Wolfgang Streeck: The International State System after Neoliberalism

[Music] as you know the topic of the lecture is the international state system after neoliberalism neoliberalism he's going to talk about Europe between national democracy and supranational centralization picking up three themes which have characterized a lot of his work the crises of capitalism the ill-matched pair democracy and capitalism the tensions between the two of them and his concerns about the EU as a supranational organization well folks Trek is eminent as director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of societies where he was director for 20 years in Cologne and from where he retired in 2014 he's professor emeritus of sociology also at the University of Cologne and he was in 2016 elected corresponding fellow of the British Academy in 2012 he received the award for outstanding contribution to the public understanding of sociology by the German sociological association to name two of the most recent awards that he has received his writings have focused on the political economy of capitalism and if were I think what I could do the easiest characterization would be to use Kathleen talents word when she gave a loud arts you for him upon his retirement from the Max Planck Institute she said like capitalism we could describe both Kong's Trek as dynamic creative Restless and risk-taking and I think this is a wonderful summary of his work of his career which has really been seminal in shaping his discipline in the german-speaking world and much beyond it let me just mention three books to recall those for those of you who have read them for those of you who have not this would be a short book list of highly discussed book is buying time the delayed crisis of democratic capitalism published by were so in 2017 in which he talks about both the crises of democratic governance and the aftershocks of the economic crises that began in 2008 but he really takes a long look at this crisis beginning already with his analysis in 1970s making the argument that one of the processes that we need to think about seriously and critically is the one which got States to turn away from taxation towards debt as their major source of revenue and this is where one of the major problems of the changing relationship also between capitalism and democracy lies not only in Europe but also elsewhere and he shows why it is a problem when capitalism immunizes immunizes itself from democratic accountability so the prophetic title book how will capitalism end essays on a failing system in 2016 has also diagnosed the ill health of capitalism he thinks capitalism is a critical condition that growth has given way to stagnation but of course questions of inequality are at the center of his analysis as well inequality paired with the instability that it causes socially and the lack of confidence in the market as a result of the shocks which we have witnessed one of the foci of his work has been the absence or the weakness of regulatory institutions which once were able to restrain and constrain the financial sector and he has looked at how these have successively collapsed and the final victory of capitalism at the end of the Cold War such that there is a lack of a political agency today which could be a bulwark against the yields of neoliberalism let me just mention one more book which is an edited volume 2013 politics in the age of austerity because he picks up a lot of the problems of increasing austerity measures which are also causing an enormous strain for democratic politics I think in the elections the growing success of populist right-wing parties we see one of the results of the kinds of problems that he has pointed to in OECD countries which have run up large deficits and accumulated debts where ever smaller parts of government revenue is available today for discretionary spending and investment and therefore there is in a way a constraint on the state which the irrespective of whichever party comes to power this is the kind of constraint and a straitjacket of an entrance straightjacket which governments are unable to avoid the in German just so that for those who would like to or prefer to read it in German get off that site the photography's it as democratic capitalism owes is the german title of his 2015 work we look forward to a discussion of capitalism and of democracy and the crises of the EU with you this evening after your lecture we'll have a short Q&A and I very much hope that we will see the lecture in print with us in our new series with the possession for dog so thank you very much for accepting our invitation for being here this evening and I'll give you the word thank you thank you very much for coming on this very hot day I will speak this will not be an American lecture which ends after 40 minutes but it won't be an Italian lecture either which ends after 102 15 minutes but you have to be ready to listen to me for 60 minutes and and this this is this is serious listening because I brought a manuscript and and and so it's it's going to be a little bit dense the international state system after neoliberalism Europe between national democracy and supranational centralization now I begin with an essay that capital Ani wrote in 1945 one year after his great transformation a short densely argued article in a journal called London quarterly of world affairs under the title of universal capitalism or Regional Planning question mark in it he in this essay he explores the relationship between what he calls the organization of the international life and the structures and domestic and foreign politics of the leading states of his time arguing that changes underway in them potentially offered a prospect of a new I quote far flung and meaningful policies which may or be it incidentally fulfil the deeply rooted aspirations of the common man focusing on Great Britain Russia and America the three global powers left standing by the Second World War Palani argues that what was now at issue between them was not so much their place in a given pattern of power as the pattern itself here the tremendous event of our age was the simultaneous downfall of liberal capitalism world revolutionary socialism and racial domination the three competing forms of Universalist societies I think by racial domination although he isn't explicit there he