Weekend Roundup: Time to Redefine Defense and Redesign Global Cooperation
Weekend Roundup: Time to Redefine Defense and Redesign Global Cooperation
Author: Nathan Gardels
Geopolitical orders, including the balance of power, arise to contain threats and promote the interests of nations that benefit from the stability they maintain. The present order is still primarily a legacy of past world wars. National arsenals and multilateral institutions established to fortify that order have all been aimed at not having to fight the last war again or prevailing in a rematch. As such, they are proving woefully ill-equipped for the threats we face going forward: global pandemics like COVID-19 and what some have called “the slow-motion pandemic” of climate change.
Of what use are stealth bombers against a virus invisible to the naked eye? What good are anti-ballistic missiles when what we need are antibodies? How does a modernized nuclear force stack up against mutating microbes? What is the point of a shock-and-awe 30,000-pound bunker-buster bomb when microscopic droplets from a cough or a sneeze are just as devastating?
Clearly, the time has arrived to redefine what defense means in this age of the first-ever real-time global pandemic. The same is true for climate change: How will fleets of submarines and aircraft carriers defend against melting icecaps and rising seas? Exposure to the COVID-19 crisis is also dealing a terminal blow to the elderly multilateral institutions born after World War II that are seeing their last days in the nursing home of a passing era.
If these new threats and convergent interests will shape the next world order, what should it look like?
The President of the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD), Vuk Jeremić delivered a lecture at ADA University, Azerbaijan’s top-tier educational institution entitled "Geopolitics of the Balkans and How it Relates to the Caucasus”.
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Vuk Jeremić lectures at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna
At the invitation of the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna, one of the most prestigious and oldest schools on the European continent, CIRSD President Vuk Jeremić delivered a lecture entitled “(Geo)politics of the Balkans: The Revenge of History”, on February 7th, 2023.
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Prof. Sachs: “Sanctions against Russia ineffective and contrary to international law”
CIRSD had the privilege to host one of the world’s brightest minds and most famous economists – Prof. Dr Jeffrey Sachs in a live discussion titled "The winter of Our Discontent".
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Central Asia: The Age of Reform
The Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD) co-organized a conference on December 7, 2022, titled “Central Asia: The Age of Reform” at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, one of the most prestigious and oldest (1754) schools in Europe.
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