Security was tight at The Waldorf as power brokers from political and financial spheres convened for the National Committee on American Foreign Policy’s (NCAFP’s) annual Morgenthau-Kennan Awards Dinner. The NCAFP is a non-governmental foreign policy think tank that includes members from the fields of diplomacy, academia, business, and the professions.
This year’s presentation marked the centennial of the birth of the late Hans J. Morgenthau (who died in 1980 at the age of 76), the Committee’s founder and first chairman, a “seminal theorist of international relations,” whose work in defining the national interests of the United States inspired the creation of the Award.
Recipients of the Award are individuals whose contributions to American foreign policy are judged to be exemplary. Former U.S. Secretary of State and former Award recipient Dr. Henry A. Kissinger (who cited Morgenthau as his teacher, mentor, and friend) presented this year’s Award to Ambassador Richard N. Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Haas is the former Director of Policy Planning for the Department of State, under Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The event also marked the 100th birthday of George F. Kennan, Honorary Chairman of the NCAFP (and Council on Foreign Relations advocate of USSR containment policy), first recipient of the George F. Kennan Award for Distinguished Public Service to an American who has helped to define the United States’ national interests. This year’s Kennan Award was presented to Maurice R. Greenberg by former recipient and Council on Foreign Relations member Paul A. Volcker, former Secretary of the Treasury and former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Greenberg’s work as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American International Group (a global insurance and financial services organization), and over four decades of serving on the Council on Foreign Relations, the Asia Society, and other trade policy committees, has promoted business development in Asia and Communist China.
It was a strong gathering of some of the brightest minds in America.
