Forthcoming
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Past Workshops
Asia & the Middle East: Straddling Between Contestation, Competition & Cooperation
Crisis Response Council and the Emirates Policy Center convened a workshop on 12 June 2023 on Asia-Middle East relations. The Middle East region is increasingly central to the foreign policies of Asian countries such as China, Japan, India, and South Korea. Each of these players have become more assertive in a range of political and economic spaces, including in security, finance, agriculture, telecommunications, transport, and especially energy. At the same time, countries within MENA are turning to Asia as the primary interlocutor for trade and diplomacy, as exemplified by the recent agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which was brokered in Beijing. This workshop explored the future trajectories of Asia-Middle East relations, their implications and how they might be harnessed to help build a collective and consensus driven regional order.
The Complexities of Hybrid Security Orders
Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF) and Crisis Response Council hosted, on 22 and 23 March 2022, a group of experts for a closed-doors workshop in Geneva, Switzerland. The convened cohort explored important themes including the complexities and challenges of hybrid security orders, managing hybrid actors, the political economy of violence and the role of the state, as well as the need to harmonize policy tracks in transitional processes.
The Middle East in the Emerging International Order: New Threats, Old Realities
Crisis Response Council was delighted to convene a workshop on the sidelines of the Middle East Peace and Security Forum in Iraqi Kurdistan. The workshop took place on November 16, 2022 and convened regional and international experts to assess the challenges facing the Middle East against the backdrop of great power competition.
Brookings Institution
Past panels
Winning the Peace: Armed Groups & Security Sector Challenges
3 June 2021
Crisis Response Council and the Brookings Institution's Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors were delighted to convene panel discussion that examined the future of armed groups in the Middle East and policy options for responding to them. It looked at whether armed groups should be integrated into formal governing structures, whether armed movements can govern, and which armed groups should be accepted, and which should be sidelined; it examined how the international community, particularly the U.S. and Europe, should address security crises and looked at potential policies for conflict mitigation and resolution at the local and regional level.
Speakers
Vanda Felbab-Brown
Brookings Institution
Benedetta Berti
NATO
Yaniv Voller
Kent University
Fred Wehrey
Carnegie Endowment
Turkey's Relationship with Iraq: Caught Between Conflict, Cooperation & Geopolitics
11 May 2021
Crisis Response Council, together with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, were delighted to convene a panel discussion on the future of Turkey's relationship with Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, focusing specifically on the implications of a possible Turkish military incursion into Sinjar, Turkey's political and economic relations with Erbil and Baghdad, Ankara's rivalry with Iran, and conflict mitigation mechanisms that can stave off a conflict.
Speakers
Denise Natali
Assistant Secretary of State
Osman Sert
Ankara Institute
Lahib Higel
International Crisis Group
Guney Yildiz
Cambridge University
The Future of the State in the Middle East
22 April 2021
Together with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Crisis Response Council convened a panel discussion on the future of the State in the Middle East, focusing specifically on how the state can better respond to the needs of populations, whether there are viable alternatives to existing administrative and territorial structures, the future of the state-system in the region and the role that international actors can play to address state fragility and the underlying drivers of instability.
Speakers
Toby Dodge
London School of Economics
Joseph Bahout
American University of Beirut
Linda Robinson
Council on Foreign Relations
Christiana Parreira
Princeton University
Securing Lasting Peace in the Middle East
15 December 2020
Crisis Response, together with its partners the Carnegie Corporation of New York, EastWest Institute in Brussels and the Proxy Wars Initiative, convened a panel discussion that forms part of its "Ten Years Since the Arab Spring" series, focusing on the main challenges to stabilization and reconstruction, the future of democracy promotion in the region, reconciliation and peace-building and the role that international actors like the United States and Europe can play to constrain the fallout from conflicts and their second-order effects.
Speakers
Frances Z. Brown
Carnegie Endowment
Jomana Qaddour
Atlantic Council
Emad Badi
Atlantic Council
Kawa Hassan
Stimson Center
Turkey's Foreign Policy: What Next?
3 December 2020
In this webinar, Crisis Response, together with its partners the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Proxy Wars Initiative, convened an esteemed group of experts to examine these challenges further, focusing specifically on the future of Turkey’s engagements with its neighbourhood and the wider region, the future of US-Turkey relations under a Biden administration and conflict mitigation mechanisms that can help reduce the fallout fromongoing crises.
Speakers
Dareen Khalifa
ICG
Galip Dalay
Chatham House
Asli Aksoy
SWP
Ian Lesser
GMF
Tensions Between the US and Iran: Where Next?
12 August, 2021
Speakers
Together with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Proxy Wars Initiative, Crisis Response examined the prospects of securing de-escalation, the consequences a sustained conflict might have for the region and the implications it could have for the effort to secure the enduring defeat of ISIS. It explored the role that regional countries, as well as outside actors like the Europeans, could play to develop a pathway to de-escalation, and the steps that the Iraqi government can and should take to forestall yet another devastating conflict on its territory.
Alistair Burt
Foreign Office, UK
Lukman Faily
Iraqi Government
Dalia Dassa Kaye
UCLA
Ariane Tabatabai
Columbia University
Hassan Ahmadian
Harvard University
Together with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Proxy Wars Initiative, Crisis Response examined Iraq's prospects of securing peace and stability and explores the extent to which the new government might be able to address the long-list of challenges that currently face the country. It identifies how the Iraqi state can reign in Shiite militias and mitigate the fallout from US-Iran tensions, in addition to examining the future of US-Iraq relations and the ongoing military campaign to defeat ISIS.
Iraq's Prospects For Stability
13 May 2020
Speakers
Ken Pollack
AEI
Jane Arraf
New York Times
Bayan Sami Rahman
KRG
Mohammed Hakim
Iraqi Government
Mohammed Radhi
Sumeria Foundation