Making Sense - Sam Harris - March 22, 2022


#276 — Defending the Global Order


Episode Stats

Length

36 minutes

Words per Minute

156.86275

Word Count

5,688

Sentence Count

9

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary

Yuvval Noah Harari is the author of the best-selling books Sapiens and Homo Homo deus, Homo Homo, and Sapiens et homo deus. He is also the founder of the journal Sapiens, and a regular contributor to The New York Times, and the New York Review of Books. In this episode, we discuss the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the early 20th century, the role of China in the post-World War II global order, and China s role as a bulwark against a new cold war or great power clash in the making. We also discuss the role China plays as a counterweight to the growing power of the Soviet Union and its influence on the global order and its impact on the maintenance of liberal democracy, as well as the potential for a new Cold War between China and the United States, and Russia's influence in the region, and its role in the development and development of the modernizing process in the 21st century. In this conversation, we talk about China's role as an emerging power in the world, and what it means for the future of the liberal global order in a post-Cold War world, including China s relationship with Russia and China, and how that ties into the larger story of the Cold War and the rise of China as a modernizing power in post-colonialism and post-Marxist China. He is a historian, philosopher, and writer, and an expert on the history of China and its relations with the West, and with the rest of the world. His work is widely known and appreciated, and widely read, and is a must-listen to, and listen to, especially in order to understand the implications of China's rise in the face of the new world order. You can find him online at his work, if you search for his name in the title "Sapiens et Homo Homo Deus." This episode was originally recorded as a zoom call for podcast subscribers, "Homo deus" and published in The Making Sense, a book on the best selling book on Homo Homo Homo's Deus, "Homo Deus" (Homo Homo Homo et et al. . It is available for purchase on amazon in the Kindle, amazon, iBook, amzn, and iBook and iAmzn or epsi at iBookshop, and in paperback in paperback


