Transcription
What I think happened was the West actually enabled the rise of China by allowing China into the World Trade Organization, by allowing China essentially to flout the rules of trade and cheat the system. And what I think we're now seeing under President Trump is a push back against the way that the system was undermined and sabotaged.
Eric made the point that both China and the United States got much richer during the unipolar moment when we had globalization. And he's of course correct. And the United States didn't care about that because the United States thought that uh once China got really rich and it got embedded in international institutions, it would become a responsible stakeholder uh to use Robert Zelik's term and then it would become a democracy and once it was a democracy we'd all live happily ever after. This would be the end of history. That was the basic idea. But it didn't turn out that way because once China got really powerful economically, it translated that economic might into military might and it began to throw its muscle around.
I would uh kindly welcome everybody. Uh congratulations for the organizers for this fantastic event and I have to tell the truth a very easy task because uh uh I have a very easy exercise to do here because we have fantastic speakers here from the global powers uh of our planet. We are from the UK, from the US, from India, from China, from Hungary. So uh uh it will be I think a very pleasant and very interesting conversation. uh and as far as I know the speakers here I just have to start and then you will react and react and uh give your opinions and your thoughts. So thank you very much uh uh for this the whole conversation and it's very much uh also in marked in the title uh the geopolitical aspect of globalization.
Mr. Marshimer, you argue that the globalization was a product of American uniolarity. Is that still true, you think, or uh does it changing uh time by time how things are developing in the world? What do you think about globalization nowadays?
I think the most important event uh in recent years was when we transitioned from unipolarity to multi-polarity. I think when one wants to assess international relations, the first question you want to ask yourself is what does the structure of the international system look like? I was born in 1947 during the Cold War and we lived until 1989 in a bipolar world. There were two great powers on the planet, the United States and the Soviet Union. The cold war ended and then we moved into a unipolar world. And I would imagine most people in the audience came of age during the unipolar moment when there was only one great power in the system and that was the United States of America. That world went away in roughly 2017 and we now live in a world where there are three great powers. The structure of the system has an enormous influence on how states interact with each other and it has an enormous impact on globalization.
During the cold war when I was young, there was really no globalization in large part because there were two different worlds, the communist world and the western world. And people in Hungary lived in a communist order or a Sovietled order. Hungary belonged to the Warsaw Pact. It didn't belong to NATO. What then happened is the Cold War ended in 1989 and you had a Unipole. And once you have a Unipole, you get globalization because the United States runs around the world running things. It creates a global economic order. It brings countries like Russia and Hungary, Russia for a while, Hungary up until this present day into this globalized order. But what's happened is we've left unipolarity and we moved into multiparity. And what you see happening is that that globalization, that global order, that liberal international order that existed during unipolarity has fallen apart. And what you're getting is a new order. You're seeing a country like China trying to influence the order by building its own institutions by shaping how states interact with each other through organizations like bricks and uh the belt and road initiative. So what I would say is that moving forward you're not going to see anything like that globalization that you saw during the unipolar moment in large part because the foundation has changed. We've gone from unipolarity to multiparity.
Mr. Ross, how is it from a British perspective? Because if we look on historically from the 19th century basically uh England was England was who created uh the the beginning of this globalization. How do you see this from a British perspective?
