Speakers:

Parag Khanna: Director, Global Governance Initiative; author, How To Run The World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance

Geo-strategist Parag Khanna is a Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation, and was a foreign policy adviser to President Obama during his campaign. Khanna agrees that we have entered a new Middle Ages, a chaotic, multi-polar, borderless world. His manifesto stresses the need to develop new directions in 'mega-diplomacy' involving governmental, NGO, philanthropic, and individually motivated coalitions. They are the key to fighting global poverty, rebuilding failed states, combating terrorism, and preventing environmental collapse.

Steven Weber: Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley and author, The End of Arrogance: America in the Global Competition of Ideas

Free-market capitalism, hegemony, Western culture, peace, and democracy—the ideas that shaped world politics in the 20th century and underpinned American foreign policy—have lost a good deal of their strength. Steven Weber argues that the US must focus on new strategies and making realistic trade-offs. We must compete not as a military power—but in the global marketplace of ideas to win influence. At the core of America's efforts on the global stage must be a new conception of the world order based on mutuality.

Moderator: Bruce Pickering, Director, Asia Society Northern California