A Multilateral Moment: A New US Foreign Policy?

This is a lecture co-sponsored by the Center for Social Theory and Comparative History and the Burkle Center for International Relations.

General Wesley K. Clark (ret.) is a Senior Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center. Paul Schroeder is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Illinois.

Prof. Paul Schroeder beings the talk with these issues:

• Overarching theme: histories of the international system and American foreign policy system are individual success stories...although the connection between these two systems is not as successful.
• Perceptions and instances of peace interrupted by war.
• Individual self-restraint and institutionalized collective constraint.
• What constitutes America’s success. America as a rent collector.
• What America needs.

General Wesley K. Clark:

• Brief comments on 2008 presidential campaign.
• Obama’s prioritization of policy (above politics), safety, and public diplomacy.
• Obama’s multilateral style, and how maintaining it bears difficulties.
• Policies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, South Vietnam.
• Uncertainty between Israelis and Palestinians.
• Eastern European nations’ rationales for NATO membership.
• How economic events have affected policy.
• Worries for the future.
• Duck feet analogy to foreign policy - represents persistence of international problems.