Transcript

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris just a note to say that if you're hearing
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00:00:38.840 okay well today i'm speaking with yuval noah harari this was first recorded as a zoom call
00:00:54.800 for podcast subscribers and there will be more of those coming especially on topical subjects like
00:01:02.740 the war in ukraine and that is the topic of today's conversation yuval is a historian who probably
00:01:11.320 needs no introduction he's been on the podcast several times before he is the author of the
00:01:17.960 best-selling books sapiens and homo deus among others and today we talk about the wider implications
00:01:26.620 of russia's war of conquest in ukraine especially as they pertain to the maintenance of global order
00:01:34.580 we discuss various forms of war we talk about the problem of misinformation international norms of
00:01:43.080 behavior the role of china the civilizational importance of trust globalization and de-globalization
00:01:51.880 existential risk the role of india ukrainian leadership the increased risk of nuclear war
00:02:00.760 regime change in russia and other topics it's always great to speak with yuval he is a wealth of
00:02:09.160 information and wisdom so now without further delay i bring you yuval noah harari
00:02:15.620 yuval thank you for doing this great to see you uh thank you for having me uh so wait you're in
00:02:27.380 israel now right i'm right now in tel aviv one of the most peaceful places on the in the world right
00:02:32.960 no that's right yeah imagine the irony of that yeah yeah wow well i know our time is uh limited
00:02:40.800 so i'll you know i'll just start running people will get in here when they get in here obviously this
00:02:46.160 is mainly a podcast people are joining us to uh listen while we get it made but um the uh so we
00:02:53.680 titled this zoom event defending western civilization or i titled it that and uh you know some back and
00:03:00.960 forth between the two of us has led me to believe that you're you don't think that's quite the right
00:03:05.420 framing and just to tee that up i mean you're someone who spends a lot of time thinking about
00:03:11.900 the power of of narratives to shape human events and even even just titling a conversation like this
00:03:17.660 is to partake in the in the generation of of narratives what is the right framing here do you
00:03:23.900 think for this what we most need to talk about now and how does that fit into a larger story
00:03:28.040 of what's going on at this moment in history i think that the the russian invasion of ukraine
00:03:33.800 doesn't threaten western civilization it threatens the global order and uh its repercussions threaten
00:03:41.800 uh the ability of humankind as a whole to deal with the main challenges of the 21st century including
00:03:49.120 climate change including the rise of disruptive technologies so it's not at all about western
00:03:54.260 civilization and also you know if we title this defending western civilization it kind of may give
00:04:01.180 some people the impression that russia is not part of western civilization it's an alien force
00:04:06.880 and it is a part of western civilization i think it's it's you know you yet again we need to defend
00:04:13.900 western civilization from itself not from an alien force yeah but what's really at stake is not the west
00:04:21.720 what's really at stake is the global order and it concerns people in africa it concerns people in
00:04:27.620 india as much as it concerns people in the united states for example right so when you say the global
00:04:32.780 order to my ear that sounds like the the liberal global order or or liberal democracy versus autocracy
00:04:41.640 i guess my framing the the western got smuggled in there because i've been thinking perhaps inordinately
00:04:49.740 about the role of china in all of this or the looming implications of oh what happens in ukraine
00:04:55.640 for what happens with china and you know what seems to be a a new cold war or a great power clash in the
00:05:02.660 making i i don't know if we want to take the china piece early or or save it for later but how do you
00:05:08.160 see it no i mean first of all i mean it's not again it's not just democracy it's not just liberalism
00:05:13.140 it's also you know self-determination it's also nationalism it's the basic idea that you can't
00:05:20.480 just invade a neighboring country country and conquer it and wiping it off the map it goes far far deeper
00:05:28.520 than than than just a liberal democracy over the last few generations the maybe the most basic rule
00:05:35.560 established in the international arena irrespective of the type of regimes you're talking about
00:05:41.280 is that you no longer do these things which were very common i mean throughout history this is kind
00:05:47.640 of you open one history book after the other so you have the assyrians or the romans or the mongols or
00:05:53.920 the russians invading neighboring countries and taking them over this is how every empire in history was
00:06:00.820 established and over the last few generations maybe the most basic rule of the new global order
00:06:07.980 and it it's again it goes far beyond western liberal democracies is that you don't do that you don't do
00:06:15.840 that even if you are an arab dictatorship or a military junta in south america and i think this is part of
00:06:24.280 the of the shock that you know that the shock waves around the world that people realize that if putin
