In 2019, the Politburo had decided not to use the real estate market as a short-term means to simulate the economy, but that decision was reversed six months later as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic
Well, patrick uh, great to see you hi john great, to see you too um, so uh we're going to have about an hour to discuss our world views our our thoughts on foreign policy on biden and uh. I think yeah weave together um a conversation about uh history, theory, politics, uh biden, uh era, foreign policy, um i'll just start introducing myself. Then you might do the same, then a few words about uh, liberal internationalism and fdr and and we can get started, i'm i can very, i teach at princeton university, i'm a scholar of international relations, american foreign policy, grand strategy, very interested in intellectual traditions of thinking. In international relations, social theory and in particular, i've been uh working on trying to reconstruct the liberal international tradition and assess its continued relevance for today's complex, a messy world. I i'm professor patrick porter uh professor international security at the university of birmingham, i'm very interested in a lot of the things john's interested in. In fact, one of the reasons i am interested is through john's work uh. I in particular i'm drawn towards realism but there's an introduction as a set of practices and the whole tradition of real politic uh, and i try i'm sort of trying to work out really over time, a theory of classical realism or at least to try and excavate And keep the flame alive and uh. My most recent book is a critique of the notion of liberal order and i'm now doing some work on uh america's war in iraq and something i've got to get out of my system, uh and the thucydides trap and various other obsessions. So it's great to be here great patrick, um, well, um! Why don't we start with with just uh a little bit of a provocation and have you react to by uh both the specific piece and the current issue of foreign policy, but also the book and the argument uh, i i what one thing i'm trying to do And be very interested in your thoughts is uh is try to step back from the current debate about liberalism and realism and look at liberalism across the uh decades and indeed the centuries to see what what it has to offer in my book. I try to show that that a couple of different things - one is that there's a long tradition, liberal internationalism didn't begin in 1989, nor even in 1945, but but it's a longer tradition that has lots of different compete pieces to it. We know kind of laissez-faire liberalism. We know of social democratic liberalism, but the strands that have uh been woven together and frayed and then re-woven together over the decades uh and connected in various complex ways that i think we'll talk about to uh power, politics, to states to uh systems of hegemony and Anarchy and and what i'm trying to do is in some sense establish in the in the shadow of realism and your tradition, uh patrick, the the kind of gravitas and a deep uh rooted intellectual tradition of liberal internationalism that it has weight. It has has a significance and a real world impact for better or worse uh across the centuries to to be honest about his successes and failures is another uh thing. I think we share uh a kind of traditional criticism of what get what what has been done right. What has been done wrong? What are the sources of of failure and hubris and missteps in foreign policy that might get us to iraq and then a kind of um kind of unearthing of our historical record to to provide a you might call it a usable usable history for american foreign policy. Today and more broadly global struggles for for world order, and in that regard, i found it particularly useful to go back to a period that i found to be very uh much a kind of uh early precursor to the period we seem to be in today, and That is the 1930s and 40s, the era of fdr and uh. I i've done this because it looks like uh. The liberal democracies have found themselves in a in a in a bit of a predicament, not unlike they did in that period when in indeed in that era, more so than today, uh there was a real sense of a kind of extinction moment and uh uh fdr Um, it plays an important role, he's kind of a hero in my book and he's he's clearly uh, given uh preeminence in this new piece, uh, the the rooseveltian tradition and foreign policy, and let me just say what what? What is that as a subspecies of liberal internationalism, and if liberal internationalism, as i define it, is a tradition of thinking and action, which, in effect does try to organize international orders so that liberal democracies can survive flourish establish themselves a kind of that great, a challenge That that ancient republics and early modern republics had of trying to remain viable in a in a world of of anarchy and power, politics that in some sense, rescue uh that central imperative uh. As as what liberal internationalism is all about. Uh a world safe for democracy. Not a world to make the not a a program to make the world democratic, but to make liberal democracy safe in a very dangerous world and and bring liberal internationalism back to that now, wilson and roosevelt are kind of two archetypes in the tradition wilson, who had His name on my building at princeton and uh, who is obviously his words, are to be the essence of nationalism is uh. Clearly, a liberal internationalist of a sort of binding together, uh different strands of 19th century internationalism of free trade and international law and the peace movement. But it's really fdr who who who revolutionizes liberal internationalism. In my my telling - and this is true - i guess in three ways that he kind of re-centers, liberal internationalism - one is there's much more as we argue in this piece attention to we'll call them the problems of modernity of industrial society and interdependence than wilson. Uh acknowledged. Roosevelt was an early theorist of contagion, effects in trade in military technology um. This is what he argued in his famous speech to the bretton woods conference. So interdependence as a managing interdependence is a central problem. Liberal democracies, a wider world have to manage. Secondly - and this is something i developed and didn't really stumble upon until the end of my book when i was writing it, and that is that in some ways wilson saw liberal democracy as a fact of life, growing, flourishing and so uh. The strategy was to leverage that world historical uh friendly, welcome development, the the rise and spread of liberal democracy to make a new type of international order. Roosevelt, in contrast, was acknowledging that liberal democracy was in trouble and wanted to create an international order that would make liberal democracy save so it was a, whereas if you will to use parliament ir parliament's wilson was a second image