The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities | SOAS University of London

this talk is sponsored by the Center for International Studies and diplomacy as a part of the International Nations speaker series national studies professor Marie Sharma doesn't really need an introduction for most of you studying international relations and the Social Sciences in general he you know surely you will know him and his writings I would say a little bit about his institutional position and then we will move on to the other parts of this lecture professor Murray Sharma is the our Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service professor of political science at the University of Chicago is your author of several books including the Israel lobby of course which is a book that is taught here at source and several courses including my humble course as well and of course is the author of the great delusion liberal dreams and international realities and this is a title of this talk today as well professor Murray i'ma go talk about for about 40 minutes should give us enough time for questions and answers and a good dialogue thereafter and we will also have a drinks reception in the foyer for those of you who want to join us but allow me to introduce the talk with a tweet and don't worry this is not from president Donald Trump and not promised Twitter site although there is a lot of exciting stuff happening then some people would say some a liberal delusions posted on that particular Twitter site I'm allowed to say that as a as a scholar here but but this is this is not from his side this is actually from one of our distinguished guests today and I thought it was very pertinent for for this particular talk so allow me to to quote this tweet John marshana is coming to speak at so us that's going to be an interesting one to say the least as one of the Lions of realism enters the den of heterodoxy I found that very interesting so without further ado please give a very distinct source welcome to Professor John Marshall thank you very much for the kind introduction and thank you so as for inviting me here this is the second time I've been to so as to speak the first time was actually with Steve Walt when we came here to talk about the Israel lobby and US foreign policy the subject I'm talking about tonight is the subject of my new book the great delusion of liberal ideals and international realities okay my basic story when the Cold War ended the United States adopted a foreign policy of liberal hegemony and the basic aim of that foreign policy was to remake the world in America's image my argument is that the policy failed miserably and I believe that one of the principal reasons certainly not the only reason but one of the principal reasons that President Trump is now in the White House is that he ran against liberal hegemony his arguments resonated with the American public because the policy failed and he got elected but again there were other reasons now regarding why it failed my argument is that liberalism as for as reflected in this policy of liberal hegemony ran up against two other isms nationalism and realism and when liberalism runs up against nationalism nationalism wins almost every time and the same thing is true with realism so what really defeated liberal hegemony in the end was nationalism and realism so that's the story that I'm gonna tell you now here's the outline of the talk I have to start by defining what I mean by liberalism then I have to tell you what I mean by nationalism then I have to describe for you what the foreign policy of liberal hegemony was all about then I want to tell you why the United States pursued liberal hegemony then I want to tell you what its track record looks like and this is a story of one failure after another and then I'm gonna tell you why I think liberal hegemony failed and then I'll close by offering some comments on where I think liberal hegemony is headed okay let me start with what liberalism is key thing to understand about liberalism is that it is based on two fundamental assumptions about human nature the first one goes like this do you believe that human beings are fundamentally social animals who carve out room for their individuality or do you believe that we are fundamentally individuals to begin with who come together and form social contracts a very very important question and where you stand on this issue is of enormous consequence liberalism is predicated on the assumption that we are individuals from the get-go and that we form social contracts this is why people like Hobbes and Locke who is effectively the father of liberalism and Rousseau are known as social contract theorists they all start with individuals in the state of nature who form social contracts so that's the first point you want to keep in mind in liberalism about liberalism the focus on the individual second is that liberalism assumes that human beings cannot use their critical faculties to discover universal truths when it comes to first principles when it comes to those big questions about what is the good life what is the proper political system we cannot reach universal agreement I like to talk about abortion and affirmative action when I talk about this subject in the United States abortion affirmative action or hot-button issues it's very hard to imagine that you could get a whole slew of people together let them turn on their critical faculties and they could reach agreement on these issues I know really smart people really smart people who favor abortion and really smart people who are opposed to abortion it was very important to understand when it comes to liberalism and this critically important assumption is that sometimes people believe so fervently with regard to a particular issue that they're willing to kill each other right it matters so much and you want to remember that you can trace the origins of liberalism back to this country and you can trace the origins back to a time when Protestants and Catholics were killing each other in huge numbers there's no way you can use your critical faculties to determine whether Catholicism is a superior religion to Protestantism or vice-versa they're just real limits to what you can do with your critical faculties when it comes to dealing with first principles and the potential for violence is always there so the central question for liberalism is how should politics be arranged to deal with this potential for violence this is what liberalism is all about thinking about this central problem this is the liberal solution has three parts to it first part is to argue about individual rights the argument is that everybody has individual rights a set of rights that they cannot be denied and those rights are inalienable that's why you use the word everybody this is very important I'll talk more about this in another minute it's very important understand that would rule ISM privileges rights and those are inalienable rights or natural rights that means they applied to everybody on the planet okay and the idea is that individuals right individuals have a right they have the freedom to live life pretty much as they see fit because we individuals cannot agree on what is the right life or the good life we can't agree on first principles the name of the game is to carve out space in civil society for individuals to have as much freedom as possible to live life the way they see fit that's what living in the liberal society is all about it's why I'm very happy that I live in liberal America right because we have lots of rights to do pretty much what we want second part of the story is we emphasize the norm of tolerance because we recognize in a liberal society that there are going to be differences and that some people are gonna live in ways that are different than you and in ways that you don't approve of but we tolerate difference again what we're trying to do here is we're trying to prevent people from killing each other and at the same time allow them as much freedom as possible to live life the way they see fit but the problem is that tolerance and an emphasis on rights only takes you so far because there's still gonna be some people out there who want to kill those they disagree with and who are living according to principles that they don't