May 13, 2020 • 32 mins
In this special bonus episode of Next Question, Katie takes a step back to consider what the bigger, global picture might look like in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. She speaks with Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who shares his belief that this crisis won’t so much change the basic direction of world history, but will “accelerate” it. He also talks about his new book, “The World: A Brief Introduction” and his hope for an informed citizenry in which all Americans are equipped with the “foundation of understanding” about our country and the larger world.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Curic, and welcome to Next Question. Today.
I wanted to look outside the US for a moment
and consider the bigger global picture. The US has taken
a clear step back from its leadership position on the
global stage, and countries around the world have been left
to fend for themselves, which leads to my next question,
(00:22):
what will the new world order look like in the
wake of the coronavirus pandemic? And there's really no one
better to ask than my guests for this special bonus episode,
Richard Hass. He's the president of the Council and Form Relations,
the author of the new book The World A Brief Introduction,
and definitely one of the smartest people I know. I
(00:45):
spoke with him about why he believes this crisis promises
to be less of a turning point than away station
along this same road the world's been traveling for the
past few decades. Richard Hass. Great to have you on
the podcast. Great to be had so Richard. Of course
(01:05):
we should mention we've known each other for a very
long time. Met Gosh, at this point, maybe thirty years
ago when you were in Washington. I'm much too young
for that to be possible, but but it was something
it might be about that you were still you were
a young reporter for the NBC affiliate in Washington, that's right.
And we met when we were in line at the
(01:26):
Social Safe Way in Washington, d C. And I just
started talking to you because I thought you seemed cute.
I was engaged at the time, and I was like,
I was like, well, we just have to kind of
because I think we're gonna sound like we know each
other and we're kind of familiar. So I want people
to understand how and why. And I'll give the short version, Richard,
(01:49):
I'll give the abridge version. So basically, I saw this
guy he out on a nice tweet jacket with elbow patches,
some Hebrew national salami in his part, and I just
sort of started talking to him because I was always
trying to set my friend up with a with a
cute guy. And I found out, Richard, what was living
(02:09):
in d C. That he had gone to Harvard. By
the way, I just learned from your book and my research,
I didn't realize you were a Rhodes scholar. To Jesus, Richard,
you're quite the overachiever. Anyway, this conversation is only trouble anyway.
(02:32):
Long story short, he met my friend, they enjoyed each
other's company, and uh, but it wasn't a love connection.
He ended up marrying someone else. I know, Susan Mark
and Daddy. He's a wonderful person and we're all still
friends to this day. And now you're frequent golf partner
of my husband's, John Muhlner. A high percentage of what
(02:54):
you just said is true. Okay, all right, We'll move
on to loftier topics Richard, and namely your new book
called The World a Brief Introduction, and I love what
motivated you to write this book? Can you tell that story? Richard?
I was doing something I don't frequently do, which was fishing,
and I was with one of my best buddies and
(03:16):
his nephew was with him. This was a very bright
young man, about twenty or twenty one, I think he
was between his junior and senior years at Stanford. And
I asked him what he was studying there, and he
said computer sciences and he told me about it, and
then I said, I'm just curious because we can't have
a conversation about computer sciences because I don't know enough
to have a conversation. But what else are you studying?
(03:37):
For example, Uh, what kind of history courses are you taking?
And he said, well, I'm actually not taking any and
I said, oh, that's interesting. Well what about economics. No,
I'm not taking any of those either. We went through
a lot of the liberal arts curriculum, and the bottom
line is this bright young man was going to graduate
from one of the greatest universities in the world with
(03:59):
what I what was a really incomplete undergraduate education. And
when I got back to my office, we looked at
hundreds of colleges and universities around the United States, and
it turned out that his experience was anything but an exception.
But even though virtually every core campus offered courses on
foreign policy or international affairs or what have you, virtually none,
(04:23):
really only a handful required them for graduation. So if
you wanted to, you could not. You could navigate your
your requirements for graduation and essentially graduate without even a
rudimentary knowledge of this world that was going to change
your life. And what I thought I would try to
do in a in a single book is give people
(04:45):
the foundation, not to give them everything they need to
know much less how to think, but to give them
enough background so they would be better prepared to handle
the flood of news coming at them, to ask the
right questions, to think of out say, investments or business decisions.
And that was the goal here, to establish a kind
of foundational of floor level of global literacy for the
(05:08):
average citizen. I think it's a wonderful idea, Richard, because
I think not just your friend's nephew is in this boat,
but I think you know, even well educated people, the
world is so complicated. There's so much to keep up with.
It's virtually impossible, I think, unless you're the president of
the Council on Foreign Relations or this is your area
(05:30):
of expertise to really have a handle on it. Were
you able to boil it down and make it accessible
and understandable for for people honestly like me who is
excited about reading about some of these things, some for
the first time and some as a refresher. Of course,
that was the goal, and ultimately people will tell me
(05:53):
whether I succeeded. I worked hard at it was actually
a really difficult book to write for two reasons, and
you're you suggested both. One was to figure out what
to put in and what not to and when you
have it's almost like a buffet and you can put
on your plate anything from a hundred different goals. How
do you decide what to take? So I took a
(06:13):
lot of laps around Central Park thinking about what it
was to include and what really wasn't uh necessary? And
then I had to really unpack the issues, not use jargon,
not assume that people knew some historical reference, had to
explain everything. I learned a lot in writing it, because
you know, I do this for a living and I've
been doing it for forty years. But in many cases
(06:36):
I didn't know everything I needed to know in order
to teach it or explain it. Look, it's interesting to
learn the basics of some of the history, or why
is the Middle East such a messed up region? Or
why should we care about I wrote about global health
and pandemics before anyone knew what COVID nineteen was, or
just why is climate change such a problem. My goal
(07:00):
every step of the way was to connect it. The
subliminal question was why does the world matter? And therefore
why why? Why do you need to become somewhat more
knowledgeable about it? Someone somewhat more prepared to deal with it.
Why do you think people suddenly became so uneducated about civics,
(07:21):
about world affairs? Um, it seems like a real indictment
of our education system. Was it the shift in terms
of what we needed to to really learn about in
order to secure a good job when people graduated. Was it?
