2020 Reflections and 2021 Projections

The year 2020 has been highly disruptive and the pandemic has had far-reaching political consequences beyond the health crisis, including in terms of democracy and civil liberties. What does this year tell us about the health of our democracies? How do we bring back a balance between civil liberties and the necessity of public order? What should be the common strategy to respond to the aggressive behavior of the Chinese Communist Party? What will be the three major developments we should be looking for in 2021? In this last episode .think atlantic of the year, IRI's Thibault Muzergues is joined by IRI’s president Dan Twining to look back at the year 2020 and try and make sense of it all. Dan Twining has been the President of IRI since 2017. Before that, he served as counselor to the president and director of the Asia Program at The German Marshall Fund of the United States, based in Washington, DC. As a counselor, he served on the executive management team that governs GMF’s annual operations; as director of the Asia Program, he led a team working on the rise of Asia and its implications for the West. Prior to GMF, Twining served as a member of the U.S. Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, as a foreign policy advisor to U.S. Senator John McCain. Find Dan on Twitter at @DCTwining Find Thibault on Twitter at @tmuzergues Visit IRI’s website at www.iri.org