Over the past two years, the world has watched tensions escalate in the East and South China Sea. Recent activities have further inflated these tensions and are threatening the peace, stability, maritime security and safety in the East and South China Sea.
In light of recent events, Boston Global Forum (BGF) Initiative has taken preliminary steps to help ease the tensions in the region. The Initiative will host an online international conference and humbly requests the participation of political leaders from the United States, China, Japan, Philippines, Australia, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Vietnam, as well as various CEOs of multinational corporations. Its objectives are to learn how the crises affect peace and stability (both political and financial), to find solutions to the problems, and to put forth a Framework for Peace and Security in the Pacific.
The conference will be on-going for one month, and BGF will apply a new conference model in order to work with hectic schedules of world leaders: each leader can provide his/her perspective via video recording or submit a statement in a document file. BGF will send each leader’s submissions to all participants and invite them to comment.
By this conference model, leaders do not need to attend the conference in person; they are only asked to spend some time preparing a statement and reading/viewing their colleagues’ perspectives on the crises. The most important aspect is that the leaders’ messages will be delivered to the world via the internet. The videos and speeches will be posted on the Boston Global Forum website, and we invite participants to continue the discussion more online.
The Conference
Leaders of countries are invited to participate in online conferences that contain several sessions organized within one (01) month. Each session has a different focus, and spans 60 minutes.Each speaker will give his/her solution and address key questions; other participants can then respond to the previous speaker’s statements.
▪ Time and Duration: July 2 to August 4, 2014.
▪ Moderator:
– Governor Michael Stanley Dukakis, Chairman, Boston Global Forum
– Joseph Nye, Professor, Harvard University; Member of Board of Thinkers, Boston Global Forum.
▪ Participants: Leaders of countries:
– The United States
– Japan
– China
– Vietnam
– The Philippines
– Indonesia
– South Korea
– Australia
– Malaysia
– Singapore
▪ Timeline:
1. Opening session – July 2, 2014
This session would introduce the Boston Global Forum’s Initiative, “Building a Framework for Peace and Security in the Pacific”.
Its purpose would be to give viewers a complete picture of the situation in the Pacific region and importance of the issue, and also to enlist their suggestions. BGF will be soliciting ideas/recommendations with the goal of identifying the key questions to be addressed about the Pacific region.
Some topic areas are mentioned, including maritime, economic, military tensions, etc., and BGF will look to the viewers for ideas/recommendations that will assist in framing the key questions in each of these arenas.
2. Multiple sessions – Dates to be determined
These sessions would review the initiative and the process of soliciting advice. Its main purpose would be to unveil the resulting key questions and explain their importance. BGF will be soliciting responses to the questions from top U.S. and Asian leaders and inviting comments on their responses.
These sessions would, one at a time, feature the prepared statements of Asian leaders. The first session would include the statement from the Prime Minister of Vietnam. Guests would respond to his statement and viewers would be invited to post comments.
The number of sessions of this type would be determined by the number of leader statements. The material from each of these sessions would be kept available on BGF website.
3. Penultimate Session
This session would offer preliminary answers to each of the key questions and invite comments/suggestions from viewers.
4. Final session – August 4, 2014
This session would offer the final recommendations for the crises, accompanied by white papers that could then be distributed.
This session would also be organized to commemorate the World War Centenary, feature speeches by Asian and Europe leaders and scholars to reflect on the First World War and to call for a prevention of new potential wars.
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