Was there a turning point? Does it coincide with the
(07:42):
US is I think increasing tendency to look inward? I mean,
how do you explain it, because it's actually very depressing
to me. Well, it's all of the above. I think
this country has a history of isolationism or continental country.
A lot goes on here, and when you think about it,
(08:03):
World War two, in the last seventy years, or really
the exception when the United States has been involved in
the world in an open ended way before then, was anything.
But in some ways, what we're seeing is a little
bit of a return to our tradition. I think with
the end of the Cold War this accelerated the sense was, well,
(08:23):
we can now put our feet up. We don't really
have to worry about the world all that much. We've
got lots of problems here at at home to tackle,
so I think a lot. And then I think, probably
more recently, Iraq and Afghanistan created the sense that getting
involved in the world was a bad thing. It costs lives,
it costs money. So again it pushed people more to
(08:47):
think about problems. In the United States, you didn't have
political leaders who were explaining why what goes on in
the world matters. That's somewhat nuanced conversation. So for any
number of reasons, Americans just turned away from it, and
I think mostly in part because they weren't studying it,
didn't see the didn't see the connections. No one was
(09:08):
pointing out why this is useful, to know why this
is relevant, and people thought they could get along fine
without it. And one of the expensive lessons of what
we're all going through now in the pandemic is that
we're learning that the world does matter, it does affect
our lives. Indeed, fundamentally our life. Denial is not a policy.
(09:31):
I think the same thing applies to to climate change,
but it is an indictment that our education in many
cases is not preparing Americans collectively or individually for the
for the world that they're going to inherit. When we
come back more with Richard Hass, President of the Council
Inform Relations. We're back with Richard Hass, President of the
(10:05):
Council on Foreign Relations. It's sort of surprising that, as
Tom Friedman wrote about the world becoming flat, that globalization
was accompanied by a certain sense of detachment from what
was happening in you know, outside our borders. You're right,
(10:26):
it's it's it's a contradiction. Also, I think against globalization
there was a certain pushback again. Foreign policy we've seen
as sometimes wasteful or expensive. People didn't always like what
they saw. They thought they could get along with with
without it, And we've been living in a certain bubble.
And we learned on nine eleven that terrorists who were
(10:49):
trained in Afghanistan could cause the death of three thousand Americans,
And in a couple of hours, we're learning now about
what began in Wuhan didn't day in Wuhan, It traveled
around the world, and now more than eighty thousand or
so Americans have lost their lives, Trillions of dollars of
wealth have been eliminated, tens and millions of jobs have
(11:11):
been eliminated. We saw the fires last summer in California.
We saw them in Australia, and I think that's just
a glimmer of what's to come. So I think what
we're learning is that the world really does matter, that
we ignore it to our peril. Isolationism is not a
solution to anything. What I'm hoping people also learn from
(11:32):
the current crisis is that unilateralism isn't much of a
response either. We can't do it by ourselves. It can't
just be America first. We've got to pool our resources
and and work with others. So this is this is
the most expensive teaching lesson I can imagine, and I
want to wish that on this country or any individual,
no matter what. But since it is happening, I'm hoping
(11:55):
that we can at least come away with this somewhat
somewhat the wiser. Well, let's talk about the US response
to this global pandemic. I know you believe it won't
so much change the basic direction of world history, but
will accelerate it. So I think, what what this pandemic
has done, Richard? In so many ways, it's brought into
(12:16):
sharp relief pre existing conditions, if you will, not only
domestically about income, inequality, access to healthcare, but globally about
the you know, the road we were already down before
this even surface. Can you talk about that this pandemic
(12:37):
didn't come out of nowhere, that it came into a context.
And the context internationally was one of a deteriorating US
Chinese relationship. You had the Brexit and the problems facing Europe.
The Middle East was turbulent, to say the least. North
Korea was increasing its nuclear missile arsenals. Russia was in
(12:59):
uh Ukraine, China was repressing freedom in Hong Kong, was
building out in the South China Sea, and as well,
it was a failed state, hemorrhaging people, and these and
any number of other challenges or realities in the world.
And what this has done is intensified it, accelerated and
exacerbated it. Uh So, the US Chinese relationship is even
(13:23):
is even worse. The Middle East now faces even more problems,
and we're looking away. So North Korea has been free
to continue down its path of missile and nuclear development.
The world has done nothing to catch up to the
challenge of climate change. And what's even worse, Katie, is
because we've had to devote so much of our attention,
so much of our bandwidth, so much of our resources.
(13:45):
I worry about this combination of a world that's in
worse shape than it was because of the pandemic, and
now we have less attention less capacity to to deal
with it. That seems to me the worst of all situations.
But I'm afraid that's the one we have less capacity
to deal with. What Richard, Oh, it's everything from the
(14:05):
fact of you've got millions of people around the world
who are are either ill or will be. You've got
economies that can't produce enough wealth in order to deal
with the public health needs as well as to keep
people employed. You've got the proliferation challenges, the terrorism challenges.
Russia hasn't left Ukraine, China is not pulling in it's horns.
(14:26):
You've had all the problems you had before. The last
book was the World in Disarray, So you had all
the disarray in the world, which has gradually gotten worse.
And again, what's now I think that more problematic is
the problems are more advanced, like climate change. The relationship
between the two most powerful countries in the world, the
US and China, is rubbed raw, and the United States
(14:49):
is spending trillions of dollars in order to provide relief
to American citizens and businesses, which means that we're not
going to have the capacity to devote resources and time
and attention to these international problems. And as we are learning, uh,
bad things happen around the world, sooner or later, they
will find their way here. You know, I was thinking
(15:10):
about terrorism, and I was thinking, as we're all focused
on the pandemic, we're really not keeping our eye on
on what kind of mischief quote unquote could be being
made in some of these terror hot spots or these
these terrorists hot spots. So I was just I was
(15:33):
thinking this morning, I mean, when's the last time we
really focused on terrorism? And the one thing we looked
at we didn't see Kim Jong n We thought he
might have died because he wasn't in public. But these
things have taken are even I mean, they're on the
back burner in a big way, aren't they. And what
do you see the ramifications of us not keeping eye
(15:55):
our eye on terrorism, which certainly is not going away. No,
history doesn't have a pause button. So just because we're distracted,
just because we're focusing in where it doesn't mean anything
else much like everything else stops. It worries me a
little bit that a terrorist might look at what's going
on and say, wow, we've been focusing on the wrong
(16:18):
kinds of threats or weapons. Our goal shouldn't be to
bring down airplanes or use car bombs, but maybe there
is something that we could use to infect a population.
