Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Today on Deep Background, we continue our
Speaker 1: special mini series looking at global power, the institutions of power,
Speaker 1: the people who deploy it, and what it means for
Speaker 1: the United States in the world. To discuss these issues,
Speaker 1: I can hardly think of a person more extraordinary than
Speaker 1: for Read Zakaria. For Reid is known as one of
Speaker 1: the leading foreign policy intellectuals, not only in the United
Speaker 1: States but in the world. Not only that, he explains
Speaker 1: foreign policy to the world as the host of CNN's
Speaker 1: for Reid Zakaria GPS and the author of a regular
Speaker 1: column for The Washington Post. Before that, he was a
Speaker 1: Calmness for Newsweek, the editor of Newsweek International, and editor
Speaker 1: at large of Time, and the editor of Foreign Affairs.
Speaker 1: He's written several important and influential books on foreign policy
Speaker 1: and the US, and today he's agreed to talk about
Speaker 1: the major challenges that face US foreign policy in the
Speaker 1: time of the Biden administration, how the US government can
Speaker 1: and should think about its relationship with China, whether the
Speaker 1: world is becoming a bipolar place with the US and
Speaker 1: China on either side, and how power has been transformed
Speaker 1: over the last several decades. He's also agreed to look
Speaker 1: a little bit into the crystal ball of prediction and
Speaker 1: try to figure out how the post COVID era is
Speaker 1: going to affect foreign policy today. We will go deep
Speaker 1: and go behind the thinking that led to the arguments
Speaker 1: in that book. Farid, thank you so much for joining me. Farid.
Speaker 1: Want to start by asking you to do a job
Speaker 1: that you've been asked to do many times over the year,
Speaker 1: which is to imagine yourself as the foreign policies are
Speaker 1: of the United States. And in the old days we
Speaker 1: would have said Secretary of State or National security advisor,
Speaker 1: but today it's not entirely clear where the true power lies.
Speaker 1: And to think about what are the major foreign policy
Speaker 1: challenges that are facing the US right now that are
Speaker 1: facing the Biden administration, and then we'll work our way
Speaker 1: through that to the question of how American power is
Speaker 1: faring at this particular juncture. So let me start by
Speaker 1: asking it to you in the most open ended way possible.
Speaker 1: What strike you as the largest issues? Oh? Thanks, no,
Speaker 1: it's a huge pleasure to beyond with you. I'm a
Speaker 1: fan of the podcast. I think that one way to
Speaker 1: think about this is to say, what is the sort
Speaker 1: of central challenge that the United States faces beyond everything else?
Speaker 1: It was the organized principle, and I would argue it is.
Speaker 1: The United States has created over the last seventy years
Speaker 1: a rather remarkable international system, a system quite different from
Speaker 1: one that existed previously at any point in history, that
Speaker 1: is marked by a greater degree of international order, norms, rules,
Speaker 1: even liberal values. It's not perfect by any stretch. There's
Speaker 1: lots of violations. The US violates at a lot of times.
Speaker 1: But if you just think in big historical terms, the
Speaker 1: big shift that's taken place since nineteen forty five is
Speaker 1: this one. And you know, for example, the annexation of
Speaker 1: territory by using force is something that used to happen
Speaker 1: routinely for hundreds and hundreds of years before that. It
Speaker 1: barely ever happens anymore. The Russian occupation and invasion of
Speaker 1: Crimea is a rare example to the contrary. So if
Speaker 1: you say to yourself, sometimes people call this a kind
Speaker 1: of liberal national order, rules based international order, that is
Speaker 1: the central achievement of American foreign policy. It is the
Speaker 1: defining feature of the world we live in right a
Speaker 1: world in which France and Germany went to war three
Speaker 1: times between eighteen fifty and nineteen fifty. It's now unthinkable
Speaker 1: that France and Germany would go to war. So if
Speaker 1: that is the central achievement of American foreign policy, I
Speaker 1: would say it is also uniquely threatened these days. It
Speaker 1: had a good run during the Cold War, it was
Speaker 1: kind of a half system, then flourished after the fall
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union, and now is really threatened. And
Speaker 1: it's threatened by a number of things. And I would
Speaker 1: say the central challenge for the United States is how
Speaker 1: do you stabilize, shore up this liberal world order and
Speaker 1: help to make it endure into the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: That's beautifully stated, and it leads us immediately to one
Speaker 1: of the most visible challenges to this order, and that's China.
Speaker 1: In part of the time that you describe the Cold
Speaker 1: War time, the US was in a bipolar world where
Speaker 1: the US powers on one side and the Soviet power
Speaker 1: largely on the other. Then in the Postcold War period,
Speaker 1: some people talked about the world being unipolar, dominated by
Speaker 1: the United States. Now, the rise of China makes bipolarity
Speaker 1: extremely probable, And in your fantastic book Ten Lessons for
Speaker 1: a Post Pandemic World, you have a whole section talking
Speaker 1: about bipolarity and how while war is not inevitable between
Speaker 1: the United States and China, some bipolarity is how should
Speaker 1: the US be thinking about China when it comes to
Speaker 1: incorporation into this international system of norms and orders, Because
Speaker 1: just to deepen the question, for about a decade and
Speaker 1: a half, foreign policy experts said, well, what the US
Speaker 1: should do is just give China the incentives to enter
Speaker 1: into this order, and then it will play alongside the
Speaker 1: United States and it will actually strengthen the order. And
Speaker 1: sometimes in some areas China appear to be doing at
Speaker 1: the World Trade Organization being a prominent example. But now
Speaker 1: it looks as though China is going to behave a
Speaker 1: little bit more like the US does. Embrace the order
Speaker 1: when it's useful and then step outside the order when
Speaker 1: that is useful. Yeah, you make a very important point
Speaker 1: that I think we often forget that the US often
Speaker 1: violates this order. I mean, if you look at, for example,
Speaker 1: even on something like trade, where the US has been
Speaker 1: the great promoter of free trade over the years over
Speaker 1: the decades, we violate free trade principles all the time.
