 winner tonight organized by the KCL Center for Ground Strategy. My name is Travegas Barri, I am lecturer in the Department of World Studies at King's College and tonight I have the great pleasure to chair the presentation of Dr. David Martin John's new book entitled Histories Fools, the pursuit of idealism and the revenge of politics. In our panel tonight we have of course the author of the book, Dr. John's. Let me just briefly introduce him. Dr. John's is a honorary reader in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland and visiting professor and teaching fellow in World Studies Department at King's College in London. He has extensively researched and published on the international relations and political development in East and Southeast Asia on terrorism and political violence, applied history and political tools. And tonight he's of course presenting his new effort, the book, Histories Fools. I'm also very glad to have here in the panel and to introduce you Professor Michael Reisburu. Professor Reisburu is professor of Strategic Theory and is the former head of the Department of World Studies, is an expert of strategic theory, the nature of war and the hidden aspects of warfare and on the history of strategic tools. And Professor Reisburu will be the discussant in tonight's conversation. So I am very much looking forward to start this event. But before we can start let me just remind the public that the video of this event, this webinar is streaming live on YouTube and it is also recorded so it will be available on YouTube afterwards. We will now listen to Dr. John's presentations and then Professor Reisburu comments and then we will open the floors to questions and comments from the public. If you want to ask questions you can use the Q&A function. There is a little section at the bottom of the screen. So please post your comments and questions there and I will read them loud to the speakers. Okay, thank you very much. I leave the floors to Dr. John's. Thank you very much. Thank you for that introduction. I'll talk for about I don't know 15 minutes I think on what the book tries to do. So the book attempted to synthesize what has happened since the end of the Cold War and exercise in how worldviews form, sustain themselves and disintegrate, leaving those who embraced them sifting around the wreckage for something to clean to. Coming to the end of my peripatetic career which began as the Cold War ended, Kings offered the opportunity to reflect on what had happened to the cosmopolitan agenda of global order founded on democratic norms and its legacy for Western thought and practice. In this enterprise I was able to draw upon a number of my own writings over a 30-year period, some in collaboration with others like the good Professor Rainsborough and John Buu who also I collaborated with when I was at Kings. To elaborate, the process was to elaborate how what Michael Oakshot under whose aegis I began my first graduate career in the late 70s termed a rationalist style of politics and how that informed an understanding of what the collapse of the Soviet Union meant for global order and the progressive end to world history. This teleology was, I argue, a form of magical thinking. It saw order both national and transnational as the product of a determinate independent ethical instrument, taking a long view of the future and a short view of the past. The evolving progressive mentality had the ultimately debilitating effect of misrepresenting the West's actual predicament in a reality that actually disclosed a variety of possible paths following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Somewhat problematically it had identified only a single homogeneous line of development which is, as I quote from Oakshot, to be found in history only if history has made a dummy upon which to practice the skill of a ventriloquist. The ventriloquism however was persuasive. It appealed across the political spectrum as well as to the media and big financial and business conglomerates. It was a McKinsey executive after all who gave us the borderless world and even after 9-11 and despite the long wars of choice that the US and its coalition partners embarked upon, in part to bring about democratic regime change, it sustained its appeal to a cosmopolitan transnational elite. The book traces how the prevailing idealist norms of a progressive democratic order achieved economic and political salience. Its structural postulates emerged from the collapse of the Soviet system, the apparent end of ideology and the triumph of market capitalism. As Thomas Friedman, more than Francis Fukuyama showed, the golden straight that ensured growth and development required globalization, the electronic herd, open markets and open democratic societies. Yet even at peak optimism for the end of history, a number of skeptics pointed out that rapidly rising Asia might be different. This not with standing, the postulates of globalization and their correlation with enhanced economic growth, via an interconnected world, best achieved through states that liberalize, integrate and pool their sovereignty through regional and international arrangements, facilitated a new progressive ideology for a post-historical order. Interestingly, this evolved from previously recondite theories that deconstructed Western thought and practice in the 1980s. The return of grand theory, as Quentin Skinner identified in the 80s, set the theoretical agenda for constructing a new world order, framed along progressive and idealist lines, emanating from a radical reevaluation of Kant and the Enlightenment project. It also reflected a reawakened academic concern with public ethics and theories of social justice and group rights associated with John Rawls, Charles Taylor and Ronald Dworkin, amongst others. This North American liberalism