And so I worry a little bit about uh so
called grand terrorism along uh those you know those lines.
But even without that uh, the violence hasn't stopped in Afghanistan.
(16:41):
It hasn't stopped in Seria or Olibya, or or Yemen.
So again, just because we're not watching, just because we're
not heavily involved, doesn't mean it's not happening. Take one example, Iran.
Over the last six months or year, it's estimated that
Iran has reduced by a significant out how many months
(17:02):
they would need before they would be on the brank
of developing a nuclear weapon. And we're not paying close
attention to it. I expect the Israelis are. But again
it's just a reminder that here we are while we
tackle this new set of problems, including pandemics, the old
set of problems hasn't been resolved, much less going away.
So two very scary notions, the use of biological weapons,
(17:25):
which we've of course been somewhat concerned about for many years,
and a nuclear Iran. Although I thought Iran had been
so impacted by COVID nineteen as well, Richard, Iran has
been badly hurt by the plummeting oil price. By their
in net mismanagement of the pandemic, they allowed the pilgrimage
(17:47):
to to continue. The government was discredited by their shootdown
of the Ukrainian civil airliner a few months ago and
their subsequent cover up. Just the other day there was
a friendly fire accident where Ronnie and Saw shot at
an Iranian vessel and I think killed something like twenty
soldiers or sailors. But at the same time, Uranians are
(18:08):
still causing real mischief around the region and in Iraq
and other places, and they are continuing to press up
against the edges of the two thousand fifteen nuclear agreement.
So they are there. They are able, if you will,
to take the punch of the pandemic and still continue
to cause other problems. Indeed, there's a school of thought
that because the regime there is facing public criticism for
(18:32):
its handling of COVID nineteen, that they're doing things in
order to promote a confrontation with the United States so
they can wrap themselves in the flag. Change the subject
if you will, Yes, wag the dog varsity style. Yeah,
let's you have said that foreign leaders have told you
that they quote don't recognize America right now and that
(18:53):
this is not the America they thought they knew. Uh.
Can you can you elaborate on that a little bit cured?
And can you talk about what ideally the American response
would have been to this pandemic versus in reality what
it has been. Uh, there's two sides to the coin.
(19:13):
One is domestically, when they look at our politics, they
look at other features of American society there they shake
their heads. A lot of them studied here, a lot
of them spend time here. And so they see United
States that has not just inequality, but has had several
decades of lagging or drifting incomes in the part of
(19:35):
many families. They see the gun violence, which they can't
understand or comprehend, the opioid deaths. Now, they see the
inept handling of the pandemic, the lack of testing, the
lack of discipline, social distancing, inadequate hospital capacity. So this
is not the United States. They respect much less want
(19:55):
to emulate. And then they see what we're doing or
not doing around the world. The fact that we not
participate in the European led effort to bring countries together
governments together, say to develop a vaccine, so we're essentially
missing an action. We talk about being tough on China,
but then we don't join the Trans Pacific Partnership, the
Regional Economic grouping, and most of our interaction with our
(20:19):
allies in the region is to break them over the
level of defense spending, rather than to come up with
a common approach, say to dealing with the challenge from
from China. So I think this the pandemic reinforces a
lot of these these perceptions of the United of the
United States that can no longer be counted on abroad,
(20:40):
were no longer as reliable and at home the United States,
that is not setting a standard or behavior that they
had come to to expect from us. And this is
what this leads to as a world where we have
less influence, where other countries kind of go their own way.
But it's not a good situation because these other countries
don't have the capacity to substitute for US. In some cases,
(21:03):
they may decide to develop more military capability so they're
more independent, which is not to me a reassuring future.
In some cases they may need to assuage a more
powerful neighbor. But a post American world will probably be
less prosperous, less free, UH, and less peaceful. And that's
the direction things are moving. We'll be back with more
(21:27):
of our conversation right after this once again, Richard Hass,
President of the Council and Form Relations. You've worked with
both Republicans and Democratic administrations, Richard uh Is, this is
(21:51):
this because of Donald Trump's leadership. It has something to
do with that. Donald Trump is UH an outlier. If
you look at it, re American president from Harry Truman
to through Barack Obama, what they had in common was
far greater than where they disagreed. Donald Trump is the
first president who probably disagrees more than he has in
(22:14):
common with all of his modern predecessors. He is clearly
in that sense of disruptor. But one of the big
questions in the field is whether it's in six months
or in four years and six months. And Donald Trump
is succeeded by someone else. To what extent the things
go back to what extent now has the rest of
(22:34):
the world somewhat moved on, to what extent as if
the American people decided they don't want to support certain
kinds of policy. But to put it in another way,
to what extent is Donald Trump or reflection of a
changed America in a changed world as much as he
is a driver of it, and that there's a there's
a big debate about that about what things look like afterwards.
(22:54):
I don't think there's any going back to where where
where things were exactly, but I do think they're a
potential for more of a return to a familiar traditional
American role in the world. I do think that's possible,
although you have posited that even a Biden presidency would
likely not guarantee a full scale return of an expansive
(23:15):
US role in the world. That's correct. I've written that,
and I still think that, and it's because the American
people aren't there. I think the pandemic we'll also reinforce
that because our domestic needs are going to be enormous,
the rest of the world might not be as prepared
to accept America's leadership in the future, and with the
(23:36):
thought that GF had happened once, it could happen again.
We can't be quite as reliant on the United States.
