World Affairs Council: Dr Michael Haltzel

Last night, I attended an event sponsored by the Oregon World Affairs Coucil and the Portland Committee on Foreign Relations. It featured the speaker Dr Michael Haltzel, former foreign policy advisor to Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del). I found his speech most interesting. His stipulation was that the 5 most important foreign policy challenges over the forseeable future include 1) Islamic Fundamentalism, 2) WMD (particularly nuclear) proliferation, 3) the US economy, 4) an Avian flu pandemic, and 5) climate change (or more in reality the environment).

While largely partisan arguments, I found his perspective to be very moderate. Amazingly, these are five challenges that most Republicans would agree upon. What I have yet to see is representatives from both sides confront these challenges together. For most, it seems that absolute power is most important. This is a tragic mistake for the American people who will continue to run into difficulty because otherwise reasonable men have been reduced to name calling.