[全场] 未来，谁将会主导世界？｜Nexus 2019年辩论全场｜李世默

now Michael spoke about their final mental crisis but we all know that there are five a month of crisis cry seen to many many other crises you know the social economic crisis the inequality the opiate crisis just name it and I would like to understand what is at the core what is the course what is the cause of those crisis we are now facing in the West thirty years after fall of the Berlin Wall when we fought you know end of history labeled democracy has won all will be fine okay Eric do you have a strong views well I think I enjoyed Michaels lecture very much this morning especially when he mentioned about liberal politics and its lineage beginning the Enlightenment of course I think we're at at the end of a 300 year run of a liberal vision of the world however you want to call them and maybe some some call it the model and and I think that vision is in some trouble not predicting its demise not yet but it seems some trouble now because in the last 30 years to this day since in the Cold War that liberals around the world have pursued a rather extreme ideological version of modern liberalism which precludes and excludes other possibilities both intellectually and economically to the point where I think the leader of the liberal world the United States of course had committed what Paul Kennedy's defined as Imperial overreach both externally into externally it's it's gone too far and try to impose its vision on the rest of the world are so many countries to some extent in some cases militarily - rather disastrous consequences and internally it's taken this vision of the world which places the individual as the autonomous basic unit of society at the center of the universe internally it's gone 25 since the Reagan and such a revolution with the neoliberal economic doctrine that has led to tremendous inequality in developed countries that are generating this backlash against the liberal tradition post the liberal tradition and in globalization itself and these problems are not being solved so so I think that's partially how I see it on the outside from a non liberal society the trouble with with the liberal vision what's the cause of the many crisis we are facing I think that first of all I agree that globalization is a main driver for this angst this anxiety that we have today in our societies I'm speaking out more about Western society so Europe Americas I think that was Sicily very much aggravated by the financial crisis and austerity policies an impact that it had foreseen in Europe a very specific issue is this movement of refugees and illegal migrants that has put a lot of pressure in some societies that were not used to deal with multiculturalism or diversity or they thought that they had enough of that so and that creates a backlash so there are many causes there is not a single cause and by the way I think we should avoid easy simplifications in fact that's one of the one of the intellectual devices from a say-so of populism the constantly fugate is to make these kind of simplifications I do not agree that we are in a worse position now than 30 or 40 years ago in fact you I think we are in a better position now if you look at Europe today okay we are not happy with all the political systems and we are not happy with all the government's but it's suddenly better than we have when you get off of Europe and the totalitarian communism it's much better the situation in in Poland or or in any central Eastern European country is better from all points of view I mean economically socially in literacy terms in openness so I don't agree if you look at Latin America also it's better now than it was 30 or 40 years ago so I don't share what I call the intellectual glamour of pessimism today it's very probably it has to do also with the aging societies we have today in the West what called krutov pessimism owes and Michael I really enjoyed also your lecture before I don't agree I think we should avoid easy simplifications we are certainly in a moment of transition with some and scientists also because politics matter and in some cases we have very extremely bad irresponsible leadership there is of course a concern global is that the global order that was created after the second world war mainly by the United States and by the so-called West now the most important stakeholder in the United States a pair appear not so committed as as they were which is quite insane so that creates this kind of enemy this sense of disorder but I believe I continue to believe that democracies are over a long period much more resilient and much more able to perform for the public good at any other alternative but Mitchell listen and will you confirm America at least Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders would agree with America right I mean that capitalism this hardcore capitalism and the billionaire class is one of the causes of the resentment the fear the problems in the West well I think certainly in the United States the drastic growth of inequality mm-hmm significantly due to marketization of everything including throughout the world leaves a yawning gap which gets filled by a type of populist nativism when others aren't addressing it and and I think the consequences of it work on many levels and then the some extent work globally some extent doesn't I think we have on economic questions and economic questions raising value questions such as what are the means and ends of life and what is the intersection between them it's like the political questions they'd like to quote with questions of the weaknesses of representative democracy and how we look to solve or respond to those weaknesses the technological and communications revolution has added another layer and all of this leads in a way to also some basic cultural educational questions concerning how citizens of a society are educated in in both cultural and political terms the question I would pose to Eric is one of a whether or not one believes in self-government and citizens self-governing and so into this one way hasn't worked I got I it's worked in some ways it hasn't worked in others ou would want to advocate self-government as a general normal or even accepting the principle that um yeah you know socialists used to argue about the preconditions of socialism they're also preconditions of democracy but but the question is whether self government regardless of the origins of its of the idea on what to be a normal or or not and that implies a concept of what citizenship means well I think the concept of self government is is an interesting and important one but the way we discuss it seems always to oversimplify it obviously since ancient time in China for instance even through the Imperial dynasties the idea is always the ruler must rule on behalf of the people and the will of the people is predominant it's the most important thing for the legitimacy even of the Emperor so what what our self-governance mean what does democracy mean right when we when we use the word democracy I think most most here really mean liberal democracy there may be other forms of democracy is it possible is it possible when when you say self-governance perhaps I'm not sure what you mean but maybe you mean liberal democracy which is a particular means there's been a minimum that the that a ruler doesn't simply rule on behalf of the citizenry but is also responsible to them and that is right of course are they our rulers rulers ought to be held accountable to the people in some format in some so so liberalism produce a particular set of procedures that make the rulers accountable I don't think it's the only legitimate procedure to hold the rulers accountable I'm not even I'm not even sure it's the most effective at this time let's pause here for a moment and get back to it where we start to talk about how power is organized because I'm still not I'm still confused by Magnus question what causes the troubles in our society now Sima is in your view the Western liberal order the best of all worlds and were fighting for or in the mean time given all that has happened you too have given up on the West and think well recent of better alternative well first of all I'm happy to be among so many distinguished people I don't know if I'm I'm not a CAD omission so I don't know all these things but I living in Afghanistan for in a conflict country since 41 years different superpower being involved and they were in the country but what is missing in in Afghanistan is actually respect for human rights and I think this is the core the cause of a lot of conflicts everywhere including in Western countries I mean let's say Western countries were all supported when the Russians invaded I found a son mm-hmm but was their support and their approach was promote human rights inequality or promote accountability injustice in the countries related to everything so that's why I think we as a human being living everywhere including in Western countries or Eastern countries we need to think again and again that where do we go either if it's environmental crisis in there in the world or if it's poverty increasing poverty in the country violation of Human Rights going on without notice without accountability because there are some powers claiming to be liberal democracy what they do there they're saying it's right whatever they does but if the other country does then it's wrong mm-hmm so that whole issue of superiority and knowing every everything they they they think it's right I think doesn't work me as a human rights activist I think our approach should be based on human rights on everything let's say when we are talking about this DG for example sustainable development goal and talking about the freedom of expression in freedom of media in China or in other countries what do we do if you're talking about the violation of human rights in China do we have the right to build all the different weapons to kill the people and it's right that we can use every possible development of technology to suppress part of the people in somewhere because we don't like them mm-hmm but then cry about the lack of freedom of expression in China so which one that's why I think there's a lack of equality a lack of accountability and I think the culture of impunity continues for the so-called war crimes and crimes against humanity around the world mm-hmm and the crimes are coming from all sides from one side mm-hmm well I think we should look why there's a extremist fundamentalists not only in Islamic countries but also in the other countries yeah because to continue on this point one of the themes of the ring is welcomes betrayal well Tom beat Wales everybody all the time and if you go on YouTube and you listen to the