Overall, the world has never been so peaceful as it is now! Steven Pinker has documented how deaths from inter-state war have plummeted. Yet, many inter-state disputes remain alive, threatening war, including between India and Pakistan, China and Japan, the US and Iran, Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine.
Professor Kishore Mahbubani’s thirty-three years in the Singapore Foreign Service, including two stints as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN, taught him that diplomacy works. As humanity overall becomes better educated, and with the spread of Western Enlightenment principles of reason, we have seen how some states have used freeze, talk and trade to ameliorate, and even solve, long-standing disputes.
This lecture will discuss both positive and negative case studies to demonstrate how these three principles should now be adopted by all disputing states.
Speaker
Professor Kishore Mahbubani
Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Research Institute
National University of Singapore
For more details, please visit the Singapore Mediation Lecture 2021 website.
