John B. Hurford Memorial Lecture: A Conversation With Stephen Kotkin on America and the World at 250—Where Things Stand and Where They’re Headed

Stephen Kotkin presents his innovative views on the forces reshaping American power and global standing and considers what comes next.

The John B. Hurford Memorial Lecture was inaugurated in 2002 in memory of CFR member John B. Hurford, and features individuals who represent critical new thinking in international affairs and foreign policy.

This meeting is also part of CFR’s America at 250 Series. To mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. declaration of independence, CFR is dedicating a year-long series of articles, videos, podcasts, events, and special projects that will reflect on two and a half centuries of U.S. foreign policy. Featuring bipartisan voices and expert contributors, the series explores the evolution of America’s role in the world and the strategic challenges that lie ahead.

MIRRER: (Off mic)—president and chief executive officer of The New York Historical. And I’ll be presiding over today’s meeting.

We are delighted to have members of the Hurford family with us tonight, and we also welcome more than 260 CFR members who are joining us via Zoom.

It’s my pleasure now to introduce our speaker, Dr. Stephen Kotkin. He is Kleinheinz senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Birkelund professor emeritus at Princeton University. He is also one of the foremost historians of Russia and the Soviet Union writing today. Please join me in welcoming him to the stage to deliver remarks, after which we’ll have a conversation, before opening up to questions from the audience. Thank you.

KOTKIN: Thank you, Louise. You’ll have to forgive me, even though I’m short I’m not going to use the stage. (Laughter.) Instead, I’m going to walk the floor. And I’ve been told I need to use the handheld. First of all, big thank you to big Mike for the invitation. I don’t know who declined—(laughter)—the invitation, but I thank them as well for giving me the opportunity. I thank the family, of course, for the honor of delivering the Hurley lecture this year—the Hurford lecture this year. And I warn you that this Hurford lecture will be banal. Not because I don’t understand the importance of the occasion. I do. But because I can’t help myself. That’s what I usually do. I say obvious things and not much more. (Laughter.) I also thank Louise. She’ll be up on stage with me, should there be anybody left here for Q&A. Louise and I have done many events together at her magnificent venue, The New York Historical society, one of the gems of New York City and one of my favorite venues.

So the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America, I know it’s hard to remember but this country is a marvel. It’s really a stunning trajectory, those 250 years. And we need to remember that somehow. The category “citizenship,” especially civic citizenship, was an incredible breakthrough. Citizenship was universal in principle and exclusionary in practice. Many people were not considered citizens. Some were not even considered people. This is a massive failing that we own, and that will be with us forever. At the same time, through struggle and all sorts of efforts across the society and the government, over time the category “citizenship” got closer and closer to the universality in practice that it was in principle. So, for example, women became citizens. Non-property-holding men became citizens. Former slaves became citizens. This was a struggle, admittedly, but this is a remarkable story.

There are some legacies that are less positive—the imperial presidency. We’ve had this now for quite some time. Roosevelt, in some ways, was the gold standard of the imperial presidency. And the rise to superpower status has turbocharged the imperial presidency. I’m not very favorably disposed towards a lack of limits on executive power, having spent nearly half a century studying that problem. (Laughter.) Also, the self-sabotage of Congress is a problematic legacy. It’s related to the imperial presidency. It’s the flip side of it. But nonetheless, the big story of the civic citizenship and the expansion of that category to become more universal in practice, not just in principle.

And so this talk tonight is going to be about that citizenship, your citizenship, your agency, the American story. I’m going to go into history, as I normally do. I’m going to take you out of the present. I’m not going to say a word about the present. But I’m going to take you into history in order to understand the present and the potential futures that are there to be shaped by the people in this room, and beyond. So that’s the goal. The proposition tonight, I’ll make only four points. The first and most important proposition—I said I would walk around. You’re warned. But I did use the breath spray that I keep in my pocket. (Laughter.) So we’re good if I get too close. which can happen.

The proposition tonight is that there is a rebalancing of American power in the world, finally, belatedly underway. Now, since Richard Nixon we’ve been hearing about the necessity of rebalancing American power in the world. Finally it’s happening. It’s not happening the way CFR would recommend it happen—(laughter)—in one of those great task forces. It is happening the way our system figured out to force it into being, through detestation of the European Union and fondness for Vladimir Putin. That’s how our system is finally rebalancing American power. Again, this wouldn’t necessarily be the best way to do it, but it is the way it’s happening. It’s happening chaotically. It’s happening, you might even say, abusively. But it is inescapable. And I’m glad it’s happening, even though this wouldn’t be the way I would do it.

