>> Welcome to Conversations on the
Future of Democracy, a series sponsored
by the John W. Kluge Center
at the Library of Congress.
I am John Haskell, Director of the Kluge Center.
Today I'm joined by Constanze Stelzenmuller, a
Senior Fellow at the Center on the United States
and Europe at the Brookings Institute.
She was recently the Kissinger
Chair on Foreign Policy
and International Relations at the Kluge Center.
Also Andrew Weiss is with us.
He is James Family Chair and Vice President
of Studies at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace where he
oversees research both in Washington
and Moscow on Russia and Eurasia.
We're happy to announce that Andrew will
be coming to the Kluge Center this fall
as the Library of Congress
Chair in US-Russia relations.
Welcome to you both!
>> Great to be here.
>> Thank you!
Thanks for having us.
>> We're in a real serious time right
now of course for all kinds of reasons,
and the topic of our conversation:
Creative or Destructive Force?
COVID-19, Russia, and the European
Democracies is a part of a much larger picture,
but let's just go right into it, Constanze,
about what's going on in the EU now,
what's your assessment of leadership provided by
Germany and France in the face of the pandemic?
>> Okay, so there's a variety of
levels that we ought to look at here.
I am German myself, so I can
speak to the German experience,
but Germany doesn't represent
the entirety of the EU,
and in fact its behavior is
often quite controversial.
Currently, we seem to be in the
sort of exception mode from that,
but that's likely to be short-lived.
So to explain, health provision, pandemics
in general is not an EU competence.
Very much resides in the hands of the
nation-states, and so what you've seen
over the first two-and-a-half, three
month of the pandemic is a broad variety
of different approaches, most of them
characterized, unlike say in Asia, by, you know,
a certain slowness to respond,
and then a scramble to test,
and finally to shut things down,
and then in the second round,
to mitigate the immense economic
damage projected
from the basically national shutdowns
all across Europe and border closures,
which we haven't seen since,
you know, the 1970's.
I mean, I last saw European
borders when I was a child.
Specifically, I think it's also important to
note while Germany has been getting an awful lot
of praise for the way it managed things, I think
part of that was luck, and there may be one
or two points that were, you know, genuine,
I think genuinely deserving of praise.
So let me start with the luck.
I think we were lucky that our medical
system was relatively top-heavy
in ICU beds, intensive care unit beds.
That was very helpful.
We also had the capacity
to do extensive testing.
But there was, because we have a very federal
culture, there was an awful lot of bickering
and sort of mutual, you know, racing
and political campaigning thinly veiled
between the candidates who want to succeed
Angela Merkel as chancellor for about two
or three weeks, and precious time was lost.
I think our death rate and our infection rate
would have been much smaller had we not lost
that time, and I think finally the
Chancellor sort of, and her government,
pulled the 16 state governors in the
[inaudible] together and said, "You know,
this is just not a good luck, and we
need to have a coordinated position."
Now that we're reopening again, that sort
of march in lockstep which looked so good
from the outside is unraveling a bit.
I think two points, I, I would
actually praise her on that leadership.
It was very rational, very empathic, empathetic,
and, and I think very well organized.
She's one of the least narcissistic
and needy leaders in Europe, and,
and I think that really mattered at that point.
And the other thing pointed, which
of course we are incredibly lucky is
that we have this historic budget
surplus before the crisis began.
So despite the fact that we're looking
at GDP drops of seven percent or more,
we're in the position to throw what
the Finance Minister Scholz called
"the big bazooka" at this stuff.
And not just that, we were in a position
to offer Europe a very large half-trillion
euro recovery package together with the French.
Perhaps one final point.
The Germans have been demonstrating in the
streets recently, on weekends complaining
about the harshness of the lockdown, and
frankly out lockdown was a lot less harsh
than what the [inaudible] the
Italians and the French had to endure,
who literally were not allowed to leave
their houses, not even with the kids,
whereas the Germans cheerfully
went jogging, so frankly, you know,
I think a little less smugness
and a bit of recognition
of just how good we had it would
be quite nice, thank you very much.
