hello good morning everybody my name is Ole Jacob Sending it's a pleasure to
welcome you all here to this event I should remind everybody that the event
is streamed so my colleague Morten Bøås and I decided just before
Christmas that we wanted to have a seminar series on the issue of distrust
and global disorder and developments in in world politics Morten had an event
here on the Middle East in January today we are fortunate to have Dan Drezner
from Tufts University then we will have a series of seminars in May we'll have
an event on China in June on Russia and later on in the fall on on European
politics now first of all welcome so much Dan Drezner is professor at Tufts
the author of many many books and also regular contributed to the Washington
Post and let me before I kick up with the first question we will start with a
focus on American politics then we will scale up a little bit to talk about the
implications of political developments in the u.s. for u.s. foreign policy and
then turn to the issue of the effects of that on global governance and global
order if we could get the I have a graph that I want to show as a to segue into
the first question so this is from Pew Research that demonstrates the or shows
the the level of trust in the u.s. in in the US government and and what is
interesting here is that one may argue that it tracks basically economic
development so steady economic growth in the 1990s on the Clinton you see there
is an increase in trust we will deal with this
graph perhaps a little bit later but then you see a steady decline from Bush
jr. under Obama continues on the Trump now this raises a question of the
election of Donald Trump as a symptom rather than a course so is this a
structural phenomenon and what are the underlying factors that produces that
structural phenomenon or is it perhaps cyclical there have been debates in the
US as it has been in European countries that are quite similar to the ones that
we are experiencing today where there is a lack of trust with various populist
mobilization so the first question basically to you that is what do you see
as the structural factors and possibly also triggering factors in the political
situation that we now have in in the u.s. so a few things before I answer
that first question first thank you very much totally a cover for having me come
I would also like to thank the former Norwegian Justice Minister for stepping
down and thereby not having you all check your phones about whether or not
there was going to be a government by the end of this talk the other thing
that and I can't stress this enough this is possibly the most important thing you
need to understand about the United States right now which is that occupied
season two just dropped on Netflix last week so I haven't watched all of it so
no spoilers please if you haven't seen it now that said back to the graph I
think you can argue that on the one hand it is cyclical
but cyclical implies you know when we talk cycles we often talk about in the
form of years and really this is a kind of cycle where you're talking almost
centuries or at least many many decades which is you know if you read books like
Richard Hofstadter's anti-intellectualism in American Life
a lot of people misinterpret that book and assume that what the book is arguing
is that there's this long streak of anti-intellectualism in the United
States the United States is never embraced intellectuals or or trusted
elites and that's not what Hofstetter is in that book what Hofstadter is saying
in that book is that there is a cycle in fact that there have been periods where
in fact Americans put great trust in elites think the Progressive Era
for example indeed the Progressive Era was in many ways a reaction to the idea
that American government had gotten too corrupt and that plutocrats had too much
power and so on and so forth but on the other hand they're all are
also these counter waves of rejection of elites and I think that's what we've
seeing and in that sense I completely agree that the Donald Trump is much more
a symptom rather than a cause of the the erosion of trust in institutions in the
United States as to why that erosion of trust I think they're to be fair valid
reasons for that in some ways you can argue that that too much trust in elites
is equally problematic it's not a coincidence that the the sort of spike
in trust starts or is it the peak is in the mid-60s and then in the next decade
after that you have the wider escalation of the Vietnam War and then the
Watergate scandal so you know those twin scandals are not you know nothing and
you would expect there to be a decline of trust in the best and the brightest
as it were after shocks like that and then you know again you do see it spike
again after 9/11 and you can argue that was after a decade of relatively robust
economic growth and a situation in which it seemed like both the system was
working and there was a sort of rally around the flag effect post 9/11 and
then we go to what happened after 9/11 and again you cannot blame Americans for
suddenly not trusting elites anymore because after 9/11 you then saw war
launched in Afghanistan that has not ended you then saw another war in Iraq
that had nothing to do with the war in Afghanistan and nonetheless has not
ended and then the greatest economic crisis in a century you know at least in
the first year far worse than than the Great Depression so again it's not a
shock that you see this kind of erosion of trust and there are a few other
factors kicking which I think I won't spoil the previews I think we're going
to talk about that a little more later but but yeah they're they're valid
reasons for why Americans and and I guess the other thing I would say is
that particularly in in foreign and economic policy you can argue there has
been a gap for decades between what elites think is the sort of best set of
policies to pursue and what the public thinks so if you you know the Chicago
Council on global affairs has done polling on elites and and ordinary sort
of the mass public of Americans for quite some time and for quite some time
ever since they started doing it in the 1970s there is this gap between what
elites feel with respect to attitudes about let's say globalization or u.s.
alliance commitments or what-have-you versus what ordinary Americans think and
the gap is is that elites are far more enthusiastic and internationalist than
ordinary Americans now ironically that gap is closing for a few interesting
reasons but if that gap persists for decades you can't blame ordinary
Americans for being somewhat skeptical about what their elites are thinking one
aspect of this is is that is the issue of economic inequality and relative
deprivation so if you consider for example the argument by Clinton's labor
secretary right so he's making the argument that from the 1970s the
economic conditions of middle-class Americans have steadily deteriorated
right well the the means by which they have been able to maintain the position
yeah I mean more and more work double work and then and debt and that on their
house and all of that right so how does that factor in you think in in the big
picture here know that factors in it I think one of the other drivers is the
widening of economic inequality in the United States and that again in some
ways is paired with the sort of great wave of globalization you can argue that
begins in 1980 because that's the moment at which at least in the United States
middle-class incomes start to stagnate now that didn't
necessarily that was you could you could see that in the data but it wasn't
necessarily immediately calamitous for a couple of reasons first Americans that
own their homes weren't necessarily worse off because even if their incomes
weren't going up their home you know the home equity prices were going up so in
some ways they were almost sitting on an ATM where they could continue to live a
you know an increasingly affluent lifestyle simply by borrowing against
their house and indeed that was one of the sources in the end of the the 2008
financial crisis that you had more and more people not just having mortgages
but taking out home equity loans to try to finance current consumption so that's
so in some ways there wasn't as much of a gap in consumption but the way that
gap was being financed was equally problematic so yeah that's that's
undeniably true and then the other thing and in some ways we're still seeing this
play out right now is that the other thing that's happened that's shift in
the United States is almost cultural in terms of the way the economy has shifted
you know you see this with debates about trade and and we just had a special
election and in the House of Representatives in Pennsylvania and was
all about steel and you know the president among other things has said if
you don't have steel you don't know the country the myth in the United States is
that we don't have a steel industry which we have a very large steel
industry we produce 70% of the steel we consume well we don't have any more
steel workers and the reason is is because the steel industry has followed
most of manufacturing and that it's become so productive that you don't need
nearly as many workers as you used to and so there's been a shift I think in
terms of workers in the United States leaving what used to be considered you
know good union jobs you know on a factory in Detroit or in Pittsburgh and
now they're working in places like Home Depot or Costco they're working on
service sector jobs they don't pay as well and are seen as not
dignity as dignified and and so in that sense it's almost a question of identity
as much as it is of economics yeah so a little pause here for this thing to go
up
so I can start with my next question which is basically a follow up on on the
issue of trust because you you wrote a book quite recently on the I DS industry
where the argument is that there is something has happened with trust not in
government per se but in other important institutions for example the idea of
expertise and knowledge producing institutions and what that has meant for
the quality of public debate you can see some of the same dynamic in in many
European countries including here in Norway so it would be very interesting I
think to hear the the core argument but also some examples of who the actors are
and how that effects actually the framing of public debate in the US so in
