Kal Raustiala 0:01

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Kal Raustiala, director of the UCLA Burkle Centre for International Relations, and it's my pleasure to bring you to this event today and actually to the start of our entire year of events. And so I want to welcome back our regular attendees and welcome new people as well. Today's event, which will begin in just a few minutes is with Dr. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. I'll be bringing Richard on in a few minutes. He will talk about both his new book called "The World" and his recent article called "Present At the Disruption", which is about the impact of the Trump administration on American foreign policy. His book is a kind of wide ranging guide to what really an educated person ought to know about the world. I highly recommend it, and we'll talk about it. He'll talk about, as I said, his article as well. But before we jump into that, I just want to take a minute to highlight events that are coming up that may be of interest. Next week, on Tuesday, we're going to have Karen Richardson. Karen was former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. She's going to talk about the power of public diplomacy to rebuild American soft power. The week after that on September 29, also a Tuesday, the Lieutenant Governor of California, Eleni Kounalakis will talk about California's international engagement, and what California is doing on the global stage as it were. The week after that again on Tuesday, October 6, former National Security Council Member Fiona Hill will talk about Russia's role in the 2020 US elections. Some of you may recall Fiona Hill's testimony from earlier this year. So that's our upcoming lineup and there is more to come, of course after that, but those are the next few things. So for today, let me just briefly introduce Richard. So Richard Haass is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a longtime government official who's worked for several different presidents, as well as in and around Washington for a long time. He's run the Council on Foreign Relations for many years. As President, I have known him in that capacity. He's someone who's always a thoughtful, and well informed commentator on all issues of foreign policy. So it's really a pleasure to have you on today, Richard, let me hand the screen over to you to begin our discussion.

Richard Haass 2:30

Hopefully, I am now both audible and visible. If not, I apologise. Anyhow, welcome. It's great to be doing something with UCLA; I should confess, I nearly went to UCLA as a graduate student. I met Malcolm Kerr, who was one of the great writers and thinkers about American foreign policy toward the Middle East, while I was still an undergrad at Oberlin and he offered for me to come out and be his teaching assistant at UCLA. I thought hard about it but then I got detoured because I got the opportunity to study at Oxford, which turned out well, so no regrets. But I do have more than a few regrets about having missed the chance to be out there for a few years and work closely with Professor Kerr.

