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Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | |
| The office of President of the United States. | ||
| And will to the best of my ability. | ||
| And will, to the best of my ability. | ||
| Preserve, protect, and defend. | ||
| Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. | ||
| The Constitution of the United States. | ||
| So help me God. | ||
| Congratulations, Mr. President. | ||
| Watch C-SPAN's all-day inauguration coverage on Monday, January 20th, including the historic swearing-in as Donald Trump takes office as the 47th President of the United States. | ||
| C-SPAN, democracy unfiltered. | ||
| And now, a broad conversation on U.S. foreign policy and global challenges, the status of democracy, the effectiveness of the U.N., and U.S. leadership and diplomatic efforts abroad. | ||
| Hosted by the Stimson Center. | ||
| It's just under an hour. | ||
| Well, ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to the Stimson Center. | ||
| Happy New Year to all of you. | ||
| My name is Brian Finley. | ||
| I'm the President and CEO here at Stimson, and it's really a great pleasure to welcome all of you as well as our guests. | ||
| I just want to start by recognizing that we are in a National Day of Mourning, and I just wanted to take a moment to really reflect on the really tremendously remarkable contributions that President Carter made to our country, to our world, to many of the issues that we are going to talk about here over the course of the next hour. | ||
| But we are certainly thinking of the former president and his family on this day. | ||
| The new year is upon us, and in just 11 days, we will welcome a new administration here to Washington. | ||
| And so, as we get our bearings in the new year, we're really pleased to kick off a series of these discussions that really think of grand strategy, that think of sort of America's place in the world, global governance issues, and situate U.S. foreign policy in the minds of policymakers and in all of us. | ||
| And we are really very pleased to kick this off with one of really the great foreign policy thinkers of our time. | ||
| Many of you know, Stephen Hines, who is, of course, the president and CEO of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. | ||
| Stephen coined the term acupuncture philanthropy. | ||
| I love this term to describe a philanthropic approach that leverages really modest, relatively modest financial assets to trigger larger systemic change in the world. | ||
| And I think if you look at certainly Stephen's time at Rockefeller and even his career of public service prior to that, he really has had, and the organization has had quite a remarkable impact in some big, transcendent areas of policy, sustainable development, democracy, global governance, peace building, among other priorities. | ||
| And I would also note that Stephen practices what he preaches. | ||
| Back in 2010, he set an ambitious path for the foundation to align the fund's investment practices with its mission space, which subsequently led to RBF divesting from fossil fuels. | ||
| Last year, Stephen authored this report, which I highly commend to you. | ||
| It's available online, and I think we even have some copies around the Office of Logic for the Future, which is an exploration of international relations in an age of turbulence. | ||
| It is a compelling romp, I think, through, as I say, grand strategy, issues of global governance, and as we kick off the new year and a new administration, we thought this would be a great way to kind of frame the discussion that will unfold over the coming years. | ||
| Stephen, thank you for being here today with us. | ||
| Brian, thanks for having me. | ||
| It's a pleasure, and thank you all for being in the various audiences online and in the room. | ||
| It's great to see everybody. | ||
| So, in full disclosure, I will start by saying the Stimson Center has been a beneficiary of the generosity of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in support of some of our China work, our Middle East work, some of our work on global degrevernance. | ||
| However, it will not blunt the savageness of my quest. | ||
| So, don't get too comfortable over there. | ||
| Do not get too comfortable. | ||
| And it's okay. | ||
| You don't have to have any future grants. | ||
| Sorry, Iwan. | ||
| I'm sorry, Ian. | ||
| Okay, before we jump in, let me just talk a little bit about the order of battle here. | ||
| Over the course of the next 45, 50 minutes or so, we're going to have a discussion really between the two of us on some of the issues that were captured in Stephen's analysis. | ||
| We will reserve some time at the end for QA, both with our online audience as well as with you in the room. | ||
| For those of you that are online, you know the drill. | ||
| You can go to stimson.org/slash questions and submit your questions. | ||
| We will call those and certainly have time to get to some of those. | ||
| For those of you that are joining here in the room, we will have a microphone passed around. | ||
| But with that, Stephen, let's get started. | ||
| Okay, shall we? | ||
| You write in this report, I'm going to quote from you. | ||
| What distinguishes this period in human history is the confluence of forces, political, geostrategic, economic, social, technological, and environmental, as well as interactions among them that fuel the turbulence that we see today. | ||
| So, everywhere we look, we're looking at upheaval, we're looking at backsliding, we see new threats, we see re-emerging threats, climate, conflict, political instability, and overall an erosion of the institutions that we previously relied upon to really manage those challenges. | ||
| So, help us just sort of sort of frame at the outset. | ||
| I'm going to let you riff here for a minute, Stephen. | ||
| Help us sort of frame your own thinking. | ||
| What would you say are the two or three kind of biggest challenges we face? | ||
| What are the chief causes of those? | ||
| And what are the consequences? | ||
| And all told, I mean, haven't the confluences of these kind of various forces always kind of created tumult? | ||
| So, what's different today than in previous years? | ||
| Great. | ||
| Well, first, I also want to pay tribute to President Carter. | ||
| He was a remarkable leader, and I had the opportunity to meet him in early 1976 during the primary season when he was still Jimmy Hu. | ||
| And I was deeply impressed and moved by his sincerity and his honesty and his approach at a time when we were coming through a period of domestic turbulence, the Watergate crisis in particular. | ||
| And when we look back on it, it's not working. | ||
| That's not so good. | ||
| It's working too well. | ||
| Which one isn't working? | ||
| Is it the room mic or the C-SPAN mic? | ||
| There we are. | ||
| Because I can speak to the room, but if you're not sure. | ||
| No? | ||