coincided with the growing European interest in a Frankfurt school understanding of universal emancipation and cosmopolitan transnationalism. The emerging discipline of international relations theory combined with a third way in governance to embed this utopian project as an enduring influence over public and international policy, seduced by the empty kisses of abstraction and assuming all problems available to a communicative reason. The progressive mind subsequently dismissed objections to the promotion of its modernization agenda, framed around multiculturalism, group rights, devolved sovereignty, and an international community based on shared norms, as at best irrational, at worst, racist. Given its universalist pretensions concerning the shape of the emerging world order, the emergence of Islamism post-911 in its encounter with the borderless secular West crystallized the illusions that beset the progressive mind in its endeavor to establish an inclusive order freely obeyed. The persistence of a political religion that should have adapted to the prevailing inclusive but secular worldview occasioned a series of intellectual and policy contortions. Several chapters consequently evaluate the political and ideological equivocations that ethicist universalism engaged in to accommodate the fact that secular modernity had become amenable to a political religion, to use Eric Berglin's term, that adapted to its tolerance in order to advance an alternative non-negotiable eschatology. Somewhat problematically, the third way of counter-insurgency prosecuted this violent ideology abroad but treated some of its transnational leaders at home in the West as either misguided or mentally deranged. Progressive and inclusive politics at home whilst persecuting a war on abstract terror abroad seemed increasingly incoherent rather than enlightened and tolerant. The practice of the mainstream media, academia and governments, whether of a conservative or social democratic hue, to sanction any criticism of this policy of tolerating the intolerant only added to the incoherence of the cosmopolitan vision. The Orwellian application of terms like Islamophobia and radicalization further suppressed open debate. The misuse of words as Camus added in a different context added to the sorrows of the world. The long wars of choice damaged the progressive project but by no means proved fatal. The postulate of this idealist project assumed after all that progressive globalization had answered the problem of both equitable economic growth, global order and major interstate conflict. Open borders, independent central banks and light-touch regulation would end the economic cycle of boom and bust. The financial crisis of 2008 rather than the war on terror undermined the structural foundations of the third wave. The consequence of the global shock to financial markets saw the emergence of a new precarious class in the West and a burgeoning divide between a cosmopolitan elite committed to some version of pooled sovereignty and international institution building and an alienated mass who experienced the crash leaving them anxious and abandoned on an alien shore where ignorant armies crashed by night. Financial collapse restarted history. It had a series of consequences unforeseen by an Olympian teleology. In the West pressure for the return of the nation state rather than their reduction to member state status fueled outbreaks of nationalism everywhere. Brexit, Trump and the rise of populism across the West were the output and visible signs of an interior struggle for the West's soul. Despite the cracks appearing in the transnational progressive edifice Tony Blair could claim in his art autobiography in 2010 that it still set the agenda. A decade later this was not the case. The last chapters of the book then explain how this change from global optimism to Spenglerian decline evolved. Internally the democracy promotion agenda always less than convincing to Asian technocrats faltered destabilized by the internal polarization of democratic party politics. Externally the return of geopolitics and the rise of the revisionist powers especially a China that refused to be a responsible stakeholder in a US-led international institutional order further exposed the gulf between the idealist rhetoric and the quotidian practice of international politics. The book suggests that to address this weakness the West might return to a more prudent politics that constitutionalists from Machiavelli to the authors of the Federalist papers first promulgated rather than the pursuit of abstract norms in global justice these might better suit our interesting times. Machiavelli and Hegel might be more appropriate guides to statecraft than Kant and Habermas. The crisis of Western democracy rather than demotic hysteria requires a reason politics of balance a middle not a third way. To mediate the modern pursuit of universalist schemes of progressive perfection prudent skepticism should recall government to its perennial office of preserving order relevant to the current conditions of society restoring in the process both a balance of attention and a balance of power. Of course this time it might be different and Western democracy is the most successful form of rule in the 20th century might not recover the conclusion observes that enduring political metaphors like the body politic serve to warn of the diseases that cause constitutional decay body politics sorry body politics like their human equivalents suffer and die even seemingly healthy bodies as Ibn Khaldun and Thomas Hobbes diagnosed can fall prey to internal disease external shock and of course more recently microorganisms empires regional orders and kingdoms vanish and far more frequently than is generally recognized at the same time the rise of government by algorithm is in the process