Beyond Europe: The Ukraine–Gulf States Partnership in a New Security Order

Featured Speakers: Ambassador Patrick Theros, John L. Robinson, Ihor Semyvolos, Elizabeth Dent, and Eugene Chausovsky.

Ambassador Patrick Theros (moderator)

Strategic Advisor and Senior Fellow, Gulf International Forum

Ambassador Patrick Theros is a Strategic Advisor and Senior Fellow at Gulf International Forum. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to the State of Qatar from 1995-1998. Prior to his appointment, he served as Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism, responsible for the coordination of all U.S. Government counterterrorism activities outside the United States. From 1991-1993, Ambassador Theros served as the Political Advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of Central Command (CENTCOM).

Ambassador Theros joined the Foreign Service in 1963, and served in a variety of positions in Washington D.C., Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Nicaragua and Syria, including charge d’affaires and Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. embassies in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. In 1999, His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah Al-Thani awarded Ambassador Theros the Qatar Order of Merit for his efforts in service of the U.S.-Qatar bilateral relationship. His commitment to national service also earned him the President’s Meritorious Service Award and the Secretary of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service (1992). Ambassador Theros has also earned four Superior Honor Awards, the highest awards for distinguished service given by the Foreign Service. After his retirement from the Foreign Service Ambassador Theros assumed the office of President of the U.S.-Qatar Business Council in March 2000 until his retirement in 2017.

Ambassador Theros’ personal commitment to community and public service earned him the rank of Knight Commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem (1999), as well as the Ellis Island Medal of Freedom (2005). In addition to his duties as President of the U.S.-Qatar Business Council, Ambassador Theros is also active in the following organizations: The Middle East Policy Council, Board of Directors; The Council of Foreign Relations, Member; The Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, Member; and The American Academy of Diplomacy, Member.

Ambassador Theros graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in 1963. He has done advanced studies at the American University in Washington, D.C., the Universidad Centroamericana in Nicaragua, the Armed Forces Staff College at Norfolk, Virginia, and the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He is married to Aspasia (nee Pahigiannis) and has three children. He speaks and reads Spanish, Arabic and Greek professionally.

John L. Robinson

President, International Technical Development Management, LLC; Guest lecturer, Tufts University and the University of Texas at Austin 

John L. Robinson is the president of International Technical Development Management, LLC, a consultancy for the aerospace/defense industry. He previously worked for Northrop Grumman Corporation for over two decades, developing and implementing defense offset programs in Asia, Europe, and South America, and currently serves on the International Business Advisory Council for Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business and the Texas Camino Real District Export Council, to which he was appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Robinson is a guest lecturer on defense offset, U.S. commercial and business diplomacy, and intercultural management issues at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and McCombs School of Business. He is the founder of the John L. Robinson Educational Fund at the North Texas Community Foundation, which promotes the study of United States-Arab World commercial and business diplomacy. The Robinson Fund is currently active at the Fletcher School, the LBJ School, and UT Austin’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

Robinson is an alumnus of the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a BA in Plan II Honors (Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts) and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he earned an MALD in Law and Diplomacy (International Affairs).

Ihor Semyvolos

Executive Director, The Association of Middle East Studies (AMES) in Kyiv; Researcher, Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Ihor Semyvolos is Executive Director of the Association of Middle East Studies (AMES) in Kyiv and a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, where he has worked since 1993. His work spans Ukrainian strategic culture, Middle Eastern geopolitics, and conflict transformation, with a particular research focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the formation of Palestinian identity. He co-founded the Ukrainian Peacebuilding School, where he also teaches, and co-founded Maidan.org.ua, a key independent information resource during Ukraine’s Orange Revolution period (2000–2005). He previously served on the board of the International Renaissance Foundation. His recent analysis focuses on Ukraine’s evolving security partnerships with Gulf Cooperation Council states, including the shift from humanitarian engagement to defence-technology cooperation following the 2026 “drone deal” agreements.

Elizabeth Dent

Nathan and Esther K. Wagner Senior Fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Elizabeth Dent is the Nathan and Esther K. Wagner Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where she focuses on U.S. foreign and defense policy toward the Gulf states, Iraq, and Syria. She was previously the director for the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, managing the day-to-day U.S. defense relationship with the nations of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Her other roles at the U.S. Department of Defense included serving as the special advisor to the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, where she primarily worked on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as serving as the Pentagon lead for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.

Dent was previously a non-resident scholar with the Middle East Institute’s Countering Terrorism and Extremism Program and a consultant with NTT Data. Prior to that, she served as the special assistant to the special presidential envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, supporting diplomatic engagements with coalition countries and working with local partners on the ground in Iraq and Syria to accelerate the campaign against ISIS. She began her work on ISIS and extremist organizations at the Department of State starting in 2014, where she helped coordinate and implement the counter-ISIS messaging strategy, and later covered ISIS in North Africa for the coalition office. She began her career at the Department of State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, where she provided policy guidance and support to bureau leadership regarding best security, strategic, and operational practices.

Eugene Chausovsky

Senior Director for Analytical Development and Training, New Lines Institute; Council Member, Washington Post Intelligence

Eugene Chausovsky is the Senior Director for Analytical Development and Training at the New Lines Institute and a Council Member with Washington Post Intelligence. At New Lines Institute, he oversees the analytical methodology and forecasting process, manages institutional training efforts, and guides the development of analytical products.

Chausovsky previously served as Senior Eurasia Analyst at the geopolitical intelligence firm Stratfor for more than 10 years. His analytical work has focused on political, economic and security issues pertaining to Russia, Eurasia, and China, as well as global connectivity issues related to energy and climate change.

He has contributed articles to a wide range of outlets including Foreign Policy, The National Interest, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Al Jazeera and has given interviews to global media outlets such as BBC, CNBC, Bloomberg, Politico, and CNN. He has served as a speaker at international conferences and as a guest lecturer at universities in the United States and abroad. He has also organized crisis simulations and delivered client briefings to numerous international organizations and businesses, including Fortune 500 companies. Chausovsky holds a Master of International Public Policy degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from the University of Texas at Austin.