The Next Debate

In a little over twelve months Donald Trump has gone from vanity candidate to the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States. What explains Trump’s meteoric rise? And, what does his candidacy say about the state and future of American politics? E.J. Dionne, one of America’s savviest political observers, is out with a big new book, Why the Right Went Wrong, that digs deep into the Trump political phenomenon.

From quantitative easing to negative interest rates, central banks around the world have become, in the worlds of mega-investor Mohamed El-Erian, “the only game in town” when it comes to reviving economic growth. But when does too much central bank intervention start to become a risk to the global recovery? Mohamed El-Erian thinks this could happen sooner than we think with profound consequences for the global economy, investing and our collective future.

Are we living in a post-revolutionary age? From the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East to Occupy Wall Street movement in the West, mass social movements have failed spectacularly in recent years to achieve meaningful and lasting social change. Author and activist Micah White thinks mass movements today are fundamentally misunderstanding the task before them. Success isn’t getting tens of thousands of people out in the public square in non-violent protest. Instead it is it creating a mass global movement that a seize the machinery of government peacefully through the ballot box. Only then is real social change a possibility in our time.

For weeks now financial markets have been in turmoil over whether a cooling Chinese economy will drag the world into recession. Renowned economist and Asia expert, Stephen Roach, thinks fears of a China “crash” are exaggerated and reveal how little we actually understand about the growing strength of China’s domestic economy. For Stephen Roach, China is undergoing a challenging but ultimately manageable transition from an export to consumer lead model of economic growth.

The international communities’ hopes for pushing back ISIS and ending the humanitarian crisis in Syria have been dealt a major blow by Saudi Arabia as it doubles down its regional rivalry with Iran. Vali Nasr, one of the world’s top authorities on the Middle East, thinks the worsening conflict between Riyadh and Tehran could be a tipping point for an already dangerously destabilized Middle East.

From Crimea to Eastern Ukraine to Syria, Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken on an outsized role in global events in the last 18 months. For Russian dissident and chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, Putin’s ambition to reassert Russian power on the world stage represents a dangerous and destabilizing force in international relations, one the West ignores at its own peril.

Warsaw-based historian and foreign policy expert, Anne Applebaum, is worried that Europe’s far-right parties, in both the East and the West, are successfully exploiting the continent's refugee crisis to advance their anti-refugee and Euroskeptic agendas. And now this dangerous dynamic is set to intensify after last week’s deadly attacks in Paris. So where does Europe go from here? How can its leaders respond to the largest refugee crisis in half a century without further emboldening their far right political opponents?

We are taught that the world is a top-down place. Generals win battles; politicians run countries; scientists discover truths; inventors make breakthroughs; and Goldman Sachs rules the world. But is this really the case? Matt Ridley, in his provocative new book ‘The Evolution of Everything’ argues that it is bottom-up trends that shape the world. The growth of Internet, the eradication of diseases, the quadrupling of farm yields are examples of powerful emergent evolutionary phenomena that have no single, director, designer or diviner.

It is a controversial thesis: Black Americans have struggled to attain the full promise of the American Dream because of government’s efforts to level the playing field that citizens compete on for everything from educational success to employment. The solution to racial inequality in America is more, not less competition, between groups where no individual is given preferential treatment over another. Is this vision of America realistic in age of growing economic inequality? And does it live up America’s ideals of freedom and fairness?

Are we at once in a generation inflection point when comes to international relations and how the global order -- circa 2015 -- is working or not? Janice Stein, one of Canada’s most respected commentators on foreign affairs, thinks an era of nostalgic thinking about the state and purpose of global affairs is at an end. Instead, the world urgently needs leaders and governments willing to completely rethink how they engage with an increasingly unstable world order where regions and nations lack the basic means to address their greatest challenges.

How do we understand the past? Is history at its essence the sweep of nations and empires and the large impersonal social, economic and environmental forces that drive change? For historian Margaret MacMillan the past is more complicated than this. It is in the lives of individuals, great and small, and the human characteristics of leadership, curiosity and hubris, to name a few, that we find some of the most important insights into our shared humanity and the meaning of humankind's common past.

All eyes were on China this week as financial markets in the world’s second largest economy spurred fears of a global economic slowdown. Is China’s multi-decade economic miracle finally faltering? While international economist and best-selling author Dambisa Moyo is sanguine about China’s immediate prospects she is less than optimistic that political elites in the western world are up to the task of dealing with an extended period of slower economic growth.

With oil prices testing decade lows the commodity that powers the planet is unsettling financial markets and upending our expectations about the future of economic growth. How long could oil’s slump last? What is driving prices down and supply up? And, what is the fate of high cost producers such as Canada’s oil sands in this new and uncertain environment?

It has been as tumultuous summer in Europe as the continent struggled to keep Greece in the Euro Zone. The controversial and harsh bailout terms ultimately imposed on Greece have led many to wonder if Europe is entering a new, uncertain phase in its existence; one where Germany reshapes the Eurozone around its own priorities and values.

At the age of eighteen Hyeonseo Lee escaped North Korea, bringing with her remarkable first hand stories of what it was like to grow up in the world’s last remaining totalitarian dictatorship. Her experiences reveal the incredible lengths the reclusive North Korean regime goes to control every aspect of its citizens lives.