 |
|
|
President George W. Bush |
|
President George W. Bush gave a major address to the Institute on February 15 about the war on terror and specifically the front in Afghanistan. The president urged steadfastness, referencing late AEI senior fellow Jeane J. Kirkpatrick: "Kirkpatrick was right: people around the world, regardless of their faith, their background, or their gender, want to be free."
John R. Bolton rejoined AEI as a senior fellow after serving as the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations. Ambassador Bolton was the senior vice president of AEI before joining the Bush administration. His book, Surrender Is Not an Option, was published in November.
Throughout 2007, Frederick W. Kagan and AEI's Iraq Planning Group monitored the situation in Iraq. As the situation deteriorated in late 2006, AEI researchers began to study a change in strategy. In January, Mr. Kagan released his phase I report, Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, which urged a rapid scale-up and military surge to clear and hold key points in Iraq. Retired Army general Jack Keane, a member of AEI's Iraq Planning Group, discussed the report at the January conference, and Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-D-Conn.) discussed their recent fact-finding trip to Iraq.
 |
|
|
Resident Scholar Frederick W. Kagan and retired Army General Jack Keane |
|
In April, Mr. Kagan released his phase II report, which focused on establishing stability after the initial military component of the surge. Mr. Kagan, General Keane, and Jack Miller of the Center for a New American Security assessed the progress of the surge in July. In September, shortly before General David Petraeus's report to Congress, Mr. Kagan held a public conference to present the next part of his Choosing Victory series, a report entitled No Middle Way. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), General Keane, and Mr. Miller also spoke at that event.
Mr. Kagan observed the situation in Iraq on trips to Baghdad and its environs in April, May, and July. Michael Rubin traveled to northern Iraq this year.
Speakers at an October event, including Senator Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), addressed challenges to U.S. leadership at the United Nations, especially in light of emerging blocs like the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the Group of 77.
 |
|
|
Senator Lindsey Graham |
|
When former Russian president Boris Yeltsin died in April, Leon Aron, author of Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life, was frequently called upon by the media for comment. Mr. Aron's Russia's Revolution: Essays 1989-2006 (AEI Press, April 2007) describes Russia's transformation from glasnost to the Putin restoration. A May AEI panel discussed Yeltsin's legacy.
In September, Mr. Aron convened a group of Russia-watchers to discuss the December 2007 Duma elections and the March 2008 presidential elections. Ambassador Bolton delivered the keynote address.
Late in 2006, AEI relaunched its European Outlook with an essay on pro-American elements in French politics, including then-presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, by Reuel Marc Gerecht and Gary J. Schmitt. The first issue of 2007, by Claude Barfield, addressed European attitudes toward free-trade agreements. Mr. Gerecht wrote a European Outlook looking at Russia as a "rogue intelligence state."
Mr. Schmitt and Thomas Donnelly spoke at a book forum along with the contributing authors of Of Men and Materiel: The Crisis in Military Resources (AEI Press, 2007) in January.
Paul Wolfowitz and Liberian defense minister Brownie J. Samukai were among speakers at a conference moderated by Mauro De Lorenzo on the implications of the U.S. military's Africa Command for U.S.-African relations and security priorities on that continent.
Mr. Donnelly and research assistant Colin Monaghan wrote a three-part series of National Security Outlooks on the Bush administration's foreign policy legacy, with special reference to Afghanistan, the "long war" on terror, and China's rise. Other National Security Outlooks explored whether the United States is an empire, the role of military advisors in Iraq, terrorist threats in the Horn of Africa, and Indian lessons for the Pakistani counterinsurgency.
A March session moderated by Mr. Rubin asked how U.S. and Iraqi troops should deal with local militias. In April, a panel discussed the spotty record of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and evaluated the effectiveness of other postconflict administrations.
In November 2006, AEI hosted former acting Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar to discuss failures of Soviet economic policy and the direction Vladimir Putin has taken Russia. His speech was published in AEI's On the Issues series.
In 2007, AEI's quarterly Russian Outlook, written by Mr. Aron, covered the twentieth anniversary of glasnost, the succession after President Putin, and the current critique of Yeltsin's tenure.
Mr. De Lorenzo has been researching the treatment of refugees. At the current critique of Yeltsin's tenure, along with Ambassador Bolton, Cambridge's Guglielmo Verdirame, and representatives of the State Department and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, he addressed accountability for humanitarian failures in refugee camps, a subject he wrote about on washingtonpost.com.
One day before the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Newt Gingrich proposed an "alternative history" of the War on Terror to make clear the scale of changes required for the United States to win.
In March, Mr. Gerecht joined Yossi Klein Halevi of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and David Ignatius of the Washington Post for a traveling debate on whether Iran will get a nuclear bomb and, if so, what it will mean. The debaters visited Paris, Brussels, and Berlin.
Making War to Keep Peace, by Ambassador Kirkpatrick, was published posthumously in April. In it, she surveys foreign policy developments in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Other pages in this section:
Other sections within the Annual Report:
