Camden Conference in the World ~ June 2025

“Three hot wars, a cold war, a potential war and a trade war” all continue three months into the tenure of self-proclaimed “peacemaker” President Donald Trump, notes Hal Brands, 2025 Camden Conference speaker, Bloomberg columnist, and American Enterprise Institute senior fellow. Brand last month gave thumbnail updates on the status of all six “wars” and argued that in his attempts to resolve these conflicts, Trump is “starting from a deficit of his own making: His decisions have left America’s alliances strained, its economic power tattered, and its strategic competence in question.”

Trump got higher peacekeeping marks from former US Ambassador to Ukraine and 2022 Camden Conference speaker John Herbst. The minerals deal the administration struck with Ukraine in late April “is a plus for US economic and national security policy,” Herbst told the Atlantic Council. Not only does it hold out the promise of providing critical minerals to the US, “this deal gives Trump—in terms he understands—concrete interest in Ukraine’s long-term survival as a secure, economically viable state.”

Caroline Freund, the dean of the School of Global Policy at UC Davis and former World Bank official who spoke at Camden’s 2023 Trade conference, charged that Trump has not only “embroiled the U.S. in an all-out trade war because of what it says are unfair trade deficits,” he is “simultaneously causing irrevocable harm to our most valuable export: education.” In an article in The Hill, Freund takes particular aim at the uncertainty the Trump administration has created around student visas, noting that the chief executives of three of the US and world’s five largest corporations – Microsoft, Nvidia, and Google/Alphabet – “are currently led by foreigners who studied in the U.S.”

From her current perch at the Brookings Institution, two-time Camden Conference favorite Constanze Stelzenmuller last month explored the role Europe might play in the future world order that will develop now that Trump has put the US on a less predictably Euro-friendly path. Stelzenmuller was speaking to the Institute of European and International Affairs. The New York Times quoted another two-time Camden Conference participant on the Asian aspects of Trump’s trade policy. “This game of chicken has done nothing but enable [Chinese President] Xi Jinping to boost his standing in and outside China, while the United States appears uninformed and unmoored,” said Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy.

In a reminder that Trump isn’t the only topic of interest out there, 2019 Conference speaker Ma Jun – who has moved from protestor to director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs — gave a detailed rundown on heavy wind-, sand- and snowstorms that hit China for several days in mid-April. “The current strong winds can be attributed to two key factors: First, the rapid temperature rise in some areas. Second, the exceptionally strong cold air mass from Siberia and Mongolia,” Ma told the Communist Party-run English-language news site Global Times. Noting that climate change will make such events more frequent, Ma emphasized “prioritizing enhanced monitoring, early warning systems and forecasting capabilities…

Pictured clockwise from top: Hal Brands, John Herbst, Caroline Freund, Ma Jun, Elizabeth Economy, Constanze Stelzenmuller