Middle East & US relations 20 years after the deadliest terroristic attack in history.

Greg Gause, subject matter expert in Middle Eastern affairs, joins us for a conversation focusing on U.S. involvement in the Middle East and how the region has been impacted by the U.S. presence over the past two decades.

This September marked 20 years since the devastating September 11 terror attacks on the United States [which took the lives of nearly 3,000] in what remains to this day the deadliest act of terrorism in history. This day would unquestionably become one of the most defining and transformational moments in the history of terrorism, war and foreign policy. Many would argue that these attacks and their aftermath would become the catalyst for sweeping changes and catastrophic upheaval across the entire Middle East. From the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, leading to Mazar-e-Sharif in early November as a key point when things turned for the Taliban, the timeline of disruption in the region would continue over the next 20 years. This past August, the US officially left Afghanistan after two decades of occupation.

To examine all of these events in more depth, we will host a discussion with one of the leading experts on the complex politics of the Middle East. Twenty years on, what is the current threat of terrorism, and how has it changed? How have the past twenty years of conflict across the region reshaped the politics of the Middle East? As the current crisis in Afghanistan surrounding the US withdrawal and the return to power of the Taliban demonstrates, the upheaval continues. How has the withdrawal affected U.S. relations with other nations? What will the next 20 years bring to these dynamic relationships, and where are the most critical power struggles currently?

Dr. F. Gregory Gause, III, joined the Bush School in 2014 as the head of the Department of International Affairs and holds the John H. Lindsey ’44 Chair. He was previously at the University of Vermont, where he was professor of political science from 1995 to 2014 and, from 2010 to 2013, chair of its Department of Political Science. He served as director of the University’s Middle East Studies Program from 1998 to 2008. He was a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center from 2012-2015. Dr. Gause received his PhD in political science from Harvard University (1987) and studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo (1982-83) and at Middlebury College (1984).

Dr. Gause has focused his research on the international politics of the Middle East, with a particular interest in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf. He has published three books, the most recent of which is The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (Cambridge University Press, 2010). His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Security Studies, Middle East Journal, and The National Interest, as well as in other journals and many edited volumes. He has testified on Persian Gulf issues before the Committee on International Relations of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Prior to his tenure at the University of Vermont, Dr. Gause served on the faculty at Columbia University (1987-1995) and was Fellow for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1993-94). He was the Kuwait Foundation visiting professor of international affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (2009-10), and a Fulbright scholar at the American University in Kuwait (spring 2009). In spring 2010, he was a research fellow at the King Faisal Center for Islamic Studies and Research in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.