What if instead of disintegrating just one minute after launch, yesterday's North Korean rocket had been shot down over Japan or South Korea? What series of events might have followed?
Parag Khanna is curious about "geopolitical chain reactions," how, as he explains, a Tunisian self-immolation can lead the world's most powerful military alliance to go to war in "the country next door." Or how the sub-prime mortgage in the United States leads to troubles in the Eurozone economies. These kinds of interactions are what the Director of the Global Governance Initiative at the New America Foundation studies in hopes of being able to understand, and perhaps, predict, complex international events.
Khanna's video is the latest in the IdeaFestival Conversations series, which in 2011 asked festival attendees and speakers what made them curious. Check them out at IFTV.
Wayne