"Though most of the literature you will read on the future of war certainly talks about war as between regular armies, as proper fights, now with drones or with autonomous vehicles or robots or whatever, or even painless--cyber and so on--yet actually the reality of war is as it has always been: it is vicious, and it is nasty, and it kills the wrong people, and it does so in considerable numbers."
Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and Senior Fellow Devin Stewart discuss the challenges to liberalism, in the United States and on the international stage, and explain today's debates through a historical context. Have too many forgotten why and how the liberal order was put in place? Can liberals find solidarity in the face of adversity?
Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Earth Institute executive director Steven Cohen offers hope for a sustainable future. In this excerpt, Cohen tells journalist Stephanie Sy that despite Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement, the momentum is on the side of America's businesses, states, cities, and civil society.
How can we engage with Muslims around the world without really understanding what they believe? On studying the Qur'an, religious scholar Garry Wills found that many of our perceptions of Islam are false or distorted. Most surprisingly, Islam is a very inclusive religion, more so than Judaism or Christianity. What's more, the Qur'an gives women more property rights than early Christian women had. Don't miss this important talk.
Republican politician Bob Inglis used to think that climate change was nonsense; but his son--and science--changed his mind. Today he advocates letting market forces do their work. "The thing to do is to make it apparent in the marketplace what the costs of energy are, and eliminate all the subsidies, and have a level playing field and a strong competition. If you do that, we can fix climate change. That is what needs to be done."
Next time on Global Ethics Forum, retired U.S. Navy Admiral James Stavridis discusses the history and geopolitics of the world’s oceans. In this excerpt, Stavridis discusses the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and its military and economic significance to the United States.
How much of a threat is fake news to the average citizen? What is Google doing to counteract its spread? Learn more with this conversation with Daniel Sieberg, co-founder of Google News Lab. Launched about three years ago, the News Lab is a small team of Google employees who collaborate with journalists and entrepreneurs around the world to use technology to strengthen digital storytelling and produce more in-depth reporting.
The liberal order was never truly a global order, and we're not entering a multipolar era either, says Amitav Acharya. It's more accurate to call it a decentered, "multiplex" world, one where there are multiple consequential actors and complex global interdependence. Such a world is an unprecedented phenomenon and globalization will surely change. But it won't necessarily be a period of instability.
To mark Carnegie Council's Centennial, Michael Ignatieff and team set out to discover what moral values people hold in common across nations. What he found was that while universal human rights may be the language of states and liberal elites, what resonate with most people are "ordinary virtues" practiced on a person-to-person basis, such as tolerance and forgiveness. He concludes that liberals most focus on strengthening these ordinary virtues.
Next time on Global Ethics Forum, First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams discusses the exceptionalism of America’s free speech laws. In this excerpt, Abrams cites Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rhetoric to highlight different legal standards in speech in the United States, as compared to Europe.
Jonathan Sanders lived in Russia for a total of roughly 20 years, both as an academic researcher and as a journalist for CBS News, and has an insider's perspective on Russia and its people. He discusses the contradictions of Russian media under Putin--the "mass, crass" state-controlled media and the dissident material and rambunctious memes on RuTube--and shares personal stories of his connections with Yeltsin, Putin, and more.
"Democrats/liberals need to understand how we lost our grip on the American imagination. Why is it that we are unable to project an image of the kind of country that we want to build together, a vision that would draw people together?" Mark Lilla blames identity politics and argues that the U.S. case offers a window on the crisis of democratic citizenship worldwide.
"We need to face the fact that Turkey under Erdoğan has become a rogue regime," declares David L. Phillips. It's a corrupt, repressive, Islamist dictatorship. The U.S. should no longer regard it as an ally, but as a strategic adversary.
Next time on Global Ethics Forum, journalist James Traub discusses the ethical questions surrounding the refugee crisis in Western Europe. In this excerpt, Traub talks with journalist Stephanie Sy about his time in Sweden, the country’s generosity, and its difficulties in finding the literal space for tens of thousands of migrants.
Entrepreneur Sam Kass talks about his experiences as chef and senior policy nutrition advisor in the White House, including titbits about the Obamas, initiatives to improve schoolchildren's health, and the lunch he served to world leaders made up of food waste. (Pass the "landfill salad"!) He also discusses the links between climate change and food, healthy eating, and hunger in the U.S. and abroad.
