Annual Ikeda Peace and Harmony Lecture: After Afghanistan - What's Next?

Synopsis:
Stewart will discuss the recent happening in Afghanistan. This marks the end of 30 years of intervention in a project that has engaged some of the most powerful countries in the world in trillion-dollar wars. The project lurched from the most unrealistic optimism to the bleakest pessimism. But it overlooked the possibility of a more thoughtful moderate approach to intervention - an approach that worked in Bosnia, and latterly in Afghanistan. And it is this - forgotten model of a light footprint - which still provides a hope for the US and its allies - an alternative to Imperial pride and abject isolation.

Rory Stewart is a Senior Fellow at the Jackson Institute, Yale University. Stewart focuses on contemporary politics in crisis and on international development and intervention in fragile and conflict-affected states.

Speaker Bio:
Stewart was the UK Secretary of State for International Development where he doubled the U.K.’s investment in international climate and environment. Prior to that Stewart served in a variety of roles including Minister of the environment, Minister of State responsible for development policy in the Middle East and Asia and UK policy in Africa, as Minister of State for Justice, and as Chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. Earlier in his career, he served briefly as an infantry officer and then as a diplomat for the UK government in Indonesia, the Balkans and Iraq. He founded and ran the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Afghanistan and was the Director of the Carr Centre and the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Stewart has also written four books: The Places in Between, Occupational Hazards or The Prince of the Marshes, Can Intervention Work?; and The Marches.

Moderator Bio:
Orlando Woods is Associate Professor of Humanities at Singapore Management University. His research interests span religion, urban environments and digital cultures in Asia. He is the co-editor of Religion, Hypermobility and Digital Media in Global Asia: Faith, Flows and Fellowship (2020, with Catherine Gomes and Lily Kong), and the author of various journal articles and book chapters on the digital transformation of society and space. He holds BA (First Class Honours) and PhD degrees in Geography from University College London and the National University of Singapore respectively.