Notice: Due to public health concerns, upcoming events are only available via live stream.
The Middle East Institute is pleased to host Congressman Tom Malinowski in a conversation moderated by MEI Senior Vice President Gerald Feierstein. Congressman Malinowski will begin with remarks on the Biden administration’s approach to key Middle East challenges, including its efforts to elevate human rights into long-standing partnerships with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, how to jumpstart negotiations with Iran, and how to build on the recent normalizations with Israel.
How is Congress thinking about the new administration’s handoff with legacies of the Trump administration including blank checks on human rights, no-questions-asked weapons sales, and the Abraham Accords? How do the Biden administration’s commitments to prioritizing human rights stand up in the Middle East? What’s behind the Saudi-Iranian diplomatic engagements?
Speakers:
Rep. Tom Malinowski
US Congressman, 7th District of New Jersey
Amb. (ret.) Gerald Feirstein (moderator)
Senior Vice President, MEI
Pulitzer-winning historian Bird (The Good Spy) discerns much positive achievement in Carter’s one-term presidency, including airline deregulation that made flying cheap; prescient energy policies that boosted domestic energy supplies and solar power; human rights initiatives…and the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement… Bird skillfully paints Carter as a mix of genuine idealism and “clear-eyed ruthlessness” behind a folksy facade, and shrewdly analyzes the forces of stagflation, deindustrialization, and U.S. imperial decline—capped by the Iran hostage crisis—that hobbled him. The result is a lucid, penetrating portrait that should spur reconsideration of Carter’s much-maligned presidency.
Speakers:
Kai Bird
Former Fellow; Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York
Christian F. Ostermann (moderator)
Director, History and Public Policy Program; Cold War International History Project; Woodrow Wilson Center
Eric Arnesen
Former Fellow; Professor of History, The George Washington University, Director, National History Center of the American Historical Association
Director-General Okonjo-Iweala has been chosen to lead the WTO at one of the most challenging moments in the history of the institution. After navigating tariff disputes and trade wars in 2018 and 2019, the WTO is now at the center of helping restart the engine of global trade. As vaccination efforts continue, countries are looking to see how the WTO will address critical issues including vaccine nationalism and supply chain bottlenecks. For a historic moment, the member nations of the WTO made a historic selection. Director-General Okonjo-Iweala is the first woman and first African to lead the organization. Director-General Okonjo-Iweala will join the Council for a candid conversation on the WTO’s priorities and her vision for 2021 and beyond. What role should intellectual property play in promoting equitable vaccine distribution? How can citizens left behind by the forces of global trade over the past several decades be supported? These are just some of the many challenges facing the WTO.
Speakers:
Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Director-General World Trade Organization
Frederick Kempe (moderator)
President and CEO, The Atlantic Council
Free zones are common features of Gulf Arab states and their economies, but these trade and investment hubs are often understood only in a very narrow sense. Free zones sit at the nexus of some of the region’s most contentious political economy issues: foreign ownership, expatriate labor, and taxes and other commercial fees. Established entities like the Jebel Ali Free Zones have significantly improved Dubai’s commercial reputation, while nascent and aspirational megaprojects – from Saudi Arabia’s Neom to Kuwait’s Silk City – incorporate free zone characteristics. The UAE’s sprawling free zone system continues to expand, and newer leaders, such as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Omani Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said, appear committed to advance free zone-led development projects.
How have free zones around the Gulf contributed to economic diversification, the strengthening of the private sector, and employment creation? Are foreign ownership reforms, workforce nationalization initiatives, and new taxes and fees threatening to diminish incentives that free zones offer prospective investors? What role do free zones play in guarding against illicit financial flows? And how do free zones feature in diplomatic relations and the opening of new markets, from Israel to China?
Speakers:
Ambassador Douglas A. Silliman
President, AGSIW
Robert Mogielnicki
Senior Resident Scholar, AGSIW
Ziad Daoud
Chief Middle East Economist, Bloomberg Economics
Sanam Vakil
Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Program, Chatham House
Achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 requires building clean infrastructure at a significantly faster pace than we are currently able to site, permit, and approve infrastructure projects. Absent dramatic improvement, important projects and new technologies will sit on the sidelines and achieving net-zero by 2050 will be impossible. The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Smarter, Cleaner, Faster Infrastructure Task Force released 23 federal policy recommendations to accelerate the deployment of clean infrastructure. Join us for a virtual discussion in this second of a joint event series with Aspen Institute’s Energy & Environment Program on building faster to decarbonize our economy.
