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Online registration for this event is closed. Walk-in registrations will not be accepted. Please note that video of this event will be livestreamed online at http://www.american.com/watch/aei-livestream
Tuesday's election turned over control of the House of Representatives to Republicans at a historic level, thus ushering in a huge class of
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freshman members. A significant group of first-time senators rode this wave into power as well, although not quite enough to take control of the chamber. In addition to addressing unprecedented voter anger and a lingering economic recession, these new members of the 112th Congress will need to get up to speed quickly on the national security questions absent from the midterm electoral debates. The war in Afghanistan, the terrorist threat against the homeland, a protonuclear Iran, a rising China, and the proper level of defense spending are among the front-burner issues. Will the new Congress challenge the Obama administration's foreign and defense policies? And, if it does, will it do so in the name of strengthening and preserving American global leadership, or not? Join Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, former senator Jim Talent (R-Mo.), and director of AEI's Center for Defense Studies Thomas Donnelly for a lively discussion.
8:30 a.m.
Registration and Breakfast
9:00
Panelists:
THOMAS DONNELLY, AEI
WILLIAM KRISTOL, Weekly Standard
JIM TALENT, Heritage Foundation
Moderator:
DANIELLE PLETKA, AEI
WASHINGTON, NOVEMBER 5, 2010--Foreign policy issues were absent from the debate during the recent campaign cycle, ignored by candidates and the press alike. A group of experts convened to discuss the key foreign policy issues facing our nation, as well as potential congressional action. Former senator Jim Talent focused on the declining defense budget and shared his concern that the world is only growing more dangerous. He noted that while Congress may only be able to make adjustments on the margin to administration policy, he hoped these adjustments would be in the right direction and could lay the basis for greater change in the future. Thomas Donnelly highlighted the current progress in the war in Afghanistan and stressed the importance of a continuing commitment to the effort. Donnelly also predicted that new congressional members will have the opportunity to play an active role on defense issues. William Kristol noted that there is significant uncertainty because of the number of new members with no voting records. He also predicted that the next two years will see a greater focus on foreign policy issues than the past two, in particular noting the danger of a nuclear Iran.
- "Because it's just increasingly clear to everybody who is paying any attention to this that America's position in the world is getting progressively more dangerous, every category of primary risk, and for that matter secondary risk, is demonstrably growing."
--Jim Talent, Distinguished Fellow, Heritage Foundation - "Foreign policy . . . is really just a secondary interest of [Obama's] . . . something that he finds an annoying diversion from the domestic policy agenda that he's got. And he looks at all these [foreign policy] issues through that lens."
--Thomas Donnelly, Director, AEI Center for Defense Studies - "Between Afghanistan and Iran, leaving aside all the other things going on the world, obviously things can blow up at any time; it seems to me inevitable that foreign policy issues are just more central to our general national debate in the next years than they have been for the past two."
--William Kristol, Editor, The Weekly Standard
--BETH FRANKER
Speaker biographies
Thomas M. Donnelly, a defense and security policy analyst, is the director of the Center for Defense Studies. He is the coauthor with Frederick W. Kagan of Lessons for a Long War: How America Can Win on New Battlefields (AEI Press, 2010). Among his recent books are Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power (AEI Press, 2008), coauthored with Frederick W. Kagan; Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007), coedited with Gary J. Schmitt; The Military We Need (AEI Press, 2005); and Operation Iraqi Freedom: A Strategic Assessment (AEI Press, 2004). Mr. Donnelly was policy-group director and a professional staff member for the House Committee on Armed Services from 1995 to 1999, and he also served as a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is a former editor of Armed Forces Journal, Army Times, and Defense News.
William Kristol is editor of the Weekly Standard, which he cofounded in 1995. One of the nation’s leading political analysts and commentators, Mr. Kristol regularly appears on Fox News Sunday and the Fox News Channel. Before starting the Weekly Standard, he led the Project for the Republican Future. He was also chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the Bush administration and to Secretary of Education William Bennett during the Reagan administration. Before coming to Washington in 1985, Mr. Kristol taught politics at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. She served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. She writes frequently on national security matters with a focus on domestic politics in the Middle East and South Asia, U.S. national security, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. While at AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, directed a project on democracy in the Arab world, and designed a project to track global business in Iran. She recently edited a publication on dissent and reform in the Arab world and coauthored a report on Iranian influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan, which she is in the process of updating. Ms. Pletka comments regularly on foreign and defense policy issues and has testified several times before the Senate on confronting Iran’s threat to the United States and terrorist activities in the Middle East.
Jim Talent is a distinguished fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he specializes in military readiness and welfare reform issues. Mr. Talent’s political career began in 1984, when, at age twenty-eight, he was elected to the Missouri House of Representatives. He later became the minority leader in 1988. In 1992, he was elected to Congress representing Missouri’s second district. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, Mr. Talent was in the thick of the debate over strengthening the armed forces and took a firm stance to protect America’s military from cuts in size and funding. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002 and served until 2006, focusing on defense issues. He was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and chaired the Sea Power Subcommittee for four years.
