It is a distinct honor to welcome Aaron David Miller, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for an exclusive webinar discussion on Syria’s latest developments - the end of Bashar al-Assad and the implications for the Middle East and beyond. Dr. Miller, one of the country’s foremost experts on Middle Eastern policy, brings decades of experience advising U.S. policymakers and shaping foreign relations. His insights are invaluable as Syria stands at a critical crossroads, with Assad’s fall ushering in an uncertain future.

In this special webinar, Aaron joins Duncan Wood, President and CEO of the Pacific Council, for an in-depth exploration of Syria’s next chapter. The conversation will cover the challenges of post-Assad governance, shifting regional alliances, and the role of the international community - particularly in light of the incoming administration’s foreign policy direction.

This webinar will feature a 30-45 minute dialogue followed by audience Q&A, offering timely and exclusive insights into this pivotal moment for Syria, the Middle East, and global stability.

To register for this webinar, visit Zoom Registration Page.

Guest Speaker

Aaron David Miller, PhD, is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focusing on U.S. foreign policy. He has written five books, including his most recent, The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President (Palgrave, 2014) and The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (Bantam, 2008). He received his PhD in Middle East and U.S. diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in 1977.

Between 1978 and 2003, Miller served at the State Department as an historian, analyst, negotiator, and advisor to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, where he helped formulate U.S. policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel peace process, most recently as the senior advisor for Arab-Israeli negotiations. He also served as the deputy special Middle East coordinator for Arab-Israeli negotiations, senior member of the State Department’s policy planning staff, in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and in the office of the historian. He has received the department’s Distinguished, Superior, and Meritorious Honor Awards.

Miller is a member of the  Council on Foreign Relations, and formerly served as resident scholar at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies. He has been a featured presenter at the World Economic Forum and leading U.S. universities. Between 2003 and 2006 he served as president of Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering young leaders from regions of conflict with the leadership skills required to advance reconciliation and coexistence. From 2006 to 2019, Miller was a public policy scholar; vice president for new initiatives, and director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Presider

Duncan Wood, PhD, is the President and CEO of the Pacific Council and has worked in international relations and policy for over 35 years. He is an internationally renowned specialist in the geopolitics of energy, supply chain policy, critical minerals, Mexican politics, and US-Mexican ties. He has frequently given testimony to the U.S. Congress, is a widely quoted media source, and has published extensively on a wide range of global issues.  He is the author or editor of 12 books and over 30 chapters and articles.

Born in Kent, England, he studied politics at Leicester University before pursuing graduate studies in political science at McMaster University and Queens University, both in Ontario, Canada. In 1996, he received his PhD and moved to Mexico City to work at the Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, where he became a professor of and Director of the program in International Relations. After 17 years in Mexico, working on international banking supervision, energy policy, and North American integration, he became the Director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. In 2021, Dr Wood was promoted to Vice President for Strategy and New Initiatives at the Wilson Center and worked alongside the Board of Trustees to design a new strategic plan for the center.

Over the past decade, he has served as co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Transparency and Anti-Corruption and has worked closely with the WEF on energy policy.  He is a board member of Transparency International, Signos Vitales (a Mexican public policy research organization), and Foreign Affairs Latinoamerica and is an editorial advisor to El Universal newspaper. He has been a Fulbright Fellow and a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); an editorial advisor to Reforma newspaper; Technical Secretary of the Red Mexicana de Energia; a consultant with McLarty Associates, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Horizon and Eurasia Group; and owner of a speakeasy in Mexico City.

To register for this webinar, visit the Zoom Registration Page.