 Hello and welcome to this Lowey Institute live event. This event is part of what we're calling the Long Distance Lowey Institute, in which we communicate our content and our analysis online while we're unable to do it in person. Today, we have people joining us from all over the world, including a number of my board members. So a warm welcome to you all. My name is Michael Fully Love and I'm the Executive Director of the Lowey Institute. And joining me this evening is one of Europe's most respected leaders, former Swedish Prime Minister, Carl Bilt. Carl was Sweden's Foreign Minister from 2006 to 2014 and he was Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994 when he negotiated Sweden's accession to the EU. Before I go to Carl, some quick housekeeping. At the bottom of your screen, you'll see a Q&A button where you can submit questions to Carl. We'll put as many of your questions as possible to Carl later in the discussion. But first, I have some questions for Carl. So first of all, Carl Bilt, welcome and thank you for joining us. Good morning, I have to say, although it's late afternoon with you, but here in Europe, a new day is starting. Very nice to be with you. All right, for Australians who may not be familiar with all aspects of your career, a quick history lesson. As a young lawmaker, you made your name by challenging the then Prime Minister Olof Palmer on Foreign Affairs. And then in 1991, at the age of 42, you became Prime Minister. At the time, I think you were the first conservative Prime Minister in Sweden for six decades. You served as Prime Minister for four years. And after that, you served in a number of important jobs in the international system as the EU Special Envoy to the former Yugoslavia, the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina and the UN Special Envoy to the Balkans. So maybe I can start, Karl, you were still a young man at that point. What was it like and what did you learn about the world and how the world works and how the international system works from being an international envoy on these difficult conflicts as opposed to being Prime Minister of Sweden? Well, it was very different because if you're a Prime Minister, even if when you are Prime Minister, particularly in the early 90s and all of the changes going on, foreign affairs was a fairly substantial component of that. But when you are thereafter launched into war and peace issues, I mean, literally war and peace, as well as sort of high international diplomacy, trying to sort of maneuver a couple of countries from Russia to the United States to the UK to France to whatever in order to get a coherent international response to difficult situations, then you are really thrown into something that is slightly different. It was a very difficult, it was a very formative period for all of Europe. The entire period of the dissolution of the Soviet Union with all of the things that were left as a result of that, including the dissolution of Yugoslavia which resulted in roughly 10 years of continuous war was of course quite something to put it mildly. And in 1995, you served as the Co-Chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference alongside Richard Holbrook. Now, Holbrook was a legendary American diplomat whom everybody I think including Holbrook himself assumed would be Secretary of State one day. He was the subject of a brilliant biography by George Packer entitled Our Man which was published last year. Carl, what was your assessment of Holbrook as a diplomat? What was this huge larger than life figure? What was it like to work so closely alongside him? Well, it was a rather special experience. He was ruthless, he was effective, he was determined, fairly centered upon himself, has to be said and that is brought out by that particular book as well. What I found really made him effective. I mean, the rumor is that he was the one who was able to bring the people in the Balkans together for peace. He had to some extent, but primarily he was able to mobilize Washington to get Washington to be, to far more coherent and more realistic policy than they've had so far and up until then. And that made it possible to fortune international consensus which hadn't been there before. And when that happened, then we could end the war in the Balkans. So the fact that he could maneuver ruthlessly, effectively Washington was very impressive and highly decisive for the outcome in the Balkans. And I want to ask you a little bit more about Holbrook as a human being because he was such an interesting character, both attractive and unattractive. I had a mini Holbrook encounter myself when I was researching a book that I wrote about Franklin Roosevelt. And one of the characters in my book was Avril Harriman who was a legendary American diplomat and Harriman was Holbrook's mentor. So I interviewed Richard Holbrook at the State Department when he was the AFPAC envoy. And it was sort of I guess a classic Holbrook moment because he padded in in his socks. He put his feet, his stocking feet up on the desk. He insisted that I record every word because he wanted me to quote him in the book. And then I recall at the end, he told me that he had decided he would write the introduction to my book. And I was sort of left thinking, but this is my book, not your book, Richard. So I know that was sort of mild behavior on the Holbrookian standards, but I remember thinking at the time, this is not normal when you interview somebody as part of a research project. So can you give us an insight like that? I mean, you had to, you were bunking, I guess, on the Dayton Air Force Base with him. How did he use his personality and the force of his personality to get his way? Well, I mean, your story is a fairly classical Holbrook story, that's the way he did it. He was very much concerned with the image of himself. No question about that. But the guy was brilliant, ruthless and brilliant. I worked with him over those years in the Balkans and then we kept in touch over the years. And then when I was foreign minister and EU presidency, I was sharing foreign affairs and he was doing Afghanistan and we were doing a lot of Afghanistan together. So we kept together over the years. And that was fairly unusual. There could be occasions when he was sort of de facto betraying us, ditching other people. He never did that to me. He stayed loyal, he defended me even when I was subject to sort of fierce attacks which you are in the Balkans now then and he was also in the Balkans. But he could be extremely effective in ways that I vividly remember when we were forced by Washington in the middle of negotiations to brief the ambassadors in Geneva of the organization for Islamic countries, I think it was because they felt excluded. And he