Confluence Consulate General of Canada in San Francisco

Welcome back for season two of Confluence! On this week’s episode, host Rana Sarkar sits down with James Crabtree, Executive Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies - Asia office to discuss the current geopolitical and geoeconomic moment. Prior to joining the IISS, James was a Singapore-based author and journalist, and an Associate Professor of Practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. His best-selling 2018 book, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age was shortlisted for the FT / McKinsey book of the year. Prior to academia, James worked for the Financial Times, most recently as Mumbai bureau chief, and has written for a wide range of global publications. He also worked as a senior policy adviser in the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit under Tony Blair. Crabtree recently hosted the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, a conference of heightened importance in this critical time in the Indo-Pacific region. In the weeks prior to the conference, we spoke to Crabtree about the wide range of issues facing the Indo-Pacific region including the impact of climate change on our current geopolitical moment; the rise of minilateralism; the evolving posture of the tech sector in the Indo-Pacific; the role of China and how the United States and Canada are engaging in the region.