New Thinking for a New World

The world's a mess. The great powers today, the Chinese and the Americans, seem to disagree on most things. The UK has left the EU and the Europeans are split North against South, East against West. China's pushing its neighbors. Russia's pecking at Europe's borders. Although each of those has its own story, is there something more fundamental going on? Are the geopolitical tectonic plates shifting?

In this episode of New Thinking for a New World Alan Stoga looks for answers from Robin Niblett, who has led Chatham House, one of the world’s premier think tanks, since 2007 and is an expert on British, European and American foreign policies.

South Sudan celebrated its hard-won independence in 2011, but today is considered one of the most fragile, even failed states in the world. What went wrong? Why are democratic governance and prosperity so elusive for the people of Sudan and much of the rest of the Horn of Africa?

Peter Biar Ajak has answers and ideas for a better future. Ajak—a South Sudanese political activist, economist and former political prisoner—recently fled to asylum in the United States. He spoke with Alan Stoga in this episode of New Thinking for a New World.

Closed borders, hoarded medical equipment, confused policies. By any measures, the pandemic has not been EU's finest hour. But could it been bad enough that Europe's leaders now know that they must do better? Might the failures of the last months produce a more successful future for Europe?

Ana Palacio, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain and a leading European and Foreign affairs scholar, Magnus Schöldtz, former Ambassador at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Advisor at the Wallenberg Foundations, talk about Europes challenges with Alan Stoga in this week's “New Thinking for a New World” podcast.

Turkey and Greece are locked in a struggle in the Eastern Mediterranean that feels like it belongs more in 1920 than in 2020. Is war possible? Will Greece’s European allies come to its rescue? What happens if Turkey’s aggressive president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan miscalculates how far he can push the Greeks?

In this New Thinking for a New World podcast, Alan Stoga looks for answers from Constantinos Filis, Executive Director at the Institute of International Relations of Panteion University in Athens.

One hundred years ago to the month, the collapsing Ottoman Empire was finally out of its misery in the Treaty of Sevre. However, in an echo of American author Mark Twain’s dictum that history never repeats, but sometimes rhymes, President Erdogan of Turkey today seems set on creating a new Ottoman power with reach from North Africa through the Eastern Mediterranean to the Levant and into the Caucuses as well as the Horn of Africa.  He is playing a high stakes game that some think could even lead to war between Turkey and Greece or Egypt. Former Foreign Minister of Egypt, Nabil Fahmy and Special Advisor to Turkish President Turgut Özal on foreign policy, Cengiz Çandar, discuss what Erdogan wants in this episode of “New Thinking for a New World'' with Alan Stoga.

Why do we seem unable to work together to manage our common home? Is the Covid pandemic considered  “global” while Ebola was not, because Covid has laid waste to rich countries, while Ebola did not? Is the failure of governments that we see almost everywhere actually the failure of citizens for not demanding more of their leaders?   Cardinal Michael Czerny, who heads the Vatican’s work on refugees and migrants, offers uncomfortable answers in this “New Thinking for a New World” conversation with Alan Stoga. 

At least so far, what plagues Africa is less Covid-19, than its consequences: collapsed economies, an industrial world that is closing to Africa, a deceleration (if not reversal) in globalization, a new “Cold War” (this time between China and the West), severe climate change, and the urgent need to grow and develop faster to serve its young, demanding population.

How can Africa cope? Are solutions—or, at least, possibilities—to be found at the local, national or regional level?  Where is the needed capital?

Looking for answers, Alan Stoga talks to Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown, and Carole Wainaina, a leader of Africa50, a public, pan-African infrastructure bank.

Why do nations, rich and poor, tolerate widespread slavery, human trafficking and even the buying and selling of young children in the 21st century?  These abominations exist everywhere and at a scale that makes them one of the largest global criminal enterprises.  How is that possible?

In this episode of New Thinking for a New World, Alan Stoga explores the darkness of slavery—which consumes even very young children—with India’s Sunitha Krishnan.  Sunitha, a past winner of the Tällberg Foundation’s Eliasson Global Leadership Prize, leads a dangerous, discouraging fight to rescue the enslaved and stop the crimes.

Like everything in life, Covid is producing losers and winners, not the least from the tsunami-like global recession it has spawned. It’s even possible that the pernicious economic effects will linger long after the pandemic has faded—and that the winners will still be winners. That’s one of the issues explored in the latest episode of the Tällberg Foundation’s New Thinking for a New World conversation with German business leader Kurt Lauk and long-time top American central banker Terry Checki. Alan Stoga, Tällberg’s chairman, asks them what happens when the global economy collapses, but global financial markets boom.

Why has America stopped investing in itself?  Why do things—from cell phones to highways to schools to trains—work so much better in so many countries that used to look to the United States as their model?  Tällberg’s New Thinking for a New World podcast explores those questions and others with Christine Loh who is a Hong Kong-based academic, environmentalist, and former government official with deep ties to—and deep affection for--the United States.  Her conversation with Alan Stoga raises questions about whether, how and if the country can recover its dynamism.  

Not to be trite or political, but can America be great again?