Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Voteronomics, where politics and markets collide. I'm made
Speaker 2: from Woodridge. For my summer reading selection, I've chosen the
Speaker 2: latest release from Fared Zacaria, Age of Revolutions. Freed, of course,
Speaker 2: hosts CNN's flagship international affairs show, fored Zakaria GPS. He
Speaker 2: writes a weekly column for The Washington Post and is
Speaker 2: the author of the Future of Freedom, the Post American World,
Speaker 2: and Ten Lessons for a Post Pandemic World. But as
Speaker 2: I said, this conversation focuses on Age of Revolutions, Progress
Speaker 2: and backlash from sixteen hundred to the present. This is
Speaker 2: really a fascinating book about the rise of the liberal
Speaker 2: order and the possible collapse of that liberal order. For Reid,
Speaker 2: you have a record of taking on read big themes,
Speaker 2: the Future of Freedom, the post American World. But this
Speaker 2: is your biggest theme yet, the Age of Revolutions, Progress
Speaker 2: and Backlash from sixteen hundred to the present. Tell us
Speaker 2: a bit about your argument. What was it that inspired
Speaker 2: this book and what is the main thesis.
Speaker 3: That's a wonderful question, Adrian, What inspired the book, or
Speaker 3: at least triggered the book was that about ten years
Speaker 3: ago I started to notice something that I thought was
Speaker 3: very unusual, which was the rise of the Tea Party.
Speaker 3: And the reason I thought it was unusual was it
Speaker 3: was a kind of grassroots insurgency that was taking over
Speaker 3: or upending, the most hierarchical of the political parties in
Speaker 3: America and one of the most hierarchical in the Western world.
Speaker 3: If you think of the Republican Party, the old saying
Speaker 3: about presidential nominations used to be that the Democrats have
Speaker 3: to fall in love, but Republicans fall in line. And
Speaker 3: if you think about, you know, the Democrat nominating John
Speaker 3: Kennedy and Clinton and Obama, you understand that, whereas the
Speaker 3: Republicans would nominate you know, Nixon and then Nixon and
Speaker 3: then Nixon and then Bush and another Bush. You know,
Speaker 3: it was very hierarchical. You stud your turn. And here
Speaker 3: the Tea Party was upending that bottom up and was
Speaker 3: animated by issues that were not the traditional Republican issues,
Speaker 3: not about economics, cutting budgets, all that stuff. It was
Speaker 3: all cultural immigration, Obama as a black president. And it
Speaker 3: made me just begin to think about how politics was changing.
Speaker 3: And I read a speech by Tony Blair, in which
Speaker 3: he talked about how the old division of left versus
Speaker 3: right on the basis of economics, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: the size of the state was giving way to a
Speaker 3: politics based on your attitude towards a world that was
Speaker 3: open versus closed, you know, globalization, immigration, technology, even and
Speaker 3: that's where it all began. And then in order to
Speaker 3: you know, I found myself asking, if we're going through
Speaker 3: this kind of period of enormous change which is producing
Speaker 3: a backlash, when did this begin? When have we seen
Speaker 3: this before? And I thought about the Industrial Revolution, But
Speaker 3: then that took me back further and I ended up,
Speaker 3: as you know, starting with the Dutch in the seventeenth century.
Speaker 3: The basic argument of the book is that whenever you
Speaker 3: have periods of enormous technological and economic change, it tends
Speaker 3: to transform societies and you also end up getting a
Speaker 3: third revolution, which is a kind of identity revolution. People
Speaker 3: change the way they think of themselves. So when the
Speaker 3: Dutch for the first time became rich, they began to
Speaker 3: think of themselves differently, not as part of the Habsburg Empire,
Speaker 3: not as simply Christians, but as Protestants, and essentially broke
Speaker 3: away from the Habsburg Empire and created the Dutch Republic,
Speaker 3: and then that identity revolution trans most into a political revolution.
Speaker 3: And whenever you have this process that I just described,
Speaker 3: there is almost always a backlash. And how you navigate
Speaker 3: through this forward movement and backlash determines how successfully you
Speaker 3: kind of make your way in the world. The Dutch
Speaker 3: and the British, I argue, in the sixteenth seventeen eighteenth
Speaker 3: centuries handled this largely well. The French, in the French Revolution,
Speaker 3: handled it very badly. And those are in some ways
Speaker 3: the two archetypal examples, one being evolutionary change of bottom
Speaker 3: up these trends of technology, economics to reshaping society and
Speaker 3: politics adapting to it, versus the French, who decide top
Speaker 3: down political elites are going to decree a revolution in
Speaker 3: a transformation of society, and the whole thing explodes.
