Stephen Walt - The World Order after the Pandemic

[Music] so good afternoon everybody my name is michael collins and i'm the director general of the iiea the institute of international and european affairs and i'm very pleased to welcome you to this iiea webinar and we're absolutely thrilled delighted to be joined today by professor stephen walt from the harvard kennedy school of government who has been generous enough to take time out to speak to us this morning american time this afternoon irish time uh professor walt to speak to us on the topic of the word order after the pandemic i think he'd be arguing that uh covert 19 will have lasting implications for world politics even after the pandemic is finally over and we certainly look forward to hearing his analysis and insights on all of this professor walt we'll talk for about 20 minutes or so and then we will go to q a with you our audience in the usual way and you'll be able to join the discussion using the q a function on zoom which you should see on your screen please also feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you and we will come to them once professor walt has finished his presentation a reminder that today's presentation and q a are both on the record you've already seen the information on professor walt but just to recap he is the robert and renee belfair professor of international affairs at the harvard kennedy school of government and he was elected a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences in may 2005 and received the international studies association's distinguished senior scholar award in 2014. he has many many books of course to his name his books include at the origins of alliances which received the 1988 elgar s furnace national security book award revolution and war and taming american power the global response to u.s primacy which was a finalist for the lionel gelber international affairs book award and arthur ross book prize his book the israel lobby and u.s foreign policy co-authored with uh john merchamer was of course a new york times bestseller and has been translated into more than 20 foreign languages i'd have to check with them to see whether gaelic is one of those but we'll see in any event his is his latest book is uh the hell of good intentions americans america's uh foreign policy elite and the decline of u.s primacy so quite a rich harvest there of of material uh from which i'm sure he will be drawing but in any event stephen you're very very welcome uh to dublin we wish you were here in person uh at some time again in the future i'm sure you will be but in the meantime the floor is all yours oh thank you very much i certainly wish i was there in person myself i have fond memories of my two visits to ireland uh as we talked yesterday i can't claim irish ancestry but i did start my day with a large bowl of authentic irish oatmeal so i'm trying to at least be there in spirit if i can't be there in person um so my topic today is the world order after covid after the pandemic and this is inherently a little speculative there's lots we still don't know we still don't know how long the current experience we're in is going to last but i do think a number of things are clear a number of trends we can uh forecast forward and there's some things that about the future world order i'll be somewhat surprised if they don't come true and that's what i'm going to talk about today uh so uh as usual with zoom i'm going to share my screen now and put up some some slides which i hope are going to be visible in a second and let's see here all right i hope that's all visible to all of you um so here's the basic outline of what i'll be going through i'll summarize the main arguments describe some of the things that were happening in the world before the pandemic uh discuss the immediate results most of which you are all aware of and then lay out some of my ideas on where we're headed uh that we're going to see a less open world than would have existed otherwise a world that is less free less democratic than we might have expected uh that the united states in particular is going to be more adversely affected than a number of other countries not in terms of the absolute damage or suffering but in terms of our relative position in the world and then i'll say some general remarks about the future global order that this will produce uh so my main arguments are as follows first of all kovic 19 is not going to alter the basic nature of world politics it's not going to transform everything we're not going to see some kind of world government emerge out of all of this the nation state will remain the basic building block of world politics and those states are going to continue to compete for power and influence much as they have for centuries however the pandemic is accelerating several trends that were already underway before covid uh struck us all and intensifying their impact and in particular i think it's going to reinforce the gradual shift in power and wealth we have seen toward asia and lead to a world that is less open and less free than it would have been otherwise so let me talk about some of the things that were happening before covet occurred first of all we were seeing the end of what you might call the unipolar moment that era where the united states really stood alone atop the pinnacle of world power roughly from the early 1990s until perhaps 2010 2012. um this is all this has been produced by a number of things obviously the rise of china the partial recovery of russia some of the mistakes that the united states made the war in iraq for example all of those have led to the re-emergence of some familiar patterns of great power competition and i think we're seeing that happen more and more already this was taking place before the pandemic uh we were also seeing a gradual shift in power and wealth from the west back to the east and i don't want to overstate this the united states europe and other countries still remain very wealthy very powerful it's not like suddenly asia has gone into the lead but the trend line was clearly one away from complete sort of western domination of the world system to one where power was going to be more evenly distributed uh third we've seen a global backlash against what i might call hyper globalization uh you see this in the brexit decision by the united kingdom backing away from the european union uh trade wars in various contexts the decoupling of the u.s chinese economy populist opposition in various places to immigration and refugees already this was happening before kovid struck and another trend of course that was going on was increased authoritarianism according to the think tank freedom house 2019 was the 13th consecutive year in which global freedom had declined we've also seen movements away from democracy in places like poland hungary russia brazil turkey and a number of other countries the bottom line here is even before the pandemic began the world was becoming less open less free and less dominated by the west