| Excellent. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So I was just saying that I had the opportunity to meet Governor Carter in early 1976 before any of the primaries had actually taken place and had been very impressed with him. | ||
| And when we think back on the kinds of things that he struggled with in his presidency and how he responded to them, there's a lot of relevance to the situation that we find ourselves in today. | ||
| So to get to your question, it's true that history is always essentially told as a story of turbulence, you know, plagues, wars, economic crises, collapse, shifts in systems of governance, et cetera. | ||
| But what I think distinguishes this period of turbulence is the simultaneous confluence of this array of forces across different domains and across the entire globe, plus, and I think this is the key point, the possibility of three existential threats simultaneously. | ||
| The first, obviously, being the climate crisis. | ||
| The second being a new nuclear arms race which is already underway between the United States, Russia, and China. | ||
| And the third being the advent of hyper-disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, but also biomedicine and nanotechnology, all of which have the potential to do great good, but they also have the potential to actually alter human life. | ||
| So these three existential threats happening simultaneously in a world that's got more armed conflict at the moment than any time in three decades, and an aging system, an anachronistic system that simply isn't up to managing the range of global problems that we are living with. | ||
| So Stephen, one of the challenges that you identify as you talk about, to just pivot off of your last comment, one of the sort of failures, if you will, | ||
| of global governance has been, to your mind at least, our inability to better integrate, if you will, really the global majority into decision-making and giving them agency to help manage the challenges that they equally are facing. | ||
| So there's 6.5 billion people in the world. | ||
| And as you know, today's kind of international mechanisms, whether it's the UN or other international agencies, do a relatively poor job of reflecting their priorities, their needs, their concerns, and really, as I say, kind of integrating them as partners in solutions. | ||
| So just by one example, obviously, we could take the P5, the Security Council itself, represents about 2 billion people, not even a third of the world's population, and yet obviously has significant influence on global events. | ||
| So there's not, it may surprise you to hear this, there's not a whole lot of sympathy for the United Nations. | ||
| Certainly not in this town and increasingly really around the world, particularly as we watch the crisis in Ukraine being perpetuated. | ||
| And we sit and say, well, how is the UN not more effective in addressing these? | ||
| So the UN turns 80 this year. | ||
| And so I have to ask you, is it possible to even retrofit this organization? | ||
| Has the UN had its day and it's time to turn the page? | ||
| Yeah, well, it's interesting that you would ask that question, Brian, exactly the way that you did, because yesterday I had a private meeting with one U.S. senator whose name I will not mention, who basically said the same thing. | ||
| Should we pay any attention to the UN? | ||
| I mean, what is it doing for us? | ||
| What is it doing for the world? | ||
| My answer to this is the UN remains essential, but the UN is not sufficient. | ||
| And we need to try to remake the UN as much as possible. | ||
| And I would say that some of the outcomes of the Summit of the Future that was held at the UN in the fall after UNGA were some positive directions, including some real progress in the concept of UN Security Council reform. | ||
| So we have to keep pushing to remake the UN as we can, but we also have to think about how do we supplement the UN and augment the capacity to solve and manage global problems when the UN is incapable of acting. | ||
| And I think a lot of that has to do with recognizing that we are living in a multi-power world and a world in which power is much more dispersed than it has been in the past. | ||
| And one of the logics of the past that we have to divest from is this notion of great power dominance because it just isn't accepted by the rest of the world. | ||
| And that's a logic that goes back to the, essentially, to the Napoleonic Wars, you know, and the Congress of Vienna. | ||
| I mean, that's when great power dominance was really kind of invented, and it's been codified in the UN Security Council. | ||
| But it is being rejected by this global majority, and thank you for using that term, because I don't like the term the global south because it doesn't acknowledge the fact that we're really talking about the majority of the world's population. | ||
| And by the way, most of them live north of the equator, so they're not even in the south geographically. | ||
| And they're the global majority, and we should acknowledge that. | ||
| And one of the things we need to do in the logic of the future is manage a process of dealing with multinodal power and to create a more equitable distribution of power and inclusion in both global process and global outcomes. | ||
| Just let me push you a little bit on this, Steven. | ||
| So what are the implications here? | ||
| Give us sort of one, on the top of your mind, what are the top one or two implications for that, as you described, kind of exclusion of the global majority? | ||
| I mean, well, I think they care. | ||
| And if we do not, if the United States in particular does not kind of redesign our relationship with the global majority, others are doing it, and we know who they are. | ||
| China is very active in this regard, and quite brilliant and very effective. | ||
| The Rockefeller Brothers Fund works in various places around the world, and I can tell you, every place that we work, we see the Chinese at work. | ||
| And it is very, very impressive. | ||
| And the countries of the global majority say to us, when I ask them the questions, well, what is it like dealing with China? | ||
| Aren't they putting you into massive debt and also forcing you into political relationships that you might not others choose? | ||
| And they said, well, make us a better offer. | ||
| Not the RBF, but the global north or the great powers or just the United States. | ||
| Make us a better offer. | ||
| It's not that this is the direction we want to go, but for us, we have to be pragmatic. | ||
| We have to serve the needs of our people. | ||
| And so, you know, this is what we are, in essence, forced to do if we don't get a better offer. | ||
| And sometimes it's a bargaining chip. | ||
| I mean, you know, we're all realists here, and the Chinese are very good at playing that game. | ||
| But that doesn't mean that the core aspirations and needs of people in the global majority are not bona fide, are not meaningful, and that we should not be meeting them. | ||
