Transcription
The US and China will go to war, perhaps over Taiwan. This is US madness. The US cannot defeat China in a war in East Asia. Of course not.
For example, is it rational for American military manufacturing to be heavily dependent upon China? No, it's not. I mean, from a basic national sovereignty standpoint, because of the military problem, military conflicts. Okay. So, how could a country like Germany do things so against its own interests? How, who are running Germany?
And of course, the United States is trying to surround China with the US military bases in Japan, in Korea, in Australia, and in Southeast Asia, in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. This is a doomed course.
Is it China's fault that the US made a lot of bad decisions after 2001? No. I mean, they were just taking advantage of the situation. Yeah. And and I think there was an interview between Trump and Maria Bartiromo earlier this year in which he was asked about Taiwan and you could see that his instinct was, okay, well, it's important to the US because of semiconductors.
So, if that's a reflection of Europe, I mean, if Europe cannot determine its own destiny, if somehow Europe, the European leaders cannot make decisions based on the best interests of their peoples, somehow they're following some other agenda, that I think is problematic.
First, the United States could stop NATO enlargement, and that would end the war in Ukraine. Second, the United States could back a state of Palestine, and that would end the war in the Middle East. Third, the United States could acknowledge that Taiwan is clearly a part of China, and the United States would stop sending armaments to Taiwan.
From the point of view of geopolitics, it has been a terrible US administration. I think the Biden administration has been about the worst of our modern times. It has been a terrible European Union commission, I'm sorry to say, and we have very high unpredictability looking forward. So, we are with three major crisis zones in the world. There are many beyond that, but three that pit the major powers against each other.
Of course, the war in Ukraine is a war between the United States and Russia. The war in the Middle East is a war of the US and Israel and much of the Arab world. And the tension in East Asia is a growing risk of conflict between the United States and China. In all three of these areas, diplomacy could have prevented the conflicts. Diplomacy is needed to end the conflicts. Whether we have diplomacy or not remains to be seen.
In the case of the Ukraine war, this is a war of NATO enlargement, plain and simple. Prime Minister Orbán and Prime Minister Fico are the only two leaders in Europe that understand this accurately. This is a war that was provoked by the United States, not by Russia. It was a long-term plan of the United States to expand NATO, and with the specific objective of surrounding Russia in the Black Sea with NATO countries, with the idea that Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia would all surround Russia's Black Sea fleet and basically render Russia a has-been on the world scene. And this was all spelled out very clearly by US strategists in the 1990s and it has played out since then.
The war came because of this, and because the United States refused to recognize Russia's legitimate security interests of not having NATO on its borders, not being surrounded by NATO countries, especially since in 1990, the United States and Germany said in unequivocal terms that NATO would not enlarge one inch eastward, much less all the way to the Caucasus. So the US caused this. It should not have overthrown Yanukovych in 2014. It should never have negotiated with Russia in 2021. It should have allowed Ukraine to declare neutrality in 2022. But it did none of those things because the US deep state is to this day intent on defeating Russia and expanding US military power as far and wide as it wants. And this is Biden has been part of that, and that's why he has been one of our worst presidents in modern history.
The second crisis in the Middle East is a crisis that has come for a very basic, unworthy reason as well, which is that Israel conquered Palestinian land in 1967 and it decided to keep that land and to rule over the Palestinians in an apartheid state. And Netanyahu is very clear about this. Israel will never retreat from the Palestinian lands. If the Palestinians don't want to be ruled by Israel, they should leave. This is as simple as that. Netanyahu recognized 30 years ago that this would lead to resistance. This would lead to military resistance by Hamas and Hezbollah and others. And Netanyahu's strategy, spelled out already in 1996, is instead of fighting Hamas and Hezbollah, Israel should fight the countries that back Hamas and Hezbollah. And in 2001, a famous list of seven countries was drawn up that the United States would overthrow in five years. And this list included Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya. And interestingly, the United States has gone to war with six out of these seven countries. The United States has backed Israel's war against Lebanon. The United States has been directly involved through the CIA in Syria since 2011. The United States invaded Iraq. The United States invaded Libya. The United States backed proxy fighters in Somalia and Sudan. And the one country that the United States has not directly attacked is Iran. But Netanyahu wants the US to escalate, to go to war with Iran as well.