many speeches mrs. Steve Benin gives also Feeney all those people it's all about the betrayal of the elites the elites in the West and those global elites who according to Steve lemon our both and he's talking about the people in the force etcetera etcetera etcetera the truth of the matter you know you don't have to be a fan of mr. ban which I'm absolutely not but if you see the kind of resentment everywhere in our society and it's resentment against elites which are you know they don't pay taxes they are there in their own valhalla they preach global blah blah and the end result is nothing they do so who else listen and and what is Israel all into a misunderstanding is that the lack of communication is lack of marketing or Easter IDI to point that like the gods in in in the integrated em room they only take care for themselves and they are not interested in quote-unquote the people I'm actually happy to say that I've never heard Steve Steve been ins any of his speeches as I as I listened to this discussion from my perspective and there's obviously a lot of concern with what's going on in the United States the the whole liberal order and the institutions that were put together after World War two and in fact a friend of mine said the other day and this was just kind of a striking statement that one of Roosevelt's advisers and said that this order will last as long as those of us who participated in this are around and and that really struck me because they are almost gone and I don't know if that's right or wrong but certainly in this time things are changing dramatically my own view in the United States it is the inequality that has led us here it isn't and certainly the elite have benefited from that but we also have in the United is completely out of touch and in my view with the American people Anna and an ethos in Washington that is very power centric fueled by legally corrupt money that have in their main in their main goal is to stay in power and and I've seen it then this isn't the last three years I've watched this grow over the course of certainly the last 20 or so when I was in Washington and I think that is at the core of the resentment on the part of the people united states that disappearance of what we used to call the American dream where everybody sort of had an equal shot and the complete lack of accountability we've heard accountability multiple times here the complete lack of accountability on the part of anybody in a position of power the game is much more specific in terms of blaming somebody as opposed to holding themselves accountable for their own actions or their own outcomes etc and a reelection rate that is typically in Washington in the 85 to 95 percent every two years you know at that level so we have a political class that is incredibly powerful it is in unto it it basically is focused on itself and sustaining itself far above meeting the requirements the education requirements the economic requirements the fiscal requirements though the the investment requirements across every aspect of who we are as a people that our political class has failed completely well I couldn't agree more but who am i every cent but but more importantly and this is a question to you Michael give me your great plea for no sensible liberalism let me put it this way FAC LaFave al gave his famous lecture for the US Congress in 1990 and at the end of his speech at Congress US Congress he said we still do not we still don't know how to how to put morality ahead of politics science and economics we are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of our activities is responsibility responsibility something higher than my family my country my firm my success so this is this big plea of fell to everybody and the whole power class in in United States of America to put moral values first and his question already then was why are we not doing it why is that the political class like Mike Mullen just said not doing that despite the fact that apparently things are going well I'd want a historian like Peter to weigh in here I I don't have I don't have good answers here right I think that Admiral Milken and mellon raised a very important point when he quoted that guy saying this'll last as long as we last these things are heavily generational III think that the liberal politics that I inherited my inherited from the Roosevelt generation from 19th from the 1930s these were people who'd seen the capitalist system almost collapse they'd seen unemployment not at 10% or 12% but at 30 40 % the country literally gone going down the drain they'd gone through a global war of unimaginable horror and then we had 40 years after that which thomas piketty's statistics show you in which because income inequality was very very radically compressed during the depression because of a eradication of wealth and then the collective mobilization during the second world war in which the state the liberal state suddenly had a huge power that lasted for 30 years I grew up in a world in which income inequality in my country Canada's and I think the United States is saying very sharply compressed there's a period between 45 and 1973 when income inequality basically keeps reproducing the pattern of compressed inequality that we saw in the Depression and the Second World War and my parents generation came back from the Second World War professionals in in a in in their fields deeply affected by the Solidarity of the Second World War emotionally affected by a sense that we're all in this together my father my mother had this passionate sense as liberals that it was one society we were going to build it we're gonna rebuild it I think we and then from the 70s onwards the numbers are remorseless we begin to see an upward tick in inequality we don't understand all of its drivers some of its new technology some of its self dealing some of its liberal professions doing better out of the economy and than they really should I mean there's some self dealing there's some technological change but it has fractured I think you're quite right it's fracture of the society that old generation has died out the Roosevelt generation has died out my mom and dad are dead as it were and we are the heirs of a new world that's very unfamiliar to us the other thing we're heir to and this would pick up what our eric has been saying is we're living the end of empire this is a huge development you go back then to 45 you know in 1945 the Netherlands had an empire the Belgians had an empire the French had an empire the British had an empire flash forward to 2019 and one damn thing I think is uniformly positive is we're in a post Imperial era but it then cuts in it in a different way I'm a Canadian I grew up dependent on American hegemony my whole vision of the world was there was a liberal democratic state that would do the wrong thing until the end that until the last moment then kind of do the right thing we're in a new world the passage of that American hegemony the emergence of let's be Franklin and all respect to China great civilization but this is a single party this is a single-party state and it's taking us if this is the power power that generates d'Or dominates the 21st century it's an unfamiliar world I do not think China will be the new Empire but the idea that the world is led by a single party state causes anxiety and and in a post-imperial world a post-imperial world is wonderful because we get back to self-determination in my view we get back to the nation-state as the driver of politics but we're we're we're suddenly in a world without the hegemon that used to have an association of democratic values and now we're into a new world I think that produces a great deal of anxiety to get back to the moral point I I think what I'm trying to say is that the morality of politics is a historical phenomenon it was created in the 1930s it lasted till the 1970s it has not survived the emergence of the new inequality it has not survived the end of empire we now have to recreate an immorality of politics for a 21st century which is totally different than the the moral and political world of my parents is through a connection Eric between Michael and and an April Mullins statement of the lack of solidarity and the rise of individualism you described as part of Western society and then the question is maybe Aleksandr can tell us also a little bit more about it what's the connection between living in a capitalist commercial society and the lack of solidarity a fragmentation and individualism which we are now facing and which is part of the resentment movement I think one reason for the crisis that you sort of spoke about at the outset is that we're in a weird transitional phase where we're we're the political mainstream political discussions are sort of 20th century discussions more or less between what is still the conflict what used to be left and what used to be right when a this conflict more or less will be rendered moot or it has been rendered moot because it will be decided by technology to a large extent I mean given that you know we're heading towards you know an age of technical technological unemployment which will require more or less a a more redistribute of approach or obviously who knows how bad it's and how quickly it's going to get really bad with the environmental crisis and that could also force sort of disruptive changes in in the social compact so a lot of these discussions are are sort of shadowboxing of dyeing belief systems and and I think that once this rubble and is cleared and this dust settles then we're gonna arrive at a more sort of very analytical and fact-based view of politics that you can already see in in this post millennial generation of activists of course the most famous figurehead being Greta Thune Berg who's whose very simple and powerful messages unite behind the science and and this whole environmental movement obviously lends itself well to to to sort of being the catalyst for the shift towards a more sort of rational and less ideological worldview because the evidence is so clear and the stakes are so high and and and obviously even kids can completely understand this this IPP Seavers I piece EC report and and the drastic implications and get completely involved in this so if we if we do move to this sort of more more rational view that of course will then leave no stone unturned in for example in Germany it would mean that they had would have to address sort of logical fault lines in there and they're established political narrative as in any other country probably but in Germany for example it would mean exiting nuclear energy which is sort of the the the the life's topic of all of the entire left-wing in Germany and they would have to re-examine that decision given that it makes no sense to exit nuclear energy in order to save the environment it just makes no sense at all given according to this new research or also proliferation even now you know Germany used to rely on the on the nuclear umbrella provided by the United States that obviously is no longer reliable just because of Donald Trump but because of in any way nuclear power cannot really be shared if it's you know in a post block world but you can't just really ignore these these sort of glaring illogical faults and and after these things have been addressed and I think at some point if we really are being if this new generation of voters is rational and not ideological then sort of a glaring moral dilemma well at some point emerge have you know having to do with global inequality and so say you're you're sitting in a hotel bar and you decide to order a bottle of wine for a hundred euros to after a busy day and in the time that it takes for the bottle of wine to arrive on your phone you can research through vaccinations in the third world or something of this nature how much it would cost statistically to save one human life and say it turns out to be also around 100 euros and what do you do do you say I'm just gonna put this out of my mind because I want to drink the bottle of wine or which would you know be by any standard in the moral decision or do you accept that this you know sort of the state of perfect information we're going into that gives you this kind of information at your fingertips wherever you are you accept that I'm not gonna ignore this and I'm gonna sort of press the one-click button on my on my charity app and not and you know have you know just like a glass of water instead and if once you do accept that though then you're really on a slippery slope basically because where does it end you know 200 no imagine yourself but I mean seriously imagine you have an app that combines a hundred different avenues of charity and you can scan a product you're about to buy and then it shows you bundles of life-saving measures that you could buy instead yeah well okay so okay it's obvious that we are you know Rob wants to stick with his mind to something a new Peter we haven't hurt you yes now in the New Silk Roads the new silk runs you claim quote equal the age of the West is at crossroads if not at the ends why ok I will answer that I want to pick up one Michael first about saying we're in a post-imperial age which I don't agree with it all by the way ok partly because brexit is going to deliver a new empire I think when Theresa May when she gave her first speech when she became prime minister she said we're going to deliver brexit and Britain's best days lie not behind us but in front of us and for historians who only need to look like a hundred years to see 25 percent of the world's population paid taxes to London 100 years ago I assume that means we're gonna get another empire I will join and we will join the very small group of those who've had an empire twice which includes as all of you will know at the bulgarians it's very rare to have an empire twice but the Bulgarian had two empires everyone should know about this but we don't in the same way that no one knows is the biggest empire that Europe has seen has been the Athenians land Empire we are our idea perspective is a challenge and that feeds into all of his kind of things but we're not just that's a bit flippant about post-imperial we are and we are an imperial age because there are new kinds of empires that have been built right and there's a cache of documents captured by the US military about five years ago profiling Isis recruits from Western European countries and that profile is almost exactly the same as Silicon Valley founders and the new empires that have been built are the disruptive 25 26 year-olds high levels of education highly incentivized to to destabilize to take advantage of weaknesses in the systems or to break things for their own idea of what their empire will look like as it happens Isis's experiment experiment didn't work too well but Facebook Google these kinds of new entities that don't look like the traditional ways that empires do have the same kinds of powers there's kind of morality questions at least talking about on a much an infinitesimal sort of scale and so some of that I think we need to be careful how we sort of calibrate how we think about the world around us and I think again going back to what mics around Ramallah said about about the failure of this of states in the u.s. particularly but also in other Western democracies too is that is that to an extent in the post-war scenario for the next forty five years they were calibrations that were reins were kept on a political class because the definition was against a defined and clear adversary an enemy and one of us as chair of a Joint Chiefs Coenen Powell in 89 when the wall came down said the only thing that he's worried about now is about being excessively bored because there wasn't anything to worry about now the Soviet Union had come to an end and so on and I don't mean that you know what I what I mean is that is that when you have to deal with new worlds those new structures those structures that you've relied on start to change and over the last 3040 years one of the challenges has been as the wall came down and the new world has emerged is that Western countries have become more like feudal states because the incentives for elites to acquire wealth and position of power and to retain those have meant that right now according to research done in Sweden in the United Kingdom and the USA and Holland will not be far behind the chances of you staying if you're born in the bottom 20% are significantly higher than if you're born today in Sierra Leone or Nisha or Kazakhstan and that means that you have a trap where the people are porous and society will start to make demands about the fact that they are not being heard and those demands could head towards the heart left with a perfectly good reason or towards a hard right and the Balan who is talking about things that are real you know in equality Israel the elites are not listening they are failing you and that's why it's so dangerous because there is that powder is dry for a reason and it's it's it's not impossible to exploit that but there are consequences of those feudal problems of power or failures of the politicians or failures of the political systems of the widening of society the incentivization of companies to buy political power and influence and tax cuts and whatever might might be but there are other problems too it means that our us our multilateral organizations start to look wrong so might compare the current secretary States in Brussels at the other last year he said if the United Nations the World Trade Organization or the European Union are not reformed they should be eliminated right these are these are words that not just an important a powerful figure but we should be paying a great deal of attention to why it is that we in the West think we're at a loose end because as far as I'm concerned Afghanistan Iraq and certain countries around the world and not excluded but I feel a great deal safer today than I did as a child of the Cold War where every Friday at my school we had a drill to hide under a table in case there was a nuclear attack where we had three day weeks and energy shortages we had problems about food supply you know we had the PLO we had ADD aircraft hijackings all the time you know are the safety of our world and the prosperity we've come to take for granted because we have no perspective right and if you don't pay attention to history and in my particular view not just European history and history of the West but to this much bigger picture then you lose the ability to look in the right direction so the West is that a crossroads for this reason but other countries other populations see things in a very different way so by 2050 80% of the world's population will live in Africa or in Asia right not in Amsterdam not in London not in whatever and so Europe becomes a corollary it can help direct it can help influence it can benefit and pay also the price if it gets things wrong but you start with history you start with discussions about power political systems and so on you start with demographics you start with climate and you start with resources and I agree with every single word and Michael's extremely eloquent speech but humans have interfered and messed up climate since the beginning of time you know forests being cleared for stock fish being over stock we can do it much more efficiently we can destroy the environment much faster and produce these climate changes too but the founding fathers in the United States were obsessed about the that about the fact that when agricultural now has been cleared in the eastern part of the United States that this was changing the way in which we'd be able to live and survive Florida was too cold to live in in the 1600s right so this is all part of a process that we we start when you look at history climates and geography demographics and Natural Resources and you follow where the distributions come from and and Europe has had a like eric says whichever way you look at it despite to resume who by the way she said she never read history that was like never light reading it's a quote she only gave her first interviews to British Vogue she said I never read history books I like to make things up as they go along and you know it makes me it doesn't give me any pride I promise you to see what's going on right now in the UK with our brexit discussion but there is that there is a there is a clear signaling of problems if you if your laudable to look and look at the problem in the right way because you of course you're going to have the wrong kind of solutions in your book also ride it the Mediterranean was not the cradle of civilization but the crebbil civilization it wasn't democracy wasn't born in Athens democracy was born in Mesopotamia the first city-states that allowed elections that allowed citizens rights these laws you can't function as a state without laws and laws are designed to protect as part of that but law is about protecting people right it Brit Brit it's designed to protect people being exploited that's a whole visible function of what the state should do the state's job is to make society more fair more open more meritocratic and States that make that work have been prosperous so the young lamp or in China for example in 1400 he said the best gift my father gave me was 40 years where nothing happened peace and stability are massively underrated you know as Hegel says the pages of peace in history books are the are the ones