The World on Stage: A Semester of Conversations on Eurasia, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific

From February through April 2026, the Clements Center convened four major events on national security and global affairs, bringing scholars, policymakers, military commanders, and intelligence professionals into conversation on the Forty Acres.

The semester opened on February 13 with the Eurasia Policy Forum: Contemporary Political Myth and Reality in Eurasia, an all-day conference at the LBJ School’s Bass Lecture Hall organized with UT Austin’s Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the Center for Law and Democracy, and the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, among more than a dozen co-sponsoring units across campus. The forum brought together historians, political scientists, legal scholars, and cultural studies

researchers to examine the myths and realities shaping democracy, identity, and conflict across Eurasia. Michael Kimmage, Director of the Kennan Institute, delivered the keynote, with panels covering state-building and democratic backsliding, the political mythology of Holy Rus’ in Russia and the United States, identity and power during wartime, and the conditions under which narratives erode or sustain democratic values. Scholars from Princeton, Boston College, Harvard, and institutions across Europe joined UT Austin faculty for a day designed to bridge disciplines that rarely share the same stage. Photos from the event are available in this Flickr album.

On March 4, the Clements Center took up one of the most contested questions in American foreign policy: what happens when a president orders a strike against a foreign head of state? Striking the Ayatollah: War Powers, Political Order, and Consequences brought together Gen. (Ret.) Vince Brooks, Strauss Center Director Adam Klein, former CIA officer Steve Slick, and senior military attorney Paul Pope for a panel moderated by Intelligence Studies Project Director Alexandra Sukalo and introduced by Clements Center Deputy Executive Director Paul Edgar.

The conversation covered the constitutional tension between presidential authority and congressional war powers, the limits of intelligence in high-stakes decisions, and why leadership strikes rarely resolve the political problems that prompted them. Tactical success, panelists argued, does not guarantee strategic stability. The full event recording and a written recap are available on the Clements Center website. Photos from the event are available in this Flickr album.

April brought two conferences focused on strategic competition and national development. On April 10, the Clements Center co-hosted India at 100: Decades of Decisions alongside the South Asia Institute, McCombs School of Business, and the Strauss Center. UT Austin’s first conference dedicated to India’s economic and political future, the day-long event featured economist Arvind Subramanian and political scientist Devesh Kapur on India’s macroeconomic trajectory, Tanvi Madan of the Brookings Institution on the emerging Indo-U.S.-Texas economic corridor, and sessions on India’s position in the global AI ecosystem, human capital development at scale, and the evolving role of language and identity in a rapidly changing society. The breadth of the agenda reflected an argument the organizers were willing to state plainly: understanding India’s next quarter-century requires more than economic forecasting. It requires grappling with governance, culture, and the weight of decisions being made right now. Photos from the event are available in this Google Photos album.

The semester closed on April 21 with The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission at 25, a lunchtime conversation co-hosted with the Asia Policy Program and the Strauss Center. The Hon. Randall Schriver, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs and now Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security, joined Mike Kuiken, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, to reflect on 25 years of American strategic attention to China. They examined how the terms of competition have shifted since the Commission’s founding, where the policy community has gotten it right and wrong, and where the relationship stands today. The event’s full title, “Still Crazy After All These Years,” captured the tone: serious people taking an honest look at a problem that has only grown more complicated. Photos from the event are available in this Flickr album. You can also view the full event recording.

Together, the spring lineup covered Eurasia, Iran, India, and China, and the questions running through all of them: how states build and lose legitimacy, how force and law interact under pressure, and how the United States positions itself in a world of overlapping strategic competitions.