- Well, thank you all for
being here this afternoon. It's a pleasure to welcome
you to Riggs Library for a special event with
distinguished civil servant, diplomat, author, Kishore Mahbubani, a gathering host in
collaboration with our initiative for US-China Dialogue on global issues and I'm grateful to Kishore
for joining us today to discuss his latest
book, How the west lost it? A provocation. And I also wish to
thank Doctor Victor Cha, director of our Asian studies program in our D.S. Song Chair in
the Department of Government in School of Foreign Service will join him in conversation after Kishore delivers
some opening reflections. We gather this afternoon
at an extraordinary moment in history, a moment shaped by unprecedented advances in technology. A time where people are more
interconnected than ever and when established
institutions are called on to find new ways of
impacting our changing world. How we respond to these
changes and challenges, to the increasing thrust of globalization is one of the defining issues of our time. Kishore Mahbubani has provided
remarkable scholarship and global leadership in addressing the need for new structures
and ways of thinking as we respond to these new realities. In a recent interview
he said, and I quote, "We now live in a small
interdependent planet. We can continue to grow our economies, we can continue to improve
lives of our people without having to go
to war with each other, without having to fight each other. Those 19th century games
need no longer be played in the 21st century," close quote. He has engaged in the
highest levels of diplomacy throughout his career and has
drawn from these experiences in his writing and scholarship. He serves as Senior Advisor of University in Global Relations and Professor in the
Practice of Public Policy at The National University of Singapore, where he also served as Dean of the Li Kuan Yew School for 13 years and completed that service in
December of this past year. As a member of the Republic
of Singapore's Foreign Service he held postings in Malaysia,
Washington DC, Cambodia and New York, where he twice served as Singapore's Ambassador
in the United Nations, and as President of the
UN Security Counsel. He's written on Foreign Policy
in a range of publications and has authored, or co-authored, or edited nine critically acclaimed books on the subject of Asia in global affairs. In following his remarks, to
engage him in conversation, we are honored to have
with us Dr Victor Cha, an extraordinary scholar
of International Relations and Asian Foreign Policy
here at Georgetown has leadership of our
Asian Studies program which has been designated a national resource center on East Asia, has been crucial in
strengthening and advancing this area of focus for us. In 2012 he founded, and he continues to direct our Masters
Degree in Asian Studies. In addition to serving as the
D.S. Song Korea Foundation and our Chair in International Affairs in the Department of Government in the School of Foreign Service, he's also a Senior Advisor on Korea at the Center for Strategic
International Studies. And from 2004 to 2007 he
served at the White House as Director for Asian Affairs in the National Security Counsel. He was our primary point of
contact for security issues in the Korean peninsula
and Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. So I'm deeply grateful to all of you for being with us this afternoon, and Kishore and Victor, thank you for being a part
of this wonderful convening. And now I'd like to invite
Kishore to our podium to offer some reflections on his new book. (audience clapping) - Is it okay if I speak from here? Can you, is the mic on? Yeah, okay. First of all, Jack, thank you very much for that kind comments
and thank you very much for your warm and generous hospitality here in Georgetown University. I'm truly grateful to you. And I should begin by announcing I'm a great admirer of Jack. He like me, studied philosophy, but he knows much more of
it than I do. (chuckles) And as you know, he's
done a great job here at Georgetown University and I'm very, very happy to be here with you to speak about my latest book. Now, as you know, if
you want to sell books and your book begins with a question mark, Has the west Lost it? You don't give away the answer. (laughs) I'm a nice guy, okay, like Jack. I'll give you the answer to the question, has the west lost it, and the answer is... No, but more accurately, not yet, because my big fear and the
reason why I wrote this book now is that The west could very well lose it if it continues going on autopilot. So the purpose of this book,
as one of my friends said, it's kind of a love letter to The west as an attempt to say,
wake up, it's a new world, adjust to it and it'll be a
better world for all of us. So in order to explain my thesis to you I plan to divide my
remarks into three parts in the 25 minutes that I have. The first be about what is
the state of our world today? And then part two, speak
about what I believe are some of the strategic
mistakes that The west has made and then in part three,
I'll try and explain how The west can take a new
course that'll be better for The west and for the
rest of the world too. But to begin by talking about
the state of the world today, I'm going to say something
very, very shocking to many people, especially
those who live in the west. And the biggest truth of our times is that humanity has never
been in a better condition than it is today. And this has come as a shock to many with all the doom and gloom here. And to explain that, lemme
just give you some big examples of how humanity today is much better off. Three areas. First area, as you know,
the most difficult part of the human condition is war and peace. And since the beginning of human history we've been fighting wars, people have been dying in great wars. Exactly a hundred years
ago, if you can remember what the world was like in 1918. At the end of World War I, how many millions had died then, right? And what most people are not aware of is that today we are living
in the most peaceful time ever in human history. And of course there's
data to back this up. I cite Steven Pinker, and he says, as he explains, that
we are probably living the most peaceful moment of
our species time on earth 'cause global violence has fallen steadily since the middle of the 20th century and the number of battle
deaths and interstate wars has declined from more than
65 000 per year in the 1950s to less that 2000 per year in this decade. That's a spectacular decrease. There may be ups and downs
with Syria and so and so forth, but the long term trend
is definitely going down. And take the other area. We've been trying to get rid of poverty since the beginning of
human history, right? And I can tell you as a student who's studied in the
70s, 80s, the economists almost gave up and said, we can never eradicate human poverty. It's an existential part
of the human condition. And here is another area where we have made remarkable progress. Now, in 1950, now that's not so long ago and that's two years after I was born. In 1950 75% of the world, 75% were living in extreme poverty. In 1981 erodes to 44%, but by 2016 it had fallen to below 10%. And I and I can tell you
as someone who grew up as a poor child in a poor family, in a poor society in Singapore, we shared the same per
capita income as Ghana. I can tell you that poverty is the most debilitating condition. And by the way, for my first day at school I was put in a special feeding
program at the age of six 'cause I was technically under nourished. As you can see, now I'm over nourished. (audience laughs) In some ways my life experience, to go from that kind of extreme poverty to where it is today is something that so much of humanity has gone through. And that, I can tell you
that future historians will marvel at our time since and say, this is amazing. They took humanity which
