 So good afternoon everyone. It's my great pleasure to welcome you to an exciting webinar with two very renowned and well known scholars in international law. We're very happy, very honored to have with us Professor Jose Alvarez from New York and good morning Jose and Professor Gary Simpson from London from LSE. Today the webinar the discussion that I'm going to moderate is about the incoming Biden administration and what extent the Biden administration is going to restore rehabilitate international life I can say that. And Jose, Professor Jose Alvarez is going to provide to provide the thought provoking testament about that, but before we start I would like first introduce Professor Jose Alvarez, Professor Jose Alvarez Professor of International Law at my former school NYU Law School. He's former president of the American Society of International Law and former co-editor in chief of the American Journal of International Law member of the Council of Foreign Relations and also the Institute of the Dwa International. He's one of the most proliferated international legal scholars on international investment law, international organizations law, international criminal law and other fields of international law in books and many, many, many articles. And on the right side, it's our pleasure to have as a discussion Professor Gary Simpson from London School of Economics. Professor Gary is a very good friend as well, a very well known scholar in international law, international criminal law but with a very promising and exciting new book forthcoming book on the sentimental life of international law. Having said that after this very short introduction, I will give the floor to Jose to to to question to what extent the Biden administration will restore international law and what we should expect from that what should be our expectation from the Biden administration, then Gary will discuss will comment on Jose's keynote, and then I will moderate the discussion between Jose and Gary but for those of you who have comments and questions, please use the chat and then I will collect the questions for the Q&A time. On that note, I don't want to say take more time. Jose you have the floor thank you once more for that. Thank you. Thank you so much Maria and Gary for participating in this so at the outset, you know I was asked to be a sort of Cassandra but remember Cassandra didn't have a very good fate at the end. And also I think it's always risky to try to predict things think of what we would be predicting we would be doing. If we were talking about this in 2019. And I think most of us wouldn't have thought that most of the time would be on zoom the whole year 2020 and perhaps even more. The other thing I want to stress is these are predictions based on the political tea leaves, not necessarily what I would like a President Biden to do. As far as so my talk is also you can find a version of it at least an early version of it at the NYU website. And so we welcome to go there it will also appear as a far longer much more footnoted law review article that deals with a number of other things that perhaps Gary and I can get into. I think this international law is concerned, I want to start off by saying that Trump was a consequential US President. And even though many of us are celebrating what we assume is his defeat and it is his defeat the question is whether he'll actually leave tomorrow we'll see. Many of us celebrating that, and many of us think that this is promising in part because finally real international lawyers will go back to the room where it happens to quote both Lin-Manuel Miranda and John Bolton. But I want to suggest that expectations for a full scale restoration of international law, at least in so far as the US calls this a normal restoration has to be tempered and and I would suggest that there are eight foreign policy trends that are likely to outlast Trump and I'll quickly just go over them very quickly at the beginning in case I don't get to all of them. First is a preference for non treaty commitments that don't require approval by the Congress of the United States. Second, a more worry hostile approach to China. Third, skepticism the world trading system the WTO fourth continued reliance on trade sanctions to punish bad actors and bad being a definition that the US will apply either because of human rights violations or simply because of protectionist actions for instance, fifth a caution disinterest skepticism depending on the organization of the UN system, six opposition to most forms of international courts and tribunals, seven opposition to never ending wars including the humanitarian use of force one way of thinking about it is rest in peace for our to be or I to be our to be and finally eighth a ever more ironclad commitment to Israelis to Israel security and that's just quoting straight from the Democratic Party platform. In fact, Biden to modify each of these at the margins a more measured diplomatic tone, but make no mistake, I would predict that for years from now, all of these a trends will be at least recognizable aspects of US foreign policy. And some of this is the product of the world that Biden has inherited, but some is the product of who Biden is President Biden will not, even though he has announced already many executive orders to systematically dismantle what Trump has done. But that's not going to define his presidency that is unlike Trump, aka termination man who sought to undo all things Obama. Biden is simply too careful to thoughtful to bipartisan to rational to respectful of the rule of law to completely just destroy everything that Trump did just for the sake of doing that. It's simply likely to be now after January 6, when he has overriding effort has to be to unite a nation that it perhaps not an exaggeration to say, maybe on the brink of a political civil war and perhaps even a more dramatic one. The fact that this is a sort of tempered restoration of international law is due to structural factors or limits that are internal to the US a more or less equally divided Congress, a more resistant conservative federal judiciary thanks to path dependent civil servants and limits on reversing federal regulations as opposed to more quickly being able to get rid of executive orders. So just to start with the first one I'll spend a bit more time on that one. That is multilateral treaties. So the first 100 days of the Biden administration will not not be filled with the US joining multilateral treaties that much of the civilized world joined years ago. Even now, with Democrats just barely in control of the Senate, do not expect the US to ratify the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, the covenant on economic social cultural rights, the American Convention of Human Rights, the child convention, the law of the sea convention or the statute of the International Criminal Court do not expect the Biden administration to remove the US reservations all 14 of understandings declarations and reservations to the covenant on civil and political rights, and even the US reservations to the torture convention remember this is a country that took 40 years to ratify the genocide convention. It's not a country that changes and spots all that quickly. And of course, much of the world had not only the US has been considerably more worry about ambitious treaty making generally. He will to be sure fulfill his promise. He promises to do that on the first day to rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change and he can do that without congressional approval. And he may pursue many other efforts to protect the planet that are consistent with one of the Pope's encyclicals law dot C. And that may include reigniting the US and China bilateral efforts to address climate change. The US is likely to join China and pledging to lower the level of its carbon emissions by a date certain Japan has done that as well. And there is some prospect that Biden could achieve those lower levels, but by changing the policies of the Environmental Protection Agency, and also encouraging the US states to mitigate climate change, even if Congress were not to pass the kind of dramatic legislation that might be desirable for that. And you could expect a President Biden to embrace related international initiatives that were rejected by Trump, such as the 2018 global compact for safe orderly and regularly migration. This is a soft law pact would need congressional authorization for approval, and it could start to address the dilemma of climate change migration. And there are exceptional cases where I think you could imagine President Biden attempting bilateral treaty efforts. It's certainly likely to try to return to a number of nuclear efforts that were that were terminated or about to be terminated under under Trump with respect to Russia so that includes the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty that Russia that was that terminated due to Russia's violations, it could include the open skies agreement, it could include the new start. But what complicates that is not Biden's unwillingness to do this, it's the complication of a much more deteriorating set of relationships between Biden and Putin, which is of course widely expected. But of course, Biden is far more worried about escalating the nuclear threat than Trump ever was. So there is some hope that you could see some movement on those bilateral initiatives with Russia. And there are many reasons for this for why a Biden administration goes for so will go for soft executive agreements, soft law instruments, agency actions, instead of high profile multilateral treaties. We saw this through the Obama years. That is the US Constitution Capitol Hill