Fixing a Broken Global Order: Is it Too Late?

welcome everyone to this panel discussion on fixing a broken global order is it too late co-sponsored by the Macmillan Center for International and area studies and the local program committee of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and we want to thank both the Macmillan Center and the American Academy for helping arrange this event all of you are invited after the event to a reception upstairs on the second floor we're fortunate to have such a distinguished group of panelists each of whom will speak for about seven minutes before we open the floor for discussion and I just want all of you to know that this is being recorded so you will be part of the public discussion should you choose to participate and this will be on the web page of the Macmillan Center and also on the American Academy so I'm going to introduce very briefly the panelists we're going more or less in alphabetical order and then we'll we'll get on with it so first is Sam Gordon the James burrow Moffat professor of economics who is an authority on economic growth innovation technology diffusion and firm dynamics in 2004 he and Jonathan Eaton received the Frisch medal for their paper technology geography and trade published in econometrics in 2018 they shared the onassis Prize in international trade he's a fellow of the econometrics Society member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research Paul Kennedy is the J Richardson Dilbert professor of history and director of the maritime and Naval Studies program at Yale he's the author of at last count 19 books including the rise and fall of the great powers and preparing for the 21st century to name just two he's a world-renowned authority on our topic of the day and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society the American Philosophical Society the American Academy of Arts and Sciences the British Academy and in 2000 was made commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to the discipline of history ian shapiro sterling professor of political science at yale is an authority on democracy justice and methods of social inquiry he's the author of many books including a forthcoming book with michael gratz the wolf at the door which makes a case for domestic compensation to losers in the world economy as a way to stabilize global economic integration and prosperity about which i'm sure he will be speaking with us this evening we expect that another book will soon follow coming out of the devayne lectures which he is currently offering at yale on the subject of politics in today's world Jean su the John MSHA professor of modern Chinese studies in comparative literature at Yale and chair of the Council on East Asian Studies is also the author of numerous books including most recently a book about how China entered the IT era the kingdom of characters : language Wars and China's rise to global power she's received fellowships and honors from the Society of fellows at Harvard Woodrow Wilson Foundation Center for Advanced studying the behavioral sciences at Stanford the Alexander von Humboldt foundation Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies New Directions fellowship from the mellon foundation and most recently the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation professor arnhem Westat is a world-renowned scholar of global history he's the author of many books including one on China's international history since 1750 and most recently a book entitled the cold war a world history it's a book of power and breadth on the origins conduct and results of the Cold War in this book I can tell you available on Amazon's audible books I couldn't put it down he's now writing about China's late 20th century integration into the world economy he's a member of the British Academy among others and Yale is very fortunate to have recently wooed him I don't want to say stolen him Harvard University so join me in greeting our panelists and then we'll get underway okay it's a little scary to be leading this off I'm my expertise is is mostly an international trade so I'm gonna focus on that part of the braking braking issue I guess to just list a few of the the things that really worry us is the World Trade Organization is being weakened we have a trade war with China that's disrupting supply chains u.s. tariff revenue just hit a record of seven billion this month now you might say okay that's revenue but that does point to a tax that we're paying of about a half a percent of our GDP so it's not trivial and I guess my main concern over all of this is not where we are but the worry that we sort of broke in a kind of convention and and other countries might sort of follow the u.s. lead in terms of what's happening so but somehow when I was given the opportunity to speak here I kind of wanted to remain optimistic and forward-looking so I thought of the quote from Rahm Emanuel a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and then I looked up it's actually not from Rahm Emanuel it's from Paul Romer that even fit in better he just won the Nobel Prize last year along with our own filled in the word house and then I wanted to talk about building the house anyway so that was kind of nice but anyway a crisis is a terrible thing to waste so is there some sense in which things are kind of torn apart and maybe we can rebuild them in a better way so I was trying to think of a situation where that could be true and that is what took me to thinking about Bill Nordhaus because he a few years ago in 2015 proposed something called a climate club of a way for countries that want to do something about climate policy to be able to solve the free-rider problem that's the real issue with a global externality is to get enough countries on board so you can actually do something if you're just in a non-cooperative equilibrium he has a nice little model where it shows you can only achieve about 12% of the the optimal the optimal policy you should really engage in so how does that fit in here well when bill lord house's idea was to make this climate club it would be something that countries want to be and they're not forced and they agree mutually on a on a carbon tax that would be higher than any of them would want to do on their own and by so imagine in in the models of Nordhaus how it would be a carbon tax of about 40 to $100 per ton of co2 which converts into somewhere 40 cents to $1 per gallon that's something we sort of make it tangible and the idea was that the non-member that to hold it together in a way that hasn't wasn't done and the Kyoto Protocol and it seems to not be working too well with the Paris Accord either there was going to be a punishment of members so they would be punished through an import tariff now when he nor doubts proposed this I was actually here at the Center for study of globalization he was presenting in front of very distinguished people and a lot of people pushed back as he said you know don't mess with a system that's as wonderful as what's happened in international trade over years we've lowered tariffs we've sort of solved the prisoner's dilemma problem that all that kind of culminating in the World Trade Organization which is that any country on its own actually you know as Trump's finds out it you know you do pretty well if you just raise a tariff it's only if the other countries retaliate that you get hurt so there's a kind of bad equilibrium where everybody's raising tariffs when we all end up with high tariffs even though each of us thought we were going to gain something so the one one view of the World Trade Organization is a kind of a solution to that problem and when people heard Nord House's proposal they're sort of like ah that's kind of dangerous we're opening up a can of worms but I guess at this point I feel like our president has already opened up a can of worms so maybe we should think about the opportunities that that gives us to remake the system in a way that's more amenable to through such proposals so if to kind of conclude so in other words try and make the best of a bad situation when I mentioned this to a colleague he was kind of angry with me he said you're gonna say that World War two was good because after that we formed lots of good institutions well no but we're here we I'm not saying anything about how we got here but I'm saying what we can do from the situation we find ourselves in I think we find ourselves in a situation where international institutions are under stress the world trading system is under stress it could get worse in reaffirming it let's also tweak it in a way that more amenable to achieving really the