Conversations With History - Amy Chua

[Music] welcome to a conversation with history I'm Harry Kreisler of the Institute of International Studies our guest today is Amy Chua who is the John M Duff jr. professor of law and Yale Law School and the author of a new book day of Empire how hyper powers rise to global dominance and why they fall Amy welcome back to baby Wendy when did you get the idea for the book actually right after I wrote my first book world on fire one question I got everywhere was so you know that the Frances foreign minister had just declared the United States was a hyper power and I the question I got was how long are we gonna stay a hyper power and you know it's China gonna overtake us is that you gonna overtake us so I decided to focus on hyper powers and and how long did it take you to write the book four or five years non-stop I believed it after reading the book and you you are a professor of law but this is really comparative history a very rich comparative history well there is a fee minute as well get to it's about tolerance and that is something that we talk about in the law and also you know my field is really rule of law and law in developing countries nation building and there is a nation building an empire building question in the book as well so so let's let's talk about what the book is telling us what is a hyper power well a hyper power is first of all a really rare thing it's not just an empire not just a superpower I'm referring to these remarkably few societies in all of history that amassed such extraordinary economic and military might that they basically towered over all their rivals and essentially dominated the world so Frances foreign minister was the one that coined this term in 1999 he declared the United States has become the world's single hyper power you know dominant in all categories economically militarily technologically and culturally you know in France is not going to have it but that's that's the concept just to give you an example the United States during the Cold War was not a hyper power because back then it had a formidable rival the former Soviet Union you know of roughly comparable strength so it's very important to understand that it we're really talking about relative power at the time when the hyper power existed right and it's it's unusual I mean the much more normal state of affairs in history is to have lots of a multipolar world we have lots of states rising and falling they're battling with each other it's actually right discovered this in my research it's really unusual to have a situation I mean the Stars have to be aligned where there's just really one power that kind of towers over everybody else tolerance also needs to be explained we're we're obviously for familiar with the term in today's world in today's discourse but but it's not a term you normally would think of a applying to for example Genghis Khan right I mean I'm glad you asked because to jump ahead a little bit my thesis is that the one thread that links all the hyper powers of history and they're not that many is that every hyper power in history you know rose to global dominance through tolerance that tolerance was indispensable so as I'm using the term I don't mean tolerance in the modern human rights sense the ideal sense by tolerance I don't mean equality or even respect rather by tolerance I just mean letting lots of different kinds of people you know even if you don't particularly like them or respect them live participate prosper and rise in your society regardless of ethnicity race nationality and even if it's only for instrumental reasons so it's a it's a relative concept to you know in my book what matters is really just whether a nation is more tolerant than its rivals not whether it's tolerant in some sort of absolute universalistic sense and and what I think you're suggesting especially in the the early hyper powers is that tolerance is a key to the power that gives us the hyper power yes it's it seems at first surprising but there's actually a really simple explanation basically remember my thesis my book is only about hyper powers it's how do you be world dominant you know there are lots of ways to achieve great power but how do you dominate the world and the idea is that in order to dominate the world a society has to be at the very cutting edge frontier of the world's technological economic and military frontier and you need in order to have that you've got to be able to pull in the world's best and brightest because at any given point in history the world's most valuable human capital whether in terms of intelligence or creativity drive skills physical strength the world's most valuable human capital is never going to be found within any one ethnic group or within any one religion so to pull away from your rivals on a global scale you've got to be able to pull in you know the best and brightest from the world so in ancient times it was really simple this kind of strategic tolerance was the only way you could build a huge military you know if you limit your army to only say pure blooded Spartans your armies going to be inherently limited in size I mean how many pure blooded Spartans are there but if you open up your military to warriors of any nationality or race you can amass a really huge military and that's what the a committed Persians did and what Rome did right and and were you surprised when you found this when you go back to the to the the Persian Empire and find the Darius was tolerant was this unexpected I was completely surprised first of all I think most of us in the United States when we think of antiquity we think of Greece and Rome and I knew very little about the a commended Persian Empire was only when I was kind of searching through history with research assistants that I found the a commanded Persian Empire founded in 550 BC by Cyrus the Great I had no idea that kingdom basically ruled one of the world's total population you know forty million people and it swallowed up and just a next you know the great kingdoms of Mesopotamia Syria Egypt Babylonia and the Greek city-state so it was huge and I never really heard of it but again