Aftermath: U.S. strategy for a new era (Day 2)

Afreen Akhter is a visiting scholar with the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She most recently served as deputy assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, leading diplomatic initiatives across the Indo-Pacific. Previously, she was national security and foreign affairs adviser to Senator Chris Van Hollen. Her earlier service includes roles at the White House National Security Council, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and multiple offices at the U.S. Department of State, where she began as a presidential management fellow. She was also a Fulbright scholar in Jamaica. She holds a BA from Brown University and an MPP from Harvard Kennedy School.

Alexander Bick, a Miller Center faculty senior fellow, is an associate professor of practice in public policy in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served in the Biden administration as director for strategic planning at the White House National Security Council and as senior advisor and a member of the policy planning staff at the U.S. Department of State. His work at the State Department and National Security Council during the Obama administration focused on Syria. Bick holds a BA from the University of Chicago, a diploma in economics and an MSc in economic history from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in history from Princeton University.

Ashley Deeks, a Miller Center faculty senior fellow, is the vice dean of the University of Virginia School of Law and directs the National Security Law Center. Her primary research and teaching interests are international law, national security, intelligence, and the laws of war. She is the author of The Double Black Box: National Security, Artificial Intelligence, and the Struggle for Democratic Accountability and has written articles on the use of force, executive power, secret treaties, the intersection of national security and international law, and the laws of armed conflict. She is a member of the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Law, a senior fellow at the Lieber Institute for Law and Land Warfare, and a senior contributor to the Lawfare blog. Deeks served in the Biden administration as White House associate counsel and deputy legal advisor to the National Security Council.

Alexander B. Gray is CEO of American Global Strategies LLC, an international strategic advisory firm he cofounded with former National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien. His practice spans the defense, aerospace, maritime, and technology sectors. Gray previously served as deputy assistant to the president and chief of staff of the White House National Security Council (NSC). He was also special assistant to the president for the defense industrial base at the National Economic Council and the first director for Oceania and Indo-Pacific Security at the NSC. He served on the 2016 presidential transition team at the U.S. Department of State and as senior advisor to Congressman J. Randy Forbes. Gray is a strategic counselor at Ballard Partners and holds a BA from George Washington University.

A. Wess Mitchell is a principal and cofounder at The Marathon Initiative, which he created in 2019 with Elbridge Colby. He previously served as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs during the first Trump administration. In this role, he was responsible for diplomatic relations with the 50 countries of Europe and Eurasia and played a principal role in formulating Europe strategy in support of the 2017 National Security Strategy and 2018 National Defense Strategy. He holds a BA from Texas Tech, an MA from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, and a doctorate from the Freie Universität in Berlin and is the author of four books, including most recently Great Power Diplomacy: The Skill of Statecraft from Attila the Hun to Kissinger.

Philip B. K. Potter, a Miller Center faculty senior fellow, is executive director of the National Security Data and Policy Institute, the University of Virginia’s sixth university-level institute. A professor of public policy and the founding director of the Frank Batten School's National Security Policy Center, Potter’s decades of research have focused on U.S. foreign policy, military affairs, data analysis, and international security. He serves as a university expert for the intelligence community and a senior advisor in the Department of Defense. He is an active voice in both academia and government on national security research and policy.  He holds a BA from McGill University and an MA and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Mara Rudman is a practitioner senior fellow at the Miller Center, where she formerly directed the Ripples of Hope Project aimed at identifying practical approaches to help democratic leaders resolve key challenges. She previously served as a Miller Center Schlesinger Distinguished Professor and on the 2022 National Defense Strategy Commission. She serves on the Howard University College of Arts and Sciences board of advisors and also consults for Democracy Forward. She was executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress, and her government positions have included serving as deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs in the Obama and Clinton administrations; deputy envoy for the Office of the Special Envoy for Middle East Peace at the U.S. Department of State; assistant administrator for the Middle East at the U.S. Agency for International Development; and chief counsel to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She received an AB from Dartmouth College and a JD from Harvard Law School.

Melanie W. Sisson is a senior fellow in the Brookings Foreign Policy program’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology, where she researches the use of the armed forces in international politics, strategies of deterrence, U.S. national security strategy, defense policy, and defense applications of emerging technologies. She also serves on the advisory council of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy for International Affairs based in Bonn, Germany. Sisson previously was vice president of analysis at Govini, an early-stage national security AI/ML technology company, and senior fellow and director of the Stimson Center Defense Strategy and Planning program. A former senior national security project associate with the RAND Corporation, manager of program evaluation for a non-profit mental health organization, and member of the U.S. intelligence community, Sisson is a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, lectures regularly with universities nationwide, and is published in national media outlets and academic journals. She earned a PhD in political science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a MIA from the Columbia University School of International Affairs.

Stephen Wertheim is a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School. An historian, he analyzes America’s role in the world, past and present, to address current problems in U.S. strategy and diplomacy. He is the author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy (2020), which reveals how the United States decided to pursue global military dominance as an effectively perpetual project. He writes regularly in major publications and was named one of “the world’s 50 top thinkers for the Covid-19 age” by Prospect magazine. He previously served as director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank he cofounded in 2019. He holds an AB from Harvard University and an MA, MPhil, and PhD from Columbia University.

Dasha Burns is Politico Playbook’s chief correspondent, White House bureau chief at Politico, and the host of The Conversation with Dasha Burns. She is also the inaugural host of Ceasefire on C-SPAN. She previously worked at NBC News, where she covered the 2024 presidential campaign, leading NBC’s coverage of the July attempt on President Trump’s life while reporting on-site in Pennsylvania. Before that, Burns was a writer and contributor at CNN and served as a fellow at the United Nations Information Center. Born in Ukraine and raised in California, Burns graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with degrees in media studies and anthropology.

Mike Emanuel is chief Washington correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC). He joined FNC in 1997 as a Los Angeles-based correspondent and currently serves as a co-anchor of FOX News Live. Since joining the network, Emanuel has provided coverage of every major election cycle. In July 2024, he was live on television when then-President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy, making him the first to break the news on air. He has provided live coverage of numerous critical national and international events, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capital; and both impeachments of President Donald Trump. Emanuel has also interviewed top political figures, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Vice President Dick Cheney, and President George W. Bush.

Laura Kelly is the foreign policy reporter for The Hill, covering how politics on Capitol Hill collide with the goals of the president and the State Department in America’s engagement abroad. While based in Washington DC, she has reported from around the world, in Europe, Asia and Africa, and in conflict zones, including in Ukraine, Israel, and northern Iraq covering the fight against ISIS. Kelly lived and worked in Israel between 2012 and 2016 where she served as magazine editor for the Israeli national newspaper, The Jerusalem Post. Originally from Long Island, New York, she is a graduate of Fordham University.