Peace picks July 1-5

Sudden summer doldrums, but a few good picks:

1. Moderating Extremism in Pakistan Working with Women and Youth to Prevent and Resolve Conflict, Women’s Foreign Policy Group, Monday, July 1 / 12:00 pm

Venue: Wilderness Society

1615 M Street, NW Washington, DC

Speaker: Mossarat Qadeem

Mossarat Qadeem founded PAIMAN Alumni Trust, a nonprofit group promoting sociopolitical and economic empowerment of marginalized Pakistanis. With PAIMAN, she established the country’s first center for conflict transformation and peacebuilding, which has helped thousands of young people and women across the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Khyber Pukhtunkwa province to prevent and resolve conflict. Working directly with mothers of radicalized youths, Qadeem helps to rescue young men who are being exploited by extremists and ensures that they receive job training and education to help them to reintegrate into their communities. Qadeem is also the national coordinator of Aman-o-Nisa, a coalition of women leaders throughout Pakistan striving to moderate violent extremism and promote understanding among diverse ethnic, religious, and political groups. Previously, Qadeem taught political science at the University of Peshawar, where she also served as assistant director of the Women’s Study Centre. Qadeem helped found the regional South Asia Women’s Peace Forum and has developed her own training materials on women’s political participation and conflict transformation. She is also a member of the Women Waging Peace Network of The Institute for Inclusive Security, which supports more than 2,000 women leaders around the globe. Qadeem has published two books, written many articles, and produced documentaries on topics including India-Pakistan relations and women’s (particularly mothers’) experiences with conflict and extremism. She holds master’s degrees in international politics and gender and development from the Institute of Social Sciences in the Netherlands.

Register through email to:

programs@wfpg.org

2. The American Economic Recovery and the Defense Industry, Brookings Institution, Tuesday, July 2 / 10:00am – 12:00pm

Venue: Brookings Institution

1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036

Falk Auditorium

Speakers: Michael E. O’hanlon, Bruce Katz, Richard C. Bush Iii, Jay Defrank, Mackenzie Eaglen, The Honorable Nelson Ford

On July 2, Brookings will host a discussion on defense spending, military strategy and sequestration in the context of the broader American economic recovery. With many parts of the U.S. defense industry located in major urban centers, the fate of America’s metropolitan economies is tightly linked to the defense spending debate. While the economic health of those urban centers helps guide business strategy, the domestic discretionary accounts that help metropolitan regions build infrastructure, educate workforces, form public-private partnerships, and otherwise catalyze growth face similar indiscriminate cuts to those of defense. Bruce Katz, vice president and director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, will deliver keynote remarks on his new book, The Metropolitan Revolution (Brookings, 2013). Afterward, an expert panel will discuss how sequestration is affecting the military and defense industry and what alternatives to sequestration the Congress and President Obama might usefully consider at this stage. Michael O’Hanlon, author of the new book Healing the Wounded Giant: Maintaining Military Preeminence While Cutting the Defense Budget (Brookings, 2013), will moderate a discussion with Jay DeFrank, vice president at Pratt & Whitney; Nelson Ford, president and CEO of LMI Government Consulting; Mackenzie Eaglen, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; and Senior Fellow Richard Bush, director of the Center on Northeast Asia Policy Studies at Brookings. After the program, the speakers will take audience questions. The Metropolitan Revolution and Healing the Wounded Giant will be available for sale at the event.

Register for the event here:

http://www.cvent.com/events/the-american-economic-recovery-and-the-defense-industry/registration-fd017f14ec7645bc8aa07226bf5336f3.aspx

3. Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin Roosevelt Took the United States into World War II, Brookings Institution, Wednesday, July 3 / 10:00am – 11:30am

Venue: Brookings Institution

1775 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036

Falk Auditorium

Speakers: Martin S. Indyk, Michael Fullilove, Kurt Campbell

In the past few years, much attention has been given to the Obama administration’s pivot toward Asia. President Obama, however, is not the first president to undertake a major strategic shift in U.S. foreign policy. In the years before the U.S. entry into World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt pivoted the United States away from relative isolationism of the past decades into the Second World War and into the role of the world’s great super power. How did he do it and what are the takeaways for presidents and their Cabinet members in this century? On July 3, Foreign Policy at Brookings will host Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, and author of the new book Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World (Penguin Press, 2013). Fullilove will present his account of FDR’s special envoys sent on missions to Europe in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor: Sumner Welles, a well-bred diplomat who was eventually forced out of the State Department for his sexual misadventures; ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, the Republican lawyer, adventurer and future spymaster; Harry Hopkins, the sickly social worker and political fixer; Wendell Willkie, a former Republican presidential candidate; and Averell Harriman, the railroad baron turned policy-maker. Taken together, the missions describe the progressive hardening of Roosevelt’s policy toward the dictators and plot the arc of America’s transformation from a reluctant middle power into the global leader. Kurt Campbell, former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and now chairman and CEO of The Asia Group, will join the discussion, which will be moderated by Brookings Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Martin Indyk.

Register for the event here:

https://www.cvent.com/events/rendezvous-with-destiny-how-franklin-roosevelt-took-the-united-states-into-world-war-ii/registration-030a8f9f090548e4934443d482ac81eb.aspx