Westminster Institute

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The Challenges Facing Christians in Turkey Today https://youtu.be/JQoE_PdKdFU

Dr. Hratch Tchilingirian is a sociologist (with a particular reference to sociology of religion) and Associate Faculty Member of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. He has published extensively and lectures on minorities in contemporary Middle East; inter-ethnic conflicts in the Caucasus, the Armenian Church, Diaspora, and Turkish-Armenian relations. From 2002 to 2012 he taught and held various positions at University of Cambridge, and was co-founder of the Eurasia Research Centre at Judge Business School. Dr. Tchilingirian is the author of numerous studies, articles and publications and has lectured internationally in leading universities, academic institutions and international NGOs (see www.hratch.info). His television, radio and newspaper interviews have appeared in international media outlets, including the New York Times, Financial Times, BBC News, Al-Jazeera and Radio Vaticana. A transcript is unavailable for this talk. Dr. Tchilingirian’s remarks will be a chapter of Handbook of Christianity in the Middle East (eds. Mitri Raheb and Mark A. Lamport). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2021.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie5YZH1W2j4

Dr. Svante E. Cornell is Director of the American Foreign Policy Council’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, and a co-founder of the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm. His main areas of expertise are security issues, state-building, and transnational crime in Southwest and Central Asia, with a specific focus on the Caucasus and Turkey. He is the Editor of the Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst and the Joint Center’s Silk Road Papers series of occasional papers.

https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-armenian-azerbaijani-crisis/

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https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-nature-of-putins-regime-and-the-reasons-for-its-foreign-policy/

David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent, is a long time observer of Russia and the former Soviet Union. He is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Satter was born in Chicago in 1947 and graduated from the University of Chicago and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and earned a B.Litt degree in political philosophy. He worked for four years as a police reporter for the Chicago Tribune and, in 1976, he was named Moscow correspondent of the London Financial Times. He worked in Moscow for six years, from 1976 to 1982, during which time he sought out Soviet citizens with the intention of preserving their accounts of the Soviet totalitarian system for posterity.

After completing his term in Moscow, Satter became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for The Wall Street Journal, contributing to the paper’s editorial page. In 1990, he was named a Thornton Hooper fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia and then a senior fellow at the Institute. From 2003 to 2008, he was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. In 2008, he was also a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He teaches a course on contemporary Russian history at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced Academic Programs.

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https://westminster-institute.org/events/how-china-sees-the-world/

Dean Cheng is The Heritage Foundation‘s research fellow on Chinese political and security affairs. He specializes in China’s military and foreign policy, in particular its relationship with the rest of Asia and with the United States. He is fluent in Chinese, and uses Chinese language materials regularly in his work. Prior to joining Heritage, he was a senior analyst with the China Studies Division at Center for Naval Analyses from 2001-2009, where he specialized on Chinese military issues, and authored studies on Chinese military doctrine, Chinese mobilization concepts, and Chinese space capabilities.

Before joining CNA, he was a senior analyst with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). He has also served as an analyst with the US Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment in the International Security and Space Division, where he studied the Chinese defense industrial complex. He is the author of the book Cyber Dragon: Inside China’s Information Warfare and Cyber Operations, as well as a number of papers and book chapters examining various aspects of Chinese security affairs. He has been interviewed by or provided commentary for publications such as Time magazine, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Bloomberg News, Jane’s Defense Weekly, and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post. Mr. Cheng earned a bachelor’s degree in politics from Princeton University and has done doctoral studies at MIT.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd2TNmpNxXA

Harun Maruf: Al-Shabaab Update and Strategic Plan

Harun Maruf is a reporter and writer at VOA Africa Division with an extensive experience in working in conflict zones. He also covers security, extremism, piracy, human rights, politics and other current affairs issues. He secured the first radio interview with the late American jihadist Omar Hammami.

Read the transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/al-shabaab-update-and-strategic-plan/

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The Reemergence of Civilizations (including Russia’s) as the Defining Factor in the Future of the Middle East

Dr. David Wurmser is a Senior Analyst at the Center for Security Policy. He has over 35 years of experience in foreign policy with the State Department, Department of Defense, the National Security Council and the American Enterprise Institute.  He is a well-known expert on Middle East issues, especially the U.S.- Israel relationship.

