Do America's allies need a backup plan?

AWANI

This week on Woo Says, Melisa Idris speaks with Prof Emeritus Datuk Dr Woo Wing Thye to explore the best way forward for the West, focusing on global economic challenges and climate change.

Transcript

00:00This week on Wu says we take a closer look at what is best for the rest of the West to move forward.

00:06Now, this includes issues concerning the global economy as well as climate change.

00:11Melissa Idres discusses this with Professor Emeritus Datuk Dr. Wu Wingtai.

00:15When you think about the rest of the West, these countries that are traditionally allies of the United States,

00:25there's no kind of coalition, it's really a grouping of friends.

00:33The friends of my friends are your friends as well.

00:36So how do we think about this divergence and how they can move forward in picking up the ball that America has dropped

00:48in terms of global leadership on the issues that you talked about, on economic development, sustainable development.

00:55Is there a way to do this without alienating the US?

01:01Well, you certainly do not want to alienate the US because we should be doing this work

01:12on promoting sustainable economic development, protecting free trade.

01:18It's not being in the US.

01:20It's not being against the US.

01:22If the US chooses not to participate, we respect the wishes of the US.

01:30But we then should not just continue to wait until the US gets over its populist phase and come back and supply the leadership.

01:40We should try to keep things moving until the US returns to the family of nations.

01:49And this could be done quite quickly.

01:56For example, the rest of the West could begin with the G7 being the G6 now.

02:05It's very symbolic that in the official photograph of the last G7 meeting, Donald Trump was not there.

02:15Because why?

02:16He had to leave early so that you could bomb Iran the next day.

02:21But that, of course, is not the stance of the other G7 countries.

02:30Things could move largely because we already have the United Nations and we also have the G6 and EU.

02:42But to be more global because it should not just be the rich countries taking the lead.

02:51We should also, Asia, Malaysia as the chair of Asia, should offer to join this group of European powers to work together.

03:04to lead the world, to carry out the mission of the United Nations and the WTO.

03:13Catch the full conversation of this on all Awani International social media accounts at Power Affairs.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended