Niall Ferguson III | Cold War II, Climate Change, and Brexit

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well Neil thank you very much indeed for giving us some time we're in Europe we're not in Australia as we were last time but I just want to follow through the world is changing unbelievably rapidly we've got all sorts of questions now how do we understand China how do we understand America brings it in Europe and even Africa the world is not as we might like it to be not even as we think it to be firstly can we come to China it keeps unfolding how do we understand China's real objectives I think China's objectives have changed radically under Xi Jinping's leadership because after the catastrophe of Mao Zedong's tyranny there was a period in which beginning with Deng Xiaoping the goal was economic growth that was pretty much it and any kind of geopolitical payoff from that as China's economy grew was to be concealed not discussed so China's rise was quiet it was also relatively gradual despite the very high growth rates because China started at such a low base with an economy less than 10% the size of the US economy even by the time that joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 it was still a relatively small economy which was why relatively few commentators in the 1990s even thought of the rise of China as an issue if you look at the economists coverage of that period with its annual outlook the world in 1994 95 96 all the way through they hardly talked about China so it was only really after 2001 the China's growth relative to the US picked up that intensified because of the financial crisis because the US economy actually had a recession then had a period of stagnation China used massive stimulus so the gap suddenly narrowed much faster than it had been doing before and in the wake of the financial crisis a new leader came on the scene Xi Jinping and instead of pursuing a continued quiet rise he started talking about China's great power status and suggesting that really China was on track to be an equal of the United States he embarks on a policy one belt one road of what was essentially imperial expansion but global strategy began as sets at a central asia revive the Silk Road ended up being an entirely global strategy of investment in infrastructure and lending to emerging markets and indeed some European countries and suddenly you wake up one morning and China's catching up and trying even starts to talk about overtaking and surpassing the United States throughout all this period the US government successive administration's going all the way back to Clinton through Bush through Obama the US government has been asleep at the wheel more or less even accepting even embracing China's rise and this was the age of what I called chai America when China and the United States kind of fused and then the penny drops and the penny drops in 2015-16 when a man called Donald Trump says I'm gonna stand up to China and that's where we are Donald Trump issued a wake-up call an America woke up and with amazing speed the age of chai America ended and we embarked on what I regard has much more than a trade war we embarked on cold war too you think we're in cold war tuna I think future historians will look back and say cold war to began though not many people noticed it in 2018 and it began modestly with the tariffs on Chinese imports right at the beginning of that year the Trump had threatened to impose during his campaign that one of the pregnancy presidency in 2016 but it wasn't just the tariffs the tariffs went up and they went up in a sustained way stepwise through 2018 and 2019 and all those people who expected a trade deal including the Chinese negotiators got the surprise of their lives because Trump didn't strike the deal yeah but but that wasn't all that happened at the same time again led by Trump the United States began to push back against China's technology companies ZTE then Huawei and their global ambitions and in addition Congress began to push back against China's ability to access Western technology so you went from trade war to tech war and that tech war was much more important because China in many ways was more vulnerable to it than it was was to the trade war isn't the truth about the trade war in many ways particularly with made in China the project whereby they want to replace a lot of imports the tariffs have not proved to be as damaging to China as might have been expected anyway and will be less damaging in the future I think that's not quite right I think that the tariffs have been damaging to China they've certainly been about four times more painful than they have been to the United States and relative terms as much as that yeah I mean that was easy to anticipate because in the end exports to the US just matter more to China the next sports to China matter to the United States but the Chinese government has done an effective job of offsetting right the impact of the tariffs through monetary policy and that's actually not rocket science because if somebody's slapping taxes on your goods as they enter the United States if you weaken your currency you offset that impact and that's what China did allowed the rememba to depreciate above what had been a ceiling of of 7 RMB to the dollar and and that's that's helped along with other monetary policy measures to minimize the impact so that China's economic growth in 2019 has probably been somewhere around maybe even slightly above 6% I think that numbers not a fake number and it tallies with other indicators we have so China's done an effective job of offsetting what was quite a meaningful impact but strategically it matters much more to China if the United States can somehow slow down its technological progress in particular make it hard for China to get to parity when it comes to the most sophisticated semiconductors that something China can't do for itself it has to import them just in the same way that in order to accelerate up the value chain China has to acquire Western technology by investing in Western companies that's all got much more difficult under Trump and that's why the tech war matters more than the trade war but remember there's more because there's also a kind of pushback against China's influence operations its influence for example through higher education and indeed through the media that was something that began in Australia as earlier was first yet to realize what China was doing through subtle and not-so-subtle methods but the United States has woken up to that - and a big report came out earlier this year co-authored by my colleague Larry diamond at the Hoover Institution made it clear that the United States was now on the same