The United States is embarking on a potentially pivotal presidential election in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the party conventions are fast approaching, the identities of both the Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls are already clear: the incumbent Donald Trump will face off against former Vice President Joe Biden. Given the obvious temperamental and ideological differences between the two candidates, the election result looks to have potentially profound implications for the direction of US foreign and security policy. What are the key differences between the candidates when it comes to their understanding of America’s international role? How might Trump’s approach to international politics evolve during a possible second term in the White House? What would be the most important changes and continuities from the Trump era in the event of a Biden victory?
Puhujat
Michael Haltzel is Chairman of the Transatlantic Leadership Network (www.transatlantic.org) and Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Institute, Johns Hopkins University SAIS. From 1994-2005, Dr. Haltzel served as Democratic Staff Director, Subcommittee on European Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations Committee and advisor to then-Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. In 2009-10 he headed U.S. Government delegations to three multi-week OSCE review conferences in Warsaw, Copenhagen, and Vienna.
His other previous positions include Chief, European Division, Library of Congress; Director, West European Studies, Woodrow Wilson Center; Vice President – Academic Affairs, Longwood University; and Deputy Director, Aspen Institute Berlin. In 2015-16 he was Visiting Senior Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
The author of Der Abbau der deutschen ständischen Selbstverwaltung in den Ostseeprovinzen Russlands 1855-1905 (Marburg, 1977), Dr. Haltzel is coauthor or editor of nine other books and author of dozens of refereed scholarly journal articles. His op-eds have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, POLITICO, Huffington Post, and U.S. News & World Report.
He received a B.A. magna cum laude from Yale, and an M.A. and Ph.D., both from Harvard. Dr. Haltzel is the recipient of state decorations from seven EU members: Austria, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Sweden.
Andrew A. Michta is the Dean of George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. His areas of expertise are international security, NATO, and European politics and security, with a special focus on Central Europe and the Baltic States. Prior to coming to the Marshall Center he was Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Europe Program) and an affiliate of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. From 1988-2015 he was the M.W. Buckman Distinguished Professor of International Studies at Rhodes College. From 2013-14, he was a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. where he focused on defense programming. From 2011–13, he was a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMFUS) and the founding director of the GMFUS Warsaw office. He holds a Ph.D. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University.
* The views presented are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect those of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
Panelistit
Maria Annala is a visiting research fellow at the Center on US Politics and Power at FIIA. She is an expert on US domestic politics and the author of "Trumpin kansa – keitä he ovat ja miksi he rakastavat johtajaansa" (Trump’s People – Who They Are and Why They Love Their Leader). From 2015 to 2019 she lived in Boston and worked as a freelance journalist, covering among other things the 2016 election and the first two years of the Trump administration for the Finnish News Agency STT and Lännen Media. Before that she worked as a managing editor at the Finnish News Agency.
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