At the 3rd attempt to get the latest updates on aljazeera. Hi im Steve Clements and i have a question will internationalism institutions like the u. N. And global commitments to democracy and human rights survive if america says it just doesnt care anymore lets get to the bottom line. When the west led by the United States played architect to build a vast array of International Institutions to promote justice liberal democracy open markets and prevent another global war thats what the world got we built the United Nations we built nato the i. M. F. And world bank the International Energy agency World Health Organization that are World Trade Organization i could go on and on and on but those days may be over at this years Munich Security Conference the worlds most important convening of National Security strategists and leaders a term was born its called west listen this a world where the United States and the west are ambivalent towards the global order and towards global problem solving so we have to ask today to International Law and cooperation still matter how relevant is the un how is a World Without leadership supposed to respond to things like the spread of the coronavirus refugees fleeing wars and natural disasters fortunately we have some people with us here who have all the answers with me here in washington d. C. Are Danielle Pletka a senior fellow with the American Enterprise institute and host of a weekly podcast on Global Affairs called what the hell is going on and ian bremmer the president of the group a consultancy that focuses on Political Risk around the world and author of us versus them the failure of globalism and in Berlin Germany we have Wolfgang Ischinger former german ambassador to the United States and the United Kingdom and now chairman of the Munich Security Conference its so great to have all of you here today this is a big heavy subject and wolfgang im going to start with you after the successful conference you just had when you laid out this this this question about what is the World Without the west essentially at the front leading to solve problems so what is your diagnosis of the. Noble order as we see it today was the 1st of all let me say how great it is to be on your show and to talk about these very important issues for for the International Community and for us the west now what we believe my team and i would we believe we can diagnose is a double phenomenon 1st that the west as we know it is beginning to become less western and that the world at large. The world at large that we thought would over time become more western with join us the liberal International Order actually we we diagnose that the world at large is not becoming more western its becoming less western so we have a double loss that was our diagnosis and thats how we tried to coined this term west listeners and i have to say that im as a conference convener im very happy that the term created quite a bit of controversy some people almost violently disagreed others thought it was right on on the mark and we had a lot of debate good debate tough debate about where the west stands and whether in fact we should be worried and i think i am gauri danny are you worried i am and its for a lot of the reasons that outlined you know its always been the case that there is a competition of ideas that goes on its not that you know we are out there and that there arent countervailing forces and whats happened over the last 2030 years since the end of the cold war is that weve kind of rested on our laurels weve said you know well we won thats great you know game over and at the same time weve seen powers rising that are inimical to us and by this i mean less russia although we talk a lot about russia and europe and at the Munich Security Conference they did talk a lot about russia but really also china and one power that i think is is ignored in the Development World and one that my colleague karen young writes about a lot which is the gulf if you look at all the initials that you laid out in the introduction it m. E. H. 0 in your un and the world bank and the i. M. F. They have a model of development that rests on accountability regulation. Transparency. Is sort of a liberal order in many ways a liberal economic order what the chinese are exporting with delton road and what we dont talk about as much but what the gulf countries are exporting with their own economic state craft is not that well so what went wrong because part of the deal ive read what youve written in the past about the fact that these institutions and. Of global order and global problem solving began letting nations in that werent democracies that didnt have the d. N. A. Of Legal Systems and you know systems of justice and rights and that that has had a corrosive effect on those institutions so but i think a lot of other people thought china and russia bringing them in would change those countries but it seems to have gone the other way around but that was the conceit of the opening to china and i dont think we should denigrate that it probably was one of the most transformative events in Human History hundreds of millions of people raised out of poverty after the opening of china the problem was that the notion you know the conceit was that we would in tangled these powers in this global set of rules and systems and guardrails right and the answer is well actually no what theyve done is theyve taken advantage theyve exploited those systems and weve allowed a lot of these institutions that were built up in the wake of world war 2 to 2 to age you know kind of like you know me. I always use the example you know im an older lady i dont do the things i need to change and yet those institutions havent adapted in youve talked about west listeners i know you were at the Munich Security Conference is a lot of this also writes very closely to another term you had of a geezer 0 world is big brzezinski used to talk about the need for a g 2 world the United States and china but if we couldnt get the u. S. And china together nothing could be done but i mention your take on west listeners. What it means to as unhappy. So why why are we in this period of profound lack of leadership we feel unmoored and Munich Security Conference which is meant to be the place where the Transatlantic Alliance comes together to talk about combined views of security suddenly feels like its not working out that way at all thats right it was very controversial at the cross secretary of state might pompei all get up and said the west has never been better right there will always winning from mike i mean thats pretty clear the germans were much more i think concern and recognize that wolfgang got it right but i think there are 3 major reasons for it number one china is rising but not aligning towards us russia is in decline really angry about it blaming us and working to undermine it so geopolitically things that we thought were going to feel like they were close and increasingly western havent work secondly inside our own countries we have larger numbers of people who feel like the system does not work for them its the legitimize its why you have trumpets why you have standards its why you have bracks its why you have the its why you have the terms for deutschland in germany on and on and on right but then thirdly having less to do with the internal and the geo political its just the institutional and the its the what daniel just said which is when we create these institutions they actually reflect the geo political order balance values capital of the time. Times change but the institutions frequently dont we put the u. N. Together in 1905 literally in 1987 the Security Council no longer made sense we had the berlin crisis and were thinking why the hell did we let the soviets in with the permanent veto sadly too late there they are and ever since then Security Council been broken cant reform it