believes both German he means both German Nazism and the end of colonialism according to Palani it was precisely because of this end of universalism that a new era of international politics had become possible allowing for peaceful coexistence of different regional regimes of international order based on and including different settlements of the class conflict I I quote world revolutionary socialism was overcome by regional socialism in the sufferings and glories of the five-year plans the tribulations of the trials and the triumphs of stalingrad liberal capitalism came to an end in the collapse of the gold standard which left millions of unemployed and unparalleled social deprivation in its wake Hitler's principle of domination is being crushed on a battlefield coextensive with the planet he attempted to conquer and out of that great mutation various forms of inherently limited existence emerge new forms of socialism of capitalism of planned and semi planned economies each of them by their very nature regional so he uses the content of regional in the Anglo sense regions of the world rather than some national unit polanyi's principle example for the salutary international consequences of the change he saw from universalism to particularism is the breakdown of the gold standard in the interval years ending the 19th century system of world economy as he calls it and resulting in the immediate emergence of economic units of limited extent each of these was now forced to look after its own foreign economy as you close it and I think this is a thermal clumsy translation of the German word awesome words I was involved I was in such a yeah the was first to look after its own foreign economy which has formerly looked after itself in the liberal world quote new organs had to be developed new institutions had to be set up to cope with the situation the peoples of the world are now living under these new conditions therefore an economy is the government's concern their currency is managed their foreign trade and foreign loans are controlled the domestic institutions may differ widely but the institutions with the help of which they deal with their foreign economy are practically identical the new permanent pattern of world affairs is one of regional systems coexisting side-by-side to explore the emerging pluralist pattern of world affairs further Falah Palani first considers the united states which he regards as a notable exception quote unquote and in this respect a potential source of systemic instability the u.s. he writes quote has remained the home of liberal capitalism and is powerful enough to pursue the utopian line of policy involved in such a faithful dispensation namely to attempt quote to restore the pre-1914 world order together with its gold standard and many-fold sovereignties utopian because according to Palani such restoration is inherently impossible for historical reasons Palani continues Americans still believe in a way of life no longer supported by the common people in the rest of the world but which nevertheless implies a universality which commits those who believe in it to reconquer the globe on its behalf 1935 the this was different with the Soviet Union where quote the victory of Stalinism over Trotskyism means a change in her foreign policy from the rigid universalism relying on the hope of a world revolution to a regionalism of revolutionary policy the startling novelty or Stalin's policy Palani rights was that he was willing to content himself with building a cordon sanitaire around Russia of countries that did not have to be socialist or communist provided their class structures were reshaped so that they were no longer likely to support deadly attacks on Soviet Russia all that was needed was the destruction quote is destruction of the political power of the few low classes revolution quote far safer than the traditional unlimited socialist one which at least in Eastern Europe would either provoke the fascist counter-revolution or else could maintain themselves or itself this is wrong could maintain itself only with the help of Russian bayonets which Russia has no intention of providing nothing Palani continues could be less appealing to the conventional revolutionary than the Stalinist urn from revolutionary universalism to this kind of regionalist particularism it was not a communist the the upshot as seen by Palani was that quote the british commonwealth and the USSR now formed part of a new system of regional powers but the United States insists on a Universalist conception of world affairs which tallies with her antiquated liberal economy regionalism is a formula for peace among neighboring countries recognises the communitarian particularism that's my paraphrase of the human condition and draws practical lessons from the observation during the war of I quote Palani how overwhelmingly the people rally behind policies designed to protect the community from external danger they obviously Russia in mind it was in exchange for a secure national existence so Palani that the Russia of 1945 asked its regional neighbors to rid themselves of incurably reactionary classes through expropriations and eventually confiscations reorganizing themselves not in order to adopt the universal model of a good society but to be capable of living in peace with their neighbors socialization of the new kind Fulani rights was referenced to Eastern Europe and the region the neighborhood of the victorious Soviet Union was emphatically not an article for export it was a foundation of national existence it is in his further examination of what he thought was the emerging post-war peace settlement for the Eastern European region that Palani arrives at the core of his argument in favor of a regionally subdivided planned global order Eastern Europe Palani notes was traditionally beset with at least three and they make political diseases intolerant nationalism petty sovereignties and economic non-cooperation here as elsewhere the rise of nationalism according to Palani quote coincided with the territories brought another control of a credit system by autochthonous middle classes moreover ethnic conflicts in polanyi's words called unresolved racial issues not only interfered with a functioning of markets across national borders but were also reinforced by unfettered economic competition between countries