 We're back. We're very excited about this show. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Stink Tech. The handsome fellow on the other on the other window is Carlos Juarez. He's in Austin, Texas today. He moves around a lot. And he's an expert in international relations. He teaches that subject in the University of the Americas in Puebla. And so, you know, the title of our show is The International System After the Pandemic. And let me add some words on that. After the pandemic and under Biden. Because that, you know, we are in a new time. Will the pandemic and Biden, I suppose, lead to a new world order, such as the liberal world order we saw emerge in favor of the United States after World War II. A very important moment in history. And we have kind of lost that, but maybe there'll be a resurrection here. Welcome to the show, Carlos. Aloha, Jay. Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure to connect and reconnect. And of course, in many ways, we're just picking up a conversation we've been having for quite some time. And that is, obviously, we see the international system in some ways in crisis and chaos. And it's not just a pandemic, which is obviously today we mark the one-year anniversary of the formal announcement by the World Health Organization. And no doubt, we're already beginning to, you know, see transitions in that pandemic. But beyond that, what is the world going to look like, you know, in two years and five years and 10 years? But keep in mind, we're also seeing a global, I guess, international order facing transitions and change. And let me suggest this, that I think it can become more stable and durable, but it requires in some ways a greater role and more commitment from a broader group of nations. And what do I mean by that? The United States, yes, it's an important player. It will continue to be, but it's not going to be returning now that we have a transition to the new administration that is, you know, trying to reconnect, trying to emphasize multilateralism. The U.S. cannot participate in the same way of the past. It has to be more humble. It has to be more a seat at the table with many other players. And we need a seat at the table, but it is a different world. You imply that had we not had Trump as the president, and we not disassociated ourselves from so many alliances and relationships, we would be in better shape today. It would be more influential, more powerful today. We would not have lost the mojo that we had before. Is that? No, I would say not. In fact, what I think what we can say is, in some ways, even before Trump, the United States was already facing a lot of discussion about a relative decline, obviously the rise of the rest, the emergence of new powers. And so the U.S. also no longer the dominant hegemonic role that it had. Keep in mind, you know, after World War II, the U.S. helped to establish this current, you know, international system. It was an open and rule-based international order. The United States, very much at the lead of it. Now, it took on a very geopolitical connotation throughout the Cold War, right? The first several decades. I'm being simplified here, but the Cold War ends. The U.S. is still the big power. But the last 20 years, we've seen just a lot of changes, the rise of China in particular, but so many other little, let's say, points of power, you know, Brazil, Russia reasserting its role. The European Union itself, basically, you know, a more important player and on and on. But bottom line is that we, with Trump, we saw a sudden, very dramatic break from that, a shift away from the multilateralism, the traditional commitment. It was a rupture. It was a, you know, the world was shocked and dismayed. Now, fast-forward, Biden comes in and we're trying to reconnect. And, you know, that's seen as ideal and favorable. But it's not going to go back to where we were. And I guess I'm suggesting that I think even the United States needs to realize that the future is one in which we need, we need global cooperation. I think that's become clear now. And the pandemic has underscored that. In other words, cooperation is a necessity. And it's also something we have to invest consistently. It's not a luxury. We can just not afford. So the pandemic has made clear that we need certain norms and rules and certain institutions, the World Health Organization. You don't leave this, you know, global, you know, organization in the middle of a pandemic. That's a disastrous decision. Well, you know, on that, I, you know, I would, I would throw the thought at you that, that agree that before Trump, it was, there was a decline in the World Organization, not only in the U.S. influence in the World Organization, but in the whole liberal order in general. I mean, just, just some anecdotal thoughts about that is that, you know, they're eyeway way and human flow and 70 million people and behind Bob wire with no prospect of leaving, no education, no healthcare, and they will die behind Bob or 70 million people like that. Now, certainly somebody, you know, some moral force in the world should address that, but the United Nations wasn't addressing that. Recently, what's his name, a share Assad, a share Assad, Syria, Syria, you know, was, was nailed for torturing children, you know, 10, 11 year old children, torturing them with, with no point just torturing them and just completely hideous things atrocities. And there was a move to put that matter in the atrocities and some kind of criminal justice, international criminal justice and the International Court of Criminal Justice, but because of the way the United Nations is formed, the Security Council has to do it, and the Security Council includes Russia and China, and both Russia and China, for reasons that really escaped me. I mean, geopolitical reasons, who knows what, they voted against it. So that was never turned over to the International Court, and nobody is taking no part of the United Nations is taking any action, you know, to, to stop Bashar al-Assad. So you say, you know, this is a defective organization. This, this has, this has a lot of work to do, you know, put the world