THE FOREIGN POLICY INSTITUTE
FPI Events
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Why so Much Geopolitical Turbulence?
Robert D. Kaplan
Please join the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute (FPI) for the
First Annual Betty Lou Hummel Memorial Lecture
featuring best-selling author ROBERT D. KAPLAN.
"Why So Much Geopolitical Turbulence?"
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
4:30pm
Kenney Auditorium
1740 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Mr. Kaplan's recent books include Asia’s Cauldron, The Revenge of Geography andMonsoon. He is a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security in Washington and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, where his work has appeared for three decades. He was chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor, a visiting professor at the United States Naval Academy, and a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, appointed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”
The Hummel Lecture will be followed by a reception hosted by FPI, SAIS China Studies, and the Hopkins-Nanjing Center celebrating the Chinese New Year.
Betty Lou Firstenberger Hummel was a member of SAIS' first graduating class of 1946 who spent her adult life serving alongside her husband in diplomatic posts around the world. Thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Hummel's friends through the Betty Lou Hummel Endowed Fund, we remember Betty Lou's life and her contributions to SAIS with a lecture that presents new perspectives on international policy challenges from leading global thinkers.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
ISIS and Implications for the Security of the Middle East and West
Souad Mekhennet
Souad Mekhennet is a SAIS Foreign Policy Institute fellow, journalist and author. She works for the Washington post and German TV and has been covering terrorist movements since 9/11.
The award winning journalist has travelled the Islamic world extensively and was able to conduct interviews with commanders of various terrorist organizations.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear
David Rothkopf
Moderated by
Amb. Tahir-Kheli, PhD
In National Insecurity, David Rothkopf offers an entirely new perspective into the hidden struggles, the surprising triumphs, and the shocking failures of those charged with leading the United States through one of the most difficult periods in its history. Thanks to his extraordinary access, Rothkopf provides fresh insights drawing on more than one hundred exclusive interviews with the key players who shaped this era.
At its core, National Insecurity is the gripping story of a superpower in crisis, seeking to adapt to a rapidly changing world, sometimes showing inspiring resilience—but often undone by the human flaws of those at the top, the mismanagement of its own system, the temptation to concentrate too much power within the hands of too few in the White House itself, and an unwillingness to draw the right lessons from the recent past. Nonetheless, within that story are unmistakable clues to a way forward that can help restore American leadership.
David J. Rothkopf is CEO and Editor of the FP Group, where he oversees all operations of Foreign Policy Magazine. He is also the President and CEO of Garten Rothkopf, an international advisory company specializing in global political risk, energy, resource, technology and emerging markets issues.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Mastering the Endgame of War
Dominic Tierney
In 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor with little idea how a war against the United States could ultimately be won. Indeed, throughout history, statesmen have often plunged countries into war without thinking through the outcome. Leaders focus on the initial rounds—capturing the hill— rather than achieving strategic success. In recent years, the United States has been particularly prone to this problem. In 2003, Washington invaded Iraq without adequate planning for the post-war stabilization phase. This talk explains why the United States adopts a short-term horizon when the stakes are so high. And it outlines a strategy for mastering the endgame of war based on “reverse engineering victory” or working backward from success.
Monday, November 10, 2014
Post-ISIS Iraq: Challenges and Prospects
Abbas Kadhim
Dr. Abbas Kadhim provides a dynamic discussion on the implications of the war on ISIS, the challenges and opportunities Prime Minister al-Abadi faces moving forward, and their effect on U.S. foreign policy.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Innovations in International Development: Lessons from a Front Line Social Entrepreneur
Elena Panaritis
Elena Panaritis is an institutional economist, social entrepreneur, and policy innovator. She has served as Member of the Hellenic Parliament and adviser to Greece’s Prime Minister. As an economist at the World Bank, she spearheaded property rights reform in Peru, receiving International Best Practice awards. Her book Prosperity Unbound: Building Property Markets with Trust recounts her experience and expands on her methodology. Elena is the founder of Panel Group LLC, a triple-bottom-line business that focuses on distressed economies. She has also founded Thought for Action, an NGO that creates awareness about transforming informality and countries under solvency crisis, such as Greece.
