Critchfield Conference explored Indian Ocean Basin

Americans aren't always aware of the importance of the Indian Ocean Basin. No superpowers reside on its shores. It's an Atlantic-Pacific world, their traditional thinking goes, and this is not likely to change soon.Robert D. Kaplan, a man New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman labeled "one of the four most widely read authors in the post-Cold War era,"tells a very different story.Kaplan is the chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor, a private global intelligence firm, one of Foreign Policy magazine's top 100 global thinkers in 2011 and 2012, and the author of 14 books on foreign affairs and travel including "Monsoon: The Indian Ocean Basin and the Future of American Power."As his impressive resume attests, Kaplan's analysis is one well worth investigating.Every two years the Critchfield Conference offers WM students, faculty, staff and the general public the opportunity to learn more about a topic pertinent to the Middle East. It brings together academic inquiry with professional networking, allowing current students the chance to interact with those working in diverse fields that intersect with Middle Eastern Studies.

The 2013 conference theme was The Indian Ocean Basin: Navigating the 21st Century Marine Silk Road. The two-day campus conference brought together scholars and business leaders from Virginia and around the world to discuss the geopolitics, science, technology, trade, culture and history ofthe Indian Ocean Basin."The Indian Ocean is the centerpiece of the 21st century,"Kaplan told a captivated audience of more than 200 at the School of Education. "If you think of the world in 2025, with nine billion people, seven billion of them will live in either Southeast Asia, South Asia, East Asia, the Middle East or the eastern part of Africa, with the other two to three billion located in Europe and the Americas.