Challenge. In the president ial election join us for americas super tuesday. Special coverage night on al jazeera. Hi im Steve Clements and i have a question will internationalism institutions like the u. N. And global commitments to democracy and human rights survive if america says it just doesnt care anymore lets get to the bottom line. When the west led by the United States played architect to build a vast array of International Institutions to promote justice liberal democracy open markets and prevent another global war thats what the world got we built the United Nations we built nato the i. M. F. And world bank the International Energy agency World Health Organization that are World Trade Organization i could go on and on and on but those days may be over at this years Munich Security Conference the worlds most important convening of National Security strategists and leaders a term was born its called west listening a world where the United States and the west are ambivalent towards the global order and towards global problem solving so we have to ask today to International Law and cooperation still matter how relevant is the un how is a World Without leadership supposed to respond to things like the spread of the coronavirus refugees fleeing wars and natural disasters fortunately we have some people with us here who have all the answers with me here in washington d. Our Danielle Pletka a senior fellow at the American Enterprise institute and host of a weekly podcast on Global Affairs called what the hell is going on and ian bremmer the president of the aeration group a consultancy that focuses on Political Risk around the world and author of us versus them the failure of globalism and in Berlin Germany we have Wolfgang Ischinger former german ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom and now chairman of the Munich Security Conference its so great to have all of you here today this is a big heavy subject and wolfgang i want to start with you after the successful conference you just had when you laid out this this this question about what is the World Without the west essentially at the front leading to solve problems so what is your diagnosis of the global order as we see it today well its the 1st of all let me say how great it is to be on your show and to talk about these very important issues for for the International Community and for us the west now would we believe my team and i would we believe we can diagnose is a double phenomenon 1st that the west as we know it is beginning to become less western and that the world at large. The world at large that we thought would over time become more western which join us the liberal International Order actually we we diagnose that the world at large is not becoming more western its becoming less western so we have a double loss that was our diagnosis and thats how we tried to coined this term west listeners and i have to say that im as a conference convener im very happy that the term created quite a bit of controversy some people almost violently disagreed others thought it was right on on the mark and we had a lot of debate good debate tough debate about where the west stands and whether in fact we should be worried and i think i am gauri danny are you worried i am and its for a lot of the reasons that vulcan outlined you know its always been the case that theres a competition of ideas that goes on its not that you know we are out there and that there arent countervailing forces and whats happened over the last 2030 years since the end of the cold war is that weve kind of rested on our laurels weve said you know well we won thats great you know game over and at the same time weve seen powers rising that are inimical to us and by this i mean less russia although we talk a lot about russia and europe and at the Munich Security Conference they did talk a lot about russia but really also china and one power that i think is is ignored in the Development World and one that my colleague karen young writes about a lot which is the gulf if you look at all the initials that you laid out in the introduction that demi h. O. In her un and the world bank and the i. M. F. They have a model of development that rests on accountability regulation. Transparency. Is sort of a liberal order and in many ways a liberal economic order what the chinese are exporting with delton road and what we dont talk about as much but what the gulf countries are exporting with their own economic state craft is not that well so what went wrong because part of the deal ive read what youve written in the past about the fact that these institutions and. Of global order and global problem solving began letting nations in that werent democracies that didnt have the d. N. A. Of Legal Systems and you know systems of justice and rights and that that has had a corrosive effect on those institutions so but i think a lot of other people thought china and russia bringing them in would change those countries right it seems to have gone the other way around but that was the conceit of the opening to china and i dont think we should denigrate that it probably was one of the most transformative events in Human History hundreds of millions of people raised out of poverty after the opening of china the problem was that the notion you know the conceit was that we would in tangled these powers in this global set of rules and systems and guardrails and the answer is well actually no what theyve done is theyve taken advantage theyve exploited those systems and weve allowed a lot of these institutions that were built up in the wake of world war 2 to 2 to age you know kind of like you know me. I always use the example you know im an older lady i dont do the things i need to change and yet those institutions havent adapted and youve talked about west listeners i know you were at the Munich Security Conference is a lot of this also writes very closely to another term you had of a geezer 0 world is big brzezinski used to talk about the need for a g 2 world the United States and china that if we couldnt get us in china together nothing could be done but i mention your take on west listeners. What it means as critically to as unhappy. So why why are we in this period of profound lack of leadership