Asia & the Pacific

Daniel Schrag and Henry Lee discuss the policies China could enact in the near-term to ease its transition to a low-carbon economy, the subject of their book Foundations for a Low-Carbon Energy System in China (Cambridge University Press, 2021). 

Stephen Walt provides A realist POV on the war in Ukraine, competition with China, COVID, and more in the second part of an interview with Foreign Policy Editor-in-Chief Ravi Agrawal.

On April 6, 2022,  the Belfer Center's Future of Diplomacy Project and Indo-Pacific Security Project as well as the Center for Public Leadership hosted a hybrid seminar with Ambassador Shivshankar Menon, former National Security Advisor of India and former Foreign Secretary in India’s Ministry of External Affairs, and Ambassador Richard Verma, former U.S. Ambassador to India and Belfer Center Senior Fellow, on India’s foreign policy and U.S.-India relations in a changing world order. The discussion explored why India abstained from recent U.N. votes deploring Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, what that means for U.S.-India relations, both bilateral and through the Quad, and how the war in Ukraine will affect geopolitics in Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific. Gopal Nadadur, MPA/ID candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School moderated this conversation.

Ten years after the Fukushima Daiichi accident and 35 years after the tragedy at Chernobyl, the lessons learned from the two most severe nuclear disasters in history remain contested. New challenges continue to emerge even as significant progress has been made in many areas to reduce the chances of another major nuclear incident. From March 3-5, the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) brought together three dozen experts for a conference exploring the lingering effects of Fukushima and Chernobyl and the evolution of the nuclear safety, security, and governance regimes in their aftermath.

The Icelandic Ministry for Foreign Affairs recently published an extensive report with a detailed analysis on the current relationship between Greenland and Iceland with 99 recommendations on how to strengthen their co-operation. Halla Hrund Logadóttir moderated the discussion.

Both sides of the Atlantic are converging in their assessment of the challenges China poses to transatlantic prosperity and democracy. The U.S. and Europe must now build on this convergence to advance a common strategy toward China. Only together can the U.S. and Europe, alongside other democratic nations, maintain the necessary leverage in trade, technology and multilateral engagement to hold China accountable to a set of standards that protects democratic societies and contributes to global stability.

To develop a stronger transatlantic approach toward China, the Biden administration must work to rebuild trust in the transatlantic relationship and recommit to multilateral alliances and institutions abandoned by President Trump. Europe for its part must unite and take action where it sees China exploiting its critical industries and infringing on its values. A common position on China at the EU–level and across several influential EU member states is critical to making transatlantic cooperation on China feasible.

John P. Holdren, science advisor to the Obama administration, lists 6 things he thinks Joe Biden would do on climate change.

On October 8, 2020 the Future of Diplomacy Project hosted Rahul Gandhi, Member of Parliament of India and former President of the Indian National Congress Party, who spoke about about Indian domestic politics and the U.S.-India partnership. This seminar was moderated by Faculty Chair, Nicholas Burns.

Authoritarian modes of governing have steadily increased over the past 10 years. A number of autocracies have intensified their repressive tactics, while several democracies – many of which were once classified as consolidated – have tampered with fundamental rights and the rule of law. Despite a few developments to the contrary, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) 2020 highlights the ongoing decline of democracy around the globe.

The presentation of BTI results focused on the resembling patterns of dismantling democracy in (highly) defective democracies such as Hungary, Moldova, the Philippines, Serbia or Zambia and regimes in which this process has been so pronounced that they are now categorized as autocracies in the BTI, such as Bangladesh, Guatemala, Honduras, Kenya, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Turkey or Uganda. It looked at the typical sequence to an authoritarian deconstruction of democratic institutions from within, from the purposeful undermining of oversight institutions, attacking the media and civil society to manipulating the electoral system, in order to examine the resonance of these trends in the United States. The goal of the discussion is to identify the features and underlying causes of this erosion, and to suggest promising counter-strategies.

The panel considers how the US, UK and EU can contribute to a global response. It also asks what a global response to the health and economic crisis in the developing world would look like.