with the gold standard with the gold standard foreign economy forcing governments to leave it to the market to balance their country's external accounts this Palani claims and Fulani readers know the argument this piranha claims came to an end whenever during the interwar period market methods were under Soviet Russian leadership discarded for planned trading now very importantly then intractable chauvinism lost their viciousness national sovereignty became less mania coal and economic cooperation was regarded again as being of mutual help instead of being feared as a threat to the prosperity of the state in effect as soon as a credit system is no longer based on confidence but on administration finance which rules by panic is deposed and sanity can prevail the lessons Palani drew from this for the rest of the world were far-reaching if he writes the Atlantic Charter really committed us to restore free markets where they have disappeared we might thereby be opening the door to the reintroduction of a crazy nationalism into regions from which it has disappeared the liberal capitalism would then become a matter of foreign policies based on foreign buying and selling lending and borrowing and the exchange of foreign currencies carried on between individuals as if there are members of one in the same country with the market expected to balance the economic relations between countries automatically that is without the intervention of the government you might want to think of the European monetary union this failed in the 1930s he says and the gold standard had to be abandoned now Regional Planning offered new methods of foreign economy that are conducive to international peace and cooperation as they allowed for mutually beneficial distribution of raw materials the stabilizing of prices and even the insuring of full employment in all countries it was only the United States that was trying to resolve these issues with quote a universal system of marketing although this would involve the impossible task of first restoring the market system throughout the world while it might take time for the United States to understand that its idea of housing third shaft is doomed to failure the promising alternative to the reactionary utopia of Wall Street Fulani riots is deliberate development of the new instruments and organs for foreign trading lending and paying which constitute the essence of Regional Planning Palani ends his discussion with a fascinating analysis of the situation of the United Kingdom the country where he was then living and and we could extend this to a whole breakfast debate but we won't do this year in in it's clear enough what he says in short Palani says Palani saw britain dependent on imports quote for maintaining a civilized standard of life and for the survival of the commonwealth on free co-operation with overseas dominions which were no longer colonies a planned foreign economy would enable Britain to quote reap the huge economic and political advantages of the regional organization of the world in fact after the changes it had undergone since the 1930s Britain was no longer a free trading country at all the process that had made it more of a popular democracy than ever quote more healthy 1945 more healthy United with every year that has passed since the since she left the atmosphere of liberal capitalism free competition the gold standard and all the other names under which the market society is hallowed this however was not yet irreversible the real issue today Milani wrote was that reactionaries still hope that it is not yet too late for Britain's own system of foreign economy to be changed back so that it may fall in line with that of America the Trump visit comes to mind the this way Britain would not just lose the advantages of equal cooperation with the United States at the Soviet Union but soon would be deprived quote of those organs of international trade which she needs for her survival as well as for her freedom of action rising standard of life and the advantages of a constructive peace for a long time to come american-style economic universalism would imply a return to the gold standard in substance if not in name the metal over the gold standard Palani adds is in reality a battle for and against regional planning fighting that battle on the side of quote the Universalist conspiracy to make the world safe for the gold standard where the old ruling classes of British society afraid of a new egalitarian impulse that might quote again and this is the end of this summary that might fuse Disraeli's to two nations into one contrary to national interest they might attempt to restore universal capitalism instead of striking out boldly on the paths of regional planning so now I have laid out the conceptual toolkit and I will go to discuss what really happened and and the first and the next section is is headlight the rise and decline of neoliberalism what became of the world as projected by car Palani at that fateful historical turning point the end of the 20 centuries great destruction while some of his predictions were obviously falsified by the course of events others were not even his misses and near misses however appear astonishingly useful for description and analysis of developments since 1945 to begin with the regionalization of socialism inside the cordon sanitaire around the Soviet Union's communism in one country proved less resilient to u.s. universalistic expansionism than hoped for s Palani anticipated the United States did at most to export its system to the rest of the world in confrontation with the other remaining superpower and was remarkably successful office of Marshall Plan a to Eastern European countries conditional on the adoption of a market economy threatened to turn the Soviet Union's regional neighbors into hostile allies of its global rival and we are countered by military support for a revolutionary conversion to the Soviet political economic order for roughly four decades Eastern and Central Europe became incorporated in more or less tightly integrated Soviet Russian Empire confronted by and confronting the Western alliance of democratic capitalist or liberal corporate estates built originally on the model of the American New Deal that other Western Empire held together even when its hegemonic power beginning in the 1980s the United States