Transcription
Trump's latest round of terrorists have ushered in a completely new world order, which has caught almost everyone by surprise. But the French philosopher René Girard predicted this exact sequence of events almost two decades ago, as well as what's going to come next.
Okay, so I quote to you Girard, writing this in 2007—the peak of Sino-American optimism—in his final work, *Battling to the End*: "A conflict between the United States and China will follow. Everything is in place, though it will not necessarily occur on the military level at first. Trade can transform very quickly into war. From this point of view, we can reasonably fear a major clash between China and the United States in the coming decades." Girard wrote this in a book titled, again, *Battling to the End*, which is his final, uh, major apocalyptic book. And this is the *Financial Times* article that I woke up to this morning: China vows "Fight to the end after Trump threatens an extra 50% in tariffs."
So Girard was absolutely prophetic in an age when nobody thought that this was going to happen. And so I wanted to help you in this video understand this new world that we're entering into by answering two questions: which is number one, how did Gerard foresee the Trump era tariffs and the trade war that we're entering into right now; and number two, his forward-looking views—why does he think that trade wars are eventually going to end in real wars in the 21st century? Um, maybe I'll start by just helping you understand how impressive, prophetic, and untimely Girard's writing in 2007 was. Because 2007 was the peak of Sino-American optimism. Uh, everyone on the American side thought that, uh, by bringing in China into this, uh, uh, you know, free trade order, it'll make China richer, it'll make the US richer, and fundamentally it will make China more similar and therefore much more harmonious to the Western-led US order. And the enthusiasm was completely reflected on the Chinese side as well. Um, I was going to school in Beijing. I was in, I don't know, fourth or fifth grade. And 2008 was the Chinese Olympics. And I remember the first two lines of the theme song that we were told to sing: "Beijing welcomes you. We will open the heavens and break the earth for you." Okay, that was the kind of prevailing sentiment. And so for Girard to have concluded that the very mechanism everyone else thought would bring about peace would be the, the cat—the catalyst of war—trade—is extremely contrarian, impressive, and untimely.
The reason that Girard saw this—so now we're going to try to answer the first question. Okay, the first question is: how did Gerard foresee the Trump era trade wars? It's because Gerard has a fundamentally different and non-economic view of capitalism. Okay. So the economic view of capitalism is that we are homo economicus. We are these rational utility-maximizing agents. So if I have two units of good and you have seven units of good, uh, you know, if we can figure out an arrangement where I have four units and you have eight units, everyone is happy. And this was the essential promise of the kind of liberal order was that free trade would make everyone richer. And interestingly enough, it satisfied, at least in aggregate, this promise, right? Both China and the US, again in aggregate, even if specific groups have been disadvantaged, are a lot richer because of this. Girard views capitalism instead, and human nature, as fundamentally motivated by social drives: prestige, status, a fundamental obsession with people's relative social standing. And in this world, the ancestor of capitalism for Girard is not bargaining, it's not barter, it's war. It's specifically the gentleman's wars of Europe in the, uh, let's say the 17th and the 18th century. And Girard had this one line: He said, "It's little wonder that the European aristocracy went into business as soon as heroes and warriors went out of fashion, went out of style." And this is a phenomenon I think you can observe in capitalism today—that the amount of martial language used by leaders, right? Um, another image that helps you get a sense of what Girard is getting at is, uh, Wellington and Napoleon's descendants are now rival traders in, uh, in investment firms in London. And I think what Girard is getting at is most easily seen in the right tail of economic behavior. Right? If you're buying a luxury good—you know, Kanye's white t-shirt—I hate to break it to you—is not worth the, you know, however many hundreds of dollars he was selling it for. Um, most jobs, or many jobs, clearly are chosen because of what they say about you. Okay. And so in this world, if humans are really motivated by these social drives and they care more about their relative standing rather than the absolute amount of material, it's easy to see why the the liberal order's promise, even if fulfilled, will not lead to the peace it claimed it would. America is more concerned that its relative status is being threatened by, by rising China, and China becoming richer is less satisfied because now it's more similar to America and it desires even more. Okay. So it's because of Girard's, uh, unique and I think more accurate understanding of human nature that he saw the flaws of this kind of neoliberal premise.
