CFR Events Audio

Panelists discuss the escalating threat of foreign disinformation and other forms of election interference and what the United States and its allies can do to combat this risk. This meeting part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Meeting Series on Democracy. For those attending virtually, log-in information and instructions on how to participate during the question and answer portion will be provided the evening before the event to those who register. Please note the audio, video, and transcript of this hybrid meeting will be posted on the CFR website.

This year NATO celebrates seventy-five years of collective defense, expanding from twelve founding members in 1949 to thirty-two today. Panelists discuss the evolution of NATO as it has sought to adapt to geopolitical shifts throughout the years, the challenges it faces in responding to global threats today, and the role of NATO in the future. For those attending virtually, log-in information and instructions on how to participate during the question and answer portion will be provided the evening before the event to those who register. Please note the audio, video, and transcript of this hybrid meeting will be posted on the CFR website.

The European Commission’s Executive Vice President and Commissioner for Trade, Valdis Dombrovskis, discusses the trends and shocks affecting international trade, the value-added of multilateralism, and how economic security is enhanced by trade openness between the European Union and United States. The C. Peter McColough Series on International Economics brings the world's foremost economic policymakers and scholars to address members on current topics in international economics and U.S. monetary policy. This meeting series is presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde discusses the state of the European economy, U.S.-EU economic cooperation, and the implications of international geopolitical conflicts on the global economy. This meeting is held in collaboration with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The C. Peter McColough Series on International Economics brings the world's foremost economic policymakers and scholars to address members on current topics in international economics and U.S. monetary policy. This meeting series is presented by the Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.

The PBS series Changing Planet embarks on its third year of this seven-year project examining the issues facing the planet’s most threatened ecosystems. The “Coral Special” episode takes us to the Maldives for an in-depth look at coral reefs and the urgent efforts to help them survive climate change. In partnership with PBS and Conservation International, join us for a sneak preview of clips from the episode and a panel discussion with climate experts discussing efforts to save some of the most diverse and valuable ecosystems on Earth.

Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at CFR, and Rebecca Katz, professor and director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University, lead the conversation on global health security and diplomacy. FASKIANOS: Welcome to the final session of the Winter/Spring 2024 CFR Academic Series. I am Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. Thank you for being with us. Today’s discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on our website, CFR.org/Academic, if you would like to share these materials with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Yanzhong Huang and Rebecca Katz with us to discuss global health security and diplomacy. We circulated their bios in advance, but I will give you some highlights now. Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow for global health at CFR. He is also a professor and director of global health studies at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relationships—sorry, Relations. Dr. Huang has written extensively on China and global health, and is the founding editor of Global Health Governance: The Scholarly Journal for the New Health Security Paradigm. And he is author of—his most recent book is Toxic Politics: China’s Environmental Health Crisis and Its Challenge to the Chinese State (2020). Rebecca Katz is a professor and director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University. She previously served as faculty in the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University. Dr. Katz’s work primarily focuses on the domestic and global implementation of the International Health Regulations, as well as global governance of public health emergencies. And her seventh book is coming out next week, I believe on Monday, and it is entitled Outbreak Atlas (2024). So you should all look for that. Dr. Huang and Dr. Katz coauthored a Council Special Report entitled Negotiating Global Health Security: Priorities for U.S. and Global Governance of Disease, so we did circulate that in advance. And I think we will begin with Dr. Katz to talk a little bit about global health security and diplomacy, and some of the findings from your report. So over to you. KATZ: Thank you so much, and really appreciate the opportunity to speak with everybody today about global health security and diplomacy. I could note—a quick disclaimer that like many people in Washington I wear multiple hats, including one that works for the United States government, but I am speaking today only in my academic capacity and not representing anybody else. So we are—we’re living in interesting times in the global health security and diplomacy space, and just the work of global governance of disease. As we speak, negotiators are working through what is hopefully a final agreement on amendments to the International Health Regulations. And in about a week, yet another version of possible text of a proposed pandemic agreement will be circulated to member states in advance of the resumed—the INB, Intergovernmental Negotiating Body, negotiations that are now scheduled, I believe, starting the 29th of April, where they may possibly finalize substantive negotiations in advance of the World Health Assembly. It is not a surprise, though, that the negotiations themselves have stalled, and they’ve stalled primarily over issues around access and benefit sharing, and the relationship between developed and less-developed countries. There are significant remaining redlines, including related to the way that pathogens are shared or the information around pathogens is shared. It’s related to the production of medical countermeasures, access to medical countermeasures. There continues to be an evolving power dynamic at this time of call it strained geopolitical tensions. And there are some real questions about the future...

Panelists discuss new and emerging commercial defense technology, current opportunities and challenges in defense innovation, and the future landscape of national security. For those attending virtually, log-in information and instructions on how to participate during the question and answer portion will be provided the evening before the event to those who register. Please note the audio and video of this virtual meeting will be posted on the CFR website.

Emerging markets now account for close to half of world GDP. With China possibly in a protracted slowdown, it is now important to ask whether swings in the outlook for emerging economies can drive the cycle in the G7. Please join our speakers and the authors of the paper, Andres Fernandez Martin and Andrea Presbitero of the IMF, for a discussion of the IMF World Economic Outlook paper, “Trading Places: Real Spillovers from G20 Emerging Markets.”