page as Australia in resisting China's attempts to build influence within American politics as it had done within Australian politics and finally let's not forget that the US has become much more cognizant of China's classical strategic expansion not just its island building in the South China Sea but its efforts to use one belt one road to create leverage throughout emerging markets so I think that that's where we are we're in the early stages of cold war - not many people are calling it that yet but future historians will say that's when it began well to move on there to the question of American engagement in the world Trump came to power saying America first and many started to worry what does that mean for America's willingness to lead on all sorts of fronts globally so one of the big questions that arises for Australia is we've seen America in recent weeks consciously withdraw much of its presence in the Middle East one assumes is not going to back off its engagement with China for the reasons that you've just outlined but from an Australian perspective China is incredibly important to our economy since 1941 we've looked to America as if you like premier friend and protector to what extent can we assume that America really will stay engaged in the Pacific more broadly than its concerns with China well I think one has to distinguish in other words American foreign policy what do we make off yeah as it applies to the Pacific well I think we have to distinguish between Donald Trump's Twitter feed and the speeches he gives at rallies and his offer CAF shoot-from-the-hip statements because American foreign policy is not something that the president gets to make up on his own president Trump leads an administration the size of which would amaze you the National Security Council alone is a very large body to say nothing of the State Department to say nothing of the CIA it's not just a one-man band and although the media like to cover the Trump administration like it's just one guy because he's always entertaining and controversial every other week in reality US foreign policy as has long in the case is the outcome of a rather complex interagency bureaucratic process and that process is not well covered in the media because it's kind of boring when people sit around on the NSC deciding how to manage the u.s. relationship with what they now call the indo-pacific region that was a new bit of nomenclature this is based on a quite elaborate process which we can trace back to the new national security strategy document that came out at the end of of 2017 at the end of Trump's first year in office HR McMaster and Nadia shad Lowe and their colleagues produced an extremely important document which resets American policy fundamentally change strategy relative to the Obama administration on China but also on Russia on the whole range of issues what they said was we're now in a strategic competition with China as well as with Russia and we are not going to play it the way the Obama administration intended to play it which was to sublimate the American national interest in the institutions of the liberal international order now America first is actually an old political slogan and most people don't know that it was Woodrow Wilson who first used it not not some isolationist figure but the great internationalist himself and most American presidents whether they've used the phrase or not have put the American national interest first well hardly surprising really right and Richard Nixon said much the same thing when he became president in 1969 that he was going to put the national interest for American presidents habitually say we're gonna put the national interest for us that that's the least novel feature of trumps administration in practice let's leave aside what the president says in practice the United States has increased its commitment to NATO so the North Atlantic Treaty Organization now has more forward deployed military assets that could counter a Russian move that it had in 2015 so although President Trump himself sounded ambivalence about NATO as a campaigner and has repeatedly beaten up on the Europeans for not paying their share to NATO which they don't he nevertheless if just look at what the administration has done has increased the u.s. commitment to NATO it's true for example that Trump has got himself into a mess with Ukraine because it seems pretty clear that he sought some political help against Joe Biden from the new Ukrainian president but in reality if you just take take a step back the main trend of policy under Trump has been to increase support for Ukraine relative to Russia and remember Congress also supports that initiative Congress is a good deal more hostile to Russia than the president but it turns out that Congress matters more when it comes to sanctions now let's turn to the indo-pacific region and what do we see that the u.s. is it for example increased the number of ships that sail around whether it's the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait to assert that China can't simply treat those places as its own backyard and I think that the commitment to Australia has been reaffirmed in fact I've been quite impressed by the way in which Trump has reached out and established good relations with key Asian leaders yes what have we seen recently a spectacular rally in the United States for Narendra Modi regular meetings with Shinzo Abe a a very good meeting with Scott Morrison yes so the administration is I think doing the right things to make sure that America's allies and friends in the region understand that it is there for them everybody in Asia knows that China's rise has major implications and that China is bidding for not just parity with the US but dominance to be number one in the Asia Pacific region when Mike Pence gave his speech at the Hudson Institute last October he said unambiguously that's what they're aiming for and they won't succeed that was an extremely important speech if you ask me when exactly did cold war to begin I think was that night when pence gave that speech and Asia listened vice president pence told me that he was struck when he traveled to Asia subsequently and what resins that speech had had everywhere so that's the stuff that matters the president will surprise us every other week with things that he says that's in many ways noise what you have to look at is action yeah point taken there's a sense in which the fact that it was pence who gave that very considered and very powerful speech which has had enormous ramifications I think signal and perhaps that I think it's a point that you're making u.s. foreign policy is not likely to change so very much whether Trump's reelected whether