Keeping Our Friends Close and Our Frenemies Closer?

A Conversation with Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Brian Katulis, and Jonathan Schanzer
Moderated by John Hannah

Friday, July 11

9:30 am – 11:00 am
Breakfast and registration will begin at 9:15 am

RSVP Below

A growing number of countries have adopted policies that make them allies, adversaries and enemies of the United States– simultaneously. Complex alliances are nothing new, but American alliances in the Muslim world have recently become far more complex than in years past. Why has the “AAE phenomenon” arisen, and what should be the implications for U.S. foreign and national security policy?

Please join FDD for a conversation to discuss these questions with Jonathan Schanzer, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, and Brian Katulis.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior fellow at FDD and an adjunct assistant professor in Georgetown University’s security studies program. His research focuses on the challenges posed by violent non-state actors (VNSAs), and he has also conducted several studies examining the foreign policy of states that are particularly relevant to the challenge posed by VNSAs in the twenty-first century. He is the author or volume editor of fourteen books and monographs, including Bin Laden’s Legacy (Wiley, 2011), and has been published widely in the popular and academic press.

Brian Katulis is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where his work focuses on U.S. national security policy in the Middle East and South Asia. Katulis has served as a consultant to numerous U.S. government agencies, private corporations, and nongovernmental organizations on projects in more than two dozen countries, including Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Colombia. From 1995 to 1998, he lived and worked in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Egypt for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.

Jonathan Schanzer is the vice president for research at FDD. He is a former terrorism finance analyst the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he took part in the designation of numerous terrorist financiers. Dr. Schanzer has authored three books about the Middle East: State of Failure: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), and Al-Qaeda’s Armies: Middle East Affiliate Groups and the Next Generation of Terror (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2004).

John Hannah is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on U.S. strategy. During the presidency of George W. Bush, he served for eight years on the staff of Vice President Cheney, including as the vice president’s national security advisor. Mr. Hannah also served as a senior advisor to Secretary of State Warren Christopher during the administration of President Bill Clinton, and as a member of Secretary of State James A. Baker’s policy planning staff in the George H.W. Bush administration.

Please feel free to share this invitation with colleagues.*

Open press coverage. Advance RSVP required.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a non-profit, non-partisan policy institute dedicated exclusively to promoting pluralism, defending democratic values, and fighting the ideologies that drive terrorism. Founded shortly after the attacks of 9/11, FDD combines policy research, democracy and counterterrorism education, strategic communications, and investigative journalism in support of its mission. For more information, please visit www.defenddemocracy.org.

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* This invitation is open to government officials, Hill staff, foreign policy professionals, members of the diplomatic corps, the think tank and advocacy communities, and press.