Well, if you look at the history of the League of Nations, it's not dissimilar to what's been happening to the United Nations that there was a grand vision of an organization that would secure peace through a rules-based order. And fundamentally, it didn't work because ultimately it's nation states that have military power. is nation states that have economic power and ultimately is those nation states when push comes to shove that determine the course of world events and I think we're seeing the increasing irrelevance of the post 45 institutions the United Nations the World Trade Organization which was of course GAT uh even things like the World Health Organization those institutions are no longer securing peace and stability. And what I don't agree with the previous speaker about, I don't think it's inevitable we've moved into a multipolar world. What I think happened was the West actually enabled the rise of China by allowing China into the World Trade Organization, by allowing China essentially to flout the rules of trade and cheat the system. And what I think we're now seeing under President Trump is a push back against the way that the system was undermined and sabotaged. And it wasn't just sabotaged by our adversaries like China or Iran. It was also sabotaged from within. So whether it was the woke movement, whether it was the environmental extremists who you know have imposed massive costs on countries like Britain through net zero. If you look at Britain versus or if you look at Europe versus the United States, we had almost caught up in terms of GDP per capita with the United States by the year 2000. We are now 50% worse off and that is largely to due to our energy policy which has been terrible. Our regulatory policy and our tax policy and the massive size of European welfare states. So if you're looking at what is the cause of the decline of European power, the primary source is economic. And that has followed on to not enough investment in our defense capabilities, not enough technological competition. If you look at where all the big technology companies are coming from, you know, very few of them are coming from Europe. And if they do come from Europe, ultimately they end up getting capital in the United States. So what we have seen over the last 25 years is a massive decline in relative European economic and security power and frankly Britain is a part of that decline. uh we we started declining earlier you know between between World War I and World War II you could see a a real decline uh in British power and we we have not regained that but what I think is you've seen since the 1990s an increased acceleration as European countries have decided with the possible exess exception of Eastern Europe because they were under communism and understand why communism is a bad thing. But certainly if you look at Western Europe, you've seen high regulation, high welfare state, chasing after policies like net zero that have damaged our energy security and damaged our industry and we are now in a much weaker position.
>> Eric, you were talking advocating regalization you were talking about previously. What would a Chinese-led globalized world look like?
>> Um I think the last round of globalization which has been about 30 years maybe 40 years um of course generated tremendous amount of economic prosperity and wealth and China certainly was one of the largest beneficiaries of this globalization and so has the United States been. um both of our countries GDP went up significantly. China went up a lot more uh because we began at a lower base. um but uh the problem with globalization as it stands is I think it's it cannot go on for two reasons. One is I think within the United States and the West somehow the economic benefits derived from globalization weren't distributed in a way that satisfied multiple segments of its population. um so it's led to an internal revolt against globalization. So, so the architect of this first round of globalization is having internal resistance to it. um so that's of course leading to uh declobalization because the leader of the globalization was saying we don't want to do this anymore. um and the second uh issue is of course the the largest developing country that participated in globalization was China. And in the beginning I think they had designed it in a way that uh uh the US and western countries were at the core of globalization and there were countries developing countries at the periphery and the division of labor was clear. you know, the US and Western Europe, we're going to be in charge of R&D and and finance and military and we're going to do cheap labor and and and and sell natural resources if we had them. China didn't have them, but other had them and provide market. um but of course, as China grew, it said, "No, we didn't agree to that. We're going to move up the value chain." And unfortunately the US and and certain western countries they thought this perceived as a threat. uh so they didn't want to do that anymore. um so we we're I think we're yeah globalization is in trouble. um but let me also comment on the liberal international order. I'm not sure where that came from. um certainly when China signed up to the WTO it wasn't told it was signing up to the liberal international order. It wasn't such thing. I mean, I think it got it was made up in retrospect. I mean, I I think when President Jang went to Washington, uh when China was trying to enter the WTO, President Bill Clinton didn't say, "Hey, President Jang, you're signing up to the liberal international order." It didn't happen. um so, so it wasn't was was never there. um so that's my two cents.
What is the India's perspective as really the one of the largest powers which are uh developing in recent decades and standing somehow between the US and China uh in several regards.