had to call the men and he detested them all. And he spent really all the time flattering all of them. He started by saying, ah, the ambassador from that particular country. I love that particular country. I have this particular story with the country and I admire your leader. Please send my regard to your beloved leader. And of course the ambassador was busy scribbling down everything of flattery that he said. So he went around an hour and flattered all of the ambassadors completely lying to all of them. And they were all happy and he gave them absolutely no information whatsoever of what happened. That was a classical holdbook. He got away with murder in terms of diplomacy but he was highly effective. And at the end of the day, I would have to say a very likeable man. All right, speaking of diplomacy, you mentioned your role as foreign minister. And it is unusual, I think, certainly in modern politics in most of the West for someone to go from being prime minister to then come back later and serve as foreign minister. And you did that very successfully for the better part of a decade. Which job did you prefer, Carl, being prime minister or foreign minister? Which one's more enjoyable? But they are very different. Of course, as prime minister you have, don't always have the powers that you wish you had, but of course you are sort of in charge of a team that is sort of running your country. As foreign minister, yeah, you run foreign policy that you make speeches, you talk, you try to alter the world, but it's not quite the same thing in terms of impact necessarily. Occasionally, foreign policy does have an impact but foreign policy is often a much more slow process of trying to change the world for the better or trying to deal with actual situations. So very difficult to compare the jobs, but I think it was a distinct advantage as foreign minister to having been prime minister to know that diplomacy is not just talking around and go to conferences, but it must be grounded in the actual policies that are conducted by countries with their domestic priorities and with their domestic difficulties and knowing something or more as well about both financial affairs and military and those issues. All right, speaking of domestic policy, Sweden's domestic policies are famous at the moment because Sweden is both praised and criticized every day for its response to COVID-19 and we're hearing a lot of discussion of the Swedish model in its approach to the pandemic. Can you fill us in a bit? What approach is Sweden taking to coronavirus and how do you think it's playing out? Well, I think that you're seriously allowed on that one. We'll see how it will be at the end of the day. The model, I don't think we are particularly, I don't think our government today is particularly happy with the word model. It was not meant to be a model and we don't want to be sort of something that we want to export to the rest of the world because we simply don't know what's going to be the best approach. But the difference is that we did not look down everything. Hard recommendations, so it means that there has been sort of a social distancing that's been significant and some might add that Swedes have a genetic disposition to social distancing anyhow, which have made it somewhat more easier to get that particular effect. But the measuring things is difficult and societies are different. But if we compare ourselves with the other Nordic countries, our neighbors, fairly similar societies, we have more than three times as many debt as them taking together. We have roughly 4,000 debt in the country of 10 million. So from that point of view, rather disturbing record in terms of economic effect, well, we are dependent on the global economy so it doesn't make much of a difference. I think we'd have a slowdown in the economy, minus 7%, 8% or whatever. That is roughly what you see in other European countries as well. But we don't know. We are in the beginning of this particular pandemic still. How would you assess the way different countries have reacted to the pandemic? And the reason I put that question to you is that there are conservatives around the world, including in Australia, but also in the United States and the UK, who argue in favour, for example, of Sweden's approach. And one argument is that the world has overreacted to this pandemic and that the cure will be as bad as the cause, that the response has been disproportionate to the threat and the unintended consequences of the policies will be very severe. What do you make of that argument? Well, as I said previously, we don't know. I think there's a lot that we can learn from what has happened in previous pandemics. There's a lot that we can learn from each other. But there is no question in my opinion that sort of locking down or slowing down or social distancing or whatever you prefer to call it has been extremely important in sort of containing the disease. If I look at Italy, it's quite interesting. Italy was first hit in Europe. It was fairly hardly hit. If you look at the figures there, most of it is up in Lombardy in the north. But then they will lock down the rest of the country. And if I look at figures for Rome, Rome is, the Rome reading is of roughly three times in terms of population in Stockholm. And we have three times as many dead in Stockholm as they have in Rome. And that, of course, to me demonstrate, A, that they should have locked down in Lombardy earlier. B, that the lockdown in the rest of Italy actually worked to sort of contain the spread of the disease in one of the worst-hit countries. But that being said, there's a lot more studies that need to go into which are the real essence of this particular pandemic. What have you made of European solidarity in the face of coronavirus? Obviously, divisions between, broadly between the south and the north. What effect will COVID have on the European Union, do you think? Well, we had a fairly bad experience in the beginning with the integrated signal market that we have. I mean, with the free open borders of the free flow of goods and services where certain countries, notably the big ones, notably France, by the way, suddenly locked these borders for medical supplies of difference. So that created significant difficulties. And the commission took fairly strict and strong measures earlier. So that was eased up. But now I think the internal market, which is really the key of the European economy, is working again. What we have now is rather vivid discussion. As a matter of fact, the commission has got a percentage-use proposal later today on the common, what I call rescue package or comeback package for the European economy. And there has been a debate and there will be debate for several weeks on the size