had 75% of the world living in extreme
poverty to less than 10%, and by 2030 it could even
go down to zero, right. Now let me give you another statistic to illustrate how the world
is in a much better place. Most of you I suspect belong
to the middle classes, and the global middle class
population is exploding. From one point, eight billion in 2010 to 3.2 billion in 2020,
to 4.9 billion in 2030. So more than half the world's population is gonna enjoy global middle
class living standards. Again, an amazing transformation
of the human condition. But of course, the big question is, why is this happening now? And here I must say, one of the biggest messages
I give in this book, is that the reason why the human condition has improved as much as it has, especially in the last 30 to 40 years, is because western civilization
has shared it's gifts with the rest of the world. If there's one place that
the rest of the world needs to send a thank you
note to, it is to the west. And by the way, just for your information, only 12% of the world's
population lives in the west, 88% lives outside the west, and this 88% has benefited tremendously from the advances made by the west. And as I say in this book, on page 11, the gift of western wisdom. The one fundamental thing
that the west gifted to other societies was what I
call, the gift of reasoning. And to explaining to the rest of the world how if you use reason, if you
use science and technology, if you use methods, rational methods you can actually solve many
of the problems in the world. And the reason, for example,
how we've eliminated poverty is with a spread of ideas from the west, including the ideas of modern economics, free market ideas and so on and so forth. And as a result of this, what
most people are not aware of is that there have been
three fundamental revolutions in the rest of the world, and these fundamental
revolutions have lifted up the human condition. Again, I don't have much time, but let me just briefly explain
what I say in this book. The first fundamental revolution is the political revolution. And here, again, this is
a simple fact of history. For most of human
history, in most societies and especially, I can say in Asia, we live in what you might
call, feudal conditions. Where a very tiny, small
feudal elite made the decisions and the rest of the society just obeyed, live under the thumb. It was a top-down process. Through the spread of
western ideas, right, it became a bottom-up process, and the top realized that
they were accountable for the bottom. Now that seems to you like
simple common sensical thing, but that's a fundamental
change in the human condition. The kind of the privilege elites and the control of power that they used to have
evaporated, disappeared. You've seen this, of course,
with the spread of democracy. But what might come as a big shock to you is that even a place like
China, which has no democracy. Even in China, you see the
transition from Mao Zedong where you had a dictator
with absolute power deciding what he wanted to do and nobody could challenge him, to the new government in
China which understands that he's accountable
to the Chinese people, and that's why the condition
of the Chinese people has improved far more in the past 30 years than it even has in Chinese history. One small political revolution
makes a huge difference. The second change is what I call the psychological revolution. And this is something I can speak about with great conviction,
'cause I grew up at a time, my parents never went to university, never went to school, right. My mother stopped school after six years. My father didn't even survive that long. And their view of life was that
everything in life was fate. You could do nothing about it. Whatever was written in
the stars was given to you and you couldn't change it. But with the spread of modern
education, western education people change their psychological mindset. And say, we can take control of our lives, we can improve our lives. And I've seen the transformation myself, because if you take for
example, all my ancestors, none of my ancestors, mother, father, uncles, grandfather, grand, uncles, whatever it
is, never went to university. One generation down,
I became the first one to go to modern university. The generation below me,
all my nephews and nieces are going to university. What an amazing
transformation in my lifetime. And that creates a
psychological revolution that says, hey, we are in
charge of our lives, right? That's a big deal, that's
why the human condition is improved so much. And the last revolution, very quickly, I will describe as the
revolution of good governance. And here I can tell you this as someone who was a Dean of a
school of Public Policy, practices of good governance
are spreading very rapidly around the world and that explains the demolition of poverty,
reduction of conflict and so on and so forth. But as a result of all
this, thanks to the west, we've had a wonderful situation. And so this should be
the moment when in theory the west should stand up and say, hey! We should be celebrating
the western project to improve the human condition
has succeeded, hooray! Let's celebrate. But as you know and as I know, there's no celebrations in the west, there's just doom and gloom. And the question is why? And my answer is that
in the past 30 years, in precisely the period when the human condition
improved dramatically the west made three strategic mistakes. Strategic mistake number one was made at the end of the cold war. That was a time when there
were genuine celebrations here and everyone enjoyed reading
Francis Fukuyama's essay, The End of History which
said, hey, we made it. We defeated the Soviet
unit without firing a shot. We've shown the world that's
only one road for history, we all have to become liberal democracies. The west has made it, we don't
have to change and adjust, the rest of the world
has to change and adjust. And as I say in a somewhat
cruel fashion in this book, Francis Fukuyama's essay did a lot of brain damage to the west, because he put the west to
sleep at precisely the moment when the rest of the world was waking up. At precisely the moment when
China and India were waking up. And why was the waking up of
China and India so significant? Because from the year
one to the year 1820, for 18 hundred of the last 2000 years, the two largest economies of the world were always those of China and India. And it's only the last 200
years that western Europe took off and North America took off. But if you view with the past
200 years of world history against the backdrop of
the past two thousand years of world history, it's been a
major historical aberration. All aberrations come to a natural end so it's perfectly natural
to see the return of China and India, but as it was
happening the west decided to go to sleep. So that was strategic mistake number one. Strategic mistake number
two was made in 2001. Now what happened in 2001? Most people in the west remember 9/11, and I know the impact of 9/11 because I was living in
Manhattan when 9/11 happened. I experienced the political shock, I know what a shock it was. But the effect of 9/11
was that the United States and some European
countries marched into wars in the Middle East and grows in wars there, and didn't note this is something more fundamental happen in 2001, which was China's admission into WTO. And the reason why
China's admission into WTO in 2001 was far more
significant is because when, according to western
theories of economics, according to Joseph Schumpeter
in creative destruction, when you suddenly inject
nine million new workers into the global capitalist system, there'll be creative destruction. So workers lost their jobs, and then you saw 15 years later, the election of Donald Trump. There is a connection in these things. And this a result of not