00:06:32.360 succeeds if putin is allowed to win then this will become the new normal all over the world
00:06:39.720 well let's cycle on that point one more time because i think many people look at this or certainly some
00:06:46.980 people look at this and wonder why we're deciding to care so much about this particular invasion
00:06:55.000 right i mean forget you know obviously it's a humanitarian crisis but there have been many of
00:06:59.480 those some of which uh we're in part or in whole culpable for right so we we have invaded places i think
00:07:07.000 there's some obvious disanalogies there but people look at this and say there's something about again the
00:07:12.880 story we're telling ourselves or are inclined to tell ourselves at this moment uh that is different
00:07:18.460 from the story we seized upon when uh russia invaded crimea previously or when um you know syria fell
00:07:28.080 apart and you know obama's red line was crossed and we just decided to move on in the news cycle and
00:07:34.720 talk about other things why is this a kind of 9 11 moment that puts us once again very close to the
00:07:41.620 the hinge of history partly because it's it's now established as a pattern when crimea happened then
00:07:49.240 people said well this is a very unique situation and there are all kinds of excuses and it won't
00:07:54.240 happen again and it won't happen on a larger scale and now you realize no this is the beginning of the
00:08:00.180 pattern if we don't stop it here it will continue it will also continue in other places around the world
00:08:06.860 secondly with regard to all the comparison well people didn't get so much excited or interested
00:08:13.940 in what's happening in yemen what's happening in syria what's happening in ethiopia part of it is
00:08:19.520 because again it's a different kind of war part of the global order of the last few generations for
00:08:25.920 better or worse was that civil wars are part of the game but invading and conquering other countries
00:08:34.080 and wiping them off the map is not and this is now what is at stake and there is a huge difference
00:08:40.800 though it's not that civil wars are okay it's not that civil wars are people don't die in them or
00:08:45.980 suffering them it's you know we had throughout history several kinds of wars external invasions
00:08:53.380 and conquests were always the most dangerous and the kind of backbone of military and diplomatic history
00:09:02.000 but there are always other kinds of wars like civil wars and what happened in the last few generations
00:09:08.340 is that first of all the big wars between superpowers and secondly the external invasions and conquests
00:09:17.720 they kind of get out of the picture out of the you don't do that anymore whereas civil wars they
00:09:26.700 continue to be part of the system and now we are seeing the return of something that we thought well
00:09:35.700 we already got over that yes we still have a way to go we also need eventually to reach a situation when
00:09:42.260 there are no civil wars but now we are feeling that we are falling back we are falling back to the most
00:09:50.040 dangerous and most destructive kinds of wars we are basically going back to the jungle to the situation
00:09:57.620 when at any moment the neighbors might invade and conquer us which was the situation for most of
00:10:05.840 history but not in the last few decades yeah i guess another part of the picture here is that
00:10:13.740 this recent adventure or misadventure as it seems to be turning out for putin seems to have been
00:10:21.160 occasioned by his perception of american and european weakness right and he he's done a fair amount on
00:10:28.240 his side to engineer that weakness i mean there are probably a thousand points of salience here we
00:10:34.920 could seize on but i mean one is just you know we have built these social media tools that allow
00:10:39.160 bad actors like you know putin's regime to use our own hyper partisanship and divisiveness against us
00:10:46.840 right so we have the kind of the rampant hacking of our society i'm not making the claim that any
00:10:52.540 election has been you know quote hacked with respect to voting machines but there's no question that
00:10:58.020 there's been an inflaming of public opinion from the outside and we have built the tools to run that
00:11:03.040 particular psychological experiment or psyops campaign ourselves we've also collaborated in
00:11:09.880 an increasing dependence on regimes that we can't actually trust and this is some of this has been
00:11:17.660 done with good intentions i mean there's this notion that trade and engagement would modify the
00:11:24.700 political visions and aspirations of autocracies right so we thought china would come around and russia
00:11:30.420 would come around and join the the well-behaved democracies of the world as long as we traded
00:11:36.420 enough and became aligned enough in our economic incentives but that seems not to be happening you
00:11:43.040 know we have you know germany in retrospect quite insanely deciding to become energy dependent upon russia
00:11:49.540 and decommission its nuclear plants and in the current moment that looks you know as masochistic as can be
00:11:55.660 we have you know the uk happily laundering the money of oligarchs endlessly even as putin
00:12:03.100 poisons people with nerve agents on their soil uh you know russian dissidents it's just at a certain
00:12:09.860 point you know all of this was it should have been obvious this was leading in a dangerous direction
