Global Summitry Podcasts

It was with great pleasure that I welcomed into the virtual studio John J. Mearsheimer. John is one of the leading exponents of the School of Realism in international relations. With his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, published in 2001, John described and elaborated the foreign policy theory and practice of “Offensive Realism”.

John has been a persistent critic of U.S. foreign policy critics and their creation and elaboration of the liberal international order. His critique has been fully argued in his two most recent works: the book The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities, published in 2018 and his recent extended article in International Security, “Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order”.

John has taught international relations for many years at the University of Chicago. He has made quite a name for himself in his works on Realism in international relations. I was very excited to get John into the studio so we could get John to discuss the Liberal Order and get his views on American foreign policy in the ‘Age of Trump’.

Defining American foreign policy and the Global Order has become

increasingly complicated. This next podcast gives us yet another

opportunity to tackle this difficult issue.

Rebecca Friedman Lissner has written a number of articles, some with her colleague Mira Rapp-Hooper, on just this topic. In late 2017, Rebecca wrote an article in Foreign Affairs reviewing the Trump Administration’s just released National Security Policy – “The National Security Strategy is Not a Strategy”. Then in the Washington Quarterly in 2018 with her colleague Mira Rapp-Hooper they wrote: “The Day after Trump: American Strategy for a New International Order”. And most recently with Mira the two have published, again in Foreign Affairs, “Why the Liberal Order is More than a Myth”.

In this latest article Rebecca and Mira argue that the United States will not be able to reclaim its former hegemonic role and instead they call for an “Openess-based strategy”. As the two wrote, “rather than wasting its still considerable power on quixotic bids to restore the liberal order or remake the world in its own image, the United States should focus on what it can realistically achieve: … Openess, not dominance should be the goal.”

Rebecca is currently an Assistant Professor in the Strategic and

Operational Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College. Come listen to this new voice on American foreign policy in the Trump era and beyond.

It was an opportunity I could not pass up. So, I sat down to interview Julia Pomares. Julia is the Executive Director of CIPPEC, - the Center for the Implementation of Public Policies Promoting Equity and Growth, a major think tank from Argentina. CIPPEC, along with a sister think tank, CARI - the Argentine Council for International Relations, coordinated the think tank efforts for the Argentinian Government’s G20 hosting year. I spent some time with Julia during Argentina’s hosting year and have had the opportunity to work with Julia in the current Japanese G20 hosting. I was very interested in exploring with Julia her experiences as the co-coordinator for the Argentinian G20. What did she see as her mission and goal?

It was a hugely eventful year with Julia and her colleagues holding many meetings with the large number of think tanks through the G20 and at the formal meetings of the T20 and G20. Julia and colleagues organized 10 Task Forces that produced over 80 policy briefs and 20 proposals for the G20. The T20 Communique was in the end 47 pages long. And yet the Leaders’ Declaration was a mere 7 pages. So, I wanted to ask her - from her experience what did she see as the relationship of the T20 and other engagement groups and the Leaders Summit.

Many researchers see a growing disconnect between the G20 Leaders’ Summit and the T20 process. What was the view of Julia from her experience at the Argentinian T20 and G20 Leaders’ Summit and now the T20 and the Japanese G20 Summit.

Recently, the City of Toronto was ‘ground zero’ for the 60th anniversary meeting of the International Studies Association (ISA). Thousands of colleagues gathered in Toronto to attend, roundtables, panels, and participate in presenting papers and receiving honors for their work on international relations. The occasion was far too ‘juicy’ to just let it pass. So, I gathered up some of my good friends to talk about the Liberal Order.

This podcast includes some of my colleagues from abroad. The gathering at our ‘studio’ - actually the lounge on the second floor of the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy – included: Bruce Jentleson from Duke University, Kori Schake from the IISS in London, Arthur Stein from UCLA and Yves Tiberghien from the University of British Columbia or UBC.

Briefly, Bruce is a professor of public policy and political science at Duke University. His most recent work is ‘The Peacemakers: Leadership Lessons from Twentieth Century Statesmanship’. Kori is currently the Deputy-Director General of the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Before her move to London, Kori was a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. She wrote ‘Warriors and Citizens’ with now former Secretary of Defense, James Mattis and her most recent publication is ‘America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order be Preserved’. Arthur is a professor of political science at the University of California at Los Angeles and his most well-known publication is, ‘Why Nations Cooperate’. Yves Tiberghien is a professor of political science at UBC, director emeritus of the Institute of Asian Research and currently executive director of the UBC China Council. He has written extensively on global governance especially as it pertains to the G20 and Asia.

All my colleagues have thought deeply on the questions of the Liberal Order and the consequences to American foreign policy in the Age of Trump.

The decision by the Trump Administration to impose tariffs on China and demand changes to the bilateral trade and investment policies has had serious consequences for U.S.-China relations. But the fallout has not been limited to U.S. China relations. This podcast with Jeremy Paltiel explores the rising tensions in the bilateral relationship, or more broadly the relationship of ‘China and the West’. With Jeremy I explore the rising tensions in the Canada-China relationship arising from the U.S. request to Canadian authorities to extradite Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies and the daughter of its founder Ren Zhengfei. The detention has met with a strong Chinese reaction including Beijing charging two Canadians arrested in China on December 10th of stealing sensitive state secrets in tandem. The Canadian pair is Michael Kovrigand Michael Spavor. Additionally, Canada’s ambassador to China, and a former politician, John McCallum, was forced to resign for what were perceived to be inappropriate statements.