Speakers:
Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL)
United States House of Representatives
Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND)
United States House of Representatives
Bobby Jindal
Former Governor of Louisiana
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has just released its July 2021 Article IV Consultation. This webinar will address the report in the context of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Saudi economy and assess the government’s policy response. With lasting effects from the pandemic and lower oil prices through early 2021, fiscal pressure increased and heightened the pace of some economic reform. As the non-oil economy begins to recover, the Saudi government is faced with immediate policy challenges and the longer-term challenge of diversification away from oil reliance.
hat fiscal policy challenges has the volatility in the oil market created? How well are reforms meeting the need to generate more jobs for Saudi nationals in the private sector? How has the trajectory of foreign direct investment flows impacted the transformation of the Saudi economy?
Speakers:
Faris Al-Sulayman
Research fellow, King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies; PhD Candidate, London School of Economics and Political Science
Tim Callen
Assistant director, Middle East and Central Asia Department, IMF
Karen Young (moderator)
Senior fellow and director, Program on Economics and Energy, MEI
Having postponed the Games by a year as a result of the global pandemic, Tokyo will be hosting the Summer Olympics later this month. Although the worst of the spread of COVID may appear to be over in some parts of the world, concerns about the risks of hosting the Games continue to persist. It has also led to discussions worldwide about the future of the Olympic Games and prospects for hosting massive sporting events. Join us for a discussion on how the Olympics have shaped the political dynamics within Japan, and the challenges as well as opportunities for Japan becoming the first country to host the Games during a pandemic.
Speakers:
Jules Boykoff
Professor and Politics and Government Chair, Pacific University
Heather Dichter
Associate Professor, De Montfort University School of Humanities
Yuhei Inoue
Reader, Sports Management, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School
Shihoko Goto (moderator)
Deputy Director for Geoeconomics and Senior Associate for Northeast Asia, Asia Program, The Wilson Center
Our overwhelming reliance on space technology puts us in a precarious position. Like any other increasingly digitized critical infrastructure, satellites and other space-based assets are vulnerable to cyberattacks. These concerns are no longer merely hypothetical and, if not mitigated, could interfere with the space-enabled technology we take for granted in our day-to-day lives as well as national security and global economic development broadly.
This event will offer expert insights into understanding and navigating the increasingly contested cyber threat landscape in space, including threat vectors unique to a space cyber attack, and high-level drivers necessary for hardening our critical space systems.
Speakers:
Meg King
Director of the Science and Technology Innovation Program
Jamie M. Morin
Executive Director of the Center for Space Policy and Strategy, the Aerospace Corporation
Theresa Hitchens (moderator)
Space and Air Force Reporter, Breaking Defense
Brandon Bailey (panelist)
Cybersecurity Senior Project Leader, Cyber Assessments and Research Department, the Aerospace Corporation
Prashant Doshi (panelist)
Associate Principal Director, Cyber Security Subdivision, the Aerospace Corporation
Erin Miller
Executive Director, Space ISAC
Ryan Speelman
Principal Director, Cyber Security Subdivision, the Aerospace Corporation
As the world enters a new era of strategic competition, the transatlantic community will need to work closely to drive a new global agenda and advance a rules-based international order. China has grown more confident, and Russia more aggressive. Authoritarianism is resurgent, while democracies face critical challenges both at home and abroad. The purpose of this event is to discuss ways that the United States, Europe, and Canada can advance shared priorities and revitalize the most powerful democratic community in modern history.
Speakers:
Amb. Paula Dobriansky
Vice Chair, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Atlantic Council
Erik Brattberg
Director of the Europe Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Ben Haddad
Director of the Europe Center, Atlantic Council
Luiza ch. Savage
Executive Director of Editorial Initiatives at Politico and Fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute
Sophia Gaston
Director, British Foreign Policy Group
Ash Jain
Senior Fellow, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Atlantic Council
Jonathan Berkshire Miller
Director & Senior Fellow, Indo-Pacific Program, Macdonald Laurier Institute
Bruce Jones
Director of the Foreign Policy Program, Brookings Institution
Ben Roswell
President and Research Director, Canadian International Council
Maureen Boyd
Fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and Senior Fellow, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University
When Martin Griffiths, the outgoing United Nations special envoy to Yemen, gave his final briefing to the U.N. Security Council on June 15, he painted a “bleak picture” of stalled efforts to broker a cease-fire and initiate talks over ending the country’s 6-year civil war. Since former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed the U.N.’s first special representative to Yemen in 2011, the country has undergone a precipitous transformation, with successive envoys overseeing an unsuccessful political transition and the eruption of a civil war, with little progress toward peace.
With diplomatic circles now humming with speculation about who will replace Griffiths, what issues should be top of the new envoy’s agenda? How has the situation in Yemen changed since the appointment of the first U.N. envoy, and have mediation efforts kept pace with the evolution of the conflict? What lessons can be gleaned from the efforts of previous special envoys? And what recommendations can be made for the incoming envoy?
Speakers:
Nadwa Al-Dawsari
Non-Resident Fellow, Middle East Institute
Peter Salisbury
Senior Analyst, Yemen, Crisis Group
Gregory D. Johnsen
Former Member, U.N. Panel of Experts on Yemen
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