Robert D. Kaplan | The Tragedy of 21st Century Geopolitics

[Music] ladies and gentlemen good evening and welcome to the Ramsey Center for Western Civilization lecture series my name is Martin fah I'm the CEO of the Ramsey Center for Western Civilization I'd love to extend a very warm welcome to all of you here to the Art Gallery New South Wales um I'm sure you'd agree that the gallery continues uh to be an amazing um asset to the community the recent extensions the renovations here really do I think speak hugely to the commitment to art and culture that the city of Sydney and the state of New

South Wales has had I'd also like to recognize the board members of the Ramsey Center who've joined us here today and thank them particularly for their support and I think the most important thing we can do at these occasions is to recognize the role of Paul Ramsey and his legacy in making it possible for us to come together and to engage in informed intelligent civil conversation in the Public Square about matters of amazing importance and so we pride oursel on being able to bring together the best Minds the best unafraid hard thinking and tonight I

I think is an amazing example of bringing public intellectuals an experienced journalist a foreign relations correspondents an advisor to important think tanks Robert kaplan's had an amazing career um a career that has been defined by a very deep and thoughtful contribution to public discourse and to the way we View the really hard issues that challenge us geopolitically and from a foreign affairs point of view around the world he's written over 22 books his next book is due out in January but it's not just the quantity of his output but the quality and depth and the

manner in which it resonates and resonates not just in the period in which it's written but resonates decades later for those of you who've read bulcan ghosts imperi grunts the tragic mind I suppose reflects a continuation of that and tonight it's that most recent book um the tragic mind that he's going to talk about Robert's very often I suppose labeled as a pessimist um but Robert I think is very much somebody who says it's not about being optimistic or pessimistic it's about being realistic and I think he more than anyone has had a front row

seat to The Impossible choices that have characterized decision making at the highest level over the last 20 years in geopolitics and tonight he's going to place that within the framework of Greek tragedy Shakespearean tragedy and The Wider literary and Western Cannon and argue that if we are to produce great leaders if we are to make you know difficult but important decisions we have to recognize the Omni presence of tragedy that in many cases the choices that face leaders are not about you know the cheerfulness of the redeeming um resolution of the conflict but very often

a choice between two and picking the less wor worst outcome Robert's been with us for the week um he's been incredibly generous he's been incredibly humble and I think it's that epistemological humility that really characterizes his work in many occasions the answers to the questions that are posed to him begin with him saying well it depends and so tonight he's going to share I think some very important views perspectives drawn from his very reong career as I said as a journalist so ladies and Gentlemen please join me in giving a very warm welcome to Robert

kapler thank you Martin uh thank you Martin so much for that uh very warm um Lucid introduction uh to um to what to what I've been trying to accomplish over the past 40 years actually uh I've been a foreign correspondent for almost half a century beginning uh in Cold War Eastern Europe in the 1980s and up until the present what I'd like to talk about tonight is to Define what tragedy is and then to describe the world as it is now in Ukraine the Middle East uh as the Asia Pacific and why one needs a

tragic mind in the way I interpret it in order to understand the difficult choices um that leaders have first of all tragedy is not common Misfortune common Misfortune is the normal way of life uh that all human beings experience in the course of a lifetime that's not what the Greeks meant when they discuss tragedy nor is tragedy vile violations of human rights like the Holocaust Rwanda or whatever that the Greeks would have no answer for crimes of that scale oh and that goes beyond tragedy uh tragedy is very human um but it's not as I

said common Misfortune it's not fatalism uh you know uh be you know being fatalistic does not mean you're tragic and being tragic does not has nothing to do with fatalism tragedy is about comprehension it's about comprehending how it's not good versus evil because good versus evil are easy choices again that's not what the Greeks uh what the ancient Greeks were concerned with it's about good one good versus another good that causes suffering uh it's about hard and this goes back to the hard choices that leaders have to make uh what is an example of one

good versus another good that causes suffering there are grave crises and human rights violations all over the world all the time and in some cases a great power could intervene for the good and in other cases it can't because if it intervened all the time the policy would be unsustainable and and there would be a backlash in the home front so it's a good to try to alleviate suffering overseas but it's also good to pay attention to the respon responsibilities of a home front because Democratic voters have more of a hold on you the people

who elected you have more of a moral hold on you than people half a world away who don't that's a very hard thing to say and yet that is what tragedy is about and that's what the Greeks meant that it's one good versus another good the and the choice between the two goods where you can only choose one that causes suffering uh you know um and and that leads to another profound realization of the ancient Greeks which is that this world is beautiful even though it's highly imperfect um it's you know it's imperfect yet it's

beautiful at the same time it's a contradiction and the ancient Greeks were wise enough to live in contradictions they would also say that human that human greatness is more apparent in disaster than in Triumph it's very easy to have a good outlook and a good attitude and a good personality when things are going well that's very easy that's not a sign of good character but what's a sign but but how do we grow emotionally and intellectually we grow emotionally and intellectually by the things we get wrong Wrong by the things that humiliate Us by the

mistakes that we make that's when we really grow um the Greeks had a great um had the greatest play about this it's called edus at Colonus by Sophocles and imagine edus someone who murder murdered his father uh had physical relations with his mother all because he didn't know it but yet he was guilty of it at the same time and it made him so guilty that he blinded himself he plucked his eyes out and he wandered Over The Hills and Valleys blind stooped over accompanied by his daughter and ended up at Colonus a suburb of

Athens and and what Sophocles is saying in this play is edus achieved wisdom because he had made the worst choices cuz the worst things had happened to him he was then the wisest man on Earth and was in and and was therefore worthy of respect um uh you know um as a personal note I've met a number of American presidents and secretaries of state but I never met Nixon and I would have liked to have met Nixon not while he was president but after he was humiliated and driven from office because of Watergate Nixon decided

not to give speeches for money even though he was in financial hardship he decided to dedicate the rest of his life to writing serious books not salacious tell all books you know Watergate from his side books about health care about foreign policy Etc that was someone who had achieved a certain amount of wisdom as the Greeks as the Greeks would interpret it um trag Al tragedy particularly afflicts those in power because the world is vast but often the choices one makes have to be very narrow uh you know a million things could be going on

but you're down to a leader is down to Binary choices um and and he doesn't know the outcome uh the situation half a world away can be given to Mysteries un certainties uh Henry Kissinger once said that you have to act when 30% of the evidence is in Because by the time there's 40% it's too late to do anything in the first place or to have any effect so there's a certain amount of ignorance in action and you know you you only know part of the story but you will make a decision on just part

