 Well, what a great pleasure to welcome you to this latest installment in the partnership between the Bridging the Gap Initiative and New America to showcase recent policy relevant books in which we bring the author into conversation with a current or former practitioner. I'm Jim Goldgeier, Senior Advisor with Bridging the Gap, which is housed at American University. And my co-moderator is Alex Stark, Senior Researcher for the Political Reform Program at New America. We are delighted to welcome Ali Wine, Senior Analyst at Eurasia Group and author of the new book published by Polyde, America's Great Power Opportunity, revitalizing U.S. foreign policy to meet the challenges of strategic competition. Ali will be joined by Fiona Hill, Senior Fellow at the Center on the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution and previously Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Russian Affairs on the National Security Council and a former National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council. National Security Council, National Intelligence Council. All right, Alex, over to you. And welcome, everyone, and thanks especially to Ali and to Fiona for joining us for this conversation today. It's great to be discussing your new book and it's also incredibly timely. So I'm really glad we're able to have this conversation. Ali, you have created this distillation of the concept and discussion of the concept of great power competition with this book. And I was wondering if you could start by talking about what you consider to be kind of the most important takeaways for policymakers and for scholars from your book. Well, first, Jim and Alex, thank you so much for the condemnation. It's a pleasure to be here. I only wish we were doing this in person. Fiona, thank you so much. I can't tell you what an honor it is and a privilege it is to be engaging with you. And I can't even begin to imagine how many demands there are on your time. So when I found out that you would be able to join, I was just thrilled. So thank you so much. So Alex, the core takeaway of the book is in many ways it's encapsulated in the title. So great power opportunity. It's kind of a play on great power competition. The core argument of the book is that the United States should strive as much as possible to pursue a foreign policy that's affirmative, that's forward-looking, and that isn't beholden to or driven by the actions of its two principal nation-side competitors, that's obviously China and Russia. And I hasten to note that obviously, intensifying strategic frictions with China and Russia, they will inform U.S. foreign policy. They should inform U.S. foreign policy. They must inform U.S. foreign policy. But informing U.S. foreign policy is different than dictating it. And I try to make that distinction in the book between informing and dictating, I think that the United States, it's both a challenge, but I think it's also an opportunity for the United States to articulate and pursue a foreign policy that speaks at least as much to its aspirations as to its anxieties, at least as much to what it promotes as to what it opposes. And so really, I think that the challenge for the United States in dealing, not only in dealing with China and Russia, but also in conceptualizing the broader contours of its foreign policies to think about leaving aside China, leaving aside Russia, what is our aspiration for world order? How do we seek to achieve it in partnership with our friends? And also with while selectively competing with China and Russia, but essentially an affirmative vision of world order that is entethered to the decisions of its competitors. That's great. And Fiona, I'd love to hear maybe how this resonates with both your experience and your work and kind of your takeaways from the book. Yes, thanks. Sorry, just in muting myself, you'd think we'd all be really adept and very quick on the trigger with that, would we? I was just actually taking a couple of notes and then forgetting that I had to move the cursor over there, which actually is, in a way, something of an analogy to what we're talking about here. Because we have, in a way, muted some of our other foreign policy perspectives by, as Ali is suggesting, focusing almost exclusively on Russia and China. And look at the way that now the debate is being framed about US support for Ukraine in the war with Russia after Russia's invasion. It's like, are we really supposed to be focusing so much on this when China is, in fact, the major threat to the US national position, international position, to US domestic politics given Chinese penetration of our intellectual property, for example, our data, the incosons through cyber intrusions or China's systemic rivalry and challenge to the United States internationally. And we focus on the fact that China could outpace us in the way that, actually, back in the 1980s, we had a similar, but I would say lower level obsession about Japan. It's just been transported slightly further north in this context in the Asia Pacific region. And I very much share Ali's view that this is actually really, instead of a, and I said this in my own blurb for the book, which I absolutely love this book and I just want to again make a plug for everyone to buy it, that this is instead of an anchor for our thinking about international affairs, a tether and the sense of something that's pulling us back from taking a 360 degree view of our national security position and our foreign policy. And just the spirit of moving things along to get into a broader discussion, just take the United States dilemmas right now with the summit of the Americas. We seem to have mismanaged our relationship with Mexico and with other countries in our own hemisphere to such an extent that the Mexican leader does not want to attend. And I think that that is also reflective of the point that we often look at the policy initiatives in other regions, including our own through the prism of our own domestic politics, obviously, but also through the prism of that great power competition. And a further example of this is something that I witnessed when I was in the National Security Council, as opposed to in the National Intelligence Council previously, was when we faced the crisis in Venezuela, when Nicolas Madura refused basically to secede the Presidents, even having, you know, to all intents and purposes and effectively being voted out by the people of Venezuela and affected as self-coup and decided to stay in place. And when we, the United States, were working with European allies and regional partners in the Western Hemisphere to try to affect a coalition that would pressure on Maduro to at least cede transitional authority to Juan Guaidó and the other opposition forces. And we found that time and time again, many of our regional interlocutors were not on the same pages as us. And in fact, Russia, China and Iran started to be part of this action as well. And we started to see the whole issue through the prism of that great power competition, especially with Russia and China. And in fact, it got to such an extent that at one point the Russians were positing to the United States a kind of weird swap between Venezuela and Ukraine, the idea that after they had sent in 100 specialists and signals intelligence to help Nicolas Maduro fend off the United States and any potential interventions, that as they were now in our backyard, in the Western Hemisphere, then perhaps we would contemplate pulling out of their backyard in Ukraine. And I and a number of other colleagues had to actually fly out to Moscow to put an end to this discussion. But it just