Lessons of the "Arab Spring"
Thursday, March 10, 2011 | 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
Video
About This Event
Online registration for this event is closed. Walk-in registrations will be accepted.
Video of this event will be livestreamed online at http://www.american.com/watch/aei-livestream
Video of this event will be livestreamed online at http://www.american.com/watch/aei-livestream
In December 2010, a young man set himself on fire in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. This simple act created a chain reaction of mass uprisings that brought down governments in Tunisia and Egypt. Muammar al Gaddafi's regime in Libya may fall next. The "Arab Spring" has captured the attention of the world and evoked allusions to the revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. Beyond the romanticism of the moment, what shapes will the new governments and the new Middle East take? What role will secular democrats and Islamist movements play? And what does it all mean for American policy and American interests?
Agenda
9:45 a.m.
Registration
Registration
10:00
Panelists:
ELLIOT ABRAMS, Council on Foreign Relations
ROBERT MALLEY, International Crisis Group
MICHAEL RUBIN, AEI
11:00
Question and Answer
Question and Answer
11:30 p.m.
Adjournment
Event Contact Information
Alex Della Rocchetta
1150 Seventeenth St., NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-4038
E-mail:
1150 Seventeenth St., NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-4038
E-mail:
Media Contact Information
Veronique Rodman
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-4870
E-mail: VRodman@aei.org
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-4870
E-mail: VRodman@aei.org
Speaker Biographies
Elliot Abrams is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC. He served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration, where he supervised US policy in the Middle East for the White House. Before that, Mr. Abrams was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC. He was a member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom from 1999 to 2001 and chairman of the commission in the latter year. Earlier in his career, Mr. Abrams spent four years working for the Senate, including as special counsel to Senator Henry M. Jackson (D-WA) from 1975 to 1976, and as special counsel and then chief of staff to Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (D-NY) from January 1977 to June 1979. Mr. Abrams served in the State Department during all eight years of the Reagan administration, as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, assistant secretary for human rights and humanitarian affairs, and finally assistant secretary for inter-American affairs. In 1988, Mr. Abrams received the secretary of state’s Distinguished Service Award. He is the author of Undue Process (Free Press, 1993), Security and Sacrifice (Hudson Institute, 1995), and Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America (Free Press, 1997); and editor of Close Calls: Intervention, Terrorism, Missile Defense, and “Just War” Today (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1998), Honor Among Nations: Intangible Interests and Foreign Policy (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1998), and The Influence of Faith: Religion and American Foreign Policy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).
Robert Malley is the Middle East and North Africa program director at the International Crisis Group in Washington, DC. He previously served as special assistant to President Bill Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs from 1998 to 2001. Mr. Malley also worked as the executive assistant to national security adviser Samuel Berger from 1996 to 1998 and as director for democracy, human rights, and humanitarian affairs at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1996. He has published extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is the author of The Call from Algeria: Third Worldism, Revolution, and the Turn to Islam (University of California Press, 1996).
Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Civil-Military Relations. In addition, he serves as the senior editor of Middle East Quarterly. Earlier in his career, Mr. Rubin spent two years as a staff adviser for Iran and Iraq in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. Mr. Rubin is the author of Into the Shadows: Radical Vigilantes in Khatami’s Iran (Washington Institute, 2001), coauthor of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave, 2005), and coeditor of Dissent and Reform in the Arab World: Empowering Democrats (AEI Press, 2008). In addition, Mr. Rubin was the primary drafter of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s 2008 task force report, Meeting the Challenge: US Policy toward Iranian Nuclear Development.
Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI. She writes frequently on national security matters with a focus on domestic politics in the Middle East and South Asia, terrorism, and weapons proliferation. At AEI, she developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, directed a project on democracy in the Arab world, and designed a project tracking global business in Iran. Ms. Pletka testified several times before the Senate on confronting Iran’s threat and terrorist activities in the Middle East. She is currently leading a project on the impact of a nuclear Iran while updating the AEI report “Iranian Influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan.” Ms. Pletka served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