of the package or how to finance it and whether to which extent there's got to be the mix between loans and grants. But I think that you will see at the end of that. And there's also a couple with a huge discussion on the seven-year budget of the European Union. You will see a fairly significant European-level package in order to aid the European economy as a whole, but particularly those countries that have been struck particularly hard. And I think the role of Germany has been instrumental in bridging the North-South divides. There's an East-West divide as well and we'll see how that works out. One of the issues to do with Europe that we heard a lot about before COVID was Brexit and that was the big story before and now we never hear about it at all. You come from the conservative side of Swedish politics, but as I mentioned earlier, you were involved in Sweden's accession to the EU. What do you think will be the long-term effect of Brexit? We're not talking about it now, but what will be the long-term effect of Brexit on Britain and also on the European Union? Well, we are losing a significant country. They are losing significant support. Take an issue which is big now for the UK, should be Hong Kong. Of course, it makes a difference if it's only the UK, perhaps together with Australia and Canada, same things, then if they had been able to act together with all of Europe at the same time. So the UK loses somewhat of foreign policy weight, so does the European Union. Then much is going to be dependent on the nature of that particular agreement that we hope that we will be able to conclude. But since Boris Johnson has set a very tight timetable and COVID has interfered as well, few people think that there will be the possibility to sort out all of the issues that needs to be sorted out by the end of the year. Will we end up only with a very limited agreement or will we extend the timetable so we can sort out all of the issues that needs to be sorted out? And we are, in fact, far more integrated than people were aware of. And we are still in the situation, of course, where the UK has left all of the decision-making bodies in Brussels. They are not legally a member, but they are legally members of the Customs Union on the single market yet, still. And to sort out all of that will take time. But the strategic relationship between the UK and the European Union, whether we can forge a new one, I think that would be important for the UK and for us as well. All right, what about the effects of the pandemic on the global order as opposed to the European order? You wrote an interesting op-ed in the Washington Post last week in which you said that at the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly, the post-American world was on full display. And you said the United States has left behind any ambition of global leadership and any function as a global inspiration. Can I ask you to talk a bit about the United States in the ear of President Trump and coronavirus? Obviously, the US response to the pandemic has been unimpressive, or some would say woeful. How much of this loss of American altitude is a temporary versus a permanent phenomenon, do you think? Will America snap back, for example, if the United States has a different president in November, or is this a more long-term trend? I think the long-term trend from your point of view is clearly that the United States is going to be more preoccupied with the threat challenge, however you phrase it, of China. So there will be, as Obama said, the pivot to Asia is there, irrespectively of who is president of the United States. So that is the implication of us Europeans. And it also has implications for the global order because it will be less cooperation and more conflict when it comes to X numbers of different issues. But then, of course, Trump or no Trump makes a difference. The Trump administration, as we've seen in this particular crisis, as I said, is the first global crisis of any sort of nature in living memory, where the White House in Washington hasn't even had the, not even a tendency towards a willingness to exercise global leadership. And that's unique. It's been sort of America first, America first, and who cares about the world? And that is fundamentally new and that is disturbing. Go around the world and not everyone has been sort of admiring every aspect of American leadership during the past sort of half century, something like that, but it's been there. And it has been significant. And I think more of force for the good than the force for trouble. Part of that can be repaired with a different presidency. But then it's a different world with different pressures. So we are not going to go back to the market that we had before. And how should countries like Sweden and Australia like-minded democracies that take security seriously? What should be our response to the United States stepping back from the world? Well, from the European point of view, we must be able to sort of up our game. We must try to develop common foreign and security policies so that we can be a global player, not just the play field for the other players, for the Chinese, for the Russians that we have here to some extent for the Americans. And we must be able to speak up with some of the louder voice on the global stage. Can we do that remains to be seen? You mentioned the World Health Assembly, that was interesting. We saw the Americans being absent. We saw the Chinese being fairly assertive as usual. But we saw the Europeans being able to, together with Australia, by the way, to mull the global compromise that eventually made it possible to have a unified decision at the end. So there's a lot of lessons in this for Europe. Then we have a dependence on the United States and a security relationship and an economic relationship and a cultural relationship that will always remain very strong. But that being said, we must be able to stand on our own feet more than we've been able to do so far. Let me ask you about what standing on your own feet looks like, especially in the context of the World Health Assembly, as you mentioned. As you alluded to, Australia stuck its neck out a little bit on this question of an investigation into the origins of the pandemic. The foreign minister, the prime minister called for that a long time ago and ended up cooperating with the Europeans on the EU motion, which was eventually passed with a large number of cosponsors and supporters. But in doing so, we raised the ire of China, who is very sensitive about this question of their maladministration, allegedly, of the pandemic in the early weeks in particular. They're very determined to show off the state capacity that they demonstrated in checking the spread of the virus. They