right. And, you know, I guess another, another issue is COVID itself. I mean, we don't have a democratic distribution, global democratic distribution of vaccines. And World Health Organization has been, you know, I don't know, less than effective in that regard. And Trump heard it terribly in all these remarks. The bottom line is, you know, we need, we need a real United Nations. We need some organization with power and influence and money and troops for that matter. Quell disturbances. We're miles away from that. And if the liberal order were to have continued properly after the war, after a war, it would have been much more robust, robust today. It is not. Do you agree with me on this? Well, I think, you know, I share a lot of your, your, your sentiment, but what I think it's a challenge is we are not going to get world government. The UN is not going to have, you know, a rapid reaction, military response. At the end of the day, and this is the harsh reality, it is realism. It's real politic. Countries looking out for their interests, the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans, and we're speaking primarily of the major rate powers. A small, you know, country, even a median size country doesn't have that capacity. They don't have veto power on the Security Council. Now, the ability, this is ongoing debate, you know, can the UN change? Can it reform? I don't see that in the cards. And at the end of the day, you're not going to have that. You're not going to have world government. What are you going to have? What do you need? Well, you need cooperation. You need coordination on many things. And again, the United Nations itself is not the solution, but it is, on some level, it is a forum for certain things and take the World Health Organization. Again, not a perfect institution. It's only as good as the, you know, the people who work there contribute, who cooperate with it. But no doubt, the United States, such an important player on, even in just understanding of infectious diseases and, you know, housing the best, you know, the mines and the research. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, long considered like the, you know, the role model for public health ministries, took a severe beating under Trump. I mean, he, you know, himself politicized it. And so much like that, the United States in this most recent Trump administration, very much rejecting multilateralism. I mean, it was a shock to the system as well. Now, back to Biden, I mean, he does offer an opportunity for the U.S. to revive some of the commitment to this liberal order. But it has to be understood that it's going to be a different role, I want to say, more modest, you know, listening more. And, you know, he's already acknowledged on one hand a more willingness to listen. And that's going to be critical. And to engage in meaningful discussions with traditional allies. I mean, the U.S. should be talking to our allies, but even our adversaries and, you know, and clearly renewing the participation in many of these supranational international organizations. I guess that's the reality of it. That's the reality of it. I mean, you can't deny that. But it puts us just a little further, you know, for the U.S. to be humble and, you know, sort of a humble member of the group. It puts us a little further from world governments, doesn't it? Because before we had the chance as being a very influential member to get up there and do global leadership and say, for example, we have a problem in climate change. This planet has to act together, or we will surely be destroyed. And we don't have that leadership now. And we certainly, we can join up on the Paris agreement. But that doesn't mean that the world, the United Nations, or any group of nations is going to really put their shoulders behind the wheel on that. Yeah. And listen, one of the challenges we have to also acknowledge, the United States is today deeply polarized. And even throughout its history, it has always been divided between I want to say a smaller, maybe minority who are, well, let me rephrase it that way. Let's say a faction who are very strongly international global in the orientation. That has never been like a big majority. But certainly for those who, let's say, more elites and those who deal with international affairs, yes, the U.S. should be there. But there's always been a strong isolationist element, a strong, you know, and it goes back, you know, from the founding, it goes back through the experiences of the world wars, through the experience of Vietnam, especially, and endless other, you know, more recently, the war on terrorism. So my point there is that it's, well, it's a paradox. On one hand, global cooperation is, it has broad popular support, and it must have it, because you need public backing for multilateralism in order to sustain the political will to maintain it. So if Biden or any president wants to engage, you've got to make that case. You have to explain and build support for it. And that's not always easy. But at the end of the day, we do see evidence now. Public opinion surveys indicate support for multilateral institutions in general, but in particular, high for, you know, those that are specialized like the World Health Organization, especially in this COVID, you know, period. But I go back to this, the United States remains crucial in global cooperation, but not in its current role. I see here that this new, this shock that this, you know, let's say the COVID, but even that the Trump shock to the US political system, it means that the US, you know, can no longer carry on the hegemonic role, the sort of big bully, although it'll always be there. But it has to somehow be a little more modest and, I don't know, I mean, it's easier said than done. But the dominance that it has long had is not possible for it to continue, I want to say. I'm not sure we deserve to be a global leader because we haven't been a good global leader anyway. We know that I was saying my view is that we could have solved some of these problems that we, the world, we didn't. And the United States was in a position to lead on that, but it didn't. And