theorist. Roosevelt was a second image reversed theorist. He wanted to create an international system that would provide a support, a support framework for liberal democracies and then, thirdly, and finally, then i'll i'll be quiet. Um there was a um, a a sense that to make states behave in this kind of world, you had to create incentives that the old wilsonian idea of public opinion being the enforcement mechanism based on acting um in a a a according to right in a in A kind of world enshrined by international law that now you had the the enforcement mechanism would be a club, a kind of liberal order which had boundaries, barriers to entry and to get inside of it. You got benefits, but you also had a kind of logic of conditionality. You had to buy into a suite of purposes. So, for those reasons, patrick, i i think that liberal internationalism from the age of the mid 20th century has something to say to us today and we'll hopefully get into that in our discussion. Thank you, john well and uh. Congratulations on your fourth of july article doctrine, and i think you start with the right question which is and one i'm troubled by, which is the interrelationship between disarray abroad and disorder at home, and the question of how? How can a constitutional republic survive in an anarchic dangerous world and the symbiosis between those two things which which for me and i'm sure for you was brought home, particularly on the 6th of january, when at the very time that america is still standing century in afghanistan? There are rioters looting, the capital, so there is something going wrong there. I don't think those two things are coincidences um and i'm particularly struck by the centrality of roosevelt. Now, in your in your thinking that um you're working at an institution where suddenly wilson is, is uh, shall we say a contentious figure more than before he's been torn down uh, but where wilson also in a sense, embodies some of the problems of the virtual liberal Internationalism that, as well as a noble vision, which i think you share of of an enlarged progressive sphere in which democracy can thrive, there's other things he got up to like the racial bigotry, the authoritarianism, the scorning of checks, constitutional checks on his authority. The regime change adventures and wars etc, and so we move in a sense to roosevelt, where there's a slight there's a different proposition here, um. So this this made me go back and read my old notes about roosevelt, and i guess - and this is as a point of entry - i also admire roosevelt, but for me he's a very he's: a canny duplicitous, slippery ruthless rail politicker he's other things too. Roosevelt is a mixed bag right he's, he can't be reduced to one thing and one of the questions you ask and you and dan ask: why isn't there a roosevelt doctrine, i think there's a reason for that. The roosevelt deliberately didn't keep records. He deliberately kept himself ambiguous that he didn't want to be pinned down too much. He was he prized flexibility, and so the achievements of roosevelt to me are partly come on the back of some very dark bargains. In other words, in your article, you talk about the kind of the sunny upside of liberal internationalism. Progressivism, you know the building of institutions, the the pursuit of international cooperation, um the importance of alliances and institutional institutions etc, but for me, roosevelt's achievement and incent america's achievements. After 1945 and they're, substantial typically come on the back of doing great, betrayals and terrible things, or at least very agonizing compromises, lesser evils. If you like um, i mean roosevelt may be the maybe the figure who presides over the atlantic charter. He may be the one who pronounces on the four, the four freedoms and the forerunner of the institut, the institutional architecture that we live in now, but he's also the roosevelt of yalta and he's the roosevelt, who uh in fact authorizes america's biological weapons research program and Not that i'm a fan of that and uh he's the one who says to the us ambassador, i think in rome uh when he's asked. If he's got a problem with the dictatorships in 1937, he says, of course not unless they move there across their frontiers and make trouble another country uh people who makes accommodations with french colonialism in vietnam, uh he's the roosevelt and speaking on this side of the atlantic, Who very ruthlessly dismantles helps to dismantle the british empire and downgrade british power? That'S not me complaining by the way and in some respect by doing so, he does britain a favor uh by turning our allies into satellites and containing them and, of course, he's the roosevelt of great duplicity. He'S the one when he's presented with evidence about the captain massacre that he will pretend not to believe it. Even if, even though the evidence is compelling um, so a power seeker who and oh and of course, how can i not mention this? What we know from historians, like robert kimball or robert devone, is his belief that international institutions are useful forums for legitimizing american power and for creating order, but that america must not be bound that the general assembly, for instance, is there to let smaller powers blow off Steam um, there was a wonderful quote from uh robert devine fdr, occasionally quote: let the mask fall to reveal his own commitment to a great power piece and that great power piece which sounds nice involves effectively looking the other way behind the iron curtain, as salonism locks Itself down and becomes deeply repressive. Why do i say all this? It'S not because i think the united states is a scoundrel. In fact, i share with you the belief that in general it's the most benign hegemon the world has yet seen it's that i have a very harsh view of what the world is and what the anarchic pressures of the world are. They as they bear down on states and it's inescapably imperial that is trying to constrain other sovereignty, to pursue your own interests. And if the question is how prudently and how well or badly uh one responds to that and that i think as well as you say, uh contains a number of vital questions for joe biden. That'S rather a long opening. But, oh that's not i i that was very good and in some ways you both made a sobering reflection on fdr, but you also answered why he might have been that way. I mean you ended by saying that uh the world is a you know, is a place uh driven by hatreds and anarchy and tyranny and uh. A true liberal piece in some kind of ideal form is, is beyond the reach of even enlightened statesman uh. So you kind of answered your question and i i don't disagree. I i i think, uh uh, that all that you said is true, and you know, there's the fdr who who, who heard about the uh what was later to be called the holocaust uh and he he didn't. Uh approve bombing of rail lines, uh there's. Of course, the uh uh, the