The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: America’s best days are behind it

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

Falling wages. Failing infrastructure. Soaring public debts. Many believe that America's future looks anything but bright. Stark ideological and partisan divisions have fractured the country at home while a string of failed foreign military interventions have soured Americans on the country's role as defender of the liberal international order. Add in exploding disparities between rich and poor, a bungled pandemic response, and lacklustre economic growth and you have all the markers of a country in decline. Others argue that betting against America has always been a losing proposition. Declinists fail to account for the country's amazing ability to adapt and re-invent itself time and time again. From world beating technological innovations in Silicon Valley to vaccine breakthroughs to the frontiers of commercial space exploration, America has proven it can rise to meet new challenges and opportunities. The strength of its diversity, size of its population, its entrepreneurial drive, military might, and financial prowess all ensure its continued dominance as a global power in the 21st century. In a world beset with authoritarian regimes, statist economies and the absence of human liberty, America will remain a powerful magnet for talented people the world over committed to democracy and freedom. Arguing for the motion is Gideon Rachman, Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator of the Financial Times and author of Easternization: Asia's Rise and America's Decline From Obama to Trump and Beyond. Arguing against the motion is Kori Schake, Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order Be Preserved? QUOTES: GIDEON RACHMAN “I've never seen the country in the state it's in now...it seems to me to be of a different order and one that does raise quite profound questions about the enduring success of the American experiment.”  KORI SCHAKE “Don't underestimate the loud raucous conflictual way America solves its problems... that's how we have traditionally clawed our way towards being a better republic and I believe that continues to happen now.” Sources: The Hill, CNET, Global News, CNN, Yahoo Finance, CNBC, Thames TV, ABC The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran Lynch Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are options, and that's why we need to take this opportunity seriously. There's no way you can prevent global warming unless China is part of the solution. This is not normal male behavior. This is predatory behavior. We don't know how bad this bug is. We don't know what this bug does. All of that was thrown away in those eight minutes and 46 seconds, and that's the moment that I became an abolitionist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Welcome to the Monk Debates. Every episode we've done. provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you,

the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. America's best days are behind it. Madam President, currently America's debt is barreling towards $30 trillion. Even before the pandemic, America had the widest inequalities of income and wealth we have had in a century. And it wider than any other developed nation. The fact that the Afghan army that we and our partners trained simply melted away, in many cases without firing a shot, took us all by surprise.

And it would be dishonest to claim otherwise. As of this morning, more than 675,000 Americans have been killed by coronavirus. It's approximately 1 in 490 Americans. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. While many people today believe that America's future looks anything but bright, Stark ideological and partisan divisions have fractured the country at home, while a string of failed foreign military interventions have soured Americans on the country's role as a defender of the liberal international order. Add in exploding disparities between rich and poor, a bungled pandemic response, and lackluster economic growth,

and supposedly you have all the markers of a nation in decline. Here's Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, predicting the end. of the American Empire. We are dying in the same way that empires throughout history have died. The decrepit infrastructure, the abandonment of whole sectors of the population, the hollowing out of institutions

that are unable to deal with the stresses that are put on a country. So the foundations rot away. Others like billionaire investor Warren Buffett argue that betting against America, has always been a losing proposition. Nothing to stop America when you get right down to it. And for long, it may have been interrupted with the scariest of scenarios.

And it may be tested now to some degree. But in the end, the answer is never been against America. So-called decline has failed to account for the country's amazing ability to adapt and re-event itself time and time. again. From world beating technological innovations in Silicon Valley to vaccine breakthroughs to the frontiers of commercializing space exploration, America has proven it can rise to meet new challenges and opportunities. Also, in a world beset with authoritarian regimes, stateist economies, and the absence of human liberty, America remains a powerful magnet for the world's most talented people seeking democracy, freedom, and opportunity.