agree with that's why you need a state there is a very important role for the state in a liberal society but it's supposed to be a limited state because if you have a really powerful state that state can trample on individual rights and you don't want that you want to give individuals the right to live the life as they see fit okay so those are the three solutions or the three elements of the liberal solution to the starting problem now here's where the taproot of liberal hegemony comes in right I'll say much more about this as we go along it took me a long while to figure this out when I was thinking about liberalism but a theory that's based on individualism and says that every individual on the planet has a certain set of rights quickly becomes a universalistic theory it's very important to understand that that's what turned this as I go along I'll tell the story in greater detail this is what turns the United States into a crusader state it's that heavy emphasis on rights individual rights inalienable rights that leads to a universalistic ideology or foreign policy in this case okay but know don't want to get into that at the moment let's talk a little bit about nationalism nationalisms core assumption very different than liberalism starts with the assumption that humans are naturally social animals we are born into and heavily socialized into particular groups were born into tribes before our critical faculties kick in we are socialized by our mother and father and by others around us and individualism takes a backseat to group loyalty this is not to say that you have no room for individualism in in any society you can carve out lots of space for individualism but you do it in the context of group loyalty we are all social animals that's what nationalism assumes aside from the family the most important group the most important social group in today's world is the nation and I'll say more about this in a second before I do that what exactly is nationalism nationalism is a set of political beliefs which hold that a nation a body of individuals with characteristics that purportedly distinguish them from other groups should have their own state a nation-state the the concept of a nation-state captures what nationalism is all about so nationalism is predicated on the assumption that we're all born into social groups and the most important social group outside the family and the world we live in is the nation and each one of those nations wants its own state to drive this point home think of Zionism and think of Theodor Herzl Theodor Herzl was the father of Zionism his most famous book is called the Jewish state just think of those words the Jewish state he's effectively saying there is this group there is this nation there is this tribe called Jews and they want their own state Jewish state think about the Palestinians what did the Palestinians want the Palestinians want a state of their own people talk about the two-state solution Palestinians and Jews go to Catalonia whether the Catalonians what the cattle aliens want a state of their own a nation-state that's what nationalism is take this a step further very important to understand especially for my story that nations place enormous importance on sovereignty or self-determination which is why they want their own state Palestinians want their own state because they want to determine their own future they want to determine what their politics look like they want to have a control over their own daily life sovereignty self-determination these these these are concepts that matter very greatly in a world of nation-states and of course this brings us to nation-states it's not just nations nation-states place enormous importance on sovereign or self-determination which inclines them in powerful ways to resist foreign interference think of the United States today and think of all this talk in the United States about the Russians interfering in American elections this is categorically unacceptable to the vast number of Americans why is that the case it's because the Russians are violating our sovereignty they're interfering in the politics of America and it's quite clear that most Europeans feel the same way about the Russians interfering and their politics and that of course is because Europe is filled with nation states and those nation states care about their sovereignty and they don't want other countries interfering and their politics it's all about nationalism now my argument is as you heard me say early on nationalism beats liberalism in every turn why is that the case it's because we're primarily social animals we're not individuals from the get-go who forms social contracts we're social animals were born into groups were born into nations were born into tribes from the beginning we're heavily socialized from the beginning we have deep loyalties in almost every case and on the empirical side just look at the planet today have you ever thought about what the planet looks like today compared to what it looked like in let's say 1450 if I gave you a map of Europe in 1450 and I told you to memorize it in one week it's not clear you could do it it would be such a complicated map there's principalities there do Xi's city states there's empires there's just all sorts of different kinds of political entities on that map of Europe in the 15th century today the entire planet is covered with nation-states remarkable homogeneity of course each one of those nation-states is different because nations are different from each other different cultures but the planet is covered with nation-states furthermore just to compare it to liberal democracies we have never even had 50% of the states on the globe being liberal democracies and since 2006 the number of liberal democracies on the planet is decreasing at the same time every state is a nation-state nationalism finally very important remember all liberal democracies this includes countries like the United States and Britain are liberal nation states the United States is a very nationalistic country Britain is a very nationalistic country witness brexit okay nationalism very powerful force here and in the United States even though what we talk about most of the time is these countries as liberal countries I often say to people if you went to the main research library at the University of Chicago you would find that half the library is filled with books on American liberalism yet you can't even find one full shelf of books on nationalism okay I've given you my definition of liberalism and my definition of nationalism that's all for setting up my discussion of liberal hegemony and why it failed okay liberal hegemonies basically an attempt to remake the world in America's image liberal hegemony as I said he before is the foreign policy we adopt when the cold war ends and liberal hegemony has three important dimensions to it the first and most important dimension is the United States and its European allies including Britain are committed to spreading liberal democracy all over the planet we are going to interfere in the politics of countries here and there and everywhere all for the purpose of making them liberal democracies we want a planet that's not just filled with nation-states but filled with liberal democratic nation states that's the first dimension second is were bent on integrating more and more countries into an open international economy the name of the game is to get countries hooked on capitalism the name of the game is to create more and more economic interdependence and in the third goal which is related to the second goal is to integrate more and more countries and especially big countries like China and Russia into international institutions and as you know those international institutions like the IMF the WTO the World Bank are inextricably bound up with that open international economy so the name of the game is to have really robust and numerous international institutions and get countries all across the planet especially the China's and the Russia's out there embedded in those institutions also get them embedded in this open international economy and going back to my first point spreading liberal democracy across the planet those are the basic goals and let me give you an example of this policy at work think about NATO