Mark Beeson
University of Technology Sydney and Griffith University
Topic:
APEC and the new international order
APEC was inaugurated in a very different era. Free trade looked like an idea whose time had come, and neoliberal capitalism seemed to have triumphed. Now the world looks very different: geopolitical competition is making cooperation difficult, especially between states that have very different conceptions about the appropriate role of the state in encouraging economic development and ensuring national security. This is a major challenge for an organisation like APEC, which includes East Asian states with an impressive record of state-led development, and neoliberal, Anglo-America states with a rhetorical commitment to free trade and deregulation. Examples of both models can be found in South America. This presentation briefly outlines these different approaches and argues that the real challenge for states everywhere is developing an economic model that recognises and responds to the universal problem of climate change, which remains the biggest problem facing humankind. APEC can no longer act as if this not an existential challenge and that we can go back to business as usual. But in crisis is opportunity: APEC could become a venue for creative responses to this challenge that might combine the best of both models and unify its members in a common endeavour.
Speaker Bio:
Mark Beeson is an adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney and Griffith University. He was previously professor of international politics at the University of Western Australia. Before re-joining UWA in 2015, he taught at Murdoch, Griffith, Queensland, York (UK) and Birmingham, where he was also head of department. He has also had visiting positions in the UK, Austria, France, Germany, Russia, China and Hong Kong. His work is centred on the politics, economics and security of the broadly conceived Asia-Pacific region. He has written over 200 articles and book chapters, and hundreds of opinion pieces for major international papers. He is the author or editor of 22 books, the latest of which are Environmental Anarchy? International Security in the 21st Century, Bristol University Press) 2021 and the co-edited book Search for Security: AUKUS and the New Militarism, Melbourne University Press, 2025.