>> Constanze, why don't you speak a little
bit more to the, to the Recovery Fund.
I know that's getting a lot of
attention, and that's for good reason.
What are its prospects and what
difference is it going to make?
>> Okay, so the Recovery Fund, as I already
said, is an offer from France and Germany
to essentially combine with the
currently-being-negotiated EU budget
which is a multiannual financial framework to
throw in an additional half-trillion dollars.
And I'm amazed at myself at the ease with
which I say things like "half-trillion."
That's not something I could do in
my private life, but here we are.
And that is something that is perhaps
not quite as surprising from the French
but for the Germans and particularly for
Angela Merkel and her coalition government
of conservatives and social
democrats, center left, center right,
is a real sort of, you know, Copernican moment.
Copernican moment in the sense that
this is a moment where the Germans said,
"Okay, Europe doesn't revolve Germany.
Actually Germany revolves all around Europe.
We are existentially bound to the
European project and our neighbors,
and this means in a situation of crisis where
it's nobody's fault and it's an exogenous shock,
we need to help to the degree that we
are able, and we are very much able,
and we will do this with
grants rather than loans.
That's the German position, and that is a
huge shift for this particular generation,
particularly of the German
conservative politicians.
It's amazing.
Now the opposition to that within the
EU is headed by what has been termed
"the frugal four," Austria, Denmark, the
Netherlands, and Sweden, who take objection
to the fact that these are supposed to be grants
rather than loans and are saying, you know,
"This is just rewarding those lackadaisical
Southerners for lax, you know, behavior,
a lack of saving, and what
not," and frankly, I mean,
that is about the thinnest possible argument
that you could come up with in this situation.
And so that position has been treated with
a fair amount of shall we say disdain?
And not just by French and Germans.
I really don't see that going very far.
The one point that, that they have, but I
think it's one that can also be eliminated,
the point that they have is that they're saying.
"Wait a moment.
Is this another Hamiltonian moment where
this is like the first step to another step
of massive European integration?"
And my answer to that is you know what?
That can only happen with a treaty
change, and that means European unanimity,
and so the four have a veto in that.
Right now, this is a one-off.
The people are propagating a saying
this is a one-off, so frankly, you know,
I would not stare this gift horse in the mouth
too long because you know, it could gallop away
or just, you know, die in the pandemic.
>> So it, even this, forget
about it, a change in the treaty.
Even this requires unanimity, right?
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> And so you think, you
think it's likely to happen?
>> I think it's very likely to happen.
I mean, it's possible that the
outcome will be a bit of a fudge.
You know, just so "the frugal four" and possible
other opponents who are hiding behind them,
although I'm not really seeing any at this
point, you know, can say, "Oh well, you know,
sort of, you know, we got, we
got something out of this."
But I think the, it's the bottom
line is you know every country
in Europe getting additional stimulus money, I
think my response is kind of what's not to like?
Also, look at the joblessness rates, look at the
projections for GDP, look at what's happening
to great power competition all around
Europe with Russia, China, and America.
Are we in a position to, as they say in your
culture, to putz around on, on stuff like this?
I don't think so.
I think this is the moment when we stand
up and put up and save the project.
>> So let, let's turn to Russia for a second.
We'll get back to Europe, but Andrew, kind
of the same question regarding Russia.
How is Putin handling the pandemic?
You're, you know, famous for being
knowledgeable for really knowing what's going
on internally in Russian politics.
What we read, what ordinary people like me
read is that it's not going very well for him.
What do you say to that?
>> Well, first of all, John,
I'm really delighted
to be joining the Kluge Center, so that-- .
>> We're excited too.
>> An exciting honor and-- .
>> Absolutely!
>> Really thrilled.
>> You should be.
