Lubomír Zaorálek, Timothy Snyder: A New World (Dis-)Order - Current Political and Social Challenges

[Music] dear mr ladies and gentlemen it is a great pleasure and honor to welcome you here at the czech embassy today's event is another result of the successful cooperation between the czech ministry of foreign affairs and the ewm the new world is over currently social and political challenges is the topic of our today's discussion i am very happy to welcome here the czech ministry of culture mr lubomir zawar alec as one of the discutants mr zauralik is currently visiting vienna and he is a long-standing supporters of the institute activities it was while he was the minister of foreign affairs then the cooperation between the czech republic and the evm was signed it is a special pleasure for me to welcome mr timothy snyder who will join mr zaur alec in this discussion mr timothy snyder is not only a world known author and historian but also one of the mr zour alec favorite thinkers and the two gentlemen will be joined by today's discussion by the excellent czech scientist dagmar riknovska and we are very grateful to the evm for the outstanding support and effort in vienna and elsewhere especially i would like to give recognition to the efforts of doctor lutker hagerdorn who is here he's sitting behind who has been okay look here you are sitting behind all the people okay and who has been instrumental in giving concrete shape to our cooperation it has become a part of our good cooperation and a great tradition that we meet every autumn to discuss actually and currently social and political issues and i hope that today discussion will not only contribute to understanding today challenges and maybe or to see the future possible development ladies and gentlemen i wish you a pleasant and inspiring evening thank you [Applause] thank you very much sir i won't uh stand between you and our distinguished guests i just want to say a very very warm word of thanks extend a warm welcome to all of you ladies and gentlemen but to thank especially mr soralek for his continued support for not only the institute but for initiating this particular program of cooperation with fellowships these are the patochka fellowships which bring czech intellectuals to the institute also bring some of our distinguished guests from abroad to prague to very many public events what i would like to do is to extend a very warm thanks to my other colleagues so i need to thank ludger hagedorn of course but i need to go back maybe one step and thank klaus nellen who is sitting next to him who is hiding also he likes to hide but i want to mention him very particularly because the entire association with uh czech slovakia and then of course later the czech republic is through the patochka archives which the institute housed and this is a very particular personal achievement of my colleague klaus nellen so thank you on our behalf to my two um colleagues here and of course it's a great pleasure to have tim schneider with us and have him here this evening and my great warm very heartful thanks to you ambassador geneva kova for having supported us through so many different events coming to you with all kinds of small and large problems to be solved and it's been a great pleasure to have you as an intellectual partner in this endeavor so very many thanks to you [Applause] so good afternoon everyone it is also my great pleasure to welcome here our two distinguished guests which have been so warmly introduced thank you also for the for the welcome to the madame ambassador and the president of the institute of human sciences um as has been already announced today uh we are talking about a new world this order current political and social challenges and i think given what has happened in the past few months there are many topics to to definitely discuss and i'm very interested to hear what our speakers think about how the perception of political and social challenges has actually changed over the course of these past months and what are the implications thereof for the upcoming years when we are probably to face new challenges or the ones that we have maybe somehow underestimated uh so far the way our uh we would like to organize this evening is that we will held a discussion between these two distinguished speakers uh for approximately 15 minutes or one hour and then we would open the floor uh for the audience to ask questions to our speakers so uh please if you have questions start thinking about them and then there will be room for them uh and you'll be able to talk about uh to to raise your questions on a microphone which will then circulate in the in the room so don't worry there'll be room for audience as well let me start with the with the most obvious [Laughter] and that is the that is the corona crisis which i believe is not only a health issue but the more complex societal and political issue we have seen that corona crisis has halted many discussions and processes in the past months and fueled others such as on social inequalities as experienced by many of us directly under the lactone and in in health care and many people have in these past months gone through a period of very increased anxiety uncertainty and maybe also fear what is going to happen now i'm wondering how do you think that this personal experience with insecurity and insecurity coming from a very globalized processes affected what citizens what people actually want from the state now professor professor snyder talks about this issue in his new book our malady where he addresses the house citizen going through going through intense health crisis experiences the whole health care system and reflects as a very reflexive citizen indeed and patient uh reflects on its shortcomings and problems and on the other hand mr zauralik has certainly experienced this from the perspective of a policy maker who is who is faced with the new demands from from the public so i'm wondering if you may talk briefly about what do you think that citizens want from the state after the corona crisis experience so i will i will talk around the question until i get close to it it it so coming coming from america a very elemental issue of controversy is the the truth itself so one thing that citizens or at least some citizens want from their government is to be told the truth and the truth doesn't appear on its own in the wild the truth is something that human beings have to purposely work for and in the case of the coronavirus you have to purposely work for some kind of a system in which human beings can be tested in austria i realized that's sepsis stanley i'm sure you all got tested this morning after you brushed your teeth but in the united states our leading politician questioned the inherent value of knowledge or to put it more strongly he conflates knowledge about the disease with the disease itself so mr trump's case is that if you don't test then there is no disease which is a perfectly coherent pre-enlightened view of the world and so one issue that's contested is do citizens have a right to basic knowledge about themselves the knowledge which will enable them to live or die it's not putting it too dramatically to say that conservatively a hundred thousand americans wouldn't would be alive right now if that issue about truth and factuality had been settled earlier in in my country a second a second question is the ability to have human contact which one sees in my country at least on both the right and the left in different ways people on the right are protesting against wearing masks they're protesting against quarantines they're protesting against lockdowns which although i disagree with it is of course humanly understandable and when they say that there's there's an issue of freedom here they're of course correct and then on the left um there is and this is something i personally am quite sympathetic with there is the observation that isolation and digitalization go together and that in fact the coronavirus epidemic is actually not a dystopia from the point of view of silicon valley but actually a utopia from the point of silicon valley because now we finally have all these humans sorted out from one another and then an almost perfect digital environment where we can classify them and data farm them as thoroughly as we possibly could so another thing which humans on both the right and the left might want from their government is the ability to gather sensibly and this feeds nicely into uh mr zarath's new responsibility which is culture the the third thing that and this relates the third thing that i've noticed that people especially in the us want not so much from their government but as a right vis-a-vis their government is the right to protest so the in we had an election in the state of wisconsin in the spring um which really should not have happened because the the disease conditions were so awful but the local authorities let it happen on the logic that they were trying to actually suppress the vote so you i mean for those of you who are novices in american politics there are two parties in my country there's the voter suppression party and there's the other party so the the uncomfortable i would like to record uncomfortable laughter in in the embassy so the the um the voters the voter suppression party wanted that election to go forward on the logic that fewer people would vote and in fact people massively voted basically as a matter of protest literally risking their lives in order to cast a vote with black lives matter one has to be very very careful about this because of course black lives matter is fundamentally about the basic civil right of americans to be treated like other americans but there is a component which i could feel myself of people wanting to show their own fearlessness wanting to be wanting to be out with other people legitimate undertaking and so when you see our president's reaction to these protests in which he characterizes people as anarchists and thugs and so on um you can see that as a claim against the government we have the right to protest even in these conditions and then and then the final thing referring you were kind enough to refer to my book the welfare state doesn't come about by its own the welfare state which europeans take for granted is is a result of among other things catastrophe um it's the the national health service in britain was largely founded or established by refugee doctors from central europe very often some very some institution that one takes for granted arises out of an experience of catastrophe i don't know if this is what will happen certainly my personal experience of american commercial medicine which came very close to killing me made