of the story but be judged as if you knew the whole story decades later people will judge you as if as if you knew everything that could happen uh that's what makes leadership so difficult there's another great play by ureides about the uh uh um you know about the difficult choices facing leaders and why nobody should Envy anybody in power in supreme power it's called ify yenya at alus and Ides wrote it toward the end of his life and it's not even clear he wrote it completely himself he may have had a help or parts

of it you know may have been ghost written it's unclear but the story is very clear it's about the obligations of the family versus the obligations of the State uh you have this tribal leader of the Greeks Agamemnon and his military forces his Navy are stuff are stuck at Evia at alus about to impart on the invasion of Troy but there are no winds and the soothsayers tell him there are no winds because you have off offended the gods and in order to get back into the God's good graces um you have to sacrifice your

daughter you know literally physically sacrifice your daughter and if you don't sacrifice your daughter the men will revolt and they'll kill you and your family so that and your daughter of course so that um Agamemnon faces this horrible Choice he envies the common soldier who has no responsibilities everyone looks up to him as the great tribal King but he's absolutely torn apart and in complete distress because he has he he you know officially he has all the power but actually he has none he has to make a binary Choice sacrifice his daughter iena and go

on to sail to Troy and earn a great Victory um or to or not to sacrifice her and be destroyed and be a traitor to and be a traitor to um to Greece um it was a binary choice and War as I said is often binary to invade or not to invade you know people say that there are Wars of choice and Wars of necessity but I can tell you um all wars seem like Wars of necessity when you have to make a choice whether to invade or not it's only in hindsight that Wars become

War uh that that a war that's gone badly becomes a war of choice it's not that clear originally um so tragedy is also the need for anxious foresight or constructive pessimism to think about all the things that could possibly go wrong before you make a decision to act the one of the greatest um progenitors of this idea were the founder founders of the American Revolution uh Washington Madison Alexander Hamilton John J Etc um they W um Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote a series of essays known through posterity as The Federalist Papers uh where they

argued about how a how a polity how a government should be constructed and it's an exercise in Relentless pessimism uh you never met more Sourpuss pessimistic men in all your life as the founders of the American Revolution this could go wrong what do we do but that could go wrong what can we do men are are rapacious vindictive not to be trusted all men are selfish how do you design a form of government that takes into account the selfishness and the aggress aggressiveness of man I often say that America has historically been a country of

optimism because it had the Good Fortune of being founded by pessimists um and because it was founded by pessimists all the things that they worried about did not go wrong it was other things that went wrong uh Civil War had to be fought 70 years later um you know other things went wrong but generally uh you know the The Federalist Papers of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison which go right back to the ancient Greeks because remember these were Men Who read mavelli they read Thomas Hobbs and who had influenced mavelli and Hobbs the most the

ancient Greeks and so these were the real founders of the American system um the Greeks um the greatest fear of the Greeks was Anarchy um the Greeks were too rational to ignore the power of the irrational that lay on the other side of civilization um uh and by Anarchy I don't mean what's in the headlines every day Anarchy and Chaos are the most overused words in the media you could find if if there's an argument in Parliament that goes on for five minutes too long people say there's Anarchy in Parliament that's not what I'm talking

about I'm talking about a s a place where no place rules where nobody rules where there is is no government essentially Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein for a few years was a place of Anarchy um you know I'm talking you know you know many countries in the world you drive outside the capital city and the government no longer has any RIT and there are armed men with with assault rifles and with the safeties off controlling roadblocks because there is no government that's what I mean by an and that's what the ancient Greeks meant

as well uh they feared Anarchy um and they feared it so much they invented a God who represented Anarchy theonis dionis uh who is the god of license ecstasy romance uh realists are Romantics because they because romance is a you know is a very irrational thing and realists understand the power of the irrational so it's not hard to find people who are very realistic and romantic at the same time uh you know our Elites fear the wrong thing they fear autocracy but the deeper thing they should fear is chaos and Anarchy because there's something worse

than autocracy it's nobody being inow at all um now that doesn't hold true in every single case we can all think of examples of tyranny that were so awful so obv so obvious you could say what's worse you know what's worse than this fine we'll have some Anarchy at least it alleviates this you know but generally speaking um you know a a Anarchy chaos are much worse than um than tyranny and the best example of this that I could think of is a conversation I had had with uh in Saudi Arabia with somebody close to

the regime there close to the government and he said look we've seen your experiments in democracy in Tunisia Libya Egypt Syria Yemen it all it all it all either uh resulted in absolute chaos and vast violence or regimes that were even worse um or uh you you you know or or or or regimes that were worse or something so anarchic it SL it slid back into autocracy like in Tunisia uh recently so leave us alone with your lectures about democracy this Saudi told me um look at us we've had about seven or eight changes of

regime over the last 100 years you know each one peaceful each change lasting 20 that took place within 24 hours we once had a King assassinated in 1975 there was a new leader within 25 24 hours uh uh you know every you know it's you know it's autocratic it's not Democratic but it's stable it's not anarchic it's efficient technocratic government and there's basically a social contract between ruler and rued the Greeks would smile at this the Greeks the inventors of democracy understood this perfectly um and then there is um you know there was a great

American writer of the 19th century Herman Melville who's famous for his book Moby Dick but the last book that Melville wrote in his life was called Billy Bud the name of a sailor and Billy Bud was a youth youthful handsome peaceful sailor who had a stutter he couldn't talk properly and he was being bullied by a by a fellow shipmate and so you know unable to answer back with words because of his stutter Billy Bud punches him hard and kills the man uh and and as a result because this is a warship at War on

the high seas in the midst of the Napoleonic Wars um the um you know the Billy bud is hung he is executed and hung and Melville is very unhappy with this he cries at the Injustice of of having to execute Billy bud you know the author cries at the Injustice it's almost there's almost a Christlike impression of Billy bud but yet yet Melville sanction sanctions it and explained to the reader why it's necessary in order to keep peace on the ship at the time of War um and uh and Albert Camu the French existentialist philosopher

wrote about this in his book Rebel he said he said it's not enough he said all men have re are Rebels at heart that you know there's always been rising up rebellions against oppressive regimes but that's not enough kamu said going back to the ancient Greeks he said you only have the moral right to Rebel if you can erect a better order in its place than the one that exists you have to have a plan in other words for the day after uh you know you can't just to Rebel so that's the ancient Greeks let

me apply this and go around the world now to see what we're facing around the world um let me give you two concepts um there was a great Hungarian American mathematician an intellectual uh of the mid 20th century who worked on the Manhattan Project who developed the atomic bomb uh also spoke ancient Greek his name was John Von noyman and vanon noyman had a very interesting concept he said because technology will increasingly shrink the Earth th shrink geography he foresaw a time in decades hence when there would be overlapping missile ranges uh uh you know

