Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis discusses the role of Greece in the Eastern Mediterranean region and the European Union, as well as Greece’s relationship with the United States.

BESCHLOSS: Hello, and welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations, ladies and gentlemen. Very pleased to be here today. It is with much excitement that I welcome Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh today. Prime Minister Hasina has been the leader of Bangladesh for over ten years, following in the legacy of her late father, Sheikh Rahman, Bangladesh’s first president. She has steered the country through an incredible period of growth. The growth in Bangladesh has been so much higher not just compared to the G-7 countries, but to the rest of emerging markets. And in the last two years it has been in the region of 7 to 8 to 9 percent, which is one of the highest rates, really, across most economies. She has received international praise for her management of the Rohingya crisis, accepting over one million forcibly-displaced persons into Bangladesh and providing them with safe haven. She has long been a proponent of women’s and children’s rights. And as Bangladesh’s longest-serving prime minister, she serves as an inspiration to millions in her country and around the world. Please join me in welcoming Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. (Applause.) HASINA: Bismillah, rahman, rahim. President of CFR Mr. Richard Haass, distinguished members of CFR, members of my—(inaudible)—my former finance minister, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and as-salaam aleikum. It is a pleasure for me to be at CFR and to meet its distinguished members once again. It has been almost nineteen years when I was at CFR last. Since then, remarkable changes have taken place in many spells in my country, Bangladesh. It is now recognized worldwide as a role models of socioeconomic development and a responsible state in global affairs. These achievements are due to our people’s drive to realize the father of the nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s, dream of Sonar Bangla or Golden Bangla, a nation of prosperity and social justice for all with a modern inclusive society, yet preserving its old traditions and culture. Thus, Bangladesh today embodies secularism and religious freedom, democracy and fundamental human rights, principles enshrined in our constitution and shaping our way of life. Bangladesh takes particular pride in religious freedom and communal harmony in the region. This year Bangladesh’s GDP growth rate has hit a record high at 8.13 percent after registering 7.6 percent last year. It is not very far from achieving double-digit growth. Our per-capita income has raised US$1,909, which is close to the middle-income threshold. Bangladesh has attained food and energy security. According to The Spectator Index, Bangladesh achieved the highest GDP growth in the world during the last ten years, 188 percent. Bangladesh is today in the world the third-largest producer of vegetables, fourth-largest producer of rice, fifth-largest producer of inland fisheries, and second-largest orange exporter in the world. Sound macroeconomic fundamentals, political stability, pragmatic fiscal policy, and export-led vibrant private sector, and more importantly the determination and perseverance of our common people, have been the main contributing factors of this economic miracle. In 2008, when I campaigned for a vote, I promised a digital Bangladesh. Therefore, since assuming office in 2009, I immediately set forth expanding the ICT network across the country. The aim was to reduce the digital divide, enhance access to information, accelerate development, and create new empowerment opportunities. The ICT coverage in Bangladesh is close to a hundred percent. Bangladesh is now the fifth-largest internet user in Asia. And out of its 160 million population, more than 150 million are mobile subscriber and ninety million internet users. An important cornerstone of my domestic policy has been women empowerment. It is because I have always believed that equal participation of women and men was vital for optimum national development and progress. Now I am happy to say that

Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan discusses the role of the Department of Homeland Security and the challenge of immigration in the United States. TOWNSEND: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today’s Council on Foreign Relations meeting with Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan. I’m Fran Townsend, CFR board member and the executive vice president of worldwide government, legal and business affairs and MacAndrews & Forbes, and I will be presiding over today’s discussion. Welcome, please, the acting secretary. MCALEENAN: Good afternoon. How’s everybody doing? I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, Fran, for the kind introduction. It’s really good to see you. And I also want to thank the Council on Foreign Relations for the opportunity to be with you today and have an important discussion on the state of border security and immigration concerns nationally. But also hopefully Fran will have the opportunity to have a conversation and dialogue on some of the other Department of Homeland Security priorities, and of course with the members here. I know that many of you have been following the crisis on our southwest border over the past year and tracking really the growing regional challenge of the regular migration in the region. And not only has the situation had obvious implications for our border security, but it’s led to really a significant humanitarian crisis, as well as a foreign policy challenge in the United States and throughout the region. And I’d like to take the dialogue today a little bit above the headlines and the daily news cycle and kind of look back at the challenges over the past, you know, ten months or so, and our efforts to address them, especially focused on the past three or four months during my tenure as acting secretary. I actually took the helm five and a half months ago, but we really started building momentum and progress on our strategy to combat this crisis in the last three or four. For a CFR audience I don’t believe it’s too controversial to state that the development of a regional approach to migration is among one of the most pressing U.S. national security interests in the Western Hemisphere, and really one of the most fundamental challenges for the region, writ large, whether it’s the migration situation from Haiti to Brazil, and across the region a few years ago, the Venezuela crisis that’s ongoing, or closer to home the Central American migration flows toward the U.S. border. With regard to that effort, we have been leading at the Department of Homeland Security, working with our partner government, to target both the push and pull factors that are driving irregular migration. But at the same time, we have to recognize that one of the biggest contributing factors to this crisis is the one we face here at home, and that’s the weaknesses in our immigration framework. I was brought in as acting secretary really at the peak of this crisis. We were in the second of four months of over one hundred thousand arrivals at the U.S. border, and heading toward a peak month in May of 144,000 arrivals. We had—that means over—almost five thousand migrants daily, primarily families and children from Central America. And we lacked effective tools to counter the smugglers operating south of our borders in bringing these unprecedented flows, as well as the funding from Congress to promptly alleviate the humanitarian crisis. But we made some progress. And today I’m pleased to report that daily arrivals are down 64 percent from our peak in May, and total enforcement actions for Central Americans arriving at the border have been reduced by over 70 percent. Critically as well, we have dramatically improved the conditions and care in our border facilities. And I’ll be able to talk more about that. More broadly, as of next week we expect to have achieved another milestone. With some humanitarian medical exceptions, DHS will no longer be releasing family units from border patrol sta