the the the the huge goal that we have which is to do something about the global do something about an effective global climate policy so well ladies and gentlemen I suddenly realized as I was thinking about why my remarks for this afternoon that it's almost exactly 25 years ago between the years of 1993 and 95 but I my colleague and political science Bruce Russell were working on the problem of restoring a broken global order can it be fixed because Yale University and the Ford Foundation had come together the invitation of the United Nations secretary-general to try to produce a report on how to get this world in a broader better shape through the instrumentation of international organizations and produce a report in time for the secretary-general to give it to all of the members of the General Assembly when they met in the special session at San Francisco in June 1995 because that would be the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations by the signing of the Charter in June 1945 the end result is a report which is called the United Nations in its second half century I think I was probably the only few words I contributed to this report and I'm still quite proud about that um and what we tried to do was to deal with a at that time pretty broken world order they had been just after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fragmentation of countries in Eastern Europe had also been a massive outburst of civil wars usually demographically driven at we've driven civil wars across Africa the Middle East Southeast Asia the United Nations blue helmets had gone up tenfold from 9,000 in the field in 1991 to 90,000 in the field in the year 1993 there were 19 peacekeeping operations the system was buckling and we were asked if we could think of ways in which maybe a restructured international organization at the center of things might help fix the world order so I'm just gonna say a few remarks about that effort of ours why it didn't work but why Nautilus I'm still a little bit optimistic about it so we went ahead with the set of proposals which included the following and I hope you would agree that it makes sense we concluded that the Security Council was his big responsibilities just couldn't be pushed to one side if some reformers wanted it you had however to enhance the Security Council by bringing in some significant players in world affairs above all India but perhaps also South Africa Brazil maybe the - two of the larger contributors of the budget like Germany and Japan but we had to have Security Council permanent members from the south we had to have a better response to in two crises of the collapse of what we called failed States we had to persuade the five great powers to stop using the veto except in extraordinary cases of threats to their own national security rather than threatening to veto who might be the next candidate for SiC for Secretary General of us of the United Nations or the veto on this or that particular thing it it should be reduced in size there should be a better coordination between the United Nations central organization and things like the you and P and it's organs and the World Bank and the IMF were too drifted way apart from the original intention which was to work in coordination with the United Nations rather than be totally independent brother arrogant looking down and knows that what these people did up in New York while we run the world essentially through big money pockets we produced a nice report and gave it to the secretary-general Boutros boutros-ghali at the time he was in the great Rao with Madeleine Albright so that when because he wished to have another six year twelve she was determined to get rid of him and so he decided at the end not to take our fabulous Yale University report to San Francisco I learned quite a lot about this in in in some the great powers count and if you do not persuade them and I don't well you know I concede that persuading China and Russia at this time would be a very difficult thing indeed the great powers count because of their veto the south counts and if we do not bring them into international organizations then it is a busted thing what we need above all clearly is political leadership and I see all of you shaking your head or sighing I just hope that in 5 to 10 years time really we will let be at the read the bottom end of a political leadership trough at the moment I'm hoping it will it will come up and we will get political leadership but we need international structures of far greater power and authority and respect I hope I will see them in my lifetime thank you I thank you everybody for coming fixing a broken global order so what what is broken many things are broken but what I want to address is the collapse of confidence in global institutions and a liberal economic order free trade order within the advanced democracies and the what I would say about this is that I can argue this in the book Francis alluded to that's coming out with Michael Kratz a principal cause of this collapse of confidence within the advanced democracies in the global political and economic order is elite complacency about insecurity within these countries I think we have spent so much time in the last few decades talking about global institutions global or transnational institutions solutions to problems but we've forgotten an important lesson that was told to us by our former colleague in 1998 Jeffrey Garret who's now Dean of the Wharton School in a book called partisan politics in the global economy that most politics is really national politics and this is I think been reiterated also by our former another former colleague Adam to's in his book on the financial crisis where he gives chapter and verse of the inability of transnational and international institutions particularly in the case of the eurozone crisis to confront problems and that what has been done more or less successfully has been done by national governments so I think we've we have not paid enough attention to the role of national politics in managing international institutions and in managing the fallout from changes in international institutions I said that I think the principal cause of this loss of confidence is elite in security elite complacency about insecurity and I want to emphasize that the the insecurity I'm talking about is principally employment insecurity in the Bureau of Labor Statistics release of August of this year 2019 they have been studying the the the number of times people have been changing jobs and they've been looking the later baby boom generation born between 1957 and 64 and what you find there is those people have changed jobs twelve point three times in their lifetimes and if you look only a small number of those changes is can be accounted for like by summer jobs in college because the great majority of them are post at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three so we're living in a world in which lifetime of employment as fundamentally vanished in these economies and it's also a world in which there's increasing pressure on welfare states for demographic reasons as the dependency ratio between the dependent retired populations and the working age population is squeezing government's I think that Donald Trump whether by luck or brilliant tactical insight understood this insecurity and I just want to emphasize that he understood it far better than the people he was campaigning against Briggs for instance if you compare his slogan make America great again with Hillary Clinton slogan I campaign I'm wanna build a III believe America's best days are ahead they're actually both slogans of Ronald Reagan's from the 1980s but when Reagan was saying America's best days are in front of us it was before we'd had people living through three and a half decades of wage stagnation and basically replacing one firm one one family incomes with two family incomes in order to to keep treading water whereas the the idea of make America great again draws on what political psychologists called loss aversion something's been taken away from you and I'm gonna bring it back and that was a very different kind of message that Trump sent and then if you look at what Trump said in his campaigning a campaign against Sanders for his differences with Sanders they agreed about the loss of jobs and they agreed in blaming trade for that but but for Sanders it was all about inequality it was all about what the top 1% of getting or 0.1% are getting and Trump never mentioned inequality not once he said I'm gonna bring your jobs back I mean it bring back what you what I'm gonna get you back what's been taken away from you he