ballistic missile ranges you know spanning their circumference of the globe that at a time of um as the Earth becomes more interconnected the very finite that's the word he used the very finite or limited size of the Earth will gradually become a Force for instability um more and more people on the planet living in higher and higher Urban concentrations um tied together by weaponry and cyber uh you you know where there's no where there's there's no place to escape to so that we inhabit a more claustrophobic anxious difficult world uh and difficult because while cyber

technology is a plus in the finan ancial world uh in medical sciences and many other things we can all talk about it's a distinctly negative thing when it comes to geopolitics um because it means that a crisis a military crisis in one part of the earth can spread to another part of the earth can Ricochet around the earth so that we feel events half a world away to a much greater degree than we did 20 years ago 40 years ago 60 years ago um and and he said the as he kept repeating the very finite

size of the Earth will become the greatest force of instability so keep that in mind then there's another phrase which has been popularized it's been ascribed to Vladimir Lenin but it's unclear that Lenin ever actually said it anyway it's a great line um and the phrase is this said decades could go on and nothing happens nothing much happens of consequence then days and weeks go on and decades happen um and we've seen that in Ukraine we've seen it in the Middle East since October 7th we see it in other places so you put decades happening

in a space of days weeks and months together with the very limited size of the Earth and you see a world um that can only best be where leaders have to make the kind of split-second decisions that are so difficult where there are no right choices that it would engender the sympathy of the ancient Greeks um let me start with Ukraine um again uh decades went along and not much happened um the Soviet Union collapsed into semi Anarchy gradually Vladimir Putin arrested the Anarchy uh um through uh intelligence operations his own repression Etc um he

invaded parts of Ukraine in 2014 it energized the elites but not the general public and then in February 2022 decades started happening when he launched you know a fullscale invasion of Ukraine the greatest military action in Europe since the Battle of Berlin in 1945 uh against which the con the military conflicts in the Balkans with all of their horror paled into insignificance because that was dealing with minor you know with minor powers without nuclear weapons uh we weren't talking about multiple tank divisions bombing apartment buildings in great CI cities Etc um I think what we're

seeing is who the Russians are on top for the moment but I think we're seeing something deeper I think we're seeing the beginning of the decline of the Russian Empire remember the Russian Empire extends 11 time zones half the longitudes of the earth uh it includes the caucuses former Soviet Cent Cal Asia Siberia and even further away the Russian Far East and um and over the past two and a half years we've seen tens of thousands of Russian tanks destroyed hundreds of thousands of Russian troops either killed or wounded um and the war has gone

on for two and a half years now let's go back to World War I for um for a comparison World War I changed the 20th century it gave the 20th century a very tragic trajectory why did it do that because World War I went on for four long years had World War I ended at the Battle of the MN 6 weeks after the war started or had ended at the Battle of the sum two years into the war the Austrian hapsburg Empire the Prussian Empire the hoen Zol and Prussian EMP Empire the Ottoman Empire may

not have collapsed there probably would have been no Hitler and no World War II it's because the war went on for four years that it changed the 20th century so so that every month that the Ukraine war goes on is very consequential every ra month I know it drifts down in the news um little by because there's no novelty anymore and the and the media loves novelty it doesn't matter how consequential something is but if it starts to lose novelty it's not covered as much um and but don't be don't be fooled it may not

have novelty anymore but it matters because thousands of people are being killed you know being bombed Etc and it's weakening the Russian ability the Russian financial and Leadership attention wherewith all to deal with the caucuses with Central Asia with Siberia Etc um There Are Places uh Siberian republics within the Russian Empire tuva btia Chia dagistan exotic place names that you know people know very little about but the young men in those republics are fighting and dying in Ukraine at a much faster rate than young men from Moscow and St Petersburg because it's been a policy

of Putin's regime to try to the degree possible to keep the war away from the urban Russians the urban ethnic Russians uh because he's afraid of a Revolt of some sort these republics will have their Revenge ultimately um and you know the longer this war goes on um and it will change Europe um and and yet there's something worse than a weakening Russian Empire which is a collapse Russia is not as institutionalized as China if Xi Jinping were to get ill tomorrow the Chinese standing committee would immediately elect a new leader there's a whole system

a whole in institutionalized system in China China after all is the inventor of bureaucracy 4,000 years ago but Russia is weakly institutionalized semi anarchic uh around Putin are concentric circles of oligarchs organized crime figures others all of whom are mad as heck about him for invading Ukraine in the first place who thought it was a mistake but what they fear worse is H his his own demise because you know his own demise could lead Russia to become a former a ver a low calorie version of the former Yugoslavia a place in semi Anarchy um and

that's what I mean uh by bad choices because over the past two and a half years President Biden has had a difficult Choice he wants to arm Ukraine but he doesn't want the Russians to use a tactical nuclear weapon uh you know as a response and he doesn't want Russia to collapse so he's so he's followed a policy that satisfies nobody and will get him attacked in through Prosperity no matter what happens but these are the difficult choices that the Greeks would sympathize with um now at the moment Europe is focused on Ukraine Europe's biggest

threat is Ukraine and aggressive Russian Empire Etc but Europe in the 21st century will face other challenges um the world population is graying it's getting older the Europe's population is graying it's getting older but there's a baby boom in Africa and in parts of the Middle East at the beginning of the 21st century there was one European for every one African by the end of the 21st century there will be seven Africans for every one European and so even if you you know even if you calculate in successful African states that produce new middle classes

the very mix of new middle classes uh uh weak States and other parts of of the African continent and failed States you're going to have steady migration into Europe and especially from the Middle East and this is going to fuel continued right-wing popul ISM in Europe uh um so you you know governments like in Spain and Portugal and Italy are not worried about Russia or Ukraine uh because of geography they're focused on the migration immigration challenge uh you know for for which there is for which there is no no answer really um urban populations are

harder to go govern they require um infrastructure Street lighting garbage collection police forces they're much more complex the world is becoming urbanized Africa is becoming more urbanized there's also climate change and I don't mean and you know and and by climate change I don't just mean different weather patterns I mean we you know lowering in the nutrient value of the soil creating more deserts increasingly lack of water to drink all this is driving African Farmers away from the Hinterlands and into cities to live in slums for which governments have no answers you know a a

democratic government is overthrown in ner it's replaced by a military autocracy but the military autocracy will have no answers either um and ner is just one example for for for problem s for which governments lack the capacity to deal so if you put urbanization together with resource scarcity climate change on a finite Planet all in places in close proximity to Europe um you will see uh you you know the difficulties that Europe will face in the 21st will face in the 21st century and the hard choices that leaders that leaders will have uh let me

