Colliding crises: The Israel–Hamas conflict, the war in Ukraine, and geopolitics

Spencer D. Bakich, a nonresident senior fellow at the Miller Center, is a professor of international studies and the director of the National Security Program at the Virginia Military Institute. He is the author of Success and Failure in Limited War: Information and Strategy in the Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and Iraq Wars (Chicago, 2014), as well as articles, book chapters, and essays on wartime diplomacy and strategy, coercive diplomacy, American grand strategy, and cybersecurity. Using transcripts from the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program, Bakich contributed chapters to 42: Inside the Presidency of Bill Clinton and 43: Inside the Presidency of George W. Bush.

Eric Edelman, a Miller Center practitioner senior fellow, retired as a career minister from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2009 after having served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House. As the undersecretary of defense for policy (2005–2009), he oversaw strategy development as the Defense Department’s senior policy official with global responsibility for bilateral defense relations, war plans, special operations forces, homeland defense, missile defense, nuclear weapons and arms control policies, counter-proliferation, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, arms sales, and defense trade controls. Edelman served as U.S. ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations and was principal deputy assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney for national security affairs.

James "Jim" Gilmore III was the 68th governor of Virginia from 1998 to 2002. Gilmore served as the U.S. representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe during the Trump administration, and he currently heads the Gilmore Global Group LLC. Gilmore is also the former CEO of the American Opportunity Foundation. After graduating from the University of Virginia with a BA, Gilmore served as a U.S. Army counterintelligence agent for three years in West Germany, then returned to the University of Virginia School of Law, earning a JD. He worked for a decade in community service and as an attorney in private practice before being elected to public office as a county prosecutor. He also was elected attorney general of Virginia before serving as governor. 

Harry Harding, a Miller Center faculty senior fellow, is a specialist on Asia and U.S.-Asian relations. His major publications include Organizing China: The Problem of Bureaucracy, 1949-1966; China’s Second Revolution: Reform after Mao; A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China since 1972; and a chapter on the Cultural Revolution in the Cambridge History of China. A University Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, Harding is also adjunct chair professor in the College of Social Science at National Chengchi University in Taipei, where he holds a Yushan Scholarship, the highest honor awarded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education. Harding served as the founding dean of UVA’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy from 2009–14.

Aynne Kokas is the C. K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center, director of the University of Virginia's East Asia Center, and an associate professor of media studies at UVA. A Fulbright scholar educated at the University of Michigan, with a PhD from UCLA, Kokas is a fellow in the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on U.S. China Relations. She is the author of Hollywood Made in China, a study of the partnerships between Chinese and American producers to produce feature films for global audiences. Her latest book, Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty, examines how weak U.S. data security benefits U.S. firms while expanding the Chinese government's digital control. Her research has been supported by the Library of Congress, National Endowment for the Humanities, Mellon Foundation, and Social Science Research Council.

Syaru Shirley Lin, research professor at the Miller Center and a nonresident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, teaches at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University in Beijing, and National Chengchi University in Taipei. Lin is the founder and chair of the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation (CAPRI) and a steering committee member of the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience under the World Economic Forum. Her book, Taiwan’s China Dilemma, analyzes the impact of the evolution of Taiwanese national identity on cross-Strait economic policy. Lin is currently writing a book on the challenges facing high-income societies in Asia Pacific, including inequality, demographic decline, inadequate policy and technological innovation, and threats to public health and environmental sustainability. Her commentaries frequently appear in both English and Chinese media. Previously, she was a partner at Goldman Sachs, where she led the firm’s private equity and venture capital efforts in Asia.

Stephen D. Mull, a Miller Center practitioner senior fellow, is vice provost for global affairs at the University of Virginia. Ambassador Mull has served in a broad range of U.S. national security positions, most recently as Acting Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, working as the day-to-day manager of overall regional and bilateral policy issues, and overseeing the bureaus for Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Eurasia, the Near East, South and Central Asia, the Western Hemisphere, and International Organizations. He was lead coordinator for Iran Nuclear Implementation from August 2015 until August 2017 and was the U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Poland and the Republic of Lithuania.

John Owen is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and a professor in UVA's Department of Politics. He is the author of Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security and The Clash of Ideas in World Politics: Transnational Networks, States, and Regime Change 1510-2010. A recipient of fellowships from Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton Universities, Owen is a member of the editorial board of International Security and a faculty fellow at the UVA Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.

Philip B. K. Potter, a Miller Center faculty senior fellow, is an associate professor of politics and founding director of the National Security Policy Center in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. He is also a university expert with the National Ground Intelligence Center, U.S. Army INSCOM. Potter has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Politics and the Journal of Global Security Studies and is an associate principal investigator for Time-Sharing Experiments in the Social Sciences (TESS). Potter has been a fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Mara Rudman is a James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center. She is also a senior counselor at the Center for American Progress. Rudman served in the Obama and Clinton administrations, including as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs. She also was executive vice president for policy at American Progress, senior vice president for policy/projects at Business Executives for National Security, and led Quorum Strategies, a geopolitical strategic advisory firm. Additional government positions include deputy envoy and chief of staff for the Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace at the U.S. Department of State and assistant administrator for the Middle East at the U.S. Agency for International Development. Earlier in her career, she was chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She received her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a law degree from Harvard Law School.

Yuri Urbanovich is an associate professor, general faculty, teaching in the departments of politics and Slavic languages and literatures, and in the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at the University of Virginia. He specializes in problems of disarmament, international negotiations, national negotiating styles, nationalism and ethnic conflict, societies in transition, politics in Russia and the post-Soviet region, and U.S.–Russian relations. He holds an MA in international relations from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University) and a PhD in international relations from the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

William J. Antholis has served as director and CEO of UVA's Miller Center of Public Affairs since January 2015. In that time, the Miller Center has strengthened its position as the leading nonpartisan research institution on the American presidency and worked with scholars across the University of Virginia to deliver vital research to policymakers and the public. Before coming to the Miller Center, Antholis served as managing director at the Brookings Institution from 2004 to 2014, working directly with Brookings's president and vice presidents. Antholis is the author of Inside Out India and China: Local Politics Go Global (2013) and co-author (with Strobe Talbott) of Fast Forward: Ethics and Politics in the Age of Global Warming (2010). He has published articles, book chapters, and opinion pieces on U.S. politics, U.S. foreign policy, international organizations, the G8, climate change, and trade.