what have been uh kovit's immediate impact well first of all as of yesterday we've had over 30 uh 3 million confirmed cases worldwide approximately 35 000 in ireland by the way and that number is probably an underestimate across the board and of course is still going up we've now cleared over one million confirmed deaths due to covid approximately 1800 in ireland and that number is almost certain in fact certainly will rise for some time to come the international monetary fund has projected that the world economy is going to contract by about five percent in 2020. uh ireland is going to be a little bit above the uh the trend line there its economy expected to shrink by about six and a half uh percent and the international labor organization forecast a couple of months ago that nearly half the global workforce is at risk of having its livelihood destroyed so the economic impact of this pandemic is non-trivial indeed to deal with this governments are doing a variety of emergency measures which of course requires taking on lots of debt so you see debt levels soaring in many countries which could have a long-term effect on economic productivity and the bottom line here is although a few months ago people were hoping we might see a very rapid recovery if the pandemic proved short-lived uh it's increasingly likely now we're not going to see what some call a v-shaped recovery a sharp decline and then a sharp uh recovery economically it's much likely much more likely to be a rather gradual one so what's that going to produce well first of all this is leading to a less open world one where borders are going to start mattering more covid19 already revealed that there were some risks to integrated supply chains these tightly linked economic production lines that we've seen as a as one feature of globalization it was clear before covet that those supply chains were at risk when you started to get a trade war so that was happening even before uh the pandemic but of course the pandemic has simply driven this home more powerfully that suddenly when you have to shut things down because of a disease that affects an entire economic production line the result of this is that both countries and firms are looking to diversify their supplies increase their stockpiles and try and bring more production at home as a matter of sort of financial or economic prudence and you'll see i quote there william wieder he's the former chief economist at citigroup with a nice line that just in time economics will give way to just in case economics with multiple supply chains to ensure continuity in a crisis this is going to be less economically efficient so lower economic growth but perhaps more robust to uncertainty such as a future pandemic kovitt19 also of course has shown us the risk of allowing people to move freely from country to country as we all used to enjoy doing foreign travel has been severely restricted that's why i'm here on zoom as opposed to present there in dublin and i think that the fear of future infections is likely to reinforce xenophobia forms of racism as states are likely to maintain new barriers to travel and migration even after the pandemic is over it's not that we won't we won't go back to the world just as it was in 2017 or 2018 you should be be ready once we start traveling again to have various restrictions placed on you once you get to wherever it is you're going i also think we're discovering a lot can be accomplished online so there's going to be less business travel less movement of people in the future because people have learned that maybe some of that's unnecessary we just add one point here it's a reminder that the coronavirus that causes this disease is the latest in a series of viruses we've had aids we've had sars we've had middle east respiratory syndrome and we've had ebola all of these have happened in the last 25 or 30 years once covet 19 is over it's not the last one of these we're going to see and one big question will be whether or not the world is better prepared the next time this comes around i'll say a word or two about that at the end it's also likely to be a less free world in any kind of an emergency governments start limiting personal freedoms start imposing restrictions on civil liberties government control goes up in wartime we have censorship of the press governments take control of the economy they impose greater uh secrecy on others and of course we've seen exactly this thing happen in response to the pandemic lockdowns shutting down businesses increased surveillance mandatory testing in some countries tracking and tracing in democracies and dictatorships alike again it's why i can't be there in ireland because it's illegal for me to go there now in some countries leaders have requested and obtained emergency powers to deal with this they may give them back when it's all over they may not and i would add here that the record so far between democracies and dictatorships is a mixed regime type doesn't seem to be determining success or failure you have some democracies like new zealand that have done very very well in responding to this you have other democracies like the united states or the united kingdom that have handled this very badly and the same is true for dictatorships there are some authoritarian governments that have actually reacted very well there's other dictatorships that have handled it badly as well the bottom line here is many restrictions are likely to be lifted once this is over but not all of them and some of those restrictions may not have that much to do with public health this is a great opportunity for some authoritarian governments to you know put an app to track you on your phone keep track of all your contacts it's all being done in the name of preventing the spread of a disease but those those tracking abilities may still be there long after this is over so a less free world as well let me say a little bit about the united states uh the united states still has enormous advantages it will remain a very powerful country but one impact that this has had on us is i think our reputation for competence has been badly damaged by how badly the united states has handled this we were supposed to be a country that you know respected science had uh marvelous technical capabilities an enormous health care establishment should have been able to do a much better job than we had and i think the reputation of the united states for simply as a country that knows how to get things done it has been badly harmed by this we also are seeing business bankruptcies uh in lots of countries including the united states and the more companies go out of business the slower the recovery is likely to be because a company can't rehire workers if it's already gone bankrupt but if it's already gone out of business moreover the long-term effects on education i think still remain to be seen but are not going to be good uh schools are closed or operating in a partial fashion all over the united states and in other countries that means less