I to be clear I'm not it's not that Darius the Great was tolerant in our human rights sense this man impaled people and poked their eyes out and you know I mean there were slaves it was a very brutal society I only mean tolerance in the sense that he let everybody into his military he took craftsmen and warriors and builders from every part of his kingdom and they basically amassed the largest war machine you know that the earth had ever seen and in that part is sort of intuitive it was surprising at first but it's intuitive how else do you build the biggest army right and it's really the Romans who go furthest to to achieving hyper power 'dom and sort of addressing this problem in a more substantial way that is how do you actually control the large numbers of people that come under your domain right hybrid powers face special problems because they extend their reach over so many diverse populations so starting with a commanded Persia one what I mean by tolerance is Darius the Great and Cyrus the Great build these giant armies but they also really were religiously tolerant so other rival kings they would you know when you conquer a land they would sort of suppress local cults and they try to impose their own gods to show their power Cyrus the Great very shrewdly the Persians they did the opposite they actually allowed local peoples to follow their own customs speak their own languages worship their own gods and he actually pretended were not pretended but he embraced local gods because that gave him legitimacy so that was to answer your question that kind of tolerance was one way of making conquered people's more compliant you know they're less likely to rebel but rome went so much further into first there was no ethnic ceiling in Rome in Persia all of the governors and certainly the people in the very highest positions of authority they were all Persian you know the number one position they were all Persians not so in Rome the Romans permitted educated men of any race or nationality to rise to the very highest positions of authority including even the position of Emperor you know people I didn't realize that for example septimus severus was the north african he was an emperor he was married to a Syrian very colorblind the second way that Rome was even more masterfully tolerant in this strategic way is that Rome managed to romanize all of these conquered peoples the Persians had a terrible time they conquered people but the Greeks still felt Greek the Egyptians still felt Egyptian they certainly didn't feel proud to be part of the Persian Empire and that's why the Empire quickly kind of split apart it was only military Mike that held it together Rome by granting citizenship to Gauls and Britons and Africans made everybody feel Roman so that was it was also sort of a form of assimilation accompanied by this kind of Tolerance and that's why I think they lasted so long and and in reading the book I had to recall what I had learned in Latin see the assumed Romanus I am a citizen of Rome had people said that from every corner of the Empire you know it was it's absolutely fascinating from North Africa Morocco they felt it and they dressed like Romans it was a great honor to be part of the Empire and and if if you were a citizen of Rome there were limits to what the the Roman government could do to you I mean if in our time you couldn't be rendered really because you had rights as a citizen of Rome right it's it's um it's both very modern and very pre-modern it's very pre-modern and I have to remind up you know it's important to remind ourselves that this is antiquity the Romans kept many many slaves women didn't have any rights you know it's again it's a pre-modern society but the citizenship those who got it and again it was colorblind they had lots of Rights that are not like those in the US Constitution you know you uh the right not to be crucified that's not like the US Constitution but you know rights to hold property rights to make contract you know rights to I'm kind of like have almost like certain hearings before things could happen to you what one of the interesting parts of the book for me was your consideration of the various Chinese dynasties and one in particular actually confirmed the criteria that you had established talk a little about that because most of the others were not that way right and I always grew up I'm you know ethnic Chinese and I always grew up on thinking that you know China is just all Han Chinese it's a quintessentially ethnically defined country and throughout all of history in China it's this barbarian versus Han Chinese thing it has been dominant you know there's the Great Wall of China very symbolic closing China in we've got enough people already keeping the barbarians out well it turns out that the one dynasty that came closest I call it a hyper power partly because there were very weak other rivals you know the Europe was just nothing at the time this is in the seventh century it was Tong dynasty China which I again I think most Americans don't know about it's not as famous as the Ming or the Ching but Tong dynasty China was actually founded by somebody that by our standards today was half Chinese he was like Park Turkish you know it was like a bar part barbarian from the north and this was the dynasty I would say the only dynasty where the Emperor's were openly hegemonic they extended their reach to Persia basically in Vietnam they took over Central Asia but the key here is that they redefined the Chinese Kingdom this empties emperors said you know barbarians are just like Chinese you know I want to be Emperor of both and they took on sort of Turkish titles as well as Chinese titles so it was very tolerant in the sense it was the most tolerant of foreigners Turkish influences Persian Arabic you know just these things that you don't think as part of Chinese society so in Xi'an that was the capital was called Chung on before it was the most cosmopolitan capital I had no idea if you go there now there are mosques and you know Christian Church just the Nestorian Christianity there were debates where they had all kinds of different religions you know sort of aired