How do we analyze vast swaths of data and who decides what to collect? For example, big data may help us cure cancer, but the choice of data collected for police work or hiring may have built-in biases, explains danah boyd. "All the technology is trying to do is say, 'What can we find of good qualities in the past and try to amplify them in the future?' It's always trying to amplify the past. So when the past is flawed, it will amplify that."
Carnegie Council President Joel Rosenthal and Senior Fellow Devin Stewart discuss the tense North Korea situation. What does Kim Jong-un want? How should the United States respond? What would the "enlightened realist" do?
Next time on Global Ethics Forum, Stanford’s Scott Sagan discusses an ethical approach to America’s nuclear weapon policy. In this excerpt, Sagan talks with journalist Randall Pinkston about the changing role of civilians with regards to control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
What are the social and ethical implications of new technologies such as widespread automation and gene editing? These innovations are no longer in the realm of science fiction, says entrepreneur and technology writer Vivek Wadhwa. They are coming closer and closer. We need to educate people about them and then come together and have probing and honest discussions on what is good and what is bad.
"When you have a president like Trump, you do have to ask yourself: 'What will the United States look like in five years or in ten years?' A strong United States is what the government of Japan wants. In that sense, Trump is a threat. It is one that not all, but I feel a lot of Japanese analysts, are oblivious to. And second, what can they do? The answer is they can't do anything."
"Ethics will be found in people of good will who believe in constructive responses to hard policy challenges. Ethics will be demonstrated by those who are willing to take a stand in defense of the core values of pluralism, rights, and fairness. Ethics will be invigorated by dialogue based on empirical knowledge, mutual respect, and equal regard for others. Carnegie Council will always be a home for these people and their voices."
George Washington understood that building capable partners during peacetime can actually prevent war, says Heidi Grant. She is deputy under secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs, an organization which works with over a hundred countries to address shared security challenges. This includes selling them military equipment and increasing their capability to conduct their own ISR: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.
Under Xi Jinping, China is stepping up a crackdown on freedom of expression, including in universities, reports China expert Joshua Eisenman. Is this the beginning of a new Cultural Revolution, as some people fear? If so, we need to understand that this time it will be a Cultural Revolution of the political right, not the left, says Eisenman. "The tactics that they're using are neo-Maoist tactics, but the ideas are neo-fascist."
After four decades of stellar growth, where is China's economy headed today? "In the last few years not only has the economy slowed down, but the government's commitment to economic liberalization has waned," warns Scott Kennedy, an expert on China's economy.
"I think the biggest impact of Donald Trump's presidency, particularly in Asia-Pacific, has been the concept of uncertainty," says Baker, citing the lack of a clear and concise policy from the administration. "Uncertainty, if the United States were just a small peripheral country, is manageable; uncertainty when the United States is such a large and impactful country becomes very difficult to manage."
In this post-TPP world where the U.S. has taken a step back from Asia, the vacuum is being filled by China's initiatives, such as the One Belt One Road, says Ziad Haider, former State Department special representative for commercial and business affairs. Nevertheless, we shouldn't fall into the narrative of "The United States and China are locked into competition." China's actions also offer opportunities for the U.S.
Major changes must be made if U.S. nuclear war plans are to conform to the principles of just war doctrine and the law of armed conflict, declares Stanford University's Scott Sagan. He proposes a new doctrine: "the nuclear necessity principle." In sum, the U.S. will not use nuclear weapons against any target that could be reliably destroyed by conventional means.
Michele Wucker describes a gray rhino as the "love child of the black swan and the elephant in the room." In other words, "it's a metaphor for the big, obvious thing that's coming at you that you've got a choice to deal with or not." Why has this concept struck such a chord in China, Taiwan, and Korea, while Americans tend to be more in denial about their gray rhinos?
Since South Sudan's civil war broke out in late 2013, soldiers on both sides have been using rape and other forms of sexual violence on a massive scale as a weapon of war, says Amnesty International's Sarah Jackson. The resulting refugee crisis is putting a severe strain on neighboring Uganda, a country with one of the most generous refugee policies in the world. What is at the root of this violence? How can governments and NGOs help?
Tired of conventional wisdom? Check out geopolitical forecaster George Friedman. The period that began at the end of World War II was a freak, he says. "We're returning to a more normal structure in which the nation-state is dominant, international trade is intense but managed by states for their own benefit, and where this idea that the nation-state is obsolete goes away." And find out why he's bullish on Japan and thinks we overestimate China.
