“But it should now be clear that Trump’s vision of the world is not one of great-power competition but of great-power collusion: a ‘concert’ system akin to the one that shaped Europe during the nineteenth century.”1Goddard, Stacie E. “The Rise and Fall of Great‑Power Competition: Trump’s New Spheres of Influence.” Foreign Affairs, April 22, 2025. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/rise-and-fall-great-power-competition. With that striking sentence, Foreign Affairs magazine set the tone for the foreign policy debate in April, a few months into Donald Trump’s second term. It’s not just the line that’s notable; it’s where it appeared. As the house organ of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, Foreign Affairs signals which ideas are moving from the margins to the “official” mainstream. When it leads with a piece like this, policymakers and experts pay attention.
The author, Stacie E. Goddard, argues that the United States is no longer trying to outcompete its rivals but to strike bargains with them. In her telling, Trump is done with Wilsonian crusades and Cold War framing. Instead, he seeks a world of spheres of influence: a multipolar arrangement where great powers police their respective neighborhoods and avoid stepping on each other’s toes. “Great-power collusion,” as Goddard calls it, is the new organizing principle.
The term and comparison are meant to be damning, at least in liberal internationalist circles. From perspective of a realist, however, it’s practically the opposite. What’s being proposed is a belated return to the historical norm rather than some sinister deviation from it. The world has long been governed this way: great powers coexisting in uneasy equilibrium, each tolerating the internal order of the others so long as no one tries to expand the game board. The “rules-based international order” that is so often invoked as sacred and permanent was never more than a temporary anomaly, predicated on the unrepeatable fact of U.S. unipolarity. That era is over.
Goddard’s essay is a useful artifact precisely because she gets the diagnosis half-right. Trump, and thinkers aligned with his administration, indeed view the international system in transactional terms and would prefer to divide responsibilities among a small club of serious actors rather than insist upon a supposed hegemony that would require continuous open-ended crusades against “authoritarianism.” Yet Goddard’s analysis falters by assuming that such a concert is just over the horizon. The problem is the timeline and the terms: what the United States could want from Russia in a new global arrangement is very different from what it can get anytime soon.
In fairness to Goddard, her thesis—that a second Trump term is functionally abandoning the doctrinal shell of “great-power competition”—is sound. What began as a strategy to constrain and “out-compete” China and Russia simultaneously (the previous Trump administration’s U.S. strategy) has given way to working with those rivals in a global carve-up.
In effect, Goddard argues, the administration envisions a neo-Concert of Powers reminiscent of the nineteenth-century order, where empires respected each other’s spheres and coordinated to suppress disorder. But what could motivate an American president to embrace this approach? In Goddard’s telling, Trump sees himself as a dealmaker among fellow strongmen, trading ideological crusades for pragmatic power-sharing. In her words, “What Trump wants is a world managed by strongmen who work together—not always harmoniously but always purposefully—to impose a shared vision of order on the rest of the world.”2Ibid.
This, however, is where the flaws with the argument begin. In Goddard’s telling, the conception of “great-power competition” proved both elastic and hollow—it served more as a narrative tool than a coherent strategy. And while the first Trump administration and the successive Biden administration invoked it to compete with China and Russia, neither defined clear objectives or metrics for success.
Fair enough. But while Goddard gestures at the fact of the shift, she does not explain the why. She notes the change in tone and posture, but attributes it largely to what she contends is Trump’s personal worldview: his preference for transactionalism, his comfort with authoritarian leaders, and his disdain for ideology. In other words, Goddard flattens strategic rationale into a kind of personality analysis: Trump prefers collusion because… he’s Trump.