>> There's a tendency to make really sweeping
judgements about Russia, and it's not,
in this case, you know, really helpful to
say, "Putin is on the ropes," or, "Putin,
like dictators the world over loves COVID,
and you know he's seizing the opportunity
to entrench himself and expand his powers."
Putin has sweeping czar-like authority today.
So what will be different is that he will
on July 1, go to a sort of plebiscite
on extending his power and [inaudible]
time in office, potentially until 2036.
So basically subverting term limits
and staying in power like a sultan.
He didn't really need COVID to do that.
It clearly forced his hand and made, maybe
made him show his true colors after talking
about other possible ways
to transition potentially.
But the reality it is no
transition for Vladimir Putin.
There's no easy way for him to be the center
of the system, the fulcrum of the system,
and groom a successor because he would
then overnight turn into a lame duck.
As far as COVID goes, Russia, for a brief
period, felt, you know, like they were going
to be able to dodge this bullet, and
that the pandemic would not hit Russia
with the same severity.
So there was some [inaudible], and I
think a lot of just bad policymaking.
So we've seen repeatedly in the Putin era the
Russian government being late, being passive,
and being just kind of, sort of
unaware of the forces of globalization
and how they would affect
Russia's [inaudible] stability.
So what's different for them, and this
is why I caution against any sort of rush
to say Putin's going to suffer a big blow
from all this is some striking differences.
Putin has actually been very
hands-off during this crisis.
And so I know in Western societies, in
individual states in the United States
or federal level, sort of always looking for
someone to show leadership and really, you know,
coordinate in a big country
the disaster response.
In this case, Putin has kind of said, "I'm too
big for this COVID thing," and basically tried
to play Pass the Parcel, and pass responsibility
for what is going to be a big unpleasant mess
to others either at the regional level,
or inside the Russian government.
That is not unique to Russia.
There are authoritarian leaders in
the Middle East who have done exactly
that who see the outfall of the, the
fallout from COVID as a loser to them.
Frankly, it's not that different from what's
happening in the United States as well
where we see a blame-shifting exercise underway.
So as far as Russia's own
problems, those are piling up,
and none of what's happened makes
those problems any easier for Putin
to manage if and when the pandemic passes.
He still has an economy which is largely
stagnant, but he has chosen basically to bring
up the defenses to stockpile hard
currency, to basically fortify the,
the ramparts around his regime instead of
having a decentralized, more free Russia.
He has made a decision in the wake of the war
in Ukraine and all of the economic sanctions
and hardship that has befallen Russia as a
result of that horrible action in Ukraine,
so he's chosen to make Russia less dynamic and
less economically vibrant, but at, you know, to,
to put this in perspective, he
[inaudible] half a trillion dollars' worth
of hard currency reserves to
basically keep himself safe.
He doesn't have any external
foreign debt to speak of,
so he's basically created a fortress Russia.
Whether or not those defenses start to be
significantly degraded by the crisis is unclear.
Oil prices, for example, are significantly lower
than they were at the beginning of the crisis,
but they've recovered somewhat, so for
Russia which, you know, is highly dependent
on the price of oil, they can
get by on basically sequestering,
on tightening their belts, basically pushing
the pain of this adjustment onto average people.
It's not like the Russian people had a
great public health system before COVID.
They didn't, and part of
the reason they don't is
because the Russian government has
deliberately unfunded it and stockpiled a lot
of those oil windfalls in a rainy-day fund.
So these are the results of conscious choices,
and it is, you know, you know, so far,
we've seen 20 years of Mr. Putin.
It's a very, you know, it's a mug's game
to sort of bet on any particular issue
as being the thing that tips
this whole Putin system over.
It's a rickety system.
There are exogenous shocks that might do that,
but in some ways, people are pinning their hopes
on this particular crisis and saying maybe
this will be the thing that, you know,
either forces the Russian people to rise up
or creates so much socio economic distress
that system starts to break down.
>> So I mean a lot of commentators
do say that, that Putin's handling
of the pandemic puts the regime as it is
today at risk, and that does make sense.
