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