the book the ideas industry I make the argument that there's sort of three core
factors underlying why the marketplace of ideas has changed to where it is now
the first as you say is is the erosion of trust in not just the government it's
the erosion of trust in almost any authoritative institution in the United
States so both pew and Gallup and the General Social Survey have all of these
surveyed surveys asking Americans not just their confidence in the government
but the confidence in business in the media in labor unions and teachers in
any sort of major institution and all of these data trends showed the exact same
thing which is that with the exception of the United States military trust in
all of these institutions has trended downward significantly now part of that
is because and this goes back to the previous answer I would say it's not
just that the government has screwed up I mean you can understand why their
trust in government would be lower because of policy scopes there's also
distrust in other authoritative elites because there's been a variety of
scandals that have been revealed in which these institutions are not quite
as aboveboard as we have as a book author I hate to do this but I
need to cite another book which is I would highly recommend Chris Hayes book
twilight of the elites which is an outstanding book that talks about how if
you look at the Catholic Church or you look at universities or you look at
other institutions that you would ordinarily have thought were a beyond
reproach they're no longer beyond reproach and indeed this is reflected in
trust in what we would consider institutions that would be considered
knowledge based whether it's universities or hospitals or religious
institutions the General Social Survey which is run at the University of
Chicago asked Americans you know trust in these kinds of institutions back in
nineteen seventy two fifty percent of Americans had a great deal of trust in
these institutions and by 2012 it was down to 30% again in no small part
because there have been controversies involving things like vaccines not you
know like the swine flu one back in the 70s or again religious institutions in
terms of the Catholic Church or universities in terms of you know
corruption and athletics programs or research scandals that have you know our
plagiarism scandals that have affected the Academy or even you know so again I
want to be clear on this I I don't think the erosion of trust is a healthy thing
but I do think it's an understandable thing and I you know so in the sense
that that when you see you know people's doubting social science well if you're a
social scientist there's some valid reasons to doubt aspects of social
science research at least in terms of things like replicability so you know
we're having these debates within our field it's not surprising that that's
spreading to wider wider parts of the country the second trend and this is one
where I don't know how much it generalizes beyond the United States
because of different political systems but it does play a large role I think in
the United States is the dramatic increase in political polarization in
the United States and and this comes through if you take a look at things
like congressional voting patterns or you know general surveys that pew and
others have done in terms of party activists and what-have-you
essentially all of the data show the same thing which is since 1970 Democrats
have moved further to the left and Republicans have moved way way way
further to the right and this is particularly concentrated among people
who are politically active so there was the more likely or a party activist the
more likely you were at the extreme of either party now there are a couple of
arguments within the United States about why this is taking place one could be
that people are actually getting more ideologically extreme there's another
argument that basically explains this on something called partisan sorting which
is to say that essentially for a variety of historical quirks you had some
Democrats in the south we're much more conservative than let's
say Republicans in the Northeast for a long time but after the civil rights era
in the 1960s those Democrats realized they were actually Republicans and so
basically switched parties and similarly you had what were called Rockefeller
Republicans in the Northeast sort of the George HW Bush types realizing oh wait
I'm actually way to the left of my relative arty and so it's not that these
people became more ideologically extreme they just joined the party they probably
should have been part of for a longer period of time and that matters because
it means that if it's a partisan sorting it might be that Americans haven't
become that much more radical it's just be that the parties have become more
ideologically pure but the real problem is that even if it's due to partisan
sorting essentially you're seeing this creation and inculcation of in-group
identities which means that in essence disliking someone for their political
ideology is the last legal form of discrimination in the United States
which is to say that if you take a look at survey work Americans are more likely
to discriminate based on high rate you know hiring people based on someone's
political affiliation than on their race or gender or religious orientation or
sexual orientation and indeed if you poll party elites you know and you ask
them what is their opinion of members of the other party you know you would see
increases in the number of people who think that the other party is no longer
as intelligent you know or trustworthy or they don't
want their children to marry outside of their political persuasion and so these
are all you know these are incredibly problematic because essentially now you
have a situation where and there's been great work on this done by Elizabeth
Saunders and Alexander good singer it shows that if an issue is politically
polarized in other words if an issue becomes sort of one that that's defined
by partisanship expert consensus has no effect so there's if you take a look at
you know if you ask Americans what's your opinion on climate change climate
change is an issue that has clearly become politically polarized which is
say Democrats really think it's a real problem
Republicans insist either it's not a real problem or we doubt the science or
what have you if you then present people with well we have an expert consensus
that says this is what's going on it doesn't move anyone's opinion if you do
introduce them to an issue where let's say there hasn't been a partisan
division let's say I don't know one of them know I'm having a hard time coming
up with one let's say let's say policy in the Arctic for example actually that
that'll you know we're you know most Americans simply don't know and if you
then present them with expert consensus that will shift opinion so but the
problem is is that we're in a situation where we have the polarization of
everything essentially every issue even cultural you know issues have now become
so politically polarized that it becomes impossible to sort of believe in neutral
expertise everyone clearly must have an agenda or something and so that makes it
harder to have a productive debate and then the third trend that I talked about
and is linked is this rise of economic inequality and wealth inequality there
are obvious socio-economic issues with that but the reason it affects the
marketplace of ideas is that we now see this sort of new plutocratic class that
essentially have billions of dollars and it turns out that if you have that much
money and you have everything you could possibly want to buy in the world then
what you wind up doing is going back to college except you don't go back to
college what you do is create your own intellectual salon and you bring in
thought leaders or you know provocative thinkers too you
know and I put provocative in quotes you know to sort of tell you stuff except
that if you think that if speaking truth to power is really hard try speaking
truth to money that's even harder because essentially if you're a
billionaire you wind up becoming and this applies to the President as well if
you're a billionaire or billionaire you genuinely will tend to believe that
you've gotten to where you are in life entirely based on your own self worth
and self value and therefore you are not going to want to hear from people who
tell you that the reason you got to where you are is that you were born on
third base which is an Americanism which is say that you were born into privilege
anyway that it doesn't matter that yes you might have you know done a few
things but really they're they're sort of these structural inequalities and so
as a result they wind up funding and/or taking much more interesting thought
leaders who will tell them what they already want to believe you know here
anyway or tell them what they already believe
which is to say disruption is good and you know founders are good and you want
to constantly shake up the system and and other buzzwords that do not come to
mind right now on that I mean there are plenty of very wealthy individuals and
groups in the United States that seems to be advancing a progressive type of
agenda so I'm just wondering about whether there are environments where so
in Europe you have you know George Soros who invested you know the Central
European University and all that an open society foundation but how does that
look in the United States given all the tech billionaires for example in
California so if you take a look at the survey there's not a lot of great survey
work of billionaires it's really hard to get them to to answer questions but that
said there is some research that's been done on this and I think the way to put
it is the following there is a fair amount of heterogeneity among the sort
of plutocratic class when it comes to views about let's say social policy
so about gay marriage for example or you know other sort of cultural issues
however when you start asking them about economics or economic policy there is
much greater degree of homogeneity among the plutocratic class now you will you
will have the occasional Tom Styer or George Soros who spends a fair amount of
money because of environmental causes or you know believing in promoting civil
society but even the Silicon Valley types are very libertarian when it comes
to attitudes about economic policy they are extremely suspicious of the role of
