Past Event
Seminar

Rebuilding Ukraine: Seizure of Russian Assets

RSVP Required Open to the Public

Please join the Belfer Center’s Future of Diplomacy Project for a two-part seminar on the reconstruction and recovery of Ukraine. Ukraine’s economy has been devastated due to Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion since February 2022. The World Bank estimated back in September 2022 that the current cost of Ukraine’s reconstruction is $350 billion, while some economists estimate the costs to be much higher. The reconstruction efforts will take decades and will require strong collaboration among Ukraine’s international partners as well as the private sector. Furthermore, it will require committed legal action to hold Russia accountable for its actions.

In this inaugural seminar, the panel will be discussing proposals for the seizure of Russian state assets to provide support for Ukraine. We will be joined by former U.S. Treasury Secretary, Lawrence H. Summers; the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia, Dr. Philip D. Zelikow; and former Assistant U.S. Secretary of State, Stephen Rademaker. The conversation will be moderated by Ambassador Paula J. Dobriansky, Senior Fellow with the Future of Diplomacy Project and former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs.

Volunteers clear rubble on the second floor of Zhanna and Serhiy Dynaeva's house which was destroyed by Russian bombardment, in a residential area, in the village of Novoselivka, near Chernihiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022

ABOUT

Lawrence H. Summers 

Lawrence H. Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus of Harvard University. During the past three decades, he has served in a series of senior policy positions in Washington, D.C., including the 71st Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama and Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank.

He received a bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982. In 1983, he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty. In 1987, Mr. Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and in 1993 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40.

He is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University and the Weil Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He and his wife Elisa New, a professor of English at Harvard, reside in Brookline and have six children.


Dr. Philip Zelikow

Philip Zelikow is the White Burkett Miller Professor of History at the University of Virginia.  His scholarship focuses on critical episodes in American and world history, including most recently The Road Less Traveled: The Secret Turning Point of the Great War, 1916-17. An attorney and former career diplomat who has served at all levels of American government, his federal service includes work in the five administrations from Reagan through Obama.  He has also led bipartisan commissions, as the executive director of the Carter-Ford commission on federal election reform (2001), the 9/11 Commission (2003-04), and the Covid Crisis Group, whose report, Lessons from the Covid War, will be published in April 2023. 


Stephen Rademaker

Stephen Rademaker is Senior of Counsel at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling.  Before joining the firm he held a variety of positions in all three branches of government, including as an Assistant Secretary of State responsible for arms control and nonproliferation, as Chief Counsel to House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and as National Security Adviser to the Senate Majority Leader. 

While at the State Department, Mr. Rademaker directed the Proliferation Security Initiative, as well as nonproliferation policy toward Iran and North Korea, and led strategic dialogues with Russia, China, India and Pakistan.  He also headed the U.S. delegation to the 2005 Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  As a House staffer, he had lead responsibility for drafting the legislation that created the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. 

At Covington & Burling, Mr. Rademaker’s practice centers on advising clients about compliance with various U.S. sanctions measures and other international trade controls, including those directed at Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela.

Mr. Rademaker has a B.A., a J.D., and an M.A. in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia and is the father of four children.