This is an unserious view. Washington isn’t shifting away from great power competition just because of one man’s instincts. It is doing so because the structural conditions have changed. Consider that, since the end of Trump’s first term, the constraints on U.S. power have become far more obvious. The war in Ukraine laid bare the abysmal state of Western military-industrial readiness, with months-long production timelines for basic munitions and an acute dependence on foreign supply chains. Artillery shell production lags behind real wartime consumption rates, and advanced systems like air defense interceptors are being burned through faster than they can be replaced. At the same time, talk of de-dollarization—once a fringe concern—is now a recurring topic in mainstream financial and geopolitical circles, signaling broader anxieties about the foundations of American economic power. Meanwhile, Washington’s calls for allied burden-sharing can, at best, be described as a work in progress. Most European states remain unwilling—or worse, unable—to defend themselves without U.S. support. Germany’s military readiness, for instance, is worse now than it was at the start of the Ukraine War.3iebold, Sabine. “‘50% Battle‑Ready’: Germany Misses Military Targets Despite Scholz’s Overhaul.” Reuters, February 13, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/50-battle-ready-germany-misses-military-targets-despite-scholzs-overhaul-2025-02-13/.
In this context, a two-front confrontation with Russia and China is simply untenable. This is the logic of Trump’s concert instinct. While Goddard herself frames this pejoratively as “great-power collusion”—it smuggles in the imagery of criminal conspiracy and scheming with autocrats in shadowy backrooms—the phrase implies something closer to strategic consolidation. The concert model is a method of avoiding conflict by settling for something less than ideological victory. It trades permanent confrontation for managed rivalry; an approach more suited to a world in which American strength has seen relative decline.
This approach, far from being a Trumpian innovation, is simply a reversion to the mean. Its intellectual roots go back to Castlereagh and Metternich. If Washington treats Moscow and Beijing as “kindred spirits in quelling rampant disorder and worrisome social change,” it could focus on internal and transnational issues rather than existential clashes with peer powers.4Goddard, Stacie E. And despite the gasps and pale faces this notion elicits from defenders of the current order, the strategic logic is compelling.
A concert framework would impose badly needed clarity on America’s global posture. As it stands, the Washington is overstretched, maintaining simultaneous commitments to Asian defense, European deterrence, Middle Eastern strengthening, and a raft of ideological ventures framed in the language of supporting democracies (or, more often the case, would-be democracies). And many of these commitments rest on questionable foundations. What is abundantly clear is that the Indo-Pacific is becoming the new geopolitical and economic center of gravity. Yet most of America’s strategic bandwidth remains absorbed by the Ukrainian theater. If Russia can be compartmentalized, then the United States can avoid the dangerous logic of escalation-by-default and instead execute a strategic refocus on China.
This has domestic logic, too. Voters are increasingly unwilling to underwrite open-ended commitments. The old bipartisan consensus behind global proactivity has clearly faded and is increasingly being replaced by what at best can be called a reluctant realism in both parties. In this political environment, a president who can “cut a deal” to stabilize relations with one peer competitor to focus on the more formidable one isn’t being cynical nor malign. He’s simply being prudent.
From the Russian perspective, too, the concert instinct has obvious appeal. The logic of great powers delineating their spheres, respecting one another’s red lines, and managing global disruptions through tacit coordination plays directly into how the Russian state views order. Russian strategists have long called for the recognition of a multipolar system because it creates room for maneuver.5Nikonov, Vyacheslav. “A New Testament for a Multipolar World.” Russia in Global Affairs, March 26, 2003. https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/a-new-testament-for-a-multipolar-world/.
Drobinin, Alexey. “The Vision of a Multipolar World: The Civilizational Factor and Russia’s Place in the Emerging World Order.” Russia in Global Affairs, February 20, 2023. https://eng.globalaffairs.ru/articles/the-vision-of-a-multipolar-world/.
Stronski, Paul, and Richard Sokolsky. Multipolarity in Practice: Understanding Russia’s Engagement with Regional Institutions. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 8, 2020. https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2020/01/multipolarity-in-practice-understanding-russias-engagement-with-regional-institutions.
