America's Role in the World

On October 23, 2007, the Center for International and Regional Studies and the Institute for the Study of Democracy hosted a private seminar of the working group members and prominent scholars and observers of US foreign policy from across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and East Asia.

Beginning in the Fall of 2006, Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) undertook a major scholarly initiative to examine the role and nature of American foreign policy in the coming years – The America’s Role in the World Working Group. More specifically, the ISD has sought to identify the geopolitical challenges that a new administration—Democrat or Republican—could face beginning in 2009, and also to define the central foreign policy choices and responses that are likely to be available. The goal is not to offer specific policy prescriptions but to provide the candidates with a comprehensive agenda of issues that could require attention and on which they should be forming views and taking positions. A working group comprised of approximately fifty-five experts on American foreign policy has been assembled to discuss and deliberate the topic.

The following day, on October 24, 2007, in addition to a group of invited scholars, the working group participants delivered their findings in a public conference on the topic of America and the Middle East after the Bush Presidency: the View from the Outside.

The following are the participants that took part in the working group:

• Farid Abboud, Ambassador of Lebanon to Tunisia 
• Gilles Andreani, Conseiller Maitre, Cour de Comptes 
• Habib Ben Yahia, Secretary General, Arab Maghreb Union 
• Chan Heng Chee, Ambassador of Singapore to the United States 
• Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict 
• Chester A. Crocker, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy – Georgetown University
• Álvaro de Soto, Former UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process 
• Jeremy Greenstock, Director of the Ditchley Foundation 
• Han Sung-Joo, President of Korea University 
• Mehran Kamrava, Director, Center for International and Regional Studies 
• Zyad Limam, CEO, AM International, France 
• Osman Faruk Logoglu, President, Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies 
• Sheikha Abdulla Al-Misnad, President, Qatar University 
• Thomas R. Pickering, Chairman of the Board, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy 
• Ahmed Rashid, Journalist, Pakistan 
• James Reardon-Anderson, Dean, School of Foreign Service in Qatar 
• James Seevers, Professor, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy – Georgetown University
• Amira Sonbol, Professor, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar 
• Casimir A. Yost, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy – Georgetown University 
• Vahan Zanoyan, PFC Energy International