of transforming both the economy building a new form of capitalism without capital and rebuilding ourselves from autonomous individuals from the autonomous individuals to our factors in a algorithmic equation and the autonomous individual of course was so important to the classical liberal project of democratic accountability ruled by AI programmers offers the ultimate triumph of the style that we first identified as rationalism that engages in schemes whose ends have always been determined by their end oak shot warned that shag ran ultimately awaits all those who embark on such enterprises I'll stop there Flavia all right thank you very much for this fascinating presentation and for all the kind of controversial points that you raised professor race board please I would yeah thank you thank you David thank you Flavia thank you David I want to keep my remarks pretty brief because David is the main event and he's obviously given you a very good summary of of his new book so I'm just going to confine my right my comments to so one or two general thoughts the first of which is to and I have I have read David's David's book from cover to cover and have you know and I went through it and I began underlining all the things which I thought all the very good points which he made and I realized that I should really sort of use my market to underline all the all the parts which were not relevant speaker or were not didn't have something to say because they're very very few of them so my my book is actually literally sort of etched with you know almost every page is etched with with a marker pen so he makes I think the strength of David's book is that he brings together an incredibly impressive array or he mentions a synthesized incredibly impressive array of very very sort of complex international and political and philosophical ideas and manages to sort of unify them in his book in a in a very very so but you know profoundly so insightful manner which actually tells us really about how we that is we if you want to call a generic west have kind of ended up in our rather deracinated condition so I would just like to sort of reiterate how much value I think resides in David's book and I think it it also it is also very important because it is in quotes controversial you know controversial not because I think David says anything which does not make in many ways entirely logical and and profound sense but because he cuts against the grain of I think what some of us understand is a sort of deep consensus within particularly the discipline that we might call international relations and it's a wider so it's wider studies in whatever you want to call it international political economy and broader political science ideas and so forth which given the the anti-realist orientations of a lot of a lot of thinking in these kinds of disciplines today means that David's book is essentially a kind of an outlier in a lot of the works which which are currently produced under the aegis of of international relations but which actually deserve I think as a result to be even more closely read because it does question and critique a lot of the pretensions which have arisen inside that discipline and indeed which have as David argues have actually influenced policy policy decisions and I'd just like to conclude my remarks by emphasizing what I think of the deleterious impact on on policy which the rise of a political and intellectual edifice which is imbued with utopian ideas and often convinced of its own moral rectitude has actually brought in the policy sphere and hopefully it won't be too difficult for many people to think back and to understand what some of those policy failures have been arising out of a conviction that that that moral goodness actually resides in a in a self proclaimed policy elite which has given us particularly in foreign policy terms we can also see it in domestic economic terms as well as David also mentions but in foreign policy terms it's it's very stark you know with the with the number of completely misguided and deeply costly some would say illegal a lot of people would also say deeply inhumane ultimately interventions which have taken place in in areas where the intervening powers of the west have did not have any understanding or didn't have much understanding or an appreciation of of any kind of long-term follow-through of what the what the implications would would end up wreaking which as we know has been the disintegration of a number of societies particularly in the Middle East has resulted in the destabilization of of countries as diverse as Libya Iraq etc Afghanistan sometimes having knock-on effects in producing large migration flows which have also freed further destabilized parts of southern eastern Europe but also extending into further parts of western Europe which then surprise produces the blowback that that these policy elites have from complete disdainful so you know like brexit like like the rise of Donald Trump in the United States like like the rise of so-called populism in eastern Europe well you know if you want to know the causes of these of these events well maybe the these people who these global idealists should actually look in the mirror because they themselves are responsible I would suggest to a greater degree so what the rise of this of utopianism in the west which David's book has amplified I think speaks to a way in which you might say that the a prudential approach in foreign policy terms in the west has been lost and which has allowed you know this generic idea of the west to actually be outplayed and outthought in terms of approaches to extent foreign policy concerns be it in the Middle East be it in South Asia and elsewhere so you know lo and behold you get the west seems to be consistently outdone by Russia by the likes of China which seem