shift to the Middle East for a moment as I said on October 7th 2023 um uh days and weeks went started to go by and decades started to happen in that time frame uh be why is that because for about a decade before October 7th there was a paradigm there was a basic conception that everybody shared the Israelis the Saudis the gulf Arabs others uh which is that the Palestinian problem was not was not going to cause instability uh that all the Israelis had to do was go into Gaza twice a decade into Lebanon twice

a decade and what they called it mow the lawn you know reduce it from Hamas 5.0 to Hamas 2.0 and the problem would essentially be solved all that blew up on October 7th uh I'm not going to recount the history to you it's been in the headlines all of that um but I just want to tell you that there are no easy solutions for this um you could say well there needs to be a Palestinian State uh Gaza was a an independent de facto Palestinian state for 20 years from in 20 05 the Israelis withdrew

all of their troops they uprooted and withdrew every Jewish settler um so that there was total self-rule in addition they allowed the gazin to cross into Israel every morning to work in Israel and come back at night with hard currency and they allowed Aid to come in from Qatar and other places ah and that didn't solve the problem you know you know it didn't lead you know you could imagine what lequan U could have done with Gaza in 2005 instead of building tunnels he would have uh built you know you know he would have modernized

the port and turned it into a big shipping mag uh Mecca um and then you have the West Bank if you look at a map of the West Bank you see big large ink blots of Jewish settl and you look at this map and you say there's not going to be a solution to this because the purpose of the Jewish settlements was to create facts on the ground you know over several decades and make it impossible to eradicate them so you have this situation where Hamas Islamic Jihad in the West Bank Hezbollah they're essentially why

cannot they be eradicated because they're essentially employment agencies they provide jobs food livelihood a mission for unemployed young men uh in places with weak or non-existent economies um you know that's the fact and because of that um you know there's there there's no easy answer I I would say that the curent there will be ceased fires there will be and there will be probably a return of many of the hostages there will be but essentially the current Dynamic of conflict between Israel Lebanon Gaza the West Bank will probably continue until there is some sort of

a change of regime in Iran uh you know it's it's remember the Cold War ended not because of an International Development it ended because of a domestic political development gorbachov tried to reform the Soviet Union and it collapsed around him and that ended the Cold War I would say that the Middle East will change when there is a domestic political development inside Iran because Iran has been likened to a country of ruled by a narrow click of North Koreans over a country that are South Koreans essentially Iran is one of the most dynamic open-minded um

uh places you can imagine 85 million urbanized Highly Educated Persians just waiting to burst forth into the global economy and being held down by a narrow increasingly unstable regime uh and when that regime changes or evolves it will be be a world historical event just like when the Sha's regime changed and it will change the middle e East in many ways um you know let me talk a bit about Asia and US power uh you know that what M American military power is not about nuclear weapons even though America still has many of them the

reason is because nuclear weapons cannot be used uh you know they're not designed to be used they're they're designed for pressure for National Prestige for intimidation um but they're not included in any Western military Doctrine what gives the United States military its primary power is the American Navy um you know a um you know a Navy uh you know an aircraft carrier strike group contains enough destructive power to destroy a middle-sized city and it can go around the world at will the United States can decide to send an extra aircraft carrier strike group to the

Eastern Mediterranean there's almost no news coverage over it it's not secret it's just not a not a big news story they move carrier strike groups around the world at will you try to move 10,000 Army troops 10,000 American soldiers from one part of the world to the other the New York Times has an editorial about it there's a big story about it there's arguments on the talk shows about it um the Navy can do things that the Army cannot essentially and it does it all the time um and so you have to say the world

we live in the world of globalization of Davos or all this is the world of the US Navy um because the new the US Navy has for decades patrolled the the the sea lines of the international sea lines of communication the maritime choke points Etc and that's the key to a lot that follows and that key is being lost it's getting rusty because an aircraft carrier with all the fighter jets on board costs $18 billion every single nuclear powerered submarine cost I don't know six billion dollars the prices keep changing that's this is why the

Aus Accord is such a big deal you know what's the big deal about six or seven submarines it's because each one costs $6 billion dollar or so and a submarine is a moving underwater intelligence Factory able to scoop up you know telephone conversations on Shore uh with just you know a few antennas a a destroyer and Arley B work class destroyer same almost the same cost the Navies are expensive and for many decades the United States had a very vibrant United middle class that funded and built the Navy with no questions asked that middle class

over the years has been splitting apart globalization has divided the United States into a whiskey sipping uh you know uh International globalized upper middle class Cosmopolitan and a lower middle class which is increasingly embittered and uh and anyway you see the you see the results in the um uh in the very division of the very political divisiveness in the country today so the United States is producing less carriers less um which we could argue about maybe a good thing but is producing less nuclear uh powered submarines there's a big question whether it can even build

enough submarines to be able to transfer some of them to Australia under the AAS Accords less uh um destroyers it's becoming harder and harder to fund a Navy uh and you know the US Navy had I think at latest count about 280 warships a US Navy with 230 warships say would be a different world it would be a much more violent world where there would be more Wars Etc these things sound like dull statistics but they really matter you know I talked about days and weeks going by and decades happening um uh that's true in

Ukraine in the Middle East as you know it's not true in Asia Asia had a steady gradual military buildup from Japan South to Australia over the past 25 years uh it's become increasingly militarized um and um and and and whereas the wars in Gaza and Ukraine have made news they've caused arguments Among Us they have not affected our bank accounts um you know if you look at your retirement savings you can see how financial markets have very efficiently priced in these wars but one war they could not price in is a war in in the

Western Pacific between the United States and China uh a a a high-end military conflict between the United States and China would have a devastating effect on world financial markets uh to an extent where the public would wipe out of their minds what's going on in the Middle East and in Ukraine and would be just be obsessed with what's going on in Taiwan and the adjon South China Sea um and I would argue that you know this is again where tragedy is relevant where Greek tragedy is relevant because what kept the peace in Europe during the