A formalized or even implicit understanding with Washington that halts NATO expansion, reduces sanctions pressure, and carves out a zone of uncontested influence in the post-Soviet space would allow the Kremlin to consolidate gains and stabilize its periphery. It would also elevate Russia’s status as a peer actor, which is central to its political theology of great-powerhood. For a regime that has long measured sovereignty in terms of strategic autonomy, participation in a concert system signals that Russia remains at the top table—not because of values or alliances, which are often deemed culturally “superior” in Western thinking, but because of practical capability and relevance. That symbolic recognition carries real weight in Russian foreign policy culture. To paraphrase Goddard, it offers “a shared vision of order” that is based on mutual toleration. For a power like Russia, which has no illusions about converting others to its system, that’s more than enough.
So, in short, the broad theory Goddard proposes checks out. The problem, however, is that Goddard’s thesis depends assumes that a mere alignment of interests between Trump and Putin is enough to bridge the differences that exist between the United States and Russia. This view seems to ignore the weight of recent history. And that is where Goddard’s thesis runs into serious issues.
A concert isn’t an idea that can simply be declared and enforced. First, it requires a level of basic trust and goodwill that simply does not exist between Washington and Moscow at present. And this is without involving China, which looms large in the background. Second, even if Trump’s Washington desires a “collusive arrangement,” would Russia play along sincerely? And third, what about other actors—U.S. allies, middle powers, and dependencies like Ukraine—that aren’t keen to be pawns in a great-power concert? To grapple with these questions, we must scrutinize why an actual U.S.–Russia détente is so elusive today, despite the tantalizing logic of spheres of influence.
The proposition of a new Concert of Powers system must be tempered by a cold accounting of recent history. The truth is that Russia has recently attempted the concert route, and with disappointing results.
In the early 2000s, under Vladimir Putin’s first terms, Moscow made a serious bid to enter into a collaborative security architecture with Europe under the rubric of the “Common Spaces.” The then-President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, put it best in a December 2002 speech: the EU and Russia would share “everything with the [European] Union except institutions.”6Prodi, Romano. “A Wider Europe – A Proximity Policy as the Key to Stability, Peace, Security and Stability.” Speech delivered at the Sixth ECSA‑World Conference, Brussels, December 5–6, 2002. European Commission Press Corner. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_02_619. This was, in other words, a calculated attempt to secure Russia’s place as a recognized pole in the emerging post-Cold War order.
In practice, this meant Russia acquiescing to many Western initiatives in hopes of being treated as an equal great power in a stable European concert. The Kremlin, for instance, closed Soviet-era military bases, accepted NATO’s expansion in the 1990s, and even supported U.S. operations in Afghanistan. To quote then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, “No Russian leader since Peter the Great has cast his lot as much with the West as Putin has.”7Wright, Robin. “Ties That Terrorism Transformed.” Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2002. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-mar-13-mn-32572-story.html. This was done less out of ideological conversion and more in the expectation that these moves would be reciprocated with strategic respect and Russia being “allowed” its sphere of influence in its near abroad.
What Russia received instead was a lesson in mistrust. By the mid-2000s, it was clear to Putin’s circle that the hoped-for concert with Europe wouldn’t materialize. Washington and Brussels pocketed Russia’s concessions without truly treating Russia as an equal stakeholder. U.S. “unipolar” actions further shattered Russian elites’ goodwill. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 convinced Russians across much of the political spectrum that Washington’s talk of democracy was a mask for brute force. To quote a leaked 2008 diplomatic cable, “For nationalists, the U.S. was a hostile force; for liberals, it was discredited due to Iraq, Kosovo, and NATO.”8Marcetic, Branko. “For Putin, Iraq War Marked a Turning Point in US‑Russia Relations.” Responsible Statecraft, March 23, 2023. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/03/23/for-putin-iraq-war-marked-a-turning-point-in-us-russia-relations/. Things worsened in 2004, when NATO expanded right up to Russia’s borders (adding the Baltic states) and the EU marched eastward. The “color revolutions” in Georgia (2003) and Ukraine (2004)—which Moscow saw as Western-fomented regime changes—fueled Russian suspicions that the United States was determined to impose its will everywhere.
