Thank you, everyone for coming today, thrilled to be with these wonderful writers. We will be talking about the relationship between the United States and china and thinking about that under the paradigm of a second cold war whether thats helpful or not helpful way of looking at that relationship. Let me tell you about the people up here. The author of the book we need new stories, ece temelkuran is a writer, a turkish novelist and journalist and grateful to have her here. Mohsin hamid is a novelist and author of many books. Its wonderful to have him here. And anne appelbaum, historian of the soviet union and the cold war, and her books include iron curtain, great to have you here. When we are done, you should get notecards at some point today and if you have any questions, pass them to the end of the island we will read those in the last halfhour of the event. I want to start with you, mohsin hamid. What do you think of this idea of a second cold war with china and specifically how it might look to people who are not in the United States or china and how you think of that idea as we embark on this relationship with china which seems to have got more intense in the last decade . Thank you. Happy to see so many of you here since the last event, nice to have you all here. The first thing i would say is the definition of cold war, even calling it a war in itself is of you from the summer. I come from sudan so i have an african perspective on the chinese us relationship and the difference between the two, and the way influence has spread across the world and how that translates into each partys agenda has been very different, china has spent a huge amount of time for good or for ill in building strong infrastructure and strong cultural connections with the continent. I room are being about 8 or 9 years old and members of Chinese Embassy coming to schools to participate in Cultural Exchange with china. There was considered attempts to have chinese tv programs, cultural programs initiated with east african governments, the difference between the engagement with china and the us have meant at our level, this is seen as a very urgent and pressing crisis but where there are economic interests from which china draws a lot of influence, those areas do not see it like that. They just see china as a benign partner and a lot of economic and cultural projects and the benign aspect is a crucial one because the way china has established these programs particularly big infrastructure projects, they done without any sort of political outage. Theres not been any demand for any pressure that these states follow a chinese agenda on the global stage if that makes sense. Contrast that to the way the United States has applied its influence or extended its power particularly in west africa which has been very aggressive and militarized, a lot of, not particularly structural clear which makes it seem quite sinister so lots of marine activity particularly in the fashion so it is seen as sinister and below the radar and having an agenda that is about securitizing africa and securitizing economic assets, minerals and other assets america wants to protect rather than being a partnership with those countries. So in summary to answer your question, the view of a cold war 2. 0 is a very specific place and not necessarily reflected in how many other parts of the world engage with that. How do you think about the question. I want to return to china and africa but how do you think about it . The first one wasnt really cold in my part of the world or your part of the world as well. Our dictators, pakistan and turkey in the 1980s, my generation of kids were pakistani, yeah. It wasnt very cold. Because we grew up i am a fruit of that cold war in that way. The most educated part of the population was either exiled, tortured, killed, imprisoned, lost their jobs, lost their families. It was pretty heated for a big part of the population. So now its going to be heated in another way. Not necessarily for the United States but in ukraine for instance. The Previous Panel was quite interesting in the sense that there was the stock of neoliberalism was the triumph and ideology but now it is coming to a end so we have to turn to the rest of the world and take the leadership to change this situation and so on. The first time they took the leadership which was during the cold war, many coups in my part of the world being Turkish Military coup in 1980. It was done to turn the Economic System of the country to free market economy because there was this massive labor movement. To impress there should have been a coup which at the end of the day happens with cia support and now it is interesting to listen to these views, we are going to take the leadership again and going to be very amazing. Sounded to me like that panel so i wanted to pickup up on that a little bit. That is what i wanted to say. I think my own personal sense is a new cold war would be a complete disaster for the world, we have enough challenges without spinning our energy on trying to destroy each other. Other things, i grew up next to one of the great battlegrounds of the last cold war, in pakistan next to afghanistan. So i grew up, we had a dictator backed by a huge amount of usaid, weaponry to islamise pakistan and tearing up the social fabric and teaching us we should support the mujahedin in their fight against the atheist soviets and setting up all these Training Camps for the mujahedin so the experience was weaponry flowing into the cities, heroin everywhere. And the complete transformation of Pakistans National character, the rise of militant groups who became terrorist groups and we won. The soviet union was defeated. Great victory was won in the cold war and pakistan and afghanistan lived happily ever after. This informs our view that they are almost always completely disastrous. Each