don't like any discussion of the cover-up of the virus in the first few weeks. But can I ask your advice as a former foreign minister and a former prime minister? Was that the smart thing and the right thing of Australia to do or not? Because there's a real debate in Australia about whether, with some people saying, on the one hand it was the right thing to do, it's an absolutely reasonable request that there be an independent international investigation into this pandemic, which has killed so many people and destroyed so many livelihoods. And then there are a number of experts on the other side who say, but hold on, we've got deep equities in the China relationship and we can't go around conducting ourselves like that. We have to be smarter. We have to be thinking of the long-term game. So what would your advice be as a former foreign minister and a former prime minister? I think it was a very reasonable demand. I think it was obvious that that demand was going to come. If you look back on SARS and Ebola and other similar or more or less similar episodes that we've had, there's always been an inquiry of some sort, lessons learned. And part of lessons learned is, of course, to see how did it start? Could we have done better in the beginning? And I think both in SARS and Ebola, the conclusion is yes, we could have done better in the beginning. But perhaps when one does that, shouldn't phrase it only as looking at China. There's no question that the Chinese messed it up in the beginning. No question about the Chinese messed it up in the beginning. But I would say there's no question of quite a lot of others messing it up slightly later in that particular process. So there's a lot of lessons need to be learned as concerns China's behavior, but not only China's behavior. So I would have phrased it as sort of somewhat more broadly oriented investigations and lessons learned exercise where the Chinese component is, of course, critical, but not the only one. All right, let me ask you a couple more questions about China and then I want to go to the audience and give them an opportunity to ask you some questions. For a long time here in Australia, it seemed to us that Europeans have taken a somewhat one-dimensional view of China, seeing it as a commercial opportunity or a market, but not as a strategic actor. But it does seem that scales are falling from European eyes to some extent, obviously. China has been very forward-leaning with countries like France and the Netherlands on the COVID issue, not just with Australia. You're seeing in the UK a big pushback actually, interestingly, from within the Tory party about the government's decision to allow Huawei to supply some of Britain's 5G technology. So Carl, how much is European thinking on China changing? How much is Europe's view of China hardening? It is shifting, no question about that. And you saw that happening before COVID. Last year was very important. There was a very important policy paper produced in Berlin by the German Confederation of Industries in the beginning of the year. And Germans have, of course, been the ones who've been pushing the Chinese relationship more than any other European country. They've been extremely the German car industry, for example. So when they started to be sort of slightly hesitant, what did have a slightly more balanced approach to put it in those terms, it was important. And then the European Commission in Brussels came out with a paper saying that they were sort of a systematic competitor in sort of also in the political realm, that that was a shift. We see that shift accelerating in the COVID crisis. But that has to be said, it's not gonna be the same as the US. From the European point of view, we must have a Chinese policy that is with two pillars. One is the call the confrontation or call it whatever you say on X numbers of issues, values, human rights, Hong Kong, Taiwan, whatever. But the second is, of course, that we see the need to cooperate with the Chinese on X numbers of global concerns that are important to us as a climate might be the most important. We can't sort out the climate issue without the Chinese, that's it. Global trade issues, we need to have a relationship with them to make certain that their behavior is reasonable. And they're quite a number of other issues, notably the global health issues, where we need to have the Chinese on board. So this decoupling thing that you hear circulating in the US debate, nope, that's not gonna work in Europe. We want to have both the competition, confrontation with China, and we want to have the engagement cooperation with China. What about in Sweden, Carl? Because I'm aware that there's been an issue over the last couple of years about the abduction and detention of one of the Hong Kong booksellers who I think was a Chinese born Swedish citizen, and that's gone in sort of unexpected ways and caught up one of your former ambassadors to China. What's happening in Sweden's relationship with China? Yeah, as you point out, that has not been developing in a very positive direction, primarily of course, due to what the Chinese have done. And you might say that the Canadians have the same with Canadian citizens being held up for the reasons whatsoever. And on these issues, the Chinese are rather hopeless to deal with. And to that, of course, that they have taken a somewhat different approach to diplomacy with their ambassadors being fairly or very aggressive in their public posturing on these issues, criticizing the media and saying things that I think backfires rather heavily against China. So before COVID, we had a virtual freeze on all official contacts. It hasn't affected the commercial relationship and it remains to be seen when eventually when we get out of the COVID, if that freeze is gonna continue or not. You referred obliquely to what they're calling Wolf Warrior diplomacy where Chinese ambassadors and diplomats are playing to an audience at home effectively and being very aggressive with their host governments and behaving in a way you've sometimes seen Russian diplomats doing this kind of thing. Do you think as a former foreign minister, is that in China's interest in the long term? No, if I see what's been happening, not only in Sweden, you see it in France, we see in other countries in Europe, it's been profoundly counterproductive from the Chinese point of view. And I think we will see change. I think to some extent, this is part of inexperience. I mean, Chinese diplomats for decades were extremely low key all over the world. And then suddenly these very low key diplomats were ordered from Beijing to be asserted. And they've not been able to calibrate it in a clever way. Diplomacy is a balancing act. And that balancing act, they haven't