There's a, there's a brain drain in Russia,
and as you said, the economy's not that good
and really hasn't been for a long time.
Could be, could this be the
thing that puts it over the edge?
You're suggesting maybe not, right?
>> Well, you know, I don't, I'm not
in the business of making predictions
because that's something where
there's just, you know, it's just,
you know, easy to do a lot of self-harm.
I don't want to do that, but
you know, we have, you know,
in most average Russians' minds very vivid
memories of the 1990's when Russia went
through something on the order of the US
Great Depression or something markedly worse
where people didn't have enough food to eat.
And so the general construct
in most people's minds
that the regime also amplifies whenever it can,
which is you don't want to
go back to that, do you?
And so that kind of creates an
argument in favor of continuity
and stability with the existing system.
The other thing that provides for a level
of continuity is there are no alternatives.
There is no competitive political system,
and there's nothing else that's on offer.
There's no charismatic counter to Putin
that average people can look to and say,
or more importantly, frankly, the
Russian elite can look to and say,
"That's someone we can rally around
who would be better than Putin."
There's, there's no agreement about
what that alternative future might be.
So in the end, inertia and resilience
in the system carry a lot of potency.
The final thing is the repressive capacity of
the Russian state is very much not being taxed,
and so it's hard to, you know, sort
of say this because I'm not, you know,
wanting to point out some of the things that
the regime has going for it, but there are a lot
of repressive capacities and
abilities to do harm and deter people
from taking the situation into their own hands.
And so the average Russian sees
what's gone on a demonstration basis
where a single student gets plucked out for
something they've posted online, on Facebook,
and a lot of people get the message, and
people retreat from political speech.
People see what happens to demonstrators.
They see how the regime means
business, and they retreat.
So there's a lot going on inside the
system itself that, you know, again,
argues in the direction of conformism,
risk aversion, and basically trying
to find compromise with the Putin
system, and basically retreat
from taking more frontal,
confrontational approach.
>> So Constanze, one of the things
Andrew said, he talked about governments
and whether it's [inaudible] or in
the case of Putin, not handling,
you know, autocracies, essentially.
Not handling the pandemic very well, and the UK
and Italy arguably aren't handling it very well
in Europe, in your area of expertise.
So what's the key?
I mean, it, what, what's the
secret sauce for, for dealing with,
you know, a massive crisis like this?
>> So.
I think there, I think you have
to sort of try to divide this
out analytically into weaknesses and strengths.
And weaknesses you might group under
the header of preexisting conditions.
And some of those preexisting
conditions are more obvious than others.
Say, take the case of Italy.
Very good medical system, but a demographic,
particularly in the areas skewed hardest,
hit hardest by the, by the pandemic, skewed very
much towards a 60-, 70-plus older demographic
which turned out to be exquisitely
vulnerable to, when the pandemic struck.
I think another preexisting condition is
population density and living conditions
in general that was something that
played a big role in New York.
Unequal access to healthcare?
Yeah, that matters like hell.
The two factors that appear to precondition
success are, I think, and this is,
I'm quoting Frank Proquiama here
who wrote this in a recent piece,
"Our government capability and citizen trust."
The thing is you can find those two qualities on
the whole spectrum from very liberal democracy
to autocracy, although it's notable that
the, the biggest autocracies, Russia, China,
and Brazil haven't had a great
pandemic, and I would say,
if you would forgive me my saying this,
the populace-run United States government also
hasn't been doing a great job with a president
who says he has all authority
but leaves all responsibility
to the states and to the governors.
That, I think, has made at least for some very
mixed messaging and a great deal of confusion
in a situation where it would be
helpful or would have been helpful,
probably still is helpful to coordinate
between the federal and the state level.
But again, I mean, I'm the first to say
that we're seeing this kind of confusion
between the states and competition between the
states and their leaders in Germany now as well.
