A 2020 Vision

“Contesting the Indo Pacific for global domination” is a paradigm whose time has come.

An examination of this paradigm forms the substance of this year’s Global Dialogue Security Summit organised by Global Dialogue Forum (GDF) and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS).

The digital conference will analyse through eminent speakers various facets of the shift in global power to the Indo Pacific region from the Atlantic, and its civilisational consequences – from security to the environment to the economy to international law to technological advancements.

Under scrutiny will be the struggle for global domination through the ages, from the primarily land-based, dominant empires of antiquity to the more recent successors founded on sea power through European naval might colonising distant lands to exploit their natural resources.

As the influence of a world order that prospered on the exploitation of weaker nations waned following World War II, another alliance emerged, the US-led Atlantic bloc which confronted  and vanquished another mainly European grouping, led by the Soviet Union.

This mainly Western coalition, facing another challenge to global domination – this time Asian and led by China – is once again splitting the world into power blocs, this time confronting each other in the Indo Pacific theatre.

Speakers will dwell on the current, second decade of the 21st Century, and the forces of change as they bring about fundamental strategic restructuring – configured around the traditional powers of the past and the emerging Asian civilisational powers of China, India, Japan, Korea and Iran.

The thrust for dominance in this emerging multipolar world has resulted in the emergence of two blocs – one led by the US and the other by China and Russia – leaving the aspirational middle powers such as India, Iran, Indonesia and Australia under pressure to choose one side or the other, as in the Cold War era of the Eastern and Western power blocs.

The Indo Pacific theatre of confrontation is the epicentre of economic wealth and prosperity.

The confrontation – that looks set to trigger a successor to the Cold War era – is located in this region – from the South China Sea to the Straits of Melaka, edging up to the Persian Gulf.

These systemic changes since the end of the Cold War that followed, the unipolar moment, the age of asymmetric conflicts, as well as the economic, technological and societal transformations brought about by globalisation to combine in a ‘perfect storm’, made worse by the pandemic of COVID-19.

China has already struck a blow in this confrontation by leading 15 nations including ASEAN and Japan into the greatest economic grouping the world has ever seen.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is made up of 10 Southeast Asian countries, as well as South Korea, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

India has stayed out of this grouping along with the US, with consequences that this conference will scrutinise.

The pact is seen as an extension of China’s influence in the region. 

The conference will attempt to find an insight into whether these developments will result in a cataclysmic restructuring of the current World Order, leading to dramatic changes in the prevailing economic, political, ideational systems.

Are we witnessing a repetition of history or will there be clear break from the past?

Can the turbulence of change, fuelled by the ascendance of China and India as military and economic powers, bring about equitable reform of global multilateral institutions?

As the third decade of the 21st century approaches – conditioned by the simultaneous surge of both conflict and disease across the globe, influenced by spectacular scientific advances, can the humanity reassert itself?

GLOBAL DIALOGUE FORUM  & KONRAD ADENAUER STIFTUNG

The Global Dialogue Security Summit ­– A 2020 Vision

Contesting the Indo Pacific for Global Domination 

Date: Friday/Saturday, December 11-12, 2020 

Mode – Online 

Day I 

1000    INAUGURAL SESSION     

Welcome Address: Moses Manoharan, Chairman, Global Dialogue Forum 

Keynote Address: General Bipin Rawat, PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, YSM, SM, VSM, Chief of Defence Staff of the armed forces of India

Summing up: Peter Rimmele, India head of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung                             

SESSION I – 1100 hrs-1230 hrs 

High Tide in the Indo Pacific

“.. man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible.” Max Weber

Speaker – H.E. Mr Barry O’Farell AO, Australian High Commissioner to India, former Premier of South Wales

Speaker – Admiral Arun Prakash PVSM, AVSM, VrC, VSM (Retd), eminent defence analyst, former Chief of Naval Staff of the Indian Navy, Chairman, Chiefs of the Naval Staff of the Indian Navy, Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee, Indian armed forces

SESSION II – 1230 hrs to 1400 hrs 

Connecting with Europe

“T is not too late to seek a newer world.” Alfred Lord Tennyson

Speaker – Associate Professor Priya Poojary, Manipal Centre for European Studies, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India

Speaker – Ambassador Ruchi Ghanashyam IFS (Retd), Former Indian High Commissioner to UK

SESSION III – 1400 hrs to 1530 hrs   

Towards an Equitable Global Economic Order

“Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbours” Confucius

Speaker –  Mr. Rahul Chhabra, IFS, Secretary (Economic Relations), Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi

Speaker – Dr. Rathin Roy, Managing Director, Overseas Development Institute, London, UK

Speaker: Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, Distinguished Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Former Permanent Secretary, Singapore Foreign Ministry, founding Dean Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

Speaker: Ambassador A.R. Ghanashyam IFS (Retd)

SESSION IV – 1700 hrs to 1830 hrs

Maritime Rules

Speaker – Dr. Jeffrey Becker, Research Programme Director, Indo Pacific Security Affairs, Centre for Naval Analyses, George Washington University, Washington DC, USA

Speaker – Dr. Connie Bakrie, President, Indonesia Institute for Maritime Studies, Jakarta, and Trustee at National Air Power and Space Centre of Indonesia

DAY I CONCLUDES 

DAY II

SESSION VI – 1700 hrs to 1800 hrs

Eurasia in the New World Order

“History is marked by alternating movements across the imaginary line that separates East from West in Eurasia.” Herodotus

Speaker –Dr. Laura Yereksheva, Professor at al Farabi Kazakh National University, Almaty, Kazakhstan

Speaker– Lt. General Arun Kumar Sahni UYSM,SM,VSM (Retd), former General Officer Commanding in Chief, South Western Command, Director General, Indian National Association, Club of Rome

 SESSION VII –  1100hrs to 1230 hrs

 The Future of India

“Sweet is the world, I wish ne’er to depart, I yearn for a dwelling place in humanity’s heart.” Rabindranath Tagore

Speaker  – Professor John Varghese, Principal, St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi

Speaker – Mr. Salman Khurshid, former External Affairs Minister of India. Previously India’s Minister for Law and Justice 

SESSION VIII – 1230 hrs to 1400 hrs  

Water of Life

“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.” Hermann Hesse

Speaker – Ms. Ritu Rao, specialist on urban water bodies, TERI School of advanced Studies, New Delhi

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SESSION IX -1400hrs to 1530hrs

Overcoming the 21st Century’s Existential Threats

“I call all things sin which bring misery to a fellow creature. Sin is to cause pain to another, whether man or beast.” Kartini

Speaker – Dr. Mathias Strummer, Head of Research Center for Digital Sustainability, Bern University, Switzerland

Speaker – Mr. Shreyas Jayasimha, Head of Aarna Law, Aarna ADR, Singapore, space, technology and nuclear law specialist

Speaker – Professor Carlos Masala, Director of Project Metis: Institute for Strategy & Foresight and Chair for International Relations, University of German Bunderwehr, Munich, Germany

 SESSION X – 1430 hrs to 1530 hrs

VALEDICTORY

“It is in playing safe that we create a world of insecurity”. Dag Hammarakjold

Speaker – Air Marshal Diptendu Choudhury, AVSM, VM, VSM, Commandant, National Defence College, India’s highest seat for strategic learning for senior military and civil service officers

VOTE OF THANKS

Mr. Pankaj Madan, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung India