Global Summitry Podcasts

The turbulence in the liberal international order continues. And we are pleased to bring a new episode, Ep. 22 of the series, ‘Shaking the Global Order: American Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump’. We were pleased to sit down with James Goldgeier to examine in this latest podcast American foreign policy and the impact of President Trump.

James is a Professor of International relations at the School of International Service at American University. James served as Dean there from 2011 to 2017. James is currently a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and at the Library of Congress he is currently the Chair in U.S.-Russia Relations.

James has written a number of studies including: America Between the Wars: from 111/9 to 9/11 co-authored with Derek Chollet; Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy toward Russia after the Cold War co-authored with Michael McFaul; and also And not Whether but When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO.

Come join us in this next podcast in the series.

I took the opportunity when sitting down with Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel to discuss the BRICS (Summit Dialogue: Episode 6) to raise with Oliver the serious refugee crisis that engulfs a number of Latin American states arising from the Venezuelan political crisis. This refugee crisis is unmatched in recent Latin American history and has hit a number of frontline states including Columbia, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina. For a hemisphere that has advanced a number of regional organizations, it is startling to see the lack of regional effort, if only with respect to the humanitarian aspects of this crisis. Why has there been so little regional effort to deal with this human crisis?

Oliver is an associate professor of international relations at Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in Sao Paulo. There, with a number of his colleagues, he is launching 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.

This is an exceptional podcast in this ‘Summit Dialogue’ series. First, it is our pleasure to interview Yale’s Angel Hsu, the founder and director of Data-Driven Yale. We have corralled Angel to discuss the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) that was held in San Francisco from September 12-14, 2018. This summit is a notable event called by California’s Governor Jerry Brown and Michael Bloomberg. The attendees included many sub-state actors from provinces and states, municipalities and regions (some 6,000) and many, many non-state actors including foundations, activists and private corporations (some 2,000). These actors were intent in promoting efforts and commitments on carbon emission reductions at something other than at the national government level. We were also keen to question Angel on recently released report for the Summit titled, “Global Climate Action From Cities, Regions and Businesses”. This Report, led by Angel, was a three-year effort to aggregate the climate commitments by these many sub-states and non-state actors. It was also my pleasure to include in the questioning of Angel our first ‘Munk-V20-Brookings Fellow’, Claire Floody. Claire from Centennial College’s journalism program had joined us in Buenos Aires for the final T20 Argentina meeting. There we had, among other things, worked on this podcast.

Angel is an Assistant Professor of Social Science at Yale-NUS College and is also an Adjunct Professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She has written extensively on the subject of carbon emissions reduction and on climate change policy.

I sat recently to discuss the most recent BRICS Summit – the 10th anniversary summit in Johannesburg, South Africa with my colleague and friend Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel. Notwithstanding much criticism of the BRICS, especially from observers from the West, the annual BRICS summit meetings have remained a serous gathering of these emerging market country leaders. There is a growing list of meetings among BRICS officials and the BRICS have created a variety of international institutions, most notably the New Development Bank. I therefore was keen to explore with Oliver the evolution and impact of the BRICS summit on international governance.

Oliver is an associate professor of international relations at Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in Sao Paulo. There, with a number of his colleagues, he is launching 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.

The rising tide of President Trump’s trade warfare is not more central than in the U.S.-China relationship. With Harry G. Broadman we target the rising friction between these two economic giants. Is the Trump trade strategy – so focused on bilateral trade balances - likely to improve economic relations between the U.S. and China? Will it help prod China in fulfilling and adhering to its obligations under the World Trade Organization, to which it acceded in 2001?

To dissect such questions and other matters coloring U.S.-China trade, we examine with Harry the evolution of China’s ‘socialist market economy’ and the growing power of China’s President Xi Jinping. Harry has long and deep connections with China and the economic ‘Rise of China’. Harry began working extensively throughout China in the early 1990s overseeing the World Bank’s state-owned-enterprise restructuring loan operations and its policy dialogue with the government’s leadership on trade, foreign investment, antitrust and corporate governance reform. Harry has worked on global finance, trade and investment for decades in more than 75 emerging markets spanning 5 continents. Among other posts, he worked in the White House, first as Chief of Staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and, subsequently, as United States Assistant Trade Representative. In this latter position, he led the U.S. negotiations on international trade and investment across all services industries as part of the establishment of both NAFTA and the WTO. He also managed all negotiations of U.S. Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) with other sovereigns. He served on the Board of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and was a member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS). Harry has been Managing Director and a Member of the Investment Committee at Albright Capital Management, an emerging markets-focused private equity firm, and founded and led PwC’s Global Growth Strategy Management Consulting Practice.

Today, Harry is CEO and Managing Partner of Proa Global Partners LLC, a cross-border transaction advisory firm. He is also a member of the Johns Hopkins faculty, an expert witness on trade and investment disputes, and writes monthly columns on global business for Forbes and Gulf News. His most recent book is: Africa’s Silk Road: China and India’s New Economic Frontier.

Let’s join Harry and me in this podcast on the U.S.-China trade relationship.

The leader-led BRICS forum has received much attention in the international relations. Initiated as an acronym in 2001 by Jim O’Neill at Goldman Sachs to capture a set of large emerging market economies with high growth potential – Brazil, Russia, India and China – Russian officials organized this group first as informal gatherings of the Foreign Ministers and then in 2009 the first leaders’ summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Leaders’ summits have continued from that point forward. Notably in 2011 at the China Sanya Summit, South Africa was invited to join the BRICS which went from the BRICs to the BRICS. Notwithstanding much skepticism by observers over the many divergent views of this leaders forum the BRICS have continued to meet, to enhance their intra-BRICS activities from security to education and to build institutions including the New Development Bank and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). With the able assistance of Andrew Cooper, we explore the evolution of the BRICS in global governance. We also explore where this BRICS summit may be going.

