Westminster Institute talks

https://westminster-institute.org/events/are-we-heading-towards-world-war-iii/

https://westminster-institute.org/events/the-future-of-ukraine-a-debate/

Stephen Bryen is a leading expert in security strategy and technology. He has held senior positions in the Department of Defense, on Capitol Hill and as the President of a large multinational defense and technology company.

Dr. Bryen has 50 years of experience in government and industry. He has served as a senior staff director of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as the Executive Director of a grassroots political organization, as the head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, as the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy, as the founder and first director of the Defense Technology Security Administration, as the President of Finmeccanica North.

In 1982, Herman Pirchner, Jr. became the founding President of the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), a non-profit public policy organization headquartered in Washington, DC.

Under his leadership, AFPC has hosted Washington events for hundreds of foreign officials ranging from the Prime Minister of Malta to the Prime Minister of Russia; conducted hundreds of briefings for Members of Congress and their staffs and, organized dozens of fact-finding missions abroad for current and former senior American officials. Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, Former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld, Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, former Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey, as well as the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dick Myers are among those who have participated in this program.

https://westminster-institute.org/events/has-wokeness-weakened-the-u-s-military/

Col. (Ret.) Grant Newsham is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. He is also a Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, focusing on Asia/Pacific defense, political, and economic matters. He is a retired U.S. Marine Colonel and was the first U.S. Marine Liaison Officer to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force.

He also served as reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific and was the U.S. Marine attaché, US Embassy Tokyo on two occasions. Grant Newsham has more than 20 years of experience in Japan and elsewhere in Asia so he is well able to offer the Asian perspective on the strategic challenges China presents to Japan and Taiwan, and how the two of them may face that threat.

https://westminster-institute.org/events/warfare-in-peacetime-proxies-and-state-powers/

Warfare in Peacetime: Proxies and State Powers

Dr. Christopher Harmon is a professor at The Institute of World Politics.

He formerly held the Bren Chair of Great Power Competition at Marine Corps University (MCU) in Quantico. Dr. Harmon also directed the counterterrorism course at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. He directed academics in the counter-terrorism program of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Earlier, he was Legislative Aide for Foreign Policy on a congressional staff.

He taught for years on the strategy and policy faculty at the Naval War College, and then served at length as a professor of international relations at the Marine Command and Staff College in Virginia. From 2005 to 2007 Dr. Harmon held an endowed chair for Insurgency and Terrorism Studies at Marine Corps University. He held another chair there from 2010 to 2014, researching low intensity conflicts in Asia and writing A Citizen’s Guide to Terrorism and Counterterrorism.

Dr. Harmon has edited or written eight books, including Toward A Grand Strategy Against Terrorism and The Terrorist Argument. Modern Advocacy and Propaganda. The latter book’s thesis was presented by him at a Westminster Institute lecture back in 2017. He also spoke at the Westminster Institute on How Terrorist Groups End. Dr. Harmon spoke on the subject of his latest book: Warfare in Peacetime: Proxies and State Powers, published by the Marine Corps University Press.

Steven W. Mosher is an internationally recognized authority on China and population issues, as well as an acclaimed author, speaker. He has worked tirelessly since 1979 to fight coercive population control programs and has helped hundreds of thousands of women and families worldwide over the years.

In 1979, Steven was the first American social scientist to visit mainland China. He was invited there by the Chinese government, where he had access to government documents and actually witnessed women being forced to have abortions under the new “one-child policy.” Mr. Mosher was a pro-choice atheist at the time, but witnessing these traumatic abortions led him to reconsider his convictions and to eventually become a practicing, pro-life Roman Catholic.

Steven has appeared numerous times before Congress as an expert in world population, China, and human rights abuses. He has also made TV appearances on Good Morning America, 60 Minutes, The Today Show, 20/20, FOX and CNN news, as well as being a regular guest on talk radio shows across the nation.

He is also the author of the best-selling A Mother’s Ordeal: One Woman’s Fight Against China’s One-Child Policy. Other books include Hegemon: China’s Plan to Dominate Asia and the World, China Attacks, China Misperceived: American Illusions and Chinese Reality, Journey to the Forbidden China, and Broken Earth: The Rural Chinese.

Articles by Steve have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest, The New Republic, The Washington Post, National Review, Reason, The Asian Wall Street Journal, Freedom Review, Linacre Quarterly, Catholic World Report, Human Life Review, First Things, and numerous other publications.

Cleo Paskal is a non-resident senior fellow at FDD focusing on the Indo-Pacific region. Cleo works with academia, government, the defense community and others in order to better understand, explain, anticipate and resolve today’s complex challenges. She is particularly interested in the strategic implications of the intersection of geopolitical, geoeconomic, and geophysical change.

Cleo has briefed government departments of the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union, India and many others. She has lectured at, among many others, the US Army War College, Center for Homeland Defense & Security (Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey), Inter-American Defence Board (D.C.), the Royal College of Defence Studies (UK), the National Defence College (India), Centre for National Security Studies (Canadian Forces College), and the National Defence College (Oman). She participates in closed-door meetings with defense, intelligence, national security, and non-government experts who engage in strategic level, unclassified dialogue and research to better anticipate transnational threats.