Well, um I think there are two things I want to be clear about. First of all, uh I will agree uh with my friend here Eric that u the liberal order did um benefit him I mean his country China more than uh India but still India too benefited for it up to a point but in some ways u it is not an undiluted uh uh thing to celebrate. I mean there were many problems with it and the underlying basis of it um uh ultimately dissolved. The geopolitical economic order that it was based on ultimately was inevitably going to dissolve because obviously the relative positions of the various countries was going to change over time. So I don't think we can go back to it. uh whatever new thing emerges out of this um we'll have to take into account the new emerging dynamic uh which will have to include India's rise as well. The second thing is that um there is obviously an issue here that we somehow everybody gives their own point in history enormous amount of importance but this is too not the end of history. history will continue to evolve and many unintended consequences of some of the things we are witnessing now will also happen. So one of the things that we need to work out here is that this idea of that there was a liberal order. It was rules-based and that everybody obeyed those rules and would or should obey those rules. That in itself should be contested because in some ways this was just an a power dynamic that evolved after the second world war and certainly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. uh so you know history didn't end there. uh history will continue into this century and many things will evolve out of that and the way these rules are set uh need to reflect the reality of what happens today and into the future rather than some idea that there was this good time. If you go through history there have been many such good times uh of stability. If you take for example Europe of 1870 to 1913, it was also a period of stability of a sort. uh but then during that time you saw the rise of Britain uh the rise of Germany uh replacing in some ways Britain as the uh industrial hub of Europe. You saw the rise of the United States and of course it did end in two world wars. Hopefully we will not end in two world wars but I am just pointing out to you that this churn happens all the time throughout history.
Tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. This is an expression that we heard we we heard uh very frequently. We have experienced a new wave of tariffs. It seems for me to be a new tool of sanctions. First the US imposed them on steel and aluminium citing uh national security. Meanwhile the tariffs rates on China reached its highest in the last 100 years and of course China hasn't remained silent. How do you see this new tool? Is it a realistic um a legitimate tool for a realist and states craft or is it uh somehow a fake diplomacy? What is your perspective about the tariffs?
>> You're asking me.
>> As you wish.
>> Yeah. Please. Please.
>> So, so as I said, I think the WTO had become a failed institution. Nothing was actually happening at the World Trade Organization. The rules were not being properly implemented. Countries who were violating were not being caught out. And I think co demonstrated to everybody just how opaque the world's supply chains have become and how insecure our reliance on you know basic materials like steel critical minerals medicine had become. So I think tariffs have been a response to that. They've also been a response to the fact and this was referred to earlier that the industrial base of many western countries has been hollowed out and those jobs have been exported overseas and that's also partly due to energy policy and it's to due to the pursuit of net zero but it is also due to the fact that it has become so cheap to import and also we saw things like dumping of products on our market. So I think it is a it it's a very rational deal making response in that countries like or organizations like the European Union actually have very high tariffs on some products for example agricultural products. I think President Trump is entirely rational in taking them on in that respect. But also rebasing uh rebasing the global trade system is also right when you have an institution that simply isn't working anymore. And I support a system where there's much more bilateral deals between countries and multilateral deals rather than having a one-size all system that fits the globe because I simply I don't think it worked. I don't think it was enforcable. And the minute you have an institution that is not simply a collection of sovereign nations and this is the problem with the United Nation, it's the problem with the World Trade Organization. there is no organization that can actually really enforce those decisions and they've just they have not worked over time. So I think getting back to a more realistic trading system that is based on agreements between countries is absolutely right.
Gentlemen, John. Uh, Eric made the point that both China and the United States got much richer during the unipolar moment when we had globalization. And he's of course correct. And the United States didn't care about that because the United States thought that uh once China got really rich and it got embedded in international institutions, it would become a responsible stakeholder uh to use Robert Zelik's term and then it would become a democracy and once it was a democracy we'd all live happily ever after. This would be the end of history. That was the basic idea. But it didn't turn out that way because once China got really powerful economically, it translated that economic might into military might and it began to throw its muscle around. And this of course scared the living be Jesus out of the Americans and the Americans have moved to counter China. We now care about relative gains. See, Eller was talking about absolute gains where we're both getting rich and we didn't care about relative gains then. But now that China's a great power, we care about relative gains. So what we want to do is we want to maximize American growth and we want to minimize Chinese growth. Anything we can do to slow down the Chinese economy and refurbish the American economy, we will do. And you see this reflected in the competition over cutting edge technologies. We're extremely scared that China is going to beat us in terms of developing cutting edge technologies. Now, where the tariffs come in? Tariffs are part of the story. What we're trying to do with tariffs is modernize, refurbish the American industrial base, make us much more competitive, and we're trying to weaken China at the same time because again, we care about relative power. And all of this is to say that I agree with you, Liz, that we made a fundamental mistake in the 1990s and in the first 20 years of the 21st century in helping China to become Godzilla. It's come back to haunt us and we're now trying to rectify that and again tariffs are part of that story.