educational progress that means a less well-trained workforce 10 or 20 years down the road which means less economic productivity another feature here is once you lock things down once people aren't going to their businesses you have problems at home you have increased spousal abuse increased child abuse which means over time you're going to have greater long-term mental health issues as well and finally there's some very interesting scientific evidence suggesting that when women are pregnant if they're undergoing high levels of stress this actually has long-term effects on the health educational prospects of their children the fetus is actually affected by what the mother is going through in all sorts of ways that have quite distinct and measurable negative consequences now my point here is that all countries going through this pandemic are going to be experiencing these problems but the relative impact will be greatest the longer the pandemic endures in a particular country i think this is a problem for the united states the united kingdom and some others because instead of having a problem here for one or two or three months and then getting a handle on it this is going on for months and is likely to continue for some time to come so the relative impact for some countries of these long-term trends is likely to be greater all right so where does this lead the world order well nationalism great power competition we're increasing before the pandemic occurred nationalism never really went away although i think some people hoped that it had and we've seen a resurgence of great power rivalry even before the pandemic since the pandemic despite lots of incentives to cooperate most states have actually gone it alone in response the united states of course has now announced it's going to cut off funding to the world health organization russia china the united states and india all declined to participate in the european union's vaccine research fund in general states have sought to protect their own national vaccine research efforts so they get access to a vaccine first and of course we've also seen some governments most notably china and the united states basically trying to blame each other for the problem uh so in this sense you haven't seen a sudden outpouring of global cooperation in response to a global problem uh there are some exceptions to this the european union did put together an unprecedented rescue fund but overall i think it's been uh sort of every state for itself more than anything else and meanwhile while all this is happening conflicts are continuing in places like syria afghanistan yemen between india and china now sudan azerbaijan and armenia and lots of other places as well so in that sense uh international politics has not really changed at all so where do i think this uh leads us first the post-pandemic world will be defined primarily by what was already emerging beforehand and that's the growing rivalry between the united states and china especially in asia i can say more about this in response to the questions but i think the simple answer here is china would like to have at a minimum a dominant position in asia that doesn't mean expanding and conquering asia just a position where it is the principal power there and doesn't fear its neighbors any longer and the united states is likely to try to prevent that which means there's going to be a competition for influence in asia between the united states and china and that's going to lead to a pretty intense rivalry the european union meanwhile is going to be preoccupied with all sorts of internal and regional issues about two weeks ago the eu foreign minister burrell made a speech announcing that the europe must chart its own way to avoid being squeezed between the united states and china i understand that sentiment but europe is not likely to be able to remain neutral between the two major powers and still expect american protection in the context of nato i think that's going to be an impossible bargain we perhaps may want to say more about that in the future and of course europe will be worried primarily about issues in its own neighborhood whether it's what's happening in north africa in ukraine elsewhere in the middle east the growing rivalry between greece and turkey so the eu will be still be a major player but may be punching below its weight because it's so preoccupied with internal issues russia in my view will continue to decline relative to the other powers i always like to remind people that the russian economy is smaller than italy's uh and that puts real limits on russian influence but it will still have some particularly in areas close to its own borders and as i said before overall power and influence is going to be shifting in the direction of asia just as it was before the pandemic if i were to add one more point to this slide is perhaps the biggest uncertainty in the short term of course is what course the united states is going to follow and that's going to depend very heavily on what happens about a month from now in our election so my last slide here uh there are despite what i've just suggested about a world of sort of growing rivalry between the united states and china one where conflicts continue in a number of places and where countries may be forced to line up you know and pick a side uh between the two major powers there are some areas where the major powers must continue to cooperate or in an ideal world they would and that includes the us and china first and most obviously uh cooperation to end the current pandemic and prevent future ones is clearly necessary the one silver lining here is there has been a considerable amount of information exchange and cooperation among the scientific community uh transnationally or internationally scientists are sharing information uh pretty uh pretty well that's the one sort of bright spot i can point to here there is no guarantee however that we will develop better global responses or better national responses historically the tendency has been to sort of overreact to an emergency like this do a lot of smart things for a few years and then gradually become complacent and relax and then get surprised all over again let's hope that we are a little bit wiser uh going forward other issues another obvious one is climate change it cannot be solved if you don't get a reasonable cooperation and agreements between the major uh greenhouse gas producers china india the united states uh most of industrial europe as well uh progress had been made until relatively recently the united states i think now has been the sticking point that's again why november matters uh improving nuclear security it's in the interest of all the major powers that nuclear weapons be uh kept under very reliable control and not used in any in anger as well we have i think shared interest there um i think it's increasingly clear that the world trade organization is in need of radical reform uh we're going to need some kind of rules and arrangements to govern the