 is global correlations with Carl Baker, senior advisor for Pacific Forum. We're going to talk about an article and a concept in The Atlantic by a fellow named Paul Post. It's not a world war, he says. It's a world of wars or something along those lines. He's trying to tell us something. What is he trying to tell us, Carl? Well, I think he's trying to tell us that the order that we thought was so firmly in place since 1945 may not be so firmly in place as what we thought and that there are edges that seem to be coming loose on that global order. Yeah. Well, I've been thinking about it too, not in the sophisticated terms that he describes in that article, which you can find, anybody can find on the web, The Atlantic, and it's called not a world war, but a world of wars. I've been thinking about all the places, and every time I talk to you, I learn about more of them, where there are skirmishes going on. That's a much too lighthearted term. People are dying and war is all over the world. And then I ticked them off when I wrote the show up, and maybe it's of some use to just see if we agree about all these places. I'll just list some of them here. Of course, there's Ukraine, there's the Middle East, Serbia, Kosovo, Kosovo, Syria, Yemen, Eastern Congo, Sudan, French Equatorial Africa, Ethiopia. There's more coming up all the time. Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Azerbaijan, Haiti already, China and Taiwan, big one, Korea, and there's more. I know I missed three or four of them. And so we have the big powers are really not stopping these things. And he argues, post argues that if the big powers are in competition and trying to look after their own interests, they're actually facilitating these wars, encouraging them, stimulating them. And there's nobody out there that actually acts as a global mediator. The UN certainly doesn't. The US is stepping away from that, has been stepping away from it. Russia would like to do it, but Russia does it in a very destructive way. And China is always self-interested. So who is going to step in on this, Tasmania? Well, no, I think that's the problem is that no one is stepping in. But I want to go back and review the history a little bit here. When you look at it from beginning in 1945, which is where he tries to start, saying that this 1945 post-World War II, there was relative calm and relative peace. But I think that that is in itself misleading. If you look back, some of the websites out there that talk about these things, like the Cornell Peace Studies Institute, says 41 million people have died since 1945. And the big chunks, of course, are the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Chinese Civil War, which accounts for 6 million of those 41 million. Africa, Southeast Asia, all the big places in the world have had wars since 1945. I think the difference in today's world and what Post is talking about is that states are again becoming more involved, where the wars that I'm talking about were, yes, somewhat led by states. But for the most part, they were civil wars. They were internal wars. They were post-colonial wars where they were fighting for control of specific countries. And in Africa, there's a rich history of unrest based on post-colonial order. Southeast Asia, there's a number of wars, don't forget, in Indonesia and larger Indochina in the post-colonial era. So these wars have been going on and people have been dying, but it's only recently that we've had this reemergence of the big states getting involved in wars. And I think that's really what's happening. And it's, I think, a function of the deterioration of this mindset that the United States as the global leader can prevent wars between states. And that while, yes, we have civil wars, these are remote and we don't really understand them very well. So yeah, there's a few million people that die in Rwanda, but that's okay because it's Rwanda and it doesn't matter to the rest of the world in some ways. I think that's been sort of the mindset over the 60s, 70s and 80s. It's part of this question of awareness. I mean, for example, if something happened in a civil war somewhere in a remote area that we don't care about it in early in 1953, just picking that year, we may not have heard about it. And certainly if we heard about it, it would be on page six. But now it's part of that raw meat theory that the press goes by. And if it please, you put it up at the top. And we get it all at the top of our headline headlines. Is it a matter of media awareness too? It certainly is a matter of if it's media awareness or if it's just the access to information through social media, I think maybe more accurate to describe it as that, I think is the new phenomena where now Gaza isn't just remote anymore, but Gaza is real because I can see it on my phone because other people are taking pictures or taking video of things that are happening on the ground today. So I think it's so much more up close and personal that you can see it. And that's I think a function of social media being able to penetrate into the deepest corners of the world where in the past, if it wasn't on ABC or CBS or NBC in the United States, you didn't see it. Yeah. So what about the lack of American interest, American influence, American hegemony around the world? I don't think anybody would disagree that we've lost our soft power, maybe not our hard power, but our soft power. And as a result, people don't care what we do if we don't do something kinetic. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure how to respond to that because certainly there's a tendency in the United States to respond kinetically, that that's always the solution to any problem. It goes back to the old aphorism of if all you have in your hand is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. And really, that's to say that because the Defense Department and military responses have become so integral to American responses, there's a tendency to see the world that way, that everything requires a, if it doesn't require a military response, then it probably isn't very important. I think that that's sort of the mindset that's become too much of an American approach to international affairs. But I want to go back and I want to talk again about the Global South, this amorphous organization of states of people that are losing, that see the hypocrisy in the Western liberal order. And by that, what I mean is, they see themselves being forced to support the Western view of the world, but they get nothing out of it. There's no real benefit that they see. They have to forego economic opportunity for the sake of promoting the Western global order, but there's no real benefit that they see. And I think that's probably more important to what we see happening today than anything, that you have this resistance from the African countries, from the Middle Eastern countries to the idea that, oh, we need to be really careful here and we need to support American involvement and European involvement because we need to support the rules-based order. And they're saying, well, rules for who and by who at this point, I think. And I think that that's really a fundamental part of what's happening when we talk about loss of American influence is people around the world, I think. But again, this somewhat amorphous Global South sees this loss of capacity of the West to actually control events and that there's something else going on. And then on top of that, you have this movement towards nationalism in the West. So for example, in Europe, now the big news, of course, is the Netherlands, that suddenly we have a populace that has taken control of about a third of the parliament in the Netherlands. You have Hungary with a strong populace controlling Hungary. And you have movements in Germany and Poland that are looking like the somewhat fascist movements, the nationalist movements are back in Europe. And you have what's happening in the United States, where you have this great turning inward in the United States, where it's all becoming self-interest. You say China, you pointed out earlier China, it has always looks very self-interested whenever it comes across and says, well, we don't involve ourselves with the external, with other people's affairs. But we certainly look out for Chinese interests in these conflicts. So I think that that's the other part of it is, number one, you have the global south sort of looking at the West saying, you guys aren't really fulfilling your promises to us because we keep getting the short end here. And then you have the West, the traditional West looking at itself and turning inward, trying to define what our national interests rather than what our global interests are. I don't know if you can say the United States is a leader in isolationism, but these days you have to ask the question anyway. And that makes me wonder and ask you whether our turning inward, our isolationist views, and the political machinations that happen in Congress and the like, which are visible to the world, which is the same thing you talked about before about social media and awareness and you pick up news that you wouldn't otherwise pick up. It's like the United States, for all its first amendment, remaining First Amendment democracy is visible to everyone, everywhere. Every single person on the globe knows what goes on in our Congress and in our government. And they can see that we're turning isolationist. And so my question to you is, does our isolationism provoke, encourage isolationism and self-interest in other places? Cause and effect may be hard to come by, but I certainly see it as causal on both sides, that it feeds on itself. I think just as globalism feeds on itself, nationalism feeds on itself as well. And so certainly they look at the United States and they see, going back to the Trump era and America first, that resonated around the world. Now we have this global leader who is suddenly saying, oh no, no, we get to be first and make it very explicit that we're going to be first. It was always probably the theory of all boats rise mindset, where now it's all boats rise, but we don't really care about the other boats. We're going to make sure our rises, ours rises higher than everybody else's. I think that that, and certainly it feeds in other people's feet on it. Sure. And I wonder too, what we are seeing and what Paul posts on, I think what we're talking about is a change in global attitudes. And it's not just the attitude of the nation states, it's the attitude of the people. If you want to get ahead, fight with someone, have a civil war, go along with your government when it wants to attack your neighbor, that sort of thing. We don't really much care about the higher moral considerations anymore. As a world, as a species, pretty much I would say everywhere, but it's getting to be everywhere. And then I'm reminded of the old quote, the way, I don't know who said this, the way to peace is through war. And for the months and a couple of years after World War II, there was more peace because people had really had enough of killing and of all the other effects that war visits on you. So I wonder what your thoughts would be about this decline of the moral standard globally of the species, if you will, and whether it could be true to say the way to peace is through war, where you have a fresh memory of the horrible experiences in war. I'm going to resist that because I don't like the idea to say that you can't have peace without war, that one is a function of the other. I just can't accept that. I mean, I think, I understand what you're saying, but again, I think that that's a very narrow view of the impact of war on populations. Certainly, that was true in the late 40s, early 50s in Europe, but it wasn't true in Asia. Remember, this was the era of the huge Chinese civil, where as I said earlier, there are 6 million people died in that war. So that certainly didn't have the impact in Asia that it did in Europe if there was relative peace in Europe. It certainly wasn't true in China. And I don't think it was true in areas that were decolonizing at the time. In Southeast Asia, there was certainly a lot of turmoil. Africa, there was certainly a lot of turmoil in that era. So I don't know that I want to make the relationship between war and peace as being you got to have a war to get peace. I think that there has to be a larger picture, a larger pursuit of global good than thinking that there has to be conflict, there has to be death in order to have peace. Yeah, no, I certainly agree that the much better approach is to work hard. You have to work harder to stave off wars, all these various wars around the world. And, you know, query, are we working hard enough now? Because the natural progression, and I guess this is implicit in Post's article, is that, you know, you can have all these spot wars all around, but ultimately it leads to a real mess. And whether the mess you would consider a world war or just a world of wars, it's not a pretty place because wars kill people and wars destroy existing cultures and societies and possibilities of a reasonable life on the planet. And we don't, you know, we don't realize we're not we're not thinking historically in the sense that if you look back and see how a given war affected life on the planet or in that country going forward, you have to realize that the war had a huge effect on the people there. Not only were there, you know, people dying and families broken and culture undermined and, you know, I suppose you could say that, like every other major historic event, it changed things. And it is an element in where we are today. But whether you can say that it changed things that are positive, I kind of doubt it. I think we'd all be better off if there were no war and we would make more progress. No, I was going to say, you know, I think that that's, I guess, ultimately the way we have to think about peace is peace doesn't mean the absence of war. That's the tautology, obviously. You know, so we should really think about how do you build peace? What is a culture of peace, rather than how do you respond to the latest series of deaths? And I think that's where we, as a planet, we fall short. The world as a whole has never really thought about what is it that would be beneficial for all the world? And I think that's why you see this fragmentation that we're seeing now in the world is that everybody has become much more self-centered. And we, as Americans, are certainly guilty of that, that we need to have our peace first and then we'll worry about the rest of the world. Africa, that's a problematic area. Let's just kind of ignore that. And the Middle East, just really let them kill each other. That'll probably get rid of all those problems that we see there. And I think that that's what's really happening in the United States, that we're losing interest in trying to be that leader. And China's approach is, well, we'll just not look at it. We'll just pretend that it doesn't exist. We'll take advantage of it to the extent that we can and then it'll be beneficial to China. It's ultimately a self-interested motivation to not get involved in it directly but to take advantage of whatever happens to fall out from. And then you have the rushes of the world that see this as an opportunity to make itself bigger, to increase its influence in Europe, for example, with the invasion of Ukraine. People say, I don't care what happens there. And then the answer to that is, wait a minute, you should care. I mean, for example, you hear it all the time. If you allow Russia to invade Ukraine, what's next? How about Western Europe? Don't you realize the risk there? Or if you allow terrorism to breed in one area, don't you think there'll be another chapter soon where terrorism is in your neighborhood? Which both are reasonable arguments. On the other hand, people in isolationist mode don't think along those lines. So I guess I'm asking, Paul post says we have a world of wars, but don't they connect? In other words, you could have all these spot wars. I don't want to read the list again. It lists too long. But those wars affect other places, right? And they connect. They blend. They have effect on other places in other wars. Maybe they provoke other wars. What are your thoughts? I mean, is this not only proliferating in terms of the number, that's what post is saying, but also they have an effect on each other. And they threaten us all. Sure. Yeah, they do. But again, I guess it comes down to what is the solution to those wars? Is the solution to stop the wars or is the solution to decide which wars should be fought and which wars shouldn't be fought? And to me, the answer has to be, we need to figure out why these wars are occurring and how do we prevent them from continuing. And yes, they're all connected. Yes, they certainly, when one place is at war, it's much easier for another place to say, this may be an opportunity for me to take advantage of this. That's what I'm