Good evening Your Royal Highness, Your Highnesses, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the opening dinner of the first IISS Geo-Economic Strategy Summit, The Bahrain Global Forum in honour of His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of Bahrain.
We at the International Institute for Strategic Studies are delighted to host this forum in the Kingdom of Bahrain, a country that is business friendly, diplomacy friendly and just overall friendly. We have deepened our relationship with the Kingdom of Bahrain and this region over the last several years.
The IISS Manama Dialogue is now established as a principal security forum of the region. Rather like the Shangri‑La Dialogue in Singapore, the Manama Dialogue is a successful example of privatised defence diplomacy, where the IISS helps to bring together government leaders in circumstances that they could perhaps not so easily orchestrate for themselves. The Shangri‑La Dialogue in Asia and the Manama Dialogue in the Middle East are important, flexible instruments for defence diplomacy. As we live in a world with less clearly defined borders participation in these dialogues reflects a natural fluidity of trans‑regional relations.
Each dialogue can be responsive to the needs to include particular countries in order to address particular problems or share valuable experience that can be transferred from one region to another. It is, therefore, normal, given the growing political, economic and security links between the Middle East and Asia that this June there will be a ministerial‑led Bahraini delegation to the Shangri‑La Dialogue and that more Asian countries such as the Republic of Korea will be participating in the IISS Manama Dialogue this December.
For our part we wish to do our best to bring the world’s top government and business leaders, leading strategists and political and economic thinkers to the Middle East and in turn ensure a stronger Middle East voice in discussions of key global trends and issues. The IISS and its diverse staff is headquartered in London with longstanding offices in Washington and Singapore and an international membership spread over 100 countries.
Given our growing commitment to this region it was absolutely essential that we established a significant presence here with resident senior staff. Yesterday the IISS Middle East office in the Kingdom of Bahrain was opened by His Excellency Shaikh Khalid Bin Ahmed, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and we look forward to turning it soon into a regional hub for research, analysis and debate on geostrategic issues. True to the IISS tradition of ensuring that our analysis of regional affairs is led by people from the region we shall be deepening our expertise by inviting the best and the brightest from your region to join our work here.
Our contribution to international strategic debate is important and the IISS is proud of its standing as a leading institute examining geostrategic issues with a global outlook, providing fact‑rich analysis on which sound public policy on delicate security issues can be based. Today, however, strategic realities are shaped as much by financial and economic factors as by political and military elements. The IISS was delighted therefore to respond to the request of His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince and the Economic Development Board of the Kingdom of Bahrain to establish a geo‑economic forum in this country that would examine the links between economic and financial change and broader strategic realities. We are hugely grateful for the patronage of His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince and the generous support of the Economic Development Board to the IISS to establish this event and build it as a vital part of the economic and financial calendar.
Today we open the first IISS Bahrain Global Forum. This is our pilot forum and we intend it to develop over time to be a magnet for the world’s top economists, business people and strategic thinkers to shape debate about the challenges to economic development, effective international financial regulation, free and fair trade and regional and global economic governance. This in particular needs to be a forum that gives increasing voice to the economists and entrepreneurs from the so‑called emerging markets. In this perhaps more egalitarian world order that we inhabit discussions here should help develop a consensus on economic and financial issues that grow out of a debate that includes all relevant actors of our diverse global financial and economic system.
Perhaps one day as a result of debates held here people will not just speak of a Washington or Beijing consensus, but also of a Bahrain consensus that might command wide attention and support, but before we get there what are some of the themes we will want to examine this weekend and the questions we will want to answer.
Firstly, what will be the relationship between the so‑called emerging markets and the established industrialised world on the best ways to govern the now virtually indivisible and certainly interdependent global economies?
Secondly, what is the right balance in this delicate economic environment between what has been styled state and private capitalism? What are the methods by which foreign direct investment can best be encouraged today? Thirdly, in what ways do various countries in the world have to diversify their economies and indeed change their national business models to adapt to the world as it is now? Fourthly, how should countries protect the economic recovery and also protect the open economic system that normally provides such global benefits? Fifthly, what new dynamic relationships between regions, especially between the Middle East and Asia, can help to promote growth?
I anticipate that this forum will also throw up other important questions and that new avenues for debate will open. We need someone to get us going on these challenging questions. We are delighted, therefore, to have with us today Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission of India. India’s recent economic growth is one of the most important geo‑economic trends of the last decade. The challenges that it has confronted and the successes that it has forged for itself make the Indian voice a central one in all debates about the future of the global economy. Its influential role in the G20 and its broader role both within the developing world and the powerful emerging markets merit further understanding and calls for careful attention to the Indian point of view. The recent inclination of India to complement its earlier ‘look east’ policy with a ‘look west’ policy carries special resonance and importance for this region.
Montek Singh Ahluwalia has been an economist at the World Bank, a special secretary to the prime minister, a member of the Economic Advisory Council for the Indian prime minister and a senior official of the International Monetary Fund. He is a world‑renowned economist and author of numerous books. In his current capacity as Deputy Chairman of the Indian Planning Commission he must be acknowledged as one of the brilliant co‑authors of India’s economic success.