Richard Haass 3:18

Let me say a few things because I don't want to go on forever, because it's a big set of topics. About the world, this is a really interesting moment in history. And let me talk about three things. And this will in some ways, dovetail my book by the title of "The World," and then the "Present At the Disruption" article in our magazine, Foreign Affairs. Here we are roughly three quarters of a century since the end of World War Two, roughly three decades since the end of the Cold War, so we've had a run of 75 years one way, and we've had a run of 30 years, more recently, again, since the Cold War ended. And what we've seen, particularly in the last three decades, is despite what a lot of people predicted, a lot of optimistic predictions, we've seen not the end of history, but we've seen something much closer to the return of history. And we're seeing a revival in many ways of geopolitics, including but not limited to great power rivalry and competition most pronounced between the United States and Russia, and the United States and China. Also, though, obviously, between China and India, and China and Japan. This is the basic stuff of history. And the challenge now as it's always been is can the major powers structure their competition and regulate their competition in such a way that it doesn't spill over and escalate into conflict, which is dangerous at any level, but particularly dangerous in an era of nuclear weapons - that's one challenge. The other is, can they structure their competition and rivalry, not only so it avoids conflict, but also so it allows limited forms of co-operation that are in their mutual interests, whether it's economic trade investment, or, for example, dealing with a certain regional or global challenge. In the case of the US and China, for example, there would be a mutual interest in limiting the potential of North Korea to lead to some type of regional conflict. In the case of the United States and China, there's also interest in say, dealing with climate change, or improving global health machinery. So that's one way to think about this era of history that is, given this revival of great power competition and more broadly, of geopolitics. In every geography in many ways, can we again, manage it so it doesn't escalate? That's one set of challenges that are very familiar. The second set of challenges, is new to this era of history and that is essentially the rise of a set of global issues. All manifestations are facets of globalization that have the ability to change our lives fundamentally; here, I'm talking about such things as climate change, infectious disease, proliferation, terrorism, the challenges to an open global economic order, and so forth. Are the regulation functioning of cyberspace? Can we figure out ways of coming together? Because I say that no country, even the United States or China, alone, can manage this on its own? Can we find ways of multilateral cooperation to deal with the negative sides of these global challenges. And right now, I simply say that in virtually every instance, the challenge is outpacing the collective response. And in some cases, actually, the gap between the challenge and the collective response is not just significant, but it's growing. I would argue this is the case in climate, I would argue this is the case in cyberspace, and so forth. And so again, these two things, I put out, great power rivalry and relations and the need to come together to deal with global responses. Those to me are the two great geopolitical challenges of this moment. What makes it also tricky are a third set of developments, which is that the United States, which for 75 years has been both the principal architect and the principal general contractor of international relations or international order, it has been central to many things that have gone on in the world, the building of institutions, dealing with challenges to order, the United States is increasingly having second thoughts about its willingness to continue playing this role. And this is where I get into my article, "Present At the Disruption" that Dean Acheson, President Harry Truman's second Secretary of State, wrote a brilliant memoir called "Present After Creation." This was essentially about giving birth to the post World War Two world -- the alliances, the basic institutions, the policies that essentially set the stage for the management of the Cold War. Four decades later, it ended on terms very much in our interest. Well, the question now that we have with the Trump administration, I would argue, rather than present at the creation 2.0. We have something more present that the disruption that President Trump came into office, and I know this from my own conversations with him, believing that his inheritance was more costly than it was beneficial. that a lot of the alliances, a lot of the trading arrangements, a lot of the institutions that he inherited, were costing us more than by benefiting us we're doing more harm than good. We're not sufficiently supportive of American interest. And he is set out to disrupt many of these institutions. He's withdrawn from many treaties, many multilateral institutions which raises questions about a lot of his inheritance. He has disrupted. But I would argue in many ways akin to healthcare, he has disrupted against what he inherited without putting something clear, much less better, in its place. So again, what we have is this third dimension of the current period. Again, geopolitical revival, the emergence of a whole set of global issues that so far is outpacing the global response. And thirdly, in the United States that has questioned, and in many ways begun to walk away from the principle threads of its foreign policy, that have informed its foreign policy for the last three quarters of a century, has not put anything workable in its place. So then the question is, what will be the impact of this pulling back on great power relations on geopolitics? More broadly, what will be the implications of this American pulling back on the ability of the world to contend with global problems? What will be the implications for the United States? One of the lessons I would argue of COVID-19, one of the lessons of 9/11, which we really recently marked the 19th anniversary, the fires that are in your backyard, is that what happens in the world matters, that the United States cannot run from the impact of globalisation or the world, the oceans, or anything but boats. And there's no consensus in the United States about what our role in the world is going to be or what our goals are to be, or what the means ought to be, or what the mix of policies ought to be. So you have, again, a time of great intellectual confusion, an absence of intellectual and political consensus in the United States, or for that matter, in the world. So all of which is to say this is a delicate moment -- it's a potentially dangerous moment. One way to think of where we are in history is that this has been a remarkable run of 75 years, there's been unprecedented peace, the absence for the most part of great power, war, remarkable prosperity, if you look at standards of living around the world, remarkable gains, tremendous gains in health, the average person in this country probably lives an average of a decade or more than he or she would have lived 75 years ago. Around the world, it's often two or three decades longer lifespans. Far more people in the world now are living in partially or fully democratic societies. And the question I would put out to you is that are these last 75 years something of an aberration from history? And are we more likely to revert what existed in the previous few hundred years? Or are the uncertainties we're going through now just temporary and that the United States will in some ways go back to the kind of role that's played for most of the last three quarters of a century? And if it does, will it be able to help pull the world together to deal with the geopolitical challenges and deal with the global challenges? All of which is to say that it's a really interesting, and consequential moment in history. I hope this encourages you, some of you to think about focusing on this, not just academically, but beyond UCLA, for careers. And even for those for whom it doesn't, if you plan to become doctors, or lawyers, or computer scientists or what have you. I hope as citizens, because you're going to have to do things like vote, and figure out where you stand on a lot of these issues of consequence to you. I hope you are tempted and ultimately drawn into devoting more of your time at UCLA and beyond to getting and staying up to speed on these issues, which will fundamentally affect your life personally and professionally. Why don't I stop there? And Kal, anything is fair game.

Kal Raustiala 13:45

Okay, terrific. Thank you, Richard. And before I jump into questions, and again, for those of you watching and listening, I'm gonna pose a few questions, and Richard and I will have what's sort of a traditional Council on Foreign Relations chat. And then we're going to open up to questions from all of you. And I urge you to post your questions to the Q&A feature, and I'll choose those and then read them out for everyone. So before we do that, let me just plug Richards book for a second, which he very humbly did not plug, "The World: A Brief Introduction," which really gives you a guide to a lot of the issues he just spoke about in a very, I think, digestible form. It's really broken out historically, thematically and regionally. But so to start with a book, Richard and connected to your article, so you wrote this article, which is a pretty damning indictment of the Trump administration's foreign policy, especially coming from you as someone who's served least, as far as I know, two republican presidents. And then you've written this book, which is a guide to the world. And one of the reasons you wrote the book, at least according to your preface was that you've been struck by how little Americans know about the world and that they really ought to know more, which I, of course, completely agree with. And so I'm wondering about the connection between the two. And is it the case, I guess that a nation that lacks knowledge about the world, and what's happening in the world is maybe more easily convinced that alliances are for suckers that we should wars are always, you know, a terrible mistake. foreign aid is a terrible mistake, we should trust Putin, we should trust Kim Jong Un, etc,. So in other words, is there a connection between the phenomenon of Trump and his foreign policy and the problems that led you to write this book?