By the time Putin took the stage at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, the façade of a friendly relationship was gone. Putin railed against NATO expansion, U.S. missile defense plans, and the very concept of a unipolar world. His speech, in effect, was a public announcement that Russia no longer trusted the West’s intentions. Any remaining illusions of a functioning security compact with the West was dead. The 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit—where NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia would become members of the alliance, a stark red line for Moscow—was perhaps the final insult for the Kremlin.
For Russian strategists, these events offered a brutal education: the West would never treat Russia as an equal. Not because of what Russia was, but because of what it wasn’t: a subordinate. The war in Georgia later that year drove the point home: accommodation had achieved nothing but erosion of Russia’s strategic depth. The tenuous idea of a Russo-American concert system effectively died.
The events of 2014 ensured this breach of trust would last a generation. Russia’s forcible annexation of Crimea and its covert war in eastern Ukraine following the Maidan Revolution—something Moscow again blamed on Western interference—is often framed as proof of a sudden imperial relapse, as if Russians simply cannot help but want to conquer territory. On the contrary, in the Russian calculus, these measures were a necessary “recalibration.” Moscow concluded that the West would never respect Russia’s sphere of influence, and that the United States in particular would always lurk behind Russia’s neighbors’ politics. From that perspective, Ukrainian politics became a proxy conflict with the West.
The depth of mistrust cannot be overstated: Putin is convinced that U.S. operatives and NGOs orchestrated the Maidan uprising, just as he believes Western intelligence encourages protests inside Russia and allied states. Sumantra Maitra’s analysis of Russian threat perceptions, conveyed in his 2004 book The Sources of Russian Aggression: Is Russia a Realist Power?, underscores this point. As Maitra (via Christopher Mott) observes, the Kremlin came to see every domestic upheaval in its neighborhood as “a plot designed to bring about the loss of any sphere of influence whatsoever.”9Mott, Christopher. “What Drove Russia’s ‘Invader Turn’?” Responsible Statecraft, May 30, 2024. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/russia-nato-conflict/. Thus, the only realistic way to secure Russian interests, the Kremlin believes, is through force. Better, in their view, to “retain part of a country than to see a loss of influence over the whole.”10Ibid.
This is the logic driving Russia’s actions in Ukraine: a desperate bid to salvage some influence and strategic depth in their neighboring country before what’s left slips into the Western camp. And thus, the resulting trust deficit and climate of mutual suspicion—far deeper than anything seen during the Cold War—make a genuine U.S.-Russia détente implausible in the near term. Unlike the 1970s, there is no shared elite memory of peaceful coexistence, no willingness to segment areas of conflict from areas of cooperation, and no way to bridge ideological differences. What exists instead is a zero-sum mentality reinforced by years of betrayal, escalation, and ideological rigidity. Russian officials openly accuse Washington of fomenting revolution and even seeking regime change in Moscow. Meanwhile, strong elements in the U.S. political and foreign policy establishment, including significant factions of both Democrats and Republicans, are steeped in a narrative of Putin’s Russia as a malignant actor guilty of every anti-liberal sin imaginable, from election meddling to war crimes.
This political climate limits how far any American president, including Trump, can go in a rapprochement without severe pushback. Trump himself might very well prefer to “collude” with the Kremlin. Yet even if this were the case, much of Washington’s foreign policy bureaucracy (the so-called “deep state,” or interagency establishment) and Congress remain deeply skeptical of Moscow’s intentions, to put it lightly. In Trump’s first term, this tension was glaring: even as Trump spoke admiringly of Putin, his administration often enacted tough anti-Russia measures under pressure from advisers and lawmakers. Were Trump to somehow strike a grand bargain with Putin in his second term—say, by trading sanctions relief and Ukrainian territory for a geopolitical realignment—there is no guarantee that the deal would survive the next change of power in Washington.