uh, the treatment of japanese americans and the internment camp, so there's uh a lot of dirty hands here and and in as one who's been looking at liberal liberalism and liberal internationalism across the areas. This is something that uh some of us who are sympathetic to the overall call it world historical project and in some ways what i hear you saying is that you are too because part of your critique of fdr is he wasn't liberal enough. He should have been more more so he he he turned his eyes away from things. No, no! No, that's not it! No! No! I i don't complain, i'm not necessarily complaining about any of that, but what what is is absolutely true is that that all of these figures - and indeed our generation uh uh uh - have will for well it also in some sense fall short and and from the the Uh, the very beginnings of liberal democracy, the original sin of slavery in the american case, the the the unfolding nature, uh, liberal democracy and liberalism as a work in progress in both senses. A work in progress in a work in progress uh sense that uh there's always a kind of doing what you can to advance uh the the project to to to look for ways to uh of for pursuing human betterment, greater freedoms, the spread of rights and protections. Knowing that that uh, it's always going to be incomplete and you're, always working with others along the way, i would say that, fdr, more so than wilson had a kind of enlightened sense of the world, the kind of a more a broader, a kind of a his Moral vision was broader than than wilson's he. He was troubled by european empire. He did uh uh aggravate uh churchill time in time. Again after the fall of singapore, he urged, on churchill uh the granting of indian independence because he saw that those in the philippines who were given the promise of enterpr of independence fought harder than the indians who were under the thumb uh of of of britain. So there was a a kind of post-imperial vision, a kind of moral vision that that that churchill was that that roosevelt was searching for was reaching, for it is in the atlantic charter, uh, it isn't in the four freedoms um, i think uh uh there. There is a a sense that that uh, that that it was a order building project uh, read the diaries of mackenzie king who, to my surprise, spent weeks upon weeks during world war ii at the white house uh with late night conversations with with fdr, and he Would go back to his room and he'd write about what what they talked about and uh you get from his clearly sympathetic, uh, reading and recording of fdr a real sense of of that this. We can't simply win this war that it's not simply a geopolitical conflict between power centers, it's a it's a struggle for the world in some sense and he used the term states that are are gangster states uh. There was a a a a a pretty strong ideological dividing line that you saw in the the four freedoms in the atlantic charter, partly prompted by the fact that that that um, hitler's uh germany was itself popping, prompting uh pumping out propaganda that that roosevelt felt he Had to to to counter - and this is kind of just an analytic point - it seems to me that in liberal democracies going to war, this goes to your point about how can a war of a world of war and geopolitical struggle be reconciled with polity principles that We associate with republicanism or liberal democracy in a strange way there. It'S not all a zero sum, the more global struggle, the less good fortune for domestic liberal principles. It actually is more complicated than that, because it was partly the geopolitical struggle with fascism and totalitarianism that led fdr to kind of raise the ideological stakes. We'Re not going to simply win the war, we're going to make a better liberal, more liberal world. On the other side of the war, so a kind of inflation of war aims that liberal democracies find themselves time and time again engaging in because they've got to legitimate war to a electoral citizenry uh. And so yes, you have to uh, provide this broader kind of agenda and that works to the advantage of the liberal project up to a point - and i think one one area where we have where we put different weightings, is, i think, agency and structure. Here i mean you're very you're, very right that roosevelt did articulate at times a very elevated conception of what the war was about partly to mobilize people. But then what happens when the red army turns up with the guns uncontested in in well throws out throws out. The third right throws out the worst thing the species has ever seen, but introduces a pretty vile totalitarianism of its sort and deep in the war. When the british empire is struggling to to breathe and america is concerned about limiting the war and maintaining domestic consent, the proposition, then is you may want to elevated principles. But do you accept de facto red army occupation in the hope that it will soften or not but not try and resist it? And in other words, it's not that there aren't preferences. There are preferences, but there are other preferences which are forced the dynamics of the system bear down which is, you may want liberal values, but you also want stability and peace and when those things lock horns roosevelt makes a pretty clear decision. Um, the high tones of the of the atlantic charter wash up against the the fortress walls if you like of stalin's empire. Understandably, so i think i mean [ Music ] and all this question of um another another point of difference. I'M more worried, i think than you are about the domestic costs of projecting power abroad. It'S not that you don't project power abroad. I know i'm no hide under the mattress guy, although i would get out of the middle east, but roosevelt in projecting power abroad does help to set up what becomes the national security state. The rationale that you have to project power in the world of violent interdependence to remain free, comes at a price and, in a sense, sets the scene for vietnam. I mean all of the things you and dan wrote also can very easily feed the logic of fighting a war in south asia. In order to demonstrate your alliance credentials to other democracies in the world to show that you're, serious and the war on terror, which at times, i think, does become partly an attempt to transform the world um comes with the patriot act and all of the wickedness that Flows as well as not just torture rendition, but the sidelining of congress as part of foreign policy, in other words the anxiety, one-on-one anxiety from where i'm sitting is that trying to spread democracy abroad or even trying to create a world that is hospitable in a progressive Way to democracy can then also undermine it at home, um and which then taps into an alternative american tradition, the exemplarist one that you build the great republic at home. You don't you don't stay away from the world. You do project power in the world, but you do it on a