trying to say with the self-interest of Chinese approach, is their vision of the world is, well, we'll just let these things play out and then take advantage of them as we can. But that doesn't work either. That's not the solution is what I'm saying. But nor is the solution to go in and say, oh, we have to stop this war, so let's go kill some people on our own. Because that's not going to stop that either. And I think that's what's missing in global governance today is how do you stop wars? The UN, as you said at the beginning of the show, has not proven itself to be very effective. It can go in and it can put in a UN mission in Africa somewhere or put in a UN mission somewhere where the Security Council happens to agree that it's worth doing that. But that doesn't seem to be a solution that's working. So now we have to figure out what does work, what can. And I don't think we're not even thinking along those lines. There's no visible organization in this world today that is thinking along those lines. It's the Chinese approach of how do we take advantage of this or the American approach of, well, where should we turn our military power today? And what group should we try to eliminate in our effort to maintain this so-called liberal order? Well, boy, you are so right, Carl. I mean, it's absolutely right. That really resonates with me. And in the days of a more perfect UN, although they never really reached perfection, you had blue helmets, they would actually make a decision about who was right and who was wrong, a moral decision, and then they would enforce that decision. But they've lost all of that since, largely because of the Security Council and the people on the Security Council. But also it's the General Assembly. I think the General Assembly has also lost its way, even without the problems on the Security Council. But theoretically, Carl, I mean, don't you really need an organization that is somehow, and not by virtue of an agreement, because humanity breaks agreements as fast as they make agreements, watch what happens in the ceasefire in Israel Watch. But an organization which is more powerful than any of its members, an organization which is able, both financially and kinetically, to enforce its decisions. And an organization which has the chutzpah to make decisions, moral decisions, and say, Russia, you're wrong, Ukraine, you're right. And unless you do this and that, we are going to have to come in with our blue helmets and rifles and whatever we need in order to enforce our moral decision. And PS, I'd like to add one other thing before I let you loose on that. We hear all this about AI. And we hear that AI can work for humanity and it can work against humanity. And I would say right now, just my observation, that it's more likely that AI works against humanity, because AI, more and more, you read about weapons that are using AI all over the world. And there are, we had weapons dealers a long time ago, hundreds of years ago, global weapons traffic. But now we have AI traffic, which can be sent over the internet instantly. And so anybody can develop weapons using AI, that would be terrific. But AI is not being used in my observation for peace, only war. And on the larger, more leveraged, you know, look at this, it seems to me that AI could help make those moral decisions. It could, but I can't envision a world where that is going to happen anytime soon. Because you're right. I mean, I'm not sure I'm ready to enter a conversation about AI, but I mean, clearly, artificial intelligence is very available. It's very accessible by people other than state actors. And those actors are going to act in self-interest, just like a lot of states are going to act in self-interest. So it's very difficult for me to see how you would ever be able to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of artificial intelligence, much like we've seen bad actors taking advantage of trade, you know, of global trade. I mean, this has been the downfall of our fantasy that we were going to solve the global problems by improving global trade and everybody was going to be wealthy and live a life of prosperity and peace. You know, I mean, bad actors take advantage of that and they use it for their own purposes. And I think AI is just another extension of that same problem, that we haven't figured out how to actually contain those good aspects of artificial intelligence, in this case, to do something for the greater good of humanity. And so having said that, now I want to go back and talk a little bit about your idea that we need to have some organization. You know, I can hear people screaming at you saying, we can't have global government. You can't have some global body making decisions for all the states in this world. That's never going to work, Jay. You know that. You know, and I mean, I... I can hear them screaming. I can hear them. You know, so okay, so I'll give them their argument that you can't expect that. But certainly we need to do something beyond the security council, because that's not going to work. You can't have five governments making decisions for everybody. And the only way you're going to fix that is you're going to have to fix the UN more broadly. And you're going to have to figure out how to incorporate, how to integrate the larger part of the population where you can actually have some form of political will to develop in an organization like the UN. And that has to involve some sort of critical mass, some sort of democracy in that organization, some sort of sense of the majority rules and an acceptance of that principle. But you can't... Don't think you can get there without addressing this gnawing issue