The U.S. & The Gulf Dispute: An Anniversary of Fragmentation, Division and Regional Disorder

Upcoming Event – Save the Date!

June 5th, 2018 will mark the first anniversary of the Gulf Crisis. The crisis appears to have reached an impasse. What are the implications when the President of the U.S., a country viewed across the Gulf as a pillar to their security, swings his policies at the click of a tweet? Has this created a swing towards new actors balancing power in the Gulf region? What are the implications of the rift on regional politics and world powers? Both factions in the crisis lured new players into the region diversifying their defense and economic partnerships. Ultimately, the division and stalemate has terminated the GCC’s common security principle and opened a Pandora’s box in the Gulf as international powers, including the U.S., remain incapable of diplomatically resolving the growing rift.

Featured Speakers:

Speakers Bio:

Tim Constantine (Moderator), Host of “The Capitol Hill Show”

Tim Constantine serves as an opinion writer for The Washington Times, reflecting on domestic and international issues of the day and cleverly pointing out facts that somehow seem obvious yet are seldom shared anywhere else.

Tim Constantine also hosts talk radio’s “The Capitol Hill Show” every weekday from Washington, D.C., broadcasting to listeners all across the United States. He combines his background in TV and radio, his experience in public office and his hard-nose business approach with his understated sense of humor for the most-entertaining radio program anywhere. Tim is “America’s Voice of Reason.”

Anne Patterson, Former Assistant Secretary of Near Eastern and North African Affairs at the State Department

Ambassador Anne Patterson retired in January, 2017, after 43 years in the Foreign Service, with the rank of Career Ambassador. When she retired, she was Assistant Secretary of Near Eastern and North African Affairs at the State Department. She served as the US ambassador to Egypt, Pakistan, Colombia and El Salvador. Ambassador Patterson was also Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Deputy Permanent Representative at the US mission to the UN in New York, and Deputy Inspector General. Post retirement, Ambassador Patterson heads the US-Qatar Business Council and has taught as a senior fellow at the Jackson Institute at Yale. She is also a Senior Advisor at the Middle East Project.

David Ottaway, Middle East Fellow at the Wilson Center

David B. Ottaway received a BA from Harvard, magna cum laude, in 1962 and a PhD from Columbia University in 1972. He worked 35 years for The Washington Post as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and Southern Europe and later as a national security and investigative reporter in Washington before retiring in 2006. He has won numerous awards for his reporting at home and abroad and was twice nominated a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Ottaway was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 1979-80 and again in 2005-06 and is currently a Middle East Fellow at the Center. His most recent book, published in 2017, was The Arab World Upended: Revolution and Its Aftermath in Tunisia and Egypt. He is also the author of The King’s Messenger: Prince Bandar bin Sultan and America’s Tangled Relationship with Saudi Arabia published in 2008. He is currently working on a book regarding the changes underway in various regions of the Arab world following the 2011 Arab Spring.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Fellow for the Middle East, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, Ph.D., is a Baker Institute fellow for the Middle East. Working across the disciplines of political science, international relations and international political economy, his research examines the changing position of Persian Gulf states in the global order, as well as the emergence of longer-term, nonmilitary challenges to regional security. Previously, he worked as senior Gulf analyst at the Gulf Center for Strategic Studies between 2006 and 2008 and as co-director of the Kuwait Program on Development, Governance and Globalization in the Gulf States at the London School of Economics (LSE) from 2008 until 2013.

David Des Roches, Associate Professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies

David Des Roches is currently Associate Professor of at the Near East South Asia Center for Security Studies. Prior to this, he was the Defense Department director responsible for policy concerning Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. Prior to this assignment, he has served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Liaison to the Department of Homeland Security, as senior country director for Pakistan, as NATO operations director, and as deputy director for peacekeeping. His first job in government was as a special assistant for strategy and later as the international law enforcement analyst in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. He graduated from the United States Military Academy and obtained advanced degrees in Arab Politics from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, in War Studies from Kings College London, and Strategic Studies from the US Army War College. He has also attended the Federal Executive Institute, the German Staff College’s Higher Officer Seminar, the US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School and the US Army Command and General Staff College.