illustrated the problem of having things framed in great power competition. Because it also means that Russia and China and other countries who would like to be part of that competition or like to have gains out of it start to also figure out where they have to manoeuvre themselves in that larger geopolitical context to either get our attention or to kind of rest concessions out from us. We're seeing that happening with Turkey in terms of NATO and NATO expansion in Europe because of the facts on the ground having changed in European securities as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And we're also now seeing, and I think this is part of the discussion that we're going to have and where Ali picks up at the end of the book that you had to write rather quickly given the way that events were changing so fast with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February. The way in which all countries are actually looking about what their reactions to Ukraine should be within the prism of their relationships with the United States, with Russia and with China now as well. And I think that that underscores more than anything else the dilemmas that Ali haunts in on with such great insight and depth in the book about having a foreign policy framed by great power competition rather than having a holistic 360 degree view of the world and of our place in it and of our larger sets of interests. That's awesome, thank you to both. Ali, one of the important things about your book, you know, we often say China and Russia, these are very different countries. And I think one of the helpful things about your book is reminding us that these are different countries. And I think it's helpful to get into, I mean, Fiona's just talking about the summit of the Americas and I noticed, you know, President Biden once again talked about sort of democracy under threat and democracy versus autocracy. You know, one of the issues that arises is the whole question of sort of the international system, the US led international system. You know, this administration talks a lot about the rules-based international system. You have a very interesting discussion in the book about Chinese and Russian perspectives on this where you argue that China with a stake and a lot of aspects of the system wants to strengthen its influence in the existing international system. But, and so in that sense, it's a revisionist power but it doesn't wanna dissolve this system. It wants to strengthen its influence. And just wanna hear you discuss a little more about what that means for foreign policy and would love to hear from Fiona your views on how different Russia's view of the international system is. I mean, does Russia seems eager just to sort of crash the system and is that in fact the case? But Ali, we'll start with you and especially on sort of how the Chinese, how you think the Chinese are thinking about the international system and what that means for US foreign policy. Thanks, Jim. So I mean, here's a dilemma for China. So China on the one hand routinely invades against the present configuration of the post-war order. It says if you look at prominent Chinese international relations scholars, if you look at top ranking Chinese officials, they say that the current configuration of the post-war order is overly Western centric and really especially overly US centric. It reflects antiquated geopolitical constructs. It doesn't reflect the emerging distribution of power. So they routinely invade against the system. And yet when press, they're the first ones to, well, maybe not the first ones to conceive, but they do eventually concede that outside of the United States, which country has been the principal beneficiary of integration into that system? It's none other than China. And so how do you simultaneously, it's a dilemma for China. How do you simultaneously agitate for piecemeal revisions to a system of which you have been the principal beneficiary? And if let's say hypothetically just positing a thought experiment, if the post-war order however one conceptualizes it, if it were to dissolve precipitously disintegrate tomorrow, the United States would of course suffer inordinately, but China would suffer too. China depends inordinately on its integration into core post-war Bretton Woods institutions. It depends inordinately on its participation in globalization, despite now it's shift towards dual circulation and sort of more inward looking economic focus. So China does have a stake. So it's trying to strike this balancing act. How do you agitate for piecemeal revisions but also maintain a sway and be seen as someone who's constructively building up that system? It's a very difficult balancing act. Russia of course, and obviously we're in the company of the world's foremost authority. So anything I say on Russia, I defer entirely. But what I would say about Russia is I think that Russia feels much less of a sense of integration into that system. It feels much more aggrieved. And I think one of the risks that, and so it's interesting, one of the risks that China presents is by virtue of its integration into the post-war order it can use, and this is Stacy Goddard, I think that's a really, really compelling point about embedded revisionism. When you are deeply embedded in a system, you have more institutional leverage with which to revise it. So that's one form of influence. I think kind of a unique challenge that China poses. Russia poses more of I think a sort of a destabilizing source of influence. And I think that Russia sense is it's almost nihilistic in a way that if the West or the underwriters of the present system, if they're gonna exclude us, then we're gonna prove our influence not by trying to integrate ourselves into that system, but by trying to collapse it from the outside. And I think that what we're seeing, particularly with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, I think it's a very visceral, brutal example is that when a nihilistic mindset guides a country of Russia's proportions, it becomes a very formidable source of influence. So I think that China and Russia, they pose distinct challenges to us national interests. They pose distinct challenges to the configuration of the international system. Just one last point that I wanted to make and then I'll stop. Fiona mentioned in her initial observations, a really key interplay that I suspect that we'll touch on for the duration of the conversation, this inextricable linkage between foreign policy and domestic policy. And one of Fiona's observations and I quote this observation in the book, for me, the further that I researched the book, the further that I wrote the book, the more convinced I became that China and Russia while formidable competitors, multifaceted competitors, competitors that are likely to endure, that they're manageable competitors. And that the United States, I think if it holds its own, if it invests its own renewal, it can manage China and Russia. But as the book progressed, I actually became more and more concerned about America's domestic politics. And Fiona renders an observation, I believe that this was in an interview, it was sort of an extended profile slash interview in the New Yorker. And Fiona rendered an observation, this interview that really stopped me in my tracks. And Fiona was reflecting on the Russia's electoral interference in the United States and how Russia has kind of lodged itself in the American psyche and said, at this point, the Russians don't have to do an additional thing. They have now so thoroughly lodged themselves in America's psyche and Americans are so now focused on tearing