it clear to me that i would rather be somewhere else than my own country in a hospital which is a terrible thought to have because when you're very sick in fact this was my thought when i was very sick i wanted to be home i wanted to be in a hospital close to home and it was in a hospital close to home that i almost died and that's like that's that's a wrenching realization that actually i would have been better off several thousand miles away in some place which had a different medical system where i wasn't speaking my own language than in my own country so i would like to think that the total failure of our medical system in confrontation with this with this pandemic will lead us to think not just about mild reforms such as such as the one under president obama but a total reform of our health system which is sadly a bit of a disaster i've given you lots of time thank you thank you for convening this gathering and thank you for this opportunity to speak about this topic very interesting topic thank you institute and also this opportunity to speak about it with the mr strider thank you for this book for this new book maybe our melody when i gave from mr snyder now allow me maybe to speak about a little bit different experience from czech republic when i remember this the beginning of this crisis in czech republic i remembered what came to my mind was memories on events in 80s a chernobyl tragedy in terrible tragedy in 80s and my feeling is that i was convinced that also this situation and this pandemic is also something like black like test very important test for government maybe you know that in 80s and it's my deep conviction this chernobyl event was important it was something like that we lost the last illusions about communist and socialist government in this time and i i it's probably it was not the fundament but probably very important part of this atmosphere in this year and that's why also it seems to me that also in march this year i had also very strong feeling that for this government this challenge is fundamental and there is something that could be crucial for the whole position and the fate of this government and maybe you know that in this time czech government started to have session maybe fourth time per week regularly sometimes the whole day i remember that we spent the whole night with the experts with epidemiologists and we all started to study epidemiology and all these fields it was and i i remember that i also spent many hours with some of the famous czech experts and started in our striving was to understand uh something which was absolutely new and and it was a feeling that to make mistake could be fatal and probably it's true that and i'm i'm glad that in this time the result of this discussion was relatively relatively strong and and and relatively uh fast and strict strict position of czech government to this epidemic it was probably right right decision comp if we compare uh development in in britain in u.s and sweden and other countries and from the beginning i was convinced that the fundamental thing is to keep confidence between government and people and that they lose this confidence could be fatal in a similar situation and maybe to to make bala violence now in czech republic it's it's it's very easy if you look at polls it seems and nothing change on the end of this crisis when you compare situation on the beginning of march and now nothing change maybe all i can say now that i i'm convinced that government was not excellent and also in a similar situation always you you make mistakes but uh in in crucial things probably government was able to make right decisions and uh we were probably able to to manage this period of health crisis probably maybe i can say that it seems to me that it was also the test of czech health system and the result is relatively relatively positive in comparison with other systems it's interesting also with systems in relatively countries which are very developed countries but for us it was big big information that countries very developed countries high developed countries were not so successful i'm speaking about for example italy and i don't know spain and i don't know france and the result were worse than in czech republic in central europe probably there are also different factors but in general picture it is very interesting and important for us that's but the problem is that story is not finished because everybody knows that the story and health crisis is only one part of this problem and now more and more we are devoting time and energy to economic problems health crisis is not finished but we are starting to solve the economic problems and nobody knows how will situations develop in future months maybe i am positive my conviction is that the main problem now is to manage three four months and i hope maybe will be vaccine in in january and february and then situation in spring the next year could be different and much more relaxed much more calm but many questions are open because also in czech republic now we have big debt it's probable that also the next year this is that will be also very high and the government are is doing many very important decision about taxation and this situation is big opportunity because i'm convinced that our system has many has many failures and many problems and i see especially for me and my party there is a big opportunity to speak and maybe to to push progressive taxation to change system of taxation in our country and probably these are the problems which could be crucial for much more important balance after after some time the next year everything is open and i see this crisis as opportunity especially for a segment which i am which i care about now about culture because i spoke about it with mr snyder it seems to me that in my country in czech republic we are facing great underestimation of especially not only culture but social social sciences generally and i'm convinced that it is a must to make something with this problem to to to open way to the future it is a must in our countries to to do something to change our mentality because what i see in countries like germany britain u.s there is much more attention also money devoted to culture creative industry and in czech republic we have big potential in this field but at the same time the big underestimation of social sciences and culture is something on the margin and something what is also on the rest and it seems to me that speaking about live livelihood for the future and about really positive development of our country there are many things which we have to change that's why i it seems to me that crisis is a moment when changing something like that changes are accelerating crisis is accelerating changes i have opportunity to use this atmosphere to use this moment and you can also lost and that's why it's interesting time but crucial time and the problem is how we will be able to utilize this situation and it's too soon for summary also in czech republic maybe we were able to manage this first attack relatively in decent way because of this positive polls but much more important will be the situation after one two years and i am afraid that it is open it is what is what is and it's maybe my very moderate picture of current situation so from my from my point of view so thank you i think uh the responses really will reflect a different type of society that the the the speakers come from and the different understanding of solidarity versus individualism uh as experienced then during the crisis now let me bring the discussion you said that crisis is an opportunity but it's still an ongoing crisis so there is still some time for assessing what has actually happened and what we can learn from that let me try to move the debate to the international scene and try to map some preliminary lessons learned from what has happened with the international collaboration so i would like to ask how do you assess the international collaboration and solidarity in dealing with the covet pandemic and what lessons do you think that we can learn from this for dealing with potential future crises whether in the european context or international context international organizations yeah thank you oh i can start because i'm very glad that mr snyder is here today because i'm convinced that u.s elections are fundamental even not only for united states of america but it is something which is very important also for us and i am very glad that i can ask questions today for mr snyder so it's uh it's fascinating opportunity because really uh essay for me it is important what is happening in czech republic but now in current state in current world it's clear that also this pandemic crisis is showing that it is our domestic well-being is very closely connected with the rest of the world and now i can say i am little bit concerned about current development in united states i would like to explain why because if i said that crisis is accelerating changes that's why it's it seems to me relatively clear what type of changes is axel are accelerating veining american leadership faltering global cooperation great power discord i can give example u.s attack on world health organization i am convinced and in similar situation we need this international organization very much and in my opinion it was the must to strengthen the position of world health organization we are facing different tendency to attack this organization and to be a to be to be to be more brutal i would like to commemorate donald trump sentence that european union is our foe or for enemy uh it was certain i don't i don't know if it was japan and so and that's why my conviction is that in the world that we are facing many global challenges not only pandemic but also climate change and nuclear and so one of the biggest problems which i see is this un ability to create alliances to accept the role of international organization and we see absolutely different tendency to attack this organization in the midst of this crisis that it seems to me that the attacks for example on china china are growing maybe a few days ago mr pompeo visited czech republic and um to help us to block to block cooperation with with china i know i i i know i have no doubt that china is big problem and so and the problem is here and we need alliance maybe to face similar challenges like china or russia but the problem is that i am not afraid that we are creating alliances it seems to me that u.s with the donald trump are playing their own game that is not alliance it's only only only sole game of of donald trump it is not enough in similar situation you know what i think what i mean that in pandemic crisis it is really extremely important to be able to