His book the world in disarray. Senator hoskins interviewed by former under secretary of state for Global Affairs from 2001 to 2009 and senior fellow for Harvard University teacher of diplomacy project. Richard, congratulations on your book, its not only the most thoughtful but its very timely and i think we just showed it there onthe screen. Very timely in discussing the world in disarray. Let me ask, why did you write it . I didnt know paula when i wrote it that it was going to be this, i simply knew that this was going to be the inbox whoever was the 45th president. And the last part of the book i talk about what is it we should and should avoid doing about it. Host i noticed in the beginning of the book you also discuss the fact that you have the opportunity to teach at Pembroke College at cambridge, that richard gere love of mi six, project and as the humana top visiting professor statecraft and diplomacy. Great title. What in particular, what impetus during those lectures that you are delivering, how did this i didnt gel wax you didnt know what was to come but we impacted somewhat by her students, by the lectures you are giving . What about that connection . Guest anytime you give three formal public lectures that helps you organize your thoughts and i gave those and they got lots of feedback and got me thinking. Actually when i came back i thought what i will do is take his lectures and transcribed them, have them transcribed and then do a quick book based on them. So i did the transcription, and for several months i fussed with the manuscript and it just uldnt get there. It turns out what may work as a set of lectures simply didnt work as a book. I literally threw it out. Theres a great quote from the famous yiddish writer that our writers best friend is his wastepaper basket. I got in touch with my best friend and dumped the manuscript. I started over and i started over from a question that had been bothering me while i was giving the lectures and afterwards, which was, why is it that things are not better in the world . The foot usually determined history is largely absent. By that i mean if great power, competition and conflict were quite muted, why was it still such a disorderly, why was it a world in disarray . It was the solving of the puzzle which i did Walking Around central park which is what i think when i write, that essentially told me okay, ive got a book year and i can explain why things are not working better than they are, what what similar lets also different about this moment in history. And then again i can explain how is it we arrived here what were the forces that were structural . What with the things we essentially did to ourselves . Then i knew i had to be somewhat descriptive. Cant write a disgk interested thats it. I felt some need to suggest what could be done about it. Host we will get to the substance of the book in a minute but about ask you a few more background questions. I noticed at the beginning of the book you dedicate it to several of your former teachers. What influence did they have on this particular topic, if any . Guest well, the teachers at oxford who i worked with, and those were through the teachers i mention here, had tremendous impact, probably heavily more than anyone. Headley was an australian and became the purpose of International Relations at oxford when i was a student in the 70s. Headley later wrote a book called the article society, and a talk about the book in the text, and as a title suggested in in a moment in history the world can best be understood as a balance between forces of anarchy, which is pretty self explanatory, and forces of society where nationstates essentially agree to some rules and follow them. Whats revealing is this balance. I find that the single most useful framing or any cake i may have on history or International Relations. So headley had a tremendous impact on me. I mention albert who was a great historian of the middle east, and wrote a fantastic essay once about the crisis of 1956, about suez in the middle east and hungry in the euro. That is simply and the european air in the middle east and the superpowers took over. It got me very interested in transitions from one historical era to another. Also worked with michael howard, the great historian of war. Then to argue professors i mentioned, one was my first foreignpolicy professor and other is the professor taught me religion. Thats what got me to the middle east and in some ways in those five professors is the explanation of what really launched me and got me going by the career path that im still in. Host thank you for sharing that. I thought it was interesting that you incited them and i wondered what the connection was and i think you well articulated. Let me ask one more. I was also struck by, in the introduction you also talk about how you spent some time with the word disarray, that you thought that maybe the best word to be used might be chaos or anarchy, that you combed through the dictionary, looked at a thesaurus. Say bit about that come how you landed on the word disarray. Guest youre right, im oldfashioned and i think i still have the source from what i got bar mitzvah, rush days. I dusted it off. I knew what i was looking for come here i am lucky enough to be the present on the council on foreign relations, an organization you know well. I felt i could use words like messy in the towel because that lacks a certain degree of elegance to chaos or anarchy seems to be too strong. Other than large parts of the middle east i felt it didnt apply. One day things may come to that. I hope they dont but we are not there now. Theres a degree of structure, a degree border. Great power relations, as problematic as i may be between the u. S. And russia are nothing like the way they were in most of the 20th century. What i was looking for was a word that conveyed messiness or disorderly mess, and what it wanted to do was give a sense of something that was dynamic, not fixed. I didnt i would be the source, which the dictionary, and