expansion EU expansion and the color revolutions the Rose Revolution in Georgia and the orange revolution in Ukraine what we were trying to do we meaning the West the United States was in the driver's seat but the Europeans were with us hook line and sinker okay what we were trying to do was we were trying to spread democracy in Eastern Europe including in countries that were part of the former Soviet Union like Ukraine and Georgia through devices like the Rose Revolution in the Orange Revolution that's what we're trying to do and we were even talking about turning Russia into a liberal democracy so the name of the game in Eastern Europe as we move NATO and the EU eastward is to foster the growth of liberal democracy furthermore we're interested in integrating more and more countries in Eastern Europe into the open international economy this is why we wanted to bring those countries into the EU remember we brought a whole slug of countries in Eastern Europe into the EU in the early 2000s and we were talking about bringing Ukraine and Georgia and other countries over time into the EU we're spreading capitalism getting people hooked on economic interdependence and finally we wanted to integrate them into more and more institutions we're spreading EU which the EU which is an institution and spreading NATO which is an institution eastward a lot of people tend to think that NATO expansion was designed to contain Russia that we were fearful that Russia was going to try and conquer Eastern Europe there is no evidence that that's what underpinned our thinking in fact Michael McFaul who was the American ambassador to Moscow from 2012 to 2014 emphasizes that he told Putin on pneumonic numerous occasions that he had nothing to fear from NATO expansion Madeleine Albright you can find it on the internet told Vladimir Putin he had nothing to fear from NATO expansion because we did not see NATO expansion as part of a containment strategy visa V Russia that's the way we talk about it now in the wake of the Ukraine crisis because we're trying to blame the Russians for the crisis but that's not the way we thought about it beforehand what we thought forehand is we would take this giant security community right these three goals were at the center of that security community and expanded eastward okay so what are the benefits of liberal democracy why are we doing this first is we believe it eliminates significant human rights violations again when you talk about liberal states like the United States and its Western European allies you're talking about countries to place a very high premium on human rights or individual rights and when those countries see individual rights or human rights being violated in other countries there's a very powerful tendency to intervene well the belief here is that if you make every country on the planet a liberal democracy then you effectively take this problem off the table because the key operating assumption is that liberal democracies don't violate the rights of their citizens and deeply harmful in massive ways the way non liberal democracies do so the name of the game is to create a world of liberal democracies to solve the problem of massive human rights violations second the liberal hegemonist belief in Democratic peace theory they believe that democracies don't fight other democracies well if you believe that democracies don't fight other democracies and every country on the planet is a liberal democracy it's peace love and dope just go back to Francis Fukuyama's very famous article at the end of history which I'm sure all of you have either heard of her read if you haven't read it you ought to read it he says at the end of the piece and that piece is consistent with the basic story I'm telling here he says that once the planet is filled with liberal democracies the biggest problem that we're going to face is boredom he says that you think I'm probably making it up go read it he says that the biggest problem we're gonna face is boredom that's because when you have a planet that's filled with liberal democracies human rights violations are off the table massive human rights violations that is and furthermore it's a more peaceful world that's why it's boring and you know the United States is deeply concerned about problems like terrorism and nuclear proliferation terrorism and nuclear proliferation well the argument is if you have a peaceful world those two those problems disappear so this is a way to solve the terrorism and proliferation problems finally liberal agenda makes the world safe for liberal democracy this is Woodrow Wilson's famous phrase what am I saying here inside any liberal democracy there gonna be a number of people sometimes a substantial number of people who don't like liberal democracy remember I told you people cannot reach universal agreement on first principles so inside any liberal democracy they're gonna be people are unhappy with that political system and they're gonna want to overthrow it and the great danger is that they'll be able to go to another country and get support let me tell you a story when I was a little boy growing up in New York in the 1950s everybody worried about communist right communism was a real threat so they said and what people worried about was that those communists in the United States would form a pulse alliance with the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union would provide those communists with the wherewithal to begin to erode liberal democracy and ultimately overthrow the American government this now sounds crazy but at the time people really did think that was a real threat okay well if the planet has nothing but liberal democracies on it then communists or any other group inside a liberal democracy who don't like the political order have no foreign country that they can go to for help and this is how you make the world safe for democracy so these were the benefits of liberal hegemony that were touted in the early 1990s and played such an important role in motivating us us meaning the Americans to push hard with this strategy I want to talk a bit more about why the u.s. pursued liberal hegemony my argument is that unipolarity made it possible to largely ignore balance of power considerations and pursue a liberal foreign policy the foreign policy that I just described to you is impossible to pursue in a bipolar or a multipolar world and the reason is that when you're in a world where there are two or more great powers the great powers have to compete with each other and they engage in security competition this is the realist side of John coming out okay in other words when there are more than one great power in the system those two or three or four great powers compete with each other and they cannot afford to pursue an ideological or an idealistic foreign policy like liberal hegemony they have to compete with each other for power and of course what happens when the cold war ends and most of you students are too young to remember this but the Soviet Union collapses and the United States is left as by far the most powerful country in the world it is Godzilla therefore it does not have to worry about balance of power politics with another great power because there is no other great power it is the soul Paul it is the Utapau so it is in a position to pursue a profoundly liberal foreign policy and that my second point the United States is a profoundly liberal country that places a very high premium on individual rights and believes in things like Democratic peace theory see what I'm saying here you had a situation where this profoundly liberal country had just won the Cold War and was very optimistic about its prospects for spreading democracy making this open international economy attractive to everyone and incorporating states of all sorts including China and Russia into international institutions but there's a third dimension to the story and I want to really emphasize this dimension in good part because it shows you how nationalistic the United States is American nationalism supplied an unhealthy dose of hubris to the equation and I right think Madeleine Albright Madeleine Albright as many of you know is a card-carrying liberal hegemonist right she's deeply committed to spreading American democracy across the planet and she's deeply