Russians are keenly aware of this. One need only recall how quickly the Biden administration repudiated or rolled back many of Trump’s policies after 2020, even if there was some continuity. This credibility gap makes Moscow hesitant: why make concessions to Trump’s America if Joe Biden’s successor or the next Congress might reverse course? Agreements with the Americans, from the current Russian perspective, are no longer made between states. What matters solely is which U.S. administration is currently in power.
Moreover, even if reality were to somehow be discounted, America’s key allies and client states also stand as obstacles to a Russo-American concert. Chief among them are the United Kingdom and Ukraine itself. London has taken an unabashed hard line against Moscow, out-hawking even Washington at times. One particularly cited incident is how, in the critical spring of 2022, as a tentative peace was reportedly emerging in the Russo-Ukrainian war, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv and urged President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to break off peace talks. Johnson argued that Putin is a war criminal that cannot be negotiated with and that the West wasn’t ready for the war to end.11Balachuk, Iryna, and Roman Romaniuk. “Possibility of Talks between Zelenskyy and Putin Came to a Halt after Johnson’s Visit.” Ukrainska Pravda, May 5, 2022. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/05/5/7344206/.
Whether one views this as stalwart or reckless, the message to Moscow was clear: powerful voices in the Western alliance were—and some remain—intent on pressing Russia to the brink and then over the cliff. Ukrainian leaders themselves, for entirely understandable reasons, are ferociously opposed to any deal that smacks of great-power collusion at their expense. As the victim of Russian aggression, Ukraine will not readily accept a new Yalta that partitions the country or freezes the conflict on unfavorable terms. Zelenskyy has even codified a refusal to negotiate with Putin in law.
Because of this, any U.S. détente with Russia without Ukrainian assent would be brittle and short-lived. Goddard acknowledges this problem: “Russia and the United States might successfully impose order in Ukraine… Doing so might produce a temporary lull but probably wouldn’t generate a lasting peace, since Ukraine is unlikely to forget about its lost territory…”12Goddard, Stacie E.
The same logic applies beyond Ukraine. A modern concert of powers would have to contend with middling powers unwilling to be mere chess pieces. As Goddard notes, “there is little recognition among smaller countries that the great powers have any special rights to dictate a world order.”13Ibid. Japan, India, Poland, Turkey, and others have their own ambitions and interests, and would bristle at a G3 condominium dictating their fate. The Concert of Europe in the 1800s ultimately unraveled in part because rising nations demanded their place in the sun. Today’s world is even less forgiving of backroom deals among superpowers.
In short, a genuine U.S.–Russia détente remains a distant prospect. The obstacles—mistrust, war, U.S. domestic politics, and the rejection of middle powers—are too entrenched. Any future thaw will be the product of policy fatigue. This is a process that will take a generation; quite literally, around twenty or so years. As the old generation of liberal crusaders fades and realism regains influence in Washington, the ideological rigidity that once drove previous policy may give way to something more calculating.
The proposition of a global concert system—neatly coordinated, governed by mutual restraint, and managed by an elite club of “strongmen”—has a certain appeal. But this theoretical architecture, already precarious in the U.S.–Russia case, collapses entirely when China is added to the equation.
Beijing, despite certain hopes, shows no appetite for joining a great-power carve-up. If anything, it sees such schemes as a distraction from its long-term project: becoming the dominant pole of Eurasia, if not further. As Zhao Long, a scholar at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, recently put it, Beijng “remains skeptical of any geopolitical model that treats Asia as a sphere to be bargained over. China’s strategic and economic rise are predicated not on regional containment but on global integration. A return to exclusive zones of influence risks triggering regional backlash, legitimizing containment strategies, and reducing China’s capacity to promote an equal and orderly multipolar world.”14Zhao, Long. “Why China Is Not Interested in Great Power Carve‑ups.” The Diplomat, May 30, 2025. https://thediplomat.com/2025/05/why-china-is-not-interested-in-great-power-carve-ups/. Or, put another way, China is still carving its own sphere, and sees little gain in stabilizing a status quo that would constraint its interests.
