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First is if this is a revolution, revolution is changing the identity of all players. No political party or actor is going to get out of the revolution in the way it started. You can have Lenin after Kerensky. You cannot have Kerensky after Lenin. It is a totally different story. And the Democratic Party is going to be as dramatically transformed by the Trumpian revolution, for good or for bad, in the way the Republican Party is.
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And now the good fight with Yasha Monk. Well, you are in for an intellectual feast today. To help us make sense of the dizzying developments around the world and in the United States, I asked one of my favorite semi regular podcast guests to come back on the show. Ivan Krushdev, as many of you will know, is the chairman of of the center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, a permanent fellow at the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna, and just one of the most surprising original commentators on how to understand the world. We had a conversation about whether there are parallels between the United States today and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, whether we should think of Donald Trump as a kind of Gorbachev figure, or perhaps a Gorbachev in reverse, about why we should think of Trump's government as a revolutionary one and how it is that revolutionary governments really take on a dynamic of their own. We talked about the condition and the future of Europe, how it is that Trump signifies a real break for Europe's self conception and the basic European model, and whether Europe is going to be able to reinvent itself after the paywall. We also talked about whether China can take advantage of this moment using what Ivan describes as the end of the the long 20th century to turn itself into the leader of the 21st century, and why demographics, among other things, may prove an obstacle to doing that. And finally, we talked about whether or not Donald Trump has now earned his place in the history books and whether those history books will feature him in the way that he hopes they will. To support this podcast, to get access to those extra parts of the conversation, which, believe me, this week even more than usually are worth listening to. Please become a paying subscriber. Please support the work we do here. And if you do that today, you even get a special discount. Go to www.yashamonk.substack.com thegoodfight for 25% off your your annual subscription that makes this podcast cost you about as much as a nice cup of coffee you brew at home, not even one you buy at Starbucks. That's jaschamunk.substack.com thegoodfight for 25% of your annual subscription. Thank you so much for listening. Ivan, welcome back to the podcast.
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Thank you for inviting me back.
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So the last time that you were on the podcast, we spoke about what Trump's election might mean for the New World Order. But I think even though we understood that election could be a very, very important turning point at the time, perhaps we underestimated just the impact it was going to have on a host of issues, from world trade to the relationship between the United States and Europe. Help us think first through this moment and what it means.
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Listen, my general feeling was that we are facing a revolutionary government. It's a revolutionary government in the form of the imperial court. This is why it's so difficult to recognize its revolutionary nature. But the most important about the revolutionary government, in my view, are three things. First, you are not running a revolution. Revolution is running you, which means that you enter a certain type of actions and basically you get radicalized by the minutes. And I do believe even Trump probably was surprised of what he was doing because he know what he wanted to achieve, but it's very much also responding to what others are doing to you. Secondly, speed is critical. Well, normally, basically, when you talk about the revolution, you're talking about the direction, what they want to achieve. When you are living in a revolution, the speed is the overwhelming thing. And I do believe Trump was very much kind of aware about this. But certainly, and this is my last point, in every revolution, there always more than one revolution. In a system where you have the revolution of the radical populist conservatives, but you have the mask people, but you have also many other kind of persons and players who see the momentum and who believes that they can shape this momentum. And I do believe this has happened. And this is quite interesting is that exactly because of the fact that Trump can be everything at the same time, that allows for the change to be so much profound, but also so difficult to be figured out.
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That's a really interesting point. It always struck in my mind that when people try to explain somebody like Viktor Orban in Hungary, who was a leader of the democratic revolution in 1989 and then turned on liberal democracy when he was reelected as prime minister, they thought of it. They had trouble thinking, understanding it, because it felt like he was a traitor to the cause that he had advanced as a young man. And you always argued that actually you can understand these developments in Central Europe by disentangling the different strains of the revolution of 1989 and realizing that one of those strains was a liberal democratic one, but another one was an anti colonial one against the Soviet Union. And the third one was a kind of national conservative, religious one. And that makes a lot more sense of the trajectory of somebody like Orban when we're talking of 1989. I just had a thought. Does it make sense to think of Trump as a Gorbachev or perhaps a Gorbachev in reverse? Right. Is he a figure that takes control of an empire, a country, a hegemon that has a lot of power, but actually, whether deliberately or inadvertently, dismantles its standing in the world system?
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Yes. Thank you very much for this question. Because recently when I was thinking about Trump more and more, I do believe that you understand Trump. You should try to understand it. But he's anti Gorbachev and Gorbachev at the same time. On one level, he's ideologically classical anti Gorbachev. Listen, on one side you have Gorbachev, the communist uparatchik, a young man after very much three old men dying on the throne of the Soviet power. And he comes and he basically is much more liberal than anybody expected. He started to fell in love with the regime, with the democratic democracies around him. Secondly, he's doing this paradoxically because he believes in the power of the socialist ideas. The most important thing about Gorbachev is that he destroyed communism exactly because he believes in it. He believes that if the socialist ideas are going to be divorced from the sclerotic party state, it is going to flourish. And he was incredibly popular in the beginning, and he was a very indecisive man. And everybody was asking about this. So this is one Gorbachev, Gorbachev, which was the internationalist, the person who basically is everything that Trump is not. But keep in mind also that Trump was totally fascinated by Gorbachev. When Gorbachev come on the official visit to the United States, Trump asked for a meeting and even one prank after that, dressed like Gorbachev and went to the Trump Tower and Trump went to meet him. So in a strange way, there was a fascination on the Trump with Gorbachev. And here comes Trump as Gorbachev and not as anti Gorbachev. What is important is that both of them believe that the only way to change our country is to change the world. In a strange way, both of them are very much agreeing on this. Secondly, in order to understand Trump as Gorbachev, this is very important to see how Gorbachev was working in the eyes of East European communist elite or Soviet elite. There was a guy who probably names nobody remember Gorgli Khachov, who was one of his colleagues. What these people were seeing when they were seeing Gorbachev, they're seeing some person who is basically breaking the Soviet state because divorcing party from the state ended in an incredible chaos. And economic crisis was deepened under Gorbachev in a certain way. The biggest cues for goods and others happened at the late 1980s. Secondly, Gorbachev, from the point of view of the orthodox communists basically betrayed the allies. If we're going to really go with these comparisons very much, you are going to see that in a certain way today Trump is negotiating the partition of Ukraine almost in the same way Gorbachev was negotiating the unification of Germany. He was going there very much using this to show to the other side how many important things that they can do outside of Germany. In the same way, basically Trump is telling to the Russians, listen, I'm just using Ukraine to tell you what kind of a great friendship we can have in Arctic and so on and so on. And at the end of the day basically Gorbachev succeeded to change, but the result was also that Soviet Union disappeared. The Soviet system collapsed. What is different, very important between two of them is that while Gorbachev didn't like the Soviet Union in the way it was, he believed strongly in a kind of strengthen the socialist ideas which turned to be wrong. And to be honest, the best analysis of the failure of Gorbachev was not produced in the west and it was not produced in Russia, it was produced in China. Chinese were obsessed with trying to understand why did the Soviet Union collapse. Chinese leadership produced a six series documentary which was discussed in every single party organization. Because while for the west and for all of us in Eastern Europe, the end of communism was a historical inevitability because of non competitiveness of the regime. This was Frank Fukuyama's idea at the end of history. For the Chinese it was a series of policy mistakes. And I'm saying this because there is something interesting about Trump. I don't know how much he really trusts the American system. I do believe that much more he has this kind of a catastrophic feeling that America is the biggest loser of globalization and his major task is to make America the winner of deglobalization.