global economy the wto is showing its age some clear problems there but creating a new set of rules for to handle global trade and investment is going to be essential and again requires agreement among the major powers it's i think also increasingly clear that the digital world for all of the benefits we get from it has a dark side to it and developing some norms of conduct for what states and private actors can do how social media should be allowed to operate is an another area where we would be much better off if we can reach agreements than if it's every country for itself so my bottom line here and it's where i'll stop is that the biggest challenge we're likely to face is to preserve all of the places where we can benefit from cooperation in a post-covered world but to do that in an era where there's going to be rising competition probably greater suspicion and an emerging rivalry between the most powerful states let me stop there and i look forward to your questions well thank you thank you steven uh that was that was a wonderful um uh presentation and uh full of rich content uh appreciate it very much uh we invite questions obviously and they'll come in and but just to get the ball rolling if i may uh i i think uh you know you made it clear that um the the the the some of these trends that you're describing they predate uh covert although covert is clearly going to accelerate them can you maybe better pinpoint when it was that the tide began to go out on on on globalization i mean obviously we may all identify it perhaps with the uh the coming up power of president trump but in many ways i have a recollection that it predates that as well there was already an indication of uh uh prior to that that you know the the the kind of trends that you're describing here were already in prospect what happened and and maybe you could pinpoint a little more closely when the tide began to go out on globalization in particular that's a great question and there's no question it predates president trump he is a symptom of that uh much as i would say the brexit vote was also a symptom of that i mean i i think it's important to remember what sort of hyper globalization was all about and think of the attitudes many people had in the 1990s that democracy was going to spread borders were going to become increasingly irrelevant uh you know you could be you could grow up anywhere get an education and move anywhere in the world get a job become a sort of global citizen as well and this was going to have wonderful benefits for everybody we'd all live in more free and open countries it would also foster economic growth because we would reduce trade barriers we'd allow investment to flow wherever it could countries would be bound together by economic ties so they wouldn't bother to fight each other as well and it was really a image of a very wonderful harmonious we'll all just get rich in this globalized world um i think several things uh then started to undermine this um first of all the benefits of this were not evenly distributed and to oversimplify a little bit uh the poorest people in the world actually did pretty well from it it fostered lots of economic growth in china in india in a number of other parts of southeast asia it also was very good for wall street it was very good for the wealthiest people in a number of advanced countries the benefits uh were generally not realized by lower and middle classes in north america in europe and elsewhere so the benefits of globalization were not evenly distributed and even though opening up trade was maybe good for economies as a whole there were always going to be sectors within particular economies that were going to be damaged by it this has been true forever right if you if you're an industry that gets wiped out by foreign competition it may be good for everybody they're getting cheaper goods economic growth increases but it's really bad if your factory is the one that closed so that was one problem you began to see a political backlash against it uh second the financial crisis of 2008 if you ask for a specific moment where i think things really begin to come unglued we have a financial crisis in the united states which spreads around the world the worst recession since the great depression that is to say before we got to the covet-related depression and i think this had an inevitable effect not only on generating a lot of lower and middle class anger but also cast real doubt on the wisdom of all of the economic geniuses who had designed this system uh back in the 90s people said you know all these masters of the universe on wall street they really know what they're doing in 2008 2009 it became clear that they didn't and in fact it engaged in a varieties of fraud and then finally i think um the opening up of borders and this is perhaps most true in the european case it neglected the importance of nationalism uh that as much as i might like to live in a very cosmopolitan rich multicultural type place uh you know think london uh many other people saw this as threatening uh saw this as threatening to their way of lives rightly or wrongly right and so you started to see a nativist backlash in places like england in hungary in poland elsewhere against the sort of social and cultural side of this as well and that again begins long before donald trump arrives it's in fact part of the argument he used back in 2016 to win the presidency okay stephen so i'll just i'll go to a few questions as they're coming in uh i want to hear from mark miller who's course chief of staff of the irish defense forces and he says thank you for an excellent talk um do you think the covet 19 that covert 19 will strengthen or weaken the multilateral institutions required uh to address um the human uh security implications of climate breakdown and uh biodiversity loss and maybe just to echo that i mean i know you've addressed this to some extent but another member of the institute peter malone and the member of our board indeed uh once wants to know what is steven's forecast on the effects of all of this on the climate change agenda i know you've spoken to about that to some extent but maybe maybe we could elaborate on a little bit more um sure so i i the short answer is i don't know you would think this would be a absolutely vivid compelling demonstration about the most obvious one we've seen yet of the necessity of global cooperation to address any number of transnational problems right ultimately the problems of pandemics are inherently transnational uh and there isn't uh i think much of a case that one any single government is responsible so we're all getting this very vivid demonstration uh that this sort of thing requires effective uh multinational responses and by the way this is happening also at a moment as you undoubtedly well know where we're getting abundant evidence of uh climate change being a very real phenomenon not 10 years from now not 30 years from now but right now my my home state of california has been on fire uh for several months and