he's not re-elected it's a new era and both sides of politics in America essentially agree those realities in China well let's just look first at the Republican side not only my pence but also Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have been pretty emphatic about the new approach to China from my vantage point there in some ways more hawkish than Trump himself on issues of human rights for example it was again vice president pence who gave a speech signaling American sympathy with the Hong Kong protesters just the other day he wanted to give a speech like that on the anniversary of gen'l'men square earlier this year Trump is good deal less hawkish on those issues than pens and Pompeyo when you step back and look at the the new configuration of the National Security Council it's highly significant that Matt Pottenger is now deputy national security adviser Pottinger has been a very well-informed architect of the new strategy towards China other Democrat softer on China than the Republicans no actually the first legislator to agree publicly with Trump's decision to impose tariffs on China was Chuck Schumer who's the lead Democrat in the Senate Elizabeth Warren another senator from Massachusetts in her case bidding to be the Democratic nominee and the favorite in the eyes of the prediction markets to win the nomination is in many ways just as hawkish on China on trade and on other issues as trunk indeed my old friend Larry Summers predicted to me earlier this year that the Democratic candidate would end up seeking to run a campaign that was more hawkish on China than Trump if Trump does a trade deal this could very well happen between now and this time next year with China and particularly if he makes concessions to get that deal the first person to call him out it will be Elizabeth Warren so if the Chinese for even a glimmer of time thought there might be relief at hand say if Joe Biden became president they must be far less optimistic now because Biden's fading as a contender and Warren is as I said the favorite in the prediction markets to be the candidate so I think that we continuity in this policy even if Trump does the trade deal the tech war isn't gonna end the u.s. isn't gonna suddenly stop worrying about why way it isn't something to shrug its shoulders and say go ahead keep building islands in the South China Sea and while you're at it one belt one road can have a green light all over Europe that's not going to happen doesn't really matter who is president yeah in January 2021 I think cold war too continues and and there's an analogy there with the original Cold War at the end of World War two there wasn't a realization amongst many people Winston Churchill was maybe the exception that very quickly the Soviet Union would go from being Ally to foe that that process was in some ways structural but because of the nature of the situation at the end of World War two when the Soviet Union had expanded its influence all the way to Berlin and Beyond I think in the same way structurally China's economic and strategic expansion have created a situation in which it would be almost inconceivable that the u.s. would just take it lying down and so rather in the same way that Harry Truman had to become a hawk the architects of containment in the early Cold War not really something he'd been born to do that wasn't his background well he's initial involvement with the Soviets he was much more positive right so the process of education that comes about when strategic realities mean you are under threat you could lose your number-one position that tends to dominate the personal predictions of presidents secretaries of state national security adviser so I think Cold War 2 is a structural thing by the way I'm not predicting a hot war here in the way that my old friend Graham Allison does in his book destined for war the facility's trap which he fears that China and the US could fall into the trap whereby the incumbent power goes to war with the rising power I think that trap is is a particularly compelling binding constraint but cold war that's highly likely in fact I think that has begun just as it began in the late 1940s we've gone in just the same way from being on very good terms with the Chinese in the age of chai America to really having them as our principal strategic rival and and that seems to me why Cold War 2 is the right analogy fascinating from Beijing's perspective the world's changed and become much more difficult it would seem to me over the last two or three years as a result not only of America taking the position it has but also because it's been able to garner support raise awareness you know there's been a coming together of a quad and so on and so forth but but really they've got a number of very troubling in their own economy levels of indebtedness that got Hong Kong a lot of pressures on them one way or another it's not the world that they thought they would be operating in well I've been traveling to China teaching in China as of as in professor at Tsinghua for quite a few years I have always been told by academics by Chinese officials that China's principal problems are domestic and and in the end they spend more time worrying about those than they do about global expansion and I believe that because the domestic problems are enormous you have inexorably bearing down on the Chinese growth rate at the population problem the legacy of the one-child policy is such that China's working population is shrinking and as it shrinks it is more or less inevitable that China's growth rate will will fall to the Chinese population the working population is going to shrink by something like 200 million between now and the end of the century the period when China's comparative advantage lay in abundant cheap labor coming to the towns from the countryside is over and there's not a lot they can do about that because you can't wave a map about there and yeah you can't just produce the people at this virtually no immigration to China robotics might help but they don't really make the kind of robots that would would do the job try Japan try the United States so that's that's problem number one problem number two is that in their response to the financial crisis in 2008 2009 the Chinese greatly expanded credit in almost every direction and as a result the financial system and gross indebtedness expanded enormous li so that in broad terms the debt gross domestic product ratio for China's but the same as it is for the United States which is remarkable for a relatively less developed economy which is still a middle-income economy if you look at per-capita gross domestic products the nightmare scenario for China is the growth rate