Speaker 2: So the Dutch, followed by the British, followed presumably by
Speaker 2: the Americans, of the good guys exactly, and the French
Speaker 2: not quite so good is that because they go over
Speaker 2: the top, and then you know, the revolution with all
Speaker 2: its blood leads to Napoleon. Is that the sequence of events.
Speaker 3: Basically, the French get it all wrong in the sense
Speaker 3: that France was not a society that was being transformed
Speaker 3: bottom up by economics and technology. At the time of
Speaker 3: the French Revolution. France was a large agrarian, centralized society.
Speaker 3: It was not particularly urban, the merchants were not particularly dominant.
Speaker 3: So all the forces of kind of modernization and change
Speaker 3: that had been roiling or transforming the Netherlands in Britain
Speaker 3: were absent in France. But the French politically, a certain
Speaker 3: group of Frenchman decide that they want to accelerate change
Speaker 3: and to achieve not quite a merchant republic, but a
Speaker 3: republic nonetheless, and they decreate it from above. And what
Speaker 3: it turns out is that France is still a very
Speaker 3: old fashioned, traditional agrarian society and it doesn't take and
Speaker 3: so the revolution goes, you know, it kind of goes
Speaker 3: helter skelter in various ways. As you know, the story
Speaker 3: of the French orpwe is so complicated. One of the
Speaker 3: great challenges of the book was getting it down to
Speaker 3: forty pages. But basically, the best way to think about
Speaker 3: it is it fails on its own terms. This is
Speaker 3: a revolution that begins with the execution of a monarch
Speaker 3: and it ends with Napoleon crowning himself as monarch. So
Speaker 3: on its own terms, it is unable to achieve the
Speaker 3: political modernization it looks for.
Speaker 2: But you have a great lineage of liberal societies starting
Speaker 2: with the Netherlands, going to Britain and then going to
Speaker 2: the United States with this sort of failed detour with France.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us something about what that means for
Speaker 2: the for the modern world. This is essentially North European
Speaker 2: Anglo Saxon lineage of ideas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's actually fascinating when you think about how unusual
Speaker 3: or narrow or serendipitous this path is. You know, you
Speaker 3: have this, this extraordinary breakout in the Netherlands. This is
Speaker 3: the first country to really redefine national power by using
Speaker 3: not agriculture and extraction. That was the old way. The
Speaker 3: only way people countries knew how to get rich was
Speaker 3: you know, your agriculture, which basically produced about the same
Speaker 3: level of wealth per capita for thousands of years, or
Speaker 3: you could go into another country stealer's goal. Those are
Speaker 3: the two way and that and the Dutch basically find
Speaker 3: that they use innovation, they use tech chnological innovation, they
Speaker 3: use financial innovation. Crucially important to Holland's rise is the
Speaker 3: invention of the joint stock company, the invention of the
Speaker 3: Amsterdam stock Market, first grade multinational company in the world,
Speaker 3: the Dutch East Indies Company, and all these things propel
Speaker 3: the Netherlands to become the richest country in Europe, which
Speaker 3: means the richest country in the world. And that part
Speaker 3: of the practices are, you know, an emphasis on an
Speaker 3: egalitarian political and social structure, a republic rather than a monarchy,
Speaker 3: a merchants having an enormous say, political parties for the
Speaker 3: first time rather than a court being the locusts of
Speaker 3: political influence. Tolerance because you discover that tapping human talent
Speaker 3: wherever it is becomes important. So the Dutch, you know,
Speaker 3: are much more tolerant towards Jews, much more tolerant towards
Speaker 3: Protestants and Catholics than any other place in Europe. That
Speaker 3: model moves to England, which had many similar characteristics, also
Speaker 3: very decent centralized part of Europe. Both of these places
Speaker 3: were the farthest provinces of the Roman Empire and were
Speaker 3: therefore the least centrally governed from Rome, and so they
Speaker 3: had developed a kind of autonomy as a result, and
Speaker 3: it is in this cocoon, the Netherlands, in Britain and England,
Speaker 3: really that ideas about individual liberty, individual rights, private property,
Speaker 3: the idea of the dignity of the individual and his
Speaker 3: or her and really his ability to pursue a life
Speaker 3: that he wants freed from monarchical tyranny, church dogma. All
Speaker 3: these ideas sort of take root in this area. And
Speaker 3: then I would argue, because of the inherent virtue of
Speaker 3: these ideas, or certainly the technical superiority of these ideas,
Speaker 3: Britain becomes the most powerful country since Rome, and it
Speaker 3: colonizes parts of the world and globalizes these ideas. So
Speaker 3: a crucial part of that is that Britain ended up
Speaker 3: colonizing North America, which became the next superpower. But also
Speaker 3: important is the fact that Britain spread these ideas to
Speaker 3: all over the world, from India to South Africa to Australia.
