This book has two aims: first, to examines the evolving role of the state, and non-state actors, coupled with trends – including globalization, populism, post-truth, enlightened capitalism, feminist foreign policy, energy disruption, climate change, emerging cyber and other technologies, and the crisis in UN-centered multilateralism, to offer a prescient assessment of global affairs in the near future; and, second, to solidify the transdisciplinary nature of Global Affairs as a field of study that transcends the traditional conceptual silos.
Examines the changing nature of power since the Cold War, the new ways in which it is exercised, and how those changes impact America's role in the world.
The Future of Global Affairs is an exciting and balanced contribution to the debate about the potential trajectory of a world in flux. Tinged more with concern than utopian optimism, this volume captures a panoramic view of our cacophonous and disorderly world that is on the verge of disequilibrium and potential destruction unless key political actors, institutions, and processes can find a way to adapt global affairs to an increasingly plurilateral and intermestic era. A must-read for serious IR scholars; written in a way that is understandable to the lay person. - W. Andy Knight, PhD, FRSC, University of Alberta Inspired by urgent questions, this simultaneously illuminating and profoundly unsettling book traces the contours of the ascendant geopolitics, illustrating how one class of events can have contrasting resonances and implications in Washington, Lima, Lagos, or Luang Prabang. Each chapter explores a different facet of global affairs, offering perspectives that, though not rosy, serious students of world politics will do well to take to heart. - Ebenezer Obadare, PhD, University of Kansas This book has two aims: first, to examines the evolving role of the state, and non-state actors, coupled with trends - including globalization, populism, post-truth, enlightened capitalism, feminist foreign policy, energy disruption, climate change, emerging cyber and other technologies, and the crisis in UN-centered multilateralism, to offer a prescient assessment of global affairs in the near future; and, second, to solidify the transdisciplinary nature of Global Affairs as a field of study that transcends the traditional conceptual silos. Christopher Ankersen is Clinical Associate Professor at the Center for Global Affairs, New York University School of Professional Studies. He is Senior Research Fellow at the German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance (CPG), Bangkok. Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu is Clinical Associate Professor and leads the UN Specialization at the Center for Global Affairs, New York University School of Professional Studies. He is also Associate Fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy and Guest Faculty at the NATO Defense College, Rome.
A leading thinker on Canada's place in the world contends that our country's greatest untapped resource may be the three million Canadians who don't live here. Entrepreneurs, educators, humanitarians: an entire province's worth of Canadian citizens live outside Canada. Some will return, others won't. But what they all share is the ability, and often the desire, to export Canadian values to a world sorely in need of them. And to act as ambassadors for Canada in industries and societies where diplomatic efforts find little traction. Surely a country with people as diverse as Canada's ought to plug itself into every corner of the globe. We don't, and sometimes not even when our expats are eager to help. Failing to put this desire to work, contends bestselling author and longtime foreign correspondent John Stackhouse, is a grave error for a small country whose voice is getting lost behind developing nations of rapidly increasing influence. The soft power we once boasted is getting softer, but we have an unparalleled resource, if we choose to use it. To ensure Canada's place in the world, Stackhouse argues in Planet Canada, we need this exceptional province of expats and their special claim on the twenty-first century.
From the visionary bestselling author of The Second World and How to Run the World comes a bracing and authoritative guide to a future shaped less by national borders than by global supply chains, a world in which the most connected powers—and people—will win. Connectivity is the most revolutionary force of the twenty-first century. Mankind is reengineering the planet, investing up to ten trillion dollars per year in transportation, energy, and communications infrastructure linking the world’s burgeoning megacities together. This has profound consequences for geopolitics, economics, demographics, the environment, and social identity. Connectivity, not geography, is our destiny. In Connectography, visionary strategist Parag Khanna travels from Ukraine to Iran, Mongolia to North Korea, Pakistan to Nigeria, and across the Arctic Circle and the South China Sea to explain the rapid and unprecedented changes affecting every part of the planet. He shows how militaries are deployed to protect supply chains as much as borders, and how nations are less at war over territory than engaged in tugs-of-war over pipelines, railways, shipping lanes, and Internet cables. The new arms race is to connect to the most markets—a race China is now winning, having launched a wave of infrastructure investments to unite Eurasia around its new Silk Roads. The United States can only regain ground by fusing with its neighbors into a super-continental North American Union of shared resources and prosperity. Connectography offers a unique and hopeful vision for the future. Khanna argues that new energy discoveries and technologies have eliminated the need for resource wars; ambitious transport corridors and power grids are unscrambling Africa’s fraught colonial borders; even the Arab world is evolving a more peaceful map as it builds resource and trade routes across its war-torn landscape. At the same time, thriving hubs such as Singapore and Dubai are injecting dynamism into young and heavily populated regions, cyber-communities empower commerce across vast distances, and the world’s ballooning financial assets are being wisely invested into building an inclusive global society. Beneath the chaos of a world that appears to be falling apart is a new foundation of connectivity pulling it together. Praise for Connectography “Incredible . . . With the world rapidly changing and urbanizing, [Khanna’s] proposals might be the best way to confront a radically different future.”—The Washington Post “Clear and coherent . . . a well-researched account of how companies are weaving ever more complicated supply chains that pull the world together even as they squeeze out inefficiencies. . . . [He] has succeeded in demonstrating that the forces of globalization are winning.”—Adrian Woolridge, The Wall Street Journal “Bold . . . With an eye for vivid details, Khanna has . . . produced an engaging geopolitical travelogue.”—Foreign Affairs “For those who fear that the world is becoming too inward-looking, Connectography is a refreshing, optimistic vision.”—The Economist “Connectivity has become a basic human right, and gives everyone on the planet the opportunity to provide for their family and contribute to our shared future. Connectography charts the future of this connected world.”—Marc Andreessen, general partner, Andreessen Horowitz “Khanna’s scholarship and foresight are world-class. A must-read for the next president.”—Chuck Hagel, former U.S. secretary of defense This title has complex layouts that may take longer to download.
Based on the 2017 conference "'New Reality' and Russian Markets" held at Harvard University, this book brings together world-renowned thinkers to offer the latest empirical research on recent financial risks, institutional policies, and financial stability.
This book considers Chinese foreign policy and China's future role in world affairs in the context of the country's recent past. Robert Sutter shows that although it appears to be in U.S. interests for post-Mao leaders to continue moving toward international norms, a post-Deng leadership backed by growing economic and military power and reflecting profound changes in China's economy and society could move in markedly different directions. Most foreign powers appear willing to accommodate China, avoiding actions that could prompt a sharp shift in Chinese foreign policy, but Sutter argues that current U.S. policy intrudes on so many issues that are particularly sensitive for Beijing and for China's future that it represents perhaps the most critical variable determining how China will position itself in world affairs. Concluding that there is no guarantee the United States will use this influence wisely, Sutter examines the uncertainty and unpredictability of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War environment that work against the creation of an effective U.S. policy toward China.
Symbiotic Realism is a theory of relations in a globally-anarchic world of instant connectivity and interdependence. It aims to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the character of relations generated by four interlocking facets of the global system: the neurobiological substrates of human nature: global anarchy: instant connectivity: and interdependence. It provides a way of understanding how a myriad of actors, including states, transnational corporations, women, the biosphere, and civilizations, help to shape and are shaped by the global system. It also contains a clear normative commitment to moving beyond the present limits of the structure and political organization of the global system towards a more just and peaceful global order.
A guide to long-term thinking: how to envision the far future of Earth. We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future—to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now. Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises: the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise—today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism. For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository “Safety Case” experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands—or even hundreds of thousands or millions—of years. They are not pop culture “futurists” but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.
Artificial Intelligence and Global Security: Future Trends, Threats and Considerations brings a much-needed perspective on the impact of the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in military affairs. Experts forecast that AI will shape future military operations in ways that will revolutionize warfare.
