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This episode of #WooSays examines US President Donald Trump’s newly released National Security Strategy. Professor Emeritus Datuk Woo Wing Thye and Melisa Idris unpack what this worldview signals, and its implications for Europe, for the global order, and for the rest of us. All this and more in this week’s #WooSays.
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00:00hi folks welcome back to another episode of who says this is where we get real about the u.s
00:16china everywhere and everything in between it's two superpowers but one global story
00:21now this week on who says we will be examining president donald trump's newly released national
00:28security strategy not just for its policies but for its worldviews now the document points to a
00:36rejection of traditional western the traditional western liberal project including multiculturalism
00:44multilateralism and the post-world war ii alliance system so it seems that an america first foreign
00:52policy strategy has finally arrived so is the united states retreating from the western project
00:59that it once led that's what i want to unpack with professor wu wingtai who will help us get get down
01:09get deep and dirty with what this really means for the global order and also for the rest of the world
01:16what does it mean if the west is no longer unified so prof that is a big question let's talk a little
01:23bit about this document first help us understand the national security strategy what makes this one
01:31that was newly released so interesting and maybe a departure from previous foreign policy documents
01:38well as you said it is a rejection of what has been the post-world war ii global order that the united states
01:49had designed and put in place when you talk about it is not a rejection of its existing alliance as much as
01:59it wants to remake it's the nature of its allies and lead a new western alliance
02:07new western alliance that is based i i find it quite incredible explicitly on on race
02:21oh that is certainly one part because the the shocking word in there was a warning to western europe
02:31that european civilization faces civilizational erasure in our words to be erased from the earth that's what
02:43he he is claiming unless they reform in the direction he is advising them and then we align with him
02:55that is the new trumpian architecture of the world that unfortunately is not likely to pan out the way that he wants it to be
03:08in fact it will be make the u.s weaker and at the same time make the world less safe hopefully
03:19this will not we will not need a global conflict to wake the u.s up to what it should really be doing in order to remain
03:32a key player in the world of the 21st century this is quite shocking that it does boil down to
03:41um race as you say so racial homogeneity right so um the idea that europe has become so multicultural multicultural
03:53because of um migration that donald trump is saying in this document that the the civilization for for
04:01centuries of of europe is at risk at jeopardy of being erased i am i'm so curious how do we interpret this
04:11um are we seeing um are we seeing a divergence of ideology between u.s and europe i think what we see
04:22is that the present group of people in power in the united states is so insecure about their place in history
04:35and the united states in the world that they feel the need to constantly assure themselves in the
04:42document that we are the great we are the greatest we are the strongest and we are the kindest if you
04:50look in that document every now and then that's a self-reference to themselves of being very generous to the
04:57rest of the world and then then it then it comes back later on and say how rich we are and then it comes
05:05back again and say that we are going continue to be the world's number one why is there such a constant
05:13need in the document to reassure the writer that he is indeed the greatest of all of the future to come
05:25this i think shows this is not the united states that i've known for the last 50 years that is why i'm
05:34optimistic that the days of trump are numbered i do see a reversal in the future but what is incredible
05:48is that what could stop trump right now is the supreme court given the many uh transgressions that
05:57donald trump has done like for example removing birthright citizenship firing uh people that are
06:08explicitly appointed by congress basically there is this view that the president is above the congress
06:19and the supreme court is siding with it this is a very unfortunate coincidence
06:26but the supreme court as we know don't always make the right decision like there's this famous uh case
06:33where in the 1860s no 1850s where there was a runaway slave and he ran to the north where slavery was
06:44not recognized and the supreme court's rule that the runaway slave was a property to be returned to the south
06:52so right the supreme court has now failed us as much as it failed the human race right when it ruled that
07:04the blacks were property that should be returned to the to the south help me understand prof how important
07:14national security strategy is from what i understand um this is very different from
07:20um president biden for instance had an emphasis on promoting western liberal democracy ensuring that those
07:29values around the world were upheld how important is this um new america first america-centric um separation
07:39from from the western liberal uh um approach how important is it is it just uh a one administration is
07:48it just for one administration or does it set the trajectory of u.s foreign policy for a significant
07:55in a significant way i uh there are similarities between the trump and biden's policy okay they are they
08:05were both extremely concerned about china becoming a threat to the united states the biden's strategy is
08:15we will work we will build an alliance that were to and together with our allies we will contain china
08:22whereas trump's first step is i will remake my allies and then we will form a coalition with them
08:33to uh fight china you could say that in the ukraine war right now trump's uh peace plan
08:44well the first peace plan the 28 points was presented was very was basically taken straight out from the
08:52russian demands russian demands why it is because part of the goal is get the europeans and the russians
09:03to be at peace so that the russians do not have to rely as much on china and give russia what it wants so that
