Remarks by Ramu Damodaran, Co-Chair of the United Nations Centennial Initiative and First Chief of the United Nations Academic Impact

by Editor | Dec 4, 2022 | News

Harvard University Loeb House, November 23, 2022

Note: I am indebted to the memoir of Vu Quoc Tuan for many of the insights into this remarkable life and career.

Imagine if you left home one morning, said goodbye to your spouse and children, and learned a few hours later that they had been killed in a bombing raid, their bodies never to be recovered.

Most of us would have allowed that destruction of our lives to imbue us with a sense of hate, of anger, of revenge. Who among us would reach out to those whom we considered our enemies and work with them to create reconciliation, to restore trust, to nurture friendship?

One individual did. His name was Vo Van Kiet. As Prime Minister of Viet Nam from 1991 to 1997, he reciprocated the decision of the Clinton administration in the United States to lift embargos against Viet Nam in 1994 with the normalization of diplomatic relations the following year.

As the Foreign Minister of Viet Nam told the United Nations General Assembly that year “The lifting by the United States of the embargo imposed upon Viet Nam has opened up new prospects for building and broadening multi-faceted cooperation between our two countries in the interests of the two peoples and in the service of peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and throughout the world.”

This was also an affirmation of what Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet had said at an ASEAN summit, “gone are the dark days for the Southeast Asian region.” In always looking to the future, rather than regretting or reliving the past, he brought to life five important principles that informed his national and world view.

One: That “unity in diversity” was the driving force to attain national, regional and global aspirations. He gave voice to this in Viet Nam itself, when he spoke of the need to respect those in his own country who had supported invading forces during the war so that full national reconciliation could take place. He gave voice to this in ASEAN where he spoke not of uniformity but a respect by each nation of the independence and sovereignty of other nations. And he gave voice to this globally when he established the “consultative group for reform” which included scholars originally from Viet Nam but working at the United Nations, Germany and Japan, among others.

After he met with then-Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa in Tokyo in March 1992, Japan resumed its ODA to Vietnam in November 1992 ($370 million) and indicated willingness to provide grants and loans to help repay Vietnam’s debt to the International Monetary Fund. To assist with Vietnam’s market reforms, Tokyo announced in October 1993 that it would send a team of legal experts to help in drafting commercial and investment laws. This set into motion a pattern of bilateral cooperation which continued to be nurtured in later years, including during the Prime Ministership of Shinzo Abe, whom we also mourn today.

Vo Van Kiet was a champion of inner party democracy which he saw as a prerequisite for drawing wisdom from the people, a “subsidy” that could propel the country forward, informing his assertion that democracy needed to be promoted in the Party to ensure freedom of thought.

Two: Seeking unconventional means of communication and dialogue. He was an accessible and respectful leader, listening, in particular, to members of the creative community. His former assistant Vu Quoc Tuan has recalled how poet   Nguyen Duy once read to him a poem which had criticisms of government functioning which he appreciated and took on board.

Vu Quoc Tuan also cites the case of Dong Thap Muoi where rice was annually cultivated in only a single crop; in certain localities, rice yield was less than 1 ton a hectare. He directly met farmers, came to each field, wading through the mud to ask them what should be done to improve production and then made the breakthrough decision to build the irrigation system. As a result, paddy production in the Mekong River Delta was raised from 4.6 million tons in 1976 to 16.7 million tons in 2000 and the Mekong River Delta became the largest granary in Vietnam.

Three: what Governor Michael Dukakis has called an “open door policy” to integrate with the world, in parallel with national reconciliation at home. Too many nations have sought to reach out to the outside world, for reasons of politics or commerce, while ignoring the need for cohesion and unity at home.

Vo Van Kiet’s Vietnam was an exception; he brought together his nation’s north and south as assuredly as he reached out to west and east. He directed the construction of a 500kV North-South Transmission Line, contributing to regulating the power volume throughout the country and, as important, symbolizing the true reunification of the country. This was done through what is described as “the guerrilla method”: dividing the span into several sections, setting the poles simultaneously, and then assembling the sections together. The line was expected to take four years to build, but it was completed in two years.