and talked as spoken about so that was a fascinating and for Chinese this is actually the Golden Age because it was the period of real artistic and poetic flowering so it was a fascinating case I think we have to come back to a point because I think people who don't read the book and who talk about it will I think abuse you use of the word tolerance if they want to write a critique of the book and and so I think we want to emphasize that that the these especially these ancient empires it's really the the the the Emperor's the the Ganga Khan the king whatever could do bad things and they were doing bad things but as a way to maximize their power they they used they made use of diversity instead of suppressing it exactly tolerance exactly that's perfectly put you know instead of killing off for conquered people or enslaving them they sort of incorporated them and pulled in their best warriors and builders and craftsmen you're I think you're talking about Genghis Khan and and you say he used some Chinese engineers who knew how to construct powerful siege engines and then but in addition there was a an openness to the diversity of the different cultures that's my favorite case I never expected this idea of tolerance to extend to jenga's Khan and I didn't have this idea of tolerance at first actually but the Mongols are fascinating they are they were nomadic people they lived on the Mongolian steppes they were basically illiterate I mean even their leaders were illiterate they had no engineering no architecture you know they lived in tents called yurts made of the felt of yaks they didn't even have the technology to bake bread and yet they came to conquer a kingdom far larger than the Romans ever ruled basically half the known world including the most spectacular cities you know Samarkand Damascus Kiev Moscow right up to the gates of Vienna so how did this small group of people without technology do this that's exactly right they conquered people and then they pulled in and sort of recruited those people with the skills and technology they themselves left and the most important were these Chinese engineers whom they incorporated right into the army and these Chinese engineers knew how to build the most advanced siege engines of the day you know these catapults and that hurled flaming liquids retractable ladders portable towers and it was only by incorporating them that the Mongols were able to overcome the great walled cities of Eastern Europe and and Persia and Central Asia I'm curious because when you look at these early empires you're talking about individuals the leader so I want you to help us understand what you're telling us about leadership in this early period because it's not as if they said oh tolerance is a good value you know and and I want to make this an in it's really about maximizing their power so talk a little about that because it's fascinating right and I you know I don't want to I can't myself get into the heads of those those leaders but there is enough historical evidence to suggest that some of it was openly strategic openly thought about you know I you could see almost the propaganda you know the Darius the Persian kings I am king of all the peoples of the world I treat them all well you could kind of sense that they are trying to keep people from rebelling they're trying to co-opt the local elites you know we're not gonna destroy your Europe positions of authority you could still stay wealthy just join the club so I do think it was very strategic they were happy to impale or you know egeskov they very brutal society if people didn't comply he would raise entire villages he used the corpses as moat film so this is not about human rights but I think it was about how can a small group of people conquer vast territories and then maintain that power and basically slavery and persecution is too inefficient you know I mean you can kind of see this in their thinking it's it's it's easier to rule if you have people kind of compliant and happy and not rebelling and thinking that you're observing their gods too and Jake is Khan declared freedom of worship for all his conquered peoples in very modern terms actually at the same time Christian Europe was burning heretics at the stake killing everybody they were just splintering apart there I think the largest European Empire under Charlemagne was maybe eight million people you know it was just these these tolerant Chinese empires the great Mongol Chinese Empire hundred million people 60 million people and again strategic tolerance played you know a huge role in in their ability to conquer and maintain that power and and what about their their education and social class is there a common element among these early leaders who saw this truth or was it in a case of Genghis Khan I mean I remember that it was the the the calculating the way to intermarry and intermix the units of the military and then build a build on that it was fascinating no common thread among the leaders jenga some of the roman emperors were tremendously educated aristocrats jenga's khan was basically a scavenger from the lowest tribe on the steppe that's why it's so fascinating he but again he used the same strategy and you're exactly right that's how he United the people of the steppe they used to bicker and fight and kidnap each other he united them under this identity the people of the felt walls and that's how we United the nomads built an inter-ethnic army large enough to conquer northern China but we'll get to this later that political identity the people of the felt walls did not do very well with the civilized populations of Europe and China you're making the point throughout the book and and this is where you end up that that there is a I wrote down an evolution of hyper powered them if that's a fair way that that you know the the personalities are replaced by processes and so you say at one point conquests turns into Commerce invasion to immigration autocracy to democracy and I guess that's the best context to then talk about the Dutch the British and the Americans right the interesting thing is that the role of tolerance changes over time because there's the