Why do I say this rebalancing is inescapable? Well, American global GDP share, proportion of global GDP, since 1880 has been 25 percent. A hundred and fifty years of a quarter of the global economy, more or less. There were years of 22 percent and years of 27 percent. Right now I think it might be 26 percent. But we’ve been on 150-year run of a quarter of the global economy. It’s pretty good for 5 percent of the population. However, there was an anomalous period when America was 40 percent of global GDP. Not only was it 40 percent of global GDP—you know, I see the spread isn’t that bad tonight. (Laughter.) Not only was it 40 percent of global GDP, but it was 50 percent of global manufacturing. And it had a nuclear monopoly, for a time.

That anomalous period, when we peaked at 40 percent of global GDP, is when we decided to build an international order that we would help oversee. At 40 percent of global GDP and 50 percent of global manufacturing, you can be quite self-confident. You can take on all sorts of commitments and responsibilities. You can say, you know, we can do this. This is within our grasp. We can be responsible for the whole world. We helped win the war. We were decisive in helping win the war. And now we’re going to shape the peace. And so during this anomalous period we took on these responsibilities. And if you’ll remember in John F. Kennedy’s inaugural, bear any burden, one of the greatest speeches ever delivered in American history, that was the peak. That was the peak of American power.

So this anomalous period was not going to last. There was no way America was going to remain 40 percent of global GDP and 50 percent of global manufacturing with a nuclear monopoly. You could have bet everything and anything on that proposition and you would have been right. Not only would you have been right, but that was the plan. The plan of the post-World War II order was to reduce America’s power proportionally. We were going to invest in our friends. In fact, in our former enemies—shockingly—in our former enemies, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. And we were going to help raise them from the ashes. So the whole point was to reduce American power in the world by exercising American power in the world. So not only could you have predicted that this was going to happen, it was what we tried to do. And it worked. It worked like a charm.

And we returned to our historic average of 25 percent of global GDP. However, responsibility for the world is a different proposition when you’re at 25 percent rather than 40 percent, plus 50 percent of global manufacturing. So for quite a long time there has been a necessity of rebalancing American power in the world. And there’s only been a rhetorical—a series of rhetorical gestures, for the most part, in that direction. Until now. Where would you start? This is my second point now. If I—now, I’m going to have to admit to this audience, you know already, GDP statistics are imperfect for the period 1880, 1890, 1900. GDP was invented in the 1930s as a concept. Statistics are imperfect. These are orders of magnitude, more or less. One can debate the precise numbers.

But the trajectory that I’m talking about is pretty established. Now, our friends in Europe, a core part of the proposition here, they’re currently 7 percent of global population. America is 5 percent. Twenty-five percent of GDP at 5 percent. And America is 50 percent, approximately, of global military. If you add in qualitative terms, it’s much higher than that, but more or less approximately 50 percent. So 5 percent of the world, 25 percent of the economy—and the most dynamic economy—and approximately, a little bit less, 50 percent of global military. Our friends in Europe are 7 percent of global population, 17 percent of global GDP—that includes the U.K., the EU plus the U.K.—and nearly 50 percent of global social spending. Yeah. That’s a pretty good deal. Would you take that deal? Of course you would take that deal.

Would you offer that deal? That’s a separate question. I’m not sure. But that’s the deal that we offer. And so if you were going to rebalance, guess where you would start? You would start with Europe. You wouldn’t necessarily have to be nasty and abusive about it. Again, maybe this isn’t the way you would do it. But this is the place that you would start to do this. By the way, in 1992 Europe was 30 percent of global GDP. And it’s now 17 percent. And it’s on trajectory in your lifetimes for 10 percent, if things continue along current trends. So somebody’s in decline, it’s just not the U.S. is in decline. I should add here a couple of other indicators, Europe’s trajectory, 1970 to 2000, on nuclear power build out, if they had continued their nuclear power build out—just continued it, not even enhanced it, beyond 2000—on the same trajectory as 1970 to 2000—there would be zero coal in Europe and zero demand for imported natural gas—zero.