seeing the big changes that were happening. And the third strategic mistake,
I'll mention very briefly is that most people are not aware, again, of how rapidly China has emerged. In 1980 the United States'
share of the global GMP was 25% in PPP terms. China's share was 2.2%. Less than 10% of United States. But in 2014 in one of a
major historical moment, China's share became larger
than that of United States and nobody noticed that that had happened. Nobody woke up and said, hey, how do we adjust to this new world? And that's why your
US-China Dialogue Initiative is a very, very important one, 'cause that's the most important
relationship of our times. So these were the strategic mistakes. The question is, can the
situation be redeemed and the answer is yes. And what I propose in this book is the three M formula
that the west could adopt to try and bring about a different world. A better world for the west and
a better world for the rest. And the three M strategy
doesn't refer to this, I think the Minnesota
Mining Company. (chuckles) It refers to three M-words. And the first M-word is minimalist. What do I mean by minimalist? I hear again, there's something that, it may take a long
lecture to explain this. But for this, you know
for the past 200 years as western power exploded
around the world, the west began to intervene in the affairs of every society around the world. Indeed, by the end of the
19th century the whole world had been colonized by the west. A few countries, China
has not been colonized, but China has bene
humiliated, had settlements and so on and so forth, and the west sort of
controlled the whole planet. Now, of course, after World War II you saw decolonization,
newly independent countries and you thought, okay, western
intervention had ended. Unfortunately the west continued
intervening in the affairs of other societies long after that. And you've seen this even
in the last two decades with wars in Iraq, in Libia, in Syria and it's almost become a habit of intervening in global affairs. So one recommendation I have,
a very simple recommendation I have is, please, the rest of
the world has improved a lot. The rest of the world can
manage their affairs very well, they don't need western
intervention anymore. And if you want proof of this, in my previous book, the book before this called The Asean Miracle. I document how the most diverse
corner of planet earth okay. By far, there are 650 million
people in Southeast Asia, part of which there are
240 million Muslims, 120 million Christians,
150 million Buddhists, Mahayana Buddhist, Hinayana Buddhist. Then you have Taoist,
you can Confucianist, you have Hindu's and then
you also have communists in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia should be a
zone of trouble and strife, but now it's become the
second most peaceful corner of planet earth after the European Union. How did it happen? The rest of the world
has transformed itself. It's grown up, it can do
these things on their won. So in the past you may have
needed western intervention, but now you no longer need it. And one of the statistics
that may shock you is that, as you know, President Barrack
Obama is a very peaceful man and tried very hard to bring
peace during his presidency, but in the last year of
his presidency in 2016 the United States dropped 26,000 bombs on seven countries, why? Why drop 26,000 bombs? You don't have to do it anymore. There are difficult problems but you can find other
ways of solving them. Which brings me to me second M-word, which is multilateral. Now it's very dangerous to
use the multilateral word, 'cause it's a word designed
to put an audience to sleep. As you know, multilateralism,
UN, very boring, everyone falls asleep. But actually in a world
where the rest of humanity has woken up, where you have more and more competent governments around the world managing their affairs, you can actually get
the whole world involved in solving many of these problems, and if you can get them involved
the results will be better than what you have seen to
unilateral interventions. Now that's not the story
that's given to you, to give you an example,
if you read the speeches made by the United States
ambassadors to the UN. You take a country like
Syria, they will say, you see, Syria is a struggle between
the democracies of the world and the tyrannies of the world which you find in China and Russia, I have that quote in this book. Okay, if you say you want
to listen to the democracies of the world, I agree. Why didn't you listen to the
largest democracy in the world with a population of 1.3
billion people, which is India. And then the third largest
democracy in the world which is Indonesia, with 240
million people in the world. And if you listen to them,
and this is what I quote. A very distinguished Indian diplomat, Shyam Saran, describing the
results of western intervention. He says, "In most cases the
post intervention situation has been rendered much worse. The violence more lethal and
the suffering of the people who were supposed to be protected, much more severe than before. Iraq is an earlier instance, Libia and Syria are the more recent ones." And as he says, "In each
case no possible thought was given to the poor. No careful thought was given
to the possible consequences of the intervention." So if you say you want
to listen to democracies in the world, listen. Also through not western democracies and see what they say about our world. That's why I say multilateral. But the third M-word is the one word that actually, I'm not supposed to use in polite western company, and that M-word is machiavellian. I know many in the west see
Machiavelli as a figure of evil. In this book, Leo Straus, an eminent America, political scientist describes him as a figure of evil, but when studied philosophy
I read a wonderful essay by the British liberal
philosopher, Sir Isiah Berlin, and in that essay he explains
that Machiavelli's goal was not to promote evil,
but to promote virtu. V-I-r-t-u, an Italian
word that sounds like, means more like virtue. He was trying to create a better world and he was giving
sensible, pragmatic advise on how you create a better world. So if the west could rediscover
the culture of pragmatism that Machiavelli was
trying to teach the west that will also help to
create a better world. So I know that we live in
times where everyone feels very gloomy and very depressed. I do believe that if you
actually read my book you'll end up feeling much more cheerful. Thank you very much. (audience clapping) - Well, thank you Kishore,
that was wonderful, and I think I can look around
and everybody already looks like they're a little bit happier. (laughing) When I walked in the room. Also we're not yet near midterm, so that's the reason I think
most of the students are happy. So the way we were going to do this, is we're going to have a
little bit of a conversation that we're going to open up to you all to ask your questions. And I will remind you
now and also at the end that the Dean has been gracious
enough to stay afterwards to sign books, for those
of you who want them, they're out in the back there. But let me start by asking you, you're book tells a story but behind every book there is a story, and so I'd like to ask you firstly, what prompted you to write this book? - Well, I mean what prompted
me to write this book was this sort of what I call,
this growing disconnect within the west and the rest. You had this rather strange, in the past it was always the
west, the Western societies that were the most optimistic
societies on planet earth and you can get data on that, and the rest of the world
was struggling, troubled, and you know, lost and so on and so forth. And then you could see
in the last 10, 20 years this remarkable shift,
where all the surveys showed that the most optimistic
societies in the world are not in the west. In fact, often in Asia, and the west has become
