Global Summitry Podcasts

It is my pleasure to sit with an old colleague who is currently the Executive Director of the Institute for International Trade in the Faculty of the Professions, University of Adelaide, Peter Draper. Much change is afoot in the trade world. First a new Director General has been seated at the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo - Iweala. The DG has much to tackle in the WTO that has been crippled by member actions, especially the Trump Administration. In the Asia - Pacific a new 15 member RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership)

has been signed and China has signed an investment agreement with the EU, the CAI. And then there are the growing tensions between China and Australia. It was at this crucial moment, I was able to ‘grab’ my colleague for an in - depth discussion of global trade with a particular Asia - Pacific focus. Besides being the Executive Director of the Institute for International Trade in the Faculty of the Professions, University of Adelaide, Australia. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Chamber of Commerce’s Research Foundation; non-resident senior fellow of the Brussels-based Euro

pean Centre for International Political Economy; Associated Researcher at the German Development Institute (DIE); and a Board member of the Australian Services Roundtable.

Bruce and I have had some back and forth recently on the definition and importance of Middle Powers in the current global order. I thought that it would be valuable to invite Bruce into the virtual studio to discuss the role and influence of the Middle Powers. In particular I wanted to review with Bruce his recent writings with several colleagues on ‘democratic multilateralism’ and ‘competitive multilateralism’. How could these shape global governance efforts going forward in light of the growing tensions between the two leading states – the United States and China.

Bruce Jones is currently the director and a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution; he also works with the Center for East Asia Policy Studies. Bruce is as well a consulting professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Jones previously served as the vice president and director for the Foreign Policy program. Jones’ research expertise and policy experience is in international security. His current research focus is on U.S. strategy, international order, and great power relations. Recent publications include an article in Foreign Affairs, “Can Middle Powers Lead the World Out of the Pandemic? Because the United States and China Have Shown They Can’t”

It was a pleasure to sit down again with Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel to discuss Brazil and the region. This session with Oliver was designed to focus on Brazilians’ reactions to the violence in Washington on January 6th.Also, I wanted an update on Brazil’s difficult struggle with the pandemic and the efforts in Brazil to roll out vaccinations against Covid-19. It has become clear that Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro has remained highly skeptical over ‘lock down’ measures to safeguard Brazilians. And the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths keep rising. What impact has all of this has on President Bolsonaro’s popularity.

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

Hal Brands is a contemporary historian that explores the current global order. He has focused, among other things, on the rising tensions and competition between China and the United States. With Jake Sullivan, a former Obama official and a non-resident senior fellow in Carnegie’s Geoeconomics and Strategy Program, they wrote an intriguing examination in Foreign Policy of the possible paths to global domination by China – “China has two paths to Global Domination.”I explore with Hal this article and ‘dig into’ current Trump foreign policy, especially towards China. Come join us for this global order conversation.

Hal Brands is an American historian. Currently, he is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

It was a great pleasure to welcome back both colleagues into the virtual studio to continue our discussion on the rising tensions in China-US relations it causes and its consequences for the liberal order. While Part 1 of this Episode 31 focused more the ‘China-West’ Dialogue (CWD) Project, this podcast cast a more critical light on the rising tensions between these two leading powers and other powers in the international system exploring in particular what could be down to avoid this growing rivalry.

As a reminder, Colin is a Non-resident Senior Fellow of the Global Economy and Development Program, Brookings Institution. Colin a specialist on global governance and the G20, He has edited Global Leadership in Transition (2010) and Global Governance Reform (2007). As a co-chair of Vision20 (V20) since 2016, Colin has convened annual events with Brookings to encourage longer term strategic thinking for the future.

Yves Tiberghien (Ph.D. Stanford University, 2002 and Harvard Academy Scholar 2006) is a Professor of Political Science, Faculty Associate in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, Director Emeritus of the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He has published many articles and book chapters on Japan and China’s political economy, on global governance, global climate change politics, and on the governance of agricultural biotechnology. Yves founded the V20 group in 2015, a new coalition of global scholars and policy-makers aiming at providing a long-term perspective on the challenges of global economic and environmental governance.

It was a great pleasure to welcome both colleagues into the virtual studio to discuss the rising tensions in China-US relations and consequences for the liberal order. We began this discussion – Part 1 of Episode 31 - with the efforts of Colin and Yves to initiate a ‘China-West’ Dialogue (CWD). This effort has brought together experts and former officials from around the globe seeking pathways to ameliorating China-US relations and suggesting a policy of ‘strategic engagement’ as opposed to ‘strategic competition’ or what some Democratic colleagues describe as ‘competition without catastrophe’.

Colin is a Non-resident Senior Fellow of the Global Economy and Development Program, Brookings Institution. Colin a specialist on global governance and the G20, He has edited Global Leadership in Transition (2010) and Global Governance Reform (2007). As a co-chair of Vision20 (V20) since 2016, Colin has convened annual events with Brookings to encourage longer term strategic thinking for the future.

Yves Tiberghien (Ph.D. Stanford University, 2002 and Harvard Academy Scholar 2006) is a Professor of Political Science, Faculty Associate in the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, Director Emeritus of the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He has published many articles and book chapters on Japan and China’s political economy, on global governance, global climate change politics, and on the governance of agricultural biotechnology. Yves founded the V20 group in 2015, a new coalition of global scholars and policy-makers aiming at providing a long-term perspective on the challenges of global economic and environmental governance.