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So let's go to this idea that in the Western reading the Soviet Union was sclerotic, was doomed to failure and Gorbachev was a kind of tragic hero in a sense because he thought that through his reforms he could save the Soviet Union. But he didn't see what he should have been able to see, which is that the Soviet Union was beyond repair, and therefore any attempt to reform it would in fact start the process of it falling apart. So he brought about the end of the evil empire, which is a heroic act, but to him it was a tragedy. And that's the kind of strange irony of Gorbachev, I guess, that brings us to the United States today. Is the United States today similarly sclerotic, which I think some of the Trump people seem to believe? They think that the established institutions, the old order, is so irredeemably broken that they need to be this revolutionary government because there's nothing to preserve. When do you make a revolution when you think that reform is a lost cause, because what preexists you is so irredeemably broken that the risks to a radical change are very, very limited. But is that right as an analysis? And if not, what will happen
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if
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the United States is not redeemed, broke in that kind of way? Will some of those institutions rear their head back and emerge from this stronger? Will it be a revenge of a kind of institutions, or is history more contingent than that? Was the Soviet Union, as the Chinese came to believe, not really irredeemably lost at all? It was because of Gorbachev's actions that it fell apart, and perhaps the United States could have persisted, but the revolutionary Gorbachevian and anti Gorbachevian government of Trump is going to break it nonetheless. How do we think about this aspect of the analogy?
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Listen, this is very important because the most interesting aspect starts to see what happened with the Chinese eyes. And the Chinese eyes was very interesting because Chinese elite, like the Soviet elite, didn't believe in kind of the success of the system anymore. They see their system as exactly sclerotic and losing. But it was very important. What they believe was the advantages of the system and disadvantages of the system. For Gorbachev, the advantage of the systems were the socialist ideas. And you should remember how many people on the European left particularly have been seeing this as the moment in which socialism, now who is going to be divorced by the Stalinist legacies and so on, is going to flourish. The Chinese Communists believe that the best thing about communism is the strong party state, because the strong party state can achieve things. And with them, you can make socialism, but your socialism is not something that is worth making. Probably you can try to use it to make capitalism. And this is in a way what they did. But for them, keeping the strengths of the state was critically important. From this point of view, what is happening in the United States is very interesting. I doubt if one of the great also way to understand the particularity of the Trumpian revolution is if you Compare with the 1970s. And from this point, if you Huntington's book American Politics, the promise of disharmony is critically important because he looks back at the America and there was a lot of turmoil and back then many people were saying that the system is beyond repair. And you're going to see this kind of a radicalism back then on the left. And this is the moment in which the trust in the American institutions really starting to decline dramatically. But what was interesting and Huntington was a very good saying this was the criticism of the American institutions and American policies were done from the point of view of American ideal rebels on the streets saying you didn't fulfill the promise. And then Huntington made this very important point. He said, if this is the case, American dream is not a lie. America is just a disappointment. What I don't see today is criticism of America from the point of view of the American ideal. In a certain way. I had the feeling that for a lot of Trumpian support, the very idea of the American dream now is kind of something that is not worth fighting for for many reasons. On the right, there is a lot of reluctance to accept America as the immigrant state. And on the left also, but also on the right there is a very strong kind of anti capitalism and particularly anti oligarchical capitalism story. So from this point of view, when it comes to how they perceive their countries, Americans remind me much more East Europeans and Soviets in the 1980s than the American rebels in the 1970s. And here is the story of the institutions at what the institutions can do and what they cannot do. I do believe that the major question is what you think about the American state. And strangely enough, Trump is sharing the view of the American state that comes from the Silicon Valley. And he gave to Musk the story that the only good public official is an algorithm. That it is the American state that is making America losing. It's very difficult. It's very difficult because in a strange way, what we see all over the world is just the opposite. The relations, of course, between the market and the states are changing. But the weak state and the small state is not the ideal in the way it was even some decades ago. And this is why I find this inconsistency, what they're doing with the federal institutions. Not that you don't have a waste, but do you have an alternative idea of state? And do you believe that this new digital State which is going to be much more AI friendly and so on is the one that American society is demanding for. Listen, I don't know the story with Gorbachev. We have this conversation because we know how it ended. Probably itch evented also differently. Funnily enough, Gorbachev believed that allying with the west was the only way also to save the territorial integrity of Soviet Union after the end of communism. Because what was going to keep the Soviet Union together if it's not a communist state? And honestly speaking, people like Bush Sr. Were very loyal in the way they were treating this. Remember his famous Kiev Chikhin speech in which he was going and telling Ukrainians, don't get independence, stay there. But you know, Emile Thurand, the famous French Romanian philosopher, used to say that history is the irony on the move in a certain way. Normally you feel betrayed, but you never know who's going to betray you.
