For tonights motion, renowned historian, filmmaker and bestselling author, Neil Ferguson. [applause] [applause] meals opponent meals opponent tonight is cnn anchor, celebrated author, for reads a car. [inaudible] [applause] gentlemen, thank you for being here. It will be an exciting debate. I want to run through a few quick predebate items with you. First, for those watching online and in the audience, there is a , munk debate. You can be part of the conversation. We have a rolling poll going, you can analyze, judge the debaters comments at ww munk debates. Com vote. We also have our countdown clock, key piece of the success of this clock. This will count to zero for each of the different segments of the debate. When you see a countdown, join me and around of applause. That will keep our debate on time and to our debaters on their toes. Fun and Critical Data point at the top of the evening, all of you here, 3000 people in attendance voted on tonights resolution coming into this hall. Be it resolved, the liberal International Order is over, gay or day yes or no, 34 agree, 66 disagree. This is a critical question we asked to get, depending on what you get on the debate, are you open to changing your vote . Lets have those numbers please. 93 . Wow. 93 are open to changing. This debate is in motion. It is fluid and lets get us started. We will have Opening Statements. Neil ferguson you are speaking in favor and you have ten minutes. Thank you very much indeed. And thank you peter and melanie for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important issue. Was famously said the Holy Roman Empire was not holy nor roman, nor an empire. The same can be set for the liberal International Order. It is not liberal nor international, nor for that matter very orderly. Yet, it seems that reckless at best to come of all places, toronto and try to get people to vote against those three words. You are all liberal. You are all international, and by my own experience, you are all quite orderly. It seems to me that one way of thinking about this is how difficult it would be to get you to vote in favor of what i suppose would be the opposite, which would be conservative, homegrown chaos. We are trained in the United States at the moment. [laughter] i just want to make it clear that i am not here to defend donald trump. I am not even here to persuade you, the liberal International Order is necessarily all bad. Im just here to dissuade you that it is. Now, i think there should be some fold disclosure. You and i have been amongst the beneficiaries of the liberal International Order. Not quite as much is peter, but some. We have had our fun over the years, i think you still go to those places. I am not going to deny that it has been pretty good. The question i want to address is whether or not it has been good for a lot of other people who may not be so well represented in this audience tonight. Has it been good for ordinary americans . It north americans, canadians, u. S. Citizens . Has it been good for ordinary europeans . Has a been good for the people and the places we come from . Those that did not make it to toronto. Or the Indian Muslims who do not make it on cnn. That really seems to me the points. I want to suggest you tonight that we need to consider very seriously the possibility that globalization has overshot. It overshoots and caused at least two major crisis, the consequences of which were still living with, financial crisis and another crisis of mass migration. If we carry on telling ourselves the story, the story goes Something Like this, a we have been so much more peaceful and prosperous since 1945 thanks to those nice liberal International Order institutions, the United Nations, the wto and so on. Why must these populist spoil at all . That seems to me to be an extremely dangerous narrative for us to cling to. I dont think it is good history to explain peace and prosperity in that way. In fact, the mip state history. Why is it not liberal . Because the principal beneficiary of this wonderful liberal International Order has been china. Yes, that has been the principal winner back in 1980 china accounted for perhaps 2 of the World Economy. The u. S. And canada together were of the worlds economy. Today china accounts for 18 of the World Economy and the u. S. And canada together slightly less at 17 . There saying by 2021 china will account for one fifth of the World Economy. How can it be a liberal International Order if the principal beneficiary is a oneparty state run by a communist elite . They are not the only beneficiaries. Theres a terrific article about ill liberal democracies. Once with elections that have no rule at all also turn out to have dominic, rather well from the system. Actually looked at some of the measures you used in that article. I wanted to see if the world got any more free since you wrote that article back in 1997. It hasnt. The proportion of countries tend to free is about the same as it was in 1997. Some of the worlds countries are getting less free by the day. Dramatic freedoms not only in russia, but countries like venezuela, china the principal beneficiary of the liberal International Order ranks 173rd out of 195. In terms of freedom today. Some liberal order, some International Order two. Lets ask ourselves who really has benefited from this era of globalization. It is really in