Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] Hello and welcome to the first episode of Trendlines in 2022. 0:15 A happy New Year to all of you from the team at World Politics Review. I am Peter Dury, and I have the great pleasure of kicking off the year together with WPR's editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein. 0:25 Judah, welcome back to Trendlines. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. 0:29 Today, we will talk about the year to come, but first, I want to take the opportunity to remind you, the listener, that you can subscribe to Trendlines in any podcast app of your choice, including in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 0:43 As always, if you want to dive deeper into the issues we will be talking about on this episode, you will find show notes and links at worldpoliticsreview.com/podcast. And now, on to the show. 0:56 Judah, the past couple of years have been dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, including in the realm of international politics. 1:04 Uh, I would even argue that the pandemic strengthened some of the dangerous dynamics that b- began to develop even earlier. 1:12 Looking at the year ahead of us, uh, what are the major trends that you will be following, and what are the developments that you will be expecting? 1:21 Well, first of all, I'd say that, uh, two things, uh, that I agree with you that, um, for the most part, the pandemic has served to either accentuate or accelerate trends that we'd already seen, um, prior to it. 1:36 Uh, and I'd also add that, uh, uh, as we're all sadly well aware now with the spread of the new Omicron variant, we're not quite out of the woods yet, even though there was quite a bit of, um, hope among countries that had access to vaccines, um, and, uh, expectations of more justice in terms of distributing those vaccines around the world. 2:00 Um, it seems like we're still gonna be in for a hard winter here in the, in the Northern Hemisphere and elsewhere. 2:06 To get to your question, um, a- in terms of how that outlook or, or how that, the, the past couple years and the trends that the pandemic accentuated, um, affect my outlook in particular for 2022, um, the big trend that I saw, uh, in the past year, um, and over the past f- uh, five years at least, I'd say, um, is this, uh, default position of closure. 2:37 Uh, and you can see it, um, uh, to, to, to me, it's, it's almost a default mental position right now in terms of international politics and I'd, I'd say popular sentiment, 2:49 um, the idea that the immediate response to any and all, uh, concerning developments, even alarming developments, is to close borders, um, to, to, to seal off behind a protective, uh, frontier. 3:08 Um, and I think we can see that happening on the micro level in terms of, uh, domestic politics in many, uh, democracies where you have increasingly siloed information ecosystems where people are sort of seal- sealed off in their own information bubbles, and it's very difficult to generate any sort of s- consensus, um, because, uh, there's a, a, no common, commonly shared set of facts, uh, often, uh, anymore. 3:39 Um, and then on the international level, we see that, uh, already prior to the pandemic, 3:45 there was a growing skepticism and even hostility to, uh, global trade, uh, because of some of the impacts that it had on various, uh, sectors, domestic economic sectors and populations and constituencies and demographics. 4:01 Um, and, uh, obviously, the pandemic, um, served almost as an artificial spotlight to, to really highlight the, that, that trend. 4:12 Um, but I think you see it with regard, for instance, to refugees and asylum seekers, particularly in the Global North, because, uh, many countries in the Global South continue to, uh, to take in refugees and shoulder the disproportionate burden of a lot of the refugee, refugee crises, uh, around the world, uh, whereas the Global North, um, particularly Europe, but also the United States under Donald Trump especially, um, the mindset is closure. 4:42 It's to keep people from coming, uh, to control who gets here, um, um, based, uh, we're both based in Europe, uh, to outsource the processing of asylum-seeking, uh, uh, applications and, and refugee applications to third countries like Turkey, for instance, or even Libya, uh, or Northern African and Central African states. 5:07 Um, and so I, I think that, uh, that to me is, is one of the things that I expect we'll see, um, continue to, to accentuate and accelerate over the coming year because I don't think yet that we have the conditions where we might see a pendulum swing on that. 5:26 But I'll also, uh, just on a more hopeful note, be keeping an eye out for that pendulum swing because it often happens, it often occurs at unexpected moments and through unex- unexpected developments. 5:39 Um, but most of all, I think what, what would, would be needed, and, and I mention this in my year-end essay, uh, on WPR, uh, is, is a new narrative of openness. 5:51 I think the narrative around globalization in the 2010s and early part of the 2000, uh, 2000s and 2010s, um, is no longer compelling, uh, the, the, the sort of utopic vision of a world without borders and, and things like that. 6:08 Um, there has to be some new narrative, uh, for the benefits that openness um, offers because I think that, uh, there's been a, a lot of emphasis, uh, on the dangers, um, often exaggerated of immigration and refugees, um, as well as trade and now the, the pandemic. 