traditions make concluding treaties purposely difficult. Obama tended to go for international agreements that were ostensibly authorized already under existing law or under a previously concluded treaty, and Biden is also facing the same phenomenon. That is, he's not likely to find many members of Congress, whose top priorities include ratifying a particular treaty. Let's take, for example, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on class US has a huge interest in defending the law of the sea and they're even stronger than ever before, given a potential threats to that convention and perhaps even to international peace posed by China's actions in around the South China Sea and yet no one including me predicts that the Biden administration will spend political capital to secure US ascension to own close, not only because I don't see members of the Senate will really care about it to push for it but also because the US no less than China has no reason for using that treaty as a tool for settling law of the sea disputes through the modes of impartial international adjudication that that treaty to a certain extent compels. Another reason for this resistance to multilateral treaties is the populist mindset that propelled Trump to the White House and very nearly kept him in the White House of Biden presidency is likely to prioritize what former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright calls inter domestic issues international initiatives that have a clear domestic policy significance, and therefore can draw support from the many sovereign tests that dominate the US capital. Biden will never utter the phrase America first, but that sentiment will compel him to justify everything he does in foreign policy in terms of how it benefits the people of the United States in what could be just a single term. Biden will spend precious political capital on filling out our wish list as international lawyers only in so far as he can justify that it satisfies the interest of his target audience think blue collar workers on Main Street. Reentry into the Paris agreement is sold to the US public under Biden administration on the basis that we need it to make sure that Main Street is not flooded burnt to the ground or torn apart by hurricanes thanks to climate change. The US returned to the WHO and its global scripts for testing contract racing and isolation will not be justified because of some abstract commitment to multilateralism, but on the simple basis that we need to do this to keep more Americans alive and Main Street open for business. And this turn to inter domestic law and domestic law initiatives to satisfy that can be to some extent a recipe for enhancing a bit US compliance with international law, even without passing new laws we can expect proactive efforts by the Biden Justice Department to protect the rights of African Americans. And that will mean proactive enforcement of US civil rights laws encouraged by the black lives movement. This will be changes to how law enforcement officers are disciplined and prosecuted for their actions at the state and municipal level, greater prosecutions of threats and acts by white supremacist rules that eliminate private prisons that reduce criminal penalties. All of this will enable the US to have somewhat better answers the next time US submits its reports to the third committee or other human rights committees. Should the US return to the UN Human Rights Council as I think is likely, it may even support an attempt to exploit a commission of inquiry to investigate structural racism in law enforcement, including in the United States. And this attention to unequal racial impact of the current pandemic, as well as climate change will enable Biden to draw synergistic connections between some human rights and his other intermestic priorities, predicted efforts to defend the rights of organized labor the right to strike the right to organize will elevate a bit. The credibility of the US, with respect to international labor rights and the ILO genuine efforts by the US Justice Department to correct and prevent pervasive forms of gender discrimination. The effected lifting of the US gag rule barring us aid to entities that support reproductive rights. These will enhance the credibility of the US before human rights bodies, even without the US joining Seedaw. Biden was president got ahead of President Obama by endorsing same sex marriage is also likely to embrace LGBTQ priorities identified in the Democratic Party platform that means he will eliminate the transgender ban on military service. He will appoint senior leaders at the State Department USA ID, the National Security Council, for which these rights are our priority. Of course, we've already seen that he's announced that he will eliminate the policy of separating immigrant children from their parents. He will attempt to reverse other Trump executive orders relating to immigration that include taking action on the dreamers he announced that a possibility today. You eliminate the revamped Muslim ban. And you reverse some of the constraints on the exercise of the rights of asylum and non reform on all of these actions will make the US a bit more compliant with some human rights instruments including the torture and refugee conventions. But it's more like 400 actions across a sprawling federal bureaucracy, and there's no way that Biden will get to really even look at much less reverse all of those actions. So for that reason, I'm not sure that even four years of efforts will restore the mantle of the US being truly a nation of immigrants welcoming to them. And there's also the possibility that some of these actions will be perceived as encouraging caravans like the one that's coming from Honduras and the political reactions to that are unpredictable. But still, these under the hood changes in US policies, Trump executive orders, and how US agencies implement the law without new multilateral treaties will be the principal way that a Biden administration will attempt attempt I say, to restore the US has lost soft power on human rights. Second, more hostile some would say sobering view of China. Unlike some of the advisors that were touted to advise Biden who thought that it was just a matter of how China gets to global domination. Biden is more nuanced when it comes to China, but don't expect a full reset to the early Obama years where there was still hope that China will be a law abiding member of the liberal international order. Biden has carefully described China as the US's principal adversary and soul strategic competitor for leading power status. He does not want clearly US China decoupling, nor a descent into the new US China Cold War. He will follow a Mao era expression to walk on two legs. He will treat China as a hostile power as strategic competitor, or as an ally, as needed to advance distinct US goals. A Biden administration will make clear there will consider certain Chinese actions such as interference with transit rights on the high seas or threats to invade Taiwan to be unacceptable hostile actions against the status quo, but also signal that it wants to have a military parade with China on matters of often global concern, and not just on climate change to permit joint efforts against terrorism, spread of weapons of mass destruction, or preempt missile launches by North Korea. And China as a strategic competitor in the race of winning hearts and minds in the developing world, and you could expect for example US support for infrastructure development projects that try to respond, and I suspect inadequately to China's formidable Belt and Road Initiative. And part of this is not just about winning hearts and minds, but to resist Chinese efforts to export Chinese standards, including surveillance technology that go along often with Chinese aid and its foreign investments. There's skepticism of the world trading system. The US is disenchantment with the WTO as a forum for negotiating new trade rules as a place to effectively monitor protectionism as an effective forum for resolving trade disputes. All of those disenchantments predate the Trump administration and will, I suspect, outlast it. There is bipartisan consensus right or wrong within the US that while the world has changed the WTO has not. But Biden, like the US business community, will not have loose talk about leaving the WTO. He will try to re-engage in reform efforts. He has no interest in sliding down Trump's protectionist path, premised on tit-for-tat tariffs. And he particularly has no interest in imposing legally implausible tariffs on US traditional allies like Canada or Europe. But steering that central path on the WTO will be rather challenging, given the Sanders-Warren wing of Biden's Democratic Party, and bipartisan concerns that the WTO's rules are simply ill-suited to liberalize trade in the age of digital trade, e-commerce, subsidize, force tech transfers by non-market economies and their SOEs, unfair or perceived to be unfair special concessions given to countries like China because they're called developing countries, and repeated failures by the WTO to police its members and their contestable trade actions. Now, which part of a huge WTO reform agenda that he inherits Biden will actually act on is a guesting game. Despite skepticism of trade agreements that accelerated in the age of Trump, I would predict that a Biden presidency would probably seek renewal of fast-track authority, which makes it much easier for the US to conclude trade agreements. That authority now expires in mid-2021. I suspect he will attempt and this will take a huge lift to get renewed authority, but it will come with new conditions imposed by Congress. And even