China has become more powerful, Russia is more entrenched in
the Middle East and in Ukraine. North Korea has much
farther advanced in terms of its nuclear and missile development.
What I do know is whoever is the next president
in early twenty one, whether it's Donald Trump for second
(23:58):
term or Joe Biden for his first, it's going to
be an extraordinarily difficult, even daunting uh inbox challenges. And
that's where again COVID nineteen, the pandemic has made it worse.
The challenges are somewhat greater about traditional ones as as
well as global ones, including the pandemic. Would also say
climate change, and our capacity and focus is going to
(24:21):
be less so. Even even if a president came in
like a Joe Biden who was inclined to do certain things,
he's just going to be dealt a very difficult, very
difficult hand. Do you think he's up up to the job,
Richard Well, Joe Biden is someone who has a lot
of experience, So I have no doubt about his ability.
(24:42):
He spent eight years as vice president, he spent decades
in the in the Senate, on the on the Foreign
Relations Committee. He's experienced with the with the issues. I
run a nonpartisan institution, so I have to be have
to be careful. I don't endorse candidates and the like,
but simply you know, he's got his background and whether
(25:02):
I don't think even his critics can can deny that
they can agree or disagree with various stances he's taken
and he and I have disagreed at times on issues.
But does he have the experience? Does he have the
familiarity both with the issues and how the US government
makes policy? I think the answer there is a clear guess. Clearly,
we are probably on the verge of a new era
(25:26):
in foreign policy. You know, from the post Cold War war.
This might be the post pandemic right era in foreign relations.
But are there some positive things that we can look
forward to? I think one thing that has been made
abundantly clear, at least from where I sit, Richard is
(25:47):
in an era where expertise was less and less valued.
We are starting to recognize, I think more than we did,
the importance of science, the important of data, the importance
of facts. Some people more than others, I think, would
are appreciating those things. But do you see that as
(26:08):
a positive as we emerge from this crisis, Well, I
hope you're right, and the kind of respect you feet
see for Dr Fauci, for example, the climate debate became
a more serious debate and people we spent less time
having to argue that a climate change is real and
more change, more kind of time talking about actually how
(26:29):
to actually deal with it, how to prevent future climate change,
adapt to existing climate change, than I would be uh,
you know, I would be gratified and reassured. I'm hoping
also that what comes out of this is a growing
recognition that the world does matter, that isolationism and unilateralism
are not viable alternatives, that we have a tremendous stake
(26:51):
and what happens outside our borders, and that we have
to we have to be involved, We can't be passive,
we can't simply bury our head in the center. Well,
I certainly hope we learn. And the other thing that
I hope is but I'm not I'm not certain it
will happen, is that Americans become more interested in what's
(27:14):
happening around the world in addition to reading your book,
that they actually that that our education system brings back
and and recognizes the importance of a well informed citizenry, uh,
not only for our democracy, but to be good global
citizens in general. Amen to that, I would I would
(27:37):
love that the day come sooner at the later every
high school graduate and every college graduate had certain things
under his or her belt, and it would be on domestically,
they would have read the Constitution and the federalist paper
is in the TOPEFIL and so forth, and understand what
is our political DNA, what is it that makes our
democracy vibrant? Uh? And and for an international they'd understand
(28:02):
why the world matters? What about this or that international
institution or alliances for this global challenge? What are certain
lessons of history? So yeah, they had that we would
be able to face the future with a foundation of
understanding about our country and the world that I really
think every citizen needs, uh, not just for their own career,
(28:24):
their investments and delight, but also to to hold their
elected representatives to account. Democracy needs to be based on
informed citizen right, and I think our schools aren't doing
the job in many cases, and not everybody obviously goes
to college or goes to high school. Beyond the age
of sixteen or once they reach our age, you forget
(28:48):
just about everything you might have learned. So I think
we need to rethink the idea of education and get
beyond the idea that it's just what you learned in
classrooms when you're a teenager in your early twenties. It's
got to be home a lifelong experience. And you know,
that's again why I wrote a book like this, because
it's aim not just as students, but it's aimed to
that for their parents and grandparents. We need an informed
(29:10):
citizen rey, regardless of the person's age. What did you
learn the most when you were writing this book, Richard?
What you know? Has you had to synthesize these very
complex things. You're, as I mentioned, one of the smartest
people I know. But what did you learn in the
process of writing this that surprised you or perhaps made
you reconsider previously held positions? For my own thinking changed
(29:34):
the most, Katie, in writing the book was in how
do I put this step? Most of my study, most
of my life has been involved with traditional foreign policy,
problems in the U. S. Soviet relationship, now the US
Chinese relationship, great power relations you know, that's what I
studied when I was a student at Oxford. What where
(29:56):
I changed the most in writing this book was coming
up with a new appreciation of global issues that every
era of history has its defining features, and say, in
the first half of the twentieth century, it was probably
the relationship between France, Britain and Germany among those three countries.
Second half of the twentieth century was obviously the U. S.
Sovia Cold War. I think in this century, what's qualitatively
(30:18):
different and this is where my own thinking evolved the most,
That we not only have to take into account the
traditional great power politics, but there's this whole new set
of global issues and we simply don't have the thinking,
much less the institutions or arrangements for dealing with them.
And and if we don't, that is going to be
(30:39):
the that's gonna write most of the history of the
twentieth century. It's gonna be our ability or inability to
come together to deal with these global challenges, from pandemics
to to to climate change to terrorism. That makes the
twenty one century qualitatively different than the rest of modern history.
(30:59):
And that's thanks for me that I just didn't appreciate
nearly so much until I really delved into the issues. Well,
Richard is always great to talk to you. The new
book you're the thirteenth I believe that you've written or edited.
Is that right? Might even be one or two more
than that, Katie, but who's counting. It's called The World
(31:20):
a Brief Introduction. Thanks so much for doing this today.
Thanks Katie, great fun. Richard Hass's new book is called
The World a Brief Introduction and it's out now. I
highly recommend it. And that does it for this special
bonus episode of Next Question. You can check out all
of our episodes and subscribe. Please do on Apple Podcasts,
(31:44):
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(32:15):
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(32:36):
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(32:56):
your favorite shows,
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Curic, and welcome to Next Question. Today.
