Tag: Asia
Peace picks, October 7-11
A wide array of interesting events this week (be aware of possible event cancellations due to the government shutdown):
1. A New Look at American Foreign Policy: The Third in a Series of Discussions
Monday October 7 | 12:00pm – 1:00pm
The Heritage Foundation, Lehrman Auditorium, 214 Massachusetts Avenue NW
For decades, libertarians and conservatives have been at odds over American foreign policy. But perhaps a conversation is possible today between classical liberals and conservatives on the nature of American foreign policy. Some are trying to find a “middle way” that is less doctrinaire. At the same time the “neo” conservative phase of hyper military interventionism is a spent force in conservative circles. Therefore, the time may be ripe for an open and honest conversation among some libertarians and conservatives about the future of American foreign policy. It may be possible a new consensus could be found between Americans who consider themselves classical liberals and traditional conservatives on the purposes of American foreign policy.
Join us as Heritage continues the discussion regarding this question, what the dangers and opportunities are and whether they afford an opportunity to take a “new look” at American foreign policy.
For decades, libertarians and conservatives have been at odds over American foreign policy. But perhaps a conversation is possible today between classical liberals and conservatives on the nature of American foreign policy. Some are trying to find a “middle way” that is less doctrinaire. At the same time the “neo” conservative phase of hyper military interventionism is a spent force in conservative circles. Therefore, the time may be ripe for an open and honest conversation among some libertarians and conservatives about the future of American foreign policy. It may be possible a new consensus could be found between Americans who consider themselves classical liberals and traditional conservatives on the purposes of American foreign policy.
Join us as Heritage continues the discussion regarding this question, what the dangers and opportunities are and whether they afford an opportunity to take a “new look” at American foreign policy.
More About the Speakers
Kim R. Holmes, Ph.D.
Distinguished Fellow, The Heritage Foundation
Randy E. Barnett
Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Legal Theory, Georgetown University Law Center
Marion Smith
Visiting Fellow, B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics, The Heritage Foundation
Hosted By
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Peace picks, August 19-23
Slowest Washington week for war and peace events in a long time:
1. Al Qaeda and its Affiliates: On Life Support or an Imminent Threat?
A Conversation with Eli Lake, Thomas Joscelyn and Cliff May
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Registration and lunch will begin at 11:45 am
RSVP below.
Twelve years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and more than two years after Osama bin Laden was killed, how great of a threat is al Qaeda to the U.S. homeland and America’s interests abroad? Has the instability in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and throughout Africa allowed al Qaeda to grow in size and power? How should the latest threats against America’s diplomatic facilities, paired with the recent prison breaks in Pakistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere impact U.S. counterterrorism strategy?
Please join FDD for a conversation with Eli Lake, Thomas Joscelyn, and Cliff May.
Eli Lake is the senior national-security correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. He previously covered national security and intelligence for The Washington Times. Eli has also been a contributing editor at The New Republic since 2008 and covered diplomacy, intelligence, and the military for the late New York Sun. He has lived in Cairo and traveled to war zones in Sudan, Iraq, and Gaza. He is one of the few journalists to report from all three members of President Bush’s axis of evil: Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the Senior Editor of The Long War Journal. Most of Thomas’s research and writing focuses on how al Qaeda and its affiliates operate around the world. He is a regular contributor to The Weekly Standard and his work has been published by a variety of other publications.
Clifford D. May is President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He has had a long and distinguished career in international relations, journalism, communications and politics. Cliff spent nearly a decade with The New York Times as a reporter in both New York and Washington, an editor of The New York Times Sunday Magazine and as a foreign correspondent. He is a frequent guest on national and international television and radio news programs including CNN and MSNBC, providing analysis and participating in debates on national security issues. He writes a weekly column that is nationally distributed by Scripps Howard News Service and is a regular contributor to National Review Online, The American Spectator and other publications.
Please feel free to share this invitation.
Open press coverage. Advance RSVP required.
Camera setup at 11:00 am
1726 M Street, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036
– See more at: http://www.defenddemocracy.org/events/al-qaeda-and-its-affiliates-on-life-support-or-an-imminent-threat/#sthash.BDqNrXD8.dpuf
2. The Coming Asian Arms Race?
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Date / Time
Thursday, August 22, 2013 / 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
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Speaker(s)
Ely Ratner, Randall Schriver, Barry Pavel
A discussion with:
Dr. Ely Ratner
Deputy Director, Asia-Pacific Security Program
Center for a New American Security
Mr. Randall Schriver
President and Chief Executive Officer
Project 2049 Institute
Moderated by:
Mr. Barry Pavel
Vice President and Director, Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security
Atlantic Council
Please join the Brent Scowcroft Center of the Atlantic Council for a panel discussion on the recent uptick in defense spending in the Asia-Pacific region, what it means for US strategy, and what it portends for the future of regional rivalries.
Last year, Defense News published a special report showing that the locus of military spending in the world is shifting to Asia as when European defense budgets are decreasing. According to an IHS Jane’s study, defense spending in the Asia-Pacific will overtake North American defense budgets by 2021. In addition, three of the world’s top five arms importers are in Asia: China (#1), South Korea (#3), and Singapore (#5). In addition, once dormant military powers, like Japan, are remilitarizing, prompting a changing geopolitical landscape that could lead to rising tensions between China and Taiwan, both Koreas, and other regional rivals. These changes in Asian defense have important implications for the United States as its posture looks east during the so-called “pivot” or “rebalance.” To discuss these strategically vital developments, the Atlantic Council has invited prominent scholars and practitioners in this field to discuss what increasing Asian defense budgets mean for the United States, the region, and the world.
Dr. Ely Ratner is the deputy director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. He recently served in the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs at the State Department as the lead political officer covering China’s external relations in Asia. He was an international affairs fellow sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. His portfolio included China’s activities in and relations with North Korea, Japan, Burma, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Mr. Randall Schriver is the president and chief executive officer of the Project 2049 Institute. He is also a founding partner of Armitage International LLC, based in Arlington, Virginia, and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, DC. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2003 to 2005, and as chief of staff and senior policy advisor to then-deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, from 2001 to 2003.
The moderator for this event, Mr. Barry Pavel, is a vice president of the Atlantic Council and the director of the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security. Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, he was a career member of the Senior Executive Service in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy for almost eighteen years. From October 2008 through July 2010, he served as the special assistant to the president and senior director for defense policy and strategy on the National Security Council (NSC) staff, serving both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama.
This event is part of the Asia Security Initiative’s Cross-Straits series, which examines strategic and current affairs surrounding cross-straits relations.
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China should concern us
With current events keeping the 24-hour news cycle focused elsewhere, one issue that doesn’t get enough attention these days is growing tension between the US and China. With an ongoing cyber-war , hostile actions in outer space , and increasingly confrontational military buildups and posturing, the military rivalry between the world’s two largest economies is worrisome.
Larry Wortzel, a respected China expert and retired US army colonel, spoke yesterday at the Heritage Foundation about his recently published The Dragon Extends its Reach: Chinese Military Power Goes Global. Describing China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Wortzel is skeptical about the future of US – Chinese relations. He dismisses those who view China’s economic and military growth as benign and believes that both the near and long-term future will be characterized by friction, competition, and potential for conflict. Read more
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Peace picks June 17-21
1. The Future of Stability Operations: Lessons from Afghanistan, American Security Project, Monday June 17 / 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Venue: American Security Project
1100 New York Avenue, NW · Suite 710W, Washington, DC
7th Floor West Tower
Speakers: Sloan Mann, Eythan Sontag, Frank Kearney III, Howard Clark
The international community has learned a great deal about how to conduct stability operations in the last 12 years. This event will be a fact-based discussion with leading experts on stability operations. The panel will discuss key lessons from the experience in Afghanistan and how they can be applied to future conflict environments.