No natural gas from Russia. No natural gas from the Middle East. Had they built out the nuclear power trajectory that they were on 1970 to 2000. Yep. Choices were made. I understand those choices. I’m not here to judge those choices. I’m just dealing with the consequences of those choices. That’s where you’d start the rebalancing. By the way, Japan peaked at 18 percent of global GDP, also in the 1990s, and is now barely 4 percent, and smaller than the economy of California where I live. So there’s decline. The decline is Europe and Japan, not the United States. The United States declined from an artificial peak, but has returned to historic averages, unlike the case of Europe and Japan. They rose and fell relative to the rest of the world.

I could give you many indicators of this rebalancing challenge. Not long ago, Pentagon doctrine—some of you in the room may have written this Pentagon doctrine so excuse me if I’m treading on some toes here. But Pentagon doctrine was to fight two major wars in two major theaters simultaneously. That was Pentagon official doctrine. Never mind that we had commitments in more than two theaters. We have treaty commitments to this day in more than two theaters. But Pentagon doctrine was two major wars simultaneously in two major theaters. That was then. What’s Pentagon doctrine today? Yes, it’s one. One major war in one major theater simultaneously. That’s interesting if you have commitments in more than one theater. We have treaty commitments in more than one theater. How are you going to figure that one out? You’re either going to rebalance or you’re going to fail to live up to your commitments.

So the rebalancing, again, is inescapable. I could go through the other economic indicators—global trade, global manufacturing, science. I’m at Stanford University now. The Pentagon was 36 percent of global R&D. Yes. (Laughs.) The Pentagon—the U.S. was 69 percent of global R&D, and the Pentagon alone was 36 percent. Now we have a Defense Innovation Unit in California. I can see it outside my office window. You don’t need a unit unless your Pentagon is not an innovation unit itself. Which it isn’t, sadly. So that’s a problem. The Pentagon is less than 3 percent of global R&D now. Scientific papers. As late as 2000 we were 60 percent of global scientific papers, quality scientific papers. We’re now hovering around 30 percent. China was zero and now they’re above 30 percent. And one could go on with all the indicators.

So you can either rebalance or you can live in a fantasy world. And it’s been a long fantasy world that’s now over. Again, this is how our system has figured out how to do this. So this is a multigenerational process. It’s for us to shape. It’s not one administration, let alone one presidency. This is going to continue through your lifetimes. And so we have a chance here to do better, to get this right, once we acknowledge that the rebalancing is inescapable, and how might be the better ways to do this. So, going back to the way things were is impossible. That’s it.

The 1990s-2000 jargon about the rules-based order and the international order, I’m sorry, but you cannot go back to that world because that world didn’t even exist when those terms were invented in the ’90s and 2000s. By the way, does anybody recall President Roosevelt’s postwar order plan? Just saying. It was a sphere of influence plan in which only the great powers would run the world, and they alone would have the right to have militaries. So nobody besides the four powers, which became five, could even have militaries in Roosevelt’s plan. That was the liberal international order as conceived in 1945. Remember, the word wasn’t invented yet. It was only invented in the ’90s and 2000s.

Point number three, America is not in decline. America remains a superpower. It is a superpower across almost every domain. Yes, military domain. Like it or don’t like the use of that military power in specific circumstances, it is awesome. We are also an economic superpower, obviously. Largest economy in the world still. We are obviously, in addition, an innovation superpower. We’re obviously also an energy superpower. We’re an immigration superpower. We’re an alliance superpower. And despite the self-destruction, we are a soft power superpower. The 1970s were a nadir of self-destruction of our soft power. We may actually discover that there’s a bottom that’s lower to the self-destruction of our soft power. But nonetheless, there is no rival for that soft power, despite our self-destructive behavior.

Superpower across these domains. America is not in decline. But the cost of America’s self-assigned role post-’45—self-assigned during the anomalous period of ’45 to 1960—the cost of that is beyond our capabilities to pay. Not because we’re bad people, but because it worked. This was the plan. The plan was to enable our peace and prosperity through others’ peace and prosperity—whether it’s the Marshall Plan or other plans and projects you can point to. So once something works, it becomes a problem. Your success becomes your problem. That happens again and again and again.