embarked on a global return to the precepts of economic liberalism pure and simple no longer allowing its client States to choose between different national economic and social policies under the protection of Bretton Woods Keynesianism this coincided with the Soviet Union finally losing the support not just of its current peoples but also of its own citizenry as a result of both heavy-handed repression and the lures of consumer capitalism in 1990 then communism was ready to collapse into global capitalism which subsequently felt free free to abandon even the pretense of democratic redistribution ISM at home and pluralist institutionalism abroad what looked like the victory however even like unconditional surrender was only a short duration very soon the sole remaining superpower by then the by then uncontested hegemon of the capitalist world began to suffer from overextension just as previous imperial powers inevitably had lost Wars beginning in Vietnam and not ending in Afghanistan and failed prospects of nation-building like in Iraq or of regime change like in Syria Iran and Libya came together with continuing elect of domestic problems like a decaying infrastructure and rising inequality as economic growth became reserved for a tiny oligarchy of private beneficiaries from public Empire strong isolationist tendencies among the electorate and resounding calls for economic protection against the world market in which the United States was no longer able to guarantee citizens a secure sane nuage paved the way to the US presidency for an apparent isolationist come protectionist America first like Donald Trump the result was a standoff between the capitalist imperialism and the entrenched international elites of the East Coast aligned with the country's huge military establishment and the new populist mainstream interested neither in international adventures nor with Palani a free-market foreign economy now one did just as a as an aside it is absolutely mind-blowing if one tries to imagine the the sheer size of the America military power and the enormous number of countries where they where they have their special ops operating some special things and it's unbelievable I mean it's 40% of the world's expenditure on military hardware and software turning to Western Europe we find another historical trajectory that fits polanyi's concepts of our deviating from his predictions in the 1950s in good part at the instigation of the United States Western European countries did in fact engage in what came remarkably close to what Palani had called regional planning the European Community for coal and steel in particular was created among many other similar institutions like the European payments Union to jointly administer the specific sector of cooperating national economies taking into account national economic needs and interests thereby stabilizing peace peaceful relations among what were now the European members of an anti-communist Western alliance placing the key industries of Industry capitalism and the supranational control Colin Steele was to prevent them being used by defeated Germany like in the 1930s for nationalists rearmament it also gave neighboring countries secure access to German coal and steel making it unnecessary for France in particular again to occupy the Hoover Valley with the disastrous consequences this head for peace in Europe and help manage the economic fortunes of Industry of an industry steel in particular with strong trade unions and the tradition of labor conflict later yet another sector nuclear power believed at the time to be of foundational importance for a modern economy was in the same way entrusted to a special international organization eurozone against very much in line again very much in line with a model of regional planning visits by Palani soon however Regional Planning changed into something else step by step the scope of supranational jurisdiction increased and so did the number of countries involved from six originally to twelve in 1989 and no less than 28 soon perhaps 27 today what had set out as joined sectoral planning began to appear for a short while in the 1970s as a prelude to regional state building sectoral technocratic administration's seem to be turning into general political authority prospectively replacing national states with a supranational European super-state and indeed super welfare state as horizontal cooperation seemed to be shading into hierarchical federalism but rather than sovereign national states merging into a sovereign supranational state something that incidentally never came to pass anywhere since the era of the nation-state after the Second World War began in earnest what happened in the only German German is the only exception yeah and but otherwise you see Czechoslovakia separating into two peacefully or you must love you less than peacefully but it's always separatism and Germany was a special case of course so what happened in fact was the merger of national economies by international treaties into a sexually encompassing supranational market economy that economy was released from redistributed state intervention not by the political will of the state coterminous with it the state that might by popular democratic pressure be moved to change direction but by regional cluster of states banding together to keep each other in the neoliberal fold proceeding alongside with the return of the United States to its historical pattern of unfettered market liberalism state free-market building in economically integrated but the onion itíd and therefore only negatively integrated liberal Europe moved after the collapse of communism and the breakup of its European Empire into international empire building a liberal empire of 28 states joined together by a stateless supranational post democratic pre Keynesian market economy kept together in turn by a heart German style common currency as Fulani would not have been surprised the transition in the final decades of the 20th century from regional planning to a new old pattern of capitalist universalism institutionalized in a neoliberal regional super state in polanyi's perspective a regressive reversal of reversal of post-war historical progress revived the national and international conflicts of the era of the gold standard in particular within European monetary union relations between