Nor is the United States in any condition to choreograph a concert. Before it can broker spheres of influence globally, it must first finish consolidating its own. As I have argued elsewhere, Washington today presides over a sprawling network of allies, clients, and protectorates—and many of these are liabilities it can no longer afford, rather than assets. “Balancing the books” in this case means scaling down overextended commitments, pushing for more burden-sharing among allies, reasserting primacy in the Western Hemisphere, and even getting its economic and resource base in order. This process, which I term the American Sphere Doctrine, will take years to unfold.15Roa, Carlos. “Welcome to Imperial America.” Institute for Peace & Diplomacy, March 7, 2025. https://peacediplomacy.org/2025/03/07/welcome-to-imperial-america/. Until then, talk of global settlements is premature.
And so, Goddard is half right. We are indeed exiting the era of liberal hegemony, with its presumption of universal norms and indefinite expansion. But we are not yet entering a new age of great-power concert. We are in a liminal phase—a geopolitical interregnum—where the leading powers are focused on addressing their own particular circumstances. The United States is overstretched and fragmented; Russia is embattled and isolated; China is ascendant but wary of entrapment. No one is in a position to lead a global order. Each is scrambling to salvage its strategic position, consolidate what it already holds, and reprioritize commitments. No one is (yet) in a firm position to define a new international order. Everyone is just trying to survive the audit.
This struggle is most visibly playing out through the slow—though accelerating—delineation of spheres of influence. This is what is really happening in Ukraine, Taiwan, Syria, the South Caucasus, Central Asia, the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, and beyond. Each of these contests is a local manifestation of the larger geopolitical sorting process at play. In time, we may reach a stable equilibrium, but only after numerous borders are redrawn, alliances recast, and economies realign. And, unfortunately, this process will often involve violence. To speak of a concert now is, if you’ll pardon the pun, to mistake the overture for the finale. The logic may be sound in theory, the timing is off by years, if not decades.
And until then, the world will be governed by collision rather than collusion.
The Western powers have failed to effectively manage the increasing threat of proliferation in the Middle East. While the international community is concerned with Iran’s nuclear program, Saudi Arabia has moved forward with developing its own nuclear program, and independent studies show that Israel has longed possessed dozens of nuclear warheads. The former is a member of the treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), while the latter has refused to sign the international agreement.
On Middle East policy, the Biden campaign had staunchly criticized the Trump administration’s unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), more commonly known as the Iran Nuclear Deal and it has begun re-engaging Iran on the nuclear dossier since assuming office in January 2021. However, serious obstacles remain for responsible actors in expanding non-proliferation efforts toward a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.
This panel will discuss how Western powers and multilateral institutions, such as the IAEA, can play a more effective role in managing non-proliferation efforts in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Peggy Mason: Canada’s former Ambassador to the UN for Disarmament
– Mark Fitzpatrick: Associate Fellow & Former Executive Director, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
– Ali Vaez: Iran Project Director, International Crisis Group
– Negar Mortazavi: Journalist and Political Analyst, Host of Iran Podcast
– David Albright: Founder and President of the Institute for Science and International Security
Closing (5:45 PM – 6:00 PM ET)
What is the current economic landscape in the Middle East? While global foreign direct investment is expected to fall drastically in the post-COVID era, the World Bank reported a 5% contraction in the economic output of the Middle East and North African (MENA) countries in 2020 due to the pandemic. While oil prices are expected to rebound with normalization in demand, political instability, regional and geopolitical tensions, domestic corruption, and a volatile regulatory and legal environment all threaten economic recovery in the Middle East. What is the prospect for economic growth and development in the region post-pandemic, and how could MENA nations promote sustainable growth and regional trade moving forward?
At the same time, Middle Eastern diaspora communities have become financially successful and can help promote trade between North America and the region. In this respect, the diaspora can become vital intermediaries for advancing U.S. and Canada’s business interests abroad. Promoting business diplomacy can both benefit the MENA region and be an effective and positive way to advance engagement and achieve foreign policy goals of the North Atlantic.
This panel will investigate the trade and investment opportunities in the Middle East, discuss how facilitating economic engagement with the region can benefit Canadian and American national interests, and explore relevant policy prescriptions.
Panelists:
– Hon. Sergio Marchi: Canada’s Former Minister of International Trade
– Scott Jolliffe: Chairperson, Canada Arab Business Council
– Esfandyar Batmanghelidj: Founder and Publisher of Bourse & Bazaar
– Nizar Ghanem: Director of Research and Co-founder at Triangle
– Nicki Siamaki: Researcher at Control Risks
The Middle East continues to grapple with violence and instability, particularly in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. Fueled by government incompetence and foreign interventions, terrorist insurgencies have imposed severe humanitarian and economic costs on the region. Meanwhile, regional actors have engaged in an unprecedented pursuit of arms accumulation. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have imported billions of both Western and Russian-made weapons and funded militant groups across the region, intending to contain their regional adversaries, particularly Iran. Tehran has also provided sophisticated weaponry to various militia groups across the region to strengthen its geopolitical position against Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel.
On the other hand, with international terrorist networks and intense regional rivalry in the Middle East, it is impractical to discuss peace and security without addressing terrorism and the arms race in the region. This panel will primarily discuss the implications of the ongoing arms race in the region and the role of Western powers and multilateral organizations in facilitating trust-building security arrangements among regional stakeholders to limit the proliferation of arms across the Middle East.
Panelists:
Luciano Zaccara: Assistant Professor, Qatar University
Dania Thafer: Executive Director, Gulf International Forum
Kayhan Barzegar: Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Science and Research Branch of Azad University
Barbara Slavin: Director of Iran Initiative, Atlantic Council
Sanam Shantyaei: Senior Journalist at France24 & host of Middle East Matters
The emerging regional order in West Asia will have wide-ranging implications for global security. The Biden administration has begun re-engaging Iran on the nuclear dossier, an initiative staunchly opposed by Israel, while also taking a harder line on Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen. Meanwhile, key regional actors, including Qatar, Iraq, and Oman, have engaged in backchannel efforts to bring Iran and Saudi Arabia to the negotiating table. From a broader geopolitical perspective, with the need to secure its energy imports, China is also expected to increase its footprint in the region and influence the mentioned challenges.
In this evolving landscape, Western powers will be compelled to redefine their strategic priorities and adjust their policies with the new realities in the region. In this panel, we will discuss how the West, including the United States and its allies, can utilize multilateral diplomacy with its adversaries to prevent military escalation in the region. Most importantly, the panel will discuss if a multilateral security dialogue in the Persian Gulf region, proposed by some regional actors, can help reduce tensions among regional foes and produce sustainable peace and development for the region.
Panelists:
– Abdullah Baabood: Academic Researcher and Former Director of the Centre for Gulf Studies, Qatar University
– Trita Parsi: Executive Vice-President, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
– Ebtesam Al-Ketbi: President, Emirates Policy Centre
– Jon Allen: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Israel
– Elizabeth Hagedorn: Washington correspondent for Al-Monitor
Military interventions, political and economic instabilities, and civil unrest in the Middle East have led to a global refugee crisis with an increasing wave of refugees and asylum seekers to Europe and Canada. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has, in myriad ways, exacerbated and contributed to the ongoing security threats and destabilization of the region.