I wanted to look outside the US for a moment
and consider the bigger global picture. The US has taken
a clear step back from its leadership position on the
global stage, and countries around the world have been left
to fend for themselves, which leads to my next question,
(00:22):
what will the new world order look like in the
wake of the coronavirus pandemic? And there's really no one
better to ask than my guests for this special bonus episode,
Richard Hass. He's the president of the Council and Form Relations,
the author of the new book The World A Brief Introduction,
and definitely one of the smartest people I know. I
(00:45):
spoke with him about why he believes this crisis promises
to be less of a turning point than away station
along this same road the world's been traveling for the
past few decades. Richard Hass. Great to have you on
the podcast. Great to be had so Richard. Of course
(01:05):
we should mention we've known each other for a very
long time. Met Gosh, at this point, maybe thirty years
ago when you were in Washington. I'm much too young
for that to be possible, but but it was something
it might be about that you were still you were
a young reporter for the NBC affiliate in Washington, that's right.
And we met when we were in line at the
(01:26):
Social Safe Way in Washington, d C. And I just
started talking to you because I thought you seemed cute.
I was engaged at the time, and I was like,
I was like, well, we just have to kind of
because I think we're gonna sound like we know each
other and we're kind of familiar. So I want people
to understand how and why. And I'll give the short version, Richard,
(01:49):
I'll give the abridge version. So basically, I saw this
guy he out on a nice tweet jacket with elbow patches,
some Hebrew national salami in his part, and I just
sort of started talking to him because I was always
trying to set my friend up with a with a
cute guy. And I found out, Richard, what was living
(02:09):
in d C. That he had gone to Harvard. By
the way, I just learned from your book and my research,
I didn't realize you were a Rhodes scholar. To Jesus, Richard,
you're quite the overachiever. Anyway, this conversation is only trouble anyway.
(02:32):
Long story short, he met my friend, they enjoyed each
other's company, and uh, but it wasn't a love connection.
He ended up marrying someone else. I know, Susan Mark
and Daddy. He's a wonderful person and we're all still
friends to this day. And now you're frequent golf partner
of my husband's, John Muhlner. A high percentage of what
(02:54):
you just said is true. Okay, all right, We'll move
on to loftier topics Richard, and namely your new book
called The World a Brief Introduction, and I love what
motivated you to write this book? Can you tell that story? Richard?
I was doing something I don't frequently do, which was fishing,
and I was with one of my best buddies and
(03:16):
his nephew was with him. This was a very bright
young man, about twenty or twenty one, I think he
was between his junior and senior years at Stanford. And
I asked him what he was studying there, and he
said computer sciences and he told me about it, and
then I said, I'm just curious because we can't have
a conversation about computer sciences because I don't know enough
to have a conversation. But what else are you studying?
(03:37):
For example, Uh, what kind of history courses are you taking?
And he said, well, I'm actually not taking any and
I said, oh, that's interesting. Well what about economics. No,
I'm not taking any of those either. We went through
a lot of the liberal arts curriculum, and the bottom
line is this bright young man was going to graduate
from one of the greatest universities in the world with
(03:59):
what I what was a really incomplete undergraduate education. And
when I got back to my office, we looked at
hundreds of colleges and universities around the United States, and
it turned out that his experience was anything but an exception.
But even though virtually every core campus offered courses on
foreign policy or international affairs or what have you, virtually none,
(04:23):
really only a handful required them for graduation. So if
you wanted to, you could not. You could navigate your
your requirements for graduation and essentially graduate without even a
rudimentary knowledge of this world that was going to change
your life. And what I thought I would try to
do in a in a single book is give people
(04:45):
the foundation, not to give them everything they need to
know much less how to think, but to give them
enough background so they would be better prepared to handle
the flood of news coming at them, to ask the
right questions, to think of out say, investments or business decisions.
And that was the goal here, to establish a kind
of foundational of floor level of global literacy for the
(05:08):
average citizen. I think it's a wonderful idea, Richard, because
I think not just your friend's nephew is in this boat,
but I think you know, even well educated people, the
world is so complicated. There's so much to keep up with.
It's virtually impossible, I think, unless you're the president of
the Council on Foreign Relations or this is your area
(05:30):
of expertise to really have a handle on it. Were
you able to boil it down and make it accessible
and understandable for for people honestly like me who is
excited about reading about some of these things, some for
the first time and some as a refresher. Of course,
that was the goal, and ultimately people will tell me
(05:53):
whether I succeeded. I worked hard at it was actually
a really difficult book to write for two reasons, and
you're you suggested both. One was to figure out what
to put in and what not to and when you
have it's almost like a buffet and you can put
on your plate anything from a hundred different goals. How
do you decide what to take? So I took a
(06:13):
lot of laps around Central Park thinking about what it
was to include and what really wasn't uh necessary? And
then I had to really unpack the issues, not use jargon,
not assume that people knew some historical reference, had to
explain everything. I learned a lot in writing it, because
you know, I do this for a living and I've
been doing it for forty years. But in many cases
(06:36):
I didn't know everything I needed to know in order
to teach it or explain it. Look, it's interesting to
learn the basics of some of the history, or why
is the Middle East such a messed up region? Or
why should we care about I wrote about global health
and pandemics before anyone knew what COVID nineteen was, or
just why is climate change such a problem. My goal
(07:00):
every step of the way was to connect it. The
subliminal question was why does the world matter? And therefore
why why? Why do you need to become somewhat more
knowledgeable about it? Someone somewhat more prepared to deal with it.
Why do you think people suddenly became so uneducated about civics,
(07:21):
about world affairs? Um, it seems like a real indictment
of our education system. Was it the shift in terms
of what we needed to to really learn about in
order to secure a good job when people graduated. Was it?
Was there a turning point? Does it coincide with the
(07:42):
US is I think increasing tendency to look inward? I mean,
how do you explain it, because it's actually very depressing
to me. Well, it's all of the above. I think
this country has a history of isolationism or continental country.
