Date: Thursday, October 29
Start Time: 6:00pm ET
The United States has a long history of misreading China. Whether misjudging the outcome of the Chinese Civil War in the 1940s, underestimating the severity of Mao Zedong’s rule, or expecting that membership in the World Trade Organization would encourage a shift toward free markets and democracy, American assessments have often diverged from reality. The stakes are now higher. Similar miscalculations today could carry consequences on the scale of World War I.
Bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan, who has spent decades studying and reporting on China and East Asian geopolitics, will address one of the central ethical questions for realism in our time: How can the U.S. avoid miscalculating again in its approach to China?
Join us virtually on October 29 at 6:00pm ET for “Getting China Right: The Ultimate Moral Dilemma.” The event will feature a 60-minute panel discussion and audience Q&A.
The Kegley Lecture was established in 2024 to invigorate the inquiry into the connection between moral concerns and the pressures and realities of world politics. The lecture honors Carnegie Council former trustee, Charles W. Kegley, Jr., the author of the bestselling international relations textbook, World Politics: Trend and Transformation, and a role model for those who ask and try to answer the most challenging questions of ethics in international affairs.
Register for the virtual event
Robert D. Kaplan
Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of 24 books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including China Whisperers, Waste Land, The Loom of Time, The Tragic Mind, The Revenge of Geography, Asia’s Cauldron, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He is a distinguished senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the U. S. Navy’s Executive Panel. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”
Featuring Avril Haines
Avril Haines was sworn in as the Director of National Intelligence on January 21, 2021. She is the seventh Senate-confirmed DNI in our nation’s history and the first woman to lead the U.S. Intelligence Community. Director Haines has deep national security experience. During the Obama administration, she served as Assistant to the President and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor from 2015-2017, during which time she led the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee. From 2013-2015, Haines was the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. She was the first woman to hold both of these positions.