with no words on because we love war we love revolution we love change we love apocalyptic views we love drama and we love crisis and actually most normal people would say in my home environment I don't any crisis at all I will settle for boredom and a quiet Friday night any day of the week [Applause] your mother loud - be quiet listen and do we like war here yeah empirically it's hard to say that we don't I mean you know as I was and listening to conversation in terms of certainly what the US has done and I personally think that Iraq the decision on Iraq was a disaster and you may recall that we were going to light the flame of democracy I think and definitions of terms are really important and one of my learnings in Iraq in Afghanistan and in other places the the the flame of democracy gets lit initially if you have some semblance of a rule of a rule of law if you if you made me prioritize impacting a country it would be first and foremost to put in a rule of law from which an awful lot of other things would grow which was the exact opposite of what we did both in Iraq and Afghanistan that so that's one thought yeah the other is it in all of this and then possibly just because it's it's how I grew up from a leadership perspective I think leaders really matter and I don't think we spend enough time talking about how leaders get created in the current world we talk a lot about how they get destroyed and we watch them seemingly on the sidelines with glee as they get destroyed what we don't talk about much is those who could lead who might be watching this that would say well that's something I'm never gonna do but my biggest concern globally quite frankly is we have is we have virtually no leaders that align with values that I cherish Western values to move us forward and the two leaders notionally who moving the needle in the world right now our Putin and xishan ping and they're not the top of my list in terms of the guys I want to move the needle so in this you know in this the description of where we are and why it's almost fuel if we don't have leaders who can move us forward and I don't know where they're gonna come from because right now politically you have to get you you virtually have to get destroyed to survive and how many people really want to take themselves and their families through that and this isn't just in the US I see this you know across the globe certainly in the in countries that I value from a Western value standpoint it is amazing to me sometimes what I see happening in my own country and how much that is being replicated you know globally in other countries that we are tied to so that leadership piece is a huge huge piece and where does it come from back to that in a second but I want to try you know what you just set them all so for you Jose Manuel and for you Seema what because the the the the ring is about also about the fact that both on has to you know it's beautiful own laws and rules and and it becomes a mess and so then he creates if it to get out of it but what are the consequences if a rule based international order is now replaced more and more by the age-old might makes right I mean Trump is no longer interested in rule-based order Mekons have the NATO is brain that and it's you know the struggle of the famous more or less well we're back in the jungle that's where I may I may be biased but that's where I think Europe is so important I think a world she world will be a problem well with all respect for the United States or China look to country that I know relatively well that I visit because Europe we are really committed probably because of our experience of the terrible wars two world wars in fact start as civil European Wars we should not forget that most awful events of mankind history were here in Europe and more development part of Europe namely Germany so that's where it started the most probably the most tragic event of mankind Shoah happen here in Europe so this job Europe is issue of wars except the last 60 years after the European community was created where you had no war in European Community Territory we had the war in fact still there somehow with created by Russia in in in Ukraine and also Georgia and we had in the Balkan wars but you pink community countries today we think and I think basically it's a good a good good way of seeing things it's a war between European countries European community European countries is not possible or is there even unsinkable so the European has an experience now of understanding that the nation is not absolute and I want to make that point because I think we have a focus some time here the philosophical the question is what we considered the real important value is it the state is it the party did an ideology is it a class or is it a human being that's fine some people call it individualism but I I prefer to call it humanism or personalism so the question is if you think that our country we love our countries I think most of us I mean I love my country we are patriotic my country has almost 900 years of existence Portugal so I lost my country but I think it is not in contradiction to BC of Europe and also why not to say citizens of the world by the way that's why I remember Prime Minister have written recently that against the tradition of Cosmopolitan's said that citizens of the world are citizens of nowhere I think we can be patriotic and be citizens of the world and care about human life and so and to let mankind but I think it was Dostoyevsky there is a personage there that says my father loved mankind in general but he hated every individual in particular so that's not the question is to a mankind is not an abstract concept like the party the class the nation-state mankind means every man every woman every child and this is why the focus too often has to be on the person human being that's why freedom is so important and I believe that with all its imperfections the free world is more able than other parts of the world to respond to human needs why do you think that Europe can deliver this and no China or America no I mean first of all we have Europe we are not perfect we had a lot of problems but in fact in Europe we have that culture of multilateralism so we believe in an order of rules global order of rules at least current Europe I mean the nanos the countries we are here very close they believe in the world of rules with some principles with some values so and geopolitical of course Europe is not the same way as United States had to remain in spite of all the difficulties the most influential country the world or China has been the most important history I think most important fact of the last thirty four kids is said on the rise of China everything is different after the rise of China and by the way in Europe I think we have interest in having a strong China not a weak shine about that for probably another discussion and that's I I really believe it's a mistake some of the policies that some people are now trying to shape against China I believe that we are interested in a strong China nice how can we Europe look now I can share with you some of my political experience after all I think I'm the only probably that was very active in politics around this table and when I go to the g20 for inside the g8 but g20 who takes decisions in the g20 that's where the real power is we are speaking about power let's speak about power where is the real power globally those who take decisions globally basically the United States and China and Europe when we are together Russia all the decisions after the financial crisis from all decisions were taken basic by the United States by the other countries that participated in 20 I mean from from Japan to Saudi Arabia to Korea to Argentina okay are very interesting contributions but the real power is the United States China some extent Russia Russia is not trying to revive but in fact economically them that they don't have the means of their ambition so it's a question they have the wheel but not the means while China today is the wheel and the means the United States every means but apparently not the wheel with the current administration in terms of trying to total shape and Europe has the means but not to build you because we are still fragmented and in matters where we require power I mean hard power geopolitical power we are not ready but by the way if I want to build it with provoked if I say that today there are at least three factors that are uniting Europe braixen until now it has been remarkable all the other countries are united in this way to deal with breaks it yeah put it because many people are afraid in Europe namely our Central European countries of Putin's initiatives and Trump because in fact when the president acted States creates mistrust on NATO the Europeans including what you said about Germany I mean people in Germany now and that's completely new that would be impossible for five years ago and say should we rely on that or should we not try to create our own city as Europeans as Germany attest Europeans until now I think German is one of the most loyal countries to the opinion and by in France so now it's going to be in Europe in way we are not going to have United States of Europe tomorrow I don't believe the revs integration of the Philadelphia moment Europe by definition is frustrating its fragmented slow time-consuming muddling through so but you know I may be biased in fact but I remember during the financial crisis when most people including g20 or g28 are our most important financial experts were telling me and the European that Greece will be an avoidable Greece was going to leave Europe so the resilience of the opinion is higher than most people and knowledge and I'm the longer in public office so I think my level of sincerity is growing day by day [Applause] [Music] I'm not European but we are impacted by everybody by by China by America by Europe and by their policies in Afghanistan as I said that we are in 41 years of war everybody is involved but no one including us as an Afghan we are not learning from history that is one of the problem what has happened of course in 1979 and 78 when the coup d'etat and then the Russian invasion the European in the American in the Arab countries they choose the most conservative group of people and they train them as a fundamentalist Islamists to defeat USSR on that time when you USSR is collapsed then they left Afghanistan they left us on our own with poverty with really a destroyed country and then must happen we had Taliban and then Mujahideen government and now we have everybody so I think what is what is really important and I insist that our policies everywhere the democracy liberalism and everything should be based on human