of the rest of the world that always seems to be in a mode of accepting decisions by the great powers. You know, and somehow you need to figure out how to integrate those parts of the population, especially in today's world where you do have information out there. You know, if you look at it at what's happening, with information just in general, you have the West which promotes free information, and then you have China which privileges the state to the exclusion of providing full information. And this competition is not equal at all because the United States and the West are always going to struggle with this problem of too much information, of information that can be deleterious or beneficial to their government. Where you have China, Russia, Iran, pick your authoritarian regimes, and they're working very hard to restrict information internally, but they look bad from the outside. Looking in, they look bad, but they look good internally. Their problem becomes how do you actually act when you don't have good information yourself? So their threat is always we're going to make mistakes because we don't understand what's really happening internally in our country. The West, on the other hand, has the problem of we have so much information, how do we know when we should act? And we sort of almost become stymied by our own excess information where the rushes and the Chinas of the world are in a position of saying, well, we're going to act and we're confident we're right because we don't have information to tell us we're not right. And so both sides are prone to mistakes, but the mistakes look a lot different. And right now, what we're seeing is the mistakes being made by the West because too much information, too much access to information. If we had Xi Jinping on the program, he would totally agree and he would say the Chinese system is better. And at the end of the day, they will prevail as a better system. And maybe he's right. Right, but he isn't going to know that until it's too late is the point I'm making. And then he's going to realize that he wasn't quite as right as he thought he was. I want to go to one other thing that comes to mind. And that's the lay back and enjoy it approach. Okay, so we have humanity that likes to kill. I mean, it isn't in the 10 Commandments for no reason. It's there because that's humanity. But it will probably likely continue to kill. And the world of wars will probably continue to go on and all these strategic maneuvers and taking opportunities as a result probably will continue. And no organization will rise either in power or money or ideological approach to stop that. So maybe you and I ought to just agree that it will be what it will be. And it's not a matter of peace through war. It's just a matter of letting this whole process play out. Maybe it will. I mean, I think the likelihood is sort of some dramatic change. It will play out just this way. And all these wars and other destructive events will have an effect on humanity and the world going forward. It will be different. Russia could control Europe. China could control all of Asia. The U.S. could shrink to a small town somewhere in Ohio. I mean, maybe just this is the way things are meant to be. And that we can struggle and strain and make our mistakes, use our various systems the best we can. But at the end of the day, the world is going to change. It is changing. Just relax. I have a theory about the stock market I want to throw in on you. It's called the fatigue theory. And the fatigue theory works this way. The stock market goes up until it gets tired of going up. And then it goes down. And then it's down. But then after a while it gets tired of going down. So it comes up. I can't tell you when these cycles will take place. If I could do that, that would be better. But bottom line is it's a natural order. It isn't a liberal order. It isn't an autocracy, autocratic order. It's just the order of things. And yes, while we have this discussion, while these wars take place, while we evolve as a species and as a global society, climate change is going to bust us good because we're not doing anything on that either. But, Query, what about that possibility? Lay back. Enjoy. It is what it is. There's something to be said for that. I mean, when you look at history and the proportion of people killed in conflict from time immemorial, you can find a graph that will show it's been fairly steady, that I gave you the number, the Cornell Peace Studies said 41 million since 1945. Yet we're still all here. We're still enjoying nice weather and peaceful seas in Hawaii. So there's something to be said for that. That as long as it doesn't rise to the level of personal inconvenience, then yeah, why not just sit back and enjoy it? The problem is that what happens when it knocks on your door? It will rise to a level of personal inconvenience, maybe the biggest inconvenience of all, like you're gone. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I mean, there's something to be said for that. And maybe it is just the order of things, that civilizations rise and fall. I mean, if you look at, you were saying the United States turns into a town in Ohio, maybe it turns into a UK, where you don't forget. A couple hundred years ago, the UK was pretty much the position of mobile power. And today that's probably not so much truing. So maybe that's what we're witnessing. And if we were here a hundred years from now, we recognize the historicity of it. But I think, Carl, there's really two roads here. One is, as just discussed, sort of letting the natural organic process take place. And if the global deity, whatever deity that is, does not want the Armenian people to survive, well, okay, they won't survive. That'll be that, just the way it goes. And many other groups, by the way, in the list I read before. That's one way. And the people who die, what do they say? The survivors tell the history, not the ones who disappeared. And I think that's the way it could work, and maybe it will work. The other way is we make a Herculean effort, and we need to be defined, we make a Herculean effort to try to control this and care for each other and do those moral things that came out of our history so far, at least the ideal moral points, and try to make a better world for everybody alive, rather than have all these people die and disappear on the historical framework. I tend to think it's the first that will prevail, but what are your thoughts about the second and how we could achieve, we, you'd have to help me with the defining we. Yeah, again, the we becomes the real problem, because the we tends to be state-based, and states tend to be very self-interested in the end. And so can you really get beyond this state-based decision making at a global level? And for as long as I can remember, and back to what's, pick 1466 or something, we can say that the state has been the preeminent decider of global affairs. And states have not, they've proven to create some stability inside the state, but once you get states trying to work together, they haven't done a very good job for sure. And so I think you're right that, short of some cataclysmic event, it's going to be very difficult to see how we move beyond what we have today in terms of global decision making. Now, maybe climate change becomes such a threat that people recognize it as a global threat and we collaborate in honor of an honor of COP28 in Dubai today. Let's say it certainly doesn't look like it's going to happen this year. But maybe that's what it takes is some external threat. Maybe there's a meteor out there waiting to impact in Nebraska, and that's going to change how people see the world. But again, this big cataclysm, is that what it's going to take to actually get serious about it. And having lived a few years myself, I'm sort of inclined to see that it may not happen in my lifetime that it's going to change. Yeah, well, we know that the only thing certain is change. And death. And I really wonder whether people will collectively realize that it's in their interest to collaborate. It's a biblical question. And whether we resolve it or not, it's an open question. And we know that the world will change and maybe just maybe we can be optimistic to say that at some point in the future, after a certain number of people have disappeared and a certain number of historical threats have disappeared, we will be wiser. But I would revise my comment about the way through peace is through war. I would, listening to this discussion, I would say the way to peace is through tragedy and cataclysm, catastrophe, one kind or another. And I think that's a more realistic approach. Yeah, unfortunately, I think that may be right. And if we can prevent wars, well, then that's that's good, because then we can be prepared for the other kinds of cataclysms that are likely to happen. But you know, I mean, I think I think it's a noble cause to to think about at least how we how we do prevent wars from becoming bigger or from becoming from starting at all, but beyond that prevent them from from escalating from becoming bigger. And that may be as big a challenge as as we, the global society can really take on. Yeah, it reminds me of Barbara Tuckman's book. Winds. No, not winds of war. The one about World War One. All guns of August guns of August, where it was she made it clear that everybody was ready for war. If they had their war machines, they had their armies ready, they had their battle plans ready. And it was just a little bit of a thing in Sarajevo that just started chain reaction and all that millions of people died. And when I see that the United States is spending what is it 70 billion 100 billion or maybe it's more try 700. Sorry, I was just Yeah, it was every person says 100 billion here. I'm pretty sure it's real money. So, you know, I'm thinking that if you put that kind of money into developing weapons and armies and whatnot, the the inclination, the seductive possibility is to use those things. After all, you have an investment. That's right. Yeah. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright very famously said, what could as a military if you don't use it? Oh, God, what a statement. She should wash her mouth out. Okay, Carl, any final thoughts from this discussion? No, you tried to depress me early on a Monday here, I think. You know, but you know, I think I think it's a good discussion because I think it really points to the fact that that you can only do so much. And that doesn't mean that you shouldn't do anything. And I think that that's really maybe that maybe the story that that the professor is trying to teach us here is that it is it is a global. I want to say it's right. I want to say global war of globe at war. And so there's a lot of opportunities to make it better, to try to make it better, to try to reduce the impact boards. Yeah, okay. And sorry, I said this, but there's also the opportunity to make more wars. The list that I read at the outset could double who knows. So we should follow that when we can. Yeah, I think try to reduce them, try to make them small. Yeah, thank you, Carl. Carl Baker, Senior Advisor of Pacific Forum. Thank you so much for joining me for this very interesting discussion and very timely and actually very, very profound in its own way. Thank you so much. Thanks. Aloha.