Natural Resources and National Security: Facing the Future

Michael Levi is the David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is director of the CFR program on energy security and climate change and was project director for the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on climate change. Dr. Levi was previously a nonresident science fellow and a science and technology fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. Prior to that, he was director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Strategic Security Project.
His interests center on the intersection of science, technology, and foreign policy, including energy, climate, and nuclear security. He is the author of the book On Nuclear Terrorism (Harvard University Press, 2007) and coauthor with Michael O’Hanlon of The Future of Arms Control (Brookings Institution Press, 2005). His 2005 monograph with Michael D’Arcy, Untapped Potential: U.S. Science and Technology Cooperation with the Islamic World, was the first comprehensive study of science and technology in the Muslim world.

Dr. Levi has been invited to testify before Congress and to present expert scientific evidence to the National Academy of Sciences. His essays have been published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Nature, Scientific American, Slate, and The New Republic, among others. His op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times. Dr. Levi is a regular guest on major television and radio programs and was a technical consultant to the critically acclaimed television drama 24. Dr. Levi holds a PhD in war studies from the University of London (King’s College), where he was the SSHRC William E. Taylor fellow. He holds an MA in physics from Princeton University, where he studied string theory and cosmology, and a BSc (Hons.) in mathematical physics from Queen’s University (Kingston).

Christine Parthemore is a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), where she directs the Natural Security Program and the Natural Security Blog. This program explores national security and foreign policy issues related to natural resources and their consumption, including energy, minerals, land, water, climate change and biodiversity loss. She is the author or co-author of publications including: Sustaining Security: How Natural Resources Influence National Security; Broadening Horizons: Climate Change and the U.S. Armed Forces; Iran: Assessing U.S. Strategic Options; Uncharted Waters: The U.S. Navy and Navigating Climate Change; and A Strategy for American Power: Energy, Climate, and National Security. She also co-authored a chapter in the 2008 book Climatic Cataclysm: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change.

Prior to joining CNAS, she worked as an assistant to journalist Bob Woodward on State of Denial: Bush at War Part III and The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat. Her research covered a broad range of American foreign and defense policy, the war on terror, and the Iraq War. She has contributed to The Washington Post, Roll Call, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and is a guest expert contributor to National Journal’s Energy and Environment blog. Parthemore has a B.A. from The Ohio State University and is a graduate student in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program. Her academic backgrounds lie in international political economy, and unconventional threats and nonproliferation.

Steven Solomon is the author of Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization and The Confidence Game, which presciently warned about building dangers in the volatile global financial system. In Water, Solomon addresses the problems of freshwater scarcity and the looming challenges that drive economic, political, and environmental realities worldwide. Water famines and faltering clean water supplies are directly related to crises of energy, food, and climate change, but Solomon contends that Western democracies now have an opportunity to use their comparative advantage in freshwater reserves to launch new leadership initiatives.

Solomon has addressed the World Affairs Council, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and university forums. He has written for The New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Economist, Forbes, and Esquire. He has been a regular commentator on NPR’s Marketplace, and has appeared as a featured guest on the late Tim Russert’s CNBC show, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, Bloomberg TV, and on many other news shows.

Moderator

Daniel S. Freifeld is a senior advisor to the Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy at the U.S. Department of State. He was previously director of international programs at New York University’s Center on Law and Security, a foreign policy adviser on Senator Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and a program coordinator for the Near East South Asia Center at the U.S. Department of Defense, working in more than ten Middle Eastern countries. He has also held appointments at the World Bank and Baker Botts, LLP. He speaks Turkish and French and conversational Arabic, Farsi, and Spanish. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Emory University and a law degree from New York University School of Law and is a member of the Massachusetts Bar, the District of Columbia Bar, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. His recent publications include “Tapped Out: Why Hugo Chávez’s friends can’t save his petrostate” (Foreign Policy, March 2010); “Enter the Dragon: Gulf Security and Chinese-Iranian Petrodiplomacy,” (Al Majalla, March 2010); “The Great Pipeline Opera: Inside the European Pipeline Fantasy that Became a Real-Life Gas War with Russia” (Foreign Policy, September/October 2009); and “Nabucco: Pipeline Politics and the U.S.-Turkey Strategic Relationship” (Turkish Policy Quarterly, Spring 2009).