cooperate but we are facing absolutely different tendencies that's why i said that i'm concerned about situation especially during this during this crisis and and that is not absolutely new but also if if i look to the past it was u.s policy in syria and afghanistan and other parts repeatedly it was seen that the us has little interest either in alliances either in gay engagement in this part of the world and in u.s we saw more and more concentration on domestic issues and conviction that the pillar of u.s policy has to be domestic solving domestic problem and the same was also during this pandemic crisis also in the mid if this crisis was clear that for current federal government in u.s the main problem is to solve situation in united states and this and it was no tendency of u.s to rally or to to to be to lead community to solve this global problem and that is something which is that during this crisis was seen that this country which is so important for current world order was not willing to play this part as somebody who is who is helping to create common approach and common common strategy and what i'm afraid is that i am not sure if current election in november are able to solve this problem yes i i'm not sure that everybody knows that they're now we can we can make stakes who will be the winner and uh and uh hardly imagined that donald trump could continue but there are many people which are convinced that trump is able to win but i am it could be probably a very serious thing if similar politics will continue but i'm also not sure if different alternative if joe biden is able to change this general move and general tendency in which u.s are shifting in in last time and it's i i remember this sentence of angela merkel i don't know when it was when she said that now we are now we are alone here in europe there is no chance to to to to to count with the help of the united states for the future and that is something which seems to me fundamental we are living in a world when it is a must it seems that is a must to face global problems when we need to speak one another and create global alliances but at the same time seems that current us are not able to help us and situation is much more dangerous and that's why i am glad that i can ask mr snyder it seems to me that what i see in last days in united states there are clashes in the streets between left particles and left wing gravitas on one side and the right wing radicals on the other side and maybe it's my only speculation the people this in the mid or on or or exeter sickness middle class middle class is staying at home and it is something which reminds me situation in 30s in germany this clashes between left radicals and right radicals and middle class is silent i don't know no don't want to have like a more brutal comparison but only brutal but apologize for this but really it came to my mind that is something similar because people are dying in in u.s streets there are concrete examples people which are dying in these clashes and that's why i i am i uh i'm able to say is that is this not something which is so close and close to situation which we know from germany in 30s people are dying in similarly similar clashes and middle class is staying at home and uh it seemed fantastic yes still maybe for somebody it is some fantastic but but i am not sure it is so big fantasy this nearly civil war in in united states country which was recently the pillar of uh global order and i i remember very well president obama i had opportunity to to thank barack obama for his policy for his stress on multilateral policy in current world i very i very appreciate this it was for country like czech republic it was fundamental thing and in a very short time i'm feeling absolutely different tendency in in us uh the tendency which seems to me could lead really to something like civil war i don't know if elections are able to solve this situation if elections are able to give result which will be respected and we will be really able to calm down situation and create solution i can imagine that also after election all this fight and all these clashes could continue and that's my probably not easy question what can we expect for current u.s what can we expect for this from this election i apologize for this so rough question mr schneider but you have to understand that i have this opportunity to ask you it's an extraordinary opportunity and you you i am i appreciate that you visited central europe and then you have to face similar questions [Laughter] so let me i will i answer the question but i want to take a few steps back um and and and rest for a moment on on dagmar's original questions about multilateralism and international order and try to say a few things about mr trump which then might help to answer ministers i would like your question so i think one level of the problem has to do with democracy so we can speak about multilateralism in general but the the european union is mostly um not entirely anymore but mostly a union of democracies and the transatlantic relationship was always understood as one that was between democracies i think it's one of the things which has changed is that the president of the united states is not an advocate of democracy he doesn't believe in democracy so he doesn't like leaders like president macron or chancellor merkel who are who who won elections he doesn't like people who want elections he's he's against that he likes dictators and this is not me saying it this is him saying it over and over and over again he has a list of his favorite dictators and he'll say this this one is my currently my favorite dictator and that is a serious problem for one form of multilateralism because leaders who are democrat i believe leaders who have democratic legitimation respect each other in a certain way and leaders who are dictators respect each other in a different way and mr trump is somewhere in between because he did sort of win an american election but he respects the dictators he wants to be like the dictators he admires the dictators so i think that's that's one level of the problem i want to disagree slightly with minister zawad's characterization of america as paying less attention to the world and more attention to its own domestic problems because in the last three years we've paid no attention to our domestic problems at all this we've passed basically no legislation i'm not counting legislation which cuts taxes for the wealthy because that's not legislation that's gravity okay that's that's inertia so if you don't count legislation which makes wealthy people wealthier we basically have done nothing for three and a half years so it's i i'm going to resist this this reflex that we're withdrawing from the world to take care of ourselves because taking care of ourselves is precisely what we're not doing and the pandemic is actually evidence of that so in other words it's it's it's possible to make a complete mess of foreign policy and domestic policy at the same time um and there is a logic to it i think and and here's here's the logic and this is my second point so the first point was about democracy the second point is about universalism so i completely agree with your remarks about the virus and about globalism or universalism um you know as as camus put it very nicely in la past a virus is a test for humanity and so do you care about humanity or do you not care about humanity if you care about humanity then one would cooperate with other institutions with other with other countries but what if you don't and here's the second problem so in the united states the way that we have treated the virus has been very unequal um it's uh i mean i will not be surprised if later historians who have better access to documents than i do look on this as something which verges on ethnic cleansing because when a government which knows that certain parts of its population are in are in greater threat of death than other parts and chooses not to act for that reason it's making the decision about demography and ethnicity and about the future composition of its population and that we happen to know is what the american presidential administration did they knew full well that the disease was affecting the city of new york uh the state of new york and other places where black and brown people live and where democratic voting people live and the decision was taken therefore not to do anything on the logic that those people will then die and we will then blame the local authorities for it and that will be a good electoral strategy for us so what i'm trying to say is that if you don't believe in humanity at home it's very unlikely that you're going to believe in humanity abroad and that's that's that's the second way that the trump administration the second fundamental way i think the trump administration um would be opposing this the the kind of multilateralism which you and i think would would favor now on yes on on on germany and um in the middle classes and so on i remember in 2016 or maybe it was early 2017 i was doing an interview with a german journalist and i i said i want you to write that i said that germany is now the most important democracy in the world and the german journalist said i refuse to have you say that like that's that's that's an unthinkable thought you know we in germany cannot think that i cannot print an american saying that germany is a more important democracy than america and i said no i insist that you print this because it's true and it's going to be very important for the next few years and you germans have to get used to it and he said no no that's not going to go into the interview right which says something i think and it didn't which says something i mean which says something very important about this relationship i mean you you said these very kind words about america historically being a pillar of stability in a democracy and so on which is you know that's that's that's sort of true it's not completely true i think americans praise their democracy too much and germans are too hard on their democracy for understandable historical reasons and one has to you know sometimes one has to flip things around right everybody has been able to vote in germany for several decades now in the united states the ability of human beings or citizens to vote has been going down for the last decade and we never quite reached the point where everyone could could vote so um i i guess what i'm trying to say is i don't mind i don't mind at all the historical comparisons and i'm going to tell you what i think about them um for me i mean since especially since we're in austria i think the much more familiar comparison would be um the would be the