 Hi, I'm Jonathan Tepperman. I'm the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy Magazine. It is great to see so many people here today. I'm especially relieved that so many of you have chosen to join us, given that this is probably the most mysteriously titled panel at this entire forum. So thank you for taking your chances and rolling the dice and showing up. In fact, on that note, I want to start by taking a flash poll, a survey, by a show of hands, who thinks they actually understand what a multi-conceptual world order is or means? Don't be shy. I did not. OK, that's better than I expected. Good. So given the confusion, I think that before we can start figuring out how to navigate this multi-conceptual world order, I should try and explain what a multi-conceptual world order means and what the WEF had in mind when they gave the panel this term. And the idea is as follows. For several years now, at conferences like these and in magazines like mine, we've been hearing and having and reading endless conversations about the decline of American primacy and what that means and what it specifically means for the global liberal rules-based order that the US and its allies helped create following World War II. And every time that President Trump tries to blow up yet another international treaty or institution on Twitter, we engage in a whole new round of these conversations. The goal of this panel is to try and move beyond those initial conversations about whether it's happening. Now, as an aside, I happen to think that the extent to which US power and influence is waning and the extent to which the current order is crumbling and the extent to which the damage that the US president is doing is permanent, I think much of that is often overstated. But that's just my view. And despite that, I think most of us would agree that not only is US preeminence being challenged today, but so indeed is this global order that I keep making reference to. And that is indeed what the panel's organizers want us to talk about. Because the fact is today not only are several countries now vying for the global dominance that the United States has enjoyed for so long, and not only are non-state actors from ISIS to Amazon now trying to assert their sovereignty, but there's also a fundamental battle being waged to reconsider and to rewrite the underlying norms or rules or concepts. And here is how we get to multi-conceptual. The concepts that underwrite the international system. And if there ever really was something called a Washington consensus, I mean there was, but whether it was ever truly consensual, that consensus seems to be fracturing today. And all of these long-settled principles of international relations are now being questioned. In other words, not only do we now have all of these new players trying to join the great game, but you also have players trying to redefine that game in its entirety. And all of this is making our world an incredibly complicated place and very hard to understand, especially when many of these revisionists are or have taken power at the heart of the Western establishment, including in the White House. After all, we now have a US president who seems to think that most of the pillars on which the international system was built are actually these elaborate rules, ruses, I should say, or scams that were designed by sneaky liberals and shifty foreigners to try and rip off the United States. And so that's how we get to this idea of a multi-conceptual world order, although disorder would probably be the more accurate term. So, excuse me. Given all these changes and upheavals, I think that our conversation today needs to answer probably three basic questions. And I've tried to put these in formal political science jargon. Bear with me. Never a good choice. Well, here they are. And Corey, you can correct me if I get the terms of art wrong. Question number one, what the hell is going on? Question number two, does it mean that we're all going to die? And question number three, what the hell can we do about it? Now, thank you. Did I get it right? Good. Fortunately, we have some very big brains up here today to help us figure things out in order to give them another 30 seconds or so to try and get their answers straight. Let me start by introducing them to all of you. Sitting on my immediate right is Rodrigo Malmerciera Diaz. He has been Cuba's minister of foreign trade investment since 2009. Before that, he spent four years as Cuba's permanent representative at the United Nations in New York, sitting to his right, is the indomitable Corey Shockey, who is currently the, and fairly newly, the deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, IISS. In London, she too is a government veteran, not the Cuban government, the American one. Having heard a number, sorry, having held a number of jobs at the White House and at the State Department, to her right is Bruno Maseyes. Did I get that right? Senior Fellow at Renmin University and a senior advisor at Flint Global in London. Across from me is Chi Zhenhong. Is that right? Did I pronounce that correctly? Forgive me. He is president of the China Institute of International Studies, which is the in-house think tank for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and also a former diplomat. And then finally, on my left is Alexander. And I've never known the right way to pronounce your last name. Is it Gaboev? It's Gaboev. Good. Good. Sasha is a reformed journalist who is now senior associate and chair of the Russia in the Asian Pacific program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, which means that we're going to make him talk like both a China expert and a Russia expert today. Rodrigo, and by the way, it's just a programming note. Here's how it'll work. I'll ask a few questions of our panelists, and then I'm going to turn the mic over to all of you for questions from the floor. Rodrigo, you come from a small country, one that is not aligned with the United States, although relations are better today or we're getting better than they had been for most of the last 70 years. How do you see these shifts that we're talking about? If you agree that the post-war liberal order is dissolving, do you actually see this as a good thing, an overdue change, that the Yankee imperialists are finally getting their comeuppance? Well, it's a good question. If we look at 30 years ago