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I'm really struck by your point about the state and I want to return to that. But I was even more struck by this idea that nobody is criticizing what is happening in the United States today in the name of American ideals. And that I think seems to me right. I mean, one point that people have made for a long time now about Donald Trump and his movement is that in some ways it's quite European. It is a much more European hard right than it is a traditional American right in key respects. And it doesn't, you know, one of the things, if the currency of a Trump movement is to be based, the least based thing, is to have a kind of Mr. Smith goes to Washington naive view of American ideals and goodness and the Constitution and restraint and good manners and so on. So the MAGA movement is in many ways even more than it is an attempt to own the libs, to own the left, a radical refutation of the kind of conservatism of John McCain, for example. Now, on the left, of course, we've had this movement for a number of years to argue that the shortcomings of America are not the injustices that need to be worked out as the arc of history inevitably bends towards justice, as it was in some ways meant to do from America's cradle, a sort of older left wing view, but rather the idea that the definition of America is not 1776, it is 1619. The definition of America is not the ideal that was laid into its cradle, but rather the shortcomings which have characterized it all along. And so if we have a competition between two political forces that have concluded that the American ideal is fraudulent and can't be realized. That does start to feel like sclerosis. That does start to feel like the end of a project. Now, perhaps it's premature. And I think a lot can depend on whether the opposition to Trump takes a position of defending American ideals and defending the American Constitution, of rediscovering the value of some of those ideas, or whether it goes all the way towards seeing the second incarnation of Trump as sort of another irrefutable piece of proof that those ideals were always naive.
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Listen, this is very interesting because one of the major question that was basically scaring everybody in the former Soviet Union after the collapse of the union was why nobody was fighting for it. All this idea of a big betrayal was why nobody was dying for communism. It was a communist country. This was people who were doing and talking for such a long time about this and suddenly nobody was dying for it. Nobody was really ready to risk anything for happened, and nobody understood how it happened. I'm saying this because there is something important that is saying today. And when we talk also at the level of the end of order, I'm asking myself, is this not all? This international order after the end of The World War II was also based on the existence of four exceptional states, not exceptional in the imagination only of their own citizens. Here I very much agree with Obama that every nation states basically believe themselves as exceptional. But there were four states that were perceived as exceptional in the eyes of Everybody else after 1945. Two of them were Soviet Union and the United States, because they were the one who owns the different versions of the future. And both of them were ideological state, one basically believing that the future is democratic capitalism, the other being basically the future that it is communism. In a strange way, the fact that everyone believes that history is on their side was probably also one of the reasons the Cold War never became hot. Because if you believe that history is on your side, better time tomorrow. Exactly. You should wait out the other side. You don't need to die now. It's this combination of the nuclear weapons and the feeling that history is on your side that was the major pillars of peace. But there were two other states. It was Germany, which was kind of the absolute villain, and it was Israel, the state, the newly created state of the Jewish people that have been the ultimate victim. All this for exceptionalism now in a certain way has disappeared. Soviet Union disappeared. And Putin's Russia is everything, but not any kind of a country based on the idea of the universalistic project. They don't want to transform the world. Putin probably is going to be happy to run the world, but he does not believe that Russia is the future of the world. And it's much more defending Russian civilization in the way he defines it than any type of universalism there.
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And he probably sees himself as defending himself against American universalism.
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Totally, totally. And he's fighting it. By the way, he's also extremely, extremely tough on Soviet universalism. If you're basically going to listen to his speech two days before he started the full fledged war on Ukraine, this was one of the most anti Soviet speeches that you can read. And the major story was with Soviet universalism betrayed Russian people. Russian people are the biggest victims of the Soviet project. So and then on the other side,
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that by the way, is an interesting point because there's this famous line that Putin thinks of the downfall of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century. And it makes him sound more nostalgic for the Soviet Union to Western audiences than he actually is. He's nostalgic for the imperial dimension of the Soviet Union, but not for its internal organization or for the dominant within the Soviet Union, but also in some senses genuinely self limiting role that Russian nationality played within the Soviet Union.
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Totally. Listen, there is a historian, Yuri Slevsky has this beautiful article some decades ago of the Soviet Union as a communal apartment. We're different basically ethnic groups and others has a room of their own and the Russians are controlling the hall and the toilets and the kitchen probably. But the most important story, and here of course is interesting, is that while the Russians were very much dominant in the Soviet project, on the other side, the Soviet project was also organized around the fear of the Russian nationalism. As a result of it, Russia was the only republic which didn't have a Communist party of their own. There never was a Russian Communist party during the Communist period with the exception of the last two years. And there was not a Russian government. There was a Ukrainian government, Belarusian government, Georgian government. So from this point of view, Russian nationalism was very easily allowing others to feel Russians in a way, if they speak the language. It was a very much more imperial identity. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, Russian nationalism was a latecomer. It was a very weak one. Russian starts basically really ending the boats and the Georgians and others who had this traditional nationalism. But when I go back to this exceptional states, Germany, Germany was exceptional. There was exceptional in a way, in two ways. They did the ultimate crime, the genocide, they did the Holocaust, but also they were the one who were ready to take the Responsibility for this. And the major story was as a result of it, Germany became the country which symbolizes the failure of a classical nationalism, militarism and so on. So peace became part of the German identity. And it was interesting to see how all the wars that we have around, be it Russia's war in Ukraine, be it the war in the Middle east, is becoming the crisis of the post war German identity. Germans felt kind of guilty for what they did to the Russians and the Ukrainians to the Soviets. But suddenly now this cannot be there when the Russians are attacking Ukraine. They felt so kind of guilty for what they did to the Jews. But this also makes it very difficult for them to take any critical position to the state of Israel when some others are basically accusing them of not doing this. And so in my view, all these exceptional states are not exceptional anymore. And Trump was the last one who basically said, American exceptionalism is not American strengths. American exceptionalism is American vulnerability. By the way, Obama started it on his own. Obama started we are much more of a normal state, but this time of a story that America should have a mission of its own. And all these American presidents be on the right, on the left, that have been very much sharing that America does not have an ideology because it is an ideology. I do believe Santayana said something in this line. This is not true anymore. The major story about Trump is America is the victim of its exceptionalism. America is the victim of its idealism. America is the victim of the American dream. The only thing that should be exceptional about America is American power. And I do believe this is a story which makes the world so different because it's not simply international institutions. This, for exceptionalism, kind of disciplined also the politics of international order.
