Global News Review

Topics for July 14, 2020

• 1 –  Global Covid Update
• 2 –  Has a U.S.-China Cold War Already Begun?
• 3 –  Afghanistan: U.S.-Taliban Negotiations Update
• 4 –  Iran-China: Wedding Bells
• 5 –  The End of World Order and American Foreign Policy

Ambassador Dick Bowers, LCDR Patrick Ryan and Dr. Breck Walker, Ph.D., discuss the top five items in the week’s global news providing commentary and assessments, background and context; and they take your questions and comments. We’re pleased to welcome Dr. Walker to the weekly Global News Review team as a regular co-host.

This week Professor Thomas Schwartz will join the conversation about key issues in global news especially his analyses of US Foreign Affairs. Dr. Schwartz is a Distinguished Professor of History, Professor of Political Science and European Studies at Vanderbilt University and author of the forthcoming book Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography, to be published in September 2020 by Hill and Wang.  (Bio below)

Ambassador Charles “Dick” Bowers, USFS (Ret) served as the US Ambassador to Bolivia from 1991 through 1994. During that time, the American Embassy in Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, was the largest and most complex U.S. embassy in South America. Ambassador Bowers grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, attended the University of California, Berkeley. He entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1967. From 1961 to 1964 he served in the U.S. Army as a Russian linguist in West Berlin at the height of the Cold War. As a career member of the U.S. diplomatic corps, Ambassador Bowers served in the U.S. Embassies in Panama, Poland, Singapore, Germany and Bolivia. He retired from the Foreign Service in 1995. Amb Bowers has been a Board Member of the Tennessee World Affairs Council since 2012.

LCDR Patrick Ryan, USN (Ret) is a native of New York City. He enlisted in the Navy at age 17 and volunteered for submarine duty. He served aboard nuclear fast attack and ballistic missile boats during the Cold War, rising to the rank of Chief Petty Officer. In 1982 he was commissioned and served aboard a cruiser in the Western Pacific before becoming a Navy Intelligence Officer. Ryan served aboard the carrier Constellation in the Pacific, the Joint Staff Intelligence Directorate in the Pentagon, the Center for Naval Analysis, and the Intelligence Directorate of U.S. Central Command. Ryan retired from the Navy in 1998 and worked as a consultant on Intelligence Community projects and as the VP/COO of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations. Ryan ran a newsletter publishing business on international affairs from 1999-2016. He founded the Tennessee World Affairs Council in 2007.

Dr. Breck Walker received his PhD in Diplomatic History from Vanderbilt in 2007. His dissertation was on the foreign policy of the Carter administration.  He taught at Sewanee, the University of the South, 2007-2012, and on the University of Virginia’s Semester at Sea Program in Spring 2013 and Fall 2015. He worked as a historian in the Historical Office of the Office of Secretary of Defense 2013-2016, researching and writing a book on early Pentagon cyber policy. Prior to becoming a history professor, Breck worked for twenty years as an investment banker, the last ten as co-head of the Corporate Finance Group at J.C. Bradford & Co in Nashville. He has an undergraduate degree from the University of Texas, and J.D. and M.B.A. degrees from Stanford University.  Breck serves as a Member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee World Affairs Council.

Guest Co-Host | Professor Thomas Schwartz

Dr. Thomas Schwartz, Ph.D.

Distinguished Professor of History; Professor of Political Science; Professor of European Studies; Vanderbilt University.  Thomas Alan Schwartz is a historian of the foreign relations of the United States, with related interests in Modern European history and the history of international relations. He is the author of Henry Kissinger and American Power: A Political Biography, to be published in September 2020 by Hill and Wang. Professor Schwartz has held fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the German Historical Society, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Center for the Study of European Integration. He has served as President of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations. He served on the United States Department of State’s Historical Advisory Committee as the representative of the Organization of American Historians from 2005-2008.