| So, Stephen, I mean, if you look through history, right, the challenge of global governance, global governance is difficult. | ||
| It's a messy process. | ||
| That many people in a room, and you get a lot of different opinions and views, and people pulling in opposite directions. | ||
| So, you know, given that, does the future lie in why does the future not lie in minilateralism, right? | ||
| In what we used to call coalitions of the willing, you know, the AUKUSES, the U.S. ROK, Japan trilateral, these kind of coalitions of the willing. | ||
| Has global governance not had its day? | ||
| And why not just work with these smaller coalitions where there are like-minded views and attitudes and individual countries that are pulling in the same direction? | ||
| I think increasingly that's exactly what we need to do. | ||
| And that's part of what I think of in terms of supplementing the UN or augmenting the UN. | ||
| It's about creating an ecosystem of institutions and processes to manage global affairs and not relying on a centralized system. | ||
| And minilateralism, coalitions of the willing, regional organizations are very important in this. | ||
| Multi-alignment or variable alignment where we will be aligned with some countries on certain issues and we will have different alignments with different countries on other issues. | ||
| And so the implication of this, of course, is far greater complexity. | ||
| And from the point of view of managing it through diplomacy and interstate relations, it's enormously complex. | ||
| And so one of the things it requires is a massive surge in diplomatic capacity. | ||
| And one of the things I think we need to do in this country and others is to build our diplomatic capacity, not rely so heavily on our mighty military force, and build a diplomatic capacity that understands the logic of the future, to use the phrase, as opposed to relying on the logic of the past, so that they are comfortable working in minilateral arrangements. | ||
| They are comfortable working in variable alignment. | ||
| They are comfortable in having to be nimble and reactive on a quick basis. | ||
| And that is a 20-year project. | ||
| And one of the ideas I propose in this paper is actually a global diplomacy curriculum that would be developed with scholars from across the globe and practitioners from across the globe and then taught in various schools of diplomacy and international relations and available online in multiple languages so that not only are we creating an American cadre of diplomats who are poised to do the diplomacy of the future, | ||
| we're helping to do this on a global basis, which will actually help create more global cooperation because the diplomats of the future will have some common basis in their training. | ||
| So I want to push this mini-lateralist theme a little bit. | ||
| I want to talk to you about the EU. | ||
| Because there was a line in your report that struck me, and I'm going to quote to you again. | ||
| You said, today the EU is a dynamic and productive single market and the second largest economy in nominal terms after the United States. | ||
| It is the world's largest trader of manufactured goods and services and ranks first both inbound and outbound in both inbound and outbound foreign direct investment. | ||
| You conclude that, quote, the EU is perhaps the greatest single political achievement of the second half of the 20th century. | ||
| So can you explain to an American audience here, Stephen, who I think would sort of a little bit rebel against that and say, well, America, isn't this just an overly bureaucratic, disorganized, slow, messy aggregation of countries? | ||
| So convince me that that statement that you said is correct. | ||
| And presuming you can, and you may not, if we're successful, though, is there a potential you, do you see a potential for other kind of regional pooled sovereignty? | ||
| I mean, give it a Africa. | ||
| Can we talk about Indo-Pacific? | ||
| Is there North America if you talk about invading Canada? | ||
| Well, this is going to end soon. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I stand by that statement. | ||
| I think that the EU is a remarkable achievement. | ||
| And I want to point out that it's not an achievement that happened easily, and it's not an achievement that happened quickly. | ||
| This goes back literally to the end of the Second World War and the creation of the coal and steel community in the 1950s. | ||
| And it has evolved to become a much more powerful and well-organized instrument. | ||
| It started out as a peace project after two world wars, fought largely on European territory, and it's been quite successful in that regard. | ||
| But it developed into a very powerful economic project, and you quote the data. | ||
| And now it's more and more a political project. | ||
| Is it messy? | ||
| Is it cumbersome? | ||
| Is it bureaucratic? | ||
| Yes, all those things apply. | ||
| And it needs reform too. | ||
| And one of the reforms that I and others have promoted, and it's in the paper, is the notion that they need to move away from unanimous decision-making because it's slowing them down on key issues. | ||
| And it's very problematic. | ||
| And there is EU reform underway in the same fashion that there is Security Council reform underway, and that will take time. | ||
| But I quote a French minister in the paper who said, we have to realize that the EU is a daily miracle. | ||
| And I think that's a fair statement. | ||
| It is pretty miraculous that these 27 member states have been able to come together and do as much as they've done. | ||
| So I do think it offers a model in the concept of shared sovereignty or collaborative sovereignty that I think needs to be more of the future as opposed to nation-state sovereignty, which is simply inadequate and anachronistic. | ||
| So we look at the African Union, we look at ASEAN, we look at other regional organizations, and I think part of what the logic of the future suggests is that actually we should work to strengthen those organizations and help them become more effective and help them take on more responsibility and do it in coordination with the United Nations. | ||
| And one thought there is to give them participation and standing in some fashion in the work of the Security Council, in the same way that some of them are now invited to the meetings of the G20, so that we are decentralizing the process but coordinating it at the same time. | ||
| And I think the EU offers a really powerful model, not that it needs to be replicated exactly, but that the lessons from EU success and its challenges and shortcomings are really important as we think about building regional capacity elsewhere in the world. | ||
| Do you see potential success in other regions around the world? | ||
| Where would you take the EU model next? | ||
| Well, I think the African Union is the one that I would focus the most on because Africa, this paper is obviously looking long term into the future. | ||
| And Africa is just going to be increasingly critical in the decades ahead. | ||