you're right, we were fragmented. And we're more fragmented today than we were 10 years ago, I think. And we may continue to be fragmented. And our government may be dysfunctional. It is right now. We can't get these, these initiatives through. And everybody agrees they're good initiatives, but they're not getting through and they won't get through. And we're distracted and fighting them are all the oxygen being sucked out of the room by these political battles in the next election and so forth. So I don't think we would have as much respect and influence as we would need anyway to be a global leader on these global issues. The question then is if we are humble and if we are conciliatory and try to make deals and try to talk nice, what happens to the notion of leadership by power, which is what it was? What happens to that? Does that mean that we have to fall second to China or Russia or a combination of China and Russia? Or will they just, you know, veto our, veto our plans and initiatives and our leadership any day, all day? Is that what's going to happen here? If our plans obviously go against their interests, yes, and then that's going to continue the Russians and the Chinese in particular. The US has to rebuild relationships that have been severed and that requires time and trust. But at the end of the day, let me suggest that as much as we may have these important ideals of cooperation and sort of this liberal order, I think we see again and again realism comes into play. Countries, powerful countries always assert that. And the United States, again, even under Biden, there will be situations where the US is going to basically carry on its bully role. It's going to be aggressive. It's going to take actions that aren't seen as favorable by many in the world. That's part of the baggage that comes with being a big, big, powerful actor. Let me just maybe continue the idea. I mean, I want to say that cooperation is going to be necessary because there's no way around it. And history has shown us again and again that global pandemics, for example, are likely to recur. This was not a big surprise. We knew it was there. We even had a playbook. Of course, the past administration threw it out the window. But the point is that we know it's going to occur and that global cooperation is key to mitigating them. You can see interestingly in Southeast Asia, for example, and other parts of Asia where the lessons of a decade ago, the SARS crisis, the H1N1, it gave many of those governments and societies an experience that helped them manage this one better. That seems to be an important lesson that we're drawing. And it was through the ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, this multilateral framework. And let me suggest that the future is not going to be the United Nations, you know, world government. It's going to be more of these regional schemes, whether it's the Europeans. Of course, they've got problems and challenges. It's not perfect, but they have to solve their problems regionally. North America, today we must recognize that the Canada, U.S. and Mexico are deeply integrated, especially as a production platform, the economies. Now, maybe the social and cultural, there's a challenge there with Mexico and the U.S., Canada and the U.S. are virtually, you know, seamless, right, in terms of cultural values and, you know, economic development and the like. What I'm getting at there is I think we're going to continue to see regionalism, regional solutions, but that is multilateralism. That's cooperation, because we can't get around that. We can't seal the country out. Pandemics don't obey, you know, visas and restrictions on the border or ethnic differences. And pandemics are going to continue to be a reality for us. Part of this is a notion of international democratization, such as the thing with Syria, such as we can't tolerate immorality or amorality. We have to step in and whatever is in the tool case, the toolkit, we have to try to have something to minimize, you know, the kind of disparity, disparity in poverty and hunger, disparity in disease, disparity in, you know, discombobulation. And, you know, we have climate change and climate change, you know, results in migration. In fact, all change results in migration. And look what happened to Europe. I mean, it really hurt Europe to have all these people come, and they weren't prepared for it. They weren't willing to accept them and created, you know, governmental issues, social issues, and business issues. And I think they're out of the woods on that. So the question is, you know, how does the world in this new order, I call it new order, rather than new liberal order, because I don't think it's so liberal. It's more like siloed. But how does the new order deal with those issues of philanthropy and humanity and being humane and helping people and taking them out of barbed wire fence, you know, amps and stopping the atrocities and all that stuff, you know, and with disease, with food, with agriculture, with saving people? Or is it simply not care? I'm concerned there's nobody going to do that. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think we have to be realistic. It's not something that's easy to solve. And we're not going to have governments just suddenly coming forward and, you know, taking care of it. Increasingly, we see a lot more civil society groups, the NGO sort of non-governmental sector is key to this. On many of the challenges that you mentioned, whether it's environmental or food security or different human rights violations. And let me just, in terms of speaking quickly about this world order that is evolving, the liberal world order, if we call it that, that emerges after World War II, at least in the first several decades, focused primarily on security and economics, you know, stability and building, rebuilding. And that was in the 50s and 60s. By the 1970s, it began to shift to human rights. And we begin to see both, you know, not everybody going forward. There were a lot of countries in deep political crises, economic crisis. I mean, think of, you know, Central America and, you know, the ongoing violence