didn't even say what Reagan said which is I want an America in which anybody can get rich he said I'm gonna I'm gonna get you back what you have lost and so he keyed right on to this insecurity now of course Trump is offering snake oil because to the extent job loss is about globalization he doesn't have a strategy for getting significant numbers of jobs back to America and the structure of the world economy thinks that basically impossible he's certainly not going to do it by subsidizing agriculture and trade Wars and and reopening coal mines for a few thousand people in in Pennsylvania or wherever he's doing it so he doesn't have a strategy for that and besides economists debate about how much of its really trade and how much of its technology but he doesn't have a strategy for the fact that most of a lot of these jobs are now in any case going to technology the McDonald's restaurant that I used to have 20 workers in it night and now has six workers in it probably will have two workers in it five years from now watching robots making hamburgers and so there's again no strategy for that either so I think that if if we want to restore confidence in the capacity of governments to actually deliver in sustaining the sorts of global institutions that we want to see that can address climate change that can sustain free trade we have to really think about what we'll enjoy what are the policies that will address employment insecurity and there there are things like taking seriously the fact that lifetime employment has gone away it is not coming back that means we have to revisit there used to be programs that largely failed in the u.s. called Trade Adjustment Assistance where you would in the government would in theory allow subsidized for people to to retrain when they lost jobs to trade it can't just be a Trade Adjustment insistence there's got to be much more comprehensive adjustment insurance they've gotta have to be things like using expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit this is essentially a federal government or state government subsidy for employment it's one of the most one of the few genuinely redistributed programs that is gets bipartisan support it started in the in the Nixon administration and has been supported by parties on both sides of the aisle and expanded by parties on both sides of the aisle many times if you think about state earned income tax credits unlike things like minimum wage which tend to produce races to the bottom it actually can produce races to the top because employers can come to different states in search of better subsidized wages there are other policies like lifetime employment retraining that has to be fine at the national level and other things of this General Order there's no silver bullet but these are the sorts of things that would address the employment insecurity that is at the heart of what is driving the populist politics that is undermining the global order thank you all for being here and I'm very feel very honored to be flanked by some of the most respected colleagues here at Yale I spent most of my time studying America's present greatest adversary China and between switching perspectives here and there and understanding where the complex come from how are they reading past each other or is it just a simply a simple conflict of dominating well I would have to re asked the question of today's themes is whether it is a broken world order or we're witnessing a world order changing hands now there many ways in which I think the American public and media are quite resistant in thinking about this prospect but it does demand a kind of more total picture a different kind of world picture then I think the one that work comes accustomed to seeing here for instance I think we tend to still think of the problems that China raises in very specific silo terms whether it's an area of science technology which that's different from use human rights whether it's a protest we see it also has some e very different what the policymakers in Beijing tend to do whereas it is very difficult I think and challenging to imagine just what kind of a grand strategy that we're in some ways confronting how should we how should we date it of course the most readily example and parallel that comes to mind to many observers is the Cold War this is China the new Russia and I think including my colleague sitting right next to me had disputed this idea that such a simple historical precedent can be simply transplanted and but it is true that is in during the Cold War that the idea of an on world order in the making was being discussed the famous Bandung conference at least to those who were outside of Russia and in the US so we can think about this world order the the early shift of it already in the making in the 50s now I think where China comes in and instead of make it particularly I think challenging adversary is that it has been a superb understudy of the Western world order for decades if not if you want to go with some simulation one and a half century million one hundred fifty years or so and it has absorbed I think many of the rationale from not just the US but also Singapore Japan military strategies of course information as well back in the 70s when China's first opened up and there was actually kind of goodwill between US and China at least unofficially as you know with Nixon's visit landmark visit China was really nowhere near of thinking of itself globally but that was when it understood what it had to learn from the West it impressed on the western side there were several delegations academics like ourselves so travel back and forth these were the bridges that was supported I think unofficially that actually even was was still kept at a trickle in this through the 60s that was immense good well on both sides China wanted to learned the West wanna to spread this knowledge who want to collaborate and it's really imagined that it was hard to imagine then that just a few decades later that it would escalate to what we have today so what are we looking at I think in many ways to think of China's what kind of world picture it is proposing it is wonder for instance is development based rather than rule-based right China's relationship to countries in Africa or Southeast Asia and have give us very different examples of where is seeks to push where it can exert its power and how its willing to work with perhaps what the countries need on level on the call 'evil rather than what they think should be ideologically disseminated worldwide there's a very different kind of strategy and I think a worldview and when I talk to my Chinese counterparts and actually not to not the 60 70 year olds but for the up-and-coming their new four-year-olds I'll explain there is a generational gap as well and how this picture is being played out for the 30s and 40s who have parents who went through in 1989 and past human cultural revolution their parents tend to I think share similar views as Western observers they're very pretty cool they they put emphasis on human rights violations political oppression all this or the very the very thorny issues that we're still dealing with but for the 30s and 40s they also see a different picture right they grew up under a one-child policy they tend to have been given great privilege and great resources they tend to invest quite a bit of hope in China as well but with clear ID they don't see they don't idealize China as a patriot but they do see that China is well take a few decades will take well into 21st century to get to where it needs to be and it is this generation is in some ways push towards China I think by the kind of what's been quoted to me as China bashing that seems to be a kind of United strategy on the part of the West and I think that is something to think about are we at the same time trying to fix or maybe trying to repair a world order are we used to sowing seeds for more problematic and maybe similar replays in the future and one of the things I would point out also that you know China has a kind of long game that I think is difficult for us to think about here also because our governance structure is very different here every four years we're sure to see a battle and maybe certain policies repealed in China now there's unlimited term on the current leadership there's a lot of time there's at a lot of time from their perspective to do what they need to do we also see that China's building immense infrastructure around the world railroads ports railings freeways airports the last time that I think a country was able to connect a whole continent through a kind of road north-south and also cross was basically