Speaker 3: They developed a kind of a broad universe of liberal ideas.
Speaker 3: But I think crucial to the spreading of them was
Speaker 3: the fact that then Britain passes the mantle to the
Speaker 3: United States. So if you think about it for two
Speaker 3: and a half centuries. Now we have lived in a
Speaker 3: world in which the dominant power has been one that
Speaker 3: adopted these very peculiar ideas that grew out of a
Speaker 3: tiny part of northwestern Europe.
Speaker 2: Now this is a very weak liberal interpretation of human history.
Speaker 2: And let me say that I completely agree with it.
Speaker 2: But let me put on my woke cat for a
Speaker 2: moment and saying that what you're doing is celebrating the
Speaker 2: triumph of capitalist imperialism, That these are countries that grew
Speaker 2: rich partly by colonialism, partly by slavery, partly by exploiting
Speaker 2: what they would have regarded as lesser breeds. You're an Indian,
Speaker 2: but you're celebrating that the power of this liberal imperialism.
Speaker 2: How do you respond to them? To the critique which
Speaker 2: is very dominant in America American higher education.
Speaker 3: Now it's a very fair critique, and it's a fair argument.
Speaker 3: It's worth noting that the original opposition to Whig history
Speaker 3: came actually from the right, not from the left. There
Speaker 3: was a much more traditional kind of deep historical school
Speaker 3: of thought in Britain in other places which said this
Speaker 3: whole idea that there is any progress in history is
Speaker 3: the fallacy. The Whigs think that things have gotten better,
Speaker 3: and this is nonsense. Where the history is cyclical, you know,
Speaker 3: morally we have degenerated. This used to be the argument
Speaker 3: against Whig history, and when Herbert Butterfield writes his his
Speaker 3: essay on wik history, that's what he's defending himself against. Today,
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right, the critique comes from the left. And
Speaker 3: look what I would say is, there's no question I'm
Speaker 3: celebrating capitalism and democracy and individual liberty and individual rights
Speaker 3: because I do believe they are in they are fundamentally
Speaker 3: superior to everything that came before them in terms of
Speaker 3: political organization, from the point of view of the rights
Speaker 3: of individuals, which I hold very dear, and everything that
Speaker 3: has come after in terms of challengers, whether it's been fascism, communism,
Speaker 3: Islamic fundamentalism, whatever else you may look at. I regard,
Speaker 3: you know, the social democracy as a variant of of liberalism.
Speaker 3: On the imperialism part, it's a it's a harder one,
Speaker 3: it's it's entire It's absolutely true that part and parcel
Speaker 3: of this process was the exploitation of people who were
Speaker 3: considered second class citizens, lesser breeds and such. I would
Speaker 3: argue that was not inherent in the project. I don't
Speaker 3: think you can make the case that Britain only gained
Speaker 3: its strength from colonies, so that they did help. You
Speaker 3: can look at I mean, I go through this as
Speaker 3: you know in the book Japan had you know, is
Speaker 3: a good contrast because they both had textile industries. Japan
Speaker 3: had no colonies, Britain had colonies. You know, it's it's
Speaker 3: not it's not easy to make the case in my
Speaker 3: view that Britain only advanced because of the because of
Speaker 3: the colonies. And much more importantly, what you can see
Speaker 3: the power of these ideas by the fact that it
Speaker 3: is these ideas that caused Europe to decolonize. And it
Speaker 3: is only in Europe that you begin you got the
Speaker 3: anti slavery movement. There's slavery all over the world, but
Speaker 3: what caused Europe to be come the locusts classics of
Speaker 3: anti slavery. It was these liberal ideas. So I think
Speaker 3: there's something to it, and it's it's probably worth always
Speaker 3: remembering that the rise of these liberalism and industrialization did
Speaker 3: come along with an enormous exploitation of other countries. You know,
Speaker 3: as as somebody who grew up in India. I'm well
Speaker 3: aware of it, and you know, we lived it. I
Speaker 3: mean I saw it more from my father's generation. But
Speaker 3: my father was very attracted to British ideas of liberalism
Speaker 3: and in his case, kind of Fabian socialism as well,
Speaker 3: but always also aware that for Britain they came coupled
Speaker 3: with a certain kind of pretty unvarnished racism. There was
Speaker 3: the reality that Britain was, in a sense the tutor
Speaker 3: for so much of the Indian kind of political elite,
Speaker 3: and yet the same political elite were jailed by the
Speaker 3: British and in trials that were not free and fair.