From December 2018 until September 2019, Wurmser also served as senior advisor to U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton. Recently he was credited for authoring a series of memoranda for the White House to provide the rationale for striking hard at the Iranian regime, including the elimination of Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani. Wurmser served as Middle East Adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney from 2003-2007.  He also served as a special assistant to Bolton when he was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control in the George W. Bush administration and as a research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute from 2002-2003.

Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, Wurmser consulted for the Office of the Secretary of Defense on a war‐related classified project on understanding the nature and strategic significance of terrorist group networks and their interactions with states.  Wurmser served in the U.S. Navy Reserve as an intelligence officer at the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He was mobilized during the Operational Vigilant Warrior following Iraq’s surge toward Kuwait in 1994 to serve on the Iraq Intelligence Task for the DIA. He was mobilized twice more for the same task force in 1996 and 1998 ‐‐ for which the Department of Defense awarded him the prestigious Defense Meritorious Service Medal.

Dr. Wurmser holds a Ph.D. in U.S. Foreign Policy and Middle East affairs from Johns Hopkins University.  He is a prolific writer and has done many TV and radio interviews.  He is the author of the 1999 book Tyranny’s Ally: America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein, which the New Yorker called the intellectual framework for President Bush’s freedom strategy the Middle East.

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https://westminster-institute.org/events/iraq-past-present-and-pivotal-future/

Hassan Mneimneh is Principal at Middle East Alternatives in Washington DC. He is Scholar at the Middle East Institute and Contributing Editor at Fikra Forum at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

He was previously Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and Director of the Center for Global Engagement at the Institute for American Values. Between 1999 and 2008, Mneimneh assumed leading functions at the Iraq Memory Foundation, the Iraq Foundation, and the Iraq Research and Documentation Project.

Mneimneh specializes in the affairs of the Middle East, North Africa, and the wider Islamic world with a particular emphasis on radicalism and factionalism. In previous capacities, he has focused on the significance of socio-political and cultural developments in the MENA region to US and European policies; assessed civil reaction to radicalizing tendencies in Muslim societies; and studied the evolution, record, and prospects of radical Islamist formations worldwide. He has written, in English, Arabic, and French, on political, cultural, historical, and intellectual questions concerning the Arab and Muslim worlds.

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China and US Strategic Competition

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Seth Cropsey is a senior fellow and director of the Center for American Seapower at Hudson Institute. He specializes in defense strategy, U.S. foreign and security policy in the Middle East and East Asia, and the future of U.S. naval power.

Cropsey began his career in government at the U.S. Department of Defense as assistant to Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and subsequently served as deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, where he was responsible for the Navy’s position on efforts to reorganize DoD, development of the maritime strategy, the Navy’s academic institutions, naval special operations, and burden-sharing with NATO allies. In the Bush administration, Cropsey moved to the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) to become acting assistant secretary, and then principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. Cropsey served as a naval officer from 1985 to 2004.

From 1982 to 1984, Cropsey directed the editorial policy of the Voice of America (VOA) on the solidarity movement in Poland, Soviet treatment of dissidents, and other issues. Returning to public diplomacy in 2002 as director of the U.S. government’s International Broadcasting Bureau, Cropsey supervised the agency as successful efforts were undertaken to increase radio and television broadcasting to the Muslim world.