On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved, America's best days are behind it. Arguing for the resolution is Gideon Rackman. He's the chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times of London, an author of numerous bestsellers including Easternization, Asia's rise and America's decline from Obama to Trump and beyond. Arguing against the motion is Corey Shockey. She's the director of foreign and foreign. and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, author of a number of best-selling books, including America versus the West. Can the liberal world order be preserved? She's also a former member of the U.S. National Security Council. Gideon, Corey, welcome to the Monk Debates. Nice to be here. Indeed. Good to be with it. I'm very much looking forward to today's debate. I think it's one of the big questions that's kind of seizing on all of our minds. Are we

witnessing at this moment some significant transfer, an end of an era, the beginning of a new epoch, the passing of leadership and power from the United States to somewhere and someone else. What are the implications for this? Is that the right way to be thinking about geopolitics and what lies ahead in the 21st century? So thank you so much both for coming on the program. Our resolution today, simple to the point, be it resolved, America's best days are behind it. get in your arguing in favor of the motion. I'm going to put a couple minutes on the clock and turn the program over to you. Okay. Well, thank you very much to everyone among, and thanks Corey for joining us. I have to say, I do think that America's best days are behind it, but I say that without any relish,

indeed, with a certain amount of dismay, because I'm one of those people who throughout the Cold War, European politics was kind of divided between pro-Americans and anti-Americans. I was always on the American side, I've always felt that the United States is the leader of the free world and that my freedom is, to some extent, linked to a strong America. So seeing the future of America thrown open to question is a very disconcerting moment. But I feel that it's staring us in the face and it's really very hard to ignore. And not really for reasons primarily of the balance of power with China, although I'm sure we'll discuss that further. For me, the thing that tells me that America's best days are behind it is the turmoil in its domestic politics, and turmoil is putting

it politely. The scenes in Congress on January the 6th were profoundly shocking. You can have a security breach. You can have a bunch of thugs storm in Congress, but that the Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, essentially refused to repudiate that, backed it, continues to insist to this day that the election was stolen when clearly it wasn't. Tells me that one of America's two major parties is no longer really committed to democracy, and therefore American democracy itself is in profound danger, in profound trouble. Donald Trump has not disappeared from the scene. After January 6th, a healthy democracy would have repudiated what happened.

The party would have turned against him. There would have been a public inquiry, a new start. on the contrary, they're doubling down on it, which tells me that further turbulence, further insecurity lies ahead. And so for me, whether the United States remains the dominant power in the world is actually almost a secondary question. I wouldn't want a United States led by Donald Trump necessarily to be the dominant power in the world, because I want the dominant power in the world to be a liberal democracy that believes in freedom that can credibly say it is the leader of the free world. And if it's democracy itself is in deep trouble,

it can't really do that. Now, there are other reasons that I'll get to later in the discussion for worrying about American power. I mean, I think there's no doubt that even a Trump-led America would be preferable to a single-party state led by China. But by some measures, China is now the world's largest economy. It's got its own problems, but it's been growing very steadily for 30 years and more. The US has a checkered record, and things that we used to think would have been big signs of trouble and now accepted huge levels of national debt, deeply unorthodox monetary policy, deepening inequality. All these are bad signs, and perhaps they're part of the reason why we've got this political crisis. But it's the political crisis above all that I want to lodge in your head

at the start of this debate. Thanks. Thank you. The head lodging is appreciated and fascinating. So I'm really looking forward to see where this debate goes from here. Our resolution today, be it resolved, America's best days are behind it. Corey, you're opposed to our motion. Let's have your opening statement, please. So I agree with Gideon that American democracy, and in particular the comportment of my fellow Republican

is a danger to democracy in America and a danger to American power internationally to an international order that has kept the United States safe and prosperous for over 70 years and has created safety and prosperity for others as well. But I see signs of change that I think Gideon doesn't. First of all, Donald Trump did not get reelected. And even though Republicans in Congress, and many at the state level, are attempting to repudiate the election, there are also Republicans, the governor of Georgia, the Secretary of State of Georgia, the Republicans in charge of the voting process in Arizona, who are adamantly defending it. And I think one of the signs of American resilience is just how well the guardrails of American democracy held during the four years of the Trump administration and that Americans did not reelect him. I share Gideon's view that the continuing support for former President Trump is problematic.

But again, there are other signs of vitality, right? So there have been 600 arrests of people of insurgents at the Capitol on January 6th. The rule of law is asserting itself and in interesting and important ways. My favorite description of the United States of Americans comes from historian Bertha Ann Reuter in 1923 in a book about the Monroe Doctrine. And she writes, Americans are a people so extreme in politics or religiously. or both, that they could not live in peace anywhere else. And I think it's easy to overstate the current crisis without acknowledging how often the United States has been in crisis.

