John Edwards - Global Challenges

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If you missed John's speech to the "future of the democrats" convention, watch www.cspan.org for re-broadcast times or streaming video.

Received by email.

Dear Friend,

I wanted to update you on some of the things I've been up to lately. The Council on Foreign Relations, one of the country's leading foreign policy think tanks, has asked me to co-chair an independent task force to review current U.S. policy toward Russia with former Republican Congressman and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp.

This bipartisan task force will be made up of some of our country's chief experts on Russia and U.S. foreign policy, including former senior officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations, presidents of other major think thanks and academic specialists, as well as representatives of NGOs and business leaders.

We'll be examining a set of issues that are critical to America's interests but, in my view, have not received enough attention recently: the present state of Russia's democracy (or lack thereof), changes we can anticipate between now and Russia's presidential election in 2008, human rights in Russia, the Russian economy (including energy), non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and Russia's cooperation with the fight against Islamic extremism. This week we had our first meeting, and in the fall, Jack and I will lead a delegation to Russia to meet with leaders and assess the situation firsthand. We'll release our report by the end of the year.

One of the goals of this effort is to generate a public debate about our relationship with Russia and the current state of Russia. We want to promote discussion far beyond the Beltway, and we're not going to produce a report that will just collect dust on a think tank bookshelf. If you have specific suggestions or ideas about these important topics, I'll try to incorporate them into the task force's work.

I also recently traveled to London and gave a speech at the London School of Economics about the global challenges facing the United States and Europe. You can read my speech or listen to it. After the speech, I took questions from the audience for nearly an hour on almost every subject you can imagine. The questions were very thoughtful and some were pretty tough. The topics ranged from alleged prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay and what we must do to end the genocide in Sudan, to the issue of race in America and how the Internet has changed political campaigns.

While I was in London, I met with Prime Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street where we discussed several of the important issues facing the world today including: the French and Dutch votes on the EU constitution, Putin and Russia, Iran's development of nuclear weapons, the situation in Iraq, the upcoming G-8 meeting, and poverty in Africa. The discussion was fascinating but we also found time for some lighter topics. He has a son Jack's age so I told him about some of Jack's funnier moments on the campaign trail last year.

I also met with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, who many believe will be Britain's next Prime Minister. He has led efforts in Britain to fight global and domestic poverty and we had a terrific discussion about policies like baby bonds that they are using to fight poverty in Britain.

As always, I'd love to hear from you on any of these subjects or any other issue that concerns you. I want this to be a conversation between us which means I need to hear from you. So please, reply to this email or visit the blog and let me know what you think.

Again, thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you.

Your friend,

John

p.s. Note John knows how to spell "challenge", unlike our village idjut!