NATO Expansion and the Opportunity for American Unity

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, there was nothing humorous about a warning from the Swiss president today as he was hosting the world economic forum in Davos. He talked about our world in the throes of multiple crises all at once. That is also the subject of a new book by our next guest, the political scientist, Ian Bremmer. In “The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats and Our Response Will Change the World.” Ian Bremmer looks at how we can better prepare for the global challenges ahead. And here he is talking to Walter Isaacson about it.

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WALTER ISAACSON, HOST: Thank you, Christiane. And, Ian Bremmer, welcome to the show.

IAN BREMMER, “THE POWER OF CRISIS” AUTHOR: Great to be with you.

ISAACSON: Your doctoral dissertation at Stanford, it was called the “Politics of Ethnicity: Russia and the Ukraine.” And you’ve worked in the past with Boris Nemtsov who was a great democracy advocate in Russia who got assassinated. Tell me what you’re thinking was back then about Russia and Ukraine, how it’s change and what this means for Putin.

BREMMER: Well, I mean, you’re bringing me way back. I started my dissertation back in 1989. I mean, how could one possibly not work on the nationality’s explosion in the former Soviet Union. I mean, this was world changing. It was empire shattering. And what was pretty clear to me from having lived for a year in Ukraine back in 1992 — in fact, I attended their first ever (INAUDIBLE), their Day of Independence — was, first of all, just how extraordinary it is to build a new country. Secondly, the fact that the Ukrainians and Russians in Kyiv and Kiev, as they refer to it at the point, got along extremely well and thought of each other as fraternal nations, as very friendly, very engaged. But also, that when you traveled as I did down to Crimea and down to parts of Southeast Ukraine that this was a very different place. And that that — that the challenges of identity, of historical attachments, of power and capital, these were not going to suddenly be resolved by the independence of Ukraine as a country. So, there was — in other words, there was a lot to think about and play for back in 1994 when I submitted my dissertation in thinking about Russia and Ukraine on the ground.

ISAACSON: You’ve said that this has the opportunity to unify NATO, to unify Democrats and Republicans even. But how long can that be sustained if this is a two, three, four-year process?

BREMMER: I want to, first of all, say that for NATO and for Europe, Walter, this is a generational change. So, what is — has ended is a peace dividend of 30 years. What has ended is the idea that the Europeans don’t need to be spending on their own defense, don’t need to be focused on their own national security. And indeed, that the Germans now understand that they’re going to spend twice as much on defense going forward. That the Europeans understand with very few exceptions, Hungary the notable exception, that they are going to decouple themselves from the Russian economy, at great expense. Even in terms of things like coal and oil and gas and faster than anyone would have expected. I think that is permanent. I think it’s generational. I think that for the Europeans, the Russian invasion into Ukraine is an existential threat to democracy. For the United States, it’s a bigger question. And I don’t feel as confident that the United States in a year or in 2024, with the presidential election coming up, will it be as committed and as focused on a country that’s far away that the Russians have done almost no business with the United States. There are very few refugees that make it to the U.S. U.S. is not part of Europe. I think the potential for the Americans to end up more divided on this issue is real, but I think that’s an open question and there is a real opportunity for the Americans to not only rebuild and revitalize what had been a NATO drift, but also bring in the Asian democracies and allies to become a broader part of that. Something that clearly was not seen as possible on February 23rd.

ISAACSON: You’ve said that it was very difficult to maintain a front against Russia win our relations with China seem to be degenerating, spiraling out of control. Do you think this is an opportunity and a necessity for us to do a reset with China?

BREMMER: I don’t think that we have a relationship of trust with China. I think that’s mutual. And I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon. But when — on February 4th, three weeks before the invasion. Xi Jinping and President Putin got on a stage in the opening to the Beijing Olympics and declared to the world that they had a friendship without limits. I will tell you that in the end of May, that relationship looks different. That relationship feels like a friendship with not that many benefits. And if you look at Xi Jinping’s private conversations in the last couple of weeks with Chancellor Scholz and with President Macron in France, they’ve been talking as if they really don’t want to be tarred with the same brush as Putin has been, that they want territorial integrity with Ukraine. They want to be friends with everyone. They want to cease fire. They don’t want a new Cold War. I think they’re being much more cautious. And I also think — I do expect with Biden’s trip to Asia, that there will be a phone call with Xi Jinping, there will be direct engagement. I know that the White House has been talking about maybe trying to reduce or remove some of the tariffs on China that was set in the Trump administration. Because, frankly, inflation right now is a very big issue affecting the American voters and not helping Biden’s popularity one bit. And the Chinese would surely welcome that. I think the Chinese have taken a number of lessons away from the extraordinary level of unity, that the United State and allies have shown in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I do think that that affects the way they think about Taiwan going forward. And I think it affects the way they think about their relationship with the West going forward in ways that can be constructive for the Americans.