if Biden were to win that battle of reauthorized trade promotion authority or fast-track, he's not likely to use it in the short to medium term, and he pretty much has said that. That that's not what he wants to do, conclude new trade agreements until the US gets its own act in order and protect its own workers. But he will face considerable business pressure because US business has been excluded from global supply chains under the new regional and comprehensive economic partnership or ReCEP, and you can expect a lot of pressure on Biden to try to come back to the trans-Pacific partnership that Trump foolishly abandoned, in my view, in his first days in office. But all of that will be, will encounter considerable resistance and require a lot of compromises, and it's not at all clear that the other 11 members of the TPP want to reopen that agreement just to get the US in. If you do see new trade agreements, you can expect new types of provisions at the insistence of progressives in Congress, and that would include climate change mitigation provisions in trade agreements. Fourth, continued use of sanctions on bad actors. You can expect the Biden administration to keep in place many of the existing sanctions, particularly on China and Russia, but perhaps emphasize different rationales for them. He will keep, certainly keep, and perhaps escalate Russian sanctions because of Russia's prior interference in US elections, the seizure of Crimea, the bounties put on US soldiers in Afghanistan, and most recently Russia's alleged involvement in the solar winds hacking. You can expect trade sanctions on China to be premised on the Hong Kong security law, on China's treatment of the weavers, less on the contention that China manipulates its currency or was responsible for spreading the so-called China virus. But these things would be, to some extent, 180 degree shift from President Trump's reported statement to the leadership in China. That building weaver internment camps was just the right thing to do. You won't get that kind of talk from a Biden administration. What about the UN system, my fifth tendency? Biden knows that few members of Congress or even the general public are invested in the UN. US disillusionment, disinterest in the UN, preceded Trump, and will outlast him. The only organization with a serious constituency on Capitol Hill is NATO, and the only UN portion of the show that American citizens know about is UNICEF because they donate it during Christmas time. Still, unlike Trump, Biden and his nominee for Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, realizes, I think, everything they've said that disengagement with the institutions of international law and order weakens rather than strengthens sovereignty. He knows, as apparently Trump did not, that the absence of the US from UN system institutions leaves a void that other states, particularly China, fill. And his nominee for UN ambassador, veteran diplomat Linda Thomas Greenfield, will certainly take seriously the UN, re-engage with the UN, including the Human Rights Council and the WHO. But Trump's withdrawals and wariness of such institutions, however misguided, will provide Biden with leverage and also impose some pressure on his administration to return to these organizations, but also try to address US grievances with them. The Biden administration will attempt to resume global leadership of what remains of the tattered liberal international order by insisting on institutional reforms to make these, quote, work as intended, at least work as intended, as the US would have them work as intended. So if we elected to the UN Human Rights Council, you can expect the US will express displeasure over the council's recent decisions to admit China, Saudi Arabia, and even Cuba to its ranks, remind the council that its membership was supposed to take the human rights records of its members into account. He will resist China led efforts to turn the body's universal periodic review into what I think many people now think it is an empty celebratory occasion to commend human rights violators for their progress. And he will look and he will try as a member to oppose recent council resolutions that, for example, denigrate the need to protect human rights defenders. As far as the WHO goes, he will try to fix the WHO, not leave it. As a re-engage member of the WHO, the US will pay the dues that Trump withheld, but also attempt to use that financial leverage to back institutional reforms. And also to secure something that China is apparently resisting a genuine candid assessment of what the organization did wrong from the time the first COVID test emerged in China through to the present day. A president elected, in my view, largely because his predecessor failed to contain a pandemic, you can count on that president to see threats to global health as a national security threat and act accordingly. And our new healthcare president is likely to take seriously the premise in the WHO's constitution that there is indeed a fundamental right to help. And like Trump, President Biden will agree that the failure of one state to prevent the spread of a contagious disease presents the common danger to all, all states benefit when each protects the health of its inhabitants. And like China's president, he will temper a bit vaccine nationalism by contributing to and joining COVAX, the alliance that tries to ensure that at least some vaccines go to and are available to 92 low income countries. Number six, aversion to most international courts. Biden will only tinker at the margins with respect to US is traditional reluctance to submit to supernatural forms of adjudication. He is not likely to resolve the stalemate over the WTO is the pellet body, really by saying, okay, we'll just agree to appointment of new appellate body members. Instead, he is likely to back proposals for some reforms of that body that were rejected by Trump that have been backed by a group of states and I'm thinking of some of the forms led by Ambassador David Walker of New Zealand. These reforms include a renewed commitment to judicial minimum in terms of WTO treaty interpretation. I'm not saying that exists, by the way, I'm saying that's the perception and are likely to be treated by the US as sort of a quid pro quo for bringing the WTO dispute settlement back to life. A very difficult symbolic issue is whether or not China will agree not to be treated as a developing state. There I would suspect that Biden will try a few trade offs. China he would argue might be persuaded to acquiesce to such a change which is more simple than anything else given the few benefits that really mean much with respect to China. If the US were to accept recent panel holdings like US tariffs on certain goods from China, that ruling found that US tariff measures that were taken in response to intellectual property complaints, and that the US took these measures, the panel found them to be illegal. A more sober USTR should accept, in my view, a ruling like that and I think Biden might be inclined to do so and as you trade representative might do that to force the US and its tariffs to be more carefully justified under the WTO's article 20 and 21 exceptions. It would reflect I think an old fashioned idea that the US gets reciprocal benefits from avoiding transparently bad faith arguments to justify trade actions. The Biden administration needs to demonstrate that the US still supports a rule based system for trade after what I think and what I think Biden thinks more relevantly are disastrous trade wars initiated by Trump. But no one should expect that the US government to become a sudden convert to the virtues of other international courts. The Biden administration is no more likely than President Trump to sign on to the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ. He will not submit to the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He will not even accept, I suspect, or put any political capital in going into the ICPR protocol that would permit individual complaints against the US to be brought before the Human Rights Committee. He will not spend any time endorsing proposals for new global courts that some of which or many of which are popular with Europeans, propose World Court of Human Rights, an international environmental court, an international anti-corruption, anti-terrorism or anti-trafficking court, a multilateral investment court, or an arbitration tribunal for business and human rights. He will not expect President Biden to spend any time on trying to make those a reality. At the same time, Biden can be expected to adopt a kindler, gentler policy towards the international criminal court, even while continuing to resist adherence to the Rome Statute, the Kampala protocol, or attempts by the ICC to investigate crimes in Afghanistan. And Bolton-inspired executive order that penalizes anyone who dares work for the ICC will be among the first of many Trump-era executive orders to go. And I don't think you will see a revival of Article 98 agreements whereby the US will force states to the condition of aid or assistance by the US will be, don't send anybody to the International Criminal Court from the US. 7, RIP to R2P, Biden was never a fan of Obama's decision to leave from behind with respect to NATO action in Libya. And like Trump, he will be adverse to starting and staying in never-ending wars, even for humanitarian reasons. I suspect that there may even be a change in US national security strategy away from pre-emptive use of force. And at the same time, you can expect his administration will be more engaged in trying to make the UN Security Council relevant, if not great again. That is just maybe a tap on