to assert their interests often in a very brutal fashion let's be let's be open about that you know I don't think anyone necessarily wants to see the western powers you know become like those powers but nevertheless the the detachment from from that sort of prudential approach in western foreign policy I think has exacerbated numerous numerous problems and diminished western influence but above all I think the emergence of a very utopian or the pursuit of idealism in in western foreign policy and the rise of this ethically informed progressive global cosmopolitan approach has resulted in the detachment of this policy elite from an understanding of their own societies you know so they have a a disdain for a disregard for the populations within their own within their own politics yeah which means that in the end they if you don't understand your own society then probably you're not in the best position to actually give good policy and strategic advice because as as klaus witz said and I'm a student of of Carl von klaus witz one of his phrases was that in order to make a good strategy you had to understand the temperament and uses that word the temperament of your own people to understand the passions and feelings at play and if you basically corral policy making within the self-invoked morally sort of this self-arrogated moral idea of how you conduct yourself conduct foreign policy then of course you're going to detach yourself from any understanding of the temperament of the people of your own society and once you've done that I think you lose all claim to or certainly you lose a substantial right to claim that that you're acting in the best interest of your own society and so let me let me leave it there I hope that's given you a few sort of sidelines on what I think are some of the sort of broader policy implications inherent in David's book all right thank you very much for adding further food for thoughts to this discussion David I don't know if you want to add anything before opening the floor to the questions that are already arriving hello David do you want to comment oh no no sorry I thought you were asking Andrew no no I was asking if you have any anything else to add or to respond no no we'll just go to Q&A I think okay perfect thank you very much both of you we are we are already receiving questions the first one is from Martin who asks how much of the western post Cold War strategy is deliberate and consistent with genuine consideration versus the accidental policy decisions of direct democracy like Brexit or populism Trumpism right okay well yeah I can see the point I would have thought you know if we're tracing over the long journey of 1990 to 2020 I mean policy since 2016 has been rather more capricious one could argue but prior to that you know the the third way in governance both you know locally and globally seem to have a fairly consistent attitude internationally or transnationally to what it was sort of seeking to achieve which was by various means a democracy promoting agenda attacked the idea of economic growth and internationally institutionally built order that would promote not only an ethical foreign policy but an ethical order which emphasised regions and international arrangements rather than states as the key actors in world politics so I think there was you know up until Blair at least a fairly coherent view of what international policy especially for the US and the UK should entail since then no it's probably been more inconsistent and more uncertain and our current predicament is is where we are at at the moment all right thank you very much and Mike no I don't want to take up any more time from the for the question so I broadly broadly agree very much with what David says I think I think that's exactly right that you know and again just emphasises what hopefully what I was trying to say in my own comments which is that there was a I think a discernible way Michael broadly Western tradition of prudence in foreign policy which certainly post 1997 has largely been lost and has has produced you know a lot of the damaging policy outcomes that we are currently contending with thank you very much another question from Mark the vision of the ideological transnational policymakers has been undone by the excess by the excess of pragmatic neoliberal economic policies to what extent were these two worlds linked now like I can't see that question at the moment which is quite a complicated one okay with the moment I oh hang on it might be here it's okay no I've got can you find that question from Mark no for some reason I've found it yeah I'm well so the question then if I would rephrase it is that the open market policies of the post Cold War economic policies which were to use that awful phrase neoliberal well did they undermine the the transnational policy vision well I'm not sure there seem to be a curious alliance between the idea of a or my my argument would be in response to Mark's point I would view it the other way around really the the the success of market states in the 1980s in being or seeming to be the only way of developing modernity along economically more equitable lines they might you know states that wanted to develop after from the not what from the Cold War onwards might start off as authoritarian but in the process of development they would have to produce or they would inevitably give rise to middle classes who are increasingly educated and who would want the goods of a more liberal not necessarily democratic society but implicitly the emergence or the attraction of market economies or market states globally facilitated the transformation of Asia particularly those Asian countries who were open to the West during the Cold War South Korea Japan the Asian Tigers the Asian dragons all were receptive to this so-called neoliberalism which