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And even American power. For Trump doesn't need to be exceptional in the sense that he opposed the idea of America as a world policeman. He wants America to be predominant in its sphere of influence, and he wants that sphere of influence to be large. And he wants American dominance in that sphere of influence to be felt heavily. But he's perfectly fine to give Ukraine effectively to Russia, perfectly fine to give Taiwan effectively to China. So even in that sense, he's thinking of America as a much more classic, non exceptional superpower within his regions, but not as the exceptional predominant power all across the world. With apologies to Frank Fukuyama, are we living the end of history now? But it turned out to look rather different from what he expected, which is to say that from a vantage point of 1989, the Universalist Project of communism has Failed. The project of fascism has failed. The universalist project of liberal democracy is left standing, victorious. And so it looks like that is the universalist project that will structure the world for the foreseeable future and perhaps forever. If what we're seeing at the moment is the end of American exceptionalism, which also means the end of American universalism, and there isn't really a universalist alternative. The Communist Party of China does not believe in world revolution in the way that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union once did, that Putin has ambitions to be more influential in the world and to recreate the fourth incarnation of a Russian empire. But he doesn't want the world to be under Russian dominance and certainly doesn't want Russian ideals to somehow structure the world. And if you're right that the strange thing about this political moment in the United States is that neither side is promising a restoration of those American ideals of American universalism is the end of history coming in 2025 rather than 1989. And it consists not in the dominion of liberal democracy, but in the passing away of universalist ambition.
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Listen, you can call this the end of the long 20th century. You remember Hobsbaum was talking about the short 20th century that started in 1914 and ended in 1989. It was very much about the age of extremes. But what we think exactly is a kind of a this world which is much more interconnected than ever. We know each other better than ever. And paradoxically, it was our interconnectedness that led to the crisis of the idea of the universal humanity. Is it not a kind of irony that the person who, as we are always associating with the idea of universalism, Immanuel Kant, was famous for not l his small town of Gillingsburg. So it's much easy for humanity to stay as a whole, particularly if you're not seeing it when basically seen as a project in your imagination. One of the interesting story about Trump, from this point of view, and this is very interesting, and from this point of view, very different than American tradition, is that Trump really, in my view, if you see his acts, and he's quite honest person, and he's not playing kind of ideological games, he does not believe that people are equal, and he does not believe also that states are equal. When he talks to the Ukrainians, he basically said, you're a smaller state. Russia is a bigger state. Russia is a stronger state. Why you believe that you should resist your fate? And in my view, this is very strange because all American ideology was based on this. We are equal. The States are equal. All these kind of idea of equality suddenly, and why people are basically ready to accept this and why this kind of a drive for universal recognition, which was in my view, a very important insight for Fukuyama's book. And this is very important insight. And people cannot ridicule it without understanding how the work goes. So suddenly it went to the other extreme. And from time to time, when staying where I'm staying, coming from a very small country in the middle of nowhere, when I will see the American clash, particularly between the radical left and radical right, it looks to me as a CL between the golf course and university campus. Both of them has kind of a strange idea of equality, but they are equality only within the space. And this is why Trump comes. And exactly because people see the world as very unequal in economic terms, but also in cultural experience, they're ready to trust him because we ended the moment in which only the cynics could be trusted. And this is, in my view, very important for this situation. And then when you're saying is the end of the history ended, listen, first of all, the end of history. And Fukuyama was very clear on this was never perceived as a utopian project. It was perceived, he believes that society is going to be married for democracy, but not necessarily in love with that. This is going to be one post heroic society. And probably you remember in the last pages, not of the article, but of the book, of course, actually the last
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page of the book, the last page of the book, he also talks about boredom at the end of history, and that perhaps those centuries of boredoms at the end of history might serve to get history going again. It's hard to imagine the book first.
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Do you remember that on this almost last page, one by last page, he's mentioning a guy called Donald Trump, of course, because he's asking this very simple question. Is the recognition you're basically getting as being successful real estate, business person and so on is enough to what extent the post heroic society can fulfill this kind of idea of ultimate recognition that history was giving it? So, funnily enough, I do believe that the second part of Fukuyama's book is even more relevant to what we are doing. And this is not the end of history, but the last message. And in a strange way, which I do believe makes the Trumpian government very interesting, is this very strong sense of apocalypticism which is present there. So even when we talk about utopians, like musk technological utopians, even when we talk about people who are very much betting on the individual immortality. On the other side, there is a very strong sense of catastrophe. And from this point of view, by the way, even when you look at Ukraine and how they're treating Ukraine, this is interesting to look at it. For Europeans and particularly for Poles, for boats, everything that is happening is very much about the lessons of the World War II. It was very much about Munich all over Again, if you listen carefully to Trump, and I do believe he's very genuine when he talks about his fear for World War 3. For him, Ukraine is the fear of the lessons of the World War I. It's about sleepwalking and somebody like Peter Thiel, in my view, very well conceptualize it because if there is some in my view strong concept that is not going to be reflected. Trump is not the person that is going to read a book. He's not, not even to listen to audiobook. It's not how he gets it. He's reacting. For him, he's not simply part of a reality show, but for him life is a reality show. But this type of a memetic apocalyptics that comes from people like Rene Girard is very important for them. They believe something that is just opposite to Fukuyama. Fukuyama's major intuition, by the way, coming from modernization theory, coming from Hegel was the similar we become different societies, the less risk of war and destruction. And Girard's intuition was the opposite. The more similar we become, the more we start imitating each other, the more this is going to lead to a catastrophic clash and this is not to be prevented. And from this point of view, Angirac is also very strong, kind of coming from a very strong Catholic tradition of thinking about. I do believe that this sense that similarity and interconnectedness is our way to hell is something that on different level, not only Trump but Trumpians are sharing probably with the exception of till none of them had time to read Girard, but they kind of unconcerns Girardians even without reading him.
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That's very interesting. I want to return to your point about about the state for a moment. A different way of casting that question is perhaps going to his point about sclerosis. There are some ways in which the American state obviously was becoming sclerotic. There's a big debate at the moment in the United States about the inability of American state to build. Why is it impossible to build high speed rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles when China has built dozens or hundreds of high speed rail lines over the course of the last 20 years? Why is it impossible to build housing in areas of opportunity like Los Angeles or New York, in a way that then locks people out of opportunity and is a huge reason for why people feel that the state is not delivering for them in all kinds of ways. There's a deeper sense of sclerosis in terms of the attitude towards institutions. You go back 30 years in America and people trust Congress, they trust the Supreme Court, they trust the local government, they trust universities, they trust corporations. Today, trust in all of these institutions is significantly reduced. Interestingly, actually, people trust the Silicon Valley companies, which are often the bergam of the left, more than many of these other institutions. But trust across the span has gone down. It would be very hard to imagine even a radical Republican president attacking Harvard and Columbia and those institutions in the same way 20 or 30 years ago, because they had broadcast trust and support in the population. And one of the reasons why the administration is able to do that now is that there isn't broad trust and respect in those institutions. Less than 50% of Americans have any positive feelings about them, and those are highly concentrated in a partisan way. And so if you look at this broader sclerosis of American life, it forces you to ask a question, but I've been struggling to answer for myself over the last months that I feel really torn on, which is is what would or what should happen after Trump, let's assume that he rules for four years, becomes quite unpopular, doesn't manage to capture the electoral institutions in such a way that the playing field in 2028 is too uneven for the opposition to have a chance to win, and we get some Democratic president? This is a set of assumptions which may prove to be wrong. But let's assume that for the moment, how should they think about what to recreate? Should we be trying to recreate any part of the status quo ante? All parts of the status co ante? It feels to me like the answer must lie somewhere in between those extremes. But what elements of the old system can we save and recreate? And what elements of it were so ripe for plucking, but any attempt to put them back in place is bound to fail?
- [40:34]
A
Listen, it's a great question, and I'm going to lie to you if I believe that even I have the illusion that I have an answer. But I can just go thinking along the lines that you suggested. First, is if this is a revolution, revolution is changing the identity of all players. No political party or actor is going to get out of the revolution in the way it started. You can have Lenin after Kerensky. You cannot have Kerensky after Lenin. It is a totally different story. And the Democratic Party is going to be as dramatically transformed by the Trumpian revolution, for good or for bad in the way the Republican Party is. So then there comes the story what happened to the state. And this is a really interesting story because in my view the the biggest kind of a failure of the Democratic Party is their deep belief that they can recreate the Rooseveltian type of a big state which is trusted. And from this point of view, I'm sure that in 10 years people are going to look at the COVID experience as much more important part of the political change the world is going around than we're talking about it. Now listen, it's not about this or that COVID policy, but during the COVID period, three important things about the state and about our life became very much clear. The first is everything that was basically perceived impossible became possible. And in one day both the dreams of the right and the left have been fulfilled. You remember, if you're basically a radical green person, you are believing and you're dreaming for a day when all planes are going to be landed and stop polluting the planet, but you'd never believe that it can happen. And then Covid came and they will land it, they will land it, all of them, overnight. And if you are basically a right wing radical, you are dreaming about a country in which basically nobody's going to cross the borders, they're not going to be migrants. And you're dreaming about it, but you don't believe it ever going to happen. And it happened overnight, the borders were closed. I'm saying this because the first thing that Covid did is make possible and thinkable something that till yesterday was perceived as impossible, even if it was perceived as desirable. But secondly which happened was the crisis of the idea of science. And in my view, one of the things that we are seeing and not simply attack on university, but science was as important for the modern state as God was important for the monarchical states of before. The legitimacy of the state was coming from science. But the problem of science is, particularly on the level in which we are, is that science functions because scientists disagree with each other. And it was so difficult for people because Covid came and then doctors started to disagree with each other. And suddenly science nevertheless that it was successful, nevertheless that we had the vaccines, nevertheless that basically in a certain way crisis was contained. Science and the way it works by disagreement, by basically not changing hypothesis all the time, delegitimize the state.
- [44:08]
B
They did Was the problem that scientists disagreed or was the problem that science was used as a slogan to shut down disagreement? Right. Which is to say that among actual scientists there was disagreement throughout Covid as there was discoveries as those hypotheses. And I think you're right that, you know, in terms of, you know. Well, there's a question about whether science caused the pandemic, right? There's a question about whether again of function research actually was the original cause of all of this, which is should impact our assessment. But in terms of scientists bringing to action and making these incredible vaccines and helping us get out of this crisis, I think you're right that at some level science should be knighted for what it did. But the problem to me seems to be that capital S science has become this kind of slogan, which is an argument by authority. You cannot disagree with my proposition about how society should be run during the pandemic, about how we should think about the origins of a virus, about whether or not you have stay six feet apart from me. Because capital as science has given the answer. And often some scientists themselves, but particularly public health authorities, mainstream journalists and so on, invoke this capital as science as the ultimate proof of what is correct in a way that doesn't require argument, but actually goes very much against what the genuine scientific spirit would demand.
- [45:33]
A
I totally agree with you and I don't believe this is very important. But I so don't forget in the way the modern state tried to use science, particularly in the moment of crisis, this is how the old monarch is going to use the idea of God and religion in the old crisis. Because you need science in order to legitimize the authority. You need science to basically tell me why I should trust you and not myself. And of course, the response of the people was particularly in my own country, Bulgaria, the most famous slogan during the COVID was everybody decides for himself. This was kind of a real strong individual response. But here what happens is also that state, in order to get the loyalty of the people, did something which was in a certain way incredible. It almost promised people immortality. You remember, basically every single death, even of a very old person, was perceived as kind of almost a crime. And I do believe this kind of a prospect. We can take care of you. We can basically save you from everything. We can save you from death, if only you're going to trust us again, if you're going to trust institutions and so on. It worked for a while. It worked for six months. And after that, basically it produced this major backlash which in my view is very important for the rise of the far right, not only in America and not only for Trump. You see everywhere in Europe, this is a very strong moment. And here, in my view, it is very important to understand. What I see is the failure of the Biden presidency. Because Biden was not a trivial president. He came as a transformative president. And he believes that he can recreate or resurrect the Roosevelt teni state. And the Roosevelt state was one that they can care, that can build things, that is re industrializing. And for him, the COVID experience was the one that forced him to believe that this could be done. But I do believe Wolfgang Schreck, one of the important German sociologists on the left, made a point that I take very seriously. The classical kind of trusted state of the 30s in America with Roosevelt or 50s and 60s in Europe was very much based on the idea is that it responded and take care of human needs. While today you should basically take care of human desires. And the most important is while market is taking care of your desires. The state cannot. Because I want the fair state to treat me as very specific personality. But state to be fair should treat me as everybody else. And we are not ready to live with this anymore. The market has taught us that we have a very specific needs, personalities, desires. And we see as a real repression where the states treat us as totally equal in a by the way, equal in not a very inventive way. And in my view, this legitimacy at the heart of the crisis of trust in the state, plus the fact that modern person all the time is asked to have an opinion about things through which he does not have personal experience. Normally democracy. And I could be very wrong on this. And Yasha, you have been writing much more than me on this. But I do believe that that the real equality of every democratic regime is that our experiences are equal. No our values or incomes or talent. But my experience and your experience in a democratic politics equal. And nobody can articulate my experience better than me. And suddenly you ask to have opinion about things through which you do not have experience and you cannot have an experience. And this may kind of a trust mistrust game. And as a result of it, democracy became the management of mistrust.
