Westminster Institute talks

Col. (ret.) Robert Hamilton takes a new approach to examining the relationship between China and Russia, departing from the standard debate over whether the relationship is a true strategic partnership or merely an axis of convenience. Instead, he argues that the best way to gain an understanding of ties between Beijing and Moscow is to watch how they interact “on the ground” in regions of the world where they both have important interests at stake. Hamilton provides an in-depth analysis of Chinese-Russian interaction in Africa, Central Asia, and East Asia, as well as an analysis of China’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The picture of the relationship that emerges portrays its dynamic, complex, and contingent nature, and reveals areas of convergence and divergence between these two powers. In doing so, he provides a new perspective useful to both scholars and policymakers.Also see:The China-Russia Relationship: The Dance of the Dragon and the Bear – Westminster Institute

Steve H. Hanke is a Senior Fellow, Contributing Editor of The Independent Review, and a Member of the Board of Advisors at the Independent Institute. Hanke is professor of applied economics and founder and co-director of the Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, senior adviser at the Renmin University of China’s International Monetary Research Institute in Beijing, and a special counselor to the Center for Financial Stability in New York. Hanke is also a contributing editor at Central Banking in London and a contributor at National Review. In addition, Hanke is a member of the Charter Council of the Society for Economic Measurement.In the past, Hanke taught economics at the Colorado School of Mines and at the University of California, Berkeley. He served as a member of the Governor’s Council of Economic Advisers in Maryland in 1976–77, as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1981–82, and as a senior adviser to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress in 1984–88. Hanke served as a state counselor to both the Republic of Lithuania in 1994–96 and the Republic of Montenegro in 1999–2003. He was also an adviser to the presidents of Bulgaria in 1997–2002, Venezuela in 1995–96, and Indonesia in 1998. He played an important role in establishing new currency regimes in Argentina, Estonia, Bulgaria, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Ecuador, Lithuania, and Montenegro. Hanke has also held senior appointments in the governments of many other countries, including Albania, Kazakhstan, the United Arab Emirates, and Yugoslavia.

David Goldman is an American economist, music critic, and author, best known for his series of online essays in the Asia Times under the pseudonym Spengler. He is a Fellow at the Corvinus Institute for Advanced Studies in Budapest, a member of the Board of Advisors of Sino-Israel Government Network and Academic Leadership (SIGNAL), and a fellow at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life.According to the Claremont Review of Books, the “Spengler” columns in the Asia Times have attracted readership in the millions. His analyses of global events have become highly regarded. Former C.I.A. National Intelligence Council Vice Chairman Herbert E. Meyer said, “Ask anyone in the intelligence business to name the world’s most brilliant intelligence service, and we’ll all give the same answer: Spengler. David P. Goldman’s ‘Spengler’ columns provide more insight than the CIA, MI6, and the Mossad combined.” Goldman is the author of You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-form the World, How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam is Dying Too),It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of You: The Great Extinction of the Nations and You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-Form the World.His article in Compact Magazine is How the War Party Lost.

Qatar: An Honest Broker? | Yigal Carmon - YouTube

https://westminster-institute.org/events/prospects-for-negotiations-to-end-the-russia-ukraine-war/Prospects for Negotiations to End the Russia-Ukraine War | Stephen Bryen

The New York Times has called Clyde Prestowitz “one of the most far seeing forecasters of global trends.” For more than fifty years, Prestowitz has studied, lived, and worked in Asia, Europe, and Latin America as well as in the United States and has become noted as a leading writer and strategist on globalization and competitiveness. His best -selling books include: Trading Places, Rogue Nation, Three Billion New Capitalists, The Betrayal of American Prosperity and Japan Restored.Prestowitz was a leader of the first U.S. trade mission to China in 1982 and has served as an advisor to Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama. He has also worked closely with CEOs such as Intel’s Andy Grove, Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca, and Fred Smith of Fedex. In addition, Prestowitz has served on the Advisory Boards of Indonesia’s Center for International Studies and of Israel’s Ministry of Industry and Labor.As Counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan administration, Mr. Prestowitz headed negotiations with Japan, South Korea, and China. Under the Clinton administration he served as Vice Chairman of the Presidential Commission on Trade and Investment in the Asia Pacific Region. He was also on the Board of Advisors to the Export/Import Bank.Prior to these posts, Prestowitz had a successful corporate marketing career, working for such companies as Scott Paper Company Europe in Brussels, Egon Zehnder International in Tokyo, and the American Can Company.Mr. Prestowitz holds a B.A. with honors from Swarthmore College; an M.A. in Asia Studies from the University of Hawaii and Tokyo’s Keio University, and an M.B.A. from the Wharton Graduate School of Business. He speaks Japanese, Dutch, German, and French.Prestowitz’s newest book is The World Turned Upside Down: China, America and the Struggle for Global Leadership (Yale University Press), which was published in January 2021.

