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LSE: Public lectures and events
America adrift: the end of the east coast foreign policy elite
01:29:29
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A
Welcome to the LSE Events Podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences.
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B
Good evening. I want to welcome everyone to LSC for this evening's lecture. My name's Peter Tribowitz. I'm a professor in the Department of International Relations and Director of the Fallon United States center which is hosting tonight's event. So tonight's lecture is the second in a year long series entitled America's Changing Role in the World. The series is premised on the idea that America is having something of a rethink about its foreign policy purposes and priorities, the outcome of which is very uncertain. And to help us get some perspective on this development or this rethink or the process, we've invited a wide range of foreign policy experts from the United States and from outside the US to join the discussion. And I'm very pleased tonight to welcome back to LSE Anne Marie Slaughter, the CEO of New America and University Professor Merida of Politics and International affairs at Princeton University. Anne Marie's accomplishments and honors are too long to run through here this evening. For me, what stands out is a long and very deep commitment to public engagement and service as a scholar and former Dean of Princeton School of Public and International affairs to her role as Director of Policy Planning in the State Department during the Obama years into her leadership at New America, maybe now dozen years. Dozen years. A leading think tank in Washington, D.C. it's great to have you back here, Anne Marie. So here's the game plan for tonight. Anne Marie is going to share some initial thoughts about America's drift, the generational, demographic and regional shifts that are unfolding in the United States and the possible implications for US Foreign policy going forward. I'll then probably put a couple of questions to her before we open it up to all of you in the theater and those of you who are online. For those of you online, you just need to submit your questions using the Q and A function that's at the bottom of the screen. Please make sure to include your name and affiliation. For those of you in the theater, just raise your hand and we'll try to get in as many questions as possible. If you haven't already turned your phone off or switched it to silent, please do that now. And also join me in giving Ann Marie Slaughter a very warm Ellison welcome.
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A
Thank you and thanks to all of you here all the more as I'm pretty sure at least some of you were probably in the audience with me last night with Sana Maran so coming out twice is something and I'm delighted to at least know or welcome all of you who are online. You never know where to look when you do that.
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C
But.
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A
I love coming to lse and it's every time I come it seems a little more integrated with the campus and with schools and buildings and colleagues, many of whom I know and have esteemed for a long time. I want to talk tonight, probably not what you're going to ask me questions about, which means I'm not going to talk about Trump's foreign policy, at least not directly, but I'm quite certain we will probably get to that. I want to take a much longer term look at the changes in the United States and how they affect our foreign policy and particularly our foreign policy toward Europe. So my title is America Adrift, the End of the East Coast Foreign Policy Elite. I probably should have said the east coast foreign policy establishment. I am a card carrying member of the east coast foreign policy establishment. And I don't mean to say that now that the establishment think Council on Foreign Relations, and I will elaborate on what I mean, I'm not trying to say that because the east coast establishment is declining, American foreign policy is worse off. That is not my claim at all. I'm simply stating a fact that anyone can observe and connecting that to deeper trends in the United States. And indeed thinking about the east coast foreign policy establishment, there are a lot of assumptions baked in to the formation of that establishment. And when I say think the members of the Council on Foreign Relations. The Council on Foreign Relations was created in 1921 to maintain Woodrow Wilson's vision of multilateralism. And if you think about sort of what that establishment has done over the course of the 20th century, through the creation of the post war order and then through the Cold War, that's a pretty good sort of capsule of the basic orientation of American leadership in the world and through institutions. The formation of our foreign policy leaders in the 20th century was not all East Coast. If you look at secretaries of state and assistant secretaries of state and diplomats, statesmen, lawyer statesmen generally, they weren't all born on the East Coast. Most were educated on the east coast in what we would call private schools, public schools and universities. The foreign policy, those who chose foreign policy careers were relatively patrician. The careers being diplomats required actually a certain amount of funding. It still does actually for the ambassador to the United Kingdom generally, people who can afford to maintain the embassy and throw some of the parties that they throw. And that was true for The Foreign Service. For much of the 20th century, it was the kind of career that people who graduated from top US Institutions, who'd graduated from top schools went into. If you look at who goes into the Foreign Service now, it is really quite different. For one thing, people start later. They've had other careers, and they reflect the entire country. So they were also most. They were diplomats and lawyers, lots and lots of lawyers. I am a lawyer. I haven't ever really been a diplomat, but I worked at the State Department. But the whole notion of a lawyer statesman, which was a term coined by one of the deans at Yale. Well, actually written on by one of the deans at Yale. But that notion goes all the way back to Thomas Jefferson. This idea that you study the rules, you then think about diplomacy as crafting some kind of order, but also just the lawyer's outlook, the generalist outlook, was what you wanted for a diplomat. Over my lifetime, I have watched the membership of the Council on Foreign Relations move from almost entirely lawyers, diplomats, and the odd banker to journalists, heads of NGOs, many, many more. They're not bankers, they're heads of hedge funds and private equity. They're in finance. Much more so, in fact, if you look at the State Department, the classic New York law partner who went in and out, the in and outer, which is something that I grew up with, they're relatively few. There was one when I was in the State Department, one New York partner who was the Assistant Secretary for Latin America. So just in terms of who they are, what the professions are, where they come from, what the formation is, and that all of that has changed. When you think also of the sojuras of the 20th century, of course, you have two World wars and then the Cold War. So really, from 1914 to 1989, in all three of those, the United States and some part of Europe fought against another part of Europe, if you include Russia or the Soviet Union, at least partly in that, and I certainly do, that is a obviously highly ethnocentric vision of what the world is, if you take it from today's point of view. And indeed, it's striking that if you ever asked yourself why, at least in the United States and in Europe, we talk about the Middle East. Middle east from where? Well, if you're in the United States and you look east, you get to Europe. We don't call Europe the Near east, but there it is. Then you get to the Middle east, and then you get to the Far east, because you're looking east and you're Looking east from the east coast, we still use some of those terms. We don't talk about the Far east anymore. We talk about Asia and we talk about East Asia or South Asia. The Middle east is really sort of the anomaly that remains. But again that's a vision of the west. And the west is a weird, is not a non existent geographic term. Depends where you're looking. The west really as the center of the globe and the center of Western civilization. All of that was very much part of the 20th century formation. All of it has been, is being sharply challenged in this century. So I'm painting with a very broad brush, I understand that. But I'm going to be talking about demography. And I think this is a fairly accurate statement based on Secretary of State memoirs, based on