Senator Chuck Hagel, Former United States Senator and Chairman of the Atlantic Council of the United States, was featured as a panelist at the May 2009 “U.S.-Saudi Relations in a World Without Equilibrium” symposium in Washington, organized by the Committee for International Trade, Council of Saudi Chambers (CIT) and the New America Foundation (NAF). He was part of a panel titled “A Forward Projection of What the Saudi-US Relationship Should Look Like and Needs to Achieve.”

The presentation is a part of a video of the complete panel discussion and Hagel’s portion starts at Time: 00:11:48.

Conference organizer Steve Clemons of the Foundation described the significance of the symposium this way:

“..Because of cultural dissimilarities and almost a purposeful “remoteness” that has become institutionalized in the US-Saudi relationship, except when behind closed doors — or perhaps in the privacy of the oval office or big estates here or there, or in Riyadh — the US-Saudi relationship remains “overly exotic” — and is not acted out in public view to the degree it should be.

”The conference that follows below will hopefully become a starting point for a more regular, public exchange of views on the key strategic and economic challenges that face the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the broader Middle East and international system.

”Whether many Americans want to acknowledge it or not, the fact is that the US-Saudi relationship is vital to America’s geostrategic and geoeconomic interests today — and like all diplomatic frameworks between key geostrategic players, this relationship as seen from both the American and the Saudi sides has warts and shortcomings. Nonetheless, it is not healthy to allow a vital relationship to be perceived and discussed through only very narrow lenses.

”What we have coming up on at this event is pretty significant in my view, and I am grateful to officials in the Obama administration and in the Saudi Kingdom — as well as other private sector speakers — for supporting the kind of open encounter we are promoting in this meeting..”

Speaker Biography:

Senator Chuck Hagel
Former United States Senator
Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance, Georgetown University
Chairman, Atlantic Council of the United States

The Honorable Chuck Hagel is a distinguished professor at Georgetown University and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Hagel served two terms in the United States Senate (1997-2009) representing the State of Nebraska. Hagel was a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; and Intelligence Committees. Hagel is the author of the recently published “America: Our Next Chapter,” a straight forward examination of the current state of our nation that provides substantial proposals for the challenges of the 21st century. Prior to his election to the U.S. Senate, Hagel was president of McCarthy & Company, an investment banking firm in Omaha, Nebraska. In the mid-1980s, Hagel co-founded VANGUARD Cellular Systems, Inc., a publicly traded corporation. He is a Vietnam combat veteran and former deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration.