Pandemic Powerplay

Around the world, governments are implementing extraordinary measures to try to slow down the COVID-19 pandemic—from closing borders to restricting and/or tracking the movements of people. But some leaders with an autocratic bent are using this public health emergency to seize new powers that have little to do with flattening the coronavirus curve and everything to do with entrenching their power. Join the World Affairs Council and Joshua Kurlantzick, Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, for a discussion on authoritarian regimes and the coronavirus outbreak.

About the Speaker
Joshua Kurlantzick is senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is the author, most recently, of A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA. Kurlantzick was previously a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he studied Southeast Asian politics and economics and China's relations with Southeast Asia, including Chinese investment, aid, and diplomacy. Previously, he was a fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy and a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy. He is currently focused on China’s relations with Southeast Asia, and China’s approach to soft power, including state-backed media and information efforts and other components of soft power. He is also working on issues related to the rise of global populism and, particularly, populism in Asia.