| Population growth is going to happen in Africa. | ||
| The consequences of climate change are going to be very acute in Africa. | ||
| The economic needs are going to be acute in Africa. | ||
| And so I think the African Union provides the kind of starting point. | ||
| And I would really spend time working with them in thinking about how to strengthen their capacity, how to integrate them into the global system, systems, and how to create this network of regional capacity that can contribute to global problem solving. | ||
| I want to turn to one of the, I think, most interesting points, at least to me, that you raised in your document, Stephen. | ||
| You talked about kind of the, and you have this morning here, about the multiplicity of existential risks that we face as an international community. | ||
| Challenges that are so big that they defy the ability of any single country, obviously, or even maybe even community of countries to improve, supersede. | ||
| So therefore, we're challenging, and you pointed out, I think, quite articulately here, the need to really transcend traditional sovereignty and think about methods of aggregating sovereignty at the supra-state level, if you will. | ||
| COVID pandemic, you speak as one example of climate change, obviously a threat of nuclear war. | ||
| I think you reference as well challenges that obviously all require a shift in how we coordinate responses to address these challenges. | ||
| I want to ask you how you would respond to those that say, look, you got it all wrong. | ||
| You're aggregating power in different ways, though, Stephen. | ||
| Rather than aggregating at the supra-state level, we should be thinking about actors at the sub-state level, and we should be engaging here in the United States, individual states or private industry or other actors to address these issues instead of going up. | ||
| Should we not be going down? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| In fact, I write in the paper that we need to be doing both. | ||
| We need to figure out those challenges that require greater global capacity and those challenges that are better managed at more local levels of governance and do both simultaneously. | ||
| And as we devolve some power, we also need to distribute resources to help those local levels or regional levels of governance to have the capacity to respond to the impacts of global problems in their particular locales. | ||
| So climate is the kind of classic example of this. | ||
| And this is a lesson we can draw from the European Union as well. | ||
| Their notion of subsidiarity is that problems should be solved at the lowest level of governance, at the level of governance closest to the people that actually will create effective response. | ||
| And I think in the global system we need to think that way too. | ||
| So for planetary challenges, we need planetary capacity. | ||
| For managing the impacts, we need much more local capacity. | ||
| And for coordinating, we need some supranational institutions and regional institutions and ad hoc institutions and mechanisms. | ||
| And so we're living in a very complex world, and I'm painting a picture of a very complex system of ecosystem of institutions and mechanisms and processes. | ||
| And this is not going to be a simple matter, and it is going to take real creativity and real political will, both of which I think are in kind of short supply these days. | ||
| So let's do a quick gut check then to that point, Stephen. | ||
| We're in an age of America first. | ||
| Some might say that we've always been in the age of America first, but it's just more in our faces now. | ||
| Talk to me about you represent a nonpartisan, non-political organization, as do I. Talk to me, though, about some of the broader challenges. | ||
| And again, this is not specific to the incoming Trump administration. | ||
| It's really relevant to kind of throughout history, this sort of American exceptionalism. | ||
| So talk to me about some of the challenges and where you see potential movement and opportunity to be much more practical in advancing this. | ||
| Well, I think perhaps the biggest challenge is that we Americans are stuck in the belief that we need to be the hegemon, that we need to cling to global primacy. | ||
| And I don't think it's possible. | ||
| Very candidly, I just think it's no longer possible, and it's not actually even in our national interest to keep trying, because it creates adversaries, it loses allies, and we can't succeed in solving problems. | ||
| And in fact, recent history suggests that by trying to maintain global primacy, we actually cause more problems. | ||
| And that is a, you know, I have the freedom to be able to say that because I'm not a politician. | ||
| And I think those of us who run NGOs and think tanks and foundations should use the freedom that we have to start this debate because America needs to change the way it thinks about its role in the world. | ||
| You know, my dear friend, Madeleine Albright, and I used to have a robust conversation about her concept of the U.S. as the indispensable nation. | ||
| And I would say to her, Madeline, the future requires that we be the indispensable partner and that we stop thinking of ourselves as the singular leader of the global scene, but a leader, an important leader, and we have to demonstrate leadership, but a different kind of leadership. | ||
| A leadership that is about listening. | ||
| And I use the term strategic empathy in the paper, that we spend more time listening and understanding the needs and aspirations and red lines of other states and other peoples and developing responses to those that are less hubristic and that we demonstrate a little bit of humility in global affairs while still wanting to be a very active global problem solver. | ||
| And that is a huge mind shift for Americans and a huge political shift. | ||
| And it's not going to happen quickly, but it has to happen. | ||
| And it will happen if all of us in the nonprofit and think tank world keep this debate alive. | ||
| And I want to be debated. | ||
| And I don't mind being challenged at all. | ||
| I think that's very healthy and constructive. | ||
| But we have to have that conversation. | ||
| Well, I see my colleagues, Emma Ashford and Chris Prebler, are jumping out of their skin right now, because I think they would aggressively agree with that. | ||
| And I really commend their work because they have been, in fact, trying to, in many ways, kind of initiate that conversation. | ||
| So I thank you for that. | ||
| One of the things I want to talk about one of the other elements of your report that I found particularly interesting, Stephen. | ||
| It's this notion of what you call positive peace. | ||
| And I'm going to quote from your report again. | ||
| You said, the logic of the future requires a shift from defining peace as an absence of war to embracing the concept of positive peace, which you define as the elimination of violence resulting from systemic conditions like hunger, poverty, inequality, racism, patriarchy, and other forms of social injustice. | ||