Speaker 1: By the way, all the tariffs against China and the
Speaker 1: tariffs against Europe are essentially a violation of the spirit
Speaker 1: of free trade. Many of them invoke entirely bogus national
Speaker 1: security arguments. We face a national security threat from Germany
Speaker 1: and Canada and therefore have tariffs on there on their
Speaker 1: steel and aluminum product. But let me get to your
Speaker 1: central point, which is which is of course the most
Speaker 1: important one. So what I try to explain in the
Speaker 1: book is that most people are going to think, wait,
Speaker 1: we're not really in a bipolar world. The US is
Speaker 1: by far the most powerful country, which is true. But really,
Speaker 1: when you think about systems of international relations, the defining
Speaker 1: feature of polarity, of you know, whether you're in a
Speaker 1: multipolar or unipolar or bipolar system is mostly are the
Speaker 1: two powers in a bipolar system kind of in a
Speaker 1: league of their own. This is what Hans Morganhou came
Speaker 1: up with in the late forties. Were accurately figured out
Speaker 1: that we were entering a bipolar world, even though the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, by the way, was at that point probably
Speaker 1: one third as large as the United States in terms
Speaker 1: of its global economic impact. The US was roughly forty
Speaker 1: percent of the world economy. The Soviets were maybe ten
Speaker 1: or twelve percent of the world economy. So if you
Speaker 1: look at it in those terms, morganhouse point was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union might be only twelve percent, but it's
Speaker 1: way more than anybody else, you know. In other words,
Speaker 1: as the US, there's a Soviet Union, and then Britain,
Speaker 1: which had collapsed, was down to something like three and
Speaker 1: a half percent of world GDP. This time around, it's
Speaker 1: clear the US is number one, but China is number
Speaker 1: two and larger than numbers three, four, and five and
Speaker 1: six put together, larger than the next four countries put
Speaker 1: together in economic terms and in defense spending. So clearly
Speaker 1: these two countries have a kind of weight and heft
Speaker 1: and reach beyond almost anything. And China, unlike the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: really is an advanced economy in many senses. Obviously not
Speaker 1: on its averages. But give you an example. There are
Speaker 1: five hundred of supercomputers in the world. The five hundred
Speaker 1: fastest computers in the world can be distributed thusly two
Speaker 1: about two hundred and twenty five are in China, about
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five are in the US, and
Speaker 1: then the rest are Europe, Taiwan and South Korea, Singapore,
Speaker 1: places like that. So you see that in some very
Speaker 1: cutting edge areas, China is actually ahead of the United
Speaker 1: States overall. No question, the US is number one by far,
Speaker 1: but China is a legitimate number two. So that's why
Speaker 1: I say bipolarity is inevitable. There is inevitably going to
Speaker 1: be a sense of rivalry competition between these two countries.
Speaker 1: There is a structural reality where each is going to
Speaker 1: think that its loss comes at the others gain and
Speaker 1: vice versa. But I don't think it's like the Cold War.
Speaker 1: For reasons you alluded to, the Soviet Union was an
Speaker 1: ideological and economic political challenge to not just the United States,
Speaker 1: but to the entire world order the United States had constructed.
Speaker 1: China is not quite that kind of player. It has
Speaker 1: readily embraced large parts of that order, not just the
Speaker 1: trading regime, but the knowledge regime, if you will, I
Speaker 1: mean the China sense. It's students to the United States.
Speaker 1: It abides by patent laws. You know, there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of areas where it is trying to mirror many of
Speaker 1: the rules regulations and norms that have been put in place.
Speaker 1: Then there are many areas where it violates, and Pattern
Speaker 1: is actually a good example where they violate and follow
Speaker 1: at the same time, similarly with trade. But if you
Speaker 1: think of the Soviets who actively argued that their goal
Speaker 1: was a communist world revolution and that funded parties around
Speaker 1: the world to do that, funded insurgent movements around the
Speaker 1: world to do that. Mouse China did that, it was
Speaker 1: funding at least a dozen insurgencies around the world. The
Speaker 1: Chinese Communist Party today is strikingly about not kind of
Speaker 1: world revolution and insurrections and things like that, but making
Speaker 1: China great. In doing that, they are violating a lot
Speaker 1: of the rules, norms, and values of a liberal international order.
Speaker 1: So the challenge with China is, I don't think that
Speaker 1: you face the same kind of Soviet like Cold War threat,
Speaker 1: but you face a country that is determined to rise
Speaker 1: and to really cheat in order to rise. And again,
Speaker 1: to be clear, it doesn't cheat all the time, but
Speaker 1: when it cheats, it is violating that that road. I
Speaker 1: would argue, that's why you have to have strong measures
Speaker 1: of deterrence where you really push back, but then also
Speaker 1: strong measures of integration, where you say to the Chinese,
Speaker 1: if you are playing by the rules, we will allow you,
Speaker 1: for example, to have a larger say in the World
Speaker 1: Bank or the IMF. Those examples are interesting because basically
Speaker 1: what happened over the last ten years is the Chinese
Speaker 1: tried to do that to say, we'd like to integrate.
Speaker 1: We'd like to be you know, we'd like to be
Speaker 1: more involved, we'd like to pay more of the bills,
Speaker 1: we'd like to bear more of the burdens on peacekeeping,
Speaker 1: on UN operations, but we'd like more of a say,
Speaker 1: and with something like the World Bank or you know,
Speaker 1: or the Asian Development Bank. The US largely said no,
Speaker 1: you can't have more, and so the Chinese went off
Speaker 1: and said, okay, fine, we'll start our own bank, the
Speaker 1: Asian Infrastructure Bank. And you know, that's the tension were
Speaker 1: One of the ways I think about this is to say,
Speaker 1: we all seem to in the in the United States,
Speaker 1: be sure we understand when China is overstepping its boundaries,
Speaker 1: it is exerting too much power and influence South China
Speaker 1: Sea or bullying Australia. But we haven't figured out what
Speaker 1: would be an okay level of power and influence for
Speaker 1: the second richest country in the world to have. It's
Speaker 1: not going to be what China's role in influence was
Speaker 1: when it was one percent of GDP, which was only
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. It's now fifteen percent of GDP. So
Speaker 1: that's a fifteen full rise in China's raw economic power.
