A world of shocks and disruptions: Where do we go from here? A French perspective
Channel: Lowy Institute
Date: 17/10/2016

“On the global chessboard, we can no longer attempt to predict the future - whether of nations or of the international system - on the basis of past or present trends…We are living in a period of disruptions and discontinuity that is far from ending and is increasingly out of control.”
 
Jean-David Levitte, the Lowy Institute’s inaugural Distinguished European Fellow, wrote those prescient words in 2013. In October 2016, Jean-David Levitte visited Sydney to discuss this world of shocks and disruptions. The Lowwy Institute hosted his address on the threat of Islamic State in the Middle East and Europe, the state of the European project after Brexit, and the rise of new powers in Asia.
 
The annual Owen Harries Lecture honours the enormous contribution Mr Harries, a Nonresident Fellow at the Lowy Institute, has made to the international policy debate in Australia.

Jean-David Levitte was the senior foreign policy adviser to Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac and served on the presidential staff of Valery Giscard d’Estaing. He has held senior positions in the French Foreign Ministry, including as assistant secretary for Asia. He was the French ambassador to the United Nations in New York from 2000 to 2002 (chairing the Security Council on 9/11), and the Ambassador of France to the United States in Washington, DC during the war in Iraq.