much more hard-nosed basis of balancing of power than an over-concerned with things like regime type, and i think this raises questions for biden today and we'll come on to it. But i think there is a question before the buy administration which has not yet been resolved. I think there is an argument going on within the biden administration about just how much he should ideologize foreign policy around democracy or prize stability in a sense, in a less dramatic way, the very choice that confronted roosevelt's in world war ii yeah. I think i think i i don't totally disagree and i i am troubled by the national security state, and i i don't you know the kind of the the grand traditional internationalism doesn't uh celebrate that in fact it it it uh. It tries to build a a a sort of articulated agenda of of kind of critical mass liberal democracy where, where the sheer kind of weight of like-minded states bound together in various ways, creates a sufficient kind of stable peace. So that you're not constantly fighting wars or uh you're, not constantly uh engaged in military interventionism, but it's it's it's absolutely true, and one of the just the sheer kind of realities that that all schools of foreign policy have to deal with is that there are these Tragic choices: uh yeah: you engage in in real real style, balancing and uh, partly to push back dark forces that can imperil you, but in doing that you are cutting corners, you're you're, empowering the state to wage war or to engage in extended deterrence, uh you're. Basing your troops around the world, it is a, it is definitely a balancing act. Liberal democracies are constantly making these choices. Just within the liberal imagination, you are balancing principles that aren't that don't quite fit together: liberty and equality, individualism and community sovereignty and independence. It'S all a constant balancing act and it's that it's uh, i think we're out of balance today. I think we we've we've moved in in a direction that has undercut the the the the what ours understood in earlier generations: the benefits of liberal democracy. We have to re-establish that we can operate as open societies in an open world and i no other uh set of countries in world history have done that before it's, it's always failed or even for the most part, never even attempted so liberal societies in a in An uh or open societies in an open world system - it's it's, it's fraught and uh. It'S my, i think. Maybe our only difference is that i think we've done a better job than you acknowledge and it's worth trying. I would put it this way. I think um to the extent that one can do a good job in an anarchic world. The us very often has, but but by doing it by doing some things that often don't turn up in the in the liberal restorationist literature which is so thriving now, particularly in the era of trump and biden, because we live in a time of restorationism politically right. Everyone'S probably including myself, wanting to bring something back right, the restoration is the thing and it's. If it's not making america great again, it's um, take back control or bring back the roosevelt and visional bring back machiavelli, all sorts of things um. For instance, one of the go-to examples in this literature is germany and post-war germany and japan as the kind of uh as the premier cases of of constructive internationalism. Turning what had been uh fascist, predatory states into proud social democracies, or at least at least helping helping them to do so? Uh when i read that - and maybe this is just because i'm always looking to the darkness um like that brad pitt character in fury. He says ideas are peaceful. History is violent. I mean emperor hirohito, for example, studiously protected and bodyguarded by the macarthur by the macarthur uh pro-consulship, where his actual complicity in japan. Japan'S war crimes is covered up and not talked about and he's not prosecuted, so that they can create a legitimizing ceremonial figurehead in tokyo, in which democratic, japanese democracy can again take root right now. That'S that to me, i think, on balance is, is worth it, but, my goodness me, that's that's rough stuff when, when, when the, i think that the documents are still under lock and key uh about what they had on hirohito and his deep involvement in in what Some people have called asia's holocaust, so um in some respects. It'S a disagreement about needs. By what means are we creating a better world? I also think it's to do with things that aren't just to do with america's benevolent statecraft things like nuclear weapons. Like the nuclear revolution fundamentally altered the world, they also obviously require care handling and systems, improvement and diplomacy and all those things absolutely but uh changing the equation. Fundamentally so that uh contrary to roosevelt's vision. It wasn't just america with a monopoly in the end, but actually that there was resistance and there was proliferation and the net result being as well as some very dangerous moments. A more stable world between major powers than there might have been um. So this then raises the question: uh: what kind of choices lie before america now and here's one area where i think, there's a real? There is a trade-off, a painful trade-off here, which is not enough, is being made about on which is on climate change. If we're going to say that climate change is a or the defining challenge of our time, as some argue uh, whereas as well as in europe, to democracy and to democratic solidarity, and things like that, i think there is a direct collision here that, if we're serious About reducing carbon emissions, for example, as a by the administration, i said it is, but if we're serious about democracy and human rights at some point, something's got to give there because you're dealing with large asian states, which are either some of which are either dictatorships. The case of china, or increasingly illiberal democracies like india and you're, wanting to get meaningful action and bargains on climate change, then you're probably going to have to ramp down the emphasis upon ideological convergence, democratic reform, human rights or vice versa. Uh - and actually i think, what's going on at the moment - is something quite interesting, so it's all sorry go on. It'S your view that if the united states raises questions like how beijing is treating the the young people in hong kong or the the yogurts in western china that china will then decide it won't uh be serious about climate change. Isn'T that kind of saying? If, if you criticize me i'll shoot myself in the head, isn't it do it whether there's an ideological struggle going on or not it may be objectively so, but i think it's going to be harder to negotiate if, if the emphasis is upon um effectively regime change In internal regime change, i think you talk about, for example, the arms control agreements, the the