09:15he is our friend and russia will now recognize that its southern borders need not be safe from china
09:25because of the understand uh relations between china and russia were so bad that which provided the
09:33opening for nixon to go to china and ratify the you the beginning of the u.s china alliance against russia
09:43it shapes the global history that's and uh you could see the when i talk about the there are several
09:52things it it tries to do in the document the first one the is to assert that the united states has a right to
10:03uh to have a guaranteed sphere of influence by being able to tell what the other countries in the americas can
10:17do the americas meaning from canada down to argentina and chile because the first part of the
10:28the uh when he comes to talking about regional strategies the first part he talks about is the western
10:35hemisphere yes the western hemisphere refers just to the americas that's geographically incorrect right
10:43well actually that was the old term oh i see that was the the western because if you look at from the point of
10:51europe the americas is to the west and since europe saw itself as the center of the world so what's to
11:00the west what's the western hemisphere so that is the old european terminology for the americas the new
11:09found the new found newly colonized lands that was okay so talk to me a little bit about that so that i
11:15understand the importance of this hemispheric dominance that was really emphasized in the
11:22document talk to me about how the us is seeking to if i may quote it restore american preeminence in the
11:29western hemisphere what does that mean what does that look like well one thing is we don't want chinese
11:36investments there okay so uh as you know mr lee kaching of hong kong owned many of the goods handling
11:47facilities in the panama canal uh-huh and that has the united states has expressed interest in buying it from
11:58mr lee the question is if there is a power of the the powerful uh country that wants to buy
12:11your shop if you don't sell your shop he could blockade your shop and the value of your shop is zero
12:18so you sell it's just like if the malaysian government approaches any company and say sell your company to me
12:27the company better sells otherwise you'll be audited by the sales the tax department audited by the health
12:33department and similarly since the investments is right next to the panama canal where there are us
12:40military bases of course mr lee kaching agreed to sell and the chinese say oh you should not have agreed
12:48so readily but basically mr lee has no choice but what is more relevant is that there are now many chinese
12:56investments in mexico producing the goods that china used to ship directly to the united states
13:05and this one has uh the the document says quite explicitly we have to uh we have to guard against
13:16investment but unfriendly powers in the americas and this is also a warning to brazil which is a big
13:26player in the setting up of the organization brics brics stands for brazil russia india china and south
13:35africa these are the biggest uh global south countries so brazil has gotten an uh it is a notice to the rest
13:47of america of america that we want you to take america's interest into account in the things you do
13:57and venezuela which has had a leftist regime for the last 20 years or so is singled out for attention
14:10because cuba right now is the only truly uh communist leftist country in the in the western hemisphere
14:21so the the obsession with uh venezuela has to do with the fact that it is preventing the united states
14:34from total control of its neighbors and of course the fact that there have been so many dope operations
14:44that are based in latin america and being shipped to the united states provides the opening for the for
14:50america to take down regimes that it identifies as knuckle states okay yeah i i like that the use of the
15:00phrase obsession with venezuela there has been a recent obsession with venezuela can so talk to me
15:07about this this document because i feel um i'm curious to understand the world view it so beyond its
15:15policies the world view that it seeks to emphasize you talked a little bit earlier about an insecure us
15:24which i i do think is maybe one of the world views it's seeking to re-establish its dominance it maybe
15:32feels it's fading in the in the global order how do you see the world view that is projected through
15:40this national security strategy well the first one is that we have the right to be imperialistic over our
15:49neighbors that is what we just talked about uh the western hemisphere exists to guard our in exist to
15:59support u.s interest the second part of the world view is that the united states wants to continue to be the
16:11biggest economy in the world if you look at the u.s economy right now is 30 trillion u.s dollars and china
16:25gdp in u.s dollars is roughly uh 19.5 trillion so the u.s is 30 china is 19.5 so the u.s is a lot larger
16:38but that is only that is largely because china is still a developing economy so the prices of services
16:48is very low like the price of having servants in china is a lot lower than having servants
16:56in the united states if you were to price the chinese gdp using u.s prices
17:03that means that china is uh the same size as the united states in fact larger the china will be 40 billion
17:15but the important thing to note is that in order for the united states to continue to be the largest
17:25economy economy in the world china would always need to be seven times poorer per person than the united
17:35states what that denies is the phenomena of catching up what we have learned from the japanese and korean
17:48growth experiences is that it is possible for countries to learn the latest technology that
17:57the u.s is using and hence reach the same standard of living as the united states okay and if china is
18:06able to do that china would be four times larger than the united states so in order to prevent china
18:14from becoming larger than the united states china to somehow be unable to catch up so there lies the
18:25strategy a strategy of somehow the united states is able to prevent china from catching up that is a
18:32very big assumption and a very dangerous assumption you mentioned a bit earlier that previous um national
18:39security strategies sought to contain china am i correct in understanding that this new document