we feel unmoored and Munich Security Conference which is meant to be the place where the Transatlantic Alliance comes together to talk about combined views of security suddenly feels like its not working out that way at all thats right it was very controversial at the cross secretary of state might pompei all get up and said the west has never been better right there will always winning from mike i mean thats pretty clear the germans were much more i think concern and recognize that wolfgang got it right but i think there are 3 major reasons for it number one china is rising but not aligning towards us russia is in decline really angry about it blaming us and working to undermine it so geopolitically things that we thought were going to feel like they were close and increasingly western havent work secondly inside our own countries we have larger numbers of people who feel like the system does not work for them its the legitimize its why you have trumpets why you have standards its why you have brecks its why you have the its why you have the terms for deutschland in germany on and on and on right but then thirdly having less to do with the internal and the geo political its just the institutional and the its the what daniel just said which is when we create these institutions they actually reflect the geo political order balance values capital of the time. Times change but the institutions frequently dont we put the u. N. Together in 1905 literally in 1047 the Security Council no longer made sense we had the berlin crisis and were thinking why the hell did we let the soviets in with the permanent veto sadly too late there they are and ever since then Security Council been broken cant reform it now when you talk about the nato in the World Trade Organization it took a long time before the geopolitics shifted so much of the institutions felt irrelevant but now in 2020 hey surprise surprise a lot is institutions dont remotely reflect the Geopolitical Realities of those 1st 2 points and as a consequence the institutions are kind of broken and you crease and we see belts and roads you increasingly see new sorts of institutions that are arising that have very little to do with the west as we historically defined it well. One of the things i love about your profile is that youre not only this. Impresario of global strategist but you were ambassador of germany to the United Kingdom and to the United States and i think one of the questions is has this. Nationalism has this disregard for the International Deal making and rule making that i see in the United States today has that been cooking up for a while in places like the u. K. And the us did you see precursors to this before donald trump. Well i think yes in very different ways i mean we have seen for example the beginning of an american tendency not to play the worlds only policeman. To withdraw where that was compatible with what the United States defined as the priority it risks we saw that with our note before donald from with saw it with this with president obama. So for from it from a european point of view you know we in europe we are all small countries on the world scale none of us has 100000000 or more inhabitants we are all small if youre small you like strong institutions if you are small you like established and accepted rules that work because that protects usually the small the the big ones the United States needs those rule a little less than this violence so if i can just make one point that affects my own country most the difference between the United States and germany is you created this liberal post world war 2 International Order you created it and you you know the world owes america a debt of gratitude my own country was the defeated enemy at the time when the United Nations was founded we joined the United Nations most people forget that only in the 1970s. We joined nato only in the mid 1950 s. And for my own country the idea that we became part of the west has been a very principle the very fundamental idea of our own postwar existence when i was investor in washington i said ok surely you know i am im happy and confident because as the ambassador of my country i can now say that were actually today on the right side of history not on the wrong that is why this. This this this breaking apart of the west this loss of control by the west of Global Affairs is of particularly. Negative impact for for germany we are losing. A lot more than established powers like france and britain and the United States we my generation used to believe that the center of the universe thats the white house and capitol hill looking at the world from germany and that is now you know there is now a large question mark thats where we are at the moment danny you spoke a lot about this weve had a lot of conversations how culpable our previous administrations in the United States to the state of affairs that we have today look i think i think we can be pretty much equal opportunity blamers you know when you talk about lack of interest for example in rebuilding Democratic Institutions in human rights in those sorts of questions in the the ideals of what we used to call the west. The Obama Administration wasnt terribly interested and the Obama Administration was a direct repudiation of the bush administrations socalled freedom agenda which really put those kinds of questions front and center and reveal. While our values may have been good and well placed and our and bish ans may have been good and well placed our capabilities were not and that we are much better at winning wars then we are at winning peace and i would go so far says that even in places where we havent fought wars but where you know Hosni Mubarak for example i was just talking about him right you a moment ago you know there was a situation where we we almost never pressed the gyptian leader for accountability for fairness for human freedom and were not pressing c. C. Today and sisi is even worse what leads us to believe that going down that same path will not in fact lead to the same outcome in right now one of the things that i have learned about Global Affairs and i come at this from a realist tradition actually but i understand why these important transnational issues like human rights