themselves apart that Russia can just sit and watch. And so I think that as we reflect on great power competition, and we not only need to think about the external front of that competition, how does the United States manage a resurgent China and Arbauch as Russia, which pose distinct challenges. But also how do we ensure that America is internally resilient? Because if America doesn't possess that internal resilience, that internal sense of cohesion, I think the questions of sustainably competing externally almost become moot. And I would just say if there's anybody who has yet to read Fiona's book, there's nothing for you here. I can't imagine there's anybody who still hasn't read it yet. But if you haven't, I recommend it highly for her insights into the evolution of the UK, the US and of Russia. Fiona, over to you. Yeah, I mean, Ali's analysis is spot on as it is throughout this book, just to be clear. And I also want to really highly recommend this to people to read as well for really helping to frame the current dilemma in our foreign policy. And I want to pick up on two issues that kind of also illustrate this problem. And then of course, respond on the Russian front because Ali is exactly right about the Russian approach. But I was also thinking again about Mexico and not just in the context in which I raised it, but it just gets to domestic policy as Ali is talking about me. Most of our policy toward Mexico and other countries for the South or Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, et cetera is really focused on immigration and the Southern border. And it's about our own domestic preoccupations and the fact that we haven't resolved all of those issues for ourselves as well. It's also then focused obviously on drugs and guns. We have a colleague at Brookings, Vandafel Bab Brown who basically specializes in drugs, guns and thugs, organized crime as well. And also looks at the way that that is also shaped by our domestic politics and then the foreign policy consequences of that. And I observed while I was in the NSC, this wasn't obviously my portfolio but that there wasn't a policy to grab on to in terms of when it came to the Western Hemisphere. We had the trade relations with Canada and Mexico and the efforts to turn after into the US, MCA, Mexico, Canada, new trade relationship. But when it came to the foreign policy, it just wasn't clear that we had an angle and autocracy versus democracy isn't going to be sufficient when we look at the complexities of what's happening in the Western Hemisphere. And again, this issue of then, well, China is in there now in terms of energy interests. For example, our investments, we saw this in Venezuela and heavily invested in the energy sector there as well as other trade relationships, Iran, in on the mix, particularly with terrorism in the past in places like Argentina and elsewhere and Russia trying to get a foothold as it always has done through various old style linkages between the security services but kind of going back historically that we've all lost sight of and people forgetting that Leon Trotsky got refuge in Mexico for a good reason because there were ties between the Bolsheviks and the Mexican socialist parties, nascent socialist parties back in the day. We've just lost sight of our own region where others haven't because others see this now as an opportunity for them if we're being inattentive. And this becomes part of the issue that Ali is emphasizing as well if we don't get a grip on our own domestic issues and our neuroses and the things that are tearing us apart it's going to be playing out more and more in our international arenas, including close to home not just with Russia and China and elsewhere and them trying to take advantage of it. Now, as I said, the Russians they've taken advantage of it in spades, especially in 2016 when we had the interference in our election finding us acutely vulnerable. Now that gets to kind of Russia and their interference in 2016 was also predicated on the fact that they want to blow everything up, including us. They wanted to show the United States to be full of hubris. The United States to be no better than anyone else and the United States to be not fit to be the leader of the rules-based international system. It wasn't that because they want to change the rules as you're talking about in the case of China, I thought that was a really good term about embedded revisionism. As you pointed out, Russia does not feel integrated because if you think about the whole Cold War and post Cold War environment, China got really much further ahead of Russia in that global economic integration. And of course, that was the post-Chanaman Square issues where China already and Deng Xiaoping had put the bet or not political change but an economic change. And then that drove the integration and Russia floundered and has the lost decade of the 1990s. And Russia's integration is also only partial after the 1990s with the changes in the economy because it's really through the prism of oil and gas where China becomes a massive manufacturing power not perhaps on the heavy industry part of the towering and commanding heights of industry although it starts to develop that as well. But really on that whole manufacturing sector of light industry which it gets himself becoming the manufacturing center for the world on so many different things from everything from rubber ducks to highly sophisticated components and computer chips. And so China does become as you said thoroughly embedded and of course it does all the things that you want to do but Russia just never feels that. Russia feels also that it has lost as a result of the end of the Cold War while China on the country feels that it's gained something. So you have to also see now China does of course feel that it lost Taiwan going back to the 1940s and to the whole upheavals after World War II but China really does feel itself to be one of the victors. Now the Soviet Union felt itself to be one of the victors of World War II but post-Soviet Russia as the successor states feels itself to be a victim and becomes in its view, this is Putin and the people around him, a victim of that rule-based order because it doesn't have a special place in it. And the United Nations isn't sufficient and because its economy is lagging so far behind we always talk about its trade relations with the United States being the size of the equivalent of Costa Rica in a back in the past but China and the United States are really, both dominant players in each other's economies and also in the broader global economy, Russia always feels like it's kind of second class and absolutely if it's not going to be first class, if it's not going to be on the board of the club then it wants to blow it up and then set the rules on its terms and that's what we're seeing with Ukraine. It's a way of blowing up first and foremost the European security system and demanding that now it's done on Russia's terms and by extension, because this has become such a pivotal conflict and actually would have been even if it had gone as Russia intended in those first few weeks of February where it had basically overturned the European security order by seizing territory in the first major effort to do so since World War II, remembering of course that they actually already did that in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass and we seem to have just lost overall of that. Russia would really have been in the driver's seat because Putin wants to see himself like Stalin. He wants people like Churchill to come to Moscow with notes saying percentages not of trade, but of