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Malaysia is hosting the 46th ASEAN Summit this week, alongside key meetings with the Gulf Cooperation Council, and China — the coming together of burgeoning economies signalling shifting power dynamics in a changing world. As Asia rises, can the rest of the global system keep up? On this episode of #ConsiderThis Melisa Idris speaks with Professor Jeffrey Sachs, economist, author, and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
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00:00Hello and good evening. I'm Melissa Idris. Welcome to Consider This. This is the show
00:23where we want you to consider and reconsider what you know of the news of the day. So Malaysia is
00:29hosting the 46th ASEAN Summit this week alongside key meetings with the Gulf Cooperation Council
00:36and China. The coming together of these burgeoning economies signalling a shifting power dynamics
00:44in a changing world. So as Asia rises, can the global system, the rest of the global system
00:51keep up? That's what we're going to be discussing today. Joining me to unpack this, what's next
00:58for ASEAN and also the global order, we have Professor Jeffrey Sachs who is an economist,
01:03author and president of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
01:08Professor Sachs, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. So let's talk a little
01:12bit about the shifting global order. Asia now accounts for I think more than half of the
01:17global GDP. Do you see a time when the geopolitical weight of Asia will rise to match its economic
01:27power? What we're seeing is a restoration of long history because Asia was at the center
01:34of the world economy and global politics for centuries and centuries up until really around the year 1700 or
01:46so when the European rise came to dominate most of the world for a period of 250 or 300 years. That phase is ending. We're going back to a more balanced or
02:02more balanced or multipolar world. The rise of all parts of Asia, of course China is probably the single most notable change, but honestly the progress of the ASEAN countries, of China, of India now, which is a very fast-growing, most populous country of the world.
02:28And as this summit shows also West Asia, the Gulf region, the Middle East so-called, but really Western Asia. All of this means that Asia is now back increasingly at the center of the world economy and world society.
02:47Now it's a multipolar world because Europe is still there, the United States is still a very important power, but the idea that in my country that the United States is the sole superpower or the dominant country of the world, that phase is clearly over.
03:06It was an arrogant moment of the United States when the Soviet Union ended and the U.S. said, oh, it's just us now. But of course that was already a little bit of a delusion.
03:18The American policymakers, I know, because I was there and I watched, didn't take into account what was happening in Asia. They weren't looking ahead. They didn't understand the dynamism of this region.
03:32Already back in 1992, you could have projected that the world is changing fast and Asia is going to become much, much larger as a share of the world economy.
03:45But the U.S. at the time was so focused on the end of the Soviet Union, the dominance of the West, that it didn't see what was going to happen over the next 30 years.
03:58So here we are, fascinating summit, because it is China, it is Southeast Asia, ASEAN, and it is Western Asia.
04:08So it's this long stretch from the East China Sea through the Indian Ocean that is coming together, really together at this summit to say, here we are.
04:21We're getting interconnected. We're moving forward rapidly on technology.
04:26We're reinventing our energy systems, our transport systems, our communication systems, and we're doing it together. Very important.
04:34So when you say we're now in the age of a multipolar world, does that mean that the age of hegemony is over?
04:43Does it mean that we will no longer see kind of the superpowers that once were?
04:51So perhaps looking at the U.S. in the 20th century, the U.K. in the 19th century, is there a possibility, Prof Sachs,
05:00that if China continues to grow at the pace it is growing, could China become the next global hegemon?
05:07So the idea of a hegemon is that there's one country that stands out.
05:13This is pretty rare in history, by the way, because it's a big world, and it's rare that one country stands out.
05:21But there have been moments, that brief period when the Mongols actually conquered most of Eurasia, for example.
05:29China, in a way, was hegemonic in East Asia, maybe in much of Asia, from around 500 to around 1500.
05:40But what has been astounding in the last three centuries was the European dominance.
05:47First it was many empires.
05:49It started actually with the Spanish and the Portuguese, but then they were overtaken by the Dutch, the British, and the French.