A lot goes on here, and when you think about it,
(08:03):
World War two, in the last seventy years, or really
the exception when the United States has been involved in
the world in an open ended way before then, was anything.
But in some ways, what we're seeing is a little
bit of a return to our tradition. I think with
the end of the Cold War this accelerated the sense was, well,
(08:23):
we can now put our feet up. We don't really
have to worry about the world all that much. We've
got lots of problems here at at home to tackle,
so I think a lot. And then I think, probably
more recently, Iraq and Afghanistan created the sense that getting
involved in the world was a bad thing. It costs lives,
it costs money. So again it pushed people more to
(08:47):
think about problems. In the United States, you didn't have
political leaders who were explaining why what goes on in
the world matters. That's somewhat nuanced conversation. So for any
number of reasons, Americans just turned away from it, and
I think mostly in part because they weren't studying it,
didn't see the didn't see the connections. No one was
(09:08):
pointing out why this is useful, to know why this
is relevant, and people thought they could get along fine
without it. And one of the expensive lessons of what
we're all going through now in the pandemic is that
we're learning that the world does matter, it does affect
our lives. Indeed, fundamentally our life. Denial is not a policy.
(09:31):
I think the same thing applies to to climate change,
but it is an indictment that our education in many
cases is not preparing Americans collectively or individually for the
for the world that they're going to inherit. When we
come back more with Richard Hass, President of the Council
Inform Relations. We're back with Richard Hass, President of the
(10:05):
Council on Foreign Relations. It's sort of surprising that, as
Tom Friedman wrote about the world becoming flat, that globalization
was accompanied by a certain sense of detachment from what
was happening in you know, outside our borders. You're right,
(10:26):
it's it's it's a contradiction. Also, I think against globalization
there was a certain pushback again. Foreign policy we've seen
as sometimes wasteful or expensive. People didn't always like what
they saw. They thought they could get along with with
without it, And we've been living in a certain bubble.
And we learned on nine eleven that terrorists who were
(10:49):
trained in Afghanistan could cause the death of three thousand Americans,
And in a couple of hours, we're learning now about
what began in Wuhan didn't day in Wuhan, It traveled
around the world, and now more than eighty thousand or
so Americans have lost their lives, Trillions of dollars of
wealth have been eliminated, tens and millions of jobs have
(11:11):
been eliminated. We saw the fires last summer in California.
We saw them in Australia, and I think that's just
a glimmer of what's to come. So I think what
we're learning is that the world really does matter, that
we ignore it to our peril. Isolationism is not a
solution to anything. What I'm hoping people also learn from
(11:32):
the current crisis is that unilateralism isn't much of a
response either. We can't do it by ourselves. It can't
just be America first. We've got to pool our resources
and and work with others. So this is this is
the most expensive teaching lesson I can imagine, and I
want to wish that on this country or any individual,
no matter what. But since it is happening, I'm hoping
(11:55):
that we can at least come away with this somewhat
somewhat the wiser. Well, let's talk about the US response
to this global pandemic. I know you believe it won't
so much change the basic direction of world history, but
will accelerate it. So I think, what what this pandemic
has done, Richard? In so many ways, it's brought into
(12:16):
sharp relief pre existing conditions, if you will, not only
domestically about income, inequality, access to healthcare, but globally about
the you know, the road we were already down before
this even surface. Can you talk about that this pandemic
(12:37):
didn't come out of nowhere, that it came into a context.
And the context internationally was one of a deteriorating US
Chinese relationship. You had the Brexit and the problems facing Europe.
The Middle East was turbulent, to say the least. North
Korea was increasing its nuclear missile arsenals. Russia was in
(12:59):
uh Ukraine, China was repressing freedom in Hong Kong, was
building out in the South China Sea, and as well,
it was a failed state, hemorrhaging people, and these and
any number of other challenges or realities in the world.
And what this has done is intensified it, accelerated and
exacerbated it. Uh So, the US Chinese relationship is even
(13:23):
is even worse. The Middle East now faces even more problems,
and we're looking away. So North Korea has been free
to continue down its path of missile and nuclear development.
The world has done nothing to catch up to the
challenge of climate change. And what's even worse, Katie, is
because we've had to devote so much of our attention,
so much of our bandwidth, so much of our resources.
(13:45):
I worry about this combination of a world that's in
worse shape than it was because of the pandemic, and
now we have less attention less capacity to to deal
with it. That seems to me the worst of all situations.
But I'm afraid that's the one we have less capacity
to deal with. What Richard, Oh, it's everything from the
(14:05):
fact of you've got millions of people around the world
who are are either ill or will be. You've got
economies that can't produce enough wealth in order to deal
with the public health needs as well as to keep
people employed. You've got the proliferation challenges, the terrorism challenges.
Russia hasn't left Ukraine, China is not pulling in it's horns.
(14:26):
You've had all the problems you had before. The last
book was the World in Disarray, So you had all
the disarray in the world, which has gradually gotten worse.
And again, what's now I think that more problematic is
the problems are more advanced, like climate change. The relationship
between the two most powerful countries in the world, the
US and China, is rubbed raw, and the United States
(14:49):
is spending trillions of dollars in order to provide relief
to American citizens and businesses, which means that we're not
going to have the capacity to devote resources and time
and attention to these international problems. And as we are learning, uh,
bad things happen around the world, sooner or later, they
will find their way here. You know, I was thinking
(15:10):
about terrorism, and I was thinking, as we're all focused
on the pandemic, we're really not keeping our eye on
on what kind of mischief quote unquote could be being
made in some of these terror hot spots or these
these terrorists hot spots. So I was just I was
(15:33):
thinking this morning, I mean, when's the last time we
really focused on terrorism? And the one thing we looked
at we didn't see Kim Jong n We thought he
might have died because he wasn't in public. But these
things have taken are even I mean, they're on the
back burner in a big way, aren't they. And what
do you see the ramifications of us not keeping eye
(15:55):
our eye on terrorism, which certainly is not going away. No,
history doesn't have a pause button. So just because we're distracted,
just because we're focusing in where it doesn't mean anything
else much like everything else stops. It worries me a
little bit that a terrorist might look at what's going
on and say, wow, we've been focusing on the wrong
(16:18):
kinds of threats or weapons. Our goal shouldn't be to
bring down airplanes or use car bombs, but maybe there
is something that we could use to infect a population.