acquired that skill in their diplomatic service. And then they have erected, I think they will find out that it's backfires against them. And I think that over time, I would believe and hope that their diplomacy will be able to sort of fine tune their behavior in a way that is more constructive from the, I mean, diplomacy has to be diplomacy, it's not a crusade. And they have to learn that particular art. All right, let me go to our audience. We've already collected quite a number of questions, but there's still time to submit a question. So if you want to do so now, please click on the Q&A button at the bottom. Please put in a concise question, mention any organization or affiliation you may have. And I'm gonna try to put as many of these questions as possible to Carl. Carl, I'm gonna start off with a question that has come through from one of our board members, Joanna Hewitt, who is a former Australian diplomat and official. And Joanna has a question about the EU. And she says, can Sweden and like-minded such as Denmark, the Netherlands and sometimes Ireland hold their own on market-oriented liberal economic policies in the union, in the absence of the UK? And this goes to a conversation I had with the Netherlands Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, when he was here last year. And he was really very sad about as a conservative, somewhat of a conservative himself, but he was sad about the UK leaving, partly because it will make Europe weaker, but also because it'll make Europe less liberal. So how do the Swedes and the other frugal countries in the European Union, how do you feel about that element? How can you hold your own against a more statist vision of the union? Well, I certainly agree with that. We have lost an important part in the United Kingdom and quite a number of these issues. But we should not forget that the European Union is governed by the treaties and the treaties are very firm on what sort of economy and what sort of society we are supposed to be. We are going to be open liberal economies, free training, open liberal economies. That's in the treaties. That is the single market. So that's gonna remain. Then on the margins of that, yeah, there will be debate on sort of competition rules, how strictly you enforce them and what criteria you have, that discussion is ongoing. That could be discussion on different trade aspects of it, how firm should we be on different, what is called trade defense measures, for example, against the Chinese. There will be discussion on industrial policy. Are we going to pour money into sort of industrial champions of different sorts? How much and which champions? Yeah, those discussions are gonna be there. But overall, I think that we are sort of firmly, firmly embedded through the treaties in a commitment to open economies and open global trading regime. I have another question from Les Pickett in Melbourne. And Les asks you to look five years in the future and tell us whether Europe will be more or less unified. And I guess Les is getting to a possible positive dividend out of Brexit, which is that maybe the union will be smaller, but you won't have these pesky Brits who are constantly asking for caveats and carve outs. And there's more sort of solidity to the EU. Do you think that's likely, do you see more or less unified Europe in five years? I think it is more likely than not that it will be more unified. I mean, the pattern that we've seen in crisis and we seem to hit a big crisis every five years. 10 years ago, we had the Euro crisis. Five years ago, we had the refugee crisis. And these, and now we have this one. And it looks somewhat messy in the beginning. And you have a couple of European Council summit meetings that don't manage to produce very much more than acrimony and bad mood. But after a while, it normally sorts itself out and they find a compromise. And that compromise normally means that we strengthen the instruments that we have on the European level. I think that is likely to be the outcome this time as well. And that we will develop primarily more common financial instruments to handle the situation like this. I think we will develop instruments to increase our resilience when it comes to strategic technologies and medical equipment and that sort of things. And I think we also need to fine tune state support policies of different sorts as a consequence of this. How much of a loss to Europe will it be when Angela Merkel eventually retires? Well, a huge loss, although we don't know what the replacement is gonna be. But I've jokingly said that one of the most spectacular failures in Europe during the last few years has been the efforts or attempt of Angela Merkel to retire, that has not succeeded. On the contrary, with Germany now taking over and Angela Merkel taking over the presidency of the European Union during the second half of this year, which is gonna be a very critical period when it comes to the recovery of the crisis and charting the long-term course of the European Union, she will be more important to the European Union than she's ever been. Then she's supposed to step down at the latest after the elections that they're gonna have in September of 2021. But who's gonna replace her? We don't know. Germany is still gonna be a very important country. What about military cooperation in Europe and the future of NATO? Well, the future of NATO isn't much of a problem from the European point of view. Another Trump presidency. What will that mean? We don't know. So far, military security cooperation has been going forward. I understand that NATO summits have a rather special character to them these days to put it very mildly. And accordingly, they are trying to have as few of them as possible. But day-to-day military cooperation is working. Then there is a determined attempt to develop more of European security military cooperation. Substantial sums of money will be spent in the European Union, but it's on that as well. That is not to really replace the basic American security guarantee particularly on the nuclear side that we are dependent upon. But giving the European ability to do quite a number of different things where the Americans are not likely to be interested or have the resources available to do it with us any longer. As said, I do believe that the Americans will be driven by all sorts of things to be more focused on China and Asia. And there are limits to also the military and security resources that the Americans can devote to Europe in the future. We have a question, Carl, from Miriam Solomon. And Miriam asks, what is the thinking in relation to a post-pandemic economy and opportunities for tackling climate change? How much support is there in Europe and internationally for a Green New Deal or