Diplomacy expert to discuss America’s foreign policy strategies

Dr. Ray Raymond, who worked for more than 20 years in Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service on issues involving NATO, U.K.-U.S. relations, Northern Ireland, the Middle East and Afghanistan, will explore America’s foreign policy strategies when he visits Salve Regina on Monday, Nov. 9.

“Enlightened Realism: Principles for a New American Foreign Policy” will be presented at 6 p.m. in the Ochre Court state dining room. The lecture is sponsored by the Pell Honors Program.

“First, we say we want to promote democracy and free markets. Second, we say we want to promote security and stability,” Raymond said. “We need to understand that these two objectives are contradictory … promoting one is usually at the expense of the other.” He will argue that America’s strategic challenge is to balance its pursuit of these objectives with the recognition of its increasingly limited assets and the limitations of its power and our capacity to shape these outcomes.

Raymond has lectured on comparative politics, international relations and counter-insurgency at West Point for many years and in 2009 served as the Thomas Hawkins Johnson Visiting Professor at the U.S. Military Academy. He is also a professor of government and history at the State University of New York.

From 1997 to 2005, Raymond worked with Prime Minister Tony Blair’s policy unit and as an adviser to his chief of staff. Since 2001, he has been chair of the Marshall Scholarships for the Mid-Atlantic States and since 1993, president and CEO of the City Fellowships in Financial Services with Goldman Sachs.