rights and respect for human dignity we do not do that on the business side view you see Chinese or you see that European countries so you see the u.s. I mean the whole policy of few people who are very rich and the companies and the consortium's they really focus on making money they don't care about the people they the growing poverty in the growing inequality around the world will be more cause more war and more fighting and more violation of Human Rights European with all these morality that they claim how they sent back the I'm talking about my own people who they sent back deport them back to Afghanistan so we are making the conventions we are making all the rule of law and then we don't respect we choose one when it has benefited us we do not choose the others the violation of human rights I mean they they the environment and the the environment crisis will cause a lot of problem for this for all of us and we choose the one we want and we attack the other one which we do not want I mean if you look at the amount of money that we all spend on on making weapons and using making different kind of guns and the more the most advanced bombs the biggest bomb because we had the biggest mother bomb they call that they dropped in a Vanessa yes well we know they're the most powerful country in the world yes not bad actually instead of blaming everything on you as an American around stable but no one is responsible no one is keeping them accountable can I just add one and in particular with respect to Afghanistan and my heart breaks with where we are right now and all you and your people have been through without I'm not overly optimistic even now about how this how this turns out but and and to to partially to what you were saying about the impact of Europe and the potential of Europe it was and I can remember exactly one but in the last few years at one point there were 49 countries that had military capability in Afghanistan as part of the cold yes 49 countries and and when you think about think about the political economic diplomatic education think about the resources of those countries put to work in this coalition beyond just the military capability and and and in those 49 countries there was a huge amount of political capital for investing in those military capabilities committed to the coalition and yet in the end we did well we will do what we did in Afghanistan the last time we'll walk away we will do what we recently did in Libya where we had a large coalition and then when it was done even after a quote/unquote free and fair election we leave some poor individual to run a country that hasn't had a functioning institution for 40 years to say just figure it out and it it absolutely I can't it be follows me completely that we would make these kinds of commitments and not include the totality of who we are as opposed to just the military side of who we are and we need we're better than that we really are better than well I think if I may add to that I think there was 49 countries soldier in Afghanistan from some of the small country in the in the Europe who had only ten medical medical staff in the ground in the US who had 130,000 forces but there was lack of coordination and lack of clear vision what they want to do so all those lives and all those money which was spent in Afghanistan nobody focused on rule of law as you said that they should be rule of law and good governance in the country so we could have done much better if there was a united approach and again I insist if there was our approach would would have been on protection of human rights and the protection of people in people's dignity in the country that was not the case they were not even talking to each other they were not sharing the information to each other Canadian was in Kandahar for example Norway was in and for Europe somewhere the other German was in in the north but they were not sharing the information to learn from each other and they were not coordinating with a firm government I'm not saying that we had a very strong institution we still don't have a strong institution but there was a nominal or a government in the country which could have been involved on the decision making is that if you want freedom if you want democracy you have to build it yourself I think there's a there's a pathos to these stories about Afghanistan to Syria too but also to the Balkans where I was very much involved and the external interventions have been almost uniformly negative them some exceptions I don't want to get I mean it's clear that Dayton help to keep the Balkan work from going on but but I come out of this thinking that the stories you actually in the post 89 world you want a vision you want to look at our place like Ghana is a country that goes down has a very bad period of authoritarian rule very corrupt kleptocratic rule and it's now had three or four successive free and fair elections Ghana's doing it itself and I I do I take that lesson being an optimistic one if you want freedom if you want democracy you got to do it you've got to do it yourself outsiders can help we can help a little bit at the margins but unless there's a constituency at home that is willing to go all the way it can't happen let me let me say a few sentences the main force in any country is the made the people of that country but the international community can facilitate and empower that people to promote democracy that cannot be done through bombs it should be done through education another basic social services and training in building empowerment empowering the people of that country so we appreciate the support of that there the other countries for Afghanistan but we what I'm trying to say that the problem in Afghanistan is not finished and it will travel the other countries as we did before although it we were not part of the 9/11 it was all the other countries who may be the the wolf boys who who did the the atrocity in New York and Washington maybe they were in Afghanistan but they're none of them were African I want to go to another place with rough roads which is Hong Kong and in Hong Kong you have a few million people who are promoting fighting protesting to keep their sense of freedom and democracy and then wrist it's civilizational state china who if I read the newspapers well has a problem with those millions of people who are fighting for their freedom and democracy what's the problem of China leave those people alone well they hadn't been left alone they were ruled by Britain for a long time yes by the way the Wars of course the and and Hong Kong came back to China peacefully mm-hmm so there's an important distinction here it was taken by force returned in peace and that's a great achievement and and in Hong Kong we have this structure called one country two systems which means the Hong Kong has this thing called basic law it's a mini Constitution so that it's autonomous it's an autonomous region it's caused a special administrative region so it runs its own economy its own legal system and its own way of selecting leaders and the current protests of course are driven you there are many interpretations I mean I tend to see it as being driven in part by a lot of economic grievances that also inequality actually those a lot of undercurrents but also these undercurrents have been politicized into dissatisfaction with the one country two systems approach and that's unfortunate so obviously you cannot break that system it's like trying to break the Constitution of the United States so so Hong Kong we need to within the legal framework within its constitutional framework it needs to find I hope it will a way forward to solve these problems in a peaceful manner and and and in in a manner that respects the rules that are currently governing the territory and we confident eventually they will get there I mean the these protests have been violent at times but and but not nearly as violent as the ones being taking place in Paris not even close and the police tactics not nearly as aggressive as that's the provision puppies so I think in comparison I'm you know I'm rather sanguine and you know I can you just take that same discussion Eric to Taiwan and kind of how you see because I think my own view is I think the West misinterprets easily misinterprets where Taiwan is where it's headed the relationship the one China policy and how that actually is going right now particular in the face of an election here in Taiwan or in your future well again it's part of history our history is so important I mean Taiwan was mean china emerged after World War Two in tatters the country had you know had a hundred some years of horrible time being weighted colonized and yet it emerged in one piece after World War Two luckily in bad shape but in one piece so it its goal is to reunify the Chinese nation and as part of national aspiration and Taiwan obviously is a part of that and the current Taiwan Constitution says that it is part of China so so it is an aspiration you could say on both sides of the strait although I do recognize there are people in Taiwan sizable part part of the population who want I want to be an independent country but as you know these are very difficult goals it's always the ami in in America to be independent from Britain it came with Wars and bloodshed and extraordinary violence so so this is not an easy proposition and and and I mean I would I hope one day the Chinese nation will be unified and one that that's our goal you get an interview for NRC in which you mentioned that the legitimacy of the Communist Party which has total control of your country is based because of the people it's the people of China who legitimizes the Communist Party right but talking about Michael mentioned if you read other reports of what's happening in China with politics of fear resist violence the credit system which even a kind of gulag were reallocated camps I mean what's the real legit emotion of this Communist Party well I think the legitimacy of any ruler or any rule on a long-term basis must be rested upon whether it delivers for a vast majority of the people that they govern okay if they fail to that do that for long duration they will lose their legitimacy period and this is something not to be complacent about and and my analysis is that the party has been successful so far is because they have this sense of crisis this sense of they're not complacent they keep thinking what can we do to keep delivering that's what I worry about liberal societies because they have again from as an outside observer how can that the liberal societies have these rulers these elites that somehow take their legitimacy for granted so they say we're legitimate because we're liberal liberalism grants us