00:12:14.720 but now it finally seems and this goes to the point of putin's miscalculation it finally seems
00:12:19.900 that that enough was enough the spell has broken for all of us or most of us simultaneously yeah and
00:12:25.620 we're we're now thinking of re-engineering a world where our ability to trust in the you know the
00:12:32.700 political vision of our allies is paramount and i'm wondering what you what you think of that and
00:12:40.440 and how much of this this sea change in our sense of globalization and global priorities
00:12:45.980 is going to be durable and and what should we be re-engineering here and rethinking here how do you
00:12:51.540 see that part of the picture i think it really was a very big shock because people not only in the west
00:12:59.180 but people all over the world had the feeling that we are living in a more peaceful era that we have
00:13:08.540 managed to somehow crawl out of the jungle put at least some distance when i talk about the jungle
00:13:14.360 i talk about the situation when at any moment the neighboring country empire tribe city state might
00:13:24.360 invade our territory and just occupy us conquer us take our lands drive away our people whatever
00:13:31.160 which was the basic situation for all over the world for most of history whether it's ancient china
00:13:38.860 whether it's medieval europe whether it's uh the 19th century this was the basic situation of human
00:13:45.160 beings and peace in in those in those days for most of history meant simply the temporary absence of war
00:13:53.580 now there is peace but at any moment a war might start and amazingly humanity managed to really get out
00:14:04.140 of this jungle and create not a completely peaceful world you know i come from the middle east i know
00:14:10.140 perfectly well there are still wars in the world but more peaceful than any previous era and it's not
00:14:16.140 some kind of hippie fantasy um if you want to really see peace in action don't look in poems look in state
00:14:25.740 budgets you look at the budgets of the world in the last few years and it's really amazing because the
00:14:31.580 average military budget out of total government budget of countries all over the world on average is
00:14:39.020 about six seven percent something like that in europe it was something like three percent compared to
00:14:46.620 most of history when the majority of the budget of every king and emperor and sultan went to finance the army
00:14:57.820 and the navy and the navy and the fortresses not health care and education the world that we know
00:15:05.020 whether in the u.s or in israel but also in brazil also in indonesia it's built on these foundations of of
00:15:13.580 the new peace and putin shattered that reminding us that the jungle is still nearby a few decisions by a few
00:15:22.700 individuals and we are back there and the danger again the danger is not just to ukraine or then to
00:15:29.900 poland you will see military budgets all over the world skyrocket which means health care budgets and
00:15:37.820 education budgets decline you see less possibility for international cooperation on things like climate
00:15:46.300 climate change on regulating ai so this has repercussions everywhere now the positive potential
00:15:55.580 it's still just i'm we're not sure but the positive potential is it's been such a shock
00:16:01.420 that you saw europe and also to some united states uniting and reacting in a forceful way
00:16:10.860 that would have sounded impossible just a month ago you know with switzerland joining the eu
00:16:17.580 sanctions with finland sending arms to ukraine with germany doubling its defense budget overnight and i think
00:16:25.580 the biggest putin made two big miscalculations one was about ukraine he thought that ukraine is not
00:16:32.460 really a nation that the ukrainians are actually russians and they will welcome him they will throw flowers
00:16:37.500 on his tanks and they are throwing molotov cocktails he was completely wrong about ukraine but he also
00:16:44.140 made a big miscalculation about the west about europe and about united states i think if he waited a few
00:16:51.500 more years just done nothing just wait a few more years there is a good chance that europe and the united
00:16:58.540 united states would have self-destructed due to their internal conflicts and culture war
00:17:04.860 and he is now giving with his own hands he has united them and he's giving them them a chance to save
00:17:13.740 themselves i hope that the positive results of this war on on the big scale
00:17:21.180 would be on the one hand that we will see a green manhattan project
00:17:27.500 to stop depending on oil and gas which is what fueling the russian military machine
00:17:34.540 but also an end to the culture war in the west because suddenly you realize there are far
00:17:42.460 bigger issues there are far bigger dangers in the world than who gets to enter which toilet and if we
00:17:49.980 can unite around the really big issue then you know the western democracies don't need to fear
00:17:56.540 anybody if you look again at the numbers they are still the most powerful you know russia has a
00:18:02.620 smaller economy than italy the russian economy is about the same as belgium and the netherlands put
00:18:09.180 together as long and forget even about the us as long as europe stands together it has nothing to fear
00:18:15.900 from russia yeah so let's linger on the culture war piece here because i do view that as in large
00:18:23.580 measure what would seem to be provocative about our apparent weakness you know that putin felt that