territory and encapsulating for the world Russia's dominant position in Europe and then by extension being one of the super players, not just one of the regular players and that's kind of part of another aspect of great power competition. It doesn't leave room for everyone else and if the decimative of great powers which is what Russia is trying to say it's Russia and China and maybe the United States but maybe not, this is what Putin and those guys say, where's everyone else? And I think it's China felt before when they were everyone else and didn't like that very much because they didn't feel until 2010 and the dramatic economic rise because everybody else was sinking somewhat after the global financial crisis and then with the increase in their military might. Now the weird thing I guess that China is trying to come to terms with is the fact that they are now one of the big guys with rules setting capability but it's still the kind of question of where does everybody else fit in? I have another question kind of linking the international and domestic but oh actually before that I just wanna remind the audience that you can submit your questions to us via Slido you'll see it on your screen we'll try to integrate those into the conversation as much as possible but Ali, so you argue in the book that the US ought to pursue a kind of selective competitive foreign policy where identifying cases where limited cooperation or limited competition with Russia and China could further US interest in the world and I'm curious about how you think about this within that framework that Jim mentioned of a global competition of democracies versus autocracies that the Biden administration in particular has advanced and how we ought to maybe think about how we cooperate and maybe affirm ties but without sacrificing democratic values and then Fiona I'd also love to hear it from your perspective what do you think it is possible in terms of cooperation especially now with regards to Russia and its aggression in Ukraine over the long term as this competition heightens is there room for cooperation alongside competition and kind of what does that look like? Thanks Alex and let me begin my answer by saying but whatever I'm going to say is gonna be highly impoverished because it's such an extraordinarily important question and it's a really difficult question too two very, very impoverished thoughts but I hope that I can kind of stitch those together and it was somewhat coherent answer the first part is in terms of the framing I would say and again I perhaps risk sounding overly sanguine I think that the narrative that sort of we live in this increasingly illiberal age that autocracies are sort of on the stealing of March it's reminiscent of sort of the 1930s and democracies are on their heel you can understand why that narrative is getting traction but I think that the decisions that China and particularly Russia have rendered I think in many ways prove that narrative to be at a minimum overstated I mean so look at, so just briefly look at China and Russia I remember, I mean we all remember the narrative so if you rewind the clock let's say March or April of 2020 what were the narratives at the time so leaving aside rest of the what were the narratives at the time, the narratives in March and April 2020 China has successfully contained the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic at home it has successfully contained the initial wave of economic fallout from COVID-19 and now having demonstrated its bureaucratic and administrative competence unlike this flailing floundering United States it's now training its sites outwards and it's dispatching teams of doctors to countries in distress it's shipping kids of personal protective equipment to countries in distress what was the narrative about the United States the United States has been convulsed by a fast-moving pandemic it can't get it under control it's being convulsed by a recession the economy's in free fall we have protests against racial injustice so the first quarter of 2020 there was this extraordinary gap in the perceptions global perceptions of US competence and Chinese competence and I remember thinking at the time China has this amazing opportunity at least I thought that it did but I think that it subsequently squandered that opportunity imagine if China in March 2020 or April 2020 given the juxtaposition of narratives imagine if China hits it you know we have the United States where we want it let's temporarily, not indefinitely but let's temporarily press pause on intimidating Taiwan let's temporarily press pause and cracking down on Hong Kong let's take steps to stabilize relations with Australia, India, Japan, South Korea major militaries and economies in our region let's take steps to get the comprehensive agreement on investment across the finish line with the European Union let's try to stabilize our relationship with the United States which is now deteriorating on a bipartisan basis I think that if China had taken any of those steps or that full combination of steps I think we would be having a very, very different conversation where's China today? China today, no it's true and I don't want to diminish that fact China is certainly more central to the global economy today than it was part of the onset of the pandemic but I think that the gap between its economic heft on the one hand and its diplomatic estrangement from advanced industrial democracies on the other hand has grown markedly larger in the in the interregnum so that's in terms of foreign policy and then on domestic policy doubling down on zero COVID doubling down on cracking down on major technology companies that are spurring innovation taking a lot of steps that are really I think undercutting the appeal of its model if there is sort of a putative China model and then of course look at Russia Russia with its invasion of Ukraine which has to rank as one of the most extraordinary acts of strategic self-sabotage in the post-war era where is Russia now we don't know how the war is gonna end we don't know the parameters of the resolution but we do know that regardless of the timing of the end and the parameters of the resolution Russia's military will have been substantially degraded its deterrence capacity will have been substantially degraded its economy is projected to contract by well over 10% and Russia is doubling down and so on the first point it's not clear over the course of the pandemic one of the concerns that I think a lot of observers have is that over the past two, two and a half years it's not clear how much President Xi and President Putin have just literally have just traveled outside of their respective countries it's not clear what kind of advice they're getting who their advisors are but they're doubling down on highly counterproductive policies that I think really place in the stark relief some of the limits to authoritarian rule now limits to authoritarian rule don't mean validation necessarily of democratic rule and so we obviously democracies it becomes that much more incumbent upon democracies to demonstrate that they can deliver that they can address major socioeconomic challenges in the United States at staggering the United States accounts for 4% of the world's population but it's far and away it's roughly I think a quarter or a fifth I haven't checked the latest numbers but roughly a fourth or a fifth each of global COVID-19 fatalities and infections income and wealth inequality are rising there are a number we look at gun violence through there are a number of scourges that democracies have to address so point one is I think that