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The world has changed dramatically in the 250 years since Benjamin Franklin’s mission to France in 1776. It is changing again now, with new powers rising, new technologies reshaping how nations engage with one another both diplomatically and confrontationally, and new questions about what diplomatic leadership looks like in the 21st century. Centralized and personalist diplomacy, technological capabilities, and economic statecraft may be as central to modern diplomacy as treaties and summits once were. As America marks 250 years, the question isn’t simply how the world has changed, but what timeless lessons from its founding diplomats still apply, and what genuinely new thinking is required to meet this moment and beyond.

How is the current geopolitical moment shaping the use of U.S. diplomacy? What is the role of diplomacy in the current world order? What diplomatic lessons can be learned and applied to the next 250 years?

Join us for a look into the current state and future of American diplomacy through the experience and analysis of panelists John Dinkelman, President of the American Foreign Service Association, Dr. Jessica Tuchman Mathews, Distinguished Fellow and former President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Professor Jay Sexton, the Rich and Nancy Kinder Chair of Constitutional Democracy, Professor of History, and Director of the Kinder Institute at the University of Missouri.

Music by Sergii Pavkin from Pixabay.