Let me give you an example. The European Union is a remarkable success. Europe had fratricidal war twice. And they murdered each other. And there was a Holocaust. And the European Union fixed this problem. It made Europe into pacifist countries. It’s just remarkable how successful that was. And now the European Union is a challenge because it’s suffocating Europe’s attempts to reinvent itself. The European Union has become a problem when it was an incredible solution. That doesn’t mean it’s a problem forever. Just like America reinvention, it’s possible in Europe as well. So hats off to them.

We have this crazy situation in the United States where the right, they hate the EU, but they love Western civilization. And the left, they love the EU, but they hate Western civilization. (Laughter.) I know. I can’t figure it out either. It’s a head scratcher. I should scratch my head. It’s itchy anyway. All right, so we’re not in decline, but we must rebalance. And problems can arise from your successes. Institutions that achieve something in one epoch can become a burden or not fit for purpose in another epoch. And so adaptability, recognizing the need to adapt, et cetera.

Let me get to my fourth and final point, but I want to have a shoutout. I think we’re OK on time, Louise? We’re OK? We’re almost done. I mean, we’re more than almost done. (Laughter.) I told you it would be banal. And so you got to say truth in advertising. Let me just make sure I didn’t skip something unimportant. (Laughter.) It’s true. I usually don’t use notes, but I’m discovering that I’m no longer up and coming. (Laughter.) Remember those days? I was once up and coming. (Laughs.) I can barely remember those days. That’s how long ago it was. Yes. I mentioned one day—I don’t remember what the context—that I was thinking about retiring. And the next day I know I got appointed at the Hoover Institution, and I became a member at CFR. (Laughter.) I think that’s coincidental. Got to be careful there with correlation and causality. I got a lot of social science friends.

Sam Huntington, before he was canceled for his Clash of Civilizations, he wrote two articles in one year in Foreign Affairs. And I think they’re the most important articles in the last fifty years in Foreign Affairs, or among the most important. The first one was called “Coping with the Lippmann Gap,” that I’m going to refer to, from December 1988. And he quotes Walter Lippmann from 1943, the journalist who helped popularize the term “Cold War.” Quote, “foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power.” Coping with the Lippmann Gap, the gap between your commitments and your power, that’s 1988. So guess what? This has been a problem of very longstanding, hasn’t it?

But the other thing Huntington did in February ’88 was wrote an article also published in Foreign Affairs called “The U.S.: Decline or Renewal?” And so even though he was trying to tell us that we needed to bring our commitments in line with our power, he was not an advocate of the position that the U.S. was in decline. So everything you’ve heard tonight is the same thing that Sam Huntington wrote thirty-eight years ago in Foreign Affairs, only delivered with less panache and at greater length, and I could go on.

Let me get to point number four and close this down. I know. There’s some very scary stuff that people can say at the Council. One is there’s a talk during dinner. That’s actually—that’s as frightening as the sign called “road work.” (Laughter.) And the second most frightening thing they can say at the Council is there’s a talk before dinner. (Laughter.) Yes. So here we are. And now you got to go to dinner, or there may be some great sporting event tonight for all I know, that you’re going to rush off to.

Point number four. There was a watershed, a turning point moment. And most of you were participants in it. And it happened in the ’90s. And it was if the 1970s hadn’t happened. And it happened in the ’90s. And it was a speech by Anthony Lake called “From Containment to Enlargement.” Lake was the national security advisor in President Bill Clinton’s administration. Maybe the person who wrote the speeches here, again, so I apologize. It then became the National Security Strategy of the Clinton administration, after twenty-one drafts. Twenty-one drafts till they got the final document. I’m sorry if you wrote it. If you wrote one of those twenty-one drafts. And the idea was that containment had been such a success that the whole world now is our oyster. Again, in the 1990s we declined from 25 percent, historic average, to about 22 percent of global GDP. That’s when Europe was 30 percent, down from its peak of 33 but still high. Japan was 18 percent. We were worried that Japan had won the Cold War, you’ll recall.

But we decided to go for broke. Instead of remembering that we maybe have commitments exceeding our power, we decided on the contrary let’s make more commitments. Remember, the demand for American power is unlimited. Let’s bring Ukraine into NATO. Let’s do a security treaty with the Saudis. Let’s fill-in-the-blank. Unlimited demand for American power, right? It’s the supply that’s the challenge. And so in the ’90s, we decided to go for broke. And we were going to do the whole world. We were going to do Pygmalion on Russia. We were going to do Pygmalion on China. Yes, we did decide that. It was understandable to a certain extent because of the conjuncture. If you were around, most of you weren’t I see, but I was around then. And it was a heady time.