committed to using American military force for that purpose but Madeleine Albright is also an American nationalist par excellence her most famous comment that she has made over the course of her lifetime was made in the late 1990s when someone on TV in an interview asked her why is the United States intervening here there and everywhere and she said it's because we are the indispensable nation we stand taller and we see further now just think about the word we the word we when you hear the word we you always want to think the other we the other this is nationalism we are the indispensable there's the word nation we are the indispensable nation and we stand taller we see further well this is a way of saying that she is reflecting the chauvinism that is almost always part and parcel of nationalism this is why most people don't like nationalism especially in the academy because it has a real chauvinistic side to it I'm not saying this is a good thing I'm just telling you this is a fact of life and it's reflected in Madeleine Albright's comments we are the indispensable nation we have a right we have the responsibility and now we have the military power since we're Godzilla to turn the world into a different place to remake it in America's image think about the concept of American exceptionalism no American politician can you know move one micrometer away from American exceptionalism right you know that Barack Obama who got criticized on this issue was forced to say that America is the indispensable nation he used those words it's American exceptionalism we're different we're better but that nationalism juiced the liberalism the nationalism coupled with the liberalism coupled with the fact that we were so powerful coupled with the fact that we had this template in their head about how we were going to make the world a much better place and we were off to the races what's the track record let's talk about the Bush Doctrine and the greater Middle East the Ukraine crisis and us-russia relations I've talked a bit about that and then the failure of engagement with China these are the three most glaring examples of failure the bush doctor the Bush Doctrine was designed to turn the Middle East into a sea of democracies in keeping with liberal hegemony it's very important to understand that the war in Iraq 2003 was not going to be in the minds of the liberal hegemonist the last war in the Middle East it was the first stop on the train line the second stop on the train line if you want to include Afghanistan we didn't go much further in terms of invading other countries because Iraq turned into a fiasco but the idea was that we could use military force or the threat of military force the threat of military force to overthrow governments in the region and install liberal democracies in their place and therefore produce peace in the Middle East that solved the proliferation and terrorism problems I know this sounds crazy now but this is the way we were thinking you remember Afghanistan is finally under American control by December 2001 and then in early 2002 the Americans are talking about maybe invading Iraq the Israelis catch wind of the fact that we're going to do Iraq and the Israelis send a high-level delegation to Washington to say why are you doing Iraq you should be doing Iran it's the greater threat the Americans say don't worry Iraq is the low-hanging fruit we're gonna go in and do a rack and then when we're done with Iraq will either do Syria or Iran next but we won't have to do one or two more of these military invasions before everybody in the region understands how powerful we are and throws up their hand and jumps on the american bandwagon the israelis foolishly believe the americans thinking that we have found the magic formula for winning wars and they then begin to champion an invasion of iraq right what's the result total disaster it's truly amazing the amount of murder and mayhem that the united states is responsible for in the Middle East truly amazing virtually no successes and nothing but failures and failures were huge numbers of people died countries are physically wrecked Afghanistan now the longest war in American history I know not a single national security analyst who thinks there's any possibility we can win that war and all we're doing is checking can down the road now so that Obama doesn't get blamed for losing Afghanistan and now Trump doesn't get blamed for losing Afghanistan to Iraq we wrecked that country Syria where the United States displayed of a very important role in trying to topple Assad that's hardly ever repeat reported in the media that's a total disaster the amount of murder and mayhem we've created in Syria no Libya we did a great job there right with the help of the Europeans my god right the Bush Doctrine in the greater Middle East an abject failure then there's the Ukraine crisis and us-russia relations I've talked a little bit about this you know in the West here in Europe and certainly in the United States we blame the Russians for the crisis well I don't buy this argument for one second from the time we started talking about NATO expansion the Russians made it very clear that it was unacceptable to them they were too weak to stop it in 1999 that's when the first tranche took place they were to stop too weak to stop in 2004 which is when the second tranche of expansion took place but after 2008 when we were talking about doing Georgia and talking about doing Ukraine they said this is not gonna happen it was April 2008 at the bucura summit the bucura Sneyd au summit April 2008 where when the meeting was over with the declaration was issued by NATO that said Georgia and Ukraine would become part of NATO the Russians went ballistic it's no accident ladies and gentlemen that a couple of months later in August 2008 you had a war over Georgia Georgia Russia war August 2008 Bucharest summit April 2008 and then on February 22nd 2014 you had a major crisis break out over Ukraine the Russians had no intention of letting either Georgia or Ukraine become a Western bulwark on their doorstep and the end result is that neither one of those countries has come Western bulwark and the Russians are going to great lengths to wreck those countries and the Russians are now going to great lengths to split NATO apart and split the EU apart so that they can expand further eastward and further where we have terrible relations between Russia and Western Europe between Russia and the United States and from an American point of view we have foolishly driven the Russians into the arms of the Chinese which is not in our interest and the people who are suffering the most from this are the Ukrainians because the Russians are interested in wrecking that country and we're not going to do anything to defend the Russians we meaning the United States under Europeans its failure number two failure number three is engagement with China it's clear in the 1990s that China is on the rise so the question is what do you do the basic view of the liberal hegemonist is that you engage with China right and what does engagement mean you get China deeply integrated into the open international economy you get China deeply embedded in international institutions and as it becomes richer and richer it will become a liberal democracy I mean this is the story we tell ourselves in the West it will become a liberal democracy and of course once it becomes a liberal democracy to put it in Robert Zoellick sturms it will become a responsible stakeholder in the international system so actually the United States doesn't think like a realist wouldn't say jeez I'm not sure that I want to turn China into Godzilla or that maybe I want to contain China no no no no we decided we're gonna help China grow more and more powerful right because it will eventually then become a democracy it'll look like us and since we're the good guys a knave will then be the good guys and the planet is populated by nothing but good guys we all live happily ever after that's the story didn't work out that way just the Asian pig didn't work out that way and actually all the architects strategy right all the architects of this strategy now admit that it was a failure right I just want to say one other thing about realness realists like me I was a prominent public opponent of the