in the 70s and 80s, right wing military regimes in South America. Most of the world in the 70s and 80s, the developing world was authoritarian systems of variations, right? So human rights become more pronounced. Now, moving quickly, and we're simplifying, but the 1980s and 90s, we have waves of democratization. We have more open societies. But we have more awareness of all of this and more connections, you know, this globalization agenda of the past three decades, especially. Exactly. And I want to say at the end, I mean, we have to be realistic that there's not going to be one simple solution. There's not going to be a world government. Instead, I think what we have is a growing, you know, virtual communities, growing experiences crossing borders where, and this, I think the pandemic, again, coming back to that, has only helped to accelerate that. That was already happening and, you know, convergence of interests and values. But now we have an accelerated process. But even in the midst of all that, we're going to continue to see very, very difficult situation. Look, Central America today, deep, deep inequality, injustice, political corruption, you know, and there's no simple solution to that. Is the solution just to build a wall and close it out? No. Is it to help them develop? Well, yes, but good luck, because we've spent billions of dollars. Most of it has gone to military and security, and it has simply helped to, you know, continue the corruption there. But what's the alternative? Again, it's not closing out. It's having to try to reengage and to do it more people to people, civil society. And again, there was a woman who came, I saw her talk at the Pacific Club here in Honolulu. And she was from, I think, Harvard Business School. And she said, you got to, you got to build this into your thinking. It's about the money, the money flow. And in today's world, money is influence. Money is power. Governments, many governments don't have money, or they have less money than the multinational corporations have, way less. And for that matter, NGOs that are well funded by philanthropists, they have a lot of money. And they can step in. And she said, you know, don't expect a lot from governments when the multinationals are the ones that really have the influence. You can make a schematic on that. You can see, you can prove it up. And I didn't forget that. And I do feel, and you mentioned NGOs a minute ago, I do feel that in recent years, the vacuum created by governmental unwillingness, one reason or another, NGOs and multinationalists have stepped into these. They have their own ethic on this. They may decide through this project, but not that one. But in general, I think they all have valuable projects, and they're all doing, in some ways, good work. And I think maybe that's the future of this. A query, though, are they responding to the United Nations? Or are they operating on their own? Or are they collaborating? Or are they just like Bill Gates? He comes up with an idea. He does it himself. He doesn't need anybody particularly. Not a lot of collaboration on that. And query whether these multinationalists are doing it in their own silos, or whether they are coordinating in such a way that you could say that they are doing a world order of some sort. Well, let me quickly answer by saying all of you above. I think you have a mixture of that. And yes, there is collaboration, even though Bill and Melinda Gates obviously through their foundation, but they are also very active collaborating with particularly the NGO world, but also the scientific community. We'll maybe have to continue a dialogue in the future more about this pandemic response, the global response, because back in, I'm going to say, May of last year, there was the creation of what is known as COVAX, which is kind of a network bringing together the research and vaccination production, but the logistics and distribution, and also the financing, very important so that this is meant to address the inequities and the challenge of poor developing countries who cannot negotiate with pharmaceuticals who don't have even the capacity to buy the medicine. At the end of the day, this pandemic will not be solved until the global community addresses it. And that, again, this COVAX, it's just getting started. And obviously, the developing world, the poorest countries are going to be on the tail end of this. But I go to say that because I think in the end, it's all going to be about collaboration and it's going to be thinking outside the box. Government is not going to be there. World government is not going to be there. The UN does have a role on some issues, primarily as a coordinating function. It doesn't have a rep-review action. It doesn't have endless money. It's only whatever the members who choose to pay contribute. But it has a wealth of experience bringing together the players, the NGO community in particular, and increasingly the private sector too. There's a role for business. And again, it's not all positive and favorable, but in some ways it is, a large corporation. But as a final thought here too, I mean, the pandemic, it's going to get worse and the inequality that we know exists in the world is likely to get worse even in the years ahead. And it's not just between countries, which is one, it's within countries. And especially in a lot of developing countries, this pandemic is going to exacerbate some of that. But at the same time, we're going to have to see how can there be more learning, more cooperation to try to address some of the worst of that. But in the end, it's going to be all of the above. Yes, some individual actors on their own, some governments picking up the slack, but civil society groups, NGOs filling in some of the and some surprises, you know, when you have a vacuum, you have surprise players coming on the stage. Sure. We had a show a week or two ago with an Indian woman in Europe who coordinates vaccines that are manufactured in India. And we find out that India is very productive on vaccines and the largest perfectly workable vaccines that they are distributing everywhere. But the most interesting part of that