Andrew is a Professor of Political Science at Waterloo University. He has written a great deal around the ‘Rise of the Informals’ including a volume on the G20 with Ramesh Thakur (The Group of Twenty (G20), 2012), Rising States, Rising Institutions with Alan Alexandroff, eds. (2010), and more recently: BRICS: A Very Short Introduction (2016). He also has a written a great deal on modern diplomacy including The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy with Jorge Heine and Ramesh Thakur, eds. (2013), Celebrity Diplomacy (2007), and Diplomatic Alternatives (2014).

It is a pleasure to welcome back Thomas Wright from the Brookings Institution. Tom is the director of the Center on the United States and Europe and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. His research at Brookings on European politics and the Trump foreign policy are exactly what suggested our callback to Tom. In this podcast we explore with Tom the growing frictions between President Trump and his European allies. We also seek to understand the growing populist politics in Europe - in Italy, in Germany and in the politics of Brexit in the United Kingdom. Tom and I had a chance to sit down after a number of turbulent weeks. President Trump joined the summit at NATO and roundly criticized his allies. He also visited with UK PM Teresa May after an interview with the Sun newspaper that likely thoroughly embarrassed her, especially after Trump praised Boris Johnson soon after his departure from May’s cabinet. And Trump thoroughly praised Vladimir Putin at the U.S. - Russia Summit calling into question his willingness to accept U.S. intelligence agency assessments that Russia had interfered in the U.S. 2016 elections.

The turbulence in international relations is apparent and Tom and I try to thoroughly explore the various ‘crises in Europe’. Tom has undertaken much research in Trump foreign policy and European politics. He has recently written a book titled “All Measures Short of War: The Contest For the 21st Century and the Future of American Power” published by Yale University Press in May 2017.

The strains on the Liberal International Order continue apace. The antagonism between President Trump and allied leaders were on full display at the recent G7 Charlevoix meeting. Though the leaders had reached consensus on the Communique, Trump subsequently withdrew the U.S. endorsement and tweeted that Prime Minister Trudeau, the host of this year’s G7 was “Very dishonest & weak.” Now the allies are meeting at the NATO Summit on July 11-12, 2018 where President Trump is likely to press his view that the allies are failing to live up to the spending commitments. Meanwhile, President Trump continues his summit dialogues with rivals. First there was the recent ‘sunny’ Singapore Summit with Chairman Kim Jung Un of the DPRK. And, President Trump is scheduled to meet with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on July 16th.

With all these summits as background, I sat down with Bruce Jentleson to explore Trump’s foreign policy and its consequences for the Liberal Order. Bruce is a very well-known Professor of Public Policy at Duke University where he served as Director of the now Sanford School at Duke (2000-2005). He also served as the Henry Kissinger Chair on Foreign Policy and International Relations (2015-2016) at the Library of Congress. And he has advised officials in Washington including senior foreign policy advisor to Vice President Al Gore.

I was particularly interested in sitting down with Bruce for this podcast to review with him a recent article he had written for the journal Democracy called ‘The Liberal Order is Not Coming Back: What Next?’ and for the conclusions he had reached in his examination of key international relations’ actors in his recently released book The Peace Makers: Leadership Lessons from 20th Century Statesmen’.

The liberal international order is showing increased strain as President Trump continues to conduct U.S. foreign policy. So, much has been happening recently: the chaos of the G7 Charlevoix gathering with President Trump withdrawing the U.S. signature from the summit communiqué. The on-again off-again summit between North Korea’s Kim Jung Un and President Trump took place on June 12th leaving most grasping to understand what the two leaders had in fact agreed to at the Singapore summit. These and other actions formed the core of the podcast discussion with Bruce Jones.

Bruce is the Vice President and Director – Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution as well as being a Senior Fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at Brookings. Bruce wrote an insightful book on the changing liberal order – “Ours to Lead: America, Rising Powers, and the Tension between Rivalry and Restraint” in 2014 and with Carlos Pascual and Steve Stedman in 2009 he co-authored “Power and Responsibility: Building Order in an Era of Transnational Threats”.

Jones has had extensive experience and expertise on intervention and crisis management. He served in the United Nations' operation in Kosovo and was special assistant to the U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process. Jones also has significant experience on multilateral institutions. He was a senior advisor to Kofi Annan on U.N. reform and served as deputy research director to the U.N.'s High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, as well as lead scholar for the International Task Force on Global Public Goods.

Come join Bruce and I in our discussion on ‘Shaking the Global Order'.

The geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific, or the Indo-Pacific, as the Trump Administration has referred to the Asia-Pacific is a critical aspect of international politics and today’s global order. This podcast very fortunately tackles the politics of the region with one of the true experts there, Professor Mark Beeson of the University of Western Australia (UWA) in Perth Australia. In the podcast we have the opportunity to review the history of the ASEAN which today includes ten countries in Southeast Asia. This summit has been ongoing since 1967 and most recently ASEAN leaders gathered in Singapore for the 32nd Summit. What has the ASEAN accomplished over this summit’s existence? What are its relations with the two great powers in the region – China and the United States? Can ASEAN be an actor in the continuing tensions of the South China Sea? Beyond just the two great powers what are, and should be, ASEAN’s relations with other major players in the region, Japan, India and Australia? And what is ASEAN’s relationship with the geopolitics and geo-economics of the Trump presidency?

Mark is a Professor of International Politics at UWA and his expertise covers international relations, international political economy, Australian foreign policy, the regional politics of Asia, security interests and the economics of this vital region. Come learn more about ASEAN with Mark Beeson.