And so I worry a little bit about uh so
called grand terrorism along uh those you know those lines.
But even without that uh, the violence hasn't stopped in Afghanistan.
(16:41):
It hasn't stopped in Seria or Olibya, or or Yemen.
So again, just because we're not watching, just because we're
not heavily involved, doesn't mean it's not happening. Take one example, Iran.
Over the last six months or year, it's estimated that
Iran has reduced by a significant out how many months
(17:02):
they would need before they would be on the brank
of developing a nuclear weapon. And we're not paying close
attention to it. I expect the Israelis are. But again
it's just a reminder that here we are while we
tackle this new set of problems, including pandemics, the old
set of problems hasn't been resolved, much less going away.
So two very scary notions, the use of biological weapons,
(17:25):
which we've of course been somewhat concerned about for many years,
and a nuclear Iran. Although I thought Iran had been
so impacted by COVID nineteen as well, Richard, Iran has
been badly hurt by the plummeting oil price. By their
in net mismanagement of the pandemic, they allowed the pilgrimage
(17:47):
to to continue. The government was discredited by their shootdown
of the Ukrainian civil airliner a few months ago and
their subsequent cover up. Just the other day there was
a friendly fire accident where Ronnie and Saw shot at
an Iranian vessel and I think killed something like twenty
soldiers or sailors. But at the same time, Uranians are
(18:08):
still causing real mischief around the region and in Iraq
and other places, and they are continuing to press up
against the edges of the two thousand fifteen nuclear agreement.
So they are there. They are able, if you will,
to take the punch of the pandemic and still continue
to cause other problems. Indeed, there's a school of thought
that because the regime there is facing public criticism for
(18:32):
its handling of COVID nineteen, that they're doing things in
order to promote a confrontation with the United States so
they can wrap themselves in the flag. Change the subject
if you will, Yes, wag the dog varsity style. Yeah,
let's you have said that foreign leaders have told you
that they quote don't recognize America right now and that
(18:53):
this is not the America they thought they knew. Uh.
Can you can you elaborate on that a little bit cured?
And can you talk about what ideally the American response
would have been to this pandemic versus in reality what
it has been. Uh, there's two sides to the coin.
(19:13):
One is domestically, when they look at our politics, they
look at other features of American society there they shake
their heads. A lot of them studied here, a lot
of them spend time here. And so they see United
States that has not just inequality, but has had several
decades of lagging or drifting incomes in the part of
(19:35):
many families. They see the gun violence, which they can't
understand or comprehend, the opioid deaths. Now, they see the
inept handling of the pandemic, the lack of testing, the
lack of discipline, social distancing, inadequate hospital capacity. So this
is not the United States. They respect much less want
(19:55):
to emulate. And then they see what we're doing or
not doing around the world. The fact that we not
participate in the European led effort to bring countries together
governments together, say to develop a vaccine, so we're essentially
missing an action. We talk about being tough on China,
but then we don't join the Trans Pacific Partnership, the
Regional Economic grouping, and most of our interaction with our
(20:19):
allies in the region is to break them over the
level of defense spending, rather than to come up with
a common approach, say to dealing with the challenge from
from China. So I think this the pandemic reinforces a
lot of these these perceptions of the United of the
United States that can no longer be counted on abroad,
(20:40):
were no longer as reliable and at home the United States,
that is not setting a standard or behavior that they
had come to to expect from us. And this is
what this leads to as a world where we have
less influence, where other countries kind of go their own way.
But it's not a good situation because these other countries
don't have the capacity to substitute for US. In some cases,
(21:03):
they may decide to develop more military capability so they're
more independent, which is not to me a reassuring future.
In some cases they may need to assuage a more
powerful neighbor. But a post American world will probably be
less prosperous, less free, UH, and less peaceful. And that's
the direction things are moving. We'll be back with more
(21:27):
of our conversation right after this once again, Richard Hass,
President of the Council and Form Relations. You've worked with
both Republicans and Democratic administrations, Richard uh Is, this is
(21:51):
this because of Donald Trump's leadership. It has something to
do with that. Donald Trump is UH an outlier. If
you look at it, re American president from Harry Truman
to through Barack Obama, what they had in common was
far greater than where they disagreed. Donald Trump is the
first president who probably disagrees more than he has in
(22:14):
common with all of his modern predecessors. He is clearly
in that sense of disruptor. But one of the big
questions in the field is whether it's in six months
or in four years and six months. And Donald Trump
is succeeded by someone else. To what extent the things
go back to what extent now has the rest of
(22:34):
the world somewhat moved on, to what extent as if
the American people decided they don't want to support certain
kinds of policy. But to put it in another way,
to what extent is Donald Trump or reflection of a
changed America in a changed world as much as he
is a driver of it, and that there's a there's
a big debate about that about what things look like afterwards.
(22:54):
I don't think there's any going back to where where
where things were exactly, but I do think they're a
potential for more of a return to a familiar traditional
American role in the world. I do think that's possible,
although you have posited that even a Biden presidency would
likely not guarantee a full scale return of an expansive
(23:15):
US role in the world. That's correct. I've written that,
and I still think that, and it's because the American
people aren't there. I think the pandemic we'll also reinforce
that because our domestic needs are going to be enormous,
the rest of the world might not be as prepared
to accept America's leadership in the future, and with the
(23:36):
thought that GF had happened once, it could happen again.
We can't be quite as reliant on the United States.
China has become more powerful, Russia is more entrenched in
the Middle East and in Ukraine. North Korea has much
farther advanced in terms of its nuclear and missile development.
What I do know is whoever is the next president
in early twenty one, whether it's Donald Trump for second
(23:58):
term or Joe Biden for his first, it's going to
be an extraordinarily difficult, even daunting uh inbox challenges. And
that's where again COVID nineteen, the pandemic has made it worse.
