Foreign Policy Blogs

World Leadership Forum

704304.jpgI was lucky enough to attend the Foreign Policy Association sponsored 2008 World Leadership Forum yesterday in New York City and here is a short summary/analysis of what I saw and heard from some of the world's leading experts and leaders of various foreign policy issues, including our beloved Central Asian region.

During yesterday's session I attended two panel discussions about the global economic outlook and energy security and heard speeches from the President's of Spain, Poland, and Turkey. The two parts of the Forum that contained issues most central to the CA region were the panel on Energy Security, featuring EU Commissioner for External Relations and Neighborhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who has been mentioned much on this page and just recently concluded a forum on security in Paris with Central Asian state leaders, and Turkey's President Abdullah Gul, who not only gave a solid speech but took questions from the audience for nearly a half an hour.  But I would first like to go over a few more general observations.

First off, it was intriguing and enlightening to hear from some of Wall Street's biggest investment firms’ representatives, including Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, and other finance sector experts and what they had to say about the current economic crisis and the US government's bailout proposal.  Unsurprisingly, they all seemed to support the bailout.  They talked about the crisis from a mainly US perspective, but also discussed how foreign markets, especially China, were effected.  They also touched on what the future might hold for the US and world economy, and there also seemed to be a consensus that the US and world's was in for an economic slowdown, but nothing too dramatically destabilizing.

Secondly, listening to the back-to-back speeches by Spain President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Polish President Lech Kaczynski was like seeing two different world's collide, at least concerning world outlooks.  Zapatero discussed terrorism a decent amount, but otherwise his speech was about ‘cooperation,’ ‘equality,’ and world social and economic development.  Kaczynski's speech was much more combatative and largely concerned Poland's fears of a rising and dangerous Russia.  Though both Poland and Spain are members of NATO and the EU, they seemed to live in two different worlds.  Spain in Kant's land of perpetual peace and Poland in Hobbes’ land of perpetual fear and pain.  It was realism vs. international liberalism going at it in front of my very eyes.  Interesting stuff to say the least for an international relations guy such as myself.  The FPA may post the transcripts from the speeches and I will make sure to link to them when they do.

Alright, I apologize for the detour. I’ve been covering energy supplies, security, politics in Central Asia for awhile now and in doing this I came across the work of Benita Ferrero-Waldner's work for the EU on several occasions so it was great to see and hear from her in person.  She mainly spoke in generalities, like a diplomat normally does, but she did have some telling quotes about EU's relationship with Russia and the Central Asian states concerning energy supplies.  She called bilateral deals in Central Asia the 'top political priority’ for the EU, especially in light of what she called the 'situation’ in Georgia.  She mentioned the recent Memorandum of Understandings signed with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and about her hopes for the Nabucco pipeline becoming a reality.  She stated that the EU desired a ‘level playing field’ with Russia and that energy was a ‘fundamental part of foreign policy’ today, not just of the EU, but nearly all nation's foreign relations.  However, she did not discuss the difficulty in making deals with the Central Asian state's leaders who have well-known human rights violations, and unfortunately I did have time to bring this up during the Q and A.  Turkish President Gul was very accomodating and answered many questions about a range of issues, including energy supplies.  Though he tip-toed around commenting on the Georgian conflict he voiced his strong support for Turkey's rights to transit oil and gas from the Caucasus and Central Asia.  He basically provided the audience with a rundown of all the pipelines and transit routes that traverse Turkish territory on their way to Europe, mainly of course the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which he stated also emphasized included resources from Kazakhstan.  Concerning the Nabucco pipeline project from Central Asia through Turkey to Austria, he called it a 'strategic project’ and strongly disagreed with those who called it a ‘dream’, saying; ‘No, that's what they said about the BTC.’

Questions? Comments? Anybody else that attended?

 

Author

Patrick Frost

Patrick Frost recently graduated from New York University's Masters Program in Political Science - International Relations. His MA thesis analyzed the capabilities and objectives of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Central Asia and beyond and explored how these affected U.S. interests and policy.

Areas of Focus:
Eurasia, American Foreign Policy, Ideology, SCO