 in Brussels, although it's only 11 o'clock, 11 p.m. And we have Gauri Kandekar joining us. She's with Global Relations Forum, which is a think tank in Brussels. Welcome back again to the show, Gauri. So nice to see you. Thank you, Jay. It's always a pleasure. So you just came back from Paris. You had a think tank conference there. You were involved. Can you tell us about the conference? And can you tell us about Paris? Yes, well, it was a short trip when it was basically about climate change and energy issues. So the topic that we're looking at is how important in Europe. It's a huge priority under term administration, but it's still big here. And this is what we're discussing, is how to deal with climate change now that America might pull out. So if the US pulls out, especially the Paris Agreement, how do we deal with it? So this was the topic. And this is why I traveled there and there were lots of experts from across Europe around to discuss this issue and a number of others, which also includes the multiplicity of actors. So while you have, for instance, the US that's pulling out, you also have a lot contributing towards climate action. Oh. You have various US cities, for instance, and they are participating. And there's another factor that's important to consider is what is now called post-truth, is the denial of facts, is, you know, alternative facts, if you like, and fake stories, fake news. Fake news. But yes, it was opening, but also quite interesting. And the good part is that, you know, experts here are thinking of going forward, basically, looking forward. And it's also sad in a certain way that, you know, Europeans have always seen the US as an ally, as a like-minded partner, now considering how we can move forward without the US. So it was quite an impactful meeting. Well, let me go to the bottom of line of that. You said that one of the big questions is what to do about climate change if and when the US pulls out. What was the decision on that? What's the strategy? Looking at it at the moment. So you had those who are climate and energy experts around that table, basically. And the biggest strategy to be decided is that, exactly. So maybe the EU will have the European Union with the UN's Climate Fund, where the US should be contributing quite a bit as a global historic emitter. So because of US industrialization, it has contributed to this climate change more than the developing country. So it has to contribute to the developing countries. US is also one of the world's largest emitters. Walk back on climate action, which means that you can't make a U-turn to fossil fuels because renewables are cheaper and they're the fastest growing source of energy. Then enormous market forces at play. You just can't go back. It would be tragic on many levels if we walk back on that. But you know, one of the, you know, Donald Trump has also been dishing the UN, NATO, the EU, all of those things, the distancing himself and giving concern about American participation in them and support of them. And one of the pieces that he continues to repeat is that the US is paying more than its fair share and European EU countries are paying less than their fair share. I mean, is there a response to that? Are European countries considering increasing their share in these things so as to deal with his claim in that regard? Most European countries don't contribute the 2% of the GDP that they're supposed to do the NATO budget. The Europeans are one of the top contributors to the UN like the US, of course, but to NATO it's different. Now that most Europeans don't do that because the fact that the US is in this alliance is the biggest deterrence. And they don't need to scale up because they know they can rely upon the US and nobody's gonna challenge US superiority in security matters. So that is the reason why they didn't so far put much more money into defense. But interesting article recently, I forgot where it was because there's so many, so many articles coming out at the moment. And it was about how Trump is not stupid as many people might, all what he's doing right now, the threats, the tantrums, it was all a test balloon. You know how they send up weather balloons to check? And this is what he was doing. And this is how he's testing the environment and it's the same in his book as The Art of the Deal. It's just about coming from a position of arrogance, threatening to break the deal, and then making concessions. So this is apparently his way of trying to get deals. But unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Diplomacy, it goes against diplomacy in the very essence of it, basically. That takes me to the whole thing about NATO. So he's talking about pulling support for NATO, considering NATO irrelevant. And at the same time, Vladimir Putin is still active in Ukraine, is still pushing on Western Europe border, so to speak. And he's making trips into the soft underbelly to try to enhance his influence there. Is Putin taking advantage of the confusion that Trump has created? You know, to be honest, and extremely honest, they did but some other country. You'd never know. Maybe some other countries' operatives who are operating from Russia, hacking it and you know, and they created this and Putin, of course, as usual, got the blame. Maybe he's saying because European countries are not gonna relax their sanctions. Trump is not someone who's reliable. And if he's not best friends with Putin and he himself says he's never been, he's never met Putin before, you never know Russia's strong stance on its geopolitical supremacy. It is not one NATO expansion towards this border. So now you have buffer states, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova. And what Trump is saying, so Trump's rhetoric fits in well with what Putin wants, which means that, you know, he's not gonna, Trump says that he's not gonna expand NATO, he's not gonna put into the budget. That means that expansion of NATO stops at Ukraine. Ukraine wants membership of NATO and this is basically why the whole annexation of Crimea and Russia's engine to Ukraine happened, you know, it was a huge conflict over Ukraine's intentions to join NATO and get closer to the EU. On the border with Ukraine, between Ukraine and Russia. But I don't think Putin will make any sudden moves. He would silly to underestimate the situation. Yeah, it's a different dance now, isn't it? Because of that unreliability. You know, we have Trump getting into arguments with bloody everyone, everyone he talks to becomes, it turns out to be an argument. I don't know if you get Saturday Night Live in Europe, but there's a program here that