Speaker 1: Surely there's going to be some increase in its influence,
Speaker 1: and we haven't figured out how do we allow for that.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean, that kind of force of integration,
Speaker 1: which will then give much more force it seems to
Speaker 1: me incredibility to the pushback, to the deterrence to say no,
Speaker 1: these are red lines when you're crossing them. But for
Speaker 1: there to be red lines, it seems to me they
Speaker 1: also have to be green lines. I love the paradigm
Speaker 1: that you're offering of deterrence and integration, and I think
Speaker 1: you couldn't be more correct that if your only stance
Speaker 1: is deterrence, then there's no positive incentive for integration. But
Speaker 1: I want to ask in practice what that means for
Speaker 1: good old fashioned hard power, you know, geopolitical power over
Speaker 1: other countries, because you know there have been voices, quiet
Speaker 1: voices for a long time, but louder in recent years,
Speaker 1: saying that when it comes to that kind of power,
Speaker 1: the US should squarely be in a model of containment
Speaker 1: towards China. That basically, every extra move that China gets
Speaker 1: more powerful in militarily comes at the expense of the US,
Speaker 1: because the US has been the dominant global superpower and
Speaker 1: China is rising. And often that view went alongside people saying,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to economic activity, that's where we
Speaker 1: can provide positive incentives sometimes because the positive incentives and
Speaker 1: economics are not thought to be zero sum. So if
Speaker 1: China gets rich, that doesn't mean that the US gets poorer.
Speaker 1: To an economist, at least, it's possible for everybody to
Speaker 1: get rich in a positive some way. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to geopolitical power, it's closer to a zero sum.
Speaker 1: It may not be exactly a zero sum, but it's
Speaker 1: closer to a zero sum. And so one of the
Speaker 1: schools of thought had been hard line on anything military,
Speaker 1: but give them green lines and encourage their participation and
Speaker 1: integrate them on anything broadly speaking economic. Does that seem
Speaker 1: to you like a plausible way of looking at it,
Speaker 1: or does that miss the point of how China's rise
Speaker 1: is actually operated, which is mostly through the economic vector. No.
Speaker 1: I think that misses the point for a different reason, Noah,
Speaker 1: which is that if you set yourself up to say
Speaker 1: that the geopolitical space is entirely zero sum, the problem
Speaker 1: becomes you condemned the United States to be essentially a
Speaker 1: world empire. Because what you're saying is if there are
Speaker 1: any gains not just for China, but for any other
Speaker 1: country anywhere in the world, that is de facto a
Speaker 1: loss of American power and influence. But does the United
Speaker 1: States want to be the dominant geopolitical player in every
Speaker 1: local conflict everywhere in the world. I mean, we're seeing
Speaker 1: the United States fatigue from having done that for forty years,
Speaker 1: I don't know, seventy sixty years in the Middle East, right,
Speaker 1: we're seeing a certain sense in which even in places
Speaker 1: like Latin America, the United States is taking a much
Speaker 1: less forward leaning position. If you think about you know,
Speaker 1: John Kennedy is a Latin American policy which was basically
Speaker 1: the United States was going to fund the foreign a
Speaker 1: in development throughout Latin America. We're not quite in that mode.
Speaker 1: Do we want to be in that mode? And if
Speaker 1: we don't want to be in the mode. It gets
Speaker 1: back to this sort of central architecture we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: Is there a way to conceive of a world order
Speaker 1: in which the United States is not maintaining the geopolitical
Speaker 1: balance in every local area so as to keep the
Speaker 1: world in some kind of equipoise, or are we willing
Speaker 1: to accept a certain amount of messiness regional balances things
Speaker 1: like that. Look what's happened as the United States has
Speaker 1: withdrawn from the Middle East. Basically you have a power
Speaker 1: struggle going on between the Saudiast, the Iranians, the Turks,
Speaker 1: the Israelis. But you know, it hasn't led the United
Speaker 1: States to say, oh my god, this is unacceptable. We
Speaker 1: need to be dominating. It's in fact, I think for
Speaker 1: many Americans, even American strategies, there's a sense of relief.
Speaker 1: You know, we were never even clear what we were doing,
Speaker 1: and we weren't clear what our interests world We were
Speaker 1: making huge expenditures and commitments without being sure we were
Speaker 1: getting much in return for it. So I think that's
Speaker 1: in some ways the central problem there is the reality
Speaker 1: that economics is more win win than security. But you know,
Speaker 1: one thing that Franklin Roosevelt who is my hero, understood
Speaker 1: about the you know, creating a world order, which Woodrow
Speaker 1: Wilson didn't. He admired Wilson greatly. Roosevelt did, but he
Speaker 1: understood you have to marry kind of power and idealism.
Speaker 1: You have to give the great powers a reason to
Speaker 1: be engaged in the international system. And so there has
Speaker 1: to be something in it for the other big powers
Speaker 1: in the world. They have to I hate to put
Speaker 1: it this way, but you know, they have to have
Speaker 1: some degree of influence. It's not spheres of control, really,
Speaker 1: But if you're saying nobody gets to have real power
Speaker 1: and influence other than the United States, then you know,
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to imagine a world order that that
Speaker 1: runs on any other principle than US as world hegemon.