the state in terms of providing public goods indeed Silicon Valley is is
extremely problematic because Silicon Valley tends to look at the state not as
ironically the the very source of the internet that they have exploited
because it was originally a invention by the Defense Department to deal with
communications in the wake of nuclear war they see it as a faulty piece of
code that needs to be bypassed so indeed to be fair Silicon Valley you know
plutocrats genuinely believed in civic activism I don't mean to to to
caricature them but they also don't believe necessarily the state will they
see the statement as an outmoded 19th century institution that can't help them
now to be fair some I think some of these people are actually beginning to
move down the learning curve and realizing oh I guess the algorithm that
we thought that would solve this sort of problem is not actually going to do it
maybe we need to rethink these things but again there's a fair amount of
arrogance going on in Palo Alto when it comes to these sorts of issues and so
it's going to take a long time for that learning curve to kick in let's shift
gear a little bit to Donald Trump as president and so we talked a little bit
about economic policy etc now security and foreign policy certainly there is a
fair amount of debates about President Trump's Twitter feeds and and all of
that but then you see underneath that perhaps
more stability then then people tend to think in in foreign policy so but still
I mean it's a mixed picture right so on so there is now so there was a lot of
debate of course about the uncertainty created with regards to article 5 in
NATO an apparent withdrawal from key international organizations now with the
Terrorism on steel and aluminum but then again maybe maybe some some progress can
be made on North Korea it remains to be seen but what what's your reading of the
changes relative to actual stability on Trump's foreign policy so I think when
it comes to foreign policy you need to actually there's a nice neat divide
between the security sphere and sort of everything else on the security sphere I
tend to agree with you which is say that while Donald Trump Donald Trump has not
helped matters by let's say in his first big speech to NATO not reaffirming
article 5 he did eventually reaffirm article 5 and you know I had the good
fortune of attending the Munich Security Conference a couple of weeks ago and was
striking to me about the conference was the degree to which the American
participants there were two things that were interesting to me the first is the
American participation was a little more marginal than it apparently normally was
so the secretary defense did not give a speech which is unusual but that said
when they did speak you know HR McMaster spoke I saw kurt volker on the you know
on a side panel who's the the US special envoy for Ukraine there were you know
members of Congress really you could have taken five percent of what they
said and deleted it and it would have looked like the exact same thing that
the Obama administration would have said in 2016 which is to say that I think on
security issues there hasn't been nearly as much of a it actually has been
largely status quo if you ignore the rhetoric which is kind of a big if I
mean that's that's not nothing on the economic side of you know foreign
economic policy or attitudes towards multilateralism or what-have-you
no I actually do really think this is a big change and part of it is that and
we've even seen this in the last couple of weeks which is say that you know last
year there was this you know argument that there was an access of adults in
the Trump administration that while Trump himself might be sort of a an
unguided missile when it comes to policy that there were grown-ups in the room
whether it was Jim mattis who was Secretary of Defense or Rex Tillerson
who's the Secretary of State or John Kelly who became the chief of staff or
Gary cone or what have you and that they would prevent Trump from acting out on
his worst impulses I have some bad news for you all that's gone I don't know
really how powerful it ever was but the scary the thing that should scare you is
that Donald Trump now actually he thinks that he's got the hang of this job he's
been at it for a year and so he really in his own mind he thinks that he can
that he actually knows better than then than his advisers and to be fair I'm not
gonna defend Rex Tillerson as a Secretary of State I really do think he
was the worst Secretary of State in 150 years at least he was not a good
Secretary of State I do I was somewhat more sympathetic to his impulse to his
foreign policy impulses than I were than I was to Trump but Trump wasn't wrong
and necessarily wanting to fire him I think the way Trump thinks about this is
twofold first he has he does fundamentally reject the sort of liberal
internationalism that animated post-war president since Harry Truman which is
Donald Trump legitimately thinks that the liberal international order is
screwed over the United States if the United States has gotten a raw deal from
this and that elites on button and both sides have have embraced it and that
that needs to be changed and the other thing that he thinks is that he's been
told repeatedly as president you can't do this
impose steel tariffs or you can't do that you know announce a summit with Kim
jong-un because that will lead to really bad outcomes and the bad outcomes
haven't happened yet I don't need to say that the steel tariffs are a great idea
they're not they're a horrible idea they're gonna cost more jobs than then
then they're going to create but some ways part of what forced Trump to
hold off on this was that you had people like Gary Cohen and Steven Oken telling
him that if he imposed steel tariffs the stock market would freak out and that
would wipe out you know which he's obsessed with and sure enough you know
when he announced the steel tariffs when Gary cone stepped down the stock market
fell for a little bit but it's now fully recovered you know all of its losses and
did someone like Trump the message he gets from that is no I can actually do
all this and there won't be any serious ramifications so I think on security he
will still he still defers to Jim to Secretary of Defense mattis he still
defers to generals to some extent on the security sphere you saw that with the
Afghanistan policy as well that is still an area where I don't think he has any
confidence but on other stuff on the foreign economic policy no I think he
thinks he knows best and so I think you're going to continue to see you know
the next month there's going to be more tariffs placed on China
we'll see how the NAFTA debate plays out every time Trump does something and
there isn't an immediate and negative response he feels emboldened to do more
stuff and so I think that's the way you need to think about it on that front I
mean this brings up another issue which is if you think about u.s. hegemonic
position would last decades it has I think it could be argued rested on the
premise that the u.s. bears a large share of the costs of certain you know
goods and that what you see with Trump is this focus on so the privilege of
economics and the idea of costs and the u.s. being you know getting a bad deal
is now also affecting security cooperation so that that is what was
underneath the NATO uncertainty etc right so it's all about focusing on what
does this cost the US and not seeing the broader picture which is well if you
want that session you have to bear the cost that
is the basis on which your leading position risk so that brings up the
issue right of how that can undermine the position over time but also how this
this is now happening at the same time as you see a new type of tactics from or
strategy from Russia and also of course from China beefing up its investments
within international organizations and also building alternatives to it yeah so
a few things on this the first is is that in some ways what Donald Trump is
doing Tom shrub really is like a you know we talked in in public opinion
about the idea of rational ignorance of voters which is not meant as an epithet
it means that voters at least in the United States are very uninformed about
questions about foreign affairs and it is also incredibly rational for them to
be uninformed because for most Americans most foreign policy does not affect them
at all these are busy people they they have jobs they have mortgages they've
got season to have occupied to catch up on so you know they're not going to pay
attention to to these other you know these more arcane questions about
foreign policy which means that they're incredibly uninformed about this if you
poll Americans in this is always the standard way of representing this and
you ask Americans what percentage of the federal government's budget do you think
is devoted to foreign aid the median answer you will get from Americans is
about 20% of Americans budget when in fact it is 0.5% so it's one of these
things where you know inevitably in presidential campaigns president you
know candidates will talk about well the way we're going to balance the budget is
by cutting foreign aid which is an absurd way of thinking about it except
if enough Americans believe that that we spend a lot on foreign aid they'll buy
this - they'll believe this to be true in some ways Donald Trump has exploited
that and also might actually believe it himself but he seems to think that
somehow you know if we if you rebalance NATO contributions and or that that
countries start paying more for us for the right to base US soldiers which is a
truly odd concept that somehow that will improve America
finances and even a quick glance at the numbers shows that that that's not going
to be the case but the other thing and I agree with you on this is that what what
Donald Trump doesn't realize is that a lot of what is sustained what we would
consider American leadership or American hegemony is the note it is two things
the first is is that America has borne a disproportionate share of the burden in
terms of military spending to some extent and to be fair that also served
American interests one of the best benefits of us hegemony for a long time
was not just at the United States you know had a large military but because of
our line system it meant that countries like Japan or Germany did not have large
militaries and that was generally thought to be a good thing from the