the narrative of sort of authoritarian ascendance or resurgence is overstated but it doesn't mean the democracies don't have their work cut out for them so I think that's point one and then on the second point and I will fully confess that when I drafted the afterwards of the book so I echo a point in the afterward to the book that I make in the body text of the book but it was very difficult for me to do so so I made the point in the main text of the book that the United States won't be able to advance its vital national interests if it cooperates solely with like-minded countries that in order to advance its own vital national interest whether on slowing climate change dealing with pandemic disease upholding of feeble and perhaps headed towards irrelevant non-proliferation regime that it would only be able to do so in full cooperation it was very difficult for me to sustain that point when I wrote the after we're just in the light of the cruelty that Russia was was inflicting upon Ukraine and yet I tried very hard when I was writing the afterward to see if I could conceptualize a scenario in which the United States and its European allies and Asian allies and partners could they lock China and Russia away in a kind of strategic quarantine and say look, given Russia's barbarity it's unconscionable to deal with Russia given the deteriorating human rights landscape in China it's unconscionable to deal with China we'll lock them away in strategic quarantine we'll organize a like-minded coalition and we will be able to advance our vital national interests to the exclusion of Asian Moscow I wasn't able to come up with such a scenario and so still and this is a lesson from the Cold War as well the United States and the Soviet Union were existential adversaries and they engaged with one another not out of not with starry-eyed illusions but they did so out of practical necessity the Cuban Missile Crisis was a real wake-up call to Washington and Moscow that we have to cooperate we have to establish hotlines not because we have any affinity or love loss for one another but for our own survival and I think it's similarly today even as the United States holds its nose even as the United States might turn away and shudder at the thought as I shudder at the thought of cooperating even selectively with China and Russia it isn't clear to me what the alternative is and so one last point and then I'll stop and actually this is another insight of Fiona's that really resonated with me this was in an interview that Fiona gave to Ed Loops and Fiona said, diplomacy and I'm paraphrasing Fiona obviously her eloquence is stratospheric because I'm very cruelly paraphrasing what Fiona said in this interview with Ed Loops but Fiona I'm paraphrasing her said diplomacy isn't just about talking with your friends diplomacy also means that you talk with competitors you talk with adversaries so long as you have no takers present you need to have no takers present if you're the US your interlocutors need to have their no takers presidents but the essence of diplomacy is not just talking with friends the essence of diplomacy it is making having difficult conversations achieving incremental progress in the interests of shared vital national interests I still don't see an alternative to doing that if China and Russia were bit-sized economies bit-sized militaries that really didn't contribute much to the global strategic balance that argument might become somewhat more tenable but given China and Russia's aggregated economic and military proportions I can't conceive of a scenario in which the United States and its allies and partners can lock them away and importantly as well to Fiona's point when we look outside of the aperture of great power competition the United States, China and Russia the vast majority of the world's countries they wanna exercise agency beyond that framework they recognize that they have to maintain their own dealings with China and Russia and so I think that for all of those reasons even as we hold our nose we engage not out of affinity we engage out of necessity while I was taking note again as I always do here yes I think that was my appeal for note-takers having been one in many different sense cause I can't remember the exact context of that discussion with it but it's the part of taking note of what they're saying and why they're saying it and what they're actually doing if there's a gap in between and then using that to inform your own way in which you're going to deal with pushing forward your interests as you said even if it's an incremental way you've got to understand the constraints, the obstacles what's actually possible and feasible in the kind of context in which others are interacting because when Alex is asking that question about is it possible to cooperate I mean I suppose cooperation when we use that where we think of something positive along with people who are basically as you said like-minded we tend to think of cooperation between kind of groups of well-meaning positive thinking, like-minded people but actually sometimes you have to cooperate in dire circumstances with people that you wouldn't normally contemplate doing that I mean I always think of a fire or another natural disaster I mean it doesn't discriminate on people's backgrounds or identities or how they see themselves you'll find everybody being in all of this together and there are a whole host of dire existential issues where we either should have been cooperating or we absolutely will have to cooperate climate change is pretty much indiscriminate I mean it's affecting the entire planet as discussed and although we may have to have local and regional responses this we might for some of the issues have to have a massive global response I mean why is it that all of Hollywood movies start with something massive inversion from outer space that sometimes gets everyone to work together but doesn't or an asteroid strike don't look up actually as an example of complete breakdown of any kind of cooperation but there are others that are more positive stories there because that's making the point for all of us that there are circumstances which we're going to have to find a way of moving forward and I think there's been some quotes from some of those countries that are not part of the Great Power Competition saying that it's all very well while China and the United States and Russia are all fighting with each other the world is burning, what about us I mean that's been in the context of food security and the extending drought and desertification in Africa and parts of Asia as well as the Middle East for example so cooperation to Alex's question about how that looks like it has to be in that frame which Ali is talking about here they can't be framed by okay well if I cooperate with Russia on this thing what does this mean on the other do I have to compartmentalize do I have to you know subsume my better judgment or put my values to one side it's basically thinking about really critical issues where it's only through some degrees of cooperation that we can tackle a moment of the obvious ones out of course a pandemic we did a really lousy job on the first phases of the pandemic in terms of our cooperation you know at this point one would have hoped if you think look back at smallpox and polio and some of the other instances and even HIV Aids after a period of time it took some time of course that we actually did get countries on the same page drug resistant tuberculosis we have international protocols and in fact the development of the vaccines actually shows how important international cooperation was and honestly