or so, we have a bipolar world. There were two superpowers, the US and the Soviet Union. And then there was a kind of balance. After that, it was maybe a movement through a unipolar world where the US were permanent. And maybe now this is changing. I believe that it would be much better if we have a multipolar world with multiple actors that could influence in the economic and in the political and even in the military world. I think that there is a space for everyone, even for small countries. And we can exercise our right to give opinions, to influence, to say something. And we should have a better world if it would be an order in which everybody can participate and there is not domination imposed by the superpower. You told me that. Quick question. Bravo. Quick answers. Much appreciated. What about you, Corey? Do you buy this talk of decline? Or do you think that this is just a bad patch that we're going through and that the order will find a way to adapt itself to current changes, the way that it's been adapting for 70 years? I honestly don't know the answer to that. That's unacceptable. I'll tell you what I think, but we're in the midst of an enormous social science experiment. I like the way the president of the EU Council, Donald Tusk, said that we're in the surprising position that the architect and guarantor of the international order is the one that is doing the most to destroy it just now. But my own view is that the liberal order, which is made up of security guarantees offered by the United States to countries, it worries about most of whom are countries that share its liberal political and social values. Trade that is mutually beneficial to those countries and also the growing component of liberalism in that. That is, we used to not reach inside states and increasingly not just the United States but the European countries want the ability to set internal rules. So I think one fundamental difference is whether this order requires the United States as the guarantor of it or whether it's self-propagating now. And I think for at least a 10 to 15 year time frame that there are enough voluntary participants. I noticed the way that Canada, Japan, Australia, and Mexico and Chile are bringing the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership into participation without the US. And even on US-centric issues, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres announced a few months ago that it looks like the first country that will meet its Paris climate accord standards is going to be the United States. Despite withdrawing from the accords, despite the overt hostility of the American government, the great Golden State of California and Michael Bloomberg's money and Apple computers are going to propel America into compliance. So it's really a complicated question, although it seems simple. And I think unless one country, likely the United States or China, proves strong enough to destroy the order, the momentum towards it is going to carry it until I hope my country comes to its senses and I hope China begins complying by the existing rules, too. From your lips to God's ear, says my grandma used to say. You mentioned liberalism and the growing emphasis on that. Are you implying, or do you think it's accurate, to say that if the system is collapsing, it is the fault of the proponents of that system who have increasingly made it or have increasingly emphasized values like liberalism as opposed to more neutral features like rules and markets, which are much easier for most countries to agree on? Again, I think it's more complicated than that. So take the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The United States was a major force in its creation. We're a signatory. We're never going to ratify it. And yet we not only comply by its rules, we enforce its rules. China is a signatory and a ratifier of it. And yet they are the major violator of it. And the thing holding up American power in the Pacific is that smaller countries want the rules-based order to continue, and they want us to help them sustain it. Bruno, we've been talking about the role that allies can play. We've all been waiting for Europe's moment for many, many years. Europe itself has been announcing that its moment has arrived for many, many years. We had a statement like that from Junker, I think, just last week. Is this Europe's moment? Is Europe going to step in and become the ballwork to the system as the United States withdraws? And what can the European contribution be at a moment like this when the United States seems, at best, very ambivalent about its traditional role as the foundation for the system and the country that underwrote it militarily, economically, normatively, et cetera? Well, it doesn't look that way. It doesn't look that Europe can step in, let's be honest. Let's think about the global economy 20 years from now in 2040. What are the five largest economies? It's not that difficult to guess. The United States is going to be there, but the other four are probably going to be China, India, Japan, and Indonesia. So no European country is there. The European Union as a whole would be there. But still, there's a sense of decline of European power. And there's a sense which is becoming very acute of an inability, incapacity to shape global events. The last 10 years of European history have been a succession of crisis. And it always feels the same. I was involved in some of those from the inside. It always feels like we are hit by something coming from the outside, over which we have no control. And then there's a process of a few months or a couple of years where we try to resume some measure of control. And by the way, I think all these crises end up making the structure more fragile over time so that the next crisis actually hits harder. I think this is the story. Now, there's some positive news as well. There's a recent trade agreement between the European Union and Japan. There's some successes here and there. I think the European Union has still been able to manage this balance between being a very prosperous area of the world that still doesn't seem to antagonize the rest of the world to the same extent that the United States does. And that's actually quite difficult, because if you're wealthy and if you have a good standard of living, there's almost necessarily a mechanism of antagonism with the rest of the world that thinks they