It is Tough Exercising Global ‘Concert Diplomacy’ Leadership – Part I

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Today’s realities demand positive international cooperation. Shared global challenges require creative multilateral solutions. Annual world leader summits like the G-8 and G-20 are free from the traditional trappings of fixed institutions like the United Nations. These gatherings adapt more easily to shifts in power, influence and political alignment.

The above is from the current Stanley Foundation website.  I have had the great pleasure of working with various individuals and experts from this serious and effective US foundation.

The Stanley Foundation (TSF) has been in the multilateral business for quite some time.  As its website identifies, the Foundation began programming in 1960.

As the Foundation declares:

The Stanley Foundation advances multilateral action to create fair, just, and lasting solutions to critical issues of peace and security. The foundation’s work is built on a belief that greater international cooperation will improve global governance and enhance global citizenship. The organization values its Midwestern roots and family heritage as well as its role as a nonpartisan, private operating foundation.

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Leaders, Leaders: Where Have All the Leaders Gone

Obama Press Conference

 

 

Well the debate, discussion, dialogue – call it what you will – among the international relations experts and pundits began with the assertion by Walter Russell Meade and others over the return of geopolitics. This debate has grown since with the rising tide of chaos in the international system – the Middle East – Syria, Iraq, now Gaza – the Ukraine, Afghanistan, the rising tensions in the South and East China Seas.  It has become – especially for experts from the US – a full scale (re)examination of US leadership.  As noted by Peter Baker in the NYT:

It’s a very tangled mess,” said Gary Samore, a former national security aide to Mr. Obama and now president of United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group. “You name it, the world is aflame. Foreign policy is always complicated. We always have a mix of complicated interests. That’s not unusual. What’s unusual is there’s this outbreak of violence and instability everywhere. It makes it hard for governments to cope with that.

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Where’s the ‘Number Two’?

Xi and Obama

 

 

With the gathering of US and China officials in Beijing for the sixth S&ED (Security and Economic Dialogue) meeting of the two, it is reasonable to take a step back to assess where relations are at the moment between these two great powers.  I was tempted to do this in part because the meetings are now happening but also because I reviewed, just the other day, a piece on global order by my colleague  Parag Khanna called a “World Reimagined” in the The National Interest.

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