Enlightenment right at the same time what it takes to be a hyper power changes in the old days in ancient times it was about having the big most number of foot soldiers it was how do you get to be a hyper power you conquer land you an exit you loot all their resources you incorporate their soldiers and you conquer more land you know and at some point maybe there's overreaching but that's how you extend starting around the 17th century the greatest way to become powerful isn't just conquering land anymore that starts to get kind of inefficient it's about innovation and commerce controlling the oceans trade you know these huge luxury trades the spices in East Asia the gold and the Americas Africa's resources so it becomes who can finance these ships that travel all over the place but what's interesting is that once again to be a hyper power of modern hyper power it's still tolerance but now the role of tolerance has changed it's not tolerance in terms of you know incorporating warriors but it's tall what I say is that immigration replaces invasion and annexation as the best way to incorporate the world's best and brightest so the Dutch were the first they declared they were the first European state to embrace this new modern ideal of tolerance you know not just um as you were saying jenga's Khan's tolerance like we can harness human beings like we harness a good mule and then we can you know impale them later now tolerance with enlightenment is a human right you know persecution isn't just bad strategy you tolerance starts to have overtones of equality and respect now a lot of the European states didn't really live up to those ideals but it's in the rhetoric and the Dutch were the first to declare freedom of worship and almost overnight it transformed itself into a magnet for religious refugees fleeing Europe I mean Mennonites German Lutheran's you know Sephardic Jews pilgrims Quakers and that's how they transformed themselves from this tiny little really just a little blip on the map to the greatest trading empire that ever was I mean just before the British and and when you talk about the British you you actually identify three groups the Scots the Huguenots and the Jews who are sort of key actors in making the success of Britain possible right I mean from most of Britain's early history 15th 16th 17th century but Hobbs was writing it was just like the rest of Europe a pit of vicious ethnic and religious warfare you know Protestants killed Catholics Catholics beheaded Protestants the English slaughtered Scots Welsh Irish and they retaliated this all changed after 1689 when Parliament passed the Bill of Rights and the act of toleration and at that point basically three groups were able to enter into British society with unprecedented freedom and sort of upward mobility the Jews who actually came over with William from Holland they were actually some of the greatest financiers of the time bank rollers of armies they actually made London they established the London Stock Exchange and turned London almost overnight into the world's commercial and financial center the Huguenots are very important most importantly the Scots instead of wasting resources fighting the Scots the English allowed through this kind of tolerance they allowed the Scots to become the best Empire builders for the kingdom I mean if you look at who was out there you know in all the colonies the Scots are wildly disproportionately represented they also were completely central in England's industrial revolution and also it's leading thinkers you hear about the Scottish enlightenment David Hume and Adam Smith we're both Scots so you know that caught that really served the English well and you actually point out that you name several great thinkers of the time who actually in in Holland in in in the Dutch Empire first in Amsterdam I guess and so that was kind of interesting these periods of tolerance uh you know this mixture of both strategic at this point it's morphing into an Enlightenment tolerance often coincides with huge artistic flourishing too because this kind of pluralism and diversity and freedom is very conducive to writing and thinking and an art it's not always but you see that a lot the Jews are an interesting case because they may they're the treatment of them occurs again and again and it's almost an indicator of the the potential to move toward being a hyper power yeah in Europe at this time actually I have a short chapter on Spain which came close it never became a hyper power under my definition although it was doing very very well but that was a time when actually many of the Jews were in Spain they'd been expelled from England France and Germany and I see this expulsion degree of 1492 was really shooting themselves in the foot and the Ottoman Sultan actually you were asking about personalities actually specifically gloated he said huh you think there are good leaders they just basically you know lost their best assets and the Jews have come here bringing with them enormous trading and financial connections I mean they for historical reasons controlled the diamond trade and a lot of the silver bullion trade had a lot of financing early financing ability became the bank rollers of armies so you're right when they were expelled from Spain they went to the Ottoman Empire and really largely to Amsterdam and that really largely explains Amsterdam's turning into the world's financial center for you know that little brief moment in history let's look at why these hyper powers unravel we've touched on this already but in in bringing people in in drawing the the best talents to enhance power you you essentially are hoisted by your own petard you you essentially create a situation that leads to the unraveling it's really interesting I mean what I noticed is that when hyper powers decline it often coincides with a turn to intolerance and xenophobia but I want to be really clear because this is another misunderstanding I have a very strong causation story on the rise I say that you can't become a global lead on entire unless you have this kind of strategic tolerance you can incorporate the world's best and brightest I don't say that tolerance is what leads to decline there are always many reasons for decline you know bad leaders natural disasters overreaching but nevertheless you often see decline accompanied by this intolerance this kind of turn to xenophobia but here's the the catch it's often too much tolerance and too much diversity that shows the seeds of decline and what I mean by that is that every hyper power in history has faced the same problem as they extend their power to include more and more diverse people so you're pushing you're at the edge of the world every hyper power has faced what I call the problem of glue for lack of a better term and that is how do we generate goodwill and cooperation and ideally loyalty among all these people that you've conquered and dominated and actually most of the past hyper powers never solved this problem you know the Persians they conquered this giant territory but they didn't have any overarching political identity to hold it together you know only military might held it together so you know Greek still felt Greeks like Greeks Upper Egyptian still felt like Egyptians they didn't feel proud to be part of the Persian Empire so within a short time you know when a new stronger military leader comes in in this case Alexander of Macedon they just switched allegiances you know I mean they just they had never been Patriots same with the Mongol Empire nothing to hold that big territory together you know people didn't the European certainly did identify with Imam goals only rome can't really solve this problem and that's what we were talking about Rome by granting citizenship to conquered elites and soldiers romanized people you know people from Syria to Algeria to Scotland to Spain they felt Roman they had this political identity that generated loyalty and that is really tough for the United States we can't do that and I guess what the overall point before we talk about the United States is really that these successful hyper powers in their ascent phase respected the culture of other people's and and I I guess you're then suggesting but after a certain time they this there is a conflict with the identity of that those people have and their sense of what they're entitled to or the better deal that they can get from another power it's so interesting the very same tolerance that allowed say the Persians or the tonk Chinese or the Mongols to put together this giant Empire also encouraged those subject peoples to preserve their own identities their own languages their own political affiliations so you know again under the Persians the Egyptians still felt like Egyptians they didn't feel Persian so there's nothing no glue to hold that empire together there's no political overarching identity so that's the sense that this kind of tolerance can sow the seeds of its own decline unless you also have a way of assimilating people you know in making them feel loyal to the to the Kingdom and Great Britain came pretty close you know actually a lot of subjects felt proud to be part of the British Empire 1 million of Indians fought in the First World War but the Romans were the most spectacularly successful and that's why I think that Empire lasted so long now you also get an unraveling at home in a way and and it seems that you're you're saying that those entities that have the most homogeneity the most powerful sense of ethnic identity which leads to a sense of the other as being the Barbarian either don't make the grade as a hyper power here I'm thinking of Nazi Germany and of Japan but then you're also suggesting that that's a problem most of the Chinese dynasties yes I mean now first of all I should say that it's an open question whether it's good to be hyper power you know a lot of societies don't even want to be hyper power but yes no society based on ethnic purity or ethnic cleansing or even religious zealot Rhee has ever become a hyper power to be clear my thesis is not that more tolerance always leads to more prosperity it would be nice if that were the case but sadly plenty of brutally intolerant societies have amassed great power and Nazi Germany is a great example I talked about that society and Imperial Japan these ethnically defined who generate a lot of force and and loyalty among your little group but you can't dominate the world to put it in sort of unpleasant and slavery and genocide are too inefficient you know I mean it's it's like you you waste resources it's much better to motivate people and bring them into your service rather than you know imprisoning them I mean Nazi Germany was amazing when they invaded parts of the Soviet Union there were tens of millions of people who would have joined the Nazi side but the Nazi said no we must extinguish these Slavic cockroaches and that's again a kind of shooting themselves in the foot if you think of it strategically in addition to expelling all their great nuclear physicists people like Einstein so that's the way that dynamic goes you know you just can't be at the cutting edge of technology or have the world's biggest army if you base your society on ethnic purity it's interesting because your book really does a wonderful job of looking at all this comparative history and and we've had guests on our program before we've talked about an empire I'm thinking of Neil Ferguson for example and what what what you are it's as if the table at which sits the people who analyze empires and hyper powers everybody has had a seat at the table so to speak but tolerance hasn't and you're not saying that you know it's the key factor you're just saying that it's it's an element that belongs at the table in understanding hyper powers that's right but I should say that I don't know if anybody else has focused on hyper powers yeah you know I draw a lot on Neil Ferguson's work and a lot of people have written about empires or even superpowers I think my thesis is unique and I do say that a tolerance is the is an indispensable it's a necessary but not sufficient condition to becoming a hyper power it's alright it's a special category Harry because again it's much more normal for the world to have lots of powers competing it's very unusual to have one