Richard Haass 15:39

Firstly, I hope this is on the record, because it's the first time the word humble and Richard Haass have been mentioned in the same sentence. So I want to say thank you for that. I hope my wife will watch this at some point because she'll be in disbelief. It's a really good question. And And short answer is yes; there is a reason I wrote this book, "The World: A Brief Introduction," is that you can graduate, I expect from UCLA, I'm not familiar with the details of your curriculum, but I expect there's dozens, if not hundreds, of good courses offered on your campus about global history, foreign policy, this or that region of the world, what have you. But I also bet that very few of them, if any, are actually required. And that way, you have a distribution two courses in this area, three in that, depending upon a student's choice, and how he or she navigates it. Students can leave the campus with a degree, but without a foundational understanding of why the world matters, how it matters, how it works, what's the relationship between the world and themselves in their country? What's the relationship between their country and the world? And originally, what led me to write the book was a computer science major at Stanford who fell into this category. And again, it's totally the norm around the country, very few courses in very, very few schools now have core curricula. Most High schools don't offer these courses. You can watch the nightly news on the network's; and most nights, there'll be nothing serious about the world. You can go on the internet, and you can find lots of stuff about the world. The problem is you can also find lots of stuff about the world although a good chunk of it is inaccurate. But there's no post-it note saying "read this, or ignore that." So I'm old fashioned. I, you know, like this guy named Thomas Jefferson, believe there's a strong case to be made for an Informed Electorate. So when people vote, they have certain issues in mind. After people are elected, they can be held to account as people can ask questions. Also in terms of investment decisions, business decisions, travel decisions, I think all this matters. But coming to your question, I also think that there's a bias towards isolationism. About if you have a citizenry that does not understand the connection of the world, its implications for their welfare. But look at the last 72 days, again, I've worked for three republican presidents, one democratic president, one Democratic Senator, I run a nonpartisan institution. And yet, both through the Woodward book, we've heard what the President had to say about COVID-19. And then, when in the conversations of the last 24, or 48 hours, what he said about climate change, and about his prediction that things are going to cool. I see zero evidence whatsoever that things are going to cool. And I see zero evidence to be confident about that. COVID-19 is somehow waning, as many people are suggesting, but if people as citizens hear these things, what is to give them the ability to judge whether these are likely to be true or not? Or if you work in a factory, and there's a question of terrorists? How are you to know whether they are in your interest or not, or limits on immigration, we could just go through the list, we could go through the entire agenda. So I do think there and I do think the lack of history is dangerous, because you're much more likely to be reckless. It's a strong word, I admit it. But to be or not to be careful with an inheritance if you don't understand its value. So this is a president and an administration that didn't value a lot of what it received, essentially looked at the last 70-75 years of history, and focused on the mistakes of American foreign policy rather than the many benefits and as a result, they have been in my view, way, way, way too ready to discard a lot have what they inherited, without understanding its value without understanding they have nothing good to put in. It's in its place. So yes, I worry that a lack of background will deny people or undermine their ability to fulfil responsible citizenship. And also whether it's policymakers or citizens, people are much more likely, I believe, to make bad decisions if they don't understand the stakes and the lessons of history.

Kal Raustiala 20:32

Terrific. I agree completely with that. But let me just play devil's advocate for a second. And, you know, there's a long history of questioning the ability of what passes for foreign policy expertise, particularly in Washington, to yield good outcomes. So thinking back to when I was a fellow at Brookings many years ago reading David Halberstam book, "The Best and The Brightest" for the first time and being struck by what a powerful book that was. And what a damning indictment of people who thought they knew the world and we're experts, and one could fast forward to the Iraq war and other recent foreign policy disasters and say, look, a lot of the same problems are there. So is knowledge really the problem? In other words, is it really that we need more knowledge? Is it something else? What is it?