perspective of the United States and also a good thing for because it meant
that South Korea was less worried about Japan or France was less worried about
Germany or what-have-you Trump doesn't realize that at all the
second thing and again this is gonna sound corny but but one of the reasons
that I think US leadership worked was not just because the liberal
international order served US interests it was that also the us could've Vince a
higher set of ideals that the liberal international order was supposed to
appeal to that there was a higher social purpose that it wasn't just good for
American interests it was good for American values the values being
promotion of democracy promotion of free markets promotion of human rights and so
forth and Donald Trump doesn't believe in any of that he has if there is one
thing that's and this is where the rhetoric does matter if there's been one
thing that this administration has been catastrophic ly bad at its articulating
that kind of higher set of principles and so if the United States who just
winds up looking like a different kind of China you know which is to say not
you know we're in it furred for the buck well then that's going to cause allies
to start you know looking around and or casting about for alternatives or at
least not you know looking at the relationship if Donald Trump looks at
foreign relations as a transactional arrangement then allies are going to
start looking back in the same kind of transactional way and that doesn't
necessarily bode well for u.s. foreign policy
the larger issue here I guess is is whether the liberal international order
will will be maintained re-established can we put the genie back in the bottle
or is what we will see in the coming decade or so be something significantly
different from what we have been used to living with in terms of multilateralism
a rules-based order and all these higher ideals to which many countries were
striving I think there there's sort of two known unknowns out there that will
that will answer that well I guess maybe three known unknowns it'll answer that
question the first is what does China think about the current order and we
fear it's but it's very ambivalent you know I don't think it's you know the the
current rage now is talk about China is developing those alternative
institutions and through things like the belt and road initiative or buying
Greece's largest port or what-have-you it's it's you know exercising this
malevolent influence I'm not gonna you know obviously you know if you look at
China's internal politics they're clear they're clearly going from
semi-authoritarian to really really authoritarian but to be fair China you
know and I argue this in my book this isn't work China did play a was a
responsible stakeholder in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis China at least
on the economic side does buy into these kinds of you know principles of the
benefits of globalization I mean it's globalization with Chinese
characteristics but there is a fair amount of overlap between that and what
the West is generally promulgated the question is whether China feels
emboldened to rewrite the rules of the game even more in favor of China and I
to be fair I'm not I think that's still unclear you might think with time
they'll they'll grow more confident but I think that masks the degree to which
China's internal economy is going to be facing some significant challenges in
the next couple of years and the question is how does it navigate those
challenges the second no no no none known is what happens in American
politics so you know we've been talking about all these sort
trends about erosion of trust and so on and so forth and Trump is president and
will be probably until 2020 what this masks is the degree to which Trump
himself has wound up generating vigorous antibodies to trump and I think this
might I don't know how much outside the United States this is quite appreciated
which is you know in all likelihood Democrats are gonna do extremely well in
the midterm elections that are coming in in the fall you've already seen them you
know a Democrat won a Senate seat in Alabama
you know for non-americans this doesn't happen anymore that's not a normal thing
there was just a special election in Pennsylvania where a Democrat want to
cede the Trump won by 20 percentage points 15 months ago this all suggests
that while Republicans at this point control all three branches of government
it is not clear if that will be the case going forward so it's possible the
Democrats might take back the house in 2018 I would put better than 50/50
chances of that at this point which does not say it's a slam dunk but in Miami
and then the real big question is is Donald Trump a one-term president or not
so first if the Democrats want of controlling at least one branch of
Congress suddenly Trump will face far greater constraints in terms of
implementing some things that he that he might have thought he was going to be
able to do before and he's also going to be facing the subpoena power of Congress
in a way that he wouldn't have he hasn't had to deal with he has had to deal with
but not nearly as much as he would have if Democrats are in control and then
it's whether Donald Trump gets reelected you know Donald Trump getting elected
once as a fluke him getting elected twice as another question altogether and
you know the problem is is that Americans have been in the habit of
electing reelecting the incumbent for the last three go-around so it is
entirely possible the Trump could win in 2020 particularly if by the way you have
a Democratic Congress the ones are backing in an taken antagonistic way but
what is striking to me I guess is the degree to which you have a u.s. by any
sort of conventional metric in terms of the US economy the US economy is doing
pretty well right now you know we have pretty low unemployment we've got pretty
decent and uninterrupted economic growth for the last
almost ten years now inflation doesn't look to be that big of a problem you
know the economy seems to have be occupying the sweet spot right now and
yet Donald Trump has an approval rating of only 40 percent that shouldn't be
happening he should be at 60% with that kind of economy and so it suggests that
Trump himself is genuinely toxic enough so that you might see this sort of
political blowback to him and if you have Democrats elected they're you know
part of what's going on is they do embrace the liberal international order
a little more than and then the Trump does and indeed what's weird is that if
you take a look at polling attitudes in asking Americans about attitudes like
free trade or immigration or alliances Americans have suddenly become Donald
Trump has made liberal internationalism great again which is to say that that
he's made Americans more enthusiastic about these ideas than they were three
or four years ago and it might be that weirdly what Trump is doing is showing
what happens when the counterfactual actually gets implemented you know it's
easy to criticize the liberal international order you know by saying
well they're these problems and there are these problems I don't mean to say
it's a it's a perfect system but what Trump is done is demonstrated okay this
is what happens if you deviate from that and it looks bad America soft power has
been eviscerated you know there's a whole host of other Pro sort of ugly
aspects and so it's possible that Americans realized oh this was not we
prefer the way things used to be actually crap so we'll see how that goes
a couple of more questions and then we'll open up for questions and comments
from the audience now I want to return to this issue of trust again you made a
very good point I think which is that people have good reason not necessarily
to trust their government and in particular institutions and so on now
that brings up the question of of what groups the liberal international order
has served the most right and the other question of of the zone
for cooperation and the prospect of more international cooperation as things look
today so in the US but also in many European countries the zone for
international cooperation seems to be shrinking in the sense that state
leaders hands are much more tight there isn't all that great appetite for more
ambitious international cooperation so states don't make treaties that much
anymore for example nothing is happening on the WTO there is deadlock in in the
Security Council at Iran etc etc now the flip side of that if you like is that
there are a lot of important challenges in many countries that are not
necessarily solved by more international cooperation so many of us that study
international politics and in the context of globalization tend to think
well the solution to this is more international cooperation right but if
you take issues like well welfare distribution issues etc that is
something best addressed at the national level so there seems to be an
interesting paradox if you like that the the idea of more international
cooperation seems to be now at some inflection point so what what's your
thought on that so I would say a few things on this the first is if you're
asking who you know cui bono who benefits from from the liberal
international order the the glib answer is workers in the developing world and
owners of capital in the developed world you know I mean this is sort of a
classic stopple Shane Samuelson theorem which says and and I would stress that's
not nothing you know you've had the greatest degree of poverty reduction in
the world over the last twenty to thirty years and that's nothing to scoff at but
to be fair voters in Europe in the United States also might respond with
yes but how does that benefit us and I think that's the the valid question to
ask because the beneficiaries in you know in the developed world are
those people who already you know we're at the top of the income spectrum those
who could exploit the sort of global opportunities and so that has led to the
kind of widening inequalities that we've seen and so that's where I do think part
of the problem is is that even if the cause of some of these issues is
international as you say one of the one of the problems is that traditionally
the solution has been domestic and so there's a genuine question of to what
extent do you need to bolster social safety nets to do this except even here
in some ways even answering it that way gives the impression that the solution