uh the 1934 in austria oh i love how the austrians are now like wait what happened in 1934 i caught i caught a bunch of you doing that come on you know jaime you don't you don't remember this okay so the in in 1934 the the the austrian both the left and the right had an organized paramilitary the the right was a little bit more organized and acted first and the right ends up winning and and so the reason why austria comes to mind to me always is that in austria the socialists like the democrats in the us now clearly have more voters right so the democrats in the u.s are a they're a slightly you know they're they're a slightly disorganized slightly confused majority party and in that way they're a bit like the interwar austrian socialists or the espada in germany the democrats have a clear majority but they have a problem holding power right which is like the interwar socialists in austria the interwar socialists had should in principle should have controlled the state but they didn't control the state and one of the reasons they didn't control the state was that they were less willing to use violence so that brings me up to the present moment i the u.s is different because the the paramilitaries are not that well organized so it's true that the average american owns don't quote me on this but like if you divide it up the average american owns more than one gun um but and that was and that wasn't true in inter-war europe but we don't have organized paramilitaries associated with political parties so mr trump can't and this is one of the things i worried about at the beginning that he doesn't have his own you know god forgive me for saying this but he doesn't have his own srss he doesn't even have his own you know he doesn't have his trump eugene they're they're not they're not organized in this and imagine like what a trump eughn would look like right they'd all be they'd all be unfit right they couldn't march in a straight line they'd constantly be asking their parents for help okay so they keep saying it was all about me you know okay they wouldn't be able to start a fire and they would blame the democrats um so but that that's the difference so that there is violence but there isn't you don't have people who can give orders and get a thousand people out right um that's and another difference is the armed forces so in austria in 1934 you know the armed forces and the heim there basically ended up being on the same side and vienna gets shelled and the socialists and the majority lose in the united states the armed forces made it clear in june when the president tried to use them against protesters that they were not going to go along so that's that's a difference i don't mean to deny or minimize the violence that there is but those are those are the differences that i see and in this connection it's also very important for me to stress that um i guess two things one is that uh we we're losing about a thousand people a day to coronavirus so i mean a thousand right this whole country has lost what 741 we lose a thousand people every day to coronavirus and that is for me the violence that should be front and center every single day because that shouldn't be happening and the second thing that i want to stress is that it's it's a little bit it's a little bit too easy to immediately start talking about the violence we had this summer the largest peaceful set of demonstrations in the united states perhaps ever but certainly since the 1960s which went largely unnoticed in in europe um what's what draws a lot of attention i understand is when you know a black person breaks a window that's great everybody wants to have a picture of that or when someone in a crowd who's maybe a pro provocateur throws something that's on fire i get it that makes a great photograph but the thing that actually happened was that we had thousands of demonstrations all over the country including in places where only white people live and what also happened is that public opinion has clearly shifted on this question so while there's still plenty of racists in the united states it's clear now that that it's not a majority which might not have been true let's say 20 or 30 years ago there now there is so i think there is a risk of the kind you're describing but the reason there's a risk of the kind you're describing is because the most important person in the country wants that scenario mr trump am i still on mike okay mr trump um because at a certain point you know they cut me off when i talk like this mr mr mr trump is perfectly aware that he is that he is way down in the polls um if it weren't for the fact that the democrats and the and american liberals are so scared you you know they would be talking more about this he's way down in the polls he basically has no way to win okay in a conventional sense and if you don't believe me ask him because he's not running a campaign he's not trying to get a majority he's trying to rally the people who already support him into doing the kinds of unorthodox things that you're talking about so i do worry about this scenario i think there will be more violence between now and november i think there will be violence in november i do however think that a lot of americans are already thinking about this a lot of people have already made plans and i do think the election will go forward for like for european journalists one thing which is very important to note is that we we will not have a result on november 3rd so you don't have to stay up late just like just go to bed don't write who won okay i mean biden's going to win but don't write that just go to bed because we're not going to be able to project to one on november 3rd and it doesn't matter okay that was always a cultural convenience to know who won the same day we don't have to count the votes until early december so everyone just chill everyone just chill let us have our riots let us count the votes and wait till early december no because i say this because this is mr trump's play he's trying to convince everyone that if it's not counted on november 3rd that's a national emergency and he's going to declare a national emergency okay so we all have to know that that's not that's a fake national emergency that we have five weeks to count the ballots and that's fine um so yeah i worry i worry about this but i wouldn't worry about it if there weren't an instigator in in the white house wow i feel like there was a fear of even darker picture of the civil war in the u.s but i think the picture we got was dark enough so i'm not sure if that's that's a good or bad news um as a as a political scientist one lesson that runs through the history is that if there's an internal crisis the the easy um fix so to speak for leaders to fix this this crisis domestically is to blame someone externally and to find external enemy and find some strawman so to speak to to put the attention to and i'm wondering is this a scenario that we can expect and we should be afraid of especially if you look at the current uh trump's rhetoric on the virus as a chinese virus so there's already a lot of very negative publicity going in in the direction of of china as a potential threat or maybe not potential to the united states um how do you see this dynamic of the international hostility between the u.s china maybe russia now with the events in belarus yeah it's also for me maybe it isn't how to raise this like question for on mr snyder because also this is one very interesting and important topic for me because the problem of china if i am right it seems that in the united states between republicans and democrats that is one topic that is consensus and this consensus is likely connected with a relation to china if if am i right it seems that on both sides there is conviction that the main challenge for current united states represents china and i remember my meeting with dalai lama many many years ago it was interesting because i remember he told me in this time it was a little bit different time than now i know but he told me what is most important you have to speak with them also when we take this politburo he told me there are differences between individuals in this politburo he told me this guy is very tough it has no sense but this is much better much moderate it has sense to speak with them i was convinced that it is wise yes not to say chinese are something a morph abstract but there are also concrete people and the role of democrats in current wealth is to look for and look for another democrats in different parts of the world in different countries and try to create alliances with these democrats in these different countries in different parties that is maybe only chance to create these alliances and also in countries like china and so i know that many things change from this time and china started in different direction and be more and more assertive and sometimes nearly arrogant but also i i am not sure if this tendency and this consensus in united states politics is really good directive for the future because i have to say i i read this book from mr alison about to get it as trap yes and that's why you can imagine that i am asking if we are not there is a danger to continue in this direction and also when i take this pandemic and the result of this episode is also further escalation of this relation between u.s and china you know very well that for europe it represents very difficult situation because mr pompeo is visiting countries here in europe and asking us to be part of this story and to help u.s to go against china and for us it is difficult decision making because here in europe there was tendency to lead some dialogue and cooperate germany is good example germany has many very deep economic contacts with china it was this card maybe that corporation has sense and there is chance how to how to create much more world in which cop will be much more possible to live together and mainly not only to live but solve all this fundamental global problem which we are facing now and we can escalate this relation but the question is we are facing something like tendency to decouple to decouple world technologically decouple and uh and economically decouple maybe the different monetary systems different financial systems and my question is is this only possible option this decoupling or if for example in u.s joe biden will be president there is chance to think about different scenario and maybe to stop maybe to make attempt to find partners we always i had feeling that when we are escalating thing that we are at the same at the same time strengthening the position the position of hawks in this country yes the same in iran for example i can tell you during my as i was minister