Topic: Foreign Policy

Erik R. Peterson

Erik Peterson is a partner and the managing director of the firm’s Global Business Policy Council (GBPC), a strategic advisory service specifically designed for the world's top CEOs and far-sighted thought leaders in both business and government. He joined in the firm in February 2010.

He is also a senior adviser at CSIS, the Washington-based bipartisan, nonprofit think tank on foreign policy and national security issues. Formerly (1998–2010), he was senior vice president at CSIS. He also held the CSIS William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis, an endowed chair named in honor of Merrill Lynch chairman emeritus Bill Schreyer. From 2003 to 2010, Peterson served as director of the CSIS Global Strategy Institute—a “think tank within a think tank”—which he established in 2003 to assess long-range trends. Previously, he was director of studies at CSIS (1992–2003), in which capacity, he oversaw and coordinated programs, projects, and publications across the organization.  Before joining CSIS, Peterson was director of research at Kissinger Associates, the international consulting firm chaired by former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger.

Peterson currently serves on several advisory boards, including the Center for Global Business Studies at Pennsylvania State University and the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. In past years he has also served on the judging panel of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation for its prize in national security reporting, as a fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of the forum’s Global Risk Network.

For the past four years, he has served on the judging panel of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation for its prize in national security reporting. In December 2009, he was named distinguished faculty associate in international business at the Smeal School of Business at Penn State University. In October 2008, he was appointed visiting scholar at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. A sought-after public speaker, Peterson has addressed numerous groups and lectured in 48 U.S. states and 28 countries. He has spoken regularly at a wide array of U.S. government institutions, including the Army Medical Strategic Leadership Program, Army War College, Coast Guard, Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Department of State, Interagency Institute for Federal Health Care Executives, Internal Revenue Service, Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Defense University, Proteus, Reserve Forces Policy Board, USAID, and the Western Governors Association. In addition, he has had extensive interface with major corporations and trade associations the world over.

The author of several publications, Peterson is now completing a book on global strategic trends and their effects on governance structures in societies across the world. Recent writings include “Race to the Future” (The Age, November 20, 2009), “The World is Dry” (SAISphere, May 2008). Together with Rachel Posner, he is author of “The World’s Water Challenge,” (Current History, January 2010), Water and Energy Futures in an Urbanized Asia: Sustaining the Tiger (CSIS, December 2007), and Global Water Futures: A Roadmap for Future U.S. Policy (CSIS, September 2008). Erik contributed a chapter entitled “Scanning the More Distant Future” to For the Common Good: The Ethics of Leadership in the 21st Century (Praeger, 2006). He also serves on the editorial review boards of the SAIS Review and Diplomatic Courier.

Peterson received his M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, his M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), and his B.A. from Colby College.

He holds the Certificate of Eastern European Studies from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and the Certificate in International Legal Studies from The Hague Academy of International Law (The Netherlands).

Eric Edelman

Eric S. Edelman retired as a career minister from the U.S. Foreign Service on May 1, 2009.

He is currently distinguished fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a visiting scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at the Johns Hopkins University and a senior associate of the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

Edelman has served in senior positions at the Departments of State and Defense as well as the White House where he led organizations providing analysis, strategy, policy development, security services, trade advocacy, public outreach, citizen services and congressional relations. As the undersecretary of defense for policy (August, 2005-January 2009) he oversaw strategy development as DoD’s senior policy official with global responsibility for bilateral defense relations, war plans, special operations forces, homeland defense, missile defense, nuclear weapons and arms control policies, counter-proliferation, counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism, arms sales, and defense trade controls.

He served as U.S. ambassador to the Republics of Finland and Turkey in the Clinton and Bush Administrations and was principal deputy assistant to the vice president for national security affairs. In other assignment he has been chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, special assistant to Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Robert Kimmitt and special assistant to Secretary of State George Shultz.

His other assignments include the State Department Operations Center, Prague, Moscow, and Tel Aviv, where he was a member of the U.S. Middle East delegation to the West Bank/Gaza autonomy talks. He has been awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Presidential Distinguished Service Award, and several Department of State Superior Honor Awards.