While these challenges pose serious risks to Canadian security, Ottawa will also have the opportunity to limit such risks and prevent a spillover effect vis-à-vis effective humanitarian initiatives in the region. In this panel, we will primarily investigate Canada’s Middle East Strategy’s degree of success in providing humanitarian aid to the region. Secondly, the panel will discuss what programs and initiatives Canada can introduce to further build on the renewed strategy. and more specifically, how Canada can utilize its policy instruments to more effectively deal with the increasing influx of refugees from the Middle East.
Panelists:
Erica Di Ruggiero: Director of Centre for Global Health, University of Toronto
Reyhana Patel: Head of Communications & Government Relations, Islamic Relief Canada
Amir Barmaki: Former Head of UN OCHA in Iran
Catherine Gribbin: Senior Legal Advisor for International and Humanitarian Law, Canadian Red Cross
In 2016, Canada launched an ambitious five-year “Middle East Engagement Strategy” (2016-2021), committing to investing CA$3.5 billion over five years to help establish the necessary conditions for security and stability, alleviate human suffering and enable stabilization programs in the region. In the latest development, during the meeting of the Global Coalition against ISIS, Minister of Foreign Affairs Marc Garneau announced more than $43.6 million in Peace and Stabilization Operations Program funding for 11 projects in Syria and Iraq.
With Canada’s Middle East Engagement Strategy expiring this year, it is time to examine and evaluate this massive investment in the Middle East region in the past five years. More importantly, the panel will discuss a principled and strategic roadmap for the future of Canada’s short-term and long-term engagement in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Ferry de Kerckhove: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Egypt
– Dennis Horak: Canada’s Former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
– Chris Kilford: Former Canadian Defence Attaché in Turkey, member of the national board of the Canadian International Council (CIC)
– David Dewitt: University Professor Emeritus, York University
While the United States continues to pull back from certain regional conflicts, reflected by the Biden administration’s decision to halt American backing for Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen and the expected withdrawal from Afghanistan, US troops continue to be stationed across the region. Meanwhile, Russia and China have significantly maintained and even expanded their regional activities. On one hand, the Kremlin has maintained its military presence in Syria, and on the other hand, China has signed an unprecedented 25-year strategic agreement with Iran.
As the global power structure continues to shift, it is essential to analyze the future of the US regional presence under the Biden administration, explore the emerging global rivalry with Russia and China, and at last, investigate the implications of such competition for peace and security in the Middle East.
Panelists:
– Dmitri Trenin: Director of Carnegie Moscow Center
– Joost R. Hiltermann: Director of MENA Programme, International Crisis Group
– Roxane Farmanfarmaian: Affiliated Lecturer in International Relations of the Middle East and North Africa, University of Cambridge
– Andrew A. Michta: Dean of the College of International and Security Studies at Marshall Center
– Kelley Vlahos: Senior Advisor, Quincy Institute
The security architecture of the Middle East has undergone rapid transformations in an exceptionally short period. Notable developments include the United States gradual withdrawal from the region, rapprochement between Israel and some GCC states through the Abraham Accords and the rise of Chinese and Russian regional engagement.
With these new trends in the Middle East, it is timely to investigate the security implications of the Biden administration’s Middle East policy. In this respect, we will discuss the Biden team’s new approach vis-à-vis Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. The panel will also discuss the role of other major powers, including China and Russia in shaping this new security environment in the region, and how the Biden administration will respond to these powers’ increasing regional presence.
Panelists:
– Sanam Vakil: Deputy Director of MENA Programme at Chatham House
– Denise Natali: Acting Director, Institute for National Strategic Studies & Director of the Center for Strategic Research, National Defense University
– Hassan Ahmadian: Professor of the Middle East and North Africa Studies, University of Tehran
– Abdulaziz Sagar: Chairman, Gulf Research Center
– Andrew Parasiliti: President, Al-Monitor
