Examining the Implications of International Scarcity and Plenty with Francis Gavin

Air dates: September 30–October 6, 2024 

It may be a scarcity mindset that views plenty as better than a world where nations and people compete over limited, scarce resources.  But Francis Gavin explains that even in a world of plenty, there are vexing international challenges for which the United States is not prepared.  

Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. He was the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies at MIT and the Tom Slick Professor of International Affairs and the Director of the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. Gavin has had fellowships at Harvard University, the University of Texas, and at the Noble Institute. From 2005 until 2010, he directed The American Assembly’s multiyear, national initiative, The Next Generation Project: U.S. Global Policy and the Future of International Institutions. He currently serves on the CIA Historical Panel and is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Gavin is the Co-Founder, Co-Director and Principal Investigator, with James Steinberg, of the Carnegie International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network (IPSCON), and Founder and Director of the Nuclear Studies Research Initiative (NSRI). He’s also the author of a new Adelphi Paper from the International Institute of Strategic Studies: “The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty: Rethinking International Relations and American Grand Strategy in a New Era.” 

On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Gavin discusses his article, “The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty: Rethinking International Relations and American Grand Strategy in a New Era.” He emphasizes the ways current times shifted how Americans should view scarcity and plenty. He said, “We lived in one world in the past where scarcity in things like security, economics and information shaped the international environment. But one of the great success stories of the last century is that we went a long distance towards solving many of those problems, but in solving them created a whole new series of problems, what I call the problems of plenty, for which we don’t have institutional or even a conceptual grasp of. And that’s the problem we face today.” 

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