Dr. Shashi Tharoor

Host: During the recent years, especially the last months, we've really witnessed an unprecedented convergence of crisis. Political tensions, wars, economical instability, health pandemic also a few years ago, and the growing, of course, impact of the climate change, which is very important for, the world and this planet. Countries, nations, institution, individuals are facing a challenge that test their resilience, our resilience actually, and vision for the future.

However, I like this however, history often shows that chaos can also, be a breeding ground for innovation, transformation, and the new opportunities. Today, in this, of course, session, we will explore how the current global turmoil might not only be, a source of concern for all of us, but a catalyst for a positive change. Thank you for being with us.

I will start with you Your Excellency, Dr. Shashi. How do you define the current state of the global turmoil? Dr. Shashi Tharoor: You know, we had a period when the Cold War bipolarity gave way to two overlapping and by and large seen as positive developments: globalization, spreading around the world and knitting us together economically, technologically, and so on, and of course from 1990 with the end of the Cold War, the unipolar Mm.

When the US seemed to be, in really a position of dominance technologically, economically, militarily, politically. Now, this has suddenly been challenged with four developments I'd like to identify briefly. The first is the backlash against globalization, which gathered pace.

It had two components, economic and cultural. The economic backlash was people in the developed countries saying, "Why are we voting for governments that are sending our jobs off to China and India?" Mm. And I think there was a cultural backlash as well against the cosmopolitanism that came with globalization.

Davos Man flitting around the globe, the, migrants who were coming into different countries, and that cultural backlash, has been described very effectively as a clash between the somewheres and the anywheres. Mm. Anywheres being people like us here who Yeah. Speak anywhere in the world, and the somewheres being those anchored in one country, one religion, one language, one place.

So that's the first major trend. The second, I would say, was the end of the peaceful rise of China, which took place during that Period. Of globalization. China becoming more assertive, more effective.

Yeah. And challenging the US dominance in all these areas: political, economic, technological, military. Third, and this is where Carl I'm sure will have a lot more to say, is Europe. Europe, I remember Carl telling me a few years ago, "Oh, there's an arc of crisis from the Nile to the Indus."

Well, it's gone well beyond the Nile now. Ukraine has Yeah. Europe into this arc of crisis, and I think, there is a certain European ambivalence as well about where they fit into all of this.

Ambivalence over Ukraine, ambivalence over China, and of course Russia right on their doorstep. And the fourth and final trend I see is the emergence of new theaters, of international cooperation in response to all this. You've got the talk about the Indo-Pacific for the first time.

Yeah. We've got the, references to the rise of the rest, which is now being talked about as the Global South, which is seeking to be both non-West without being anti-Okay. And expressing its ambitions in different ways. I mean, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a cliché that in world affairs, you're either at the table or on the menu.

Or out. Oh, yeah. And if you don't want to be on the menu, you have to find ways of expressing, your opportunities at the high table. Mm. So they're also trying to do this, and this is manifesting itself in multiple ways.

We can talk about plurilateral arrangements, new groupings, and Host: Amazing overview for the situation that could have led to this turbulence. So, backlash, globalization, cultural and economical, China, Europe, and the new emerging countries. Dr. Shashi, here, you mentioned China.

As we witness shifting power dynamic, during the last decade, so the last 20 years between East and West, what impact do you believe this rivalry, in having on global, stability and cooperation? And you mention it's mainly China and America. Well, Dr. Shashi Tharoor: I mean, China is definitely now, emerging as a new hegemon, a new significant, whether you want to call it superpower or whatever, a challenge to the US.

At the same time, the Chinese and the Americans have levels of cooperation and interdependence that never existed during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. You've got more Chinese, investments in US Treasury bonds. You've got more American investments in the Chinese economy.

You've got, Chinese students in America. You've got American tourists in China. All of these things didn't happen during the Cold War, so the, it's not quite the same thing.

But there are a number of concerns. China's become much more assertive on its borders, maritime as well as land with us in India, where we've had a very unpleasant incident that ended 44 years of a Mm. Coexistence on our otherwise disputed frontier.

We've had incidents in the South China Sea with the Japanese, with the Philippines, with Vietnam. So it's a different China from what we were, had got used to in the earlier days. And the high-tech, And you're right.

