Special Panel: Oil and Foreign Policy

Event Details

GAGE is pleased to host a special panel discussion on Oil and Foreign Policy on February 16. How has oil shaped America's modern political economy and influenced its foreign policies? Can the United States free itself from its dependency and shape its own future? This panel of scholars, policy experts, and private practitioners discussed the origins of our present energy dilemmas and examine the options that lay ahead. Moderated by Melvyn P. Leffler, the Edward Stettinius Professor of History at the University of Virginia, and co-Director of the Miller Center's America in the World program.

Joe Barnes has been an advisor and the Bonner Means Baker Fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University since 1995. His chief area of interest is international economics, with a focus on the geopolitics of energy. Barnes' work has appeared in the New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, Survival, Z Magazine, Oil and Gas Journal, Energy Markets, the Newsletter of the Royal United Services Institute, the SAIS Policy Forum Series, and The National Interest. He is a contributor to Energy in the Caspian Region (Palgrave Press, 2002), and his work was recently published in Natural Gas and Geopolitics from 1970 to 2040 (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Barnes served as a career diplomat with the U.S. State Department and is a graduate of Princeton University.

Michael T. Klare has been Director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies (PAWSS) since 1985. Klare has written widely on U.S. defense policy, the arms trade, and world security affairs. Most recently, Klare authored Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (Metropolitan Books, 2004) and Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Metropolitan Books, 2001). He has contributed to The Nation, Current History, Arms Control Today, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harper's, International Security, Issues in Science and Technology, Journal of International Affairs, Le Monde Diplomatique, Mother Jones, Scientific American, Technology Review, Third World Quarterly, and the World Policy Journal. Klare received his B.A. and M.A. from Columbia University, and his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of the Union Institute.

David S. Painter is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. His areas of expertise focus on diplomacy and international relations, specifically on the political economy of U.S. foreign relations as it relates to the international oil industry. Painter is the author of The Cold War: An International History (Routledge, 1999) and Oil and the American Century: The Political Economy of U.S. Foreign Oil Policy, 1941–1954 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). His articles have appeared in numerous journals and books of foreign policy and diplomatic history. Painter received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and holds B.A.'s from Oxford University and from King College.