Iraq war and all these crazy wars we fought as I often joke to people I've become a peacenik in the United States it's hard to believe mr. realism 101 it's a peacenik the Ukraine crisis you just heard my argument I was opposed to NATO expansion from the get-go he's one of those people who said this is gonna lead to big trouble George Kennan of course famously made that argument and lo and behold that's what happened and with regard to engaging in China and turning it into Godzilla I would have never done that since we had no way of knowing what China's intentions would be but anyway this is liberal hegemony at work okay why did it fail I've told you what the argument here first of all power of nationalism powerful realism and over selling individual rights power of nationalism look the idea that the United States can go around the world violating the sovereignty of other countries invading those countries and doing social engineering at the end of a rifle barrel it's a prescription for giant trouble if you're smart you stay out of countries like Iraq you stay out of countries like Afghanistan when I was young right I was in the American military I was in the American military from 1965 to 1975 which was coterminous with the Vietnam War and over the course of those ten years I watched the United States get battered in Vietnam and lose we lost the Vietnam War it was a deeply humbling experience for the American people and the thing I learned was you do not want to go into a place like Vietnam it's a prescription for real trouble the French were there before us remember the French were defeated at the NBN Phu in 1954 the goal told us in 1964 and 1965 don't go in there we've been there done that it did not turn out well it's not gonna turn out well for you it did not turn out well for us and then I remember in 1979 the Chinese foolishly invaded North Vietnam where it was then Vietnam but the northern part of Vietnam and they got their snaps whacked in 1979 the Soviets invaded Afghanistan most of my colleagues and not all my colleagues in the National Security community were aghast Soviets are on the march this is the end of the world we have to double the defense budget we have to do this we have to do that I say you're dead wrong they just jumped into a giant quagmire if your arm is racing with the Soviet Union what you want them to do is try and invade a country like Afghanistan you saw what happened to us we're still there 14 years later what 14 years later 18 years later longest war in American history stay out of these places people in countries like Iraq countries like Afghanistan and other countries around the world do you not want the United States invading them and telling them how to do their politics and what happens is we become an occupier and that leads to an insurgency and it is one giant mess so you want to stay out the point is you get resistance and by the way the power of nationalism also applies to the Russians and the Chinese you know that the United States is interested and feisty liberal democracy on Moscow and on Beijing there's no question about that you go to Moscow you go to Beijing and you talk to the foreign policy elites about how they think about it they think about it the same way we think about the Russians interfering their domestic politics surprise surprise is my mother taught me when I was a little boy what's good for the goose is good for the gander oh so if we don't like the Russians interfering in our politics don't be surprised if they don't like us interfering in their politics and the same thing goes with the Chinese that's the power nationalism you want to remember this as time goes by going into other countries and doing social engineering you're asking for big trouble power of realism let me go to my NATO example it's my favourite example here the idea that you could take NATO which was a mortal enemy of the Soviet Union which was the predecessor of Russia right Russia is the largest remnant state out of the Soviet Union it sort of been Herot of the mantle of the Soviet Union the idea that you could take NATO and March it right up to Russia's doorstep and Russia's gonna do nothing it's lunacy it's just lunacy just to take the American case the Americans have what's called the Monroe Doctrine the Americans basically say I know many of you're not gonna want to not gonna like hearing this but it's true this is what the Americans basically say we own the Western Hemisphere that's it's our backyard no distant great power from Europe or from Asia is either allowed to form a military alliance with a country in the Western Hemisphere or bring military forces into the Western Hemisphere when I was young we had this thing called the Cuban Missile Crisis the Soviets put missiles in Cuba this is categorically unacceptable to the United States and we told the Soviets that and we forced them to take the nuclear missiles out then they talked about building a naval base at cienfuegos in Cuba the United States again told them this is categorically unacceptable this is the Monroe Doctrine you do not bring Soviet military forces into the Western Hemisphere let me give you a hypothetical situation 50 years from now China is really powerful it forms a military alliance with Canada and with Mexico it starts to move troops into Toronto and Mexico City you think the Americans are just gonna sit there the Chinese ambassador to the United States and the Mexican ambassador of the United States go to the president they say you don't mean to worry about we're benign hegemon right this is not aimed at you what do you think the president's gonna believe that you think we're gonna tolerate Chinese military forces in Canada or in Mexico I can assure you we are not the United States you want to always remember this ruthless great power there are a few great powers in modern history that are as ruthless as the United States we cover that up with litter Brett Eric right we are ruthless that's not gonna happen any country that invites one of those countries a lot of power and let Europe East Asia into the Western Hemisphere is really asking for trouble well the Russians the same as the Americans in this regard they do not want Ukraine and Georgia turned into Western both works very simple by the way Syria you understand what happened in Syria in 2011 when Assad's in trouble the Americans the Turks the Saudis the Qatar ease begin to move in and they begin to fund the insurgents and they begin to fuel the insurgency and they begin to try to topple Assad by 2015 it looks like Assad is going under what happens the Russians come in the Russians have a long-standing alliance with Syria the Russians have a naval base in Syria surprise of surprises the Russians decide they're gonna prop up Assad that's real politic 101 and who succeeded the Russians succeeded and the Americans lost Assad is going to remain in power over selling of individual rights final point here look I think if you go around the world there is a great deal of interest in individual rights almost everywhere people care about rights I don't want to make light of that but they don't care that much about rights in a lot of places and they don't care that much about little democracy liberal democracy is not an easy sell in a lot of places go to Russia and say you know your average well-educated Russian one somebody even in the Russian Foreign Policy League what you need is liberal democracy they'll look at you like you're nuts and they'll say we tried liberal democracy in the nineteen 90s it was the Wild West we do not want to return to the 1990s we don't need liberal democracy thank you and we'll take Putin and his soft authoritarianism despite its problems every time over liberal democracy so what this tells you is you're not selling an ideology or political governing system that is that wildly attractive in all places it's oftentimes a hard sell and when you go into a country and you topple the regime and this chaos all around you people are mainly interested in security not individual rights okay liberal hegemonies future not conclude here my argument is that liberal hegemony is finished and there are two reasons the first which is the least important reason is Donald Trump Donald Trump ran against liberal hegemony just think about it he said that I am no