Colin along with Yves and Alan Alexandroff initiated the ‘China-West Dialogue’ (CWD) holding virtual workshops at Boston University GDP Center and at the Global Solutions Summit (GSS) in Berlin. Research from both events can be found here at Boston University and here at the GSS site All the research notes from experts at the BU workshop can be found here at the Global Summitry Project website at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

It was a great pleasure to invite Scott Kennedy into the virtual studio to discuss China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) just recently concluded. There decisions were announced on Hong Kong, with respect to the Chinese economy. These decisions formed the most recent backdrop to the rising tensions between Beijing and the current Trump Administration. In the light of earlier podcast episodes here at Global Summitry (these podcast episodes can be found at iTunes and at Spotify) with Kerry Brown (Ep. 28 and 29) on Xi Jinping’s China, we wanted to get Scott’s take on China and the US-China tensions.

Scott is the Senior Advisor and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business & Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. Scott focuses on Chinese economic policy including industrial policy, technology innovation, business lobbying, US-China commercial relations and global governance.

Scott has written extensively on China including his CSIS study ‘China’s risky drive into new energy vehicles’, and he has edited among other books, Global governance and China: The dragon’s learning curve.

Before coming to Washington, Scott was a professor at Indiana University (IU), where he established the Research Center for Chinese Politics & Business and was the founding academic director of IU’s China Office.

As most international relations specialists would agree, the most consequential relationship now, and for the foreseeable future in the global order, is that between China and the West. There is a growing rivalry between China and the United States, and the rising tensions raises difficult global order questions for all the actors in the international system.

Kerry Brown is one of a number of China and international relations experts that have joined the Vision20 principals to examine the future of global order in the face of a growing tension between the two leading states in the international system, the United States and China.

The Vision20 principals, Colin Bradford, Brookings and Yves Tiberghien, UBC and myself here at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto launched the China and the West Dialogue (CWD) this spring, and with the support of Kevin Gallagher from Boston University, we planned our first workshop. The meeting became virtual, of course, with the pandemic and this initial workshop was joined with experts and former officials from Latin America, the United States, Canada, the UK and Europe.

The results of the meeting including identification of the participants and CWD statements that emerged can be found at the Global Development Policy (GDP) Center at Boston University (http://www.bu.edu/gdp/cwd/). Many of the experts that joined us at the BU virtual meeting also prepared Background Notes. All these Notes can be found at the CWD site at the Global Summitry Project website.

The Vision20 principals also planned to gather experts at the 4th annual Global Solutions Summit in Berlin. That too turned into a virtual gathering. Several CWD participants prepared video presentations. These video presentations can be found at the GSS 2020 theme, the ‘Future of Multilateralism and Global Governance’ where Colin Bradford provided the keynote and the panel included Chen Dongxiao, President of SIIS in Shanghai, Susan Thornton, Senior Fellow and Research Scholar at Yale Law School Paul Tsai Center and Kerry Brown, Lau China Institute, King’s College London spoke on: ‘How is it Possible to avoid the emergence of another bipolar competitive era’.

As noted, Kerry was one of the video panelists. I was keen to bring Kerry back into the virtual studio (You can listen to Kerry Brown’s earlier podcast, Ep 28 ‘Shaking the Global Order’) to discuss his Background Note from the BU meeting and his panel appearance at the GSS. I wanted to dig further into his view that the global governance system was evolving to a ‘dual architecture’ or a ‘dual track world’ with ‘two different operating systems’. What are the implications of all this for US-China relations and indeed global governance relations?

Kerry Brown is currently Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute, Kings College London. Before that 2012-2015 Kerry was Professor of Chinese Politics and Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia. Kerry has served in both the public and the academic sectors. From 1998 to 2005, he worked at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as First Secretary at the British Embassy in Beijing, and then as Head of the Indonesia, Philippine and East Timor Section.

Kerry has written a great deal about Chinese politics and its foreign policy. Probably his most well-known study is China's Dream: The Culture of Chinese Communism and the Secret Sources of Its Power.

It is a pleasure to welcome back Nick Bisley, an international relations expert from La Trobe University in Melbourne. We were keen to sit down with him in the virtual studio to examine Australia’s response to the global pandemic. We were most interested to understand the relative success of the Australian effort to flatten the curve of infections of the virus when it was clear that Australia had suffered a crisis of competence in dealing with the bush fires that had ravaged Australia in its summer. (Please listen to the ‘Now’ Series Ep. 18: an interview with Steven Slaughter ‘Australia Burning’: The politics of Climate Change in Australia”). The answers Nick provides are quite revealing of how Australia is well and badly governed.

Nick is currently Head of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University in Melbourne and Professor of International Relations. Previously Nick served as the Executive Director of La Trobe Asia at La Trobe University. Nick is the author of many works on international relations, including Issues in 21st Century World Politics, 3rd Edition (Palgrave, 2017).

Lim Wonhyuk has long been involved in global governance issues and the role of Korea in in the regional and international system. I first got to know Lim Wonhyuk when we were both involved in Korea’s year of G20 hosting in 2010. It was a great pleasure to invite Lim Wonhyuk into the virtual studio to explore Korea’s seemingly successful effort to control the pandemic there. It is a fascinating story of earlier failure in public health leading to the current success of the government efforts and being able to hold an election on April 15th.

Lim Wonhyuk is currently teaching at SAIS in Washington D.C. as an Adjunct Lecturer. He is a professor at the KDI School of Public Policy and Management in South Korea. In 2010, Lim Wonhyuk helped to formulate the G20 Seoul Development Consensus for Shared Growth. In 2013, he became Vice President and Director of Department of Competition Policy at KDI. Most recently, he served as Associate Dean, Office of Development Research and International Cooperation, at KDI School. His recent publications include Understanding the Drivers of Trust in Government Institutions in Korea (OECD, 2018, co-edited), Improving Regulatory Governance (OECD, 2017, co -authored) and The Korean Economy: From a Miraculous Past to a Sustainable Future (Harvard, 2015, co-authored). He holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford University.