But then you have a relatively
authoritarian state like Singapore
that also has done very well, or a democracy
like Japan where with a very high level
of citizen deference and trust, that also has
done well and literally and managed the pandemic
with far fewer of the restrictions than were
imposed in Europe, including on Germany.
So those are the, the two points.
I think the, you know, coming away from
Europe, your point about the autocrats,
I think for us Western democracies,
it's important to say
that in some ways this pandemic has shown up
structural weaknesses in Western democracies
in ways that were perhaps not quite as clear
before, or that we have not wanted to see.
It's held up a mirror to a deficiencies,
the structural deficiencies, the inequities,
the inequalities, the unfairnesses of
our own systems, and I think, you know,
if there is a silver lining to this, I
think that it is literally that it forces us
to examine it and come to term with, to term
with it because these are vulnerabilities
that will not just, if remain untreated, will
expose us to the next sort of exogenous shock.
And also expose us to external
pressure by autocrats.
So it's in our own interest
to get a grip on this.
>> Can I just take onto something related to
what [inaudible] is saying which is in the case
of Russia, what's remarkable is the gap between
the, particularly the Western perception
of how the state's authority and authoritarian
nature impact average people's lives
and the reality.
So what we see in Russia, for all the sort
of focus and 20 years of Putin's tenure
on the state and re-establishing a
strong state is the state didn't deliver
for the average person in Russia.
It didn't deliver the healthcare,
and then when the state was trying
to enforce the quarantine lockdown
provisions, it didn't do that very well either.
It basically, you know, the Russians looked
at what China had done with tremendous envy,
and they saw the way China kind of
automates digital control of the population,
how it uses facial recognition and
other technology for societal control,
and it tried to do something
as basic as rolling out an app,
that everybody in major cities would have to
carry around to give you a green or red stamp
that would allow you to move around,
and they couldn't even do that right.
So there was a level of, you know, exposing
here the ineptitude and the deficiencies
of Russia's authoritarian system and more kind
of seeing the state disappear in a crisis.
So the average person in some cases
has felt more exposed, more vulnerable,
and has retreated as a result because they
see that they're basically on their own,
and the social guarantees and
the other things the Soviet Union
at least provided are no longer there for them.
>> You know, and one thing that
came to mind when you were speaking,
Constanze was that you got federal
systems in Germany and the US,
and a lot of what you're saying seems to explain
maybe the difference in, in the effectiveness
of the response, even though both countries have
dispersed power, at least to a degree, right?
>> Well, let me put it this way.
I think that two states that have very clearly
struggled with, shall we say implementing
from the top of the executive downwards are the
highly centralized cases of France and the UK,
who I think if you have a centralist system
like that, it's then all about executable power.
If you haven't evolved power downwards, you'd
better have bureaucracies that can do this,
and you'd better have politics that will
let you do it, and I would say that I'm,
I'm not sure that I'm able to speak to the state
of the French or the British bureaucracies,
but I would say that in both cases, the
politics have to come very polarized.
You have the leadership both
in the form of Boris Johnson
and in the French President Macron very
much on the defensive against populace
in their own camp in, or, or outside of it.
In France it's, it's the hard left and the hard
right that are sniping at the president, and in,
in the UK, interestingly, it's suddenly a, a new
labor leadership that looks far more centrist,
far more competent that is suddenly
making the government look pretty poorly.
What's interesting is the comparative case
Germany and the US, two federalist states.
And in fact the German case,
the German constitution post-war was very
much modeled on the American example.
But there's always been much more built-in
tension in the American system dating back
to the days of the Revolution, and you
know, throughout the nineteenth century
and twentieth century the assumption
was always, you know, conflict is good.
We can handle this.
Our political culture is [inaudible]
but in the end, we, we come through.
And I, and I think right now that American
tradition is being tested somewhat, and it's,
it's also being tested, I
think, because of the deep
and growing underlying societal
and economic inequalities.
