is an hour and 25 minutes.

>> welcome to the georgetown dialogues. i am the vice president for global engagement here in georgetown. we are the lead organizer for this week's events. i want to welcome you to our historic hall. and those following online around the world. for the first couple of sessions in our weeklong conference. the first on the u.s. presidential election and the focus on how it is seen from abroad. in the second on social inequality is a complex global challenge. what are the georgetown global dialogues? around this time last year, we

began to explore prominent examples. and students in the wider community. on challenges facing humanity. intellectuals already engaged in global conversations. through articles and books and all kinds of appearances. please welcome them to georgetown.

it is a bit unusual to have this community in washington. that brings us to our theme. it sounds presumptuous. but we have arrived at a global impasse. now is the time to think together. think about the catastrophe in gaza and the ever present danger of a wider war in the middle east. think about the brutal russian invasion of ukraine and terrible civil wars in sudan and the democratic republic of the congo. think about a global economy that has listed millions out of poverty but also left millions

of dire need. so many young people languish with little hope. gender discrimination remains a deep structural problem. think about a politics that is polarized and dysfunctional within handed the -- across our countries. very new threats including here in the u.s. the prayer inflation -- proliferation of demagogues. think about our financial institutions. the founding documents of the u.n. a world of peace and justice were all human beings enjoy the same foundational, economic, social, civic, and political rights. it is a vision of human

solidarity. a vision that still seems so far out of reach in today's world. overshadowing it all is a steadily worsening climate crisis and the transformative challenges posed by the digital nai revolutions. -- and ai revolutions. this is the world that surrounds our gathering here in the capital of what is still the most powerful country in the world. the u.s. is more than at any time in its history needing to learn to live with and listen to other countries and cultures. there is no alternative given the shifts we are witnessing in the global challenges we all face. that is the point of the georgetown global dialogues, to promote a more inclusive conversation about the future of

the world and beyond. georgetown, we believe them is a fitting host of such a conversation. we are a catholic and jesuit institution, founded in the same year as the united states. we are part of a centuries old tradition with a global horizon, ages what university committed to a dialogue to the common good, so what pope francis calls a culture of encounter, the creative exploration of our differences, the acknowledgment of our deep divide. but also the search for common ground. as you can see from the program, we want to explore with you the ways forward across a range of interesting and intersecting topics, from the presidential election to the climate crisis,

social inequality, and the future of feminism, the crisis of democracy to the cultural and spiritual resources of cosmopolitan thought. as we traverse this terrain, we will, of course, revisit and establish debates, but we want to avoid falling into civilian observations that lead into debates we see polarizing all around us. we will be on stage and with you all to explore together our complex presence and to envision better global futures. two other program elements will help us along the way. every day, before our second section, we will be treated to short performances by georgetown's laboratory for global performance and politics. he will be a dramatic way to remind us of the importance of potential of dialogue in a divided world.

and on thursday evening here in gadsden hall, we are enjoying a musical performance a conversation with a remarkable person under the heading other voices, other rooms. before i acknowledge the many institutional partners who made our gathering possible, i want to recognize some students who have made logistics for this week's events and responded thoughtfully online to essays crafted on our themes. more than 100 people take part in student workshops tomorrow morning and wednesday morning, designed to elevate the voices of young people around climate change and other global challenges. we really hope that this week will begin a wider conversation with the experiences of young people into the future. a quick word on our partners, the dialogues are a university wide effort in collaboration with the law school of foreign

services, the mcdonough school of business, and our campus all of our sessions between now and friday, one or more cosponsors acknowledged in the program, and georgetown's departments. i want to express my gratitude to all of them and especially the remarkable team at the berkeley center for making possible our time together this week. i also want to acknowledge and thank the new york review of books, our media partner for the dialogue. and remind you all that our afternoon sessions are being livestreamed on youtube and, of course, that we have a hashtag for social media commanded is #gudialogues. i am now delighted to turn things over to linnie bernardo,

who is moderating our first session on the u.s. role in the world, looking beyond the 2024 election. thank you all to come in. please join me in welcoming lenny, veronica, and ben rhodes. [applause]

