LSE IDEAS Transatlantic Programme in Association with the Grimshaw Club
14 January 2009, LSE
The West: Last Gasp or Making a Comeback?
Speaker: Professor Charles A. Kupchan
Discussant: Thomas Carothers
Chair: Professor Michael Cox
The election of Barack Obama has precipitated a surge of interest in the future of transatlantic relations following the disharmony of the Bush years. But is the thaw in the Atlantic Alliance a sign that the West has common interests and can act in pursuit of them, or merely the dying breath of an alliance that sees the world in fundamentally different ways?
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IDEAS Graduate Seminar
20 January 2009, LSE
The Balkans in Turmoil - Yugoslav Political Crisis and its Position Between the Blocs 1966-1971
Speaker: Ante Batovic
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
Ante Batovic presents the results of his doctoral dissertation research on the influence of the liberal reforms in Yugoslavia and their implications on Yugoslavia's international position between 1966 and 1971. His research shows that Yugoslavia made an irretrievable shift towards the West in this period, and that both Belgrade and the West feared Soviet intervention if the liberalisation process in Yugoslavia went too far.
Read paper.
IDEAS Transatlantic Programme Roundtable in association with Carnegie Europe
21 January 2009, LSE
The Reality of Hope-Obama and Europe after the Inauguration
Speakers: Robert Kagan; Charles Grant; Robin Niblett, Professor Michael Cox, Gideon Rachman
Chair: Fabrice Pothier
As Barack Obama prepares for the daunting inbox of challenges awaiting him after his inauguration, his administration faces both unprecedented enthusiasm and expectations from Europe. The question remains, however, as to what extent the U.S. and Europe are ready to fulfil each other's expectations, interests and needs for collaboration to address global issues like stability in South East Asia and Afghanistan, peace in the Middle East, climate change, and rebuilding the global economy.
Philippe Roman Chair Lecture
22 January 2009, LSE
The Great Transformation: How China Changed in the Long 1970s
Speaker: Chen Jian
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
China's adoption of a new path toward modernity, one that champions ‘reform and opening to the outside world’, had profound significance not only for China itself but also for the rest of the world. What were the origins of this ‘Great Transformation’?
Professor Chen offers a historian's overview of China's 1970s transformation and the beginning of global systemic change that this transformation helped create.
Listen to the Lecture
IDEAS Transatlantic Programme Seminar
23 January 2009, LSE
NATO: From Kosovo to Afghanistan
Speaker: Jamie Shea (Director of Policy Planning in the Private Office of the NATO Secretary General)
Chair: Professor Michael Cox
At the beginning of Barack Obama's Presidency NATO faces important challenges on the ground in Afghanistan and in policy terms in 2009 with a new Strategic Concept. Jamie Shea reflects on how NATO got here and what the future may hold for the Transatlantic Alliance.
IDEAS Southern Africa Programme Seminar
23 January 2009, LSE
CCBH / IDEAS Witness Seminar: Britain and South Africa: Road to Democracy
Hosted by LSE IDEAS in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary British History.
British politicians faced substantial challenges on how best to promote and support peaceful change inside South Africa. It will be the aim of this witness seminar to provide an unique oral history account of an issue which had complicated the United Kingdom's relationship with the Commonwealth and prestige within the wider international community, and the view of leading contemporary British actors on the process of the final transition to democracy in 1994.
The meeting was chaired by Professor Jack Spence, former Academic Adviser to the Royal College of Defence Staff, and Visiting Lecturer, King's College, London. Participants include Lord Howe (former Foreign Secretary), Lord Powell, Sir Bernard Ingham (Press Secretary to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), Richard Dowden (Chairman, Royal Africa Society); and Patsy Robertson, formerly Press Officer, the Commonwealth Secretariat.
IDEAS Southern Africa Programme Conference
30-31 January 2009, South Africa
Oral History Conference: Southern Africa in the Cold War era, post-1974
The Southern Africa Programme in IDEAS organised a small oral history conference in South Africa on Liberation in Southern Africa during the Cold War, post-1974, in collaboration with Monash SA University.
The meeting involved active participants in the domestic and regional conflict between the various African liberation movements in Southern Africa (i.e. Zimbabwe, Namibia, South Africa), the white minority governments of South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, and former Soviet and Cuban representatives.
Sponsored by the Aluka Project, the Nordic Afrika Institute and the Journal of Southern African Studies.
IDEAS Book Launch
11 February 2009, LSE
A Cultural Theory of International Relations
Speaker: Professor Richard Ned Lebow
Discussant: Professor Kim Hutchings
Chair: Dr. George Lawson
In this exciting new volume, Professor Lebow introduces his own constructivist theory of political order and international relations based on theories of motives and identity formation drawn from the ancient Greeks.