that. Security Council relevant again. And unlike Trump, he would support, for example, future Security Council action to respond to pandemics as a threat to international peace and security. After all, the council had already done that with respect to Ebola. And the eighth trend, ironclad security commitments to Israel. Biden is expected to recommit to protecting Palestinian rights in any future Middle East peace deal, but that now has to be undertaken in a new environment. US embassy relocated to Jerusalem in executive order, recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel, the closure of Palestine's diplomatic mission in Washington. Those are facts on the ground that will be unlike other things that, other things like Trump's epic order, that have some strong political support. It will be difficult to change, despite icier relationships between Biden and Netanyahu. The US under Biden will continue to encourage these bilateral peace agreements between Israel and its former enemies, like those concluded under Trump with Sudan, Bahrain, UAE, and those agreements may further complicate any possibility of a broader peace deal. In other words, the ironclad commitment to Israel's security that's proclaimed in the Democratic Party platform will continue to make the US not at all a credible, honest broker for Middle East peace. And it will continue to complicate the US relationship with a number of prominent forums that remain very sympathetic to Palestine, and that includes UNESCO, I don't predict the US will return to that, as well as many initiatives in the UN General Assembly. So where does that all leave us? It is a tempered restoration of international law along the normal approach to international law seen in the US, and it is a restoration that will occur in a world transformed by Trump's years in office, anti-democratic trends around the world, including an established democracies disenchantment with the UN system. The world in short has changed and not just the US in four years, and it's not just because of an ongoing pandemic. It is also because we have witnessed a paralyzed UN system that repeatedly fails to protect human life, whether in a conflict zone like Syria, on migrant filled rafts in the Mediterranean, amidst forest fires in Australia or California, or of course in intensive care units around the world. Biden is heir to deep seated skepticism about the efficacy of international organizations to address problems of the global commons. And that's just one reason why you should not expect Biden to bring us to an effective third term of Obama with respect to foreign affairs. And there's other reasons for this. That is, he has difficulties returning to Obama era policies, because Trump has managed to eviscerate trust that the US will keep its word, or that when it keeps its word, that it gives its word, it can actually do what it promises. This alone will complicate any renewed efforts to seek the help of others, whether it's on climate change, restore respect for the WTO, or the WHO, close one ton of render suspects accused of terrorism. It will take decades to restore a reputation lost in four years. Even the US traditional allies are aware that nearly half of US voters supported a second term for an extremely unilateralist president. And that means that over half may yet elect in 2024, another unilateralist president that is just slightly more competent. That reality means that NATO members will welcome Biden's expected embrace, but continue to assume that in the future they will better have a plan B for securing Europe. No one can be sure how much time it will take to regain the trust of trusted allies, whom we have spurned, and really reset the tone of discourse with authoritarian rulers that we will now unfriend. And another complicating factor is that over the past four years, it's been a massive change in US foreign intelligence services. Trump administration sideline career diplomats fired independent inspector general, made enemies of foreign policy intelligence agency whistleblowers. Many distinguished public servants have resigned, have been forced out. He made a record number of political friends, incompetent ambassadors. As a result, the US Foreign Service has reportedly experienced the biggest drop in applications in a decade, thereby reversing any progress to recruiting a more diverse workforce. Today, only four of the US is 189 ambassadors are black. The Biden administration will undoubtedly seek to restore the value of a political intelligence foreign policy expertise, compliance with ethical standards. He may be trying to race RACE US foreign policy so that its diplomats actually look like the US. And such efforts may help to redirect attention to problems that we have long ignored, including race, as well as relationships with parts of the world that we routinely ignore. But making diplomacy professional again, even if he were to distribute MDPA hats instead of MAGA hats is just not a sexy topic. It will be a tremendous lift for an administration that is facing unprecedented other challenges that have far greater political salience. In the meantime, he has to work with the decimated State Department that he has inherited, including leftover deputies that have now acquired the status of civil servants and will not necessarily leave with Trump. If past is prologue, some of these officials will not immediately get with the new program. But Trump's deep state, ironically, will live on this time to delay, obstruct, and sometimes even possibly derail the new president's priorities. So where's the hope for even the restored international law restoration, and that is the fraternity to depart at the show. And this is likely to define the Biden administration and is likely to cut strongly, most strongly against Trump's erratic belligerence, and perhaps resist some of the harshest parts of those eight foreign policy trends. And that is Biden's reliance on allies, his reluctance to go it alone. In his climactic speech of the presidential campaign at Warm Springs, Georgia, Biden cited Pope Francis latest encyclical fraternity fraternal openness, defined as allowing us to acknowledge others and work with others. Of course, Biden's expected return to allies is not grounded in the fact that he's the practicing Catholic, it's grounded in geopolitical realities. The US is no longer the sole superpower on the block, it needs the help of others. And that is basically Biden's response to almost every question he poses on foreign affairs. His response is, he's no friend of Brexit, he wants to work with Europe. So perhaps the US UK trade pack will have to wait while we go forward with US European trade and elevate that. His response to the unfolding Pacific century, including the rise of China is to strengthen allies with ties with key allies in the region, including Japan, South Korea and Australia to have robust engagement with institutions like ASEAN and the Quadrilatical Security Dialogue, the Quad between US, Japan, Australia and India. He will turn to a reinvigorated transatlantic partnership in trying to find common solutions to big data flows while respecting privacy and to try to achieve greater energy security while combating climate change. And in this atmosphere, you can expect attempts at greater Western hemispheric cooperation and forums like the OAS, trilateral dialogues between US, Canada and Mexico to address Biden's announced priorities in the Americas. And that is addressing the root causes of migration in Central America, protect the Amazon from deforestation, assist nations in this hemisphere, including the Caribbean to adapt to climate change. This is all dramatically at odds with the unilateral synclinations of Trump. The search for allies is inherent in Biden's tendency to find common ground with political opponents, whether in Congress or I predict abroad. His instinct is to elicit consensus by emphasizing fact over fiction, science over QAnon, deference to experience diplomats over businessmen, and they have been mostly businessmen with bank accounts. And I think that is why there has been a resurgence of faith among some international lawyers in the United States. And the 2020 election demonstrates, I think, once more that US politics continues to be defined by a sharp divide between values voters who often identify as evangelical Christians and secular largely urban elites on the east and west coasts of the United States. Ironically, the presidential candidate that was most strongly backed by coastal elites turns out to be a practicing Catholic, who in my view is apt to take seriously Pope Francis call to defend common humanity and fraternity duty, and to protect the planet in the other encyclical law. See our incoming president also seems inclined to take seriously those of us who still have faith that international law and its institutions can help achieve both of those goals. So for that reason, this is an occasion to temporarily set and with caution celebrate. Thanks for listening. I look forward to the comments from Gary. Thank you very, very much for this extremely fine analysis. And I would say genuinely nuanced skepticism about the prospects of, as you say, temper restoration of international law based on the eight threads that you have identified and that they most likely will outlast Trump, but also given on the restrictions both on the domestic front such as a constitutional setting, or the sentiments the mentality domestically, but also regarding the institutional context. This, what we call the backlash that the lost faith in international institutions. So on this note, I want to give the floor to Gary for his provocative thoughts and comments. Gary, you have the