The Berlin Wall fell. It fell in November 1989. I started at Princeton University as an assistant professor in September 1989. The wall fell in my first course on communism. (Laughter.) Yes, gee, what’s that about? What does that mean? Anyway, so we decided to go for broke. It was a decision. Sam Huntington, in that article that I quoted earlier, wrote this. Quote, “Consider how different the world would look and what the demands would be on U.S. resources if China were threatening aggression against American interests in Asia.” It was barely thinkable, but he thought it all the same. Yeah. So we went for broke. And it didn’t work. It didn’t work in a big way. Again, it made sense to many people at the time, but not in the trajectory that I’m talking about.

We’ll leave aside that Russian and China are ancient civilization empires that predate the existence of our 250-year-old republic. And that no matter how many times Russia collapses it seems to come back again. That’s another Clinton reference. All right. I leave you with this, this excursion in history. This rebalancing is yours. You own this. We can learn from our mistakes. We can correct our mistakes. We can figure out how to do this better. We can make this a challenge that works for us rather than works against us. We don’t have to be passive recipients of these processes. The processes are larger than we are, but they’re there for us to seize. They’re there for you to exercise that citizenship, that gift from 250 years.

Right now the third Republican president in a row is presiding over a war in the Middle East. That’s right. Three in a row. You may think that that’s a partisan comment, but I have to tell you there were three Democratic presidents who presided over wars in East Asia—Roosevelt, Truman, and Lyndon Johnson. So if you’re thinking about 2028, think about which you’d prefer. (Laughter.) Thank you. (Applause.) Thankfully it tells me which chair. (Laughter.)

MIRRER: Great. So it’s been a while, Stephen, since I’ve been up close and personal, so to speak, with you. And you’re dazzling as always. So thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and ideas.

So let me begin here. You say we’re a superpower. America is a superpower. We’re an economic superpower, energy superpower, immigration superpower, alliance superpower, and even a soft power superpower. Why is it then that so many of us feel a bit queasy these days about the nation, the state of the nation, and the state of democracy?

KOTKIN: This is one reason. Many of you, as smart as you are, use your phone to get information. And it’s not actually information. You’re marinated in outrage, anger, resentment. That’s the business model. You’re marinated in that constantly. The ’70s, as bad as they were, didn’t have social media, didn’t have a business model of outrage, anger, resentment, extremism. And so it’s very tough in the media environment in which we live. We had this with radio, when radio first broke through. It was very disruptive to democracy. People could broadcast into your living room. It couldn’t be stopped. And they could say anything. We had it with television when it was images. This is the third technological revolution. It’s much more powerful because everyone now is a broadcaster of radio and television, not just a consumer. So that’s one reason that we’re not feeling good about ourselves, is because a lot of people are making a lot of money to make us not feel good about ourselves.

The interesting thing about AI is—well, many things could be said. And I don’t want to open up a can of worms. But unlike social media, the bias of AI is towards factual information and moderate views. When you go from an advertising model to a subscription model, you open up the world that we’re living in now. When, you go back to the AI version of this, there is some evidence that AI is a moderating influence, despite the hallucinatory dimensions. So we need, as a democracy, to assimilate the technological revolution, beginning with the internet—(audio break)—computers in the pockets of our children, and now the social-media business model. It’s been enormously disruptive. We have not figured this out yet. We will have to figure that out and assimilate that and get to a better place. And AI, ironically, that could be one of the positives that it’s delivering in the public sphere and information space.

The other thing I should say, in answer to your question of why, you know, Louis C.K., who is probably our greatest living philosopher—he was canceled for a while, but I think he uncancelled himself somehow. (Laughter.) He said, you know, everything is awesome and nobody is happy. That was one of gems from, I forget which philosophical treatise. It may have been a nightclub. But so that proposition is real. That’s not made up. And social media explains part of it, but not all of it. Another part is the malperformance of governing institutions. So governance performance is on a secular decline. Government has been tasked with more and more things to do, and has shown less and less competence in doing those things. Part of it is government software doesn’t really work. Again, sorry those of you who are responsible for software in the government. It’s a huge challenge because part of it is asking government to do too much, and its performance in doing anything declining.