| So we're five years out, as you know, from the UN's 2030 agenda for the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. | ||
| Last year, sadly, the UN reported that only 17% of the SDG world targets are on track. | ||
| Not a great record and rather disheartening, particularly given your notion of this notion of positive peace. | ||
| So on the current trajectory, where, for instance, the world is experienced the highest number, frankly, of active conflicts that we have seen since the Second World War, The world doesn't seem to be prioritizing positive peace. | ||
| So how do we talk to me? | ||
| Give me some practical steps. | ||
| How do we get there from here? | ||
| We seem to be spinning our tires in so many of these areas. | ||
| The signs, the clouds on the horizon seem to be getting darker. | ||
| Give us a little positivity in the steps toward positive peace. | ||
| Well, the first important shift is in the mindset shift. | ||
| It relates to the conversation about U.S. primacy as well. | ||
| We have to be thinking about addressing the causes of conflict and focus on conflict prevention as opposed to constantly responding to conflict and focusing on winning conflict. | ||
| That will happen, and we will engage in those activities when it is necessary. | ||
| And this really relates to the diplomatic surge and I would add to a development surge. | ||
| If we can, as an indispensable partner, help countries that are facing these economic and social dislocations to achieve a positive development trajectory where the quality of life is improving and we are addressing the root causes and drivers of conflict, we will have less conflict over time. | ||
| And again, these things don't happen very quickly at all, but they won't happen unless we start shifting in our thinking about it and shifting resources accordingly, which means really taking a hard look at the defense budget and really looking at the development budget and looking at how we do development and how we spend those development dials and being honest about how much of it actually reaches the people on the ground who need to benefit from the kind of development work that we ascribe to. | ||
| So it's about really shifting away from this notion that military is the only way to achieve peace to the notion that resolving the drivers of conflict is the way not to need to use your military to achieve peace. | ||
| I want to talk to you about democracy for a minute. | ||
| I know another big priority for you, for RBF, and certainly really a pillar of what you speak to in the report. | ||
| So last year was the year the world voted. | ||
| More than half the world's population, as you know, headed to the polls. | ||
| Taiwan, Bangladesh, our own country, Britain, South Africa. | ||
| Great success stories, and democracy seems to be flourishing, except where it's not. | ||
| And there are obviously high-profile examples where we're seeing a backsliding in democracy in recent years and elections with some relatively minor to pretty significant controversy. | ||
| I think you think Russia, think Venezuela. | ||
| The question is this, is imperfect or you might say even fraudulent democracy better than no democracy at all? | ||
| Or does kind of the abuse and misappropriation of the term democracy really begin to erode the public's trust and render democracy increasingly meaningless? | ||
| And what can we do about that? | ||
| Well, certainly Imperfect democracy is better than no democracy. | ||
| Flawed democracy is certainly better than authoritarianism and autocracy. | ||
| Fraudulent democracy is a different category, and we can debate definitions about this. | ||
| But as I look at our own democracy and the expressions of democracy around the world, what I see is people feeling that democracy is simply not delivering for them. | ||
| And so they are losing faith in democracy, and they're losing faith in their own agency as citizens living in democracies. | ||
| I think this really applies to our country. | ||
| And they also don't see their place in the global economy, and they're not seeing a bright economic future for their families. | ||
| And this also applies very much to our country. | ||
| I think this election was a referendum on the status quo. | ||
| And Americans said, we're not satisfied with our democracy, we're not satisfied with our economy, and so we're voting against the status quo. | ||
| And if we don't reinvigorate democracy and give citizens a sense that they do have agency, and if we don't couple that with a shift in political economy that moves away from, frankly, the kind of dominant neoliberal economic model, and this is another, in my argument, an element of the logic of the past, and move to an economic model that is about human and planetary well-being, | ||
| we will continue to erode the faith in democracy because these two things are so interconnected. | ||
| And if I look at Russia, and I spent 10 years living and working in Eastern Europe right after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and spent quite a bit of time in Russia and Ukraine and all of the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. | ||
| And I think what happened in Russia, to simplify probably far too much, was that we all rushed to help Russia become a democracy, but actually what we were doing was rushing to help Russia become a capitalist economy. | ||
| And the capitalist economy that they developed delivered extreme benefits for a very few and almost no benefits for the many. | ||
| And they were told this is democracy. | ||
| And so why would Russians believe in democracy when that's what they associate it with? | ||
| And that's kind of an extreme example, but I think that's happening a bit in our country too. | ||
| And so I think we have to look at these things as two sides of the coin. | ||
| We need to think of this as political economy, where we strengthen the agency of citizens in the democracy to have voice and agency, and we strengthen their ability to have a better economic future and reduce economic inequality in order to do that. | ||
| Stephen, you spent the past 24 hours, I know, walking around talking to some policymakers in this town, and I suspect if you were talking foreign policy that 90% of those conversations were focused on China. | ||
| It sucks up a lot of oxygen in this town. | ||
| You know, it's my observation that increasingly we are seeing countries around the world, global majority, really caught between the tug of war, between the United States and China, and are increasingly being asked to pick a side. | ||
| My concern is that the United States may not win that competition. | ||
| And you referenced just a few minutes ago the backsliding or the encroachment that we have seen and the effectiveness in some ways of China's engagement, for instance, in sub-Saharan Africa. | ||
| So is this a real concern? | ||
| Two, how do we deal with it? | ||