Jeremy is Professor of political science at Carleton University in Ottawa and was visiting professor at the department of international relations at Tsinghua University in Beijing in 2009. He has published widely on subjects relating to China and its foreign relations, including on the political economy of transition to market economies, management training in the People’s Republic of China, and comparison of business culture in China and Canada.

This podcast explores the consequences of the rising tensions in China-U.S. relations and the spillover to the relations between China and other states in the ‘West’.

‘Now’ Episode 10 is a wide-ranging discussion with Yves Tiberghien first: on the leadership of Xi Jinping and where Xi is attempting to take China’s modernization and; second an examination of the course, and reasons for, the rising tensions between China and the United States. This interview examines in depth the rising role of the Chinese Communist Party in China’s economic development. Why has the Chinese President seemingly rolled back the economic reforms identified in the Third Plenum of the 18th Party Conference? Then, we explore the direction of China-U.S. policy – trade, investment, technology innovation and geopolitical relations in Asia and globally.

Yves is the Director Emeritus of the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Executive Director of the UBC China Council, and a full Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. Importantly, Yves spent several years working in Japan and has focused a good deal of his research on globalization examining China in particular. He specializes in comparative political economy and international political economy with an empirical focus on China, Japan, and Korea.

In 2007, Yves published Entrepreneurial States: Reforming Corporate Governance in France, Japan, and Korea (Cornell University Press). He has also published many articles and book chapters on the Japan’s bubble economy, on global governance, global climate change politics, and on the governance of agricultural biotechnology. He has focused more recently on the role of China, Japan, and Korea in the G20 and in global economic and environmental issues. He has published two new books on the topic (L’ Asie et le future du monde, Paris: Science Po Press, August 2012; and Leadership in Global Institution-Building: Minerva’s Rule, edited volume, Palgrave McMillan, February 2013).

With the election of a new populist president in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, I thought it was a great moment to sit down with our Brazilian colleague, Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel from Sao Paulo, Brazil. In this podcast we explore why Brazil was so interested in electing this rather controversial politician as president. We also wanted to explore the economic policies that the new finance minister, Paulo Guedes is promoting to bring strong economic growth back to Brazil. Guedes supports a strong Chicago School economic program much in contrast to previous governments there.

Oliver is an associate professor of international relations at Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in Sao Paulo. There, with a number of his colleagues, he has launched a new School of International Relations. Oliver has written extensively on the politics of the rising powers, including The BRICS and the Future of the Global Order and his most recent book from Polity, Post-Western World: How Emerging Powers are Remaking the Global Order. He is a frequent commentator on the Hemisphere in journals and in the media across the region.

There has been a ‘raft’ of environmental reports and climate change summits in the very recent past. I’ve called on Joshua Busby to discuss these summits and the reports and to give us some sense of the success in the global efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Josh is an Associate Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin and a Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Josh has been deeply involved in the efforts to mitigate climate change. Busby is the author of several studies on climate change, national security, and energy policy from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, the German Marshall Fund, and CNAS. Busby is one of the lead researchers in the Strauss Center project on Climate Change and African Political Stability (CCAPS), a $7.6 million grant funded by the U.S. Department of Defense. He is also the principal investigator of a Complex Emergencies and Political Stability in Asia (CEPSA), a 3-year $1.9 million project, also funded by the Department of Defense. He has also written on U.S.-China relations on climate change for CNAS, Resources for the Future, and the Paulson Institute.

His most recent publications include: “As the Stakes Rise, Climate Action Loses Momentum”, Current History, January, 2019, “Warming World: Why Climate Change Matters More Than Anything Else”, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2018, and with Nigel Purvis, “Climate Leadership in Uncertain Times”, The Atlantic Council, September 11, 2018.

You will find that the global efforts are rather sobering, but Josh provide a full review of, and insight into, the current climate change efforts.

International Relations’ experts have come to recognize that there are many more actors in global governance today than in international relations in the past. There are states and intergovernmental institutions, of course, but today there are a variety of sub-state and non-state actors (NSAs) that are involved in meeting the growing challenges of global governance.

It is our good fortune to have Miles Kahler, the Distinguished Professor of the School of International Service at American University, Washington D.C. with us here in the studio and in fact Miles has been with us at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy for the semester. Miles and I range widely over a number of global governance areas including climate change and the flows of illicit finance that has become a serious topic of concern for the G20 and other global governance institutions. Miles, in fact, has recently concluded a study with colleagues for the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is a Senior Fellow in Washington, titled, “Global Governance to Combat Illicit Financial Flows: Measurement, Evaluation, Innovation”.

Before taking up his position at American University, Miles was the Rohr Professor of Pacific and International Relations and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at UCSD. Miles has published widely in the fields of international politics and international political economy. Among other volumes he has co-edited with David Lake, Politics in the New Hard Times, and edited, Networked Politics: Agency, Power and Governance.

Stephen Walt has just published, The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (see NYTimes Review). It seemed like the appropriate moment to interview Stephen. This new book by Stephen ranges broadly across American foreign policy. Stephen provides a strong critique of U.S. foreign policy and the effort by what Stephen refers to as the ‘foreign policy community’ to maintain a policy of ‘liberal hegemony’. Stephen heavily criticizes the foreign policy elite for maintaining this policy in the face of very serious failures including in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The interview also explores the Realist approach favored by Stephen in his views of ‘Offshore Balancing’.

Stephen holds the Robert and Renee Belfer Professorship in International Affairs in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Stephen was previously the Academic Dean at the Kennedy School. Stephen has written a number of notable books on U.S. foreign policy including: The Origins of Alliances, Revolution and War and Taming American Power. More controversially, Stephen wrote with John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, the article, “The Israel Lobby”.