Trust in government is at the center of government performance decline and social media take off. And so we’re on a secular decline in performance and trust in government, exacerbated or enhanced, if you will, by the social media. When something happens in the world, the first thing people say is, do something about it. Do something. Don’t just sit there. Do something. And government will sometimes do something. And then that event will pass. And the something it did will remain. And then something else happens. And it’s, do something. And something else happens again and it’s, do something. So government accretes these function without ever really canceling them or throwing them off, right? At universities we have the same problem, accretion, right? We have all these nonperforming assets that we can’t spin off. I don’t want to name the departments, but you know which ones I’m talking about. (Laughter.)

So there’s a—that’s a too-complicated answer to your straightforward question. There are reasons that have to do with actual performance, plus perceptions of that performance. So until we get government to be better at its tasks, and I would argue by focusing on fewer tasks and into the twenty-first century in the information space, and until we do better with the public sphere and the incentive structure, you can’t prohibit—in a free society, you can’t stop things from happening. You have to assimilate them and make them work. That is the task for us, everyone.

MIRRER: OK. Moving on. So you’ve talked in the past a lot about our ability, the United States ability, to deter other nations from impacting the world, us and the world, in ways that would not, to put it mildly, be favorable. We have a clock that’s ticking away now, unless something’s happened during the time that you’ve been speaking, and a threat to, I can’t remember exactly the words, but basically level a civilization elsewhere in the world. Iran, to make it real. And I’d like to ask you about what you’ve said and thought about in terms of deterrence and this particular threat. I’d like to ask you to comment on it in a historical context, whether we’ve ever tried this kind of thing, before. And how it fits in with—you know, really with your thinking, how we can stop nations from doing things that we don’t like.

KOTKIN: Including ourselves. This is the seventh bankruptcy. There was six in private business and this is the seventh. That’s one answer to your question. The bankruptcy that you’re seeing, which is when you cause some grief and then you kind of walk at grief and you get to start again. This is the seventh. I said that in a Foreign Affairs interview a long time ago, that we were going to see the seventh bankruptcy. There’s a way out of any situation. You can’t destroy a civilization no matter how hard you try, unless you use nuclear weapons. So not long ago, in Foreign Affairs again, I wrote an essay about why I’m against regime change, but I’m not against sitting on my hands. You see, the regimes really are evil. They really do murder their own people. They really do cause a lot of grief for us.

Our ability to do regime change is highly limited. But living with such regimes as they are is not a solution for me. So my argument was—I’ll recapitulate it—my argument was that you have to do political deterrence. We’re good at military deterrence. The Tomahawk missile is one of the greatest drones I’ve ever seen. The torpedo is another great drone. We have a lot of great stuff on the military side, military deterrence. It’s too expensive. There’s not enough of it. But we can figure that one out. It’ll be slower than we want, but we’ll get there. Economic deterrents, we’re also capable. We have all sorts of tools that we use—sometimes abused, admittedly—in the economic sphere when it comes to sanctions. And they do inflict great pain, even they can’t always achieve the objectives that are announced.

It’s political deterrence. Where we’re not as capable, we’re much weaker, and where the game ultimately is. Authoritarian regimes can fail at everything, and they often do. They only have to succeed at one thing to survive, the suppression of political alternatives. If they can suppress political alternatives, they can lose wars and survive. Milosevic had to lose four wars before he went down. But if political alternatives exist, then they have a much more difficult time. So that’s a field in which need to play more, let’s say, front foot, more proactively. And that means that fractured elites and authoritarian regimes are the places you go to get them to change their behavior. So you don’t do regime change, because it turns out, you can’t do that. And you don’t just accept and be passive. You don’t just accept their interventions in your society, their—(audio break)—of your grief.

You instead put them on the back foot, you get on the front foot, by cultivating those inherent fractures in their elites and rewarding behavior that is not necessarily democratic but is behavior that is aligned with American interests, rather than against American interests. If you think about the Venezuela case, this is an audacious example of what I’m talking about. There are fractions in the elites who are unsatisfied. If you get promoted, maybe I don’t get promoted. If you get to steal the asset, maybe I don’t get to steal the asset. If your children get the plum job as the trade representative abroad, maybe my children don’t get that. So there’s all sorts of roiling resentments and tensions in the elites, as well as ambition.