| Do we need to just win this competition with the Chinese or do we need to find a way to cooperate and defuse tensions with the Chinese? | ||
| Is it both? | ||
| And how do we skate this complicated relationship? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, it's one of the most important and complex questions we face. | ||
| And as so many have said, and I really believe this, the U.S.-China relationship is the most consequential bilateral relationship of the future. | ||
| And if we don't get it right, we are going to have really a potential catastrophe. | ||
| So it requires a great deal of work. | ||
| And I'm very happy, by the way, that we are partnering with the Stimson Center at RBF and Sun Yuan in work on China as part of our portfolio of activities related to China. | ||
| And it's a pleasure to do that work. | ||
| And we benefit greatly from your wisdom. | ||
| I think that this is another case where we are following a logic of the past and not challenging the assumptions embedded in that logic. | ||
| And the logic of the past as it applies to China is that, oh, we know we've seen this movie before. | ||
| This is a Cold War. | ||
| And so that's the logic people are applying to this relationship. | ||
| And if we think that it's a Cold War, it becomes a Cold War. | ||
| And in a Cold War, as we know from studying the actual Cold War, what happens is you get military buildup, you get mutually assured destruction, you get a whole lot of distortions in economics and in politics that then lead to decisions that continue to undermine the values that we stand for, the systems that we would rather strengthen, like democracy, etc. | ||
| So I think we have to reject the kind of knee-jerk assumption that this is a Cold War. | ||
| Could it become one? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But we have some power to use to help that not to happen. | ||
| So what I think is true, and by the way, the Foundation works in China. | ||
| So we've been working in China at the Foundation for many, many years. | ||
| And I've been going to China since 1979. | ||
| I think I've been to China 20 some times. | ||
| And I'm on a very high-level Chinese government advisory body on environment and development. | ||
| So I have not huge Chinese expertise, but some. | ||
| And I was just there in October and I gave several presentations about this report in China, which was extremely interesting. | ||
| My thought is that because this bilateral relationship is so consequential, we need to in much more intensive relationship with China. | ||
| And the artifice or the device that I suggest, and it's not unique to me, is creating some kind of a permanent secretariat where technical level expertise from the civil service of key ministries in both countries would actually be seconded to a neutral place like Singapore or Geneva, | ||
| it doesn't really matter, and working side by side year in and year out, learning from each other, listening to their aspirations, understanding red lines, being creative about ideas for cooperation, sharing those ideas back with the national capitals, and just kind of being an ongoing source of communication as opposed to the more episodic kind of communication that we currently have, which, by the way, you know, | ||
| ceased for almost a year and a half after the espionage balloon incident. | ||
| And we can't afford to have those big gaps in our communications with the Chinese. | ||
| And again, I want to congratulate Stimson for the military-military dialogue that you have been managing for many, many years, which I think is extremely important. | ||
| So, you know, if you think about how we developed modern relations with China, Henry Kissinger's secret trip to Beijing in 1971, he sat down with Zhou Enlai, the foreign minister, and he started a conversation not by lecturing the Chinese and not by telling them what the United States wanted in Asia or wanted from China, but rather asking questions. | ||
| What is China? | ||
| What do you think of China's role in the world? | ||
| What is it that you're trying to accomplish? | ||
| What is your national sense of China's identity? | ||
| And it was a conversation that then led to a much more empathetic, ongoing process of dialogue that led to, ultimately, normalization of relations. | ||
| And again, we're thinking of Jimmy Carter because that's when normalization actually occurred. | ||
| So, you know, I think now, because we're in this thinking that this is a Cold War, we are not having that kind of dialogue where we are lecturing, they are lecturing, it's the natural reaction. | ||
| And instead, we should be having these conversations based on the notion of strategic empathy where we're doing a lot more listening to each other and trying to find the areas of common ground, which there are numerous, and climate is the first one. | ||
| And there's a lot of good cooperation going on between the U.S. and China on climate, and not only at the governmental levels, but at the non-governmental levels and at the academic and research levels. | ||
| There's very, very good work, and we need to build on that and find the areas of cooperation. | ||
| What we have to aspire to, in my view, is a relationship of constructive competition. | ||
| It will be competitive, but constructive competition as opposed to Cold War and potential conflict. | ||
| And we have to really go to work at this and be consistent and do it on a professional basis, quietly, every day, day in and day out, and make it a number one priority. | ||
| So, Stephen, I want to turn these folks loose on you here and take a couple of questions from the audience. | ||
| I think what I'm going to say is there's a little bit of energy in the room here, Stephen. | ||
| So, I'm going to merv a couple of questions. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Maybe Isaac Bray. | ||
| Well, let's start here with Barbara up front, and then we're going to go back to the lady in the black sweater behind her. | ||
| Barbara, if you could just identify yourself, Stimpson, and great to see you, and thank you for your support. | ||
| Over the last 15 months in particular, I've been thinking a lot about international accountability, crimes against humanity, double standards. | ||
| I don't know if you deal with that in your paper, but I wonder if you have any thoughts on how, particularly, countries in the wealthy countries can avoid the double standard accusation and be seen as supporting accountability. | ||
| I speak as members of Congress want to sanction the International Criminal Court for its actions against Israel. | ||
| What can we do to show that every human life is precious? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Isaac, there's a lady right here. | ||
| There you go. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Good to see you again. | ||
| Nada Blucci. | ||
| I wanted to ask you a little bit in terms of what Barbara's asking, but first on Africa with rare minerals. | ||