That's not to say we don't have those in
Germany, but they're not as extreme as I,
I think the, you know, the spectrum isn't
as broad by far as it is in this country.
>> Is, is the right, you know, the surging
right wing in Germany, is that undermining
in any, at any level what Merkel-- .
>> Interestingly, the, the AFD was doing very
well until you know sort of fall last year.
They were really putting the Grand Coalition
government of Angela Merkel on the defensive
and in particularly the eastern states.
They were trying to pick up Christian democrat
governments and trying to essentially force them
into some sort of a de facto coalition.
That didn't work, and meanwhile,
the AFD underwent a sort
of self-radicalization process very publicly,
which caused the German domestic intelligence
services to say, "Alright, enough of this.
You know, this is so obviously, you know,
studded with neo-Nazis, identitarians
and what not, we're going to put
this under domestic surveillance."
And right now it's, it's notable that the IFD
has done very badly in responding to the crisis.
They've really not come up with messaging
that was in any way you know got them
out of their [inaudible] poll doldrums.
They're under, they're polling
under ten percent.
And although they were clearly trying
to piggyback on some of the protests
in German cities about the
reopening, that's not--
I, I, for, there were a couple weeks where I
thought this might go the same way, [coughs],
sorry, a the migration crisis in 2015,
but right now it does not look like it.
Now, we're at the beginning of this.
I, I'm expecting more waves of this
pandemic worldwide before a vaccine is found.
We're looking at catastrophic events
worldwide, including Germany and Europe.
Bazookas are out.
So we're not, we're only at the-- you know,
the end of the beginning of the story,
and God knows what traction hard right
or had left movements will be able
to gain before this is over
and a vaccine is found.
>> So a little bit of a different tack here.
Andrew has, you know, given all the challenges
in Russia and challenges that Putin faces.
Is Russia going to be a factor in our
elections or in European politics,
or is that overtaken by events now?
>> I'd say that there's a
couple things going on.
One is obviously the US is in a very deep,
and you know hard to see, easy to resolve set
of crises that are interlocking with the
disorder, the effects of the protests
across the US in major cities,
and small cities for that matter,
and the effects of the pandemic
and the economic crisis.
So all that stuff is a, is a very, very potent
and disruptive set of forces that to me seem
like the, the elephant in the room.
And what Russia is doing or isn't doing
is probably going to be on the margins
from that bigger, very tragic
set of circumstances.
With that said, we need to be I think a little
more disciplined and a little more careful
about how we talk about foreign
interference in our democracy.
There's a tendency that can play, I
would say three tiers of activity,
some of which we can deal with as a
society by improving our civic culture,
by improving the knowledgeability
about how people, you know,
deal with social media influencing
their political perceptions
and hardening their biases.
So disinformation is a category of, you know,
the pollute, sort of information pollution
that we're all confronted by from our
phones and from our reliance on social media
to get a handle on the world,
that's not going away.
I don't think it'll go away
during this campaign.
In fact, a lot of the tactics and
techniques are being embraced by the parts
of the US political spectrum right now.
So it would be hard to disaggregate
where the foreign evildoers are
and where the US opportunistic use of the
same kinds of divisive tactics resides.
The second category of [inaudible] I think
is a real potential problem is the use
of computer intrusions and penetration
of computer networks to sort of break
into people's email to, as
we saw in the 2016 campaign,
to then release wholesale enormous
archives of information to the press
and into the public domain, and then basically
turn the dirty work over to reporters and others
who are looking for the juicy bits.
And that has happened not only in the United
States, it has happened in a lot of countries,
and there are a lot of Russian fingerprints,
including in Germany on those kinds
of activities, what we call hack and release.
And there are potential strategies and one hopes
that the US Presidential campaigns
will embrace those strategies
to reduce their vulnerability going forward.
And then the last category of
stuff which I think also there are,
there is scope for potential serious
problems is actual effects on the tabulation
and the vote system on election day and
could a foreign actor somehow do things
across our very disparate electoral system in
all 50 states to either impeded people's ability
to vote, to throw the system off, or
to throw questions about the result?