equivalent? And I guess it's going to the, we're all seized with the urgent issue of the pandemic but there is this important, perhaps even existential issue of climate change just around the corner. Do you think, will the pandemic, I mean, there are sort of mixed messages I think out of the pandemic. On the one hand it's shown that science matters, that people will listen to expert opinion when the chips are down. It also shows that collective action is possible where all around the world people are obeying what their governments are telling them to do and modifying their behavior and indeed closing down economies. But on the other hand, they're closing down economies and when we come out of this, there's going to be a rush to as much economic activity as we can in order to secure people's jobs and livelihoods. So what's the future for the movement to encourage cooperation, come up with better international deals to limit carbon emissions and limit dangerous climate change? Well, prior to COVID, if you remember, there was a word some time ago. The Green Deal was the big issue for the European Union. I mean, the EU has been sort of the green leader in the global diplomacy for four years and the intention was to accelerate this further with key decisions coming up this year and next year, leading up to COP26, which was supposed to be held in Glasgow in November. Now as you point out, everything is different. What will happen? Well, some people in Europe are saying, I mean, you can look and listen to Poland, for example, say the priority must be the economic recovery. We can't spend that much money closing down coal mines as fast as you want us to do. So let's wait the wine. They also say, well, the COP26 is not going to happen urgently anyhow. So why the rush? While others are saying, well, this is a long-term challenge. We need to face it. And why not tie the measures that we now take for the economic recovery to also implement these sort of Green Deal sort of changes in the way our economy operate? I think it's going to end up as a delayed version of the latter course. That is, yes, Europe will tie its different measures that it takes to the Green Deal type of policies that was discussed prior to COVID, but it will probably be somewhat delayed. And it will be delayed also for purely what I call bandwidth issues. I mean, the European summit meetings are going to be taken up by other issues due to the next six months or something like that. So it's like delay, but no change, of course, and continued commitment to the Green issues when the COVID crisis start to loosen up somewhat. All right, I have a question from Jeanette Sortner from the Canadian Embassy in Poland. And Jeanette asks, have democratic institutions been weakened during the COVID-19 crisis? If so, why and is the damage likely to be long-lasting? I think they have been weakened, the question is coming from Poland, and other questions could have been coming in from Hungary where they have been weakened. Is this because of COVID? No, it's not because of COVID. It is because of other political tendencies in these respective countries that we've been battling with and we'll continue to battle with. Will this be reinforced by COVID? Not quite certain of that. There was a tendency to say in the beginning of the crisis that this would demonstrate the superiority of more sort of ortho-ethanals of governance. I'm not quite certain that will be the case. If you look at the, and you are closer to it, Taiwan did better than mainland China. South Korea has done fairly well. I mean, the sort of, the more open society tends to be more agile, more responsive, more fast moving in situations like this. And I think that that conclusion I believe will stand stronger when we start coming out of the crisis. One country we haven't discussed, Carl, is Russia. And of course, Russia featured importantly in your career at the beginning and it's a preoccupation for people in your part of the world. What changes have you detected in Russia in recent months and years? And how would you assess President Putin's mindset and approach to Europe at the moment? Well, I mean, this is not the sort of crisis that President Putin likes. He likes other types of things. And you might note that he was rather late in reacting. He was rather sort of Trump inspired in his approach. So they closed down and took the measures fairly late. The consequence of that is that they have a fairly bad situation primarily in Moscow. Add to that that the health system is not particularly impressive, particularly out in the regions. So they are having a difficult time. And add to that, of course, the oil price crisis. I mean, the export income is going to be down roughly 40%. And it was rather bad last year as well. So down 40% from a bad level is quite a lot of money that's going to be lost. So Russia is going to go through a fairly difficult time. Does that affect this relationship with Europe? Let's see. We haven't seen any move from them on being more accommodating on Ukraine. What they are up to in Syria remains to be seen. The Libyan adventure is highly doubtful. Will they cut back on the exposure to Venezuela? We don't know. But I think something will have to be, something will have to give in Russia in the next year or two. We have a question from Chen Weihua from the China Daily. And this is his question, which I don't necessarily agree with, but let me pass it on to you. He says, the US and China are edging towards Cold War, pushed mostly by the Trump administration. How do you think Europe can play a role to stop such a dangerous trend? Yeah, I don't really agree with the analogy of the Cold War because the Cold War was different. The Cold War was a confrontation limited to, at least in the latter phases, primarily to the military political domain. I mean, the Soviet Union's never appeared competitor in terms of economy or technology very, very far from it. China is a different sort of confrontation. It's a battle for control of the technologies of the future to take one example. And the Soviet Union was a part of a nuclear weapon, never there. Well, the difference is so far with this person administration in the US. The US administration has no commitment to what we could call a global system, a global order. The word is absent from all of the policy document coming out of Washington. We Europeans have. We think there needs to be a global order of some sort. A global system of governance multilaterally is called whatever you want. Different sorts of treaties. And here I think the Chinese with their own characteristics to use that phrase or their own assertive interests have a civil interest. And here we should be able to work, I hope, with the Chinese in order to do something