If you think about, you know, one may say the apogee of American power in 1954, 5, and 6, you still have the McCarthy hearings going on. You have the American military forcibly integrating schools in the American South. In the 1960s, you have political assassinations of a president, a presidential candidate, and the leading religious figure in the country. The United States is not newly in crisis. There is a sort of brutal dynamism to the United States that we often underestimate when we look only at the present problems and don't look back.

to the past. So that's my first point, that the United States is, as the poet Robert Pinsky writes in democracy in America, American culture, as I have experienced it, is so brilliantly and sometimes brutally in motion that standard models for it failed to apply. And the second piece of the argument I would make is that global power isn't an absolute index, it's a relative index. And as Gideon mentions, China's rise is astonishing, but they are still a very long way from being risen. You know, per capita GDP in China is roughly equivalent to Mexico or Mozambique. That's a long way from having a wealthy society. Moreover, China has, appears to be making policy decisions that are squelching the prospects for their continued rise. Their domestic crackdown on

tech companies, the opacity of their banking system, the potential default in real estate, and internationally by behaving in such a predatory way, even during the Trump administration, America's alliances held and are deepening as the Australia, UK, U.S. agreement from a couple of weeks ago demonstrates. So I think we shouldn't underestimate the challenges for the displacement of American power, either domestically or internationally. Thank you, Corey. Terrific opening statements here. Just love the way you guys are framing this debate in terms of an internal set of circumstances, challenges, opportunities, and then the external international dimension. Get in your opportunity now for a rebuttal. What do you

want to react to from Corey's opening statement. What are you pushing back against? Well, you know, as you might infer in some ways, this is a debate I'd happily lose because I don't want to believe that America is in decline. And so some of what Corey has to say, I take some comfort from. But, you know, there are things where I think that, you know, in the way of these debates, she's put in the best possible gloss on what is a pretty grim picture. It is true, of course, that America has been through periods of profound instability before. I mean, obviously the civil war to put it at its most extreme. But more recently, she mentions the 1950s.

But McCarthyism was a bad thing. But McCarthy was a senator. Trump is a McCarthy figure who was president and who may yet be president again. In the end, the political establishment repudiated McCarthy. Well, you know, Trump has essentially taken over one of the great. parties of the United States. So I think it's a much more extreme challenge. The 1960s were, of course, a period of enormous instability, the assassinations and so on. But again, I think that the American establishment remained basically true through its values. There was violence outside it

by, you know, assassins, but these were not mainstream figures trying to take down the system. They were lunatics with guns who did a lot of damage, to put it mildly. But the, but the the system held. There wasn't a sense that the system was deeply sick and under assault from within. That's the difference with today. And as for the external aspect, look, I mean, I think it's hard to dismiss the questions about China's future, but one has to accept that these questions are being asked really more or less since the rise of China began. I have a book on my shelves called The Coming Collapse of China by a guy called Gordon-Shang, which was written in 2000. since when the Chinese economy has grown by about four times in size or more.

And I think Xi Jinping is very bad news for China. And they may enter a period of instability. But I guess the history of the last 30 years has made me cautious about predicting that. I think once a country like China gets moving and discovers the kind of formula for industrialization, rapid export growth, it takes a hell of a lot to stop it. So that you have a situation where China is already the world's largest exporter, the world's largest producer of steel, incidentally, the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases as well.

And Corrie says, well, their standard of living is lower than America, undoubtedly. Their per capita income is lower than America, yes. But there are five times as many. China's population is 1.4 billion people. So they only have to get to a quarter of the level of American living standards for the economy and the market to be larger than that in the United States. And that does matter politically because if you look at all the major countries of Asia, for which, and there's obviously a competition to influence going on, you know, Japan, Australia, India, would I think all prefer America to remain as the, at least a balancing power and probably the most important power in the Asia Pacific. but they all do more trade with China, considerably more trade with China than they do with the United States. China's centrality to that economy, to the economy of the Asian Pacific, which is now the core of the global economy, is already established.