should have a share, a higher share of that. So it's still unclear where Europe is going. But I would say without radical changes in the structures, probably Europeans are going to lose more and more power, more and more influence. Heart power still matters, and we don't have that. And you don't think that the external environment, the decline or withdrawal of the United States will, the threat from Russia will provide a sufficient goad to convince the Europeans to finally get to their house in order and work together in the way that everybody's been fantasizing that they would. The problem with the discussions in Europe is that there are so many proposals. It's not lack of proposals and lack of ideas. There's an intellectual chaos where every two years, new proposals are put on the table. And we don't even know where to start. It's very unclear whether it's commentators, academic, or the politicians where the European Union should be going. If anyone here has clear ideas, they're very much in need of that in Brussels. So without that, without having a clear path, compare Europe to China, China might be right or might be wrong about the Belt and Road and other projects. But you know what the path is. I just finished a book on the Belt and Road. Actually didn't have a lot of trouble understanding what the strategy was. In Europe, there are 1,000 different strategies fighting each other. Gee, my next question is for you. Do you think that there is a way, can you imagine that China could gain enough influence in the current system that it could agree to accept the current system without making fundamental revisions? Or do you think that China's hopes and desires for its growing international role are so fundamentally at odds with the way the current system works that China can't make its place with what we have now, but would need, and in fact desires, to create a new order in its own image? Thank you, moderator, as known to all. We are living in a world of a lot of changes, in fast change. In front of such a faster changing world, I think that people have different opinions which is quite a usual case. You know, the word is this word for dialogue or conflict. Shall we seek cooperation or confrontation, fair treatment or superior to the other, peace or at war? I believe that we want, we are all pursued of a common and prosperous order. This is something good, it's not something bad, this is what people want. At present, the existing international order was formed after the Second World War. It was mainly dominated by the U.S. Such kind of a world order, it is true it has some unfairness and unreasonable things. However, it maintained the stability in the peace and development of the Second World War. China is always a constructor and promoter of the global peace, as well as a contributor of the world economy and also defender of the national order. And the many U.S. said that we want to correct the things. And the things we want to correct and change is something unreasonable and not fair. China speaking, we are defending the system. On the opposition, the U.S. want to break down the old world, building a new world. You know, what kind of new world it is? Is it a world of peace? A world of wars? It brings prosperity or depression? And people are still doubting the so-called new order and people feel confused that just now this American friend said there are many resolutions of the UN love for ocean at present. It was not ratified. You know, China already ratified that one. On the other hand, the U.S. keeps quitting from the communities. I will not do this, I will do not either. I know they want to build up their own independent community, fighting for the self. And I don't know if you all agree. I don't know if this agreed about American people. I don't know if it is feasible. I think the China's policies like this, we want to work with the rest of the countries for the peace and the stable development with our own contribution. If we have difficulties or problems, we can open for discussion. We want to seek partnership instead of alliance. And we want to have a dialogue instead of a confrontation. We want to be friends instead of enemies. And we want to contribute to the world peace and prosperity, thank you. Do you feel that the current system is flexible enough and that the other major powers in the system are open to the kind of changes that China is asking for? Well, if China accepts or not, it's upon China's willingness, or it's upon people's willingness, it's kind of a trend of things are happening. At the present, within this structure, we do see something unfair. But in general speaking, the overall framework, like I mentioned, maintains the world peace, stability, and development. We are always defender of the existing system. For example, the unreasonable and unfair things. Especially the delegation and the voice of the developing countries in the international communities. 193 UN members or 192, regardless of sizes or wealth, should be treated under equal footing. And no single country is superior to others to see the hegemony worldwide. And what is the reality? And you see that some countries have more delegation, have a louder voice than the developing countries. It decides the wealth allocation. Should we see a win-win, or it's your individual interest of one single country? It is still open for discussion. Thank you. Sasha, I'm gonna ask you first a question as a China guy, and then a question as a default Russia guy, since that's where you're from. Then I need to wear a thick Russian accent, right? Exactly, please. Okay, Tamarish, I will do that. Very good. So first on China, do you buy this view of China's essentially a status quo power that's seeking to make some moderate, reasonable revisions, but that are mostly in the name of making sure that the system operates the way that it was supposed to operate from the beginning? Or do you think in fact that Chinese ambitions are greater and more disruptive than that? I will say that actually the international level of water is a concept which is murky because we are wanting a thing which probably never existed in its totality at least. If we use Corey's definition that US is providing security guarantee to like-minded nations, you have a lot of powers in the Middle East where you look through their human rights record or their political setup are not necessarily aligned with the