The biggest security crisis in Europe for eight decades has generated the use of economic statecraft on an unprecedented scale. With geopolitical competition becoming more intense, many are asking what the future role of such statecraft will be.
Few senior figures in the Western economic response have spoken publicly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In this lecture, Jonathan Black, Heywood Fellow at the School, will explore how economic measures were developed at speed; how the use of economic statecraft might develop in the future; and what countries should bear in mind as they do so.
The event will be introduced by Kathy Hall, COO of the School. Tom Fletcher, Principal of Hertford College, will introduce the lecture and moderate the Q&A.
The lecture is followed by a Q&A and then a drinks reception.
Jonathan Black biography
Jonathan Black is the Heywood Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government. He was the UK Deputy National Security Adviser and G7 / G20 Sherpa and the senior official overseeing the UK’s economic policy response to the invasion and coordinating that response with international partners. He was recently appointed by the UK Prime Minister to coordinate landmark global talks on the safe use of artificial intelligence ahead of a UK summit later this year. Alongside Matt Clifford, Jonathan will serve as the Prime Minister’s representative, coordinating and galvanising efforts to make sure the summit results in the development of a shared approach to mitigating the risks of AI.
Tom Fletcher biography
Tom Fletcher became Principal of Hertford College in September 2020. He is also currently serving as the Vice Chair of Oxford University’s Conference of Colleges.
He was previously the foreign policy adviser to three UK Prime Ministers (2007-11) and the UK’s Ambassador to Lebanon (2011-15). More recently, he has been a Visiting Professor at New York University, and chaired the International Advisory Council of the Creative Industries Federation, promoting Britain’s most dynamic and magnetic sector overseas. In 2018 he founded The Foundation for Opportunity. Tom led a review of British diplomacy for the UK Foreign Office in 2016, and on the future of the United Nations for the UN Secretary General in 2017. In 2018 he authored a report on the skills the next generation need to thrive in the 21st century. He has published three books: The Naked Diplomat: Power and Politics in the Digital Age (Harper Collins, 2016), Ten Survival Skills for a World In Flux (Harper Collins, 2022) and a novel, The Ambassador (Canelo, 2022).
For more information, read the full text here.