During the last decades of the twentieth century, there were major changes in the world economic organization as the end of the Cold War, the birth of the WTO, and the off-shoring of manufacturing to lower-wage developing countries created a highly integrated global economy dependent on complicated supply chains linking production and consumption. Similarly, sophisticated systems of data collection have distributed previously private or nationally-held data across state borders and spawned an industry around its global trafficking, resulting in security risks to individuals, businesses, and nations. A series of crises over the last several years—including the Covid pandemic, rising tensions between China and the US, natural disasters brought on by global warming, the war in Ukraine, and the sanctions regime—have shaken the globalized trading system and produced shortages in goods, energy, raw materials, food supplies, and labor. Access to these resources has become a strategic bargaining chip in international relations, as nations seek to secure supplies of food, raw materials, and energy in the global marketplace, while also ensuring that sensitive data is securely protected.

Panelists will discuss questions about how nations hedge risks in a world in which the global flow of goods, data, and services is regularly interrupted by natural hazards, man-made conflict, and political relationships within the international order. How do these global and external issues impact domestic politics, and how do domestic issues impact the international world? And what is at stake?

Abe Global 2023 is held in partnership with the East-West Center in Washington, DC.

The Abe Fellows Global Forum (Abe Global) brings Abe Fellow research and expertise on pressing issues of global concern to broader audiences. Abe Global hosts events each year in partnership with academic and civic organizations. The forum is a partnership between the Social Science Research Council and the Japan Foundation.