05:58And then after 1815, it was the British, and the British really dominated.
06:04They dominated, obviously, Malaysia, Malaya, but the British dominated most of the world with France being also around,
06:17but never quite what Britain was, which was the global naval power, the unchallenged navy.
06:25And we could say that British hegemony lasted about a century from the end of the Napoleonic Wars, 1815, to the beginning of World War I.
06:37Then Europe went into this extraordinarily self-destructive period, two civil wars of Europe, one could say.
06:48The First World War, the Second World War.
06:51It also had the major wars of this region.
06:55But basically, Europe went into 30 years of near suicide, two world wars and a Great Depression in between.
07:06By the end of that period, Europe had exhausted itself in every way, militarily, industrially, financially, morally.
07:16So the European imperial system collapsed.
07:21Countries like Malaysia or Indonesia from the Dutch and so forth gained their independence.
07:27Indochina gained its independence, though, after long wars with France and then with the United States.
07:34And during that phase, essentially the United States became the near hegemon.
07:42It was always challenged by the Soviet Union.
07:45But in fact, the U.S. was militarily, industrially, and technologically the dominant power of the world from 1945 until 1991, let's say.
07:58Then came the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.
08:04That was a chance for peace and a kind of non-hegemonic world.
08:10But the United States read it differently and said, okay, now we really are indisputably in charge of the world.
08:17We are the global hegemon.
08:19And many people believe that all over the world.
08:24But I'll tell you the ones that really believed it were in Washington.
08:28They just said, we dominate everything.
08:31Now the point I want to make is the following.
08:34It was never quite true.
08:36It's a big world.
08:37The United States is a little over 4% of the world population.
08:41Could it really be in control of the world?
08:44Only in their great imagination.
08:47But with the rise of China, that put an end to that even delusion.
08:54And I think it was a delusion.
08:56Now what's happened with the Ukraine war and with the events of the last 10 years is to say, it's not only China.
09:03Russia is the largest country in the world by land area, 17 million square kilometers compared to roughly 10 million for China or the United States or Canada.
09:16And so Russia is very big, filled with resources, militarily powerful.
09:22They're a superpower, no question.
09:24And it's also India.
09:27India's got a larger population than China now.
09:30China's population has peaked.
09:32It's starting gradually to come down.
09:34It will continue to go down.
09:35India is still rising.
09:371.5 billion people now.
09:39And India's growing rapidly.
09:41So to answer your question, my view is, no, China's not going to be the next hegemon.
09:48There won't be a next hegemon.
09:51China will be a powerful country, but it will have a declining population.
09:56Its share of the world will probably peak at around 20% of world output measured in so-called international dollars.
10:05India will rise.
10:07And a place that nobody expects, but it's going to be there, is Africa.
10:12Because Africa's population right now is on par with India and China, 1.4 billion.
10:18But Africa's population is soaring.
10:21So it will be 2.5 billion people by mid-century.
10:24It could be nearly 4 billion people by the end of this century.
10:29And Africa's economic development will also surprise people.
10:33Because just like other countries have used technology to catch up rapidly, a lot of Africa's going to do the same thing.
10:42So we're going to see that the share of the world economy produced in Africa is going to rise.
10:48So, yes, the old Western world, which really is the North Atlantic world of Europe and the United States, powerful, but diminishing in relative terms.
11:01China, very dynamic and powerful, but it won't be a hegemon.
11:07India will rise quickly.
11:09Western Asia will play its role.
11:11Africa will have a much bigger role.
11:15We're going to be in a multipolar world.
11:17The question is, can we live peacefully in that world?
11:20Okay.
11:21That is a big question.
11:22And let's come back to that.
11:23But I'm curious if I may pull on the thread of the U.S.
11:27Yes.
11:28I mean, you talked about maybe it was a delusion in the U.S. to think that they were the global hegemon at that point in time.