that's very directly climate change related so we're not lacking now evidence of what needs to be done and that those responses have to be multinational in nature what i find frustrating where my uncertainty comes from is the fact that a problem exists and is recognized doesn't necessarily mean that it gets solved and one of the more disappointing features of the response to uh to the pandemic has been the sense to which different states have tended to want to go their own way on this my own country in particular rather than working together with others to try and respond to it you've seen that i think to some extent in europe as well you know france's response is different than belgium's is different than spain's is different than italy's um and there's been some cooperation within the european union but there's also been a certain amount of of tension or rivalry or disagreement so the fact that we're getting this demonstration of the importance of acting together to address these things i worry is not necessarily going to lead us to draw the right conclusion and even if we did draw the right conclusion this is my last point reaching an agreement on and figuring out you know who will bear the set of costs and what the new set of rules or guidelines might be is not going to be easy because these are immensely complicated issues climate change being i think in some respects even more difficult a problem to tackle than something like a pandemic yeah stephen uh just maybe um just to talk about a little bit the uh the the the um the pending election uh and um i i think most people accept that uh you know if if there's a president biden that that everything won't go back to the way it was uh five years ago or four years ago um that that some things have changed uh regardless of whether it's a biden or or a trump presidency obviously uh um in president trump trump's case obviously um we we know his form over the last four years but a president uh biden presidency um what things uh would likely cut you know would likely would he not reverse i mean in other words some of these trends that you've been describing are they're almost are they almost regardless of who becomes president of the united states uh after the third of uh or early next year uh um and would a president biden just just simply kind of be be uh be part of kind of um this this new world that you're describing uh obviously maybe shaping it in somewhat different way uh but nonetheless it would be that different world that he would be deciding over in other words that the trends that you're describing are indeed irreversible are ones that he would not lose to that's another excellent question um so the most obvious thing uh where i think the biden presidency would be similar to the trump approach is vis-a-vis china uh biden's positions in the campaign have been uh more much more hawkish than he would have taken 10 years ago for example uh and i think there's now a broad consensus within the american foreign policy community that the united states has to take a tougher line against china on a whole variety of subjects economically militarily and uh even i think with respect to human rights practices i think the difference between obama administration and the trump administration on china will not be in being more confrontational or taking a tougher stance but biden would want to do it much more uh in much more in partnership with others i mean one of the great mistakes the trump administration made was that they decided to launch this economic rivalry with china at the same time that they were launching trade wars with south korea with japan with the european union and with others so the united states ended up in effect going up against china on its own it would have been much more effective if we had you know stayed in the trans-pacific partnership worked with europe worked with japan worked with south korea and collectively gone and said to china you need to alter some of your economic practices i think that's likely to be a biden approach but it will not be sort of uh returning to the open embrace of china that you might have seen in the 1990s or before um on other issues i think it's clear by the administration would take that set of transnational issues we were talking about before climate change pandemics uh some other things much more seriously as the obama administration in fact did there my concern is that even if they want to do more on those issues they're going to face lots of opposition from the republicans party and so you may have a situation where the administration wants to go in one direction and has trouble getting the congress has trouble getting the senate to go along with them in ways that might be important some of that will depend obviously on how the election turns out and what the relative balance of power is on capitol hill okay stephen can i just take a question here from um alan jukes who's a former uh finance minister here in ireland he wants to know and this question relates to africa he says and what effect does professor walt foresee for africa in what you've been describing there he says disruption of trade flows will hamper development processes and competition from the rest of the world for for example precious metals could lead to further danger dangers of external manipulation and corruption in african states i suppose so the effect on africa of what we talked about asia obviously to some extent to considerable extent but maybe just a little bit focus on africa um yes uh so with the caveat that i don't consider myself an expert on african politics and and so i don't speak from a deep well of expertise on on this one but i'd say a couple of things and i agree with the thrust of the question i mean first of all uh the pandemic is having a very powerful effect in parts of africa partly because public health facilities are not as well developed as they are in other parts of the world with the small caveat that some african countries have responded actually pretty well in part because they've had experience with things like ebola and others in the past and so there was a certain uh certain degree of expertise or awareness of how seriously when one had to respond but the rest of the question i think gets it exactly right there are two big uh issues one uh africa had been doing relatively well when the rest of the world economy was doing well for all the obvious reasons uh you know the rising tide was lifting all boats and was lifting africa actually faster than other parts of the world if the whole world economy goes back the other direction this is uh you know harmful to africa and they don't have the reservoirs of wealth uh to buttress or to get through it as easily so if we have a very slow global economic recovery to covid that's not going to be good for africa second to the extent that the united states china and perhaps some others start playing hardball with each other and start worrying about relative levels of influence on the one hand some countries may be able