Speaker 1: Here is where the rubber, I think, really meets the road.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right that the public sentiment in the United States,
Speaker 1: if you ask people in polls, is not that the
Speaker 1: United States should be an empire that dominates decision making
Speaker 1: everywhere in the world. And Donald Trump's foreign policy, if
Speaker 1: you can call it a foreign policy, followed that call
Speaker 1: it intuition, public intuition, and you know, Trump regularly responded
Speaker 1: to problems in various regions by saying, I don't care,
Speaker 1: not my problem. We're going to back away from this situation.
Speaker 1: The Biden administration comes in full of young, smart people
Speaker 1: who don't see the world that way at all. Many
Speaker 1: of them are products of Hillary Clinton's time in the
Speaker 1: State Department, which in turn reflected to some degree Bill
Speaker 1: clinton foreign policy vision in which people talked about the
Speaker 1: United States is the indispensable Nation, which is a kind
Speaker 1: of egomaniacal formulation in a certain way, but which does
Speaker 1: capture this post Cold War idea that the United States
Speaker 1: would intervene wherever it was possible to do so to
Speaker 1: try to maintain something like the international order. Now. I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone disputes at this point that we overplayed
Speaker 1: our hand very badly with the wars in Afghanistan any rock,
Speaker 1: and with respect in the Middle East, I think you're
Speaker 1: right that there's a tendency to say, let's not get
Speaker 1: involved in that anymore. And yet when the Israelis and
Speaker 1: the Palestinians find themselves leaving aside the rights and the
Speaker 1: wrongs and who started it's killing each other, it's the
Speaker 1: United States that gets the call still. And that's partly
Speaker 1: because Israel as a US ally, but it's also partly
Speaker 1: because there's no other actor who can plausibly go in
Speaker 1: and sit the sides down and say, Okay, there's going
Speaker 1: to be a ceasefire now. And I'm wondering whether, as
Speaker 1: you look at the Biden administration's approach, they should just
Speaker 1: be saying something more trumpy. They should just be saying, no,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do that anymore. It sounded a
Speaker 1: bit like you were saying that that the US should
Speaker 1: sort of say to regional powers, you know, step up,
Speaker 1: you take some responsibility here. You want it anyway, so
Speaker 1: we'll just sort of give it to you. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if that's I mean, I don't have the sense
Speaker 1: that a lot of Biden's foreign policy advisors think that way,
Speaker 1: but perhaps they should think that way. You know, you're
Speaker 1: right about Trump. But what I think you are neglecting
Speaker 1: to say is Obama in many ways had very similar
Speaker 1: instincts on this limited issue as Trump did, particularly in
Speaker 1: the Middle East. The central drama of Barack Obama's presidency
Speaker 1: in the Middle East was his refusal to intervene in Syria,
Speaker 1: despite frankly a majority of his aids wanting him to
Speaker 1: do so. I happened to think Obama was dead right
Speaker 1: that if you had had a major US intervention in Syria,
Speaker 1: it is very difficult for me to see how it
Speaker 1: would either not Either it would be completely feckless and
Speaker 1: you would be just prolonging a civil war and actually
Speaker 1: increasing the casualties without doing having much impact, or you'd
Speaker 1: go in a big way and it would be a
Speaker 1: rock all over again. I mean, you had basically an
Speaker 1: almost identical situation, a minority government that was being pushed,
Speaker 1: you know, with lots of islam Is there, and the
Speaker 1: US was being told get rid of the minority government
Speaker 1: in this case, an Ola Whide government, in the Iraqi case,
Speaker 1: a Sydney government, and we would have seen a much
Speaker 1: bigger civil war and we would own it. And Obama
Speaker 1: is I think, very conscious of that danger, and you know,
Speaker 1: had this kind of hippocratic view, which is let's first
Speaker 1: not do any harm. But I think you're right many
Speaker 1: of his advisers are more in the Hillary Clinton mode,
Speaker 1: which is more of a kind of reflexive American imperial mode.
Speaker 1: What I would say to you is, look not so
Speaker 1: much at the Arab Israeli issue where the US has
Speaker 1: unique equities causes, you say, of the very close relationship
Speaker 1: with Israel, but also of the sense on the Palestinian
Speaker 1: side send me of a certain generation of Palestinians that
Speaker 1: the USA is trying to broker something and is actually
Speaker 1: trying in its own way to create a two state solution.
Speaker 1: Look at the rest of the Middle East. I don't
Speaker 1: think Biden is getting much involved as far as I
Speaker 1: can tell. I mean Syria. They you know, as I say,
Speaker 1: many of those Biden advisors criticized Obama for staying out
Speaker 1: of Syria. They're staying out of Syria. So I think
Speaker 1: everywhere you're seeing more of an approach that tries to
Speaker 1: recognize that the US does not have to be dominating
Speaker 1: and shaping every one of these balances. It's not just
Speaker 1: the American people. I think it's the reality that you know,
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about the post American world, and
Speaker 1: the central point was that these other countries have become
Speaker 1: quite strong and powerful. You know, you can't push them around.
Speaker 1: To my mind, Turkey is in some ways the best
Speaker 1: example of that. Twenty five years ago, Turkey was a
Speaker 1: basket case economy run by generals, and every time the
Speaker 1: United States would tell the Turks to jump, they would
Speaker 1: ask how high. Today, Turkeys, I think the GDP's has
Speaker 1: gone up fivefold since then. It is a mature political system.
Speaker 1: It is a democracy of sorts and imperfect democracy. Its
Speaker 1: leader is quite popular. He has a very different attitude, right,
Speaker 1: And I don't think it's just out one. I think
Speaker 1: any Turkish leader at this point that who was democratically elected,
Speaker 1: who had the weight of the Turkish economy behind him,
Speaker 1: is going to be much less willing to simply act
Speaker 1: as America's stalwart. Ally. Turkey has very complicated interests in
Speaker 1: that area, and so it pursues them correctly or incorrectly.