11:35What do you see the role or the future of the U.S. in a multipolar world?
11:42Are they adapting well to the multipolarity or are they resisting it?
11:48Well, right now the U.S. is having, I don't know if it's a nervous breakdown or whether it is a cultural revolution, but it's in a very weird state of affairs.
12:02Okay.
12:03So if you ask, is the U.S. adapting well?
12:05No.
12:06Not at all.
12:08As we speak, the United States government, for example, is saying to our most famous university, Harvard University, you can't have foreign students.
12:19Well, it's like the Chinese Cultural Revolution of the mid-1960s.
12:24To attack one of your leading educational institutions that way and in this particular way to say no foreign students, this is madness.
12:36This is, if I could use a psychological term, profoundly neurotic.
12:42This is, and it is a reaction to the rest of the world.
12:47The United States is coming to grips with the reality it doesn't understand, which is it's not alone in this world.
12:56The United States talked to itself a lot.
12:59You know, if you look in the mirror and you say, who's the most beautiful of all?
13:03And the mirror is always answering, oh, you are.
13:05This is the Snow White case, is it?
13:07That was the U.S. approach for decades.
13:10Oh, you are so powerful.
13:12You are so wonderful.
13:14And suddenly it doesn't quite work that way.
13:17And so the reaction is, smash the mirror.
13:20We don't want foreign students.
13:22It's a kind of craziness.
13:24But this is actually what's happening right now.
13:26So the reaction is not good.
13:28It's not healthy.
13:30It may take a number of years to come back to some basic common sense.
13:35But the tariff wars and the deporting, arresting and deporting students and telling Harvard University, you can't have foreign students.
13:46This is a kind of culture war going on in the United States right now.
13:50And it has its roots in the end of the delusion of hegemony.
13:56Part of that delusion was the global leadership position that the U.S. took on in challenges like climate and global trade and conflict, even peacekeeping or even spreading democracy.
14:13All these principles the U.S. claims to espouse.
14:21What then happens to these pressing issues?
14:26Who then takes moral leadership, global leadership on these issues in a multipolar world?
14:32I think the key is to distinguish two concepts.
14:37One is multipolar and the other is multilateral.
14:41Can they coexist?
14:43Well, multipolar means many poles of power.
14:49And I would say the major powers in the world right now are the United States, China, India, Russia, and if Europe gets its act together, Europe.
15:02And Europe is a strange bird because it's actually 27 independent countries that say that they're a union, but how much of a union it is remains to be seen.
15:16But those are the major powers right now.
15:19And you can define the major powers that they're big economies.
15:22They're technologically dynamic.
15:24They're nuclear powers.
15:27They have their geopolitical role.
15:30They're represented in the U.N. Security Council, except for India, interestingly.
15:36But India is definitely a global superpower at this point.
15:41So those are the major powers.
15:43And then there are groups like ASEAN, 800 million people almost.
15:48Africa, African Union, 1.4 billion people, but much poorer.
15:53Latin America is also interesting.
15:56It doesn't have a political union the same way.
16:00Even it has something called CELAC, which is the community of Latin American and Caribbean countries, which actually just had a meeting in China, China CELAC.
16:10But CELAC is so weak institutionally, you can't really say it's ASEAN or you can't say it's EU or African Union and so on.
16:19So these are the major powers.
16:24And they have a kind of balance of power that is quite unstable.
16:29But balance of power in the sense that the U.S. cannot defeat China.
16:34China cannot defeat the U.S.
16:37They could blow up the whole world, that's for sure, but they can't defeat each other.
16:42Same between the U.S. and Russia.
16:44Everyone can beat their chests and say who's more powerful.
16:48Doesn't matter.
16:49They're nuclear superpowers that cannot defeat the other.
16:54This is the first point.
16:56That's multipolarity.
16:57They also happen to be substantial economies for various reasons, technology, land area, minerals, base, and so forth.
17:05They're all substantial.