foreign efforts i visited tehran in this time because everybody know what was the position of european union in this pla in this game we were convinced that we have to make stake on hope and give chance iranians to cooperate with us you know that one of the fundamental deep deeds of mr trump was that he totally broken this deal with iran and started with absolutely different policy and this policy is happening right in these days in these days u.s are trying to undermine and to destroy this deal and to and to continue this attack on iran maybe you understand that i was deeply convinced that this eu politics to iran had chance because i had opportunity to visit i know that ira tehran was technocrat was democratic regime but i had opportunity to speak with the people in government people which were very close to people which i remember from 60s in czech republic this progressive people with a tendency to modernize the country i remember minister finance vice chairman of the government in iran he told me we have last chance to do something to modernize this kind in opposite we are lost i mean i had opportunity to meet with these guys these guys were my they were my partners i was convinced that it is our role i feel obliged to help these people to to give chance to this path of modernization of the country but trump policy destroyed all all this and burned this this tendency to to to to cre create this alliance with democrats in iran i know that every country is different a china is special problem very complicated but my question is is if this consensus on china policy in the u.s is not this way to to kidded us to created as trap in the world and i i i i i it would be it's for me it's very interesting to know your approach to this problem and how do you see this issue well of course when everyone when anyone talks about thucydides i get all dreamy and i think ah the first historian the way he used primary sources pushed legend out of the picture completely minimized his own rule what a beautiful book that's what i was thinking the entire time um i though so the the idea and thucydides the the the graham allison book has the idea that the two greatest powers must inevitably fight that's the thucydides thesis whereas of course the the the actual book about the peloponnesian wars contains a thousand bits of wisdom of which that is perhaps not not one um on this on the issue of consensus i'm going to try to i'm going to try to turn the question around and and be a bit critical now of europe because it seems to me that whether i'm talking to you know czech social democrats or or german businessmen the approach is always something like uh when are the americans going to become reasonable about china and i actually don't think one can be reasonable about china and that is for for for for reasons of principle um i i think let me let's let me try to explain this with respect to belarus there was a the question there was a question about belarus what's the relationship um well the americans haven't had much to say about belarus because you know currently we like dictators but the um but the the and we especially like you know slightly aging dictators who have like children who they like to put in prominent display we like that um the ambassador was not laughing at all when i said that um but the europeans have also done far too little about belarus and i i think you have a problem which is that you're not sure you know fundamentally you're not sure whether values are part of the european enterprise or not and i think they have to be because i think if you if you don't have a european foreign policy which is about democracy you will eventually stop being democracies yourself because on this issue democracy it's a it's no less than no less than epidemiology it's it's global so you have to you're either for it or you're against it and or maybe you don't care but you you what you can't do is say democracy is fine for us but maybe it's not okay for other people which i think is a very strong european temptation and i think it's a mistake so with i i what's what's interesting about belarus what what makes bill such a pure interesting case is that it's only about democracy right you can't look at it and say well you know i don't like this personality or that personality it's not about personalities you can't even look at it and say i don't like this policy or that policy because the opposition has no policies the only thing the opposition is saying is we want to have clean elections and so the question then for you know vienna and warsaw and you know in vilnius and kiev and and berlin and so on is do you care about clean elections and there have been different kinds of answers from the different european capitals but i'm struck that there hasn't been such a clear answer in general from europe now that leads me to china because i'll say what i think about trump and china in a minute but i don't think that the place to start with china is we do a lot of business with it and that's all we're going to say because if that's all you're going to say then you have nothing to say about the values then you're saying that china is a normal country and i don't think china's a normal country i don't i don't want to live like if we do this in a kantian way and say would you like to live in china right would you would you switch places would you like to live in china would you like to have that level of digital surveillance of course you don't right europeans don't want to have that kind of digital surveillance would you like to live in a country which has concentration camps for ethnic minorities no i don't i mean i'm not taking a poll but i assume that most europeans do not think that that's normal so i agree with americans who think we can't just treat china as though it's a big market and you know frankly i think just treating china as though it's a big market has gotten is part of the reason why the united states is where it is um that's part of the trap that we fell into and i think you're standing before the same trap i mean there are a lot of things which have already happened to us which could happen to you and china is one and digitalization of life is another one and so when we get to china so i guess here i'm going to disagree i don't think the question is like when are the americans going to be reasonable and can't we just get a reasonable american i think i think the question is something more like are there american and european values which we might be able to agree about with some other administration and then talk about china together because see that like the framework of the question is something like we europeans already get that we have to deal with the reasonable chinese and the americans just don't get it i i don't i don't agree with that i think i think the issue is something like hopefully something like can can we reach a point where americans and europeans sometimes talk to themselves talk to each other before they talk to china because as i see it i mean if the if the world were entirely like china it would be a worse world and um and and as i also see it neither the united states nor the european union can actually deal with china on its own and what the trump what what the trump foreign policy i think has actually led to is a situation where there have been too many meetings between europeans and chinese in the last three years without the americans being present which has led us to the situation where the europeans you know now the default position is oh well it's a big market and one of the americans going to be reasonable so our policy i think has been totally counterproductive because we've taken ourselves out of these conversations and i agree you have to you have to talk to people um and and what we've what we have led to is is this image you know that that we are being totally unreasonable and we are and that's been a great and that's been a great opportunity for the chinese so is there a consensus in the u.s that china is a problem yes there is a consensus in the us that china is a problem and i think there are people who hold that view who are entirely reasonable in fact i think there are people in the trump administration who whose whose ideas about china are perfectly sensible um however i'm not saying that our policy towards china has been perfectly sensible what we have done with china has been very inconsistent we fought a trade war on the one hand and then we've asked the chinese to intervene in our elections on the other hand mr trump has asked base every time he gets a meeting with somebody he says like hey can you help me with the elections right he asks xi to intervene in american elections on what this is yes this is not a secret um it's in john bolton's book um it's it's that's how mr trump sees the world so i think the problem with the current administration is that uh a a policy of of i think of skepticism towards china which i'm going to repeat i think some members of this administration hold for good reasons actually a policy of skepticism towards china has become a basically ethnocentric excuse for our own disasters so when we call the when we call the virus the chinese virus or the wuhan virus we are of course indulging in ethnic blaming and we're indulging in in nationalism and the problem so the problem is that we the trump administration doesn't really have a china policy at this point it's very inconsistent you know he one day he play he praises if you look back at his tweets he was actually very friendly towards torji and the chinese communist party for the whole beginning of 2020 there are lots of tweets about how great the chinese are doing with the virus um they're you know on the on the day the first person died in hong kong there was um there was a congratulation to chairman g for the anniversary of the chinese revolution so there's lots of friendly stuff towards china it's very inconsistent i think the difference is that yes you're going to have to deal you know knock on wood with the biden administration which is not going to say right out of the gate hey the only problem is we need to talk about business with china that's not what the biden administration is going to say if there's a you know assuming there's american democracy in february 21 um and and so i'm going to turn the question around and say this why is it that europeans always ask what are the americans going to do why don't why shouldn't there be a prepared a european dossier on important for foreign policy questions including china that's ready on january 21st rather than waiting to see what the biden people are going to say because the biden people are of course preoccupied with domestic affairs right now they