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CC In the World

 
30 Nov 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-December 2018

Camden Conference speakers past and future have been weighing in on China-US tensions that are dominating headlines worldwide – and will figure prominently in the February 2019 conference Is This China’s Century? The Trump administration has an important story to tell about “the challenge that China poses to the fundamental principles embraced by market democracies globally: free trade and open markets, freedom of navigation, and good governance,” 2019 speaker and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations Elizabeth Economy wrote last month in a Council on Foreign Relations blog post. “Understanding the nature of the challenge is the first step toward developing an appropriate strategy to address it,” she continues. American diplomat and author Chas Freeman presents a sharply different take on the tensions in a November interview with Xinhua, the official Chinese state press agency: China and the United States “have no alternative to living and…

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31 Oct 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-November 2018

“When developing countries and partners think of the China Model, they often, incorrectly, think of it as purely a top-down model,” 2019 Camden Conference speaker Yuen Yuen Ang told an audience in Cambodia recently, in a display of the “fresh perspectives” for which she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow earlier this year. In fact, “different parts of China have followed many different paths to economic and social development over the last several decades. Their commonality is the adaptation of central mandates to local conditions.” Praising attempts to revive the traditional Cambodian silk weaving industry, University of Michigan professor Ang suggested that China itself needs to learn that other countries “want to build their future their own way, too.” MIT Professor and fellow 2019 Camden Conference speaker Yasheng Huang, who has his own insightful take on the Chinese development model, argued recently in the MIT Technology Review that China’s adoption…

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01 Oct 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-October 2018

Keynoter for the 2019 conference Martin Jacques this summer provided the perfect segue to the China theme from 2018’s New World Disorder, arguing in this interview that as the first leading US politician to recognize America’s decline, President Donald Trump would also be wise to come to terms with — rather than fight via trade wars or otherwise — the “deep historical forces” leading to China’s ongoing rise. Basically answering “yes” to the Camden Conference’s 2019 title “Is This China’s Century,” global best-selling author Jacques says that at the heart of the question is: “How is the West going to handle its own relative decline?” Hear the latest on China’s tumultuous economic situation in this late September podcast by Kaiser Kuo, another speaker on the 2019 conference roster and founder of the Sinica weekly online discussion of events in China. Kuo was previously director of international communications in Beijing for…

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04 Sep 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News, Uncategorized

Camden Conference In the World-September 2018

It’s been an active summer for Camden Conference alumni speakers, including on topics directly related to our 2019 theme “Is This China’s Century?” Hannah Beech explored the state of China’s relationship with Malaysia under Malaysia’s recently returned leader of an earlier era, Mahathir Mohamad. A 2011 Camden Conference speaker on “How Asian Journalists Operate with State-Controlled Media,” Beech is now southeast Asia Bureau Chief for the New York Times, having served for a decade as East Asia bureau chief for Time magazine. Thea Lee defended a thesis that is at the core of the percolating trade war between China and the US — Globalization Has Undermined America’s Working Class – in this Intelligence Squared debate aired on public radio. For the full debate, listen here. Thea is president of the Economic Policy Institute, past deputy chief of staff and chief international economist for the AFL-CIO, and a speaker at the…

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28 Jun 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-July 2018

How serious are perceived threats to democracy around the world and at home in the US? A prognosis for democracy that “although hardly inspiring — is less dire than much commentary suggests” was outlined by UCLA political science professor and 2015 Camden Conference speaker Daniel Treisman in the Washington Post last month. Not only do four commonly cited ratings system reviewed by Treisman show the global proportion of countries that are democracies “at or near an all-time high,” but his own historically based research indicates a likelihood of less than one in 3,000 of a democratic breakdown in a country as wealthy and with as long of history of democracy as the US.   Cas Mudde, a University of Georgia professor and widely cited commentator who spoke on the rise of the far right at our 2017 conference on Refugees and Global Migration, argues in The Guardian that liberals, fearful…

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01 Jun 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-June 2018