6:31 Um, so that's really what I'll be keeping my eye on, um, the, the acceleration of that trend, but also hopefully, um, some, some attempts to, to respond to it, uh, through more positive, uh, narratives and, and imagination because I think often that's what it takes to reverse those kinds of, uh, pendulum swings. 6:49 Yeah. 6:49 This, this question of a new narrative is really interesting, especially because, um, I think looking back at the trends of globalization even before the pandemic, um, I think the freedom of movement was always the most fragile aspect of that. 7:04 Uh, there was always a tendency to, uh, especially of the well-to-do countries to shut themselves off and, and, and, uh, take advantage of the, uh, freedom of movement that wealth would afford, but shut themselves off against the other parts of the world. 7:19 And now we see that, that the other parts of globalization are also increasingly questioned. 7:26 As somebody who's recently built a house, I know that [chuckles] in Germany, uh, prices for, for building materials have gone through the roof, um, especially because demands and supplies from other parts of the world are, uh, creating havoc in the local markets, and there's real discussions here about are open markets even worth the, the pain that they also cause. 7:49 Um, and I think this, this idea that, that a new narrative is needed to, to, to maybe shift the, the attention away from, from, from the, uh, economic, um, benefits of globalization and come back to the root of, of w- what does it mean for you personally that you can travel and that other people can travel, um, that might really be the way to go. 8:14 Especially as I, I know you've been interested in that question and you had an excellent column, um, by Aishwarya Ma- Makani, um, on World Politics Review, uh, posing this question of intergenerational equity and justice, which I feel has really, uh, been thrown under the bus, especially in the context of the pandemic, but also, uh, s- uh, for the past decade or so in, in, in the context of the, uh, question of global warming and environmental justice. 8:47 Uh, yeah, that as well as, uh, it is sort of forgotten already, but the global financial crisis, uh- Oh, yeah. Yeah... 8:55 where the f- the economic policy responses, um, really prioritized preserving savings, which, uh, represents obviously the older generations over jobs, uh, which represents the younger generations, uh, predominantly. 9:11 And we saw that a lot in, in Southern Europe, for instance, in Greece, uh, Spain, for instance, where there was, uh, great suffering and a lot of outmigration because of that. 9:21 Um, and, uh, and yeah, that does get into a, a second, uh, I guess, theme that I'll be keeping my eye on, uh, this year. 9:31 Uh, again, assuming that, uh, that things begin to ease a little bit and that the Omicron wave subsides, which, uh, hopefully it will, um, and as the weather warms in the Northern Hemisphere and, and hopefully as there's more vaccine equity in terms of, uh, helping the Global South, uh, access vaccines, um, uh, as we see more opening of borders and, and, uh, and a return to, to, to normal economic life, um, that, that question of will we remember the debt now that's owed to young people, 10:07 uh, who when you, when, when, when you stop and think about it were asked to sacrifice so much over the course of the past two years, um, in terms of school closures, in terms of, uh, lost economic opportunity, uh, in terms of, uh, it might seem or sound frivolous in, in the face of a, a mortal pandemic, but in, in, uh, the, the loss of, of their 10:32 youthful period of socialization, of emerging as young adults in the world, which is absolutely essential to, to identity formation and to life formation. 10:42 Um, and when you think of how much they shouldered in terms of, uh, sacrifices to help spread, help, help stop the spread of a disease, uh, to which they were less vulnerable, uh, it's really very remarkable and I think that the debt that all societies, uh, and especially older, uh, the older generations owe to the younger generations for that, um, is enormous. 11:07 And, uh, I think that, um, that e- this question of intergenerational equity and interne- intergenerational justice and what is owed not only to the young people today but to, to generations, uh, yet to be born, um, and that will inherit the, the, the world, uh, that we live in now, 11:28 um, I think that question is gonna take on added importance, um, uh, for, for a number of reasons. Uh, first of all, because it is a, a, a burning moral question. 11:40 Um, and the second thing is that the younger generations have a lot more opportunities to express themselves and to, uh, to insist and force, uh, their voices, uh, be heard in, in, uh, debates, um, at least be noticed if not listened to. 11:59 Um, and, uh, and, and, and then beyond that, uh, you have two real factors, uh, in the Global South and the Global North, particularly Africa for the Global South and then the Global North and Asia. 12:12 Um, in Africa you have countries and societies that are young That are predominantly young and where the median age is extremely youthful. And those are young people whose aspirations have to be 12:28 responded to and addressed and met. And those aspirations are increasingly threatened by climate change, for instance, among other things. 12:39 And then in the global north, Europe, Asia, the United States, you have aging populations that are increasingly dependent on a smaller and smaller youth cohort that's working. 12:52 Dependent for, for instance, social welfare benefits like retirement and social security funds, which is intergenerational. So I think that all those things are going to really magnify 13:06 the importance and the visibility of young people in societies around the world. 