Russia and China could have been part of this but they decided to be kind of a national approach to vaccine development and you know that I think is a huge mistake and if we're thinking about the next pandemics you know just like we know now African countries are chiding us for getting panicked about monkeypox which is something that they've been dealing with for a long time and reminding us that you know so many of those disease diseases come out of certain particular reservoirs particularly country perspective that they've been dealing with and those can be scaled up and it's not just obviously Africa and Asia that the sources of pestilences and pandemics the bird flu that turned into the 1918 so-called Spanish flu started in Kansas chicken farms so this was you know in many respects it was a global pandemic that sparked off in the United States because of you know various poultry rearing practices that we actually still engage in so I mean there is a scope here for cooperation through international mechanisms to deal with existential crises like pandemics and climate change which were of course intertwined and then the question is how are we creating institutional arrangements multilateral arrangements for that and that can't be just done through the prism of great power competition we're seeing the failings now with the UN system because we created a situation where the UN Security Council which was created I mean Chinese are right on this but it doesn't necessarily mean then that they should dominate it but how do we deal with everybody else is not part of this but they are right this is an antiquated setup from the end of World War II the so-called victors of World War II you know sitting on top of the rest of the General Assembly and we have to figure out how we bring everybody else with urgency in and one example you know of this would be I mean thinking about now the food security crisis that comes out of Ukraine and the war and the Russian embargo I mean it's very disturbing to me that the head of the African Union went to Moscow to talk to Putin the aggressor who has actually caused the food crisis rather than actually through a UN framework or a larger international mechanism try to create an international response to this because an awful lot of the food programmes are run through the UN in any case in other international multilateral organisations that feed impoverished areas of Africa and the Middle East and Ukraine is a major obviously exporter but also a provider of grain to those services so this is exactly what Putin wants he wants to become again the setter of rules about who gets grain for example I mean I think there is you know definitely a part of that desire to control Ukraine to be able to control food supplies because the largest producers of grain I'll tell you the United States, Canada and you know a small number of other countries are in fact Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine and so many countries worldwide are almost entirely dependent on grain from those three sources and Putin sees not only the ability to control the spigot on energy but another spigot of food and so we need to find a way and it's part of that competition because this is all about sticking it to the United States not about a larger international wellbeing he's using this to basically say pressure should be put on the United States to back off and get out of Europe because this is the United States that's doing this not that this is a direct consequence for the war on Ukraine so even on those issues that's not cooperation obviously with Russia but it ought to be larger international cooperation we could cooperate with China on this too because China has a vested interest in the restoration of food security because China too is vulnerable here this is one area where China is not at all self-sufficient not in food there's also suffering from desertification risks and the effects of climate change So thanks so Ali there are a couple of questions that have come in that followed directly on some of the things that Fiona was just talking about and related to sort of the idea of a rules-based order so one of them so Paul here asks Biden highlights the rules-based order as the arena for strategic competition is there a global consensus on what that means and support for the U.S. version and Bruce Genelson relatedly asks first he says kudos Ali what would be the two to three rules-based order components that could get substantial global agreement global south too and fit today's world? Thanks Jim and thanks Paul and Bruce for the question and Bruce thank you so much for the kind words they really mean a lot there's no way that I could do justice to your question so let me begin by stipulating that caveat up front I think that any I'll begin with the sort of with Bruce's question and what would sort of two or three components be and if my answer kind of reflects at least sort of common denominator approach but I would hope so in terms of sort of what would a rules-based order look like when we use we so often use the term and I myself am very guilty of this kind of over usage when we think about we use the term post-war order so often and so reflexively that we forget sort of its foundationless significance we have a post-war order because the world suffered the scourge as a true world wars and there was a recognition Margaret McMillan has a really powerful observation at this point she said after World War I it was possible for diplomats to say let's start over World War I it was a horrific, it was a horrific globally calamitous event but it wasn't so calamitous the diplomats couldn't say let's start over again and she says that after World War II it became that proposition that we just need to tinker a bit with some of the so so World War I happens we had then in this period of the 1920s which actually Dr. McMillan states at the 1920s it's actually not remembered as much we're actually a time when there were a lot of really creative and potentially promising experiments in great power cooperation and institutional cooperation she talks about the League of Nations a number of other treaties and arrangements and then of course we had the Great Depression and then we had World War II so after World War II it became untenable to say back to back normal we needed a post-war order so I would hope given the foundational significance of what it is that the post-war order is trying to achieve first and foremost avoid World War III secondly avoid another great depression I would hope I would hope and if the answer is no on this we really are at sea but I would hope that there could at foundationally be an agreement that the most solemn objective of great power relations leaving aside cooperation on transnational challenges but the most solemn objective of great power relations must be to avert the repetition of great power war I would hope that there will be some consensus on and a global consensus on that pillar number one number two Fiona brings up the point by food insecurity I would hope that food insecurity obviously right now Russia is weaponizing food insecurity but I would hope that outside of Russia which is weaponizing this horrific humanitarian and economic crisis for its own strategic very, very myopic strategic ends I would hope that there will be a consensus that Russia's weaponization of food insecurity it highlights vulnerabilities in supply chains it highlights the need for collective resilience and it highlights the need to kebuffer ourselves to strengthen ourselves against the weaponization of interdependence that's Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman's really compelling phrase from their international security piece a few years ago so I would hope in food the world cannot survive if it's hungry the world cannot survive if there's perpetual food insecurity so I would hope that some kind of galvanization or mobilization outside of Russia for the time being on the need for enhanced food security could be another pillar so those are a couple of ideas and then on what sort of a rules-based order means well invariably everyone is gonna have a different conception so the United States has one conception China has its conception Russia has its conception but I do think that perhaps a rules-based order stemming from just some of those kind of first-order priorities do we all agree that another great power what would be calamitous? I think there would be I would hope pretty widespread agreement do we agree that any rules-based order that is worthy of the name would be able to provision food and avoid widespread famine I would hope that there would be an agreement so even though there are invariably gonna be different conceptions and we see the intensification of strategic frictions bringing out those different conceptions into sharper leaf but I would hope that let's begin with kind of those lowest common denominator but fundamental prerogatives and use those to inform a rules-based order but certainly I'll make one last point and then I'll stop I know it's become cliche to say that we're present at the creation and this is the time for a new order but I think that in this case however cliched or hackneyed that expression or that conclusion might be I think that there is something to to recommend that judgment I think that we are seeing and Fiona mentioned it in her previous remarks we're just seeing glaringly the inadequacies of the present system it's and it's not just I mean Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a very visceral example of the failures Tanisha Fuzel talks about this very beautifully in her recent Foreign Affairs piece and very urgently how Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a first-order test of some of the foundational norms of post-war order but predating Russia's invasion of Ukraine look at our response to COVID-19 I remember when COVID-19 broke out my thought was that COVID-19 would occasion the kind of emergency bilateral coordination between the United States and China that we saw when Lehman Brothers collapsed and precipitated a global financial crisis Lehman Brothers collapses we had this fast-moving recession the United States and China they get together they engage in emergency bilateral coordination they activate the G20 now granted 2008 and 2009 they were devastating for the global economy but they could have been much worse and yet what did the pandemic do? The pandemic has made the it is heightened nationalism it is undermined support for global responses it is undercut institutional mechanisms to address transnational challenges so you look at Russia's invasion of Ukraine you look at the response to COVID-19 you look at the global financial crisis and it's clear that there's this growing gap between the present architecture and the present and future imperatives and I would hope that some of those I think really increasingly apparent realities could drive some consensus maybe not a full consensus but a substantial consensus but again a very impoverished answer to two really important questions so Paul and Bruce, thank you Can I just add a couple of points to this because I thought what Ali said is just spot on but there's just a couple of little things that I wanted to mention as he was speaking it made me think about it you know public health as you said Ali and we've all said the pandemic really should have been this occasion but I think it was that great power frame of competition because it starts we think in Wuhan in a live animal market and it gets covered up and you know if it had been Ebola and it had somehow you know changed to become basically a pandemic of global proportions and the method of transmission had become airborne or you know kind of something more difficult but it come out of you know an existing skirt that's been there for some time we would all have really rushed to do something we did with MERS and SARS as well but it's because it becomes associated with China of course you know former President Trump about that you know rather derogatory name about it I mean it's you know perhaps no accident that the great influenza was called Spanish flu and it but instead of Kansas flu and but it's because it became global very quickly before people were really realizing the origins of it in the multiple waves and yes there was an adequate response there and of all kinds of reasons that you know we don't have to get into but we do have the systems in place we dealt with smallpox we've dealt with polio being dealing with TB and you know those keep coming you know back up again again our domestic politics are part of the problems of some of these issues because of resistance to vaccination you know with measles and others returning but it's because it becomes associated in this great power frame that we have such a problem in dealing with it so it gets to your point exactly of how can we take it out of there and the same thing with climate change is starting to get put in a great power frame as well it says whole idea you know the Russians get this idea they're going to benefit somehow from climate change so why stop it? because Siberia is going to become Florida and you know they're kind of in the new place to be you know the new sign of place of viticulture the new Mediterranean climate I mean that's you know kind of preposterous but in some cases some of that thinking is there that maybe some countries will benefit over the others rather than that having that global commons approach and that's become a feature now of those post Cold War institutions as you're suggesting because they were set up by the victors of that war when we were starting again and we've not created an adaptable system and the question I guess it does have to be do we start again or can we adapt what we've got because as you say it's very hard to keep coming up with new ideas and many of the ideas from the 1920s got rolled over into some of the institutional ideas in the 1940s but in just different format so can we reform what we've got or do we have to you know start all over again I think is you know as part of the question I think we can reform what we've got but it takes that larger will and how do we get there if we have everything framed in what if we do something here it'll actually help you and remember the propaganda coming out of China and Russia for talking down Western vaccines I mean that came back to hurt the Russians in spades especially a Sputnik and their vaccine you know perhaps if it had been done in an international cooperation as it came on a little bit later may have been an effective part of the response and China if it had been you know kind of less nationalistic I mean may have also been able to be part of that and to help develop a actually more effective vaccine because we know that it's been you know some more ineffective which has had the problems for the and then their vaccination drive we could have done this better and we could you know for the next as well but we have to have a take it out of that great power frame. Ali I want to you don't mind Alex there's one other question here that's just been on my mind a lot that I wanted to get your thoughts on as comes from Scott Moore great talk how much potential do you see to