ISAACSON: If you were Jake Sullivan or Kurt Campbell or Anthony Blinken, helping arrange Biden’s trip to Asia, would you have him both call Xi Jinping in China and maybe even offer to have a summit between the American president and the Chinese leader?

BREMMER: 100 percent. Biden’s meeting with Putin a year ago in Geneva was something that Biden very much wanted to do. I don’t think that’s feasible going forward because Biden feels like Putin has lied to his face and is a war criminal. Biden never talks about Xi Jinping the way. He talks about how much the two men have gotten to know each other when Biden was vice president and Xi Jinping was vice president. Biden’s proud of that. And it’s not that they agree on everything but they feel like they have a level of mutual understanding and respect for each other. Biden is a big believer in personal diplomacy. He’s a big believer that went two individuals get together and speak honestly with each other, they have the ability to resolve problems. And especially because Biden is being so welcomed by the New South Korean president, just came into office two weeks ago, very aligned with the United States. With the Japanese, the relatively new Japanese from minister, very assertive on the global stage. Very popular at home. And also, with a meeting of the quad that Trump presidency started but the Biden presidency continues to grow. That includes also Australia and India. The fact is, that the Chinese do not want to feel like the only purpose of American policy in Asia is to contain them. And frankly, that feeling has been part of the reason why Putin and Xi ended up on the global stage the way they did. I feel quite confident that Biden will want to address that directly.

ISAACSON: If Biden does address directly the Chinese issue, has a summit with Xi Jinping, do you think that will cause a widening of the political divide in Washington? Because one of the things that Republicans and Democrats have agreed on recently is that we’re in a very deep rivalry with China.

BREMMER: Yes, there is no question that there is massive agreement among Democrats and Republicans with very limited exception in how to respond to Putin, how to respond to Russia. So much so that Trump has been relatively quiet on this issue. And even backtrack a bit when Putin invaded Ukraine, said, well, that’s not the Putin that I knew. So, on China, I think Biden has been very cautious. I think that Ron Klain, his chief of staff, who is obviously critical on these issues has been very cautious because they understand that a Biden who might be perceived as soft on China could lose your votes. Did lose them votes in swing states back in 2020. And obviously, they don’t want that to happen again. But Biden is much more concerned about inflation at home. Biden is much more concerned about the future of the global order an American’s role in it. And I don’t think he is prepared. I mean, he appointed John Kerry, and on the climate, he said, the Chinese and the Americans need to work together. He said, you go and do it. And I don’t think he was worried about backlash when he sent Kerry over Beijing and said, find a way to work with the Chinese.

ISAACSON: One of the maximums and foreign policy comes from the cartoon character Pogo who said a long time ago, we’ve met the enemy and it is us.

BREMMER: And it is us.

ISAACSON: Yes. And so, in your book, you talk about the dysfunction of democracy and how that’s something that we have to fix and we have the opportunity to fix because of a lot of these crisis that have come along. How important is it do you think for us to concentrate on fixing our democracy at home?

BREMMER: You started this interview asking about my dissertation. When I started writing my dissertation, it was 1989. America’s greatest strength were our ideas. Our political system. That’s why the wall came down because on the people on the other side wanted their system to be more like ours. They aspired to have the kind of individual liberties and civil society that the United States embody. And that is not true anymore 30 years later. The American institutions have eroded, they have fragmented, they have become delegitimized. Every day, we see new unprecedented things. We see a Supreme Court opinion leak. It’s never happened before. We see people demonstrating in front of the homes of Supreme Court justices. It’s never happened before. January 6th had ever happened before. All of these unprecedented things because we, Americans, increasingly don’t believe in our own political system. So, clearly, if you do not address that your ability to continue to function as the north star, the leading light, for other countries around the world, you know, you can forget about it. And that is — I think that’s a big challenge for the United States.