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Dr. Walid Phares (June 2020): Analysis of the Geopolitics of the Libya Conflict

Dr. Walid Phares, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump and Mitt Romney and is Fox News national security expert, will assess US policy towards the Greater Middle East from Afghanistan to Libya, with insights into major crises in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Gulf and Turkey. Dr. Phares is an engaging and highly sought after Middle East expert and pacesetter, often predicting trends and situations on the ground years before they occur. He is a Fox News Expert, advisor to the US Congress and the European Parliament and served as a senior advisor on national security foreign policy to presidential candidate Mitt Romney 2012. Dr Phares is the only expert/author who predicted the Arab Spring a year before it occurred in his pacesetting book, The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (Threshold, a division of Simon and Shuster 2010). Dr Phares holds an extensive CV and noteworthy achievements in the fields of academia, government strategies, media and publishing critical advice on combatting terrorism and countering jihadi radicalization both stateside and abroad. Dr Phares holds a Ph.D in international relations and strategic studies from the University of Miami, and a Political Science Degree from St Joseph University and a Law degree from the Lebanese University in Beirut and a Master in International Law from Universite Jean Moulin in Lyons, France.

Read the transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/analysis-of-the-geopolitics-of-the-libya-conflict-june-2020/

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Hear his full talk on YouTube and read the transcript here

Mehdi Khalaji is the Libitzky Family fellow at The Washington Institute, focusing on the politics of Iran and Shiite groups in the Middle East. A Shiite  theologian by training, Mr. Khalaji has also served on the editorial boards of two prominent Iranian periodicals and produced for the BBC as well as the U.S. government’s Persian news service. From 1986 to 2000, Mr. Khalaji trained in the seminaries of Qom, the traditional center of Iran’s clerical establishment. There he studied theology and jurisprudence, earning a doctorate and researching widely on modern intellectual and philosophical-political developments in Iran and the wider Islamic and Western worlds. In Qom, and later in Tehran, Mr. Khalaji launched a career in journalism, first serving on the editorial board of a  theological journal, Naqd va Nazar, and then the daily Entekhab. In addition to his own writing, he has translated the works of the humanist Islamic scholar Muhammad Arkoun.

In 2000, Mr. Khalaji moved Paris where he studied Shiite theology and exegesis in the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He also worked for BBC Persian as a political analyst on Iranian affairs, eventually becoming a broadcaster for the Prague-based Radio Farda, the Persian-language service of the U.S. government’s Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. At Radio Farda, he  produced news, features, and analysis on a range of Middle Eastern, Iranian, and Islamic issues.

Mr. Khalaji writes a bilingual English and Persian blog, MehdiKhalaji.com. He previously addressed Westminster on the subject of How the Iranian Revolution Changed the Role of the Shia Clergy.

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https://westminster-institute.org/events/is-the-muslim-brotherhood-still-a-threat-today/

Cynthia Farahat is a Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum and a founder of the Egyptian Liberal party, which was the first secular classical liberal political party in the history of modern Egypt.

She co-authored Desecration of a Heavenly Religion, which analyzed and criticized Egypt’s blasphemy law. The book was officially banned in Egypt by al-Azhar University in Cairo in 2008. Cynthia’s work on countering Islamic terrorism has lead Lebanon’s intelligence officials to officially bar her from entering the country. She also received hundreds of death threats from Islamists and was placed on an al-Qaeda affiliated hit list. Recently she has briefed over 120 Congressional offices on the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood by discussing her personal story as well as her research, from a cache of thousands of previously undisclosed documents, into the nature of the Brotherhood.

In 2011, the abduction of her brother, the assassination of her friend, and numerous threats to her life prompted her to flee to the United States where she was granted political asylum. She is currently writing a book on the Muslim Brotherhood’s involvement in transnational terrorism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_NVQK39lsE

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Bilal Wahab: Iraq and Iran

#Iraq #Iran #MiddleEast Dr. Bilal Wahab is the Nathan and Esther K. Wagner fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he focuses on gover...

https://westminster-institute.org/events/iraqi-freedom-confronts-iranian-domination/

Dr. Bilal Wahab is the Nathan and Esther K. Wagner fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he focuses on governance in the Iraqi Kurdish region and in Iraq as a whole. He has taught at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, where he established the Center for Development and Natural Resources, a research program on oil and development.

Dr. Wahab earned his Ph.D. from George Mason University. He received his M.A. from American University, where he was among the first Iraqis awarded a Fulbright scholarship. His master’s thesis was on How Iraqi Oil Smuggling Greases Violence. He earned his B.A. from Salahaddin University in Erbil. He has also taught at Salahaddin University in the Political Science and English Language Departments. Along with numerous scholarly articles, he has written extensively in the Arabic and Kurdish media.