Now, um, the, the, the fundamental punchline of, of Girard's reading is that China and the US are not fighting because they're too different. They're fighting because they've become indistinguishably similar. Okay, I quote you Girard: "The looming conflict between the United States and China has nothing to do, nothing to do with a clash of civilizations. We always try to see differences where in fact there are none. In fact, the dispute is between two forms of capitalism that are becoming more and more similar." What Girard is getting at here is: we think that it's difference that causes conflict. But in reality, similarity is a catalyst of conflict because all of those social drives traffic much more readily amongst equals. So here's an example. Um, there are friends and mentors of mine who are so much more wealthier in their 40s and 50s, and yet I'm, I'm never jealous of them because fundamentally they're, they're a lot older. I have an excuse, right? They got two or three decades on me. But the only, the people that I find myself jealous of are the ones who are, you know, the other 27-year-old entrepreneurs who are slightly wealthier than me. Right? This is the narcissism of small differences that Girard is latching on to. Um, now obviously the response is: but that clearly, that's ridiculous, right? Clearly this conflict is between, you know, Plato versus Confucius. It's between freedom versus harmony. It's between capitalism versus communism. And Girard would say: of course there are differences among cultures. But that's not why you guys are fighting. If an alien were to come down to, to the world right now and you ask the alien what is the country most similar to America, the, the answer undoubtedly is China, right? Technocratic, secular states, uh, similar size and geography, highly populated. Its tech sector aspires to do the exact same things. It has the same kind of, uh, uh, self-conceived leadership position in the world that it wants to inhabit. And it's precisely because of these similarities that there is tension. And you know, remember that Girard quote: "We always want to see differences when there is none." The reason that this is not obvious, Girard thinks, is because rivals in these rivalries exaggerate whatever minute and small differences there are between them in order to justify their aggression towards the rival. And I think this is perhaps most easily seen, uh, in historical conflicts that, that we no longer, that is no longer politically charged. Okay. So let's say Orthodox versus Catholics—I guess that, that's still politically charged—but, you know, to, to, to someone outside of that debate like me, it's no longer. And you know, one of the big disputes—it's not the only dispute—one of the big disputes between these sects was regarding the filioque. Right? This is a sentence that, according to the Orthodox, the Catholics added to the Nicene Creed, and this was what a huge, huge issue. Now obviously from our perspective, even from a Protestant perspective, you know, these sects are extremely similar, and yet to justify their aggression towards the other, they, they magnify these, these small differences among each other. Another example would be, um, England and France in the age of conquest. Okay, uh, in our, from our perspective, these are just rival colonial powers doing their thing, but from their perspective—if you read what their own justifications—they are radically different, right? England's self-conception was: we are this, uh, uh, you know, maintaining of this fair global order of freedom and free trade, and the French are these absolutists. Okay, but again, from our perspective—which I think is the more sober perspective—these are rival colonial powers doing their thing and fighting because of that.
So that's Girard's answer to the first question of why he predicted the the Trump era trade war: is because number one, capitalism and human nature is driven off relative social desires and not absolute material desires, and as a result, by bringing in China and the US closer, similarity rather than difference is going to be a new catalyst of genuine conflict. That's the first question. The second question is: why does, does Girard think the trade war—trade wars in the 21st century—will descend into real wars? And this has to do with Girard's understanding of law. In the same way that Girard sees the ancestor of, uh, capitalism and trade to be the gentleman's wars, he sees the ancestor of law to be violent ritual. So in Girard's, uh, anthropology, he believes a necessary thing—all surviving civilizations need to develop—is a way to prevent reciprocal violence from spiraling out of control: I kill you, your brother kills me, my family kills your brother, on and on and on, because this is obviously kind of an existential risk to, to, to, to human society. And so the mechanism Girard believes that early societies used is to discharge, uh, uh, this violence in a cathartic way by selecting a relatively innocent party or group and expelling that. Okay, this could take the form of—I mean, the most recent one would be the Jews, uh, in World War II. Um, but throughout history as well, there's a pharmakos tradition in, in Greece where they would expel someone from the, the city itself. Um, but it could also take more subtle forms. Um, for example, like carnival—these festivities of—I wouldn't say violence—but intense energy