parodies him every Saturday night and it's very good, it's very funny. He's the object of tremendous ridicule for that unreliability. So I guess my question is, you know, how do people feel? How do the people in the think tanks feel? How do the leaders feel? How does the public feel about Trump? Well, for me, the most epic moment of last week, apart from, of course, Melissa McCarthy playing Sean Spicer on set. Right, exactly. You guess, I guess you do see Saturday Night Live, eh? Of course, I do. I think Baldwin, of course. I just need to see German Chancellor Angela Merkel explaining what the Geneva Convention is to President Trump. Maybe Trump thinks it's sort of a business convention, a business gathering, you know, happen, because when the news broke out that Donald Trump may have yelled, the UK, okay, they have a special relationship, but the UK has been massively criticized in Europe. Theresa May, the UK Prime Minister has also been called spineless because she held hands with Trump. And this is across Europe. So UK does not have a good reputation at the moment, just because they close to Trump. Trump was gonna visit, when he visits the UK, he was gonna speak in the parliament, but I just, and this is breaking news basically that he will no longer speak in parliament because the Speaker of the House refused to allow him to speak. And really, God saved the Queen. I think I have my answer. Benefits, you know, you always have to look on the right side. Is that it's gonna push Europe closer together and make it a much stronger password, 75 years at least? Yes. 100 years, you know? Yes. What become a major threat? Nobody imagined that. Nobody would have even prepared for that, so. Well, you know, the flip side of that though, just one observation is that as Europe becomes stronger because of Trump, as Trump becomes more of a joke to Europe and other places, the US loses credibility. The US loses its influence, doesn't it? Yes, of course. Now, you also see a bit of the dichotomy between the administration to a certain extent. So you also had the military chief of the US who was visiting Japan, and he reassured Shinzo Abe that the alliance stands no matter what, which, you know, makes you question whether this is just theatrics. Whether would change the course of US history or is it some sort of summit and the G7 summit as well in Europe, in Italy? So it's not clear yet. If, for me at least, it's not clear. Okay, he was, he has no experience in diplomacy, but he's not stupid, basically. It's, the US is not, that would allow probably, it's been a superpower, it's a state superpower. It's survived Richard Nixon. Questions whether it will survive Trump. I know. By the way, I wonder if you've watched these videos that almost every other European country has been creating. So basically it's the Trump slogan, make America great again in America first. Yes. And you have various European countries, so that Netherlands, Germany, who say, okay, you know, this is a message, an introductory message from our government about our country, you know, and it gives, it's a parody video. Then it's, okay, if we understand that America's first, but can we just say, you know, Germany second or the Netherlands second, it's amazing. It's amazing, really, I'm excited to hear. Yeah, we were gonna take a short break. We'll be right back and I'd like to talk to you about some of the other issues in Europe, including, you know, for example, the migrants, we'll be right back. My name is Mark Schlauve, and I'm the host of Law Across the Sea. And Law Across the Sea is a program that brings attorneys who have traveled across the sea and live in Hawaii or are staying in Hawaii for a time to talk about their travels, where they're from, where they're going and bring it all together because really, we're all connected some way, although we travel across the sea. So I hope that you'll tune in and watch our program. Thank you very much. Thank you for watching Think Tech. I'm Grace Cheng, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 p.m., where we'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in and aloha, and thanks for watching. Hey, has your signal just been taken over or am I supposed to be here? This is Andrew, the security guy, your co-host on Hibachi Talk. Please join us every Friday on Think Tech away. Back we're live with Gauri Kandekar, Global Relations Forum. She joins us by Skype. And we love to see her every few weeks from Brussels. And if you're wondering, it's 11, 1115 in Brussels right now, p.m., heading on to midnight. So she does us the honor of staying up late for us. Thank you, Gauri. Yes, my pleasure and honor completely. Well, so tell us about the winds of hatred, if you will, in Europe, because we have that here in this country. And I wonder how things are doing in terms of the rise of the right in Europe and the rise of, what do you call it, people not getting along with each other? It's actually an example, you know, in the ethos. So Trump, like Nigel Farage, like, here at Wilders from the Netherlands, even Therese Amin, you know, she's a conservative leader, but won't hate. They sing what hate has done to the world's superpower and the biggest ally. So now they have a really fearful stability. Oh, that's so interesting. Because we've only been in office for two weeks. Yes. In terms of dividing people and shocking people and unprecedented executive orders and also, you know, his tweets, especially about the judiciary, they're quite sobering, you know, people have voted, let's say, for Brexit, right? Even in the US, some have voted because of their own situations. They've not been happy. They've not seen the bigger geopolitical picture. Now, in Europe, that they're seeing it, they know that they can't afford instability and at home. How interesting. So there's more to it when you vote for stability, when you vote the voting leader, you know, when it's a smaller country that votes to, you know, let me say, protest vote. Still fine with the, yeah, with your countries. And this is what has also been said by some members of the British parliament, but also across the public is that we need to rethink Brexit because the geopolitical conditions have changed. This is no longer a tenable situation because the UK, when it voted for Brexit, imagine that they would leave a strong union, but they would also have a strong US. So they would be the bridge, you know, now that for Europe, most Europeans, the US is collapsing, it's becoming protectionist. It's isolating itself, it's building walls. UK would leave a prosperous Europe. It's no longer tenable. The UK isolates itself then. Oh, this is