A George D. Schwab Foreign Policy Briefing
Election 2024: Expectations and Speculations in
Foreign Policy
Tuesday, March 19 from 12:00-1:00 PM (EST)
Meeting held virtually via Zoom
Featuring:
Dr. Heather Ashby
Principal Consultant,
Corner Alliance
Ms. Carla Anne Robbins
Senior Fellow,
Council on Foreign Relations on Defense and Security
Mr. Ali Wyne
Senior Research and Advocacy Adviser for US-China,
The International Crisis Group
Moderating:
Mr. Nicholas Thompson,
CEO, The Atlantic
Trustee, NCAFP
Welcoming Remarks:
The Honorable Jeffrey R. Shafer
Chairman of the Board of Trustees, NCAFP
The anticipation of more than sixty countries heading for major legislative elections this year will shape global engagement, world democracy, and foreign policy. The possible outcomes of the U.S. elections have dominated the headlines and commanded the attention of foreign policy circles both at home and abroad.
With the prolonged war in Ukraine, spreading conflicts in the Middle East, crisis in cross-border migration, and security anxieties across the globe, an AP-NORC poll reports that Americans are more concerned about U.S. foreign relations leading into this election than in previous years. Many world leaders, including key allies and partners, share the same concerns. In the current political atmosphere, how will foreign policy determine ballots in November? Can the U.S. assure consistency with our policy commitments despite electoral results? Moreover, in an increasingly polarizing environment, can the U.S. forge a bi-partisan foreign policy?
Joining us to parse out these questions are: Dr. Heather Ashby, Principal Consultant at Corner Alliance; Ms. Carla Anne Robbins, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations on Defense and Security, and faculty director and clinical professor at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs; Mr. Ali Wyne, Senior Research and Advocacy Adviser for US-China at the International Crisis Group, and author of “America’s Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition” (Polity, 2022); and moderating the discussion is Mr. Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic and member of the NCAFP’s Board of Trustees.
About the Speakers
Dr. Heather Ashby is a Principal Consultant with Corner Alliance working at the intersection of national security and technology. In this role, she supports Corner Alliance’s work with the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate.
Dr. Ashby was previously the associate director for the United States Institute of Peace’s program on disruptive technologies and artificial intelligence. She joined USIP after seven years with the Department of Homeland Security, where she worked on both domestic and international affairs issues.
Dr. Ashby received her doctorate from the University of Southern California in 2014. Her research interests include misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, as well as artificial intelligence, and digital security and safety.
Ms. Carla Anne Robbins is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), where she leads a roundtable series on national security in an age of disruption and is co-host of The World Next Week podcast. She is also Marxe faculty director of the master of international affairs program and clinical professor of national security studies at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs.
An award-winning journalist and foreign policy analyst, Ms. Robbins was deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times and chief diplomatic correspondent at the Wall Street Journal. She has reported from Latin America, Europe, Russia, and the Middle East.
Ms. Robbins is a graduate of Wellesley College and received a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University and a media fellow at Stanford University.
Mr. Ali Wyne is the Senior Research and Advocacy Advisor for U.S.-China at the International Crisis Group. He previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the State Department, the RAND Corporation, and Eurasia Group. He has also been a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute.
A graduate of the MIT and the Harvard Kennedy School, Mr. Wyne is a security fellow with the Truman National Security Project, a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former David Rockefeller fellow with the Trilateral Commission. He is the author of “America’s Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition” (Polity, 2022) and a co-author of “Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World” (MIT Press, 2013).