now when you talk about the nato and the World Trade Organization it took a long time before the geopolitics shifted so much of the institutions felt irrelevant but now in 2020 hey surprise surprise a lot is institutions dont remotely reflect the Geopolitical Realities of those 1st 2 points and as a consequence the institutions are kind of broken and you crease only see belts and roads you increasingly see new sorts of institutions that are rising that have very little to do with the west as we historically defined it well. One of the things i love about your profile is that youre not only this. Impresario of global strategist but you were ambassador of germany to the United Kingdom and to the United States and i think one of the questions is has this. Nationalism has this disregard for the International Deal making and rule making that i see in the United States today has that been cooking up for a while in places like the u. K. And the us did you see precursors to this before donald trump. Well i think yes in very different ways i mean we have seen for example the beginning of an american tendency not to play the worlds only policeman. To withdraw where that was compatible with what the United States defined as the priority it risks we saw that with donald before donald from with soil with with president obama. So for from it from a european point of view you know we in europe we are all small countries on the world scale none of us has 100000000 or more inhabitants were all small if youre small you like strong institutions if you are small you like established and accepted rules that work because that protects usually the small the the big ones the United States needs those rule a little less than the small ones so if i can just make one point that affects my own country most the difference between the United States and germany is you created this liberal post world war 2 International Order you created it and you you know the world owes america a debt of gratitude my own country was the defeated enemy at the time when the United Nations was founded we joined the United Nations most people forget that only in the 1970s. We joined nato only in the mid 1950 s. And for my own country the idea that we became part of the west has been a very principle the very fundamental idea of our own postwar existence when i was investor in washington i said ok surely you know i am im happy and confident because as the ambassador of my country i can now say that were actually today on the right side of history not on the wrong that is why this. This this this breaking apart of the west this loss of control by the west of Global Affairs is of particularly. Negative impact for for germany we are losing. A lot more than established powers like france and britain and the United States we my generation used to believe that the center of the universe thats the white house and capitol hill looking at the world from germany and that is now you know there is now a large question mark thats where we are at the moment danny you spoke a lot about this weve had a lot of conversations how culpable our previous administrations in the United States to the state of affairs that we have today look i think i think we can be pretty much equal opportunity blamers you know when you talk about lack of interest for example in rebuilding Democratic Institutions in human rights in those sorts of questions in the the ideals of what we used to call the west. The Obama Administration wasnt terribly interested and the Obama Administration was a direct repudiation of the bush administrations socalled freedom agenda which really put those kinds of questions front and center and revealed. While our values may have been good and well placed and our and bish ans may have been good and well placed our capabilities were not and that we are much better at winning wars then we are winning peace and i would go so far says that even in places where we havent fought wars but where you know Hosni Mubarak for example i was just talking about him right you a moment ago you know there was a situation where we we almost never pressed the gyptian leader for accountability for fairness for human freedom and were not pressing c. C. Today and sisi is even worse what leads us to believe that going down that same path will not in fact lead to the same outcome in right now one of the things that i have learned about Global Affairs and i come at this from a realist tradition actually but i understand why these important transnational issues like human rights what happens with refugees what happens with system of justice really matter my form of realism was apparently a lot more progressive than i and i had anticipated now you see World Affairs but i guess the question is when he sees things like the coronavirus today spread around the world these are sort of dark day issues where nations sometimes say you know i wish i hadnt kicked germany in the teeth or canada in the teeth when you kind of begin looking at whether or not there is a reservoir of goodwill today among countries when big transnational challenges come out weve got refugees weve got coronavirus and pandemics in general and im interested in how you see a way. Forward or whether we find ourselves just living in an ad hoc world where sometimes we Work Together and the rest of the time were not welcome there is good news in the good what is the good news is that after 75 years of growing globalisation were just a lot wealthier and not only were a lot wealthier as a world but we also have a lot more people with the education to be a part of solutions so even though it is not unified we have more capacity to respond to shocks whether its climate or its coronavirus right but clearly governance which is what were talking about here right political variables are heading in a very different direction and when we had 911. 00 the United States came together the support was about 92 percent that january right and the world came out there was that reservoir of goodwill thats what i want to go back i want to play or not hear out of one of dannys former colleagues maybe current colleagues on not sure but but former colleagues played a prominent role in the trumpet ministration but also bush mistreatment but lets listen to john bolton at a conference in new york in 1904 there is no United Nations there is an International Community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and thats the United States when it suits our interests. And when we can get others to go along secretariat building in new york has 38 stories if you lost 10 stories today it would make a bit of difference. This kind of mindless. Creation of the United Nations as Something Different in the United States interest to do isnt going to sell here or anywhere else the United States makes the u. N. Work when it wants to work and that is exactly the way it should be because the only question the only question for the United States is whats in our National Interest and if you dont like that im sorry but that is the fact so this was a long time ago this is ambassador john bolton. Operating in a very dim feel that he was he was so much more of your i. Couldnt raises an interesting question that i think gets right if this this this part of the west closeness challenge was if john boltons comment was if the United States is engaged in leading then operations like the United Nations can matter if you know if the United States is not there and doing the things then youve basically unplugged a world that is problem solving and i want to know where the good news is and that. The good news is that if the geopolitics have moved so far that the old us led order can no longer hold much better to know that early than late much better to actually be working on a new set of institutions that will actually reflect a functional new global order than wait until the big crisis inevitably