harness the perception of threat from China to build support for domestic investment and reform and it's on my mind a lot because I mean pushing back against the kind of approach that you're taking is basically the incentive to take advantage of the bipartisan support for being tough on China to try to move things through especially given how hard it is to get domestic legislation passed but to use that threat to say okay this is why we need to do infrastructure or whatever the other particular things might be and how do you see that having an effect on the kind of argument that you're trying to make here in the book. Thanks Jim and Scott thank you so much Scott has a book coming out very very soon China's next act and I can't wait to read it I tweeted out about it I can't wait to read it it's gonna be a vitally important book and thinking about how with China's scientific and technological strategies how do we balance how do we balance your competitive dynamics and cooperative dynamics with China so please do keep a lookout for Scott's book I wrestled with this question a lot as well and the answer I'll be I think perhaps an unsatisfactory one the answer that I came to in the book was that if we think about sort of a competitive toolkit I see no reason why anxiety that is constructive anxiety about external competitors that is constructively harnessed I see no reason why one would object to that anxiety as one tool in a large toolkit I don't think it should become a crutch that's the point that I try to make in the book so certainly if the United States can harness competitive anxiety constructively to take steps that it should have been taking anyway I think that that use of anxiety is very compelling and Scott has actually written very powerfully this was a piece I think from to last year in foreign affairs with Tarun Shabra who's now in the administration and with Dominic Tierney and I think that they make this case very powerfully using a competitive anxiety as an instrument of domestic renewal so it can be done I don't think it should become a crutch I would say a couple of other points one potential constraint is the extent to which we're gonna be able to harness that competitive anxiety constructively given our intensifying domestic divisions and I think that Rachel Myrick has written very powerfully on this when she actually she has a piece recently in international organization in which she explicitly tackles this question and says to what extent will the United States be able to leverage this external this sort of the fear of external competitor as an instrument of domestic renewal as an instrument of internal cohesion and she renders a pretty cautious and I think sober perspective so one tool as part of a broad toolkit not as a crutch recognizing that we have to get our own sort of house in order for us to be able to use that competitive anxiety in a constructive way and then just one last point and I'll stop I think it's really important not only in terms of what we do here at home but also the kind of signaling what message do we send our allies and partners even if we do invoke China and Russia and external competitors to get legislation passed to make certain investments we shouldn't have to invoke them we shouldn't have to invoke China or Russia to take care of our citizens' public health we shouldn't have to invoke China or Russia and China and Russia to repair broken infrastructure to improve our system of K through 12 education those are imperatives that we should undertake not because of external competition but because we have an obligation as public servants for our citizens and I thought President Biden I think that this was on the sidelines of the Glasgow climate change summit and he was asked where do you see US-China competition fitting in vis-a-vis climate change and President Biden said very powerfully and very succinctly he said we should be decarbonizing and we should be moving to mitigate climate change not because of competition with China but we want clean air for our grandchildren and I think that that's a very, very compelling justification so I think that Scott's point is absolutely right one tool is part of a toolkit but let's not use it as a crutch and Fiona did you want to weigh in on that as well? No, I think on most of these issues Ali is just totally spot on I mean whenever I've just been provoked to add something it's just based on anybody saying I mean I just can't say enough how useful this book is for really getting us to push beyond this I mean I would just say when I think back how when I was in the National Security Council and other people grappled with that as well there's obviously imperative to create these strategic reviews and come up with a national security strategy we do this frequently and we were always doing it every administration does their own national security strategy and that whole frame of grip power competition is obviously very seductive just like democracies versus autocracy it kind of gives you again a tool to use but it can't be the only driver for everything it is just a frame of reference and I mean Ali I think has outlined so clearly here and all the questions are basically moving towards the same conclusion that a frame of reference is not then a deterministic driver of everything that you do and just cannot be and in fact there's great dangers inherent to this as Anne-Marie Slaughter says on the blurb of the book it's just you can't just use a security blanket we need to be doing some of these things all for ourselves for all the inherently self-evidently right reasons Well I think we're almost out of time Ali I just wanted to check with you before you wrap up if you have any kind of concluding or final thoughts that you wanted to add And I'll just mention that we'll send we have all the questions and we'll send them to Ali and he can get back to people separately outside of this session Absolutely and I will make sure to respond to all of them only two concluding thoughts first Jim and Alex I think that this series that you've inaugurated I think it's such an important series you know bringing together practitioners and academics to exchange ideas so I mean hats off to you on starting off this series or inaugurating the series and thank you so much for inviting me to be a part of it I before Fiona joined the call we were talking beforehand that just this book is a product of roughly two and a half three years of work and I feel that honestly just this one hour of conversation actually outstrips all of the perspectives that I gained in those two and a half or three years so thank you Jim and Alex so much and Fiona again just given how many demands you have in your time it means so much that you joined and given the influence that you've had on my own thinking my view of the world I just can't tell you what an honor it was to engage with you in honor to have your imprimatur on the book thank you so much and it's just it's a real privilege to have this chance to talk with you today thank you so much Oh it's a real honor to be with everyone I also want to commend Alex and Jim and everyone for coming up with this series this is a really this is a really great framing exercise as well and hopefully it will also lead to some changes and the way that we think about things so thank you I think we did we just I think we might just lost Alex so if that's the case grateful to her for the partnership that she and I have developed through this series with New America and with Virginia Gap Ali congrats on the book Fiona thanks so much for joining us and with that wish everyone a great day and happy reading