Issues Driving the US Foreign Policy Debate

PSIA is honored to welcome Mark Kennedy, Director of the Wilson Centre’s Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition and former United States Congressman (Minnesota), for a discussion of how to understand American foreign policy and how to navigate in turbulent times to preserve peace and shared prosperity.

Winston Churchill spoke out vigorously on the need to act in the face of rising militarism. Jean-Baptiste Colbert, First Minister of State under the French King Louis XIV, drove economic policies that made the lavishness of that reign possible, but perhaps sowed seeds of the revolution that followed. Aspects from each of these periods are being emulated today in the foreign policies practiced by, or being debated in, the United States.

The discussion was chaired by PSIA Dean, Arancha González.

Watch the replay of the event:

Guest speaker

Mark Kennedy serves as Director of the Wilson Centre’s Wahba Institute for Strategic Competition, as an appointed Civic Leader supporting the Secretary of the Air Force, and as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Naval Analyses.

Kennedy applies experiences as a former United States Congressman (Minnesota). He has been President Emeritus of the University of Colorado, President of the University of North Dakota, and a presidentially appointed member of the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. He has also been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and as Chairman Emeritus of the Economic Club of Minnesota. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan and St. John’s University; and is the author of Shapeholders: Business Success in the Age of Activism (Columbia University Press).

Kennedy has engaged wide cross-sections of society in over 45 countries, including refugee camps, war zones, 60+ military bases and three aircraft carriers at sea.