Camden Conference in the World ~ July

The width and breadth of international knowledge brought to Midcoast Maine by the Camden Conference has been in bold display over this nationally and internationally contentious summer.

Former US Ambassador to China and multi-conference moderator in Camden Nicholas Burns is back at Harvard and active in the media on at least two fronts: In defense of the John F. Kennedy School’s openness to the foreign students who make up 52% of its student body – a policy under attack by US President Donald Trump – and on the trade conflict with China, where Burns has more areas of agreement with Trump. Burns told CNBC in an interview on China that what we’re seeing now is “more of a truce than a comprehensive trade deal.” A genuine settlement will likely take “a month, or two, or three,” Burns suggested. Perhaps coming “in the autumn.”

Anyone looking to understand the “AI-augmented, green-energy-powered, self-reliance-oriented transformation of the world’s most formidable industrial base” that underlies China’s confrontation with the US would do well to check out 2019 Camden Conference speaker Kaisar Kuo’s discussion of “China 2.0: The Future of Global Manufacturing” for the World Economic Forum. Kuo, host of the Sinica Podcast, also discussed “the cultural dimension of tariffs,” and what he sees as a fundamentally different attitude towards the benefits of technological progress in China than in the US on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast back in May.

Brown University professor of international economics and 2022 Camden Conference speaker Mark Blyth wrote in a major article in The Atlantic: “Against the background of tariff wars, market angst about U.S. debt, tumbling consumer confidence, and a weakening dollar watched over by a heedless administration, globalization’s American-led era of free trade and open societies is coming to a close.” He argued that what the world is getting at the moment is not equivalent to a software update, it’s a full “hardware refit” that involves “trying out a new operating system.” Blyth this spring came out with a new book on inflation: A Guide for Losers and Users. Those without an Atlantic subscription can read Blyth’s views on both the global system reset and inflation in this Mercatus podcast.

Former nuclear negotiator and now visiting researcher at Princeton University Seyed Hossein Mousavian wrote in Middle East Eye in the immediate aftermath of US and Israeli attacks in June on Iranian targets: ”The perspective from Tehran is that the attacks by these two nuclear-armed countries revealed that the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) not only has no real value, but is in fact harmful.” Mousavian, who was in Camden for our 2013 conference, further explained in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now why Iran may be rethinking its agreement not to develop nuclear bombs. Iranians now “have been attacked… And countries like North Korea, Israel, India, Pakistan, which … have never accepted the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they have never been attacked. That’s why they [the Iranian leadership] are now thinking perhaps having nuclear bomb is much better deterrent compared to being a member of the NPT.”

Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs and research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club, provided a detailed analysis of the Iran-Israel conflict last month on the Russia Today state television site. “The liberal order that peaked at the turn of the century sought to reform the Middle East through market economics, elections, and civil society. It failed. Not only did it dismantle the old without building the new, but the very forces meant to spread democracy often empowered sectarianism and violence.” Lukyanov, a speaker at Camden’s 2015 “Russia Resurgent” conference, concluded: “We are witnessing the result. The Iran-Israel war is not a bolt from the blue. It is the direct consequence of two decades of dismantled norms, unchecked ambitions, and a deep misunderstanding of the region’s political fabric.”

Notice all the podcasts on which former Camden Conference speakers have talked recently? That‘s hardly surprising, as podcasters are now a news source for more Americans than traditional media, finds Nic Newman, senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, in the 2025 annual Digital News Report Newman has headed since he appeared at Camden’s “Media Revolution” conference in 2020.

Pictured, clockwise from top: Fyodor Lukyanov, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Nicholas Burns, Kaisar Kuo, Nic Newman, Mark Blyth