uh corporation and global public health between the us and the soviet union in world war ii. Oh sorry, after during the cold war, but that came mostly at moments when there was greater stability and greater mutual restraint. I mean my fear with china. Is that actually, by by conceding by conceding a lot of things for china in order to get it to move on on climate change? It may not cooperate anyway, but i think there is a problem here that of priorities. In other words, most people in washington dc are in favor of climate emissions reduction. Most of them are in favor of democratic reform. It'S when the things come into collision but they're being spoken of as though they're of a peace as though they're harmonious. Now china may say: i'm not an expert in this, but it may say we want action on climate change, but on our terms not on america's terms, and they can be very different things, but who's going to move first, who's going to take who's going to make Sacrifices, etc, and quite as much as anything else and you and i agree that the us should lead a balancing coalition against china's bid for germany and asia. But that's going to involve cooperation with some pretty despotic, pretty unpleasant states as well ramping up emphasis upon um. Liberal ideology is going to, i think, put a strain on that, for example, the likes of vietnam or thailand. I i see the point and i understand the the possibility of uh a kind of uh trade-off here, uh, but not entirely uh uh. Let me just sort of say i would kind of frame it slightly differently. On the one hand, i do think that china has an interest in climate change if, if, if a regime is threatened by uh environmental problems, it's china more than anybody else. From what i hear. The reports of of of domestic protests for dirty water and and climate change, related, uh, uh degradation and in the environment uh is is pretty pretty a hot topic there. So china's regime has a self-interest in in getting over this and making progress and, secondly, to the extent there's competition with the the the other model for the world. The liberal democratic model and china can show that it has a pathway to low-carbon or carbon zero economic development. It it uh is that's a kind of a key to the 21st century that they would want to grasp if they could, and so too uh. The liberal democratic world, and so in one sense i think, uh, the liberal democracies see seeing their challenge as as showing the world that that that kind of of of polity that the liberal democratic world can solve problems can can uh uh take take hold of this Problem and and make progress in a way that that that is consistent with their their values and institutions that that that's good for china as well and and so a kind of uh, constructive competition, and i don't think um full-throated geopolitical cold war. Competition is going to happen partly because um [, Music ] america's allies, don't want to do that. Uh germany, not least uh. They there's trade here that that's at stake and and as dan and i argue in our piece uh these what we call the problem. What i call the problems of modernity, these interdependence problems, where you do need to have countries simultaneously working together on these problems so too, on pandemics, uh, that is, as you say, important uh as an independent line of american foreign policy that gets threatened by simply devolving Everything into great power competition - i've never subscribed to that view, i've! No. I do think that we are in a contest with the world. I do think that china is attempting to uh fashion, alternative vision of modernity and how state socialism, uh can can be a kind of model that that that overtakes, the western model. I think this is clearly in in president xi's imagination. So there is something deep at stake: uh, not just about territory and realist kind of struggles. My my point to you is that the liberal international tradition has a dna, an intellectual dna that does grasp these notions of interdependence, which you are emphasizing now and i'm just curious. How does classical realism, [ Music ] provide any intellectual guidance for you. It seems to me you have to step out of your cherished uh academic tradition, to make arguments about what the world needs to do in the area of climate change, pandemics, uh, more intensive international institutionalized international institutions where, where do you uh institutional cooperation? Where do you get uh the intellectual inspiration for your your your policy agenda when it comes to these 21st century challenges? So so the point, the point that i was sort of working off there was not so much me saying, climate change is, is the most important thing. We have to sacrifice everything for it to the contrary, what i was, what i was noticing was a treatment of a number of things that are valued as though they're harmonious, when, in fact, i think i see there is much more directly in in tension with each Other uh that the commitments at the taking the your own article and wider body of work and the biden administration and what they've been saying, particularly anthony blinken, amongst others, talking about the importance of a rules-based liberal international order about the importance of democracy. The importance of allies, the importance, important ally of work on climate change, as though these things are naturally in harmony. Now you may be right. That objectively spoke speaking. That'S true, there's a harmony of interests there, but, but i think in order to if you actually, if those are the things you care about, the world will force you to make painful choices that i'm not sure we're ready for, and i think in some respects, liberal Internationalism makes it harder to get ready for those choices because, because it has, it has a a worldview which de-emphasizes the clash between those things i mean my view is that actually we do overstate interdependence on many fronts and that an emphasis on interdependence all the time. Actually leads america into a lot of wars, it doesn't have to fight, and the the searching for a security link with everything has led to the last few has helped to lead for the last few decades into not just wars of blood and treasure which have taken Up everybody's time in washington dc, where there are very other, very important things to talk about from wi-fi poverty, to opioid addiction at home, to uh to the very serious uh power struggle going on in asia, i mean my my tradition is in a sense, my tradition, The tradition i'm admire is more skeptical and has the higher threshold for what truly affects you and threatens you and what is just desirable, um, fair enough. I i just would just in defense of of liberalism - and this is the argument that dan and i make in the paper yeah um and it's in my book as well. By taking the long term, you see that the the liberal project, modern liberalism, is constantly reinventing