13:13 And just in a very cold balance of power framework, it really will shift the balance of power to young people to really insist that their voices be heard and that as we address some of the rebuilding after the pandemic, that not only is it green 13:34 in terms of energy, but it's green in terms of growth, in terms of the young shoots of the branches getting the kind of the resources that they need to really develop and to carry the torch forward. Yeah. 13:49 And another thing that in my view really threatens the current young generations, future generations, is this, I would say, reemergence of a real risk of major interstate conflict, 14:08 the emergence of large scale cyber attacks and the use of cyber attacks as an extension of adversarial politics in the international sphere. 14:21 I'm really interested in that question if the past 20 years or so, which have been quite peaceful in global terms, 14:31 where one could really have hopes that war was on the way out and great power confrontation was a thing of the past and would in the future be handled differently. 14:47 Were the past two decades or so a complete anomaly? Are we kind of diving deeper, ever deeper into a new age of conflict? 14:59 Looking at the current discussion around Russia and possible invasion of the Ukraine, the increasingly hostile posture between US and China. What do you see coming up there on the horizon? 15:14 Well, I definitely share your preoccupation, let's say. And obviously, there's no way of knowing what will happen, for instance, in Ukraine or elsewhere. 15:31 I think we see a number of things, trends, some long-term, some more recent, that are sort of gathering and whose interplay, to me, makes it more and more likely that we'll see a certain breaking of 15:51 certain taboos around especially interstate conflict. Certainly, we've seen two sort of parentheses within a parenthesis 16:05 in the aftermath of World War II during the Cold War because of what was at stake, especially when it came to the risk of nuclear war. 16:14 Most of the conflicts that played out between the US and the USSR or great powers remained proxy wars and within states, civil wars mainly. And so in terms of statistics, there was a 16:30 huge reduction in interstate conflict. There was a reduction in the lethality of conflicts within states, the civil conflicts. That's not to say they didn't exist and that a lot of people weren't affected and 16:42 that there weren't a lot of casualties. But compared to the sort of mass combat and mass battlefield losses that we saw historically in World War I and World War II, they didn't rise to that level. 16:56 And then after the end of the Cold War, there's this parenthesis within that 17:03 parenthesis where you have a dominant power in the United States that is really the only country at that point really capable of projecting force on a global level. 17:14 Russia was in a state of decline after the dissolution of the Soviet Union for a period of a decade or so. China had not yet emerged as an economic power, let alone one with a modernized military. 17:29 And so in that period, there was the use of force in the Persian Gulf, for instance, by the United States-led coalition. 17:38 Until the early 2000s, though, there was a sense that the use of force should be authorized by the United Nations. It should be in defense of a world order, 17:49 the liberal international order, rather than for territorial conquest, for instance. And to defend a status quo before conflict rather than to create a status quo after conflict, a new status quo. 18:05 And so you had a lot of frozen conflicts and a lot of residual conflicts. But for the most part, in that period, what you said is absolutely right. There was a sense that major wars like we saw in the 20th century 18:18 might be a thing of the past. And then there was the euphoria around globalization in the 2000s and 2010s and a lot of the rhetoric around that. I think a number of things have happened. 18:32 To begin with, um, the memory of, the historical memory of World War II in particular is, is more and more distant, and the last living, uh, uh, people who lived through the horrors of, of that period are now leaving us. 18:50 Um, and so more and more that, that real, that, that psychic im- imprint, that psychological imprint that left on humankind and, and, um, the international state system, I think, uh, is waning. Um, 19:06 the, the, the, the second, uh, thing that's emerging is that especially with regard to Russia, but also China, um, there's a, um, a more and more vocal expression of dissatisfaction and disapproval and opposition to what the United States in particular and a lot of the West considered, uh, an accepted and established status quo after the post-co- after the Cold War in terms of a US-led order, rules-based, um, with a certain status quo security arrangement in Europe and Asia. 19:39 Um, and as Russia has regained its strength and as China has emerged as a, as a, a strong and now global power, um, it's very natural in the state of, in, in the course of hist- in the history of international relations that more powerful states, uh, demand and demand a greater say in what's going on in their near neighborhoods especially, but also in world affairs. 20:03 Um, and both, both of those, both countries and others as well have been more and more willing to use the threat of force and even in, in many cases, the use of force, uh, now, uh, to achieve those, those goals. 