Each of my eight years at Brookings has been exhilarating and challenging in its own way, but the one drawing to a close has been uniquely so. I’m sure that my predecessors felt that way about seismic events during their own tenures. Certainly America’s entry into World War I so qualified, as did the Great Depression, World War II, the beginning—and the end—of the Cold War and, more recently, 9/11 and its aftermath in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But I’d still contend that never in the 93 years of the Institution’s existence has there been an array of world-class problems, domestic and foreign, as kaleidoscopically varied, complex and urgent as what we’ve experienced in this year. And virtually all of those problems cry out for solutions of the sort that is our stock and trade. Hence John Thornton’s description of these turbulent times as a “Brookings moment.”
The task, as we look ahead, is to harness the energy and momentum we’ve demonstrated over the past year and play them forward.
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Strobe Talbott,
President