to play both sides off against each other and benefit from that but i think if you look at sort of the history of the cold war for example uh soviet american competition in some parts of the world and including africa ultimately wasn't beneficial for those societies as the question implied made it it tempted us to you know cut deals with rulers who chose to support us even if they weren't very good for their own countries it made us put human rights on the back burner even economic development on the back burner to strategic position and competition and i would worry that we're going to see a replay of things like that in the future if a soviet amer or sorry if a sino-american competition really heats up okay stephen uh so question here from suzanne keating who's the ceo of one of our development uh agencies here dokas she says ireland is due to sit on the security council in january 2021 having of course been elected as a non-permanent member for the two years 2021 to uh 2022. he and he says she says given your analysis what would you advise that they being we i suppose prioritize if we are to have any influence at that table i mean maybe ah um you know i i obviously not knowing what the agenda is going to be it's sort of impossible to answer the question but i i would say to uh it's almost any country as a non-permanent members to say you should uh you should think for yourself um that i think the security council works more effectively when uh the permanent members are not able to fully dictate the outcome of different of different initiatives or different resolutions and you know actually have to go do the real political and diplomatic work of rounding up support and so you know if the united states is able to uh put together positions that command uh real support uh through the security council that's good and when we find ourselves isolated because the position that we're taking can't even command support from ireland that should be a warning sign to the permanent members that maybe that they're they're off you know in a position that's not really defensible so i guess i would encourage encourage the irish representative to think for himself or herself in this case it'll be a herself um uh so um uh steven just a question from mary uh cross who's a former irish ambassador indeed and iie a board member uh she says professor walt said uh that power and influence is shifting towards asia and that's been a very clear part of your presentation issue also what other asian powers besides china do you see as important in this shift um well almost all of them the certainly you know if you look over a 30 or 40 year period the rise of south korea uh from a country that was at one time had a lower per capita income than north korea i think that was true well into the 1960s and now south korea is a top 10 economy uh north or sorry vietnam has had a remarkable run of economic growth increasingly important uh this is the first year i in 25 years or so in which the australian economy uh didn't grow and that's directly related to covet not the mistakes that the australians made and finally india although i think it's disappointed a number of uh you know analysts uh with its economic performance has done far better in the last uh 10 to 15 years than it had done previously as well so in a sense we're seeing not just the spectacular rise of china but a number of other countries over a 30 or 40 year period you know you could throw in singapore which has had a remarkable run for a long period of time as well and all of this has begun to move the overall balance of economic power uh you know from what was once very much a north america and europe uh world plus japan to a world where it's much more evenly distributed it is not it is not just china although china is obviously a big part of it steve just um uh you said uh either in your speech or elsewhere you you said that it was a combination of the deadly virus inadequate planning and incompetent leadership has placed humanity on a new and worrisome path just how worried are you i mean how worrisome is this path i mean is this is this future a possible future that you're describing uh is it one that we should all be uh losing a great amount of sleepover um well i'm more concerned than i have been you know in most of my life i guess uh i mean i think the pandemic itself we will in fact get get over i think there will eventually be some combination of vaccines and medical treatments such that this issue is no longer uh restricting life in the way it is uh i don't anticipate you know sort of going back to the way things were anytime soon i think we will still be adjusting our behavior a year from now and one thing to think about is you know what happens if a year from now we have a vaccine it's readily available and it's only 70 percent effective it's about as good as a good flu vaccine which means there's still some considerable risk that if you're in certain circumstances you could catch a disease that's more virulent or potentially more dangerous than your average than your average flu that's going to lead people to adjust their behavior in certain ways and that may be the world uh we're headed into i'm much more concerned by a set of political trends in a variety of places and and to be uh you know a selfish american nationalist for a moment especially in my own country where the the toxic nature of our political system now the fact that we're even talking about the possibility of an election where 30 to 40 percent of the country will think the election was fraudulent regardless of what the outcome is right that's a very worrisome situation for any uh democracy to be in and particularly when it's a democracy that has been as powerful and influential and played such an enormous role in the world so in in a sense i've been more worried about the political trends inside the united states for the last few years than i've ever been at in my life and i'm hoping that the sort of darkest predictions here turn out not to be true and that over the next year or two we can see uh sort of the re-emergence of a somewhat more unified and cohesive america i think that would be good for the united states would also be good for the rest of the world it is actually not healthy to have such a powerful country be so convulsed so distracted and so unpredictable because our politics keeps shifting back and forth so rapidly well just apropos that i mean a question here from peter gunning who's a former colleague of mine indeed a former ambassador and he wants to know he says even if we leave aside the u.s election outcome uh is the era of the us as the indispensable power in the world uh whether militarily or in terms of values and standards is that over forever is it over for good um well i've never liked the thinking of ourselves as the indispensable power i think that was uh madeleine albright's uh mistaken phrase it exaggerated america's ability to shape uh shape events uh certainly the position the united states found itself in in the 