falls over the next 10 or 20 years and China doesn't make it out of the middle income trap remains essentially a country that is quite a lot poorer on a per capita basis than the United States even if an an aggregate basis its gross domestic product has got quite close to that of the United States so that's another problem third problem we all worry I think most of us at least worry about climate change and if we don't worry about it were made to feel that we should problem the percentage of the increase in carbon dioxide emissions since 2007 accounted for by China is more than half the percentage accounted for by the United States is zero the percentage accounted for by Europe is 0 because the emissions of co2 in the United States and in Europe have actually gone down since 2007 after China next up is India which is something like 20% of the total and then the Middle East so the real question in the climate change debate should be not what are we going to do because we're doing it the question is what is what are we going to do to constrain China because the Chinese say one thing and do another yeah they say we're committed to green technology we're going to invest in solar we're going to have electric cars and people in the West go how wonderful marvelous well done China but they don't notice is that the same time China is building a new coal burning power station every week they have more coal-fired capacity under construction in China today than Australia has in its entire grid exactly it's extraordinary so that's the reality all the debates about climate change from my vantage point are just virtue signaling unless we get to the question what do we do to make China and India reign in their co2 emissions because whatever do the planets in trouble if they carry on like this and they show no sign of reducing this from the trendline is absolutely clear its steeply upwards from bottom left to top right of the chart so that's the issue and that's a problem for China two ways one at some point people are going to notice that this is it this is the issue too they have their own environmental basically reasons to worry yes Elizabeth economy at the Council on Foreign Relations some years ago published a devastating book on the environmental costs of China's breakneck growth by the way that's a familiar story because communist parties tend to cause environmental disaster when they do high-speed industrialization the Soviet Union did it too if you have at the core of your economy a lawless one-party state with a substantial state-owned enterprise sector there will be environmental degradation on a massive scale and human health will suffer the environment will suffer the planet will suffer these are China's problems as I don't come back at at the moment because the way the West responds may end up damaging the West for no global out can't benefit whatsoever oh it's higher loading it's highly likely that's what the Europeans already at the point of self-immolation on this issue but if you just come back before we get to that yeah I'd love to come back in a moment but where China yes you mentioned Hong Kong I have you not think that Hong Kong like protests will happen on the Chinese mainland in the foreseeable future because number one mainland China is now under such extraordinary surveillance it's almost a digital prison well it it certainly is like something out of science fiction isn't it and it's it's kind of beyond George Orwell you have Kenya's a mutant wrote a wonderful book in 1921 called we and in we there is a one state capital o capital s in which there are no individual human beings there are only ciphers everybody wears the same uniform and the apartments are made of glass so that there can be no privacy that's China today there is no privacy because the data that are gathered via network platforms like Alibaba and 10 sent the data are essentially accessible at will by the government and the government is using social media and other data including financial data to build social credit scores the track not just whether you're a safe bet for a lender but more generally how do you babe you spend enough time as a party official readings Xi Jinping thought there's an app for that so this is not about to produce revolution in the streets because the minute you say on WeChat hey why don't we get together you know to do X doesn't even need to be political the minute you start getting together in China and the authorities are on to you so Hong Kong is absolutely sweet generous and I don't think we should expect contagion but I do think that Hong Kong poses a problem because if I'm sitting in Taiwan yeah and I'm looking at what's going on on Hong Kong I realized that the idea of one China two systems is a fantasy that Hong Kong's semi-autonomy is for the birds ultimately the rule of law in Hong Kong is going to be hollowed out and gradually Hong Kong is going to be subordinated to Beijing yeah where it matters the most which is its law so I think the implications for Taiwan are very clear you can't allow yourself to be drawn into the orbit of the People's Republic of China so much that the same thing happens to your democracy so given that Xi Jinping's ultimate objective was to bring Taiwan back into the fold and essentially have one country one system I think that's in deep trouble as a strategy or at least a showdown is coming and it may be coming quite soon yeah at our next you in yeah and Taiwan elections are coming up and the issue of what is happening in Hong Kong is extremely important there so I think that's a long enough list of China's problems to be going along with you there are a bunch more we can talk about but but I think those are the central problems so the reality is a China is now surrounded by people if you like in the Pacific Rim that part of the world that are well and truly under them yeah but strangely where we are here in Europe it's a different story altogether there doesn't seem to be any particular engagement no energy no great sort of focus no unity around the question of China and extraordinarily Henry Kissinger has indicated that he he's a little concerned that for all that Europe may end up as he put it an appendage of China what on earth did he mean Henry Kissinger recently looked back on something he'd written in the 1950s I'm in the midst of writing his biography so it may have been that I turned this up but back in the 50s Kissinger asked himself could the United States end up being a kind of offshore balancing power to a Eurasia consolidated under Soviet rule now that didn't happen and it didn't happen because the Europeans understood the Soviet threat very well and it wasn't a difficult choice Stalin or the