and outlet and disruption of the social order—or something like Aztec human sacrifice. But Girard observes that, um, in societies that have law, they no longer practice these kind of, uh, violent rituals. And so he, he, he hypothesizes that that law must take on this function. And Girard invites us to look at the most lawlike ritual to find out what the true essence, what the true necessary condition of law is. And so he highlights, uh, this ritual from the Chuckchi clan, which is, uh, this kind of Arctic, uh, uh, roaming band of hunter-gatherers. And so one of the rituals was this: If someone from my clan unjustly kills someone from your clan, me as the leader of my clan, I need to pick someone from my clan and kill him, expel him as a, as balancing of debts. But crucially—and this is how it's different from law—I cannot choose the guilty party, the my guy who actually killed your guy. So in many ways, this is very much like law, right? Instead of Aztec human sacrifice, uh, instead of you're throwing a baby in a volcano, instead of carnival, it's in response to an explicit event; it's an attempt to figure out who is wrong and who is right; and it's an attempt to isolate a single, uh, party to, to, to be punished. But it's also very, very different from law in one key regard: that the guilty party cannot be punished. And so Girard asks: why can't the guilty party be punished? His answer is that in this, uh, uh, escalating rivalry, my guy, the guilty guy, has so much of the tribe and society rallied around and against him. So he's become this, this focal point, this tension point, right? Think about someone like Trump in the election trail. If he is killed, right? If Trump were killed, that could be cataclysmic for society because that's going to engender—because so much social energy is, is, uh, surrounding, is surrounding this person—that could engender an even worse cycle of vengeance. And so the best thing I can do is to offer, uh, an innocent person to be killed as a way for, uh, your, your clan to dispel your violent, uh, urge or impulse. Okay. So Girard asks us: this is as close to law as ritual can get. So what enables our societies to actually punish the guilty person? And his answer—and this is what he thinks, uh, the essence, the necessary, a necessary condition of law—is is a monopoly over violence. Me as a clan leader and you as a clan leader, there's nothing we can do if our groups spiral into, into, into reciprocal violence. But in modern society, if you take vengeance into your own hands, you yourself will be jailed. And the only way that, that, that is, uh, enabled is that the state has a monopoly over violence. Okay. So, so that is Girard's kind of key conclusion: that, um, for law to function, you need an entity with a monopoly over violence over all disputing parties. Okay. What does this have to do with trade war? What does this have to do with how trade wars descend into real wars? A trade war, by definition, is a dispute among entities where there is no third party that has a monopoly over violence. Another way to put this is that international organizations are impotent to the extent that they don't have a very big stick. One of the most comical things in the beginning of the Russian-Ukraine war was, uh, the UN voting a resolution to basically stop Russia. Now obviously Russia vetoed it. Okay. But, but even if Russia didn't veto it, right? Clearly that, that wouldn't have done anything because law, again, is impotent, and its impotence is hidden from us because law pretends to be—Girard thinks—this source of impartial justice, and we, we mistakenly think that's where it derives its power from, but that's not where it derives its power from at all. You know, Mao had this line: "Political legitimacy comes from the barrel of a gun." And, uh, this is also sort of Girard's realpolitik position on the efficacy of law. So this is why Girard thinks that trade wars can so easily and readily descend into real wars because trade wars are this intersection where all of this pride, all of this national energy, the, these social mimetic impulses are gathered at. And yet it is the part of trade that actually has no party that has a monopoly over violence over disputing parties. And so trade war is different in essence with domestic commercial disputes because in domestic commercial disputes the state has a monopoly over violence. And so this is why Girard in 2007 said that the dyke will break at trade wars. Um, this is not even the most, I think, prophetic and alarming message of his book. There's actually a third step here, which is that Girard thinks real wars in the 21st century will lead to the, the last war. Okay, this is why he titled the book *Battling to the End*. It's sorry, he actually didn't title it—he, he titled it *Aki Clauswitz* in French. Uh, the English translation is *Battling to the End*. But, but the sentiment is there, which is that this is an apocalyptic book. And so not only will trade wars lead to real wars, but real wars will lead to the end of the world. And the reason there has to be is because of how the nature of war has changed in modernity with technology and culture. Um, that's outside of the scope of, of this conversation. So I'll just link my lecture on *Battling to the End*, which is my final lecture in my seven-part series, in the description. Um, and yeah, I hope this was, uh, illuminating for you.