Today, leaders from the U.S., India, Japan, and Australia will meet virtually for the first-ever ‘Quad’ security summit. In other news, officials from the U.S. and China announced that they will meet next week in Alaska to discuss a range of policy issues, China and Russia agreed to jointly build a lunar research station, and the Biden administration imposed its first sanctions against Iran over human rights abuses. Read more below.
This Week's Content Highlights
Features from Aspen Strategy Group Members
Madeleine Albright in a Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics discussion: “The Future of Diplomacy Is Female: A Conversation with Secretary Madeleine Albright”
Nicholas Burns on The Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast: “Biden Makes Friends with 'The West': Politics Weekly Extra”
Michèle Flournoy in an Atlantic Council discussion: “International Women’s Day 2021: The Future of Defense and Security”
Jane Harman on Yahoo Finance: “How Biden’s Administration Could Tackle the U.S. Defense and Intelligence Budget”
Anja Manuel on Bloomberg News: "The U.S. Should Not Meddle in Beijing's Affairs"
Condoleezza Rice in a Hoover Institution discussion: “Women’s Leadership and National Security”
David Sanger, Julian Barnes, and Nicole Perlroth in The New York Times: “Preparing for Retaliation Against Russia, U.S. Confronts Hacking by China”
Anne-Marie Slaughter in The U.S. Army War College Quarterly: “Seeing in Stereo”
Dan Sullivan, Lisa Murkowski, and Don Young in The Anchorage Daily News: “Even During a Pandemic, the Iconic Iditarod Continues”
Fran Townsend featured in The Wall Street Journal: “Activision Blizzard Says Frances Townsend Will Oversee Compliance”
Tweet of the Week
Upcoming Events
The View from London:
The United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State Dominic Raab
Speaker
Dominic Raab
Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State
The United Kingdom
In Conversation With
Andrea Mitchell
Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent and Chief Washington Correspondent, NBC News
Host, Andrea Mitchell Reports, MSNBC
Introduced By
Nicholas Burns
Executive Director, Aspen Strategy Group
Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations,
Harvard Kennedy School
Wednesday, March 17
9:00 - 10:00 AM EDT / 1:00 - 2:00 PM GMT
Things to Know
Stay Informed with Important Analysis Relevant to Aspen Security Forum Discussions
Things to Know
Content Relevant to Aspen Security Forum Discussions
Bob Davis and Alex Leary in The Wall Street Journal: “Top U.S., China Officials to Meet Next Week in Alaska on Range of Issues”
Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Lara Jakes, and David Zucchino in The New York Times: “U.S. Pushes U.N.-Led Peace Conference in Letter to Afghan Leader”
David Ignatius in The Washington Post: “The U.S. Is Quietly Mobilizing Its Economy Against China”
Brad Lendon and Selina Wang for CNN: “Leaders of U.S., Japan, India, and Australia to Meet in First-Ever 'Quad' Summit”
Scott Neuman for NPR: “China, Russia Announce Plan to Build Moon Research Station”
Reuters: “U.S. State Dept. Blacklists Two Iranian Officials Over Human Rights Violations”
Philip Stephens in Financial Times: “Squandering Trust Is No Route to a ‘Global Britain’”
Dov Zakheim in The Hill: “A One-Day 'Stand Down' Is Not Enough to Address Extremism in the Military
Book of the Week
By Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis
"From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the U.S. and China in the South China Sea in 2034--and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration.
[2034] is a disturbingly plausible work of speculative fiction, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral who has spent much of his career strategically outmaneuvering America's most tenacious adversaries. Written with a powerful blend of geopolitical sophistication and human empathy, 2034 takes us inside the minds of a global cast of characters--Americans, Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Indians--as a series of arrogant miscalculations on all sides leads the world into an intensifying international storm. In the end, China and the United States will have paid a staggering cost, one that forever alters the global balance of power.
Everything in 2034 is an imaginative extrapolation from present-day facts on the ground combined with the authors' years working at the highest and most classified levels of national security. Sometimes it takes a brilliant work of fiction to illuminate the most dire of warnings: 2034 is all too close at hand, and this cautionary tale presents the reader a dark yet possible future that we must do all we can to avoid."
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