what happens with refugees what happens with system of justice really matter my form of realism was apparently a lot more progressive than i and i had anticipated now you see World Affairs but i guess the question is when he sees things like the coronavirus today spread around the world these are sort of dark day issues where nations sometimes say you know i wish i hadnt kicked germany in the teeth or canada in the teeth when you kind of begin looking at whether or not there is a reservoir of goodwill today among countries when big transnational challenges come out weve got refugees weve got coronaviruses and pandemics in general and im interested in how you see a way. Forward or whether we find ourselves just living in an ad hoc world where sometimes we Work Together and the rest of the time were not well clear is good news and the good what is the good news is that after 75 years of growing globalisation were just a lot wealthier and not only were a lot wealthier as a world but we also have a lot more people with the education to be a part of solutions so even though it is not unified we have more capacity to respond to shocks whether its climate or its coronavirus right but clearly governance which is what were talking about here right political variables are heading in a very different direction and when we had 911. 00 the United States came together pushes support was about 92 percent that january right and the world came out there was a reservoir of goodwill thats what i want to go back i want to play or not hear out of one of dannys former colleagues maybe current colleagues and not sure about but former colleagues played a prominent role in the trumpet ministration but also bush mistreatment but lets listen to john bolton at a conference in new york in 1904 there is no United Nations there is an International Community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and thats the United States when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along secretariat building in new york has 38 stories if you lost 10 stories today it would make a bit of difference. This kind of mindless. Creation of the United Nations as Something Different when its in the United States interest to do isnt going to sell here or anywhere else the United States makes the u. N. Work when it wants to work and that is exactly the way it should be because the only question the only question for the United States is whats in our National Interest and if you dont like that im sorry but that is the fat so this was a long time ago this is ambassador john bolton. Operating in a very dim feel that he was he was so much more of your i. Couldnt resist an interesting question that i think gets right if this this this part of the west listeners challenge was if john boltons comment was if the United States is engaged in leading then operations like the United Nations can matter if you know if the United States is not there and doing the things then youve basically unplugged a world that is problem solving and i want to know where the good news is and that. The good news is that if the geopolitics have moved so far that the old u. S. Led order can no longer hold much better to know that early than late much better to actually be working on a new set of institutions that will actually reflect a functional new global order then wait until the big crisis inevitably comes right and so in other words trump being elected could be more of a call to arms for a lot of people that say wow there you see a whole new world of kind of global architect i mean its going to happen eventually the question is how much pain how much suffering do we need to suffer on a bunch of issues all of which are you know in front of us in the future i think the challenge here is is when you talk about global architecture. Whats wrong with a lot of these institutions is you know per john bolton of the old school they dont actually work that well you alluded to you know the disc. Unction of the Security Council a mere 2 years after it was created and nothing has really happened to fix it we have the European Union but we still have fronts on the Security Council you know if you are front you want to hang on to that if you are the European Union you dont really get it but a lot of these mis connects continue to exist and a lot of people who like these sorts of global institutions like them because they diffuse responsibility not because theyre hugely effective if i think back over the last 70 years and i have to list the accomplishments of the United Nations. I have i have fewer words than i would the argument that you liked was the one that i made with a colleague and a friend of ours for a crime saying and what we and im saying was at the center for americans that are that are American Progress to a good left right. Argument and what we both said is part of the problem with all of these institutions whether its the European Union or the community of democracies or nato if you look at the challenges nato is facing now with turkey if they are a one way ratchet you know theyre the harvard of of institutions once youre in youre in and you dont have to do anything and when you transgress the rules and in many cases these are the sort of the western values based economically liberal base rules theres no punishment that means that these institutions rot from within and that goes for the e. U. Just as it must as it goes for the United Nations and others in i want to go to the best of it before that i want to ask you about china and chinas role in this i mean i have a lot of relatives who think america fought the cold war and china won and that china is riding high on the very foundation of what made. This International System work and operate is there any chance that china will turn out to be a responsible stakeholder in the words of bob zelic who once said that china needed to stand up and become a Good International on Climate Change on protecting the global market. Order system do you think theres any chance they might only come respond they wont in zelotes formulation or Hillary Clintons and its because their definition was that not only does china need to accept more responsibility but they need to accept more responsibility in western institutions with