Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: So I will not be at Davos. And if doctor
Speaker 2: Klaus Schwabz people came to me and said do a panel,
Speaker 2: this is the year where I would say, I want
Speaker 2: to do a panel, but I want it to be
Speaker 2: just one person, and it would be Ian Bremer. Every
Speaker 2: year he and his team, let John Lieber among others,
Speaker 2: put out a thing called the Top Risks, and it's
Speaker 2: not funny. It's a really serious look at where we
Speaker 2: are going into a given year. And it's remarkably Prussian.
Speaker 2: Some things he gets wrong, but huge amount of OMG,
Speaker 2: how'd you do that? Like Miracle and Germany years ago.
Speaker 2: But he's really outdone himself this year. Hearkening back to
Speaker 2: his classic G zero of twenty twelve. Doctor Bremer joins
Speaker 2: us this morning, Ian, I'm just going to cut right
Speaker 2: to the chase. The summation of your top Risk twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. It's a reversion to the nineteen thirties. How
Speaker 2: close are we to the nineteen thirty five of Hermanvoch's
Speaker 2: Winds of War?
Speaker 3: Well, we're close to the thirties, and we're close to
Speaker 3: the fifties. So in other words, the trajectory is not sustainable.
Speaker 3: And the question is whether the crisis that's coming is
Speaker 3: big enough to make us pay attention, but not so
Speaker 3: big that we all end up fighting each other, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, in the early Cold War, we.
Speaker 3: Had this unfettered decoupling and arms race between the Americans
Speaker 3: and the Soviets culminated in the.
Speaker 4: Cuban missile crisis.
Speaker 3: We almost blew it ourselves up, and then we started
Speaker 3: recognizing we needed, like actually to have some institutions that
Speaker 3: would create more stability between the two countries, arms control,
Speaker 3: hotline and the rest. You see shades of that, and
Speaker 3: you also see shades of the thirties with a United
Speaker 3: States that's incredibly powerful but is unwinding its own global order,
Speaker 3: its own institutions. I mean, you look things like the
Speaker 3: United Nations and the WTO, and these are organizations the
Speaker 3: Americans put in place to coordinate global governance, and that
Speaker 3: now Americans don't believe in you. It's it's not clear,
Speaker 3: but it's clearly as you say, Tom, this is a
Speaker 3: definitive moment ian what's.
Speaker 2: So important here? And I lived this. My grandfather was
Speaker 2: a textbook Chicago Tribune isolationist of Middle America and you
Speaker 2: go back to Lindbergh and the rest of them. What
Speaker 2: is the character of President Trump's isolationism.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's isolationist. I think it is strongly unilateralist.
Speaker 3: And so it's not that the United States is saying
Speaker 3: we're only going to focus at home. I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: the Panama Canal and Greenland and Canada. Comments don't feel
Speaker 3: isolationists to me, but they're deeply transactional and in many ways, Tom,
Speaker 3: what we have is that the Americans are embracing the
Speaker 3: Chinese worldview that has served China so well over the
Speaker 3: last thirty five years.
Speaker 4: It's transactional. It's not about rule of law.
Speaker 3: They don't care what your political system or economic system
Speaker 3: is like. They will engage with you bilaterally with the
Speaker 3: intention of being more powerful than you, and therefore you
Speaker 3: have to play by their rules. And what the Americans
Speaker 3: are saying is, actually, China, we can do that, and
Speaker 3: we can do it a lot better than you can,
Speaker 3: because we're a lot stronger than you, by the way,
Speaker 3: And that's really what Trump is saying. And it does
Speaker 3: come at a time when America's adversaries, Russia in deep decline,
Speaker 3: Iran having lost their empire by proxy the Chinese, and
Speaker 3: the worst economic condition since the nineties maybe the seventies
Speaker 3: are particularly weak, so an trusting moment to try this experiment,
Speaker 3: A lot of things are probably going to break as
Speaker 3: a consequence.
Speaker 1: Doctor Bremer. Eurasia Group's Top ten Risks are required reading
Speaker 1: at the beginning of every year, and this year is
Speaker 1: is no different. US, China, Russia, around Mexico, I mean,
Speaker 1: you name it, They're all in there.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: The one country that I didn't see in there, well, Syria.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what the
Speaker 1: fall of the Asad regime means for the Middle East
Speaker 1: and the rest of the world. More broadly, I mean, seriously,
Speaker 1: what role America play in restoring order to a nation
Speaker 1: where fourteen million refugees were fourth were forced to flee
Speaker 1: their homes in the last you know, call it fifteen years.
Speaker 1: I mean, a nation's geostrate, strategic position is so very
Speaker 1: important to health in Central Asia.
Speaker 4: You know, what are your thoughts there? So Syria's there,
Speaker 4: but it's underneath the number nine risk, which is called
Speaker 4: ungoverned spaces, and we include Syria and Yemen and Libya
Speaker 4: and Haiti, and mean mar Western Sahara Dan by the way.
Speaker 3: Which is a lot more important in terms of numbers
Speaker 3: of lives than what you just mentioned in Syria. And
Speaker 3: yet no journalists on the ground, and they're fleeing mostly
Speaker 3: to neighboring African countries as opposed to Syrians who go
Speaker 3: to Turkey and go to Europe, so we don't pay
Speaker 3: as much attention to them. And that's kind of the point,
Speaker 3: right is that. I mean the danger in Syria, where
Speaker 3: the Americans had slightly more than two thousand troops on
Speaker 3: the ground and under Trump are likely to remove them
Speaker 3: and say, Turkey, you mop it up, is that if
Speaker 3: ats is incapable of running a unifying government in Syria,
Speaker 3: which is a reasonably plausible outcome, then you can easily
Speaker 3: have a big part of Syria that's ungoverned and would
Speaker 3: be fodder for a new Isis caliphate. And over time,
Speaker 3: not twenty twenty five, and this reports for the year.
Speaker 3: Over time, of course, that's something that will wash up
Speaker 3: on our shores too.
Speaker 2: Ian Bremmer with us here was thrilled to have it
Speaker 2: here to celebrate his top risk. It's a team effort
Speaker 2: from erase your group each and every year. It'll be
Speaker 2: with us for a good amount of time. Jim Grasso
Speaker 2: to join us here in a bit on this important
Speaker 2: Chinese social media thing which I don't understand, Doctor Bremer.
Speaker 2: One of the moments it stands in time for me
Speaker 2: is Ian Bremer and Robert T. Kaplan with me together
Speaker 2: talking about a zero world within Kaplan's Revenge of geography.
Speaker 2: What is the most constructive path for moderates in America
Speaker 2: to get out four years or dare I say eight
Speaker 2: years out? What is the initiative that needs to be taken?
Speaker 2: Do we need to take kaplan realist policy?
Speaker 5: Well, it's not about foreign policy so much. Although it
Speaker 5: is true that a lot of people that decided not
Speaker 5: to vote, that had voted for Biden last time around,
Speaker 5: report that Biden's position on Gaza slash Israel was a
Speaker 5: significant thing that turned them away from the polls.
Speaker 3: And that's a place where Elon Musk and his targeting
Speaker 3: of you know, very specific and important districts that were
Speaker 3: swinging in the United States could have made a difference.
Speaker 3: But leaving that one piece aside, and it's not unimportant,
Speaker 3: of course, I would say most Americans are not going
Speaker 3: to the polls on the.
Speaker 4: Basis of Biden or Trump's worldview.
Speaker 3: It's more about what they're doing and what they're rejecting
Speaker 3: at home.
Speaker 4: And the fact that Trump has become a leader that
Speaker 4: attracts more.
Speaker 3: Working and middle class Americans because they feel like he's
Speaker 3: more interested in their well being.
Speaker 4: The fact that he was.
Speaker 3: Able to get a significant majority of labor union voters
Speaker 3: in the United States, while Harris was, you know, the
Speaker 3: candidate for are urban, well educated, elite and that's not
Speaker 3: a sustainable path for the Democrats in my view. So
Speaker 3: they clearly have to reassess a lot of their platform
Speaker 3: that did not appeal to the average American that did
Speaker 3: not feel taken care of. More billionaires put money into
Speaker 3: Harris's campaign than did Trumps.
Speaker 4: That again, that tells you something, doctor Breber.
Speaker 1: The US channel relationships at the forefront of geopolitical risk
Speaker 1: in the current beta regime. Yet, if we do see
Speaker 1: something like sixty percent tariffs, do you really think that
Speaker 1: China's going to allow the Uan to debase itself again?
Speaker 1: And if that does indeed occur, do we feel there's
Speaker 1: a I don't know, a clearing price and dollar you
Speaker 1: on where the market can go to that can still
Speaker 1: allow China to grow at five percent per year.
Speaker 3: I don't expect China's going to grow at five percent
Speaker 3: per year over the coming several years. I think They've
Speaker 3: got deep structural problems that are being made worse by
Speaker 3: the fact that the only part of their economy that
Speaker 3: is overperforming is their manufacture during export, which feels like dumping.