The challenges are somewhat greater about traditional ones as as
well as global ones, including the pandemic. Would also say
climate change, and our capacity and focus is going to
(24:21):
be less so. Even even if a president came in
like a Joe Biden who was inclined to do certain things,
he's just going to be dealt a very difficult, very
difficult hand. Do you think he's up up to the job,
Richard Well, Joe Biden is someone who has a lot
of experience, So I have no doubt about his ability.
(24:42):
He spent eight years as vice president, he spent decades
in the in the Senate, on the on the Foreign
Relations Committee. He's experienced with the with the issues. I
run a nonpartisan institution, so I have to be have
to be careful. I don't endorse candidates and the like,
but simply you know, he's got his background and whether
(25:02):
I don't think even his critics can can deny that
they can agree or disagree with various stances he's taken
and he and I have disagreed at times on issues.
But does he have the experience? Does he have the
familiarity both with the issues and how the US government
makes policy? I think the answer there is a clear guess. Clearly,
we are probably on the verge of a new era
(25:26):
in foreign policy. You know, from the post Cold War war.
This might be the post pandemic right era in foreign relations.
But are there some positive things that we can look
forward to? I think one thing that has been made
abundantly clear, at least from where I sit, Richard is
(25:47):
in an era where expertise was less and less valued.
We are starting to recognize, I think more than we did,
the importance of science, the important of data, the importance
of facts. Some people more than others, I think, would
are appreciating those things. But do you see that as
(26:08):
a positive as we emerge from this crisis, Well, I
hope you're right, and the kind of respect you feet
see for Dr Fauci, for example, the climate debate became
a more serious debate and people we spent less time
having to argue that a climate change is real and
more change, more kind of time talking about actually how
(26:29):
to actually deal with it, how to prevent future climate change,
adapt to existing climate change, than I would be uh,
you know, I would be gratified and reassured. I'm hoping
also that what comes out of this is a growing
recognition that the world does matter, that isolationism and unilateralism
are not viable alternatives, that we have a tremendous stake
(26:51):
and what happens outside our borders, and that we have
to we have to be involved, We can't be passive,
we can't simply bury our head in the center. Well,
I certainly hope we learn. And the other thing that
I hope is but I'm not I'm not certain it
will happen, is that Americans become more interested in what's
(27:14):
happening around the world in addition to reading your book,
that they actually that that our education system brings back
and and recognizes the importance of a well informed citizenry, uh,
not only for our democracy, but to be good global
citizens in general. Amen to that, I would I would
(27:37):
love that the day come sooner at the later every
high school graduate and every college graduate had certain things
under his or her belt, and it would be on domestically,
they would have read the Constitution and the federalist paper
is in the TOPEFIL and so forth, and understand what
is our political DNA, what is it that makes our
democracy vibrant? Uh? And and for an international they'd understand
(28:02):
why the world matters? What about this or that international
institution or alliances for this global challenge? What are certain
lessons of history? So yeah, they had that we would
be able to face the future with a foundation of
understanding about our country and the world that I really
think every citizen needs, uh, not just for their own career,
(28:24):
their investments and delight, but also to to hold their
elected representatives to account. Democracy needs to be based on
informed citizen right, and I think our schools aren't doing
the job in many cases, and not everybody obviously goes
to college or goes to high school. Beyond the age
of sixteen or once they reach our age, you forget
(28:48):
just about everything you might have learned. So I think
we need to rethink the idea of education and get
beyond the idea that it's just what you learned in
classrooms when you're a teenager in your early twenties. It's
got to be home a lifelong experience. And you know,
that's again why I wrote a book like this, because
it's aim not just as students, but it's aimed to
that for their parents and grandparents. We need an informed
(29:10):
citizen rey, regardless of the person's age. What did you
learn the most when you were writing this book, Richard?
What you know? Has you had to synthesize these very
complex things. You're, as I mentioned, one of the smartest
people I know. But what did you learn in the
process of writing this that surprised you or perhaps made
you reconsider previously held positions? For my own thinking changed
(29:34):
the most, Katie, in writing the book was in how
do I put this step? Most of my study, most
of my life has been involved with traditional foreign policy,
problems in the U. S. Soviet relationship, now the US
Chinese relationship, great power relations you know, that's what I
studied when I was a student at Oxford. What where
(29:56):
I changed the most in writing this book was coming
up with a new appreciation of global issues that every
era of history has its defining features, and say, in
the first half of the twentieth century, it was probably
the relationship between France, Britain and Germany among those three countries.
Second half of the twentieth century was obviously the U. S.
Sovia Cold War. I think in this century, what's qualitatively
(30:18):
different and this is where my own thinking evolved the most,
That we not only have to take into account the
traditional great power politics, but there's this whole new set
of global issues and we simply don't have the thinking,
much less the institutions or arrangements for dealing with them.
And and if we don't, that is going to be
(30:39):
the that's gonna write most of the history of the
twentieth century. It's gonna be our ability or inability to
come together to deal with these global challenges, from pandemics
to to to climate change to terrorism. That makes the
twenty one century qualitatively different than the rest of modern history.
(30:59):
And that's thanks for me that I just didn't appreciate
nearly so much until I really delved into the issues. Well,
Richard is always great to talk to you. The new
book you're the thirteenth I believe that you've written or edited.
Is that right? Might even be one or two more
than that, Katie, but who's counting. It's called The World
(31:20):
a Brief Introduction. Thanks so much for doing this today.
Thanks Katie, great fun. Richard Hass's new book is called
The World a Brief Introduction and it's out now. I
highly recommend it. And that does it for this special
bonus episode of Next Question. You can check out all
of our episodes and subscribe. Please do on Apple Podcasts,
(31:44):
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Until Next time and my Next Question, I'm Katie Couric.
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(32:15):
is a production of I Heart Radio and Katie Curic Media.
The executive producers are Katie Currik, Courtney Litz, and Tyler Klang.
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Editing by Derrek Clements, Dylan Fagin and Lowell Berlante, Mixing
(32:36):
by Dylan Fagan. Our researcher is Gabriel Loser. For more
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(32:56):
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