the beginning of the American Empire except now I think China is actually doing it worldwide most of you of course know about Bri and I think even two three years ago it was often kind of laughed off as a kind of a vanity project or something that's more name than substance but then lo and behold it is essentially a world project right it's going up into the artists going south through Latin America there's not a corner of the earth that is not not in some way figure into the Bell Road initiative plan so I think when we think about word order I would say a lot of it depends on how rest the world responds that even though we think of ourselves as sort of increasingly in a multipolar world but our conversation very much still evolves between something like us and an opponent and the strong adversary and I think that itself is kind of misleading path I think what is neglected is because of the fact that we have less an existing superpower and a contending superpower having a faceoff at the moment that it actually gives rester world opportunities we might think about even from the trade war who are the big winners Singapore and Vietnam eight months ago the factories in Taiwan were ready to move into where we're looking for warehouses move into in Vietnam so there's a lot of more local regional players that I think tend to be left out of the global picture when we talk about World Order right and I do actually breathe that great powers matter and great powers count but I think now because of the uncertainty I think both in this country but also regionally in Asia that there's actually tremendous opportunity that's open up for countries like Africa in Africa or Southeast Asia in Latin America and certainly if I were one of those countries I would think about how to best gain the situation whether it's where a lot of uncertainty a lot of room for maneuver so I will leave it at that it's wonderful to be here with some of the colleagues here at Yeti for a most admire and it's wonderful to see so many of you coming out for the discussion today thanks to Francis for organizing this so I I think I'll take as my starting point the question that is in the toilet can it be fixed and I think to that I have a pretty straightforward answer it depends on whether Donald Trump is reelected as US president next year or not so if that happens then the International cooperative world that many have dreamt of bringing into being after the Cold War and it is probably not going to happen in our lifetime because the institutions as we would know from several distinguished colleagues the institutions on which such a World Order any kind of world order would depend would be weakened to the point that they cannot bear the weight of the developments that we are seeing a presence that's the significance of that election so there are lots of things happening elsewhere in the world as well that we need to look at that this is the one occasion in my lifetime where it's very clear that for Americans the key question about what kind of world we are going to live in in the future can be answered here first and foremost to to what happens in American politics next year so I say this for two reasons the first one is that I believe that we are now in a global power shift while we are moving away from the unique polarity in global affairs that the end of the Cold War created so the end of the Cold War really meant that it was only one great power left standing and that was the United States of America so for some time and for quite good and if I may say natural reasons we'll be moving away from that I agree with yang that we are not moving towards bipolarity so you know what to say so China I think we are movie pretty force towards multipolarity so different powers in different parts of the world possibly on a regional basis that are going to be more significant in terms of how the global system of the future is being put is being put together this it's from my perspective that's not necessarily bad the problem at the moment is the speed with which it's happening under the current administration because if there is it is one thing that we can learn from history and the one who's helped us learn that more than anyone else's is Professor Kennedy who is here today is that power shifts may be good or bad but first and foremost depends on how they take place and how quickly they take place so very rapid power shifts have a almost unerring legacy of ending up in cataclysmic Wars power shifts that take a longer period of time have at least a chance for arrangements to be worked out so that it's possible for the major powers and for the rising powers to work together at least to secure the peace if not necessarily cooperate on a broad scale and what the Trump administration has done to its policies which in reality whatever way you put it implies a USB troll from the world it has made our allies much more insecure it has emboldened regimes that normally would for good reasons have been worried about what kind of actions their initiatives would set off with regard to the United States no one less concerned about it it has sped up the very power shift that Trump of course in his rhetoric by saying America first has promised people that he would stand up against so this is something I think is really really important to consider that the the power shifts dynamic that we have been looking at has sped up tremendously and I think possibly with some quite catastrophic results unless the United States finds a way or using its power selectively and and and and in well-defined ways to try to create a world that is more stable than what we are looking at the moment that won't happen under a trump presidency whatever you think about a trump presidency in other in other in other directions so China of course is particularly important illnesses as as King pointed out but it's not a whole story there are many other things that are happening in terms of change that indicates that this power transition process has been been sped up and again if you think about it is historically so I mean historian by trade won't surprise you to hear me say this that that's what are the ways we should approach these these issues we have to think about parallels and analogies from the post and as I've been arguing elsewhere to me even though I spent a fair amount of my career studying the Cold War it is not the cold water and first and foremost comes to mind when you look at how international affairs are being reconstituted today it is and I'm afraid I have to say this it looks much more like the late 19th century so the period before World War 1 or even the interwar era where things seem to move very quickly in the direction of a number of very strong nationalistic great powers competing for power economic advantage and influence on a global scale compared to those systems the Cold War was actually remarkably stable it was dangerous first and foremost because of the truth of of nuclear annihilation but it had a promise built into it that both of these powers where he had to try to improve the world so we would argue I am ugly and that didn't always work out for for either of the two sides but there was a stability to the system that we simply didn't for in prior to 1940 9/11 priority to 1914 or or Indian table era so that's the first reason why this election will be so significant that we have a power situation that is being pushed by the very country that has been up to now at the center of the international system and the second one which has been alluded to already so I'll be quick on this is that Trump dramatically reduces the potential on a global scale for international cooperation even on issues beyond strategic conflict on issues that are really really important such as global health or climate change and these issues are important in themselves I mean they are our common future cannot be secured without these being addressed many people see that but what I think fewer people see is that there is also I spill over from these issues increasingly to the international situation in general so if the senses that we cannot work together and that United States cannot play a leadership role in trying to deal with these acute issues that are before us then no one else will step up to the plate everyone will first and foremost look after their their own interests so in conclusion I one of the things that I worked on in the past is being very critical of US foreign policy with regard to taking on too many obligations being too interventionist attempting to be the world's policeman and I still stand by that but if you compare much of that critique from myself