Inspired Post #4: Experience Can Provide Such Revealing Insight

After talking with several people in the class after our trip to CSIS, it seemed that many of us were extremely struck with our time with Arnaud de Borchgrave. One of the key points that really resonated with me during our discussion was his impression of just how many struggles we were going to face over the course of our careers. After looking at how the world is becoming globalized over the course of this semester, it makes sense but hearing it from someone with so much experience and background in the changing world climate made it feel all the more apparent.

What do you guys think? In looking at our four final presentations, it seems we can identify threats in four main categories: energy, disease, crime, and international affairs. Simply looking at this, I think our great challenge would be to tackle all of it over the course of our lifetimes. An ambitious and possibly naive approach? Perhaps. But as we have learned over the course of our semester, it is that everything is interconnected and interlaced in our world today. In completing our final policy brief, this is a lesson that seemed particularly strong; a simple solution will not suffice. We must examine issues from all angles and from as many perspectives as possible in order to find the optimal solution.


So let’s examine the issue that we have grappled with over the course of the semester, the possible slipping of U.S. power. In taking what we learned over the last few weeks we must look at this issue on all fronts and make improvements. An article published earlier this year in Financial Policy highlights the multi-faceted nature of this issue. However, it ends on a subject that I think is a good place to begin when attempting to tackle this question - China. If we are to evaluate our slipping economic power in terms of policy towards China, then I think we can begin to make progress in each of these areas. As we heard during our week at CSIS, Henry Kissinger recently came out with a book on China and held a book discussion at CSIS.

If you watch the first five min or so of this discussion, you will hear Kissinger discuss cooperation with China and establishing our position with respect to them. However, can we really ever be in complete cooperation with an entity that has such vastly different thought processes as we do? I think we can attempt to make compromises and efforts but complete understand on one side or the other may not be possible in an equitable sense. I don't know about you but I might take a look at Kissinger's new book over break and see what his take on it is.