And so before Maduro was captured there was a deal cut with part of the elites. That deal so far is working. Problem with the deal is it didn’t necessarily go as far as I would have gone, which was to say, we need a schedule for free and fair elections by the following date. If you go straight to elections, you go straight to democracy, you risk an insurgency by those who fear going to prison, losing their property as well as their freedom. Venezuela has a big jungle. And you could end up with a burning insurgency, counterinsurgency problem. But if the people with the guns take care of themselves, and they come on to the other side, you can avoid the possibility, or even the likelihood, of an insurgency, and begin a transition. Against their will, eventually you have to have the elections—free and fair elections. That needs to be part of the deal. That’s still a possibility in the Venezuelan case.

In the Iranian case it’s quite similar. There are huge parts of the regime that don’t want to die for the regime, just as there are parts that do want to die for the regime. That’s the field you play in. You divide those ambitious elites who want to survive and prosper from the rest. You divide the regime from the people. You empower part of the regime—again, not necessarily democrats—in a transition to retrench. To say that our behavior is hurting Iran, our regime’s policies are hurting Iran, or hurting Russia, or hurting China, or what the case might be. It’s not easy. It’s not simple. But it is political deterrence. It doesn’t substitute for the military deterrence. It doesn’t substitute for the economic deterrent. It is the third part of the triad, in my view.

We take regime change off the table. They accuse us of it anyway. We pay the price for not doing it even when we don’t do it. But regime change is too far beyond our capabilities, but playing in the space of political deterrence is in our toolkit. And we have used that toolkit. Some of those people are here in this audience. And I just recommend that we use that more. It’s still available in the Iranian case, despite everything that’s happened. And it’s available in these other cases. And, again, this is a banal point, actually, but deterrence is multidimensional, not one dimensional. If people are incentivized to go to the wall because they have nothing left to lose, they’ll go to the wall because they have nothing left to lose.

In the case of Iran, that’s grief—very considerable grief. But all it is, is grief. In the case of Russia, that’s the end of the world as we know it. If the Soviet Union had behaved when it was crumbling the way that—(audio break)—is behaving now, this room would be empty. Or, it would be filled with apes, like Planet of the Apes. And so that proposition of the case of Russia is a serious one. I don’t mean diminish the Iranian case. It’s just there’s a difference between higher oil prices and potentially tens of thousands of deaths, to the loss of the planet.

And while the China case is the hardest and most important one, it’s right in front of us, it’s here now. We have war in Europe, due to Russia. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. We have war in the Middle East. We have everything—absolutely everything, short of what used to be called war in East Asia. There’s not peace in East Asia. There’s everything short of war. You collide those three theaters. You throw in opportunism on the Korean peninsula. You throw in India and Pakistan. You throw in whatever else in the mix you’d like to put in there. And here we are, World War III. This is how close we are right now. This is it. World war is not something happens when nothing is going on.

World war is something that happens when the Japanese take Manchuria in 1931, and Mussolini takes Abyssinia, Eastern Africa in 1935, and Hitler militarizes the Rhineland in 1936, and then decide that he wants Austria in 1938, and then the Sudetenland in ’38. The Japanese in ’37 decide they want all of China. So the Japanese and the Germans and the Italians didn’t coordinate. They had a pact on paper, but they did their own thing. And then in 1941, the Japanese decided they couldn’t do this unless they took the Americans down. That’s where we are. Slightly different circumstances, but that we are. And so your question about deterrence couldn’t be deeper and more important. And it worries me all the time. And I want to see the political dimension.

MIRRER: OK. Well—(laughter)—a lot to hope for and a lot to be worried about. And—

KOTKIN: It’s your future to shape.

MIRRER: On that note, let’s go to questions from the audience, and also questions from those joining us remotely.

KOTKIN: I don’t know how this works. I guess you call?

MIRRER: Go ahead.

Q: Thank you. Niso Abuaf from Pace University.

How do you put the current situation that we are in vis-à-vis Ibn Khaldun’s perspective? That’s part A of my question. And part B, you said you would take the trade from Europe. There’s 50 percent expenditures on social spending, but on the other hand, Europe has declined. Don’t you think that’s one of the reasons?

