Im Rahmen des International Round Table

16. November 2021, 12:30 Uhr

Vorträge der beiden ehemaligen US-Kongressabgeordneten Dr. Charles Boustany und Loretta Sanchez zum Thema "US-Demokratie im Umbruch?".

A year of political earthquakes is coming to an end. Donald Trump, at the end of the last year and in early 2021, rejected and challenged the official voting results and his deselection. The following Capitol riots became – like the earlier unrests of BLM protesters – yet another symbol of a deeply rifted society. The rules and standards of modern democracies like the acceptance of the rule of law, peaceful protests and respectful transitions after democratic elections have been challenged, if not damaged.

To this adds that America’s new President Joe Biden is facing tremendous challenges abroad and, to name just a few, with the COVID-19 pandemic (next to the now emerging economic consequences of the world’s excessive fiscal policies to tackle it), China’s impressive re-emergence as a global superpower or the pressures created by global climate change, Big Tech’s digital power or sizeable migration waves the Biden Administration is in dire need to find workable, affordable and sustainable solutions for pressing questions of both national and global scope. Moreover, after an almost twenty years long military engagement in Afghanistan, Washington’s hasty and bloody withdrawal from Afghanistan has drawn a battered picture of Western democracies and their military prowess. All in all, it appears that no “end of history” (Francis Fukuyama) can be expected and that “there is no advanced industrial democracy in the world more politically divided, or politically dysfunctional, than the US today” (Ian Bremmer).

As long-term former Members of Congress, our honorable guests from the United States, Loretta Sanchez (Democrat, 1997-2017) and Dr. Charles Boustany (Republican, 2005-2017), will help us to shed more light on the inner workings of the US democracy and will provide us with a better understanding of how the US wants to hold its ground against severe national and global challenges while being perhaps more divided than ever before in history due to identity-driven grievances, economic disparities and political fissures.

Welcoming

Christan M. Schlaga
Presidium member of the International Club Bonn La Redoute,
Former German Ambassador to Namibia

Lectures

Loretta Sanchez (Democrat)
Former Member of the US House of Representatives from California's 46th/47th District (1997-2017)

Dr. Charles Boustany (Republican)
Former Member of the US House of Representatives from Louisiana's 7th/3rd District (2005-2017)

Summary

Dr. Benjamin Becker
Director of the AmerikaHaus NRW e.V.

In Kooperation mit dem AmerikaHaus NRW und dem International Club La Redoute.

Diese Veranstaltung hat in englischer Sprache stattgefunden.