Tamara Cofman Wittes and Brian Egan on Law, Policy, and the U.S. Role in the Middle East
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2019
⏱️ 79 minutes
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Summary
Last month, Tamara Cofman Wittes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and Brian Egan, former legal advisor to the State Department and National Security Council, participated in the Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens Memorial Lecture at the UC Hastings Law School. Ambassador Stevens, who died tragically in the attack against the U.S. special mission in Benghazi in 2012, was a proud alumnus of UC Hastings. In his memory, his family generously endowed an annual lecture on a current topic in foreign relations.
This year's event featured a panel discussion with Cofman Wittes and Egan, moderated by Professor Chimène Keitner, on U.S. law and policy in the Middle East. The conversation takes a step back from current events to look at the broader strategic landscape following the U.S. withdrawal from Syria.
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
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| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.9 | So the question is what's our priority, right? |
| 0:36.9 | And ultimately, policy is all about priorities and trade-offs. |
| 0:40.9 | And so the trade-off that President Obama chose to make was that it runs nuclear program. |
| 0:48.7 | It's the increasing sophistication and capability of its nuclear program. |
| 0:53.8 | We'd get it to weapons capability soon in a way that would threaten its neighbors, threaten |
| 1:01.6 | Europe, potentially threaten the United States because it was also developing long-range |
| 1:05.8 | missiles. |
| 1:07.0 | And therefore was an urgent and because we're talking about nuclear weapons, existential |
| 1:13.8 | threat to us and our friends. |
| 1:18.9 | I'm Michaela Fogel and this is the LawFair podcast November 30, 2019. |
| 1:25.7 | Last month, tomorrow, Kaufman-Wittis, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former |
| 1:31.1 | deputy assistant secretary of state for New York's eastern affairs, and Brian Egan, former |
| 1:36.4 | legal adviser to the State Department and National Security Council, participated in |
| 1:41.0 | the Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens Memorial lecture at the University of California Hastings |
| 1:45.8 | Law School. |
| 1:47.4 | Senator Stevens, who died tragically in the attack against the U.S. Special Mission in |
| 1:51.5 | Benghazi, Libya in 2012, was a proud alumnus of UC Hastings. |
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