The line was also an affirmation of the power of youth; young people were the main force in the construction of electric poles, pulling wire and addressing the many other necessary tasks. Many sections were assigned to the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union or the Da Nang Youth Volunteers Association. Vu Quoc Tuan recalls the days when he and the Prime climbed to the high mountain peaks to inspect the construction of electric poles and pulling of the wires. The young people gathered around “uncle Sau” like a family member. During a visit to the people constructing the Line on occasion of the Lunar New Year, he spoke to every person, asking them about their family, about the food and drinking water, reminding them of the cakes on Tet holiday. He was enthusiastically cheered.

As relations normalized, several travel agencies in Little Saigon in California reported up to a 50% increase in inquiries about trips to Vietnam.

Si Duong, a 42-year-old Garden Grove businessman, looked forward to diplomatic normalization bringing him back to his homeland for the first time since the fall of Saigon. “I have waited 20 years to see my parents,” he said.

Four: invigorating the ethic of “doi moi”, or renovation, with a truly entrepreneurial spirit which allowed the private sector to realise its ambitions and the public sector to seek unexplored areas of adventure. Again, to quote the Vietnam Foreign Minister, the core of this reform and renewal was the development of a multi-sector economy operating through a market mechanism and employing State regulation at the macro-economic level with a view to maintaining the country’s socio-economic stability, along with the step-by-step establishment of a state of law of the people, by the people and for the people.

The reform and renewal process achieved important initial results. The average annual growth rate of gross national product for the three years from 1991 to 1993 was 7.3 per cent; for the first six months of 1994, the rate rose to 8%.

In parallel, an inclusive policy to harness the skills of the young, mirrored in his famous statement “no one can choose their parents.” Youth had traditionally been inspired by a song whose refrain ran “If you are human, I will die for the country.” Today’s homeland, the Prime Minister said, does not require every young person to die for it. Rather it requires him or her to live and live meaningfully. And so, the refrain should be corrected as “If I am a human, I have to live for the homeland.” Living is not parasitic, living is to work”.

After April 30, 1975, when the South was liberated and the country united, Vo Van Kiet was assigned to be the Chairman of the People’s Committee and then the Secretary of the Party Committee in Ho Chi Minh City. Vu Quoc Tuan recalls that the State could not buy paddy; the people had to eat rice mixed with maize, potato, and other root vegetables. Mr. Vo Van Kiet devised many measures to deal with the problems. State owned enterprises were allowed to borrow foreign currencies to buy raw materials and buy paddy from farmers at reasonable prices, through a system called “fence breaking.” It was contrary to the established regulations of the State but solved practical issues and helped the people and guided the entire country during the next few years.

Five: The courage of public expression. As Prime Minister, he spoke openly about matters that were traditionally discussed in hushed tones privately. In so doing, he took his nation and his people into confidence. And he gave measure of himself to the world. An instance of this is also the letter he wrote on August 9, 1995 in anticipation of the 8th National Party Congress (July 1996). The letter outlined four important issues for the Politburo to consider: (i) A need to understand and be integrated into the world in which we are living, (ii) Concern about breakdown of social order and security, (iii) Improving the state management capacity, and (iv) Party reform.

The US “opening” to Viet Nam was a vindication of the assertion by Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts in his “State of the State” address in 1990 where he spoke of the need to “go international with a vengeance” whether in business and commerce or in education.” Our kids have to go back to the study of geography,” he asserted. Looking at any map of the world, the shared Pacific linkages between Viet Nam and the United States speak of the inevitability of their cooperation. As does their shared presence in the United Nations.

If, as Suzanne Nossel writes, “the United Nations remains the closest thing to a system of global governance that the world has ever known and may ever achieve,” much is owed to its unique convening capacity in bringing together erstwhile adversaries, even combatants, to a shared sense of participatory purpose which, at its finest, is reflected in the unanimity of resolutions consciously conceived in common cause. In 2021, fifty years after the verdict in the My Lai massacre case was consummated, the United States, President of the United Nations Security Council in March, was looking to hand over its leadership of that body in a matter of days to Viet Nam, next in line of alphabetical rotation. This some 44 years after Viet Nam (which could well have been a founding member of the United Nations in 1945) was admitted to the world body, its then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Nguyen Duy Trinh, affirming his country’s readiness to “continue negotiations for a satisfactory solution to the problems still outstanding with a view to normalizing relations between” Viet Nam and the United States.