inter elitist order that we should be talking about. The principal beneficiaries of the system turn out to be those lucky few who possess rare intellectual property or rare real assets, including and peter gnosis as well as anyone, commodities. Even canada has experienced rising inequality in this era of International Order. Has gone up since the 1980s, a third of the gains this economy made in this glorious decade before the financial crisis accrued to the top 1 of income earners. The show the incoming canada that goes to the top is not quite 1 today. Not quite as high as it was before world war ii. That is another consequence of the liberal national order. The winners take all in this system. It is one of the paradoxes of globalization. If i am right about that, it signified by the fact that it is not only popular to try to rein in globalization, here in canada you have just imposed an additional tax on Foreign Investors in housing because of the dramatic increase in the cost of housing that has been. As chinese and other investors, toronto has gone up by a factor of three sincere 2000. Let me conclude by observing the liberal International Order isnt orderly. The order in any case was not produced by the unit much less by the use wto, was produced by the United States in the military and other alliances that led. The reason for itself has been made often lets not confuse these things. Its very different if the world is led based on america as opposed to collect the security base that is a challenge is being made to that tax what do we see . Increase disorder islamic extremism claiming to thousands of lives every year. That tens of millions of people displaced from their homes. Nuclear proliferation, another test tonight, luckily it didnt work. You dont need to support donald trump to know that there is something wrong here. You dont need to be a populist, you can do it as a Classical Liberal which is what i consider myself and recognize the biggest of Classical Liberalism is a set of globalization that undermined the foundation of a free society based on the rule of law and represented as government. So, the liberal International Order spelt l i o. It is an l ie. It is not liberal nor Truly International and it certainly is not orderly. Folks, it is over. Thank you very much. [applause] now the Opening Statement will call on peter. Your ten minutes on the clock now. Thank you all. It is a great pleasure to be here. I have to confess that i was nervous when i was told i would be up against Neil Ferguson. I do not have his oxford degrees, and i certainly dont have the british accent. I thought he would have these extraordinary moments of eloquence, he began by quoting voltaire. Im a simple guy, i cant do all of that. Im just going to tell you a story. Going to tell you story of how this liberal International Order began. Its an interesting story because it involves the canadian. About a year after pearl harbor, Franklin Roosevelt decided he wanted to try to figure out what kind of world the United States wanted to build at the end of world war ii. He could always see that the United States would decisively win this war. He did not have someone he could talk to and really trust. Except Mackenzie King, who is a confidence. He asked him to come to washington. King took the train, went to washington and they sat down at dinner. Roosevelt had a martini, did not offer Mackenzie King a drink because he knew he was a teetotaler. Then he went to the oval office and Franklin Roosevelt, this aging, visionary man described to him what kind of world he wanted to build. Mckinsey kept a diary and it is one of the rare instances of where we have recorded roosevelts vision. And it was in understanding that the world has so far been characterized by war, great power of conflict, colonial empires, economic and next line tatian. The United States cannot support the resurrection of that old order. We are going to try to do something different. Were going to try to build a new International Order. He did not quiet a liberal International Order but clearly that is what he meant. A world in which is at first will ask for the absolute surrender, the Unconditional Surrender of the powers. Will ask the british and french to understand they cannot reconstruct their great empires, that we need a world in which freedom, liberty and selfdetermination has a greater scope. He wanted a world of open trade and open economics. He wanted a world of greater commerce in contact. But he also wanted a world that have more rules. So there were some political structures that would be built that allowed for a more orderly resolution of political disputes. And that is called the United Nations. And all of these things together in roosevelts view would justify the Great American effort and involvement in world war ii. At the end of world war ii, roosevelt did not live to begin to build that vision. But he talked about it throughout the war and he worked on it throughout the war. In fact, what happened was a partial creation of exactly that vision. After hundreds of years of something completely different, perhaps thousands of years it was built, this liberal International Order. It created a rulebased system and an open economy with greater commerce in contact. It wasnt perfect, there are many flaws a month of countries that were not part of it. The soviet