Global Summitry Podcasts

It is a pleasure to welcome back Tom Wright to the ‘Now’ Series to review the United Kingdom and Ireland’s responses to the pandemic. Tom remains the director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution and a senior fellow there on the Project on International Order and Strategy. Tom has been very busy on examining Europe’s responses to Covid-19 as well as the Trump Administration’s response. He has also been closely following U.S.-China relations and the Trump efforts to ‘call-out’ China’s pandemic responses.

This podcast is one in a series in the ‘Now’ series on various responses to the pandemic including: Matthew Goodman from CSIS on the G20 response, Torrey Taussig from the Belfer Center at Harvard on Europe, and Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel from FGV on Brazil and Latin America.

Tom has been very active writing on contemporary politics and the impact of Trump on American foreign policy. He continues his writing in The Atlantic magazine on what Democratic Party foreign policy might be for the upcoming Presidential 2020 contest. Tom’s most recent book is on U.S. foreign policy, 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.

It was a pleasure to sit down again with Oliver Della Costa Stuenkel to discuss Brazil and indeed the region. This session with Oliver was designed to focus on Brazil’s response to the pandemic. It has become clear that Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has remained highly skeptical over ‘lock down’ measures to safeguard Brazilians. He has fired the Minister of Health and, more recently, the politically influential Justice Minister Sergio Moro has resigned and accused the President of criminal conduct. We were eager to understand how Brazilians viewed the President’s actions and the consequences for his government, especially the economic reforms from these various controversies. We also wanted to survey the effect of the pandemic on the major economies in the region. So, join us.

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.

The spread of Covid-19 across the globe dominates policy making everywhere. States have responded in a variety of ways; the consequences for these states are varying population spread and death tolls. Though the virus began in China some of the most serious consequences have been felt in Europe particularly in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

It was my pleasure to invite into the virtual studio Torrey Taussig. I was particularly keen to discuss with her the efforts of the EU 27 and the European Commission to adopt collective European efforts to combat the virus. Torrey was with us at our virtual conference at Boston University in March hosted by the Global Development Policy Center (#GDP). There we launched the China-West Dialogue to discuss the future of global governance in the context of Covid-19 and other challenges, such as climate change. The virtual workshop was well attended and featured a keynote introduction by The Right Honourable Paul Martin. The former Canadian Prime Minister called on the #G20 to tackle climate change and the pandemic, noting that now is not the time to forsake multilateralism.

Torrey is currently a non-resident fellow in the Foreign Policy Program’s Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings. She is also a research director of the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. Torrey focuses her research attention on U.S. foreign policy as well as European and Asian security issues.

Join us in our discussion on the European response to Covid-19.

We were glad to welcome back Matthew Goodman from CSIS in Washington. As you can see from his short bio below, Matt has had both public and private sector roles and has been directly involved with the G20 in past U.S. administrations.

Matt has ben working with colleagues Stephanie Segal and Mark Sobel to evaluate the G20 summits. This analysis can be found at the CSIS website. It prompted Global Summitry to get back in touch with Matt to bring him into the virtual studio to discuss how the Informals and the formal institutions are responding to the pandemic. We also had an opportunity during the podcast to examine the difficult relationship between the two leading states, the U.S. and China, and how that disruptive relationship has had an impact on the global governance response to the crisis.

Matthew is senior vice president, senior adviser for Asian economics, and holds the Simon Chair in Political Economy at CSIS. Matthew has served in both the private sector at Goldman Sachs and Albright Stonebridge Group and has also held several significant roles in the public sector including early in his career as an international economist at the U.S. Treasury Department and at the Tokyo Embassy. Subsequently, he was director of international economics on the National Security Council staff responsible for the G20 and, the then G8, and then former White House Coordinator for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the East Asia Summit (EAS).

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. Yes, I do not say the U.S. Instead it is West. That does not mean that many do not see this as primarily a U.S.-China rivalry. But for others this not a retelling of the Cold war.

Among the China experts we are so very pleased to welcome to a new Vision 20 Project, the CWD (China and the West Project, is Professor Kerry Brown. His insights into China policy making and politics are well known. I was therefore pleased to welcome him to this Global Summitry podcast series to talk about China’s leadership and its policies toward the West. Come listen to Episode 28 in the series, ‘Shaking the Global Order: Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump’.