dominating the world so for that I think you need special conditions I mean a lot of luck too but you need special conditions and that's where this tolerance comes in so it should be at the table in the discussion of any Empire but I think it's an indispensable element if you're talking about hyper powers let's talk a little about equality and inequality that was a concern of your previous book world on fire where you looked at the interface of democratization and globalization and you're suggesting in this book that one of the problems that emerges is that those people who feel part of say Rome basically benefit in ways that not necessarily everybody in that particular province benefits right there's always this problem equality and democracy should play a role in this book - I I see it as this this way a lot of people compare the United States to Rome these days and it's a great comparison in many ways like the United States Rome was the economic and military giant of its day he had a really appealing cultural package togas and glad year games like our SUVs and supermodels but one big difference is that America is the world's first democratic hyper power it has to deal with questions of equality and inequality you know we can't just conquer in the next people and you know take their best warriors we can't just loot resources anymore we are supposed to be the beacon of freedom and democracy so one of the biggest problems the biggest differences between the United States and all previous hyper powers is that we have we are a democracy so whereas Rome could make conquered subjects part of the Roman Empire and many of them its citizens the United States can do no such thing as a democracy we don't want to make foreign populations our subjects and certainly not our citizens you know when the US government talks of bringing democracy to the Middle East it is not thinking of having the people of Baghdad and Fallujah vote in the next u.s. presidential elections and I think this is a big part of why there's so much anti Americanism I mean there's many reasons for it but the issue today is that the u.s. as a hyper power dominates billions of people around the world you know through our economic leverage our military bases all over the world people from Morocco to you know the Philippines to Bolivia feel dominated and bullied by the United States but they don't feel any ties or connection they don't have any links they're not our subjects than our citizens so they you know they feel bullied by and dominated by no allegiance so there's no glue the United States outside our borders there's no glue or connective tissue or anything connecting the people we dominate to the United States they don't feel that they have a stake in our success and I think that's a really important thing for policymakers to focus on I mean I think that would be a good frame of mind you know how can we find new ways whether it's a marriage of constitutional and international law or through commercial mechanisms to give others around the world a sort of a sense of having common values of the United States and a stake in our success and leadership right now in the last five years I think we've done about as bad a job as can some would argue that the post-war leadership of the United States had a vision that would have helped solve that problem by creating a penelope of international institutions the World Bank of the International Monetary Fund that furthered our interests and at the same time further further the interests of a lot of the world after the Second World War we were instrumental in creating a lot of the international institutions that now actually were resisting it's very interesting of course there's a built-in tension in that vision because the these international institutions you know they can't secretly be I mean they at some point they're supposed to be really international and that just has not panned out I mean the United Nations is we are nowhere close to having a world democratic government at this point so so do you see possibilities here I know that in you you see positive elements in things for example like outsourcing as a way to build integration into the world economy that that and the byproduct of that could be a commitment to the international economic system that we want right now it's not that I'm you know a big probe outsourcer or anything like that but I just say that you know we need to look at new mechanisms you know by the way after September 11th one mistake that a lot of people who are very much in favor of an aggressively militaristic American hyper power or Empire some people called it that is regime change let's take out these dictators or place them I think with a big mistake by those championing kind of an American Empire lies in assuming that the spread of markets democracy and American consumer brands and culture McDonald's you know would somehow Americanize other nations of the world and give them as want them to have you know be in favor of American leadership that's just sort of a non sequitur people can want American products and you know wish that they could live here but if they can't live here if they feel resentment they don't you know love America one of the lines in my book is you know drinking coca-cola and wearing a Yankees baseball cap doesn't turn a Palestinian into an American so the question is if just our consumer brands don't make people want to support us since they don't feel they have a stake how do we do that well unlike the Romans we can't put large numbers of foreigners in our military you know we don't have a Foreign Legion that we can staff we can't put large numbers of foreigners in our Civil Service like the British did you know we just don't do that but we can give foreigners a stake in our the American economic machine so that's where this outsourcing idea came in there's a big debate and I'm actually very sympathetic to the people who say hey I've lost my job here you know I think somebody else should step up and maybe take a role in cushioning that blow but I do say that most of the debate about outsourcing is all economic you know and there was a non economic