And that does give them considerable power. And I can't really see that power going away. Whereas, last word on America's low-less leader, it's also, I think, evident that America, for, I think, understandable internal reasons after Iraq, Afghanistan is losing the appetite to be the world policeman. I think it's still there in the American establishment, and you can see that in efforts to bolster American position in the Pacific. But I think those people are unsure that they have the American people behind them. After Donald Trump, after even Obama talking about nation building at home, that's why they're pulled out of Afghanistan. And it's why the US is now very reluctant to sign new trade deals

and try to push back against Chinese economic influence. So it's not sure to me that there is the domestic consensus now to support this American global role. And without that, I think, you know, I don't know whether America's best days as a country are due, but I tend to think that if America doesn't control the international environment as much as it can, ultimately it will also pay a domestic price. Thank you, Kadyen.

Corey, your opportunity now for a rebuttal, reacting to Gideon's opening statement or what you've just heard? I agree with Gideon that if you don't have domestic support for an expansive international rule, that the United States will be less safe and less prosperous. But I'm more skeptical of China's continued rise than Gideon is. For a couple of reasons, they are, in my judgment, about to get stuck in what economists called the middle income trap, where economies that have relied on manufacturing and the international trade in that manufacturing, tried to work up to supplant more creative industries,

more technologically innovative industries. And there's no doubt China could do that. If you look at the success of Ant, of Baidu, of D,D, they clearly have the technical technological capacity, but the policy choices the Chinese government is making are casting a pall over creative technologically forward Chinese companies over the willingness of others to invest in those companies. We are watching Chinese text docs this morning because some of the big internet names down huge this morning like Alibaba, JD.com and Didi, they're watching. off more than 10 percent. How should U.S. investors think about what's going on in China and these

crackdowns on tech stocks? You know, Wall Street is going to be the last redoubt of Americans who believe in China's rise because you see Wall Street having a big debate right now where Ray Dalio, for example, and Bridgewater are making big bets and encouraging investment in China. And George Soros and many others are suggesting that China's political manipulation of its market, of its exports and imports, is going to make investing in China very risky and likely unprofitable undertaking. So we're in the midst of that conversation and the choices Xi Jinping and the Chinese government are making, beginning in 2010 when they shut off rare earth minerals exports to Japan.

over a fishing dispute. And the even more aggressive banning of exports from Australia that we see happening now because Australia had the temerity to suggest that the World Health Organization needed to investigate whether China was actually the source of the COVID-19 outbreak. Those are political acts that are going to have cast long shadows into China's ability to continue to become a more prosperous country. And in my judgment, we may be over-worryed about the problems of a successful China and not worried enough about the problems associated with a stalling or failing China.

Thank you, Corey. My opportunity now to kind of join the debate and think up questions that are top of mind for our listeners. And getting, let me come to you first with a part of Corey's opening argument in this debate is that yes, America is facing incredible divisions and polarization within its society at this moment. It's something you've identified in some ways as the bigger threat, you think, to America's promise and potential going forward possibly larger than the China threat. So I want to hear a bit more from you why you think possibly that this time is different. I mean, if you look back at the America of the late 1960s, early 70s, I mean, many of these same issues,

were at the four, the divisions were just as acute, the social strife just as intense, yet the period after that, through the 1980s into the millennium, was a period of amazing American rejuvenation, power, influence, and projection in the world and at home. So why is this time different? The answer is Donald Trump. I mean, I think that it's not just the existence of a Trump. the support for Trump in one of the major political parties. You know, the Watergate scandal seems almost quaint compared to what Trump did. And yet in Watergate, his party turned against him.

Both parties agreed he could no longer be president and he resigned even before he was impeached. That testifies to a degree of health in the political system, even though it was regarded as a deep crisis at the time, because there were common standards. There was the rule of, law, there was a common agreement on what was decency and what was allowed, that's all gone. And that is profoundly shocking. And, you know, one can point, as Corey did to the fact that at the crunch point, certain key officials, the state secretary in Georgia and so on, did their duty. And that is key. Pence actually behaved well. Briefly, McConnell behaved well. but the reckoning that you should have had then within the Republican Party, the hearings,

they haven't really happened. And it seemed to me, I sometimes think, you know, what would have happened if the Georgia Secretary of State had behaved differently? And what's happening now is that you're having a kind of purge at state level, a packing of the state assemblies, more gerrymandering. So it's not clear to me that in the next crisis that the system necessarily will work, I hope it will. And also the other thing is that Trump may actually win fair and square in the sense, I don't think you ever win the popular vote against Biden or maybe even a Kamala Harris,