Speaker 1: And I think that's you know, that to me feels
Speaker 1: like the new world we're in. Look at India, look
Speaker 1: at Brazil, look at Indonesia. These places are not going
Speaker 1: to be pushed around in quite the same way. So
Speaker 1: the US has I think, real power, and that is
Speaker 1: a gender setting power, and it has real power when
Speaker 1: it wants to. What I would like to see is
Speaker 1: in America that played more of that agenda setting role
Speaker 1: which it uniquely has, and I think that's for all
Speaker 1: kinds of reasons, a combination of hard and soft power,
Speaker 1: but only the US that can push forward some big
Speaker 1: idea on the international stage, whether it's climate change, whether
Speaker 1: it's even something like this global tax regime. The janet
Speaker 1: Yellen has just managed to do. It is striking that
Speaker 1: the US has this power. It should be using it
Speaker 1: to do stuff like that, to shore up the international system,
Speaker 1: to make it work, make everybody feel like their equities
Speaker 1: are being taken into account, and not to go off
Speaker 1: in one more military intervention hero there, which often tears
Speaker 1: at this fabric rather than builds it. One of the
Speaker 1: fascinating sections of your Ten Lessons book was about the
Speaker 1: question of decline, and you quoted the late grade political
Speaker 1: scientists Samuel Huntington, always controversial but also always saying something
Speaker 1: that made everybody think on the idea of there being
Speaker 1: moments of declinism in US history, and his moments when
Speaker 1: he was writing were mostly moments of the late sixties
Speaker 1: through the middle seventies. And you note that we might
Speaker 1: be in another moment of declinism. Huntington, as you point out,
Speaker 1: use this phrase to say, we're not really declining. People
Speaker 1: just think we're declining. You're more measured in the book,
Speaker 1: and you say, look, this might be a moment of
Speaker 1: declinism where without actual decline, or it may actually be
Speaker 1: a moment of decline. I'm wondering how that plays into
Speaker 1: the picture that you were describing, because the one difference
Speaker 1: between now and those other times is that there really
Speaker 1: is another power, namely China, that is in a position
Speaker 1: to share a substantial part of the power that the
Speaker 1: US has had now. That existed during the Soviet period,
Speaker 1: of course, but over time it dwindled, and one of
Speaker 1: the reasons the US didn't decline is that the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union declined faster and then disappeared. This time around, China
Speaker 1: is not in a moment of the client's in a
Speaker 1: moment of rise. And so I'm wondering if you think
Speaker 1: that relative to China, we are inevitably somewhat declining, and
Speaker 1: that that's a reason to push this kind of legacy
Speaker 1: issue that you're describing, the international order, which after all,
Speaker 1: was created in part because it was good for the US,
Speaker 1: and which now maybe is still good for the US
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I mean, it's a fascinating question. So
Speaker 1: where I find myself coming out is when you look
Speaker 1: at America, you cannot help but notice it. It's a
Speaker 1: very complicated country, and the answer to a question is
Speaker 1: going to be necessarily complicated. There are areas where the
Speaker 1: United States is incredibly inventive and dominates the world like
Speaker 1: frankly no other country of our hats think about big tech.
Speaker 1: If you went back to the nineteen seventies and said
Speaker 1: what country dominates the world of technology? It would have
Speaker 1: been a complicated question because the Germans, you know, still
Speaker 1: we're doing very well. The Dutch in areas like the
Speaker 1: Phillips and consumer electronics, we're doing very well today. The
Speaker 1: big technology companies in the world or all American or Chinese,
Speaker 1: but the American ones, I think I still have a lead,
Speaker 1: and that reality is, you know, one that does not
Speaker 1: seem likely to go away anytime soon. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: in terms of you know, the quality of life for
Speaker 1: average Americans, median wages, social mobility, all kinds of metrics
Speaker 1: like child mortality, the United States does wigh worse than
Speaker 1: most European countries, certainly worse than all Northern European countries,
Speaker 1: and increasingly worse than places like Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea.
Speaker 1: So you know, how to conjure up in America that
Speaker 1: conveys that full picture difficult. But that's why I rest
Speaker 1: my argument here or less on where America is in
Speaker 1: terms of how well it's doing, more in terms of
Speaker 1: how the rest of the world is doing. I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to say that whatever you may think of
Speaker 1: how America is doing, Singapore is doing ten times better
Speaker 1: than it was twenty five years ago. In South Korea
Speaker 1: and Indonesia, and India and Chile are all leaps and
Speaker 1: bounds further ahead than they were. And of course the
Speaker 1: number one country in that regard is China. As I say,
Speaker 1: one percent of global GDP twenty years ago, fifteen percent
Speaker 1: now almost inevitably rising to twenty percent in the next
Speaker 1: five to seven years. I would say, you know, seven
Speaker 1: years would be a reasonable number, and in that sense,
Speaker 1: in relative terms, it would be astonishing of the United
Speaker 1: States did not decline a little, not a lot. I mean,
Speaker 1: the truth is, the USS stayed roughly constant for the
Speaker 1: last twenty or thirty years. It's been sort of between
Speaker 1: twenty and twenty five percent of world economy. The Chinese
Speaker 1: have gone up, largely at Europe's expense. The country that
Speaker 1: has the countries that have declined in those terms, but
Speaker 1: the US has also declined a bit. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was closer to twenty five, it's now closer to twenty.
Speaker 1: It's likely I think they'll go down to eighteen something
Speaker 1: like that. So I do think that there is a
Speaker 1: reality here, and the larger reality is also one of
Speaker 1: political confidence, of cultural pride, of a sense you know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've always been struck by
Speaker 1: is the degree to which American culture, which used to
Speaker 1: dominate the world completely, just does not anymore. When you
Speaker 1: go to mean, if you go to China, there is
Speaker 1: essentially unknown. I mean, there are five American rock singers,
Speaker 1: rock stars who are known, and then everything else is Chinese.