benefit to outsourcing and that is that for those say Indians in Google India you know who get managerial and even executive positions those people are affiliated with an American organization an American institution they have a stake in that American economy doing well you know and I don't think it's a coincidence that India remains one of the few places where views of America are quite strongly positive still you know in this kind of pool of anti-americanism it's not a coincidence I mean there are other factors too of course but that's India is one of the main beneficiaries of you know outsourcing your book has important implications for the debate here on immigration talk about that well I think that first of all the current debate I worries me that there's so many straw men out there you know it just I think people are playing on American insecurities and it I think first we should just say that of course national security has to come first you know of course the strict immigration measures are going to be needed of course we can't let everybody in we have to restrict immigration you just can't open the floodgates and of course as a lawyer illegal immigration is a problem you know it's not fair it's got to be addressed but there are people who want to go a lot further and my book really says we have to remember that the secret our success has been for all the terrible stains on our history I think it's we've certainly had our imperialist moments in our militaristic moments but I don't think it was through imperialism that we became the world's richest strongest nation I think it's been always through our ability to be a magnet for people all over the world who say that's where I can have the best opportunities you know it's not that everybody really can get rich but people believe that and we be able to pull people from all over the world so I think it's crucial if we if we want to stay a hyper power the secret is not in militarism you know I mean again I'm not in favor of pacifism I mean terrorism may require strong military measures but I think the real key is maintaining that what we've always been you know a relatively open tolerant nation that's that's what I think what we should be so those are the implications now I actually think that a relatively open immigration policy actually gets to the other problem visa vie the rest of the world it's one of the few ways we have to still have connections to the rest of the world you know not everybody can come but you know people will have relatives that live in the United States who send back money they themselves think I know it's a very small chance but I might someday it's it's a country that somebody like me could someday end up in you know retaining a small lottery component to our immigration policy I think is another way to maintain ties for the rest of the world and not you know you know I don't think this is the wrong time I think to shut down completely yes so you you make an important point which is that many of the revolutions the the atomic revolution here that we mastered the Silicon Valley revolution that has put us at the cutting edge of all technologies really have been heavily dependent on people who've come from other parts of the world it's fascinating right from the beginning I mean I did not know this until you know right around the time of Benjamin Franklin we were a small set of colonies even then they said we need to get the best gunpowder makers and textile producers and mill makers from Europe they were work fooding even back then our westward expansion you know people go on out west who was responsible for the industrial explosion first many immigrants from Europe bringing you know skills and technology but also just Irish Germans Scandinavians who populated the interior you know settle the northwest I mean that was crucial the atomic bomb race clearest case I think are winning of the atomic bomb race in the Second World War was really directly the result of our ability to pull in these brilliant scientists like Einstein who actually lived in Hungary and Germany but they came here because they were fleeing Nazi persecution and less well known same thing with our digital revolution domination Silicon Valley was not completely I mean there were a lot of you know people would lived here for generations who contributed to but very large extent the father of venture capital you know Intel a lot of these really key startups that made Silicon Valley had an immigrant as a founder you know fleeing again Nazi persecution and even today I think fifty two point five percent of all startups founded between 1995 and 2005 had at least one key founder who was an immigrant so it's not all immigrants but it's a very substantial contribution you know it's like this innovation that the dynamism that comes from the people who have the drive to come over how do you see this interplay between militarization and a main focus on national security interacting with the the great strength and resiliency of the American economy which depends on immigrants I there's a real clash here and so I want you to tell me as a as a lawyer and as somebody who does comparative history what is the way out of this dilemma obviously in this book you're saying hey look at this aspect of the problem which should help influence the public debate a few years after September 11th lots of voices calling for the of militaristic America to deal with terrorism completely understandable the National Security Strategy issued by the administration said we must do basically anything it takes to maintain a unipolar world you know it's kind of putting militarism first we've got to do this I think that gets it exactly backwards I think that's the way to fall from being a hyper power I think that of course we've had our imperialist moments we've had a lot of militarism but that it wasn't through imperialism and militarism that we got to be the strongest nation it's by being able to attract the best and brightest that ironically is what gives us the cutting edge technology the chip you know and it's that being on the cutting edge of technology that allows us to have the most lethal