lenny: great. thank you, tom, for that interview, and thank you, everybody paid i am going to introduce our esteemed panel in just five seconds, but tom said, at the top, that the united states remains the most powerful country in the world, and this may be one area of conversation that i and my panelists might want to dig into. if you take a very conventional sense of power, as the often very conventional conversationalists would have it, power is having about a do to b what b would otherwise not do. and if the united states is in a position to have the kind of power when we think of empirical cases, like, for example,

ukraine or gaza, it would be an interesting point of reference for thinking about what the u.s. may be able to do post the 2024 election. so with that, i am going to introduce immediately to my left veronica, who i had the great pleasure to hang out with in buenos aires a few months ago. she is a professor of social sciences in buenos aires. she is an activist working on issues of feminism in the greater political economy, with her most recent books being a feminist reading of death, feminist international, and neoliberalism below, popular pragmatics and baroque economics. "not one woman less" movement as

a fearless activist. a british pakistani author noted for examining global issues. recent novels include "the last white man," and "exit west," which receive prizes for fiction, his book "the reluctant fundamentalist," was made into a film. the engagement with the political turmoil, cultural resource meant, and shifting into collective i did these informed his essays on contemporary affairs and in outlets like "the guardian," "

the new york times," and elsewhere. a turkish novelist, political thinker, and an analyst of the erosion of democracy and the challenge of populism on a global scale. the author of 10 choices for a better now as well as the celebrated how to lose a country. the seven deaths from democracy to dictatorship. her novels are published in multiple linkages, a frequent contributor as well for "the guardian," "the new york times," "la monde," and elsewhere. the human rights association of turkey, not an oxymoron. she received an award for her work. finally, ben rhodes, writer, political commentator, national

security analyst, author of the "new york times" bestseller "after the fall," a member of the obama white house. he is a contributor for nbc nightly news and cohosted a podcast, senior advisor to the 45th president and chair of national security action, ben is also published widely in "the atlantic," "foreign affairs," and "the new york times." ben, welcome. to begin, there is a distinction that people know of that comes from david hume, between i.s. and the ought, what actually is, the facts on the ground, and what can become a more normative, hopeful look at the world and its future, and i would like to begin with the o ught and moves to the is.

what would be our ideal u.s. in its relationship to the world beyond it come 2025? what would that look like in an ideal, typical way? not the sins of what it will look like, whether an administration under donald j. trump or the current president, joseph biden, but could and should and might it look like in an ideal way? i would like to begin and ask her to think a bit aspirational he, -- aspirational he, and what will the united states and its relationship to the world look like? >> it is too dark to think about, aspirationally, but hello, everyone, welcome, and thank you for sharing this

afternoon with us. i came to washington two days ago, and since then, i am watching cnn and other news networks, and i thought, you have all of these medicine advertisements. [laughter] and i thought, america, if it were a musical, it would be called "drugstore." [laughter] also, there are the insurance company advertisements. when you look at the market, what settles tells a lot about a country, so i thought, my god, there are so many fears, and even i have fears, thank you very much, i have several illnesses as well, thanks to these advertisements. so, the rest of the world in these americans for their lightheartedness and the internal sunshine of the spotless mind kind of being.

but in america, you know, since two days i'm thinking that, has too many fears, and now, thanks to trump, they know what it feels like to be represented by the worse of you and the thing that we suffered in global selves is now familiar to americans. before trump, it was impossible to tell the west, before brexit, it was impossible to tell the westerners from our side of the world that, how devastating it is to be represented by the worst of you, and to be known through these guys. so, shame and fear, these are the two things i have been thinking about. but also, coming to your question, i was thinking about this, you know, not very well-known story from 5, 6

decades ago, about the united states. my mother is a painter and my father is a lawyer, and they met through politics, and my mother was in prison, and my father, being a young lawyer, he actually rescued her from the prison. before she actually stepped out, he proposed, she said yes, and therefore i am. one day, she told me this story about americans. i come from an anti-imperialist, anti-american family, if you can imagine, from the cv of my family. she told me this story, which one day i am going to write a novel about. she told about this american teacher that came to turkey in a very small town, by the way, who came through the peace corps. and this young man taught them

how to ask questions, how to question things. years later, she told, all of the club members who were taught by this young american guy, became progressive leaders of the political movement. so when i am asked about u.s.' role, i want to think about, what is american, but american people's role can be. tom celebrated a bunch of interesting fellows. i would not be too wrong to say we are mostly people who are invited to international meetings, you know, interesting people, controversial people, and then to be put in a big room to talk about security stuff in the real problems and so on.