progressively more and more gloomy and if you ask young people
in Europe today for example, where youth unemployment is 40, 50%, do you think that your
like would be better? They say no, I don't think
my life will be better. So the sense that I had
was that many in the west thought they had lost it. And my view is that the
west hasn't lost it, that actually the west
can also participate with the rest of the world in this sort of more optimistic, dynamic, global dynamic that we have, because the human condition, paradoxically in the period
when Western optimism has been declining, the human
condition has been improving. And it improved more in the past 30 years than the past 3000 years. So why this disconnect? So I was trying to bring
it back and explain to Western societies, don't give up. There is a better world out
there you can participate in. - But was there something, was there a specific moment? Was there a specific conversation? Was it something, you
gave a talk somewhere and just saw doom? I mean, what was it like, specifically that got you at a personal level? What got you to, like
I need to write this, I must write this book. I need to explain to the west. - Well, actually I had
been sort of in a sense, in one way or another
writing about these topics for quite a while. In fact, my first book used a title, Can Asians Think? - Right, right. - Was published in 1998 and in it you will find something similar, also signals to the west,
hey, the rest of the world is waking up and so on and so forth. But as you know, the
amount of doom and gloom among Western intellectuals has never been greater, and I would say events, especially if you look at what I call the liberal intellectual crowd. Not just in the United
States, also in Europe. There are two events and interestingly they both happened in 2016. One was Trump and the other was Brexit, and these were huge political shocks because I mean, and I was here in 2016, all the liberals intellectuals
were absolutely convinced that Trump would not possibly win. And that to me was quite shocking, the disconnect within the
liberal intelligence here and their own population,
their own people, the voters. It was quite shocking. So hey, so what explains this disconnect? So that's why I was trying to find the structural reason for that. Similarly in Brexit too. I think when David
Cameron made the decision to have the referendum,
apparently I was told, I was just in fact recently talking to some of my British friends. Senior advisors said, hey, there is no way the British people are
gonna vote for Brexit. They're not that stupid,
come on, it's suicide. They will never do it, but they did. So it was a big shock. So in that sense, those two shocks was a kind of a wake up call that led to me writing this book. - Right. Now the title of the book is, Has the West Lost it? What is it? - Ah, you asked a question
that the Chinese asked also, and you know why? Apparently you can't translate Has the West Lost it into Chinese. You know, it's got to be something. What is that something? And so I had to say,
actually that if you want to, so in Chinese they said,
Has the West Lost it's Way? It's direction. It's sense on momentum
and so on and so forth. So that's what I mean by it. - 'Cause when I looked at the title, I haven't finished the book yet, but when I looked at the title I looked at the word,
it, and I took it to mean when you lose something, you
usually lose it to someone, or to something else, and so how much of this book is written, certainly written and directed
towards the Western audience and how much of it is
written and addressing, as you said, a Chinese audience? - Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that the primary audience for this book is clearly
a Western audience because I would be happier to see, I think it's better for the
world to have confident, optimistic, Western societies
dealing with the world, rather than troubled, insecure societies. And as you know, we are now in the midst of a major trade war with
the United States and China, and you can talk about what's driving it, but certainly one fact driving it is the feeling of many,
let's say in America that unless America comes
on very hard on China, you'll never get back your jobs. But actually, economics teaches us that economics unlike political games is not a zero sum game, that
if the Chinese economy grows it's actually can be good
for the American economy and it can also be good
for the American people. Economics is not a zero sum game, but because it's the
politics that's driving the relationship rather than the economics that's driving relationship, people see there is a zero sum game. - Sure. - So I'm saying if you
focus on the economic side there are tremendous opportunities
for American businesses and China's too. - Yeah, now it's pretty
clear that economics doesn't really explain this trade war. (chuckles) But if I could just take you further on the whole China question. Suppose the west can't keep
it, suppose the west loses it. What are your views on whether China can actually get it, or win it? - That's actually the
subject of my next book. (laughing) Seriously, just for your information. After I step down as Dean
in December last year, I'm on a nine months sabbatical and actually I spent
time in various American, in fact, I spent month
in Fudan University. So I'm actually right now
formulating my thoughts for my book on the US and China. It's very hard to answer questions about what will China do or
what will it achieve, because China is a moving target. China's a moving target
because it is right now, as you and I speak, it is
adjusting all the time. It is, for example, to look
at the current trade war, when it began, I think,
from what I understand, the Chinese officials,
because they've done so many negotiations with United States, they felt okay, this is another round of difficult negotiations. By the end of the round, go make a deal and problem will be solved. And I think it's come as quite a big shock to the Chinese leaders to come to realize that what is happening
now between US and China is something that's
fundamentally different. The Trump administration is
not trying to reach a deal. It's trying to alter the playing field in a very fundamental way. Now that's a different game, right? So clearly the Chinese government is now going through a period, I suspect, of de-introspection and
trying to figure out what's going on here, right? It's a different game. So that's why you cannot say
how the Chinese will react, because they're still thinking how to react, they're
still trying to figure out what to do and I hope that my next book, just as this book was trying
to be helpful to the west I'll try to be helpful
to both America and China as they try to achieve a new
balance in their relationship. - As you explained your
argument this afternoon, you noted that the very things that have, the very things that you
attribute as positive things the west has done to help bring
the state of the world to a greater sense of affluence and everything, are also many of the ways the things that have been dragging it back, I mean you say minimalist, for example, to move away from this
interventionist policy, but you also note that the interventionism was part of what brought
the rest of society, the rest of the global society up. I think for many Americans
the notion that there, if we look at somewhere like China, the Rising Liberal Hegemon,
that there are aspects of the American hegemony that
just don't translate as well if China is to rise and
occupy this position. So I guess the question
really is, is that enough? I mean, what you advocate in
the end is more of a minimalist sort of, check your values at the door, sort of multilateral approach and if that's the case, is there an appeal of a sort of, illiberal hegemon
that can actually take us in not a very good direction?
- Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's a
very important question I'm going to try and
address in my next book, but the question is-- - Sorry to keep asking
you about your next book. - My simple answer to your question is can we go beyond hegemony though? And this is where, this is
why China is going through a very plastic phase now, you know. Trying to figure out what
it's role in the world is. But how the Chinese behave
would also be influenced by their past history as you know, and the Chinese for some
reason, for whatever reason never saw themselves as
natural colonialists. Now, I don't know how
many of you know this, but the Chinese in the 15th
century, if I'm not mistaken, under Admiral Cheng Ho. Admiral Cheng Ho has a much bigger fleet, much bigger boats than the
Portuguese ever had, right? The Portuguese has much smaller boats, colonized South America,
that's why you have Brasil, colonized Africa, you have
Angola and Mozambique, took a bite of India, you have Goa. Took a bite of China, Macau. Now that's kind of a colonial, what do I call it, drive, that's been very much
part of Western history. But the Chinese for whatever reason haven't had that same drive. So for example, Australia as you know, is so far away from, let's say the United Kingdom, or England. Australia is so close to China, it's been close to China for 2000 years. No Chinese went there, but
the British came all the way, sailed halfway across the world, more than halfway across the
world and ended in Australia and Australia today is remanent
of a British colony, right? So the question therefore is,
will China naturally follow what the west did as it becomes powerful? Now there's absolutely
no doubt that when China becomes more powerful it will definitely become more assertive. Very clearly, no doubt whatsoever, but there's a big difference
between becoming assertive and becoming aggressive,
and that's the question. And for example, will the
Chinese go out and bomb Syria? My answer is no, China will not. 'Cause they can't figure out why, why would you wanna go and bomb Syria? So their mentality therefore
is in some respects is fundamentally different. So it will not therefore
replicate the Western style of what you might call,
hegemonic intervention that the west has been doing. But of course, I have to
qualify by saying that because it depends also
on how you treat China in this period, and if you provoke China there's gonna be a reaction. How, what kind of reaction, I don't know. It depends on the issue,
it depends on the context and everything so and so forth. So that's why the period of
history we are going through now is very, very important, because we are going to shape the future by many of the decisions
we're gonna make today. - There is, I think
implicit in your argument is your degree of confidence
that what has been built since 1945, whether it's the
Neoliberal International Order or whether it's an environment
in which China and India could lift themselves out of poverty, whether it's any of these things. There's implicit in your
argument is the confidence that that can continue if the United States takes a
more minimalist role, right? The question really is, can it continue if the United States takes
a more minimalist role? China can offer a lot,
but they offer many things that as you know, we
as political scientists would describe as private things. Hegemons don't just intervene
they also offer public goods and that's the question. - I'm asking to clearly
define, explain my points as clearly as possible. I'm asking for minimalist,
unilateral interventions. And I'm asking for Maximalist,
multilateral interventions. So yes, intervene, but
do it multilaterally. Now, there's one important point, we now live in a global village, okay. Small, interdependent global village and that's why Jack Nagoya
said, even introduced me as what I've said. Now when you live in a global village, a global village like a
normal village needs counsel. Now in the village
counsel you must make sure that all the villages are represented, and therefore many of the
multilateral institutions, and I give you just a simple example, the most important low
economic institutions are the IMF and The World Bank, right? And China is not trying to destroy them, China wants to keep them. By the same time, you have
to get rid of the rule that says, to become the head of the IMF you must be a European. Be of the 5% of the worlds population. Or to become the head of The World Bank you must be American, right? Also, 3, 4% of the
world population, right? And the remaining 90%
of the worlds population don't qualify to run the
IMF or The World Bank. That's gotta change. So we not gonna get rid of the IMF, we not gonna get rid of The World Bank. We gonna insure that we
have an IMF and World Bank where the sense of ownership
is felt not just by, what 8 to 10% of the world,
but also felt by the other 90% of the global village that we live it. That's what I mean by maximalist, multilateralist intervention. - This is before we
open up to the audience, I want to ask, not that
I believe this argument but it's for argument sake. I mean, when you describe
sort of a minimalist, Machiavellian,
multilateralist position which essentially means also
seeding more authority and rule making authority
to others in the system. Isn't that kind of what
Trump is doing right now? I mean, he's kind of,
pretty minimalist in terms of wanting to intervene in
other parts of the world and he's definitely Machiavellian. (laughing) - I have to disagree
with the last statement. (laughing) Trump is too honest to be Machiavellian. (laughing) Of course I might say
that's a compliment, right? He doesn't hide his intentions at all. I mean he's out to sabotage Iran and he says I'm out to sabotage Iran. If he really wants to sabotage
Iran he wouldn't announce it. He's not Machiavellian. He's actually amazingly open, and frankly, to say that he's having
exchange of love letters with the leader of North Korea,
that's not Machiavellian. That's incredibly open. - But it is in terms part of the way, at least in the presentation of the way you describe
Machiavellian was being, you know, basically being ultra pragmatic. That implicit is the
criticism of the west, it has been too ideological in
terms of imposing our system on others and on the world. You're right, President Trump is honest. The one thing I would not
consider him to be is principled in terms of ideology and
he is quite pragmatic. I mean, if he calls a North Korean leader his new lover. (audience laughing) We know what he wants, he
wants his nuclear weapons, or in the case of Iran, he clearly wants to sabotage the deal. I mean, that's pretty pragmatic. - I wouldn't use the word
pragmatic to describe him. I would say he's extremely unilateral and he still believes
that the United States can single handedly change the world, and that's a very
unpragmatic position to take. And if he was pragmatic
he would actually not, number one, not undermine
the most important alliance that he has, which is with Europe, and the fact, I mean, I'm
actually quite stunned that Germany, France, UK, Russia, China, a very unlikely
partnership have now set up an alternative payment
system to do trade with Iran. That, if you a really pragmatic, you wouldn't alienate your allies. I just spent four weeks in
Paris before coming here and Sioux Paux and the Europeans who had a very high level of trust and confidence, at least in
the American good intentions have lost it in a very profound way. And one of my friends, Sylvi Kaufman, the editor of Le Monde, actually, and I had lunch with her in
Paris just two weeks ago, and she actually
published a page one piece in the New York times explaining
how what Trump was doing was damaging so much of
what Europe stood for, and therefore damaging
the alliance in a big way and that's not pragmatism. That's ideology. And he has a certain ideology of his own, which is about America
alone can do everything. - Yeah, I mean, America alone
can do what's good for America at the expense of all
the rest of the world. So, part of your
recommendation here, if it were for Trump audience, not that this is, this is about the furthest
thing from a Trump audience. But your recommendation-- - Are you sure? (laughing) - Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. - Maybe they don't dare to
declare they're Trump supporters in this room! (laughing) - We have a pretty open
political environment here, so. But, I've had 'em in my
class, the one or two, yeah. (laughing) Would this be the same message? This message I take to be
a message being given to sort of many of the liberal
internationalists in the west who, as you said, are in a state of real shock and depression. What would the message
be to a Trump audience? 'Cause that's when people
here in DC and this country, that's all we see, that's
all we talk about these days. What would be the message to them? - If the Trump audience is what I call the unhappy, white working
class citizen in America. That's the core. My message to them is that