for some sort of global order in a situation where the American are at another end of that particular debate, at least as long as we have a Trump administration in the White House. All right, staying with China, we have a question from another of our board members, Penny Wensley, who was an Australian ambassador to the UN among other roles in her career. And Penny says, you mentioned Hong Kong and Taiwan briefly. How concerned are you about what is happening now in Hong Kong, obviously developments this week in terms of out of Beijing, in terms of the security law in Hong Kong and the possibility of China pushing harder on both Hong Kong and Taiwan while the world is focused on the pandemic and the economic destruction that it's causing? Well, I'm concerned. I had a long chat with Chris Patton the other day and who is of course extremely engaged with this and engaged with trying to mobilize public opinion on what's happening. I think it was very well worth noting that when they had what they call the twin sessions in Beijing, Hong Kong was evidently the key issue where they wanted to demonstrate that we are not gonna tolerate more. We are gonna clamp down. We're gonna do whatever we want, irrespective of what USA. And the fact that they're wording on Taiwan took away the word peaceful when they talked about the future was, I mean, this was not an editing error to put it mildly, this is a policy signal. So the Chinese are being far more assertive on these particular issues. I think it is related to Hong Kong, but I think it's even more related to Taiwan and not wanting to say that we have an imminent crisis on Taiwan, but I think we see a hardening of Chinese issues here. And I think it's important that we sort of freedom loving democracies in different parts of the world do whatever we can in order to raise concern about Hong Kong, develop links also with Taiwan within the framework of the one China policy that we have in order to try to sort of prevent things from going even further downhill. All right, I wanna take you back to the United States a little bit if I can because I know you're a close observer of the United States and you worked with the Clinton administration when you were Prime Minister, you worked I guess with the Bush and the Obama administrations as foreign minister. Let me try to draw you out a bit more on the long-term trajectory of the United States. I think you said that the administration can a change of administration could repair some of the damage that President Trump has caused. Obviously, the way he conducts himself, his worldview is so completely different from even, for example, somebody like President George W. Bush who was not a big fan of multilateralism, for example, but was very strong on alliances. Do you worry about the damage that President Trump is doing to US public opinion, to doing to opinion in the Republican Party, the GOP, which has traditionally been a home of internationalism and belief in alliances. Tell us a little bit more about how you're feeling about the United States in the post-Trump era. I am worried about that. If you see trade issues, which are important, I mean, Europe is extremely dependent on Sweden, Europe is extremely dependent upon foreign trade. We are the opinion is, I think, even after the UKF is leaving, we are the biggest trading entity in the world. Traditionally, of course, the Democrats have been somewhat hesitant, not against, but they've not been driving those issues in the US the Republicans have. And now we have a situation where he has shifted opinion inside the Republican Party and might even have solidified opinions inside the Democratic Party. So my fear is that we might have a US that is less committed to the sort of free-open global trading regime that we are very dependent upon and that the rest of the world is highly dependent upon. Has he shifted opinion on alliances and things like that? Less certain. I think another administration will restore a normal climate of dialogue across the Atlantic, which is sort of the low bar that we have these days. And take the US back into some of the multilateral regimes that are important to all of us. But then there will be the preoccupation with China. I mean, I think if you look at this upcoming campaign in the US, it's gotta be a campaign where foreign policy does play a role. They are both going to accuse each other of being soft on China and promising to be even hard on China. And to which extent that is going to be translated then into trade policies, into security policies, into diplomatic action, that we don't know. But it will have effects. And those effects will not be limited just to the purely sort of bilateral relationship between the United States and China. It will have global ramifications. I have a question from one of my low Institute colleagues, Sam Rogavine, who's the director of our international security program. And Sam asks, who are the most impressive world leaders you encountered in your career and why? And who are the least impressive? I skip the least impressive. I think the leaders that I have been impressed by are the leaders that have a historical vision for their countries. Let me sing aloud too. I mean Boris Yeltsin, who evidently had a relation with alcohol and quite a number of other things that was slightly out of the normal pattern. But he had a vision of coming out of the Soviet Union. He considered the Soviet Union to be wrong historically. And he wanted to have Russia that could be on its own and give sort of independence back to say the three Baltic states. That was a highly radical view in late Soviet Union. Hardly anyone except him had that particular view. And for all of the other oddities of his presidency, he did that. Another one going back to say Mia was held but called and my happened to know rather well in those days in spite of being a much younger man than his. He was an historian. And whenever you sat down and talk to him, it was history. And it was the long trajectories of German and European history. He always said to me, Carl, you should know that Germany is the country in Europe that has the largest numbers of neighbors. And it's only when we have finally restored peace and harmony and friendship with all of our neighbors including the smallest one that we can say that Germany and Europe is finally at peace. I mean, those sorts of sentiments come out of leaders who have a long strategic historical vision. And he was lucky enough in order to be able to sort of fulfill part of that particular vision. So was Boyd Jelsen to take just those two out of an era long gone by now. What about Xi Jinping? Because you mentioned you like leaders who have a sense of the history of their country and Xi Jinping certainly has