Speaker 3: They walk past clubs and buildings which said which had
Speaker 3: signs which said dogs and Indians not allowed. You know,
Speaker 3: my father once pointed out a couple of places where
Speaker 3: there used to be that sign. So that is the
Speaker 3: mixed legacy of the Enlightenment, and you can't get away
Speaker 3: from it. But I think it was a historical fact,
Speaker 3: not a logical fact.
Speaker 2: But when Kipling says take up the white man's burden,
Speaker 2: he's talking to the United States, and this mixed legacy
Speaker 2: is even stronger in the United States, I think than Britain,
Speaker 2: because it has the institution of slavery, and it has
Speaker 2: the institutions of Jim Crow, right, you know, and voting
Speaker 2: discrimination and things like that right up to the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: It does seem to be extraordinary that you can have
Speaker 2: liberal values and those very very anti liberal values coexisting
Speaker 2: within this global hegemon, which is the United States. How
Speaker 2: can we explain that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very good point, and I think it's
Speaker 3: a point that tells us something about the present as well,
Speaker 3: which is tribalism and tribal affiliation is one of the
Speaker 3: deepest social organizing factors of life. The ability to think
Speaker 3: about your tribe as separate, distinct better than the other
Speaker 3: tribe is the oldest form of politics, really, and what
Speaker 3: you see with liberalism is that it is not able
Speaker 3: to completely overcome that, and that it rests uneasily alongside
Speaker 3: that reality. And in the American case, think of Jefferson
Speaker 3: as such an interesting example, right, because of course he's
Speaker 3: a slaver owner, but as so many of the biography's
Speaker 3: point out, he was tortured by this. Yeah, quite not
Speaker 3: so tortured that he freed his own flags, but you know,
Speaker 3: it was tortured by it, and ultimately what gets rid
Speaker 3: of slavery is the you know, those same liberal ideals,
Speaker 3: as a Lincoln points out that we're in the Declaration,
Speaker 3: you know that were that were in there and in
Speaker 3: a sense have to be have to triumph over the
Speaker 3: tribalism that says white sou superior to blacks. And then
Speaker 3: what makes Jim Crow disappear is again those same ideals.
Speaker 3: You know, Martin Luther King talks about how the Declaration
Speaker 3: of Independence was a promisory note to blacks, in other words, saying,
Speaker 3: you know, we are using those same ideas to break
Speaker 3: through the irrational tribalism that has kept us down. And
Speaker 3: even now, you know, we see that the return to
Speaker 3: tribalism is very easy. And whether you look in the
Speaker 3: United States, whether you look in Europe, you see that
Speaker 3: it doesn't take a lot to get us back to
Speaker 3: a kind of tribal way of thinking.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm quite convinced by your wig interpretation of history.
Speaker 2: I share it quite strongly. I'm less convinced by this
Speaker 2: notion of the open versus the closed, which is something
Speaker 2: that Tony Blair embraced and you embraces in this book,
Speaker 2: that liberals are essentially open to the world, open to change,
Speaker 2: open to immigration, open to globalization, and nonliberals, conservatives, reactionaries,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call them, are much more closed.
Speaker 2: And let me say why, I'm a bit skeptical about this.
Speaker 2: It strikes me that it's rather the victor's propaganda, and
Speaker 2: that many liberals, though they claim to be open, are
Speaker 2: actually very good at protecting themselves. They protect themselves through
Speaker 2: educational credentials, through various sorts of certificates, licenses to operate.
Speaker 2: For example, barristers in this country don't let solicitors go
Speaker 2: into courts. If you go to university towns, they seem
Speaker 2: to be well defended against change. And if you look
Speaker 2: at the service sector, it's much much less globalized than
Speaker 2: the manufacturing sector. If you look at immigration, openness to immigration,
Speaker 2: the's so called disupposedly troglodite people who are opposed to
Speaker 2: immigration actually a people who are badly affected by immigration.
