The Next Debate

In a little over twelve months Donald Trump has gone from vanity candidate to the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States. What explains Trump’s meteoric rise? And, what does his candidacy say about the state and future of American politics? E.J. Dionne, one of America’s savviest political observers, is out with a big new book, Why the Right Went Wrong, that digs deep into the Trump political phenomenon.

From quantitative easing to negative interest rates, central banks around the world have become, in the worlds of mega-investor Mohamed El-Erian, “the only game in town” when it comes to reviving economic growth. But when does too much central bank intervention start to become a risk to the global recovery? Mohamed El-Erian thinks this could happen sooner than we think with profound consequences for the global economy, investing and our collective future.

Are we living in a post-revolutionary age? From the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East to Occupy Wall Street movement in the West, mass social movements have failed spectacularly in recent years to achieve meaningful and lasting social change. Author and activist Micah White thinks mass movements today are fundamentally misunderstanding the task before them. Success isn’t getting tens of thousands of people out in the public square in non-violent protest. Instead it is it creating a mass global movement that a seize the machinery of government peacefully through the ballot box. Only then is real social change a possibility in our time.

For weeks now financial markets have been in turmoil over whether a cooling Chinese economy will drag the world into recession. Renowned economist and Asia expert, Stephen Roach, thinks fears of a China “crash” are exaggerated and reveal how little we actually understand about the growing strength of China’s domestic economy. For Stephen Roach, China is undergoing a challenging but ultimately manageable transition from an export to consumer lead model of economic growth.

The international communities’ hopes for pushing back ISIS and ending the humanitarian crisis in Syria have been dealt a major blow by Saudi Arabia as it doubles down its regional rivalry with Iran. Vali Nasr, one of the world’s top authorities on the Middle East, thinks the worsening conflict between Riyadh and Tehran could be a tipping point for an already dangerously destabilized Middle East.

From Crimea to Eastern Ukraine to Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken on an outsized role in global events in the last 18 months. For Russian dissident and chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, Putin’s ambition to reassert Russian power on the world stage represents a dangerous and destabilizing force in international relations, one the West ignores at its own peril.