Speaker 1: But even those, you know, Britney Spears or Beyonce or
Speaker 1: Jay Z, whoever you have, these are like number forty
Speaker 1: in China. But that's increasingly true everywhere. South Korean television
Speaker 1: shows dominate East Asia much more than American television shows too,
Speaker 1: So that maybe one kind of soft indication of what
Speaker 1: I'm describing. But I really do think that it's this
Speaker 1: rise of the rest that is the dominating force here,
Speaker 1: not so much the decline of America. But to put
Speaker 1: it in terms that you were asking, quite rightly, it
Speaker 1: does mean a certain kind of relative decline. Even if
Speaker 1: the raw numbers show a small decline, there's a similar
Speaker 1: moment in many of these countries. I think we'll be
Speaker 1: right back, Freed. I want to ask you a question
Speaker 1: that I hear frequently from what I would call the
Speaker 1: critical left that looks at international order, looks at liberal
Speaker 1: internationalism and says that when it works, it just benefits
Speaker 1: global elites, that it facilitates trade and facilitates great accumulations
Speaker 1: of wealth. And yes, if you push people, they will say, yes,
Speaker 1: it's very nice that so many Chinese people came out
Speaker 1: of poverty. But they say that happened at the expense
Speaker 1: of the loss of middle class jobs in the United States.
Speaker 1: And so one of the lines of criticism of the
Speaker 1: liberal international order is that it hasn't actually serve the
Speaker 1: interests of ordinary Americans, of middle class and working class Americans,
Speaker 1: and that therefore, in that approach, continued adherence to it
Speaker 1: with ideas that you and I tend to like, like
Speaker 1: free trade countries participating in an international order for intellectual
Speaker 1: property and so forth, is actually not in the long
Speaker 1: term interests of ordinary Americans that we need something different,
Speaker 1: perhaps a little bit more populist, less globalist, less focused
Speaker 1: on the idea of trade, and a little bit less
Speaker 1: worried about the fact that we can, through this model,
Speaker 1: enable poor people in other places in the world to
Speaker 1: get richer, more concerned about taking care of ourselves. So, first,
Speaker 1: I think it is worth noting the irony of a
Speaker 1: movement of people who central claim is that they are
Speaker 1: most concerned about human poverty, essentially being against a process
Speaker 1: that has taken the poorest of the poor, the you know,
Speaker 1: the people living on one dollar a day and move
Speaker 1: them up. You know, it's easy to regard this as
Speaker 1: an abstraction. I grew up in India. When you went
Speaker 1: into my father was a politician. Much of his constituency
Speaker 1: was rural. When you go into rural India even today,
Speaker 1: but twenty five years ago, I mean, there are people
Speaker 1: living there in medieval poverty. And so the idea that
Speaker 1: this is something to be scoffed at or to be
Speaker 1: taken lightly, you know, this is extraordinary. Five hundred million
Speaker 1: people moved from that kind of poverty into a more
Speaker 1: decent circumstance. You know, three four dollars a day. But
Speaker 1: I will say, the right wing populist seven don't have
Speaker 1: that worry about hypocrisy. I agree that part has to
Speaker 1: deal with that, but if you're a Trump supporter, you
Speaker 1: can skip over that part, right, you don't care. But
Speaker 1: but I think it's weird that Bernie Sanders, you know,
Speaker 1: the man of Workers of the World Unite, doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to notice this extraordinary benefit that trade and globalization has
Speaker 1: produced for hundreds and hundreds of millions of incredibly poor
Speaker 1: people all over the world. It is true, I will
Speaker 1: I will not pretend that there is no connection between
Speaker 1: globalization and what has happened to middle class wages in
Speaker 1: the Western world and in the United States in particular.
Speaker 1: It is not the whole story, as you well know,
Speaker 1: a large part of it when economists do the math.
Speaker 1: A large part of that story is manufacturing has become automated.
Speaker 1: If you look at America's manufacturing output, it has gone
Speaker 1: up and up and up over the last twenty years.
Speaker 1: It's just with fewer and fewer and fewer workers. So
Speaker 1: when people keep saying we're going to bring back manufacturing
Speaker 1: to the United says you can bring it back all
Speaker 1: you want. What you're bringing back is highly automated plans
Speaker 1: where very few workers work, and where the people who
Speaker 1: work are essentially advanced software engineers, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: running the plan. So there is that problem, but globalization
Speaker 1: plays some part in it, there's no question, and China
Speaker 1: plays a large part in that story. I have always
Speaker 1: felt about this the way I do about domestic economics.
Speaker 1: And again, I grew up in India socialist economy, and
Speaker 1: so maybe I'm colored by that experience of watching a dysfunctional, decaying, stagnant,
Speaker 1: corrupt system. There's no question that the market provides much
Speaker 1: greater efficiency, much greater vitality, allows for innovation, allows for
Speaker 1: the generation of growth. There's also no question that markets
Speaker 1: need to be regulated and some of their profits need
Speaker 1: to be taken and redistributed to provide greater opportunities for people.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest mistake we've made with regard to
Speaker 1: trade over the last fifty years is we keep saying that, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, whether we know there are winners and losers
Speaker 1: in trade, and we need to make sure that we
Speaker 1: help the losers adjust, and then we never do it.
Speaker 1: There's never any money spent it seems to me this
Speaker 1: is obviously the right answer, which is you keep the
Speaker 1: motor that generates the dynamism and the wealth and the innovation,
Speaker 1: but you use the proceeds, the rewards to really try
Speaker 1: to bolster economic opportunity to really help people move up.