floor. Well, thank you very much. I'm not really sure how provocative they will be. But Maria, first of all, thanks for organizing this I see we have 100 participants which is marvelous, and perhaps not unexpected for all sorts of reasons but one of which would be that that of course tomorrow is a historic day in American politics and and therefore international politics so it's in that we were lucky to have that presentation and I learned a lot from that but also from the longer paper which I command to anyone who's interested in in the future of international law under myself I think quite a contentious figure, not as contentious as Trump obviously but perhaps not quite the mainstream liberal figure that we expect. I mean my questions are comments really what is, what is a is a sort of epistemological question or maybe as a research question, if you like, which is, is, you know, how do, how do we know what we know about about Biden. So, I guess I'm asking you, Jose, you know how you know all this stuff. So, you know what's, you know, to ask the sort of question that certain type of scholar might ask what's, what's the, what's the relevant archive here I noticed that there were a number of papers from foreign affairs and so on. But as you say is a sort of guesswork we don't quite know precisely how Biden and his administration will operate part of it is with reference to how the Obama administration work given the crossover and personnel, part of it is about the internal of the Democratic Party, and part of it is related to the sorts of constraints that operate internationally and I think also domestically and here I find the paper very very useful to try and understand just what sorts of barriers lie in the in the in the way of any Biden rethinking or reconsexualizing or even remaking of international law so that that would be an initial question. The second point I make is you know what is the oldest question in the book but but it's a kind of what is international law question. It seems to me that there were lots of different international laws floating around in the in the paper so at one point in the top you said that that we wouldn't, we wouldn't get a wish list for international lawyers from Biden, and I guess my question might be, what is that wish list and and do we all have the same wish list so So for example, the international law you describe, which is, you know, an international law of tribunals the WTO, the ICT why the ICT are you talked about the ICJ, it's an international law of multi multi lateralism. It's an international law in which the R2P plays quite, you know, a relatively prominent role I know that you have your skepticism about this as well and you've got what Maria called a nuanced view of this as with so many things but So if that's a very particular international law that wouldn't necessarily be shared by lots of people so that you can imagine international lawyers, not of the Trumpist variety, who might be quite skeptical about courts or tribunality and you know, think of judicial institutions or dispute resolution mechanisms sitting at the heart of international law tool that international law might be much more of a sort of private public affair, or much more of a bilateral as you I mean you talk about this in your paper much more bilateral than say multi lateral and that what we're being presented with in the paper is partly a sort of classic multi lateralist tribunal, a particular type of liberal international law and that never mind all the other international laws that might float around like you know, critical international law feminist international law third world international law where there might be a number of different concerns and those concerns might be related to the problematic of liberal international law itself of course as you as you well know so that the restoration of that international law would not possibly be met with a great deal of enthusiasm in the first place. Okay, but critical international law and third world international law would be very torn about the Biden presidency because you know Trump Trump puts people who puts the critics of international law in a slightly tricky position. Because sometimes, as many people have said critics of international law sound like john Bolton so no one wants to sound like john Bolton no one wants to sound like Donald Trump and yet some of the positions, seemingly superficially similar so the restoration of international law is both a sort of ambiguous enterprise for many many people, but also very complicated one because it's not clear to us what sort of international law is being restored and that's why I found, I thought it was a strength of the paper actually I found the reference to Pope Francis and what we might even call though this would be quite a historical I suppose a Catholic conception of international law, not the first one I mean it's not 500 years old as well and I think the links between current sort of pronouncements on internationalism if you like, and those more historic ones would be a really productive research agenda itself is not something that I remotely propose that you'd have to do in this paper but it's something that others might, might want to take take up of the sort of 100 guests, guests we have here So, so I think that's a question I have as well as you know it's partly a question of style what style of international law we want we may want international law to do lots of things but how do we want to adopt? I mean is there any real reason to prefer the UN over the quadrilateral security dialogue? Is there any reason to disparage what you actually described at one point is these other normative projects that Trump administration adopted I mean in content we might not like it but I wonder to ask of that take up to take up Maria's request ask a provocative question is there anything we can learn from the Trump administration? I mean it sounds very strange given the events on Capitol Hill almost mystifying question but is there anything we can learn from how Trump did international law was there anything creative there is there anything that can be retrieved so that would be the first or second question I might have The third is a big question about internationalism and about whether whether history is with Biden or Trump There's been a lot of concern about the liberal international legal order and political order John Eikenbury and so on and the question about whether we're coming to the end of it and whether Biden's retrieval of it will turn out to be somehow anachronistic or exceptional in itself whether the winds are actually blowing in a different direction whether we're moving towards of populist extralegalism or whether we're moving back to Sovereignism and I guess that even raises a question about whether these forms of Sovereignism themselves are sort of built into the structure of international law which has always understood itself to be a conversation between Sovereignism maybe even populism and multilateralism and internationalism so whether a sort of broad conception of international law So it takes in all of these positions somehow whether this is a debate internal to international law rather than a debate between sort of international lawyers on one hand and recidivists who just can't stop breaching international law on the other hand the sort of Trump and his supporters and so on so that would be the the second the second question The third point, at least I think it's the third point. I just wonder what effect the Trump and again you touch on this in the paper what effect Trump will have on Biden's ability or the United States authority to now intervene in international affairs so you know the paper does what many of us do which is it sort of speaks from a centre outwards and sort of ask questions about how we might control Iran or North Korea or deal with the Middle East or ISIS and so on and also how we might try to understand what you call the WHO's failings but I wonder from the rest of the world that that's the way it now feels or has experienced I wonder just to speak from the United Kingdom, Britain still imagines itself to have a certain degree of authority and weight in international affairs but I think it's squandered some of that in recent years, maybe even decades going back to the Iraq war under Blair and certainly under Johnson who doesn't seem to have a good feel for internationalism and Brexit being just the latest example of that and though we feel the need to pronounce on vaccines and so on, the British really have lost their authority on COVID, it's dealt with a world historical disastrousness and yet we keep having this reflex of saying we're going to ban flights from Portugal because they're dangerous out there or we need to reprimand the WHO for its failings and I just wonder if we have the authority to do that anymore. I don't want to bump argue with a million questions so let me just come to some sort of conclusion I really do want to get into the issues of friendship and the idea of this Catholic conception of international I found them so interesting and there has been quite a bit of writing on friendship and international law and relations over the last over the last 10 years but my last question is really about the relationship between Biden and your portrait of Biden and you know the internationalists rather than internationalism you refer to businessmen with big bank accounts being very important under Trump but of course businessmen with big bank accounts are very important to that story that Scott Shapiro and you know half the way tell about internationalism in general going back to the Kellogg Breon pact and I just I think we can set aside the