was the basis of their development it was also it would seem the reason why the Soviet Union collapsed so the consequences that liberal economic policies were the foundation for what then comes as an idealism out of it which you know with Habermas or Giddens wants to make capitalism more attractive more friendly hence the idealism builds out of the economy not the other way around so if you like there's a bit of structural Marxism here to facilitate the discourse that would be my point in response thank you very much next question from Duham what has been the number one pushback in terms of academic growth to the ideas posed in your book the sorry I'm just sorry I'm going to see that question again okay I think that the major pushback is that the problem with academia as it's developed as a managerialist and grant getting approach to knowledge and with it the perhaps decline in some standards that apply to entry has meant that increasingly academia has become orthodox in its presentation of knowledge and its maintenance of research hence the lack of space for alternative views particularly I would say conservative views has been quite notable since universities became businesses again from the 90s onwards I would suggest okay thank you very much Mike do you have anything if you want to jump in no I'm just I just completely agree with David on that I think he's not very long okay thank you we have the next comment from Terry but the Asian Tigers and I see were not followers of neoliberalism the economic growth was driven by state-led and non-democratic regimes supported supported especially by the United States no no I know that's fair enough Terry but the point would be that their state-managed growth actually was accountable to market forces in other words you know you could say they you know the Asian model which you know I kind of discussed quite extensively in the first chapter of my book was interestingly an ability to take aspects of liberal economics and filter them through an Asian values model that meant that a kind of state capitalism or what comes to be known as an authoritarian capitalism was made feasible then it was made feasible of course by the open conditions of the western markets that enabled Japan, South Korea and other countries to rise as I have not seen put it like a flock of flying geese thank you very much Christopher are we not confusing or at least mixing up and and ways ends might be idealistic but the ways must always be realistic the means must be what we can afford in both Russian capital and political capital well don't think so Christopher I mean I see what you're getting at but I would have thought the ideals are always within the means that are being promoted so of course the problem well the way I would present it is that as states develop as they become more wealthy as a result of globalization they of course want more than just material well-being they want other things the idealist agenda has to have wealth to make it run I would say okay thank you very much another question from Mark how far was Blair merely resuming the long tradition of western interference for example Iran in 53 or Sweden in 56 Vietnam Korea etc um yeah well he not only resumed it he put it on steroids I'd say I would I would just add on to that yes please yeah that I mean in one sense yes you can say that Blair Blair's wars and so cool they do exist on some sort of continuum if you want to if you want to see the perspective as one of western intervention on the other hand as David implied what what you could say about those those particular those particular you know wars pre um pre you know pre uh pre the end of the cold war is that they were informed either by a desire to protect Britain's imperial interests um and or they were done um with some idea of protecting broader western western ideas of anti anti-communist interests you know so there was a sort of a clear sort of ideological um uh sort of you know goal um point to a lot of these inter interventions and also um you know if you're thinking about um I mean obviously Britain didn't intervene in Vietnam but you know you could say that Britain's so-called wars of colonial disengagement they were they were pretty sort of realist orientated encounters which were intended really to leave behind pro-British regimes you know and also where the British um felt that the situation was too complex say um in Palestine or um a good one would be the Yemen and the late 1960s or mid 1960s the the British kind of got out you know or didn't even didn't even decide that the fight was worth it so there were very much of realistic premises based on sort of calculations of what could realistically be achieved um what uh what Blair's um sort of wars you know of course it wasn't just him of course it was it was a broader sort of western coalition was based on sort of explicitly sort of ethical ideas you know um making the world a better place or if you want to be critical bombing to make the world a better place you know and I think that is that is the difference and that is the controversy inherent in them is that you know the basis for intervening you know there may be you know the the aims might be all well and good they might be based on you know wanting to do good but in the end what has been the results has the has the end for those sorts of societies actually turned out very well well you know I think the the broad conclusion is that um uh you know we're looking at um you know I don't want to take a pic Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, um Libya, um someone and so forth um well uh I don't think the um the the scale of advantages and disadvantages weigh very heavily um on the advantage I think those encounters are grossed on policy elite policy advice yeah and um so I think we can make our judgments accordingly