So, I regard the Middle East wars, including the fall of Syria last week, as a plan that has been underway for 30 years, to remake the Middle East in Israel's image and to have the United States carry the heavy lifting of that. The result is a disaster. It's basically the destruction of Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan, all of which remain battlefields until this day. And this was the plan. I mean, the plan was that these would be functioning US-backed states, but none of them is functional. And Syria is very unlikely to be functional as well. It's more likely to fall into civil war than to be a functional state.
The third crisis is in East Asia, and this is America's struggle to remain the hegemonic power despite the rise of China. Now, it's impossible for the United States to be the hegemonic power of East Asia because China is larger and more powerful in East Asia. The United States is trying to harm China's economy through tariffs, through prohibitions of technology, through general info wars, through instructions to its companies not to invest in China, through formulating trade agreements that exclude China. And of course, the United States is trying to surround China with the US military bases in Japan, in Korea, in Australia, and in Southeast Asia, in the Philippines, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. This is a doomed course. China will not be contained. China will not succumb to US pressure. And if worse were to happen, the US and China will go to war, perhaps over Taiwan. This is US madness. The US cannot defeat China in a war in East Asia. Of course not. But the war could either turn into a world war or an outright military defeat of the United States. I don't know which it would be, but it would be a complete disaster.
So these are the main crisis zones in the world. As you hear, my own view is the United States is the faulty party in all three cases, basically reflecting the delusions of unipolarity or the delusions of hegemony, which I think is a kind of arrogance that is way past its time and is getting us into a lot of trouble. My own hope for 2025 is that the US changes its foreign policy. All three of these crises should be diffused straightforwardly. How could that happen? Three ways. First, the United States could stop NATO enlargement, and that would end the war in Ukraine. Second, the United States could back a state of Palestine, and that would end the war in the Middle East. Third, the United States could acknowledge that Taiwan is clearly a part of China, and the United States would stop sending armaments to Taiwan, and that would end the tensions with China.
Do I count on any of this? Maybe Trump will end the war in Ukraine. I doubt that he will recognize the state of Palestine, and I doubt that he will tamp down tensions with China, though it is possible that he would do something more on that. He will launch a trade war with China for sure. Whether he launches a hot war or a rising escalation with China over Taiwan remains to be seen. So, I can't give you a forecast because we're going to have one of the most unpredictable administrations in our history. I can only give you a prescription. And the prescription is peace, peace, and peace in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and in East Asia by the United States changing its foreign policy approach and accepting the reality of multipolarity.
The final thing I want to say is that European foreign policy is absolutely bizarre and dreadful. Europe mortgaged its future to NATO, which is completely unjustified and not in Europe's interest. Von der Leyen doesn't know whether she is an employee of the United States or actually the head of the European Union Commission. Kaja Kallas is as likely to create a war with Russia as she is to find a diplomatic way, because the rhetoric that comes out of the new High Representative for Europe is absolutely destabilizing. Mark Rutte, the head of NATO, is already showing completely adverse views that Europe now has to go to 3% of GDP, that it's all getting ready for war with Russia for no reason, because what Europe needs to do is to understand collective security, that Russia has real security interests, that the United States is provocative and needs to stop provoking. And Europe's real solution, but maybe too late, I don't know, never too late, Europe's real solution should be the OSCE, which is a body of 47 countries based on collective security, not on NATO, not on blocs, not on security for some at the expense of others, but on collective security. So these are the remarks that I wanted to share with you.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your insights, professor, and thank you for taking the time to join us. We'll have a lot to reflect on, but we'll let you go. Thank you again, and have a pleasant day ahead.
Gentlemen, I think that the professor mentioned many things that we want to discuss during the panel, and we will get to that. The biggest lesson or lessons of 2024 from an American, a European, and a Chinese point of view. I think the biggest lesson in 2024 is that American political experts really don't know what they're talking about. I mean, it's just unbelievable. It's just been so long that they call everything wrong. I mean, in 2016, that's forgivable. And in 2020, they called it all wrong. And this time, this time, they said they've adjusted all the polling mechanisms. They made adjustments. They said they have assigned different weights to everything, and still they got it so completely wrong. So, something is wrong in the American political expertise expert class. America is an important country, of course, to all of us. So, in order to understand the trajectory of the United States, I think we should probably come to Hungary more, and we can be reading these American experts.