And if we have a close election
campaign, and that, you know,
several of the most recently elections have
been, unfortunately very hotly contested.
The outcomes have been sort of questioned,
you know, with different winners
and different losers coming away feeling quite,
you know, embittered and also raising doubts
about whether the election was free and fair,
you could see a really damaging
scenario unfolding in the United States
where things get really nasty, and there's
going to be both domestic players who want
to take advantage of that, and there
are going foreign affairs who seek
to undermine our effectiveness as a society
and a a player on the international scene.
So it's a very, it's a very worrisome situation.
It calls up for national-level
leadership and a bipartisan response.
>> Chris, how do you look at
Russia and European politics?
>> I mean, right now it's, I think, there
are several notable points to be made here,
and I think, you know, all of
Andy's points are very well taken.
These are very important distinctions.
Firstly, it's notable that the European
sanctions consensus or the consensus
over the sanctions imposed as a result of the
annexation of Crimea and Russia's fomenting
of war in Eastern Ukraine
has held together since 2014.
That's a fairly remarkable achievement, and it's
the German leadership, for better or for worse,
that has been holding it together
despite problematic projects
like the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which I
personally wish would just whimper and go away,
which it may well do because I think
it's economically pointless anyway.
But the, the, the reality is that Russian,
Russia as a threat or as a genuine factor
in European politics is being dwarfed currently
by China, by an increasingly assertive,
aggressive Chinese diplomacy that goes
well beyond covert or overt attempts
to acquire physical and digital
infrastructure and is very much now
about political and even cultural dominance.
However, to the, I mean, to the extent that
it's also generating a very real pushback,
the German National Telecoms provide
a, today said it was going to work
with Ericsson rather than Huawei.
And the couple days ago, just to make a
final, to dot the I's and cross the T's
on the Russia topic, famously the German
Federal Legislature, the Bundesrat,
saw a Russian-originated hack
about five years ago, and Merkel
and a couple days ago said it's
very clear that this was the GRU,
the Russian military intelligence, and not only
do we plan to institute criminal proceedings,
we're also going to call for sanctions
over this which is fairly remarkable.
So I would say relationships, you know, the
Russians are not profiting from what is going
on here, and from what has also been
a, a Trans-Atlantic relationship
that has not been going well, evidenced by
the recent kerfuffle over the recent G7,
Angela Merkel saying she didn't want
to come in America in the early summer
because of the travel risk, and the
President's then saying, "Well, you know,
I think this G7 mode is outdated anyway, and I
want to invite Russia, Australia, India, and--
" what was it, South Korea, I
think was the other country?
>> Yeah.
>> So that would make it G11.
I think at this point, all the traditional
G7 countries have firmly put their foot
down on re-inviting Russia which was thrown out
of the G8 because of the annexation of Crimea.
So you know you would think that the Russians or
the Chinese would get traction out of this kind
of stuff, but clearly they're not.
>> But, but you are saying that China
is kind of overshadowing Russia?
>> Absolutely.
Absolutely simply because their, their
resources, because they have been
so much more strategic, subtle, and resourceful
because they've put far more intellectual
and diplomatic investment into this, whereas
the Russian strategy has been destructive
and opportunistic.
And I think beyond, you know, the occasional
funding of European right wing parties
or right wing political individuals, and messing
with the social media space through outlets,
state-funded and owned outlets
like Russia Today or Sputnik,
has really not gained them
a great deal of traction.
I mean, they've bought politicians
including a former German chancellor,
but that, that's, you know, [inaudible].
>> Is China also [inaudible] the US in Europe?
>> I'm sorry?
>> Is China making progress toward
overshadowing the US in Europe?
>> Well yes and no.
I think to the degree that the US is losing
influence in Europe, that's, I have to say sadly
because I'm a committed Trans-Atlantacist
to a great degree self-inflicted
by this particular administration.