Those negotiations, facilitated by the commonality of United Nations membership, succeeded; as United States Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said at a UN Security Council Ministerial Open Debate on Mine Action, chaired by Viet Nam on April 3, “our two countries now sit together as partners in this Council – and that has not always been the case. However, in the 26 years since our countries normalized diplomatic relations, the United States and Viet Nam have developed a thriving partnership, which includes jointly addressing war legacies and unexploded ordnance. This collaboration has allowed Viet Nam and the United States to make enormous efforts to ensure that the Vietnamese people can be safe from explosive remnants of war.” It was particularity heart-warming to see instance of that “trusted partnership” in the “soft power” of shared music featuring the outgoing United States ambassador in Ha Noi, Daniel Kritenbrink, with references to Vietnam’s “hot spots and hot pots.”

I was privileged to join a conversation in mid-March 2021: which included a number of friends from Viet Nam. The event was led by Governor Michael Dukakis, who recently co-founded Artificial Intelligence World Society (AIWS), “a project that aims to bring scientists, academics, government officials and industry leaders together to keep AI a benign force serving humanity’s best interests.” The idea of an AIWS struck a particular chord since the United Nations had, just two years after its inception, organized a conference on the idea of a “world society”;  just as that society sought to be both a physical and a spiritual concept, so too did our 2021 conversation suggest what the Boston Global Forum  describes as a “sophisticated pioneer model: a combination of the virtual, digital AIWS City and a real city”, the model being Phan Thiet in Viet Nam, developed by the Nova Group in that country whose Chairman, Bui Thanh Nhon, described it as “ the place for the World Leadership Alliance-Club de Madrid and the Michael Dukakis Institute to hold important annual events marked by the theme of ‘Building a New Economy’ for the world in the digital and artificial intelligence era, a venue to announce new achievements in the history of artificial intelligence and the digital economy.”

Nguyen Anh Tuan, co-founder and CEO of BGF, speaking at the Riga Conference 2019 in Latvia, referred to the “need for a new social contract, one that is suited to a world of artificial intelligence, big data, and high-speed computation and that will protect the rights and interests of citizens individually and society generally. A fundamental assumption of the social contract is that the five centres of power – government, citizens, business firms, civil society organizations, and AI assistants – are interconnected and each needs to check and balance the power of the others. Citizens should have access to education pertaining to the use and impact of AI,” a thought reflective of what Governor Dukakis said at the March event, of the possibilities of “new ideas, initiatives, and solutions by thinkers and creators in an effort to build a civilized, prosperous, peaceful, and happy world,” a reference that also brought to mind Viet Nam’s youthful academic energy and, indeed, the youthful energy of Vo Van Kiet himself. Were he to have been alive today, one can imagine him, with wit and ready smile, championing all that the United Nations and the Boston Global Forum are working to do together —seeking the opportunities of technology, digital advance and artificial intelligence to create a truly harmonious world society, justly governed, its social contract woven by the talents of its peoples.

Distinguished Global Enlightenment Speech by Amandeep Gill to receive World Leader in AIWS 2022

by Editor | Dec 4, 2022 | News

The Boston Global Forum (BGF) honored the Technology Envoy to the United Nations Secretary General, Ambassador Amandeep Gill, with the World Leader in AIWS Award 2022, and Ambassador Gill presented the Distinguished Global Enlightenment Speech at the BGF’s 10th Anniversary Forum on November 22 at Harvard University’s Loeb House.

Ambassador Gill is a pioneer of international cooperation on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI), a passionate advocate of inclusive, responsible and collaborative applications of data and AI to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Distinguished Global Enlightenment Speech 2022 of Ambassador Gill:

“Thank you very much for honoring me today.

Dear Tuan, ladies and gentlemen,

It’s a pleasure to be here at Harvard to spend some time with you and talk about digital technologies and the issues that pose… that these technologies pose for our societies, our economies, and our political systems, whether national or international. I’m deeply honored by this award, which I think should rightfully go to all those who are toiling away in our academic institutions, in multi-stakeholder forums, in multiplication forums to get a better understanding of the impact of these technologies across the three pillars of the UN Peace and Security human rights, and of course development and are working together, often unacknowledged, often in obscurity to reinforce international cooperation around these technologies. Powerful technologies have been around for a while. We have in the 20th century dealt with the power of fission and fusion, often and not in very successful ways. We’ve dealt with space technologies. We say that we’re very far from technologies coming from the biological domain, and therefore these two technologies are no exception to that struggle.