Speaker 3: It's a trillion dollar surplus, and it's upsetting lots of
Speaker 3: countries around the world, not just the US. The US
Speaker 3: is leaning into hitting back, which will occur with tariffs,
Speaker 3: though it won't be a sixty percent number. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know the top line election campaign numbers, and never
Speaker 3: the numbers we see.
Speaker 4: But even if it's twenty five percent, which I think.
Speaker 3: Is more plausible in the early weeks and months, you're
Speaker 3: not just.
Speaker 4: Talking about US China.
Speaker 3: You're also talking about the Americans squeezing other countries. We've
Speaker 3: already seen this with Mexico, we will see it with India,
Speaker 3: with Southeast Asian countries for acting as a pass through
Speaker 3: of Chinese exports to the United States. So it's very
Speaker 3: hard to imagine that US China relations are going to
Speaker 3: maintain a comparatively well managed, you know, sort of incremental
Speaker 3: decline that we've seen in the last year and a
Speaker 3: half under the Biden administration.
Speaker 2: I want you to sit on this question, Ian, because
Speaker 2: I think it's so important to all of our listeners
Speaker 2: and the people that you enjoy so much your international relations.
Speaker 2: This hearkens back to the fear of the first week
Speaker 2: of August nineteen forty one, a bunch of boats sitting
Speaker 2: off eastern Canada, where Roosevelt and Churchill tried to begin
Speaker 2: to piece together the post World War two world. They
Speaker 2: were humbled by two major wars. The thing out there,
Speaker 2: doctor Bremmer, is the only way this is going to
Speaker 2: get solved is a humility of a war discuss That
Speaker 2: is that what it takes to get away from the
Speaker 2: madness we're living in right now.
Speaker 3: I think in the near term we're talking about damage control.
Speaker 3: We're talking about countries and companies on defense. So you know,
Speaker 3: a lot of them are hoping that they just don't
Speaker 3: make headlines. Others are trying to figure out what they
Speaker 3: need to do proactively to kiss the ring, and geopolitically,
Speaker 3: you're going to see a whole bunch of countries acting
Speaker 3: the way Mark Zuckerberg has in the last week towards
Speaker 3: the commander in chief and towards his chief, his bomb
Speaker 3: thrower in chief, Elon Musk, by far the most powerful
Speaker 3: person around the administration, if I can call it that.
Speaker 4: Look, I mean the way that you respond.
Speaker 3: To a GI zero world is either you reform and
Speaker 3: strengthen your existing institutions so they are more fit for purpose.
Speaker 3: You build new institutions that better reflect the demands, the opportunities,
Speaker 3: and the concerns of the present age, or you go
Speaker 3: to war.
Speaker 4: And I can give you examples of all three. All
Speaker 4: three are happening.
Speaker 3: We are strengthening NATO right now, we are creating new institutions,
Speaker 3: you know, the Quad, the Chinese are building Belton Road
Speaker 3: and the bricks, and you know there are other examples.
Speaker 3: But the most energy is going into more conflict. The
Speaker 3: most energy is going into more war, and again that
Speaker 3: is not geopolitically sustainable. So I think you know your
Speaker 3: advice to other countries right now, given the power and
Speaker 3: balances and Trump coming in and how consolidated his authority
Speaker 3: is inside the United States compared to twenty seventeen, where
Speaker 3: you know he was riding the Republican Party's co tails.
Speaker 3: His administration felt very different. Not this time around. He's
Speaker 3: the guy. Is that they have to recognize their playing defense,
Speaker 3: and defense is more effective in depth, it's more effective
Speaker 3: if it's strategic, if you're not just you know, reacting
Speaker 3: to the latest headline, and it's more effective in numbers.
Speaker 3: In other words, the EU is better off than say
Speaker 3: the Mexicans, because they can act collectively and to the
Speaker 3: extent that other countries are capable of doing that in
Speaker 3: defending the things that matter to them, both in their
Speaker 3: own countries but also in terms of international architecture.
Speaker 4: We will all be better off by the way. Trump
Speaker 4: is going to get a lot of wins in the
Speaker 4: next year.
Speaker 3: But unlike Shijin Ping promoting a Chinese worldview, Trump doesn't
Speaker 3: get to do this for twenty years. He gets to
Speaker 3: do it for four, assuming he's in good health, and
Speaker 3: then he doesn't anymore. So long term, the United States
Speaker 3: unwinding its own institutions does not strike me as strategically smart.
Speaker 2: Okay, gotta leave it there. Ian Bremmer, congratulations on the
Speaker 2: impact the effect of your top risks for two thousand
Speaker 2: and twenty five of course doctor Bremmer with Eurasia Group,
Speaker 2: and I think it will be a source of great
Speaker 2: conversation here