Transatlantic Currents: The Iran war – Picking up the pieces

Ambassador (ret.) Alina L. Romanowski is a distinguished national security leader in the areas of national security, geopolitical and geoeconomic risk, counterterrorism, business strategy and crisis management with a focus on the Middle East region. With a 44-year career in U.S. government national security affairs, she has held key C-suite equivalent leadership positions at the Departments of State and Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Central Intelligence Agency and played a pivotal role in shaping and implementing international policies, forging strategic partnerships in the U.S. and abroad, and driving high-stakes initiatives in some of the world’s most complex geopolitical landscapes.

She was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Iraq from 2022-2024, and as U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait from 2020-2022. As ambassador to Iraq, she led the largest U.S. embassy in world, re-shaping strategic U.S. political, defense, and financial engagements with the new Iraqi government, promoted American commercial engagement and developed policies to safeguard U.S. personnel and interests during significant regional conflict.

Widely recognized for her exemplary public service, Romanowski is a recipient of a Presidential Distinguished Rank Award; two Presidential Meritorious Rank Awards; several Department of State Superior Rank Awards; two Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Awards; and several CIA exceptional performance awards. Amb. Romanowski holds an M.A. and a B.A. from the University of Chicago and studied at Tel Aviv University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy; serves on the boards of Amideast and the World Affairs Councils of America; and is a distinguished non-resident fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.

Ambassador (ret.) Deborah A. McCarthy is an expert on U.S. foreign and national security policy. Most recently, she was the U.S. negotiator to the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Cybercrime (2022-2025) leading U.S diplomatic efforts with allies and partners which successfully concluded a new global UN Cybercrime Convention.   Just prior, she was a Fellow at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative (2020-2022) focusing on cyber and technology and  was the host and producer of the podcast series “The General and the Ambassador”.

In a long diplomatic career, she served as Ambassador to Lithuania (2013-2016), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs, Deputy Chief of Mission in Athens, Greece, Special Coordinator for Venezuela, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Consul General in Montreal, Deputy Chief of Mission in Nicaragua and Economic Counselor in Paris.  Other postings include Rome, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Amb. McCarthy is a non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. She is a member of the American College of National Security Leaders and the American Academy of Diplomacy.  She is on the Advisory Board of the Master’s Program of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and Senior Editor of the Harvard Social Impact Review.

Amb. McCarthy holds a M.S. in Foreign Service and a M.A. in Economics from Georgetown University and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia.

Ville Sinkkonen is Leading Researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Center on US Politics and Power. His research focuses on US foreign policy, great-power politics, normative power, and the politics of trust in international relations.

Sinkkonen is the author of A Comparative Appraisal of Normative Power: The European Union, the United States and the January 25th, 2011 Revolution in Egypt (Brill, 2015), and his work has been published in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, the Journal of Transatlantic Studies, and European Foreign Affairs Review, among others. He holds an LL.D. (International Law) from the University of Turku, where he defended his doctoral dissertation Failing hegemony? Four essays on the global engagement of the United States of America in the 21st Century in December 2020.

Sinkkonen is the chairperson of the Finnish International Studies Association (FISA) and co-editor of the Nordic Review of International Studies (NRIS).