There was a time when America spoke with a semblance of moral authority – not because the world believed the rhetoric, but because Americans did.
Thus, America received the benefit of the doubt – even when self-interest was evidently mixed with a just cause. However, has America lost legitimacy? If so, then how did this happen and does it even matter? Does power really need legitimacy?
If so, then can the situation be reversed? And in any case, why should we care?- Intelligence Squared
Bio
Mark Carnegie
Mark Carnegie is an investment banker who co-founded Carnegie, Wylie & Company, one of Australia's leading independent corporate advisory and investment firms.
He is currently in the US advising on the ramifications of the financial crisis. He has had a near twenty year career as an investor and corporate adviser in New York, London, and Sydney. Mark is a Director and CEO of Lazard Carnegie Wylie, a private equity firm, and a director of Macquarie Radio Network Ltd and a large number of investee companies. Carnegie is a former Director of Lonely Planet Publications, Chairman of STW Communications Group Pty Ltd (formerly Singleton Group Ltd and Australia's most profitable advertising and marketing group) from 1993-2005. Amongst other investments Carnegie has been a participant in groups that have acquired major stakes in the Courage Pub Estate, John Fairfax Holdings, Hoyts Cinemas, Formula One Holdings, SCTV, Macquarie Radio Network and Lonely Planet Publications.
Carnegie holds a BA from Oxford University and is a former Treasurer of the Oxford University Union.
Bob Carr
Bob Carr was Premier of New South Wales from 1995 to 2005. He grew up in Maroubra, attended the University of New South Wales, and worked as a journalist for the ABC and The Bulletin before being elected to the New South Wales seat of Maroubra in 1983.
Known for his oratory, for his environmentalism, and for his commitment to schooling and literacy, he launched the Premier’s Reading Challenge in 2001 and currently sits on the board of Dymocks. He is the author of Thoughtlines: Reflections of a Public Man, What Australia Means to Me and My Reading Life.
Geoffrey Garrett
Geoff Garrett is founding CEO of the United States Studies Centre and Professor of Political Science at the University of Sydney. Garrett was previously President of the Pacific Council on International Policy, where he remains a Senior Fellow, and Professor of International Relations, Business Administration, Communication and Law at the University of Southern California.
Among the most widely cited political scientist of his generation, Garrett is an expert on the causes and consequences of globalization, American politics and foreign policy, and the impact of China's rise on the US and the rest of the world. He is author of Partisan Politics in the Global Economy and editor of The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy, both published by Cambridge University Press.
Garrett has been quoted and interviewed by leading media sources around the world and his essays and opinion pieces have appeared in newspapers and magazines in Australia, the US, Asia, Europe and Latin America.
Garrett served as founding Dean and Vice Provost of the UCLA International Institute and has held academic appointments at Oxford, Stanford and Yale universities and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Garrett is a member of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations as well as the Pacific Council.
Garrett was born and raised in Canberra and holds a BA (Hons) from the Australian National University. He earned his MA and PhD at Duke University in North Carolina, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.
Owen Harries
Owen Harries is a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney.
His research interests include US foreign policy, the US-Australia alliance and morality and foreign policy. He is a graduate of Oxford University, and during the late-1970s became head of policy planning in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and senior adviser to the Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser.
In the mid-1980s he was a fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, where he became editor in chief of The National Interest, a leading Washington-based foreign policy quarterly, from its founding in 1985 until 2001. He has published over 200 articles in leading journals and magazines and is author of several books examining American policies.
Harries delivered the 2003 Boyer Lectures for the ABC, published under the title, Benign or Imperial? Reflections on American Hegemony.
Martine Letts
Martine Letts joined as Deputy Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy in January 2005 following 4 years as the Secretary General (CEO) of Australian Red Cross and a 17-year career with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Letts served as Australian Ambassador to Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, Deputy Head of Mission and Australian Deputy Permanent Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna and was an adviser to Foreign Minister Evans from 1992 to 1994.
Letts specialised in arms control and disarmament on postings in Geneva, Vienna and as a policy officer in DFAT.
Simon Longstaff
Dr Simon Longstaff is Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre. Simon spent five years studying and working as a member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Having won scholarships to study at Cambridge, he read for the degrees of Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy. He was inaugural President of The Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics and is a Director of a number of companies. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Foreign Policy Association, based in New York.
Paul McGeough
Paul McGeough is a former Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and is now its chief correspondent spending much of his time in conflict zones Iraq and Afghanistan in particular.
McGeough was in Afghanistan just before September 11 and in New York on that day and has written several books about his reporting experiences, including Manhattan to Baghdad: Despatches from the frontline in the War on Terror and In Baghdad: A Reporter's War.
A hallmark of McGeough's writing is the human dimension he brings to world affairs. He is currently finishing his next book on the Middle East. Apart from being twice named Australian Journalist of the Year, his work has been acknowledged with five Walkley Awards.
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