Camden Conference in the World ~ May

Two-time Camden Conference speaker and senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution Elizabeth Economy argues in the latest Foreign Affairs that the US “should take a page from China’s playbook” and “move aggressively to position itself as a force for system change” at the international level. This approach should include “advancing an economic and technological revolution that will transform the world’s digital, energy, agricultural, and health landscapes in ways that are inclusive and contribute to shared global prosperity.”

Also, in Foreign Affairs, director of the Carnegia Middle-East Center and 2017 conference speaker Maha Yahya warns of the dangers of a third front in Israel’s active or threatened conflicts – after Gaza and Iran – this with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Although neither Iran nor Hezbollah wants an all-out war with Israel in Lebanon at this time, Israel is “feeling emboldened…  [and] it may no longer be a matter of whether Israel attacks Lebanon, but when,” Yahya write. She urges Washington to work harder to avoid this.

In response to a question by Maine Sen. Angus King about Russian activity aimed at influencing the November election, director of national intelligence Avril Haines told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in early May: “We continue to see them focused on this and increasingly so.” Haines was a speaker at our 2018 “New World Disorder” conference.

Multi-Camden Conference keynoter and speaker Chas Freeman spoke multiple times over the last month on what he sees as America’s problematic “forever wars.” He places both the “proxy” US war in Ukraine and “Seven Years of Sino-American Antagonism” in trade and economic realms in this Forever Wars category.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian journalist and diplomat now at Princton’s School of Public and International Affairs, argued in a Middle East Policy Council analysis piece for five steps to preserve peace in West Asia (Middle East): 1) Israel accepts a ceasefire in Gaza and the concept of two-state solution for Palestine; 2) An “international initiative” mediates a peace deal between Israel and Iran; 3) Iran and the US engage in direct talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal and “alleviate broader animosities”; 4) A security system is established to between Iran and the Gulf Arab states; 5) UN decisions on weapons of mass destruction in the Mideast are “operationalized.”

Former Indian Foreign Secretary and ambassador to both China and the US, Nirupama Rao, told the New York Times that despite India’s increasingly prominent role on the international stage, China “would still like to pull us down.” Rao was keynoter at Camden’s recent 2024 India conference.

European University Institute professor and 2005 Camden Conference speaker Olivier Roy’s new book Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms is described by the Financial Times as a “remarkable” achievement: Roy has written “a book on identity politics that neither condemns nor embraces it, but is instead a nuanced cultural dissection of its origins and its contradictions… [which] brings order to a world that is not at ease with itself.”