Speaker 1: Places like Denmark Sweden do this very well, even Germany,
Speaker 1: which is why they have not had as much of
Speaker 1: a decline of their manufacturing sectors or as much of
Speaker 1: a decline of their jobs. So it seems to me
Speaker 1: the answer is not to go in a Trumpian populist direction,
Speaker 1: but in a more social democratic European direction. Social democracy
Speaker 1: properly understood Northern Europe is very free market. In fact,
Speaker 1: in the Heritage Foundations Index of Economic free Denmark and
Speaker 1: Sweden rank higher than the United States because they're more
Speaker 1: free trade that they actually don't have that much regulation,
Speaker 1: but they take that money and they spend it on
Speaker 1: the poor, onequality economic opportunity. That seems to me the
Speaker 1: answer when a country is economically powerful that does have
Speaker 1: a tendency, not universally, but to create more economic opportunity
Speaker 1: and therefore more opportunity for well being for ordinary citizens,
Speaker 1: especially if they do the kind of Nordic redistribution that
Speaker 1: you're describing. What about geopolitical power? Is there any real
Speaker 1: reason to believe in this day and age that a
Speaker 1: country's capacity to exert its will globally necessarily serves the
Speaker 1: interests of ordinary citizens. You know. Trump seemed to think
Speaker 1: that it just didn't matter to ordinary Americans if the
Speaker 1: United States could exert its will globally, because it wouldn't
Speaker 1: translate into jobs, and it wouldn't translate into anything that
Speaker 1: would affect their pocketbook, and wouldn't translate into their daily
Speaker 1: well being. And in contrast, a lot of liberal internationalists,
Speaker 1: myself included, tend to assume that there are benefits to
Speaker 1: all Americans knowing that, let's say, our values can be
Speaker 1: expressed globally, that international institutions that we help design to
Speaker 1: serve our own interests are out there and are functioning
Speaker 1: in the world. But I'm not sure that we've necessarily
Speaker 1: done a very good job of translating that into concrete
Speaker 1: terms for ordinary people. Yeah, the Trump argument is sort of,
Speaker 1: I don't see cash coming into my pocket by doing this,
Speaker 1: so obviously the whole thing is a scam, and therefore
Speaker 1: what we should just do is you know, Drum would
Speaker 1: literally say this, even no matter how illogical it was,
Speaker 1: we should just charge the Chinese for this, or charge
Speaker 1: the Saudist to defend them, or you know, things like that.
Speaker 1: The truth is, I think is a much stronger case
Speaker 1: to be made that the kind of world that the
Speaker 1: United States has created is profoundly in the interests of
Speaker 1: an ordinary American. First of all, it produces peace, It
Speaker 1: produces stability, It produces more general prosperity, a more general
Speaker 1: adherence to rules and norms, all of which is great
Speaker 1: if you are a rich, powerful country that you know
Speaker 1: already has lots of things that you don't want war,
Speaker 1: you don't want revolution, you don't want massive chaos all
Speaker 1: over the world. And as you say, there is a
Speaker 1: certain benefit that we get from having regular open trade
Speaker 1: by having you know, democratic societies around the world observe
Speaker 1: the rule of law, observe human rights. Because we're the
Speaker 1: ones who are most more likely than not to interact,
Speaker 1: to travel, to trade. I think that the sort of
Speaker 1: central challenge we face that's more substantive, and this goes
Speaker 1: back to, you know, where we started is can we
Speaker 1: build a liberal international order in which we also adhere
Speaker 1: to the rules more. You know, there's a certain tension
Speaker 1: here where we tend to think we're the guys organizing
Speaker 1: the whole system, so we can we can be expected
Speaker 1: to live by these rules. So when we criticize China
Speaker 1: for excessive involvement in the South China Sea in violation
Speaker 1: of the Law of the Seas Treaty, nobody points out
Speaker 1: the US is not itself a signatory to the Law
Speaker 1: of the CIA's treaty. When we talk about war crimes again,
Speaker 1: you know, and we accuse dictators of war crimes, what
Speaker 1: we are implying is that they're going to be taken
Speaker 1: to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, and we
Speaker 1: don't point out we are not a signatory to the
Speaker 1: International Criminal Court. You know, when we talk about these
Speaker 1: tariffs or these unfair trade practices, the Chinese have a
Speaker 1: couple of good accounts have tallied up the number of
Speaker 1: protectionist measures enacted by any country. The US is off
Speaker 1: the charts. We're number one by far. So it seems
Speaker 1: to me our challenges can we find a way to
Speaker 1: also adhere to these rules and norms more, because that
Speaker 1: is going to be a more compelling argument as to
Speaker 1: why the Chinese need to do it as well. You
Speaker 1: put it very correctly. You know, the start of the show,
Speaker 1: you said, the Chinese really are not trying to be
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union in nineteen sixty. What they're trying to
Speaker 1: be is the United States in nineteen ninety five or
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, and say, we're big enough now that, yeah,
Speaker 1: mostly will follow the rules. But whenever we feel like
Speaker 1: we don't want to follow the rules, we're big enough
Speaker 1: that we don't need to. And Exhibit A is the
Speaker 1: United States of America. I want to close for Reid
Speaker 1: with a challenge that is enormous to everybody and also
Speaker 1: important to everybody, and that can't be solved without very
Speaker 1: sophisticated deployment of global power. And that's a climate. Pretty
Speaker 1: much every country in the world now is prepared to
Speaker 1: say that we need to reduce emissions in order to
Speaker 1: maintain the global temperature, but the collective action problem remains
Speaker 1: just so difficult to overcome. How do you think about
Speaker 1: the right approach to that? How should the Biden administration
Speaker 1: be thinking about what it can realistically do, because this
Speaker 1: is one of those cases where the ideals are shared.
Speaker 1: The problem is in the practical realities of getting people
Speaker 1: to overcome their own impulses to develop their economies. So
Speaker 1: it's the perfect example of why I think we should
Speaker 1: not go down a path of a cold war with China,
Speaker 1: because you know, you would have the two most powerful
Speaker 1: economies in the world that would be engaged in a
Speaker 1: ceaseless competition. And the central danger, the central cost, it
Speaker 1: seems to me, is that we will not be able
Speaker 1: to cooperate on issues where we need to cooperate. And
Speaker 1: the number one there's climate. You know, if you really
Speaker 1: do believe the climate is the existential challenge that we
Speaker 1: need to face up to, you can't do it without
Speaker 1: the United States and China in some measure of cooperation.