sort of the institutions like the Council on Foreign Relations or the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And also things. Little more anecdotal bits of evidence, but things. The CIA was also very much in this culture. And there's something called the Camden Forum where you can go and speak on foreign policy. Well, why is it in Camden, Maine? Because many members of the CIA came from families who summered in Maine, around Camden. And there are enough retired members of the intelligence community that they created a sort of international forum, just as the kind of example of what I'm talking about. So I'm going to talk more broadly about the differences between the 20th century and the 21st century, the way it's been shaped. But again, when I say America adrift, that the traditional 20th century assumptions that anchored American foreign policy and really anchored Republicans and Democrats. I mean it's the Republicans that stopped Woodrow Wilson, but the Republicans, Senator Vandenberg, who changed his vote and enabled the passage of the UN Charter and through the Cold War. Although there was a lot of fighting between Dems and Republicans, no one would have challenged NATO. No one would have challenged the basic alliance and sort of set of value based assumptions with Europe. But it's Barack Obama who called all of us, and I will include myself, the Blob, not Donald Trump, Barack Obama. And that's very telling because Barack Obama is really the first departure from this set of assumptions. Barack Obama, who grows up in Hawaii, who certainly does not look first stick to Europe. He looks west and to the extent he looks to Europe, he was not the biggest fan of the special relationship. His father was Kenyan and although he did not grow up in Kenya, he spent a lot of time in Indonesia. And from the Kenyan point of view, Britain looks quite different. A lot of Barack Obama's formation was more postcolonial than certainly anybody who'd preceded him in the 20th century. I'm not saying he was obviously a strong supporter of NATO and our alliance with Europe, but he also very strongly felt that Europe had to pay its own way. And that gets lost when we look at Donald Trump. But in 2012, Barack Obama was insisting on the 2% every bit as much as Donald Trump was. Donald Trump was just more vocal, more sensationalist about it, let's put it that way. Okay, so looking with that sort of overview, let's look at the big differences between who Americans are and who they have been and who they will be in shaping foreign policy. So the differences are generational, and I've started to talk about that demographic and then geographic. So think about generational. So the 20th century, if you think about the people in charge of foreign policy, and I include the think tanks, the scholars, the officials, somebody like Joseph Nye, who unfortunately just died this year and was a great figure in thinking about power and foreign relations. He was a professor, but he was also in government. And he was also someone who just wrote very broadly. You're talking about great generation people, baby boomers. I am born in 1958. That's the peak of the baby boom. That's when the most babies were born in the entire baby boom. And then Gen X. So Gen X is roughly 1964 to 1982. So that generation is shaped by certainly World War II and the Cold War. So if you're thinking about people of my generation, the first events I really remember, I remember Watergate, but it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis. That happened when I was a senior in college. That's when you're. I was studying international relations. But even if you're not at that point, you're aware more of the world around you. And of course, people who were born in the 60s and 70s, they're shaped by the fall of the wall and the 1990s, which was, of course, a period of American hyperpower. And again, they're also thinking about the west versus some enemy generally. Again, first dictatorships, fascists and Nazis and then Communists. They're also thinking about a period where the west is absolutely economically dominant. So Robert Cohan wrote the book after hegemony in the 1980s. This is the first time, after the oil crisis and the dollar going off the gold standard, when Americans are starting to think there may not be a hegemon forever. And we're not the hegemon now in the 80s that we had been in the 60s, the 50s and 60s, the 1990s, there's sort of a return to hege, but essentially that's the way those generations think about the world. It's also the last balanced budget United States has seen under Clinton in the late 1990s. We've seen rivers of red ink since, so the 21st century. You're talking about millennials. So 1982 to 1996. My elder son is born in 1996. He does not count himself a millennial. He was four at the millennium. But those are the formal, of course. And the oldest millennials are in their 40s now. And then Gen Z, and we're already into Gen Alpha, but we're not gonna talk about Gen Alpha, but. So the oldest millennial was not even a teenager when the wall came down. I'm talking. Many of you will think, yeah, you're young millennials and Gen Z. The first dramatic foreign policy event then for the millennials is 9 11. It's really the. Yeah, it's 9 11. That's when they're in college or passed. Then it's the 2008 financial crisis, which had a huge impact. And when we look at why, young people in the United States are often as pessimistic as they are a large part of it. And again, these are slightly older, but if you came out of college around the financial crisis, you didn't get a job and your lifetime earnings are affected. And then throughout their adult lives. Russia invades Ukraine in 2014. Well, really, actually, although it may been more for foreign policy specialists in particular, it's 2007 that Putin rejects the West. That Putin says definitively, okay, I've pursued the West. We've tried this. It's not working. The loss of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. And then there's the. The invasion of Crimea and Ukraine in 2014 and then again in 2022. So Russia has been a spoiler, a player and a spoiler. And of course, China has been the dominant figure for this generation after 9 11. Again, economically, the US is not declining, not in absolute terms, because we are extraordinarily wealthy at the high end, but. But for the middle class, it's at best, stagnation with little rises, but no set of assumptions that the next generation will just continue doing better than the previous generation. Also in this century, the rise of the rest. Right, the bric. The term bric, Brazil, Russia, India, China, is coined by somebody at Goldman Sachs in 2001. In 2006 the foreign ministers of those four countries start meeting on the edge of the United Nations. 2009 it's created the BRIC. And then in 2010 South Africa is added, it's the BRICS. Then in 2024 Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE, which is a really unusual combination of countries joined the BRICS in 2024 and 13 other countries were offered partnership. That is you can. There are many different ways of talking about that, but let's just say the rise of the rest, the re emergence, the return of former great powers or new powers that are playing a huge role in their regions. And more generally, if you look at Brazil or India and many of the African countries, they are now what I would call the middle powers or the multi aligned powers. Very different vision of what the world looks like. And then finally for these two generations, global threats Covid climate change AI global existential threats that are not geopolitical. Alongside geopolitical threats, massive rise of mis and disinformation. You don't believe anything. In the elections last week, when the governor Mikey Sherrill won to be governor of New Jersey, many of us were deeply relieved because her opponent had run a set of devastating ads against her during the World Series, which is one of the few times Americans of my generation anyway still watch tv. And we thought that those might have an effect. It turns out doesn't look like anybody believed those any more than they believed anything else. I don't know if that's a positive if you don't believe anything, but at least you equally don't believe Ms. Information on both sides. And then finally, very, very new ways of war. And this is probably more Gen Z even than millennials. But if you look at what's happening in Ukraine, the very idea of what war is is very different than the 20th century. So those are just different life experiences shaping what you think of. What's your mental map of the world? Who are the countries that matter? Who are the forces that matter? What are the assumptions you make about those countries? What are the assumptions you make? All of those are very different for millennials and for Gen X, sorry, Gen Z, I keep calling it Gen X. Okay, so now let's turn to demographics. And here I cannot overstate the impact of the basic demographics of the United States. And I say this in my own country, although we are feeling it, but it's more important for Europe probably than anywhere else in the world because the Europeans are accustomed to at the United States as it has been for the 250 years of our history that we will celebrate next year. We have been 80 to 90% European American. 