On Thursday, February 16 at 12:15-1:30pm the Strauss Center of International Security and Law in conjunction with the Clements Center for National Security will host international development expert Daniel Runde as he discusses his new book, The American Imperative: Reclaiming Leadership Through Soft Power. Mr. Runde argues that China and Russia fill vacuums—vacuums that are digital, healthcare-oriented, infrastructural, commercial, security-related, value-related, and ones that occupy the multilateral system. In turn, the US and its allies must invest in a positive agenda that meets the hopes and aspirations of its partners to fill such vacuums. Great-power competition, Mr. Runde maintains, is not going to be fought in Beijing and Moscow. Rather, it is currently being fought in the post-Soviet space, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. This competition is contested in areas of development and other forms of soft power. While power is undoubtedly expressed in more violent arenas—as seen in Ukraine—most of this contest will be through means other than war.
Mr. Runde hopes to spark a national conversation about how and for what end we are going to use our non-military forms of our power overseas given the challenges and opportunities in front of us as a country. He calls for supporting broad based economic growth, supporting good governance and anti-corruption, long term training, differentiating our approaches in middle-income countries and fragile states and stronger US leadership in the multilateral system.
The event is open to the public, no RSVP required. Lunch will be served. Contact Susan Crane at scrane@austin.utexas.edu with any questions.
Biography
Daniel Runde is a senior vice president, director of the Project on Prosperity and Development (PPD) and holds the William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a leading global think tank. Mr. Runde also served as the director of the CSIS Americas Program for two and a half years. His work is oriented around U.S. leadership in building a more democratic and prosperous world. Among his many other contributions, Mr. Runde was an architect of the BUILD Act, contributed to the reauthorization of the U.S. EXIM Bank in 2018, and was an architect of Prosper Africa, a U.S. government initiative to deepen the United States’ commercial and development engagement in Africa. He has been a leading voice on the role and future of the World Bank Group and U.S. leadership in the multilateral system. Prior to CSIS, Mr. Runde held leadership roles at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank Group. Earlier in his career, Mr. Runde worked in commercial banking at Citibank in Argentina and in investment banking at Alex. Brown & Sons. Mr. Runde was granted the Officer’s Cross in the Order of Isabel la Católica, a Spanish civil order. Currently, he serves on the board of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), Spirit of America, and the Ashesi University Foundation. Mr. Runde is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bretton Woods Committee. He is also a columnist for The Hill and hosts a CSIS podcast series, Building the Future: Freedom, Prosperity & Foreign Policy with Dan Runde. Mr. Runde is also the author of the book The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership through Soft Power (Bombardier Books, 2022). He previously chaired two U.S. government advisory committees: the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid at USAID and the Sub-Saharan Africa Advisory Committee at the U.S. EXIM Bank. Fluent in Spanish, he graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College and holds a master’s in public policy from Harvard University.