John Delaney speaks on the future of U.S.-China relations. Read John Delaney’s answers to our questions on foreign policy issues. https://www.cfr.org/article/john-delaney

Jens Weidmann discusses the challenges facing the Deutsche Bundesbank, the role of central banks in Europe, and the global effects of transatlantic trade tensions. This event is cosponsored with the American Council on Germany. The C. Peter McColough Series on International Economics brings the world's foremost economic policymakers and scholars to address members on current topics in international economics and U.S. monetary policy. This meeting series is presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.

General Mattis discusses his lessons learned in leadership over the course of his military and government career.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan discusses the September/October 2019 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine with co-contributors Ernest Moniz and Sam Nunn. The authors discuss their joint article "The Return of Doomsday," which focuses on the new nuclear arms race and how Washington and Moscow can prevent further escalation. For further reading, please see the September/October 2019 issue of Foreign Affairs, including the article “The Return of Doomsday” by Ernest J. Moniz and Sam Nunn.*Members may bring a guest to this event.*

The World Economic Update highlights the quarter’s most important and emerging trends. Discussions cover changes in the global marketplace with special emphasis on current economic events and their implications for U.S. policy. This series is presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.

For the past three-quarters of a century, the United States has led the world in technological innovation and development. The nation now risks falling behind its competitors, principally China. Innovation and National Security: Keeping Our Edge, the report of a CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force, outlines a strategy to ensure the U.S. remains the predominant power in a range of emerging technologies, and the national security implications if it fails to do so. *This meeting will take place at the Council on Foreign Relations in both New York and Washington, DC.*Members may bring a guest to this event.

The World Economic Update highlights the quarter’s most important and emerging trends. Discussions cover changes in the global marketplace with special emphasis on current economic events and their implications for U.S. policy. This series is presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies. MALLABY: Well, welcome, everybody, to today’s Council on Foreign Relations World Economic Update with, on my far right, Lewis Alexander from Nomura Securities; Jan Hatzius from Goldman Sachs; Isabelle Mateos y Lago from BlackRock. I’m Sebastian Mallaby from the Council, and I’ll be presiding over the discussion this morning. So I think a fair summary of where we are with the world economy is that it’s growing moderately. The OECD reported fairly recently that growth in the G-20 is the lowest since 2013, but it’s still growing. We’ve got 2.2 percent forecast for 2019 in the U.S., 1.3 (percent) in the euro area, 1 percent in Japan, 6.1 percent or so in China. You’ve got pretty much full employment in the U.S., Japan, the U.K.—although not in Western Europe, where structural unemployment remains pretty high. But you’ve still got stuff to talk about, to worry about. That’s our job here. That’s what we’ll be doing. You’ve got negative growth in the last quarter in Germany and Britain, disruption of the oil markets in the Middle East, full-scale disaster in Argentina. So there’s no shortage of things for these folks to comment on. So let’s start with oil, since that is the most recent uncertainty. Maybe start with Jan. The first news kind of headlines after the drone attack on the Saudi infrastructure was that this was the biggest inter-day spike since 1990. And I’m wondering whether these headlines, in your view, exaggerate the impact on the world economy. HATZIUS: Yeah, I mean, there was clearly a big inter-day spike, but I would say that they do exaggerate the impact from the perspective of the overall impulse from oil prices to growth and inflation. For that it’s not really the day-to-day moves that matter, but really more the moves over several quarters or a year or so. And on that basis, we’re still I think in reasonable shape. We had seen a negative impulse from oil prices to growth and a positive impulse to inflation a year ago, but with the decline that’s occurred since then even with the backup here these effects are gradually fading. And even at the current level, in our view they’re likely to turn into, you know, small positives on growth and, you know, somewhat less positive numbers on inflation, maybe slightly negative numbers. So I mean, these are all moves that are sort of at the margin, and I don’t think that anybody can really argue seriously that this significantly changes the economic outlook on its own. The question, I think, is really more—and that’s probably more a question for security experts—what does this say about the vulnerability of oil infrastructure, and what does it say about, you know, future attacks or military conflict in the—in the Middle East? And you know, the oil market, obviously, tries to come up with some kind of judgment on that, and I think at the moment the judgment is that, you know, it’s probably not such a huge change in the—in the risk profile. But we’ll see. MALLABY: Isabelle, do you think that the description—I mean, Jan’s given an overall description. I think you’re talking about the U.S. mainly when you give that answer? HATZIUS: I’m talking, no, actually more about the global impact. I mean, the—since the oil price is basically global, the impulses from oil, you know, are likely to be relatively small. Obviously, the signs are different, the magnitudes are different for a given change in oil prices. But over the last year we just haven’t seen that much of a change. That’s really my main point. MALLABY: Isabelle, would you agree that, you know, even if you think about a region like Europe where the balance of payments is a bit more exposed than in the U.S., it’s not a huge