United States NATO was formed and ever since that point there has been a strong American commitment to the defense of Western Europe the difference is that today I don't think the Europeans feel anything like is threatened by China as they were by the Soviet Union that's understandable it's farther away long lower it seems much less ideological the Chinese show up in Europe and they say we want to invest in your let's take one example in your port the Greek port of Piraeus well they show up in Italy and they say would you like to sign a one belt one Road a document and become part of our exciting initiative to invest in infrastructure so the Europeans are highly susceptible to those kinds of blandishments in addition European corporations take the German automobile manufacturers think that China's the future yeah it's just gotta be a bigger market they listen extraordinary so they look at the numbers all around wherever you go to China so I can't blame them for making the calculation that that's where they need to build their business but it means that they're very reluctant to criticize the government of the People's Republic of China because they want to be there that's true I think of BMW I think it's true true of Daimler it's really true of most of the major German industrial companies that are at the heart of the European economy remember German is the most important economy and it's important because of its manufacturing exports so that's why when the United States comes along and says you can't buy stuff from Huawei please don't have 5g technology from somewhere else the Europeans are like but no because Huawei is an apparently ideal partner offering 5g technology hardware much cheaper than it's available from anywhere else in Cold War one there was a non-aligned movement there are a bunch of countries India and Yugoslavia who said we don't want to take sides here we want to be in the middle in a kind of neutral position in Cold War to the non-aligned movement could be much larger indeed all of Europe seems to be seeking non-alignment it certainly would rather not choose remember also that Europeans despised Donald Trump but definitely the German especially the Germans the Germans do have a particular aversion to him but I mean if you look at polling generally in Western Europe where whereas they were very enthusiastic about Barack Obama maybe more than Americans were they're very negative about about Trump so that means that when the Trump administration shows up and asks for anything their immediate reaction is not 9 the Chinese have been quite effective at playing the Europeans off against one another Chinese strategy for years has been pretend the European Union's not there and just go one national capital at a time Paris Berlin London divide and rule and that's been quite effective for them so as a result I think that Europe is not at all with the program when it comes to cold war - when it comes to standing up to Chinese expansion and indeed if anything Europe shows signs of going in the other direction almost into the Chinese embrace quite a number of EU countries have signed up for one belt one road not just Italy and so I think when when kissing just said recently if things go wrong Europe ends up as an appendage of a Chinese dominated Eurasia and the United States is reduced to the role of the offshore balancer I think that's what he was talking about well that's interesting and you yourself have made the point that the ability for Europe to act as a whole was shown to be somewhat limited in the refugee crisis of 2015 16 when essentially Europe divided up had countries handled at one by one as you made the point even Denmark you know a very progressive country by Heymann standards chose to go to learn so who leads Europe you know how do we think of Europe the idea of a United States of America of Europe that that might be still seen as an objective in the Europeans in many other parts the world appears to be well and truly dead not just because it brings up I think back in the 1990s there was a project to create the United States of Europe to create a federal European state that was going to be done through monetary union you were gonna build a monetary union and that would sort of force the Europeans down the the road of federalism because if you had a monetary union then you'd have to have a some kind of fiscal Union and I think that was the idea that's I think over as a project in practice even if there are still plenty of people who cling to it in theory if you think about what's happened since the financial crisis which was actually more disruptive for Europe than it was for the u.s. not much has changed we have taken only baby steps towards banking Union there's still nothing resembling a european-wide system for Deposit Insurance there isn't even a glimmer of a transfer Union of a fiscal Union that might allow for example the rich states like Germany to help out those states like Greece that get into difficulties all of this is is stalled permanently and not just because of German opposition northern Europe is essentially against the idea of fiscal federalism and as any Australian knows if you don't have any fiscal element to it it's not a federal system so I think Europe's federal dream is essentially dead even if some people still cling to it and that leaves Europe in a very uncomfortable place somewhere between a confederal system and a federal system that's a problem because a challenge like the migration crisis of 2015 2016 exposes the lack of any real common ground between the Member States there are still 28 member states because Britain hasn't yet left the European Union when the migration crisis struck and decisions were taken not least by the German government about what to do with more than a million people heading towards Europe across the Adriatic and across the Mediterranean essentially it was a case of softkey per each of the countries acted independently of the others attempts to agree burden-sharing to redistribute the refugees essentially failed these European countries said we're not having any and the southern European countries ended up bearing a heavy burden not only Greece but also Italy in to some extent Spain so what a mess and it's not going away because this migration crisis was only essentially contained through a deal with Turkey which was to leave the refugees in places like Turkey in other parts of the Middle East bottle them up in refugee camps there and and get some relief from Europe that way there isn't a better solution it'd be nice to believe that European investment in North Africa would encourage people to stay there people don't want to stay there if they can get to Europe