legitimacy doesn't matter no matter what and you're illegitimate because you're a liberal therefore you know so that kind of complacency I think may defeat liberalism which will be unfortunate I like to see a world where there are many different ideas of how to govern and and and but but I I mean that would be the danger of liberal societies current Chinese party in a state are not in danger of that because they are constantly in this and have the sense of crisis and how they deliver and that's that's what I mean by by legitimacy what you wrest legitimacy on is on the one hand just an empirical question all governments succeed only to the extent that they deliver in some way but the issue that you raised with with Taiwan I think goes to the heart of a very important problem and and that is if there are millions of people want to govern themselves does nationalism always Trump's self government well and and and and that that seems to me a rather urgent matter especially since the nationalism that would trump self government is that of a one-party state well it depends and that's not a question of I think the problems of liberalism are evident but that but the fact that liberalism or Western societies have enormous problems and I come from a country where we have a very very big problem starting with the president you know the fact that there were problems doesn't legitimize any other form rule that's exactly my point the problem the fact that we have problems does only demise you but let me tell you let me take your point let me take your point I think the the issue here is how you define the people all right I mean I define the people as the Chinese people which includes Taiwan so I mean do you define do you define the Spanish people as including Catalonian people then if you define Spanish people Catalonian people as part of Spanish people then you will say that their aspiration for self-governance would be illegitimate because people in Madrid have a say as well in Barcelona right soso so that but I mean I I know it's a debatable issue you can debate that you could come to me and say taya is not a part of China I will disagree with that but but but that's the issue that we're debating well but no but you can still say that Taiwan is a part of China but the it's the vast majority of Taiwanese want to govern themselves and establish their own in the vast majority of people in Shanghai don't believe that and we have a say in that too just like the vast majority in Madrid also have a say in how barcelonian should rue themselves they think so at least these are strong arguments I'm treating them with respect but then the issue becomes how does this get adjudicated well how does this how does this get done we and the China want to essentially absorb Taiwan but the worry that everybody has externally is the beyond these issues of political theory this will come down to a matter of force just as when the when the one China two countries system ends in 2047 that a lot of people in Hong Kong who'd like to remain free will not be free and a lot of people in Taiwan who would like to be free will not in the end be free they will be unified but on the conditions dictated by China that's the issue right and and I don't see a story here that that that begins to respect the longing for democratic freedom that you see in Taiwan and they you see in in in in Hong Kong that is a problem for you it's how you get there even if you agreed that this is one China you may have to live with the fact there are many China's well I'm not so sure about that maybe what would it mean we have to live okay many Chinese I mean Hong Kong obviously has so many Constitution which I think in almost in the modern history is impressive and I don't I can finally example where one nation-state could be so tolerant as to have a its sovereign territory a part of sontar territory completely ruled almost autonomously with its own constitution so I think I'm optimistic that we could resolve these differences amongst ourselves and let me also help if I could relieve your anxiety a little bit you earlier pointed out about about the potential for Chinese dominance of the world let me say this I will wager bet today that in 25 years when we return for the 50th anniversary of the Nazca conference that that China will not be dominating the world at that time and our wager that bet for two reasons one is because I don't believe China intends to dominate the world and and number two is even if they did they would fail at it because we moved way past beyond the age of dominance I think it will be difficult for any one power to dominate the world's the wrong mindset and let me if I if I could if I could please let me let me let me finish my train of thought you know in 20 some years ago I was still a youngster coming out of university at that time channel was just beginning to you know sort of barely joining the WTO is trying to you know emerge and and I there is a lot of anxiety at that time even you know and I read one day I was reading The Wall Street Journal I think on the left column there was a picture of the Chinese grand strategist champion who coined the term peaceful rise and he said the China's aspiration is to rise peacefully and I read that I was very excited I went on and talked to people and say we're gonna rise peacefully huh and and everybody was very very suspicious and skeptical and and they attacked the idea and all that and to this day I go out and say peaceful rise and people look at me using you know oh whoa whoa what are you smoking okay but let me just say this in my lifetime just in my career peaceful rise has already happened it's a fact on the ground we went from since I started my career in business we went from a poor agrarian country to a behemoth that you know that is China today but he must in every respect okay yet no country has been invaded not a single shot fired no violence and if you look at human history the rise of every power from athenian empire to the roman empire to the british empire to america's manifest destiny to the rise of modern Germany a modern Japan Ottoman Empire every single one of them their rise was accompanied by tremendous bloodshed colonization Wars massacres okay and China's rise to date has been bigger and faster than them all in fact but but no war yet so that's something to celebrate I'm not predicting the future but at least the achievement to date is something worthy of celebration and worthy of cultivating further I mean I wouldn't disagree with the principle that our empires get built but the most effective form of empire building which explains the pathology of all the world's great empires a negative thing is always through accommodation right it's just the problem is historians focus on the bloodshed and the violence so there are obviously cases where the native population of Australia's the communion essentially genocide or mass murder anyway but generally the way in which things work are when people are incentivized to work with you and that means that there are expansions of Empires that are not just done through force of arms sometimes military is a very important threat to open up the doors but things that are sustainable are too far about finding working exchange relationships with each other right so that's how that's that's the reality of how empires really get built and so the big question is in what way is this metric of China and its massive economic power how what kind of stake is it going to take and what should it take right under what does it want to take in a world that's changing very quickly where it's a neighbor with Afghanistan and yet 2sat out of the story of the last 40 to 40 or 41 years what role should China play as being part of the battered part of the neighborhood right and why hasn't it laid a role so far and will it help to make things better in Afghanistan we might help things worse will it listen and who will listen to in terms of shaping you can replicate that question with every single country that China shares a border with but obviously it's much more expanded than that elsewhere to obviously do no harm and peace and and I think China is dabbling at Afghanistan a little bit now they're trying to host this this thing yeah yeah but I don't know whether that was succeed but but you know if you look at in 1949 when the People's Republic was founded China had China ahead I think share borders were 16 countries land borders right China had territorial disputes with all 16 countries in 1949 right today that numbers down to two essentially one India and Bhutan and Bhutan was a part of the India okay so so in the last 70 years China had settled his territorial disputes with fourteen of the sixteen countries ship waterways or peacefully with Russia it was like centimeter by centimeter negotiation over a 15 year period which isn't resolved talk about land borders right good so so therefore no no but we have it well what I'm trying to say is that's something to celebrate isn't it I mean I don't I don't see a lot of precedents in history in all your countries what you've done to settle your your borders huh come on come on you could cut us some slack first of all we the greatest respect for China I had because of my previous political functions I have many many interactions with China in fact it was during my time as foreign minister till 95 that we negotiated with China the end over of Macau Portugal so and in fact Macau was coming back to China two years after Hong Kong in 1999 and until now there has been no no issue and in fact the the relationship between Portugal and China today I think it's a perfect relationship so having said that just to moderate a little bit what you said Xi Jinping and I met him several times present her present but also the previous present in all important meetings we had as European summit with China which odious was with the creamy it was when G Bao leaky Chang but sometimes we had also perpetual meetings in the presence but almost as the rule the Chinese said the change to the ship said to me and to the other European leaders representing opinion we have a great respect for your a great respect for the appear deal more precisely because you have done something in Europe that we have not yet done in Asia a true reconciliation yes among former enemies the reality is that in Europe today France Germany Britain that have been as is rightly said during many centuries terrible bloodshed table Wars in fact today it's almost unthinkable say while I'm afraid to say in Asia China India Pakistan Japan the two Koreas the reality is in Asia the level of reconciliation is much much lower to say to the diplomatic than Europe so that is the point I want to say so now after what