yeah to um Mike's point is absolutely spot on really about the Cold War uh relative realism compared with the post-Cold War democracy promotion you know agenda of wars of choice rather than wars of necessity and it's quite you know like the point about Vietnam I think is is is an interesting one you had a pragmatically but Prime Minister like um uh Harold Wilson and a very prudent foreign minister when he wasn't in his cups in George Brown um contrast very dramatically with Blair's um internationalism really and his um complete kind of uh addiction to um an interventionary agenda which didn't really suit British interests in the long term thank you very much another question from Will who asks about the Biden administration who's uh uh coming um and asks how um can the United States correct the zero sum excesses of the Trump years especially vis-a-vis uh an increasingly assertive and capable autocratic China yeah well I mean the the the way in which the um uh the Trump regime collapsed is huge the problematic for Trump's legacy on the other hand um some of the foreign policy decisions that Trump took in other words you know America was not engaged during the Trump regime in any um uh interventionary exercises overseas um and with regard to China I don't think uh it's as you know Trump's policy is a zero sum excessive as Will maybe you know thinks um certainly you know there was a case um that Trump rather capriciously abandoned the um the what was the trans-specific trade um proposal that the Obama late Obama regime was was was promulgating um but in other areas the fact that um China had been really since Kissinger treated as a power that could be shaped um and could be a responsible stakeholder in the international community that gave China considerable advantages not under Trump but as a result of um Bush and Obama the second Bush and Obama China's entry to the WTO sorry the World Trade Organization in 2002 uh supercharged its growth and it was not accountable to the kind of liberal constraints that the WTO should have imposed upon it and so Trump's attempt to um question China's trade policy I think was entirely reasonable and actually you know if Biden and Kurt Campbell have any sense they would build upon it rather than necessarily trash it thank you very much another question second question from Mark uh free markets are undermined by monopolistic structures and where people and organizations operate beyond tax systems as a new global establishment being created as a result and if so what does this mean for democracy well I think good question mark um I think the um you know monopolistic structures are indeed problems uh for not only people and organizations but for democratic growth transparency and accountability and um um I don't know whether a new global establishment has been created but certainly um post-covid and post-financial crisis we've created a hell of a you know financial debt arrangement that it seems unlikely we're going to get out of in in the immediate future without some very hard decisions being made um I don't know that there's not a I don't don't see a new policy establishment actually I see a lack of an establishment really and the g7 and the g20 offering very little right thank you very much another second question from marty um it seems to me that since the cold war the there has been a significant deletion of foreign policies from defense policies in the west uh which may be a strategy on its own how much as separating the influence of military strategies um affected our current western vulnerability to more militarized approaches to strategy maybe might can answer that actually um well um yeah no thanks it's an interesting question if I if I understand the um uh the terms of the question right marty that um it certainly is the case that I'm gonna speak for sort of um or sort of my um thinking is based on um you know sensibly british understandings but I think they apply more broadly um across western europe and even the united states as well which is that um as the breadth of the interventionist tendency arose um defense spendings were actually reduced as a percapser of gdp so I think that does um as your maybe I think your question implies that that produces well a fairly sort of obvious and logical tension between your uh your means and your your capabilities which I think is a very um potent source of the current incoherence in um broadly speaking western western foreign policies if your aspirations are to um are to be interventionist then of course you must be willing to um service that uh that that capability both in terms of means and most importantly of political will and so um and I think we can see again so far as the sort of uh an understanding of british foreign policy is concerned how um incoherent this this this made british foreign and defense policy in the aftermath of the um toppling of saddam hussein in iraq whereby um you would have thought or you would have hoped and then david and I uh remember this period very well in in 2003 um and um speaking for myself I think for david as well you know we were thinking well maybe you know maybe if there is something in this um in the in the whole idea that saddam hussein has uh um has a nuclear weapons capability or an evolving capability and maybe um maybe it was correct to go in and intervene and topple saddam hussein but regardless of whether it was or wasn't you would expect that the intervening powers which britain was was perhaps the second key um partner they would actually have a plan to occupy the place you know rather than just regime um you know topple over the regime and hope the hope the society will somehow remake itself in some sort of democratic image um and the fact that both capabilities and will you know result you know the all the lack of them um resulted in the