“What spectacle can be more edifying,” James Madison wrote in 1822, “than that of liberty and learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?” It was long and widely understood in America that a certain kind of education is essential to the maintenance of a free society. It is less well understood today, and we are seeing the consequences. This third CCA of the 2020-2021 academic year will consider liberal arts education, its relationship to liberty, and American education today from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Dr. James S. Robbins is Dean of Academics at the Institute of World Politics. He is a national security columnist for USA Today and Senior Fellow in National Security Affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council. Dr. Robbins is a former special assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and in 2007 was awarded the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joint Meritorious Civilian Service Award. He is also the former award-winning Senior Editorial Writer for Foreign Affairs at The Washington Times. His work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, National Review, and other publications. He appears regularly on national and international television and radio. Dr. Robbins holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and has taught at the National Defense University and Marine Corps University, among other schools. His research interests include terrorism and national security strategy, political theory and military history. Dr. Robbins is the author of five books, including The Real Custer: From Boy General to Tragic Hero, This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive, and the critically acclaimed Last in Their Class: Custer, Pickett and the Goats of West Point.

A deep dive into the strategies and tactics used by the radical left in recent years to undermine the institutions of the United States, along with suggestions for how to counter their advances. Many Americans believe that the United States is in decline. They see a country that has become unrecognizable: where individuals are reduced to their race, ethnicity, or sexual identity; where children are indoctrinated into radical ideologies; where anti-semitism has become widespread. Gonalez and Gorka explain how all of these ills are rooted in Marxism. To be sure, it is not Soviet Marxism, but a Marxism that was shaped by European intellectuals, adapted and refined by America’s student radicals of the 1960s, and diffused throughout the culture as those student radicals became professors, community organizers, and leaders. The end goal of these NextGen Marxists is expropriation, redistribution, central planning, and collectivism. They are working toward nothing less than the cultural transformation of the United States—and they have partially succeeded. But NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It is infused with optimism. It reveals the dark inner workings of the radical left’s destructive agenda in the United States in order to teach Americans how to fight back. The authors share their conviction that the best days for the United States are still ahead of us if every day Americans can work together to restore sanity and make America the great beacon of freedom once again.

Herman Pirchner is the president of the American Foreign Policy Council, which was founded back in 1982 in Washington to provide some well thought out perspectives on foreign policy questions. In 1982, Herman was the president of the American Foreign Policy Council, and today more than forty years later he remains as the president of this important and distinguished group. Herman has held other significant positions as well, senior Senate staff, and as director of the national security team advising former presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. The AFPC, the American Foreign Policy Council, also publishes a great deal of material from is senior fellows and senior management in the form of monographs and books and shorter papers for briefings. Herman has hosted hundreds of delegations from foreign countries to come to the United States to meet senior American political leaders. And likewise, he has sent these senior American political leaders to foreign countries to meet with their peers. He did this for quite a few years in China, and likewise in Russia, and has done it for the last 10 years in Ukraine, a country with which he is very familiar, and to which he has traveled often. Herman has also written a good deal. Two of his books particularly pertain to the topic. One was a work in 2004, which shows the kind of prescience that Herman exercises or possesses, Reviving Greater Russia: The Future of Russia’s Borders with Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, and Ukraine. He is also the author of Post Putin: Succession, Stability, and Russia’s Future, which is also available in Russian and Ukrainian. Stephen Bryen has also held senior Senate staff positions, including for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he has excelled in both the private sector and the government sector. For many years he was one of the senior civilian employees at the Department of Defense, a position in which he gained the highest award given by the Department of Defense to civilians, not once but twice. I am speaking of the Distinguished Service Medal. Dr. Bryen is particularly expert on technology and strategy, and as such has been contributing to other Westminster shows on China, Japan, Taiwan, as well as on Russia and Ukraine. I should also mention that he was the executive director of a grassroots political organization, the head of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and in the Pentagon he served as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Trade Security Policy. Dr. Bryen is also a frequent contributor on foreign policy matters in his own column, which appears usually a couple of times weekly, in which he gives his sometimes unique perspective on the burning questions of the day, including Russia and Ukraine, so we are delighted he is also back here with us to further debate the future of Ukraine.