but this is the main stage now, so in our view of the world, if i can say that, should be the mainstream, the whole conference. so i can say that maybe we should think about your roles, american people's role, and that role can be truthful to the promises of this country, promises that have failed, big time, promises who are still remembered by some. and that promise was to have a dream, and american people, as opposed to u.s., did not fail us that much actually. now i'm thinking, there was also a time, there was black lives matter, then there was columbia

university, yale university, so american people's role, if i'm not too optimistic, might be as important as the u.s.'s role in the world. and i'm looking forward to that as well. lenny: let's stay on that. ece looks at a positive role in the future looking at examples like the movement for black lives or occupy or what is happening as we speak in universities like columbia and yam. -- yale. to what extent do you see the power of american citizens and american activism allowing for, again, in a best case, future between america and the world as something that is affirming, something you feel can take us into a more better, is not radiant, future, and to what

extent do you think the role of the state still is going to play a predominant role in how we think about a better america and the world? >> so i think, my immigration to america began when i was 3, and i came in 1974, lived in california. when i went back in 1980, i was nine years old. and i thought as this american kid, i had to learn to be pakistani again. and i've always had this kind of half in, half out relationship with america. i remember my dad's best friend in the 1970's was this guy called blake. blake had volunteered in the 1960's, when the vietnam war was in its height. he never got sent to vietnam, but he volunteered at that time,

and when he finished his service, he came back to campus, and he was upset with antiwar protesters. i remember when blake picked me up, i was giving a lecture at stanford, must have been the latter part of the decade, 2008, 2009, something like that. blake picked me up from the airport, we were driving to campus -- he has passed away now. and we were talking, and he said, you know, it is funny because there are a couple of wars going on right now, this war in afghanistan, this war in iraq, and you look around, it is like nothing is going on. american troops are fighting, there are wars happening in these countries, but around you, there is nothing. you go onto campus, you give a lecture, it is not affecting anybody. there's no protests, no nothing.

and he was sort of baffled and horrified by this state of affairs. and i thought a lot about that, and i have thought about it many times since. america has wound up, if we talk about where america could go, what might be the optimistic future. and i think that, in a sense, what you see now is life in the country disproportionately provided the troops that went to fight in these wars, that have proven catastrophic for the countries in which these wars were fought but also catastrophic for the families of the young people who fought in them, the united states, are now reeling with a sense of betrayal, a sense of

disenchantment with what united states is. and i think that something quite profound has been happening in the united states, you know, if you compare the current generation of america to those mobilized to fight the second world war, basically everybody is different. america has found a way to numb itself to foreign policy a way. wars can be fought, people can do things, and people can be somewhat insulated. i think that has resulted in america making a series of very bad decisions, and if i would imagine a more positive future for the united states, i would think, you know, america needs to look inward, actually. it is not clear to me that

america's interventions around the world are particularly helpful or useful. i think that american society is deeply divided. american people are grappling with all sorts of problems. i went to public school in california in the 1970's, and when i went to pakistan and went to one of the best schools locally, my public school california education was so much better than the best education on offer in lahore. it is not like that today. so i think, in a sense, i would imagine a future american engagement, and optimistic engagement, would be one where america did much, much less in the world, did it with enormously more humility, focused much more on the united states, and people are saying