European countries are worse today than ever in the post-war period Germany in particular the the the new hegemon under the hard currency it has bestowed willy-nilly on its Western European allies remember that the Germans didn't wanted the Italian and the French did it has become the target of deep nationalist and animosities especially among Mediterranean countries including France as countries find themselves and their foreign economies in unmitigated competition with one another a condition that they cannot do anything about under the four freedoms of the market and in particular the common currency that has become constitutive for the Europe of European integration and they are enshrined in in treaties not in legislation or in jurisdiction of the European Court which is totally immune to any political political change the popular counter movements have sprung up that are rediscovering the institutional resources of national democracy to force governments to abandon their studied passivity and protect their society's economic fortunes and a custom ways of life from the creatively destructive forces of globalization after the center-left in most if not all of the countries involved head in the 1990s at the latest tide its future to a neoliberal revival of capitalist growth sorry I know these new glasses this the first time I'm wearing this will I have to find out how to put my head to be able to read this yeah yeah yeah it's it's it's unbelievable but but it comes with age after after the center-left and most of us kind of involved head tight is future to enable live liberal revivals through in the economic internationalism it is only the nationalist right that is today offering protectionist political rhetoric that speaks to those who feel threatened by an open society identified with a neoliberal economy since 2008 in particular declining confidence in neoliberal global governance and its promise of universal economic achievement for those who with hillary clinton who work hard and play by the rules fueled the rise of new political parties denounced his populist by the established political class class and its media that have broken up the centrist politics of post-war Western European democracy this is some something I can take from the book of Chantelle move who describes the process in exactly these terms the result was and is an impasse between two incompatible political economic projects the neoliberal supranational II centralized top-down technocracy of globalization a neoliberal super state or a supermarket without a corresponding state held together by a firmly institutionalized de facto international gold standard on the one side and the anti-liberal nationally decentralized bottom-up democracy of often reactionary popular counter movements of various kinds of colorations mind you that I I personally used the term democracy not to mean a catalog of middle-class values to which Democrats if they want to be ones must subscribe rather I mean institutions that give losers political as well as economic losers a chance to organize and thereby gain the attention of the winners that's to me the democracy yeah so one issue this raised was that of political scale whether it was preferable for a political jurisdiction to be large or to be small to merge with others to form a larger or split from others to form a smaller unit of governance today it appears that in this in Paris the neoliberal advance has come to a halt resulting for the time being in a political interregnum which everybody calls crunchy today in which the old order is dying well in you or I cannot yet be born and Ramsey adds to this a time in which all sorts of monstrosities can happen polanyi's analytical tool kit may be profitably used to shed new light on the British brexit politics and he returned to this on the particularly complex configuration of interests and perceptions vis-a-vis a European Union that is today breaking up the British party system in the same way in which the Italian party system has broken up into German party system he's about to break up this year leaving this aside for reasons of time I will now turn to how not just Britain but the European region of the global economy as a whole might resolve the cross pressures of the neoliberal interregnum pressures for both political economic centralization as well as decentralization for global capitalism on the and Regional Planning on the other four neoliberal super statism and democratic nationalism and for economic universalism as well as particularism in the spirit of Palani I will discuss this with reference to the broader international context now I will spare you a number of pages where I'm discussing essentially this the this interesting point that even compares today's words with polanyi's the position in in that world of the Soviet Union is now filled by another also presumably communist country China and there are strange difference in similarities with China at the Soviet unit but one commonality with what with what the Palani attributed to Stalin and namely the sort of regional this this non imperialistic regionalism now that's something that it was interesting in the case of China which in its whole tradition was never in fearless it was the object of imperialism never never the subject and and as parry Anderson has shown in this fascinating book on on hegemony that there is no tradition in in in in China of the idea that you have to come for the rest of the world and teach everybody to behave like the Chinese basically but I think because they out of a sense of cultural superiority think that the others can't do it anyway yeah they will never learn it so leave them alone now now then of course the question today is and and in and I have to skip this how the relationship between the the United States and and China is going to develop and here I yeah of course I did a quick reading course on Kanchana and there the interesting question is what does this what does this new Silk Road really yeah now if this country is is capitalist it has to be expansion arey there is no way I argue for a capitalist society not to be expansion arey it has to do this and and whether China is a capitalist society or something else that's a socialist shall of communists shell with a capitalist core of whatever we can leave that aside and simply assume that they