Averting War, Defeating Terror: Townsend Hoopes To Discuss Mideast Dilemmas November 12

Chestertown, MD, November 4, 2002 — Washington College's C. V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience presents “MIDDLE EAST DILEMMAS,” a lecture by Townsend Hoopes, Senior Fellow of Washington College and a recognized authority on foreign policy and international security. The talk will be held Tuesday, November 12, 2002 at 7:30 p.m. in the Casey Academic Center Forum. The event is free and the public is invited to attend this timely and important discussion.
Hoopes will address two challenges currently facing U.S. foreign policymakers: the need to destroy the al Qaeda network and the concurrent need to forge workable, peaceful relations between the West and the majority of Islam. Hoopes regards Iraq as a problem, but not an urgent threat to U.S. security. He believes a preemptive war aimed at removing Saddam Hussein would further inflame ant-American feeling in the Arab world, quite possibly overturn U.S. allies in the region, and undermine the prospects for holding together an effective coalition against al Qaeda. In his view, the U.S. must make a determined new effort, in concert with other major nations, to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, which remains the root cause of destructive anti-Americanism in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world.
Hoopes has had a long career in government service and as a partner in the international consulting firm of Cresap, McCormick and Paget. From 1965 to 1967 he served as Principal Deputy for International Security Affairs at the Pentagon and later as Under Secretary of the Air Force (1967-69). Subsequently, he served as President of the Association of American Publishers, Co-Chairman of Americans for SALT, and Director of the American Committee on U.S.-Soviet Relations. He is author of numerous works on international affairs and contemporary history, including The Limits of Intervention (Vietnam War), The Devil and John Foster Dulles, and Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal (coauthored with Douglas Brinkley), which won the 1992 Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt Naval History Prize. Townsend Hoopes on Arms Control, a collection of his essays and speeches, was published in 1987, and FDR and the Creation of the UN (coauthored with Brinkley) was published in 1997.
The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience offers many lectures on American history, culture and politics. Contact Kees deMooy, Program Manager for the C.V. Starr Center, at 410-810-7156, or visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu for a list of upcoming events and lectures.