time we sublet to another one, vietnam, afghanistan, iraq, ukraine, the moral argument is always whether the soviets doing, and democracy. The argument is always persuasive and the people who live in these places, generally speaking find their countries completely devastated by these things. America tires of the exercise, and up abandoning the region or the place and we have a disaster. That informs my sense of the desirability of this sort of thing. The other thing i would say in terms of what is going on, i think at the moment in the world we are experiencing Something Like covid. The real danger of covid turned out not so much that it would kill us but that our body would have exaggerated immune response. The immune response would ravage our lungs and brain and other parts of the body and go haywire in response to a perceived threat and damaging ourselves. My sense is in a sense the United States is going through Something Like that right now. The United States establishment looks around the world and sees all these threats and is gearing up to respond to these threats in a way that i think will be devastating for the body of the world. For me, how do we not do that is very important. I will go on but in a nutshell i think being skeptical of the degree to which we consider other enemies to be our adversaries, the pakistanis look at india and be aware of the rise of the multigovernment but indiana, a Huge Population of people with whom one can cooperate collaboratively similarly to the us and the second part of it is dont view the threat as quite as threatening. The second thing, last thing i will say is be much more critical and skeptical of your own side. In pakistan we have a corrupt and selfinterested National Security establishment. So does the United States. The United States, im old enough some of my friends are living very well, the United States legalize corruption by allowing people to work in Government Department particularly military departments, to preside over massive purchases, go to the private sector, receive enormous payments from the same people they were supposed to recommend and engage in this legalized corruption at much of americas militarized Foreign Policy is based on that like pakistan. I will stop there but those are my initial reactions. I object to cold war 2. 0 on a lot of grounds. I am not sure who uses it. I hear it used as a provocative phrase but im not sure who thinks that way, how many people are planning to divide the world between america and china. At the implication of the phrase that we were divided like we were in the past. I dont believe the world divides up that easily or that simplistically. I dont think the original cold war did either. The mistakes were made in the cold war were always to do with the us or the other side or the soviet union perceiving enemies and allies when in fact it was more subtle, vietnam is a famous example of that, we are the south vietnamese halide with the United States because they were capitalist or because or for other reasons, north vietnamese attacking because they were communist or because they were nationalists so we allowed the world to be divided into these two camps but made an easy frame for people to make judgments and lead to a lot of mistakes. Same is true of the soviet union, even more so. I actually think there are divisions in the world and i dont agree with you that all enemies and all conflicts are matter of perception. I think there are what we do see arising is certainly a network on the autocratic side, china, russia, iran, venezuela, zimbabwe, north korea our country to do now Work Together, they have nothing in common ideologically, they dont meet in secret rooms like in a james bond movie and make decisions about what they should do. Its not a simplistic group but it is a group who have some things in common and one of the things they have in common is their desire to repress their own democratic activists and their own population and in order to do that they fight both ideologically and in some cases really against the democratic world. One of the reasons for the russian invasion of ukraine, its a colonial project with russia deciding to recreate an empire but another reason they are doing it is the idea that ukraine could become a democracy and make its own decisions and be aligned with other democracies around the world was an ideological challenge to Vladimir Putin which he couldnt let go. If you fail to understand that then you wont understand why the war is being fought and couldnt can justify it. So that there is a loose alignment of powers who have reasons, to mystic political reasons to repress their own democracies and to create difficulties for the democratic world, that is just a fact of life. I wouldnt call it a cold war. I wouldnt call it cold war 2. 0. I dont think it is a simplistic frame you can put on top of the world, theres no berlin wall that divides east and west in some obvious way and i think there are autocratic behaviors and practices inside most democracies, maybe this one in particular in the fight against those is just as important as the struggle internationally. At the same time i would agree with you that there are allies whether the russian opposition or the hong kong opposition or the uranian womens movement. Those are also allies if they were to Work Together and with one another and people in a democratic world we could achieve things so i do think theres an ideological conflict in the world, i hope it will never look like cold war 1. 