Panel Discussion
The Missing Middle: How Middle Powers Are Shaping the New World Order
Zoom Webinar
Thusday, June 23, 2022 | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM ET
The importance of middle powers in the postwar international world order is often overlooked. While it may seem at first glance that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was answered unanimously by nations around the world, many emerging economies and middle powers –nations whose hedging strategies can collectively tip the scales in one direction or another—have been much more cautious in their response to the war. Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, and other nations have all responded differently to Russia’s actions; in our Virtual Briefing Series on Thursday, June 23rd at 12 PM EDT, we want to examine what some of these responses have been, the economic drivers and consequences to these responses, and the reactions by great powers in their goals of either preserving or revising the international world order. Joining us for this virtual discussion are Dr. Michael J. Mazarr, Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation, and Dr. Zongyuan Zoe Liu, Fellow for International Political Economy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
COULDN’T ATTEND OUR EVENT? Don’t worry. You can watch it below
Suggested Readings:
Zongyuan Zoe Liu & Mihaela Papa, March 2022, The Anti-Dollar Axis, Foreign Affairs.
Michael J. Mazarr, May 2022, How to Save the Postwar Order, Foreign Affairs.
Interests, not values, underpin Asia’s ambivalence about Russia, April 2022, The Economist.
SPEAKERS:
Dr. Zongyuan Zoe Liu
Zongyuan Zoe Liu is a fellow for international political economy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Her work focuses on international political economy, global financial markets, sovereign wealth funds, supply chains of critical minerals, development finance, emerging markets, energy and climate change policy, and East Asia-Middle East relations. Dr. Liu’s regional expertise is in East Asia, specifically China and Japan, and the Middle East, specifically Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Dr. Liu is the author of Can BRICS De-dollarize the Global Financial System? (Cambridge University Press) and Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions (Harvard University Press, forthcoming 2023).
Prior to joining CFR, Dr. Liu was an instructional assistant professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, DC, where she taught courses on global economy, economic statecraft, and Chinese foreign policy. She joined the Bush School after post-doctoral fellowships at the Columbia-Harvard “China and the World Program” and the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Dr. Liu was a research fellow at the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies and a research associate at the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business. She was also a visiting research fellow at the Institute for International Monetary Affairs in Tokyo, Bank of Mitsubishi-UFJ, and the Delma Institute in Abu Dhabi. She taught courses on Asian energy security and political risk analysis at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Dr. Liu received her PhD in international relations from Johns Hopkins University and her MA in international relations from the George Washington University Elliott School of International Studies. She received her BA in history from Shandong Normal University in Jinan, China. Dr. Liu is also a CFA charterholder.
Michael J. Mazarr
Michael J. Mazarr is a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation. Previously he worked at the U.S. National War College, where he was professor and associate dean of academics; as president of the Henry L. Stimson Center; senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; senior defense aide on Capitol Hill; and as a special assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His primary interests are U.S. defense policy and force structure, disinformation and information manipulation, East Asian security, nuclear weapons and deterrence, and judgment and decisionmaking under uncertainty. Mazarr holds a Ph.D. in public policy from the University of Maryland.
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