is economic and I think the problem is is that we are now in a period where the
political problems are not just about the economy in fact the economy isn't
even the main culprit it's a background condition and I think that's part of it
this is about identity and that's much more problematic you know it's about
identity in the form of the refugee crisis in the European Union and in the
United States is in the form of a wave of immigration that went happened from
1986 to about 2006 and so you know if you if you take a look at things like
the brexit referendum or the 2016 election in the United States
you know most polling and sort of political science analysis that looks at
this and says well were there political science you know economic factors or
cultural factors that explain why people vote it's all culture
I mean economics play some supporting role in this and I don't mean to
belittle it but it is primarily the people who voted for Trump are people
who feel like the United States is not the way that was when they were growing
up and they don't like that and indeed what's particularly interesting is you
know hostility and immigration for example in the United States it's rooted
almost primarily in areas that don't have any immigration or it or just
beginning to experience it whereas if you're living in Florida or Texas or
California it's a it's been a multicultural society for you know
Jennifer for generations there's much far less agita there on these questions
so one of the interesting questions is whether this is literally a sort of
phase transition where once people get used to this and to be blunt the people
who don't like it die do you see this kind of shift in
attitudes that winds up not generating these kinds of things or is this going
to be a continued disruption I went off on a rant there and I can't remember if
I answer the second part of your question
that's one just one final one I mean what is what you what you say now
combined with the argument from your book godís industry and and the
marketplace of for these would suggest that it's going to be difficult to get
back or out of this cycle No so yeah the here's the the good news
part of the story which is we've been in this situation in the United States
we've been in this situation before you know the last time we had a period where
there was this degree of distrust institutions this high degree of
political polarization and this amount of economic inequality was the end of
the 19th century and the good news is is that there was then a progressive era
and you know you wound up the cycle turned you know and eventually you wind
up with a situation where elites played a larger role that's the good side of
the story the bad side of the story is that while the progressive era played a
role in that so did two world wars in a Great Depression that you had really
serious shocks to the system that caused people to realize oh okay we've we've
got to change the way we do things and what does terrify me is the notion that
we need to have that kind of that degree of shock for the situation to change and
I honestly don't you know that's a very gloomy way of ending but it's
nonetheless the reality I think on that note no let's let's get some questions
and comments from the audience and I'll ask you please to identify yourselves
and and be brief so that we can have many questions starting in the front
here thank you you Livingston I'm a senior research
fellow here I had one two quick questions first one you said that the
there's a lack of trust to all leadership apart from the military and
the generals could you explain there's trust in them then secondly I'm
interested in the relation to the liberal international order and the
return of people who believe in that and I would like you to elaborate a bit
because there are different versions of how to support this liberal
international order and I'm I'm a Russia Studies person and I would say that you
know the diversion of spreading the liberal international order through
military intervention is in a way a new a new version of it which has been
escalating in the past 15 years and it creates a lot of problems for Russia for
example the liberal international order wasn't so problematic before this trend
started so is there another camp who would promote liberal liberal
international order through more peaceful means is there any thinking on
that in this alternative camp thank you so to answer your first question on the
military part of it I think is that there were a few reasons for this the
first is just the first is simply we've been at war now for 15 years and there
are ways in which you know there's just a general respect for the troops that I
think there there wasn't necessarily in the post in some ways that was the
reaction of the post-vietnam period and the fact that the military then
responded to that by essentially you know by ending the draft and becoming an
all-volunteer military it changed the relationship between I think American
society and the military it was no longer seen as you might get conscripted
to serve but rather that you had volunteered and therefore that was a
form of service and related to that I think part of the reason the military
still has high levels of trust despite the fact that there have actually been a
fair number of scandals within the military as well is that the military
represents ideals that both liberals and conservatives can like so in terms of
conservatives conservatives like the military for all the standard reasons
you would expect conservatives to like the military it represents you know
belief in in you know patriotism and national service in a hierarchical you
know command structure all of these kinds of things but the
military in the United States has also been in some ways a trailblazer for a
variety of social you know for forms of social change that means that liberals
like it too so I mean when when the military desegregated that was that was
a head of rather than behind the civil rights movement in the United States the
treatment of gay marriage and and gays serving in the military it was
remarkable how seamless that was in some ways you know in the late 2000s an early
part of this decade and so in some ways the the the military represents an
aspect of society that which is disturbing in some ways but but in some
ways the military represents a way in which society functions that I think a
lot of Americans would wish that the rest of the country operate alone now
the problem of course is that that then leads to some disturbing implications
which is do you really want the rest of the country to function like the
military but that said there are Admiral you know they're all they're extremely
Admiral ways in which the military is handled a variety of sort of social
changes in the country which you can argue the rest of the country has had
more difficulty dealing with on the liberal international order so it's
funny when I think liberal international order I don't necessarily think about
the security side of things as much partly is because I'm I do globe you
know I'm my original training is in global political economy so when I think
liberal international order I think the economic rules of the game or the
environmental rules of the game or you know to some extent this sort of ideals
about human rights and democracy that that are being promoted but you're right
eventually there's a security fear of it do I think that the liberal
international order can be divorced from that completely no but is it possible to
talk about defending the liberal international order in a way that
focuses primarily on non-military means as opposed to military means yeah I
think absolutely and in some ways this goes back to the thing I'd forgotten to
talk to you about when we talk about the liberal in our international order and
the sort of institutions that make it up I think there's a danger in confusing
stock with flow by which I mean that the stock of international institutions that
we have now is far thicker than it was even
years ago and certainly 40 years ago or during the Cold War the problem is is
that the flow is stopped what what you haven't seen is the creation of really
sort of vigorous new multilateral institutions instead they're much more
informal things like the g20 or the p5 plus one or so on and so forth and it's
interesting to ask whether that's a whether that's a problem or or a
solution and I think the jury is still out on that it might be that it's it's
concerning because we don't have the sort of hard treaty organizations that
you know that the demonstrated degree of durability that presumably a contact
group like the p5 plus one doesn't on the other hand the reason you're seeing
a shift to those groups is because they're less rigid they're a little more
flexible I think you ideally in terms of global governance want a mix of those
kinds of you know hard law institutions but you also want the kind of soft law
ones and in some ways much as in the United States what we're concerned about
is not the erosion of the rule of law but rather the erosion of norms that we
previously didn't realize we had taken for granted that now are suddenly
becoming much more important because we have administration that doesn't
necessarily adhere to them I think that's also true at the international
level that the problem is in you know just the WTO is collapsing or anything
like that it's that some of the norms are more informal regimes that we took
for granted no longer seem to be operable and so in some ways is the
question is how do we cope with that hey um Hilda rested Bjerknes University
College thank you for being here professor Dresner this is really fun and
depressing at the same time I'm glad you you addressed identity at the end
because I think what political science is finding about the what what Trump was
the symptom of was much more identity than economics and I have two questions
one is about you mentioned the effect of immigration in the US which is related
to the demographic change in the US right so in many ways
can you reduce what Trump is a symptom of to the reaction to the fact that in
2045 the US will be a minority majority society where white people will no
longer be the menu are talking about identity what you're talking about is
also status and this feeling that white males once they are no longer the master
race let's say of the u.s. these I don't like using these words that I understand