KOTKIN: So I’m a transatlanticist on Europe. I think it’s really important for us to have that relationship and for it to work. The Western alliance has been in crisis since 1949. It’s just there was no social media back then. Had there been social media in ’56 and Suez, I worry what might have happened. So it’s a relationship. I don’t know if you’re married, but I am. And you have to manage tensions, differences of opinion, differences in culture, your own failings which you don’t admit, your spouse’s feelings which you see unbelievably clearly. (Laughter.) So I want to manage this relationship. I want Europe to succeed.

The Draghi report, I think, was clear as day. It was technocratic. And some people could criticize it because it was less civil society and more technocracy. The one-year anniversary of the Draghi report at a conference he said: Every problem I’ve identified has gotten worse. The next one-year conference, which will be the two-year conference coming up in September, we’ll see. So Europe has deep and fundamental challenges. And some of the institutions, as I mentioned, are not there. But also have corrective mechanisms, open societies, elections, a dynamic private sector in many areas, not in all, a highly educated population. They’re going to need immigration and figure out how to deal with that.

So it’s—there’s trouble. The Draghi report is clear. There’s trouble. There’s difficulty in implementing. But you have to say you want this to succeed. You want the Europeans to figure this out. We want them to get to a better place. And we want to be partners in that. We have a lot of our own problems—significant, deep, and fundamental challenges. And we need to address them as well, and address them in partnership with friends and allies. So China doesn’t have any friends and allies for the most part. And it refuses to take responsibility for global affairs. So if American power decides it’s going to go home, you know, kick everybody else’s blocks over and then pick up our blocks and go home, I don’t know what happens to freedom of navigation. I don’t know what happens to anything else.

And so I can only imagine America’s future in this partnership and Europe, God bless, being able to tackle their problems (and solve them ?). Same thing with the East Asian partners and friends. Not everyone is an ally; some are friends and partners. And so I—that’s the future that’s ours to shape. And maybe we can do better in rebalancing American power, and Europe can do better with their own (challenges ?).

MIRRER: All the way back there, question.

Q: Hi. My name is Hall Wang.

You know, I’m very amused by your optimism for rebalancing, because I’ve come from history myself. I used to focus on history of the American South. But the big difference between now and back then is that Europe and, to a lesser extent the U.S., has an incredibly large older population. In times past, you always had a large number of youth rise up and be the hopes and dreams of the future. How are you so certain that there will be a rebalancing and not falling, as Europe is getting older, sicker, more in debt, and we’re doing relatively better but we’re only somewhat behind?

KOTKIN: Demographics is a fundamental structural challenge for almost the whole world. Except for India for the next twenty years, then they fall off the demographic cliff, or begin to. And Africa, for potentially the next fifty, although you have to be careful projecting current trends out because the change is often very dramatic when women are empowered and get choices. So yeah, demographics. What’s our answer? Or what’s Europe’s answer to that? Or what’s Japan’s answer to that? Or what’s South Korea’s? Again, these problems to be managed.

The beauty of a free and open society is that you can identify your problems and try, try to manage them. You can’t fix them necessarily, but you can try to manage them. That’s why I’m optimistic. There have been a lot of problems in Europe and America. I mean, the Holocaust was a problem. World War II was a big problem. The Great Depression was a big problem. I could go on. I got a lot of problems that are bigger than too many old people like myself. That doesn’t mean I don’t recognize that problem. That doesn’t mean I do nothing, sit on my hands about the problem. But there’s a difference between problems that are manageable and problems that are not manageable. And this is not a not-manageable problem, however deep and fundamental it looks. What’s the point of a free and open society if not to identify and manage problems?

MIRRER: So I think on that note of slight optimism—(laughter)—

KOTKIN: I’m very optimistic.

MIRRER: I heard you say that.

KOTKIN: You’ve known me for how long? I think we can do this. And just because mistakes doesn’t mean it’s over, game over. This is a game where you get a second chance. Look, I had a career at Princeton and they gave me a second act at Stanford. This is the country of the second act. Even if you don’t get a first act you get to have a second act. Your kids are going to be managing these questions. So make sure they have the tools for this. Make sure that AI is enhancing their capabilities rather than displacing them, right? I mean, the Boomers will be gone soon, and big relief. But I’m still optimistic about the future. (Laughter.)

MIRRER: That’s great. Thanks everyone. And thank you, Stephen. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.