1990s uh where not only were we essentially unchallenged by anyone on good terms with almost every uh major power uh uh enjoying a number of years of pretty robust economic growth i think that uh that world is not going to come back in my lifetime uh that the united states is not going to be in that dominant position uh as well and that's because of the rise of china the partial recovery of russia and some other other trends as well but the united states is going to remain extremely influential and its ability to shape events in particular realms uh in particular areas for good or bad is still going to be quite profound i think that requires the united states to be more selective to decide what issues it's going to care most about what parts of the world it's going to care most about and to understand what it is good at doing and what it's not good at doing historically we've been pretty good at deterring major conflict in certain areas we have not been particularly good at taking over other countries and then running them in a beneficial uh beneficial way so if we do more of the former and less of the latter uh that'd be a good thing historically the united states has been pretty good at bringing groups of mostly like-minded countries together for common purposes and that was obviously especially true in the cold war and not just in security terms also in in economic terms i think we can still play that role pretty effectively if we choose to do so but whether we uh you know have the wisdom to sort of focus on what our skill set really is and stop making some of the mistakes we've made over the last 20 or 30 years uh remains to be seen okay yeah you've touched um extensively on on asia we've talked in africa as well there's a question here from um jeremy uh wilmhurst of the british embassy here in dublin he wants to know what is your assessment of uh recent gulf peace deals and with israel uh what might happen next in the middle east peace process um well the i've i've taken a slightly contrarian position i don't regard these uh recent agreements uh the establishment of diplomatic uh relations between the uae and israel between bahrain and israel as particularly significant um they're not trivial they're not non-events but they're not a breakthrough in any significant way first of all these were countries that weren't at war with israel had never fought israel posed no military threat to israel so suddenly establishing diplomatic relations doesn't alter the strategic situation at all uh secondly there was already a lot of tacit cooperation between these countries in israel that's been going on for a long time a lot of it is focused on their mutual antipathy toward iran um so it wasn't exactly a revelation to discover that these countries were now willing to sort of go public uh with this as well so i say it's not a non-event but it's not a real breakthrough and of course it does absolutely nothing to deal with what is israel's central problem which is namely still the israeli-palestinian conflict and what they're going to do with the million-plus palestinians who are under their control but have no uh political rights um it has no uh bearing on that uh decision if anything it just allows um the situation to to continue now there is a statement or there's been a hint that to get this the netanyahu government agreed that they would not go ahead with plans to annex the west bank uh i guess my view is uh that option is always there it's certainly been something that the israeli right has pushed uh for a long time and i don't imagine the uae sort of breaking diplomatic relations three years from now uh if that's what ultimately happens so when i i did write about this a few weeks ago and i said uh basically the road to a one-state solution just got a fresh code of asphalt it made that more likely and that itself poses i think enormous long-term problems for israel because it will be impossible to impose a one-state solution uh and uh and also remain any kind of a democracy in in more than just name only i think there it has uh potent you know enormous long-term problems and those agreements really didn't do much to address that okay stephen uh just uh one or two more questions here and we're uh coming up against the hour very shortly uh neve garvey who's another um leader in our among our development agencies here called tropra she says for a small country i'll date one with a good diplomatic profile she's talking about ireland here uh what role can ireland most meaningfully play in fostering global cooperation and promotion of values of rights and democracy i suppose as as the us withdrawals to some extent um you know what is the scope what's the prospect for how realistic is it that a country like ireland can can they can it can take up these challenges uh in the absence of of the united states uh in ways that we've known of them in ways that they've been previously um i haven't thought about this i mean obviously smaller countries have have more limited influence but they occasionally do punch uh you know punch above their weight and a number of them have been quite influential on certain issues by sort of establishing credibility with the different parties by establishing a mutual acknowledgement of neutrality sort of not taking sides in any particular way the most obvious place of course where ireland can exercise disproportionate leverage or influence is vis-a-vis the united states because of the connection between the two countries i think american politicians are more likely to pay attention to a diplomat from ireland than a diplomat from some other parts of the world precisely because of the impact of the irish diaspora in our politics uh and the role that you know those connections play so in a sense um you know the irish approach should be not all that different from what i think has been the british approach all all along which is you know you recognize that the united states is going to be doing a lot of things around the world and you want to perch on our shoulder and whisper in our ear hopefully with some sage advice on how we ought to think about it and if we're wise you know occasionally we'll listen well that's good to know just a question here from dan o'brien and just back to asia dan o'brien is the chief economist uh here in the iaea he says are asked how significant are recent developments in hong kong and do you think the us would react differently if it appeared that something similar was going to happen in taiwan uh that that's a uh that's a hugely important question so um first of all uh the united states uh in in general has not reacted to uh internal developments in china we protested i mean go back to tiananmen square um we protested we downgraded diplomatic relations for a time but ultimately i think we have recognized that when you are dealing with major powers there are just real limits to how much you can shape what they do internally but hong kong was slightly different because it was supposed to be under a different set of