What is perhaps different is that these technologies are coming more and more from the private sector. Their development has not been shaped as much by government intervention by public institutions, as has been the case with other powerful technologies. The other thing that we must keep in mind when we talk about digital technologies is the way in which they cross borders. They have transport order, in fact, like no other technology does. So, a small app in a remote location, if it is the right kind of moment, the right kind of user interface can scale to global proportions in no time and incident anywhere through social media platforms. through other digital means can impact the consciousness of billions around the world. So that’s what’s different about these technologies. And when it comes to artificial intelligence, and we have some experts in the room, what’s different is not that we are dealing with something that’s beyond the current paradigm of computer science, of dealing with information in zeros and ones, but it’s just a different way of putting data, outcomes, and code together. So, imagine in the past, we used a code with data to get to some outcomes. But with artificial intelligence the outcome is that it comes together with data to determine the code which becomes a model, which can then interact with new datasets to come up with insights.

So, it’s an interesting reversal of the earlier paradigm, at least with the current generation of artificial intelligence technologies. And this is where the power lies. You can deal with datasets that are simply impossible for humans to deal with. So, if you look at financial transactions in today’s markets, the speed, the volume and the shared variety of data that’s out there, it’s impossible for either humans or traditional computing systems to handle. So, you have to rely on artificial intelligence. So that’s the source of their power. And we’ve seen this power demonstrated first in the marketplace… Companies, such as Google and Meta, look at our data across a variety of devices across platforms and are able to get insights from that… and place ads or other proposals before us that there is attention, there are actions and entire business models with huge market capitalization have been created on that basis.

The power of these technologies is seeping into other domains lethal atomics Weapons Systems where AIS comes in to help select targets to go through petabytes data whether it’s coming from video feeds from drones or something else or multitude of sensors in the battle space can then help what planners decide which target to engage in how. So, when conflict is taking place at warp speed, when you have a battlefield that is confusing to say the least and when you don’t have the kind of connectivity that you are used to in… from the battlefield of the past. Then AI steps to select targets. Sometimes it allows them to make autonomous decisions about life and death, an issue that the U.N Secretary General is very, very concerned about and states quite early on that we should not allow machines to make decisions on their own to take life or pain. Humans should remain accountable, should remain responsible for those decisions and the application of international humanitarian law, international national human rights law should not be occulted just because machines… we’ve delegated some of these functions to machines.

So, I just gave you a few examples to illustrate the power off here. The potential of these technologies for good is there. We see challenges today, such as the climate challenge, the green transition from a take, make and wasted economy to a circular economy. All these challenges cannot be handled without data, without artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. So, what we need to get to a place where we can get a handle on the wrists, where we can prevent the misuse but at the same time maximize the opportunities for good, maximize the potential of these technologies to contribute to the international community’s sustainable development goals those 17 goals, from Zero Hunger and no Poverty all the way to conserving our Global Commerce

I think the first thing we need to do is to make sure that the opportunity space is democratized. Today you have close to 3 billion people who are not connected to the internet, and even those who are connected often cannot afford…connectivity in a meaningful way. They connect to devices which give them only a narrow window onto the digital reward. The content that’s available to them is not in their languages. It’s not meaningful. It’s not empowering enough. When it comes to data, those who are left out to the data economy are the ones who are contributing data. They do not benefit from data. And when it comes to AI, and its application that is the junction of digital and other sciences. You see the dividing even more stock term. So, all of Africa contributes less than one person to patents and research publications on digital health and AI. And within Africa, a single country contributes 75% of that. So this is the extent of the device at the data and AI end when it comes to some countries. And mind you this is not limited to the developing countries alone. Even in richer countries, you see many countries getting left behind by the data and AI Revolution. So the digital divide is not only about internet connectivity, it extends all the way to data. And if we are not mindful about it today… if you don’t address it today… you’ll have a yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots in the future. So, few people who design the algorithms would use data from the passive in a sense to maximize value for themselves. And this is not just a morally untenable position. It’s also practically dangerous. If you don’t have diversity, in terms of datasets in terms of contributions to our digital future, we are likely to be running more risks than we should. Just take the gender divide issue. If today, we have certain problems in the tech domain, just imagine if there have been more women designing these two technologies 20 years back then would we have seen the same kind of business models today. I doubt very much. So, lack of diversity is the practical risk for assets. Well it’s not just a model question.