- [49:37]
B
That is interesting. I mean, when democracy is either an aggregation of interest, as it was for much of the 20th century, when you had very clear class structures, and it was simply a question of do I vote for a party that is more favorable to the working class. Do I vote for a party that is more favorable to the bourgeoisie. That was straightforward. Perhaps even on some moral debates for a long time, it was about questions that people had some kind of direct experience on. Certainly when you think of a debate over trade policy, for example, you're effectively asking people to participate in a referendum on international economic theory, and they can, of course, vote on the results that they see. So if a radical trade policy results in a crash of the stock markets and a recession and unemployment, then they might punish the incumbent. But it's very hard for people prospectively to decide about which is the right theory of international trade. In the absence of direct experience, it's very hard to know how to do that. We haven't talked that much. It occurs to me about the international dimension. How permanently do you think the standing of the United States in the world is going to be altered by what Trump is doing? To what extent is this going to put into place a very, very different vision of what America is and signifies? And I'm interested in that question in the context of East Asia and Latin America and Africa, but of course, particularly of Europe. Europe, which has certainly in Western Europe and in big parts of Central and Eastern Europe, relied on the United States as its key strategic partner since 1945, or in some places since 1989. It seems the continent has in many ways believed that it doesn't need to do certain things, obvious ones, like invest in military sufficiently to defend itself, but also perhaps more intangible ones, like being at the forefront of technological evolution and industry, because it would always be protected by a nation that is doing those things. Is this the end of 75 years of European American trust To that extent, could it still be a kind of aberration? I mean, if Democrats win again in 28, are European statesmen going to go back to pretending everything is fine like they did when Biden was elected in 2020? And if not, what does the effective end of a transatlantic alliance signify, both for the United States and for Europe?
- [52:27]
A
I do believe that the effect on Europe of Trump's presidency is stronger than on any other part of the world, regardless of the fact that I'm not sure that Europe is not at the center of his interest. And this is exactly by this. It was an American vote, but Europe was the biggest beneficiary of it. And the funny story about Europe is that we managed to create a kind of a society which was very much preconditioned on the American security guarantees, on cheap Russian gas, on an open Chinese markets. And all this has disappeared for a period of almost shorter than a decade. I don't believe that the relations can be the same regardless of what is going to happen, which does not mean that United States and Europe are not going to be allies or they cannot work together. They're going to work together in way or the other. But everything is changing. And from this point of view, Europe now is understanding this from time to time. We're doing also in a funny way, because we start to talk about sovereignty and so on, as if this can be born overnight. The technological dependency of the United States is not going to disappear, regardless of what Trump is doing. But also, suddenly, Europe cannot tell about itself the story that it was talking before. Europe before was looking as the laboratory for the world to come. Probably this was a laboratory built on the American money, but we were the laboratory of the world to come, not the Americans. We are going with the postmodern state. We have basically much more social spendings. So in a certain way, the idea was that even America is going to become much more European. And there was a moment in which there was a talk about this, and it was very much there. And suddenly, Europeans, we feel very lonely. When Trump was elected, European Council on Foreign Relations did a survey in 21 countries, 11 European countries and 10 of the big countries in the world. India, Brazil, Turkey, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia. And do you know what? There was three simple questions, among others. Do you believe that Trump is good for America? Do you believe that Trump is good for your country? Do you believe that Trump is good for peace? And normally they had in mind Ukraine, but also Middle East. Almost everywhere outside of Europe, people think, yes, Trump is good for America. Trump is good for my country. Trump is good for peace. Of course, there was only in Europe, and particularly Western Europe and South Korea, that people are ready to say no. And I'm saying this because suddenly Trump came and he's surprising and he's striking, and nobody likes the disruption that he did to the system. But he's a political leader that the other part of the world understands is important. And there is very something strange about Trump, which I do believe that people are going to get puzzled with the time coming. Everybody looks at him as a classical American nationalist. But, for example, for the American nationalist, there are certain things that you cannot understand. For example, his view on land, for the nationalists, basically, lent is sacre. Lent is given by God to nations. When he was developing his idea of basically Gaza becoming a major resort, you see that for him. He sees the land with the eyes of a real estate person. And strangely enough, if you're going to ask Trump how you're going to improve the world. Probably what he's going to tell you, it's about gentrification of the world. Rich people are going to go in bad neighborhoods and poor people are going to go somewhere, and some of the poor people are going to become richer. And for example, when he talks to the Ukrainians, this is a great story, story in misunderstanding, because Ukrainians said, we need the security guarantees that you're ready to defend us. And they imagined the world like the Cold War in which you're defending us because we are democracy, we are allies, and we are not going to allow Russia to do this and that. And Trump said, yes, we could be ready to defend you. But do you know what your best defense is? If you're going to give us your mineral resources and your pipelines and your infrastructure. Because the only way to stop Russians to destroy infrastructure if they know that it's an American infrastructure. And secondly, the only way to convince Americans to defend your infrastructure if they believe that they're defending an American company. So this kind of a story, which is so difficult, and this is why, in my view, part of the crisis that we are seeing is that people living in a different world, I should say something that is probably not. Not easy to be said, but when I was watching what happened in the Oval Office between Trump and Zelensky, I had the feeling that it was also a clash between two different television programs. On one level is a reality show, and on this story is a much more kind of a classical, heroic narrative. One is speaking the language of the nation and the other basically speaking this making a deal story. And you have this all over the world. It's not simply that government change. And for Europe, it's very difficult because Europe should try to find a new identity, a new power to defend this identity. Kind of the major bets of Europe, for example, on the Green deal or on the relations with the United States, are not there. And even when we talk about defense capabilities, Europeans, when we talk politics, we talk money. Money. Germany is going to spend so much money. But listen, when you talk even to the most kind of unimpressive captain in the army, they're going to tell you budgets don't fight wars. People fight wars. And this is the major issue for European society. The biggest success of Europe was that it made war unthinkable for the majority of Europeans. Now the biggest vulnerability for Europe is that war looks unthinkable for the majority of Europeans.
