In December of last year, as a follow up to the Ditchley Summer Project and our Autumn programme, Ditchley held a series of discussions designed to help the Ditchley community reflect on the impact of President Biden’s victory in the US elections; geopolitical competition with China; and the continuing course of the pandemic on the prospects for the democratic world and the paths to renewal.
The eight sessions included a briefing from some of the participants who took part in a virtual traditional Ditchley conference in honour of Dr Henry Kissinger, World Order: what can and should it mean today? Alongside Dr Kissinger, participants included former prime ministers and foreign ministers, former Google chairman Eric Schmidt and a high-level Chinese delegation led by HE Dai Bingguo. The programme concluded with two fireside conversations; the first with Admiral James G. Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, on the subject of Geopolitics and Leadership in the Time of Coronavirus, and the second with William M. Daley, former Obama White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Commerce on Leadership on domestic and international crises in a time of transition.
The short bullet point notes prepared following each of the sessions have been collated into the accompanying summary document. This also includes the Director's own reflections on the discussions and the events which have followed in the first weeks of this year.