On October 3rd, more than 70 students, faculty and staff attended a faculty panel sponsored by Discourse in Democracy on “International Security and U.S. Foreign Policy: Challenges and Opportunities in a Campaign Year.” The event featured five political science professors – Drs. Ionut Popescu, Edward Mihalkanin, Thomas Doyle, Franziska Newell, and Suzanne Sternthal.
The speakers addressed a wide range of topics. Dr. Popescu argued that the next President must adopt a realist foreign policy laser-focused on containing China’s efforts to remake the world order and to dethrone the United States from its superpower status. Dr. Doyle’s remarks emphasized the continuities of US foreign policy on matters of international security from the Obama administration through the Trump administration and into the first Biden term. Dr. Boehme-Newell spoke about polarization among American elites and the public and how this now manifests itself also in foreign policy.
Dr. Sternthal’s comments focused on the war in Ukraine arguing that Putin’s war is not about countering NATO expansion, but about preventing Slavic Ukraine from joining the EU which would provide a prosperous and democratic alternative to his regime. Dr. Mihalkanin spoke about three major challenges facing the U.S. foreign policy: Hyper-partisanship, the radicalization of some Congressional Republicans, and climate change.
The event concluded with a lively question-and-answer session, where the students and faculty in the audience asked for the experts’ views on other topics including national security, the Ukraine-Russia war, and the possibilities of a nuclear exchange.