And the way that I would frame that is, were the Trump years an exception to the prevailing post-war liberal norm, or were the post-war, post-Cold War liberal years an exception to the normal set of political forces which govern world events? And I think now the answer is pretty clearly that the toolkit, the intellectual toolkit and the conceptions that were used by people to analyze the to come to the conclusion that the Trump era was an exception, those tools are broken and not adequate to the current political situation. That's part of the reason why the polling was so bad. Maybe polling is not intended to be an objective science. I just want to throw that out there. In fact, all of this, and this is the nub of this observation, I think, is truer and truer of many Western liberal institutions generally. They portrayed themselves as objective, science-based, evidence-based, based on clear conceptions that are neutral, that everyone can agree to, and that's manifestly not how they're being used. The problem that the managers of these controls are now facing is that they now have opposite reactions in the world. So they're trying to do the same things, and different things are resulting. So you can see this, I'm picking one out of a hat, in the post-election situation in Georgia, where you have the same playbook, the same liberal noises, the same objective polls, pre-election polls, which are then used to claim that the election was stolen or something like that. And it's the same playbook, but the same results or the good or hoped-for results are not materializing. So this is an exciting situation, but it's a dangerous situation as well, because it means the concepts and the tools to understand the situation and to navigate it from a policy standpoint are not readily available.
So now we know that most Western political experts don't really understand what's going on in the world. But looking at 2025, connecting everything that happened in 2024 to what we can expect in 2025, what do you see as the major disruptions in the last year or the biggest challenges that will have the biggest impact on the year ahead?
Sorry, just to add, so we are going to start next year with a new US administration. We're going to have a new European Commission. There are ongoing conflicts, as we heard, in Europe and also in the Middle East. So we have a lot to deal with, and I think we can all agree that it's likely to be a very dangerous year. But what are the main perils that you see in the coming year?
Well, let me sound a note of optimism. I think several things that happened in 2024 could make 2025 a little bit better. One is, I think the returning of President Trump to the American presidency, in one respect, could make the world better, because President Trump is manifestly uninterested in military adventurism. He's not a military adventurer. I think it's true that the claim that he was the first American president since many years who did not start a war on his watch. And so, and I think that hasn't changed from his public speeches, from his views that he has expressed. He is less inclined to embark on military confrontations around the world. So I think that actually, at a high level, reduces the chance for war in the world, because that's number one.
Second thing that's, I think, cause for optimism is, 2024 was a year that we really witnessed the rise of the Global South in a material way, and the Global South has become an enormous, self-conscious, self-aware force in the world, and it's very big and very diverse and very influential. So the enlargement of BRICS, for instance, in 2024, I think will lead to the world being more prosperous and peaceful. And the third is, I think in our neighborhood, in China's neighborhood, 2024 has been a very successful year for China to reach a more peaceful environment in the Western Pacific. So the relationship with ASEAN has improved tremendously. China is now very friendly with Malaysia, Indonesia, in the South China Sea, with all the other claimants in the South China Sea. I think China has improved the relationship with them, notably with Vietnam. And there's a seems to be a thaw with India, which is very promising. So I think in China's immediate surrounding, with one or two exceptions, we're in a much more peaceful environment for 2025.
Yeah. And I think that the danger that I was trying to outline applies less to President Trump himself and more to the existing class of political leaders, particularly here in Europe, unfortunately. But, you know, I'm reminded by your comment of an experience I had at the beginning of the Trump administration. I was sitting in my office in the University of Dallas, and I received a package with a book inside, which had a note from a friend of mine that said, "Here, just wanted you to have my book on what's going to happen." This was 2017, in the upcoming Trump administration, and the book was called "World War Trump." And the author is and remains a good friend of mine, and I think that reflected the expectations of a lot of people that his impulsive, apparently impulsive, or tactical, or transactional approach to foreign policy would be more disruptive rather than less. You know, I think that Professor Sachs made a lot of interesting and contestable claims, but when he came to his expectations for how each of the conflicts that he identified could be solved there, I think that his expectations of the Trump administration are a little bit too low. He almost seemed to be describing, I know he's trying to describe the permanent or criticize the permanent American foreign policy posture, but I think what we're going to see an attempt at is for America to follow a rational foreign policy for the first time in the recent past. And as much as Professor Sachs might like for the three conclusions he recommended to be immediately adopted, it's just not clear to me why anyone entering into a negotiating room would avoid, like, why posit the conclusion that the other side wants, rather than going into the negotiating room from a position of strength and to have a negotiation and a trade-off or settlement of some sort. We know Trump. We know he's like that. He's talking about Canada as the 51st state. This is the guy who will say we should have 100% tariffs on Canada until he goes into the negotiating room and comes out with a reasonable solution. Trump doesn't need this like sophisticated post-liberal intellectual framework that, of course, I enjoy trying to describe and put together. He's one of that group of politicians that have a quite close feel on the interests of their nation, and I think that will result, although there are a lot of other forces pressing in the world, that has great potential, even in the relationship with China.