The CFR luncheon event held in conjunction with the International Studies Association featured a discussion on Foreign Policy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence on Thursday, April 4, in San Francisco. The conversation featured Rachel Gillum, vice president of ethical and humane use of technology at Salesforce; Andrew W. Reddie, associate research professor of public policy at University of California, Berkeley; and Carla Anne Robbins, senior fellow at CFR. James M. Lindsay, senior vice president, director of Studies, and the Maurice R. Greenberg chair at CFR, moderated the discussion.

Moisés Naím, distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, leads the conversation on authoritarianism. CASA: Welcome to today’s session of the Winter/Spring 2024 CFR Academic Webinar Series. I’m Maria Casa, director of the National Program and Outreach Department at CFR. Thank you all for joining us. Today’s discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be made available on our website, CFR.org/Academic, if you would like to share them with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We are delighted to have Moisés Naím with us for a discussion on power and authoritarianism. Moisés Naím is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an internationally syndicated columnist. Dr. Naím’s experience in public service includes his tenure as Venezuela’s minister of trade and industry, director of Venezuela’s central bank, and executive director of the World Bank. He has held appointments as a professor at IESA, Venezuela’s leading business school, and Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Naím is the host and producer of Efecto Naím, an Emmy-winning weekly television program on international affairs that airs throughout the Americas on Direct TV. He was the editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine for fourteen years, and is the author of many scholarly articles, and more than ten books on international economics and politics. Welcome, Dr. Naím. Thank you very much for speaking with us today. NAÍM: Thanks for inviting me. Delighted to be with you. CASA: You have been reflecting on the nature of power, authoritarianism, and autocracy for many years, and have written a series of books that focused on these themes. Could we begin with you telling us a little bit about your current thinking on the subject? NAÍM: Of course. I am as concerned, as many other people are, about the fact that democracy is in retreat and authoritarianism is moving. This is not just an opinion; this is solid data from Freedom House, which is an institution that analyzes and surveys the world in terms of its propensities towards freedom or not. And in the most recent report about the state of freedom in the world, they show that it has—global freedom has declined for the eighteenth consecutive year. So for every year in the last eighteen years, democracy was declining and authoritarian regimes, of different stripes and forms, were taking over. Political rights and civil liberties were diminished in fifty-two countries, and the fact is that the majority of the people in the world today live in authoritarian regimes, or regimes where the checks and balances that define a democracy are not functioning—fully functioning and are limited and constrained. This is a very complex, surprising world in which a lot is happening for the first time—or a lot that we believe is happening for the first time, in fact, has happened before. I have here a phrase—a couple of phrases by European thinkers in the 1930s. After the First World War and before the Second World War, they saw it coming. They did not know exactly what form would it take. But José Ortega y Gasset is a famous Spanish thinker of that time, and in 1930 he wrote a book, and one of the phrases in the book is, “we don’t know what is happening to us.” And that is exactly what is happening to us—that we don’t know what’s going on. We know that something big is going on, but we don’t know exactly how is it going to affect our jobs, our companies, our politics, our life, our society, and so on. Another politician, at the same time—an Italian this time—in the 1930s, wrote a book. Antonio Gramsci was his name. He was in jail for political reasons, and Gramsci wrote, “the old is dying and the new is yet to be born. In this interregnum, monsters are hatched.” I repeat: “The old is dying and the new is yet to be born. In this interregnum, monsters are hatched.” And we have the same feeling now, that...

Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Philip Gamaghelyan, assistant professor at the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego, discuss the ethnic and territorial conflicts in the region, including conflict resolution strategies, regional security implications, and the role international actors have played.

In From Peril to Partnership, using case studies of Colombia and Mexico, Paul Angelo evaluates the efficacy of U.S. security assistance and the necessary conditions and stakeholders in partner nations that facilitate success. The book answers why Plan Colombia achieved its objectives and why the Mérida Initiative underdelivered in Mexico. It goes beyond drug war theatrics and the “one-size-fits-all” approach to U.S.-led stabilization. The CFR Fellows’ Book Launch series highlights new books by CFR fellows.

As a record number of countries hold elections in 2024, panelists reflect on the substantive policy achievements of women political leaders, needed measures to achieve increased women’s leadership, and recommendations for bridging divides and governing effectively in a time of turmoil. This meeting is part of the Council on Foreign Relations Roundtable Series on Women's Global Leadership.

John Kerry discusses his work as U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, the challenges the United States faces, and the Biden administration’s priorities as it continues to address climate change.

Former CENTCOM Commanders David Petraeus and Anthony Zinni discuss the military aspect of the Israel-Hamas war and lessons learned from U.S. involvement and operations in the Middle East.

Putin vs The West, a three-part series produced by Brook Lapping, tells the inside story of how the West has struggled to deal with Vladimir Putin, told by the presidents and prime ministers who worked and fought against the Russian leader. As we enter year three of the Russia-Ukraine war, CFR will be screening the first episode of Putin vs The West: At War, followed by a discussion on what to expect next.

Panelists discuss the regional escalation of the Israel-Hamas war, developments in flashpoints including in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, attacks on U.S. forces and the consequences for U.S. strategy in the Middle East.