have to worry about the scenario that you're talking about namely they have the biden people have to both win an election and they have to and they have to win the civil unrest afterwards right they have to run two campaigns at the same time they have to run the election campaign and the mobilization campaign at the same time so i don't think they're actually thinking about china right now and i i i don't blame them so how about you know we flip things around and and think about this as a european responsibility to come to the biden administration in february and say here here are the things we think are very important because i think i think waiting for the americans you know is is in this case in this case a bad bet um so i've i've talked enough about this so let's let's go to the next question ah thank you for opening so many interesting uh interesting questions and themes uh i would love to follow on so many of them but i feel that there must be a lot of pressing questions in the room from the audience so i would like to open the floor and ask who would like to ask our speakers thank you thank you very much for both these distinguished speakers my name is anna dornov i'm at the institute of advanced studies and i'm a political sociologist so my question will be more on the knowledge uh and around and uh mr snyder at the beginning of your talk you talked about that institution arise always from catastrophe so my question would be what is the institution that is going to arise from what we see right now in all the efforts in containing the pandemic and what i had in mind while listening to your stories was a somehow let's frame it in a blunt way a distinction between more paternalistic institutions that's what we've seen in the czech republic for example where you have the massive orders the lockdown orders and the institutional authorities are the ones that are actually prescribing the behavior as opposed for example to the swedish model or even even in the u.s context you may find a lot of individual agency playing with the individual responsibility and i find this paternalism versus individual autonomy quite interesting because as you've shown from the u.s example it can turn the opposite way in a very dangerous way so is there a lesson learned in terms of an institution that needs to arise or needs to be reformed apart from the health care institution that you've been talking about and related to that maybe i had a question to mr zarlik as well i was very interested in how you were describing the role of social scientist in all this and how you've been actually calling for social scientists to be more included in the debate so my question would be how do we do that how we how do we do that apart from being uh interviewed and intellectual attachments to national newspaper or having a distinguished debate somewhere how do we actually reach the voices how do we reach the press conferences because i think that there is an imminent task and i'd like to illustrate it on one example i think that what the pandemic has shown is that there is a huge uh role of of public framing of events not the virus itself but how it's publicly framed and this is a light critic on what you said i think it was marvelously pointed out when you were describing the black lives matter protest as a radical left between radical arrived i told you as a political scientist sociologist i would tell you that this is exactly the public framing that deprives us actually from seeing what is the role of a black lives matter protest for civil society because once we frame it as a radical against radical we don't really have a discussion on the role of these civil rights that are so fundamental to democracies all over the world so thank you very much once again for these thoughts okay so i'm it's a hard question because it's about the future and also as the way you frame the question suggests it involves every every single country right so i and i i wasn't in every single country during the pandemic i've only i've only been in three i can tell you what institutions i think were missing in the u.s some maybe some not obvious examples one of them is local news so it's it's very hard to believe in an epidemic if you don't know about it personally and one of the problems that we had in the u.s was that people would start dying even in considerable numbers but it wasn't reported and and so unless you unless you happen to know someone personally it wasn't real to you and i could see this by you know by the counter examples like every time local reporters did find for example a nursing home where there where there was a pile of bodies people noticed but there were a lot of nursing homes and a lot of piles of bodies and most of them weren't reported every time a local reporter caught a government under reporting deaths people noticed but i'm quite confident that most of the time that happened there was no reporter to catch them because we just don't have enough reporters anymore so i think the weakness of our local news and this is again one of these things where you know europe is 15 years behind and you still have a chance not the same make the same mistakes but local news helps make this an event like like an epidemic reel and because we didn't have it more real for people was what was said in washington or what was said in saint petersburg or beijing because we had a tremendous problem you know and this goes back to what china is we had a tremendous problem with russia still do with russian and chinese propaganda playing a bigger role in conversations in arkansas and nebraska than what was actually happening in arkansas and nebraska we have a big problem with foreign entities and also domestic entities who gain the algorithms on facebook and other social platforms in order to drive americans into a frenzy um and away from and away from the facts so so local news local news would be an institution that that i would fix on and i was going to my second answer was going to be the one that you actually gave as your question to mr zout i like i think the framing part is extremely important and it's why it's why it's why the humanities are so important because it's the humanities that allow journalists and others to see that something is being framed and it's the humanities that give you the categories to frame things on on on your own right so if we don't know about the history of interwar europe we can't ask the question is it like that if we don't have the category of the middle classes we can't ask about the middle classes which i forgot to answer which is that actually the black lives matter protests were middle class protests as a matter of fact the middle classes were present and that's a very important thing to know about them they were a very middle-class mittelstand um kind of affair in in their mass numbers right not not the looting you know not not the acts of violence but the protests themselves were in fact middle-class protests which makes them very important but i can't frame it that way unless i have the baglipa right like so knowing what the baglypha are what the concepts are and deploying them is something you can only get from the humanities which is why you know which is why i think certain kinds of governments really don't like the humanities because certain kinds of governments really like to do all the framing by themselves thank you for a question i would like to try to ask or to answer um the first thing i would like to explain that this task is uh very concrete is a very concrete now because you know that now european union is offering this recovery fund and the problem is how to gain some money and some segment of this money also for this field of culture and social sciences and so it's a very concrete in czech republic to raise this question to discuss during two weeks will be discussion in czech government and i i said many times also that i have interest to participate on this recovery fund and to have some money especially for some excellent center in social sciences because it's possible to sh to to to show that in czech republic we have very limited number of this excellent center in the field of sociology economy and others that's something very concrete for me what i am trying to to to to to to to raise in in government and i hope that i will be partly more and more and less uh successful it's concrete task and the second uh it in all countries also in czech republic i'm also concerned about uh something like very dangerous splitting of discussion that it's all problems are very quickly politicized and escalated it's if i can any problem in our country also we have also problem with the status different than in united states but i'm speaking about koniev konjev issue in in prague so but or marian marianski slope how to say it marian column in in in in in in prague also the symbol of monarchy and so on all problems also cultural problems are very quickly escalated and part of very very furious discussion and that's why what seems to me interesting to ask is why it is that public space is not functioning that is falling apart that this public space is falling repeatedly that it's very difficult to raise question and to lead normal quiet dialogue about it it's it's it's very complicated and the my question is how it is possible that is so difficult how how media sphere is functioning in this system it seems to be very important to understand better why this why this terrain is so difficult for public discussion it is something in in this i see the role of social sciences to explain to help us better understand what are these barriers what are the reasons why every question is so quickly destroyed in public space and what we have to do to avoid this what to do to be able really to lead syria because we need to solve problems very serious problems but we are only quarreling yes and maybe and it's it's it seems that it's impossible to raise i i remember it was mr brzezinski he told me years ago here in this country in the united states it's impossible to raise any serious question and lead normal discussion about it you you need what probably he mean in this time that he spoke about the suspicion that obama is not us american he was convinced he was surprised how quickly this topic started to be the main topic in all public discussion absolute nonsense but it was the main topic and it is is what i'm speaking about this epidemic is uh is uh growing not only in u.s but in any other country we are all solving similar non-sensing issues and we are not able to concentrate on really serious questions and to understand better how this public space is working why it is not why is so difficult in current world to to to to lead it all