Cold War what really kept the peace it was something unspoken it was the fear of hydrogen bombs that's why the Cold War was fought militarily on the periphery in former Portuguese southern Africa in the Korean peninsula in Vietnam and other places there was no fighting in Europe because both sides were terrified of it going nuclear and I would argue that what keeps the peace in Asia and will continue to keep the peace in Asia is is a very tragic sensibility felt not just by the west but by the Chinese too who need to sell their

goods to a vibrant American economy um a fear that if there was ever a military conflict it would be almost an extinction level event for financial markets you know it would be so devastating and worse than Co and federal reserves would not have easy answers for it um that that's what keeps the peace it's the piece of fear you know it's the fear of something worse happening uh and as long as that fear exists there will be peace um let me just um uh say two other things in conclusion we live at one thing we

live at a time when all the all the great powers are weakening all of them America whatever happens next Tuesday is a divided country um uh increasing uh at the end of World War II America accounted for half of the world's manufacturing capacity it's now down to about 15% and China is ahead Russia as I explained though it may be doing well temporarily in Ukraine is the weakening Empire and China hundreds of billions of dollars are fleeing the country China's economic problems are um are immense um uh you know former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd

had famously said that xiin ping is destroying the Golden Goose that created the Chinese economic miracle in the first place so because China's an a ocracy its problem and problems and decline are hidden somewhat whereas Americas are out in the open um but I would say that all three great powers are weakening and we Face a much more tumultuous World let me end up with a plea a plea to use your imagination there was a character in tolstoy's War and Peace towards the end of the book countr spot and count botan was able to analyze

the probability of Napoleon con conquering Moscow in 1812 and how Moscow would be destroyed as a consequence he knew this analytically but he couldn't actually imagine it happening so when it did happen in the book he was as terrified and surprised as anyone because it wasn't enough to be analytical you also had to use your imagination throughout the 1970s American experts warned about the sh the Sha of Iran's weakening support at home that it was an increasingly disliked regime but nobody can actually imagine in Iran without the Sha the Sha was eternal you know how

can there be an Iran without the Sha well now we've had an Iran of the ayatolla for 45 years and so nobody can imagine in Iran beyond the clerical regime you know all we see all we can imagine is Iran that's in a clerical regime that wants to destroy Israel etc etc and and so I plead with you use your imagination there will be a future Iran and there will be other great changes and use your imagination about what could befall Asia if it loses its fear of financial catastrophe it's you know using your imagination

is what the Greeks recommended when they when they warned of uh you know of irrationality on the other side of rationality that you know that that imagination is the you know is the the ultimate protector thank you very much Robert thank you very very much for that uh I'll give you a moment to uh maybe gather your thoughts and give some water thank you the format for the remainder of this evening um I'm going to maybe explore some of the issues that Robert has raised in the last 45 minutes but then I'd like to turn

and we will have a I I think what should be a pretty extended Q&A session from the audience and we have a number of mics we've got four mics uh two on each side low and high and so as we move through that um you'll have an opportunity to ask questions Etc you've talked about the you know a lot about tragedy and clearly you know a well- read leader can be familiar with tragedy in sort of antiquity the literary world of Shakespeare they can read mavelli Hobbs and others is that enough or do they really

have to encounter and have had a lived experience of tragedy I I think your question leads to to something that I agree with reading is not enough it's a matter of lived life experience uh Harry Truman came to the White House in 1945 in April with uh not knowing much about Foreign Affairs um and uh you know not being a genius in any way but he had fought in World War I you know he had seen War firsthand and he knew about tough decisions and he turned out to be a very consequential great president because

he had lived experience um let me give you an example John Kennedy President Kennedy was a genuine war hero from World War II um he had you know he was always engaged in foreign affairs and and presidential assassinations are really tragic events because had Kennedy not been assassinated I would argue with anyone that America would not have sent half a million troops to Vietnam um you know Johnson had a lot of experience growing up poor in Texas in southwest Texas but he had no experience with International Affairs whereas Kennedy grew up with it his father

was a failed ambassador to Britain at the you know uh during the Hitler period up until the outbreak of World War II when he had to be replaced and was humiliated all of this Kennedy inculcated and which made him uh wise in a way that Johnson was not but not all political assassinations are are to the the rifle I mean John Curry a war hero somebody who had seen firsthand assassinated you know in an election campaign in in a way that potentially could have changed history you know we haven't had the last American president to

have served Bush W and Bush W was not only the last American to have served he was the last American Aristocrat to be president of the United States um uh and you know he had he had also he was a def facto ambassador to China right after Nixon and Kissinger went there he ran the CIA uh all for short periods of time you know admit it but he had experience and I think Bush won together with Baker is Secretary of State and Scot Croft is National Security advisor and I would argue Dick Cheney is an

excellent defense secretary at the time was probably the best functioning a high level National Security team the US has had in decades part of that was was Baker famous quote about democracy is not for everyone and and to some extent they seem to understand that whatever the attractiveness of the universality of democracy the pragmatic reality particularly in the Arabian Peninsula meant that they saw as something that would come perhaps with time with an emerging middle class but which they felt was otherwise would be premature they also recognize the very diversity of the world uh you

know many people who argue fervently for democracy and only democracy tend to be European focused they tend to be europeanists European experts you know because you get a different perspective in the Middle East you get a different perspective in South Korea or you know how did South South Korea is a successful democracy but it would but its middle class was built by a military autocracy as you look out across the leadership and and you know we've come to the end of that generation of leaders who were shaped by the post-war and the War era within

Russia those that you know had survived the stalinist purges Etc what's the prognosis globally for leadership at the moment um I think if you go around the world we have you know a very dangerous decline of leadership in the former Soviet Union Russia you know as as I explained during the week but repeat it now the people who ruled the Soviet Union were all survivors of Stalin's purges which meant that they were all extremely cautious and they learned how never to have an opinion on anything essentially and when they did something that wasn't cautious like

the Cuban Missile Crisis they were rejected from leadership two years later uh uh or you know kushev uh and so we've seen the decline in the Soviet Union I think we've seen the decline in China from dunsha pings Mandarin uh pragmatic very subtle form of of rule he was like a burky and conservative you know he knew that he had to introduced a high degree of capitalism in the society but you couldn't do that by opening up the system politically it had to stay autocratic so you had dunsha ping and his Auto and his accolades

Jang Z Min and hinau but now we have a leninist autocrat uh uh and because of this leninist autocrat I think it's because of she that there's Aus in the first place Aus might not have even been necessary you know if you know if had there just been a continuation of dung of dung likee rulers and the Middle East has some wise Le I would argue that MBS the Arabian uh the Arabian Peninsula sultanates are are more or less wise leaders um I think Egypt has a deadend dictatorship it's not going anywhere it's more repressive

than Mubarak um uh we'll see what happens in Tunisia um I would say um Netanyahu like him or not is uh he's a world historical figure because he's been in power 15 years in a very tumultuous democracy and has to make decisions of the kind I just spoke about at the beginning you know you know just tra decisions where there are no good answers you know you talked about the fact that you know the Ukraine the Middle East are very very different conflicts the the potential for contagion the potential to to create Decades of changes

within days and and you've said that's not what's going to happen in Taiwan that the repercussions the connectivity of of Global Financial systems hope people's 401ks what's the appetite do you think for a the us to come the seventh fleet to come to the defense will it depend on the nature of the conflict or can we assume uh Donald Trump made a very um crude statement and you say well that's not news he makes crude statements all the time but listen to this you know they told him that taiwan's defense budget was not was very