In January 2011 he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur by the French Government.

He received a bachelor's degree in history and government from Cornell University and a doctorate in U.S. diplomatic history from Yale University.

Arvind Subramanian

Arvind Subramanian currently serves as the chief economic advisor to the government of India. He is on leave for public service from his position as the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Formerly an economist at the International Monetary Fund, he is a widely cited expert on the economics of India, China, and the changing balance of global economic power.

He was assistant director in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. He served at the GATT (1988–92) during the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations and taught at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government (1999–2000) and at Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced International Studies (2008–10).

He has written on growth, trade, development, institutions, aid, oil, India, Africa, and the World Trade Organization. He has published widely in academic and other journals, including the American Economic Review (Papers and Proceedings), Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Economic Growth, Journal of Development Economics, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, International Monetary Fund Staff Papers, Foreign Affairs, World Economy, and Economic and Political Weekly.

He has also published or been cited in leading magazines and newspapers, including the Economist, Financial Times, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and New York Review of Books. He contributes frequently to the Financial Times and is a columnist in India's leading financial daily, Business Standard.

His book India's Turn: Understanding the Economic Transformation was published in 2008. His book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance was published in 2011, and he is coauthor of Who Needs to Open the Capital Account? (2012).

Foreign Policy magazine has named him as one of the world's top 100 global thinkers in 2011.

He obtained his undergraduate degree from St. Stephens College, Delhi; his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, India; and his M.Phil and D.Phil from the University of Oxford, UK.

Kishore Mahbubani

A student of philosophy and history, Kishore Mahbubani has had the good fortune of enjoying a career in government and, at the same time, in writing on public issues. With the Singapore Foreign Service from 1971 to 2004, he had postings in Cambodia (where he served during the war in 1973-74), Malaysia, Washington DC and New York, where he served two stints as Singapore’s Ambassador to the UN and as President of the UN Security Council in January 2001 and May 2002. He was Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Ministry from 1993 to 1998. Currently, he is the Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) of the National University of Singapore.

Concurrently, Prof Mahbubani continues to serve in Boards and Councils of several institutions in Singapore, Europe and North America, including the Yale President's Council on International Activities (PCIA), Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, Indian Prime Minister’s Global Advisory Council, University of Bocconi International Advisory Committee, World Economic Forum - Global Agenda Council on China and Chairman of the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize Nominating Committee.

In the world of ideas, Prof Mahbubani has spoken and published globally. His articles have appeared in a wide range of journals and newspapers, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Quarterly, Survival, American Interest, the National Interest, Time, Newsweek, the Financial Times and New York Times. He has also been profiled in the Economist and in Time magazine. He is the author of “Can Asians Think?”, “Beyond The Age of Innocence: Rebuilding Trust between America and the World” and “The New Asian Hemisphere: the irresistible shift of global power to the East”.

His latest books are “The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World” and “Can Singapore Survive”. “The Great Convergence” wasswlected by the Financial Times as one of the best books of 2013 and long listed for the 2014 Lionel Gelber Prize.

Prof Mahbubani was awarded the President’s Scholarship in 1967. He graduated with a First Class honours degree in Philosophy from the University of Singapore in 1971. From Dalhousie University, Canada, he received a Masters degree in Philosophy in 1976 and an honorary doctorate in 1995. He spent a year as a fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University from 1991 to 1992. He was conferred The Public Administration Medal (Gold) by the Singapore Government in 1998.

The Foreign Policy Association Medal was awarded to him in New York in June 2004 with the following opening words in the citation: “A gifted diplomat, a student of history and philosophy, a provocative writer and an intuitive thinker”. Prof Mahbubani was also listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines in September 2005, and included in the March 2009 Financial Times list of Top 50 individuals (including Obama, Wen Jiabao and Sarkozy) who would shape the debate on the future of capitalism.

Most recently, Prof Mahbubani was selected as one of Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers in 2010 and 2011. In 2011, he was described as “the muse of the Asian century.” He was selected by British current affairs magazine, Prospect, as one of the top 50 world thinkers for 2014.