whole Kellogg Breon argument because not that many people certainly in my circle take that part of the story very seriously but the other part which is that something called internationalism developed in the 1920s and continues to be something worth holding on to is very very important and there are lots of debates about that and I wonder where you situated on Biden in that particular story of internationalism in fact where you where you situate your own paper in that in that particular story of internationalism so that I mean I just I read your paper alongside a piece by Christopher Craver and then you left review which was a absolutely vicious review of of the Shapiro half the way book from a kind of left critical perspective it was so interesting reading so the Shapiro on one hand you on the other and Craver on the other you've you know occupied an unusual position in the International Legal Academy one that I'm you know quite sympathetic to the idea of trying to steer some sort of middle position between the triumphalism of the half the way the half the way Shapiro school of internationalism and the skepticism of critical international law. Wow. So okay so let me attempt to address some of the first one I think is the easiest one that is how do we know all of this well in the case of Biden we do have probably the longest career trajectory of any candidate for president in a long time you have a lengthy record as head of foreign affairs, lengthy record as vice president, and now an increasing evidence that I didn't have when I started the paper, but I would have predicted of the types of people he is now seeking to nominate and in and now with just enough Democratic control that my prediction is all of these will eventually be confirmed with the possible exception of the defense for particular reasons that don't affect so much for a foreign policy. So we have the people, we have his career, and among the people we also have a Biden's long standing allies on the hill. So somebody like Senator Chris Murphy, who's likely to be quite influential in terms of foreign affairs. He's the one that says look, the Biden people and I in Congress will prioritize the US EU relationship over the US UK trade deal. It's not really specific, but that's an indication of where Congress is likely to be and not just the Trump administration. When we have Anthony Blinken making statements not just now but others in the past about bricks it being a total mess. And what a disaster that was that tells us something about the Biden administration's likely approach, including not just to bricks it but perhaps divorce Johnson right. So we do have quite a bit of tea leaves to search through, not all of which were the subject to footnotes right this was originally a speech. I'm not sure if you got the law review version of it with all the footnotes. Even that won't give you won't give you all of that so there is quite a bit it doesn't mean that my predictions are accurate. It means that I'm basing it on sort of traditional tea leaves, and we have a lot of them in the case of Biden, we have a lot less with respect to Kamala Harris, right. If something were to happen to Biden, and she becomes president, then I have a lot fewer basis of predictions based on, she has barely made a dent in foreign policy she was not vice president etc right. So that's that the harder question that you pose is, what's my style of international law, or what's the basis for this so I guess what I am trying to suggest. When I talked about the wish list of international lawyers, and their likely reactions to my eight foreign policy. I'm sitting in the office of Tom Frank. And so I'm thinking, what would Tom Frank think of these things so I'm thinking traditional progressive international defenders of the liberal international order. Tom Frank was not a bomb thrower, but he was sympathetic to critiques of international law. It was not unlike me maybe it's good that I'm in his office. And, but I'm also suggesting that these are predictions based on what I know of Biden, and predictions based on what would be the reaction of, oh that's just take. That is, if you take a survey of the 25 editors of the American Journal of international law. Do they back international courts. Yes, do they back multilateral treaties. Yes, would they like us to sign all the human rights treaties in site. Would they like it if we were actually more involved than we were on a number of institutional fronts, where things get a little dicey is the details of how you carry out the goals, as you rightly point out. Many of them would be just equally sympathetic, not just to the UN system and traditional international organizations, but to using the quad to using G seven G 20. And that case, they have certain goals in mind, whether it's encouraging the SDGs, and how do we achieve that, and using the tools of international law and you could get differences of view with respect to that. So, you are quite right that this is not the wish list of twalers, for instance, nor the wish list of say, conservative international lawyers in the United States such as Curtis Bradley, or Jack Goldsmith, right. So, they wouldn't care if we adhere to a multilateral treaty or not. And, and to some extent, the fact that you have international lawyers of varying persuasion on questions like that, helped me to predict that there will be less push for ratifying seat of God, because the answer of a moderate like Biden will be. To accomplish the goals of gender equality, at least within the confines of US law. Let me try that first, rather than spend the political capital to ratify a treaty that conservative international lawyers will say is just trying to get rid of Mother's Day, according to the on speed off, right. So, so that's the, that's the sort of political calculation. You are in the set in the longer version of the law review article I do hint that many of the things that a Biden administration will try to accomplish will actually generate considerable pushback, including by a left or by a trailer, for instance, and not just remember twalers happen to be mostly critical lawyers, writing in a third world perspective who have to live in the United States in Europe. I'm talking about, is there going to be resistance on the ground in African states among the governments and perhaps the peoples of countries and I would predict yes. I think if the US were to push certain reforms of the WHO that prioritize expensive global scripts for testing contract tasting and isolation, and you're sitting in a country that has other issues and would like, for example, to investigate the causes of diseases that migrate from animals to people and maybe we should prioritize that rather than some of these other techniques, or if you're sitting in a Vietnam, where which has been relatively successful with respect to controlling COVID, but not through the traditional means that you see in many other countries. So I don't, and that is why I tried to be careful in both the paper and in my speech of saying he will try to do these things, but it actually could generate resistance so they're very different forms. So the part of the paper on UN integrity, right, so the Trump administration. And here you're asking me what do we learn from the Trump administration so for example, I think the Trump administration was was right, that it is not an applied glory that China is now in control of some four UN system institutions, and the way some of those elections were conducted through supervising in the worst fashion of say the US Cold War that you are well familiar with where everybody keeps track of who's voting for whom, and then everybody gets punished for the wrong vote, China is basically deploying those old tactics that the US itself and Russia did with respect to UN elections. And so it wasn't wrong for the Trump administration to point it out that that China was undermining whistleblowers and the integrity of UN elections, but let's face it, what credibility does the Trump administration have on both their elections and protecting whistleblowers. Now, I would predict that a Biden administration will try to pursue comparable program with slightly more credibility, at least to the extent it is perceived not as just dumping on China, but actually as trying to maintain a less politicized civil service and elections where where is not quite as politicized as they have been. And also, I think you can expect Biden to attempt and I'm not sure successfully to restore the observer status of Taiwan in say a place like the WHO, which I think benefits the WHO for Taiwan itself. So, so all of this is by way of suggesting that you're correct that there's going to be resistance and not just resistance because the US will be pursuing a particularized view of what international law is. Another point that I think I tried to raise, which is that the US has no credibility has squandered its leadership with respect to COVID with respect to human rights with respect to elections, what country is now going to buy any premise that the US respects free and fair elections. I mean that unless there's a global amnesia about January 6 that's going to take place through a global pill that we distribute, no one is going to believe us. And that's what I mean in part by the lost reputation. That is, if we've lost credibility in competence, we've lost credibility in in principles, and this is just attempts at the margin to try to restore it and it will take more than one election. Because if we get, you know, another unilateralist in four years, this will be, as you say a blip on this, which means that you are maybe quite right that we are just talking about a blip in an overall decline