low of you know as a as a factor of GDP and he said you know um he said the United States is like an insurance company you don't pay the premiums we don't defend you you know and that's you know that was trumpian statesmanship you know and but there's an element of Truth in that um which uh which is that Taiwan from America for the American public to support Taiwan um uh Taiwan has to be seen as willing to defend itself and making the sacrifices uh to do so but again a lot depends on the

way in which there might be a crisis uh you know if it's just a frontal Chinese Invasion I think the United States would immediately come to taiwan's defense but if it's something more subtle that evolves over time where you have a combination of Taiwan you know not putting more money into its defense budget information Warfare against Taiwan from the mainland to um to um uh you know to weaken support in in in Taiwan um as a form of psychological warfare it could be different but but that's the big question in terms of of you know

the US uh and and its allies have spent 20 years in a conflict in um Afghanistan uh and Iraq there's a generation of Americans who have served um Australian forces have served we would expect that within that inventory of young men and women that had firsthand experience that what would emerge from that is leadership do you think that you know in the same way that second world war brought forward an amazing generation of leaders do you think that's going to come true you've talked about in Imperial grunts about you know Fly Over States workingclass young

men and women serving and yet 20 years later you know with the exception of Pete Buton jet there really isn't we haven't seen in Congress yeah Vance actually we have seen many individual examples of former of former soldiers and officers uh um you know who have gone into politics and have done well and are very thoughtful and all um I'm doing a book about China experts now that you know a long range book project on China experts in America going back 100 years and one of the modern ones I'm doing is someone who's a big

China expert you know former Marine in Iraq you know um and that's that's not too uncommon but generally speaking generally speaking you know I was an embedded reporter with the Marines in the first battle of fuia in April 2004 and I went back to Iraq um several times during the war and as you said as you indicated most of the people I was with most non-commission officers were um working class from flyover states uh or fly over counties um I would imagine strongly though I haven't kept up with most of them um that they've all

become Trump supporters um and I say this because that's what the statistics show um and it's explained by the fact when they went to war in 2003 they were actually very idealistic about it they thought our leaders said we're going to change the Middle East in a positive way and when it didn't happen and when the Washington political class didn't pay a price in any demonstrable way they became Trump supporters you know I would say um but I still hold out the possibility that we will see Future Leaders not necessarily presidents but senators congressmen we

have who have you know who who were are veterans of Middle East conflicts and who have done well the ability of the political system John hard wrote a number of weeks ago about how challenging it is for talented experienced capable leadership to rise up through the political selection processes you've talked about the contrast between the era of of print and typewriter and you know the the the the limit characters of Twitter and social media is that something that will in time they'll be able to navigate through JD Vance has clearly been able to do it

but is it an obstacle to to bringing the quality that we need in our leadership not just in the US but here and in the UK yeah see what worries me as I've said is if you look at the history of the United States as a mass democracy it basically thrived during the print and typewriter age when everyone got their news from major news organs that were fact checked professionalized long articles and essays where people had to delve into the complexity of issues and that basically developed a a a very um informed moderate thinking electorate

of either the center right which made them Republicans like Bush and Baker you know the Elder Bush and Jim Baker or Center left you know um kind of people but now the United States and the rest of the world is in a what I call a cyber digital age which does not reward lengthy moderate complex thinking uh but rewards impulse Instinct extremism emotion passion all and short bursts and that leads to a different media climate and the different media climate it has its effect on leadership because all leaders want to be popular you know you

know you know being you know looking at what the Press is saying about you is not new you know it goes back many decades it's just with the media changing and becoming more superficialization oriented it has its corrosive effects on on on on institutions and Leadership last question before I go to the audience um next week decades and days or I don't know i' and and I'm not trying to dodge the question the poles are on a hair's breath difference nobody in recent days has seemed to be drifting to an advantage even of a one

or two or threo level the polls admit that they have a three-point margin of error so that Anything Can Happen including a a decisive Victory by one or the other where you would have an early evening because with um you know with six or seven swing States a percentage apart if one candidate actually gets a 2 and a half% Advantage he could run the table on all the Electoral College swing States and that could happen um very early in the evening if the polls were not wrong but just a little bit inaccurate uh kind of

um I think the key thing is that whoever wins half of the country or nearly half of it is going to feel disenfranchised because we no longer have a center right versus a center left we have a far right versus a more Progressive further left and so because the two parties are further apart philosophically each party has no regard for the other which didn't used to be the case uh remember when Nixon lost to Kennedy Kennedy won the election by 118,000 votes out of like 50 million cast um and um he made a joke about

it he said they asked him about it he said well my father said he'd pay for a victory not for a landslide you know you you know Kennedy was able to make jokes about all this but anyway and yet Nixon who is the vice president certified the election and refused to challenge it because again the two sides were closer than they are now the man who's who was born in a house that his father built the opening line of his biography Nixon questions from the floor um just we would ask you keep your questions brief

that that way we can get through more questions we've got four mics we've got lty Eric is here Megan's here and we've got Jack so if you'd like to ask ask a question raise your hand wait for the mic to arrive and and then you can uh pose your question loud and clear so Jack we might start here in the front row and then I think we're going to go to Charles behind this person thanks very much uh I'm um sorry to mention American politics I think that's one on everyone's mind um do you think

in terms of the long-term future of the Republicans the leadership of trump is aberrational and after he goes off the scene it will just go back to say being run by the the George Bush Marco rudo types or is this a permanent feature the disruptive sort of extremism uh the character of trump is aberrational uh because even his running M JD Vance is normal in a way that Trump is not normal whatever you whatever you may think about JD Vance's politics um so the character of trump is aberrational however what's not aberrational is that the

Republican party has moved from the center right to the further right and so it will never again be George HW Bush's party again Charles here Jack just thank you thanks for an interesting presentation um an obvious question from this audience is okay well what are the implications for Australia I mean what's an optimal strategy for us when we're when we're facing these issues what's the optimal strategy for Australia yes see Australia's dilemma is partially geographical it's a big continent but it has only what is it 30 million people is that the PO yeah it has

roughly 30 million people tucked in into its Southeast corner so it cannot defend the vast area around it it requires the help of the US Navy and the Air Force combined which means Naval power in an era when you have a leninist autocrat ruling China so I think that um for decades Australia was able to get rich off China and to be protected by the United States Navy and Air Force that was held true during dong sha ping Jang ziman and huin um it's less so now it's more like you've had to make a choice

and I think alus was the choice because um nuclear submarines I can tell you from experience because I was embedded on several for weeks at a time are the most complex massive um technological beasts you can imagine all run and by new nuclear power which is so amazing that every you know you could take a hot shower for 30 minutes and so could half the rest of the crew and there lights are still on the computers are still working you know the power is just endless um so I think Aus was the jump into the