Dr. Wahab has contributed recent analyses on the subjects of: Kurdish Reactions to Their Abandonment in Syria; As Protests Explode, Iraq Must Get Serious About Reform; and Iraqi Kurdistan’s New Government. He speaks Arabic, Kurdish, Persian and Turkish.

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Dr. Patrick M. Cronin: Total Competition: The China Challenge in the South China Sea

#SouthChinaSea #China #geopolitics Dr. Patrick M. Cronin is a former Senior Advisor and Senior Director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center fo...

Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/total-competition-the-china-challenge-in-the-south-china-sea/

Dr. Patrick M. Cronin is the Asia-Pacific Security Chair at Hudson Institute. Dr. Cronin’s research program analyzes the challenges and opportunities confronting the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, including China’s total competition campaign, the future of the Korean peninsula, and strengthening U.S. alliances and partnerships. Dr. Cronin was previously senior advisor and senior director of the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and before that, senior director of the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National Defense University, where he simultaneously oversaw the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs.

Dr. Cronin has a rich and diverse background in both Asian-Pacific security and U.S. defense, and foreign and development policy. Prior to leading INSS, Dr. Cronin served as the director of studies at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). At IISS, he also served as editor of the Adelphi Papers and as the executive director of the Armed Conflict Database. Before joining IISS, Dr. Cronin was senior vice president and director of research at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

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Dr. Ali H. Alyami: Saudi Arabia's Unpredictable Future

Dr. Ali Alyami is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, based in Washington, D. C. He is a native ...

Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/saudi-arabias-unpredictable-future/

Dr. Ali Alyami is the founder and Executive Director of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, based in Washington, D. C. He is a native of Saudi Arabia and has been an avid advocate for political reforms in Saudi Arabia.

The Center for Democracy & Human Rights in Saudi Arabia (CDHR) focuses on Saudi domestic and foreign policies and their impact on, and implications for, the Saudi people and the international community, especially U.S. economic and national security interests. Due to its centrality to Islam and possession of large quantities of fossil fuel energy sources, Saudi Arabia plays a major religious and economic role in the lives of Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide. CDHR was established in 2004 to promote institutionalized democratic and human rights reforms as the best way of achieving long term stability in Saudi Arabia.

Previously, Dr. Alyami was a Senior Fellow at the Saudi Institute in Washington, D.C., Director of an educational peace program for the American Friends Service Committee in San Francisco, and a Representative for the Arab Organization for Human Rights (a Cairo-based group) in North America. He holds a Ph.D. in Government from the Claremont Graduate University in Southern California, and a Master’s Degree from California State University in Los Angeles. His Ph.D. doctoral thesis was: “The Impact of Modernization on the Stability of the Saudi Monarchy.”

Dr. Alyami provided expert testimony regarding human rights in Saudi Arabia before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. He also organized and participated in many conferences and discussions about Saudi Arabia, its policies and their impact on the Saudi people, the Middle East, and the international community. Alyami has spoken at conferences in the United States, London, Egypt, Sudan, and Israel, and is a frequent media presence.

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Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/how-terrorist-groups-end/

Dr. Christopher C. Harmon is the Donald Bren Chair of Great Power Competition at Marine Corps University (MCU) where he lectures across the schools within MCU – (the Marine Corps War College – MCWAR, the Command and Staff College – CSC, the School of Advanced Warfighting – SAW, and the Expeditionary Warfare School – EWS.) Some terrorist campaigns are short; some last for decades. Most terrorist campaigns do end….but how? The answers not only reveal much about a given terrorist group, they also aid us in identifying good strategies for countering such political violence.

