Power Dynamics in the Asia-Pacific

Reception from 5:30 p.m.
Program begins at 6:30 p.m.

Wealth and power are shifting east. Three of the world’s four largest economies are in Asia, and the fourth, the United States, is a Pacific power. By 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in Asia, compared with just over a tenth in the West. Asia’s economic transformation is reshaping the global distribution of power, changing the way the region — and indeed the world — works politically and strategically. Just as significantly, tensions between Asian powers will define war and peace in the 21st century.

The Lowy Institute — an independent, non-partisan, international policy think tank based in Australia — has created an Asia Power Index, the most comprehensive assessment of power and influence in Asia ever undertaken. It measures and ranks 25 countries — including the United States, as the major external player in Asia — in terms of their power. The Index evaluates each country on 114 indicators of power, including measures of economic, military, defense, diplomatic, and cultural power.

On the occasion of the launch of this Index, join us for a conversation on power dynamics across the Asia-Pacific, in a panel discussion chaired by Lowy Institute Executive Director Michael Fullilove with speakers including ASPI President the Hon. Kevin Rudd, Permanent Representative of Singapore to the United Nations H.E. Ambassador Burhan Gafoor,  POLITICO commentator Susan Glasser, and Director of the Lowy Institute's Asia Power Index Project Herve Lamanhieu. The panel will cover topics such as the most powerful players in the region, the economic trajectories of Asian powers, whether economic or military power proves mightier in the region, and potential solutions to the region’s increasingly volatile security situation.

Speakers

Burhan Gafoor is the Permanent Representative of Singapore to the United Nations. During his distinguished diplomatic career, Ambassador Gafoor has been Singapore’s High Commissioner to Australia, Ambassador to France, Ambassador and Chief Negotiator for United Nations Climate Change Negotiations, and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva. He holds a bachelor’s of social science from the National University of Singapore, a master’s in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a degree in public administration from the École nationale d’administration in Paris.

Susan Glasser is a renowned foreign policy journalist. She served as Founding Editor of the award-winning POLITICO Magazine and went on to become Editor of POLITICO throughout the 2016 election cycle. She is a former Editor-in-Chief of Foreign Policy magazine, spent four years traveling the former Soviet Union as the Washington Post’s Moscow Co-Bureau Chief (and spent a decade with the Post), has covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and co-authored Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin and the End of Revolution.

Hervé Lemahieu is the Director of the Lowy Institute Asia Power Index project. Prior to joining the Lowy Institute, he was Research Associate for Political Economy and Security at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). In parallel, he worked alongside the IISS Director of Studies on the development of the Institute’s worldwide research activities. He covers the political economy, foreign policy, and military-civil relations of Southeast Asia. He has an MSc in Global Governance and Diplomacy from St Antony’s College, Oxford and an MA in International Relations and Modern History from the University of St Andrews.

The Hon. Kevin Rudd is the inaugural President of the Asia Society Policy Institute. He served as Australia’s 26th Prime Minister (2007-2010, 2013) and as Foreign Minister (2010-2012). He is a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House and the Paulson Institute and a Distinguished Statesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also Vice Chair of the International Peace Institute, Chair of Sanitation and Water for All, and a member of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization’s Group of Eminent Persons. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese and serves as a Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Michael Fullilove (Discussion Chair) is Executive Director of the Lowy Institute, and has been associated with the organization since its establishment 15 years ago. He has also worked as a lawyer, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and an adviser to former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating. He remains a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Brookings and serves on the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Dr. Fullilove also studied as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he completed a master's degree and a doctorate in international relations.

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