they will go to Europe and not just from North Africa people are coming from sub-saharan Africa in pursuit of a better life on the other side of the Mediterranean and that's going to keep happening indeed I think the scale of the migration northwards to Europe over the next 20 years will be even larger than we've seen so far and that seems to me to be a major and probably insoluble problem for the European institutions because it's just so difficult to get agreement on what to do and the European institutions that are supposed to be dealing with this problem front X which is the the European Border Security Agency really don't have the resources to do it and so as I as I said the other day even Denmark ends up quietly restoring its national boundary its national border because in practice it can't rely on the European border to keep it from unwelcome migrants some of them but not all of them genuine refugees Germany in particular seems to as a very powerful player in Europe but one that's still reluctant to lead perhaps there's still a guilt hangover there there's a concern to talk about the German people that the tendency is to talk about people who live in Germany we seen the ultimate evil you can't talk nationalities the way you used to how does that unfold given Germans Germany's sort of enormous importance that reluctance to leave it seems to really grasp the mantle my own Europe's friends the former polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski gave a speech quite a few years ago now saying that the problem in in Europe is not German power anymore it's the opposite it's German weakness it's German reluctance to give leadership angular Merkel is a distinctive kind of German leader in some ways the product of all the horrors of the 20th century someone who who glories in the tactical compromise the short-term fix somebody who never has a grand vision but is always just kind of keeping the ship steady that's been her style it was how the the financial crisis was managed it was how Germany responded to the Arab revolutions by essentially saying nothing we can to leave it to the Americans but when the refugee crisis began Merkel behaved in a very surprising way which was to say initially in 2015 Via Condotti schaffen we can't cope with this and in a very remarkable encounter between Merkel and a young Palestinian girl on live TV she seemed to lose her resolve and within a week or two it became via Condor shuffle we can manage this without any major consultation with other European leaders Merkel essentially opened the German border and for somewhat less than a year 2015-2016 there was a math 2014 no 2015-2016 I'm right there was a mass influx of about 1.3 million people into Germany from not only Syria but from North Africa from Afghanistan from all over the Muslim majority world so Germany has been grappling with the consequences of that remarkable decision which she reversed again after a relatively short time and it's created a firmament in German domestic politics on the one side the alternativa for Deutschland alternative for Germany has sprung up as a right-wing party explicitly opposed not only to immigration but Islam it has gained ground all over Germany but especially in the former East Germany in the five lender the five states that were once upon a time the German Democratic Republic and at the same time the Green Party has gained enormously and probably in some ways gained more in Germany as a whole so the traditional parties that dominated German politics the Christian Democrats which Angela Merkel used to lead and still nominally still effectively leads and the Social Democrats who've diminished enormous Lee in their power since being in coalition with the Christian Democrats these parties have shrunk so Germany is so introspective so preoccupied with its own changing political landscape but the idea of German leadership in Europe has kind of faded Merkel was the dominant player and earlier in her career it is now Emmanuel macron the premium reservoir from him who does the leading it's macron who speaks often explicitly for europe this annoys some people but he loves it and and I think what's fascinating is that shift from a German led Europe to one that is much more French led at the moment I was travelling in Europe recently I was in Italy and and somebody said to me don't understand how much this is now macro setting the agenda and Merkel is in a kind of twilight phase yeah it's not quite clear when she steps down it's not quite clear who replaces her we're in a kind of limbo because she won't say when she's going and in that state of affairs its France that sets the agenda now France began under macaron after his remarkable election victory with renewed Federalist Drive we're gonna fix this we're gonna move forward that began ever more integration we're gonna have common foreign policy we have common army and the German response was there and I think makan realized particularly when he started trying to do significant domestic reform and face the jeely join the yellow vest revolt this isn't gonna work I can't do this if the Germans aren't on board and so Mac on was pivoted to a much more traditional doorless strategy well it's really all about France yep and it's all about not only France but the big European powers some people even now talk about the e3 which is Britain France and Germany so in the midst of brexit with Britain and tying itself in knots about its future relationship with the European Union in macrons eyes the initiative really belongs with France with Germany and with Britain the traditional European great powers this is where we are it means that the European institutions like the Commission now to be led by a German politician Sylla fonder lion may no longer be where the action is the European Parliament may revert to being a kind of irrelevant talking shop and the decisions that matter the decisions taken in Paris in Berlin and also in London so paradoxically brexit may go ahead with respect to trade it may mean enormous disruption in the UK's relationship with Europe economically but actually a Britain France and Germany may may be the strategic players taking the decisions that that really matter when it comes to the cold war between China in the United States that's I think where we are so to focus sir to use that as a segue to brings it for a moment the deal that Boris is promoting as we speak here now what will it mean in that in the context of what you're really proposing things won't change as much as it might appear to the layman at the moment this is some a complicated subject that I'm going to simplify for you in British politics there is always an issue once upon a time it