Speaker 2: They lose jobs, they see their wages decline, whereas most
Speaker 2: liberals benefit from immigration. They get cheap servants, they get
Speaker 2: cheap cheap services and things like that. Isn't this a
Speaker 2: bit of a liberal illusion that they open.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So let me first explain in the broadest sets
Speaker 3: what I meant I mean by that, and in a
Speaker 3: way you can see it in the transformation of the
Speaker 3: Republican Party. The old model, the Republican Party was basically
Speaker 3: a free market party, believed in low taxes, low regulation,
Speaker 3: low tariffs, welcomed immigration. Ronald Reagan famously signed the eighty
Speaker 3: six amnesty Bill, So it was, you know, it was
Speaker 3: arrayed largely along the kind of free market orientation. And
Speaker 3: what has happened to the Republican Party now it's essentially
Speaker 3: almost entirely transformed itself. It is now largely skeptical of
Speaker 3: In fact, it is the most protectionist major party, I
Speaker 3: would argue in the Western world these days. It has
Speaker 3: become much more uneasy about even things like fiscal conservatism.
Speaker 3: You know, Trump was a big spender. The degree to
Speaker 3: which it has completely try and reversed itself on immigration
Speaker 3: is striking. So it's become a party more comfortable with
Speaker 3: the idea of a society that's more closed, more protected,
Speaker 3: more culturally chauvinistic, more nationalistic. Now, when you get to liberals,
Speaker 3: you're right, they have a slightly more uneasy relationship. In general,
Speaker 3: I would say they are more comfortable with the world
Speaker 3: that's open and things like that. In theory, they are
Speaker 3: in favor of meritocracy. You are right that they preach
Speaker 3: more meritocracy than they practice, and that they quietly managed
Speaker 3: to find some ways to protect themselves. But I recall
Speaker 3: a wonderful book Meritocracy by ade Reinvolridge that basically concludes,
Speaker 3: look for all its problems, there is no other solution,
Speaker 3: and the answer to the problems of meritocracy is surely
Speaker 3: more meritocracy. In other words, you're absolutely right that there
Speaker 3: are places where they do this. But just as you know,
Speaker 3: Martin Luther King used liberalism to push out the illiberal
Speaker 3: features of life, I think one could effectively use liberalism.
Speaker 3: And it is as you know, there is now pressure
Speaker 3: on universities, for example, not to have legacy admissions in
Speaker 3: that sense. Most people don't realize this, but Oxford and
Speaker 3: Cambridge are much more meritocratic than Harvard and Yale. Oxford
Speaker 3: and Cambridge just have a you know, essentially an entrance
Speaker 3: exam these professions, though they would argue they're trying to
Speaker 3: maintain a certain kind of standards, but those standards again
Speaker 3: should be more meritocratic. But I think that to me,
Speaker 3: the question is is politics becoming more about these two
Speaker 3: poles not so much? Are liberals always consistently open or
Speaker 3: consistently closed. I think in all politics there's a certain
Speaker 3: amount of hypocrisy and all that. What I would ask
Speaker 3: you is, isn't it fair to say that the old
Speaker 3: left right divide has gone away largely because the two
Speaker 3: parties are relatively close to one another. You can see
Speaker 3: this in Britain where the Labor Party has come in
Speaker 3: to barn this seemingly revolutionary election and said, oh, by
Speaker 3: the way, we're not going to change anything that the
Speaker 3: Conservatives have done on economic policy. The battleground is now
Speaker 3: immigration and so called woke woke ideology and assimilation and culture.
Speaker 2: I'm skeptical about it. I'm willing to be skeptical about it.
Speaker 2: Is when you talk about the rise of the rest
Speaker 2: and the relative decline of America, which you do in
Speaker 2: this book towards the end, is it true that we're
Speaker 2: seeing the rise of the rest and the relative decline
Speaker 2: of America? Or is America pretty constant? You know, twenty
Speaker 2: five percent of GDP in nineteen ninety twenty five percent
Speaker 2: of GDP now a big chunk of the most highly
Speaker 2: valued companies in the world now American. Isn't it really
Speaker 2: what we're seeing the decline of Europe, American maintaining its position,
Speaker 2: the rest certainly rising, particularly India and obviously China. But really,
Speaker 2: isn't it a story of the decline of this chunk
Speaker 2: of the West that is Europe that we're saying at
Speaker 2: the moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a very good question, because it's The answer
Speaker 3: is I think complicated, and I tried to explain it
Speaker 3: better in I think in my book The Post American World,
Speaker 3: Which is the reason I talk about the decline of
Speaker 3: America in a post American world, is that the most
Speaker 3: important shift that's taken place is the decline in American influence,
Speaker 3: not American power. You're absolutely right, American heart power has
Speaker 3: stayed constant. In fact, you could argue on some levels, Adrian,
Speaker 3: as I'm sure you would agree, American power has grown.
Speaker 3: American technological dominance of the world is probably today than
Speaker 3: it's ever been. I looked it up to see what
Speaker 3: were the top top ten technology companies in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 3: Only four were American, four were Japanese, and two were European. Today,
Speaker 3: ten out of ten out of ten are American. So
Speaker 3: American power has stayed at least constant, if not increased,
Speaker 3: but American influence has declined. And what I mean by
Speaker 3: that is and this is why the rise of the
Speaker 3: rest becomes important. Take a country like Turkey. Forty years ago,
Speaker 3: Turkey was a basket case economy with a military junta
Speaker 3: that ruled it and was absolutely reliably pro American and
Speaker 3: did whatever Washington told it to do. Today, the Turkish
Speaker 3: economy is about four times bigger, or maybe five times
Speaker 3: bigger than it was forty years ago. It has a
Speaker 3: stable political system with a very powerful, charismatic leader who
Speaker 3: routinely tells the United States to go to hell when
Speaker 3: America asks it what to do. That pattern recurs with India,
Speaker 3: because of course with China and with Russia, but with Indonesia,
Speaker 3: with Vietnam, with Brazil. And that's what I was trying
Speaker 3: to get across, which was that the United States had
Speaker 3: a certain kind of extraordinary political influence after the end
Speaker 3: of the Cold War. It literally set the terms for
Speaker 3: the rest of the world. And that influences waning because
Speaker 3: you have a lot of uppity middle powers who are
Speaker 3: willing to say, we're just going to do our own thing.
Speaker 3: And look at India and the way it's handling the
Speaker 3: Ukraine War. You know, it is happy to be courted
Speaker 3: by Washington and sometimes agrees with Washington when it serves
Speaker 3: its own India's purposes, for example, the anti Chinese element
Speaker 3: to Indian policy. But at the same time, it happily
Speaker 3: buys oil from Russia, trades with Russia, consorts with Russia,
Speaker 3: buys weapons from Russia because that helps it on its
Speaker 3: own defense independence line. So that's the reality of the
Speaker 3: world today. And I couldn't I couldn't think of a
Speaker 3: better term than post American because it's not a Chinese word.
Speaker 3: Dominated world certainly, but it's not quite the American dominance
Speaker 3: that you had now Europe, I think just the coda
Speaker 3: to I would say to Europe is, in my view,
Speaker 3: you're absolutely right by the way, of course Europe has
Speaker 3: declined and China's rise in India's rise has all come out.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're trying to think about Europe, Yeah,
Speaker 3: who declined so that China could rise? It was Europe.
Speaker 3: But Europe was never politically powerful, unified and strategic in
Speaker 3: the first place. So the economic decline of Europe has
Speaker 3: not actually had that much geopolitical effect, because Europe has
Speaker 3: never been united as a geopolitical player.
Speaker 2: One wrinkle to the argument that strikes me is it
Speaker 2: used to be the case that America was influential because
Speaker 2: it exported its best features, like good governance, like the
Speaker 2: charisma of of Kennedy, like the commitment of the liberal
Speaker 2: democratic order. Now it seems as America is getting better
Speaker 2: at exporting its worst features, which you know, to some
Speaker 2: extent is wocism, to some extent is polarization, and to
Speaker 2: some extent is a sort of technology that exacerbates anger
Speaker 2: and angst. America is. People around the world are obsessed
Speaker 2: by America, but they no longer see it on as
Speaker 2: a shining city on the hill. They quite often see
Speaker 2: it as a sort of version of hell. Actually it
Speaker 2: doesn't stop them being obsessed, but they're still fixated, but
Speaker 2: not fixated in an admiring way. America is treated as
Speaker 2: an example of politics we don't want to imitate, as
Speaker 2: an example of an administrative system we don't want to imitate,
Speaker 2: and in an example is a healthcare system that we
Speaker 2: don't want to imitate. It's a very different sort of
Speaker 2: influence from the nineteen sixties influence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would agree with that, and I think that
Speaker 3: that's part of what has caused the decline in American influence.
Speaker 3: As you know, in the book, I argue there's sort
Speaker 3: of there were three bloss to American influence. One, the
Speaker 3: Iraq War damaged America's military credibility. The economic crisis of
Speaker 3: oaight damaged its economic credibility. And the rise of populism
Speaker 3: and the paralysis that came out of that damaged its
Speaker 3: political credibility. And those three things together, I think you
Speaker 3: put it very well. I would actually even border it's
Speaker 3: not just the healthcare system, I think, and you may
Speaker 3: be more uncomfortable with this as I am as well,
Speaker 3: but most of the world sees Europe's social market as
Speaker 3: much more attractive than America's kind of laissez faire, you know,
Speaker 3: And I would argue highly inefficiently say fair system, because
Speaker 3: as you know, we do plenty of government spending, it's
Speaker 3: just very badly done. And you know, we have our
Speaker 3: own weird welfare state which mostly coddles the middle class
Speaker 3: and it miserates the poor. I saw a poll recently
Speaker 3: that ipsisted as I recall twenty four thousand people thirty
Speaker 3: one countries. Most people were still very admiring of or
Speaker 3: not admiring, thought that America did more good in the
Speaker 3: world than China or Russia by far. But when asked
Speaker 3: what model people liked, Europe was number one, America was
Speaker 3: number two. In a way, Europe has done something very extraordinary,
Speaker 3: even as it has declined in terms of raw power,
Speaker 3: it has shown that past a certain level of economic wealth,
Speaker 3: what matters is not just sheer economic wealth. What matters
Speaker 3: is quality of life. What matters a certain level of
Speaker 3: equality and things like that. You know the Europeans have.
Speaker 3: As you know, for most of history, a kind of
Speaker 3: general quality of life was closely correlated with wealth. The
Speaker 3: richer you were, the better. And what's happened in the
Speaker 3: most in the richest countries in the world is that
Speaker 3: has now gotten decoupled. I think most people would say
Speaker 3: that they would prefer to live as an average person
Speaker 3: in your Europe than they would in Americas. It's so
Speaker 3: great to be rich in America, probably better than anywhere else.
Speaker 3: But for the average person, I think Europe is the model.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And this brings me on to the final thing
Speaker 2: I want to talk about, which is the notion of
Speaker 2: a liberal hegimen. That since about eighteen hundred we've pretty
Speaker 2: much always had a liberal hegimen, starting off with Britain, which,
Speaker 2: for all its faults, is wedded to a certain set
Speaker 2: of liberal values and a certain set of liberal norms
Speaker 2: about how to run into national affairs. America takes over
Speaker 2: that position. It's a bit of a messy handover. But
Speaker 2: even during the sort of the messiest part of the handover,
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, America is essentially a
Speaker 2: liberal power which is in a state of retrenchment. And
Speaker 2: then of course after forty five America takes up the
Speaker 2: burden and becomes the great liberal hegimen. We are now,
Speaker 2: as far as I can see, in danger of having
Speaker 2: a hegeman which is not a liberal power. I mean
Speaker 2: by that that Trump and JD. Vance are not liberals.
Speaker 2: They will be in charge of the world's most powerful country,
Speaker 2: but wedded to a set of policies and a set
Speaker 2: of assumptions which we haven't seen in two hundred years.
Speaker 2: Is that true? And if so, does it worry you?
Speaker 3: It worries me deeply. So there are two problems. One
Speaker 3: I think is exactly what you say with Trump and Vance,
Speaker 3: who fundamentally reject that kind of open liberal internationalism that
Speaker 3: really has been practiced by every American administration since FDR.
Speaker 3: I think what we are watching historically, I mean, it
Speaker 3: comes straight out of my book, is that the period
Speaker 3: of high open globalization immigration led to a backlash in
Speaker 3: the twenties, as you note, and you know, the United
Speaker 3: States ended up very closed with the immigration policy much
Speaker 3: more restrictive than anything Trump or Vance as proposing. And
Speaker 3: maybe we're watching a similar kind of retreat or turning back.
Speaker 3: But there's a you know, the optimist in me hopes,
Speaker 3: just as the twenties didn't last forever, that that will
Speaker 3: be reversed. I hope it doesn't take a world war
Speaker 3: to do that. But I think that there's a I'm
Speaker 3: still I still believe that the larger liberal project is
Speaker 3: so it benefits so many countries, it benefits so many
Speaker 3: human beings around the world, that ultimately, you know, we
Speaker 3: will come to we will come to realize that. For example,
Speaker 3: I don't think Europe will go in that direction if
Speaker 3: America goes in that direction. I don't think this is
Speaker 3: a case you know, for one thing, other countries can't
Speaker 3: become as protectionists as America because they don't have the option.