you said about until now the rise of China I shared the same admiration where fraud rise of China I really share it I've been there every year since the eighties and it's amazing but you said rightly that the past issue of empires has been a history of aggression and supremacy and detriment so those of us who like to study history and political sciences also say now the rise of China why would it be different so you say until now externally externally there has not been violence and I agree basically with that it's true so no invasion of countries but how can we guarantee now put put yourself in the position of a Western power how can we guarantee their China now coming from those very poor it's the most impressive growth ever in human history much bigger much much faster than the the British let's say Industrial Revolution so it was it's a great success from a point of view of lifting people of poverty and so on but but now that China is becoming let's put it frankly much more assertive which is natural I think it's completely natural to be proud of some success and I also agree with you that's the the Communist Party of China until now has been extremely a competent and effective in the way of keeping sufficient support in the country but how can be sure that it will be like that he made a bet okay but we all want to be sure about that that's why I came back to my point it's so important that we work together for a world based on rules also it's it's in our fundamental interest for mankind that we have China committed and now China says that is committed and the President Xi Jinping has made very clear commitments about that in United Nations even in Devils he came to Davos make that point so the question is the eastery shows to us that empires tends to be assertive sometimes / aggressive okay now you say to me and I'm sure that you are sincere that China will be different but we have to be sure that you have a sufficient global order that can prevent us from more accidents in the future that is my part for the last half hour to the psychology of power Admiral Mullen hasn't been such a top military leader you know everything about power what can you tell us about the psychology of power and I also would like to know what according to you political leaders can from military leaders in terms of the ethics of power I think your assumption that it you know that I was sort of at the pinnacle of power is something I would certainly like to debate with you in that regard if the chief of joint stops right III guess we said earlier in I think we're talking about Afghanistan and certainly something I've learned since these wars is whether it's in Iraq or Afghanistan or against terrorists is you can't kill your way to victory that's just never gonna happen and in that regard then the pinnacle of power ahead of a military that's obviously extremely powerful is it really powerful in terms of what we're really trying to generate with respect to outcomes and I would argue that it is part of the power but the it is it is done well it is part of a strategy that includes governance economic advancement rule of law human rights your own values respect dignity etcetera I mean I found in my experience sitting in the highest offices in the United States that it would everybody is a military expert you know I everybody wants everybody wants to talk about how many troops how many died how many wounded how many more or how many be trained and when I would try to guide the conversation to these other factors of governance and development and which are really hard and rule of law they're they're really hard military's hard enough those conversations would quickly drift back to what about these number of troops I mean the military in that regard and even the question sort of hits me that way right now I think we have to be with respect to military power we have to be incredibly judicious about using it and about and and we're in an era right now where it is easier to use I speak from my own country and there are historians at the table that would know more about this than I but there I have watched for the last thirty years forty years the power of the presidents the United States one after another they just pull more and more and more into that and the neutering of our legislative branch in terms of any kind of balance or check on the power of the presidency and I think it's a really dangerous trend and in my world when you combine that with the lethality of weapons the ease with which they use the remoteness now that you can just sort of you know intellectually disengaged and pull a trigger that's going off somewhere in the world it's pretty scary in terms of not just what I see now but what could be used in the future with respect to that kind of power I've also seen it used for good from the standpoint of deterrence I mean we got to the Berlin Wall because a scary and as devastating as the weapons of mass destruction you know during the Cold War were we actually never use them even though I worry now that some of them are being discussed more than I'm comfortable with in a in a post 1989 timeframe so there's a deterrence a switcher destroy it when you consider saving civilization if you will given the potential there's an awful lot of power associated with that and then maybe the last thing I'd say is I just never I mean I just never thought about power I mean maybe that's because I had it but I'd never thought about it I never thought about it in the in the terms with which in which you asked the question and I never really thought much about the United States even in the position being quote unquote the most powerful country in the world and I'm by I have much I I thought about it much more along the lines of most capable most influential most critical or important in certain aspects you know in the lifetime that I grew up as opposed to focusing on power when you say power to me though the first thing I think of and I spoke to this earlier is just the politicians the politicians love the power that's why they stay in office that moves away from from my perspective their ability and when I take that versus what have you done for the people and I'll speak for my own country and and they have missed so badly in the power that that they have accrued over the years and then just for the record I'm you know I'm 73 now and I'm at a point where I'm ready we've had three baby boomer presidents in you know my generation and I'm ready for everybody over 70 to just step aside you know to move out of the way and let's let the younger generation take over okay so we have 15 minutes left and the following question and Alex and I would like you to be the first one written in history if we if we then consider who are in our the greatest men and women quote of all the people who really make the difference for the best our people like Confucius or Moses or Jesus or Plato or Spinoza or from Schneider girl or simone weil or Goethe or in all ways people without political economic power always so why are we in our culture so obsessed with the rich and the powerful I don't understand that well that's is that a universal obsession in in in some countries in Europe I would say the rich and the powerful are sort of a in Germany I don't think they're obsessed with the rich and the powerful I think they're and that probably has to do with the with the special history of being of the blueness type of vehicles of the the Constitution written in 1949 from scratch basically and since you know the original German II because none of these ancient German myths survived the Holocaust the original was its constitution and for many many years the only form of patriotism that was acceptable is called fossils papillote is most meaning meaning not patriotism to the country but patriotism to the idea of the country as written down in the Constitution and and the sort of the two main the two main special aspects of the of the Constitution are a the the which are which are protected by an eternity Clause meaning that can never be changed our is the social state principle and the stipulation that property needs to serve the common good explicitly in the Constitution and this already shows the whole basically the entire character and mentality of Germans is is very egalitarian and very very distrustful and critical of sort of the fringes in terms of very very wealthy and very poor situations so I I sort of disagree with this that there's a fetish for for for power and no power in Germany that's interesting Mitchell American culture American culture I think one way to think about the problems of American culture right now is to think of um - I don't want to call them both founding myths and I don't mean if in a negative sense here but as a descriptive one which animate the country still and are contradictory to each other one is the Horatio Alger myth based on 19th century young boys novels but the vision that everyone is an individualist you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and and you can also be there which the emphasis isn't the I and the individual contradicting that in a way is the myth of the founding of the country where the Declaration of Independence talks about the rights of a people to be independent and the Constitution which begins with we the people of the United States so there's a contradiction between a weenus and a type of pull yourself up by your bootstraps which and even though he didn't pull himself up by his bootstraps um the the the type of image cast by the current American president in a way brings out that contradiction not only since he seems to think that the White House is part of his real estate portfolio but but but that it serves him and and one of the great dangers we faced and I should add one other thing the the the role of while the President may attack the media all the time the role of celebrity in the culture which is partly a function of of economics and money and and and false gods who were still there is another crucial part of it and and and and and so there are these deeply contradictory cultural currents which maybe it's very unclear to me as to what where it's going to be right now I'm the I'll quote someone I don't usually quote Gramsci in the 1920s said the morbid symptoms that he saw in front of him he was also he was in prison at the time of the morbid symptoms that he saw in front of him were those of an old world dying and and but the new world hasn't been born he was fortunate because he had faith in what that new world would be which most of us don't have anymore we're quite disillusioned by but he had the Marxist answer that clearly is it's not one but I think part of the current predicament is a difficulty in projecting