US side but this presupposes that the US will always be reliable you know we'll always be rational we'll always be reliable and I frankly worry about this being the case you know if if Trump is elected because uh vice president Harris frankly is she's a she'll be a committee driven mediocrity but that's safe you know she will have the best top people working for her um not just that the Secretary of State and defense level but at the assistant secretary the deputy assistant secretary let me tell you from experience the Democratic party is just filled

with the most competent dedicated technocrats in the national security field who are just ready ready to move into government you know to either replace the Biden Administration or to extend it or whatever that Australia would have nothing much to worry about but I just worry about Trump I hope I'm not being too fearful question um I got to go here and then I'll go here and then we'll come over this side so this row here and then I'll come to Madam here um thank you very much for your lecture you you've spoken about world events

very much from a ra politic point of view um Without Really um considering any moral Dimension to any of the various conflicts around the world the supposed repository of morality is the supranational organization in the United Nations and yet that seems to be more fragmented and less reg highly regarded around the world than ever would you like to comment on yes um the the UN the UN um engaged people's idealism and Imagination in the early Cold War because remember the Soviet Union was one of the Victorious allied powers of that war and was not engaged

in a direct conflict with the United States so that the security Council meant something and in the early Cold War the security Council accurately reflected the division of power um in the world but decades hence where we are now you have France as a member India is not um you have a war you essentially have the United States at war with Russia um in Ukraine though indirectly uh the United States is doing all it can to bodily weaken arrival power both the US and Russia both being at the same time members of the security Council

um you know when you look at Gaza when you look at Ukraine the UN has nothing has nothing to say in all of this it is a world of power you know um and um and the Greeks understood this but they also understood the limits of power and the need for Morality In the melean dialogue where you know where where uh you know where the Athenians you know butchered the the the inhabitants of the island of Milos um because they were weak and couldn't say and couldn't do anything about it and that was the beginning

of the end of you know of a of the Athenian Golden Age so morality matters but but but [Music] um but but but in a world of power um morality has to follow power or to be integrated with it you cannot have a pure world without taking into account power there um I'll give you an example during the 1990s the intellectual world was focused and moral world was focused on the crimes of the Balkans but there were equal crimes going on in Chia in two Wars in Chia where all these moralists and intellectuals had very

little to say about it that's because Russia completely dominated the region with atomic bombs um that was not the case in the western Balkans where it was minor Powers who were not nuclear nuclear arm so morality can have an effect in the Balkans where it could not in Chia because there was an issue of power involved that morality had no answer for lady here Jack and then we have a question here go to Simon Erica if you can go to Simon and thank you very much for your presentation it's an honor um this um aging

demographics and the all-encompassing problems not just economical labor etc etc that you touched on you talked about the Africans and the European 7 to1 birth rate um out of interest is that the is that that represent an increase in African and a decrease of European and um and if so why now this comment question comes really I'm not a political person or educator it really comes from a common sense but I also read in the paper that the South Koreans are doing it instead of forcing the Europeans and the Western World women to have children

the JD Vance way the suppression of women you do see countries now and South Africa South um Korea is now doing it why are they not just doing the simple supporting the cost of women I mean most women will say in the western world it's cost so I'm not um saying this from a a leftist political I'm just saying it from a sensible that if you were Cradle to grave support um the cost of women having children you'd probably double it over you know most most young women in their 20s say yeah I have two

I have three but we can't afford it and just a little um comment question on following on from the gentleman about the morality you did talk about um the sort of like the I think the word was you used efficient for some autocracies and you used um Saudi Arabia as an example and my question so let's take two questions the the question of declining birth rates in the west U versus and and the relevance of geography the geographical overlay of that why are governments you know why aren't there more effective policies around that um and

then the second question is about kind of universal values in the Arabian Peninsula and and the longterm does it need perhaps a middle class that will drive change yeah um having children is a very personal choice and it's more likely to happen when people are in better Financial circumstances I mean that's just a fact you know um uh and uh so if you want people to have if you want the population to grow you have to provide social services or tax incentives or a combination of the two or else people will make private life choices

not to have children or to have fewer of them you know uh um and uh you know and that's absolutely essential um the Arabian Peninsula has a vibrant middle class generated by oil and gas wealth to be sure but nevertheless Le a vibrant middle class that essentially cares about predictability and safety and um and uh and convenience it's very conveni it's a very convenience driven world you could see it in Saudi I was in Saudi Arabia during covid and they had you could go anywhere for a test and get a result within an hour there

was no bureaucracy involved it and you got like an app on your phone to show that you were vaccinated and you flashed it whenever you entered a restaurant or a mo mall or something they had figured it out you know and you know that's the kind of things that impress people in the United States we never figured it out you know you know covid was a mess though there was variations from state to state you know and County to County um and I you know it's it's a philosophical question question uh you know Western you

know Western Elites are obsessed with democracy and human rights but Elites in other parts of the world outside of Greater Europe and the West I'm getting the feeling may be obsessed with convenience you know you know just don't bother me and I won't bother you and make things convenient for me they've also seen the evidence of the ARB spring and and the chaos that that's true let's go to Simon Eric Simon thank you um terrific terrific talk thank you can I take you back to what you were saying at the beginning about tragedy uh and

the idea of tragedy as a clash of good versus good uh and you mentioned edus and you talked about igia in Alis and think about antigon as the clash between the the the the good that is duty to the state and the good that is duty to the gods and tragedy in general as Athens thinking about clashes of goods and clashes of values and a way of processing those clashes for itself and then can we map that onto what you're saying onto contemporary America and could you think for us a little bit aloud about uh

the clashes of goods that you see either immediately now or in the recent past or even going back to Kennedy and Nixon that you've been talking about very interestingly and bring out what that equivalent Clash of value or Clash of goods would be in the American context compared with the Athenian one yeah uh I think I understand the question um America became a democracy in in you know in the 1780s after the Constitution was promulgated but it had to fight a civil war to give a big chunk of the population their their rights their Democratic

rights and then those democratic rights still weren't available until 1964 on the Civil Rights Act so having a a brilliant Constitution was not enough there had there was a war and there was policy changes almost into 200 years later it was a gradual process you know and a lot of it was based on self-interest you know a lot you know um uh and all of that so America had to find its way towards a wider Democratic franchise uh so to speak that democracy itself was not enough you know it it had to get go wider

and it had it had to do with you know with um with SE with political self-interest to the southern states uh and and all of that and I I would argue that these are all the kinds of compromises and difficulties and Imperfections that the Greeks entertained in their worldview I'm going to go to in a moment and I hope you don't mind can I take you to Balan ghosts on a Saturday and you know a Saturday in which tragedy was large in in what was a modern European era in shita to Simon's question is is

that the outcome what I in terms of you know the the the Dutch forces withdrawing peacekeeping forces withdrawing from shonita I mean for you personally you had sort of written about this in advance yeah um Clinton read the book and and it led your Reflections on that and those tragedies yeah um yeah my Reflections are that when when the Balkans erupted in violence George HW Bush was president and the first Secretary of State to deal with it was James Baker and baker said we should do nothing because we've been lectured by the Europeans throughout the

