To members and friends of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com).

For news about non-PCFR  local events and an article or two that caught our eyes, please go to the bottom of this memo.

Meanwhile, with Russian intrusion into American politics and government such an issue, we thought it would a good idea to recruit a Russia expert to start off our season. Thus we have the distinguished Prof. David R. Stone of the U.S. Naval War College lined up for Wednesday, Sept. 13.

He'll explain Putin and the new Russian nationalism and how it affects us.

Professor Stone received his B.A. in history and mathematics from Wabash College and his Ph.D in history from Yale University. He has taught at Hamilton College and at Kansas State University, where he served as director of the Institute for Military History. He has also been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. His first book Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926-1933 (2000) won the Shulman Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the Best First Book Prize of the Historical Society. He has also published A Military History of Russia: From Ivan the Terrible to the War in Chechnya (2006), and The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (2015). He also edited The Soviet Union at War, 1941-1945 (2010). He is the author of several dozen articles and book chapters on Russian / Soviet military history and foreign policy.

The next dinner after that will be with French Consul General Valery Freland, who will talk about how the French presidential-election outcome might change that nation’s foreign policy and the Western Alliance, on Wednesday, Sept. 27. By the way, he went to school with French President Macron.

Then on Wednesday, Oct. 11, Graham Allison, who has been running Harvard’s Belfer Institute, will talk about, among other things, Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea. He'll talk about his new book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? 

On Wednesday, Nov. 1, comes Michael Soussan, the writer and skeptic about the United Nations. He’s the author of, among other things, Backstabbing for Beginners, about his experiences in Iraq, which is being made into a movie starring Ben Kingsley.

In January, at a date to be announced, we’ll have Victoria Bruce, author of Sellout: How Washington Gave Away America's Technological Soul, and One Man's Fight to Bring It Home. This is about, among other things, China’s monopolization of rare earths, which are essential in electronics.

On Wednesday, Feb. 21, we'll have Dan Strechay, the U.S. representative for outreach and engagement at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), who talk about the massive deforestation and socio-economic effects associated with producing palm oil in the Developing World and what to do about them. 

Prior to joining the RSPO, he was the senior manager for Sustainability Communications for PepsiCo.

The dates of the dinners for the rest of the season to be announced.

Suggestions for speakers and topics are always much appreciated. We’re all in this together.

In other news:

For movies and other upcoming events about Brazil at Brown’s Watson Institute, see:

 http://watson.brown.edu/events/series/brazil-initiative

Hear Edward Luce talk about the decline of Western liberalism:

http://watson.brown.edu/events/2017/edward-luce-retreat-western-liberalism

Former Timor Leste President Xanana Gusmao will speak on Monday, Sept. 18 at the Pell Center at Salve Regina University, Newport. The event will begin at 11 A. M. 

Timor Leste itself is at a crossroads. The clock is winding down on a novel test of dispute resolution, a first-time effort under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to settle a maritime boundary dispute not through arbitration, but through mediation. The principals in this dispute are the young democracy of Timor-Leste and its neighbor, Australia.

Meanwhile, scary North Korean news. See:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2017/sep/03/north-korea-nuclear-test-south-korea-yohap-kim-jong-un-live

President Macron may actually succeed in fixing French labor law. See:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/emmanuel-macron-scores-a-win-where-presidents-failed-to-overhaul-frances-labor-laws/2017/09/01/049c9222-8f14-11e7-9c53-6a169beb0953_story.html?utm_term=.40828bb11738