On Tuesday, February 23, 2016 at 5:00pm ET, General James Mattis and Admiral Gary Roughead will participate in a panel discussion entitled: "2016: International Security Challenges and U.S. Readiness." The discussion, moderated by Hoover Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz, will analyze international security challenges in the year ahead, including the Middle East and Indo-Pacific regions, and how the United States is prepared to deal with them.

America has been in Arabia for well over six decades, yet the American access to the inner workings of the Saudi world has been limited at best.  There is an opaqueness to the Saudi realm, and that ambivalence has run through its tangled relationship with its American protector.

We launched our first Caravan in February 2012 under the leadership of our friend and colleague Fouad Ajami. Fouad spent his life studying, teaching and writing about the rich culture and history of the Middle East. He was a man of the East and of the West – a son of Lebanon who proudly became a US citizen. He loved his adopted country and was a patriot in the truest sense of the word.