liberal regime that we have. That's one. And B, this system after World War II existed in cold war context with competition between the two powers. And then even with the unipolar moment, a lot of these countries were still authoritarian or transitioning. So it never existed in its totality. And then right now what's very important that we have so many new dimensions of the international order which are just being created like AI or cyber governments. There are uncharted waters, just entirely new phenomena which never existed and we don't have any WTO or IMF World Bank institutional framework to regulate that. Right, or Geneva Convention when it comes to cyber war. So going to your original question, what the hell is going on? The US is still rising, it's still the strongest power and still the hegemony but its hegemony is increasingly challenged because the rise of the rest. The others are rising just much faster than the US keeps going up. So when China arrives as this dominant newcomer but there are others, I won't mention Russia necessarily but there is India, there is Indonesia. The question is whether they are happy or not. And then if you look at China's behavior there are parts of international order where China totally plays ball. They are entirely happy. Bretton Woods institutions. China was whining about why did we agree that the share of control in these international institutions would go to powers which have the largest economy. Nominal GDP, okay, we are here. We are number two economy. Where are the voting rights? So then China went to create AIB. If you look at AIB performance, like I know that US and Japan had a lot of worries about rules and norms. So far it's a totally complementary institution to World Bank or Asian Development Bank. So here China is pretty much part of the consensus. If we go to the cyber world sovereignty on the internet or AI it might be entirely different pictures. So I don't know. My last point is that I don't think that China will be replacing the US in having as much power and as much global appear to create the norms which everybody would say, oh market capitalism freedoms, that's a nice thing. We also want to be part of this order. It's going to be much more contested and it's going to be much more voices than just one or two. Right, sure. And it seems that China has at least two or three major problems as it grows that will prevent it from playing that kind of a role. One is the fact that there is no China model or Chinese way that is appealing across the world the way that the American model has been for so long. And the second is that China is not willing to provide the kind of global public goods such as policing sea lanes that the United States has been for so long. And typically when I've asked Chinese about this in the past you will get complaints about American dominance but when you turn the tables and say so are you ready now to play the kind of global policeman role that the United States has in the streets of Malacca for example. The Chinese have always said no we're not ready for that yet. We may enter a very complicated discussion whether the US is ready to do some burden sharing in the Malacca street and if the US and other nations there will be happy if China plays that role. Sure, but that's still a third complication right, which is that if you take a poll of countries around the world and say okay we're not going to use the United States for these roles anymore, who do you nominate? We're not gonna get votes from any other countries. I think that's exactly gonna be very contested and as we don't have any rules of engagement or the existing rules are eroding we're not creating any new rules. My problem is that we are more and more entering into collusion territory where the states which has the power will just claim what they think should be that are part of the world in terms of sphere of influence be it as brutal as Russia did in Crimea or the way China does it by Salamis lies in the South China Sea. Okay, comrade, now I have to ask you about Russia. Pleasure. Is there a Moscow consensus? Is there a Russian way? Is there any Russian theory of global order that is different from the liberal order, the rules-based order that we've been discussing? That is, is there a positive Russian vision for how things should be different or is Russia purely today a disruptive power that yes it has an idea about Russian greatness that it's very much pursuing but has no particular ideas for a global order that could replace the current one and so what Russia's mostly interested in is increasing its own influence while trying to screw over the West. Sure answer to your question is no, Russia doesn't have that view. Longer answer is the ideal which I see in Putin's mind is to go back to the Yalta table where there are a couple of great powers, it's not just Russia and the West where it's probably Russia and maybe India and definitely China and the US and Russia is not the strongest power among all of this but it sits at the table with the big guys like it does in the P5 and nothing happens against Russia's will and then there is also that big powers have sphere of influence, like a couple of countries that depend on them and that's why Russia is craving for controlling the post-Soviet space because that's an attribute of a great power in Putin's worldview. So you have a totally non-normative system where everything is sort of haggled out between one. Nineteenth century Europe and the concert of power after defeat of Napoleon would be Russia's or the Kremlin's vision for how the world should operate. Okay, we're about at the halfway mark so I'd love to take some questions from the audience. Just raise your hands and we'll get a mic to you and if you don't mind standing and telling us who you are when we take your question right here please. I got too much stuff on, okay. Hi, I'm Joanna Bryson and this isn't really a question, it's a complaint and I'll see if, so I guess the question is, tell me I'm wrong, but I'm gonna complain about the characterization of the EU because I work in the area of AI ethics and I've been seeing the EU moving incredibly rapidly in the last couple of years and leading the world not just with GDPR but then also with the post-GDPR with the more public data, how are we gonna move that around starting to talk about regulation in this area and then also I'm not as much of