western values and conditionality as we define them so if the chinese are going to accept more more responsibility for example as they are in by far the biggest supporters of un peacekeepers internationally in a lot of parts the World Americans dont care as much about it its going to be increasingly with their rules and their institutions and thats the problem of both american and chinese exceptionalism is that theres not a lot of willingness to coordinate on these things i dont believe that were heading to the americans and chinese in any way looking at the g 2 in any way looking to say how the interesting about munich right here was that the europeans had no interest in making china their principal National Security concern the americans not just the trouble ministration i mean nancy pelosi to that was absolutely number one eyebrow never seen this kind of division inside the transatlantic in our last couple of minutes i want to read just a line from Wolfgang Ischinger who happens to be on the show and ask each of you how you would avoid this bleak diagnosis he writes the International Order of mostly shaped by the west is coming apart and what emerges is not a more just one more peaceful order but rather one in which those seem to prevail who do not seem to care about International Law and norms the age of impunity is David Miliband has called it so i agree with the diagnosis i would like ideas from munich or you or anyone on how you change Gravitational Forces and get into a better place wolfgang im going to this was your comment you fix it. Ok ill be very brief i think the problem is that we on the european side have a very very different philosophical view on what you know patriotism and globalism means in our view these are not opposite concepts in our view you can be a european or a german patriot by embracing the idea of a Global Commons the idea of strong International Institutions and i think the way forward for us on the european side is not to abandon not to ignore the institutions but to try you know to do whatever we can to maintain even those bracks it happens to maintain a strong and vibrant and capable European Union and to support the United Nations and certainly to maintain nato thats what we need. But this is a consistent theme of what weve just been talking about which is that if values dont play a role in our National Security policy just as we need them to play a role in our National Policy then we are going to see this drift get worse and worse we are going to see these failures of governance that in talked about we are going to see countries like china like russia like iran the do not value the same things that we do dont have the same values that dont have the same principles and that will not uphold this order that has frankly made us all hugely prosperous that has made a better world for the last 70 years if those are absent then we will have no direction we will have no north star and thats going to be a lot of the young girls you know the law of the jungle and do you just quickly have any hope that among the many colleagues we know that they will somehow wake up and say this matters it breaks my heart when i see 2 president ial candidates one whos the exiting resident of the white house and one whos the Democratic Front runner neither of whom i really care about human freedom one whos trumpeting you know the. Missive of fidel castro and the other one who seems more fond of not amir putin then he does the article audience thats Bernie Sanders yesterday and yes thats Bernie Sanders who is the current front runner for the democrats. That breaks my heart because america has been the power that has stood for these things the only hope that i have is one based on history and you know as Winston Churchill said we like to try Everything Else out there in the end we generally do the right thing and im going to give you the last word on on how you would see us voiding the direction of this sort of bleak diagnosis that is offered us the reason weve gotten to this position is in large part because weve forgotten about ourselves at home were not going to re insert values in our National Security and Foreign Policy if the majority of americans feel that those values no longer apply to themselves here so i mean the reason you have Bernie Sanders and the reason you have donald trump are symptomatic of decades of forgetting about the average american if we dont rebuild that were not going to reassert values abroad id like to thank you all for being with us here in washington d. C. Danielle pletka a senior fellow at the American Enterprise institute and ian bremmer president of Eurasia Group and in berlin ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger chairman of the Munich Security Conference thank you all. So whats the bottom line globalization used to be about connecting all of us and the glue was trust people ideas and institutions moved across borders with less friction but walls are back populism and nationalistic narcissism are dividing us trust is collapsing and unfortunately fear is rising if you see a way back to a world where leading nations Work Together to solve challenges like the global refugee crisis like Climate Change impacts and epidemics like the coronavirus my panelists think that a combination of a need for a new order and values that respect human rights could make a comeback but from my Vantage Point not soon enough and thats the bottom line. Perception is validation we believe want to be seen but in one life time we cannot see everything that we would lie and he experiences of others and the legacies of previous generations. Testimony we let you know that he lived. With us documentaries that open your eyes. To see. Where every. 0. Hello im kevin l. This is the news our live from doha coming up in the next 60 minutes a major turning point in the corona Virus Outbreak with more new cases outside china than within for the 1st time. Pleading for peace indias capital remains on it chapter 3 days of rioting over a controversial citizenship law thats killed over 20 people. Turkey says it will push back against Syrian Government forces says the number of displaced people in the north reaches nearly a 1000000
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