was Irish Home Rule in the 1930s it was appeasement and today it's brexit but behind the debate about the issue there is a simple struggle for power yep and that the point about breaks it the reason that referendum went the way it did was that Boris Johnson calculated that backing brexit was his best shot at becoming prime minister and dislodging David Cameron and after an interregnum under the hopeless hapless teresa may it worked Boris Johnson is now Prime Minister and in that sense Briggs it has succeeded from his vantage point now the only question becomes can he hang on which is not easy as he doesn't have a majority in the House of Commons so that's the first thing to understand about breaks it from Boris Johnson's vantage point it has achieved its objective purely in terms of his becoming Prime Minister extraordinary secondly many people make the mistake of thinking of briggsie as a stock that is something with the to find end-state it's a flow yeah breaks it will carry on for years there's not going to be closure British voters would love it to be done and Boris says yeah I'm gonna get brexit done and they sell please get it done we're absolutely sick of this bloody bread sir just get it done and then we can get back to the things that we really care about more but this is an illusion so even imagine a best-case scenario even in a best-case scenario where somehow Boris gets his deal through the House of Commons where he doesn't have a majority and then wins an election so he does have a majority even in that best-case scenario that's just the beginning of the process of renegotiating the future relationship between Britain and the European Union because the words drawl act as if it were to be passed would only start that process they would still need to be a free-trade agreement negotiated between Britain and the European Union and those things take years so forget about breaks it as something will will get closure that's just a media fantasy that's just a dream that people cling to brexit will go on for years and years and years until it becomes kind of part of the the norm of British politics there was a wonderful cartoon I saw I think it was in the Financial Times the other day which was my father was a brexit negotiator and his father before him that's how to think about brexit simultaneously it's about hide politics its objective has been achieved Boris's Prime Minister it's also it's a flow it'll go on for years to pick your thesis up the British people have paid an incredible price for viruses ambitions then the division the angst the disruption the dividing even of families yes pretty monumental and then you've got the question of where does power really lie you've got almost Parliament versus Parliament where the House of Lords sits as a house of review in this is a troubling issue they seem to rust things through in a way that looks highly inconsistent with deep consideration of the issues at hand in the recent constitutional issues and is it people versus the Parliament a substitute for the old king versus the Parliament and where to the courts sick there's a bunch of issues that domestically will still need sorting through I would have thought when this is over many people including me said the problem with bread soon was economic and that the costs will exceed the benefits I still think that's probably right I'm skeptical that over a ten year time horizon the benefits will really be that great and it's pretty clear that there will be significant costs but it turns out that the economic costs of breaks it weren't the real problem the problem has been the political costs of brexit yeah in terms of deep division not necessarily long the old party lines divisions within parties within labour as much as within the conservative party within families and the bitterness of that division I live in the United States now and I'm accustomed to bitter polarization in politics and for a while I thought breaks it's not that bad it's not as bad as as Trump's America but actually it is the nastiness changed hugely the nastiness has come in a way that we haven't seen in British politics in my lifetime and not only is it verbal nastiness members of parliament find themselves around and social media threatened physically but that's been the real cost of of brexit a kind of collective nervous breakdown has been happening and that I think is going to have an enduring and rather toxic legacy unless Boris Johnson can use his undoubted charm and charisma at some point to begin healing those those deep wounds but that's going to be a difficult task and he's not a popular thing all over the country he's popular in some parts of the country but in my native Scotland he's like the caricature of everything we don't like about the English so I think it's extremely concerning to just take that argument a step further that one implication of Boris Johnson's brexit deal is that the status of Northern Ireland is going to be different from the statuses of the rest of the United Kingdom and a brexit is gonna happen to Great Britain not to northern armed which will effectively remain inside the customs union and single market a status like that raises the age-old question should our land be United there's a reason that Shin fain welcomes this brexit deal it sees it as a stepping stone towards a united Ireland meanwhile in Scotland which voted overwhelmingly to remain in the European Union Nicola Sturgeon the leader of the Scottish National Party revives the idea that we need another referendum that Scotland should be independent that ultimately what England is doing is at odds with what Scotland wants and if the Northern Irish are gonna have a special status why not Scotland - what really worries me is not so much the divisions within England it's the ultimate possibility that Britain itself could break up that we could end up at the end of the day with the United Kingdom falling apart in the process of leaving the European Union and I think that would be a tragedy so we talk about deep divisions and they are deep at a time of deep divisions as a question as to how we're going to cooperate with one another becomes very important how do we live with our deepest disagreements and you're seeing this enormous intergenerational split over climate change I can't think of an area where we need more calm reasoned careful consideration if we're not to shoot ourselves in the foot where do you see the climate change debate going in Europe well I think it's not just in Europe but in the world that this debate is happening and I think it's important that it happens I live in Northern California as we speak there is a massive wildfire raging in Sonoma County that will