but given the electoral college, it's possible that he will win the next election. And that too would be a very sad moment for the United States and for the world, I say, as a citizen of the world. So I really don't think this is comparable to the 70s or the 60s. this is a crisis of a different order. Thank you, Gideon. So, Corey, let's hear your rebuttal to the thesis that Gideon has just rolled out that Trump, maybe not so much the man, but the phenomenon that he represents is somehow fundamentally new to your democracy, that it poses a set of very unique and different threats.

These threats are now systemic, endemic, and they represent something that will be a persistent and enduring limiter on American exceptionalism going forward. I want to hear the counterpoint to that argument. I agree with Gideon that Donald Trump and the force he represents, which is about 30% of the American public, is a grave constitutional threat, a grave threat to constitutional integrity and governance in the United States of America. but I am less convinced than Gideon that there are not countervailing forces working against it and that we're in the middle of the conversation.

I, like Gideon, wish it had happened sooner and more decisively. But it's non-trivial, for example, that as rock-ribbed a conservative as Liz Cheney is adamant about the reckoning. and, you know, she may well become the Republican candidate in 2024. So the future of this, I think, is yet to be determined. It is easy to underestimate the things the United States gets right. And it is difficult to govern over diversity. It's always been difficult to govern over diversity.

And the crucial role of civil society in constraining government has been, been enormously helpful in the last five years in ensuring that the guardrails of democracy hold in the United States. And that source of vibrancy continues to be very important in this conversation. Hi, Reddier-Griffis here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits, including a 10-plus-year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world, and you get a specially curated Friday weekly Monk Members Only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world.

All of that, again, free at www. dot monkdebates.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. Getting you right for the Financial Times of London, your newspaper has a big focus on everything kind of economic in your opening statements. You flagged a concern about America's future going forward, a case for why its best days may lie in the past around fiscal monetary argument. I want to hear a bit more on that as we've seen. seen through this pandemic, not only soaring public debts, but exceptionally aggressive moves on the part of the U.S. Central Bank, the seeming manipulation of markets and asset prices.

I want you to situate those events in the context of your larger argument of American decline. Yeah, well, I mean, here, we're all speculating, but I think it's worth reminding ourselves how extraordinary the economic policies of the last 20 years would have seen viewed from the 1990s, when in the aftermath of the Cold War, we believe that we understood how economies worked and that the Soviet Union's problem was that it didn't. And that it required not just a capitalist economy, but a central bank that maintained orthodox policies, controls on debt, these kinds of things. and that the debt levels reached under Ronald Reagan were regarded as shocking and something that needed to be controlled.

And indeed, Bill Clinton began to control them. But they were as nothing to what we're seeing now. Now, for the first time since World War II, the U.S. national debt is projected to grow larger than our entire economy. And debt to GDP will rise to 107 percent in 2023, the highest in our country's history. We've essentially had three shocks in a row, two bubbles and then a pandemic, each of which has led to the inflation of another bubble. We've never really had the courage, perhaps correctly, to have that market clearing moment where you allow people to go bankrupt.

So we just, it seems to me, kept our foot on the foot pump, pumping up the next bubble. We cut interest rates again and again and again. now gone into these policies of quantitative easing, which we don't know how to get out of, which again would have been regarded as shocking 20 years ago. They're now completely standard. We have debt levels that, again, would have been shocking. Now, it's possible that the orthodoxy of previous decades was just wrong and that all these things are doable and that the policymakers have made the right calls and so on. But it does remind me of that phrase that Ken Rogoff, the economist, Harvard economist, popularized, which was this time is different. He used it ironically, mockingly,

that each time people do something massively unorthodox pump up an inflationary bubble, as we may be doing now, they tell themselves, well, the old rules don't apply anymore, this time is different. And they're usually wrong. In fact, they're, according to Rogoff, invariably wrong. And we are, at least according to conventional economic, stoking up a debt default, stoking up the next inflationary bubble. So I think there are good reasons to be pretty profoundly concerned about something going really quite badly wrong in our economy. And it's not, incidentally, like out there in the real economy, everyone's having a great time. This has been associated with an era of widening inequality, shocking numbers of people who don't have enough savings