what you're trying to yeah no it's Trump brings out the worst in all of I'm sure
that makes me a little uncomfortable it makes everyone uncomfortable yeah and
the second question is about the partisan makeup of distrust because you
guys are talking about the gen the general levels of distrust in American
society but I would argue that one party has been more active and telling its
voters to not trust elites even as President Ronald Reagan you know said
that the the problem is the government it's not the solution and the scariest
words and English languages I'm the government I'm here to help you and
since then it's sort of been downhill in terms of the Republican Party telling
its voters not to trust elites or the government so I'm also wondering about
the the partisan makeup may I suggest that we group them a little bit so that
we have time for for everybody there and then I'll just make this yeah my name is
Jim Frasure I have a just a short question when you show the chart you
showed with the ups and downs of trusts in government or in elites it seemed to
me that they tend to be on the low when it's Democrats in power in the White
House is this a correct observation or what is the reason behind it if so it or
is it just coincidence okay I'll answer that question first no
I don't think that's correct which is to say if you take a look at the chart
you actually saw rising levels of trust when Clinton was president when Obama
was president you saw low levels of trust but to be fair I don't think that
that it's something to do with Obama and a hell of a lot to do with the 2008
financial crisis so I don't think it's linked to that's
not linked to party what you generally see happen is that when what it might be
is that when a Democrat takes you know the power of the presidency it's
remarkable how suddenly Democrats have much greater faith in the government and
Republicans heav'nly have much greater distrust of the government or and then
their occasional moments where you know like for example there was a lot of talk
about how in 2017 Americans had never felt better about the economy
well that was truly a partisan effect because basically Democrats had been
pretty had been feeling pretty good about the economy for a while because it
had been doing reasonably well into the Obama period and so there was no reason
for them to change their minds what happened was that Republicans had been
down on the economy for a long period of time and then once Trump got elected
they suddenly felt much better so that's that's that's a artifact of partisanship
but I don't think it's it's it's not the case that when Democrats are in power
trust in government has gone down period I don't it's there's something more
complicated going on there okay with respect to Hilda's questions so the
first on on the sort of my joy you know what happens when America no longer
becomes a majority white country first of all this is gonna sound weird I'm
going to question your premise I know the demographic trends but the
demographic trends are driven extremely heavily by Hispanics and this is going
to be a fascinating question of the identity of Hispanics of second
generation and third generation Hispanics which is I can easily conceive
of a scenario where third-generation Hispanics don't think of themselves as
Hispanic they think of themselves as white and indeed the very category of
white belies the fact that if we were talking about this a hundred years ago
we'd be talking about all the dirty Irish and Jews and and you know Eastern
Europeans that are coming into the United States and you know ruining the
the master race in that level which I'm not be able to be clear don't endorse
any of that but I'm but I'm saying you would have had that kind of debate
happen then so in some ways the categories are almost defined in some
ways by the other and the question is to be blunt do you still see darker skinned
Americans as the other in twenty four five and I I want to say no but I'm this
is one area where I've grown more and more depressed over time one of the one
of the best books that I've read over the last couple of weeks has been how
democracies die by livets ginza blood I don't know if that's gotten here yet but
one of the the one of the things I will give them credit for is they point out
very plainly that part of the reason there were higher levels of trust in the
country in previous areas was that they didn't pull black people and because
African Americans did not have any political voice and so in the 1950s you
could talk about there being a sort of you know much more constrained degree of
political difference because you know you were only talking about white people
and so as you start widening that that aperture it's not surprising that you
have you know much higher degrees of distrust and there was a second part of
your Co the the whether the GOP is particularly responsible for this I mean
obviously the GOP has campaigned more heavily on distrust of government but to
be fair there have been periods where Demick Democrats start distrust in
government to george w bush being behind the 9/11 attacks or for that matter the
trump administration or Donald Trump being a puppet of Russian you know
plutocrats one of the things I can't stand about this administration is the
degree to which it forces a conspiratorial mindset I can't stand
conspiracy theories period but I've talked to a lot of experts who you know
normally study the Middle East the sort of Gulf shakedowns and what they keep
telling me now is that what bothers them is that they have to apply that kind of
mindset to explain what's going on in the United States right now so that's
not good so over here yep my name is Phaedra thank you so much I have one
just remark and then to choose more question the first is I think that what
you described as a trust crisis in the u.s. it's not only a u.s. crisis a lot
of the things that you say is also related to what's going on in Europe so
so that's and I think that the stressing on important policy failures
but also an identity politics I think is really important now two questions very
simple one first one how to restore trust and how to restore trust in
foreign policy in economic policy how to overcome political polarization and how
to address the identity challenge it's not the easy one but they do be
interesting so if it is worth preserving how to restore it and that's the and
then the second comment relates to distrust in their leads and Trust in
knowledge because currently there's a big discussion in the US about
misinformation and fake news and basically a lot of that discussion is
based on the premise that somebody else is somehow misinforming otherwise we
will be in we'd be be in harmony and we might make enlightened decisions so and
and then there's this academic literature on motivated beliefs
basically saying that people tend to believe what they believe and they
ignore the rest so how do you view this misinformation and this discussion into
this highly polarized political space that you described and how does it fit
in somehow thank you so these are very easy
questions that I can answer and just probably oh yeah sure well first I'm
gonna agree with you and say the polarization is on this side of the pond
as well we have a tweet that almost took down a duly elected government here in
the last few days that's and another quick calm the way
I'm sorry this is where I'm uninformed did the Justice Minister get in trouble
by something she tweeted it was a Facebook post okay all right good so
it's pretty extreme here and another quick comment on the the military I said
and beam former military in the US and and maybe globally it's thought of -
it's probably one institution in the US that is still probably without you know
here and they're highly regarded and trusted I mean once the political people
send them somewhere I think the military itself is very trusted
to do a job and do it you know a political and that sort of thing
I would say the shock to the system as far as the election was the reason for
Trump being there and through a lot of things that you said and because
institutions and a lot of things structurally in the country have just
deteriorated to a lot of people's perceptions and you know we'll see you
over the next couple of years how Trump does and straightening that out but as
some what the occur to comment and I want you to comment on this comment the
other day were a politician who was saying a lot of very interesting things
he said one issue of misunderstanding a lot of people are having with with Trump
and the way he's doing things is they said Trump is not a diplomat not a
politician he deals with things on a business man kind of level and he's
using his policy tweets and his rhetoric to start debates on things and to push
the bar on these debates to try to accomplish you know his his agenda and
this is just a sort of way of doing things
disruptive or not the question is if these things are achieving results do
you think that's still going to be a bad or a good thing or still he will just be
perceived as disruptive in the long term even if this policy gets enacted okay
I'll answer them in reverse order so Trump is a so first on Trump Trump is a
businessman but let's be clear he's a particular kind of businessman Trump is
a real-estate guy so not even businessmen normally do business the way
Trump does it and so in that sense I want to stress that to argue this is
certainly a Trump person would make that case but I think he's a particularly
unique kind of businessman someone who thinks that the way that you get ahead
in bargaining is to take an extreme position with the idea that you know if
it forces others to make you know to accommodate you then if you only get
like half of what you originally asked for then the incentive is to always ask
for the most extreme in that way you get what you want how to put this that's a
bargaining 101 sort of approach to the world and the problem is is the world
politics is more like bargaining a 301 and bargaining 301 says if you start
with an extreme negotiating position you are equally likely to piss off so many
of your bargaining partners that they will conclude that you're not serious
you're not actually bargaining in good faith and therefore there is no point in
having serious negotiations and so I think to some extent Trump has done this
whether it's a question of the tariffs or whether it's a question of