Richard Haass 21:21

Well, look, one can come up with a pretty good list of foreign policy errors, mistakes, blunders that were extraordinarily costly in terms of lives and money. The three biggest I would name in the last 75 years would be the decision to try to reunify the entire Korean Peninsula by force. We were right to resist the North Korean invasion but were wrong to try to reunify the peninsula, second, Vietnam and third, Iraq. What they have in common was that the three were what I dub wars of choice. And all were badly, I believe, misguided. So look too far, and all were supported by the foreign policy establishment. So there's no guarantees here. That said, if I look at the larger canvas of American foreign policy over the last 75 years, it has been the most successful era of great power foreign policy I've ever seen. I'm a historian, and I've looked at, you know, we manage the Cold War kept cold, it didn't spill over into nuclear warfare, it ended peacefully, after four decades, on terms remarkably advantageous to us -- a unified Germany and NATO. During the Cold War, early on, the Alliance system, the Marshall Plan were remarkably successful. We built international institutions to promote development to promote trade and investment. Look at the economic success and the overall economic success in the world. Again, as I said, a lot better lives, longer lifespans, more people living in freedom. Perfect? No, but good? Yes. And I can't think of another historical period in the modern era since the mid 17th century that is comparable. So I go, not bad to say the segue. So yeah. Is information a guarantee of success in any specific decision? Of course not. Knowledge is not the same as judgement. Smart people know, people who know a lot and have terrible judgement, people who don't know a lot and have pretty good judgement and so. But I do think that foundational knowledge and understanding, again, about why the world matters, may not answer the question of specific policies, but it would say to you, okay, climate change is real. Look at it and say, therefore, denial is not a serious policy. Or the United States is in fact vulnerable to infectious disease. My last book in the world, I predicted it, other people said there are pandemics coming. So then we could have made preparations. Terrorism, we know that it's a real threat. We don't want nuclear weapons to be used this way. There's tools we know that can reduce the possibility or likelihood of them being useful. I do think there is useful knowledge, there is relevant knowledge that we ignore to our peril. So again, it's not like a cookbook where there's recipes and you go two tablespoons of this and three cups of that and we'll have peace and prosperity. I get that. And there's always the question of how you apply general principles to specific situations but the alternative of flying blind to simply deny things or to ignore actions, what to say well, alliances are just places that cost us and are taking us for a ride really, I actually think alliances are the great structural advantage of American foreign policy. We wake up every morning, and we have partners who want to work with us. And if we break these bonds, what do we think will happen? Either they're powerful labels or take over what these countries will do things like start developing nuclear weapons on their own, do we really want that? So again, I'm not claiming that expertise gives you good judgement. But clearly ignorance is, I think, a recipe for disaster. And I do think whatever mistakes we've made the establishment and others over the last seven and a half decades, it's a historical record that is second to none, and what it has both accomplished and what it has avoided.

Kal Raustiala 25:51

Great. So let me ask one final question, and then I will open it up to the questions coming in from the audience, and we have quite a few and I encourage more. So you talk in both the book and the article and a bit today, then, as many foreign policy experts do about the post war international order or post war liberal order, how successful it was, how important it is to this country, but also to the world. And so I'm curious, about Trump or no Trump, come January, is that post war order, which is now 75 years old, sustainable over the next couple of decades? And if not, what kind of scenarios Do you foresee?

Richard Haass 26:35

It's not sustainable or even if it were, well, it wouldn't be enough. And by that, I mean, it's not sustainable in part because the institutions and the relationships that have informed this order are no longer adequate. Power balances has shifted, things like China's rise have to be dealt with, but more importantly, institutions that were created after World War Two were were created to contend with that world -- the world of the 40s and 50s. On the world of the second and third decade of the 21st century, is a different agenda -- things like climate change, things like cyberspace, things like proliferation. So the answer and it has real consequences for the next administration, even a Biden administration. The emphasis can't simply be one of "restoration" of the Paris Climate Agreement getting back into it is not even close to coming up with an answer or resolution for climate change. The 2015 Iran nuclear agreement is inadequate as a basis for dealing with Iran for much longer. The work getting back into the World Health Organisation is not an answer, if the World Health Organisation is a flawed or inadequate mechanism. So what we really need to do is think creatively about what will we require to create or maintain order in the 21st century, given that, again, we've got a traditional geopolitical agenda, and we've got this whole new fangled agenda. And again, it's a great area of where intellectual work is required. Since this is an academic setting, let me add one, particularly rich additional complication. The principal rule or source of water for the last three and a half centuries has been the notion of sovereignty, borders cannot erase or go over borders using military force. Sovereign countries have to respect other sovereign countries to not meddle in their internal workings. And though that's been violated many times and wars, as a rule, it served the world well. And we still need it. And indeed, without it, we'd see more Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Russian invasions of Ukraine, what happened? We don't want to live in a world where borders are not respected. But it's a big but we're living at a time where that's necessary, but not sufficient. Does Brazil have the right to destroy the rain forest, if it's within its borders, if that exacerbates climate change for us all? We decided after 9/11 that Afghanistan didn't have the right to harbour the Taliban, didn't have the right to harbour al Qaeda within its borders, if they were going to commit terrorist actions against us. Should Russia have the right within its borders to allow hackers who interfere in the American electoral process? We can go around virtually every international issue. What about country's responsibilities to deal with outbreaks of disease? So what we've got to figure out in the 21st century, is how do we maintain respect for sovereignty? We don't want to have wars become commonplace, but at the same time, how do we build on the idea that with sovereignty comes obligations, to not to allow certain activities to take place within your own borders, that could have true adverse consequences for others, or that would result say, in a genocide. And the world hasn't figured this out. The world doesn't agree to it in many cases, or if it agrees with it, in principle, it can't figure out how to enact it, how to implement it in practice. And that's just an example I think of the kinds of challenges that we're dealing with.