and others with what is actually happening today and particularly happening in eastern Asia which is by far the most significant region in terms of what is gonna happen in the future how unstable the situation there can easily become because of a rapid US withdrawal then I'm certainly on that issue on the other side of the equation I don't think that a United States that is seen as not being able to handle problems dealing with China and dealing with the East Asian region around China is helping to make the world more secure quite on the contrary I think that's the region where I dramatic power shift the power if that happens very quickly would have the most catastrophic results thank you and we have some mics and so if you would like to ask questions of the panelists this is the time to raise your hand thank you thank you very much for your for your presentation it's been very interesting whoever I found one element missing of your of the five presentations of you that you made you all talked about countries but I thought that the element that the sovereign of the order or the beneficiaries of the order was missing and that is the people in this room the Lehman's the real people so I turn on the TV these days and what I see are protests like see protests everywhere I see purchase in Ecuador protests in Chile protest in Hong Kong for the Suniva non-partisan Catalonia and the list could go on and my question is what is our role there all of the people in changing the order can we fix do we have any role you have any agency can we fix the order or there's no role for us and everything is left to the countries thank you thank you for that comment I think it is it's actually a great issue because we are seeing what one of our former colleagues here while there's time we'll call anti-systemic movements awful for different reasons and as a way in which two people actually has a power that I had not before which is the ability to organize a bio social media is actually technology is a huge I think one thing that does speed up this process of publishing is also technology they're people who anticipate decoupled world I think this Kevin Kevin Rudd's platform but also technologically you all must anticipate that it wouldn't be inconceivable that 2040 2050 we would have an internet that's basically still goes by the West American Standard and another one that's based goes by China and it's perfectly conceivable just be of all this infrastructure building right I think in terms of world people I think in fact what would be the random de variable and the unknown factor is what will happen within these countries right on China in particular is very alarming I mean people don't most people don't know this but there are thousands of protests in China like the ones that the ones that actually cost labor stoppage every year and very few May across the media the fact of ruling over such a gigantic population this is the kind of question of scale that we all know China is very big as one of our colleagues at the Financial Times you know China baked China bad China weird you know it's one of those three kings but scale actually it is really hard to imagine what that is unless you've walked through Shenzhen or Hong Kong or Beijing and just to think about if you're applying for college now how many of these people you have to compete against to get into a place like Yale and I think for those four for China governance first of all within its borders is incredibly important and I think it's because the people have the ability to disrupt and you will see that so the protest movements now is not so much topple governance is really about disruption right enough to just be that thorn in your side and they're also they also coalesce around different causes you might also notice that and it's not that the people have one particular grievance but they all find a way to come together for that movement so I think it is I think the people without sounding Marxism betraying my undergraduate background at Berkeley I think that is key that is the unaccounted for and that's still hopeful factor well I'll just say briefly that I think that people can spontaneously have much sustained effect in politics that there's a reason we have political parties and political institutions and unfortunately what's gone on over the last four decades this is really alluding to my book last year with Francis on responsible parties but what's happened is as people have felt increasingly out of control of their futures and as people have experienced the insecurities that I was talking about in my earlier remarks one dominant response across much of the developed world has been to dim to basically weaken political parties to do and more direct control in the in the decision makings or referendums and plebiscites brexit and so forth to get more and more grassroots control of political decision-making within parties and in the selection of candidates through primaries direct election of party leaders and so forth and the the results of all of this is to make it decreasing leafy's decreasing li possible for governments to govern they are hamstrung even in countries like Germany that used to have very strong political parties you see now it takes seven months to form a government that has to be approved at the grassroots level by the four hundred and fifty thousand members of the SPD and so what what you get is a world in which governments can't govern and then people feel even more disempowered and alienated that by the fact that they can't govern and that leads to demand demands for more local control so I think that the the real answer is just to strengthen parties so that they can deliver the things that people want rather than engage in this cycle of weakening the capacity of governments to govern supposing every one of those protests in all of those countries led actually to the governments in all of those countries being responsible Democratic aware of global challenges parliamentary governments then the link would have been made between what's happening on the street there and those governments being able to work with other governments to actually get things done in I organized and agreed way through organizations which we have I've made the point earlier that I don't think we're going to get this global this broken global order fixed until responsible government's step in and do that in various levels whereas socio-economic or environmental Accords or dealing with breakdown of law and order and trans-border mayhem but it has to be government's but I'm rather hopeful it's sometimes these protests lead to governments which are reformist governments why shouldn't they be hi thank you really really interesting discussion and and talk so thank you very much my question was I wondered if you could comment on global population size and structure and my question has two main parts the first part is to what extent would you say the current brokenness of the world order is due to global overpopulation and then secondly if we are in fact looking at creation of a new world order with China at the fore rather than a broken order would you say the difference in population structure between China and the USA would be a major driver of that handover so I I do think it's true that demographic increase has driven some of the resource resource diced and distributary issues that's behind what the inverse oppose was talking about earlier on but I do think we are at a tipping point with regard which will go to this as you know we are both with regard to world population growth overall what is now turning towards a more downloads trend but maybe especially if we look at the relationship between the powers that he's assumed her her to have the greatest influence in the future so I believe that the unprecedented decline in in the number of Chinese are particularly young Chinese those who will be working and staffing Model T the factory so for that you know that's how the minute the military enterprises I am agraphia decline in terms of the number of young people the equal of which in relative terms the world has never seen before is going to have a very strong impact on on what happens in it would happen so demographic change of course take some whisper so implicitly a generation to to be seen but in in a generation I think this is going to be really significant there's one of the reasons why I am saying that I'm pretty sure we are not heading towards bipolarity that yeah I think towards multipolarity because one of the things that a country in the future will need to have in order to sustain itself and make its mark internationally is a healthy demographic