Speeches

Order in Turmoil: Making Sense of Kaleidoscopic Change in the Middle East
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Providence, Rhode Island, March 11, 2019
Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 28, 2019

By now it is widely accepted that U.S. influence in the Middle East is in something approaching freefall. The Arab uprisings of 2011 overthrew the governments in Tunis, Egypt, and Yemen, stimulated bloody miscalculations by both the Syrian government and its opposition, and destabilized Bahrain.

After the Trade War, a Real War with China?
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
St. Petersburg, Florida

 

I’m here at your kind invitation to discuss China, how bad our relations with it may get, and how the contest we’ve initiated with China is likely to play out.  Let me take a minute or two to set the context for this discussion.

The Middle East after Khashoggi
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Washington, DC

We are only beginning to understand the slowly unfolding impact of Jamal Khashoggi's murder.  I considered him a friend.  No one deserves to die as he apparently did.  The incident is in every respect repellent.

The North Korean Nuclear Crisis
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island

A couple of days ago, I read an article on economic statecraft in Foreign Affairs. It asserted that sanctions had “helped drive North Korea to the negotiating table.” That’s the accepted narrative. But the north Koreans were never unwilling to negotiate.

In the Time of Trump: Public Turbulence and Private Capital
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Washington, D.C.

We live in turbulent times.  In Europe, in America, and in parts of Asia there is an elemental unease about what is to come.  The rule-bound order that the Western victors of World War II created is disintegrating.  International law no longer protects the weak.  Bluster, bullying, and bombing ap

A Middle East with No Master
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Washington, D.C.

Time was, the countries of the Middle East relied on the United States for patronage, protection, and guidance.  Suez taught Israel, Britain, and France that without Washington’s acquiescence, their policies could not succeed.  Egypt’s defection showed Russia the limits of its ability to compete

Fifteen Years of Forever Wars
Ambassador Chas. W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.

Fifteen years ago today, speaking in Kabul, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld declared that, in Afghanistan, “we clearly have moved from major combat activity to a period of stability and stabilization and reconstruction activities.