His theory stresses the human need for self-esteem, and shows how it influences political behaviour at every level of social aggregation. Lebow develops ideal-type worlds associated with four motives: appetite, spirit, reason and fear, and demonstrates how each generates a different logic concerning cooperation, conflict and risk-taking.
IDEAS Gilder Lehrman Lecture Series in American History
24 February, LSE
Democracy in America: Jefferson, Tocqueville, and Lincoln
Speaker: Professor Peter Onuf (Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of American History at the University of Virginia)
Chair: Professor Michael Cox
'Democracy' has always been central to Americans' self-understanding. But what does the term mean?
Drawing on the influential commentary of Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (first published in two volumes, 1835-1840) Professor Onuf explores the development of an elusive and controversial ideal from Thomas Jefferson's revolutionary writings to Abraham Lincoln's great effort to vindicate republican principles in the American Civil War.
IDEAS Seminar
25 February 2009, LSE
How Individual Rights Transformed World Politics
Speaker: Chris Reus-Smit
Discussant: Dr. Kirsten Ainley
Chair: George Lawson
Today's international system is entirely unique: the world's first universal, multi-regional, multi-cultural system of states. Four centuries ago it was a fraction of its present size, limited to Europe, and confined with the cultural bounds of Latin Christendom. How did this transformation occur?
This seminar argues that struggles for the recognition of individual rights played a critical role in the system's globalization. Far from being marginal to world politics, in one crucial respect individual rights made the modern international system.
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IDEAS Seminar
26 February 2009, LSE
Soft Power: Means to China's Peaceful Rise
Speaker: Xu Jian
Soft power has emerged as the dominant paradigm of international relations since the end of the Cold War. In this seminar, IDEAS Visiting Fellow Xu Jian will speak about the role of soft power in China's rise.
IDEAS Seminar
3 March 2009, LSE
Japan and the Cold War: An Overview
Speaker: Anthony Best
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
The degree to which the Cold War shaped the history of modern Japan - the world's first economic superpower - is a topic that is often over-looked in studies of the Soviet-American global confrontation between 1945 and 1991.
Dr Antony Best argues that, while the Cold War was clearly important in Japanese history due to its being a key American ally, the legacy of the Pacific War should not be neglected, and that it was the interplay between these two conflicts that helped to create modern Japan.
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Philippe Roman Chair Lecture
17 March 2009, LSE
What is the significance of 1949?
Speaker: Professor Chen Jian
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
2009 marked the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China, an opportunity to consider and reconsider the Communist revolution in Chinese and world history.
In this lecture Professor Chen offered a critical review of the origins, processes and consequences of the Chinese revolution, arguing that while the revolution's many dark aspects need to be exposed, as a whole it has transformed China and the world for the better.
IDEAS SAP Public Lecture
Indonesia: Global Reach, Regional Role
31 March 2009, LSE
Speaker: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia
Dr. Yudhoyono is currently serving as the 6th President of the Republic of Indonesia. As an intellectual and prolific writer, General (Ret) Yudhoyono has authored a number of books and articles.
This event marked the opening of the Southeast Asia International Affairs Programme at IDEAS.
Event Transcript.
IDEAS Roundtable
April 29 2009, LSE
The Rise and Decline of Putin's Russia
Speakers: Professor Margot Light, Professor Marie Mendras, Dr. Bobo Lo
Chair: Professor Michael Cox
The last ten years have seen a marked deterioration in Russia's relations with the West and the United States. This has happened, not coincidentally, at the same time as Russia began to emerge from the economic doldrums of the 1990s while benefiting enormously from the rise in the world price of oil and gas. But how far is Russia's rise guaranteed?
IDEAS Southern Africa Programme Seminar
30 April 2009, LSE
China Into Africa
Speaker: Dr. Chris Alden
Chair: Dr. Sue Onslow
China's engagement with Africa has been the subject of considerable international controversy and criticism.
What are the rationales behind China's policy towards Africa, and the response of African governments?
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IDEAS Transatlantic Programme Seminar
1 May 2009, LSE
The Last New World Order: The Rise of American Multilateralism and Historical Lessons for Today
Speaker: Dr Stewart Patrick
Chair: Professor Michael Cox
Listen:
IDEAS Roundtable
5 May 2009, LSE
Rising Asia in the World Crisis
The global financial crisis presents both opportunities and challenges to Asia. The initiatives and responses by Asian countries, China and India in particular, have the potential to define the world's path of development now and in the future.
To discuss these issues Chen Jian is joined by Danny Quah (Director of the LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre) and Athar Hussain (Director of the Asia Research Centre).
Listen to the event.
IDEAS Latin America Programme Seminar
6 May 2009, LSE
Venezuela's 'Bolivarian' Process: Achievements, Challenges and Prospects after 10 years
Speaker: Dr Samuel Moncada (Venezuelan Ambassador)
Speaker: Dr Julia Buxton (University of Bradford)
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
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IDEAS Public Lecture & Book Launch
7 May 2009, LSE
Explaining the End of Communism in Europe
Speaker Professor Archie Brown, Discussant Dr. Roy Allison
Chair: Gordon Barrass
Archie Brown addresses the question of why Communist rule ended as suddenly as it did in Europe twenty years ago. The downfall of Communism has been linked to such disparate phenomena as the decline in the rate of economic growth, Soviet failure to keep pace with the technological revolution, the election of a Polish Pope, and the policies of President Ronald Reagan.
IDEAS South East Asia International Affairs Programme Seminar
Friday, 8 May 2009, LSE
Indonesia: The Next Political Phase
Speaker: Mr Karim Raslan
Chair: Dr Munir Majid
Indonesia, has with its recent legislative and upcoming presidential elections made a bold claim for regional, even global prominence. The republic, which some analysts a decade ago were predicting would fragment or fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists, has seen its populist President President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono solidify his power base and move Indonesia to geopolitical prominence.
IDEAS Southern Africa Programme Seminar
8 -9 May 2009, Lisbon, Portugal
Southern Africa in the Cold War Era
Working Expert Seminar hosted by the Cold War Studies Programme at LSE IDEAS in cooperation with the Institute for International Relations, Lisbon.
IDEAS Roundtable
13 May 2009
Declining Hegemon? The United States and the World of Crisis
Speakers: Professor Michael Cox, Professor Danny Quah
Chair: Lord William Wallace
How will the world economic crisis impact the United States? Are we now witnessing the end of the American era?
Cold War Studies Programme Seminar
26 May 2009
A Transnational Community of Solidarity? Western Social Reaction to the Polish Crisis 1980-82
Speaker: Dr. Idesbald Goddeeris
Chair: Dr Svetozar Rajak
The Polish crisis in the beginning of the 1980s provoked strong reactions in the West. In many countries, trade unions and specially founded committees used various methods to express their solidarity with Polish workers. Several arguments give a transnational dimension to this international solidarity campaign.
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IDEAS Latin America Programme Seminar
27 May 2009, LSE
Continuity in an era of upheaval: Sino-Chilean Relations, 1970-1974
Speaker: Maria Montt Strabucchi
Chair: Professor Arne Westad
In December of 1970 in Paris, Chile opened diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, thus closing relations with the Republic of China and completing a historical demand of the Chilean left. This seminar will discuss the role of the Cold War in the establishment of diplomatic relations between Chile and the PRC in 1970 and their continuance in 1973.
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Witness Seminar
29 May 2009
The Cold War in the Caribbean: The Grenada Intervention, 1983
Chair: Professor Paul Sutton, Senior Professor of Caribbean Studies at London Metropolitan University
The event is co-hosted by Centre for Contemporary British History and LSE IDEAS. It will examine British policy during the crisis. By examining the fundamental differences between the USA's and the UK's view of the Grenada intervention, we will be able to see what the differences were between the two countries perceptions and conception of the Cold War.
LSE IDEAS Lecture
12 October 2009
Top Secret: How Intelligence Changed the Cold War and the Lessons for Today
Speaker: Gordon Barrass (former member of the Joint Intelligence Committee)
Chair: Sir Howard Davies
Recent disclosures help clarify one of the most mysterious aspects of the Cold War--the impact of secret intelligence. What part did it play, for instance, in spurring suspicion and rivalry between the two sides, in preventing confrontations getting out of control and contributing to the peaceful ending of the Cold War? What did the two sides not know about each other? And what are the lessons to be learned?
The Defence of the Realm
15 October 2009
For the first time, the British Security Service has opened its archives to an independent historian – Christopher Andrew. In this lecture, Professor Andrew describes how MI5 has been managed, what its relationship has been with government, where it has triumphed and where it has failed.
LSE IDEAS Public Lecture
1 December 2009
What Next for Afghanistan?
Speaker: Antonio Giustozzi
Commentator: Artemy Kalinovxky
Chair: Nigel Ashton
Antonio Giustozzi leads a discussion of the present and coming challenges in Afghanistan.
Dr Giustozzi is research fellow at the Crisis States Research Centre of the London School of Economics, and contributed to the IDEAS Strategic Update on Afghanistan.
Join us at a forthcoming IDEAS event.