union and its allies been the most important exceptions. But it did create a new world. If you think about the world we live in, it is the world or Franklin Roosevelt created and dreamed of with Mackenzie King. It is a world of much greater order, much less Political Violence, much greater trade commerce and capitalism, much greater broad sustained prosperity that has ever been true before. That is the world you live in, the world we live in, and what we take for granted. It has now become so commonplace. It becomes easy to attack the little flaws, the challenges, the pauses that take place, the tiny reversions that take place when you have a world like that. Just look at the big picture, steven pinker, harvard professor, colic of meals wrote a book and he meticulously calculated that we are now living in the most peaceful each in human history. Violence, Political Violence, war and terrorism is down 75 compared to for five decades a ago, its probably dont 90 or 95 from 500 years ago. Or so he claims. Im not sure the data from the late middle ages is not very good. Im not sure one can speak with confidence about that. But he is a harvard professor so, i trusted. [laughter] when you look at the expansion of this world you see the power, the endurance and appeal. It started as i said without the great soviet and without most of the third world. By the 50s and 60s countries began to realize that in order to grow fast you needed to be part of it. Japan, taiwan, south korea started to come in. Latin american countries joined in. Then you had the collapse of the soviet union, the collapse of communism and all of a sudden the entire world becomes part of the system. The free trading system, the socalled gap had 78 countries in 1970 and now has a hundred and 70. If you look at the European Union which was six countries in 1970, and has 28 now. Twentyseven when we kick out meals written. But, still an enormous expense expansion from that time. They include most powerfully the new rising powers. We have talked about who this order has empowered. I tell you who it has empowered more than anybody else, it has empowered the poorest people in the world. The United States nation calculates that in the last 50 years, we have taken more people out of poverty than in the preceding 500. That is principally because countries like india and china were able to grow and raise their Living Standard and allow peasants who are living on 1 dollar a day to move out of poverty. My father was a politician, his constituency was largely rural. 1000 villagers in it. When he went to india 30 or 40 years ago and went into those villages, people live lives that looked as though there from the middle ages. Today when you go to those places it is a world transformed. They have food, medicine, shelter. It is not luxury by any standards but the difference between living on a dollar a day of living on three or 4 a day. That transformation has taken place in india, china, latin america, and other parts and it is beginning to take place in africa. Those are the people who have most powerfully benefited from this new liberal International Order. Others as well. It is not as though the United States has been standing still. U. S. Gdp is up 1000 since 1970. European gdp is not up that much but if you go to any of these countries youre struck by a rich society. There is a problem with how it has been redistributed. When it is we have globalized very fast and we have had enormous amounts of immigration. Women have been emancipated. All of these changes produce cultural anxiety. They make people want to go back to a simpler time to make America Great again. To make britain great again. But to these countries have been great because that they led and spearheaded this liberal International Order. They have found a way to allow the world to share this extraordinary dream that Franklin Roosevelt had that he talked to Mackenzie King about. A dream that brought peter munk from hungry fleeing persecution here. It it is a world who has allowed Neil Ferguson to leave scotland and britain and come to the United States and fall in love with a woman and born in some aliyah fled to go to holland to find freedom there. And then to the United States. It is where they have had their son, Beautiful Boy name tiny thomas, neil colson. I think that thomas is future rests on an open, pleural, diverse, cosmopolitan world where people think of you based on the content of your character, not the color of your skin. I think that is the world that neil secretly believes is powerful, deep, and enduring. Otherwise he would not have voted with his feet. And moved to the United States and moved to palo alto. He knows that is where they are inventing the future and he wants to be a part of it. What i say to you, Neil Ferguson is, come home. [laughter] [applause] come home to the liberal International Order that has been so good to you and that will be so good to your son, thomas. [applause] weve had two fabulous debaters on stage. We are now going to move into two rounds of bottle. Youll each have three minutes on the clock, uninterrupted to react and what you heard in the Opening Statement. Neil, europe first with your first rebuttal. [laughter] now he has crossed the line because he is my children into it. You should not have done it. That was not smart. You are going to regret it. So