longer interested in having the United States try to spread democracy around the world and as you know Donald Trump has never seen an autocrat or dictator that he didn't want to jump into bed with he has no special place in his heart for liberal democracies right and he's not interested in spreading liberal democracy all over the planet second with regard to the open international order he's a protectionist he thinks that America has been screwed by the open international economy he wants to slap tariffs not only on countries like China but on our allies as well and with regard to institutions the guy's never seen an institution they didn't love he hates NATO he hates the EU he hates nasty hates the IMF god he hates the WTO he hates the World Bank one of the first things he did when he took office was to kill the TPP trans-pacific partnership which is actually a boneheaded move but nevertheless it reflects the fact that he hates institution you want to know why the foreign policy establishment in the United States Lowe's Donald Trump it's because he ran against everything they stand for but he got elected and you know why he got elected because he pointed out that the policy has been a failure so we have this disconnect between the elites who want to perpetrate forever and ever this foreign policy and the body politic and by the way Trump's done an exception here Barack Obama was elected in 2008 on the platform that we were gonna get out of the business and nation-building and Obama to use his own words said we should do nation building at home and then right before he left office he gave a very famous interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly where he basically said that the foreign policy establishment what we sometimes call the blob in the United States the blob beat him back and he was forced to play in his words by the Washington playbook but Obama was not that different than Trump in certain respects squirted foreign policy and but Trump is not being beaten back but more importantly liberal agendas over because of the rise of China and the resurrection of Russian power as I said to you earlier and it's very important you understand this point you can only have liberal hegemony you can only pursue this really radical foreign policy in a unipolar world where the sole pole which is of course Uncle Sam does not have to worry about competing with other great powers now that China and Russia are considered great powers and we're talking about the return of great power politics and we're talking about multipolarity security competition is back in force and it squeezes out liberal agenda so for better or for worse liberal hegemony is history thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] for my own understanding and then I will open up to the audience for that question and and their questions with reference to the two fundamental parts of your of your lecture the first really about this interrelationship between nationalism and liberalism in the United States and how that works in terms of individual freedom and liberty because where there are formal rights some would say there are also many formal regulations and to my mind the United States and advanced democracies are highly regulated places where the state is is almost everywhere from taxing to mortgaging there's a whole kind of informal structure of regulations that constrains you know some would say that we kind of individual freedoms that the forefathers of liberalism thought about so maybe a little bit about that and how it changed now with your very you know great example about about Trump and his idea about you know what the United States is for instance you know the wall issue with Mexico doesn't seem to me to be a particularly liberal idea that goes goes well with the kind of idea of American liberalism so so maybe a little bit about the trajector and the brexit of course is the same thing for from britain this is a very liberal form of of nation-building I'm somewhat say so this is just with reference to to that part and then the issue of liberal hegemony and and the analysis was based on the idea that there is a genuine effort in u.s. foreign policy to export democracy and some would say that you know this was more like a Trojan horse to expand US dominance or hegemony or however you want to call it and that example such as Pinochet in Latin America or the Shah in Iran or or you know us alliances with with autocracies all over the world do not really unprovided of evidence for a real genuine effort to spread democracy in the way it was done in in Europe with a Marshall Plan that was really a genuine effort to democratize absolutely agree with you the European continent but with the Iraq invasion in particular there was no Marshall Plan there was no really systemic structure competent effort to create a democracy the only administrator that was guarded after the invasion was the oil ministry and none of the others so this is just a point for my for my own understanding about the trajectory of of you know what happened to to the liberal United States and we used to no good these are two great issues and let me do my best to answer them I take them in reverse order first of all with regard to what happened with the Shah would happen with Pinochet Guatemala in 1954 and your comments on the Marshall Plan remember my argument is that liberal agenda only takes effect with the end of the Cold War really about 1990 so I would argue that the this is just dovetails with what you said the United States has a rich history of overthrowing democratically elected leaders right and furthermore preventing the emergence of Democrats in other cases and furthermore aligning itself with murderous thugs and dictators and my argument would be then in a world of realpolitik where security competition is it play you're going to see a lot of that kind of behavior so I'm not challenging that part of the story in any way what I'm saying is that after 1990 Oh but so recently up until Trump the United States I believe was genuinely committed to spreading democracy around the world now a number of people including some of my really good friends make the argument that you make which is dead even after 1990 this is a Trojan horse their argument is John this is you know the atavistic realist United States taking advantage of the unipolar moment to dominate the globe and then disguising its aggressive behavior with liberal rhetoric okay now uh I think that's wrong okay and I think whether you're you and my friends are right or I'm right is largely an empirical question it may be the case in thirty years when they open the public records there is an abundance of evidence that supports your perspective which is that we behaved in a very realist we tried to become a global hegemon and we successfully covered it up and we bamboozled people like John okay that that may happen I cannot deny that okay but my argument to you and to my friends is that I believe that's wrong and I believe that the people who are who have been conducting American foreign policy are not that clever they're fools they're fools and they are remarkably idealistic and I think there is an abundance of evidence to support my position right I can't adduce it all here or we can't have a big debate about it but I do think that's true and the reason I go to the case of NATO and I say that NATO was not about containment cuz I'm anticipating your question necessarily from you maybe from somebody in the audience right and I'm trying to show you that NATO expansion was not realpolitik at work it was liberal hegemony but again I think I'm right in the terms of the story that I'm telling you but again this is an empirical question and as you well know we want to be humble in this business because we're sometimes proved wrong your question about nationalism and liberalism I'm gonna make two responses to that first of all I do think one can make an argument that liberal democracy is in trouble in the United States with Donald Trump as the president I think most people believe that there is some chance some reasonable chance he will get reelected I think eight years with him could do a great deal of damage to liberal democracy but I would take it a step further and say that Trump is a manifestation of you know