The other thing that we need to get right if we want to maximize the opportunity and minimize misuse is governance. We have a live example today. The collapse of the FDX Empire, the Crypto exchange. So, when three Regulators coming from three different domains are asked what they were doing. And the answer is an awkward silence because this thing actually fell between three tools. And you cannot just say that, you know, these are offshore companies… lost land doesn’t extend that. If the law of one of the most powerful countries on the planet cannot extend to these business models, you can imagine what might be happening elsewhere. So at the national level, we have this ambiguity. We have the base of technology, this famous pacing problem between tech and policy, where regulators are using 19^th century tools of 20th century mindsets to deal with some of these issues that are struggling and at the international level just as these things fall between schools in the national domains. Internationally they just fall at the borders because we are not used to cooperating on digital Technologies. And increasingly there’s a nationalist done on these technologies from supply chains to manufacturing chips. And it’s not just an East West tissue even within the West…. You see a competition between the EU and the US and sometimes even within Europe. So, there is a degree of beggar thy neighbors, nationalist positions and that is preventing international cooperation on the governance of these technologies.

And then in terms of our mindsets, what we learned today is lifecycle approaches to these technologies. Because you simply cannot recreate at one point and say I will now sit back and just deal with some compliance issues. Because what you see is data coming out of certain contexts, contributing to the AI models, the air models then coming out with certain outcomes in that particular context. And what is developed inside the Sandbox when it scales and is taken to the society at large or the marketplace at large sometimes has a different impact than what it had in the Sandbox. So, unless you have a lifecycle approach, unless you look all the way from the context to the data, training data to the AI systems, and to their impact. You cannot handle their implications. So some geography and some market regulators are looking at these issues. For instance, they are looking at smart regulation that combines competition policy and consumerism to deal with these issues. They are looking at getting together in the industry and getting together with civil society and academia to have more of a jointed approach. But this is something that is very patchy at this point in time and needs to be done in a more coordinated manner. Otherwise, we will lose the trust of public Technologies, and without trust we will not be able to scale… we would not be able to have the kind of digital transformation that we wish for.

I think we have an interactive session plan, so I’d like to end my remarks by speaking a little bit about a process that has started at the United Nations. A few years back, Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez, who has a deep interest in technology, is actually a former student of this domain. He started a discussion around digital cooperation. He felt that there was insufficient cooperating across domains. Sometimes the tech issue is just discussed by technologists. We don’t have enough social scientists in the room, ethicists, designers, artists, poets, people with a different perspective. At the end of the day, it’s humans we are speaking about so it’s not just code. And he also felt that there was insufficient cooperation across borders, so he started a discussion on digital cooperation. And that discussion is now moving into a digital commons discussion just as we’ve had these commons in the past. The maritime domain the scenes that have been regulated, either customer international law, or instruments such as the UN Conventional involve the sea or, we have the outer space domain where anticipate outer space is supposed to be the province of all mankind and there are specific conventions that regulate how you send astronauts up in space, how you recover objects that fall toward. So just like those old moments, the digital domain itself can be treated as the commons. And just as we had the tragedy of the commons in the past, we have the tragedy of the commons today with digital.

There are pirates and buccaneers who take advantage of Max governance, who indulge in Branson beer, exploitation of children on the dark web and many other abuses. Therefore, we need guardians; we need certain rules of the road for these commons. And just like in the past, some of these commons were turned into private clubs and so they’re not truly commons available to the community. We face a similar problem today with the digital domain exclusion of not enough of a democratic opportunity for everyone. So, we need common rates. We need guardrails for the digital commons as well. And the Secretary General has called for a summit in the future in 2024, at which one of the six key topics would be digital commons. And a proposal has been made for a global digital compact, a kind of charter if you will that brings us together; that helps us address this problem of things falling between stools or things stopping at borders. And not enough coordination, not enough alignment on approaches to digital technologies across borders. The journal assembly the member states of the United Nations come together to approve that the proposal and the process has just started under the leadership of the president. The general assembly who in a sense embodies the combined will of the member states, and the BGF he called has appointed two co-facilitators ambassadors and permanent representatives of Sweden and Rwanda to lead that process. And my office has been entrusted with supporting them on this two-year nearly year; wo-year journey to the global digital compact. A very important aspect of this journey is that it’s a multi-stakeholder journal even though these discussions will come to a conclusion at the summit of the future which is an intergovernmental process. The digital domain is multi-stakeholder so the private sector, Academia, Civil Society, The Tech Community have to contribute and have to be also part of the implementation of the global digital compact. It’s not enough for governments alone to agree on this and then apply it in their own practice. This has to be landed in the practice of the private sector as well.