that. And he is almost from taking office as president. He surprised observers who thought he would fight his time very quickly. He has transformed Chinese internal politics in many ways. There's beginnings of a cult of personality around him. Some analysts would argue certainly he has tightened the controls on Chinese citizens. He's launched these big anti-corruption programs within China, taken a much more forward-looking approach to the world. Does Xi Jinping feel like a significant historical figure to you? Well, certainly a significant historical figure. I never met him. But the question mark I would have, and no one has the answer to that, is had he taken a different approach at Tiananmen? And they would have followed what was the majority in the Standing Committee, I understand, in China at the time to initiate a dialogue and gradually open up. Would that have succeeded? Would that have collapsed China as was obviously what he feared? Or would it have resulted in China that was now developing in sort of a South Korean direction or something like that? We don't know. But he evidently took the view at the time that there's no way they could liberalize China without China breaking up and sending the tanks. But there were others in the Chinese leadership at the time advocating another course of action. And needless to say, I would have liked China to try that other course of action. And that would have left us with China, I think, certainly more free and probably not less prosperous than it is today. But what about China's current president Xi Jinping? Who might have met a number of occasions. Yeah, I'm more surprised by when meeting him that he's very calm. He takes his time. He never seems to be in a hurry. And whether that sort of leadership will work remains to be seen. I think the verdict of regimes that centralizes too much power is that, well, it looks strong, and it is strong for a while until something breaks. So I would be sort of, we'll have to reserve the judgment. I think Deng Xiaoping to go back to him was wise in saying that, well, we should have more sort of collective leadership, or we should not concentrate too much power in one leader who could be there forever. We've done that in China. It didn't work out very well. We should also try to gradually start separating state and party power in order to have them to stand somewhat separately and have separate functions. Xi Jinping has gone back on both of those two fundamental aspects of the strategic vision of Deng Xiaoping. And I don't think that's wise. Two final questions, Carl. First of all, a question from Ines Willocks, who's the head of the Australian industry group. And Ines asks, how will the prolonged closure of international borders impact on trade, on especially a possible trend towards nativism or protectionism, as well as the tendency for nations to develop greater economic self-reliance and possibly less reliance on China? I think there is a tendency now in the debate to say, this is the end of globalization. And just in time and all of that will be gone. I don't think so. There is no question that we will have to look at the experience and see what can be adjusted in the model. And there are changes underway anyhow in the global economy. China is less the factory of the world than it was 10 or 20 years ago. There are other factors of the world. And manufacturing is going through a technological revolution as well. So I think just in time we'll be there still. But that will be just in case as well to increase the redundancy, the resilience of our supply systems of different sorts. So change will happen. I think it is absolutely critical that we keep the commitment to open global trade. I think one of the biggest changes that I see now is that we have a resurgence of protectionism. And if there's a resurgence of protectionism, then the risk of us repeating the experience of the 1930s. When a deep recession after the crash at the Wall Street in 1929 led to protectionism, that led us into a depression. So I sincerely hope that lesson will be learned. I'm not afraid of Australia or Sweden, but there are other countries that could be more subject to that particular dangerous temptation. All right, final question, Carl, to focus back on you if I can. What have you learned during lockdown or what have you enjoyed about the lockdown experience? I can imagine that it has really clipped your wings because you're something of an international manner, mystery, a much sought after commentator and speaker around the world. I can see a plane on the bookshelf, an airplane on the model of an airplane behind you, but you won't be able to get into an airplane for a while. But is there a positive you've taken out of this sort of enforced slowdown? Well, it's nice to be with your family for a longer time continuously than you've been for a very long time indeed. That has done to be, I wouldn't say surprisingly, but I mean, a very nice experience. And nice to be able to connect with your own country somewhat more in terms of even meeting people in Stockholm. I think we've all been able to sort of upskill ourselves in terms of the digital dialogue across the globe. That is something I think that is here to stay. But then at the end of the day, you need to meet persons directly as well. The digital can never substitute completely. So I think that I hope there will be a day when the wings are back, although perhaps not in the full dimensions it had prior to call. I think you're right that Zoom can't substitute for personal conversations, but in the absence of the wings, we've really enjoyed this conversation in which you've covered everything from just-in-time manufacturing to just-in-place manufacturing. And I must say, as an historian myself, I've really enjoyed your reflections on leaders like Boris Yeltsin and Deng Xiaoping and Richard Holbrook and some of these other characters. So thank you very much, Carl, for joining us this evening. Let me also thank the audience for being with us for this Lowy Institute live event. For the time being, we are live streaming all of our events. So please keep an eye on our website for future events. And also please keep an ear open for Lowy Institute podcasts. We have COVIDcast every week and every fortnight. I put out my own podcast, The Director's Chair. And just this week, I spoke with a mutual friend of Carl Biltz and mine, David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, now CEO of the International Rescue Committee. So please, ladies and gentlemen, listen to those podcasts wherever you find your podcast. So again, Carl Biltz, thank you very much and thank you everybody for participating in this event. We hope to see you soon. And in the meantime, stay safe and well. Thank you.