Speaker 3: The US is a huge internal market. You know, there
Speaker 3: are only two countries that can really thrive in this
Speaker 3: kind of America first World, ironically, and that's America and China,
Speaker 3: the two vast internal markets. But for a country like
Speaker 3: Britain or Germany, where trade is almost half the economy,
Speaker 3: you can't, you know, you can't succeed. So I think
Speaker 3: that there will be a kind of self limiting quality
Speaker 3: to it. I think the fact that half of America
Speaker 3: doesn't agree with what Trump and Vans agree with helps enormously.
Speaker 3: The second problem, though, is harder, which is this decline
Speaker 3: of American influence. We've never had a world, a liberal
Speaker 3: world without a liberal hegemon. And if the liberal hegemon
Speaker 3: is getting weaker in influence of not in raw power,
Speaker 3: how do you sustain that. My hope is that you
Speaker 3: can have a kind of coalition of liberal powers Europe,
Speaker 3: the United States, Japan, Australia, countries like Singapore, even countries
Speaker 3: like Saudi Arabia. At the end of the they want
Speaker 3: an open international system. But would that work, you know,
Speaker 3: We've never had power that way shared that way. You've
Speaker 3: never we've never had the world run by committee, and
Speaker 3: that is a real puzzle. But we are going to
Speaker 3: run this experiment, both experiments. You know, probably if you
Speaker 3: assume Trump wins, we have to try the experiment of
Speaker 3: a coalition of liberal powers, and in a way, that's
Speaker 3: a more stable you know, in the long term, you
Speaker 3: can't just hope that you're always going to have one
Speaker 3: enormous liberal hegemon. Maybe you have to hope that enough
Speaker 3: of the world is converted to this idea because it
Speaker 3: really does help everyone. You know. That's why at the
Speaker 3: end of the day, I'm an optimist, because I do
Speaker 3: believe that these are better values.
Speaker 2: But that means Europe stepping up a bit more in
Speaker 2: terms of defense spending, in terms of acting on the
Speaker 2: global stage, of course, but it's very hard for Europe
Speaker 2: to do that at a time when America is treating
Speaker 2: and embracing a set of values which sometimes look like
Speaker 2: more like the values of autocracies than they do like
Speaker 2: liberal powers. I mean, even if you go back to
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties and thirties, you know, the Harding and
Speaker 2: Coolidge sort of seem half liberal and half not. I mean,
Speaker 2: both Trump and Vance do seem to be very hostile
Speaker 2: to the liberal project.
Speaker 3: There's a possibility that that actually spurs the Europeans to
Speaker 3: do more absolutely for example, on you know, on defense,
Speaker 3: they realize they have no option and they do it. Look,
Speaker 3: it's it's back to that ageal struggle between tribalism and liberalism.
Speaker 3: Because in a way, the Europeans talk a good game,
Speaker 3: but at the but at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: you know, the Paris wants to make French foreign policy
Speaker 3: and Berlin wants to make German foreign policy, and they
Speaker 3: talk about delegating and having a unified strategic European foreign policy.
Speaker 3: But you know, they don't want to give up the
Speaker 3: national chauvinism and you know, so so maybe this is
Speaker 3: a bit more of a spur for it happening. I
Speaker 3: also do think that maybe I'm wrong about this, but
Speaker 3: the trumpad clash is, you know, it's not the wave
Speaker 3: of the future. I mean, look at the people who
Speaker 3: vote for Trump. They're older, they're wider, they're they're you know,
Speaker 3: this is the part of America that is fading, and
Speaker 3: it might take a while to fade. But there is
Speaker 3: a demographic reality to the change that's taking place, so
Speaker 3: you know it can't go on forever.
Speaker 2: I think the's truth in that, but I also think
Speaker 2: that liberalism needs to examine itself and reform itself and
Speaker 2: defend both the liberal cause but also the interests of
Speaker 2: ordinary working, working people a bit better than it has.
Speaker 2: But Freed, thank you, thank you very much for everything
Speaker 2: you've said and for being here.
Speaker 3: Arian's a huge pleasure to have this conversation.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks for listening to this week's Photonomics from Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: This episode was hosted by me Adrian Woodridge. It was
Speaker 2: produced by Samasadi, with booking support from Chris Martleau, production
Speaker 2: support and sound design from Moshus and m Random. Francis
Speaker 2: Newnham is our executive producer. Sage Bowman is Head of
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