of the liberal international order. If this is not the beginning of the end of populism, but just a temporary stopgap where not just the US but other countries will return to a place where, and here's one difference I do think between Trump and Biden, that is, what you see with a Biden and an Obama is you're going to see a steady attempt to justify whatever we do through international law. And that will mean memos that will sometimes be totally implausible. I never bought Harold Koh's attempt to argue that drone killings were better, killing them is better than torturing them somehow. I found that untenable. Remember, we tried to make the argument and by making the argument, we then can generate a discussion about this. But if you don't try at all, which is frequently the Trump effort, and you just assert sometimes on the basis of totally made up facts. You're playing on the on the traditional playing field of using law to justify your actions. And so I think we're going to be back to that. The other reason that I think is different from Trump is that there will actually be more of a demonstration of what is the US position. That is frequently you had Trump tweeting something at 5am. That was completely different than the intelligence services and everybody else. So somehow the solar winds hacking was China, not Russia in Trump's view, thereby obliterating all kinds of consistency in terms of the credibility of US policy or what that policy was. You can bet that there will be a more consistent tone. It could be wrong, but it would be more consistent across the administration, across the various agencies. I speak with one boy fifth business that the Supreme Court always tried to protect in terms of US presidential voice will be back and and and that means that there'll be a target for when you think that presidential voice is wrong and and you can actually address it that way. As to whether the liberal order is on decline. All together. I am not sure my crystal ball extends to that. I do think that one of the issues here is how much institutional reform is actually conceivable or possible. So where are we to embedded in, for example, state centricity that we can't adopt the changes to something like the World Health Organization that would open it up to where I think it needs to be opened up so that it takes the advice of frontline medical workers for instance, or and to take out operational activities to doctors without frontiers or to other agency more capable of doing this. So that one key for the WHO would be to separate out some of its functions I think Japan has articulated a position like that, that we would expect the WHO to prioritize some of the things it does, maybe fix the proclamation of a public health emergency of international concern focus on trying to be more or less consistent in terms of global guidelines and perhaps change a little bit. It's the way it comes to those guidelines. So right now I think the WHO is still late to the game, when it comes to mask wearing, when it comes to travel restrictions. And it's mostly because at various points in time it was relying on proof positive, tell me proof positive, scientifically documented that masks help. Tell me proof positive that a ban on travel from the following countries helps without thinking about the sort of the equivalent of precautionary principle in this field, which is, hey, if it might help, maybe you ought to encourage mask wearing until we find out other ones right. And so I think that, ironically, the WHO is too embedded in the scientific community to some extent, and not willing to consider political advisors and even lawyers with respect to these things, but also separate out as I say some of the some of the other challenges I've been around the UN reform effort for way too long to be optimistic about any of this. I never you notice I never said a word about Security Council reform but a joke that is right so I'm not even going to think about Security Council reform. But is there enough reform of some of these institutions whether it's the World Bank the IMF, or others that make me think that they could still survive. For example, if there is a Beijing consensus emerging from how to encourage the achievement of SDGs through development assistance that is less that is not like the Washington consensus and it's almost the exact opposite. And if that turns out to work, then maybe that is the way we ought to take lessons just like you encouraging us to take lessons from the Trump administration we could take lessons from China. And the paper that the long version that you have, you have a section on where I go through the Pope's fraternity to T encyclical. And the Pope certainly has a policy agenda embedded in it. The Pope is the one that would prioritize multilateral institutions, the current liberal institutions should work as intended. In the Pope's view reforms to them should be encouraged so that the most vulnerable states are are and their needs are elevated as opposed to the more powerful states, which is why he elevates multilateral initiatives, as opposed to bilateral ones, but it is a particular agenda. And I used it as okay if we follow the Pope, because I am well aware of the competing strands of international lawyers different recipe books. Well, what would that look like, right and it was sort of fun to think about the Pope as president of the United States, frankly, I mean it's just, it was such a refreshing take. But you're quite right. If, if you were to take a different view of how you achieve the STGs, for instance, without multilateralism, it wouldn't look like the Pope's recipe book, right, it could involve working with completely non state actors throughout bilateral approaches. So if, and then, and then the question you ask and I do want to hear from the chat box. What have we learned from the Trump administration well one thing we've clearly learned is that if you do everything the way that I sphere, Biden will do. It will not last so that the ignoring Congress and doing things through executive order means that they will not last. It is much harder to get out of a treaty that Congress has entered into and of course under US law. It's impossible for the president to do that unilaterally, but politically, it is much harder to to terminate a treaty, just as president, that the Senate or the House and the Senate have jointly given their approval for. So Trump has shown us the inadequacies of the Obama approach. Now, in defense of Obama, it wasn't clear that he had an alternative. Once the Republicans took control of the Senate, then it was very hard for him to get anything done. But it is true that Trump has, I think the other thing that that is quite true is also, to some extent, Trump's breaking of all norms made it easier for people to question particular approaches, not just whether China was a rule abiding status quo. But is the WTO really the best approach for getting to a new trade rules. So I think there's greater skepticism, including in the new administration of a number of institutions and practices that there was before. And that's all to the good provided you do something about it that is realistic. The problem with Trump is he may have pointed out these things, but he didn't do anything about them, and he tended to exacerbate the very problem that you that he may have pointed out. And pointing out that the WTO is a disaster and it comes to dealing with five, six and seven should okay then do something about it that would help you work with others to achieve those goals. We never saw that sort of follow through on any of the Trump criticisms of the existing international order. And I know I didn't answer everything but that's as far as I'm getting right now. You did. You did. You did. You did answer. You did answer. I just had one little comment to make. When I read the, the, the Pope's position on some of this it reminded me a little bit of the book that John Rawls wrote on the, on the laws of peoples we had this great philosopher coming down from the Muslim and presenting us with the, with the very latest liberal philosophy on international law which turned out to be almost exactly like liberal international law. It felt to me as if the people pronounce it was a bit like that. It was more as what we had or what multilateralism is at least imagined to be amongst international law supporters but Maria. Thank you very much. I was following your fascinating discussion back and forth Gary was pretty sure you would say something about liberal mainstream liberal. I was trying to avoid that phrase. Yeah, I was waiting for that, you know, here we are. And Jose, thank you so much for your response. And I have to say that several times myself I wonder what would Tom think today what would Tom think what would he say about that today. And I remember working in this room, you know, when I was doing my research for him. So we just have less than 10 minutes so what I did was I was collecting some comments for Jose for you and then unfortunately we have we have to do to conclude and maybe you know I will conclude with one sentence. In the, in the Q&A is you know, there are several people I saw Chezar Romano is is attending as well so he was asking about the Inter-American Commission, you know, and your guest, I would say everything is now to what your guest you know to what extent the government Biden administration I'm collecting everything will have a different position towards the Inter-American system to what extent you know he will the administration will reiterate a different relationship with Briggs to what extent these are issues you touch upon as well you know about the sanctions against the ICC officials, our