Kal Raustiala 30:40

I agree with that completely. So let's go to the questions that have come in. I'm going to start with this question from someone named Robert O'Brien — I'm going to guess this is not the National Security Advisor. I'm going to go ahead and ask it as our first one. He asks, in what ways did the US and USSR constructively cooperate in the 20th century as competing great powers? And how can we take those lessons from the 20th century great power conduct into a new dynamic between the US and China?

Richard Haass 31:13

It wasn't positive cooperation in the sense that the two of them, for the most part did not do things together to accomplish a positive good, it was more negative cooperation. And the two of them agree collectively not to do certain kinds of things. So they agreed to arms control agreements, which kept certain categories of weaponry and provide for certain mechanisms for inspection and verification. There were certain unwritten rules of the road, that they wouldn't directly attacked, not just one another, but close allies of the other, and so forth. They're trying basically, they would be circumspect in their behaviour. So they wouldn't like fuses that could ultimately bring the two of them into direct conflict and things like that. So they were, and I think there were certain understandings about the limits to what they would do inside the territory of one another, and so forth, because again, they needed to maintain certain kinds of working relations. And I think some of that is still relevant for the United States and Russia. One of the first decisions by whoever's elected this November is going to have to decide what to do about expiring nuclear arms control agreements — that's going to come up in February of the new year. And for the United States and China, I've been a consistent advocate for more of a US-Chinese strategic dialogue that would essentially try to come up with some rules of the road for conducting US-Chinese relations, again, both to limit competition, and so it doesn't go beyond a certain point. And second of all, and more positively, that it would allow for areas of limited collaboration. So I think the United States and China actually have more of an upside than United States and the Soviet Union ever had; in part because the Soviet Union was much more isolated from the rest of the world and China is much more integrated. China has much more of a real vital economy. And so I think there are potential upsides for the United States and China, and I would love to see those come about, but they'll only have the possibility of coming about if the United States and China again are able to regulate their competition there. I think there are some useful lessons from the United States and the former Soviet Union.

Kal Raustiala 33:51

So just to riff on that for a second, are you alarmed by the trajectory of US-China relations right now? So I'm thinking of, you know, we have a number of different disputes, legal, political, economic, technological, Chinese students who used to flow into universities like mine are no longer doing that. So the person to person ties are weakening, the aggression that China's shown in various ways is increased, and Trump is more bellicose -- so it feels like a dangerous time, is that your take?

Richard Haass 34:25

It is a dangerous time. And just to take a step back, this is the most important relationship of the era if the US-Soviet relationship was the most important relationship of the second half of the 20th century. If the British French German relationships were the critical relationships for the first half of the 20th century, US-China relationship is critical for this era. If this relationship had stood out in a bad way, it's not only dangerous and a distraction and costly, but again, it will preclude the kind of necessary cooperation to deal with these global challenges that we've been talking about. So I think the stakes are enormous. I think you're exactly right, things have deteriorated significantly and quickly. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to think of a relationship that has deteriorated as quickly. And by the way, this won't change. Fundamentally with the election, a lot of the criticisms of China are shared by people who would support and go to work for, I would expect, Vice President Biden were he to be elected this this fall, so no one should dismiss this as simply Donald Trump or simply election, your politics, it's much more profound than that. I think the Chinese to some extent, have brought a lot of it on themselves by they're much more assertive or aggressive behaviour. What they've done in Hong Kong, what they're doing with India, what they've done in the South China Sea, what they've done in the realm of trade. And I think, you know, we have done, we have, to some extent added to the mix, but what we've done in public, and so forth. But I worry again, about a lack of a serious conversation. What I would hope the new administration would do -- I'd focus on a few things. One is, ultimately reestablish a serious private dialogue with China. Second of all, repair our alliance relationships, we'd be far more influential in trying to shape Chinese behaviour if the United States did it in tandem with our European allies, with Japan, South Korea, India, and others. There's also certain things we've got to do for ourselves. We can't keep China down. For the most part, China's going to determine its own future. It's got a lot of challenges, but we can compete. And it's not China's fault that we've reacted as badly to COVID-19 as we have. It's not China's fault that our infrastructures in the shape it is our politics are as divided as they are. That K-12 education in many parts of the United States is as poor as it is. China is not responsible for a broken immigration system. China is not responsible for a divisive politics. So we have got to do a lot if we want to succeed with China, I would say the two most important things to begin with are repairing the homefront. I once wrote a book called foreign policy begins at home, I continue to believe that's true. And second of all, repairing our alliances, then we're a stronger United States, we're stronger because we bonded or banded together with other like minded countries, then we can present China with some pretty clear choices. If you are to act this way, tt will be the positive consequences. If you are to act this way here would be the negative consequences. And I think we need to do that.

