Summerschool 2008: Day 12

Following D’Costa’s presentation, the participants’ perceptions of China and its rise in the international community were challenged by the DGAP’s very own Otto Wolff-Director, Professor Dr. Eberhard Sandschneider. Sandschneider delivered an impassioned presentation characterizing China’s recent growth not as China’s rise to power but rather as a return to the Chinese ingenuity and dominance experienced 600 years earlier. However, Sandschneider emplored the participants to be mindful of different perspectives through which China’s rise can be viewed and be aware that China’s list of problems is as long as its list of successes. After a lunch break, the presentations from PD Dr. Martin Beck and Professor Dr. Moonis Ahmar offered perspectives on two regions lacking in regional leadership: the Middle East, and central Asia. In analyzing how regional power is determined in the Middle East, Beck looked at different models of political analysis and concluded his presentation with a case-study of the Iran-Israeli Conflict to highlight the contradictory implications for policy advisory. In the final presentation of the day, Ahmar looked at the role of Pakistan in the global war on terror. Ahmar underscored Pakistan’s strategic situation at the crossroads of South, West and Central Asia looking at Pakistan’s internal and external political fault lines. In making explicit the fragility of the political situation in contemporary Pakistan, Ahmar looked back on historical Western presence and involvement in the region implicating it as the main destabilization factor.

The International Forum on Strategic Thinking is DGAP’s main instrument for the promotion of young professionals and scholars in the area of foreign and security policy. Every summer, a number of carefully selected students and recent graduates are invited to attend its two-week International Summer School.