Debates 3

Geopolitics and Analysis

Geopolitical Futures

Robert Gordon PhD '67 calls his new book a revised version of his thesis for Professor Robert Solow, "47 years late." The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War upends the typical narrative about the wonders of twenty-first century American innovations.

In this interview, Gordon shares his thoughts on American growth and shares some memories of his MIT years. Read more: http://bit.ly/21bLmTd

Episode Transcript: https://bit.ly/2Je9zY4

The Rise and Fall of American Growth (Alumni Books Podcast)

Award-winning journalist, academic and author Stephen Kinzer discusses his latest book The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire.

Show Notes
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/05/13/new-allies-for-new-world/xVbB3usL9CPF7vvPDliTNM/story.html
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2017/06/10/saudi-arabia-destabilizing-world/ivMeb7TWGk1fQaVjZWWKGP/story.html
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/05/27/foreign-policy-mixtape/3UEjCooruAmF3uHoJXQb8O/story.html

Websites
http://stephenkinzer.com
https://twitter.com/stephenkinzer

Books
https://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Kinzer/e/B00455F1NC/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

About the Guest
Stephen Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to place him “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.”

Kinzer’s most recent book is “The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War.” The novelist John le Carré called it “a secret history, enriched and calmly retold; a shocking account of the misuse of American corporate, political and media power; a shaming reflection on the moral manners of post imperial Europe; and an essential allegory for our own times.”

Kinzer’s previous book was “Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future.” “Stephen Kinzer is a journalist of a certain cheeky fearlessness and exquisite timing,” The Huffington Post said in its review. “This book is a bold exercise in reimagining the United States’ big links in the Middle East.”

In 2006 Kinzer published “Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.” It recounts the 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments. Kinzer seeks to explain why these interventions were carried out and what their long-term effects have been. He is also the author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.” It tells how the CIA overthrew Iran’s nationalist government in 1953.

Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed and bombed from the air.

In 1996 Kinzer was named chief of the newly opened New York Times bureau in Istanbul, Turkey. He spent four years there, traveling widely in Turkey and in the new nations of Central Asia and the Caucasus. After completing this assignment, Kinzer published “Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds.”

He has also worked in Africa, and written “A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa called this book “a fascinating account of a near-miracle unfolding before our very eyes.”

Before joining the New York Times, Kinzer was Latin America correspondent for the Boston Globe. He is now a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, where he teaches international relations. He contributes to The Guardian and the New York Review of Books, and writes a world affairs column for The Boston Globe.

In 2009, Dominican University in River Forest, Illinois, awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate. The citation said that “those of us who have had the pleasure of hearing his lectures or talking to him informally will probably never see the world in the same way again.”

The University of Scranton awarded Kinzer an honorary doctorate in 2010. “Where there has been turmoil in the world and history has shifted, Stephen Kinzer has been there,” the citation said. “Neither bullets, bombs nor beating could dull his sharp determination to bring injustice and strife to light.”

Stephen Kinzer: The True Flag of American Empire #051

The founder of peace and conflict studies, Dr. Johan Galtung, discusses his predictions of the US Empire collapsing and becoming a dictatorship, before eventually rebuilding its democracy.

Transcript: http://guadalajarageopolitics.com/2017/09/10/johan-galtung-us-empire-will-collapse-and-become-a-dictatorship-058

Show Notes
USA–Where Are You Heading? https://www.transcend.org/tms/2017/09/usa-where-are-you-heading
Pentagon Study Declares American Empire Is Collapsing https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/pentagon-study-declares-american-empire-is-collapsing-746754cdaebf
DOD Risk Assessment in a Post-Primacy World https://ssi.armywarcollege.edu/pubs/display.cfm?pubID=1358
US Power Will Decline Under Trump Says Futurist Who Predicted Soviet Collapse https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7ykxx/us-power-will-decline-under-trump-says-futurist-who-predicted-soviet-collapse

Websites
https://www.transcend.org
https://www.galtung-institut.de

Books
https://www.transcend.org/tup/index.php?book=5

About Johan Galtung
Johan Galtung, dr, dr hc mult, a professor of peace studies, was born in 1930 in Oslo, Norway. He is a mathematician, sociologist, political scientist and the founder of the discipline of peace studies. He founded the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (1959), the world's first academic research center focused on peace studies, as well as the influential Journal of Peace Research (1964). He has helped found dozens of other peace centers around the world. He is currently the president of the Galtung-Institut for Peace Theory & Peace Practice.

He has mediated in over 150 conflicts between states, nations, religions, civilizations, communities, and persons since 1957. His contributions to peace theory and practice include conceptualization of peace-building, conflict mediation, reconciliation, nonviolence, theory of structural violence, theorizing about negative vs. positive peace, peace education and peace journalism. Prof. Galtung's unique imprint on the study of conflict and peace stems from a combination of systematic scientific inquiry and a Gandhian ethics of peaceful means and harmony.

Johan Galtung has conducted a great deal of research in many fields and made original contributions not only to peace studies but also, among others, human rights, basic needs, development strategies, a world economy that sustains life, macro-history, theory of civilizations, federalism, globalization, theory of discourse, social pathologies, deep culture, peace and religions, social science methodology, sociology, ecology, future studies.

He is author or co-author of more than 1600 articles and over 160 books on peace and related issues.

He is the weekly editorialist for TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, which features solutions-oriented peace journalism.

He is founder (in 2000) and rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University, the world's first online Peace Studies University. He is also the founder and director of TRANSCEND International, a global non‑profit network for Peace, Development and the Environment, founded in 1993, with over 500 members in more than 70 countries around the world. As a testimony to his legacy, peace studies are now taught and researched at over 500 universities across the globe and some are contributing to peacemaking efforts in conflicts around the world wihtout buying into the securitization sell out.

He was jailed in Norway for six months at age 24 as a Conscientious Objector to serving in the military, after having done 12 months of civilian service, the same time as those doing military service. In jail he wrote his first book, Gandhi's Political Ethics, together with his mentor, Arne Naess.

As a recipient of over a dozen honorary doctorates and professorships and many other distinctions, including a Right Livelihood Award (also known as Alternative Nobel Peace Prize), Johan Galtung remains committed to the study and promotion of peace.

Johan Galtung: US Empire Will Collapse and Become a Dictatorship #058

Foreign policy expert Robert Kagan discusses our nation's retreat from its international responsibilities under President Trump and why it could mean the end of the world order America created after WWII.

Robert Kagan on why Americans don't want the US to be the leader of the free world

On June 5, 2018, Dr. Christopher D. Yung explores China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s version of the Marshall Plan, during a lecture "Who's Afraid of China's Belt and Road Initiative? Getting to the Heart of China's Controversial Marshall Plan" at The Institute of World Politics.

Who's Afraid of China's Belt and Road Initiative?

GPF Director Jacob Shapiro welcomes special guest Dario Fabbri, Senior Analyst at Limes, to talk about Italy's view of Europe. Along the way, they touch on Italy's relationship with the U.S., Germany's lack of strategy and France's double-edged demographic advantage. Sign up for free updates on topics like this! Go here:  https://goo.gl/zt6tzx

Italy's View of France and Germany

This week, the head of NATO wrote a column politely reminding everyone about the use of the military alliance. Can NATO continue to meet the needs of all its members? Sign up for free updates on topics like this! Go here:  https://goo.gl/zt6tzx

Is NATO Obsolete?

Kings Maritime Seminar Series 2017-2018. Helen Sellers presents on the topic of 'Australia and India at Sea: The Contemporary Security implications of Two Maritime Histories from ancient to modern times.'. The seminar took place on the 7th December 2017 in the Department of War Studies, Kings College London.

Maritime Seminars 2017-2018: Australia and India at Sea: Contemporary Security, Helen Sellers

Author John Lehman talked about his book "OCEANS VENTURED: Winning The Cold War at Sea" during a lecture on June 25, 2018, at The Institute of World Politics.

About the Book:

A thrilling story of the Cold War, told by a former navy secretary on the basis of recently declassified documents. When Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981, the United States and NATO were losing the Cold War. The USSR had superiority in conventional weapons and manpower in Europe, and had embarked on a construction program to gain naval preeminence. But Reagan already had a plan. Reagan pushed Congress to build the navy back to its 1945 strength of 600 major ships. He gathered a circle of experienced naval planners, including the author, to devise an aggressive strategy that would move our fleets within spitting distance of Soviet waters. New radars, sensors, and emissions technology would make ghosts of our submarines and surface fleets. We would operate aircraft carriers in Arctic waters, which no navy had attempted. The Soviets, surrounded by our forward naval strategy, bankrupted their economy trying to keep pace. It wasn’t long before the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR was disbanded.

About the Author:

John Lehman, a former U.S. Navy pilot, served as United States Secretary of the Navy from 1981 to 1987. From 2003 to 2004 he was a member of the 9/11 Commission. He lives in New York.

OCEANS VENTURED: Winning The Cold War at Sea

Is populism an ideology? Is it a political tool? A political weapon? The term has been bastardized over the years, so much so that it is nearly devoid of any meaning, and yet it is invoked nearly every day, levied against politicians of every political persuasion in every region of the world. In this week’s episode, the team digs into what it means to be populist and applies it to Mexico’s newly elected president. Sign up for free updates on topics like this! Go here:  https://goo.gl/zt6tzx

The Problem with ‘Populism’

The U.S. and Turkey have a lot of big mutual problems (Iran, the Islamic State, Bashar Assad) yet seem to be preoccupied by much smaller ones (pastors and alleged deep state operatives). To help explain why this is so, this week’s episode checks in on the status of U.S.-Turkey relations. Also, what’s with the stories about Rex Tillerson preventing a Saudi invasion of Qatar? Sign up for free updates on topics like this! Go here:  https://goo.gl/zt6tzx

Turkey and the US: An On-Again, Off-Again Relationship

The heat is on Iran. Its economy is faltering. The currency is falling. The people are protesting. The government is threatening to close down the Strait of Hormuz. Renewed U.S. sanctions didn’t directly cause all these problems, of course, but they sure didn’t help. And they wouldn’t be an issue had U.S. stayed party to the Iran nuclear agreement. Is this the end of the reconciliation, or just a minor setback? If the deal is forever dead, will Iran now go nuclear? Would doing so achieve its regional objectives? Does deterrence strategy still hold? In this episode, recorded not-live but in-person, Jacob, Cole, Phil and special guest Ryan answer these questions and probably a lot of others you never thought to ask. And they do it without the comfort of an air conditioner. Sign up for free updates on topics like this! Go here:  https://goo.gl/zt6tzx

If Iran Went Nuclear, Would It Even Matter?

An online subscription-based publication, founded by internationally recognized geopolitical forecaster George Friedman. Geopolitical Futures tells you what matters and what doesn’t. Learn more: https://geopoliticalfutures.com/about/.