00:18:30.140 we were so divided against ourselves that we would never cohere in the face of this kind of challenge
00:18:36.220 and i think he rightly thinks that you know after all of our failed wars our appetite for conflict is
00:18:42.460 somewhere near an all-time low so the idea that we're actually going to get militarily involved
00:18:46.780 you know in anything seemed remote i'm sure the culture war piece i mean it's hard to disentangle
00:18:53.740 that from just the misinformation piece i mean we have tens of millions of people in america now i mean
00:18:59.020 this cohort are disproportionately on the right who believe that the world is being run by a cult of
00:19:06.380 child raping cannibals right i mean like there's no limit to the craziness that passes for political
00:19:12.300 engagement on the right at this moment and you know not quite that far toward the fringe but still
00:19:18.060 pretty far toward it we have people with platforms in the millions who are obviously parroting russian
00:19:25.580 propaganda in the middle of this war and this piece needs to be disentangled from the you know the quite
00:19:31.340 odious claim that any criticism of you know any possible policy here like a you know enforcing a
00:19:37.180 no-fly zone is treasonous or doing you know carrying water for putin no i mean there are things that
00:19:42.620 we need to debate with respect to how we react to this but there are still obvious untruths being
00:19:50.700 confidently spread by people who have you know bigger platforms than either of us do and i'm hopeful
00:19:57.660 as you sound like you might be that this challenge could get our heads straight and cut through the
00:20:04.780 culture war but an information ecosystem where it's becoming harder and harder to agree about facts i mean
00:20:11.420 one thing i thought just the other day is what would this current situation be like if deep fake technology
00:20:18.460 was five years better than it is now where really we were struggling to figure out whether any of the
00:20:23.980 video we were watching of zelinski or whether any of it was real right like if that was where we were
00:20:30.140 stuck so anyway just talk to me about the misinformation piece as you see it you know partly we can't get
00:20:36.780 everybody on board you can never get everybody on board you just need enough you just need enough of the
00:20:43.500 still sensible people on on the right and also on on the extreme left to to have their aha moment that
00:20:52.460 okay we we need to face this challenge it's bigger than all the other things we've been discussing
00:20:58.700 and especially if you talk about the american right they have this cold war inheritance of you know all the
00:21:05.180 all the rumble movies and all the rocky movies with the bad russians and here you have it in real life
00:21:10.380 and it's almost irresistible and i was kind of you know flipping between fox news and cnn and for
00:21:16.460 the first time in a long time they are actually showing the same thing they are showing the same
00:21:22.140 reality with a different take on it so in fox news we're really excited about all these people getting
00:21:27.180 guns and look it's so important to have a gun in your home because when the russians come you can shoot
00:21:31.980 at them and you didn't see so much of that on cnn but still they are on the same page roughly
00:21:37.660 they are on the same reality and um you'll you'll never get everybody there but you don't need
00:21:44.620 everybody it's never the case in history that you have everybody and i'm less you know also i'm less
00:21:49.980 familiar with this specific situation in the us but you see also what's happening in europe
00:21:55.340 that the the kind of closing of of of the of the ranks very quickly and and and quite surprisingly
00:22:02.140 and you know even figures like victor urban saying that he will not oppose he will not prevent
00:22:08.620 sanctions against russia and accepting waves of refugees uh after all his talk against refugees
00:22:16.460 against the european union against brussels he's suddenly behaving in a different way maybe because
00:22:22.460 there is elections coming in hungary and i'm not sure but you see something changing i don't i can't
00:22:29.580 predict the future whether it will last this is this could be a very long war and people need you
00:22:37.420 know it's not just the first two three weeks we need to see what happens in a month in two months and
00:22:42.460 even after the war is over at some some stage a big question will be how to win the peace no matter how
00:22:49.820 the war ends it's crucial again especially for europe to some extent also to the us but europe is the main
00:22:56.220 player player player here to win the peace europe has the economic resources to turn ukraine whatever
00:23:03.980 the peace street is europe has the power to turn ukraine into a prosperous democracy by making enough
00:23:13.820 investments and sending enough help in various forms you know not just rebuild roads and bridges and
00:23:20.380 hospitals and hospitals and schools building research centers moving factories and if they
00:23:28.460 make this investment and turn ukraine into a prosperous country this will obviously not just benefit ukraine
00:23:37.260 enormously it will be the biggest defense for europe and also the biggest challenge for the putin regime
00:23:43.340 to explain to the you know the the poor citizens of russia how come the ukrainians can do it and you don't see
00:23:53.180 the same thing in russia you know russia is a much much wealthier country then you it's one of the wealthiest