renegotiating NAFTA or what have you now you're asking if he gets significant
concessions will that cause a rethink I think the answer would be yes if he does
gets any of the concessions I think it would cause a lot of people to think oh
well maybe he actually knows something maybe he really you know as an
instinctive bargain or is getting what he wants to put it generously he hasn't
gotten anything yet I haven't seen any evidence that that
you know he's gotten any of these kind of fabulous deals you know you see the
the Saudi Arabia you know trip I mean he got a great orb out of that don't get me
wrong and and we all got great pictures of that orb but for all the announcement
of like all these these actual deals that were made if you actually look
under the hood there was no actual new money committed by Saudi Arabia in any
of these kinds of arrangements similarly you know he apparently had
this great summit at mar-a-lago with Xi Jinping I haven't seen any concessions
whatsoever from the Chinese after that summit I don't think the Europeans are
gonna make any concessions when it comes to steel I don't think either Canada or
Mexico are gonna make any concessions when it comes to NAFTA so I'm not
convinced that we're gonna get you know the question becomes what is the
deliverable and I don't think he's delivered anything on that point on the
so on the on the question of elites and Trust and how to restore that but with
the 30 second answer so the quick answer is oh sorry wait I did want to say one
last thing on this point I'm sorry on the first point which is on on Trump
winning as sort of representing a rebuke of elites in some ways this gets to your
point I do think there is a danger of over interpreting Trump's victory as
sort of this general rebuke of all elites for a few reasons first again I
hate to you know beat a dead horse on this Trump got three million fewer
voters than then Hillary Clinton did so
the idea that this was some popular
groundswell in favor of Donald Trump is crap it's just wrong the second thing is
that and again I can't stress this enough there has been one time since
1945 that a political party has won the presidency three times in a row and that
was you know Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush you know at the end of the 1990s
Bill Clinton oversaw what would look like a really robust and great economy
and Al Gore loses that election in 2000 it is not shocking that a Republican won
in 2016 what's shocking is that Donald Trump
became the Republican nominee and you can argue that Donald Trump became the
Republican nominee in part because of this sort of populism but also because
he was running against fourteen other Republicans and with a diverse field if
you got you know a loyal 130 we're gonna vote for you no matter what you could
run the table so you know in that sense I think there's a tendency to over
interpret what Trump's victory meant that said how do we restore trust one
way is weirdly Trump being president as I said we now get to see what the
counterfactual looks like very often you know elites have have often said if we
go down this wrong policy choice bad things will happen and so you know but
the problem is if you avert the counterfactual you don't know if that's
actually true well we now have a genuine populist you
know nationalist in the White House so to some extent the degree to which we'll
actually see what we get in terms of the economy and in terms of foreign policy
will be a way in which you can realize okay maybe we don't trust the old elites
but we know we don't like this so maybe we'll have to go back to that but that
said how do you you know build trust in elites and knowledge that qualifies that
I'm gonna give it a slightly glib answer that qualifies under what I call a yacht
question which is to say if I had the answer to that question I wouldn't be
talking to you I'd be on my yacht somewhere because I would have made
billions of dollars from it that that said I do think there are two things
that can you know potentially contribute steps forward the first is transparency
which is not something we normally talk about but it trans
in the sense of the acknowledgement by elites that mistakes have been made that
one of the things that you occasionally need to do is to traffic some candor in
terms of saying we screwed up in the past and therefore you know and and
furthermore we have been somewhat humbled by those mistakes one of the one
of the concerns that legitimate concerns that I do have about Trump is that Trump
hasn't just made liberal internationalism great again he's also
made elites like me arrogant again because you look at his administration
you can think yeah I can do better than that you know despite all of the the
various you know policy music use that have happened in the past so I I do
think that while let's say Democrats are out in the wilderness or while even sort
of it's mainstream Republicans are out in the wilderness some some
introspection would be a good thing and some acknowledgement going forward the
second thing we clearly need to get a grip on although here this is again more
of a symptom than a cause is the question of social media and what role
it's played in all this now I honestly think that what social media has done is
make visible what had always been invisible
you know the idea the conspiracy theories you are unique to the 21st
century is absurd you know this has always existed in the
past what is different is that we can now all observe it in a way that we
couldn't before and so partly I think elites need to get used to the fact that
in some ways it's not that the distrust has gone up and in some ways the factors
that play into that are not new they've always been there we just didn't really
pay attention to it before so the idea that we're gonna suddenly have this
massive shift back in trust I don't think that's possible but really we
don't need that what we need is a moderate shift towards more trust and
that's fine you know that actually would would in and of itself make a large
difference and as I said before there is such a thing as healthy distrust or
healthy skepticism I don't think that the conclusion to draw from all this is
oh we were wrong we should you know totally trust what what elites say cuz
we don't know everything and we're arrogant enough sometimes to think we do
let's face it if you're in this room you're an elite so in the back there and
then the in the back over there Daniel my name is Luke owed me I'm over here in
away for two little Norwegian Americans and I'd like to place my question is a
white anglo-saxon Protestant American male not necessarily supreme
insignificant part we America's elected Trump to stop the neoconservatives kick
the amount of power get out of the Mideast
get out of this dangerous nuclear confrontation with Russia Trump
appointed Mike Flynn Tillerson he had Steve O'Bannon he had that portrait of
Andy by got Jackson above his desk now you support Tillerson being kicked out
of power but and you've supported Mike Pompeo saying he could actually moderate
Trump but Senator Rand Paul says Mike Pompeo is pro war and so I'm concerned
about that I've got another question about distrust of intellectuals like
Bernard re Levy who you appeared to defend but I'll save that for later so
is Mike Pompeo going to lead us to help lead us to World War 3
my name is Jung Revell first of all thank you for an excellent discussion
early on you brought up that a lot of people a lot of very safe industrial
jobs with a high degree of unionization and relatively high status and wages
simply disappeared that there are no longer there and that they can't
possibly be there and a lot of those people would have moved into retail jobs
so just like but and I'm not sure to the extent which is it is true but you keep
seeing headlines about retail more or less disappearing and dying and also
becoming ottoman eyes and I would like to hear if you have some comments on
what the consequences of that are and what potentially can be a political
solution to overcoming that problem thank you
so again I'll do the reverse order thing so your question is a really good one
yeah I mean obviously there you know there's there's a new phenomenon the
United States about retail deserts and you know sort of abandoned malls and
really in some ways with what this is coping with is that for the longest time
there had been you know there's always been a protectionist element within the
United States because trade was thought of as a policy choice you know and if
you opened up to trade it would create new winners and losers it would
redistribute things and while there's certainly a good economics argument for
the the you know that on the hold there will be a net gain you can understand
why there were there was political resistance to that in some ways what
we're beginning to see now is this question of what is what should be
government policies towards innovation because that's what you're talking about
and you know this goes back to this Schumpeter concept of creative
destruction the notion of innovation is that it always creates creative
destruction it destroys you know certain sectors as well as creating many now one
of the ways in which America has I would argue been exceptional in the past is
that Americans are far more enthusiastic about techno
logical innovation I think in most other countries even most developed countries
and the general norm in the United States has been yes even if you you know
have a technological innovation that destroys some old sectors it doesn't
matter because you create all these new ones as a result so it's ok if for
example upstate New York is devastated because Kodak and Polaroid go out of
business because you've created this whole new digital photography thing and
and the consumer benefits are obvious I think it's going to be very interesting
going forward whether things like automation of let's say long-haul
trucking or you know which is by the way the largest source of blue-collar jobs
in the United States or as you say retail jobs I don't have a great answer
to this I honestly don't the the only thing I will say is that in some ways
again this gets bound up in identity questions because it's this notion that
what made the United States great was we were a manufacturing powerhouse then we
made things and the truth is that was never completely true but it's really