So we can conclude that the foreign policy conducted by the Trump administration will be a rational, a realist one, and probably he won't be invested in military conflicts too much. But what we see is that, like he announced, like heavy tariffs on Chinese products. And my question is, how is China supposed to react to that, or what are the expectations of China on that, and how should Europe navigate in such a situation?
I think that's, let's put this in a larger context. I think the two forces that are shaping our world today are the forces of deglobalization and the force of reglobalization. So, you know, we're at the end of this first round of globalization that's been happening post-Cold War for the last 30 to 40 years. And many countries benefited from that globalization. China, of course, is one of the biggest beneficiaries. And I would say America also is a great beneficiary of this round of globalization. But what's happened is that within the United States, all the benefits of globalization went to very few people, and the vast majority have not benefited as much. So, it's leading to a revolt. So, the current round of globalization that's ending was led by the United States and the West, and now the primary force of that globalization is retreating from it, is deglobalizing. So that's, I think, all that the tariff talk, the trade war talk was part of this larger picture. But at the same time, China, of course, is the largest trading country in the world, and in human history, China's continued development relies on continuing economic interconnectedness with the rest of the world. Okay. So, China's attempting reglobalization, and you see that in Hungary with the automobile manufacturing being put up here, and that's all new. So, these two forces have their own secular drives, and they are opposed to each other in some ways, but they coexist. So I think tariff and trade war is part of it, but China's of course developing new globalizing tools, new globalizing trends around the world as well.
Well, no, I think the main danger that this dialogue can address is that, and this is what we were talking about a little bit beforehand with Eric, is that right now, and it almost sounds like a liberal globalist thing for me to say, but global mutual understanding is at a very low level, particularly after the COVID pandemic. So much so that Americans are not aware, and I think many Europeans are not aware, what happens in China and vice versa, and this affects everyone. Obviously, this is not the only relationship. I'm not trying to say something trite. But after the COVID pandemic, all these exchanges went down. And so when I go back to the US and I run into Tesla drivers, I tell them, you know, I've been driving around in Budapest a lot, and I see some, I saw an amazing-looking SUV the other day, which I assumed was a Porsche SUV, and I looked a little bit more closely, and it was a BYD SUV. And the point is not that BYD or Tesla is better, but that in order for the US to make good decisions as it faces the principal challenges to it, and China is definitely a challenge to it, there's no point in denying that, it has to have this better mutual understanding, which comes in other conflicts and disputes as well, through discussions like this. So I think that, you know, there are a lot of things that when it comes to the US relationship with China, that could be on the table. It's not going to play out the way that Professor Sachs suggested with the US just, whatever, making the declaration that he said.
For example, is it rational for American military manufacturing to be heavily dependent upon China? No, it's not. I mean, from any basic national sovereignty standpoint, unless there are very good reasons for allowing the components of your key weapons to be made by an adversary or potential competitor, it's irrational. What was it that led to that happening? This is where I'm plugging into, going to echo what you said about different types of globalization. There was, in that first period of globalization, the intellectual framework that went with it was the post-Cold War, very excited, very enthusiastic liberalism. Borders won't matter anymore. That's how we'll get rid of disputes. We'll have global culture instead of national culture. That's how we get rid of disputes. That's how we avoid the bugbear of nationalism coming back. And that led to a lot of bad decisions being made. Is it China's fault that the US made a lot of bad decisions after 2001? No. I mean, they were just taking advantage of the situation. But we can't go, we don't fully have the alternative framework. Hungary has been trying to build it with this concept of connectivity plus the national interest, where it's very highly engaged throughout the world but also pursuing its national interest. The dream would be if all nations can begin to pursue something like that. There are issues between the United States and China on trade. It's again, it's not rational to have key components made elsewhere. So if you were President Trump and you wanted to engage in a negotiation that's something that's important to you, the other side has some things that are important to it. There will probably be a lot of bluster beforehand and afterward, and we'll see over the next few years whether a rational solution can come out. But to begin with, we need a new perception on what the entities are, what the countries are, what the building blocks are of a different international framework, and what the underlying forces are that are likely to plug into that. And I think we've made some progress on that today.
