Asia & the Pacific

President Donald Trump, convinced that he alone can break stalemates with adversarial counterparts on trade and security, will put his theory to the test in Argentina this week. Global markets and foreign capitals are eyeing him anxiously.

This year’s Halifax International Security Forum paid respect to the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One, but in its final plenary session, Future Tense: Our World in Ten, the attention shifted to the future. How will the issues discussed throughout this year’s Forum play out over the next decade? Will democratic states be able to defend their values and institutions from growing threats like great power politics and cyber-warfare? This diverse set of panelists spoke confidently and optimistically about the resilience of democracies to withstand this challenge.

"Despite being on different sides of the Syrian civil war, Putin has managed to bring Riyadh into its diplomatic orbit through cooperation on oil policy, given how both Saudi-led OPEC states and Russia need substantially higher prices for government budgets to break even."

"...[W]e now know that the notion that regime change leads to a better democratic or a humanitarian outcome is decidedly false. From Iraq, where the West tried a heavy footprint strategy, to Libya, where it opted for a light one, the idea that Europe or the United States can actually execute democratic change by force has been exposed as a fallacy."

"A central tenet of both neo-conservatism and liberal internationalism/interventionism is the idea that democracy is both the ideal form of government but also one that is relatively easy to export to other societies. Never mind that democratization tends to shift the distribution of power within different societies, thereby provoking potentially violent struggles for power between different ethnic or social groups within society. Pay no attention to the fact that it took several centuries for stable democracies to emerge in the Western world, and that process was frequently bloody and difficult."

"If the behavior of Iranian government after the 1979 revolution and the Kuwaiti government after it was liberated from Iraqi occupation in 1991 can shed light on how a post-Khadafy government will behave in Libya, then Turkey would be better off to reconsider its position. In both cases the new governments in power politicized their foreign trade and contract awarding procedures. Nations that were perceived to have been friendly during the struggle were rewarded with profitable contracts while those perceived to have been hostile were ignored. If Turkey does not join the countries that are putting more and more pressure on Moammar Khadafy, it risks losing not only its hard earned credibility in the region as a champion of democracy but also its access to the Libyan economy after Khadafy is defeated."