Kal Raustiala 37:47

One thing and the people don't always appreciate is China has effectively one ally, maybe, we have dozens, and it's a huge advantage that we're squandering. So the next question, somewhat related, though, doesn't mention China, specifically, the Trump administration's retreat from multilateral engagement comes as a lot of business leaders are increasingly entangled in global questions. They point to Disney, the recent issue around Milan, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube convention, the NBA, etc. What values should guide leaders of these companies in this context? This is an interesting example of what you were talking about a moment ago, how different, no one would have asked this question 40 years ago about companies used to be the Soviet Union.

Richard Haass 38:36

Right, because many companies have far more touch points with China than they ever had with the Soviet Union. Also, companies now are far more important actors in many ways on the international stage. You know, if you look at the United Nations, you have what 190-something countries with seats in the General Assembly. I would say Microsoft and Apple and Google are more important than that all but a handful of them. And one of the things we need to think about and what goes by the phrase "global governance" is how we better integrate the private sector, or even NGOs and the Gates Foundation, how there's no way you could have a serious meeting dealing with global health without the Gates Foundation at the table. So we've got to redesign some of the the functioning of international arrangements to take into account the fact that nation states, as important as they are, are hardly the only players on the chessboard, in some cases, they're not the most significant,. I think, with China I don't think we're heading for a complete divorce, what I tell companies is I don't much like the phrase "decoupling" -- that's too black and white, it's too extreme, it's not possible, it's not desirable, but we're going to have to discriminate. And there's going to be forms of technology interaction and they're not going to be permitted for reasons of security, privacy, competitive reasons. And so we're going to have to figure out how to design and then implement not a divorce, but something of a separation. It's almost the language is a little bit like marriages. In this case, we've had something of a marriage. I don't think the answerr is that it's not sustainable anymore. Even in our interest in certain ways, we don't want to go to divorce, for economic and other reasons. So what we need to figure out is, where do we say relationship, for example, no one should be against normal agricultural trade, a lot of non technology-laden manufacturing, and so forth, normal investing, but there might be certain areas of technology, which we say this is too sensitive to share, or we don't want to be dependent, we want to maintain privacy, we want to be more self sufficient. I think one of the lessons of COVID-19 is we don't want to be as dependent as we've been on foreign sources of supply, we want a bit of supply chain redundancy, we want greater resilience that could come through stockpiling domestic manufacturing, what have you. So I think, in the aftermath of both COVID-19, as well as the deterioration in US-China ties, I think we're in the early stages of the process of coming up with new ground rules, not limited to US-Chinese economic relations, but it's a big part of it. My own hunch is a lot will continue to happen. What I think there'll be the area, what will be the greatest restraint will be with areas of select technologies. I think also you asked about companies, you know, and I think in other areas, companies are going to have to make decisions about trade offs, and how anxious they are to have access to the Chinese market, but in some cases, they're gonna have to pay a price. And they're gonna have to decide if that is something they're prepared to live with? And whether it's a constraints on freedom of expression, or what have you. And I think it'll be a very interesting set of decisions for a lot of companies, because they have multiple stakeholders. And just like Google had issues with some of his workers who didn't want their technologies being used by the US government in certain ways. Well, what about shareholders or workers who say we don't want this or that company producing intellectual property to self censor? So I think for a lot of these companies, there's going to be some very difficult decisions to make, and navigating competing constituencies because we're now in a world where shareholders are but one constituency, they're not the needless to say, they're not the only, for some, they may not be even necessarily the primary one. And this is going to be a much more, I think being a CEO is going to get tougher, not easier.