I just wanted to add that the car, the BYD, even if it were a Tesla, the chances are it's a Tesla imported from China. Okay. But I absolutely get your point. I mean, I think actually these mistakes go both ways. The Chinese were asleep at the wheel on semiconductors, for instance. I mean, to hand such an incredibly important part, just totally reliant on foreign production, it's absolutely crazy. And they got their head handed to them right now.
Yeah. And I think there was an interview between Trump and Maria Bartiromo earlier this year in which he was asked about Taiwan, and you could see that his instinct was, okay, well, it's important to the US because of semiconductors, and also for geopolitical reasons. But why is American semiconductor manufacturing dependent exclusively on the outside? And so there are clearly alternative models of globalization on offer. No one is going to go back to a totally autarkic standpoint. But the danger is that in the absence of another framework, you know, if we just end up with four years or more of tit-for-tat trade wars, well, maybe a couple of issues are solved, but a lot of new problems are created.
We touched a little bit on Europe as well, but I would like to elaborate a bit more on that. So how do you see the situation of Europe in the coming years? Because what we see is that Trump seems to be determining to put an end to the war in Ukraine as soon as possible. He's also advocating for like a biggest strategic autonomy, European strategic autonomy, at least an increased NATO contribution coming from European countries. But at the same time, as we see, the Trump administration will not be lacking a China hoax. The question is, will how big of a room for maneuver will Europe have when it comes to dealing with China or dealing with other countries? And how, for example, Hungary's connectivity strategy will be perceived by the incoming administration? I mean, this is there are a lot of complex issues there.
So I'll just pick one aspect, but I mean, I'm not an investor, and I know I'm in the presence of some investing talent. But, you know, investors are always supposed to look at fundamentals, and Europe has a lot of fundamental strengths in the geoeconomic world. It is a very large market. It has always been a place that offers something distinct. It's where a lot of raw materials come and are put together with a unique expertise. It has a lot of distinctive features as well. But it has leverage points. But for its leverage points to function, it has to take a different approach on the international stage. It has to adopt a more peace-building approach to the West and to the East. It has to take care of itself better, and it has to have the fundamental conditions that would allow its economy to flourish, or its economies to flourish. If it can put that recipe together, then it's a wonderful place. It's the place where we're having a conversation now. But again, getting there is a leadership problem. It's a toolbox problem, but there are alternatives to Europe on offer. Hungary is offering one. It's not the only alternative vision, of course, but it's not a doomed area, but it is going to be doomed if it continues to follow its current approach. And I think it's reasonable to adopt a simple historical viewpoint at this point and assert that if Europe becomes a geoeconomic black hole, then it will be a catastrophe for the world, and for the US and China as well. So hopefully, everyone, all the major players will recognize that they too have an interest in a certain vision of a certain type of European strength. That's what I hope for.
You know, I worry about Europe. Let me use the example of Germany. I was in Germany a couple of times this year. You know, I used to worship Germany. Yeah, I go to, I mean, the country was always perfect to me. Everything was efficient, everything was on time, extremely well-designed. But I don't know if you know, I mean, you're close to Germany. Germany is in trouble. The German economy is in trouble across the board. And it's very, very sad and very, very concerning to see. I mean, even the trains are not on time, or actually never on time. It's crazy. It's Germany. The trains are not on time. The planes couldn't take off because they can't load the luggage onto the planes. It's so, so I asked, what's happening? It turned out that there's been an increase across the board in substantial increase in costs in German industry across the board because of the military problem, military conflicts. Okay. So how could a country like Germany do things so against its own interests? How, who are running Germany? So, if Europe, if that's a reflection of Europe, I mean, if Europe cannot determine its own destiny, if somehow Europe, the European leaders cannot make decisions based on the best interests of their peoples, somehow they're following some other agenda, that I think is problematic. I mean, we want a better world. To me, a better world is a world in which leaders of different countries, different regions make decisions based on the best interests of their peoples. It may have conflicts, it may have disagreements, but that's a better world. And I'm not sure if Europe could do that in the future.