How should the United States proceed in the Middle East beyond the borders of Iraq?
Middle East experts Michael Barnett of the Humphrey Institute, Meghan O'Sullivan of the Kennedy School, Stephen Cook from the Council on Foreign Relations and Vali Nasr, author of the "Shia Revival" consider national security priorities from Israel/Palestine to Afghanistan and Pakistan, with particular attention paid to the rise of Iran in the wake of America's intervention in Iraq- University of Minnesota
Bio
Michael Barnett
Michael Barnett is the Harold Stassen Chair of International Relations at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. He previous taught at the University of Wisconsin, Macalester College, Wellesley College, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has been a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research and the Dayan Center at Tel-Aviv University.
Barnett teaches and does research on international relations, international organizations, humanitarian action, the United Nations, and the politics of the Middle East. His dissertation won the 1991 APSA's Gabriel Almond Award for Best Dissertation in Comparative Politics and the book based on the dissertation, Confronting the Costs of War: Military Power, State and Society in Egypt and Israel (Princeton, 1992), won the ISAs Quincy Wright award. His other major books are Dialogues in Arab Politics: Negotiations in Regional Order (Columbia University Press, 1998); Security Communities (Cambridge University Press, 1998), which he co-edited with Emanuel Adler; Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda (Cornell University Press, 2002); and, with Martha Finnemore, Rules for the World: International Organizations in World Politics (Cornell University Press, 2004). His scholarly writings have appeared in major professional journals, including International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, World Politics, and Cultural Anthropology. From 1993 to 1994 Barnett was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at the U.S. mission to the United Nations.
Steven A. Cook
Steven A. Cook is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as U.S.-Middle East policy. Dr. Cook is the author of Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). He is currently writing a book about the United States and Egypt.
He has published widely in a variety of foreign policy journals, opinion magazines, and newspapers including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Wall Street Journal, the Journal of Democracy, The Weekly Standard, Slate, The New Republic Online, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, and the International Herald Tribune. Dr. Cook is also a frequent commentator on radio and television.
Prior to joining the Council, Dr. Cook was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution (2001–2002) and a Soref research fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1995–96). Dr. Cook holds a BA in international studies from Vassar College, an MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and both an MA and PhD in political science from the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks Arabic and Turkish and reads French.
Richard N. Haass
Richard Haass is President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Until June 2003, Haass was director of policy planning for the U.S. Department of State, where he was a principal adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell on a broad range of foreign policy concerns.
Vali Nasr
Vali Nasr is Senior Adjunct Fellow on the Middle East for the Council on Foreign Relations.
Additionally he is Professor of Middle East and South Asia Politics and Associate Chair of Research at the Department of National Security at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Meghan O'Sullivan
Meghan L. O'Sullivan, PhD. is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government's Belfer Center. Prior to joining the Belfer Center, O'Sullivan was an IOP Fellow in the Fall of 2007. O'Sullivan was Special Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, a position she maintained from October 2005 to September 2007. O'Sullivan was stationed in Baghdad, Iraq for the summer of 2007 at the request of the President, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, and the Commanding General.
Prior to this appointment, O'Sullivan was with the National Security Council staff as Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan since July 2004. Before joining the NSC, O'Sullivan was political advisor to the Administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Deputy Director for Governance in Baghdad, Iraq from April 2003 to June 2004. There, she worked on national political issues, such as the creation of the Transitional Administrative Law and the formation of the Iraqi Interim Government.
From November 2001 to March 2003, O'Sullivan worked at the Office of Policy Planning at the Department of State, where she was the chief advisor to the presidential envoy to the Northern Ireland peace process and helped advance efforts to promote reform in the Muslim world.
From 1998-2001, O'Sullivan was a Fellow at the Brookings Institution. During that time, she was also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and published several books and articles on American foreign policy, including Shrewd Sanctions: Statecraft and State Sponsors of Terrorism (Brookings, 2003).
Agreed, an Israeli strike against Iran would not be in the interest of the US. The US would be forced to intervene in the event of a retaliation thus causing further a deterioration to a already poor US image.
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