America's Role in the World Working Group

The Institute's "America's Role in the World Working Group" will focus on the geopolitical challenges that a new administration -- Democrat or Republican -- could face beginning in 2009, and seek to define the central foreign policy choices and responses that are likely to be available. While we do not intend to offer specific policy prescriptions, we hope to provide the candidates a comprehensive agenda of issues that could require attention and on which they should be forming views and taking positions. The aim of this working group is to look forward.

Core members of the working group are drawn from the Institute's Board of Directors, the Institute's Schlesinger Working Group on Strategic Surprise, the Georgetown faculty, and other foreign policy specialists. The Co-Chairs of the Working Group are Thomas Pickering and Chester Crocker. The Project Director is Casimir A. Yost.

The bulk of our work will be conducted in four core meetings from the fall of 2006 through the spring of 2007. The first session on November 28 examined what assumptions can be made about the geopolitical context that policy-makers will face over the next 4 to 6 years, and look at the broad global, political, economic, demographic and other trends that could affect the future conduct of American foreign policy. Building on the first session, meeting two on February 26, 2007 will focus on specific long term challenges that a new administration is likely to face. On April 30, 2007 the group will analyze the functioning of our foreign policy institutions and decision-making processes and assess the degree to which these will assist or hinder the United States in playing a future global leadership role. On June 14, 2007, drawing on the previous three meetings, the working group will seek to identify the central foreign policy choices, questions and priorities a new administration will face in the near term as it assumes office in 2009.

After these four core meetings, the Institute hopes that some members of the group will meet again at the Georgetown University campus in Doha, Qatar to receive non-American feedback on the draft report. A final meeting will be held in the fall of 2007 to review the completed draft report.

The final report will be published and made available to the campaigns for federal office -- presidential and congressional -- in 2008.

The Institute is also running a Northeast Asia Initiative Working Group, as a part of the "America's Role in the World" project, focused on the triangular relationship between China, Japan, and the United States. Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy chairs the initiative, and ISD Associate Paul Frandano serves as Project Director. The group consists of a diverse, non-partisan collection of regional specialist and seasoned foreign policy practioners, and it met for the first time on October 5, 2006. A working paper describes its initial discussions and conclusions. While the "America's Role" project focuses on the entire spectrum of U.S. foreign policy choices, we have chosen to pay special attention to this topic in the belief that relations between Japan, China, and the United States have a central role in U.S. foreign policy and that the triangular dynamic does not always get the attention it deserves. The Northeast Asia Initiative Working Group will meet again on January 25, 2007.

Project Publications

America's Role in the World

Final Report: America's Role in the World: Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next President, February 2008

A Scope Paper, "America's Role in the World," by Casimir Yost is intended as a broad introduction to the four topic areas to be covered in our four meetings.

Scope Paper #2: Global Challenges for the Next President

Scope Paper #3: Capacity to Conduct Foreign Policy: Domestic Constraints

Scope Paper #4: Choices for America in the World

Reports

America's Role in the World: Foreign Policy Choices for the Next President, 2008

Domestic Challenges to America's Capacity to Conduct Foreign Policy, 2007

A Dangerous Inheritance: Converging Challenges that Will Face the Next American President, 2007

Characteristics of an Emerging World: Assumptions about the Drivers of Change, 2007

Northeast Asia Initiative

A NEAI working paper describes its initial discussions and conclusions.