>> Let me comment on that. let Harry comment on this.
>> Um I think you're well of course like I said both countries benefit tremendously. um and but if the United certainly the US did not set up the system and ask China to join out of charity, I really don't think so. um they they thought that they would benefit too. That's number one. Number two, uh if the US thought that that if China develops and eventually it will become a liberal country, they never told us that. Nobody told us that. It was a secret intent. It wasn't disclosed in the prospectus. Okay, we signed up. We went we signed up to WTO and there was a prospectus. There were a bunch of rules, a lot of texts, a lot of words, nothing in it that said, "Hey, if your economy develops, you must become a liberal society." It wasn't there. We didn't sign up to that, like I said. um so, so I I think, well, look, if if the US is now changing its path, changing its direction, that's completely within its power to do. It's a sovereign nation. uh tariffs and all of that. If the the globalization, if the United States wants to ditch globalization for its own needs, I think China will adapt. Everybody has to adapt. It's okay. U I I think China will do okay in this new era. uh and it will adapt.
Sanjie um as the citizen of a country that uh is now emerging as a third pole uh but still a long way to go uh my real interest is not how we got here but what is going to happen going forward because I have to try and maximize the next 25 years of demographic sweet spot in trying to kind of improve the quality of my the lives of of a very poor country what is still a very poor country. um so my real issue here is the following. What happens from here and what do we do about it? So at the risk of uh attempting to guess where all of this is going, I think what we will end up with is a network of bilateral deals with two big centers of gravity. One will be the US and the other will be China. Now these this network will not break up into two blocks as many people think. My sense is that they will there will be enough trade between these two blocks but there will be these two rival centers of gravity and while one doesn't have to choose in a clear way as you had to in the cold war you will have to kind of side in one way or the other uh with one or the other uh center of gravity. Now as things are emerging, say India is already signed a free trade agreement with uh Australia, the UK uh and is in advanced discussions with the uh European Union and the US. I can foresee that we will probably end up in in in that side of the network uh dominated by the West. That doesn't mean we will not trade with China. We still will trade with China. China is our biggest trading partner on goods and the US is our biggest trading partner on services. um but I can see that that is a world in which we would end up drifting in that direction just because of the logic of how the geopolitics or uh the way the free trade agreements would work and incidentally we have explicitly kept out of ARP. So at least in the case of India that is how we think we will navigate this.
>> I think let's continue this because it's a very interesting topic that you started to talk about the main question that appears to me after this round. Who can win this the trade war? What happens with this trade war? Is it going on or it will be balanced out? What are your bits and why John?
Yeah, if I can just say a word picking up on what you said, uh I think the way to think about the world we're moving into is to separate the economic from the security competition. uh and think about it in the context of the preWorld War I period, not the Cold War. And you're probably saying to yourself, what is he talking about? Before World War I here in Europe, there was a huge amount of economic intercourse among all of the states. There was a huge amount of economic interdependence here in Europe. Nevertheless, at the same time, you had two powerful security blocks. One was the triple ant, which was France, Britain, and Russia, and the other was the triple alliance. Germany of course was the key player, Austria, Hungary, and Italy. And you had this intense security competition before World War I that of course of course in August led August 1914 led to World War I. But at the same time you had this intense security competition. You had all this economic interdependence. Fast forward to the Cold War when I grew up there was hardly any economic intercourse between the West and the East. So there was security competition but no economic intercourse. The situation moving forward is going to look like the preworld war I period. It's not going to look like the Cold War. There's going to be a great deal of economic intercourse between India and China, the United States and China, Europe and China. The key issue inside the economic realm will have to do with high edge or cutting edge uh technologies. That's what the United States really cares about in terms of the competition with China. And just to take Europe and how this competition will affect Europe, there's no question given the economic state of Europe that European states will have a powerful incentive to want to trade with China. And the United States will tolerate that as long as Europeans don't trade cutting edge technologies to the Chinese. Because what the Americans are trying to do, as Eric knows very well, is the Americans are trying to throttle, slow down China's development of cutting edge technologies. And the United States is not going to be happy if Europe trades cutting edge technologies or technologies that feed into cutting edge technologies with China. But nevertheless, Europeans, Americans, Indians, we're going to trade with Chinese, the Chinese. But at the same time, you're going to have a wicked and very dangerous security competition in East Asia for many, many years moving forward.