20:19 Um, it's still always remained, uh, either just short of war, as in the case in, of China in the South China Sea. 20:27 Um, in the case of Russia, it's often a disguised war, uh, whether in Georgia, uh, where, uh, it was, uh, under cloak of defending its, uh, its clients in two breakaway regions of that country or in Ukraine, uh, where it was a disguised annexation of Crimea until it was already accomplished. 20:48 I think what we're seeing now, uh, last year in Nagorno-Karabakh, uh, where Turkey helped Azerbaijan retake territory that had been occupied by Armenia, um, in a very brutal, 21:00 uh, th- uh, six-week war, I think it was, um, a, a real open return to interstate conflict, um, and the threat of interstate conflict in a way that we really haven't seen, uh, in a long time, with the exception, obviously, of the US invasion of Iraq, uh, which, uh, uh, which I think Washington mistakenly thought might be an anomaly or a, a sort of one-off exception. 21:26 But I think it really did set a precedent, um, for other countries, uh, that the strong can do what they want, uh, and that it pays to be strong. 21:36 Um, what I'm most concerned about in the coming year is some sort of breaking of that taboo where we'll see a real major cross-border military conflict. 21:48 Um, obviously, Ukraine and Russia right now seems to be the, the most likely candidate, although I'm not con- con- uh, convinced that, uh, that, uh, Vladimir Putin actually wants that. 21:59 Um, one thing I've been thinking increasingly, uh, is that China, for instance, has been really watching on the sidelines as just about every major and middle power, uh, uh, around the world has been gaining really valuable operational experience for their militaries. 22:14 Uh, Turkey and Azerbaijan, uh, Syria, Libya, uh, Russia and Syria, uh, Georgia, Ukraine, uh, the United States, obviously France and Africa, um, and other European militaries that have contributed small troop, uh, deployments to those, those, uh, operations. 22:32 Um, and all around the world, you have militaries that have had that valuable experience of actually being in, uh, real conflicts because that's where all the doctrines and training and, and new military hardware gets put to the test, and you see what works and what doesn't. 22:47 Um, for, for Russia, for instance, the Georgia invasion or Georgia War was a real watershed because it, it really demonstrated the degree to which the Russian military had deteriorated, um, and really drove the, the military modernization that then made the Syria intervention possible. 23:04 So I'm, I'm pretty concerned about China taking it upon itself to provoke some sort of, uh, easy trial run conflict with a pushover state in its vicinity. 23:15 Um, and then as you mentioned, um, cyber, uh, the, the use of, uh, cyberattacks, uh, not just to the extent that we've seen so far in terms of, uh, limited ransomware or, or, uh, cyber espionage attacks, uh, but something that w- might have, that, that could be considered an act of war by crossing a threshold into, uh, critical infrastructure and, uh, and, uh, creating mass casualties through the compromising of critical infrastructure. 23:47 Um, those are the things I would be most worried about, uh, in the coming year, uh, in terms of the, the, the testing and crossing that taboo, uh, that has been, has bent and bent and bent over the past decade but hasn't so far really broken. 24:04 Um, should that taboo be broken, it's not necessarily certain that it would then open the floodgates. 24:09 It might, again, be a cautionary tale that, that causes people to remember why it's so valuable to, to, to have a system that's based on respect for borders and, and the, the, the emphasis on, on peaceful diplomacy. 24:23 Uh, but that would be my, I think my major concern for the year ahead, um, is, is, uh, is something of that order. Yeah, the outlook is not entirely positive, I would say [laughs] for the coming year. 24:39 I guess the main advantage is that it opens us, us up to, uh, positive surprises [laughs] Positive surprises. 24:45 And, and I don't mean to be totally pessimistic because I think, um, that everything that I have talked about, um, creates the, the, the conditions for a response and an effective response to it, whether it is a newfound, uh, commitment and narrative surrounding openness, um, whether it is a, a real intergenerational cooperation to, uh, rebuild after the pandemic and, uh, address the climate crisis. 25:17 Um, and then also a civil society movement, uh, within countries and around the world to really reinforce that taboo against armed conflict and to make the cost of breaking it, um, on a reputational level, uh, in terms of boycotts, economic boycotts, citizen-led economic boycotts, things like that. 25:37 There's all sorts of, uh, po- potential ways for us to be surprised by, uh, responses that, that could address these things effectively. 25:45 So as much as I'm preoccupied, and maybe those would be my major, uh, sort of worries or concerns about the year ahead, um, I'd add that, that caveat that, that, uh, as you said, we can never rule out a pleasant surprise. 25:57 [laughs] So let's hope for that. Uh, thank you for joining me today, Judah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a great pleasure. And thank you, dear listener, for joining us as well. 26:08 Uh, you can find the show notes and in-depth coverage of everything we discussed here today at worldpoliticsreview.com. Many thanks to the entire team at WPR. My name is Peter Durrie, and I am Trendlines producer. 26:22 Uh, remember to subscribe to Trendlines wherever you listen to podcasts, and see you soon. [outro music]