Cold War how they could settle their own problems if we would just get off their back back you know if the U us would withdrew if the Soviets would withdrew Europe would be fine and this was the first crisis after immediately after the fall of the Berlin wall and baker said let's give the Europeans a chance let's see what they can do on their own well you saw the results exactly because you know there's an irony about peacekeeping if you're not willing to kill and take power you won't be a good peacekeeper keeper CU peacekeeping

like War making is about monopolizing the use of force in your area and being willing to fight for it the Dutch peacekeepers were not they had no no interest in monopolizing the use uh you know the use of force in their area and they were eaten alive through naiv Etc there's a rough comparison with unifil in southern Lebanon uh which has been around since the I think since um the late 1970s you know operation Lani in 1978 um and and and Hezbollah it was invented and grew up around unifil and though there wasn't a single

singular event like with the Dutch and shre ranita it was a similar policy if you're if you're not sending troops there willing to fight and kill they're not going to be very good peacekeepers and when NATO went in it monopolized the use of force and Baker would say that Europe failed the test it required NATO which is not a de a democratic organization which is led by the United States Michael um Robert a great lecture do Young Americans believe in America I asked the question in the context of the demonstrations that have happened on University

campuses the r of anti-Semitism is there a problem with the academy and what lesson do you draw out of the last 12 months that are relevant yeah um I went to school in the late 1960s and early 1970s when University professors were all veterans of World War II so they had life experience as well as academic experience and this was reflected I took courses English literature courses that you couldn't find on any Ivy League school campus today nobody would teach them because they would say oh it's just dead white males and all of that well

who else do you learn from except writers who are dead because by writers who are dead are writing about a time you have not personally experienced so that you can add your understanding of what went on before you were born so you should read dead writers you know I um um I uh I I I would make the argument I think the academy is declined because you have people who have degrees but no life experience um and there's there's something to be said about the tyranny of virtue you know everyone trying to be so virtuous

that they create a tyranny out of it a kind of abstract tyranny out of it and that's what forms the framework for what we've seen on University campuses setting aside the fact that there's a real human tragedy gone on you you know you know it's it's perfectly understandable that people would demonstrate against human rights violations in Gaza you know um because the Israelis have taken extreme to put it mildly extremely harsh actions but that leaving that aside um there is uh there's no m uh there's no maturity in the Outlook because you're dealing with people

who have been physically pampered their whole lives grew up with Financial Security with physical security so they so it's very hard for them to to to to understand peoples and governments who have lived without physical security and often without Financial Security either question at the back I've neglected this person's apologies so Megan and then I'll go to Erica thanks Robert um you're just going back to some of these wars so the US is involved in Ukraine and they're supporting Israel and it's very costly um without putting troops on the ground yet could you speak up

sorry it's quite hard to hear no worries um so I was just saying that um the US is involved in these wars which is costing them a lot of money at least um so there's two two spheres and then possibly sometime in the next decade there could be another sphere in Taiwan um so my question is can the US really well they can defend Taiwan but how much is that going to cost them and then the second part is is that cost worth that thing to the US is it a vital interest to the US

because also from an Australian perspective is it a vital interest to us as well thank you yes yeah there is actually a a very interesting debate going on now in Washington in defense circles about whether the US can continue to arm Ukraine and Taiwan it gets down to the nitty-gritty you have these policy analysts arguing about the numbers of shells the numbers of munition shells and though it gets very technical it's also very interesting because they're dealing with inescapable realities that the what's called there the defense industrial base you know the amount of bullets and

shells and others cannot fight two Wars at the same time um and well then the counterargument is well fine we'll just expand the defense industrial base the US uh defense budget is still low compared to GDP than that of many other countries you know it's higher than that in Europe most of Europe but it's lower than other countries and the US can easily afford to to um expand its industrial base in order to defend both um Taiwan and Ukraine but it's the very fact and fervency of this debate that's going on that has very little

to do actually with isolationism or anything like that is can we keep afford to can we afford to keep doing what we're doing and you know and the counterargument to that is whatever it costs it's more peaceful than getting into a war with China and Taiwan so you better off building up deterrence you know uh um you know deterrence value which is a very good you know a very good argument but what it shows is that the ultimately the American public is not 100% sold on defending Ukraine or maybe even Taiwan Erica question year cheers

um I just question around you were talking about the three predominant powers in the world all kind of falling at a similar I didn't think you specified rate but they all falling ironically two would have to hit the floor first right uh of those three you've got Russia with potential ethnic tensions as you outlined China with uh the fastest aging population in the world over leverage broadly across the economy and the United States with uh a divisive political system out of those three I think my personal interpretation is the United States is still the best

off it'd be good to hear how you view those challenges he thinks the US is the best off well in in a world in a world of declining great Powers you know one thing that I who holds their breath longer yeah one thing I I'll argue about in a book I have coming out in January is that the cine itself is overrated because um the British royal Navy started to decline in the 189 90s but that did not stop Britain from essentially saving the world in 1940 uh which is almost a half a century later

so decline can be so gradual that it's more academic than practical also the the three powers are not declining at the same rate and in the same way um so that I I think of the three uh I I would put I would hold up better hope for the United States than for Russia or China because I think their problems are much much more profound and get down to the very system itself whereas the US system is capable of regeneration it's done so a number of times in the past final question for me you you've

made the case in the past for coldhearted analysis over passion um but yet tonight you talked about the fact that that great leaders and power is often associated with a romantic Outlook can you unpack the passion first and why passion in international Affairs is can be Cloud judgment yeah all right let me Define romantic romantic is not falling in love that's not what I mean by romantic what I mean is romantic is is agreeing that people are irrational that they're given to Passions emotions um and that people matter you just can't um people human beings

are not are not particles in a test tube um you know it's not all geopolitics and geography it's Shakespearean and you know and and that's what I mean by by ro a romantic romantic um Outlook um and there has to be a degree of passion um but at the same time you know what the Greeks would say is this world is beautiful but it's imperfect because you're you know ultimately your passion has to be tempered by practicality uh uh and that leads to the hardest choices you know the most difficult kinds of choices Robert thank

you very very much ladies and gentlemen Robert K thank you thank you [Music]