00:24:00.220 countries in the world in terms of natural resources but the citizens are poor they receive very low level
00:24:09.660 government services health care education welfare and that's you know one maybe the biggest
00:24:17.900 question that russian citizens should ask their government why don't we get the same level of health
00:24:25.180 care as they get in finland or as they get in canada i and the answer of course is because the money went
00:24:33.660 for tanks yeah we mentioned earlier that the russian economy is smaller than the italian economy
00:24:39.580 so how come putin has this military machine because the military budget of russia in percentage out of
00:24:46.940 government budget is not three percent like in the eu it's not six percent like the the world average
00:24:54.860 nobody knows exactly how much it is because it's secret the estimates the lowest estimates are around
00:25:00.620 11 percent the highest estimates they reach 20 30 35 percent truth is probably somewhere in between
00:25:07.980 and again that's the the key question for russia but also the key question for for european citizens
00:25:14.620 and for people all over the world which kind of country do you want to live in do you want to live
00:25:20.380 in a country with like russia which spends 10 20 percent of its government budget on the military
00:25:26.540 or not and i think that even people on the right know the answer to this question no we don't want to
00:25:33.340 live in this kind of country but it seems to me that if we're going to seize the right lesson from this
00:25:42.620 moment and unite the liberal world order against all of the remaining autocracies i mean that's one lesson
00:25:50.780 we might seize from it and one one of those being china right then we're talking about acknowledging
00:25:58.700 that we're losing this peace dividend and we're thinking it's a good thing that germany now is
00:26:05.100 willing to spend more on its own defense yeah right so i mean what what is the normative that is desirable
00:26:11.340 move now in light of what is happening with respect to things like military budgets don't don't unite the
00:26:18.380 world against autocracies unite the world against aggression uh we need some autocracies on on the
00:26:25.500 right side uh it would be difficult i mean if you divide the world into autocracies and democracies
00:26:31.660 you're making it much much more difficult there are many autocracies that are not necessarily in favor
00:26:38.940 of the kind of aggression that and and again this is why what we talked about earlier why is this so
00:26:45.740 different from other wars and why does this create the this kind of of reaction because it's not about
00:26:53.820 the internal regime of a country it's about the behavior the norms of behavior in the international
00:27:01.500 arena when you look at the past few decades you see that also many if not most of the autocracies in the
00:27:09.420 world and again there are many terrible things to say about them of course but at least most of them
00:27:16.300 also kept this key norm of the international community that you just don't invade a neighboring
00:27:25.420 country and conquer it and you know you look at china since 1979 and the chinese incursion invasion into
00:27:32.700 vietnam china has not engaged in any external invasion and we shouldn't kind of rush to to to
00:27:40.780 to to you know push the chinese into together with the russians into one camp if the chinese choose
00:27:48.220 at this critical moment to join the russians and support them that's terrible news and if it happens
00:27:54.700 the world will have to deal with it but it still didn't happen and ideally we should isolate
00:28:02.140 the putin regime not push countries to to join it now i have no kind of china is not going to
00:28:09.740 actively take actions against russia but it's also very careful so far about supporting it the the best we
00:28:19.900 can hope from the chinese is to stay on the fence to stay neutral and we shouldn't do anything to push
00:28:25.740 them towards the russians the same is true of other countries like iran like venezuela uh if the u.s
00:28:34.460 can diplomatically uh work with these countries so they don't join a bloc with russia that's that's a
00:28:42.380 place right what's your view of the the degree to which we the the the u.s and uh the eu or the nato
00:28:51.260 countries should be engaged on the ground in or in the skies over ukraine i mean so what what's your
00:28:56.940 what's your position on enforcing a no-fly zone for instance that that's above my my pay grade
00:29:03.500 i'm not a military expert i don't understand the kind of of military issues involved i also don't
00:29:11.180 understand that the complicated political issues involved with nato and europe and so forth i i don't
00:29:16.140 know i i don't have a strong opinion on that do you have thoughts about what this does to the logic of
00:29:21.500 of nuclear proliferation i mean it seems to me one lesson many countries might draw from this moment
00:29:27.260 is that if you have nukes no one invades you and if you don't have nukes uh you might be invaded at
00:29:32.860 any moment that's part that's part of the danger again that the norm that you you don't invade and
00:29:39.500 conquer countries was very important for a number of reasons one of them is again military budgets but
00:29:46.300 the other is the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons because you had the kind of feeling
00:29:52.780 that even if i don't have nuclear weapons i'm still protected against the worst and not against all