17:07So, multilateral is a different thing.
17:12And that is can you get along in a civilized manner?
17:16Is there an international rule of law?
17:18Does the U.N. function?
17:20Will the U.N. Security Council operate to keep the peace?
17:24I would say at this point we have a lot more multipolarity than we have multilateralism.
17:31The U.N., which I love and work with and work for, is very fragile, very important, but not working very well, honestly.
17:43Too much of the veto power of the big five countries, too much disagreement, not enough diplomacy, too much grandstanding where the U.S. accuses Russia, this one does that, and so forth.
17:57And they attack each other rather than solving problems.
18:00And the U.N. doesn't have a tax base.
18:03It certainly doesn't have an army and so forth.
18:06So the global governance or the multilateralism is very weak.
18:10Sometimes the U.N. General Assembly makes a vote, overwhelming vote, say there should be a state of Palestine, something I completely agree with.
18:19And then the United States says, no, we don't want to do that.
18:23So international law remains very, very fragile right now, very weak.
18:29We could have multipolarity without multilateralism, but it will be very dangerous because multipolar world can have a balance of power or balance of fear.
18:41But that balance can turn into arms races.
18:45Transactional.
18:46Exactly.
18:47And very unstable.
18:48What we need is the U.N. actually functioning.
18:52We need the U.N. Charter.
18:53We need the International Court of Justice.
18:56We need the U.N. Security Council.
18:58And it doesn't quite work properly yet.
19:00Well, the U.N. turns 80 this year.
19:02And you have advised three U.N. Secretary Generals today.
19:07You serve as an SDG advocate.
19:10In the time where its credibility is under pressure with the wars in Gaza, in Sudan, in Ukraine,
19:17how do we make the U.N. fit for purpose in today's age, the global governance system?
19:24You laid out some of the things that are wrong with it, but is there hope for reform as the U.N. turns 80?
19:32By the way, whenever you rationally need to do something that is feasible, you have to say there's hope for reform.
19:40Because our rationality should say to us, oh, we need the U.N. to work, here's how it can be reformed, so let's do it.
19:48So that's where my hope always lies.
19:50But there is a lot of pessimism around whether the U.N. can function the way it was meant to function.
19:56The pessimism is also realistic, but we can't let pessimism determine our fate.
20:02There must be hope.
20:03We have to use problem-solving approach to say what needs to be done.
20:08For example, with the U.N., the Security Council needs some basic reforms.
20:15First, no country should have an indisputable veto.
20:21So we could go part way where you could say, yes, one of the permanent members has a veto, but it can be overridden by a supermajority.
20:33So let's say somebody makes a veto, one country, but then 11 of the 15 say, no, no, no, we disagree with that.
20:41You override the veto.
20:43This is a very straightforward, rational approach.
20:47We need to make that change.
20:49That's an example.
20:50We need, in my view, to have India in the U.N. Security Council, 1.5 billion people.
20:56Represented, yeah.
20:57It's the only country not in the Security Council that fits on every criterion.
21:04Are you kidding?
21:05How could it not be there?
21:06So that's another basic change that needs to be made.
21:09A third change I would say is rather straightforward but very hard, and it's the following.
21:16I've testified a number of times to the U.N. Security Council in the last couple of years.
21:23They're not good at their job, and by that I mean the following.
21:28They should be analyzing the crises as a group.
21:32They should have a kind of secretariat that says, here's a brief that explains the crisis.
21:39Now you, the Security Council, are assigned under the U.N. Charter to solve that problem.
21:45Not just to stand in front of the camera, not to grandstand, not to give a speech, but to solve the problem.
21:51They're not doing that properly right now.
21:54So I don't think they do their job properly.
21:58I like, by the way, when you need to select a new pope, as was just selected in Rome, the cardinals go into the Sistine Chapel, you lock the door, con clave, with the key.
22:12You lock the door, and you say you don't come out until you've solved the problem.
22:17Should we do that to the U.N. as well?
