00:00And joining me now is Charles Kupchin. He's a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University.
00:04He's also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
00:08His new foreign policy essay is adapted from his forthcoming book, Bringing Order to Anarchy.
00:14Professor, it's good to have you back on the program.
00:16You say the old world order is dying.
00:20How dangerous is the transition to whatever comes next?
00:26Well, we're living through a very dangerous moment because we know from history
00:29that when you get these inflection points, these shifts from one order to a next order,
00:38it's very destabilizing.
00:40And we are still now, I think, in the phase of dismantling the old liberal order that emerged after World
00:47War II.
00:48We haven't even begun a conversation about what comes next.
00:51And I think what's driving this historical inflection point, two big tectonic shifts.
00:58One is a redistribution of power on a global scale that we haven't seen in a couple of centuries.
01:04Power is shifting from the west to the east and from the north to the south.
01:08And the other big tectonic shift is the onset of the digital age and the erosion of the social contract
01:17that emerged in the industrial era.
01:19And I think that's one of the reasons that our electorates are very angry and why we're seeing this surge
01:25of a liberal populism in many democracies on both sides of the Atlantic.
01:31You call Donald Trump a symptom, not the cause.
01:36I'm wondering what broke before Trump.
01:40Well, in many respects, I think that Trump is the president today because he has tapped into a lot of
01:49anger in the electorate,
01:51this anti-establishment wave that is undermining governments in Britain, in France, in Germany, in Italy.
01:58And it stems from, at least here in the United States, primarily the socioeconomic uncertainty that is caused by automation
02:07and free trade.
02:09A lot of working Americans are finding it very difficult to make ends meet.
02:14And Trump, I think, is there because he has said to those people who feel left behind and forgotten,
02:20I hear you, but this is a problem the United States has been facing now for several decades.
02:27We have gone from Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden to Trump all over the place.
02:36And that's because the erosion of the middle class has also undermined the political center.
02:42And without a political center, the United States doesn't really know its own mind.
02:49And so this is in part about Trump because Trump is the demolition man.
02:53He's the guy who's taking the wrecking ball to the old order.
02:57But this is a problem that is bigger than Donald Trump.
03:01And beyond the United States, you know, you saw as well as we did this summit of BRICS countries over
03:08the weekend.
03:09What did the BRICS summit, what did it show us?
03:14Well, I think the BRICS summit, as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
03:20and other groupings that are coming together in some ways as a counterweight to Western institutions,
03:27I think, number one, it suggests that those countries that aren't part of the liberal order
03:34and don't want to join the liberal order are beginning to step out.
03:38They're beginning to push back.
03:40But in some respects, the big story here is not that the BRICS countries that Russia and China
03:47are suddenly running the world, they're not.
03:50They're sitting back and they're watching the liberal order erode from within.
03:55And I think what the most damaging parts of the Trump presidency
04:00are the degree to which Trump is threatening democracy at home.
04:05Trump is alienating our key allies, trade war now with Canada, deep sense of estrangement
04:14with our European allies.
04:15And so in some ways, the old order is collapsing from within more than it is collapsing from without.
04:24But it is these dual changes, the rise of other countries, this disaffection within liberal
04:30democracies that is making the world feel so off kilter and out of balance today.
04:36You bring me to my next question, and that's about the Canadians and the Europeans.
04:41And Canada and the EU are building a closer alliance, trying to build a closer alliance.
04:48Is that evidence that America's allies no longer trust Washington?
04:55Well, you know, I think the story that you see if you look at the rhetoric and the story
05:01you see if you look at the reality are different, in the sense that Trump is very hard on allies.
05:08He says, where are you when we need you in Iran?
05:11Why don't you spend more on defense?
05:13Ukraine is your problem, not our problem.
05:16But the bottom line is the Atlantic alliance is still standing.
05:20NATO is still standing.
05:22And there are still 80,000 American troops in Europe and tens of thousands of American
05:27troops in Korea and Japan, in other American allies.
05:32And so in some ways, I think what you're seeing here is an alliance network that is stronger
05:37than Trump.
05:39The only country that is really stepping out there and breaking rank with the United States
05:45is Canada.
05:46And I think in some respects, Canada is doing it because they don't live next door to Russia.
05:51And they're not very close to China.
05:54And therefore, they feel they have more geopolitical slack in pushing back against the United States
06:00and Trump's America first.
06:02But I do think that what the Europeans are doing is the right thing.
06:07Play the long game.
06:08Stand up to Trump when you have to.
06:10Work with Trump when you can.
06:12And my best guess is that a couple of years from now, when Trump leaves office, the Atlantic
06:18alliance will still be in good shape.
06:20And that's because the United States needs Europe.
06:23Europe needs the United States.
06:25That's not changing anytime soon.
06:28The Canada EU project, BRICS countries, are they different versions of the same idea?
06:37And that being countries refusing to choose between Washington and Beijing?
06:45Well, you know, I think there are a couple of different things going on here.
06:49The Canadian strategy of trying to align with other middle powers and to forge a kind of close
06:58relationship with the European Union or the balance against the United States, that's really
07:04an effort to preserve a liberal order that Canadians and Europeans continue to buy into, even though
07:12the Trump administration does not.
07:14What we see going on elsewhere, I think, is very much about an alternative course to the liberal order.
07:24And it's quite striking to me that despite the war in Ukraine, despite the war in Iran, despite
07:30this new era of rivalry between a Russia-China bloc and a U.S.-led bloc, most of the rest of
07:39the world is sitting on the sidelines.
07:42The Indians are in some ways the best, the gold standard here.
07:46They're practicing what they call multi-alignment.
07:50And that means one day you work with Russia and China.
07:54The next day you work with the European Union and the United States.
07:57Everybody is playing the field and they're doing it because they can.
08:02But that gives you some sense of what this 21st century is going to look like.
08:07Very fluid, very unpredictable, no fixed alliances in the same way that we've seen over the last
08:16several decades, really going back to World War II.
08:19You want regional powers to have greater influence in their neighborhoods.
08:26Isn't that simply a return to spheres of influence?
08:32Well, one of the unstoppable trends that's shaping our world today is the diffusion of power.
08:38And that's going to lead to the de-centering of the world.
08:42There will be no captain of the helm.
08:44It won't be an American century or a Chinese century.
08:47It will be no one's world.
08:49And as power diffuses outward from the core to the periphery,
08:53I think naturally more authority and more responsibility will devolve to regional actors.
09:00And in some ways, that's the natural state of affairs in international history.
09:05Regions and regional powers exercise more influence.
09:10And so we are, I think, heading back to a world in which there are spheres of influence.
09:16But I think we want to see not coercive spheres of influence, but benign spheres of influence
09:24that attract the smaller powers around the bigger powers.
09:28And then the other piece of this is that at the same time that you see this devolution of authority,
09:35the regionalization of the world, we also need to centralize global governance.
09:40And that's because the world today is more interdependent than it's ever been.
09:45And if we're not getting the United States to work, not just with its democratic allies,
09:51but with countries like China and Russia, we're going to be in big trouble.
09:57And in the book that's coming out, I propose a kind of concert system drawing on the 19th century concert
10:03of Europe
10:04as a way to create steering groups that provide that centralization,
10:10that top-down governance that we're going to need in a more regionalized world.
10:14Yeah, the topic that this concert, we wanted to talk about.
10:17Unfortunately, we're out of time, Professor, but we'd like for you to come back when the book comes out,
10:22and we will definitely talk about that.
10:24Professor Kupchan, it's always good to see you.
10:26We appreciate your insights.
10:29Thank you so much for having me on.
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