Speaker 1: This is a problem that actually heart power is very
Speaker 1: poorly designed to solve because the United States is not
Speaker 1: going to be able to force countries to do things
Speaker 1: that are not in its self interest. Right. If you
Speaker 1: look at a country like India that is essentially building
Speaker 1: a coal five power plant almost every couple of weeks, still,
Speaker 1: what is going to make India stop doing that is
Speaker 1: two things. One, there has to be some economic logic
Speaker 1: that makes sense for India, some kind of financing structure
Speaker 1: which allows it to buy slightly more expensive energy. And
Speaker 1: the second is a regime of global norms and values
Speaker 1: and rules which say this is really not okay, and
Speaker 1: you would pay a certain price, even if it's an
Speaker 1: intelligible price, even if it's a kind of normative price.
Speaker 1: So you'd need those two things to happen, And for
Speaker 1: both of those things to happen, you need the United
Speaker 1: States and China on the same side to generate those norms,
Speaker 1: to generate the financing, because otherwise what's going to happen
Speaker 1: is the Chinese will provide financing for dirty energy, which
Speaker 1: is what a lot of the Belton Road initiative is,
Speaker 1: we will provide financing for clean energy. Again, this will
Speaker 1: all get caught up in the more of competition. So
Speaker 1: it feels to me like there's no way to do
Speaker 1: this without some substantial degree of cooperation between the United
Speaker 1: States and China. Europe is already on board. So when
Speaker 1: you add that all up, you're talking about sixty five
Speaker 1: seventy percent of the world economy. But it seems to
Speaker 1: me that there's a larger issue, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: is there a way for us to find these kind
Speaker 1: of areas of common opportunity and to say to ourselves, look,
Speaker 1: there is a reality of common humanity. Are there ways
Speaker 1: we can try to solve these common you know, these
Speaker 1: common challenges. It has always been America's historical legacy that
Speaker 1: we have been able to do this. Maybe it's because
Speaker 1: I'm an immigrant. I do think one of the distinctive
Speaker 1: features about America is we think about our national interests
Speaker 1: like every other country in the world, but we also
Speaker 1: think about broader global interests, and we try to expense
Speaker 1: some power and some resources in doing that. So if
Speaker 1: you're going to say that's important, then it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's crucial that we not end up with a foreign
Speaker 1: policy that is solely defined around a kind of nationalist
Speaker 1: competition against another country, no matter what country, because that
Speaker 1: has never been the American way. The American way has
Speaker 1: been to try to create a better world, not simply
Speaker 1: to keep one country down, no matter how problematic that
Speaker 1: country is. Freed I want to thank you for your very,
Speaker 1: very coach intend sophisticated analysis that's tremendously valuable to all
Speaker 1: of us who try to think about these issues. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Now, this is a huge pleasure. Thank
Speaker 1: you Listening to Farid's fascinating analysis really brought home the
Speaker 1: depth to which a foreign policy thinker like Farid has
Speaker 1: to go in order to produce the analysis and the
Speaker 1: suggestions that go into much of his public commentary. Behind
Speaker 1: Fred's analysis lies a complex worldview that sees a combination
Speaker 1: of foreign policy realism and foreign policy idealism as components
Speaker 1: of how the United States approaches power and politics. In
Speaker 1: an important sense, Farid is a globalist. He cares a
Speaker 1: lot about how people all over the world are conducting
Speaker 1: their lives and are trying to improve them. He credits
Speaker 1: China with extraordinary efforts to raise people out of poverty,
Speaker 1: even as he is concerned about the lack of freedoms
Speaker 1: that China extends to its own citizens and the ways
Speaker 1: in which It's built and road initiative limit and constrain
Speaker 1: the freedom of countries with which it interacts. Freed does
Speaker 1: believe that we are headed for a greater degree of
Speaker 1: bipolar struggle between the US and China than we have
Speaker 1: seen until now. Yet simultaneously he argues that while struggle
Speaker 1: between the two may be inevitable, genuine conflict may be
Speaker 1: controlled and constrained. He sees the United States as playing
Speaker 1: a central role in the continuing international legal order, and
Speaker 1: he hopes that the United States can, at the level
Speaker 1: of its grandest strategy, still seek to constrain and limit
Speaker 1: China and bring it into that order, requiring it to
Speaker 1: the extent possible to follow the rules of the game
Speaker 1: in order to be a constructive partner for the United States. Overall,
Speaker 1: Freed's analysis remains optimistic about the capacities and possibilities of
Speaker 1: the United States to continue to lead in a range
Speaker 1: of different ways, even as it acknowledges the rise of
Speaker 1: China and seeks to recognize a shifting set of global
Speaker 1: power actors that go beyond just the handful of traditional
Speaker 1: ones in the United States and in Western Europe. The
Speaker 1: picture that emerged from our conversation is of a world
Speaker 1: getting more complex by the minute, a world in which
Speaker 1: no country can think that it has all of the
Speaker 1: answers to the core problems of the future, and in which,
Speaker 1: above all, on issues like climate, the world must work
Speaker 1: together or all countries are going to reap the whirlwind.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful that Farid agreed to go deep into his worldview,
Speaker 1: and I learned a tremendous amount from listening to him.
Speaker 1: Until the next time I speak to all of you,
Speaker 1: be well, think deep thoughts, and have a little fun.
Speaker 1: Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Mola Board, our engineer is Ben Talliday, and
Speaker 1: our showrunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from noahm Osband.
Speaker 1: Theme music by Luis Gera at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell,
Speaker 1: Julia Barton, Lydia Jeancott, Heather Fain, Carlie Migliori, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weissberg. You can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at Bloomberg dot
Speaker 1: com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's original slate of podcasts,
Speaker 1: go to Bloomberg dot com slash Podcasts, and if you
Speaker 1: liked what you heard today, please write a review or
Speaker 1: tell a friend This is Deep Background.