80 to 90%. And I use European American because white, which is the category used on the census, is not only constructed, but right now it includes North Africans. And my North African friends would not say that their experience in the United States is the same as a European American. So I'm just gonna use European. So if you look at. I'm just gonna go through a little. In 1970, now you have to use white, because it was one of the few categories available. 87.7% of Americans on the census said they were white. In 1980, it goes down to 83%. And that's because Hispanic comes out up for the first time. Hispanic is another ridiculous category. There are countless different strains of people who count themselves as Hispanic, but it means if you have any Latino or Hispanic origin. So now you've gone from 87% to 83. In 1980, 1990, we go down to 80%. So now we're longer 2000, we're at 75% again now white alone. Now you also can say mixed race, which is also something new. In 2020, it's down to 61% of white alone. So you've gone from 87% to 61%. That's an enormous drop. Just think about European countries with 10, 15% foreign born. And we are talking about a 30% shift. And if you look at Americans under age 30, and this is 2020, white alone, 51 to 52%. So this is just five years ago, 51 to 52%, Hispanic of any race, 25%. That's an enormous increase. Black alone are in combination 14%. Asian alone are in combination 6% and two or more races, 10%. So what that means is that in 2027, just two years from now, Americans under 30, there will be no one ethnic or racial group, no majority. Right. European Americans will be at 48%. Hispanic Americans will be somewhere between 25 and 30% African American. And again now you're including new African diaspora, Caribbean Americans, many different groups, but will be somewhere between 10 and 15%. And then you have Asian Americans, which, again, it's a vast category and a steady increase in other. And we can't really project. And I'm glad that we can't, because the other is going to just continue to rise. I said to Peter, perhaps one of these days, perhaps our best future is that all of us will be other. And so we won't be able to make these distinctions. But that is Just a massive change. And I don't care what happens with this administration and immigration. We could lock up our country for the next 40 years. It is not going to change this. This is the result of the change in the immigration laws in 1965, where we really dramatically changed who could come in family reunification and the changes between 1965 and 1960, 1990, 2000, that's what we're seeing today. So think about when you look at trade and investment flows and education flows and cultural flows, and you imagine the United states again was 85 to 90% European American for its history, it's hardly surprising that those flows are always the thickest. When you look at arrows, a map of arrows of investment in trade, that transatlantic, northern, transatlantic, transatlantic is wildly over other, in aggregate, other flows. In fact, I was looking at a report called The Transatlantic Economy 2025, which is put out by the US Chamber of Commerce and the US Chamber of Commerce in Europe and Johns Hopkins, and I'll quote the US Europe commercial relationship is the most mutually beneficial on Earth. The 9.5 trillion transatlantic economy is the largest in the world. The US and Europe remain each other's most important markets and geoeconomic base. No two other regions are as deeply integrated as the US And Europe. Well, yeah, that's not surprising. Now think about 30% Hispanic Americans. They are not going to be investing in Europe. They might, but most of them are going to be looking just as European Americans were looking for where they came from, what language are spoken, what cultures are the same. Where if you are in a diaspora, do you start creating a business and growing that business? It's where you came from. You're already seeing this with lots of different pockets of Indian Americans and East Asian Americans. You're seeing it the single most successful US Diaspora group, Nigerian Americans. My Indian American friends are always a little insulted at this, but that's a great example where there's already, if you look at culture and you look at trade and gradually you will see investment. Those flows will not stop in Europe, but they will not be dominant in the same way. So the other big shift in assumptions is kind of who's the center, who's the most important. Already certainly we have shifted. It was a Barack Obama who wanted the pivot to Asia. That's never quite worked. And I certainly, I actually think if you are focusing on Asia, you should look east and focus on Asia and Europe rather than assuming it's a choice of one or the other. But certainly focusing on Asia and Japan, Korea, also Australia, India and China. That's already a way that this generation, these two, the 21st century Americans, millennials and Gen Z think about what the world looks like. It's not us, Europe and the rest of the world. It may be if you're American, American at the center, but you're looking equally east and west and South. It means, as I said, many of these new Americans come from countries that had a bad col experience with Europe and with the United States. Latin America does not have the same vision of the United States that the United, my version of the United States had of itself, for sure. And then similarly, this whole idea that transatlantic is in the north. Why, why aren't we looking at Latin America and Africa or Europe and Latin America or the US and Africa? As I said, many new African diasporas and an assumption that Europe's wars are the world's wars. No, we heard very clearly from the Indian foreign minister that he did not think that the war in Ukraine was the world's war. We heard that from multiple countries around the world. Even after the US had been courting many of those countries. They were, yes, we're sorry about this, but we've got plenty of wars or catastrophes on our own continents much closer to home that are direct, directly important to us. If you get in a taxi in the United States, you are going to be talking with an Ethiopian driver about Ethiopia's conflicts far more than you'll ever talk about Ukraine. So I'm going to close with this to say these are long term trends. I cannot tell you what the formative assumptions of this century's foreign policy establishment are going to be. I can tell you they're going to be much more, more global. They're probably going to be much more focused on global existential threats like climate change. But mostly, and it might be AI mostly I can't tell you because we haven't had the catastrophes that we need to have to crystallize those kinds of assumptions because that in the end is what ends up shaping what people think is the most important. Covid for some, probably not enough yet. But I can tell you it's not going to look like the 20th century for the United States or for any country the United States interacts with. So thank you very much.
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B
Great, Anne Marie, you put a lot on the table there. It's a very kind of provocative argument. I want to drill down, but I think maybe before I ask a couple questions about the argument, I'm curious how you kind of ended up. I mean, this is really, it's A lecture about changes domestically in the US that are driving things. And normally you would think like a director of policy planning would be focusing on pressures and developments kind of outside that are pushing and pulling the United States in different directions, pulling it towards Asia, let's say, away from Europe. I'm just kind of curious when and how you came to this. Was this kind of partly a function of your experience in government and kind of the nature of the deliberations inside the White House or inside the State Department? What was left out? Or is this a product of kind of being outside in a sense? I know you're still in the belly of the beast, you're inside the Washington beltway, but it's different.
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I live in Princeton. That every man's.
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I mean, maybe just kind of how you came to this, because, I mean, it's really from the inside out. Out, it seems the story, as opposed to from the outside in now.
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That's right.