so interesting. I'm really interested in what you have to say on this. But, you know, until a few weeks ago, you and I were following this whole move to the right in Europe. Reaction to the migrants, you know, the reaction against those leaders who wanted to allow refugees to come into their countries, who was moving right. Are you saying that maybe this is being, you know, modified in some way, that this has changed because of Trump? Yes, to a little extent, to a certain extent. You don't see as many protests. Okay, so you did have the Hungarian, came out in support of the Muslim ban, you know. Of course, well, it is a Muslim, I'm sorry. But he did come out in support. But he's one of the leaders, you know. There are 28, still 28 member countries of the European Union. And this is just basically that might seem to be, because you have to understand that these countries in Central and Eastern Europe, they've not seen as much migration, as much demographic change for many, many years, for many centuries even, you know. It's always been white. And it's always been European and Christian. So it's an influx. At the moment, it's an influx. Not as big, I would say, but it's still an influx. So people do this. However, it's winter time. So migration flows are reduced. They're larger in the summers. And people are just shocked at what's going on in the US. And they don't want to be there like that. There've been so many protests here in Brussels, but across Europe as well, against Trump, against the Muslim ban. There've been the women's marches here as well. And yeah, it's a rejection of what they're seeing now. And they don't want to come back. Well, you know, we've had some really strange reactions. I mean, unpredictable, I think, reactions to Trump's building walls. I mean, a lot of people react to oppose that, obviously, the marches and so. And a lot of Jewish people, for example, have come out in favor of the Muslims, which is that that hasn't happened in that scale before. And people are rallying toward the notion of love, if you will, of accepting people from outside of becoming diverse or appreciating diversity against Trump. So it's a reaction to Trump, but it is truly happening, at least in some quarters in this country. At the same time, there's the right-wing Nazi view of things. And that's happening, too, with anti-Semitism and anti-Muslimism. It seems to be in transition right now. And you don't know which way it's going to go, and all everyone is speaking on it. And I imagine the same thing is happening in Europe. You get both sides of it. You get love, and you get hate. And you're not sure which way it's going to go. It is a very, very tiny, has become a very tiny part of it. People are important. The US is the Europe country. It is in front of Europe. So it's a huge, major example. And what's happening in the US to the US, actually, it's utterly shocking here. And it's frightening, basically, because European foreign policy normally always follows US foreign policy. The Europeans look for security to the US still, even though they have some of the largest militaries in the world, yes, and the highest technologies. But they still look to the US quite a bit. Actually, there's also, so you're right about different communities coming together as a rejection of hate, because you never know which community gets targeted next. So during the World War, you had the Jewish community that was targeted. Now it's Islam, but it's also mixed. Yes, I mean, you have the Nazi symbols in Metro, which is shocking. But there are a lot of millennials, I believe, and there have been some articles as well on it, who completely reject hate, who completely reject divisiveness. And this is because they've been some of the most open generations, yeah? They've traveled more. They have a large number of technologies at hand. They're more connected with the world. They have more knowledge. They're just up to date. And so millennials have a more open attitude in that sense. That leads me to the question I want to put to you about putting this in global perspective. This is a hard one. But even following your geopolitical person, a think tank person, a global relations person, where is it going? I know it's very hard to predict. It's an unfair question. But where is it going over the next, say, two, three years? What are we going to have here? In terms of global politics? Yes, in terms of global divisiveness or global togetherness. Wow. It's just a hard question the way the US works. But it's going to bring about a more balanced approach to international relations. It has sped up the process of multipolarity. So you have a multipolar system with different sources of governance. And it's just very, you're going to have the realization that other countries are as much important as well. It's my feeling. I have more unity abroad who are coming out in favor of the UN. So you've had, OK, the US wants to back out from climate change. But India and China are now leading energy, which is incredible. For they were being criticized as the worst polluters. Now they're leaders of clean energy. So I think it's going to speed up multipolarity. Fascinating. And I totally agree with you. And I really appreciate that answer. But one of the flip side of that, again, is that at the end of the day, we have a reordering of the world order, I think. That's what we're talking about. And at the end of the day, the US will not be nearly as prominent as it has been because of this reordering. Don't you agree? I agree completely, you're right. But based in Hawaii, and you have PECOM, what do you use? How do you see the changes? I'm only reminded of the argument between Trump and Donald Schwarzenegger, where Schwarzenegger proposed that they change places. And he suggested that he would be president, even though he wasn't born in the US. That's a constitutional problem. And that Trump could be, could go back to his apprentice television show. And that would be a benefit for everybody concerned, because, and here's the point, Schwarzenegger said, because then we could all sleep at night. And that's why I answered your question. Nobody's sleeping at night very well. Nobody I know. And we're all waiting for some resolution. I'm reminded of the counters that they always had on television before the debates. They would say, it's so many hours before the debate begins. And you see this counter going down to round zero when the debate started. Well, I think soon enough there's going to be counters about how many days and hours it will be before the Trump administration is over. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.