- [58:52]
B
So I have two thoughts about this. The first is that one strange aspect of Europe is that Italy always feels like the country of the past and turns out to have a politics of the future. You go back to the medieval city states and they feel in some ways like remnants of ancient Rome or ancient Athens, but they prefigure in certain ways the rise of modern democracy. You go to Mussolini, he feels like an odd political figure and obviously prefigures the rise of fascism. And then you go to berlusconi in the 1990s and again he sort of laughed at and looked at with pity and Italy is sort of treated as a strange aberration. But he in many ways prefigures the rise of right wing populace who are ideological, but even more so of of right wing populists who are in certain ways non illogical business figures like Donald Trump. Now, conversely, you might say that Europe as a whole has sold itself as the continent of the future. And there was a real moment in the 2000s that I think you were alluding to when there was, I don't know how best selling the books were, but books that got a lot of attention in intellectual circles and political circles that were arguing that really Europe and the European Union is the model of the future. The African Union in some ways was modeled on emulating some of that. There's always been a movement of highly educated Americans who thought that Europeans are really somewhat more civilized than us here and we should emulate them. And so Europe did feel quite recently to some people, like the continent of the future. But it's in some way ways turned out now to be the model that may not be defensible, the model that was reliant on the external support of a country like the United States to be able to continue functioning like that most obvious way in the military sphere, where I certainly think that Germany, where I grew up, always had this sort of disdain for those American cowboys who are so obsessed with the military budgets and their guns, which was based on the complete willful ignorance of the fact that Germany could afford not to spend money on its military and not to afford to have a larger army that would have changed the nature of that society. Because we could always rely on the United States coming in to defend Germany in that kind of way. Since you're talking about TV shows, I think the show Borgen, about a kind of center left, somewhat technocratic, idealistic prime minister who breaks with a governing coalition because she's not going to compromise on immigration, was meant to make her look like the politician of the future. And the populists in the show were these kind of troggle died old idiots. And you go back and look at Borg now and it feels very old fashioned. It feels like a lost world, even though I think it's like less than 10 years old some of the later episodes of it. So there is something to that. In Europe the question is what does European self invention going to look like? There's the obvious answers which is that the continent needs to spend more money on its military because it can't rely on the United States anymore. And it needs to invest in infrastructure because it needs to have more economic growth. And Germany needs to go back to having trains that actually run on time because at the moment their trains are less punctual than Italian ones, which as both an economic and an identity crisis. You need to implement some of the parts of a Draghi report which talks about how Europe all of that seems fine. I don't disagree with any of it. But it doesn't add up to a project and it doesn't add up to a vision. And the larger question to me is whether Europe can recognize that it has become a museum continent. That it lived in a fantasy of gradual and gracious decline line in which it could absent itself from history without having to pay a high price for that. In which even if you are not one of the forces that shape history, you can have a good welfare state and nice bicycle lanes and a decent life for your citizens. And recognize that that may not be true, that if you don't shape history, history shapes you. But if you're not at the forefront of technological development, you're not going to be able to defend yourself no matter how much money you spend on the military. And that if your fate is determined by outside powers and your economy is not at a cutting edge, the decline in your welfare states might turn out to be much more precipitous and much more economically painful than you recognize. But I don't get the impression from afar I'm in the United States at the moment that that lesson has arrived in the European public. Or even less so that anybody has a vision for what it would take to change the fate of a continent. Are you any more optimistic? And what might a non museal Europe look like?
- [64:02]
A
Listen, I'm not famous for optimism, but one of the most interesting book in Europe was written at 1978 or 79. Aaron wrote the book called In Defense of Decadent Europe. And of course back then it was very much about French politics. The French left was coming to power. This is basically what happened to Ismith, Iran and others. But don't forget, decadence does not mean necessarily decline. Paradoxically interesting story is that Europe is going to look for new identity. For sure. For Europe, the identity based on the Cold War is not there anymore. And you cannot have any identity of a type like the Cold War if the United States and Europe are not the same. So the Cold War west is over. You are also totally right on the level of the security because we can move money here and there. And if I'm going to be particularly critical to Europe, even when you listen to the way we talk about Ukraine, you have the feeling from time to time that in the way we have been outsourcing our security before to the United States, now we want to outsource our security to the big Ukrainian army that is going to stay there and to defend us against the Russians. But the most interesting is that part of the story between Trump and Europe, even between European nationalists and Trump, is that Trump type of nationalism is divorced from history. It is history free. Listen, what normally nationalists talk about when they meet, they talk about history and how history was unfair to their countries. Can you imagine Donald Trump talking about history with anybody? So basically the only history that he can talk about is his own history. And the only kind of a history of the American Republic is the first Trump presidency. So in a strange way, his American individualism on the level of the national ideology, I'm not interested what was before me. And to be honest, I'm not interested what's going to be after me. And I'm saying this because for Europe, it means how you are going to reconcile the fact that in the moment of crisis, all European nations will go back to their national histories. And at the same time, in order to stay together, they should have a common identity. Because Europe before was a project. And in a strange way, Europeans can have common dreams, but their nightmares are totally national. And you can saw it dramatically either with the war in Middle east or with the war in Ukraine. And I find this quite important because history is going to play an important role in the way Europe is going to remake itself. And the story that Europe is going to remake itself, and this was a metaphor that I always was. You think is that in 1990s particularly, but even in the early 2000s, Europe was seeing itself as a missionary. Exactly, because we have been the future. We were there to tell others how to live. Europe specialized on lecturing others even more than the Americans. Now Europe feels like a monastery. And the only problem with the monastery is how you're going to defend yourself and secondly how you're going to feed yourself. And my story is that Europe will try to make a point that we are different. So suddenly European universalism is going to become universal exceptionalism. So to Europe is going to happen what happened to Russia after the end of the Soviet Union and even in a certain way what is happening to America after Trump. We start to say that there is something which is so special for us that make it so important for us to be what we are, even if we are not going to be the most competitive economy, if we are going to lose here and there. And this is going to be interesting. This is going to be based on the fact that Europe is composed by a very small state for European standards. And also that while you have a lot of political dynamics in Europe and it's very unstable and this is why I cannot say that I'm particularly optimist because. Because this is a project that very easily can collapse. Also Europe also has kind of a more. Europe has in a strange way the wisdom of an older people. When they go on the streets, they're carefully looking at the pavement. And I thought this is important. Many people today are saying Europe is like it was in the 1920s and 1930s. And if you're going to read this great book on Mussolini, the son of the century and there was also nice very miniseries that Italians did. No, we are not back into 1920s and 30s. In 1920s and 30s Europe was a very young continent and it was populated by ex soldiers. And now Europe is a much older continent and it is populated by people who don't believe that they're ever going to be a soldier. So from this point of view, this creating your own space, try to develop much more your relations with history then kind of a future. Not trying to escape on Mars like Musk went, but believing that even Mars is not so different than where we are. This is what I much more expect from Europe. So I don't expect this rapid transformation that can happen in other places. I don't see a next modernization of Europe. But Europe probably is a better therapist and psychotherapist than most of the others.