you can create a better future for your children, and you
can create a better future for your children by having an America that works with the rest of the world and tries to charge up the global economy and work together. It's amazing and in theory
if the United States was a company and not a country and if China was a
company and not a country. The United States as company would find the best partner to have
would be China as a company, because the strengths of the United States as a company, is technological
lead and advances and so on and so forth of tremendous. But China as a company has got tremendous infrastructure building capacity. Now what does America
as a company need now? America as a company now
needs better infrastructure. The America Society of Civil Engineers has said that more than three
quarters of American bridges need to be fixed, and I genuinely
hope you have nothing like what happened in Italy happen to you. But if you want to rebuild infrastructure, the company that is the best in the world at now producing world class
infrastructure is China. And it's amazing, I mean you know, and I as a young person, when I came to John F. Kennedy
Airport, whatever it was. Was one of the best airports in the world and Beijing Airport was a dump. Today you wanna go to one of
the best airports in the world, you go to Beijing, and
if you wanna go to a dump you go to JFK Airport. (audience laughing) That's how the world has changed. - LaGuardia, LaGuardia is
even worse, it's even worse. - Well, you can have a comment. (laughing) What's even more shocking, and this to me, I never thought it would
happen in my lifetime. You wanna see some really
good airports, go to Deli, go to Mumbai, excuse me. How can Deli and Mumbai
have better airports than American airports? Isn't that shocking? That's how much the world has changed. And you know, you can
cooperate with this world. You don't have to be a hegemon anymore, you can be a partner,
and if you're a partner the opportunities to grow
and develop are tremendous. And as you know, one
of the biggest mistakes that Trump made, was to walk away from the Trans Pacific Partnership. That Trans Pacific Partnership
was a gift to America. Some of the best, fastest
growing economies in Asia wanted to have a privileged
partnership with America and prepared to give up,
frankly, open up sectors that they never thought
they would open up. Vietnam opened up so
many sectors under TPP. And you were given this
gift and you dumped it. That's being completely non-pragmatic. - [Victor] No, I agree,
that's one of the biggest strategic mistakes that we made, 'cause TPP was not just
a trade union at all. - And TPP was also a way of
anchoring America influence in the region. So if Trump was pragmatic he wouldn't give this duel
political gift to China. - Yeah. Okay, now is our opportunity
to open up to our students and other guests of the
university community. So why don't we start in the back. Right there, in the gray, yes. - [Julian] Thank you very much. My name's Julian and I'm a
second year graduate student here at the School of Foreign Service. I really liked your observation with regards to globalization
and how the divide between rich and poor countries
has certainly narrowed over the last 50 years, but I wonder whether this
is the right question to ask for the title of your book. I haven't read your book, I'm sorry, but I'd be interested to
hear your opinion on that, because I think the average
American doesn't really care how the airport in Deli
or in Beijing looks, but what they care about is
that for the first time ever basically, the last two
years life expectancy in the United States actually declined. Especially with regards
to the working class. If you look at the average wage increase over the last 25 years of blue collar and white collar workers,
actually stagnated. So on those criterias we
have to look at in order to understand why there was
this white revolt in the UK, in the US and isn't this the problem of the consequences of globalization? - Yes, I completely agree
with you that issues like life expectancy are very critical, and by the way, in the same
period in the last 30 years while America sort of
stagnated, life expectancy in the rest of the world
has shot up dramatically. Really, really dramatically. And certainly in terms of
wages and income, you're right, they've been stagnating here. And as I say in the book,
the gap between the elite and the masses, I have
the data in my book, has also grown a lot. And you're right, these
are the issues that needs to be addressed. They need to be addressed, but the best way of addressing them is for America to work
with the rest of the world and not against the rest of the world. So for example, if you're looking
for economic opportunities that will give jobs to people, you will find the faster growing economies and work with them and deal with them. For example, that's what the
rest of the world is doing. By the way, even though it's paradoxical that the greatest preacher
of the free trade agreements used to be the United
States in the 60s, 70s, 80s, even up to 90s I think. And then in those times, I
know when I was ambassador of the UN 84 to 89. All third world countries
except Singapore, of course, said, no, no, no, free
trade means you gonna exploit my economy! No, no, I'm gonna close the borders! And it's very bizarre
that the United States that used to preach free trade
to the rest of the world. And basically it's a
Western theory, Ricardo's whatever this theory of
comparative advantage and so on and so forth,
makes it very clear that the more you trade, the
better off you are, right? Your standard of living always goes up. So the rest of the world
has now bought the virtues of free trade. Countries in East Asia are continuing to sign free trade agreements. We haven't stopped because
the United States has stopped, but the United States has gone
in the opposite direction. So this is where I think there
United States got to go back and in a sense, go back
to it's own theories on what generates economic development. And what generates economic development is to utilize the theory
of comparative advantage, produce what you are good at and everyone keeps talking
about the United States deficit in trade in goods, but the United States is
surplus in services, right? And also, frankly, if
you are a very rational, objective analyst, the United
States economy benefits a lot because the US dollar is
the Global Reserve currency. So which means the Chinese
worker has got to work very, very hard to produce the
contents for the iPhone and send it to you. You can just print money and send it back to the Chinese worker in
theory you can do that, right? So there are many benefits
that the United States enjoys from the current system
which no one talks about. And if you don't pay attention to it you might lose some of these benefits. And believe me, the next big
shock which I will talk about in my next book that's gonna come, at some point in time where
people lose confidence in the US Dollar as a
global reserve currency. As a global reserve currency means it's a global public good,
but a global public good has got to serve global interests. But you take a global
public good and you use it to serve unilateral interest, then people walk away from it. And if people walk away from it then the consequences are quite bad. So there are lots of things
that the United States can do positively to
improve the conditions of it's workers, it can be done. That's my message. - Great. Yes, you sir, right here. - [Ryan] My name is Ryan
and I'm a second year graduate student in the
Security Studies Program. So when we talk about the gap between the liberal intelligence
and the general population in the United States,
one aspect of that gap that I have found is
outside the intelligence you see a lot of the US
population is deeply skeptical of multilateral institutions,
like the United Nations. And from my perspective it looks like one of the reasons for that is some level of perceived hypocrisies so
when the general assembly passes a resolution condemning
a countries actions, over 80% of there time it's
in reference to Israel. Whereas to my knowledge, there hasn't been a UN General Assembly yet condemning China for having somewhere around
a million Uyghur Muslims illegally imprisoned in Xinjiang province. So that kind of thing to me is a problem in terms of fostering trust
in multilateral institutions, and I'm just wondering if
you think that there is any responsibility that lies
on the United Nations or similar institutions to
try to rebuild that trust with the American public to encourage that multilateralism they're seeking? - Yeah. I will say you're asked a
very, very good question. You're right, by the way, that the record of the United Nations is imperfect. You're absolutely right, but then as someone who's lived as long as I have, I find most institutions
in the world are imperfect. There's no perfect
institution in the world. For me, which are the least
imperfect institutions in the world to work with. The United Nations for
