About the Dialogue:

Whenever a new US President comes into office, the incoming administration’s foreign policy exhibits a combination of continuity and change. With the election of Donald Trump – whose statements on US foreign and national security policy have been unconventional and even unsettling in many respects – the prospects for US foreign policy span an unusually wide array of possibilities.

In this RSIS Dialogue, two members of the RSIS Board of Governors – Professor Michael Brown of George Washington University and Professor Bates Gill of Australian National University – will assess what is currently known about the Trump administration’s foreign policy and national security policy directions, with a special focus on the prospects for US-Asia relations. In addition to assessing likely elements of continuity and change, they will offer best-case, mid-range case, and worst-case scenarios for the next four years and beyond. With the US presidential inauguration scheduled for January 20, 2017, this dialogue will be very timely.

About the Speakers:

Michael E. Brown is a Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. He was Dean of the Elliott School from 2005 to 2015. He is a member of the RSIS Board of Governors, and he was an RSIS Distinguished Visitor in April 2016.

From 1998 to 2005, Professor Brown was on the faculty of the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. From 2000 to 2005, he was Director of Georgetown’s Center for Peace and Security Studies and Director of the M.A. program in Security Studies. From 1994 to 1998, he was Associate Director of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. From 1988 to 1994, he was a member of the Directing Staff and Senior Fellow in U.S. Security Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Professor Brown was Editor of the journal Survival from 1991 to 1994. He was Co-Editor of the International Security, the leading academic journal in the security studies field, from 1994 to 2006. He now serves on the Editorial Boards of Asian Security, International Security, and The Washington Quarterly.

Professor Brown is the author of Flying Blind: The Politics of the U.S. Strategic Bomber Program, which won the Edgar Furniss National Security Book Award. He is the editor or co-editor of 22 books, including: Ethnic Conflict and International Security; Grave New World: Security Challenges in the 21st Century; Going Nuclear: Nuclear Proliferation and International Security in the 21st Century; and four books focused on Asian security issues. His research interests include: regional security in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East; global trends and global governance; U.S. foreign policy and U.S. grand strategy.

Professor Brown received his Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. He has given more than 150 talks in more than 30 countries outside of his home country, the United States. He has traveled to more than 70 countries.

Bates Gill is Professor of Asia Pacific Strategic Studies at the Australian National University Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.  He is a career-long observer of US foreign policy in Asia and particularly US-China relations.

From 2012 to 2015, Dr. Gill was Chief Executive Officer of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He was previously Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Before joining SIPRI, Dr. Gill held the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C (2002-2007) and previously served as a Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies and inaugural Director of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution (1998-2002).

He was selected as the 2016 Sir Howard Kippenberger Chair in Strategic Studies at the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Among his more than 160 publications, he is author, co-author, or co-editor of seven books, including: Asia’s New Multilateralism (Columbia University Press, 2009); Rising Star: China’s New Security Diplomacy (Brookings, 2007; revised edition 2010; republished in Japanese 2014); and China: The Balance Sheet (Public Affairs, 2006). His next book, forthcoming in 2017, co-authored with Linda Jakobson, is titled China Matters: Getting it Right for Australia.

He also serves on the Board of Governors of the Rajaratnam School of International Studies (Singapore) and is a member of the International Board of Advisors for the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies.  He is on the Editorial Board of China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, and Security Challenges.

Dr. Gill received his Ph.D. in Foreign Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia. In 2013, he received the Royal Order of the Commander of the Polar Star, the highest award bestowed on foreigners by the Swedish monarch, for his contributions to Swedish interests.