Kal Raustiala 42:45

I agree, and I think one of the interesting things to add to that is, in some of these cases, like let's say the NBA or Hollywood, I recently wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs about Hollywood and their foreign policy problem. There are dimensions that go beyond the companies that actually reflect American soft power. And you know, the NBA is a quintessentially American institution. And yet, it's totally caught between these two things. It's huge in China, it ran into a lot of difficulties, and it's attacked sort of either way. So it's not just the company or the league. In that case, it actually has implications for how we are seen by the world. So that's another dimension we can only begin to kind of think about. So. So next question, we've interestingly, had a pretty long conversation about foreign affairs without really talking about the Middle East, which is striking. So this question is about the Middle East. So we're calling your services special adviser to the President on the Middle East, would you comment on prospects for the two state solution, given recent developments in Israel, the UAE Israel agreement, Jared Kushner's peace plan, etc.? This is a chestnut, it never goes away.

Richard Haass 43:53

It never goes away. Look, I welcome what was announced today. The normalisation in relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, which make them the third and fourth Arab states, to normalise with Israel. I think that's a really welcome development. There's no direct impact on the Palestinian issue. And I still think that it's in not just the Palestinians interest, but I think it's also in Israel's interest to resolve the Palestinian issue. If Israel wants to remain a democratic Jewish state and not have to choose between its democraticness and its Jewishness, then it needs a Palestinian state, living alongside. Obviously, the details are to be determined and so forth, consistent with Israeli security and the rest. And the only potential linkage I see here is that if the Palestinians internalise the message that the world is not going to deliver a stay to them, whether it's through the UN, the Arab League, or anything else. The Arab countries are getting tired of this issue. They want to normalise with Israel for either economic reasons, or strategic reasons, to better push back against Iran. And that the Palestinians realise that the only path to a Palestinian state is a direct path, which is through direct negotiations with Israel. Now, it's easier said than done, given the divisions within the Palestinian leadership, the politics of Israel, but at the moment, it's not happening at all. And I would say, the trend and time are not the friend of the Palestinians. However imperfect, the options are today, they're more imperfect than they were 5,10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. So I'm hoping the Palestinians take on board that message, but in the meantime, the two state solution, the chances for it are remote, and they're not improving in the sense that a given settlement activity, given attitudes, and so forth, because the urgency of it to some extent is going out. If Israel can normalise with our countries without dealing with the Palestinian issue, then it removes one of the incentives for Israel to to deal with the Palestinian issue, though again, I think, Israelis would be wise to think of it not as a favour they do to Palestinians, it's a favour they do to them themselves. But that issue is still there. It's not going to move ahead on the basis of Donald Trump and Jared Kushner's peace plan, that's a non starter. The only best thing about it seems to me the UAE decision is not only the normalisation with Israel, but temporarily at least to put annexation off the table. The other things about the Middle East, though, is you still have three entirely failed states in Yemen, in Syria, in Libya, and your potential failed states like Lebanon, and you have an Iran that is closer to putting together the prerequisites of a nuclear weapon. It's closer today than it was three and a half years ago. So the Middle East is, was, is and still remains and might well remain for some time the most turbulent part of the of the world. It's only about 5% give or take of the world's population, but it's a lot more than 5% of the world's problems. And it's absorbed a lot more than 5% of the world's attention and American foreign policy, resources. So again, I think today is a good development, but no one should confuse the development with some of the larger challenges still facing the region.

Kal Raustiala 47:37

Just on that last point, it's one I've often been struck by how much kind of mindshare of any given president in the last 30 years, 40 years, I don't know how long, is consumed by the Middle East, and as you say, 5% of the world's population, and you know, at one point maybe really significant for oil reasons that's decreasingly true. Obviously, we have strong interest there with regard to Israel and other actors, but is it high time that we stopped paying so much attention to the Middle East?

Richard Haass 48:06

Yeah, the answer is not to wash our hands of it or ignore it. But I think it's not to allow it to absorb so many of our foreign policy resources, so much of our bandwidth. If you would told me 30 years ago when the Cold War was ending, say the wall came down, on all days, it was 11/9/89, if you would have told me that over the next three decades, the United States would have fought as many wars in the greater Middle East and so much of our foreign policy would have been absorbed, I would have thought you were nuts. Now, the first challenge was the Gulf War, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. That was a war that was, shall we say, thrust upon us, what I described in a different book as a war necessity. And I think we were right to respond. And I think we were mostly right to respond in the way we did in a limited fashion. And then we kept a limited number of troops in the region afterwards. I thought that was fine. I think we got you know, I thought the 2003 Iraq war was a strategic error. I think our ambitions in Afghanistan became a strategic error. So I think we've gotten over involved in the Middle East. I think going forward, the question is, how do we right size given both the nature of the Middle East and given all else? And I think that's an interesting conversation. But downsizing, what we're doing the Middle East, militarily, I think is fine. Energy is a little bit less significant. But I think it's essential that Iran not be allowed to get nuclear weapons or get to the precipice of it. We still have major concerns about terrorism emanating from the region, we still have our historical, moral support for Israel. Again, it's one of the reasons that I think Israel needs to be careful not to act in ways or to foreclose the possibility of being a democratic state and a Jewish state, which is why the Palestinian issue must be dealt with in a fair and comprehensive way. So there's, you know, a lot of humanitarian issues in there. So we still have interests in the Middle East. But I do think the goal is to right size them, I think they've been outsized. I guess if I had to say it in a sense, we got, we need to go from outsized to right size, and reasonable men and women can can disagree on what right sizing is. But clearly, it's got to absorb less of our bandwidth and calories for the next 30 years, than it's absorbed for the last 30 years. This doesn't make strategic sense.

