America and the Middle East after the Bush Presidency: the View from the Outside

On October 24, 2007, in conjunction with Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Democracy, CIRS hosted a conference involving key members of the America’s Role in the World Working Group — including Co-Chairs Thomas Pickering (former US Ambassador to the UN) and Chester Crocker (former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs).

A day earlier, on October, 23, 2007, CIRS and ISD 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 are the participants and their presentations for the October 24th conference:

Keynote Speech: Thomas Pickering, Chairman of the Board, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD), Georgetown University. 

Panel I: The United States and the Middle East after the Bush Presidency 

Chair: Jim Seevers, Georgetown University 

• Casimir Yost, Georgetown University  America and the World after the Bush Presidency 
• Chan Heng Chee, Singapore Ambassador to the United States  America and Its Allies after the Bush Presidency 
• Jeremy Greenstock, Director of the Ditchley Foundation  America and the Middle East in the Post-Iraq Invasion Era 
• Chester Crocker, Georgetown University  American Foreign Policy-Making During & After the Bush Presidency   

Panel II: America’s Role in the Middle East 

Chair: Mehran Kamrava, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar 

• Jaafar Abbas, Al Jazeera English  Al Jazeera and US Foreign Policy: An Insider’s View 
• Mehran Kamrava, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar 
• Eldad Pardo, Hebrew University  US-Israeli Relations: The View from Jerusalem 
• Steven Wright, Qatar University The United States and the Gulf: The View from the Gulf 
• Thomas Pickering, Chairman of the Board, ISD, Georgetown University  Keynote Speech