ISAACSON: In your book, you paint some scenarios that might stem from this dysfunction and this distrust of government that you’ve just talked about. And one of them is that big technology companies, global technology companies will end up with a lot more power, and a techno utopianism in which governments will play a smaller role. Do you think that’s likely and explain what that would be?

BREMMER: Well, I’m not sure how likely it is that will feel like a utopia. But I think it’s very clear that technology companies are functionally sovereign in the digital space as opposed to the physical world. So, let me give you an obvious example. Russia invades Ukraine. NATO provides javelin missiles and stingers and tanks and helicopters. But in terms of defending Ukraine from Russia, a cyber-attack, that’s actually Microsoft and Google and IBM. I mean, literally, it’s not the government. It’s private technology companies that are deciding, as companies, how they want to act. And that’s kind of astonishing. It’s very new. And so, if you want to think about the dangers that come from disruptive technologies, like cyber and like algorithms for disinformation, and like lethal autonomous drones and like quantum computing, we have to recognize the principal actors in that space are not just governments anymore, they’re actually tech companies. So, we now have a lot of very new, very dangerous disruptive technologies and it’s not going to be just about governments taking action to ensure that they do not proliferate. From the get-go, it’s going to also be private sector corporations. And that means any institution that we create to try to facilitate that regulatory space that governance will not just be about governance but it will also be about tech companies. It’s kind of a post West failing (ph) order in the virtual world that affects all of us. It affects the global economy, it affects our personal security, and it affects national security around the world.

ISAACSON: After World War II, we developed a lot of institutions that served as guardrails against the threats we might be facing, political, economic, military, whether it be NATO or the World Bank or the IMF and the United Nations even. Nowadays, those institutions don’t seem suited to be the guardrails. Do we need a whole new set of institutions to serve as a guardrail for this new era?

BREMMER: Of course, we do, Walter. Because, look, what is happened in the world? You have economic cycles. Every seven years on average, we have an economic recession. And we know how to identify it, we have the playbook, it’s monetary, it’s fiscal tools. You know, we’re probably heading into a global recession right now, hopefully no deep one, and then, we’ll come out of it. The interesting thing is that there are geopolitical boom and bust cycles too. And the world is, right now, in a geopolitical recession. And the reason you get your geopolitical bust cycles is because the institutions that you create around the world, when you create them, they’re very aligned with the balance of power in the world at that point and the values and preferences, priorities of the countries that are most important in the world. And overtime, that balance of power changes. But the institutions are sticky. They don’t change. And when the gap between the institutions and the balance of power becomes great, the institution starts to break down. They become obsolete. They become delegitimized. And then, you need new institutions. You have to either reform dramatically or you have to create new ones.

ISAACSON: Give me an example of a new institution with a new ideology you would start right now.

BREMMER: We do not have globally any institutions that deal with the proliferation of disruptive technologies. We need one. For climate change, we have an inter-governmental panel for climate change. And every year, all of these scientists and public policy people come together and they say, what is the state of challenge that we have a climate change? And as a consequence, we all agree that there is climate change, It’s 1.2 degrees centigrade so far. It’s man-made. It’s not natural circumstance. And here are the implications. We have not yet done that at all for destructive technologies. So, it’s very clear that we need and inter-governmental panel on artificial intelligence. Where you’d put together public policy experts, technologists, scientists from the private sector and from the public sector globally to identify first what the state of play, the state of danger is with lethal autonomous weapons. The state of play with bioweapons. The state of play with dangerous algorithms. Because you can’t fix a problem until you, at least, agree on what the problem is. And the reason we’re responding so effectively to Russia as the West is because everyone agrees that what Putin did wrong. Well, it took us decades to agree that climate change was real, that the science wasn’t fake and that we had to respond to it. Now, we are there. And as a consequence, we’re making a hell of a lot of progress. You need architecture to do that. You need institutions to do that. And that’s what has to come in response to disruptive technology.

ISAACSON: Ian Bremmer, thanks for joining us.

BREMMER: Thank you, Walter.