will have to stretch out somehow and then the question is what are the Americans going to do and this is the this is the overall context they can either try to try out something bushes would be unprecedented in the history of the world that is capitalism to be run by two power centers rather than one from Genoa onwards it was always one and the transitions were bloody the the other question is can they sort of at least work out some some peaceful coexistence between them that is in the Palani sense divide the world between it that may also be impossible and then you can speculate about also to think what are these two going to do and how are they organizing their little relationship and without going into detail I would say that the best thing I have read on this is Susan Watkins is account in the last in the last edition of the or the the last issue of new left review in the introduction on the China section where where she she really in a very sort of smooth way sees the the the problems of establishing peace but also the fact of the huge Americans military superiority which might in the end get the Chinese to submit to American leadership and she gives some examples where they say so it's a very unclear situation and what I will do now is drink some water and then go to to the final second yeah you're looking at your words and I know I can't save you from the from the conclusions so a new Europe question mark in which direction if at all with the European state system move out of its present implants downward back to democratic redistributionist politics on the ground as demanded by nationalist communitarians or upward to more Europe last election in the sense of more super state enforcement of a politics free market economy has asked for by modern capital and promoted more or less knowingly by the european center left in the name of a new non parochial non proletarian middle class only kind of democracy for Palani this would depend on the evolution of europe's global context especially China and now China at the United States in particular the question seems to be what opportunities that context will will offer to European centralist to establish a new narrative now it's always a narrative I don't know when this witness talked up but to establish a new narrative confirming the historical need for more European integration the narrative replacing the social democratic European social model narrative from the 1970s witches as dead as it can possibly be as well as the neoliberal one of borderless international markets producing prosperity to everybody for everybody and economic conversions for all which in 2008 came to a sudden death in this respect note the rising calls among European super nationalists for a European army as a rationale for European unity so how mamas and several political Christian Democratic politicians recently sign the petition they want a European army yeah there's the strangest things happen in an interregnum right monstrosity so building an army is a classical Avenue to State Building as it comes with the identification of a foreign enemy establishing a Schmidt Ian find find fairness helpful for social integration well for some time now the designated enemy posing security risks for Europe as a whole has been Russia it is increasingly joined by China and even in reaction to Trumpets isolationism sometimes also the United States European army building as a pathway to European state building had been tried before with the European defense community project of the 1950's which was ended in which was which in the end was vetoed by the French National Assembly now it is above all France that is pushing European military unification like in the 1950s centrally important in this is Germany which currently is about to almost double its defense spending from one point one to two percent of GDP in response to long-standing demands by the United States under NATO but also by France with view to the creation of a southern European defense capacity now if you hear 1% to 2 you think that that's ridiculous but I worry about it but but Germany was a 2% spending of GDP would spend 40% more than Russia then Russia Germany alone Russia including its it's very expensive nuclear capacity so this would be quite a powerful country country by spending 2% as it would become the biggest military power in Europe far ahead of Russia since Germany cannot and will not acquire nuclear weapons all of its additional spending would be unconventional arms which would ideally close the gaps in the French arsenal caused by the high costs of France's nuclear force they have a problem with ground forces using the for this they have an aircraft carrier which they now renovated for four billion euros of a time of three or four years our new would be Chancellor a KK ya suggest it to the French we can also do the German the German aircraft carrier if you want some other sort of complement using defense as a lever for supranational integration requires that European elites can point to an unstable or hostile international environment threatening peace prosperity and the European Way of life and a great combo of English well what external dangers can always be overstated like in the case of Russia real tensions in the international system obviously helpful taking my cues again from polanyi's 1945 essay I conclude by discussing three ideal typical European trajectories out of the present political economic interactome the first would lead to a decentralized system of democratic nation states loosely integrate horizontally through negotiated economic cooperation or with Palani regional planning which in Europe would require replacing the euro with a more flexible monetary regime under which southern countries can survive simply breathe how this is a different question globally this would presuppose something like the International order Palani had hoped for the balance of power between self-contained non expansionist big states or blocks of state unwilling or in any case unable to impose the economic and political system on the world at large a non imperialistic non universalistic peaceful coexistence as the Soviets called it in particular between China and the United States cured from it's neoliberal one-world sense of mission interstate relations although not necessarily into society relations would be governed