>> Eric, um I think if the United States wants to contain China by through technological means, which is understandable, uh then I think they're pursuing very mistaken tactics. um I mean I don't understand what I mean by just because by cutting off semiconductor for instance uh when Mr. Biden did. um and the Chinese were asleep at the wheel for a long time on the stuff. They woke up the Chinese and say, "Whoa, this is what they could do to us." And listen, we graduate more STEM students than the rest of the world combined. Okay? And we got research dollars than the more than the rest of the world combined. If you don't think we can lick semiconductor, you got to be out to lunch. I mean, so so I I just don't I mean I I just don't think that's the productive way to go about it. And I mean I, by the way, I totally understand. I think the Chinese understand the US wants to re-industrialize. If I were running the United States, I would want to re-industrialize, too. um I just wish there could be a friendlier way to go about it externally. um and I I actually think that's why I'm actually reasonably optimistic. I actually think the Chinese would be willing to cooperate and maybe contribute to that effort. uh certainly China is the largest industrial power in the world. uh there's something that there's some kind of accommodation that could be reached I believe if if we pursue a a friendlier atmosphere.
How should we decode this? Is it a positive or a negative answer to my question of the trade war?
>> How should we decode it? Is it a positive or a negative answer that the trade war can end soon or how do you see this, Liz?
Well, >> I I very much agree with this. we're going to end up with two competing networks. And in fact, I think that's what's already been happening. We haven't talked about the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative and Africa. But what has happened is the United States for the last 25 years haven't really been playing on that economic pitch. They haven't been signing new trade deals. They've been allowing China to use the Belt and Road initiative, use trade to pull more countries into their orbit. And we're seeing what we're seeing with the trade war, which is also offers of trade deals as well. So, you know, people lining up at the White House to sign new deals with uh the president, is the US re-engaging in that economic battle that pretty much left the pitch on uh particularly during uh the Biden presidency. Ultimately, and this is where this is where I slightly disagree with the sort of the term multipolar, the US is still the most powerful country in the world. And ultimately, I don't think it has been using its leverage for the last 25 years. And that is what President Trump is fundamentally doing. He's saying, I'm going to use the U the leverage of the US consumer market to get what I want with respect to Europe. So Europe has all kinds of non-trade barriers up against US products. Those those can be removed under economic pressure. American can also put pressure on Europe as to what we do with China and what our economic relationship is with China and which goods we can or which services can be traded with China. So there is a big opportunity for the US to use its leverage at present. I think within a decade or so, China would have gained sufficiently that that would no longer be possible, which is why I think now is exactly the right time to act. And of course, China isn't going to like that. I think that um this we have a lot of time to unpack it over the next couple days, but well I'm I'm trying not to use a Latin expression um from my old study of scholastic philosophy. But the word multipolar is said in many ways and I think when US decision makers refer to it they mean mean something like what uh Liz Liz is saying and when it's used at the BRICS council it it means something different. So there are those who use the word multipolar to say well thank god that we've moved away from the era of western hedgemony and it'll be much better for world peace etc etc if there's a a a different set of of world powers and I think when uh secretary Rubio again just trying to interpret when US decision makers have referred to this recently I think that they're um uh speaking more in the manner that that Liz is suggesting that the that The situation of the world now resulted in part from catastrophic decisions by western leaders and using the uh window of opportunity that is available to them and the options that are avail policy levers and options that are available to them they will try to situate America and the west to compete better or to realize as you say uh what the different levers of influence are and and what the different planes of competition are. So, everyone made fun of Trump when he uh declared that it's now the Gulf of America and, you know, started talking about the Panama Canal and and and Canada and and Greenland. But if if