new york university, a russian scholar, chrystia freeland of the "financial times", claire shipman of abc news and thomas pickering, the leading american diplomat and former u.s. ambassador to russia and undersecretary of state for political affairs. >> we expanded nato, we left the a.b.m. treaty, russia helped us win the ground war in afghanistan more than any other country in 2001 and 2002 and we gave them nothing, we just expanded nato and withdrew from the treaty and the political class looked at him and said "fool. weakling. we look like pushovers, we give; they take." that's why... that's the real issue of what happened and is happening in moscow. >> i think the big choice for russia still is the choice that it faced in '89, '91, '96, 2000, which is between democracy and pluralism and authoritarianism. and i absolutely do not see how appeasing, placating this sort of neo-imperialistic mood which