Monday, November 3,2014
The War Trap: Ethical Problems in the Ending of War
David Rodin
What are the ethical dilemmas associated with war termination? In addition to jus ad bellum (the ethics of entering into war), jus in bello (the ethics of conducting war), and jus post bellum (the ethics of conduct in a postwar state), David Rodin identifies a fourth type of ethics associated with war: jus terminatio (the ethics of war termination). Is it just to end a war once the conditions of entering into it have been fulfilled? This is correct but incomplete. Rodin identifies the possibility of “rational entrapment” in war: that strategic escalation may compel actors to continue a war disproportionate to their interest, out of a desire to avoid the costs associated with the risk of defeat, the dilemma of sunk costs, or the moral hazard of peace negotiations.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Political Order and Political Decay
Francis Fukuyama
Volume two is finally here, complement the most important work of political thought in at least a generation. Taking up the essential question of how societies develop strong, impersonal, and accountable political institution, Fukuyama follows the story from the French Revolution to the so‐called Arab Spring and the deep dysfunctions of contemporary American politics. He examines the effects of corruption on governance, and why some societies have been successful at rooting it out.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Preventing Nuclear Terrorism Globally: Results and Remaining Challenges
Deepti Choubey
The 2014 Nuclear Security Summit – the third installment of a global effort to prevent nuclear terrorism – hosted by the Netherlands concluded in March with meaningful outcomes thwarting terrorist access to the building blocks for a nuclear bomb. The United States will host the fourth, and likely the last, Summit in 2016. To prepare for it, top officials from 50+ Summit participating countries will gather in Washington, DC near the end of October to further advance the global nuclear security agenda and plan for the effective implementation of a strengthened global nuclear security architecture.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Track Two Diplomacy Toward an Israeli-Palestinian Solution: 1978-2014
Yair Hirschfeld
Track-Two Diplomacy toward an Israeli-Palestinian Solution, 1978– 2014
is an important insider account of the negotiating sessions and internal policy and strategy debates during the thirteen-year process that led to the September 1993 Oslo Accords. Signed on the White House lawn in the presence of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat, the treaty was a landmark occasion followed shortly thereafter by the unraveling of the Israeli-Palestinian permanent status negotiations. The historical narrative focuses on series of negotiations and ongoing efforts under particular Israeli governments.
Thursday, September 18th, 2014
Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel
Joshua Muravchik
During the Six Day War of 1967, polls showed that Americans and Europeans favored the Israelis over the Arabs by overwhelming margins. Fast forward 40 years and Israel has become perhaps the most reviled country in the world. Although Americans have remained constant in their sympathy for the Jewish state, almost all of the rest of the world treats Israel as a pariah. What caused this remarkable turnabout? Making David into Goliath traces the process by which material pressures and intellectual fashions reshaped world opinion of Israel.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Zbigniew Brezezinski with Bruce Parrot
The Crisis in Ukraine
Dr. Brzezinski is a Counselor and trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; trustee of the Trilateral Commission; national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter and member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board; 1981 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom; former faculty member at Columbia and Harvard Universities; Ph.D., Government, Harvard University.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Peter Gries with Jim Mann
The Politics of American Foreign Policy
The Politics of American Foreign Policy weaves seamlessly together in-depth examinations of the psychological roots and foreign policy consequences of the liberal-conservative divide, the cultural, socio-racial, economic, and political dimensions of American ideology, and the moral values and foreign policy orientations that divide Democrats and Republicans. Within this context, the book explores in detail why American liberals and conservatives disagree over US policy relating to Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, and
international organizations such as the UN.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Dan Deudney with Scott Pace
Dark Skies: Space Weapons, Planetary Geopolitics and Whole Earth Security
The first human steps into outer space have been among the most spectacular and potentially consequential events in the globalization of Earth. ‘Space Expansionist’ thought makes ambitious and captivating claims about both the feasibility and the desirability of human expansion into outer space. But if arguments for space expansionism are broken down into their parts, and systematically assessed, a very different picture of the space prospect emerges. There are strong reasons to think that the consequences of the human pursuit of space expansion have been and could be very undesirable-- even catastrophic.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Souad Mekhennet and Guy Raz
The Eternal Nazi - From Mauthausen to Cairo, the Relentless Pursuit of SS Doctor Aribert Heim
Dr. Aribert Heim worked at the Mauthausen concentration camp for only a few months in 1941 but left a devastating mark. According to the testimony of survivors, Heim euthanized patients with injections of gasoline into their hearts. He performed surgeries on otherwise healthy people. Some recalled prisoners' skulls set out on his desk to display perfect sets of teeth. Yet in the chaos of the postwar period, Heim was able to slip away from his dark past and establish himself as a reputable doctor and family man in the resort town of Baden-Baden. His story might have ended there, but for certain rare Germans who were unwilling to let Nazi war criminals go unpunished, among them a police investigator named Alfred Aedtner. After Heim fled on a tip that he was about to be arrested, Aedtner turned finding him into an overriding obsession. His quest took him across Europe and across decades, and into a close alliance with legendary Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. The hunt for Heim became a powerful symbol of Germany's evolving attitude toward the sins of its past, which finally crested in a desire to see justice done at almost any cost.As late as 2009, the mystery of Heim’s disappearance remained unsolved. Now, in The Eternal Nazi, Nicholas Kulish and Souad Mekhennet reveal for the first time how Aribert Heim evaded capture--living in a working-class neighborhood of Cairo, praying in Arabic, beloved by an adopted Muslim family--while inspiring a manhunt that outlived him by many years. It is a brilliant feat of historical detection that illuminates a nation’s dramatic reckoning with the crimes of the Holocaust.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
General Mahmud Durrani
US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Regional Security Dilemma
General Durrani commentedn the current status of the Pakistan US relations and its impact on the security and stability of Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as on the GOP’s effort at peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban. He also shared his recommendations for bringing some peace to the region with the SAIS community.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Robert Nickelsberg
Afghanistan - A Distant War
In his new book, Afghanistan: A Distant War, veteran photojournalist Robert Nickelsberg offers a vivid close-up of life and conflict in Afghanistan. Nickelsberg gave an in-depth image presentation and discussed his experiences in Afghanistan over a twenty year
period.