itself for new circumstances, so think of uh 19th century liberalism, laissez-faire liberalism leading to what the british called reform liberalism, the the the us uh progressive era, liberalism, the great society Or the new deal great society uh along the way in each each era: industrial society, interdependence, the the problems and prospects of modernity are forcing liberals to to ask the question: how can we stay true to our values of open, uh, accountable, uh, uh, limited state constitutionalism Freedom of right, you know it'll elevate, individual rights, freedoms and protections and do so consistent with these pressing uh transformations of industrial society brought on by modernization uh and that's. That was fdr's path to to reinvent the liberal state for a new era, and i kind of think that's what biden is trying to do. He may not succeed, but but the the ideas of linking um industrial policy uh climate friendly technology, r d, um jobs, programs, uh, um, fdr's, uh conservation, um civilian conservation corps - was a ingenious way of of of making good on the liberal uh value traced back to Teddy roosevelt of of of of preservation of of forests and public lands with jobs, programs and uh new ways of of connecting uh uh citizens to the public wheel. So i think uh, that's something that f. That biden has in mind as kind of trying to learn from or take a leap from the fdr playbook. It'S very much a domestic story of of updating liberalism for a new era. Again, it will entail some kinds of trade-offs. Everything does but, but it seems to me that that's the vision of trying to do what dr was able to do in his era, which is combine these things uh in a way that that allows us to preserve our our valued institutions and ideals, but adapt them To new realities, which raises a further problem to what extent that that presupposes and depends upon american primacy in the world right. So there is a slippage here between the pursuit of a liberal order, that's friendly to democracy and american primacy american global leadership, which i don't think he's only used. Um - and one of the problems here is that the world that biden has inherited and is dealing with in some in many respects, is so fundamentally different and i'm not even i'm not talking about the technology or the clothes or the manners or even the beliefs. I'M talking about the balance of power that the united states and world war ii eventually inherits the world where its main adversaries have destroyed each other and its main allies are exhausted and shattered um it is, it is the is this. It is the superpower that has for a time and atomic monopoly. It is the world's greatest creditor. It is the world's industrial home uh producing the you know, the great industrial miracle of world war ii, uh a ship every day and a tank every five minutes um. It'S the one that everyone wants, the patronage of very confident, and i don't mean to minimize america's sacrifices in world war ii that i mean for the people involved. They were heartbreaking, but relative to all the other countries, it has suddenly ascended to global primacy at a relatively low cost. It has a freedom of maneuver and a canvas on which to paint that biden does not have, and i think biden realizes this, i'm i'm one of the reasons i have a sneaking regard for biden is that, just occasionally there is a prudential bite that kind of Peeps through the clouds that you know his his quarrel with richard holbrook over afghanistan and the limits on america's moral duties, there um his skepticism about the libyan adventure in 2011 uh his desire to hire matthew roginsky to the nsc against huge opposition. In other words, i think, along with all of the kind of things you're talking about the kind of domestic revival stuff, he does realize that america is we're living in a world. Now america has to focus as it's never focused before, because this is the first time which america has been a great power, but not uh, of the kind of stature that it was for a number during a number of unipolar moments after world war ii. Right and so so that - and i think he and this is different - i think some of his advisers and some of his ministers realize is actually he won't quite say it. But whilst focusing upon checking china's bid for hegemony in asia, there's a need to have an entitled with russia, a dialogue with russia, bilateral agreements which he's cautiously feeling towards and drawing down, if not withdrawing from the middle east and he's doing this in creeping steps. He'S doing it cautiously he's got a great eye as fdr had for what is possible domestically politically, but i think in a sense he's at war with his own administration or some of his advisers, who have some of them frankly have an almost mccarthyist view of any Kind of cooperation with russia um, which i think is very harmful. I think, if you have an interest in competing with china in a clash of systems, then we're trying to find ways of wedging driving a wedge between china and russia. To prevent that thing that america has been struggling for years to prevent that is a eurasian hegemon coming together and not being embroiled in a region where america turns out to have not that much influence. But it pays huge costs and is burdened all the time and, as we saw recently uh in the in the crisis in israel and palestine, the west bank and gaza. America has the worst of all worlds, its complicity without much influence, but biden realizes these things and he's trying to deal with it, but like roosevelt, he realizes that to do rail politic. You have to do it in an american accent. Well, i i think, uh. I think there is that we, the united states, is in a in a world where its power, you know, may not be what it used to be, although i would urge you not to be too nostalgic about america's power in the past to use a term you Enjoy uh, the u.s was powerful after world war ii, but it was not all-powerful and uh. It was not all liberal, democratic, uh. Think of spain, uh portugal, military dictatorships, the huge communist parties in italy and france, uh uh the suez crisis, there's incredible. Uh story of of of of mixed outcomes, uh based on american uh primacy during that period. I do think that, where i start, if i were to accept your premise, that it's not quite like it used to be it that, for me, a foreign gives me a reason to want to bring uh like-minded states together, which all along, i think, there's a certain Misconception that american grand strategy in the 40s onward was a a kind of singular uh us kind of a it was unipolar, be before unipolarity emerged. It was. It was a uh first among equals. It ran the show kind of role when there was a lot of coalition uh coalitional politics. There were bargains uh, germany and france. Uh were uh partners, there was a there's, a sharing of the spoils of modernity. There was incredible kind of international institutional interconnections