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And I come to it because I run New America and New America was founded in 2019, and it was really, I'm sorry, 1999. Between 1920 and 2020. It was founded in 1999, so roughly 25 years ago on the premise that we needed a new generation of public intellectual, but also on the premise of the next America. And already you could see demographic changes, but domestically, as we look at our politics and these changes are at the root of a huge amount of our upheaval. I mean, really, there's no one explanation for populism, for right wing populism, I think. But if you just look at the white, white Christian nationalist rhetoric, which is very open and is not thought of as racist, it's thought of as nationalists, this is our country, we are a white Christian country and we are being taken over. So part of it is just understanding that, but also just looking at the New America and I mean, I'm looking at this audience. If I were in the United States and I had an audience of basically baby boomers and Gen X, it would look very different than if I had an audience of millennials and Gen Z and that. So it's sort of staring you in the face, I think. And I'm just so struck by how little other people think about it. Whereas for me it's a reality. The other is I'm half Belgian and I'm keenly aware my husband's half Hungarian. But we're very aware of how much our European origins have shaped us. Now, we in particular cause we're second generation, but just more broadly, when you look at, I mean, also even look at Downton Abbey and the popularity of something like that. That is really an artifact of a particular time. And I think I'm very aware of that from my own background.
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B
I want to push you a little bit on kind of where you ended. And you said, well, I can't predict where this is going, going to go. And I get that. And nobody's got a crystal ball. But I was thinking about what the maxims kind of, let's say that what the Blob shared, the worldview that the Blob shared. And I guess to me there's three things that jump out that for the last 80 plus years, let's say one is that American security was contingent on European security, something that was certainly not accepted, let's say, before World War II in any kind of systematic, programmatic way. The idea that America was American leadership was indispensable, indispensable because nobody else could provide public goods in the same way or would. And third, I think the idea that for all of its limitations, America was a force for good. I think that people kind of accepted or believed that. And so I guess the question is these, the Gen Xs, the millennials, I.
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C
Mean.
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B
So maybe the question is not so much do they, what is it that they believe, but how much do they embrace this? I mean, have we like arrived at some point where it's like a jump ball or something, you know, which direction we're going to go? Or. I mean, my sense is probably the third one. Most Americans, no matter what the cultural heritage and so forth, probably buy into the third one still. America is a force for good. But maybe the other two are under assault in a sense, or are unraveling. I guess I'm just trying to get a fix on where you think younger people are going or what it is. Is it that Hispanic Americans want their flag in the hemisphere and Asian Americans want to plan it with respect to East Asia and the European Americans will still look this way. And so the US Instead of having a compass set in one direction, is going to be all over the place.
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A
Okay, that's a lot. And we should probably ask the audience maybe more as a boomer. So let me take the middle one, because I do think that my generation of Americans, if you were interested in foreign policy, and this was very true in the State Department, and it's been true of my 40 years in and around the establishment or the Blob, when there's a crisis in the world, there's this reflexive, what are we going to do about it? I was in the State Department when there was the earthquake in Haiti. I wasn't there with the tsunami. But a humanitarian crisis, certainly a conflict, not always, but even a conflict in Sudan. The State Department Department is thinking, what do we do? And other countries far too often depends because they're colonial relationships, but far too often are thinking, what are the Americans gonna do? And that has to change because that I think even already by the end of, well after the Iraq war, young people were very clearly, we are not the global policeman. This is a disaster. And that's true. You see that with Trump supporters. And it isn't isolationism, per. The United States sent tens of thousands of US Military into conflicts that in the end, it's not clear why and it's not clear that we won. So that idea that it's up to us, I think that definitely changes. I also think the kinds of problems. It can't be up to us. I mean, we can't. The United States could do a lot more than it's doing on climate change, but it can't fix it alone. It can't fix pandemics alone. So, depending even where you're looking, you know, I would never have thought that Trump would be able to get as many Republicans to turn on Ukraine as he did and on Russia as he did. But I think part of that is, again, the younger MAGA folks, they don't have the. If they have the assumption that we should be fixing problems, we have the assumption that there's lots of free riders. And I don't. And that, again, you can find that on the left as well as the right. And you can find on the left, left, the we did more good than harm. We did more harm than good, which I don't share. And I definitely don't think the idea that if Europe's security is necessary for ours, again, Trump's paying more attention to Venezuelan drug traffickers. In many ways, this idea that we are a force for good in the world, I certainly hope so. I believe it. I believe. Believe it not through military intervention. I believe it in if we can get our own house in order, I believe it. But that's the other thing. I don't think young Americans are looking at us and seeing a great model for the world. I'm not certain. You know, obviously in Vietnam, many did not either. But this arc of overall all we were heading in the right direction. I still believe we are and can be. But it requires our focusing on ourselves domestically for at least the next couple of three, four decades.
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B
Well, just to pick up on that, then. I mean, what. And this really, just thinking about this whole talk, what are the implications for folks on this side of the pond? I mean, if, if the tethering of the United States to Europe is weakening, of those ties are weakening, what does that mean on the outside? What does Europe do? The implication here, Trump's answer to that is Europe needs to fend for itself, it seems. Or that's the America first version of it.
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A
So Trump's a transactionalist. I do believe there's still a strong values oriented constituency. And again, you can find this among faith groups also. I mean, you find it actually right now, but just in unusual ways. But on the far right, evangelicals toward Israel, for instance, that's value based in many ways. And of course there's huge opposition. Um, I don't think it means. So I don't think it means Trump's kind of transactional. Do whatever you do. We'll, you know, I'll get what I can get. Give me some critical minerals, maybe I'll support you. No, I think that really is anomalous. But if you look at Marco Rubio as a good example, who, you know, is very much focused on Latin America, and not surprisingly, I think there's an assumption of, yes, you have been our traditional allies. I think there is still support for NATO within the Republican Party as a whole, and the party's changing, but it is absolutely, you are going to have to pull your weight and you're going to have to build your own defense. And I think that is right. If I were advising European leaders, I would say you're crazy to be defending on the United States in the same way in this century, and it's not good for you. And you have the advantage of developing a new defense infrastructure that, that hopefully can leapfrog a lot of the big missiles and aircraft carriers of the 20th century. So I think it's much more going to be, we are still with you, but we are a very important power. We are not the power. And we need allies. And we need not to assume that countries are with us based on our values or based on historical alliances. Positive is that we'd be a country that reflects the whole world and ideally connects the whole world. To me, it's a far more positive vision, but it's going to take quite a while to get there.
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B
Let's open it up here. We'll take one online. Go ahead, Chris.
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A
Hi. I'm interrupting this event to tell you about another awesome lse podcast that we think you'd enjoy, lseiq asks social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. Question like, why do people believe in conspiracy theories? Or can we afford the super rich? Come check us out. Just search for lseiq wherever you get your podcasts. Now back to the event.
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B
One sec.