Dr. Harmon’s work — from a 2004 think tank report to lectures at the National Counter-Terrorism Center and Interpol headquarters — has focused on five results: defeat of the terrorists by force; arrest or killing of the leader(s); terrorism’s turn up a pacific political path; defeat via good grand strategy including law enforcement; and terrorist success. His lecture will address a dozen important modern groups of varied ideologies and will include Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Long ago stirred by the question of this evening’s topic, Dr. Harmon created a rubric and concept of analysis, articulated in many publications from 2004 through 2010, including a book chapter for Cambridge University Press in early 2006. He is lead author or editor of six books, including A Citizen’s Guide to Terrorism & Counterterrorism, Toward A Grand Strategy Against Terrorism, and The Terrorist Argument. The latter book’s thesis was presented at a Westminster Institute lecture in December, 2017 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q8U7T1vJcw). Harmon’s most recent essays are in Combating Terrorism Exchange, the geopolitical journal Orbis, and Oxford Bibliographies.

Dr. Harmon wrote his political science dissertation on terrorism in the early 1980s at the Claremont Graduate School in California, where he had also earned his M.A. He continued that work as Legislative Aide for Foreign Policy to a member of Congress and, much later, director of counterterrorism studies programs in Asia and Europe for the U.S. government. A professor at civilian and military graduate schools, including the Naval War College, Dr. Harmon has also taught courses at The Institute of World Politics on terrorism and on counterterrorism.

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Read the Transcript

David Des Roches is Associate Professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies at National Defense University. Prior to this, he was the Defense Department director responsible for policy concerning Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Prior to this assignment, he has served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, as senior country director for Pakistan, as NATO operations director, and as deputy director for peacekeeping.

An Airborne Ranger in the Army Reserve, he was awarded the Bronze Star for service in Afghanistan.  He has commanded conventional and special operations parachute units and has served on the US Special Operations Command staff as well as on the Joint Staff. He graduated from the United States Military Academy and obtained advanced degrees in Arab Politics from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, in War Studies from Kings College London, and Strategic Studies from the US Army War College. He has also attended the Federal Executive Institute, the German Staff College’s Higher Officer Seminar, the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.His academic awards include Phi Kappa Phi, the British Marshall Scholarship, designation as a Distinguished Alumnus of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, and selection as a Joseph Malone Fellow of the National Council of Arab American Relations.

His most recent publication is “Dominance versus Disruption: Asymmetry in Gulf Security,” which analyzes the security objectives of the Gulf Arab states and Iran. He previously spoke at Westminster on the Push and Pull of Religious Extremism: Who Are the Terrorists, How Are they Recruited, What Can We Do?

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Transcript: https://westminster-institute.org/events/wael-farouq/

In his new book, Egyptian scholar Wael Farouq addresses such issues as tribal culture in Arab identity, the invention of the Caliphate, and the history and the role of the fatwā, including an analysis of what European Muslims are looking for as shown in their requests for fatwās today. Throughout, he examines the deeper roots of the perilous predicament of Arab reason revealed in the contemporary clash between religious and modernist discourse.

Professor Farouq is currently professor of Arabic language, literature and culture at the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Catholic University of Milan (Italy) and at the Faculty of Linguistic Sciences and Foreign Literatures of the same university. Previously, he has been professor of Arabic language at the American University in Cairo (Egypt), Straus Fellow at the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice at the University of New York, and vice president of the Cairo Meeting.

He is author of several books and essays in Arabic, Italian and English in the field of Islamic studies and on contemporary Islamic thinking. Among other publications, he is a contributing author of the book Dio salvi la ragione (“God Save Reason”, Cantagalli, 2007) with Pope Benedict XVI, and coauthor of the book Pope Benedict XVI’s Legal Thought: A Dialogue on the Foundation of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He has recently published two books: Conflicting Arab Identities – Language, Tradition and Modernity (Muta, 2018) and Discourse Analysis of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity (Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 2018).

An excerpt from his monograph Hats and Turbans:  Adaptation to Modernity and Conventional Mind, (New York, 2012), can be read at: http://www.almuslih.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=295:modernity-between-exclusion-and-identification&catid=44:islam-in-history&Itemid=214.

For a companion lecture, see Robert Reilly’s Westminster talk, Not What Went Wrong in the Arab World, but Why It Went Wrong: A Theological Answer.