who sometimes go hungry. And if that is the consequence of an era of really loose monetary and fiscal policy, what's it going to be like when finally there is a reckoning and we have to tighten? So, Corey, to come to you on this question, Gideon raises a number of points here, but I want to zero in on two. You know, historically, if you look at great powers, one of the millstones around their necks, which often herald's decline and permanent decline is soaring public debts and rising economic

inequality. And that these two factors together can have an incredibly pernicious effect, both on the country's public finances, but also on its culture, on people's sense of optimism about the future, their own agency as citizens of a nation, a state, or a community. So I want to hear a little bit more from you maybe as to why you think these issues shouldn't be top of mind for those who are taking Gideon's side in this debate. Well, I agree that the issues should be top of mind. I think the national debt is the top national security concern of the United States, and not just because of the prospect of its unaffordability, but even at these astonishingly low interest rates, we will very quickly crowd all defense and discretionary spending out of the federal budget in order

to pay for the cost of managing our debt. So Gideon's exactly right. It's an enormous problem, and we are not doing enough to solve it. I can say there are a couple of things that are different. Whether these are going to be definitive, I am not sure, but they are significant. The first is the globalization of finance. The huge flows of investment capital that have come with China's rise and the globalization of financial markets have created interesting differences. That is, the chase for rates of return has become global. And that's making the entire global financial system a lot chocolate. The second thing that's different is the technological innovation that is changing global economies.

We're in the midst of a technological revolution, and it seems to me that some of the inequality is potentially caused by the return on intellectual capital and the unleashing of global finance. So there are things that are different. We have to come to terms, policy terms, with ways to handle them. But that it is confusing for policymakers, I think shouldn't be surprising. China's national debt is more than two and a half times what the United States is and growing rapidly. So again, it's not simply an absolute metric. You need to look at it relative to other choices that China and other countries are making. Thank you, Corey. Corey brought up a point that I wanted to hear you on, which is, you know, one thing is sure through this pandemic and even before is we are moving into an age of incredible, fast-paced and rapid technological change, this kind of merging of supercomputing with biosciences, with information sciences, with global communication through the worldwide web and social media platforms. And if you look at not only where those technologies are created,

but the biggest creators today of those technologies for global audiences, those are overwhelmingly U.S. headquartered companies. These are businesses powered more often than not by immigrants who've come to America for precisely the reason that they see it as a nation of opportunity, a nation where they could realize their potential in powerful ways. So why shouldn't that, just that single piece of America and its uniqueness and its exceptionalism today be a harbinger for why its best days could well lie ahead? Well, I think you're certainly pointing to the most single, most hopeful thing in the United States. I agree. America's technological prowess and the technological revolution that it's brought to the world.

is incredibly impressive. And whenever I can, I go to, out to Silicon Valley and talk to the likes of Google and Facebook and so on. One may have slight reservations about some of the social effects of what they're doing, but it's been a revolution and a revolution made in America. But I wouldn't underestimate the economic and technological prowess of China. I mean, there are certain respects in which China now feels more advanced than the United States. There are some people who believe that in AI, China is at least the equal of the United States. And, you know, 5G technology was, I think, a shocking moment, or it should have been a shocking moment for the United States because they were trying to stop countries, including my own,

the UK, from adopting Huawei's 5G technology. We've got the pressure campaign by the U.S. to persuade Britain to ban Huawei. That pressure campaign intensifying with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeting that the UK faces a, quote, momentous decision that could affect its sovereignty. The U.S. is demanding an outright ban on the Chinese company, citing security concerns over Huawei's links to the Chinese government. In the UK's case, they were successful in dissuading us. But one of the reasons we were looking to China is there was. no American 5G. There was no American product out there in the market. And I think that tells you that this idea that all technological advances come from America, well, it's just

not true anymore. China is an impressive competitive in many ways. Corey, do you have a reply to that? I mean, there is an argument here that China may be through significant amount of copyright infringement and industrial and other espionage has amassed in a sense in a period of a decade or two, really the building blocks of advanced 21st century technology across quantum, AI, big data in ways that, again, suggests that this very unique factor, a factor that Gideon and others who are maybe pessimistic about America's future acknowledges a key strength of American power at home and abroad in the 21st century, it's technological power, so that this really is something.