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D
Just to say there are about 110 people watching online from countries including Egypt, France, Belgium, Spain, Slovakia, Australia, Kenya, Turkey, the US And Canada.
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A
The Belgian is disowning here.
- [45:59]
D
This questioner remains anonymous. But they ask, given these broader changes in return and emergence of regional powers and with the changing worldviews within the US and globally, does Aukus have relevance as a cheese alignment? It was formulated by baby boomer policymakers in the US The UK and Australia. Thank you.
- [46:16]
B
Okay, hold that thought, Aukus. We'll take that gentleman right back there. Yeah.
- [46:25]
D
Thank you very much. Really enjoyed your talk. So my question is actually about the defining experiences of some of the, of the elites of, you know, that, that you mentioned. Clearly World War II was a major tragedy, calamity, catastrophe, whatever word you want to use it. And you know, the, that fact, fact that there was appeasement before Chamberlain, all of these matters clearly played a very important role in the thinking of, I guess, the US foreign policy establishment in the 20th century. But I guess many people outside of that circle wonder whether that became too much or they read the wrong lessons out of it. Because almost everybody or anything would be, oh, we are about to appease them. Let's not appease them. Let's go, go out and do something proactively or get aggressive, you know, whether it's Saddam Hussein or Putin or whatever it is, you know, so, so the reaction has always been, look, we better stop another Hitler from emerging. And that's totally understandable given what happened in the 20th century. But just is that something that might change with this, with this new.
- [47:39]
B
Let'S other hands out there oneself back. We'll take this gentleman right down here. Yeah. Okay.
- [47:50]
D
Thank you. First of all, I'm Shota. I study here at lse. So my question to follow up your discussion. So as you mentioned, America is trying to step down as a global policeman. My question is, doesn't that leave some kind of empty space there, empty room for other, let's say imperiums like China and Russia to step in?
- [48:16]
A
Is it this role?
- [48:18]
D
Thank you.
- [48:19]
B
So Aukus, the Munich analogy, or what's the replacement to the Munich analogy? I suppose. And I think this is, I've thought about this too. So if the US Pulls back. It leaves a vacuum. Yeah.
- [48:38]
A
Okay, so I love the Aukus question in part because I don't think Jake Sullivan would appreciate being called a boomer, but he is Gen X, so maybe qualifies. But I think that is a really a good question. And I'm not a huge Aukus fan. For one thing, I thought it was idiotic to exclude the French in the way that we did. And the French have their own strong South Pacific and Asian connections. So I thought that was stupid. But the thing that I would say about that is that was a particular dimension of the 20th century assumptions, which is the Anglosphere. I mean it was very clearly we're going to cut out the French and we're going to do this with the Australians and the British and we have the five eyes. That's still, that's another vision of how the world is organized where you have the five eyes and then you have the rest of the West. And so I did not think that that actually reflected how we ought to be thinking about organizing relations. But that comes to the third point and then I'll go back to appeasement, which is I am not suggesting the United States just pull in completely and sort of say you're on your own. Quite the Contra. Again, there are many groups in the United States now who are interested in many other conflicts than we have traditionally than again the east coast foreign policy establishment has paid attention to. That overall is probably a good thing because it's much better to be engaged in a way where a. You have more knowledge and this. You have to always be careful with diaspora politics because you can also get groups that fled a particular conflict that we've seen this with many countries and who have very strong views. But it can't be Biden's, we're back. It has to be. We are here and we care and we are powerful and we can work with our allies and, or we can support people in the region, preferably through regional organizations. And I don't mean just not the big ones. The Organization of African Unity is too big. You're not going to agree with 64 nations. You probably need smaller sub regional organizations. But I can see lots of ways in which you actually could restore peacekeeping, you could restore many of the rules we've had, but they're going to have to be agreed on by a wider group of nations. And the US is not to going. Going to be the player. We will be a very important player. And on appeasement, that's an interesting question. I certainly, I think the US has had a very strong kind of Churchillian streak that also shades into a just tough guy streak that has. Has not served us well in recent military conflicts. But I think, again, I do believe that part of being an American is being sincere and even sappy enough to believe in the Declaration of Independence and our values, and to think that you can, in fact try to advance those values. And that is going to mean, in some cases, saying, this shall not stand. It's just that we can't do it alone.
- [52:38]
B
Other questions? Hands. Let's take this woman right here. And yes, if you can just raise your hand.
- [52:47]
A
Yeah, hi.
- [52:49]
C
Wonderful talk, by the way. This is a bit more focused on the uk, but do you think that currently the Prime Minister is kind of being questioned and almost people, a lot of people are thinking of kicking him out, like getting new Prime Minister, which has happened quite a lot. But do you think that'll really affect the US's relationship, considering how close Starmer and Trump are, kind of the US's relationship with England, do you think that'll really affect it? In a way, what I'm trying to say is, like, the UK population sees America as a joke, basically, right now.
- [53:27]
A
With Trump, do you think fair.
- [53:31]
C
Do you think that that view will be taken over if the new Prime Minister comes into power?
- [53:38]
A
So one of the rules of being a former State Department person, and even a person as injudicious as I can be, is not commenting extensively on the politics of a country you don't understand. Well, what I would say is, is that I was very surprised that the government, the labor government here, took the, what I would call an appeasement approach to Donald Trump. I understand the difficulties of standing up to Trump on tariffs when you depend on the Americans still on Ukraine, I understand that trick trade off. Nevertheless, I would have preferred a more Churchillian manner. I was surprised that the British people didn't want sort of at least a more dignified kind of insistence on standing up against what is really just open bullying and should not stand. Whether that would change with a new Prime Minister, I really do think, though, depends more on the British people than on the person, him or herself. I hope, though, that Britain can find ways to be closer to the eu, both with tariffs, as it already will be and must be in a European defense community.
- [55:09]
B
Chris, let's take another question online.
- [55:13]
D
Thank you. This question comes from Fernando Herrero from the University of Salamanca in Spain, who asks what about changes in the mindsets of those more ethnically diverse Americans.
- [55:25]
B
Want to hold on to that Robert Faulkner, outcome. There's two Roberts. The two Roberts.
- [55:37]
D
Okay, Okay.
- [55:38]
A
I wanted to bring out the contrast.
- [55:40]
D
Between Anne Marie's vision for the future and that set out in the Congressional Research Service document published in July of this year, the key point of which was that the entity called Eurasia was by far the most important entity in the world for the United States because of population and economic power and also military power. And therefore, point number two. Two, the US Must, as its top priority, make sure that no other state can exercise hegemony over Eurasia. And that then led to the third point. It is the US that must exercise hegemony over Eurasia in order to ensure.
- [56:33]
A
That nobody else does.
- [56:35]
D
So this was the congressional research service Dr. Document in just a few months ago. And I wanted to get your sense.