an expert on this but also with the green stuff with the, they did lead, I know China is now working on leading but they were absolutely leading in the environment and so I, to me it seems like, and also I think that the diversity is a strength, I wish that the US and China were as a respective of its minorities as the EU is of some of the smaller countries, so. Well, let me argue a little bit with that. Being a European, I can say some of the nasty things that I'm about to say. Well, I'm not sure the EU is such a model in dealing with its minorities, the EU in fact going down a path that I think is very troublesome. There are countries in the EU where you can no longer cover your face with a veil, countries like Austria for example, they pretend that it is a neutral rule, that it is applied to hockey players as much as to Islamic believers but of course it's a law against Islam and it's a very cruel law because a woman can no longer wear a veil outside her house and perhaps she won't be able to work or she won't be able to have a public life, she would be at home. I wrote a text a few months ago about AI and the EU and the last sentence was maybe the EU is going to lead the reflection about AI worldwide but others are going to lead AI itself. And it made many people angry in Brussels and probably you as well. I don't think anyone can argue convincingly that the EU is keeping up with China and the US on developing AI and you would be a sad fate for the EU if it becomes the block that is there pointing the finger at Russia and the US and saying you shouldn't do this because it is unethical while China and the US just speed ahead and develop this new technology which is going to change the world. So I'm a bit more skeptical. I keep an open mind and an open heart. I just think that I'm very much pro-EU but I just think it needs radical changes. It needs to acquire some dimensions of power to compete in this world. I'll finish with this. I had a meeting with someone in the commission very high up a couple of months ago and he said well our nightmare is that the world is gonna become this stage for great powers to compete against each other because we don't have the tools to participate in that game. And then I was thinking get the tools and do it quickly because that world is approaching. So it's even worse than you imagine Europe does have those tools, right? If you think about the countries that negotiated the Iranian nuclear agreement, Britain, France and Germany, each of those three countries individually could win a war against Iran if they fought a war against Iran. None of those three countries individually or collectively think about themselves that way. So it's as much a perception of inadequacy, more a perception of inadequacy than an actual inadequacy on Europe's part. It's choosing not to be a rule setter to be a central participant in some areas where it manifestly has the power to do so. We've now touched elliptically a couple of times on this issue of right wing populism and nationalism which we haven't addressed frontally and I think we should before we go back to the audience because this of course is the other great threat to the international order today and it's coming from the heart of the West and undermining the West's ability to continue to maintain this order. And I'd love if we could get the non-Westerners on this panel, the three of you to comment on how you perceive this threat, what you make of it, the rise of right wing, xenophobic, anti-internationalist populism within the heart of Europe and within the United States, whether it worries you. I know that it doesn't worry your president. In fact, it's something that he's gleefully taking advantage of but what it looks like from the Cuban perspective or the Chinese perspective. Well, in the case of Cuba, we have been for almost 60 years on their commercial, financial and economic embargo as the USA in English, what we call it, blockade because in fact, it's something that doesn't only apply to the relations between the two countries but is also applied to the companies of other countries. So this is the biggest obstacle we have to develop our country and to insert our economy internationally. Why is this happening for so many years after the United Nations General Assembly has approved for many and many sections the resolution against the blockade? Simply because there is a decision from the US perspective because they are strong enough to do it no matter what the rest of the world thinks about it and it's the kind of thing that I would like to see changing in a new order. We don't want to, we are not menacing the US, we are not menacing anybody. We just want to do what we want to do by ourselves. But what I'm asking about is it seems like under Trump for example, who takes a hard right nationalist position on foreign policy that the chances of greater rapprochement between Cuba and the United States are weakening and I wonder what you make of this trend which has produced Trump and is producing Trump-like characters whether it's in Austria or France or even Scandinavia and what that means for a country like Cuba. Does it alarm you? Do you feel like it's going to make cooperation even more difficult? The problem is that when the President Trump for instance starts a trade war with China it's not only affecting China and the US it's affecting everybody. So this kind of decisions has impacts in all the world and it should not be something to be the right for one person to decide because sometimes you have the perception that in the current administration some decisions are made by President Trump not taking into account the opinion of others in the administration. So it's dangerous, of course it's dangerous. I believe everybody would accept that. I think that what doesn't worry our President because he is exploiting that but what worries me and frankly many people in the Russian elite which he's exposed to the outside world is that these trends are much more structural. It's not just about Steve Bannon or Trump or even Trump's tweets that it's probably the change that the Western societies are experiencing the largest change since the Industrial Revolution. You have the digital revolution which is changing the economy which is increasing or having impact on growing inequality, growing inequality matched against unequal access to education and resulting ability to process