- [70:04]
B
I mean. Right. I think the question. You're absolutely right. I think our instincts at least are very similar about what Europe's event horizon is. In the 1920s, of course, Europe was literally a young continent in the sense that the average age was vastly younger than it was today. It was a continent that still had a completely different self confidence as standing at the center of A world in some ways it no longer did. The United states by the 1920s, was as powerful or more powerful as Europe, but that is not how most Europeans saw it. And colonies, of course, were still a going concern very strongly at that time. There was a much more fervent nationalism and the recent experience of war with feelings of victory and confidence that gave to some, and humiliation and desire for revenge it gave to others. And all of that is fundamentally different from today. I think the question to me is whether that assumption that there can be a decent life in decline turns out to be right or not. And I'm. I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure about that in terms of the demographics of Europe, where the population is rapidly shrinking. I'm not sure that in terms of international relations, because I don't think we've yet fully seen the impact of basically having a fate determined by the whims of much less reliable partners in Washington D.C. or worse, by Vladimir Putin and Russia or Xi Jinping and China. And it's not clear to me that it will turn out to be true economically. I mean, Germany is a good example there of a country that had a very stable economy that is now in serious danger. And if the German car manufacturers start to go bankrupt, a lot of the basic aspects of a political economy of a continent are going to change. So I hope that this sort of vision of an old continent that carefully looks at the ground so it doesn't stumble, and whose horizons are perhaps a little bit limiting, that gets home safe to a heated apartment and has a nice dinner waiting for it, proves to be right. I have less confidence in that than most observers seem to at this moment.
- [72:38]
A
No, listen, to be honest, I'm much more on your side. But it's very important to understand also what we are going to value. We don't know how the world is going to look. So from this point of view, what is competitive advantage or disadvantage can dramatically change. And I do believe that Europe is never going to be the most dynamic power in the world exactly because of it. Demography, but also culture. But what is interesting is when you are looking at some of European societies and all of European societies and know, taken apart and so on, but there is so much invisible change. Do you know that the number of foreigners, people not born in Austria, as a percent of population who are living now in Austria is higher than in Canada?
- [73:24]
B
Wow, I did not know that.
- [73:25]
A
Okay. But this is the story of Europe. In Europe, in America, change is in your face. America is a place where you. You basically notice only what is moving, only what is changing is worth talking about. And European is changing a lot. But Europeans are starting to pretend that the change is much more limited and from this point of view, try to adopt it by neglecting to a certain extent how dramatic the change is. And I'm giving one example on the level of population. But there are many other things that have been changed. So this kind of. I believe that different cultures has a different idea of adoption. And as a result of it, the biggest problem for Europe is to try to pretend of what it is not going to be. Europe is never going to be succeeded in having economic dynamism of the United States, even if all Dragon reports are going to be there. And they're never going to have basically the readiness to die in a war that Putin's Russia has, even if you're going to have this and that. But I do believe Europe was based on this kind of idea of moderation. We went too far away on this, unfortunately. When you're talking about films, when I was thinking about Europe, I'm always remembering this old film being there, where the major protagonist was a gardener living in one of the family estates and taking care of his garden and spending all his time, his leisure time, watching television with a remote control in his hand and changing the channels anytime when he does not like anything in life. So when he had to leave his position, he was attacked on the street. And what he did, facing the danger, was try to change the channel. So in a certain way, for the last years, particularly for the post 1989 decades, Europe has changed a lot. But we looked as a person who is armed with a remote control, who believe that anytime we don't like what we see, we can change the channel. And obviously now we're basically very much doomed to watch either the Trump channel or the Putin channel. And of course, this is changing Europeans. But without being over optimistic, I do believe that there is a certain level of resilience which suddenly comes. This is not the resilience of a young person that goes every single day to the gym and he's ready to resist this and this. It's much more resilience based on reflection. Suddenly you know that you can lose certain things in order to keep others. And probably this is the best chance of Europe. Is it going to work? I don't know. You need political leadership also. You need luck. And it's not easy when. And you have also depending on so many kind of uncertainties, starting with the fact how many different member states you have in the Union.
- [76:42]
B
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Good Fight. If you don't want to miss any of Ivan's insight, if you want to listen to his views on how China may or not may not be able to take advantage of this moment to impose its view on the world, and if you want to hear whether or not Trump is going to be featured in American history books and how he might be portrayed in them, please become a paying subscriber. Please go to yashamonk.substack.com thegoodfight for 25% off your annual subscription. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much for listening to the Good Fight. Lots of listeners have been spreading the word about this show. If you two have been enjoying the podcast, please be liked. Rate the show on itunes, tell your friends all about it, share it on Facebook or Twitter. And finally, please mail suggestions for great guests or comments about the show to GoodFightPodmail.com that's GoodFightPod at gmail. Com.
- [77:48]
A
This recording carries a Creative Commons 4.0 International License.
- [77:53]
B
Thanks to Silent Partner for their song Chess Pieces.