Friday, February 8
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Holsti-Anderson Family Assembly Room 153
Rubenstein Library, Duke University

Roundtable on

Realism and Liberal Internationalism after Trump:
The Future of U.S. Foreign Policy in Transatlantic Perspective

The election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States has called into question some of the assumptions that have guided U.S. foreign policy since the nation’s victory in World War II. On the one hand, realists have pointed to Trump as the necessary outcome of a U.S. foreign policy that was overambitious and unattuned to the inability of great powers to remake the world in their image. On the other hand, liberal internationalists have argued that Trump’s foreign policy signals a crisis in the so-called “liberal international order” that, they argue, has defined world politics since 1945.  This roundtable will interrogate these claims and explore what, if anything, is salvageable from the various approaches to international relations that have dominated geopolitical thinking for decades.

Confirmed participants will include:

Daniel Bessner, Assistant Professor, Jackson School of International Affairs, University of Washington

Patrick Duddy, Director, Duke Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and
Former US Ambassador to Venezuela

Joseph Grieco, Professor of Political Science, Duke University

Malachi Hacohen, Professor of History, Duke University

Alexandra Kemmerer, Senior Research Fellow and Head of Berlin Office,
Max Planck Institute for Public Law (Heidelberg)

Erwan Lagadec, Professor of International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University / Visiting Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy,
Duke University

Simon Miles, Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University

Robert Pearson, Former Director of Human Resources in the Foreign Service and
Former US Ambassador to Turkey

Katharina Rietzler, Lecturer, History, University of Sussex

Matthew Specter, Visiting Research Scholar, Center for International and Global Studies, Duke University, and Lecturer, Department of History, and Program in International Studies, UC Berkeley

Giovanni Zanalda, Director, Duke University Center for International & Global Studies (DUCIGS), Duke University