00:29:58.860 violence but against the worst form of violence which is to just being wiped off the map but by some
00:30:06.460 crazy neighbor and if this norm no longer is no longer valid then we are very likely to see
00:30:14.060 the proliferation of nuclear weapons not just in the usual suspects you know like iran but you know
00:30:21.820 think about germany if i'm now a german and i'm looking around then i say to myself okay uh we need nukes
00:30:31.420 to protect ourselves and also to protect eastern europe now where who controls these nukes in nato
00:30:39.580 there are three countries that control the nukes it's the u.s it's france and it's britain now let's
00:30:45.580 imagine a scenario that in 2024 trump is again u.s president let's say that it's a bit extreme but
00:30:52.620 let's say that le pen still possible wins the coming elections in france and britain goes its brexit way
00:30:59.740 can germany really trust trump le pen and the brexeters to risk nuclear annihilation for the sake of
00:31:09.260 germany or for the sake of poland maybe not if so the logical conclusion could be germany needs its
00:31:18.140 own nukes and the same kind of thinking can be happening in japan can be happening in south korea
00:31:25.980 can be happening in more and more places which is extremely dangerous because the more fingers you have
00:31:32.700 on these red buttons chances grow that somewhere some some sometime somebody would press the button
00:31:41.100 uh with terrible consequences for the whole of humankind so again nuclear weapons play you know a very
00:31:49.500 double role here in this war on the one hand they prevent inter for better or worse i'm not sure
00:31:57.820 they prevent the entry of nato into this conflict i mean if russia had no nuclear weapons i think it
00:32:04.540 was a very high chance that either nato or at least some members of nato like poland would have
00:32:10.380 intervened on the other hand if putin is allowed to win then the lesson for many countries around the
00:32:17.900 world including in europe as we just discussed would be we need our own nukes right right well what what
00:32:25.340 what do you see about the forces of globalization and de-globalization now with respect to i mean
00:32:30.860 this was not only a story of what russia invading ukraine did to our minds but this is obviously
00:32:36.940 what covet did as well when we we noticed that our supply chain was not no longer reliable when everyone
00:32:43.180 was faced with the same emergency again this is part of a peace dividend unraveling for us because
00:32:50.700 obviously it's more expensive if you need to vertically integrate much of what you care about
00:32:55.500 economically where do you see that going and um is that something we should be resisting it seems like
00:33:03.740 the normative lesson you would want to draw here is that while some of this may be necessary i mean
00:33:08.620 why it may be necessary for germany to think about doubling its or tripling its military budget now and
00:33:15.420 that seems appropriate and it seems also appropriate for them not to be dependent upon russia for natural
00:33:20.780 gas several moves ahead all of this begins to look like a more divided world a less a world with just
00:33:29.340 this predicated far more fundamentally even explicitly on a loss of trust yeah right and trust is a good
00:33:36.060 thing trust is something we want we want to maximize and yet it's unraveling here geopolitically and again
00:33:43.580 this is this also links it back to the the internal divisions of the culture war you were discussing
00:33:48.380 because perhaps the most salient variable you know right and left politically here has been a total
00:33:55.340 breakdown in trust of institutions you know the far left and the far right agree about one thing that
00:34:01.740 you can't trust the mainstream media you can't trust mainstream science you can't trust corporations
00:34:08.220 certainly and there's this epidemic of contrarianism yeah that is being leveraged which is being sold
00:34:15.740 psychologically to people as a kind of skepticism you know it's kind of been like do your own research
00:34:19.900 right where but it's actually not skepticism it's skepticism about the mainstream narrative always and
00:34:26.220 everywhere uh you have people who will deride the new york times as fake news and you'll and they assume
00:34:32.380 that a corporation like pfizer will always lie to them about their data and yet they will
00:34:36.380 trust something they they get on a substack newsletter about alternative medicine without blinking so
00:34:43.580 it's not skepticism proper it's quite asymmetrical but i gotta think that civilizationally the larger
00:34:49.820 project here is for us to find some pathway back to trust you know both within and outside of our
00:34:57.500 respective countries without trust both on a national level and on the international level civilization
00:35:05.420 collapses trust is the glue that holds everything together and trust in institutions i mean not
00:35:13.420 trust in the hundred people you know personally you can't build a nation of 300 million people or a world
00:35:22.620 of almost eight billion people if you only trust the hundred people you know personally how do you
00:35:28.860 trust people you don't know personally this is where institutions come into the picture and again
00:35:33.900 without institutions if you'd like to continue listening to this conversation you'll need to
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