colleague Megan Furley is asking that which was unprecedented but also issues with regard to the EU basically it's everything about a friendship to some extent you know it's what Gary said about international and friendship and how he's going to, I don't know to rethink about all these relationships so if you can you have any word I know you touch upon that on your papers and you also So I would predict more generally that human rights will get a far more higher priority and will be dealt with more seriously so that if for example the Inter-American Commission were to issue criticism of existing immigration policies and so forth. I would predict that this administration will either try to correct whatever the commission is pointing out but will at least engage with it in terms of legal arguments and what Customary international law does or doesn't require since the US isn't a party to the American convention but it is a party to the American declaration of human rights. I would also expect and this is a key thing that the US will actually try to fill to the extent it can positions that are now vacant throughout UN system organizations. The US is not a party to the Inter-American court but it can have a role in the Inter-American Juridical Committee in all the variety of settings. And I last time I checked a lot of these positions were left vacant right and I think what you could expect is serious international lawyers being appointed to those that require legal background. And it matters. I happen to think and this is I'm old fashioned that way that that having the US at the table in a serious way in all of these institutions which includes the assembly of state parties for example as an observer in the ICC makes a difference. Not always to the good but we saw the difference it can make good or bad. If you look at the Kampala agreement on aggression that is a lot of it was influenced including the understandings by Harold Koh as an observer there. And the truth is in the past four years we have been present I understand at the assembly of state parties but have mostly been silent and not sent people of the kind of elevation and seriousness of somebody like Harold Koh. And there for example the ICC has a huge agenda for reform coming out of its independent commission that the assembly of state parties asked. And this is an interesting document that is quite damning about how the International Court the International Criminal Court and its prosecutors handle the prioritization of cases, manage the relationship between judges, handle evidence of a variety of things, all of which are low hanging reform fruit as far as I'm concerned. And what it takes is serious people going through them and that includes sensitive points about are they really prioritizing the types of cases with respect to some of the so what you could expect. And this is just a prediction is that in the assembly of state parties for instance, the US would probably no longer advance the implausible position that it took under the Bush administration. That it is illegal for a state to send US nationals to the court who happened to have committed a genocide or crimes against humanity or war crimes in its territory that that's somehow illegal I don't think this administration will will make that with a straight face. So what will they say about Afghanistan. Well, they'll say something like this and this not necessarily publicly but in the corridors. Look, guys, we're going to be prosecuting one Republican administration already. You want us to tackle another Republican administration for torture allegations that are quite publicly well known. That is, we had congressional testimony on all of this we have a huge record of everything from john use memos, lucidating torture, and we, and ever since Obama, we said we were not going to do this, but Obama was the one that closed the avenue for prosecuting these people. You want to reopen that politically we're not going to reopen Obama's decision to prosecute these people. And frankly, we think you have more current war crimes and other things to address than that. And that's the answer, right, whether the Biden administration will seriously pursue this question of, we're an exceptional nation that has to be exempt from all of this because we're present all over the world. I think they'll probably downplay that, but they may believe it, by the way, I mean this is part of having a traditional sort of a traditional foreign policy establishment, which is what Biden is restoring. But what gives me hope is that, at least, these are people who are not given their jobs, because they donated to the campaign, and don't know squat about foreign affairs or international law. You can accuse that whole cabinet list of New York Times published everybody that is there. You can't suggest these people aren't competent. You may disagree with them on the margin about policy, but a they have a record. They're mostly public servants of long standing. And I doubt that you will have the kinds of scandals of ethics that we have just gone through to great exhaustion, by the way, over the past four years. You will see a steady hand and steadiness has some merit on this, but but whether the US. So I've already suggested that I don't, I see this as a restoration to some extent of the old status quo, not a radical move. Even though in principle, you could see it. That is, remember the constraints on getting through human rights treaties under US law that suggests you have to go with two thirds of the Senate, which is a very high hurdle is a political constraint. You could decide to pursue those treaties through half of the House, half of the Senate, you just have to convince them that the Senate to give up those priorities. And I suspect that this is not something that Supreme Court will strike down. If they decide to join CEDAW, the way they decide to join trade agreements. That's a political calculation, not one embedded in the US Constitution. So, so that's what you know if you had a more transformative president who's willing to strike a new deal on international law like FDR struck on some things. It could happen. The constraints that I've talked about are to some extent political, not legal. So for that, Gary, would you like to add something? No, I don't have much to add. I know you've run out of time. I mean, I suspect what might happen to multilateralism, which I think of as a very diverse project is that it'll start to feel multilateralist may feel a certain amount of nostalgia for the Trump era when we could agree on one thing, we didn't like what he was doing. But when it comes to constructive projects of multilateralism, I think this agreement may begin to flourish again. I mean, I think it's a sort of nostalgia the punk rockers have for Margaret Thatcher, for example, galvanizing figure. Right, right. No, I think that that's that's certainly true. We knew who the enemy was. What the restoration project should look like. That's a far more contentious question and it is one that will will raise a serious divisions in the Democratic Party itself. Right. So this is why that part of it is unpredictable. You have, you know, varying views, not just on international affairs but on domestic affairs among this intent called Democrats, which by the way may become a little bigger since January 6. Yeah, very, very, very, very true. Well, on this note, I would like to wrap up to conclude. First of all, I want to thank you. I want to urge all the participants to read your, your law review article, which is a website of NYU. And I can say that personally from from while I was reading it, I thought I found two friends over there. One was a call for moderation. Maybe it's my project because I believe in moderation but the way I was reading it I thought that it was, it was a call for thinking of all the idea of the crisis or national multilateralism what we had during the Trump administration and what we can expect for the Biden administration via the lenses of moderation. And the second one was a sense of reality that I felt taking it from Messiah Berlin, because somewhere in your paper you say at the end of the day maybe the return is what is normal behavior for USA. And that goes back, you know, to Gary's question about the, what is the direction like think that in other parts of the world we don't think that this is okay normal maybe for the US this is the normal behavior you know what is for the USA. And I think this is a very, very important observation that actually identifies and frame somehow our expectations, but I'm pretty sure you know that from tomorrow we will continue having all this discussion debates between mainstream liberal international lawyers Gary Simpson you know and the others you know who challenge our faith in the so called international law. So we are their lawyers you know who escalate balance between faith and critique. And I think you know this discussion was the best proof of all these on that note tomorrow is a historic day, no matter what it's not only you are the Americans who wait for this day, but I would say the rest of the world. And I want to thank you once more both of you for spending an hour and a half discussing this fascinating article by Jose. Thank you very much Jose. Thank you very much Gary. And I'm looking forward to more meetings in person, you know where we can, we can properly discuss whether in New York or in London or in other places. Thank you all and I want to thank all the participants and Danny very much for the technical support. Thank you. Thank you very much and looking for you. Thank you. Great. Great. Thank you. Bye Jose. Thank you Gary. Take care of area. Thank you. Thank you all. Bye bye.