0. You want to respond to that . Let me ask about one thing. You spoke about the initial cold war and some of the mistakes the United States and the soviet union made, seeing people a certain way based on the way you laid it out, this idea of having autocratic countries that are allied in some way, they pose a challenge democratic countries. Where might it be more autocratic that they are allied with us to fit into that, saudi arabia or egypt or india . Its not a framework that includes every country. Vietnam is an extreme example that doesnt have as its primary goal undermining. It is not a revisionist power. Doesnt seek to change the world order or take human rights language out of the United Nations so you can point to them, saudi arabia plays on one side and sometimes the other, india, you can say sometimes aligned one way or the other. I am stressing it is not a simplistic framework and not every country fits into it and not every conflict fits into it. I am simply saying that there is a network of autocracies who do have as one of their goals the repression of their own democratic opposition, and they have tools, Information Warfare makes it sound too exciting, you could just call it propaganda. They have tools in which they seek to spread autocratic narratives, spread the narrative of democratic decline and dk, thats one of their projects, they seek to preserve our kind of kleptocratic system which allows them to steal and hide money and they do that with the cooperation of people in the United States and in europe as well. They also help one another so there are several examples of that, venezuela is a country that has an extra ordinarily unpopular government. Why his it remained in power so long, partly because the autocratic world supports the madura regime. The russians sell them weapons and the chinese solemn Surveillance Technology and invest in ways some of the chinese investments around the world may be benign, some of it is directed in such a way that is of use to dictatorships. Iran place of extraordinary role in venezuela given theres no historic relationship between iran and venezuela, what do they have to do with each other . The only thing they have in common they both are interested in, oil and getting around sanctions so they help one another do that. So the rescue of the russian dictator, that was mostly a russian project but was done with others too but they do see one another, they have some joint projects and many differences between them as well. Ive written down a question, followup question about how other autocratic regimes work. I appreciate attempts to complicate the framing and give it some nuance. Even within that training theres more nuance as well. Im struggling to get my head around the uniformity of these, im saying they have Group Interest related to advancing their own agenda or oppressing their own people but i will speak about iran in particular, theres a kind of regional conflict to it as well and one of the difficulties particularly when iran comes at this it is seen as axis of evil that has no ideology apart from some sort of disruptive antius hegemony agenda but has its own regional context, probably no dimension. Theres lots of nuances to irans security in the middle east. It is a country that locks into other countries like venezuela or has brought interests in opposing the us that lock, interlock with the us and china but also has a long history and a long history of religious schism but also a long history of shiite dispersal into the peninsula. I am not justifying the, giving a benign motivation. Just trying to give some color to how the motivations of these countries may manifest broadly into antius, antiwestern using an example of iran, representative, interlocutor in a region with a shiite population in many countries that have collapsed system is themselves and iran becomes inner antigovernment or tehran becomes a Central Force in local political dynamics. The way people talk about proxy forces in iran that they are very easily and directly connected, the houthis are connected on the other side of the puppet chain or even other small terrorist networks in the region. It is not that straightforward. There are influences and desires that marginalize the region and Political Forces in the region would like to impose or equalize. Iran is the Central Force behind that. The point i am trying to make is in that complexity theres more complexity that means that it is i think we should hesitate a little bit to categorize places in countries like iran as purely or even primarily acting from an agenda of democratic suppression and imperial or us hegemony resistance. Theres a regional context, and axis of failed states and oppressive government around that. Let me ask something separate from this conversation which is both of you talked about during the cold war coming from countries where us policy was imposed in some way by elected leaders, things youve discussed and that was a huge part of the cold war. The cold war also especially in europe was something many Free Democratic countries wanted the United States support during. And the conflict with china, theres all kinds of things going on in africa and latin america and much of the world but theres also countries in east asia, japan, south korea, democratic countries that want to draw closer to the United States in part because of fear of an aggressive china. Most people would say the most successful aspect of the us cold war policy was various policies in europe at different times during the cold war so im wondering how to think about that, how to separate out if you should separate it out, democratic countries who want the support, the help of the United States from these aspects of the cold war that you guys eloquently talked about. Theres this word democracy that has been used like a signal in these conversations when talking about politics in those countries are democracies which is why the us wanted to to protect democracy against Vladimir Putin or this or that and in that, very nuanced and complicated frame and so on but then i have to make this point. Can we all get real please . Right before of letter putin attacked ukraine