not true now because America's you know comparative advantage is actually in
services we're really good at that we're also really good at consuming but that's
a whole separate conversation and the in some ways and this goes back in some in
some ways to the the last question I think one of the ways that you can
actually change the debate in the United States is if weirdly you start
valorising services more in other words you don't just lionize the factory
worker you lionize the nurse or the teacher or the other sort of service
professional that actually you know that if you add dignity to those kinds of
jobs and those jobs do have a fair amount of dignity already I would say
but you know if you actually add dignity to those things that actually does
change the conversation a little bit but that's a hard thing to do and it takes
time on Mike Pompeo so let me be clear what I was trying to say about that Rex
Tillerson had as I said foreign policy instincts that I was probably more
simpatico with I didn't think the United States should pull out of Paris I don't
think we should pull out of the Iranian nuclear deal I don't think we should
necessarily trigger a war in North Korea I'm pretty sure Rex Tillerson believed
in all of those things but it didn't matter because Rex Tillerson was the
least competent Secretary of State in history it doesn't matter if you believe
those things if no one listening to you and again what I was
genuinely impressed by was the fact that Tillerson managed to alienate every
major power center in the United States that you would care about if you're a
secretary of state the only person who was on his side by the end of it was the
Secretary of Defense which is not a significant thing but the president
didn't trust him the building didn't trust him Congress didn't trust him and
if that's your situation it doesn't matter what you believe because no one's
gonna listen to you anyway Pompeyo on the other hand is undeniably
more hawkish and I am concerned to some extent about whether or not that means
the United States will pursue a more hawkish course of action but that said
Trump trusts him in a way that he doesn't trust Tillerson or never trusted
Tillerson which means that if Trump were to support you know propose something
like let's say I don't know a bloody nose strike on North Korea that someone
even as hawkish as Mike Pompeo might stop for a moment and think well I'm not
sure I like where that's gonna go and if someone like Pompeo says I don't think
that's the right course of action Trump will listen to him in a way that he
would not have listened to Tillerson so live for this way I don't know what's
going to happen if Pompeo gets confirmed as Secretary of State for that matter I
don't know if Pompey was gonna get confirmed to Secretary of State because
among other things as you point out Rand Paul opposes him and him plus 49
Democrats equals a real serious problem now it might not go that way that said
there are moments where a hawk if there a responsible Hawk can actually stop
even worse impulses and at this point all I'm concerned about with the Trump
administration is preventing the worst case scenario thank you so much I don't
see any more questions so oh here's one all that I don't from from New P here
thanks for coming one question we haven't really talked that much about as
international trust and the question is really goes back to United States though
to what extent do you believe the elites in America have realized that for at
least for Europeans and for many others as well Donald Trump is not a bug he's a
feature over the last five elections three times you elected two times you
elected George Bush jr. and one time you elected Trump and
so did you to what extent have American foreign policy elites or lay leads more
generally acknowledged not to outsiders I mean the u.s. is not just not
trustworthy I mean I mean parties tend to change and they're if the Republican
Party tends to nominate people like this you move from a position where the
United States could lead and have a sort of well I don't like the word soft power
but you had sort of transactional costs were low because you were trusted I mean
a lot of people just by gut reaction trusted United States if you move to a
situation where everything is interest based from the other side as well from
the European side as well the costs for America of doing foreign policy are
going to be sort of rising all the time so do people realize this or it's just
sort of you do people actually believe that if you like someone else things are
going to be just hunky-dory and fine
question the million-dollar question my name is Ben techno Union will Trump have
the guts to fire Robert Miller okay so I'll answer the second question first
which first of all saying have the guts is the wrong way to frame it because it
would be and it would be an episode of rank stupidity if you did that I think
if Trump has any degree of introspection I don't know if he has any he would
acknowledge that his biggest mistake in his first year of office was firing
James Comey as FBI director because that move triggered the appointment of the
special counsel which is then led to where we are now if he fires Muller you
know we have pressed it partly depends on how much longer this is going to go
on when does he do it but the fact is is that you know the Muller investigation
has actually been as special prosecutors or special counsels go it's been a
remarkably productive one he's been it's worth remembering he's been in office
less than a year he's already what indicted five mean ERT
has indicted something like 20 people he's gotten plea deals for a couple of
them there's gonna be a trial of Paul manna for coming in the fall he's made a
fair amount of progress and indeed if you take a look at polling
most Americans do trust the Muller probe more than they trust the Trump
administration so if he does it's worth remembering that when Richard Nixon
tried this during what was called the Saturn at massacre when he ordered his
Attorney General to fire Archibald Cox at that point with a special prosecutor
Cox refused he and then Nixon fired him his deputy refused his deputy got fired
as well and then finally the Solicitor General fired Cox that was called the
Saturday night massacre in the United States and in some ways it was the
beginning of the end for Nixon because it indicated the degree to which he was
willing to abuse his power I suspect it would play out that way there was he
would ask rod Rosenstein to fire Muller my guess his Rosenstein would refuse at
which point he would have to fire Rosenstein and then find a subordinate
who would do it and it would be as problematic because it you know it's
been the one tripwire for congressional Republicans I mean when you saw that
over the weekend where you even had people like Marco Rubio actually
pretended like they have a spine or something
so you know that was so I don't I actually don't think in the end he's
going to do it and the other reason by the way is that he's clear he's wanted
to do it for quite some time and it's been the one area where his own staff
has said no we know that Don McGann has refused twice to you know intercede to
try to fire Muller I don't think I think this is one of the areas where his staff
would actually refuse to follow his orders on that back to the question on
on the United States more generally so let me let me act as this proud American
and and and give a response which is on the one hand look I'm not going to deny
what you're saying we're like the worst relationship Europe has ever been in
right we're like the most volatile significant other you must have ever
been involved with sometimes we're great sometimes we're
abused it's it's a real problem but that said the same country that voted Donald
Trump in george w bush president also was the first OECD country to vote in
ethnic minority to be at the president in the form of Barack Obama so you know
were we're a mixed bag that way and that said I think in some ways it goes
back to this question of Elections having consequences so for example
American or European attitudes towards the United States they weren't thrilled
with george w bush getting elected it was 2004 that was really the problem it
wasn't that we elected george w bush the first time because that was a really
close election and again george w bush lost the popular vote it was that we
reelect them so I think the answer your question is what happens in 2020 if
Donald Trump gets reelected then yeah things are gonna get really
bad and the real district the the other disturbing thing is that American
attitudes about this I went to a saw a conference on soft power where we
debated this and and part of the problem is is that the American attitudes on
this is well yes we've been in moments like this before in fact we were in this
moment in 2008 where if you looked at all like the sort of public opinion
polling and so and so forth American soft power had been eviscerated and what
did we do we elected Barack Obama and we all work it all recovered you know if
you looked at the polling data if you looked at any of it things looked much
better and so I think the belief that a lot of America you know even American
elites have is well we can recover and this is where I start to get a little
worried because Barack Obama was a unique case you know he was different in
a variety of ways he was genuinely charismatic he was a minority and so as
a result that the election because of who Barack Obama was and because of how
he acted we wound up recovering in a way that I'm not sure if we elect let's say
a Joe Biden or you know sort of garden-variety Democrat you'll have the
same effect but I think the real issue here is not the things don't look good
now the question becomes 20/20 if Donald Trump gets reelected then that I'm
actually legitimately worried about there being a permanent divorce thank
you so much than for a very interesting discussion and your analysis of US
domestic politics in u.s. foreign policy I want to say again the just mentioned
professor Shi Yinhong of Renmin University is coming May 3rd to discuss
similar issues with our colleague Hans Jørgen Gåsemyr, and Fyodor Lukyanov
who is the of the council for foreign and defense
policy. We'll talk with Lukyanov on June 14th about the similar thing but
for now thank you so much for coming Dan and thank you all for for coming thank
you
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