New Thinking for a New World - a Tallberg Foundation Podcast

What does China—or, more particularly China’s leadership and the Chinese Communist Party— want from the rest of the world?  Domination or collaboration? Allies or subjects? War or peace?

Jonathan Ward, an American who is rapidly becoming one of that country's leading China experts, thinks they want victory. Dr. Ward, who has lived and worked in China and has a deep affinity for the Chinese people, recently published a new provocative book, China's Vision of Victory. Listen as he shares his perspective on the issue that could literally change the course of history.

Early in 2020, when the global pandemic was still gathering force, UNICEF published a prophetic, deeply disturbing document "All children of all ages and in all countries are being effected in particular by the socioeconomic impacts and in some cases, by mitigation measures that may inadvertently do more harm than good. This is a universal crisis. And for some children, the impact will be lifelong.” If anything, what actually has happened—and continues to happen—to children everywhere is, if anything, probably worse than UNICEF imagined. Not just schooling, but human and social development interrupted. Children cut off from the meals that come with school attendance. Surging levels of abuse, trafficking and child labor. Perhaps, a lost generation, but almost certainly a damaged one.

Robert Jenkins sits at the epicenter of this crisis. He is leading UNICEF's global education response to the pandemic and brings decades of experience and a global perspective to what might easily be the most important and longest lasting impact of COVID. How worried is he? What needs to be done? How can societies around the world, ameliorate the worst impacts of the pandemic on their children?

Who do you think deserves to be recognized as a global leader? Nominate someone today at www.tallbergprize.org

Today’s world is short of a lot of things—sustainable environment, peace, prosperity, equality—but what we lack most is innovative, global, values-based leadership. If we can find and nurture that kind of leadership, the rest will follow.

In this special episode you will meet Jared Genser, one of the three 2020 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership prize winners. Jared is an international human rights lawyer who has spent his career practicing law, engaging in serious scholarship, and teaching and mentoring the next generation of human rights lawyers.

Listen, as he is interviewed by Shahidul Alam, photographer, writer, curator and activist and a member of the 2020 prize jury. What can you do? Take Jared’s call to action seriously and, then, nominate someone who deserves to win the leadership prize this year.

Music: “Without You” by Oxime © 2021. Permissions granted courtesy of Oxime Audio https://www.oxime-audio.com/

Even as the pandemic, like some giant glacier, slowly and unevenly recedes, the world seems frozen in place as it deals with the mess left behind. Increased poverty and malnutrition; greater inequality; damaged and depleted health care systems; rising social and political tensions. But is this crisis or opportunity? Or, rather, are we smart enough and driven enough to turn what threatens to be a period of enormous strife—of the kind that often follows pandemics—into a new era of positive, life affirming change?

This week’s guests on the New Thinking for a New World podcast are dedicated to the latter proposition. They both are trying to make the world the kind of place it could and should be. Vidhya Ramalingam is a recognized expert on the use of technology to disrupt violent extremism online. Sarah Durieux focuses on mobilizing citizens online, to help them achieve policies they care about. They both also recently completed the Obama Foundation’s inaugural Emerging Leaders in Europe Program

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Europe is increasingly divided: between the frugal North and the Club Med South; between the illiberal East and the progressive West. In many ways, the latter is more profound at a time when democracy is under pressure almost everywhere. Leaders like President Orban of Hungary and Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński, who founded the ruling Law and Justice Party, are trying to change not only their own countries' laws and institutions, but to shift the center of European social and political gravity to the right.

How likely are they to succeed? Will they change only their national realities or will they make changes on the larger European or even global stages? Do Hungary and Poland really belong to the Europe of the early 21st century?

Today's world is short of a lot of things—sustainable environment, peace, prosperity, equality—but what we lack most is innovative, global, values-based leadership. If we can find and nurture that kind of leadership, the rest will follow.

In this special episode of the New thinking for a New World podcast, you will meet Sylvia Earle, one of the three 2020 Tällberg-SNF-Eliasson Global Leadership prize winners. Sylvia is a world-class oceanographer and educator. Listen, as she is interviewed by Ashok Mirpuri, Singapore's ambassador to the United States and a member of the 2020 prize jury.

What can you do? Take Sylvia’s call to action seriously and, then, nominate someone who deserves to win the leadership prize this year. Nominate your candidate here: https://tallberg-snf-eliasson-prize.org/nominate/

Music: "Without You" by Oxime © 2021. Permissions granted courtesy of Oxime Audio https://www.oxime-audio.com/

Venezuela has been in a death spiral for years. The country have been devastated by political repression and economic depression; its people suffer from huger, malnutrition, shortages of food, medicine and, perhaps worst of all, opportunity. The numbers tell the story: 9 million malnourished, 90% of the country’s 28 million live in poverty, and more than 5 million have fled.

David Smolansky, our guest for this episode of New Thinking for a New World, is one of those who have fled. He was chased from his elected post of mayor of El Hatillo municipality and avoided jail only by seeking political asylum in the United States. Listen as he imagines how his country can—he believes, will—go from a failed, kleptocratic state to a prosperous democracy.

Q. What do Donald Trump and the Ayatollah Khamenei have in common with Rihanna?

Europe has had a bad few years. The struggles between North and South mostly over economics, between East and West mostly over values. Brexit, which shifted the locus of power eastward and distracted European leaders from any possibility of a more positive agenda. The pandemic, which among all its other impacts led to interrupted borders in a Europe that prided itself on having no borders. Tensions with the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese, and overall a sense that Europe is largely irrelevant to what happens elsewhere in the world.

2020 was an awful year for Iran. A year that started with the assassination of the country's widely popular, leading general ended with the assassination of its most important nuclear scientist. The three year old recession deepened while inflation soared. Widespread shortages, including medicines, made the fight against the pandemic all the more difficult. American “maximum pressure” combined with Iranian mismanagement took a huge toll on the country and on ordinary people. Yet, if anything, the regime seems more firmly in power today than a year or two ago.

How can that be? Will it change? Is there any chance that the Green Movement of a decade ago will reappear during this election year?

Answers are difficult to find, but this week’s New Thinking for a New World podcast guests are in the business of looking for them. Sima Shine leads the Iran program at Israel's prestigious Institute for National Security Studies and spent most of her career in the Israeli Intelligence Community. Dr. Sanam Vakil is deputy director of Chatham House's Middle East Africa Program, where she leads the Iran Forum among other projects.

Listen as they discuss Iran, today and tomorrow.