22:19The U.N. Security Council should have a key.
22:23You're going into that chamber.
22:25You can come out for your purposes to sleep and eat and so forth, but you must solve the problem, not just give a speech and think you've done your job.
22:37And they're not doing that properly right now.
22:40This is interesting to me because for someone with your experience, the decades that you've spent trying to fix global systems, advising governments, thinking about how to shape policy that will affect the world.
22:52What is your theory of change, Professor Sykes? When you think about all that you've learned about power and the people who claim to be able to do their jobs but are not very good at it, how do you see real change being affected and happening?
23:07So I do have a theory of what should be done.
23:11It's not so easy to implement, but I start with the idea that we should decide what we want to do.
23:18So you have to start with goals. Interestingly, the U.N. is not bad at that.
23:24The 17 Sustainable Development Goals are an example of that.
23:28Or the Paris Climate Agreement is an example of that.
23:31Or the agreement that we've reached about protecting biodiversity called the Kunming-Montreal Protocol or Framework is an example of that.
23:41Not bad at setting goals. That, to me, is the starting point.
23:45The second point is rationality. If you have a goal, rationally you should say, well, how could that ever be achieved?
23:53And usually goals are not self-fulfilling. They're not self-generating. They don't just happen.
24:01Or the magic of the marketplace doesn't just say, yes, that's our goal and we're going to get there.
24:06You have to say, we should do X, Y, and Z to get there. Government should do the following. Business should do the following.
24:14Civil society should do the following. You need a plan. Here the U.N. really fails. They don't make plans.
24:22They set goals, but they don't make plans. They leave the plans to the nation states.
24:29There are 193 member states in the U.N., and the nation states are supposed to set their goals.
24:36But it's a little bit of a fallacy because it's not true that a climate goal, for example, can be achieved by 193 separate plans.
24:48Climate's a global problem. If Malaysia puts up CO2 into the atmosphere, the United States puts up CO2 into the atmosphere, that affects everybody's climate.
24:59And if someone else does it, that affects America's climate or Malaysia's climate. So you need cooperation for this.
25:06And the idea that separate actions by separate countries will solve this is false.
25:12So my next point is start with the goals, figure out what you need to do, and then realize that we need governance,
25:21not only at the national level, but at multiple levels, at the global level, at the regional level like ASEAN, at the national level like Malaysia, at the local level or state level,
25:36like Selang or Kuala Lumpur, at the local level.
25:41So we're going to have what's sometimes called a federal governance, or not federal, but, well, federal is the word that's often used,
25:49means multiple levels, that there's not one level of government. We're not good at that because it was drilled into us by the Europeans over centuries,
26:01that the only real government is the nation. That's a European idea that comes from the European empires.
26:08It's a nonsense. Even the Europeans are finally figuring this out. That's why they have the European Union, as weak as it is.
26:15China was a united giant for two millennia, so they don't have exactly the same mindset as in the US world, or the European world.
26:27But this idea that the nation is the organizing principle of the world is just a mistake.
26:36So we need to strengthen the UN for global things, we need to strengthen ASEAN for regional things, and so on.
26:43And we need local governments also to function, that they're not just under the thumb of the national government,
26:49but they have their own tax base, and they can also do independent things.
26:54It's interesting. This, I think, is one of the great challenges of politics in the world,
27:01recognizing that, yes, there are multiple levels of government, and the nation state is one,
27:08but by no means the most important, or the sole one, or the organizing principle for the world.
27:16But it became, because of European history, the main organizing principle of power.
27:23But that's as much of a hindrance today as it is a solution.
27:27Professor Sachs, thank you so much for speaking with me today. I appreciate your time and you sharing your insights with me.
27:32Well, I'm always delighted, and thank you for your wonderful conversation.
27:36That's all we have for you on this episode of Consider This. I'm Melissa Idris, signing off for the evening.
27:41Thank you so much for watching. Good night.
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