The Great Experiment: Globalization

On April 16th, The Levin Institute and Bard's Globalizaton and International Affairs Program co-hosted a lecture as part of the James Chase Memorial Lecture Series. Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institute, former Deputy Secretary of State and author of the book “The Great Experiment: Globalization”, came to Levin to discuss his book.

Talbott’s lecture presented a general overview of globalization, looking at it through the lens of big history, and seeing it in relation to the long history of global governance. The beginning of the lecture referenced Socrates famous claim to be a “citizen of the world”, and followed by discussing successive examples of imperial empires that came into and fell out of power over the span of recorded history.

Talbott presented the three biggest issues he believes the world faces: climate change, the potential for nuclear war, and the meltdown of the modern global economy.

He drew a connection between the need for nuclear power as an alternative energy source to help slow global warming and the importance of creating and strengthening regional and global organizations to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorist organizations.
Talbott also discussed the importance of stabilizing the global economy in order to finance the development of new technologies to help curb global warming trends.

In conclusion Talbott stressed that the problems we face globally are interconnected and the solutions must also be interconnected. Talbott believes that the only way to achieve results on a global scale will be to implement a more effective global governance.