soon send if it hasn't already smoke through the air towards where I live with our two small boys if climate change isn't affecting you yet the way it's affecting us I can't remember when we last had rain it's gonna so let's not pretend there isn't an issue here and in some parts of the world the issue is is really grave and and I fully expect there to be a deterioration that will affect some parts of Asia a great deal more severely than than we're being affected rising water levels seem highly likely now there is a science of climate change which is extremely difficult to do and there is an economics of climate change which involves estimating probabilities and trying to attach appropriate insurance premium and I'm a believer in insurance that's why I have fire insurance and in the end climate change implies insurance you know we we got to assume that something bad could happen we don't know quite how bad because we can really not be sure about something as complex as the Earth's climate but we need to have some kind of credible insurance policy against that disaster for the sake of people living in low-lying cities close to the sea and in different parts of the world okay that's the problem now let's have a reasoned debate about what that insurance premium should be what effects what steps rather we should take to mitigate these risks you go first Greta Thun Berg and and Greta toon Berg who now leads a kind of youthful rebellion says you politicians are destroying our future the world is about to end this is not just a disaster it's a crime the accusatory finger is pointed and the world's media by and large echoes that message on critically Bjorn Lumbergh another Scandinavian comes along and says you know what as an economist I can see ways that we could do this well and I can see ways that we could do this badly if we do it badly and we actually caused economic growth to stop or even go negative we're not gonna have the resources available for effective mitigation there's a way in which you could actually get this wrong now what do the other sides say then do they say that's interesting can we look at your numbers no no no that's not what they say they say you are a denier and you are an evil person and you should be boycotted ostracized and shamed he has been in Australia by a university so we have a problem here which is that there isn't a real debate going on there is virtue signaling and reputation destruction and a great deal of heat and very little light I am weary of hearing sermons about this problem I'm weary of people saying it is a terrible thing that we're not going to meet our targets it is a terrible terrible crime and here are the guilty people what we need to discuss and here I think Bjorn Lomborg is absolutely right is what the optimal combination of mitigation steps what the right insurance premium is if let's take the example of Europe but it could equally well be the United States if Elizabeth Warren became president if Europe adopts a policy to reduce co2 emissions by essentially taking economic growth to zero because I really believe that Europe strategy is going to promote growth if you impose such burdens on manufacturing as are being imposed on German manufacturing right now because you got rid of nuclear after Fukushima and you are getting rid of coal and you're committing to an all renewable program and the resultant least in the short term is higher costs well who really benefits from that it's not clear to me that we significantly alter the trajectory of average global temperatures because meanwhile in China here the emissions continue [Music] emissions leakage yeah if all we do in the West is to cause our own economies to flatline because we're so determined to be virtuous and nothing happens to change the trajectory in Asia then we've achieved nothing maybe maybe some people will feel morally better maybe they'll feel that they've had done a saintly thing the but the plan is still gonna burn and Northern California is not going to get any less arid and and flammable so where I get depressed is when I have to listen to speeches whether it's greater toon burg all or Al Gore frankly that are highly moralistic in nature but don't address the question what do we do about China what do we do about India how do we actually get co2 emissions worldwide to be reduced ain't gonna be the Paris Accord that achieves that I wonder how can we get back to a rational discussion of this problem because if we don't when others solve the problem of climate change all we're gonna do is self-harm all we're gonna do is cause the West to fall faster behind China then it is already falling our inability to have a rational debate about this problem the utter refusal of one side to listen to the arguments of the other is itself a fatal flaw in the way that Western civilization now functions and it may be that we can't we can't fix this maybe we've just lost the basis for reasoned debate and we're reverting to where we were back in the 16th and 17th century where instead of reasoned debate you just accused one another of heresy I think we've kind of got to that point again you said earlier in the conversation we've never been in such a bad place I'm afraid we have and the period after the printing press Europeans in particular spent 130 years fighting one another burning one another over religious questions that couldn't in fact be resolved I feel as if that's happening in the realm of Western politics today and it's a deeply depressing prospect well thank you on that sobering note let's commit ourselves to try at every point to lift the standard of the debate and to respect the dignity and worth of the people were engaging in even when they won't there doesn't seem any option cries of bad faith are not going to get us anywhere these are difficult problems we have the tools the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution and generations of philosophers gave us the tools to have a reason to bate about any policy problem if we choose not to be rational and civil then we shouldn't be surprised if the planet does burn virtue signaling is not going to stop it Neil thank you for your time but thank you much more importantly for being a voice for civility and reason thank you John [Music]

Channel: John Anderson

Views: 69,139

Rating: 4.7864079 out of 5

Keywords: Niall Ferguson, John Anderson, China, Rise of China, Chimerica, Cold War, Cold War II, Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Communism, gilet jaune, Henry Kissinger, Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, EU, Brexit, Climate change

Id: nmCWDwAZLLU

Length: 63min 58sec (3838 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 14 2019