these things seems to me are very important to to to to to to to investigate and to know how it works it is something when i see very important role of social sciences and that they have to help us to manage this and i'm afraid it's impossible without these scientists to to to manage this terrain this modern torrent of modern society and medias and and and all this and probably i can only agree what mr snyder said that with this framing that it the danger that police politics will frame all discussion and then we need a much more sophisticated system how to raise questions and it's also part of this what why it seems to me that social sciences are so important and in czech republic there is a special story by this sciences are underestimated and i see like a challenge to overcome this and to find a way how to change this it's and i'm it's not on the margin it seems to me it's fundamental for the future i'm afraid that we are running out of time but hopefully there is a time for one more question from the audience so i think or i saw two two pairs of hands maybe we can take both questions and then try to answer them so if we may please thank you very much my name is anir barzillai and i'm a historian by training my question is for both speakers and i would like to address something that we sort of revolved around but didn't really touch and that would be regarding what i take and most people i think take as a sacred fundament of democracy and maybe liberal society and that's the right to demonstrate and to protest and the reason i'm asking that is because professor snyder began his talk by obviously mentioning the fact that public health and medicine are always political but then we sort of went to talk about protests and you when when you began um um your your your talk you said that you know for in the united states corona itself is is as a disease is not accepted as a as an objective fact but trump denies it and don't you think that precisely there is a interesting maybe paradoxical connection between the denial of corona as a disease and the protest that we see in places like belarus and in the united states by the fact that someone like trump denied the disease he was he didn't have the trump card pun intended of saying okay you cannot protest because covet is happening and it's dangerous and this is something that we see happening precisely in places that are i would say more democratic more liberal at least on the face of it when they say no no protest now is something we should avoid we should avoid precisely because of covid is a real thing we saw something happening in germany a couple weeks back we see this thing becoming a theme in israel we saw it also in france even and that is i think a risk we might truly face when people are using this framing of saying no no no this is an objective thing this is a disease there is a virus you have to basically be in lockdown in quarantine you cannot protest so what do we do about this fundamental liberal democratic right of protesting against something that is scientific thank you so can we collect the other question as well thank you very much and i am iowa ceramic check ambassador to the un to the usce and other vienna based international organizations and my question is concerning belarus because i'd like to use the opportunity having here the former ministry minister of foreign affairs and and professor snyder and it is of course the topic we are dealing now quite a lot in the osce and my question is what would you recommend as a course of action ew action u.s action towards belarus because what we are witnessing is rather that principled answer that we are imposing sanctions isolating the regime and the eu is doing that the u.s is doing that as well but on the other hand everybody knows what might be the eventual outcome and the eventual outcome is that we will push president lukashenko into even tighter kremlin embrace and it will be at the end of kremlin playing the cards eventually replacing lukashenko but replacing him by somebody who will be more willing and cooperative with moscow and then we will lose belarus for another 20 years for it's the equation when on one side is the geopolitics and real politic and on the other side principles and values and questions how to play it and not get it into the possible scenario which i described thank you all right so one more place thank you thank you very much my name is barbara didachnel and um first of all i have to say i've taken note of your prophecy professor snyder saying that mr trump will declare national emergency on november the 3rd and i'm really looking forward to what is going to happen um i will discuss it with my students um the second point i would like um to touch is um what you said in the in the end about china and europe um that europe is not going to speak with the us with a preparedness here for example in china china is just one example we can take any other example and that's what i'm noting here now that um domestic politics are really predominating at the moment if you're looking at the news for wherever um and the eu has is kind of not disappeared it's maybe a little exaggerated but but it has kind of drawn back and it's also a question to the minister am i right with this observation i have the impression that is all national politics at the moment we don't have any eu anymore and and like every country has its own national policy on corona and different rules and different laws and whatever and i'm i'm i think that's really sad i mean that's really sad so my question to the minister would be am i right and what can we do about it so multilateralism is not only dying and i'm really sorry to say it is not only dying from uh the u.s administration administration side but also from the eu side and the third point was about 1933 in 1934 in the the comparison with the interwar period i think the most dangerous point today is and that's more about the u.s but maybe also about europe i'm not sure was that if you compare the current situation with 1933 and 1934 in austria the first thing that mr dolphus who became the leader of australia at that time did was to put newspapers under censorship and we are coming back to your point that local news is so important or news in general and newspapers are so important um some people have the impression that there is no real open discussion on on for example corona and and um that might be a comparison to the interval period the newspapers are self-censoring themselves shall i repeat it or do you if i may start on this maybe maybe because it was very close to my conviction also i i have very similar feeling that today we have mainly domestic policy and not foreign policy yes also in the case of belarus i would like to compare situations when started crisis in ukraine maybe you remember in this time we sent as foreign affairs council ministries from brussels we send ministries to kiev steinmeier and french minister and polish minister to kiev it was this mission was probably unsuccessful but what seems to be interesting that we send ministries to negotiate to deal to use diplomacy now in the case of belarus there is no diplomacy we are only starting with the sanctions it seems to me very characteristic you said that now we have only domestic policy no foreign policy because my feeling is that you are able to solve any similar problem if you are able really to make sometimes risky diplomacy steps and be able to also accept some compromises why in 90 in why in 1968 they had no chance in czech republic in czechoslovakia with this because there are no diplomacy between us and russia in this time why they are successful in 1989 velvet revolution because it was absolutely different situation and from russia there was some diplomacy between united states and president and gorbachev in this time there was some communication there was some steps and this diplomacy was created room in which velvet revolution was possible but it was relatively clear that probably russia will not intervene a czechoslovak country we got the chance to create independent regime in you know uh in this time this diplomacy between powers also created room for countries like czechoslovakia to start new life and to be independent countries and now when i follow situation in belarus you may we have many examples in the now for you can take venezuela for example visit them people in the street egypt also people in the street but you have there is no follow-up after this because there is no diplomacy i am afraid of one thing if we on the best are raising false expectations because we are making declarations because they are making maybe making decisions about sanctions but what are the real impacts of these steps if these steps are not not followed or or part of some also diplomatic attempts maybe risky steps but steps which will create room for some solution in these countries and i am afraid if we have no idea and no there are making no attempt to communicate with other partners that's i am very i have problem if if there is a real room for example in belarusia really to change something i'm i'm i i met i remember that years ago i i met i have many meetings with the current minister foreign efforts belarus also i immense i met lukashenko i remember this this meeting lukashenko told me that he's expecting that in short time putin under some pretext will intervene in belarus because he wants to create military bases in belarus he told me belarus is the last country without military bases if you take any post-soviet countries as georgia ukraine and so and uh in in some time in this in this time really it was some position of lukashenko in foreign policy to keep belarus without be without concrete intervention of military so now things are changing but because now it seems that lukashenko is much more much more under the influence of putin and is losing ground in in belarus on the other hand it seems to me if really we want to help belarus it's impossible without diplomacy and i am afraid that we are not willing to start this diplomacy because it's risky it's very difficult to address putin probably we have limited cards but in similar situation i'm really afraid of false expectation which we can create in in this situation but generally i agree what you said we are facing what we have now is very very often only domestic policy not foreign policy and european union resignate on on resignate on unreal foreign policy we can speak why it is same like in in us america first is also program for domestic policy not for us for a foreign policy it's it's it's my feeling and maybe also last what i would like is also on this different question of covet my feeling is that speaking about behavior