that's now in the rearview mirror, and we're all going to be contemplating quite soon, a 21st century that is technologically led out of Asia, not out of Silicon Valley. Maybe, but the possibility also exists that the Chinese surveillance state tracking that young woman and turning her mobile payments off because they saw she Googled Hong Kong umbrella movement will create such disincentives that that talented young woman goes to Canada or goes to Britain or the United States to found her company. And the disappearance and prosecution or forcible subjugation of innovators in China is going to be a big problem for them. because creating an ecosystem that forges ahead that way is actually very difficult to do,

and it relies on social trust that the Chinese government is actively moving against. We shouldn't underestimate just how much damage policy choices that a brittle and repressive government in China is imposing on its own people. And the other thing is, you know, we're assuming that the Chinese, people will be either supportive or compliant on this. If you have big streams of data, you're collecting and analyzing data. It doesn't take very many people in the system. A mom furious that she can't get safe baby milk or that her son can't get into college because he Googled umbrella movement in Hong Kong. She can corrupt that data and corrupt that code. So we shouldn't think that

China will prosper in perpetuity, government choices have big consequences for the work people choose to do and where they choose to do it. And free societies, as aggravating as they are, as conflictual as they are, also have enormous resilience and the risk tolerance of our societies in the aggregate produces better solutions in the long run. and we should not lose confidence in that. Great point, and that's my last point that I want you to address, Gideon, before we go to closing statements, which is, if you think about any country in the world today

that you would want to be a citizen of, to have the opportunity to belong to, and you're not part of this American community, either by living there or by virtue of citizenship, billions upon billions of people see that there's something there, this, these indefinite but essential qualities that Corey has outlined of personal freedom and liberty, of opportunity, of this ability to kind of maximize your human potential in an open and more economically

dynamic society, that's not going away. Is it getting in? I mean, why doesn't America just continue to benefit from all the world's most talented, driven, intelligent, and capable people wanting to come to its shores to be part of that so-called American dream? Well, I think America remains a very attractive society. There's no doubt about that. But I wouldn't assume that if it's democracies under threat, if it's governed by Donald Trump, that everybody's still going to shrug and say, well, whatever, you know, I'm going to come to America. I don't think they will. I mean, in fact, increasingly, I mean, we all know kind of odd subsex of people, but I know Europeans who now would think twice about moving to the United States because it doesn't

feel like a stable country. And even if its democracy survives, and obviously I sincerely hope it will, and I think it probably will. It's a deeply, deeply divided society. Now, everybody's got their problems. You know, I'm sitting in Britain. The petrol station seemed to be out of petrol. We're divided over Brexit. France is going to have a far-right candidate in its presidential election, etc., etc. That nobody's perfect. But I think that the idea that America is still this uncomplicated land of opportunity, the whole world aspires to move to. Look, if you're in Central America, obviously you aspire to move to the United States. You don't have to question why that is.

But I don't think that America's such an obvious choice now for all the world's most talented people in the way that you suggest. Many of them will continue to go to America and be tempted by all the good things that it has to offer. But I think quite a few will pause as well. Thank you, Gideon. Let's go to closing statements on our debate today, be it resolved America's best days are behind it. Corey, you've been arguing against our resolution. Let's put a couple minutes on our show clock and hear your final arguments about why we should be optimistic about the United States and the 21st century that awaits your country. The United States has never been an uncomplicated place.

You know, Gideon said that the world's talent might not want to come to the United States now. And that's been true for a long time. The deep and systemic racism of the United States, the cultural oddities of us, the wide variance in policies across different states in the United States. There have always been downsides to coming to America and there will continue to be downsides to coming to America. But I really think one of the most important articles ever written on the United States is by the Atlantic correspondent James Fallows. And he wrote it in 2009, after coming back to the United States, having been the correspondent in Beijing for five years. And he talks about the role of the Jeremiah in American policy. Jeremiah in the Bible is always worried he's failing God, and that's why he's beloved of God.

