Daniel Benjamin

Daniel Benjamin Speaking Topics

• The Terrorist Challenge: A Status Report

  Since before the first al Qaeda attacks against American embassies in East Africa to the present day, Daniel Benjamin has been involved in America’s efforts to combat contemporary terrorism. As the longest-serving ambassador-at-large and chief of the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau and a White House counterterrorism official in the 1990s, Benjamin has been intimately involved in crafting the strategies that have weakened the world’s most formidable terrorist threat. Winner of the Council on Foreign Relations book award for The Age of Sacred Terror—a New York Times Notable Book—Benjamin provides a global perspective on the changing terrorist threat. He describes how the al Qaeda core in Pakistan has been crippled, and gauges the threats that have evolved in Yemen, Iraq and various parts of Africa. He examines the problem of Iran, the world’s foremost sponsor of terror, and its partner Lebanese Hezbollah. He describes how the Arab Spring has transformed the security landscape and the approaches we need to take to lock in the security gains of recent years. He also looks over the horizon at the long-term danger posed by the conflict in Syria and the sectarian strife now reshaping the Middle East and Persian Gulf.

• Thinking About Risk in a Fast-Changing World

  Dramatic events in just the last three years have swept away many of the certainties and assumptions that businesses relied on to advance their global operations. In the broader Middle East, the events of the Arab Spring have radically reconfigured societies and often upended expectations about what kind of security states can provide. Terrorist violence has spread into new regions in Africa, while elsewhere, countries such as Brazil, Greece and Turkey have experienced widespread demonstrations and social unrest. At the State Department and the White House, Daniel Benjamin served at the center of international security policymaking, and he provides the audience with a map of the new global instability, separating myths from realities and explaining the forces that drive these transformations.

Ethics & Foreign Policy: What Will the Moral of Our Story Be?

Every day, U.S. policymakers are confronted with a flood of news stories and intelligence on growing conflicts, mass atrocities and grave injustices. They also face the profoundly complex problem of reconciling their responsibilities to advance American interests and carefully manage American resources while upholding American values. In a democratic system, how should we weigh the requirements of moral principle against the preferences of the broader public? What role should concerns about political endurance and even survival play in these deliberations? Are there any moral imperatives in the conduct of statecraft?

Daniel Benjamin began working in the White House shortly after the Rwandan genocide and served in the 1990s through such events as the crises in the Balkans, the bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan and, in the first Obama term, played a central role in counterterrorism policymaking in such areas as Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Syria. In this talk, he reflects on the extraordinary challenges faced by those who must decide when the nation should act to prevent bloodshed, protect the helpless or redress inequity.

Mapping Risk: Navigating an Ever-Changing Global Landscape

In a short three years, international businesses have witnessed a redefinition of the security calculus for their foreign operations. In parts of the Middle East, the Arab Spring has opened up some societies, but swept away the ability of some states to provide a stable, safe environment. Elsewhere in the region, renewed repression has led to smoldering tensions or outright conflict. Terrorist groups are acting with greater impunity across Africa, while in countries such as Turkey, Brazil and Greece, social unrest has erupted, clouding these countries’ political and economic prospects. Daniel Benjamin served at the heart of the policy world at the State Department and the White House. With such experience, he provides audiences with a guide to the new global instability, identifying those developments that are passing trends and those that are reshaping the way governments and the global business community work.

A Global Threat Assessment: Terrorism Trends of Today

Almost 15 years after 9/11, the landscape of terrorism is changing rapidly. Though al Qaeda’s historic leadership in Pakistan has suffered profound damage and the threat of catastrophic attack has diminished, dangerous jihadist threats such as ISIS persist in Yemen and Iraq, and a plethora of new challenges have arisen, particularly across Africa. In the West, lone wolf operators who are hard to find and difficult to track add to the complexity of the picture.

As the State Department’s top counterterrorism official and as a high-level White House aide, Ambassador Daniel Benjamin takes the measure of the threats we face today, from bin Laden’s progeny to Iran’s role as the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, and from the Islamic State to the emerging danger of cyberterrorism. He explains how the Arab Spring has radically altered the situation on the ground and how the conflict in Syria – and the sectarian strife behind it – could well spawn the next era of terror.

The Crisis in Ukraine: Russia — What’s Next?

With his seizure of the Crimea, Russian President Vladimir Putin has instigated possibly the greatest international security crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As the leader who brought this historic Russian territory back into the Russian state, Putin is enjoying a huge boost in domestic popularity.

For the United States and its European allies, Putin’s action has broken the post-Cold War taboo on changing borders by force. With Europe’s military forces weakened by years of defense cuts, and its economies reliant on Russian energy exports and deeply tied into Russian consumer markets, the appetite for tough measures is low though anxiety is high, especially among the EU’s newer eastern members. Drawing on his extensive White House and State Department experience, Ambassador Benjamin examines the wide-ranging consequences of this unheralded crisis, from their Eurasian core to the international efforts to curb the slaughter in Syria, which Putin has foiled, to curtailing Iran's drive to acquire a nuclear capability.