objectively things are in a more multip-olar situation, for better or worse, one of the things that you naturally can focus on uh is your region. You have a a better knowledge there. There's even a historical doctrine in in the US context, the Monroe Doctrine, which has oriented American policy toward attending to the nature of its own its own region. And probably you're going to be better at figuring out how to navigate that uh than doing something very far-flung. and Trump by picking this term Gulf of America. Again, people thought it was ridiculous, but it's precisely the that kind of meme generation capacity that he has that puts a word out there and then suddenly everyone's talking about it and actually it ends up as memes do. Glad we've gotten to the serious part of the discussion, but as as memes do, ends up shaping the way that that that that people think. um the the the problem or or a big problem within the US from this standpoint though is that there's a a huge amount of path dependency around being a primarily consumer oriented economy and there's even the um and the status of the US dollar as a global reserve currency has been the the hinge on which that uh rests. So I think that there there is some truth also to what to what Eric says that the policy levers that the west was able to use in the 1990s successfully defending itself by imposing sanctions on particular uh industries or on particular types of exports was effective in many ways but the results of those actions are are less effective today. One of the things that has been weaponized in the last few years through the sanctions imposed on on Russia and the Swift system uh was the the the reserve currency status itself and it will be a quite complex political problem although a very important one. I mean it is in a way the problem that the US needs to solve in order to compete well in in upcoming years. But the the problem that it will have to solve is how to maneuver itself, hold together as a country and shift toward a more industrial economy. That means there's it's less based on freewheeling uh acquisition of of debts or debt driven consumer society. moving away from that and managing the political results of that and increasing investment. That's a quite complicated process and somehow putting a few markers down like Gulf of America or looking in looking in the region um is something that I think will will help a lot Sanjie and then John and then we move to the next topic.
So I think um what is one issue is that the personal style of President Trump very often distracts from the wider issue that there needed to be some radical change that had to happen uh in the US's approach to the world and take for example the shutting down of US aid uh when it was done there were there were sort of uh those of a liberal bent were of the opinion that uh recipient countries would be very unhappy about this. But in fact u most recipient countries like India were rather pleased about the fact that the US aid was shut down because it's mostly used for interfering and doing regime change and other those kinds of things in uh these recipient countries. So uh you know those tools had run their course. Maybe they used to be useful at one point in time. I don't think so but anyway maybe they did. uh but that cycle had ended. Similarly, these international inst institutions like WH and so on clearly didn't function during uh the one point in history needed to have which was the COVID crisis. So I think there was a case for radical uh reorientation. Whether or not the way President Trump is going about it we can debate. But I can see that this turbulence that we are seeing in terms of the world order, the old world order dissolving is something I think is was inevitable and it was inevitable consequently that uh the you know the the old power so to speak was going to change its uh uh approach very in in many ways. But it one has to also take into account that you know it's a it's a game in which other players will also play their moves and so yes if you deny China certain technologies it's not unreasonable that it too will develop some of those technologies now as a emerging third pole and we have some way to go uh we have to navigate between all of these things uh so I think the most important thing for a country like India and others as well like Europe and so will be the extent to which we can pursue longerterm objectives while retaining as much flexibility and optionality as possible.
John, I'll just say one minute worth of comments and then you can go to the next issue. Uh I just want to make it clear that I was not arguing that the United States will defeat the Chinese in this economic race or in this arms race. uh the Chinese are incredibly impressive and there are all sorts of reasons to think that the United States is in deep trouble and not up for arms racing uh either economically or militarily with the Chinese.