profile and fewer and fewer countries outside of Africa have a healthy demographic profile because I mean China is an in a position all all by itself for reasons that are mainly self-inflicted the wall child the one-child policy but you see similar trends in Europe and you see them increasingly I think in other in other parts of the world as well where this will lead we don't know I mean what I'm pretty sure of is a world that is getting rapidly older will not be a world that will necessarily be better suited for dealing with the kind of problems that we are talking about on the on a global scale and I think the countries that are at the forefront of that demographic term towards older populations will probably be the ones that are less capable of contributing you have something you want to say about demography boy what a question took all of world history to 1875 to get a population of 1 billion on this planet by 1925 50 years it was 2 billion by 1975 it was 4 billion by the year 2000 it had just crested 6 billion it's now seven point eight seven point nine billion the best estimates of the UN Population Fund or something like nine point five billion people on this planet by the roundabout 2040 ninety percent of the increase of that coming in Africa the aging is another phenomena and then there's a question of whether we really do want ladies and gentlemen all of the 9.5 billion to be raised up to the level of Kansas which is what that Senator said famously in the middle of the Second World War he looked forward to the time when everybody in the world will be raised up to the level of Kansas that is to say with the GDP per capita of something like $35,000 which would mean that the world was utterly devastated in resource and climatic terms the dilemmas of this population issue and the way in which it will break through from time to time sometimes beyond beyond beyond ways in which I can I I can't think through all of the consequences of that except that I think that to ignore the demographic push in world affairs over the next 10 or 25 years and to think that we should be concentrating only on the atomic asyou are only on the traders you are only on technology is you're only what to do with the big four means that we would there's some bigger thing happening involving most of the planet professor Kennedy actually all but especially professor Kennedy professor jinx when Professor westerly had all discussed us-china relations in particular one of the comments was that correctly I I think that Trump has played a key role in a worsening of us-china relations and sort of led to a worsened u.s. role in the world but at the same time in Washington DC there appears to be a bipartisan consensus on having adopting a tougher stance towards China and scaling back on America's armed commitments abroad so my question then is do you think this changing worsening us-china relations and a reduced America's role in the world do you think that is contingent upon the policies pursued by the next administration or do you think that would that is likely to happen irrespective of the administration that comes next we have two great China experts on his panel just along there well he always leaves the most difficult questions to me so I think I mean the current predicament as I try to have the loin in my opening remarks it's very much in in your in your question right now I think so this administration has certainly on trade rules who knows some strategic issues a more confrontational approach to China that with previous administrations have had but that's happening at the same time as the very same administration seems to be very Pro pointed in a deliberate way with reducing the u.s. overall influence in eastern Asia by having falling out with with with long-term allies with building down the links to newer friends of the United States Indonesia Vietnam India and and in general signaling to the leaders in Beijing that we're going to confront you by all means that won't cost us a thing as long if you can sit back here you do well out of the tariff so some assumption we we will be number one you know that's not how world power works and and this is the reason why I am why I'm I'm worried so I think you're right in saying that even if we get a new administration in place of the next full I do think there will be significant tensions in the us-china relationship I mean some of this has to do with a structural aspect of things right I mean you're dealing with one established great power sees itself as certainly the number one power in the world United States in and the rising power that is seen as a challenger to this this hegemon or whatever where one should understand United States the tensions come also that's quite it's quite it's quite understandable that different in character the different in area that different in history and background the big question is how can one handle those kinds of issues and this is what I'm afraid of so I think that this idea of a decrease in American commitments to deal with other countries in Asia which for which in many ways are themselves rising and not is rising in terms of what they see as their own drone potential power and influence that that would destabilize the region much more than what I continued even it's not a scaled-down level American presence would lead so that's what my hope after the next election here that we get an administration that looks pretty cool code auditors but there will be tensions and conflicts between the United States and China as there will be between the United States and other countries not least on trade issues but that's not a reason to forego an order that has been able for a very long time to keep the peace in Asia that's my view well you need something to rebuild bipartisanship on so I think regardless so that I suppose that as good as any and it's absolutely true I think that you know China's rise to power would not have been possible without America's simultaneous retreat from the world stage I think that's very very clear but I think from China's perspective regardless of what the next administration is like is not going to change his plans too much I think for many years now for at least several years it's clear that United States is an important a very important but not a decisive factor for China and you can see that China has been building essentially a containment strategy by essentially building out into the world so that it can use it as a way of buffering whatever is happening with let's say with the trade wall you can see that it just moves elsewhere Huawei expand while hallway is building these high-tech cities in Ethiopia Kenya etc it is basic bankrolling them giving them almost equivalent foreign aid so I think it's very clear that China has built a kind of Network and global infrastructure where it's kind of like a kind like a spiderweb it's like if once Isis plucked is the it can it can be pressure can echo elsewhere so it has been building that kind of nimble capacity worldwide I think so that so that it would not be beholden to any particular one power and what am I do so several of you recently spoke about the the need to empower people or make government more accountable to to the people and professor West at you suggested that you think we're returning to or that the future will most resemble the multipolar era of the period between nineteen nineteen hundred and nineteen and forty-five of course it separately no I'm sure that this period was one in which leaders used public opinion to justify either inaction and foreign policy or aggressive expansionist policies are you concerned that increasing popular empowerment in this century may have similar effects and if so how might those dangers be tempered yes I think that the the the the idea that popular empowerment is a solution to the problem you had a so popular empowerment at the expense of what and if it's the expense of political parties that can actually govern then it's going to exacerbate the danger and I agree with RNA that the parallels to to the pre-world War one and interwar period are are the most striking parallels that's it is it's also an ear or was those particularly the interwar period was era of growing employment insecurity and many of the established democracies it was a period of great party fragmentation in the european systems which were also seeing now and it was appeared which demagogues mobilized populist opinion against existing party systems and and so I do think that the the solution is not a lot of sub popular empowerment but rather the empowerment of parties that can actually govern just at one footnote I think you