where where we may end up and especially since well I think we're heading into a constitutional crisis if we're not there in the United States so and we're talking about you know family myth of Germany and the myth of America because I'm Manuel you yesterday you told me about when you were chairman of the European Commission that you had a project on the new narratives of Europe now mastering this new maluma was intended to to give the German people that new myth and out of it something horrible got out of it but you cannot have indeed a society without a myth you need the grand narrative now what according to you should be the --use grand narrative I mean I think the founding myths in fact I mean miss the world is the world is a real risky because it for me it has usually a negative connotation but it is peace the idea why after the Second World War the leaders of France and Germany together with other countries but equally Italy in the three Benelux countries create and there after the Hague conference it was in this country immediately after the second war created the Union and the great was a genius of political that was not a politician for Germany was to try to achieve a political means peace through economic ends to make interdependent interdependence so strong that it would make war and possible or even unsinkable so that was the idea in a pragmatic step-by-step approach not creating a United States of Europe to stop because we are very different countries with very long history so our process is different from the United States of America but to step by step creating some kind of unity based on that economic interdependence and basically this goal has been achieved until now that's why by the way I was so proud to receive on behalf of the European Union the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 in Oslo because it was a recognition that European in new penis such as a construct has been giving an important contribution to peace but I think now for the new generation in fact that is not enough because that we take for granted in our society we take for granted European Union most most of us of people with the notable exception of brexit in fact we we travel around Europe there are in fact almost no borders and so on so I think that we need new narratives one of them precisely I think we should be proud is that your opinion has been leading the global a fight against climate change in fact it was European Union basically that pit for the most ambitious goals at the time I remember we were discussing in the United States of America tour still President George Bush george w bush or with china china was very negative at the beginning afterwards there was a clear evolution in the chinese thinking on this matter but in fact we tried in copenhagen without success afterwards there was the declaration in paris and basically it was europe that was right so I think the European young generation should be proud of what we have been doing now this is not sufficient because there is the issue that everybody tells me all the time and I know it's a problem of communication because we have not used the yoga now the Obamas concept we have not a common public space in Europe so communicating from Brussels it's extremely difficult because the same words have different let's say connotations in different countries in fact one I mean one of those conference I invited him to come to Brussels Meaghan Umberto Eco such a great Italian and European intellectual and he said the language of Europe is translation the language of European and so forth when during the financial crisis I was trying to say let's unite we need responsibility and solidarity the word solidarity was very well received in the countries under stress but not well so much so well received here in the Netherlands or in Germany but the word responsibility was very well received in Germany but in Greece it was not - what they wanted to so the same words you see so the same word as a complete so that's why the Commission tried as always muddling through solidarity and the responsibility so that I'm not I'm not apologizing now I think we we tried the European Union it's not from Brussels or Strasbourg that can solve the issue the only way for opinion and to have this narrative is to have at national level the leaders the European the national leaders the earth did Barry are the stakeholders of the project to make the point I think with the best marketing in the world the European Union from Brussels will not achieve it if there is not the ownership of the European narratives by our countries and by country don't you only mean the government's I mean the government's I've been the local of sorry Simon University you can email I mean the Opera the operator by the way a great european creation and so on and so forth so the ownership of the project and but for that narrative I would say that piece and in today's world the fight against climate change the preservation of our planet our importance and sufficiently mobilizing narratives if you have the stakeholders really committed to them thank you my final my final question [Applause] what we're talking about crisis climate crisis or the crisis the old world is dying and Michael said a institutions are failing which is all part of Wagner's twilight of the Gods phenomenon and you know a new world has to be born now Peter in in one of your books you have a beautiful quote of a certain King Zhou who must have said I quote a talent for following the ways of yesterday is not sufficient to improve the world today end of quote I think we all cannot agree more but what then should change or embark mr. what are we in need of to restore an international moral order gosh you know thirty years ago this morning people woke up in Berlin and the wall was started to be taken down and I'm from a generation that assumed that the end of Eastern Bloc collapse the Soviet Union would would only take place in bloodshed because it's not just the building of Empires the collapse of Empires tends to happen in these ways and it's been a it's been a blessed 30 years despite things that are gone happened in Afghanistan which has a much longer history than 89 even I think well the difficulty in today's world is that we we tend to talk about countries like China like it's one entity right we tend to simplify the Europe into whether it's you can union or not or Europe you know what can look at it both ways you know we were talking last night Alex like about how the West Germans are not really celebrating this morning because they think the eastern Germans are the radical rights impoverished cousins who complain a lot and the Eastern Germans think that this also wasn't great for an Eastern German perspective but you know even before the accession of Romania Bulgaria and so on Eastern Europe is suffering the largest population loss in history right because clever people from Eastern Europe migrate to countries they're wealthier better job prospects and they're falling fertility levels etc etc so even here within Europe we have the good story which is a manual tells very persuasively about solidarity responsibilities the fact that we don't kill each other anymore it's unprecedented from historical point of view from 1350 to 1950 there was at one decade that didn't involve a war in Europe and for one reason or another we in Europe are very jumpy as people very jumpy you know brexit as part of that story we tend to overreact by thinking we're better off going on our own we can't trust each other right and I think in this world where we are coming to the end of the you know the the last 30 years of structural reform globally that you know the fall of the Berlin Wall was very carefully studied in Beijing at the time very very important role that it played in the thinking of Deng Xiaoping of opening up not just our own new markets but the reforms were needed post Hanuman square as well right that's part of the story but we have had this 30 years of despite the Middle East in Afghanistan by Lodge we've all gone on pretty well you know a child born this morning while we've been talking anywhere in the world will live for longer be more literate have access to clean water you know has the best possibilities of any child ever born in history and that's something which we are all part of so we can we can be down on the ways that we're coming to the end and it's got to damn ring and that this is the end of the life as we know it there are ways in which we can learn how to work together and you know taking all the incredible expense being a privilege to be part of the panel like this and that's why the nexus Institute is so important to bring people from different backgrounds different areas you know doesn't happen to me very often to have this kind of range of perspectives is that it's very important of course I'm selling history right there please study history I'm bound to say that but it is very important to be constantly providing that perspective in that context so right now here in Europe and in the States attitudes towards how important democracy as a functional system are falling you know if in Germany the summer service but more than 40% of young people don't believe democratic democracies is necessary for an ascent essential brother for the functioning of a state and these things are very very surprising how they're measured how the poles are actually conducted you know how the data is gathered is a separate story but there's something there that is showing the lack of confidence and faith in systems that we have in the West as it happens you know it's not just about China and authoritarian and different kinds of systems in 1989 if I'm not mistaken twelve percent of global GDP was produced in authoritarian States today it's about 33 percent in the IMF by 2023 we'll have more than half of the world's GDP produced in systems that don't look like ours the parts of well I traveled to work in it's almost impossible now with a straight face to say that anybody should base their political system on the UK's right where we shut down Parliament give an unlawful advice to the Queen and things will be will be you know they'll work themselves out but we are clearly the point where serious reflection serious thoughts are required and the only thing I've learnt as an individual as a scholar as a as a colleague and universities is that the only way it works is by sitting and talking and higher levels of communication are vital at least and that's what we're doing here and we intend to do it for the next 25 years and I would like to thank you all so please you

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Length: 105min 54sec (6354 seconds)

Published: Wed May 06 2020