There is a consultation phase that we have just embarked on and these consultations have to be diverse; have to be inclusive. I was in Malta recently where nearly 100 people of different ages and different backgrounds came together for a very interesting, very insightful conversation.  I’ve been to Arabia next week, where we will do more consultation on the African continent. Which continued to Nairobi, where again you know new and emerging geographies of innovation in Africa Asia and Latin America. And they have to be part of the conversation Civil Society partners have come together to run their own consultation processes with the disabled, with women, with LGBTQ communities and others who often don’t get a voice when it comes to these intergovernmental negotiations. So, I would like to invite you today to take some interesting ideas and contribute to this process, and host your own consultations.  If you can, work with us so that we leave no voice behind; so that we can work together for an open, free secure and inclusive digital future for all.”

Message of Japanese Minister of Defense Yasukazu Hamada to Boston Global Forum

by Editor | Nov 27, 2022 | News

Harvard University, Loeb House, November 23, 2022

Excellencies, I am Hamada Yasukazu, Defense Minister of Japan.

I am afraid I am not able to attend this conference in person due to a scheduling conflict.

I am very delighted to know that Boston Global Forum established the Shinzo Abe Initiative for Peace and Security to honor his legacy.

The international community now faces severe security environment such as North Korea’s nuclear and missile development, China’s unilateral change of the status quo and its attempts to do so by force, and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. More than ever, it is important to promote a Free and Open Indo-Pacific which Prime Minister Abe poured his heart into, and be united among the countries which share the fundamental values.

I sincerely hope that at this conference which gathers distinguished guests from Japan and the United States, you all will have lively discussion conducive to the promotion of FOIP, solidarity of democracies, and global peace and security.

Hamada Yasukazu

BGF – Message from Minister Hamada

Remarks by Governor Dukakis in tribute to Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet

by Editor | Nov 27, 2022 | News

Governor Michael Dukakis, Chair of the Boston Global Forum and Harvard professor Thomas Patterson

Harvard University Loeb House, November 23, 2022

Of Southeast Asia’s leaders of the past half-century, no leader has demonstrated more foresight and courage than Vietnam’s former Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet who died in 2008. The year 2022 marks the 100^th anniversary of his birth – a fitting moment to recognize his contributions to peace, security, reconciliation, and inclusive economic and political development.

A revolutionary who fought against the French and then the Americans, Vo Van Kiet after the war was named Communist Party chief in Ho Chi Minh City, where he saw that Vietnam’s top-down economy was failing to address the severe economic hardship that followed in the war’s wake. He was also alarmed by the government’s harsh treatment of its South Vietnamese adversaries, quietly defying official orders by providing them opportunities to contribute to the vitalization of the former Saigon.

It was an extraordinary act, personally as well as politically. His wife and two children had been killed by South Vietnamese forces.

His openness to new ideas and new ways of doing things stayed with him as he rose through the ranks of the country’s leadership, becoming Prime Minister in 1991. “Being proud of the past,” he said, “does not mean that we cling to it like a cloak to cover our present shortcomings.”

He championed Vietnam’s opening to the outside world through the adoption of liberal economic policies. It was a cause he continued to pursue after leaving office in 1997 when more conservative leaders came to power in Vietnam. During his time in high office, he presided over a period of dramatic economic growth and foreign investment that is called “Vietnam’s economic miracle.”

As Prime Minister, he fostered the creation of normal diplomatic relations with the United States, ushering in what is now a decades-long friendship between the two nations. He refused to be called a statesman, preferring instead to be seen as a partner and friend of other nations whose purpose was to foster peace and mutual understanding.

He advocated for national reconciliation, not only between north and south Vietnam but between the Vietnamese in Vietnam and those who had fled the country after the Vietnam War. He instructed his subordinates to act boldly in the face of those who thought differently, saying “If you go to jail, I will take care of you”

He also recognized the need to bring the Vietnamese people more fully into their governing, saying “the nation belongs to us, the state belongs to us, Vietnam belongs to us, not to communists or any religious group or faction.”

He was, foremost, a man of the people. He respected people from all ranks of life, deeply engaged with them, saw it his duty to serve them, delighted in listening to them, trusted their judgment.