and reciprocity, and working together and and three kind of moments uh, so that that dna of of coalitional politics among the liberal democracies is precisely what this moment uh demands. Uh we are. We are stronger together if europe and the united states and japan and korea and your country, australia, does stand together. They will they. They are still kind of a critical mass that can drive. The reform of institutions can make sure that standards and practices of international order have a liberal, democratic, friendly, uh tilt to them uh. So i i i think, where biden has it right and it's premised precisely on his sober as opposed to hubristic, assessment of liberal democracy and his prospects or american power at his prospects? Is we you know we've got to be together. You know benjamin franklin, as he told his fellow 13 colonists, uh uh uh uh in in 1776. We will hang together or we will surely hang separately. I i think this is a moment when uh, when, when, when we, we make a decision, whether what kind of world we want to live in and if we, if we want to live in one. That has a kind of framework that that is, that allows. For liberal democracies to cooperate to protect themselves to leverage their their their their their aggregate resources and capacities, um that can welcome countries that want to move in that direction that want a bandwagon with them. Rather than balance, i think that's where you start, as you say it, the the danger, of course, is, and moscow and beijing feel this - that a successful and thriving liberal democratic world is threatening to to autocratic states, because they're worried the great threat to putin and she Is a citizenry that that demands rights, and as long as countries in the world that have polities that give citizens rights are doing? Well, it's it's! It'S! It'S a structural threat. It'S not a regime change threat. It'S not uh, cheney and and rumsfeld plotting to intervene in beijing or or moscow. It'S just world historical developments are going to be unkind to autocratic states who are deeply threatened by their own people. And i don't think that that that's a big enough excuse for us not to be proud of living in societies that that it's drying those rights and want to protect them and make them greater than they were before and extend them to people who are still struggling To feel like they get, they have those rights to reckon with our past to make it a better polity to to to to tell the world we. We know we, we don't have all the answers, but we know where we want to go, and - and so i just think that that this is a moment like the 30s and 40s, where we've got to say things like this, i, as international relations scholars, we didn't Have to make those kind of arguments 20 years ago, but, but today we have to. We do have to sort of ask the question: what what kind of world do we want to have out there for our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren? Do we want to see if there's still a possibility that open societies can exist in an open system, and i think the jury is out but well? I would also like not to have a major war, and i think there is a real danger in tilting too far to a belief that, in order for for the republican constitution, democracies to be secure and and to thrive, they have to expand or replicate that system. I think that one of the problems here is that, whilst we may like to think that we have benign intentions about building and and and consolidating democratic renewal, that has come historically with the accumulation of enormous power and if, from moscow's point of view, the oncoming of A euro atlantic world that, if you've had their history and all almost every major power, has a memory of predation, including america, including china. It can look very threatening and uh. In other words, we have to try and empathize with those we, including those we don't like. As well as the citizenrys that we do admire um - and i actually wanted to ask you a question here - um your work - i mean your book and and this article, the middle east, doesn't turn up much because you you you emphasize understandably enough alliances and those things In normal and in particular, non-democratic eyes of the middle east, where does that all fit here? Because isn't the middle east the place where a lot of these come into the most violent tension and contradiction that it's where the u.s struggles a lot to exert influence? It'S where its allies are not only suppressing democratic reform but in fact often sponsoring jihadis and unapologetically, often or even to the point of murdering u.s journalists. Things like that. Where does that all fit here? Isn'T it a time in some respects if the u.s is to stay there to start actually not just emphasizing solidarity but starting to throw its weight around and issue some credible threats of abandonment? Well, first um. As you know, the book um is is arguing that a set of ideas and projects that we call liberal internationalists have come into the world in a world that you map quite eloquently. Um global capitalism, uh rising falling uh, hegemonic and imperial powers, and so it's it. Inevitably - and this is my argument - has to make peace with with those other forces, it doesn't extinguish them. Indeed, liberal internationalism doesn't really even have an ontology. It'S like a parasite that needs a host uh it lands on american power or when america is, is most uh. Most powerful uh, uh and uh and it doesn't transform america, but it works at least at the edges, and i think, even more than that in informing uh, uh uh american policy. Uh we've had our discussion of roosevelt and the complexity of his calculations. Are there to be seen um and in parts of the world, in latin america and in the middle east, the united states has acted in a more traditional, great power way that that you uh, you are quite familiar with that geopolitics did not begin um in the Middle east, when america became powerful, it's it's been at the crossroads of the world for um, for for a millennia for millennia, and it's acted and been the site for great games and contests and probably will for forever um. There isn't a kind of regional, great power that there is in other regions of the world, and so in that sense it does invite intervention and geopolitical gains. Not a lot of great progress from a liberal perspective. Is there to be had uh, and so i i might be closer to you than to to um [ Music ] would be interventionists, whether they're, realist or liberal uh alike, to to try to organize things. I i i, i think, um uh, trying to minimize the the downside. I think that that those american foreign policy figures over the last 15 20 years since 9, 11, the obama years and the biden years now. I think they they don't necessarily have a lot of great ideas. Uh, i don't think they're necessarily certain that they've done everything right there. I i think, there's