18:47that was released doesn't actually frame china in that way there's a there's a shift in the way of
18:54not registering china as a top threat i think previous ones had said it was china it was russia that we
19:00need to be careful about that the u.s needs to be careful about it is it true that in this document
19:06there's a slight pivot away from seeing china as the number one enemy or in your case does it do you
19:12still see it as a continuation oh i see it as a continuation but in a much more alarmist manner oh wow and
19:23in a manner that whereby western civilization is being threatened so instead of let's coexist with the
19:35the chinese it somehow has this tone that if we attempt to be to do to have uh equality we will end up being swallowed by them
19:54you could see that in the section on europe it says that it first complains about the european economy
20:05have uh growing slowly as much slower in the last few years talks about uh european g
20:13share of global gdp went from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today and he blamed it on the europeans have
20:26over regulated their economies to death so he blamed the the the decline of european share
20:33to the europeans shooting themselves in the foot to regulation yeah regulation that that's that that is
20:40the uh but that is the mechanism those identified it completely denies that the phenomena of what i call
20:48catching up the other countries just gotten richer because they are they have now learned your technology
20:57and hence that is why the the their share has gone up your share has gone the european share has gone down
21:06not because the europeans have regulated themselves to death but that the chinese and the rest of the world
21:14have grown have grown like malaysia we certainly have gotten a lot richer through international trade and
21:21that is because our human capital has been greatly expanded just look at the quantity and quality of
21:29of malaysian universities certainly uh have improved so that is an unrealistic view of the world not seeing that
21:40the rise of the others has come about at your expense that is very unfortunate
21:50but the more important phrase after saying that the europeans have gotten weak because of their own actions
21:57he goes on to say this economic weakness is a much smaller problem than what an even bigger one
22:04the bigger one is that the european civilization would be erased oh yeah and 20 years from now some of our
22:11nato allies will not look anything like the people there today that is basically he say they are going to be
22:22swarmed by immigrants and they have surrendered their country basically that's the the the
22:33claim basically the the the decline of european civilization is because they have the adopted multiculturalism
22:45how so where do we go from here how first of all how do you think america's traditional allies in europe
22:54will respond to this i mean i i i hope i'm correct in saying that multiculturalism is has become embedded as a
23:03european value is something that's been happening for decades migration and um assimilation of
23:10multicultural societies in europe how do you think europe will respond european countries will respond
23:17to this this document how well what's your sense of where we go from here well the european society
23:24has a mainstream and a fringe okay okay okay definitely see the fringe getting stronger and much
23:31inspired this could embolden the the right wing exactly because when vice president went went to germany
23:39he spoke out in support of the alternative for germany a movement that unshamedly
23:49proclaimed itself to be nazi in origin and we know what the the essence of nazism is racial
23:58priority and the domination of the of the german race over the rest of the world this particular uh feature
24:09is not the mainstream view in europe and this is something that these countries will have to address
24:21it's true it's true when you have got very fast and big inward migration the adjustment process is a
24:30difficult one right and it's true that people are naturally uncomfortable so there is a a process
24:41of migration would naturally be much slower than before okay is the outcome right so in conclusion to the other
24:52countries of the world who are watching this new document be digested by um by foreign policy pundits
25:02everywhere how do you think the rest of the world will respond to trump's national security strategy
25:10the german foreign minister says united states remains our number one security partner okay but
25:20conversations on security does not involve our domestic social policies so everybody is
25:32being very polite largely because they do see the u.s is being unreasonable
25:39they are on one hand hoping that donald trump is a temporary phenomena and on the other hand they will try to become
25:47more independent more less dependent on u.s uh military support okay that is what the europeans uh are doing
25:58they are certainly increasing their military strength and donald trump
26:04strange enough would want them to increase their military strength and then join him
26:12in confronting china rather than confronting the soviet union what about middle powers how do we address
26:21this west hemispheric dominance that comes comes across clearly in the document
26:27this is a wish list that will not turn out the way that donald trump wants you don't think
26:35it's going to to actually because it is beyond the ability of the united states to stop china from rising
26:46uh-huh number one and it is beyond the ability of the united states to dictate to the europeans
26:56so the the u.s can express its opinion of what europe ought to do but the europeans have the
27:05can't just ignore it yeah and still go very well without it as long as they remain united among
27:14themselves right so as long as they remain united among themselves we may be seeing the birth of a new
27:22new european order one that is middle power based and not led by the u.s amazing basically he donald trump is
27:34making united states unpopular to the europeans there you go except to the right-wing parties
27:44in europe prof who that was quite a zinger for the u.s um a lot to digest there about the national
27:54security strategy i think that's it for this episode of who says thank you so much for staying
28:00with us getting real about the u.s about china and everywhere and everything in between i'm melissa
28:05adris and i will see you in the next episode for now bye-bye folks
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