Asia 2019: The Experts Forecast

Join us for an annual Asia Society tradition as we look to Asia’s future with Vali Nasr, John Park, and Tom Nagorski. They will discuss some of the most critical developments in Asia in the past year: the nuclear negotiations with North Korea and the absence of them with Iran since the end of the Iran Deal, the ongoing war in Afghanistan and how Pakistan’s new government’s approach to its neighbor, and China’s vision for the region with the Belt and Road Initiative. What’s in store for Asia in 2019?  

Speakers

Vali Nasr is Dean of the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. From 2009 to 2011, he was Special Adviser to the President's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. He is the author of several books, his most recent, The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat deals with the implications of the Obama administration’s foreign policy on American strategic interests. His previous books, Forces of Fortune: The Rise of the New Muslim Middle Class and What It Will Mean for Our World and The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future examined the postwar sectarian violence in Iraq and the Arab Spring uprising, and contributed to U.S. policy formulated in response to those events.

John Park is Director of the Korea Working Group and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, a faculty affiliate with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and advises Northeast Asia policy-focused officials in the U.S. government. He was the 2012–2013 Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow at MIT's Security Studies Program, and previously directed Northeast Asia Track 1.5 projects at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. He worked at Goldman Sachs, where he specialized in U.S. military privatization financing projects, was project leader of the North Korea Analysis Group at Harvard's Belfer Center, and worked in Goldman Sachs’ M&A Advisory Group in Hong Kong and The Boston Consulting Group's Financial Services Practice in Seoul. He is a member of Asia Society's Asia 21 Young Leaders Initiative.

Tom Nagorski (moderator) is Executive Vice President of Asia Society. He joined the Asia Society following a three-decade career in journalism-having served most recently as Managing Editor for International Coverage at ABC News.

This program is made possible through the generous support of the Nicholas and Sheila Platt Endowment for Public Policy.