In turn, the Vietnamese people bestowed on him an honorary name – Mr. Sau Dan. It means, “The Prime Minister in the hearts of the people.”

Ever a visionary, one of Vo Van Kiet’s last public acts was to urge the Vietnamese and their government to do everything possible to address climate change, seeing it as an existential threat to Vietnam and the world.

Vo Van Kiet was a resolute leader who dared to think about the world as it could be, not the world as it is.

The Boston Global Forum is honored to recognize Vo Van Kiet and his enduring contributions to peace, security, reconciliation, and inclusive economic and political development.

Remarks by Cameron Kerry, former US Acting Secretary of Commerce, at the BGF 10th Anniversary Conference

by Editor | Nov 27, 2022 | News

I appreciated from the representative of Taipei. It reminds us that you can have a democracy with Chinese characteristics.  Taipei and Japan both demonstrate that democracy is not just a Western concept.  The urge for self-determination is a universal and fundamental part of what makes us humans.

It’s an honor to be here with you and so many distinguished Japanese public servants who worked with Shinzo Abe, who showed that security goes hand in hand with a strong economy and international cooperation.

Yesterday I mentioned the major international gatherings at COP27 and the FIFA World Cup.  I began yesterday morning at 12:00 participating in a panel at another international gathering, the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence Summit taking place in Tokyo.  GPAI is a legacy of Shinzo Abe, launched during Japan’s G20 presidency.

That presidency also launched Data Free Flows with Trust, an initiative that is gaining traction through the creation by the U.S. and Japan

Now Japan is about to assume the presidency of the G7 in a consequential time.

Let speak about the broader contact of these multilateral gatherings and efforts like the Boston Global Forum and the Forum for Cooperation on AI that I co-lead at the Brookings Institution.

We are in a changing world.  The international order that emerged from World War II and then the end of the Cold War no longer works.  No one country or set of countries can operate alone, not the United States or United Nations or China.  The problems we face are global – climate change, disinformation and misinformation, poverty and disease.  Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has changed the stakes

These problems demand global solutions.  Americans are familiar with what Benjamin Franklin said in another difficult time as members of the Continental Congress risked their lives in revolt against the British Crown: “We must all hang together, or we will hang separately.”

The White House National Security Council released a new national security strategy a month ago to address the development of a new national order, called “What Comes Next.”  Its answer is “a new rules based order” that “builds on what came before.”  The U.S. is willing to “partner with any nation” on two tracks:

•   “We will cooperate with any country, including our geopolitical rivals, that is willing to work constructively with us to address shared challenge” and
•   “We will deepen our cooperation with democracies and other like minded states.”

I think framing this as a rules-based order makes sense. That makes it open to any regardless of its governance.  We can cooperate with China on some issues, as we saw at COP27.

One of the important aspects of the U.S. strategy is that it elevates economic security on a par with strategic security. That’s something I worked toward when I was part of the Obama administration. It takes a page out of Shinzo Abe’s book.  It is important in a digital era when a global digital economy works across sectors and regional or national lines.

In speaking about networks, I am reminded of what Robert F. Kennedy said in South Africa about how change comes. He spoke of “a million different centers of energy and daring” that create ripples, “and those ripples can build a mighty wave ….”  Over time, ripples crossing fa network of networks can build a wave that forms a new international order.

Anne-Marie Slaughter has compared international relations to networks. The Internet that connects our world is a network of networks.  And this new international order will have to be built like those digital networks – with many different nodes that provide diversity, redundancy, and resiliency.  Different coalitions on different issues – Data Free Flow with Trust in the G7, the Christchurch Declaration, where private sector companies came together with the government of New Zealand after the attack carried live on Facebook and YouTube to agree on ways to take down similar incidents, bilateral efforts like the US-EU Trade & Technology Council and regional groups like APEC and ASEAN, multi-stakeholder groups like standards development organizations whose work will play an increasingly role in an ICT-driven world.

In describing a network of networks, I am reminded of Robert F. Kennedy’s description in South Africa of how change comes. He spoke of making ripples and said that “those ripples, intersecting from a million different centers of energy, can build a mighty wave ….”  We need millions of rip.

Pictures of BGF High Level Discussion at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and discussion with Edward Feigenbaum, November 15-18, 2022

by Editor | Nov 20, 2022 | News