by respect of difference international economic relations could bind large be free from colonialism and post colonialism and European countries might even be able to work out a peaceful accommodation with what is now their international bed Noire Russia strong incentives to build up European military strength would be lacking the project of a European army would lose plausibility and become unfit as a vehicle for European super-state formation and the war on terror terror could be delegated as it long should have been to cooperative international police work rather than sending German troops to jail fighting terrorism numerous questions would arise in particular on the capacity of a decentralized state system based on voluntary cooperation to respond to global problems such as climate change tax evasion and the governance and finance and money I spare you this discussion or I say in this context is that you have to compare with the real achievement of the often now existing multipolar crazy super state arrangement and they didn't didn't get much done so in trying it differently might simply be justified by the fact that the way this is being tried now is relatively unsuccessful but I can say on that a little later in the discussion if you want ok we're we're sort of approaching the the goal yeah wonderful I said 660 minutes and it will not be longer than that returning to the global context of Europe it appears that just as in polanyi's analysis the main obstacle to a pluralist global order is the United States having conquered the Soviet Union the US would have to learn to withdraw from its far-flung networks of alliance and outposts and redefine America first to mean prioritizing domestic / international and the question is of course if this is at all possible whether the US economy has become too dependent on its country's international dominance to be able to do without it in this case the US would have to perceive the rise of China as a deadly threat involving the diminished American access to global resources and higher prices for American imports of raw materials also continued American hostility to countries like Iran might make these natural allies not just of Russia but also of China which would further exacerbate tensions between the two 21st century superpowers such tensions would of course advance the credibility of a military justification for a super state like centralization of the European state system like you've not used to call pressure an army versus state attached to it and Europe could might in this on this becomes something like that the armed super state project of European integration comes in two versions French and German linked to different perceptions of the constraints and opportunities inherent in a Chinese American struggle for global hegemony in both European State Building proceeds via European Empire tightening curtailing the autonomy and suspending the democracy of member states the French version sees Europe as a third big player in equidistance from the US and China whereas the German version envisages something like a sub Empire of the United States joining it in its fight with the Chinese and for whatever reason the Russians in practice distinguishing between the two is not always easy as the exact nature of the American of the future American Chinese relationship is not known and France and Germany are struggling within the European Union over its finality while hiding as much as possible the quite fundamental disagreement now this this was as long as angle America really had power in Germany now the disagreement is really breaking up it's very very clearly seen the matter is further complicated by the fact that there is in the german foreign policy establishment and minority goal list faction that's what they used to be called in the seventies contesting the pro-american majority Atlanta Syst affection as represented above over angle America and her hand-picked could be successor the few selected points must suffice to illustrate the differences between the french and german visions of an ambulance super state the french concept of a third hegemon presupposes global tensions strong enough to unify Europe but not strong enough to force it to choose sides it also presupposes the hefty increase in American military spending that is current in German so the in German military spending that is currently underway which will compensate for the large share of French defense spending for on on the force of up on the on the nuclear force the French are already spending two percent of their of the GDP on unarmed but you can't see it if it sits in the in the aircraft carrier no nobody knows what the aircraft carrier is doing if it is not being repaired since since the first farm will remain under French control it will ensure superior all of France in a future European super-state in geopolitics also because France will after breaks it be the only European Union member with a permanent seat and a veto on the United Nations Security Council German conventional forces under French European Command in particular and and if you have the nukes then you have the command the German conventional forces an offensive up in command in particular German ground troops will be needed to fight post-colonial Wars and French Africa and perhaps the Middle East to secure European access to natural resources and keep Europe's Chinese and American rivals in southern Europe and northern Africa at bay as as much as you can do that inside Europe priority would be given to keeping the Mediterranean countries on board and willing to be governed from the European Center which would require as I wrote in in no more diplomatic which would require compensation for the damage inflicted on the economies by the hard common currency firms by way of a special budget for the eurozone paid for in effect by European surplus countries a French third hegemon strategy would also allow for some sort of the table with Russia unlike the French European super-state it's German alternative would fundamentally be a market state with strong interests in the European East in potential coalition to collision with Russia a collision with Russia and the high Atlantic affinity with the United States the Germans always feel uncomfortable if they are hugged too hard by the French on the other end say they can't