| So when you're talking about constructive competition and climate change, a lot of the mineral market in Africa has actually been purchased, bought in a variety of ways by China. | ||
| And increasingly, those who are doing electronic vehicles or anything impacting climate change are talking about the rare minerals and how the United States and particularly producers are being locked out of Africa. | ||
| So how do you re-envision, I guess, a constructive competition or because post-World War II is very much democracy and capitalism by the United States, what can the United States as a government do to support a constructive competition that you're talking about that then is supportive of American producers and particularly helping with climate change. | ||
| And my second question, if I can, you know, is going to be about Iran and what you might see. | ||
| what you might see coming down the pipeline besides maximum pressure and possibilities there. | ||
| I'm going to help you. | ||
| I'm going to help you. | ||
| Isaac Wright here. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| It's been a very I'm being an Ipram and with the Global Alliance of Indigenous People. | ||
| Such a pleasure listening to you. | ||
| Thank you for your thoughts, which brought a lot of peace in my heart. | ||
| My question is, in your logic for future, where do you position 476 million indigenous people living in 90 countries and territories? | ||
| In fact, for the diplomacy for the future, we started some work on what is called indigenous peace building and healing methodology, which will help to bring heal the world rather than fracturing the world. | ||
| So I just want to know in the logic, I haven't read your report and I'm really looking forward to, but if your thoughts on in the next 10 to 20 years of work, how do you position this amazing work of indigenous people for healing people, peace, and planet? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So we've got four questions here, Stephen. | ||
| One on the issue of the double standard, China competition, particularly this notion of constructive competition, question on Iran, and this final question on indigenous. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Well, thank you all for great, great questions. | ||
| And wonderful to see so many friends and colleagues in the room. | ||
| Starting with the question of the double standards, I think this is a major, major issue. | ||
| And it's part of the reason that U.S. leadership is now being challenged so profoundly from various quarters of the world. | ||
| Because we go around the world saying that we really believe in the rules-based international order, and we want you to believe in the rules-based international order. | ||
| And then all of a sudden, it's when we make the rules and when we get to decide whether we want to apply the rules to ourselves or not. | ||
| And so the rest of the world looks at this experience, which unfortunately seems to be more and more frequent and certainly better known because there is more kind of transparency about this and exposure of it. | ||
| They then say, well, why should we play by these rules if you, who have led in creating these rules, you know, violate them when you think it's in your national interest to do so? | ||
| And that undermines our place in the world as a nation. | ||
| It undermines the international system, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| So that is a major, major problem that we have to overcome. | ||
| And we have to just, if we need to make adjustments in some of those rules, then let's make those arguments. | ||
| If we think there needs to be more flexibility in how the rules are applied, then let's be honest and open and create the systems that create that flexibility. | ||
| But by and large, let's hold ourselves accountable and as international advocacy organizations, let's argue for greater efforts to eliminate impunity and strengthen the mechanisms of international criminal courts and justice and the creation of a new international corruption court, | ||
| which is an idea that is being proposed and developed, and really make these things meaningful because otherwise we will continue to undermine the values that we actually believe in and want to see as values that others can believe in as well. | ||
| So it's critically important. | ||
| And it's going to be very hard work because the politics, as you say, Barbara, are miserable. | ||
| But that's why all of us, I actually think many of these ideas, as I have talked about them around the country, American people are really actually interested in these ideas. | ||
| And the American people, I actually think, would like to see our country be this kind of country in the world. | ||
| Yeah, people will debate individual parts of this, but in general, I think they would like to see us be this country. | ||
| They would like to believe that we are this country. | ||
| And so somehow we have to mobilize the American people so that the politicians get the fact that their constituents actually are in a better place on this than they are. | ||
| And it's not going to be easy work. | ||
| In terms of the competition in China and the rare earth minerals and the importance of all of that in the future of electric vehicles, et cetera, we have already, because of our stance, we have in some ways lost some of the competition. | ||
| And we are damaging our own national interest by not having acknowledged that we needed to do more to manage the competition in a way that shared resources. | ||
| And I think one of the conversations that we need to have with the Chinese is say you have moved ahead aggressively in the market of electronic cars and in solar and wind. | ||
| When I was in China in October, I went to the province of Inner Mongolia to the city of Erdos and saw these massive, in a coal mining region that is part of the Gobi Desert, massive installations of solar and wind generating enormous amounts of electricity that is being transmitted very efficiently all the way across the country to Beijing. | ||
| And instead of competing in a way that tries to reduce the Chinese ability to do those things, why not negotiate a relationship in which the benefits of that kind of engineering expertise and manufacturing expertise and scale ability can benefit the rest of the world? | ||
| Because the Chinese also understand they can reduce their emissions and they've made pretty substantial progress. | ||
| They probably will peak this year. | ||
| But that won't save them from the climate crisis unless the rest of the world is also keeping pace. | ||
| And so they have an incentive to cooperate. | ||
| We just have to figure out a division of labor and do it in an equitable fashion. | ||
| I know this all sounds very naive in a way because it seems so simple to say and it's so hard to do. | ||
| But if we don't talk about it and if we don't really think about it, if we don't design the ideas and then negotiate them, then it will continue to spiral in the way that it has. | ||
