Launch of Global Panel America

Global Panel America

PREFACE
Global Panel America seeks to address international geo-political and geo-economic issues. The approach will reflect the way the world has changed since the end of the Cold War. It will look at the transforming impacts of globalization and the information revolution.

Everything has changed, even the nature of ideology. There has been a disintegration of the traditional left-right-center model of political allegiance. But politics and policy thinking have yet to adapt.

It is no longer adequate to organize institutions and policy thinking around the traditional geographic structures. The models of the Atlantic system, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific are no longer valid. We need to address the ways in which these regional structures have become trans-oceanic – that the Middle East, Russia, Central Asia and Africa are now parts of a Mediterranean system with the European Union; part of an Atlantic system with the US; part of the Indian Ocean system with the Gulf, Iran, India and Pakistan; and part of the Pacific system with China, Japan and the Korean Peninsula.

Moreover, the effects of global trade and financial systems have made these issues too important to be left to traditional diplomacy, military and statesmanship. International institutions, and the innovation and investment power of the private sector, now require an approach that combines the traditional concerns of geo-politics with an application of the new power of geo-economics.

The world economy is now dominated by a global financial system and challenged by terrorism and environmental stress, pandemics and organized crime, energy supplies and financial imbalances. Our political thinking, our policy-making and our ability to deploy physical, economic, military and moral force to address these challenges are still being fine-tuned. Many American policy-makers see globalization as Americanization of the international system — one part of the Global Panel America agenda will be to promote the internationalization of the American body politic.

The cutting edge of these changes is reconfiguring and shaping the world in new and different ways. Global Panel America seeks to bring together policy-makers, businessmen, military leaders, and international thinkers and commentators who will help create this new cutting edge.

APPROACH
Global Panel America will come to Washington/Toronto as an expansion of an existing prestigious international not-for-profit-organization. In so doing it will establish itself as a unique entity from the very beginning. The mere principle of a centrist international organization - having already established itself in Europe, the Far East and Australia - arriving in North America will set Global Panel America apart from the myriad of institutions in North America. Global Panel will arrive in North America as an established and credentialed entity which can rely on a network which is already in place.

AIMS
Global Panel America will be a strong and influential organization which brings together important people from North America, the EU, Australia, Asia and the Near and Middle East. It will facilitate global strategies under a new paradigm. Global Panel will look after and secure the interests of members and partners to achieve common goals. Global Panel’s initiatives will form a “behind-the-scenesstrategy” supported by several influential governments and entities worldwide.

STRUCTURE
Global Panel America will establish itself as (501)(c)(3) entity and cooperate with other leading nongovernmental- organizations. The structure includes an executive committee and an advisory board. The current proposal is to balance our board members with people considered conservatives and progressives.

At the Global Panel American Inaugural Board Meeting on 24 April 2007, the following positions on the executive committee and the advisory board were filled. Those who have not yet confirmed are listed with “tbc”:

Executive Committee
■  Hon. Barbara McDougall (Chair), former Foreign and Finance Minister, Canada
■  Sir Malcolm Rifkind, MP, (Vice Chair), former Defense and Foreign Secretary, UK
■  Hon. Dov S. Zakheim, (Vice Chair), Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton; Under Secretary of Defense
(2001-2004)
■  Hon. Yossef Bodansky, (Director) Senior Advisor, Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare (Director 1988-2004)
■  Marc S. Ellenbogen, Chairman, Global Panel; Member, National Advisory Board, Democratic Party
■  Robert S. Seasonwein, (Director) Assistant Chief Counsel, TSA, Department of Homeland Security
■  Gen. Dieter Stockmann (ret.), former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe,SHAPE,Germany
■  Martin Walker, (Director) Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, United Press International (UPI), UK

Advisory Board
■  Hon. Hassan Abouyoub, Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to King Mohamed VI; fmr. Minister of Trade and Foreign Investments, Morocco
■  Charles C. Adams, Jr., Esq., Managing Partner, Hogan & Hartson, Geneva, Switzerland
■  Hon. Richard L. Brodsky, Chairman, Committee on Corporations, Authorities and Commissions, New York State Legislature, USA
■  Hon. Jennifer Brunner, Secretary of State, The State of Ohio, USA
■  Hon. Jan Carnogoursky, former Prime Minister and Justice Minister, Slovakia
■  Baroness Cox of Queensbury, Deputy Speaker, House of Lords, UK
■  Hon. Stuart E. Eizenstat, former Deputy Treasury Secretary and Ambassador, USA
■  Hon. Sen. John Faulkner, National President, Australian Labour Party; former Minister of Veterans Affairs and Minister for Defense Science and Personnel, Australia
■  Lord Holme of Cheltenham, Liberal Peer; Chancellor,University of Greenwich;Business Leader,UK
■  John O’Sullivan, former Special Advisor to Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher; Editor at Large, National Review, UK
■  Lord Pearson of Rannoch, Independent conservative Peer; Business Leader, UK
■  Hon. Thomas R. Pickering, Vice Chairman, Hills & Company; former Under Secretary of State and Ambassador; former Senior Vice President, Boeing, USA
■  Hon. Lydie Polfer, MEP, former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Luxembourg (tbc)
■  Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, Labour Peer; Deputy Chairman of the Board, TNK-BP British Petroleum; former Secretary General, NATO; former Defense Secretary, UK
■  Hon. Philip Ruddock, Attorney-General, Australia
■  Hon. Hitoshi Tanaka, Senior Fellow, Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE); former Deputy Foreign Minister, Japan
■  Hon. R. James Woolsey, Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton; Director, CIA (1993-1995)
■  Dr. Henrikas Yushkavitshus, Assitant Director General, UNESCO (1990-2001), Lithuania

The proposal would be that the boards meet twice a year (minimum). Global Panel America will be launched 31 October to 3 November 2007 in Columbus, Ohio. Global Panel America will hold two-day policy conferences in the USA and Canada twice a year on high-profile themes.