The Rumi Forum presented “How the Outcome in Egypt Could Affect the U.S. Role and Influence in the Middle East” with Steven Clemons, Senior Fellow, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation; Publisher, The Washington Note
Summary:
Pro-democracy protesters celebrated in cities across Egypt on Friday after forcing President Hosni Mubarak to step down. Mubarak, who had announced Thursday night in a televised speech that he would keep his title and give some of his authority to Vice President Omar Suleiman, suddenly handed over power to the military and left Cairo.
Mubarak’s resignation, which ends three decades of authoritarian rule, raises numerous questions about what led to his decision, what happens next and what the transition means. Here are some answers.
Bio:
Steven Clemons is the founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, which aims to promote a new American internationalism that combines a tough-minded realism about America’s interests in the world with a pragmatic idealism about the kind of world order best suited to America’s democratic way of life. He is currently a Senior Fellow at New America, of which he previously served as Executive Vice President, and remains actively involved in the direction of the American Strategy Program.
Publisher of the popular political blog The Washington Note, Mr. Clemons is a long-term policy practitioner and entrepreneur in Washington, D.C. He has served as Executive Vice President of the Economic Strategy Institute, Senior Policy Advisor on Economic and International Affairs to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and was the first Executive Director of the Nixon Center.
Prior to moving to Washington, Mr. Clemons served for seven years as Executive Director of the Japan America Society of Southern California, and co-founded with Chalmers Johnson the Japan Policy Research Institute. He is a Member of the Board of the Clarke Center at Dickinson College, a liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pa., as well as an Advisory Board Member of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. He is also a Board Member of the Global Policy Innovations Program at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs and on the advisory board of the Robert Bosch Foundation Alumni Association.
Mr. Clemons writes frequently on matters of foreign policy, defense, and international economic policy. His work has appeared in many of the major leading op-ed pages, journals, and magazines around the world.
Moderator: Jonathan S. Landay, Senior National Security and Intelligence Correspondent, McClatchy Newspapers.