know power empowerment's are great but you have so also realized why now we have a very big issue with being empowered on the wrong kind of information right I mean misinformation can fan popular actions in ways are very frightening or you think at the the violence in Southeast Asia I think that's it's it's it's also about you know what kind of because they used to be popping up rising you have you have a goal you know what your ideology is you know that well they get you know where each other stand but these days it's very difficult and popular opinions are themselves being swayed one way or the other right we know that for certain something very alarming obviously some of this goes back to again we'll put in register at the beginning so you know you can understand where this reaction comes from I mean it's a reaction against what could be seen as failing state capacity to act for you to act for the the individuals who particularly in this country who feel that having won the Cold War having gone through all the changes that enormous changes that are taking place in terms of the economy of this country's instant which are often not you know commented on enough how this country has gone from making things to to becoming a center for financial capital and a center for high-tech development which it which is you know made life really difficult for people who were connected to to the productive economy that this country stood for for a very long time and and within less than a generation it has gone from United States has gone from being the world's largest capital exporter to becoming the world's largest rapidly important of course this has consequences for people's daily lives and and in particular I think this is visible here now because unlike other powers that have experienced what you could call relative decline over a period of time there is almost no social safety net for the people who have been hurt as a result of this readjustment in the in the u.s. in the u.s. position you know a lot of bad things could be said about British decline in the mid mid 19th century mid 20th century but where at least for a while there were institutions in place that correctly look off to some of the people who were the worst hurt by this kind of development you do not get that here and I think in order to understand the reaction that we've got now in American politics one has to understand that perhaps more than understanding is the International could I just add since you brought up Britain in in the earlier part of the 20th century it's it's a note it's notable they had much stronger political parties and and in Britain in the 1930s there were there were fascists as well the Mosley i'ts for example had more members in 1936 than the Nazi Party had in Germany but because they had two strong political parties they couldn't get a foothold in Parliament so if if we could go back to the discussion between China and the US and that kind of relative positions on the world stage maybe I'm misreading your narrative a little bit but it seemed to me that China has been biding its time for quite a keeping a low international profile but that has now changed and it is like with the belt and Road initiative is like their typical example it is trying to take more of a leadership role internationally and as we've discussed the u.s. is stepping back and that there is an appetite within the u.s. to withdraw some support from the UN withdraw from its kind of more expansionist military or interventionalists kind of behavior that has been as the global hegemon doing over the last few decades and so to me that doesn't seem like recipe for a clash it seems like as one retreats the other maybe steps in let me do you so but presumably there will be sticking points and where do you think those would be like is it the cultural hegemony that is where America will suddenly feel like that the relationship will become inflamed or is it military you know expansionism or is it where democracy is no longer being portrayed as like the global ideal so I guess and I guess one further point is that as the u.s. maybe puts down some of these leadership of international institutions do you see that China may try and pick up that leadership role but maybe in more of a bilateral sense not within the structures of the UN for example that we've seen up to this point those institutions have been well underway right the Asia infrastructure development investment bank their Silk Road Fund and I think you're absolutely right that just in the past I think couple of years you know the the keeping low just want harmony taina rhetoric really changed one of the very clear instances is you know maybe 18 months ago or there was this group of scientists under Chinese county scientists who specialize in Tibetan Plateau Himalayan plateau and they put forth this argument that they're the third pole that to say North Pole South Pole and then there's a third Pole because they share certain climactic you know some of my similar biomass issues etc etc and the reason that came up with that is because China wants to be an acetal table at the Arctic why the Arctic you know the Arctic's been melting in some ways a faster than the rest of the world and with a through waterway the shipping time that it takes to go from Norfolk are up to Asia will be reduced by a third if you go that route reduced by 1/3 that is quite significant and you can dodge the tax ruin or the poll tax you have to pay the suez canal and you know malacca if you look at this marine you know bringing map in real-time it's always congested so this is actually very very important and a kind of a real I don't want over use that would be a real game-changer I think Google for global trade and also oil tankers and their cetera cetera so for China they built they were very you know very very cautiously trying to play nice and this is just a science exploration and this has really changed in the past six months or eight months and it's now much more aggressive it really thinks that it has a role to play in the Arctic it's it's it's changing and this this type of Redax are changing everywhere in this reach and i think in part is in response to us because that the clashes been so great that it decides it's it's that if you listen if you read you know what's reported in chinese media it really is this very incendiary but very hurt kind of rhetoric that recalls of course a central humiliation so and so forth but it is kind of a long process i think a lot of times we think about you know china us is really about what's happening now like it's never happened before but so it occurs to me counting that two of the five experts of here are China experts and four of the seven questions posed by the audience somehow to do with China and China and the United States so regardless of this I don't particularly there is something else going on in one's national sentiments and national apprehensions and it is what Allah was talking about a little bit before is under the very good question here but whether a change of administration in this country or a change of administration on the Chinese side would make much difference if there is just a long-term secular shift in the global economic balances if it was the case of some economists I'd love to have some now come in on this if it was the case that he's and gentlemen that our American GDP would grow roughly to 2.25 percent per annum over the next 10 20 30 years and the Chinese GP would grow not at the rate it's been doing in the past 30 or 40 years but it just grew at four and a half percent to 5 percent a year then that simply means that there is a huge secular shift regardless of who is in government and one side of the Pacific Ocean or on the other side and this strikes me that now I I feel I'm back in some sort of echo way where we were about 35 years ago where every every event I came to about international affairs here was about Japan under the Japanese red and the Japanese challenge and the Japanese buying Rockefeller Plaza and I was switched but I think and I like the comments of the three of you um I think that it's a bigger shift it's a much much bigger shift than any perceived and as we saw short-term rise of Japan to challenge the American position in the world well I just wanted to start with something trivial which is with those different growth rates yet all China's gonna double relative to the US and around 30 years so that's a pretty big change and I guess but the problem is I guess in in our economics way of thinking we wouldn't put so much weight on just the pure solid I think the political and international relations part where I feel not out