arrangements now you know as sort of a foreign policy realist i've always thought that the agreements on hong kong were not going to last forever that as china became more powerful eventually they might renege on them but they have real implications for taiwan because of course if the chinese now try to say to taiwan look please let's have reunification we'll let you have some special character that's a much less credible promise to make now that they've of course altered the arrangements in hong kong the taiwanese are have every reason to be skeptical of any assurances they might get about special treatment or special status or you know one country two systems or anything uh like that so any kind of reunification i think being much harder as a result of what's happened in hong kong i also believe the united states for both uh political and strategic reasons would act uh very differently uh in the event of uh any effort to impose coercively uh beijing's control over uh taiwan and the american position since the 1970s here has been you know quite clear uh we were not opposed to voluntary reunification if both sides wanted to get back together that was fine uh with us but we didn't want china to impose uh reunification and i think that position would uh any effort by china to do that would be strongly opposed by the united states okay um stephen we've been speaking about uh state actors obviously and um global institutions as well to some extent but here's a question now where we on which we might um finish off uh it's from alexander alex uh conway uh he wants to know where do enormous companies like facebook and google feature in your vision are in this vision of post-pandemic global world order and does professor walls see them becoming more powerful or influential actors um i'll go out on a limb here and i again this is not my area of expertise but i'll i actually think that we may be sort of at uh you know let's call it peak google or peak facebook that people have we've all benefited in various ways from these social media companies people have uh have enjoyed using them have gotten benefits uh benefits from them etc but i think there's also a growing recognition uh in many parts of the world that their political and social impact is not just positive uh and that with anything any agency any corporation any activity that can have this profound an effect on our politics and on our society does require some degree of control um whether it means breaking some of these companies up whether it means putting some restrictions on how they operate uh exactly how we go about doing this that's all up for grabs but i think this idea that we could that we would just treat them as corporations that were providing a service and let them make as much money as possible let them act pretty much as they wished and let them put any content they want up on their platforms regardless of its consequences i think there's a growing sense that that's not the right answer what the right answer is is what we're arguing about now but i would guess that 10 years from now we will see most of those companies under greater restrictions greater degree of control altering their practices i think they'll still be making tons of money but i think they're going to be operating somewhat differently in many parts of the world um precisely because net people now realize that the consequences of allowing them to sort of operate unchecked have not been uh uniformly positive yeah just i mean um talking about just go back to the nationalism issue i mean obviously you say that the nationalism is likely to emerge as a stronger uh force post covet but where does that then i mean as a country here obviously devoted and about to take up the responsibilities uh within the security council of the united nations where does that leave and i think he's also spoke about the w a other the wto leading reform but where does it leave the the multinational multilateral world of of the un i mean is america simply going to just uh do its own thing uh or is is is there still um is there still scope for for a role by by by the multilateral organizations uh in the future as there has been in the past yeah i i think there definitely is i i don't see any contradiction between a world that uh where nationalism is a very powerful force where different groups see themselves as belonging to a nation with particular interests and traditions and cultures uh and a world in which multilateralism is a key element uh that's i think a recognition that although we have these separate nations around the world in separate states they cannot achieve their own selfish interests uh as effectively on their own as they can in partnership with others figuring out what the rules should be figuring out how those arrangements or norms or institutions should be constructed is always a difficult diplomatic task but the fact that we are existing in all these separate tribes doesn't mean we can't come up with ways of doing business together ways of working together that are better than trying to operate solely on our own so i don't see a tension or at least a contradiction between nationalism and multilateralism i think of multilateralism as one of the strategies states can adopt to try and pursue their own aims in partnership with others i'd like to think that's a view that will overall be you know characteristic of american diplomacy even if it hasn't been featured very much in the last few years people were right on two o'clock here irish time nine o'clock boston time uh so i want to just say thank you to you for such a such a diverse uh inspiring indeed and uh presentation this afternoon uh we we do very much hope that some of these things that you forecast particularly when you speak about a less open less free less democratic world at post covert that all of them don't come to pass uh or may not come to pass in in ways that uh you know surpass our worst uh uh fears but in any event uh clearly uh we're deeply indebted to you uh we wish you the very best and we follow obviously uh the developments of the united states in particular with a particular intensity over the next couple of weeks but they're after as well of course and we just look forward to being able to welcome you back uh hopefully post covert and whether we'd have that post code world at that stage it remains to be seen but we certainly wish to uh extend a very warm invitation to you to come to dublin to the institute at some time in the future where we can continue this discussion i look forward to it for many many reasons the world will be in better place when that's a possibility and i always welcome an opportunity to come to ireland thank you stephen we appreciate it very much good afternoon you

Channel: IIEA

Views: 18,710

Keywords: Covid-19, Global Politics, International Relations, America, China, US, United States, Europe, EU, European Union, Globalisation, Ireland, IIEA

Id: 7WoOje_mDNQ

Length: 61min 26sec (3686 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020