- [56:44]
A
Of what's the significance of that document.
- [56:47]
B
It's very fitting that this question is asked here at the lsc, because this is actually Sir Helfa Mackinder's idea that no single country. Former Director, no single country or group of countries should be allowed to gain control of the Eurasian landmass or inside influence. Now, if that's the Congressional Service view, if that's what they're pushing, that's been American policy for 80 plus years. I think so. Yeah. So that question. And how about the woman right there in the white blouse or sweater? Yeah.
- [57:30]
C
Hi, my name is Monica. East coast educated, former foreign policy. I'm doing the Master of Public Policy. Yeah, I'm doing the Master of Public Policy here at the lse. I wanted to ask you about the rise of the brics, which you mentioned in your talk. I'm curious if the US were to pull back even slightly and other countries were to step up in multilateral leadership, whether you think current multilateral partnerships, the G7, for example, would continue to retain the relevance that they do. And also, this is just for my curiosity. You mentioned catastrophes that will shape the future of the world order. I am curious to know if you have any predictions as to what form those will take. Oh, boy.
- [58:17]
A
Well, I asked for it. It was a very broad talk. So to the question online, again, I think when you're talking about different ethnic and racial groups, you are walking a fine line between stereotypes and different cultural and life experiences. So on the one, you would never say, well, you know, you're an African American, you should be interested in Africa. Indeed, many of my African American friends, some are Russia experts and some are China experts, as it should be. So I don't think that's why you Cannot say, for instance, if you are an Indian American top foreign policy official, well, you're automatically going to be anti Pakistan or anti China. That said, if I am looking at an administration that has four or five top officials who are Indian American and no one who is Chinese American or other East Asian, I think that may be an issue. I would want to have a broader group. So I don't think you can make assumptions other than economic. Assumptions are easier to make. This is where business gets done, trade gets done, foreign investment gets done. I think you can assume, assume that simply through what their family and friends have paid attention to in the world, that is something that they will be more aware of. But I don't think you can just say they're gonna take a specific political position with respect to specific countries. So it's broader. I think you can describe broad strokes, but not specific ones. Um, Eurasia, that I've got to look for this. I have not seen this report. Um, who do you know who asked for it? I would certainly want to know. Yes, definitely. I mean, it's CRS is very good, but it also responds to someone. The main thing is I do not think that 80% of Americans or higher would know what Eurasia is. It's just not a term. I mean, we're not terribly literate in general on foreign policy, but that's just not the way people think of the world. As I said, you think of Europe, you think of now the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia. So yeah, it sounds kind of 19th century to me. But even there it is not the way foreign policy is formulated. The other point, I do think it means when China moves to toward Europe, we've gotten worried in various ways at the same time. You are looking at the rise of India goes to the BRICS question, which I will come back to the Middle east countries are going to play both ways. You want to make sure that they're using our technology as much as China's technology. But it's too diverse entity several continents to be able to be useful, I think. But I will definitely go read the report and I certainly don't think that the many groups I've been talking about would think about it that way in part because they're looking at a very specific part of Eurasia. The BRICS question and the Middle powers is really interesting and I've thought a lot about it. There's a very happy scenario where you say the middle powers will take over the General assembly, they'll bypass the Security Council. I think that is true. They will find enough consensus among different groups that you will actually be able to get some kind of UN action in different areas. The counter is there'll be just constant fighting and there's fighting among the BRICs. And India and Russia and China really are in a different place than India, South Africa, Brazil, Brazil, I think that the US Self preoccupation, just put it that way, is really creating options for a Brazil or for India or a Mexico. But also I'd put more faith in some of the smaller countries who are very adept at organizing coalitions with maybe one big country or one big country, one middle, and a number of small, smaller. The other thing I would look to, though, is it can't just be countries if those coalitions are organized more by middle or semi. It's hard to describe, call them middle powers. They're going to include business, philanthropy, civic groups. I've written a lot about that. But if you're going to build coalitions for problem solving, you've got to bring in more than states. I think there's more room to do that when you. You're smaller.
- [63:32]
B
I think we should give the other Robert a chance.
- [63:39]
D
It's very generous, Peter. Thank you so much. Robert Faulkner from International Relations. One comment, one question. The comment is, I'm glad to hear you think Britain could have stood up to Trump's bullying, but perhaps you read a bit too much into Britain's economic and political strength there. I think you've got a good deal out of that agreement. At least Keir Starmel must be thanking that. At least he got Trump off his back there. So that's the comment, but the question is about the title of your lecture and been mulling over this, because I'm still not sure in what ways you argue the east coast foreign policy lead has come to an end. So could you elaborate that a bit? Is it about the elite having been pushed aside or the new people coming in, the younger people you've talked about just not being part of it? Is it a kind of rip placement that's gone on? Could it come back in that case? Or is it that the elite itself no longer has a consensus view of how America's role in the world should look like that multilateral consensus you talked about? So where's the structural shift that you see? Because if it's the latter, that's more worrying from an internationalist perspective than the former.
- [64:50]
B
Should we take some other questions? How about in the very back there? We need to go to the back.
- [65:00]
D
Actually. Thank you, Mr. Faulkner. This is Sort of a specification of his question. Particularly when I hear elites and American, I think of the family dynasties. And I want to draw your attention particularly to the Kennedy family, who just had RFK Jr. The ring and RFK Jr. Who ran a relatively successful campaign. And Jack Schlossberg, who's running a Jack Kennedy type campaign, is appealing to young Americans. And even outside of the Kennedy family, you have Gavin Newsom, who probably shops at the same Joseph A. Bank. And you have Jon Ossoff, who's an LSE alumni, who again, fits this sort of like, I don't want to say WASPy East Coast Foreign policy, even though they're not East Coasters, but they could fit that demographic. Do you think that their successes or potential successes in 2028 are going to be blips or are they potentially actually a shift from the old world being Europe to the old world being the America of the 1950s and 1960s?
- [65:53]
A
No, I like that.
- [65:54]
B
And maybe just to kind of follow on to this. So maybe the third question, I mean, so how should we understand. I know you don't really. You didn't talk about Trump. So this is like the 600 pound gorilla in the room is. I mean, should we understand Trump as a kind of symptom of what you're describing in America First? I mean, to the extent to which it's a challenge to the east coast establishment. I mean, it seems to me that it is. At the same time, it doesn't seem to me to be representing. I don't know, I might be missing it, but like the diversity that's out there. So it's kind of like a pocket notice. I haven't noticed that.
- [66:45]
A
Women and people of color.
- [66:47]
B
So it's a kind of like pox on both your houses or something. So, I mean, how do you fit, let's say, the America first movement in this?