And yet at the same time, you see European
governments and citizens in surveys trying
to make a very careful distinction between
the, the current incumbent in the Oval Office
and America as a country, a an
ally, as a partner of Europe
and its citizens on the other hand.
We're in no position to cut
off Trans-Atlantic ties.
We need America.
I mean, everybody, you know, who knows,
you know, who knows the facts knows that,
but it is deeply unpleasant to be
engaged in debates with an administration
that cancels arms control treaties
without discussing with the Europeans,
so as more recently the Open Skies treaty.
That you know is clearly trying to bring
Russia back into the fold diplomatically.
That's really hard, so this is a, this
is a very, very rocky relationship,
and I would say that the Europeans have tried,
you know, every way until Friday, in many ways,
to, to stay as far as possible on the good
side of America and of this administration
as they can, but it's not
being made easy for them.
Does that fuel traditional anti-Americanism?
Cultural anti-Americanism which is always a
reflection of our own self-doubt culturally?
Yes, but you know what?
That's, that's always been there.
That's kind of a cultural perennial, sadly.
>> So we're running out of time, and I wanted
to see whether Andrew or perhaps you, Constanze,
and I don't mean this to be facetious, but
is there something hopeful that we can talk
about as we wrap up this conversation, Andrew?
What are you looking forward
to that might not be as grim
as some of the things we talked about?
>> Oh man, you're asking a think
tank person the worst question.
We hate this question.
I'm just kidding.
So the, I think there is inescapably, and
I hope that this can be a bipartisan issue,
a need to reckon with the resurgent Russia,
and there's a way to do that that's smart,
that plays to our advantages, that stops being
purely reactive, and that also recognizes both
that we have a stake in a couple
of areas like arms control,
dealing with our huge nuclear arsenals
where there's some form of cooperation
with Russia that's out of
cold-blooded self-interest required.
But at the same time, we do have to look at
ourselves in the mirror and not necessarily look
to others and say they're the
source of our divisiveness
and our poisonous political
acrimonious environment.
So my hopeful moment, you know, against all
the horrible things that are going on is
that America needs to really do
some serious self-evaluation.
It needs to look at all of the heartbreak
and all of the things that are unfolding,
and it needs to basically get to
work and start addressing those.
So, so that's very much what I think
animates my work at the moment, and,
and my hopefulness about the future.
>> Constanze, I'll give you-- .
>> Very well taken.
In the same spirit, I, you
know, I was saying earlier that,
that European political economies also
very clearly have pre-existing conditions
and vulnerabilities.
That very much includes my own country, Germany.
We had skated along on, on recent economic
success and not wanted to look too closely
at areas where we had not
invested, where we were vulnerable.
So I think to the extent that we're being held
up, you know, [inaudible] that's good for us,
and frankly, I will say as
someone who has you know,
is the child of war children remembers you know
economic stagnation in Europe and also the,
just the sheer unbelieving joy of the
1989 moment, the fall of the wall,
and European reunification,
I would say this is a moment
where skating along is no longer going to work.
Ignoring our own deficiencies our
vulnerabilities is no longer going to work.
It's a moment to stand up and be counted,
and it's a moment not just for, you know,
repairs and quick fixes, but for reviewing the
architecture of our countries and our alliances.
And you know what?
I'm up for that.
I think that's a good thing.
That is, I think, I think we have the energy,
the values, and the spirit to do that,
and the goodwill, and I'm going to believe we
can come through this better on the other side.
>> Well, thank you both so much.
You're both great friends of the Library.
In fact, Andrew's going to be an
incoming scholar at the Library,
and Constanze just finished an appointment
at the Library and remains a friend.
We're proud to have you-- .
>> Thank you very much.
>> Both as friends of the Library, and we
look forward to having you on future programs
and interacting in different ways.
Thank you so much for participating.
>> Thanks.
>> You're very welcome, it was a pleasure.