disarray came closest. I ran it by my editor and originally he wantedthey wanted to call the book disarray. I said thats too general. I thought that consumer did a book about your sock drawer, and things were a mess. I set i thought we needed up frame intervals going under worlds i suggested a world in disarray and did what he said thats it. That sums it up. Just getting i had a parcel for a second, its funny, ive written a number of books, more than a dozen now, this is a first book ive ever written why dont have to tell people with the subtitle is. People say you got a new book, whats it called . I say a world in disarray and a look at me, they not and they go yes, it is. It checks the box of having a selfexplanatory title. Host i guess toiling over your dictionary and your thesaurus, that it resulted in a good outcome for you in that sense then with people immediately embracing it, grasping it, understanding it. You dont have to go to the subtitle. Lets go to the first part. You divide the book up into three parts and your first part is the history of International Relations, starting in the mid17th century at through through two world wars, and then on to the end of the cold war. The thesis that you primarily put forward is you say that there was considerable continuity, in how the world works during this period. Describe that. Guest thats true. Host history was different in each of the streets. You point that out, but what was the continuity you thought about these periods . Guest there are a couple of features. I think you got it exactly right. One was that nationstates were the principal actors on the worlds stage, to use a cliche on the chessboard, that a lot of history was about great power, competition that spilled over to confrontation or if you look at the 20th century you are to ask for nearly costly world wars as well as a cold war. And a lot of the structures of the world such as it was, was based on this idea sovereignty. The idea that borders were significant, that they define nationstates, countries, and that there was a deal out there that we wont try to change your borders by force if you dont try to change hours, and we wont mess around inside your territory if you dont interfere inside of hours. So i as a kind of live and let live society. This wasnt self banding. And when there was peace in the world it was largely because there was a balance of power. And when there wasnt peace in the world was because one way or another the balance of power broke down and one or another country saw advantage in trying to change the map. For me, didnt you question succinctly, the continuity with nationstates, Great Power Competition being the principal driver or shaper of history, and that centrality of solid as the organizing principle. Host also what were the Lessons Learned . In this section of the book you do provide analysis, descripti description, contrasting one. To another. We share with us but with a Lessons Learned, particularly, as put it quote the unprecedented disorder of the 20th century, in other words, looking at the two world wars. Guest to meet the most fundamental lesson is that its necessary but not sufficient to have a shared understanding of what others and what i call legitimacy. Sounds a bit academic but legitimacy is essentially the idea that we agree on what the rules are of International Relations and how they are to be set and change. On the one hand you need legitimacy, and then secondly you need a balance of power. Ethernet of both that its inevitable that one day, they wont like what the map looks like. It wont like what the chessboard looks like. If they cant get its way peacefully it will be tempted to act coercively, essentially with military force. That seems to me the basic lesson is that you need this set of rules, you need a process for setting and amending them. But you also need a balance of power in order to lock them in. Because again its inevitable that you always have what Henry Kissinger called in another context revolutionary states. That if they see an opportunity to change things, will do just that. Host let me bring in the fact that in 2014 russian president Vladimir Putin held the conference, the tenth anniversary of val die. The title of the conference was world order, new rules on the game without rules. How does that relate to the thesis tt you are putting forward and looking back historically h you set the stage in the book . Guest i think its relevant and a couple of ways to who we are now roughly a quarter of a century since the berlin wall came down, since the end of the cold war. And i would argue that several things are happening. One is that there is less consensus then there was some if there wasnt much to begin with, i want the rules of the world ought to be. Exactly what ought to be the principles that organize the world order, what ought to be the behaviors shall we say that acceptable in those behaviors that are discouraged that i think theres growing friction between particularly russia come to a lesser extent china, and the United States and others, including europe. I think the balance of power is weaker than it was. Nato in many ways demilitarized after the end of the cold war. Russia did many things but it has asserted not demilitarized. Thats the principle instrument of Russian Foreign policy. China has militarized in significant ways. So theres certain shifts and a balance of power in some ways commensurate with the change in balances of economic wealth. You that the rise of all sorts of nonstate actors come most dramatically the al qaeda and isis who now can also wield significant power. You have medium states, north korea, iran, who could be a real factor in the regions. And then above all i think theres a globalizationand youve got these enormous flows of just about everything from vises, whether they are real or computer, two guns to drugs to greenhouse gases, the component of missiles, more bombs, to hack into the things that hackers would send around the world, you name