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 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 written a great deal about Chinese politics and its foreign policy. Recent works include: “China’s World: What does China want?”; “China’s Dream: The culture of Chinese Communism and the secret sources of its power”; and “The world according to Xi: Everything you need to know about the new China”.

The recent horrific Australian bush fires appear be largely out. These bush fires reflect both a sad tale of land burned and enormous loss of unique wildlife. It also appears to reveal a federal government policy resistant to dramatic change to combat the growing threat of climate change.

As Damien Cave’s recent piece (February 15, 2020) in the NYTimes quoted an Australian filmmaker: “I am standing here a traveler from a new reality, a burning Australia,” Lynette Wallworth, an Australian filmmaker, told a crowd of international executives and politicians in Davos, Switzerland, last month. “What was feared and what was warned is no longer in our future, a topic for debate — it is here.” And Cave added: “Politics have been a focal point — one of frustration for most Australians. The conservative government is still playing down the role of climate change, despite polls showing public anger hitting feverish levels. And yet what’s emerging alongside public protest may prove more potent.”

In the face of these tragic bush fires I sat down with my podcast guest, Steven Slaughter to discuss the fires but more the politics of climate change in Australia. Steven is an associate professor of international relations at Deakin University in Melbourne Australia. He has broad research interests that go beyond international relations to include: international political theory, political and democratic theory and global political economy. He is currently actively working on projects relating to the application of republican thought to contemporary global governance, and the role that the G20 plays with respect to questions of authority, legitimacy and accountability in global governance.

Come join us as we discuss ‘Australia burning’.

My guest and I were fortunate enough to attend a recent conference at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Japanese Research Workshop on “Japan’s Leadership in the Liberal International Order”. Many Japanese scholars joined experts from North America to discuss the role of Japan in the liberal international order, especially under the current Abe Government.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to sit down with at least one scholar to discuss Japan’s evolving role. I was fortunate enough in this case to welcome Phillip Lipscy in our studio here at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. Phillip is an Associate Professor of Political Science here at the University of Toronto and is the Chair in Japanese politics and global affairs and Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Japan at the Munk School. Phillip has published extensively on Japanese politics and foreign policy. So come join us as we discuss the role of Japan in the current Liberal Order.

Both Jennifer and Matthew attended COP 25 in Madrid. So, I wanted to get a first-hand reflection on the meeting and the results achieved. I also wanted to get from them their own assessment of the state of efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. Finally, I wanted to discuss with Jennifer and Matt what is needed for the upcoming COP26 that is meeting in Glasgow five years after the successful conclusion of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. Are we on track, and if not as it appears to be, what can be done at COP26?

Jennifer Allan is a writer/editor at ‘Earth Negotiations Bulletin’ and a lecturer at Cardiff University. Matthew Hoffmann is a colleague at the University of Toronto and a Co-Director of the Environmental Governance Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto.

Come join us for the is podcast.

Thomas Wright and I turned from podcast Episode 27 of ‘Shaking the Global Order: American Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump’ and the U.S.-Iran rivalry, to all the issues surrounding the election of Boris Johnson and his Conservatives in the U.K. in December, and examine the consequences for Brexit, the U.K. and the EU. The future here for all is dramatic. And Tom has a lot to say about England, Scotland, Ireland and the EU.

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. Tom is the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power and Tom is also a contributing writer at The Atlantic.

It was opportunistic but very fortunate that I had the opportunity to welcome back to our studio and to sit down with Thomas Wright to explore with him Trump’s logic, strategy and motivation in targeting General Qasem Soleimani of Iran.

I had originally contacted with Tom to discuss the election of the Boris Johnson and his Conservatives in the UK in December, and examine the consequences for the Brexit, the UK and the EU. That podcast can be found at Episode 17 in the ‘Now’ Series. But I could not pass op the opportunity to sit down with Tom to examine the US-Iran crisis and in particular by Donald Trump and his Administration to kill General Soleimani.

Tom has been involved in unpacking Trump’s foreign policy since about the time Trump announced his candidacy. Recently he has been a contributing writer for The Atlantic and has continued to explore Trump foreign policy. A recent article on January 1st does just this with respect to Trump’s Iran policy.

Tom is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power.

It is a pleasure to welcome Tom back.