Former US Ambassador to Nato Nicholas Burns, minced no words in recent criticism of President Donald Trump’s May decision to pull the US out of the Iran nuclear deal of 2016, terming the move “reckless and one of the most serious mistakes of his presidency.” While many 2013 Camden Conference attendees will remember Burn’s tough engagement on the side of the US with former Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossien Mousavian, Burns is now recalling how the subsequent 2016 accord “has dismantled Iran’s nuclear apparatus and denied it the possibility of developing a nuclear weapon for more than a decade.” Not surprisingly, Mousavian in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, took the criticism a step further: “Trump has officially declared a regime-change policy towards Iran, as his speech made clear, setting himself on an all-out confrontational path against Iran. A dangerous new US-Iran escalation will now ensue, and it will have…

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01 May 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-May 2018

Chatham House associate fellow Cleo Paskal recently explored another fascinating niche angle of the changing geopolitical landscape: Britain’s expanding post-Brexit role as a counter to China in several small Pacific countries that are also in the Commonwealth. Paskal, a popular favorite at the 2018 conference on New World Disorder and America’s Future who will be returning to Camden Aug. 14 for a Camden Conference friendraiser, writes regularly for India’s Sunday Guardian and other Indian newspapers. Natalie Nougayrede, a companion speaker of Paskal’s in Camden in 2018 and a regular columnist in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, calls French President Emanuel Macron “a poster boy for radical centrism in an age of democratic retrenchment and rampaging populism,” in an assessment of Macron’s recent state visit to Washington.   Those already looking forward to next year’s conference on China might want to check out this conversation from last month on US-China relations between 2018…

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03 Apr 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-April 2018

The news this month has been filled with former Camden Conference speakers discussing national and international rising tensions. Two speakers from 2015’s Russia Resurgent Conference have discussed the relationship between the West and Russia following the nerve-agent attack on a former spy in Britain. Quoted in The Irish Times: “A multi-faceted diplomatic war has begun between Russia and the West,” Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor-in-chief of the respected Russia in Global Affairs journal, wrote on his Telegram account on Monday. Diplomacy was supposed to preserve lines of communication at times of crisis, he said. “But what is happening today seems like a negation of that function.” In an article in US News and World Report, Russia expert at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington, Matthew Rojansky said, “The risk of escalation doesn’t just come from tit-for-tat punishments.” Rojansky cited the potential for more aggressive moves from the Middle East to the cyber…

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01 Mar 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-March 2018

Both the opening and closing speakers at the February Camden Conference on “New World Disorder” addressed ongoing attacks on diplomacy and its contemporary practitioners last month in other forums, as well. Chas Freeman looked back to historic examples of successful US diplomacy in Southern Africa and on the China-Taiwan question to argue for better attention to the Rusting Tool of American Statescraft in a lecture to a combined audience from three top US foreign policy schools delivered just before he came to Camden. Stephen Walt took a different angle, proposing means to fix a “rot” that “runs deep” in the now highly professionalized US foreign policy establishment, in this article published just after the Camden Conference. Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a 2013 Camden Conference speaker, applies the call for more and better diplomacy to the specific context of the Middle East in calling on Saudi Arabia and Iran “to openly and…

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01 Feb 2018
Posted by Lauren Lewis
Category All Events, CC In the World, News

Camden Conference in the World-February 2018

The speakers who will be debating and discussing the New World Disorder and America’s Future later this month here in Maine are already engaging with diverse aspects of the topic in the big wide world out there. Wall Street Journal commentator Gerald Seib provided insights into President Donald Trump’s current diplomatic thinking following a Journal interview with the president in early January. Seib will be speaking at the Camden Conference on the influence of nationalism and populism on US foreign policy. Natalie Nougayrède, the Guardian columnist who in Camden will address the theme of “Can Europe Hold the Fort?”, last month introduced a new series The Guardian will be running in the coming months on “Europe Now.” That series will consider topics from the Eurozone and refugee crises, to Brexit and separatism.  Our moderator for the February conference, Indira Lakshmanan, bemoaned the “hollowing out of the State Dept.” in one…

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