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Past Event

A Foreign Policy Event

Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan: U.S. Foreign Policy Challenges This Fall and Beyond

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Foreign Policy, Middle East


Event Summary

When Congress reconvenes in the fall and the presidential election shifts into high gear, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan will dominate the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Congress and the presidential candidates will debate next steps for Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as new policy approaches to Pakistan and the struggle against Al Qaeda in that country’s border regions.

Event Information

When

Wednesday, August 06, 2008
11:00 AM to 12:30 PM

Where

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map

Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

E-mail: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

On August 6, Brookings hosted foreign policy experts Michael O’Hanlon, Kenneth Pollack, Bruce Riedel and Jeremy Shapiro for a discussion on the state of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as U.S. efforts to partner with Pakistan in confronting al Qaeda. Senior Fellow Kenneth Pollack recently authored A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East (Random House, 2008). Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel recently completed a new book, The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology and Future (Brookings Press, 2008), which will be released this fall. Fellow Jeremy Shapiro is the primary researcher on the Afghanistan Index, a detailed examination of the NATO mission in that country. Senior Fellow Michael O’Hanlon is the primary researcher on the frequently cited Iraq Index.

Transcript

KENNETH POLLACK: So we spent four years, four thousand men killed, hundreds of billions of dollars to get us back to where we always should have been in 2003. Now that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, we have made some progress in certain areas and there were some problems that we probably would have confronted even then.

But that’s really what we’re thinking about is that we now still have all of those problems of an immature political system which is ultimately subject to and vulnerable to all of the problems of other Arab political systems that we’ve seen over the course of time. The threat of coup d’état, especially now that you’ve got a very big, a very capable, sorry, much more capable military that is very confident in its own abilities and it looks around and doesn’t see other institutions of government that are nearly as capable or as effective as they are. That’s been a recipe for coups all across the Arab world.

Participants

Introduction and Moderator

Michael E. O'Hanlon

Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy