Looking at a Different ‘World Order’

Posted on January 16, 2017 by Alan Alexandroff

It is evidently a result of the distemper of our immediate circumstances – brought on by President-Elect Donald Trump about to become President of the United States – that my colleagues are not unreasonably contemplating alternatives to the current Liberal Order. Being apocalyptic is in; optimism out. As my Cornell colleague and political economist friend, Jonathan Kirshner recently wrote in an article in the Los Angeles Review of Books:

And so the election of Trump will come to mark the end of the international order that was built to avoid repeating the catastrophes of the first half the twentieth century, and which did so successfully — horrors that we like to imagine we have outgrown. It will not serve us well.

We have lost, we are lost. Not an election, but a civilization. Where does that leave us? I think the metaphor is one of (political) resistance.

Continue reading →

The ‘Tweeting’ Elephant in the Room

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Alan Alexandroff

He wasn’t there. But his presence seemed nowhere, and everywhere, nonetheless. Just a month ago the presidency of the G20 passed from China to Germany in Berlin. And with the transfer Chancellor Angela Merkel identified her priorities for what is going to be a truncated German hosting of the G20. The presidency will end with the a Leaders Summit in Hamburg on July 7th-8th. Summarizing Merkel’s priorities my colleague Stewart Patrick at CFR suggested the following as her particular interests:

Chancellor Angela Merkel, this year’s host, has emerged as the world’s most important defender of globalization. She has chosen “shaping an interconnected world” as the theme of this year’s summit. Her priorities include fostering economic resilience, advancing sustainable development, empowering women, implementing the Paris climate agreement, and advancing peace and development in Africa.

Continue reading →

Lacking Global Leadership

Posted on October 6, 2016 by Alan Alexandroff

Nova Délhi – Índia, 29/03/2012. Presidenta Dilma Rousseff posa para foto junto com os Chefes de Estado do BRICS. Foto: Roberto Stuckert Filho/PR.

[Editorial Note: This piece was originally posted at the RisingPowersProject at the inauguration of this new site.]

So the Hangzhou G20 Summit has come and gone and now the eighth BRICS leadership conference hosted again by India, but this year in Goa as opposed to the previous India BRICS Summit in New Delhi is just about upon us. This BRICS Leaders’ Summit will take place on October 15th and 16th.

So where are we in determining the the state of global order leadership and the Liberal Order that has been so prominent since the end of the Cold War? A sweep of editorials and reviews of China’s G20 in Hangzhou has been notably downbeat. At this site ‘Rising Powers in Global Governance’, my colleague, Jonathan Luckhurst described the Hangzhou reviews this way: “The Group of Twenty (G20) has received poor reviews in recent years, so expert reactions to the Hangzhou G20 Summit of September 4-5, 2016 were hardly surprising.”

Continue reading →

Back Again: The Global Order in Our Sights

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Alan Alexandroff

It has been a long hiatus. Truth be told, I was planning to remain silent for an entire year. But I couldn’t resist coming back before then. As it turns out – just on the cusp of Memorial Day weekend for my American colleagues – and in the face of the announcement that Donald Trump had enough delegates to be nominated in Cleveland at the Republican Convention in July, I am back. The fact is too much is happening both in the world of global governance and also in the examination of global order ideas. So it’s time to end my silence.

Continue reading →

The ‘Mechanics of Global Order’ – A Different Kind of World Ordering

Posted on August 30, 2015 by Alan Alexandroff

I was reminded recently of the enormous influence of the nonagenarian Henry Kissinger. My colleague from Brazil, Oliver Stuenkel, author of the blog Post-Western World reviewed Henry Kissinger’s most recent book, World Order. His review of the 2014 book caused me to look back at my notes on this book and then to drag from my University library his 1994 book, Diplomacy. Obviously quite laconic when it came to titles – don’t forget On China – Kissinger has been the most detailed – and THE contemporary deep thinker – both as an academic and a diplomatic practitioner – when it comes to articulating the contemporary global order and its inner workings. Kissinger has been enormously influential since at least his A World Restored (Kissinger’s Ph.D. thesis originally) published in 1954. And of course, his diplomatic practice in the Nixon and Ford administrations remains central to US foreign policy behavior and critique. Today, he is still consulted by many in Washington for his views on US foreign policy – see his and George Shultz’s review of the Iran nuclear deal – and in particular US diplomacy toward China.

Continue reading →

A Good Week for Diplomacy

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Alan Alexandroff

It is jarring. It shouldn’t be, but given the strategic actions of the leading state, it is. We all have gotten so used to the exercise US military muscle (or not), especially in the Middle East, it is shocking almost, to see diplomacy in the lead. It takes some getting used to. So the Iran deal has been concluded. As Robin Wright described it in The New Yorker:

The agreement is the Obama Administration’s boldest foreign-policy initiative. It marks the first success in dealing with Iran since its 1979 revolution and the prolonged seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran.

Continue reading →

Time to Return to the Blogosphere

Posted on June 28, 2015 by Alan Alexandroff

So it’s time to rejoin the blogosphere!

I apologize to all of you who might have looked to Rising BRICSAM for news and views on the BRICS and the other Influentials in the global order. It was an extended absence, I know, but it was not time ill-spent.

Over the last months we completed the chapter on ‘concert diplomacy’ for the volume the Next Great War? The Roots of World I and the Risks of US-China Conflict – a work edited by Richard Rosecrance and Steve Miller from the Belfer Center at Harvard. And then there was the paper for the ISA in New Orleans entitled, “The Challenges to Contemporary Global Order” that can be found at my ResearchGate site. But the most critical work has been the effort by myself and many others from the Global Summitry Project at the Munk School, The Rotman School of Management and especially from Oxford University Press to get the lights on for the new OUP journal, Global Summitry: Politics, Economics and Law in International Governance. Hopefully the lights will be fully lit by the end of this month. This latter project is a ‘real labor of love’. Working with Don Brean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, we hope

Continue reading →

In a World of Order? Or is it Disorder?

Posted on January 2, 2015 by Alan Alexandroff

My good colleague, Stewart Patrick at the Council of Foreign Relations, left us a “must-watch list” of global summits for 2015 before he disappeared for Christmas and the New Year. Prepared for the slightly pretentious Council of Councils, Stewart nevertheless left us a sensible “go-to” list. This list for 2015 is valuable if only to suggest the range of global governance meetings in what most commentators have described as a growing sense of disorder in contemporary global order.

Continue reading →

South Africa’s Place in an Economic Global Order

Posted on December 8, 2014 by Alan Alexandroff

Without question South Africa remains a vibrant, complicated and seemingly a growing troubled land. My colleagues from the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) one of the premiere think tanks in South Africa and the University of Pretoria, particularly the Department of Political Science there brought together some of their South African colleagues with experts from a number of countries for a conference (December 4^th-5^th) titled “Alliances Beyond BRICS: South Africa’s Role in Global Economic Governance”. Hats off to both Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, President of SAIIA and Maxi Schoeman Head of Political Science at the University of Pretoria and all their colleagues for a job well done.

Continue reading →

Building Global Order: A Good Day for Global Summitry

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Alan Alexandroff

The headline says it all. Just a quick look at the New York Times: “As Xi and Obama Stress Common Ground Stubborn Differences Persist“. Or an earlier headline from the same paper: “U.S. and China Agree to Cut Tariffs, but Vie for Trade Blocs“.

Let’s be clear, however. It’s been a good couple of days for global summitry. As Dan Drezner headlined in his Washington Post blog post this morning: “Best APEC Summit Ever“. As Dan suggested:

This year’s APEC summit that just wrapped up in Beijing is therefore highly unusual… because stuff got done. Seriously, a LOT of stuff got done.

Continue reading →

Rising BRICSAM

'Breaking' Knowledge, Information and Commentary on Rising BRICSAM and Global Governance Summitry

Category Archives: Global Summitry

Looking at a Different ‘World Order’

The ‘Tweeting’ Elephant in the Room

Lacking Global Leadership

Back Again: The Global Order in Our Sights

The ‘Mechanics of Global Order’ – A Different Kind of World Ordering

A Good Week for Diplomacy

Time to Return to the Blogosphere

In a World of Order? Or is it Disorder?

South Africa’s Place in an Economic Global Order

Building Global Order: A Good Day for Global Summitry