Belgium Prime Minister H.E. Yves Leterme delivers the opening address at the 2010 Brussels Forum. Craig Kennedy, president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), introduces Leterme.
Bio
Craig Kennedy
Craig Kennedy has been president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) since 1995. Under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership, GMF has focused its activities on bridging U.S.-European differences on foreign policy, economics, immigration and integration, and domestic policy. Toward this effort, he has provided GMF with a strong infrastructure throughout Europe, opening new offices in Paris, Bratislava, Brussels, Belgrade, Ankara, and Bucharest to complement the work being done in Washington and Berlin. Mr. Kennedy began his career in 1980 as a program officer at the Joyce Foundation in Chicago, becoming vice president of programs in 1983 and president from 1986 to 1992. He left the Joyce Foundation to work for Richard J. Dennis, a Chicago investor and philanthropist. During this same period, he started a consulting firm working with nonprofit and public sector clients.
Yves Leterme
Yves Leterme is currently serving his second term as prime minister of Belgium. He studied political science and law at the University of Leuven and at the University of Ghent, and in 1983 he became chairman of the Ypres Christian Democratic and Flemish Party (CVP) Youth. In 1992, Mr. Leterme became an administrator at the EU and worked at the European Commission for five years. He became municipal councilor of Ypres in 1995 and parliamentarian in 1997. In 2001, he became CVP fraction leader in the Chamber (House of Commons), and in 2003 he became the party chairman. In 2004, Mr. Leterme became minister-president of the Flemish government. In 2007, he became vice-prime minister of Belgium and minister of budget, transport, institutional reform, and the North Sea. He then served as prime minister, minister of foreign affairs, and again as prime minister.
Process by which the experience of everyday life, marked by the diffusion of commodities and ideas, is becoming standardized around the world. Factors that have contributed to globalization include increasingly sophisticated communications and transportation technologies and services, mass migration and the movement of peoples, a level of economic activity that has outgrown national markets through industrial combinations and commercial groupings that cross national frontiers, and international agreements that reduce the cost of doing business in foreign countries. Globalization offers huge potential profits to companies and nations but has been complicated by widely differing expectations, standards of living, cultures and values, and legal systems as well as unexpected global cause-and-effect linkages. See alsofree trade.
Study of the relations of states with each other and with international organizations and certain subnational entities (e.g., bureaucracies and political parties). It is related to a number of other academic disciplines, including political science, geography, history, economics, law, sociology, psychology, and philosophy. The field emerged at the beginning of the 20th century largely in the West and particularly in the U.S. as that country grew in power and influence. The study of international relations has always been heavily influenced by normative considerations, such as the goal of reducing armed conflict and increasing international cooperation. At the beginning of the 21st century, research focused on issues such as terrorism, religious and ethnic conflict, the emergence of substate and nonstate entities, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and efforts to counter nuclear proliferation, and the development of international institutions.
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