underlying forces that are at play here that don't bode well for liberal democracy so I'm not at all making light of what a dangerous situation were in and of course not only applies to the United States as I told you folks in my talk if you go look at Freedom House's data since 2006 the number of liberal democracies in the world has been going down now another fascinating issue you raise is the whole question of the sort of omnipresent state in the United States right that doesn't look like a liberal state it looks like it's interfering in the management of almost everyone's daily life I don't want to go into this in any great detail but basically when I talked about rights I was talking about negative rights I was talking about freedoms and the problem is that in the modern world this is all to be a good thing we're not just interested in negative rights were interested in positive rights and the best example of that is just think about this the right to an equal opportunity it's not just the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness we you're talking about freedoms those were we're talking about rights like the right to health care the right to equal opportunity those are called positive rights and they're very important in every society today including the United States and the point is once you start talking about positive rights as well as negative rights the state begins to get involved in a really serious way and you remember folks when I told you about the three solutions that liberals have to dealing with potential for violence I said inalienable rights tolerance and the state and remember that I said that it's very important to have a limited state and the point that you're making is that we're moving away from that limited state and I think in modern societies it's very hard not to do that I'm agreeing with you because of the end is because of the emphasis on positive rights and then when you start thinking about things like artificial intelligence the national security state the ability of the state to intervene in our daily lives you see that liberal democracy is a fragile device that really has to be protected so I'm agreeing with you in very important ways in terms of ever saying that was essentially the point that we are all in the same boat in many ways trying to struggle to keep the rights alive when trying to struggle to keep a democracy alive here but questions from from the audience and if I may I take two at a time John is that okay it's perfectly fine I should have said at the beginning by the way switch off your mobile phones I mean Jeff reminded myself with a so - two questions the lady with the colored jumper yes I forgot to bring over a big piece of paper hello thank you very much for your talk in your talk you mentioned international institutions particularly the WTO and the IMF as kind of instruments of liberal hegemony I'm wondering what do you see the future of those international institutions now that there's a failure of in of liberal hegemony thank you okay one more question the gentleman in the back just right at the back yes with the highest hand ah yes that's what the blue blue sweatshirt hi thanks you said that obviously liberal Germany is faltering is it any more or less faltering than autocracies such as China Russia Thank You Jon first question had to do with the future of international institutions I believe that in a highly interdependent world and we live in a highly interdependent world a globalized world a hyper globalized world cult whatever you want international institutions are absolutely essential and that doesn't mean that certain international institutions won't die but if they do they'll be replaced by new international institutions there's just no way you can do business without international institutions international institutions is I learned a long time ago when I wrote an article on this subject are basically rules and you need rules for all sorts of reasons when you're doing business and that business can be economic it can be military I mean if you have military alliance NATO as an institution the Warsaw Pact as an institution if you're gonna fight the Cold War all over again you're going to do it with a mill Alliance which is an institution you need the WTO although I think you need a different variant of it you need the IMF the World Bank the Chinese have created the aii big institutions are here to stay Donald Trump can get rid of NAFTA but he in effect just produced another institution that looks like NAFTA so institutions aren't going away no question in my mind on that the gentleman up here asked me about whether you know the Chinese political system and the Russian political system were also failing and maybe failing more so than liberal democracy I don't know what the answer is to that at this point in time I think that both the Chinese and the Russians are doing reasonably well at this point in time what the long-term future of those political systems is it's hard to say so I'm just not too sure I think in in both the Chinese in the Russian case a lot depends on the economy and I think a lot depends on how much progress they make on the economic front over the future but I think at this point in time to some extent everybody's in trouble okay two more questions the lady in the back all the way my question is about based on the relationship between China and United States do you think we are entering oh we are already living you know in new Cold War era and secondly do you think that sports country US and China will end up in Susa dated Trump's will end up way so City Detra okay second question yes the gentleman right here would you wait for the microphone it's right that it's in the front yeah thank you it's okay sorry to make you run hi John thank you for your talk much of the US political discourse lately around Trump seems to be focused apart from the collusion with Russia seems to be on the lack of coherence of foreign policy and I think looking at some of trumps rhetoric in recent years it seems to align a lot with the core tenets of your book tragedy of great power politics and in particular we see Trump adopting an offensive realist position towards China we see him somewhat buck-passing Syria to Russia and we see a kind of offshore balancing with regards to NATO in Europe so my question is to what extent do you think that Trump is a meerschaum heurists so to speak truth [Music] okay John okay I'll take the first question on China and the United States and the young woman in the back asked me if I thought there was a new Cold War in store between those two countries I think the answer is yes my basic view of international politics is that the great powers in an ideal world want to dominate their region of the world and they want to do like the United States did in the Western Hemisphere they want to be the only great power and they don't want any other distant great powers coming into their backyard and if you look at China today China's growing economically and militarily and I think that the Chinese are very interested as they should be in dominating Asia and that means not only being the most powerful country in the region but also making sure the Americans are pushed out the Americans well the Chinese talk constantly these days about the century of national humiliation which ran from the late 1840s until the late 1940s the Chinese were weak over that hundred year period and they were exploited by the Japanese the Americans and the European great powers they have never forgotten that and their goal is to make sure they are really powerful in the future if you were to go up to a [ __ ] to a Chinese policymaker or remember the Chinese foreign policy League and say to that person you have two choices you can be twenty times more powerful than Japan or Japan can be 20 more times powerful than you do you think it makes any difference they would laugh in your face they would tell you we know what happened the last time Japan was 20 more times powerful than us we intend to be 20 times more powerful than Japan in the future and then when you ask the Chinese behind closed doors what they think about the Americans running ships and aircraft up their coast and having ground forces off their coasts and places like Korea and Japan they will tell