of my out of my league if that matters but just for the pure economics of it I'm not so sure that's such an important issue and I mean I guess I kind of wonder also about the you know the watching brought up about the going through the Arctic and so on it's very intriguing and yet I think that's not gonna be first order for what China is I mean you know I was just looking at China's exports to the US have fallen 20% in one year I doubt that going through the Arctic is gonna really be of that magnitude and somehow they're they're living through that so one more thing I guess while I'm have the mic is thinking on that last question that Francis asked me to respond to and I was a little slow one thing I recently was looking at about the decline of manufacturing and RNA brought that up about and it's certainly true but it's just steady it's just a perfect line of the fraction of US workers in manufacturing sector from 1950 to about a to the Great Recession just straight as an arrow so why is it suddenly right at the end of that so the rate of change it's a it couldn't go on like that forever it it'd go - and now it's kind of flattened out but but why all the sudden was that so disruptive a I believe it could be but I think there's a big question there about why now and maybe so maybe it's just a sort of thing always an irritant that interacted with other thing so I guess I'm not so sure of it being the causal or at least not the one causal factor Wow yeah I think well if we think about I mean we're moving to I I do feel a lot of these trends are not all bad I mean if we're a bunch of old people will all be docile II sitting around if we're young taking care of old people and if we're old being taken care of and probably won't be as much conflict well it'll be it'll be at a smaller scale the conflict gets and but what we owe and and of course we're moving I mean I think a big issue to kind of tie back into the China issue is that we're kind of moving into a world of everything being intangible and so I think that's a big part of this China issue is the property rights over intangibles and I do feel that that that's where you know the administration has something of a point I don't know if that's that maybe I kind of cover for something else but that's where there's a sort of logic to their irritation with China I think is that we probably do need to be a world that respects property rights over over intangibles if we're going to kind of move into a world where we don't have so much manufacturing and everything sort of is anybody an expert on that 5g anyone I know all right I wanted to jump in on this there was a hand there and there's a hand this is just on the lining Sam's question about why now which i think is a really really important question because you know these have been trends have been going on for a long time and of course what happened in 2008 2009 accentuated much of this but almost confessed that that is I think one of the most important issues to try to figure out I mean the only part of the answer I think we know and I am talking about situation in the United States is that a certain kind of manufacturing jobs was probably declining more quickly even before the Great Recession to cold and in other parts of the manufacturing sector and it's possible that it's that in social terms that are unleashed you know this tremendous political anger in terms of our over over an overall process that has been going on for much longer that's not much of an answer but it's a really really important question and it's a question that again brings echoes of earlier historical periods so why do long-term trends that people would see as negative suddenly lead to a deep fundamental distrust of institutions and abilities we're going to adjourn to the upstairs reception and the conversation can continue but just to say let's get the last few questions maybe keep your comments and questions just quickly we've spent most of this time and we haven't really mentioned the European Union where do you see do you see it as becoming a mediator between the US and China do you see it asserting itself and and you know kind of becoming a three-part power structure or you see it becoming utterly irrelevant and splintering and you know facing both pressures well I think you know in 2006 we saw the publication of Tony Judds book post war shortly before he died and one of the many themes in that book was that the EU has always been an elite project and the first time it hits a real challenge it look out and he was certainly right about that and I am just to come back to to the twos book it you know it's a it's a really stunning documentation of the inability of the of the EU to coordinate any kind of response to eurozone crisis for years and years and years and it it certainly seems to be an open question whether the EU is consolidating or D consolidating at this point so I I wouldn't I wouldn't buy a lot of stock in the idea that they will be mediating much thank you I will question for professor Kennedy and you made a comparison of Japan 35 years ago to China today and I wonder if we can we can put the two countries together because in 2015 the Prime Minister of Australia he told Angela Merkel German Chancellor that two feelings jo-jo our relationship with China why is greedy why is a fear that means China now make give people the feeling of a fear I want to know Japan 20 35 years ago winter when Japan was trying to buy the world did people have the feeling of a fear because we honest we understand the why today China gives the people the feeling of a fear because it has no row of law and no separation power and the press remain our place and whose end of his day so can we make the Clarisse can we make the same the same statement with Japan 35 years ago and the China today thank you thank you very pertinent question ladies and gentlemen about whether the fear of Japan which many of you in this audience remember the Japanese challenge the penetration of the world economic order the the unfairness the imbalance as saira in some ways leading to Sean Connery movies leading to a belief at this this was something that we find very hard to handle was outrageous that we defeated them in the second world war now they were coming and getting us in a insidious way could this is this is that set of sentiments of fear and worry now repeating itself with regard to China but I would say yes in many parts of the country it is there is it China on the brain phenomenon across United States just as there was a Japan on the brain phenomenon you did not ask me whether I think the fear is valid so I'm going to duck that particular question but I think that to to watch what's happening is it's clear that it is very very similar indeed said fear but I just my memory is that a words like greed and words like cunningness and words like deviousness and words like unfair competition were commonplace 35 years ago in regard to Japan as they are now widespread in this country about about China I I think there actually is a critical difference China is trying to build food water Navy and this actually goes back to the Arctic why that's important and the remilitarization I think we have not seen escalation like this we have not even touched on thank you for bringing that up not quite not the kind of focus China's not just an economic threat right is trying to you know it is going for a one bundle package deal where actually tries to dominate on every front I think very very brief question I don't know how brief this is can you hear me I don't know how brief this is but who are we fixing the world for 500 years of Western capitalism has created a few inequities are those going to be addressed in the next few years [Laughter] well you have no idea of the nature of the world's inequities in the year 1500 [Laughter] we're just add something to that although inequality within countries has grown massively global inequality has not in fact it's declined in the and if you look at the number of people have pulled being pulled out of poverty globally in the last 40 years it's actually not a depressing story and it might be if you want a happy a note on which to end maybe that's it yeah and that's also a China story [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Yale University

Views: 6,460

Keywords: American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Samuel S. Kortum, Paul Kennedy, Ian Shapiro, Jing Tsu, Arne Westad, Yale, MacMillan Center, New Haven Program Committee, history, economics, political science, global order

Id: fE6lUkxnRh4

Length: 90min 24sec (5424 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 12 2019