military weaponry it's astonishing how how much ahead we are everybody else militaristically I mean just in terms of our our arsenal but that's where we got it from so I think ironically that may be the only way the u.s. can remain a hyper power is if it stops trying so hard to be one you know I mean that if it remembers that it's secret has always been it's almost I like to think of it almost as an accidental hyper power that people want to come here we keep getting talent that puts us at the edge of technology we but then what happens is we are able to have the most powerful military and that's the irony right once we have that military we have the force we have the ability to coerce and to invade and I think we need to resist those temptations of militarism I think it's great to be the most powerful nation on earth we need to defend ourselves we need to take strong action if there is if it's the right time but I am not in favor of sort of unilateral pre-emptive regime change to put in place pro-american pro-market regimes very difficult to do especially without the hearts and minds of the rest of the world and if you're going to do it you know you've got to make sure it works the irony here is the the implications of the militarization the sole focus on national security is that you get a kind of chauvinism and ethnocentrism at home that undercuts way we have been so successful with very interesting that's exactly right I mean if you start you know I'm an optimist but if we go this direction of you know they're all these bad foreigners they're bad people people can't become Americans whether because if there's certain religion or religious or or certain ethnicity if we go that direction I just think that is going in the opposite direction of what made America great that's exactly right this kind of xenophobia fear driven I mean I think it's from researching histories hyper powers it's often at these moments of an external attack people are insecure they are scared and they they scapegoat and they target and they shut down instead and then it spirals downward so I think that's what we need to resist interestingly enough you address the question of challengers to the US and and you you're you're not sanguine about China's ability to become a hyper power assuming it wants to be one may not want to be one and and it really relates to this problem of so we call it the the dormant notion of the other being the Barbarian yeah it's very interesting I mean China I think will continue to explode economically it's doing so many things right it's pouring money into R&D and education doing great on the foreign relations front much better than the US you know I mean public polls show people majorities in Canada and Europe and Russia have a much better view of China than the United States but if my thesis is right I don't think China could become a hyper power and that's because it's the quintessentially ethnically defined nation it's the opposite of an immigration Society and there are tons of foreigners in China right now it's so much more cosmopolitan than it's been since you know Tong dynasty China but it's not turning these foreigners into Chinese citizens you know that's not what China's about so you don't see large numbers of you know talented American scientists and mathematicians wanting to move to China to become Chinese citizens or European scientists wanting to become Chinese citizens but you do see large numbers of Chinese still moving to the United States to become you know US since so and some people say but hey they've got 1.3 billion people of course they've got a fifth of the world's population China doesn't want any more people but my thesis is that at any given point in time the world's best human capital that the smartest people the most creative the most driven they're never going to be all in one ethnicity so I think it's possible that China could become a superpower you know that in fact that China could grow and rise so much maybe with Russia and India and Europe that the u.s. basically Falls from its hyper power status and we go back to a more evenly distributed power system you know where we have lots of powers but I don't think that China can replace the u.s. as a hyper power I'm curious as to how your your book relates to your own personal story because I I know you and I think that there's a sense in which the power of your insight actually comes from personal experience yeah in a way the book is a tribute to tolerance my parents emigrated here from the Philippines they're Chinese it came from the Philippines they they were actually liberated by MacArthur in 1945 so my dad always wanted to come here you know you wouldn't be loved you remember as a GIS throwing out free cans of spam so when MIT gave him a scholarship it was a dream come true and we not every immigrant has a story but my family had the lucky ideal rags to riches story you know we start off with nothing my parents were so poor as students here in the United States in Boston that they couldn't afford heat the first two winners they just were blankets around we had to work incredibly hard and you know things really worked out for us so first and foremost the book is a tribute to American tolerance but at a different level it's also a warning I mean when I grew up on me everybody wanted to come to America everyone loved America my grandfather when he was 90 just before he died said he wanted to become an American citizen you know he had been here for 40 years but he wanted to take the citizenship test and you know I'd like my are there our next generations to have that feeling back you know it's not the case today that you go all of the world and everybody loves America well Amy on that note I want to thank you very much for joining us today I want to show your book again and recommend it highly for the comparative history in and for the inside so thanks again thanks so much and thank you very much for joining us for this conversation with history you

Channel: UC Berkeley Events

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Length: 54min 46sec (3286 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 22 2007