all it's flaws is still the least imperfect
institution to work with, for one very, very simple reason. At the end of the day if you believe in the theory of democracy, that you have to listen
to the people's voices. There's only one place on
planet earth, by the way, you can go to to listen to what
7.3 billion people believe. And I assure you that's the case, because if any United Nations, any ambassador from any country, whether it's from China, from Egypt, from Argentina, when he
speaks at the United Nations, if he doesn't represent what
his people thinks, he's toast. Whenever he speaks in United
Nations he's gotta make sure he reflects the views of his own people. So you may like what he's
saying but what he's saying represents the views of his people. So the question is, do you want to listen to the voices of the 7.3 billion people on planet earth? And if you want to listen,
where do you go to listen to it? And that's the United Nations. And you're right about on
the humans rights issues there are double
standards, but by the way, if you want to hear about
the other side of the story, they will say, is that, how is it that, and I know this because
United States used to be the persistently published
reports on the humans rights standards of every country. The State department does it every year, and until 2001 would condemn every country for implementing torture. And then in 2001 as you
know, Guantanamo was set up. And then when Guantanamo was set up, number one, the question is,
why did the United States continue to publish reports
on the rest of the world when it itself was practicing torture? But more importantly, all
the European countries which were very critical
of the rest of the world when it came to torture,
not one European country officially criticized the United States for implementing torture. Now, I bring this up
because when it comes to human rights issues,
unfortunately, you'll find everybody has got double standards. There's no such thing as
a saint in this group, but despite that I still
believe that the cause of human rights is progressing
dramatically in the world. And if human rights is
at the end of the day about improving the human
condition in as I say, in terms of liberation
from extreme poverty, big deal, right? Liberation from ignorance, big deal. But also as a result of what I call the spread of the principles
of good governance, less and less human beings
are now being subject to arbitrary governance, and that's a great
improvement in human rights. In many societies you could just be sent to jail on the whim of an official. Now, less and less is happening. So if you look at it objectively in terms of the real conditions
of the 7.3 billion people, the human rights conditions
of the world have improved. What will shock you is that
the reason why it has improved is that every country in
the world has to submit a report to the United
Nations on how it has improved it's human rights situation. And as someone who has to
draft the Singapore report, we had to study what we did. So for example, the demands on how the condition of the woman,
condition of the children, you gotta provide data to the UN. Yes, we have improved the condition of children in Singapore. Yes, we have improved the
condition of woman in Singapore. Here's the data. So that's what the UN does,
so don't right off the UN. Believe me, this is a
shock to many people, but it's not true that
the liberal intelligence loves the UN, because the New
York Times rubbishes the UN as much as the Wall Street Journal does. Unfortunately there are very
few UN lovers in the world. One of my good friends was Sir Kofi Annan, I was very sorry that
he passed away recently, but I actually declare myself passionately as a lover of the United Nations and I still believe,
especially in a small, interdependent global village, there's no better alternative
to the United Nations. - Let's go to this side of the room. Fellow in the green shirt. - Hi, my name is Adved Arun. I'm a freshman in the
School of Foreign Service. I wanna thank you for speaking today. What's your take on
China's economic expansion where they decouple investment
in non-western economies from human rights? I know the United States
tries to couple investment in other countries with
guarantees of human rights and prosperity for everybody, but do you think it's a smart
idea to not make human rights a precondition for investment and growth of economies around the world? - I must say, I'm very
glad that these questions on human rights are surfacing,
because it gives me a chance to explain how complex the issues are. But I hope you do know that United States has invested in countries
where there are violations of human rights. Look at all the gulf countries, right? Look at the condition of woman
in those countries, right? As you know, woman can't
drive in some countries. Now, has the United States
invested in those countries? Yes, it has. So, again, my simple answer
to you, there's no such thing, countries are not saints. Countries follow their interests, and during the Cold War, by the way, the United States was very close friends with some of the bloodiest
dictators in the world. Mobutu and Zaire, okay. General Zia of Pakistan. So I want to give you
this piece of history because sometimes many Americans think that you are the only
virtuous country in the world and everybody else is not virtuous, but the rest of the world
looks at you and says, you're not any much worse than us. You're not much better
than us, you are the same. We are all basically the same. And the rest of the world actually wants to improve the situation. Now, then when it comes
to what China does. If the Chinese investment in a country where the human rights record is bad leads to economic development, as you know, very often
economic development leads to improvement in
the human rights condition. So if it creates a virtuous circle, you may not necessarily
see an immediate result, but in the long run you see
incredible transformations. Look for example, let's say
a country like South Korea. It had a terrible dictator, Pak Chong Hee and conditions were terrible under him. The middle class grew, exploded, there was a political transformation and today South Korea
is very, very different. So if you want that
kind of story to happen, you have to promote economic development. And if China is promoting
economic development, that's a good thing for the world. - So the counter argument would be that there's nothing empirically incorrect with what you just described, but at the same time the difference between the United
States and China funding economic development projects is that even if they are with dictatorships there is a longer term
value laden objective behind whatever the US
plan is for different parts of the world. Whereas in the case of China, there isn't. This is the direction of the question. So you just gave the
example of South Korea. Yes, you could argue that
the United States teamed up with bloody dictators since South Korea but eventually spurred
growth, middle class income that then engendered a
political transformation in the country, but that transformation didn't happen absent. The United States at the same
time preaching human rights, democracy, rule of law, transparency that eventually had an
impact on decisions that, not just South Korea, but you know. There are a lot of failed
state building projects that we can point to where the west, you can say wasn't successful, but there are also successful ones and many of them are in Asia, like Taiwan, or Japan, South Korea. So I'm just curious, like how, I know this is a hot topic
of your next book. (laughing) - Well, I mean, you see, the thing is I'm in a very uncomfortable
position because I'm here in the United States so I don't
wanna say things that I... (laughing) But you know, for example, if
you say that the United States is always on the side of
democracy then I would say go and talk to the people of Egypt. They had a democratic, how do you call it? Elections. The democratic elections was overturned and the United States
supported the overturn of democratic elections in Egypt. It's a fact, okay. So it's not true that the United States automatically supports democracy. The United States supports democracy when it is in American
interest to do so, it's a fact. Take Algeria, okay. Algeria has elections, the
elections were overturned. Western Europe embraced
the military government. So these are realities of the world that you have to understand. We live is a very imperfect world, and the question is how do we make that imperfect world better? And my view is that you do
it by slow, pragmatic steps and not by being
ideological and judgemental. And unfortunately this is
not just true of Trump, this predates Trump, this goes back, it's part of an American tradition. You are very judgemental and ideological when you should be more pragmatic and understand that in general, the world by the way, is
getting to be a better and better place. That's the important message. - We have time for a