- [66:58]
A
Okay, yeah, good questions.
- [67:00]
C
All right.
- [67:01]
A
So any really good talk, the presenter comes away amending it for the next time, which will be tomorrow morning. And I think I should talk about. So I think this is a good point. It's the decline, not the end. It is definitely the decline. And again, I think I just should have talked about the establishment because I'm really talking about a very particular piece. There's still gonna be plenty of people educated at top schools from the east coast who will be in foreign policy. But I definitely, again, I think the Blob was losing its power under Obama and that you might not have expected, but his own formation. And actually those folks who were closest to him, Ben Rhodes is a good example. Had a different view, as Samantha Power has a different view of the world in much more. Less Europe focused, for sure. She's Irish originally, but more global, more focused on developing countries, and I would say less automatically European, even under Obama. Biden is the anomaly. Biden belonged in 1996. That's where he was, and that's where the core people around him were. Jake's a good example of somebody who is obviously not. He's from Mistake Minnesota, but educated all those same schools. But who was Jake's mentor? Les Gelb. Right. And Richard Holbrooke. I mean, these folks were still. That is the 20th century. That no longer holds. So Biden's sort of showing you what was and is not gonna be Trump is absolutely a reaction. I mean, in some ways, exactly. The people Trump has said, nope, no more women, no more folks of color. All of this was de. So we're gonna get rid of everybody and we're gonna go back to really good people, good white men who can be in charge. With Marco Rubio as an exception. That's, again, that's reacting. That is not. I think that's part of the turbulence and the way he expresses America first and the transactionalism, I don't think holds, but the challenging of the assumptions. I. And another place you really saw this, and you're seeing this is where there's some weird splits. Most of my African American friends and other friends of color, including other, certainly other European American friends, but have a very different view of Israel. They look at Israel as a colonial power. As a colonial power, much closer to the experience that their families have had, or seeing the US as an imperial power. And that was true in the Biden administration. You saw it in various places in the State Department. Very much generational, but that was already there. Now Trump oddly goes in the other direction, but he's doing that going back to white evangelicals. So I don't think you can tell exactly where we'll be right now. But I think both Biden's backlog, sort of the throwback of Biden and Trump, are also reactions to these bigger changes.
- [70:54]
B
Great, Sarah.
- [71:02]
C
Thank you, Sarah. Hobo government department here at dlse. So, I mean, I was really, really interested in this political sociology, almost the political or foreign policy elite that you're presenting. And I sort of thought, well, how does that extend and apply beyond the context? So we have demographic changes in Europe, for example, so does that mean that Europeans equally like, does this travel? Or is it because the US Is a sort of country of immigrants. So it's specific to them that their own sort of their heritage shapes them. Or would you also expect that Europe will start orienting itself in line with the sort of shifting demographics of European societies? And that also sort of raises the question again, why is Trump not more pro European and his administration, given that that seems to, as you acknowledge yourself, to be a return to that white European heritage when you look at his administration. So why is he not sort of saying, yes, this is what shaped me and the people I surround myself with. So why is he sort of continuing that trend with focusing away from that? Some of you.
- [72:10]
A
That's a great point.
- [72:12]
B
Hold on to that one. The gentleman right here in the center. Yeah, I've just about hit everybody in that row. I need to go ahead.
- [72:24]
D
Yeah. Thank you. So actually I worked for number of years at the Congressional Research Service. So you knew you were going to have someone who been there. But, but, but, but I specialize in the steel industry.
- [72:44]
B
So.
- [72:44]
D
And I think, but I probably know who wrote that report. I think that I, I think you, you, the one major disappointment I've had in this whole discussion is that, and some of my two neighbors have touched on it. But you, you haven't really got to the point yet, which is, look, the big issue now is between the US.
- [73:11]
A
And China, not Europe, not Africa and.
- [73:16]
D
Not even, quite frankly, East Asia and certainly not Russia. Finished. So I mean, Russia's got some bombs, but that's about it. So, so the question, so that's, that's the question. The question is why haven't you focused more on the big division between the US And China and the, well, that's really the basic question. You should, I think, focus more on the US And China as the key division issues. And just to say that I am an expert, LLC alumnus.
- [74:01]
B
Okay. And so let's go ahead and take a question online from Chris, right here, right behind you. Great.
- [74:09]
D
So this question is from Anthony Valian, who is an LSE external alum in 2029. Could we see another big switchback like when Biden came in after the first Trump administration.
- [74:18]
B
Right. And coming on the heels of the election last week. Yeah, yeah. Where young people really swung. I mean, everybody knows New York, but it's true in Virginia and in New Jersey as well. So a big movement there and I guess you could say also Hispanic voters. Okay.
- [74:42]
A
Yes. Although very hard to read from those particular states.
- [74:49]
C
So.
- [74:52]
A
First point. Absolutely. I think Europe will change, not to the same extent. The numbers are smaller, but I can see a 20, 30 years from now a transatlantic relationship that is Europe, Africa, including North Africa, of course, but also Sub Saharan Africa, the US Latin, Central and Latin America, and then the South South. So it's the full Atlantic hemisphere. Indeed. If I were planning and there are people who are thinking about this, I would be bringing together the younger leaders, the European younger leaders, the American younger leaders, and with African and Latin American leaders. For one thing, it's important that American non European, non traditional or non white European American leaders understand the changes in Europe as well. When I go back to Brussels, it is unrecognizable from the Brussels I grew up in, in part because the whole central area was originally Zaire and now Congo, now Congo, Congolese, Belgians, and the same obviously here in Britain and the Netherlands. So I think that's very important and should be built on as a plus. I mean, again, you're not seeing that kind of immigration into China or Russia. So I do expect that. I think you, you see little bits of it. But again, and particularly when you're talking Gen Z, it's way too soon for these folks to really, really have power. Your question about Trump is a great one. And I hadn't, because obviously he really cared about the royal visit. He really cared about that. But why? And he does. He was very favorable about immigrants from Norway as opposed to other places, particularly he said as much in the first Trump administration. Administration. I think part of it is Trump. And you've seen this a little bit before. You actually saw it with George W. Bush, who was certainly the elite, but had been in Texas, the folks who've rejected Trump, who he is just dying to get back at. They are all of us who are very European, who are sophisticated, who have a kind of many Americans feel this way, sort of an old world sensibility that they feel, feel very much not at home with. So all I can think. And also he hates the eu, right? He hates any kind of supranational entity and he gets along well with Macron. It may not be sort of anti Europe as a whole so much as anti European. And again, this sense that the Europeans are ripping us off on China. So this is one and I'll just be provocative. Look, the United states spent the 20th century with an enemy, certainly post 45, but really 1933 through as soon as the wall fell, the late 1990s, and then again under George W. Bush before 9, which then refocused us. Suddenly China was the peer competitor. You had to have a rival of equal size. And that has been certainly Obama did not take that view. He then shifted, realizing that he was being taken advantage of. I think that is true. I think, yes, there are many things that China does that the world needs to push back on. But the idea that the global polit in this century should be focused on a US Chinese rivalry is something the US Tech companies would love to see because that gives them everything they need, something the military industrial contracts would love to see. And I can't for the life of me see why the rest of the world should be oriented on that axis. I just think it serves lots of domestic interests. And I'm not saying the United States should just let China do what it wants. But I do not see China invading countries. I see China establishing tributary relationships. It has always done. I think there are lots of ways you can push back on that. I think a lot. You know, if I were an African country and China were offering me a lot of what it's offering, I'd take it too, because the US Certainly isn't doing so. So I would develop counters. But this notion that this now are the two poles, that to me is if anything, a 20th century hangover.