And it says it's a metaphor that Fallows uses for the fact that the United States is all always feels like it's failing at things. And that's why it solves problems. That's the motivator of dynamism in American society. So to take the Black Lives Matter protest, for example, the United States is not the only racist country in the international order. And yet you saw enormous social protest here. demanding better governance, demanding equality before the law in the United States. Our ideology helps us hold our government accountable and our authority figures accountable. Those protests spread to other places where in many cases the problems are even more severe

and the accountability even less. And so I think you shouldn't underestimate the loud, raucous, conflictual way America solves its problems and the importance of civil society in demanding better governance from our politicians. Because that's traditionally how the United States has clawed our way towards being a better republic, and I believe that continues to happen now. Thank you, Corey. Your opportunity now, Gideon, to wrap this debate up. Our motion today, be it resolved,

America's best days or behind it. You've been arguing in favor of the motion. As per debate convention, we're going to give you the last word. Well, thank you, Rudyard, and thank you, Corey. And look, as I've said, this is a debate I'd happily lose. I've been very upset by seeing the crisis in America, because in a way we all live in the world that America has created. And throughout it,

I've had this little voice at the back of my head sometimes saying, I believe in America. And I'm something, where did I hear that phrase? And actually, it's the opening line of the Godfather. It's a mafiosi saying that. So I'm not sure how much of a incommium we should take that as. But it's, you know, it is tempting to believe in America. And the things that Corrie points to are real, of course. The resilience of the society, its ability to come back. its ability to self-correct, the fact that a lot of the kind of problems are on the surface because it's an open society that debates things all true. But because I have believed in America, I've generally been an optimist about the United States throughout the Cold War,

the Japan's going to take over America, as people were said in the late 80s, throughout the dot-com bubble, the financial crisis, I kind of believed America would come back. But I must say, I've never seen the country and the state it's in now. And I hope this is just a deeper crisis than the others that I've seen. But it seems to me to be of a different order and one that does raise quite profound questions about the success of the enduring success of the American experiment.

And finally, a lot of our conversation inevitably has been comparisons with China, but it's saying, well, maybe China's in more trouble. And maybe it is. But it's possible that both societies have deep-seated problems. It's possible that they'll both fail in different ways. One success does not have to mean that the other fails and vice versa. To the extent that there's a competition for power, yes, you know, the relative weakness of China or the United States does matter. But it may be that as troubled societies, they will stumble into conflict, or it may be that

neither of them will be able to impose order on the world and will see a kind of an unraveling of the international order. But I think that the final lesson I'd conclude is that I think that one of the things that, or the lessons I took away from the Cold War and the way the Cold War was resolved, was that in the end, international rivalries are decided not so much by deploders. or by force of arms. This was a rivalry that was decided by the domestic health of the societies. In the end, America was a stronger, more resilient place than the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was deeply sick. And the lesson I drew from that is a society that is in trouble politically at home, in trouble economically,

is ultimately not able to be a superpower. And I worry now that that was a description of the Soviet Union in the 80s. and I worry that it may now be a description of the United States in the 2020s. Of course, the future is not written, and I hope I'm wrong, but I do believe, looking at all the evidence, that America's best days are, sadly, behind it. Gideon Corey, thank you so much for being part of this debate. We've covered geopolitics, economics, domestic, political issues, culture. You've wrapped it all up in your considered analysis and insight.

So Corey, Gideon, again, appreciate your time today on behalf of the Monk Debates community. Thank you for coming on the program. It was a great pleasure. Thank you, both. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Corey and Gideon. They certainly give us a lot to think about. Big topic, big questions.

We want your feedback and reflection. So please send us an email on this episode of the Monk Debates with your feedback and reactions. You can do that to podcast at Monk. Monk Debates.com, that's MUNK, Debates with an S.com. Also, tell us what other debates should we be organizing for your listening pleasure. A reminder that our members-only podcast comes out every Friday, and it's yours free to listen to as part of our complimentary basic membership. You can get your membership now at www.munkdebates.com forward slash membership.

Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts. in interest as an organization in restoring the art of civil and substantive public debate in our time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffith. The Monk Debates are produced by Antica Productions and supported by the Monk Foundation. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gurwitz are the producers. Abbey Rahesia is the associate producer. The Monk Debates podcast is mixed by Kieran Lynch, and the president of Antica Productions is Stuart Cox. be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.