discussion to me was that India, like in the way of governmental soft power, India wants to make friends. So India takes these developing countries and it gives them the vaccine in a very noble gesture. Now, maybe they have in their minds later, they want to do trade and sell stuff, but they want to show the world that they have a philanthropic side to them as a country or maybe a pharmaceutical company, one or the other, or both. But they're doing this as a lemosinary experience to say to myself, maybe that's the future of the new order. What do you think? Oh, absolutely. I think you hit it there very well in that, again, these are going to be new examples, taking outside of the box. And I think we're going to have to come back with another show in the future, looking at this whole pandemic nationalism and how it's become, in this case, like you example, the example you've given a form of soft power so that India, this important emerging power, what does it have? It has tremendous capacity to develop pharmaceuticals. It's the largest, as I understand it, the largest producer of vaccines in the world. And they've been doing a lot of the testing of some of these and production of some of these newer ones. And yet it's a mixture of obviously very large private corporations in India, often closely connected to the state, they get support and investment as well. And the government of India, very much, this is part of their, you know, their global connection, let's say, they're not a, you know, yeah, but it goes on even beyond that, the vaccine nationalism that we're calling it. We're seeing it in so many places, you know, in Europe right now, deciding to ban exports to Australia or whatnot. Scandals everywhere about, of course, the abuse and misuse of the vaccination program. It's brought down already ministers and some political systems in South America and Peru has been facing a big back, they call it vacuna gate, like vaccine gate, because it's already brought down a few foreign ministers, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, government ministers. Yes. One other thing, Carlos, we should talk about is Joe Biden, you know, wrapping around all of this, all of, you know, the history, the current situation of the fragmentation in our, you know, in our reputation of the world and all that, the possibilities of collaboration, the condition of the UN. What should Joe Biden do? Not only to be a re-entering member of the club, you know, the international hour club, do well, world order club, but also to do good things, to make sure that that club does good things and to make sure the United States does good things. I mean, to me, he's got a lot of tasks on his desk. In a moment of time, you may not think this is the most important, but in many ways it is the most important. What should Joe Biden do to realize our destiny in world leadership and in, you know, helping people? Yeah. Well, real quick, I mean, I think one of the things that he has to do in both the U.S., and I think he's in a good position to do this, is to help diversify the leadership portfolio of both the U.S. but also the international community. And look, at the end of the day, Biden is very well suited to repair a lot of these strained and broken relations and be able to work collaboratively with, you know, with different, I mean, it's in his, let's say it's what he's done. And he is reasonably well regarded. He may not be as charismatic, as dynamic as, you know, or popular on the level of, let's say, Barack Obama was, with particularly a lot of European leaders. But I think he does have a lot of that. And back to the main point is that I think that what he can do, much like he's trying to do even with the U.S. government today is to have it reflect the diversity and the values of the U.S. And I go back to this idea of being more modest. It also means to be a better listener. The U.S. has a tradition of being very arrogant and sort of self-serving and, you know, the wide, it's our way or the by way, you need more modesty and more humility. And he's done part of that already by assigning, you know, the leader, her name is not on my fingertips, but the new U.N. Ambassador, you know, a long career diplomat, African American woman. And I would actually mention one last thing that's interesting. It's a little bit under the radar, but you may recall Susan Rice, a former national security advisor for Obama and U.N. Ambassador. She was appointed by Biden not to a national security sort of foreign policy. She was domestic policy, right? She's in part, and that is a curious example of how we need to think outside the box. Today, foreign policy and let's say the U.S. role in the world can only be strengthened if we take care of our house and connect the domestic and really link those two. You cannot delink them. And so I just go back to this, what can Biden do well and obviously take care of the house, but also help to diversify the leadership both of the U.S., which I think he's done on some level, but even at the global community level, giving recognition that, let's say, new emerging powers have a voice. He met last week in a virtual meeting with President Lopez Ovalador of Mexico. And in that, I mean, again, it's more for show, but he tried to say, hey, we see Mexico is equal. He was using language that I think, at least from Mexico's point of view, that's better than the confrontational view that they had from Trump, which is you will do this or I will punish you with tariffs. So you need some of that more modesty and humility. There are signs of it. It's not going to change overnight, but that has to be the new reality for the U.S. that we cannot assert dominance control. We have the answer. No, no, it needs to be, we have a seat at the table. We have a lot to bring to that table. And that's why I think we also need a refreshing of the leadership of our own foreign policy. And that's happening now. Yeah. New times require new steps. We are in already in a different world order. Thank you so much, Carlos. Carlos Juarez, thank you so much for joining us. Look forward to our next discussion. Aloha, Jay. Thank you so much.