a lot of a lot of worry about how power can be used effectively to to ensure stability and and and create some opportunity for little little teeny increments of progress, but uh um. I, i guess that's kind of as far as i think. The liberal international agenda can go. I have i have a further question for you um. In a sense, i feel a responsibility because you - and i are the only ones in on this uh conversation right now - uh. What what can you say to the radical scholars? In particular, who take wilson and now roosevelt and say that actually what's going on here, is racial hierarchy, international relational hierarchy and the wilson himself segregationist roosevelt's the author of the uh internment policy, for example, um. The allegation that liberal internationalism is complicit uh in in kind of racist power, projection and racial hierarchy, and that is that is intrinsic in a sense i mean this is not my own view actually, but um. I i think it's possible to take part of history carefully, to try and evaluate and that not everything is forever tainted, but we do have to be honest about the history. Where do you sit on? I mean it can't be comfortable for you with the iconoclasm around wilson and everything like that. I mean what do you say about all that yeah there's i. This is something very that's very important to discuss and uh. In my book i have a chapter on liberalism and empire and i both conceived the entanglement and complicity right uh. You know our liberal internationalists when we look at the racial hierarchy and imperialism of the modern era you know is. Is that what we'll call we might call the the crime scenes of the modern world is? Are liberal internationalists perpetrators, uh, um uh? Are these? Are they standing by uh? Are they uh? Are they themselves uh, involved or or or onlookers? What is their their role and, in some sense, they've been in all aspects involved? Entangled uh uh john stewart mill made a liberal argument for empire and um wilson uh had a narrow, a kind of moral blindness that breaks the hearts of modern liberals. He didn't get it uh, he his his vision of self-determination, which was revolutionary, uh um and had more impact on the 20th century than perhaps any other idea. Uh nonetheless, was shorn of of of a kind of enlightened view about race and inclusion, uh and rights, and so uh, it's uh. It'S it's there to be seen and has to be reckoned with um. I, what what i would say in trying to to create a full complex picture of what we're looking at the standards we're using to evaluate the failures of liberal internationalism, are liberal international standards. Mandela uh embraced those standards, havel, uh, uh gandhi, the the kind of liberal democratic imagination has been the wellspring for the ideas that have been used and deployed against uh, the worst abuses of them by those states who who often hide behind them and enshrine them. So so uh, thank goodness for liberal internationalism, for providing kind of a measuring stick for us to draw moral arguments about the world and and chart a path of social justice. So i i i think, there's something there to defend. I also think that, when push came to shove, liberal internationalists, in the hands of the united states and in the hands, yes of fdr built an international order that took the world from a world of empire to a world of nation-states under the auspices of what we Call pax americana: the world doubled the number of independent sovereign nation states from a little bit less than 100 after 1945 to almost 200 today and the the us did see it in its interest to usher in a post-imperial world, not always for idealistic reasons. It was actually for reasons of as a rising state. The u.s wanted to have access to resources and trade in all regions of the world. Its so-called grand area needed to be quite grand. It couldn't be an empire in the traditional sense and be a world power, and so post-imperial world order was very much in america's interest, so it wanted to uh, do good and be and do well at the same time. Yes, so yet you also write. Do you modify it very quickly? You also say you also say this, though, because the question of empire is a shadow here that follows this argument around. You also say in the article left-leaning critics, who characterize the us system as yet another empire failed to recognize that it is won by invitation at times it's post imperial at times it's a benign by invitation empire. Well, how do we, how do we reconcile these? I actually don't that is a term from gear lunge dog empire, when one kind of tries to evoke images of what this order is. There'S a real kind of linguistic stew that one can draw upon uh, liberal hegemony is the term i've used uh pax americana, the free world uh, the uh, the pax democratica, that's jim huntley's term uh uh dan dudeny uh, the philadelphian system. So i it's interesting. These terms and what they're telling us is that there's kind of an ambiguity that it's not easy to call it an empire directly. You need to add more turns to it: a a neo empire, a post empire, there's a sense that that empire is not quite right. An american empire yeah an american empire if empire, two things that that that would empire in some sense for something to be an empire. I think uh that there there has to be some sense that states or apologies that are underneath the imperial center have no choice but to be there and, secondly, that they are uh, so there's no volition, no consent and, secondly, that they are in some sense uh. Unable to develop mutually advantageous relations with other states outside of that hierarchical system of empire and in both those senses, the us doesn't qualify as an empire. It overthrows quite a lot as a literary term. Historians have a kind of poverty of terms to talk about big structural world developmental patterns, and so they always go back to empire. So you know the empire of liberty, the m, which is jefferson's term, the empire of tobacco uh the empire of this or that so there is kind of literary use of the term for big structures. But if you mean it more technically the us doesn't seem to qualify in the core in the uh world that we associate with the g7. The trilateral world. The us, as i've conceded already has been, has acted in imperial and kind of crude imperial ways in the middle east and latin america. So we're not disagreeing on that either. But i think there's something beyond empire here and that's why the term liberal international order uh, which apparently dan doody and i invented in 1999 in our article, it's been used in ways that some of that we have not entirely uh uh used in our defining essay. You caused all the trouble all the trouble you caused. Well, you know i mean so just a few looking for something they get a sense that there's something out there. It'S complicated uh, so a few, a few thoughts on the imperial question: yeah uh. Firstly um!