- [79:52]
B
Alexander.
- [79:59]
A
Oh, and I didn't answer 2029, but I'll come back to that.
- [80:02]
D
So look, many, many thanks. I mean, I wanted to again ask about the east coast foreign policy elite because I was sort of reflecting on sort of JD's, Princeton and prep schools. And if you kind of gaze around the Department of Defense or the State Department or the interagency, actually an awful lot of people are certainly in two of those three categories, a bit less prep school. Right. Fewer people with kind of in East Hampton that they go to at the weekend. But you're still talking about an awful lot of people, whether they're political appointees or career officials who've been to the big schools or who have JDs. And so my question to you is a little bit, is like to what extent has that community, is that community decaying and gone, or is that community simply going to be reframed by the political impetus that you, I think, aptly described? That there will be a different set of political decision makers sitting on the Hill and sitting in the White House?
- [80:54]
A
Very good question.
- [80:56]
B
So we've got 2029 and that. Let's take another question right back there.
- [81:11]
C
Hi. So I asked this as somebody who grew up 15 minutes from Princeton, so it comes from a good place. But in terms of the east coast part of the title and how that's shifting and a little bit looking towards 2029 because a lot of people are discussing Gavin Azinace and Gretchen Whitmer, which are from the Midwest and the west coast, respectively.
- [81:29]
A
So if it's not going to be.
- [81:31]
C
The east coast, how are the other regions of the United States going to step up and how are they going to evolve to be able to get there? And is this something that sort of the old guard of foreign policy is going to welcome or that they're going to challenge?
- [81:43]
A
So that's a very good. It's a related question, I should say. I grew up in Virginia. I haven't lived in Princeton all my life. I've lived, but it's the same. It's the East Coast. So let me start with 2029. I'm on one project 2029 and there are at least three others. And I think that we need a project 2050, not a project 2029. I think we need to be looking much bigger than the Democrats have nothing quite close to the scale of change that Project 2025 brought about. And if it's just kind of pulling back again, that, if anything, I think guarantees the U.S. has less weight in the world. Schultz in 2022, after the U.S. invasion of Ukraine and he announced the 2% and the Zeitenwende in Germany, he'd said in his speech, we have to do this because we can't count on the Americans. And in 2024. And he was right. And if you see America flipping back again, you are not going to see the end of the maga. You are simply going to see a very close election in the other direction. We need much bigger political shifts and reforms. But even if, that said, if it's a Newsom, if it's any of the people I can think of, they are not going to be elected unless they have a better account of our role in the world and one that is not America first, but it's definitely not America the indispensable it will be around allies. I suspect it will be more around different regions. If you are pitching for the Hispanic vote, and you absolutely have to be, there is no one Hispanic vote, as we've seen pretty clearly. And there's a big gender divide there as well. But you'd better be talking not only about immigration, but about how you are in fact engaging with Central America and Mexico in a different way. So I think you could maybe see the beginnings of a sort of 21st century foreign policy, but I don't yet see the kinds of kind of anchors that we're talking about and the somebody asked me about, okay, what crises I see, I see climate disaster. That's so great. We are talking about millions of people on the move. I think I probably see an AI disaster. I hope that is short of the equivalent of a nuclear attack. And I can't tell you where that's going to send us, but it's going to lead people to think more globally and in terms of global regulation. But so I don't think 2029 is going to be any kind of really dramatic change. And I would say the Europeans do not count on that. You're crazy to think that even if, I mean Biden really was the last of his time. But then that goes to your question, which is a very good question about a lot of the people I looked at. Like George Kennan's a great example. So George Kennan, a pillar of the east coast establishment, but he's actually from Indiana or somewhere, somewhere in the Midwest and Wisconsin. Okay. And he's miserable, right? He's miserable at the. Okay, I probably got Kenan experts here, but he really didn't like his prep school, Princeton, all of that. And yet he was socialized in. So your point is? Well, okay, so now if I look at the Ivy Leagues, many of them are already 50%, 48% European American. They reflect the population shifts, but they're still at Ivy League universities and those have very, very long shadows. Again, I think this is too strong. I should call it the decline. I truly believe that you will not only get a more global perspective and again more of a focus on developing countries not as other but as countries that are countries that are growing and are important in the world. And I think you will get more of an anti colonial kind of reflex which goes to my answer to the other point that if I were thinking about how to maintain close European relations, I'd be busy showing young Americans that young Europeans don't look as the way they may assume Europeans look either and also come from a much wider range. So I do think there will still there will be more change. There may be be a. It won't be geographic. It may be still a kind of class division, but I hope not. I mean there too a lot of those schools are trying to take a wider range of people and on the regions. Yeah. So again there's something called the. What is it, 10 across. It's a project of Arizona State University and it looks at the 10 major cities from Los Angeles to Miami going through Phoenix and the Texan cities and says look, these cities we don't normally think of. We normally think of east to west. We don't think north to south. But they have far more in common climactically, culturally and in terms of foreign policy, I expect to see that part of the US Speaking more together. Partly that's Los Angeles and Miami. That's not a region exactly, but it is definitely the part of the United States I was saying earlier, I don't think you can survive in Miami and not that easily in Los Angeles without speaking Spanish if you are a business person or a person or a politician for sure. And all the signs are in both languages. So I would expect more there. Also interesting in terms of recent developments, whether you might not see the same thing across the top with much closer ties to Canada. We're going to have much closer ties to Canada. Hopefully not of the kind this administration has been projecting. But Canada is going to be a much more important country for a lot of reasons, and I would expect that, too.
- [88:35]
B
I think we're going to leave it on that very positive note for Canada. We've hit 8 o'. Clock. Anne Marie, this was terrific. I think we've made you go all over the United States, back and forth, north and south, the east and west. It's been terrific. Thank you.
- [88:49]
A
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