you in no uncertain terms if they get powerful enough they will try to push us out beyond us meaning the Americans beyond the first island chain and then beyond the second island chain and if you look at how they think about the waters around them they've made it very clear that they think the South China Sea belongs to them and we've made it clear to them we don't agree with that they've made it clear they think the East China Sea belongs to them and there's a real possibility they'll get into a fight with the Japanese over those small islands in the East China Sea then there's Taiwan which is a potential flashpoint of great significance China is not a status quo power so the Chinese as they get more and more powerful are going to try and become more and more influential in East Asia and they're going to try and push the Americans out and you know what the Americans are going to do the Americans are going to pivot to Asia and they're going to try and contain the Chinese and they're going to push back so I would argue that there is likely to be trouble ahead and put it in your terms you are likely to get a new Cold War in Asia second question had to do with Trump and he accused me of being in bed with Donald Trump intellectually this is a frightening thought yes right that's right then we know there is no connection look to be serious I think that I think that Donald Trump has no coherent foreign policy I think he flies by the seat of his pants and he has certain intuitions and I do think apropos your question that some of those intuitions are consistent with a realist perspective in other words when Trump says that he is not interested in using military force to spread democracy around the planet that's an argument that resonates with realists there's just no question about it now another example that you used was containment of China right that of course resonates with realist logic but also you want to remember that the person who articulated the pivot to Asia was Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration the Clinton administration was also interested in the pivot to Asia so this is not something new to trump but it gets consistent both with the Democrats and with Trump with basic realist logic my problem with Trump is that he's done a half-baked job of pivoting and dealing with our Asian allies Trump's big problem and this is where you know he parts for realism his realist believed that alliances matter allies matter and if you're gonna deal with an adversary like China right you need help from countries in East Asia and you don't want to be slapping him around which is what he does I also think the TPP the trans-pacific partnership which was an economic institution that was designed to contain China right it was designed for economic purposes but also for security purposes he vetoed that or he killed that when he came to office that was a big mistake so I think a lot of what he has done is inconsistent with a realist approach but there is no question that he does have realist tendencies although again it's not part of any sort of grand theory of how the world works okay last round of questions the gentleman white sweatshirt thank you so much for your talk it's very enlightening I just have a question with regards to the Iraq invasion so you said and I quote there are virtually no successes in Iraq and I personally think that there were some successes for the United States let's put aside all of the inexplicable damage that has been wrought on to the Iraqi population I think that there were benefits for it for its economic interests in the long term we can see today that although what was done in Iraq was a failure in many ways many oil contracts if not all were given to American country companies like ExxonMobil war was created which increases the demand for for weapons which in turn can increase manufacturing and selling of weapons by American companies although all these contributes to the economic superiority of the United States and its prominent companies so we need a question I will come to the question because we're running out of time all right I apologize for that so we can't imagine the United States today without its superior economy right so I ask can the Iraqi invasion be seen as a commercial success for the United States thank you very much the second question hi thank you very much for your talk my question is regarding the European Union as America focuses on itself more and liberalism takes a backseat do you think there is a future for the European Union and what do you think the future holds for Western Europe thank you I should go okay thank you with regard to your question about Iraq I thought you were gonna argue that it had some benefits for Iraq but obviously you're arguing that it had benefits to the United States economic benefits for the United States I don't believe that I think it's estimated that the two wars won in Afghanistan and two in Iraq and the Iraqi war is the more expensive the two of the two is gonna cost us somewhere between four to six trillion dollars over time again when you think of all that money and and and and the consequences for the Iraqi people it's just stunning right but for the six trillion dollars I don't think the oil companies ended up making much of profit as a result of the invasion and I think in terms of arms sales yes we sold some more arms but not enough to really matter not enough to really affect the economy so I don't think I don't think that you're right that the the United States benefited economically from this war but again even if it did it wouldn't justify you know what happened in Iraq and by the way remember that one of the principal consequences of the invasion of Iraq was the creation of Isis just don't want to lose sight of that second question a very interesting question on the EU and the future of the European Union and you prefaced it by saying America's losing interest in Europe to some extent and as American interest in Europe wanes what does that mean for the EU I make two points first of all I believe that one of the reasons probably the main reason that European integration has been so successful and there has been peace in Europe is because of the presence of the American military in Europe its NATO it's the American pacifier as I often say to audiences you know I've spent a lot of time going around Europe since 1990 when the Cold War ended I have never met a single policymaker a single pundit a single academic a single representative of the foreign policy establishment in any country in Europe who wants to see the Americans leave Europe this is quite remarkable and now I was recently Romania as recently in Denmark the Romanians and the den Danes do not want us to leave Europe and it's because they understand that this I'm throw but the American military presence that NATO underpins the EU and peace and security in Europe okay that's my view so in terms of the future of the EU what really matters in terms of the United States is that we stay in NATO keep NATO intact and keep American forces here the second point I would make to you the problems in the EU today despite all Donald Trump's rhetoric have nothing to do with the United States they're mainly Eurocentric problems problems associated with the euro problems associated with brexit if you look at what's going on in Italy and a lot of these problems by the way have to do with nationalism right I'm not going to get into that in any detail here but there are real problems in the EU today but those problems are not the result of the United States right so the Europeans have to figure out how to fix those problems but more importantly for the Europeans they got to keep the Americans here in my opinion I think the America the European elites understand correctly that an American military presence is a pacifying factor here in Europe the main pacifying factor thank you very much John unfortunately we have to leave it at that there will be a drinks reception outside in the foyer but join me once again to in thanking professor much I'm afraid excellent [Applause] you [Applause]

Channel: SOAS University of London

Views: 215,914

Keywords: SOAS University of London

Id: ni9rncx8ceA

Length: 85min 18sec (5118 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 24 2019