| There was a question about Iran, and this is something that, as you all know, many of you, the RBF has been involved in for 22 years now. | ||
| And we are in close contact with the new leadership of Iran. | ||
| We met in New York, as Barbara did and others, with President Pezash Ghyan and the Vice President for Strategic Affairs, the former Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and the new Foreign Minister Abbas Aragji, people we have all known because they were the team that negotiated the JCPOA in the first place. | ||
| And my impression from those conversations and other things that we observe is that they are really eager to negotiate with the U.S. and the West. | ||
| And in fact, there will be another negotiation with the Europeans, or at least a meeting with the Europeans, on the 13th of this month, so in a couple of days, which I think is very important. | ||
| They have been sending very strong signals to the incoming administration that they are eager to negotiate and they're eager to negotiate on a broader set of issues because everybody recognizes that by now the JCPOA, which was, you know, a stake was driven through its heart by a former president, soon to be president, that that is no longer adequate because of the advances in Iran's nuclear program, because of changes in the region, | ||
| because of some of the sunset provisions of the JCPOA itself. | ||
| So we need a new negotiation and a new structure for the negotiations. | ||
| But my impression is the Iranians are ready. | ||
| And if I were giving advice to the incoming administration, I would say get to work on this. | ||
| Don't lose this opportunity, because I think it's a genuine one. | ||
| And if we really want to help promote peace in the Middle East, take advantage of this moment. | ||
| Iran is weakened. | ||
| Their proxies have been eroded. | ||
| Their economic situation is terrible. | ||
| So use that. | ||
| That's not the outcome. | ||
| Those are conditions that can help you get to an outcome. | ||
| So that's my answer on Iran. | ||
| And on the question of Indigenous peoples, thank you so much for asking that. | ||
| We at RBF are actually deeply engaged with Indigenous communities, mostly on work related to solving global problems at the local level. | ||
| So for example, we have been supporting Indigenous groups in the Amazon River basin who have had huge influence on very important decisions of global governance related to resource uses in the Amazon itself. | ||
| And this is across state boundaries, as you know, I'm sure, better than I do. | ||
| It goes across state boundaries. | ||
| It's indigenous communities who are bringing their wisdom to the challenges of managing globally essential resources. | ||
| And also, another extraordinary example is in Guatemala, where the indigenous community actually saved the democracy. | ||
| I mean, it's not an exaggeration to say that after the election, when the right-wing forces who have been in power tried to prevent the election results from actually being implemented and the installation of the new president, it was the indigenous community that stood up for the democracy and blocked the roads and would not let a coup take place, essentially. | ||
| So the power, the wisdom, and the humanity of these indigenous communities, we can learn so much from. | ||
| And if we involve them more directly in these challenges, I know we will find better solutions. | ||
| Stephen, in 30 seconds or less, a quick online question. | ||
| The UN seems impotent to address some of the conflicts that you just referenced, Gaza, Ukraine. | ||
| Is there a role here? | ||
| And what should it be for the UN in addressing these immediate conflicts? | ||
| 30 seconds or less. | ||
| You know, the role of the UN has to be to apply the resources that it has to solving these problems. | ||
| And I think it's a question of leadership. | ||
| It is a question of diplomacy. | ||
| It's also a question of public education. | ||
| You know, the UN, one thing it can do is bring these issues to the fore in a way that is shared broadly across the global population. | ||
| And that is not an inconsequential thing. | ||
| So, you know, the tragedy in Gaza is highlighted by all the UN reporting and monitoring that happens there. | ||
| And without that, things would be much worse than they already are. | ||
| The fact that the P5 can't agree on solving any of these problems is a major problem. | ||
| But that doesn't mean the role of the UN is completely negligible. | ||
| It's not. | ||
| The UN needs to monitor, it needs to call out the problem, it needs to work for solutions, and it needs to stand up for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the dignity of every life. | ||
| So those things, those normative kinds of activities by the UN are important and essential. | ||
| There was an additional question online, which was how do you get a copy of this report? | ||
| So I will pledge that you can go on to Stimson to the events page at Stimpson. | ||
| We will cross-link to it. | ||
| I suspect you can also go to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund website, rbf.org. | ||
| I really do commend this to you. | ||
| I'm really grateful to all of you for making the time to tune in from around the world. | ||
| For those of you here in the room on C-SPAN, very grateful. | ||
| Today's events and all events at Stimson are offered free for your own pleasure and edification. | ||
| And so if you are interested in supporting the future of Stimpson's foreign policy program, you can also support Stimson at Stimson.org slash support. | ||
| That includes you, Stephen. | ||
| This event was also recorded and is available at Stimpson.org. | ||
| Really grateful, Stephen Heinz, to you. | ||
| You're a great American. | ||
| I'm very grateful to you for the remarkable work that you have done. | ||
| And thank you for being here with us. | ||
| Thank you very much. It was fun. It was great. Thank you. Welcome back. | ||
| This morning, a discussion on the relationship between parental rights and their children's safety and well-being. | ||
| Watch live from the American Enterprise Institute starting at 9 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app or online at c-span.org. | ||
| The House returns for business today at noon Eastern for speeches with legislative work later in the afternoon. | ||
| A number of Amtrak and disaster-related measures are on the calendar. | ||
| Later in the week, the representatives are expected to take up other bills, including H.R. 28, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025, and H.R. 30, Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act. | ||
| Over in the Senate, lawmakers will be considering the Lake and Riley Act, which came over from the House last week. | ||
| It would require the Homeland Security Department to detain undocumented immigrants for theft-related crimes. | ||
| The next procedural vote on that bill is set for this afternoon at 5.30 p.m. Eastern. | ||
| As always, watch the House live on C-SPAN and the Senate on C-SPAN2. |