Annual Ikeda Peace and Harmony Lecture: After Afghanistan - What's Next?
From Yew Ming YAP
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From Yew Ming YAP
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.