couple more questions, so why don't we go to this fellow. The glasses, this student
has been very patient. - [Student] I'm Jelo Matodo, student in the School of Foreign Service. So my question about
the Machiavelli piece, I found that interesting in
terms of working with regime type system from liberal democracies, but do you think there's
an implicit contradiction when you answered about multilateralism because it's much harder
to pick and choose countries you work with, where
in a multilateral system, by definition you need to
work towards a consensus where you needs to convince most countries and not just your alliance partners? - Yes, I think you're absolutely right. It's much harder working
in a multilateral setting, but if you want to, lemme
give you specific examples of major global challenges that we face. Number one, global warming. You think a collation of
the willing (chuckles) of just your partners
can solve global warming if you don't bring in China,
you don't bring in India. How are you gonna solve global warming? So you have to work with countries that your are uncomfortable with if you want to solve global problems. Take global over-fishing. As you know, our fish stocks have been depleted dramatically. You mean a collation of the willing, United States and Europe can
solve global over-fishing? No way, you have to get the other 6.5 billion people
outside Europe and America to be involved to solve the
problem of global over-fishing. I can give you global challenge,
after global challenge that is coming our way and you
have to work with the people, all the countries of the world, and the only place you can do
that is the United Nations. Now by the way, you know one
of the most successful things we have done, is created something called the Convention on the Law
of the Sea Treaty, UNCLOS. Why do you think UNCLOS is working? UNCLOS is working because
fortunately virtually every state in the world, except the United States has signed and ratified that treaty, and because every state in the world has signed, ratified the
treaty it is working. And that's why ships can
travel around the world freely, because the laws and
regulations are all fixed. What can be done and what cannot be done. So if you really want
to improve planet earth, it's the only planet we have by the way, there's no planet B we can go to, you have to work with the 7.3
billion people in the world. If you think you're gonna work with a small slice of humanity
and solve global problems, you will not succeed. - Yes, Sir, right here. - [Student] A new, with the
McCarty School of Public Policy. You were talking about the trade war between the United States and China. What's your device of Asean? Thank you. - Asean? - Yes, Sir. Well, I think the Asean countries, I think you all know that
the 10 Asean countries in Southeast Asia do not want a trade war, because all the Asean countries
actually believe in trade. And the Asean countries have
benefited a lot through trade and the country that
has benefited the most from trade in the world
is Singapore, by the way. Singapore's total trade
is three over three times the size of it's GNP, no
other country comes close. So we know the virtues of free trade better than any other
country in the world. So if you ask the Asean countries, they don't want to see this trade war between United States and China. They would prefer to see
the United States and China resolve this issue. Because unfortunately in the real world, fortunately as a result of 20
to 30 years of globalization. So even when you manufacture
this American product, the iPhone, right. The parts come from all over the world, including all over
Southeast Asia and China and so on and so forth. And that's what makes this
phone so great, right? But to dismantle it is very difficult, because there's some parts
that couldn't even be made very well by different produces in different parts of the world. You can't bring all the production back to the United States. You can, in theory you can. You're gonna cost 10 times as much, right. If you want to buy an
iPhone 10 times as much, you can do that, manufacture it here. But if you want to live in the real world and most countries in the
world actually paradoxically want to see more trade, and therefore they want to, Asean countries, if you ask
them what their views are, they say they would actually
plead with both United States and China and say please
stop this trade war. It's bad for us too. - [Victor] Where do you think it's going? This trade war. - (sigh) That's what a
actually came to Washington DC to find out. (laughing) Because so far everybody in
the world is very puzzled by where it's going. I think I was in Beijing in late June or early July. Five of us were invited to Beijing, a very unusual group. Tom Friedman, New York Times. Martin Wolf, Financial Times. Neil Ferguson, Kyle Burnsteen
and myself, five of us, and so we were discussing the trade war. And I think that was when the Chinese were beginning to get puzzled. They assume, and as you know some deals were apparently reached
between Steve Mannucci and his counterparts, and the Chinese are
prepared to make a deal. I'm pretty sure that China will be happy to buy another 50 billion dollars, another hundred billion
dollars of American products. Why not? They'd be happy to buy it. But the question is this, and this is the fundamental question, is it about a trade deficit,
which is one problem A, or is it about China developing
a technological capability which may one day be better
than the United States in some areas? Example, artificial intelligence, and the Chinese thought they
were dealing with Problem A, about the trade deficit. Now they beginning to realize that, no, the focus is on problem B, and some people in the
Trump administration want the Chinese to give up
their technological development. And the Chinese said why should I give up my technological development? It's what every country tries to do. So the question therefore is when you ask what's going to be the
outcome of the trade, is it about problem A? If it's about problem
A, there is a solution. Problem B, no solution. 'Cause China will not give
up it's desire to improve it's technological capability. And every country wants to improve it's technological capability. - But without taking other
people's technology, right? (laughing) - I agree. And you know something? If you look at the history
of the United States, in the 19th century when the
United States prospered a lot by stealing British intellectual property, but after you develop your own capability, then you became a defender
of intellectual property. The good news is that
China is now developing enough intellectual property,
it's happy to join you in defending intellectual property. (laughing) - We have time for one more
question, one more question. Jennifer, yeah. (talking in the distance) - [Jennifer] I know this is
a love letter for the west and I really enjoyed your
talk, but since you're here and we have here all the as many students coming from Asia or maybe
some come from China. So what would be your advise for Asia and China specifically at this moment? - Well, I think my big advise
to my fellow Asian friends, and I've also published a lot on that, is that Asia's success
is as I say in this book, a result of gifts from the
west, and we must thank the west for these gifts, but at the same time we've also benefited a
lot from a global order created by the west. The liberal, what they call,
rules made international order. And the west was happy to be the custodian of this liberal rules
based international order, as long as western societies
perceived themselves to be also the biggest beneficiaries of this international rules based order. But today the biggest beneficiaries of this western created
liberal international rules based order are the Asian societies. So the Asian societies who have
been in way way or another, I'm exaggerating a bit,
have been free-riders on this liberal international
rules based order, have got to stop being free-riders and become core custodians. To become core custodian means
that you got to work harder to strengthen this order. So for example, one reason why
the World Trade Organization is not doing well, is that
in the past the drivers of the World Trade Organization vehicle were the United States and Western Europe. Now as you know, the United States is walking away from free trade, Western Europe is
nervous about free trade, who's going to drive the
World Trade Organization? And unfortunately no
Asian government as of now is ready and willing to take on the job of custodianship or these organizations and if you are young Asians, trust me, the burden is gonna
fall on the young Asians to take on some of the responsibilities that the west used to undertake as a gift to the rest of
the world in the past. - Kishore, thank you so
much for taking the time to be with us. The title of the book
is Has the West Lost it? There's a reception
outside and a book signing for all of you students if you don't have to rush off to class. So thank you again. (audience clapping)