Kal Raustiala 50:38

So we have a somewhat unusual question about demography, which I think is a topic that's important and doesn't get enough attention. So this is not to endorse the question necessarily, but the topics an important one. How has the explosion of the global population contributed to local, regional, and global competition? And how might this be overcome? And I'll just mention, you know, there's a book just out by Matt Iglesias about 1 billion Americans, and the idea that the US should actually grow significantly. You talked earlier about China, one of the things that gives China a lot of power is its massive size. So traditionally, size was viewed as something that was good for states wanting to be bigger. That's not so true today. So there's a lot of interesting dimensions to this.

Richard Haass 51:23

Yeah,look, population is both a potential strength and a potential burden -- it depends. China for what it's worth is now about 1.31- 1.4 billion, over the next, probably by the end of the century be be closer to 1 billion. So China is, you know, the result of the one child policy. And so where China is, and the danger for China is going to be that the ratio of working age to non working age is going to move in directions that are going to be very hard to sustain. The one part of the world that's going to experience a massive population increase in the next 50 years will be Africa. And the question for Africa is can it kind of provide for the schooling, food, the housing, most important jobs, because so many of these people are going to be young? And if it can't, what what will be the consequences? So I think I'm worried about that, particularly in a context of often poor governance of many African countries, climate change could be will be a real problem for lots of African countries, large population coming in Africa just at the time when technology is replacing a lot of human labour. So Africa's timing is unfortunate. But I think the United States is slowly growing as a result of in part, demography, immigration, but the immigration has numbers, as you know, have come way down, but I don't think population per se is strength. Again, it can be strength, or it can be burden, it all depends upon its relationship with productivity, what kind of services are provided the strength of national cohesion? And so I think the idea that numeric targets for population in the United States are inherently, forget about whether they're achievable, but even whether they are per se good seems to me a silly notion.

Kal Raustiala 53:24

All right, so we're almost at the end of the hour. But a final question that I think is very concrete and maybe helpful to a lot of the viewers were or how do you suggest Americans get their world news given that the news media is biased and offers little international news?

Richard Haass 53:39

Glad you asked. Look there is a couple of places that I think everyone should read. One of the major daily newspapers, you've got a good one in your city, the LA Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, there's some. But basically any of the major newspapers that has people around the world that does significant international coverage. A magazine like the Economist does give you a lot of weekly coverage. Our magazine, Foreign Affairs, gives you I think by far the best analysis. Magazine comes out every two months but on the website, foreignaffairs.com -- you get it every day. I think it's the best analysis out there. Certain websites, the BBC, can be a very good website about the world. You know, certain shows on television Fareed Zakaria show on Sundays is a really thoughtful show about the world, the NPR and PBS do more thoughtful reporting. International. The network's gives you very little now, sorry to say, the major networks, the cable networks tend to be more politicised. The problem with the internet other than a few specialised sites, is the problem with the internet. It's an unedited, there's no one there again, saying read this, don't read that. So there's a problem there. And what hopefully people get steered by those in the know saying, "Oh, this is a smart site". I think another great place at the risk of blowing our own horn is cfr.org. It's probably the best site in the world about the world. In terms of background knowledge, and so far, we're not trying to tell you how to think. But we are trying to provide the basics you need, again, in order to make informed decision, so I'd recommend people going there. So there's a lot out there. I think the biggest problem with the internet is all the stuff that's quite honestly misleading or just just flat out wrong. There are no alternative facts. There's only facts. And there's a lot of places out there that are just wrong and misleading and dangerous. But I think it's great if people get in the habit when they finish, you know, on campus when they finish the reading at least one serious newspaper or go to the website with international coverage. And again, the Economist is probably the best weekly, Foreign Affairs is the best journal about the about the about the field.

Kal Raustiala 56:17

Great, well, fantastic. And thank you so much, Richard, for coming on and for all of you to tune in to for tuning in. Please, if you're watching, join us next week we will have Karen Richardson of the State Department joining us to talk about American soft power. So, Richard, thanks again and have a great day everyone. Take care. Thank you

Richard Haass 56:36

Thank you.