RSVP through email to:
events@americansecurityproject.org Read more
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No questions are a bad sign
Myanmar’s President Thein Sein put on a good show at SAIS yesterday. In his prepared remarks, he talked about:
- His country’s transition from autocracy to an open society and democracy;
- Ending Myanmar’s isolation and its internal, communal wars;
- Bringing perpetrators to justice;
- Pursuing national dialogue;
- Establishing the state on the basis of the people’s sovereignty;
- Opening the economy in a way that is fair to all;
- Taking advantage of Myanmar’s geopolitical situation in a resurgent Asia;
- Protecting the natural environment;
- Reforming the military;
- Opening the political system to multiple parties, civil society and free elections;
- The coming of age of a new generation unburdened by past conflicts;
- Meeting the challenges of natural disasters, sea-level rise and epidemics;
- Broadening the concept of national identity and finding ways to work together to build the state and nation.
All this he noted will require compromise, tolerance and patience. It will also require going beyond the 10 ceasefires already in place to another imminent one with the Kachin. The ceasefires will have to be made sustainable by devolution, resource-sharing and broad popular support.
What more can a proper 21st century American professor ask of a former dictator?
Then two things happened that cast a shadow on the event: he did not take questions, and when I got back to the office news of a two-child limit on Muslims in an area where they are already subject to ethnic cleansing reached me. I already knew that the President had not fulfilled his commitments on a number of reform issues.
So what are we to make of this virtually impeccable speech and a less than perfect record? I wouldn’t doubt Thein Sein’s sincerity. I thought his speech written in Washington (a couple of well-informed colleagues disagreed), but he read it with conviction and the things it said were vigorous. He’ll have to wear them when he gets home. But his performance in an interview at the Washington Post was at times been opaque and at times defensive of the military role in Myanmar.
Thein Sein is a transition figure who can’t avoid the contradictions of his transitional position, even if he was unequivocal in describing the regime he spent his career in as an autocracy. He said a lot of the right things. What was missing in the presentation was however something fundamental: he never mentioned human rights. The transition he was describing was an elite-decided and elite-led transition, not one respectful of the rights of individuals.
Had there been a Q and A session, I and likely others would have explored this lacuna. That is only proper, in particular at a university event. It’s only the second time in many years of attending such events that I remember no Q and A. The last time was more than 10 years ago, when Michael Armitage appeared as deputy secretary of state at USIP to justify the Iraq war. No questions then either. It was a bad sign.
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Ten things the president should be doing
Herewith my short list of ten international issues more worthy of presidential attention than the issues that are getting it this week:
- Drones: Apparently the President is preparing to address how and why he uses them soon.
- Syria: Secretary of State Kerry and the Russians are ginning up a peace conference next month, while Moscow strengthens Syrian defenses against Western intervention.
- Iraq: The Syrian war is spilling over and posing serious challenges to the country’s political cohesion.
- Egypt: President Morsi is taking the Arab world’s most populous country in economically and politically ruinous directions.
- Israel/Palestine: With the peace process moribund, the window is closing on the opportunity to reach a two-state outcome.
- Libya: The failure to establish the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force leaves open the possibility of further attacks on Americans (and on the Libyan state).
- Afghanistan: The American withdrawal is on schedule, but big questions remain about what will be left behind.
- Pakistan: Nawaz Sharif’s hat trick provides an opportunity for improved relations, if managed well.
- Iran: once its presidential election is over (first round is June 14, runoff if needed June 21), a last diplomatic effort on its nuclear ambitions will begin.
- All that Asia stuff: North Korean nukes, maritime jostling with China, Trans-Pacific Partnership, transition in Myanmar (how about trying for one in Vietnam?), Japan’s economic and military revival…
In the good old days, presidents in domestic trouble headed out on international trips. Obama doesn’t seem inclined in that direction. He really does want to limit America’s commitments abroad and restore its economy at home. Bless him. But if things get much worse, I’ll bet on a road trip.
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