say don't have me for all sorts of historical reasons it's a me can lead to a situation so national or supranational security would be derived in addition to European efforts from a nuclear military pact with the United States it's our would come with a reassertion of American expansionism and the serious Chinese American confrontation resulting from it we're seeing that confrontation right now beginning to build up one role of Europe as a sub Empire of a refounded American lead left perhaps including the United Kingdom in a special relationship after its separation from the European Union would be to keep Russia in check preventing it from projecting its power into the Middle East and the Mediterranean and binding Russian forces the armed super binding binding Russian Russian force that might otherwise support an alliance with China a confrontational European stance with Russia would also keep the Eastern European countries in the Western European Empire ensuring their elites against the risks of taking a hostile view of Russian regional security interests like Ukraine preventing in other words the kind of regional peacemaking through Regional Planning envisaged by Palani German conventional superiority over Russia would be backed up and in it will be huge because all the German money will go into tanks or whatever conventional conventional arms it will be huge and the Russians are spending 40 percent less and probably one half of it has to go into the nuclear force German Canisius security over Russia would be backed up by American nuclear power for which which would be enlisted which would be enlisted by logistical support for the American American Middle Eastern Wars for example in particular some military bases in Germany I'm Stein understand is a place that the very few people know about and it's it's huge it's you it's the biggest American Air Base outside the United States and and and the the operations the Middle East are all controlled out of lunchtime and and the drones that are being sent there is not there in political terms a sub imperial European project as a part of an american-led West might be difficult to sell to voters outside of Eastern Europe as long as Trump or another ugly American is in power but the same may be true under a new leftist Democratic president or Congress which may be culturally a Kennedy of the 21st century Alexander who Garcia Cortez for example but politically even more isolationist then Trump initially tried to be now he is no longer very much so because the military establishment is basically taken over is his staff in the White House the probably the German version of a military pass to European unity presupposes a return to power or at least a realistic possibility of such a return of Clinton style American liberalism or more likely a successful resistance of the American deep State the country's military industrial intelligence complex against isolationist attempts left or right to subordinate its priorities to domestic ones and the the Harvard speech of Merkel there is is remarkable in in this respect because if there was one thing in her career that was some absolute constant was she never ever took issue with the United States only now and and now because these United States cannot sort of support this idea of a European American alliance may be impacted by politics but certainly not in popular politics they they have presented Trump to the German voter and some someone who's at least as bad as Putin and Putin is also very bad in the idea of the German conclusion an interregnum is a time of high uncertainty with respect of goals how long it will last and how it will end nobody knows how the United States and China will settle their relationship if at all they may for an indefinite period be wavering between conflict and accommodation between peace Cold War and war shrinking back or not from the abyss as they perhaps repeatedly approach it nor do we know what the ongoing rapid digitization of military technology will contribute drones being only the beginning followed by robots fighting robots as they attack infrastructures in troops accompanied by ever more sophisticated cyber warfare against writer telecommunications and data processing systems equally uncertain is how long the populist defense of local autonomy against supranational centralism who endure international scaremongering by European elites may push back centrifugal forces or it may not French hopes for a more isolationist United States and German hopes for an American return to multilateralism may both be disappointed as the United States may remain torn between an America first electorate and an internationalist military establishment moreover French and American expectations nourished by the German government but America government of a Germany arming itself to the teeth and placing its military under European Command not saying wherever NATO is in this thereby extracting it from national parliamentary control may be frustrated by German voters and parties and who will win the battle between the golus in Germany and the Atlantis's the former nita France that is not the Penn East the letter the United States that is not Trump aced perhaps here - all one can predict is a drawn-out period of indecision among doubts whether Germany will be able and willing to pay the rising price of keeping its liberal European empire together above and beyond the 2% for a larger and better military what we may be in fallen is what chess players call a hanger party long hang party with uncertain event but productively accounted for within the parameters of pole armies polanyi's 1945 sa universalism vs pluralism one world or more gold standard vs. regional planning Empire vs. 17 counter movement from the left versus the right in all this uncertain complexity and the brinksmanship it may engender political elites may at some point finally cease to understand what they are doing and like in 1914 and these people were not different from from us basically the same brains and like in 1914 unintentionally started a wildfire that they cannot control there are enough fuses around for this thank you for listening [Applause] [Music]

Channel: IWMVienna

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Id: ZQ2z-ygbYNw

Length: 66min 25sec (3985 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 12 2019