The final session of the 2017 China’s Grand Strategy lecture series was delivered by Professor Oliver Della Costa Stuenkal, who mastered a lecture packed with insight, relevance and vitality towards the discourse of ‘International Relations’. Summarizing the lecture comes with difficulty as Professor Stuenkal’s ideas were delightfully profound as he grappled with the faults of ‘International Relations’ and seamlessly related his insights with contemporary global affairs. So without wishing to undermine his eloquence, his opening sentence:
“International Relations is fairly ill-equipped to help us understand the global transformations based on the shift of power that we are witnessing right now and what this work seeks to initiate is a reflection on how we can adapt academic debate in International Relations to a multi-polar reality right now”.
This was an entirely apt introduction point in summarising the focus of the lecture in which we were allowed to recognise the Western stronghold and self-promotion within International Relations as a potential hindrance in guiding international policy making in today’s world. Furthermore, Professor Stuenkal enabled his audience to notice that through Western self-promotion it has arrived at a discourse in which the rise of the BRIC’s groups comes as a surprise by not rising through Western structures and norms, and therefore perceives these powers as undermining. Which, as Professor Stuenkal points out, they are not. In the case of China, their actions have in fact been rather similar to the U.S.A’s rise through the provision of public goods across the world, to the extent that an ‘Asian-centric Century’ should be encouraged due to the global balancing of GDP per capita.
Professor Stuenkar’s lecture was greatly thought provoking and I have no doubt his thoughts will make their way into many students essays. We would like to thank the Professor for his coming to Renmin University for delivering his lecture.