it. Essentially anyone and anything that goes to cross borders with tremendous speed and tremendous volume. The old rules, the ones, to one extent or another, helpless percentage of essentially been overwhelmed by this combination of globalization, this dissemination of power into all these actors, state and nonstate alike, and the rise of some new powers that are not totally comfortable with the distribution of arrangements in the world and the rule such as they are. So when the russians Start Talking about not having rules or the end of the old order, this is their way of saying we are not comfortable. We think what exists out there is biased against us, its there to help the United States and its allies, and as the guys it in the movie, we are not going to take it anymore and i think thats what were beginning to see. Host let me stick with the historical backdrop of it. You have a section devoted to the postcold war period, and talk a bit about that. Because you do discuss the progression and also how the world order was defined at that time, and you focus on the issue into boards of fears of this one. Isnt that still part of the discourse today . Guest it is. After world war ii event to principal sources of order. One was the first dimension of the cold war, the Nuclear Dimension which introduce lot of restraint in the u. S. Soviet action so neither would press advantage too far. We also ended the fact away as you suggest except in one and of influence. United states was limited in what it tried to do in Eastern Europe to weaken the socalled over its warsaw pact neighbors. The soviets for their part were mostly circumscribed although not always what they try to do in the western hemisphere. And in some ways the greatest crisis of the cold war was and i can 62 when the soviets went too far from the perspective of the United States and put missiles into cuba. That led odyssey to the crisis of october, and at the end of the day the soviets, they backed down. So i think that tells us, once was order of the postworld war ii period. Whole bunch of institutions, the u. N. , the International Monetary fund, the world bank, the alliances that group, the Marshall Plan that strengthened countries began allies of the United States in europe and gave in the capacity to withstand local communist movements here what you had coming out of world war ii were all these cold war related arrangements and then all these larger institutional arrangements. When the cold war ended in 198 19891990, we lost those disciplines. You are the breakup of the soviet union, the breakup of the warsaw pact. You had the phenomena of a former soviet client states like iraq would invade kuwait, something when not a done without soviet permission during the cold war. You had a loosening of the bons of International Relations. You still in place the sum of these institutions and some of these rules, but what i argue in the book is that as welcome as things like the u. N. Or the world bank or the imf or other arrangements, they werent enough to contain the new source the presres and dynamics that emged in the world over the last 25 years. Host let me also go the part in the book where you do discuss, as you put it, the other order, you know, the postworld war ii order, the liberal democratic order. Many would subscribe today to the order and say that the issue is that the values, the institutions that have been put in place, that framework stands. But what needs to be modified in many ways, things need to be updated, not on values but in terms of the institutional arrangements that the world has changed and there has to be greater adaptability there. How do you respond to those who argue very aggressively that really the issue is the maintenance of the liberal democratic order . Guest i think a liberal democratic order is fine as far as it goes. It just doesnt go near it as far enough. It was invented or designed in a world of what, 70 years ago. A lot of the challenges that exist in the current world simply didnt exist then. And a big concern of the liberal democratic order in many ways was to promote peace, to get other countries to respect the sovereignty, not to use force to change borders, and that all continues to be relevant and necessary, but its not sufficient. The shortcomings of the liberal order were partially the institutions, which countries had what positions. No one on gods green earth for example, if given a pencil and paper with design the current u. N. Security council if theyre going to design it for today. Theres no way we would give these five countries, the u. S. , russia, china, britain, france vetoes and not have significant roles for other countries from japan to india to germany. So the institutions themselves havent kepthape, kept pace. But also theres also the issues in the world that didnt exist. How do you rate it cyberspace . How do you deal with Nuclear States once the nonproliferation treaty prevents them from becoming Nuclear States . What do you do about global terrorism . What to do about global Infectious Disease, and on and on and on. So my argument is so be that what we need to do, i dont care if you call updating or complement thing, we need to take the basic mechanisms of world order that were invented for centuries ago and update them. The biggest single change we need to make is we need to introduce an idea that i call sovereign obligation. Its that part of what also call world order 2. 0, but its the idea that what goes on inside of other countries can no longer be there business alone. Their province alone. If what goes on has the ability effect of the countries and other populations negatively. You cant have terrorists in your country if they are going to do terrorist acts beyond their borders. You cant allow computer hackers to operate freely. You have to make sure that Infectious Disease doesnt break out, and if it does you have to be willing to take steps to bring it under control. You have to act responsibly about Climate Change you just cant have, you know, bur