complete failure of um western certainly british policy in in iraq and through a completely incoherent um occupation policy I think underlines the verity of what you're saying and if we extend it into um say you know the intervention in libya again knock over a regime um you have no interest in in in the means or the will in following it through and and um seeing through a a a uh government um you know which which could um be which could survive in place of gadafi um now arguably you know one shouldn't have actually intervened in the first place but nevertheless if you've chosen to do that then of course you must have the the means and the capability and I think that um you know the chickens definitely came came home to roost as a result of the of that de-latching um that you refer to marty so yeah I think it's a fair fair point thank you mike um another question from aron uh how much are we in the world uh living with the hungover of the end of the bipolar cold war in the west yeah I I think what erin's asking is that um the cold war in the wet inducted because the the rest of the question is versus nixon decoupling of the bipolar east by china in the india pacific shift that's a balanced power um well if I kind of um understand the question aright is it that the west um uh is itself um well the west always saw the cold war in terms of um the soviet union and china is a bit of an add-on um and actually the the the the end of that um and the shift um in the cold war mentality or you know that europe could expand eastward um ignored the fact that um china uh which was treated in you know as a result of kissinger and nixon's opening in an entirely different way and enabled china to emerge as a far more um effective threat particularly economically to the west uh than the soviet union um that seems to have been um what could be increasingly seen as uh something of a mistake so kissinger the great cold war realist and pragmatist is always a bit um uh elusive in his view of china or as something that is uh obviously a major civilization but something that can be brought within a western orbit that was always the dream after 1972 uh nixon himself was a bit more skeptical uh before he died in an interview with william frieken he actually noted that he might have created a frankenstein's monster um this is the um you know one of the potential legacies of that kind of um um shifting politics towards china i think and the endo pacific now becomes a region not only of opportunity but also potential global conflict going forward as the chinese and the soviet well the russians particularly now realize great terrific thank you very much um i think we are uh almost the time is almost over uh before concluding if i can just ask briefly a question to david as well because you mentioned 9 11 and then the economic crisis in 2008 which under certain respect as you said had even more influence and impact and now we are living into uh in the middle of a health crisis and i expect in 10 years probably the next one will be an informatic crisis and then probably the planet will explode and the world will end but my question is um if the current crisis will have any impact on basically pushing things in the direction you you described in your in the book well yeah i mean i think um you know the the we're talking about the the covid effects yeah yeah and what that implies going forward um i suppose you know obviously i wrote the book before covid that's what i'm asking came out in april and devastated my attempts to promote it so i'm fairly against microorganisms at the moment but um i think you know the not only the um disease itself a microorganism you know that has devastated our economies in the west um uh and so it's not just the micro it's not just the the coronavirus um we've dealt with coronaviruses in the past without this um medical health kind of um approach to disease the public health state that we now live in um where we're ruled by our our kind of um iatrogenic concern with with health at the expense of our economies um this seems to me to be uh potentially tragic actually i mean when i wrote the book i thought there was scope for um democratic recovery you know i mean we've become a bit over the top about the potential for a universal end of history but you know our aspirations for a liberal order were you know noble um you know we might have gone around about that it slightly wrongly or wrongly uh in the long term or relatively short term but the the idea of international order pre-peace and harmony are you know good um uh ambitions um and democracies might have got overstretched and over promoted certain things but there was the potential to um you know prudently recover and and reboot the democratic project uh the economic devastation that we've leaped upon ourselves which china has has not suffered from even though it would seem to have created the virus um is you know uh one of the great ironies of the current condition i think i mean china's recovering very nicely as we're all in across europe into a third lockdown um no i'm i'm quite pessimistic not not because of the coronavirus itself but our response to it which is being so illiberal all right well thank you very much uh thank you for answering my question um time is over unfortunately so i have to wrap up i want to thank our speakers dr johnson professor raceboro for this fascinating talk i would like everybody to join in a virtual round of applause for our panelists uh thank everybody for your attention uh and your participation of all your questions uh this um event will be available on youtube on the war studies channel um i think tomorrow i mean as soon as the recording is ready so you can re-watch it and i thank everybody uh and see you next time bye bye all right thank you thank you bye bye it's a lot fun you can stay on