the information critically that's set up against regions particularly in the US but also in Europe, set up against race and ethnicity particularly in the US as well as in Europe and is matched against a system which still trumps one person on board. To my mind that's opening the door to the populism. The swath of people which are less educated and less well off and the erosion of the middle class is opening the door in your current political setup. So it's a big challenge which will produce a lot of unpredictability in your domestic politics and I think unfortunately Trump is only the first stop in this long journey. So if the Western societies don't come up with a solution it's gonna be much more unpredictable and probably scary for countries like Russia or China where they preach from one person rule in Russia or one party rule in China will solve it all. Don't you think there's something a little bit short-sighted about Putin's strategy of trying to encourage and support populists throughout the West because it's true that up until now many of these populist parties whether it's the National Front in France or Trump personally in the United States have been or Bonn in Hungary have been very pro-Russian but that's not necessarily going to remain the case and as right wing nationalist parties become more and more powerful in the West it strikes me that the possibility for conflict with Russia could increase rather than decrease. I totally agree with you and don't look for any smart long-term strategy in the Russian behavior necessary. I don't think that Putin is schizophrenic I give you one example. Russia did four major pension reforms under 18 years under Putin, right? So we did reform something which you shouldn't touch for decades, four times because the government is just couldn't figure out what to do with the pension reform. So why do you think that Russian approach to foreign policy is that enlightened coherent? Another example, interference into US elections. Like the ramifications for Russia long-term with sanctions are just tremendous and they are horrific. Of course there are a lot of quarters in the Russian society and in the Russian state particularly the security state benefiting from that growing isolation but long-term the consequences are horrible and still Putin goes for that. So don't see any long-term visionary visitor strategy develop in the ivory tower. Let's get another question from the audience please. Any brave souls? I can keep going but the floor is yours if you want. It's so clear that. Exactly, exactly. Shall we go to the last question of what the hell shall we do? Well let's, in fact we do have one question and then I want to come back to you because I can't wait to hear your answer. Is there another one, 12th grade? Hi, it's Robert Guest from The Economist here. I would really like to hear what the Chinese reaction is to your earlier question about the rise of populist nationalism around the world. Do you see it as a threat or is it part of a trend that President Xi can get on board with and participate in? We see a phenomenon from North America to Europe. The popularism is rising. I'm thinking about what are the reasons for the rise of popularism and I read some reflective articles. So my overall impression is quite superficial. My basic conclusion is the influence from other powers, other countries, not internally. And it's because of the lack of execution power, the poor reflective capability of the administration. So if we allow the populism to continue, we will see closures and conflicts and history shows once and again this popularism. When populism goes to extreme, which will threat the world, but also a disaster to this country as well. From this perspective, I suggest finding out the reasons behind the development of populism and the prevalence of populism. We need to treat both the symptoms as well as the root causes. In nature, we want to make friends with countries all over the world. We have resonance at the heart. We are friends and we seek commonalities based on differences. We are also friends. The more friends we have, the better. In China, we have all the same. One friend gives you one road. I believe Europe and North America, which we will hear more reasonable analogical voices, which will be very prevalent. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Yaroslav Maluk, and I come from Ukraine, so this panel is really sensitive for me in terms of what's happening the last years. So I have two questions. One is very easy. You mentioned previously about that there is increasing populism because the critical thinking is decreasing, so populists getting advantage of that and including Mr. Trump. So I have a question that relates to Russia. Do you think Russia today benefits of that, just spreading their propaganda across the globe? And the second question would be, you mentioned also about Russia is on the table among global superpowers, right? But do you think Russia deserves that place to be on the table? Not only because the conflict happens now, but also because Russia gave up its commitment under the Budapest memorandum when Ukraine gave up nuclear power. So do you think it's worse? Thank you. All right. Second question. I think it's not a question of ethnic standards, frankly. It's a question of raw power that you can accumulate and put to use. Russia is probably GDP of Spain, right? But Spain cannot afford to do some adventures that Russia did in Eastern Ukraine or in Syria. And we are not talking the nuclear dimension, we are talking sheer conventional power. Neither Germany can afford to do something but they probably have some conventional elements of that. And it's both the resources that you have and the ability to put them to use in an organized fashion which distinguishes this great power in the rough sense for Vladimir Putin. Again, this Yalta 2.0 table exists only in his imagination. I don't think that it really exists. And I think that it exists probably in debates on AI where Russia is a dwarf, though we have some very capable hackers as proven in the US election, frankly. The first question was... I think that Russia really exploits this division in the West and I think that it's well documented in the Mueller investigation and we have numerous cases in Europe. To blame the rise on populace on Russia today, which is second, like, which is watched in the UK, for