Events from The Brookings Institution

Listen to recordings of public events from the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy research organization (think tank) in Washington, DC. Expert speakers and panelists at our events include scholars, leading policymakers, and foreign officials, and address a wide range of public policy issues that matter to the nation and the world.
Book cover of The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict by Elbridge A. Colby
International & World Politics

The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict

Elbridge A. Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of U.S. defense strategy in a generation. Here he lays out how America’s defense must change to address China’s growing power and ambition. Based firmly in the realist tradition but deeply engaged in current policy, this book offers a clear framework for what America’s goals in confronting China must be, how its military strategy must change, and how it must prioritize these goals over its lesser interests. […Learn More]

Book Cover of Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States since FDR by Bruce Riedel
International & World Politics

Kings and Presidents: Saudi Arabia and the United States since FDR

An insider’s account of the often-fraught U.S.-Saudi relationship

Saudi Arabia and the United States have been partners since 1943, when President Roosevelt met with two future Saudi monarchs. Subsequent U.S. presidents have had direct relationships with those kings and their successors―setting the tone for a special partnership between an absolute monarchy with a unique Islamic identity and the world’s most powerful democracy. […Learn More]

Americas

We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America

The economy has been brutal to American workers for several decades. The chance to give one’s children a better life than one’s own — the promise at the heart of the American Dream — is withering away. While onlookers assume those suffering in marginalized working-class communities will instinctively rise up, the 2016 election threw into sharp relief how little we know about how the working-class translate their grievances into politics. […Learn More]

Book Cover of Beirut 1958: How America's Wars in the Middle East Began by Bruce Riedel
History

Beirut 1958: How America’s Wars in the Middle East Began

What wasn’t learned from a U.S. intervention that succeeded 

In July 1958, U.S. Marines stormed the beach in Beirut, Lebanon, ready for combat. They were greeted by vendors and sunbathers. Fortunately, the rest of their mission—helping to end Lebanon’s first civil war—went nearly as smoothly and successfully, thanks in large part to the skillful work of American diplomats who helped arrange a compromise solution. Future American interventions in the region would not work out quite as well.  […Learn More]