Recording of the debate at the Battle of Ideas Festival 2018.
Visiting Europe in the summer, President Trump lambasted Germany’s relationship with Russia, took a dig at Theresa May’s Brexit strategy and seemingly sided with Vladimir Putin against America’s own intelligence agencies. The UK’s former foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, also famously made numerous diplomatic gaffes. Once diplomacy was regarded as a careful art, furthering national interests through back-channels and coded language, and pursued by highly educated diplomats. But in recent years, politicians have seemed keener to make loud public statements at the expense of cool negotiation. Why do politicians seem to respond to events on the hoof rather than pursuing a long-term strategy? Are they playing with fire?
MARY DEJEVSKY
former foreign correspondent in Moscow, Paris and Washington; special correspondent in China; writer and broadcaster
PROFESSOR BILL DURODIÉ
chair of international relations, University of Bath
DR SEAN LANG
senior lecturer in History, Anglia Ruskin University; author, First World War for Dummies
CARNE ROSS
author, The Leaderless Revolution; executive director, Independent Diplomat
#LockdownDebates: Has Covid-19 killed globalism?
#EconomyForum: Covid-19 and the US economy
#LockdownDebates: Is ‘gotcha’ journalism the new normal?
#EconomyForum: China, Covid-19 and the West
#BookClub: The moral dilemma of Ian McEwen’s Machines Like Me
#Arts&SocietyForum: How Salman Rushdie changed everything
#LockdownDebates: How much should we listen to experts?
#EducationForum: Is it time to reopen our schools?
#EconomyForum: Covid-19, from Germany to the developing world
#Arts&SocietyForum: The Burial at Thebes and the tragic imagination in poetry
#EconomyForum: How can we escape a coronavirus depression?
#EducationForum: Pedagogy and the ’Corona Classroom’
#EconomyForum: How will coronavirus affect Johnsonomics?
#PodcastOfIdeas: Is the lockdown lifting in Europe?
#PodcastOfIdeas: Has Coronavirus put an end to the generation wars?
#BookClub: Power, democracy and coronavirus in George Orwell’s Animal Farm
#SportscastOfIdeas: Missing the beautiful game
#PodcastOfIdeas: Facing the lockdown from Singapore to Johannesburg
#PodcastOfIdeas: The European response to Covid-19
#PodcastOfIdeas: Life in times of Corona
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free