of government what is very important if country which is relatively democratic country is able to to behave effectively it's now there is something like there are many comparisons in current world it's very important if democratic countries are very are able are strong enough to manage this epidemic crisis because this is something which is on the end of all stories if you are effective to be able to fight epidemic maybe and it's very important that democratic countries are able to be effective because in opposite democracy will be losing maybe i would like to say that it seems to me that in the last 15 years democracy is losing its in current wealth we have more and more failed states like yemen and liban on maybe and so democracy is really in defeating in in la in last years and it seems to me that in this crisis is very important to show that democratic countries are effective they are able to to to to to find right answers it's a very important fight and the result will be also very important i'll pick out a few i forget a few things you've all been very patient it's like it's the first time you've been allowed out of your apartments in months even this is entertaining enough to keep you in the room that's that's very nice um on the on the prophecy i just want to resist the word prophecy i want to make clear what i want to make clear that i think what happens in the u.s depends a great deal on what people do between now and november 3rd so when i was trying to say european reporters please be aware that we don't have to know the results on november 3rd i'm trying to affect what happens between now and november 3rd and a lot of other people who are trying to affect what happens between now and november 3rd so i don't want to give mr trump powers he doesn't actually have i want i want to make it i want to make it hard for him it is clear though that he's going to dispute the results even if he wins i mean he won last time and he still disputed the results so and he's announced over and over that he's going to dispute the results so that that we can be pretty sure about on the european union uh i mean i haven't been here you know for more than a few weeks during this pandemic but i do know that the european council on foreign relations carried out a poll of every european union member state and i was interested to see that 62 percent of europeans believed that the pandemic was a reason to advance european integration and that's interesting because europeans basically don't think anything is a reason to advance european integration if you ask them come up with something that's a reason to advance european integration they would be like but interestingly a clear majority of europeans thought at least as of july that the pandemic was a reason to favor the european union and i i take that as a sign for cautious precautious optimism and then with respect to belarus and to foreign policy and domestic policy i'm just going to repeat the point i made earlier which is that you don't really have a domestic policy unless you have a foreign policy and vice and vice versa especially if we're talking about democracy so i mean moving towards your concerns mr ambassador i think it doesn't matter so much whether you win in belarus it does matter a lot whether you have a position on on belarus because the question that you raise like what is the long-term effect you know will we maybe be nudging putin this way or that way that argument can be made both ways but what will what is certain is whether you take a position or not that's certain um that's one thing which is clear i i happen to disagree i think with the analysis because what's happening now is that because the americans are absent which is unusual in this sort of thing and the europeans are not very active there is no you know there's no shakurski there's nobody going to minsk right now no there is shakurski but he's in brussels right he's no longer polish foreign minister but uh but there is no european presence i'd like to agree very much with the minister's remarks about diplomacy because there isn't a european presence you're drifting towards the scenario that you describe i think which is that the russians who are very disoriented did not expect this and don't really know what to do are winning anyway because there's no one else in in the room and so i i mean i'm afraid that what's happening is is is is what you describe but for different reasons i don't think and here is where i respectfully disagree i don't think you can push lukachenko towards putin because lukashinko no longer has the domestic legitimacy that he had before these elections he is now for the first time i think actually dependent upon putin but not because of anything you did but because of what the biela russians did which is they voted him out of office he's lost an election i mean as as people should i think more clearly say he lost and when you lose you're supposed to go so and that's i think something that you know we should agree about he lost he should he should go it's really not very complicated and i think that what you know what europeans can do is move in on that principle not that we're for against lukashenko if we're against putin but that we're that we would like to help if the majority of yellow russians want there to be clean elections we would like we would like to help with that and i i and with putin i think heroin has to be very careful because i think his position is much closer to lukashenko's um than it appears i mean he you know speaking of protests you know there have been protests going on in habadovsk for months now also on a question of basically of democracy putin's approval ratings are half of what they were two years ago he faces really serious problems and so i don't think you know i think europeans can get into this habit you know which mr trump does too of thinking okay there's a dictator therefore he's there forever but you know we can't one thing which is not going to happen is that we push lukashenko over to putin for the next 20 years because and here i will prophesize um putin and lukashenko are not going to be in power in 20 years they will probably not be alive so um so but again i think the more the most important thing with belarus and europe actually i think has to do with europe rather than rather than with belarus and and to answer your direct question i think in addition to what the minister said about there being a diplomatic presence i think there should be positive incentives and not just sanctions namely i think the european union should say if belarus succeeds in having a clean election we will allow for the free and unimpeded travel of yellow russians inside the european union why not you know if you're sure that if you're so sure they can't do it then you're not making any risks and if they do it why not allow bailor russians to travel in the european union ukrainians can travel in the european union there aren't that many yellow russians you know about as many you know i won't mention any countries by name but about as many as there are in other east european countries why not why not create not just sanctions but a positive incentive and say you know we will have we'll allow free movement and we will begin discussions on an association agreement with belarus why not why not why not create a positive incentive why not have an actual an actual foreign policy and then which leads us to this with the question about protests and and you're quite right um you're quite right in there that that it's in these there's a middle zone of countries where the the dictator or the aspiring dictator denies the reality of the virus where you then get a bunch of protests and that's that's brazil that's also russia incidentally um and it's united states of america and it's and it's belarus where you have this dynamic that you can't say hey don't protest because it's a um but and and i do think i think you're right i think i think your analysis is correct and then if it's about the science i'm just going to point out that it does seem like being outdoors is pretty is very safe almost regardless of what you do when you're outdoors um and i i agree with your concern that the more technocratic part of the european elite can use can use the pandemic to argue that they don't don't protest and i think in the you know in the very long run or in even the middle run or not even in the middle run forever um what's happened in the u.s and in russia and in belarus and all over the world shows us that you can't have democracy without an active public um and this feeds into the local news question and the digitalization question and china right the one thing um i was talking to a journalist from hong kong the other day and she asked me a journal if if the dictatorships around the world were learning from each other and i said it's hard to say whether they're learning from each other because there seems to be a total lack of imagination everywhere right like if you read out a trump response to a protest a putin response to a protest and a chinese response to a protest they all say it was inspired by foreigners it's a threat to our sovereignty right they say exactly the same things right there's no there's no imagination at all in the response which leads me to think that the protest itself is the essential thing like it's the protest itself which is what bothers these people it's it's the it's the physical appearance on on on the streets and so i i agree and you know i i think they think the science is actually on my side i mean the reason why the americans are dying is that they stay inside in in air-conditioned spaces and go to bars and so on in air-conditioned spaces everything i think being outside is generally fine there was a lot of worry about the black lives matter protests along these lines and it hasn't actually panned out protesting outside seems to be seems to be fine so do it so i'm very glad that we ended on a positive note it's call for call for action some might call it uh i i believe we have heard many interesting thoughts and many much food for thought but it's time to end this part of the evening so please join me in thanking our excellent speakers for the evening and [Applause] and thank you again for audience for coming to this evening and the embassy and the institute for human sciences for organizing this this interesting event and as you as you suspect there is a informal continuation so you can slowly continue in in the discussion later on thank you again [Applause] [Music]

Channel: IWMVienna

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Id: -0Wy3clXuH0

Length: 111min 4sec (6664 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 07 2020