example, less than the most popular Welsh channel is exaggeration. I can imagine that there is an industry among think tank world to which some of the people here belong, you know, to drumming the beat of the Russia threat and to get some funds to explore this threat. And I don't deny that the threat might be real, but just to say that is all because of Margarita Simonyan and Putin are just so smart that the Americans have elected Donald Trump or the British went to... No, but it's really not about RT. It's about what Russia is doing on Facebook and other social media platforms. Right. I think that there is malign activity and they are trying to exploit that, but I wouldn't exaggerate the effect that it's having on the societies. It's not well-intentioned. It's pretty hostile behavior that probably, if I'm in your shoes, should be pushed back against. But whether that's having the kind of impact and it's the root cause of all evil in the Western societies, I would be pretty skeptical about that. Even the DNC email hack? No, the DNC email hack was having an impact, but it's very hard to measure whether that was something or that was Comey or that was something else. Hillary Clinton not going to some states she was supposed to go as a candidate. Can I say one thing about the Budapest memorandum, which is Russia is the predator and its invasion... I'm sorry, Kray, just remind everyone what the Budapest memorandum is. It's the agreement that Russia, the United States, and other countries signed with Ukraine at the end of the Cold War as the result of which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. And what all of us who signed that committed to do was respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine and preserve its security. And Russia is the predator, but all the rest of us are also failing Ukraine. All the rest of us who are signatories of the Budapest memorandum are also in violation of it. More questions? Here, please. Hi. Hi, I'm Po Shan Lo. I'm from Carnegie Mellon University. I'm also the national coach of the United States Math Olympiad team. Yay! Yes, so actually this question is about, we've discussed about soft power, about hard power, but actually I'm quite interested in economic power or even the economic power primarily, which in the next 100 years is going to be driven by the intellectual creations of a populace, which is actually largely driven by math, science, and technology. Now, in my role, I travel around the whole world seeing different countries and their approach to math and science. And in my observation, China has an extraordinary number of people, young people from very young ages which are developing extreme math and science skills. Actually, based on this observation, that alone will drive China into an extremely powerful position. And this is not today, but this is over the next 10 to 20 years. So actually my main point is that, my main question is this, any country which wants to maintain the current world order, shouldn't they be making massive investments in science and technology, and not just science and technology, but education in general across their populace because that's the future as opposed to present? I think you can get a universal consensus from the panel that the answer is yes, absolutely. One of the interesting things about the Chinese example that I'll add is that while for many years there have been these intense investments in STEM, the conventional view until a few years ago was that despite these investments, the Chinese were gonna have real trouble developing an innovation economy because of political constraints on free speech and free thought. That consensus seems to be changing and so now you have people like Eric Schmidt, among many others, saying that the Chinese are going to completely dominate the race for AI because they have figured out a way to ensure that political constraints do not limit the kinds of innovation that are critical to dominating in the competition for knowledge economies. To provide you a very cynical Russian perspective, I've talked to some very senior level Russian government official recently about this where whether China is innovative enough and they say, oh, the Chinese just didn't figure out the style and way how creative people can be in a gulag if they have to fight for their survival. So that's the Soviet spirit. I, again, all the kivitz pause that was a cruel cynical joke by a very senior high level government official but I just going back to the original point it's really about massive investment into education but it's, I would challenge the wisdom that only democracies can be super successful in developing human capital and whether that's a one party state, oh, it's going to fail miserably just because it's a party state. Well, we're seeing that now, I think. But why, you know, Russia has been talking for years now and especially under President Medvedved about developing a knowledge economy and there was a whole city or campus that was going to become the new Silicon Valley of Russia and Russia, of course, is the country that's produced the engineers and doctors who work in many, many, many other countries sometimes as taxi drivers, sometimes as engineers and doctors but why isn't Russia taking off the way that could be? It seems like Russia really struggles to take advantage of its own intellectual potential. They are trying to do that but I think that there is always tension in the Russian society between control and development and Putin is choosing control all the time. So if you are to invest into education, you need to empower those who are very critical towards Putin regime and that's necessarily what Putin doesn't want to. So what does he do that the Chinese don't do that makes, that's the critical difference here? He doesn't encourage that because Russian economy is so well off being a raw material supplier. It can sustain Western sanctions pressure and keep Putin in power and still have like this extraordinary vote rates and approval ratings for him. That's enough for him. He's a tactician who is trying to clinch to power and use the limited instruments that he has to revive Russia's greatness. He's not really thinking long term what should I do now in order to get Russia there in 20, 30 years to be the global leader in the AI or have conversation this. That's why he's sticking to these very simple but very efficient