Center for International and Regional Studies

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 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.

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.

On October 24, 2007, CIRS hosted the "America and the Middle East after the Bush Presidency: the View from the Outside" conference involving key members of the 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).

CIRS will publish some of the major papers and the research findings of the conference.

The following are the participants and their presentations for the October 24th conference:

• Casimir Yost, ISD, Georgetown University
  America and the World after the Bush Presidency
• Chet Crocker, ISD, Georgetown University
  American Foreign Policy-Making During & After the Bush Presidency
• Chan Heng Chee, Singapore Ambassador to the United States
  America and Its Allies after the Bush Presidency
• Jeremy Greenstock, The Ditchley Foundation
  America and the Middle East in the Post-Iraq Invasion Era
• Jaafar Abbas, Al Jazeera Satellite Channel
  Al Jazeera and US Foreign Policy: An Insider’s View
• Eldad Pardo, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  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
  

• America's Role in the World
• Global Challenges for the Next President
• Capacity to Conduct Foreign Policy: Domestic Constraints
• Choices for America in the World