My last topic is Europe. Europe and uh the circumstances where the European Union is. And I would add to this topic your opinion about the Ukrainian Russian war. If you look on the history of Europe within Europe, it was always a big question where belongs to Russia. Is it part of Europe? Is it part of Asia? uh we know this old pan plan of Prussia and Germany to connect the Russian energy and and uh minerals with the German central European economy. Of course, we know the the plans of the UK and France somehow to disconnect this. How does it look like for the future? How does this whole game and this whole whole thing uh uh what is going on uh uh between the west and the east between Russia uh and Europe and the western world? What kind of role will it play for the whole question that we have that we have uh as a title here? What is your opinion about this? And especially in our region we are next to Ukraine. It's a big question and a big fear in our society. Will this war end soon? How will it end? And uh because it's a big interest that we stop dying that we stop that people are dying next to uh in our neighborhood. uh and the other hand economically it would be also very very important for this region that uh the circumstances are getting clear and uh especially if you look on the energy security uh of of Hungary and the region and the economic development it is a key issue how this war ends and as soon as possible ends. What is your opinion and your country's opinion about this, please?
>> So, on on the subject of the European Union, of course, Britain left the European Union. Unfortunately, we've kept all of the same mentality, all of the same bureaucracy, all of the same laws. So we are suffering from the same economic decline because the entire continent is overregulated, overt taxed. The welfare state is far too big. We've got a massive problem with immigration, huge levels of immigration. We've got a problem with the eco-nutters. And we've also got a problem with Islamism. And all of those factors are part of a takeover essentially of institutions. And we were talking earlier about failed postworld war institutions. And the EU is the ultimate failing institution that is not democratic and it reflects the elite opinions. I talked earlier about wokery, about the sort of anti-western civilization attitudes that are embedded into all our institutions. That is a problem we have. It's particularly true in Western Europe. I think Eastern Europe is performing better economically. It doesn't have so many of the cultural and social problems, but certainly in Western Europe, that is what we have to fight. And I think in Britain, we can fight that. I believe in 2029 there will be a political revolution in Britain. People are now not just fed up with the political parties in Britain. They're also fed up with the institutions of state itself. So the police have found to be complicit in this scandal of majority Pakistani grooming gangs. You raping uh young girls. uh we've had our financial institutions have been found uh severely wanting creating huge levels of inflation and our bureaucracy has been found wanting. So I think there will be an institutional revolution in Britain because that is what the public want. I think it's easier to deliver it in Britain because we're not part of the European Union. And ultimately, I think to get that kind of change in Europe, which I think is needed, it will require both France and Germany to see those types of political revolution. And I think that's where we're headed because the public in our countries are now so fed up with what has happened. They're so fed up with the status quo. and an elite that supports things like mass migration, very expensive energy, uh declining living standards, certainly declining GDP per capita. I just don't think that is in is tenable in the longer term. So, I think we're going to see uh massive political change. As for the situation in Ukraine, I did think that because we'd had very low oil prices recently that that would help bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table because the Russian coffers would not be being filled up with oil and gas revenue. I'm pleased about what's happening in Iran, but one side effect of that is of course the oil prices now shot up again. So I fear that could prolong uh the hostilities. But I think you know what we need to get to is we need to get to an end of this war. But Putin cannot seem to have be seen to have won from his aggression in Ukraine. That is very important from a European perspective, but it's also very important because of the message it sends to President Xi of China and the threat that could be to Taiwan.