tools like hacking or like using sheer conventional power to reclaim his place on the wall stage. I just got the high sign that we have about five minutes left. So I think we probably should use it to return to the third of my questions which is what the hell are we gonna do about it? Who has the brilliant idea that's going to save the international order and take us all into the promised land together? Cory, you're smiling. So one of the central questions that all of us have to think through for ourselves is whether as people grow more prosperous, they grow more politically liberal, right? Because in the West, since the time of Hegel, that has been our operating assumption. There are outliers to that, Imperial Japan, contemporary China, Nazi Germany, but they are very, very few and also in those previous two cases, provoked crises that the rest of the world organized to prevent their continued success. And so I do think it's a really important question whether China as currently governed can become the fulfillment of its potential because if China becomes progressively more liberal as in order to have the creative economy to grow sustainably prosperous, then we'll be fine. We will find ways to cooperate and compromise. I'm much more pessimistic if Hegel turns out to be wrong and China can continue to grow increasingly prosperous without liberalizing because I can't see an historical case in which a country grew to be a hegemonic power peacefully without also liberalizing. My view would be that, A, as a concerned citizen, I would be really, we talked a lot about domestic problems in the West, populism and the evolution of capitalism, the digital revolution and the evolution of the political systems in the West. So if the West is able to bring it house in order, that would be a terrific contribution. Point number one, point number two, I think that if we look at the Cold War, there was a very progressive or positive element in the Cold War in competition between the two superpowers. And that was the space race and the Olympics. Of course, that sounds very cynical from a Russian that cheated so massively in the Sochi Olympics. But anyway, the ideal of countries competing in those sectors, non-kinetic, non-warfare, which says we China are one party state, we think that our approach is right. And we prove that by scoring as much in mathematics competitions as we do. And like in 2050, top 10 of universities will be Beida, Tsinghua, Zheda, which is my alma mater, and probably Harvard at number nine, maybe. And then the U.S. says no, because of creativity and daring of the American people and the can-do spirit and all the opportunities that our institutional framework provides to the people, we're always gonna be Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton, and then comes Putin and says no, because of my values in Russian orthodoxy and blah, blah, blah, there's gonna be Moscow State and St. Pete. And then we compete. And this is the level of, this is the field where we compete, not on the battlefield in Syria. And then we compare notes, and then in 2050, it's probably Harvard and then Beida and then Moscow State somewhere, top seven, maybe. I'm very skeptical. But then we say, okay, let's compare notes again in 50 years. So that would be my ideal vision. In order to achieve that, we need to establish rules for great power competition in those kinetic and dangerous spheres. What do we do in South China Sea? What constitutes election interference? Why don't we have an open and frank debate about that? What constitutes election interference? And we'd not necessarily agree with that if the State Department supports the NGO in Russia which monitors elections. From Russian point of view, that's election interference. So we should talk about that in order to hedge again those outcomes. Quick final comments from Chi and then Bruno. For this world to become a more beautiful world, I think there are three points. Number one, you had to do your own job well. Firstly, in technology, you have to keep yourself in line with the new development and also need to emphasize entrepreneurship and craftsmanship. And entrepreneurship means you have to choose, you want to choose to be a pioneer, you want to explore. For craftsmanship means you want to do a good job on the job at hand, but different countries have a different level of development, different background. So long as you can come up with innovations, that's something positive. We should improve our communication between us. Not this model is good and that model is bad. Also in big powers, they have special responsibilities in maintaining the social, the world order and they should not enjoy so much privilege. This is very important. US as a number one power, this is very important for them to take special responsibilities. And I feel privileged why the US is making trouble for itself and certainly in the current framework, we should set up a better platform. Countries are big and small, weak and powerful. We can, on this platform, do equal discussion, on equal footing to resolve the common issues faced by mankind. Thank you. Well, I think we'll have to live with lack of control and with chaos. We're entering a very dangerous world where there are many different powers. They are more or less at the same level. They are very different from each other. They interfere constantly with each other's affairs. So I think it is a dangerous world and the only way to live with it is to be aware that this idea that every country can control its affairs completely belongs to the past. You have to leave with the idea that you don't control everything. You have to deal with the idea that other countries are gonna have an impact on you. So I think politicians have to become a little more like businessmen. If a company can't get its way, it doesn't declare war on the other company. You have to live in this very confusing chaotic environment where everyone is pushing in its own direction. That's the only way. Either you live with chaos or you live with conflict. Sounds like we should all become Buddhists. Please join me. Hopefully not all the presidents of large nations are property developers. Yeah, indeed. So look, folks, they did it. We figured out what the hell is going on and we figured out what to do about it. Please join me in thanking these wonderful panelists for this great conversation. Thank you very much.