Cleo is widely published and a regular media commentator. Her books include the award-winning Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map and the best-selling Spielball Erde. Recent academic book chapters and research papers include: “Is New Zealand Creating Global Disruptions” (The Law of the Jungle: How Can New Zealand Navigate Global Disruptions); “India: The Challenge of Reform” (CÉRIUM); “The Modi Phenomenon: Rebooting Indian Foreign Policy” (The Modi Doctrine: New Paradigms in India’s Foreign Policy); and “The ‘Three Geos’” (Geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific). In addition, she has contributed chapters to academic books published by Elgar, Routledge and many others and was the Guest Curator/Editor of the influential East-West Center (D.C.) series Oceania in 2018.

In the popular media, Cleo has contributed to The Diplomat, The World Today, The Telegraph (UK), The Independent (UK), South China Morning Post, BBC radio, Australian Financial Review, New Zealand Herald, and Times of India, among many others. She is regularly interviewed by US and international media, including the John Batchelor Show. She is currently North America Special Correspondent for the Sunday Guardian (India).

https://westminster-institute.org/events/did-lockdowns-work-the-verdict-on-covid-restrictions/

Steve H. Hanke is a Senior Fellow, Contributing Editor of The Independent Review, and a Member of the Board of Advisors at the Independent Institute. Hanke is professor of applied economics and founder and co-director of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, senior adviser at the Renmin University of China’s International Monetary Research Institute in Beijing, and a special counselor to the Center for Financial Stability in New York. Hanke is also a contributing editor at Central Banking in London and a contributor at National Review. In addition, Hanke is a member of the Charter Council of the Society for Economic Measurement.

In the past, Hanke taught economics at the Colorado School of Mines and at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers in Maryland in 1976–77, as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1981–82, and as a senior adviser to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress in 1984–88. Hanke served as a state counselor to both the Republic of Lithuania in 1994–96 and the Republic of Montenegro in 1999–2003. He was also an adviser to the presidents of Bulgaria in 1997–2002, Venezuela in 1995–96, and Indonesia in 1998. He played an important role in establishing new currency regimes in Argentina, Estonia, Bulgaria, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Ecuador, Lithuania, and Montenegro. Hanke has also held senior appointments in the governments of many other countries, including Albania, Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yugoslavia.

Hanke has been awarded honorary doctorate degrees by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito (2003), the Free University of Tbilisi (2010), Istanbul Kültür University (2012), the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (2013), Varna Free University (2015), the Universität Liechtenstein (2017), and the D.A. Tsenov Academy of Economics (2018) in recognition of his scholarship on exchange‐rate regimes. He is a distinguished associate of the International Atlantic Economic Society, a distinguished professor at the Universitas Pelita Harapan in Jakarta, Indonesia, a professor asociado (the highest honor awarded to international experts of acknowledged competence) at the Universidad del Azuay in Cuenca, Ecuador, a profesor visitante at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas (the UPC’s highest academic honor), and the Gottfried von Haberler Professor at the European Center of Austrian Economics Foundation in Liechtenstein. In 1998, he was named one of the 25 most influential people in the world by World Trade Magazine. In 2020, Hanke was named a Knight of the Order of the Flag by Albanian President Ilir Meta.

Hanke is a well‐known currency and commodity trader. Currently, he serves as chairman of the Supervisory Board of Advanced Metallurgical Group N.V. in Amsterdam and chairman emeritus of the Friedberg Mercantile Group Inc. in Toronto. During the 1990s, he served as president of Toronto Trust Argentina in Buenos Aires, the world’s best‐performing emerging market mutual fund in 1995.

Hanke received his B.S. in Business Administration (1964) and his Ph.D. in Economics (1969), both from the University of Colorado Boulder.

https://westminster-institute.org/events/what-president-erdogans-election-victory-means-for-turkey-and-the-world/

Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow at FDD and an expert on Turkish domestic politics and foreign policy.

He is also an Associate Professor of National Security Studies at Marine Corps University (MCU). Prior to joining MCU, Sinan was the Executive Director of the Institute of Turkish Studies, based at Georgetown University (2011-2020). Between 2008-2011 he established the Turkish Studies program at the University of Florida’s Center for European Studies. He continues to serve as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Sinan was born in Turkey and educated in the United Kingdom. He was previously an instructor at Sabanci University between 2004-2008 and completed his Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the same institution between 2007-2008. Distinct from his articles and opinion editorials, his book titled Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People’s Party: Secularism and Nationalism (Routledge, January 2009) focuses on the electoral weakness of the Republican People’s Party.

He obtained his Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2007 in the field of Political Science. He continues to author scholarly articles, opinion pieces and book chapters on contemporary Turkish politics and foreign policy, as well as participate in media appearances.

https://westminster-institute.org/events/should-the-u-s-or-europe-make-nato-great-again/

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. He worked as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan and editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He writes regularly for leading publications such as Fortune magazine, National Interest, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Times.

Bandow speaks frequently at academic conferences, on college campuses, and to business groups. Bandow has been a regular commentator on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. He holds a JD from Stanford University.

https://westminster-institute.org/events/are-japan-australia-the-united-states-and-others-prepared-militarily-to-meet-the-ccp-threat/

Col. (Ret.) Grant Newsham is a Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. He is also a Research Fellow at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, focusing on Asia/Pacific defense, political, and economic matters. He is a retired U.S. Marine Colonel and was the first U.S. Marine Liaison Officer to the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force.

He also served as reserve head of intelligence for Marine Forces Pacific and was the U.S. Marine attaché, US Embassy Tokyo on two occasions. Grant Newsham has more than 20 years of experience in Japan and elsewhere in Asia so he is well able to offer the Asian perspective on the strategic challenges China presents to Japan and Taiwan, and how the two of them may face that threat.