John, I think I'm going to focus mainly on the Russia Europe relationship moving forward. uh I think relations between Russia and Europe are going to be poisonous and very dangerous for as far as the eye can see. I think the April 2008 decision to bring Ukraine into NATO and then doubling down on that at every point moving forward was a disastrous mistake. It led to the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and the present war that's now confronting us. I do not believe there is a meaningful peace settlement to this war. uh I think that the Russians on one side and the Ukrainians and the West on the other side are so far apart on what terms are satisfactory for ending the conflict that it's not going to be ended peacefully. You're going to end up with a frozen conflict. And when you get that frozen conflict, the Russians are going to be seen to have been the winners. The end result is that the West and the Ukraine will go to great lengths to undermine Russia's position in the part of Ukraine that they annex. At the same time, the Russians will go to great lengths to make sure that Ukraine is a dysfunctional rump state and do everything they can to wreck the politics and economics of Ukraine. The West, of course, say for a few countries, will have terrible relations with the Russians and do everything possible to undermine Russia's position. So if you look at just Russia versus Ukraine and Russia versus the West in the wake of a frozen conflict, it looks terrible. Superimposed on this frozen conflict are at least five big potential flash points that could lead to a hot war. One is the Arctic, two is the Baltic Sea, three is Kinenrad, four is Bellarus, five is Muldova, and oh, there's a sixth one, the Black Sea. These are all locations in Eastern Europe where big trouble could start and easily start because of the poisonous relations between Russia and Ukraine and between Russia and the United States. So I think moving forward it's going to be a very difficult time for the Europeans and for the Russians and certainly for the Ukrainians.
>> What is the Indian and Chinese perspective on this?
>> So it's politics.
>> I think in our case we have both countries which have otherwise good relations with Russia. um we basically want this war to stop and I don't think the the to expect that one side will back down is very difficult. So I think at least in the short run the best thing we can expect is some sort of a ceasefire till tempers cool down. uh there's no point in blaming one way or the other whether the push of NATO eastward or was it aggression from Russia. We can sort those out later. I think the first thing we got to stop is actually the war going on. So I think some sort of a ceasefire uh will have to some point uh happen and I think that is best we can expect in the short run. um on Europe. um well, if you listen to the big boys and girls in Brussels or in the big capitals, uh you get the sense that they are pounding their chests to take over the mantle of the liberal international order now that the US is kind of abandoning it. um so we're not sure what to do. We're not sure whether we should tell them come on or to cheer them on. um it's um I think Europe should kind of make up its mind on what it wants to do. um and and you know if you look listen to the current US government um their narrative on the conflict in Ukraine is now almost identical to what China has been saying for three years. Okay. To the words. uh it's amazing. but now you know so so I think Europe it's a tough world out there. um so, so maybe maybe you don't change until you know you get marked by reality. We'll see.
>> Kaden, you have now an an easy position to finalize it.
>> Uh, I'm just looking at the clock bleeding red uh, and uh, thinking about how to wrap it up very quickly. But well, I think to I want to return to my earlier ironic analogy of of base and and super structure. It's clear that the in the relation between the US and Europe that the US is going to demand a lot more of Europe in terms of its military spending and capacities to be determined what that spending goes into and what what the result of it is. That'll be a big theme of the NATO summit that's just coming up. But the bigger question, the $64,000 question plus several ensuing decades of inflation, um, is what is the mindset? What is the what is the mind that is on top of that? What is the intellectual and strategic super structure that would be on top of on top of Europe? And there we see almost no sign whatsoever of a change in the elite mindset. It's pretty much attempting to be the continuation of the Biden administration at this point. There is not a a an intellectual plugging in to the the strategic questions that face Europe. You know, if you ask about what Europe's strategy is in a rapidly changing global order and you get a different answer to that question in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024, it does not mean that very, very smart, intelligent, shrewd strategists were rapidly responding to events. It meant that there was no clear goal and no strategy leading to a very reactive viewpoint throughout European relationship to China. Is it decoupling or is it coupling because Trump is against them? I mean, they have there's there's no answer to these questions or at least no answer that can be taken seriously because when they change that rapidly, it undercuts the credibility of the person saying so. All we can be certain of is that in this kind of global competition, a a Europe that becomes more divided, whose uh publics don't have the opportunity to vote for parties that would certain parties that would actually represent them will result not only in a more dangerous politics in Europe, but also a much more dangerous situation for the globe because if those sentiments become more extreme, if people become more dissatisfied uh and if European elites are unable to change their direction then the consequences are damaging not only for them but for everyone else as well.
>> I think uh that we really see after this conversation that we are really towards a new geopolitical reality as the title says. uh thank you very much for this very interesting conversation.