Advance of China. They're advancing remarkably in high tech. Solar, they're world leaders. 5G, they're perhaps ahead of America.

We're not entirely sure, but they're, there's 5G, yeah. Awful lot of progress happening, so technologically they're doing well. Militarily, they've almost caught up.

The Chinese Navy is almost as well equipped as the American Navy now. They've got more planes, more soldiers obviously. And as far as the economy is concerned, they have already supplanted the Yeah.

As a manufacturing power, as an industrial power, and they will overtake the US economy. Host: And they are eating this, you know, between the first powerful country, that is the US, they are coming second economically, and they are ramping in the scales to more and more be closer to America, which they don't like it. What are the alliances?

We talk about alliances, EU. We are have BRICS that was joined by UAE, for example, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, for example. We have NATO is an alliance.

We have ASEAN is an alliance. I'm talking about economic blocks and of course military blocks as well. Where are they from all those places?

Dr. Shashi Tharoor: Well, there's a mul there's a proliferation of such groupings. The Americans, of course, still rely heavily on NATO, and what's interesting is the Russian invasion of For now. Has resulted in Sweden, Carl's own Yes, Finland.

And Finland joining NATO, which was never on the cards until the Russians invaded Ukraine. Host: But it's okay to say for now? No, Because if Trump is coming, NATO will not be really in a good position.

Well, Dr. Shashi Tharoor: we'll have to see. But it's not just NATO. What Americans are doing is creating smaller groupings, mini-Yes.

Groupings everywhere. So, where countries are not willing to be allies in the formal sense, like India, they've created partnerships. There's a group called the Quad, which is US, Japan, Australia, India. True. There's, another group called the Squad, where it's the Philippines instead of India.

There's the A, Australia-US-UK, or AUKUS, which is now a military alliance 'cause all three are formally allied. And you've got all of these different things happening to try and shore up the effort of the Americans to match economic decoupling from Exactly. On the one hand with a geopolitical and military containment of China.

So that's interesting. China, on the other hand, has no allies. Show me a Chinese ally. There isn't an ally.

They have dependencies. How? They have countries that are dependent on them, and with Host: They are soft power in Africa, Dr. Shashi. Yes. How is that?

They That's a lot of African countries. They are, they are Yes.

Because they build, they invest. They're, Dr. Shashi Tharoor: they're not alliances, they're dependencies. So they are given an awful amount of aid, and those countries are suitably grateful.

But the fact is, these are not countries that they can use in a geopolitical conflict or a standoff. Linked to that is the fact of the whole big question mark over the Chinese-Russian partnership. Mm-hmm. You remember just before the Ukraine War started, Mr. Putin visited Beijing, and there was this announcement of a no limits partnership.

Well, some of the limits are already becoming apparent in terms of how far the Chinese can go to support the Russians. Yes. Now, on top of Mm-hmm. You've got this question of, the fact that Russia, on the one hand, is more and more dependent on China, economically, Yes.

In terms of sanctions- Sanctions. Military and so on. But at the same time, they have relations with countries that are not so happy with China, including India and Vietnam.

My Host: question now, do you see an opportunity for cooperation between those alliances to be part of the conflict resolutions in many part of the world? Dr. Shashi Tharoor: Well, for the sake of the world, I hope so, because obviously we're not sitting here saying we're all doomed into an inevitable conflict.

But those opportunities would require some very serious and imaginative rethinking, both of global structures, which frankly, the United Nations was created after two world wars, a Holocaust, Hiroshima. Yeah. You're not gonna get that kind God willing. Mm. We're not gonna get that kind of crisis.

So we need, even in times of relative peace and calm, to find the global imagination to be able to redesign global systems, accommodate different voices, give the Global South more of a voice, give the Chinese a place that is respectable without allowing them to dominate, give countries like India, Africa, and others their own place of honor. All of that is one thing that needs to be done.

Secondly, we need to move away from the risk of greater bipolarity. We need to go, for example, away from this language of containment, which is very rife in Washington even today, into something more like constraining rather than containing, limiting how much damage any one country can do to its neighbors and others.

And maybe instead of decoupling, we should be talking about, multiplying, our relationships economically as well as politically, rather than actually ending any relationships. Absolutely. And this will require multiple efforts by various countries across the world. Host: Yes. Thank you very much for attending.

Thank you so much.