this is sort of isolationism, etc. it needed to be isolationism, but i suppose my take on all of this is informed by, when you are in pakistan, pakistan is a u.s. ally for much of the cold war. every dictator in history has been massive for usaid. what is the legacy of that fight? the legacy of that fight was the transformation of pakistani society under the islamist dictators, this horribly disfigured society. and it continues to this day. and you can save the cold war

was defeated, it was a great intervention. it was not a great intervention. i tend to think that come in many ways, the optimistic vision for the united states is in fact the united states comes to recognize that its power to shape the world for good is quite limited, not nothing, but more limited that it would sometimes have us believe. and it is fundamentally premised on the america that is good for americans. lenny: so let's stay there for a second, mohsin, if i could ask ben -- i mentioned president 45. he worked for president 44, sorry. [laughter] sorry about that. my fault. ben, i'm wondering, for someone who worked in an administration

under president barack obama, who was known, at least in part, for having a more restrained sense of the role of the u.s. in the world, and it seemed like the kind of hubris on steroids under the obama administration had been tamps down. in the biden administration, however, the ideas once again of communities of democracy, this kind of parallel ready of democracy -- polarity of democracy versus autocracy, a gladiatorial fight to the finish has once again been restored. do you feel in an optimistic way that a subsequent administration with take on what mohsin is saying, a recognition that america may be a declining power, and what that means for the world and that the kind of somewhat limiting polarity of

democracy versus autocracy may itself be rethought? can you imagine that, optimistically? ben: i can try, and i just want to validate what a great idea this all is, because, as ece alludes to, as someone who is also that the security conferences, i would much rather be with this collection of people. i feel like i have been promoted, you know. [laughter] because actually, when i left government, i think the first thing i read was ece's book about how to lead a country, and one thing that americans lack is, if you look at america from the outside in, it is much clearer been the view from the eye of the storm in washington. i can understand democracy from reading ece's book about what

happened in turkey, not many of us have experience with that. nobody believes the vision of the united states that our own national security policy is wired to do, other than the people who are running the machine, whether they are in government or whether they are, you know, here in d.c. or even if they are europeans who kind of plug into the american security tape. nobody else believes that that kind of virtuous hegemonic capacity to shape events it exists anymore, never mind that it is a positive force. and there's also an insecurity, you know,, you know, in that someone cares about the small d

democracy, there is an insecurity that you have to impose that on somebody. if you have the confidence in a society and the confidence of the guy who shows up in turkey and tank, the best thing i can do as an american is teach people how to ask questions, you would not need to find a perpetual war in multiple countries on behalf of that. you would not need to arm, like, a collection of autocratic for autocratic-like partners to preserve some sort of so-called liberal international order that does not exist anymore. the first point i would make, i guess at the person here who is meant to represent the u.s. [laughter] lenny: international order does not exist anymore. it existed before, it does not exist now? ben: there were a set of institutions and norms that i think were quite important, right? that either facilitated

collective action, but also just even though nobody really lived up to the norm, there was at least some, you know, that medic accountability around the pretending, you know? and i think what we are living in is a world that has reverted to nationalism inside of countries and between countries, and when that is the case, you know, how can you say there is a rules-based international order when you are giving unconditional military systems to gaza, to israel to bombard gaza? it is a selective menu commit is a rules-based international order when we want to use that order to sanction russia come of it is not a rules-based order in gaza, it is not a rules-based order when we are trying to figure out how to create supply chains of critical minerals that

will facilitate the american battery industry, right? this is not to say, this is leading to the answer of your question though, lenny, which is, what is the rule of doesn't and is kind of world in which we cannot pretend anymore that the u.s. can control events, can dictate outcomes, can exert, to your initial statement, pressure a on b, and something happens, right? while u.s. still has a tremendous amount of power, i think that we have to kind of return to a view of the governance rule to prevent the worst outcomes. the best thing that can happen in the next administration is that we don't have world war iii. is that the current conflagration with the war in eastern europe, a war in the middle east, a war across north africa, that that is not spread to asia, and there is some sort of de-escalation page which, by

the way, is not a novel idea. it is changing the paradigm where the goal of american policy is to win a battle with somebody else, to defeat vladimir putin entirely or, and i have no set of the whatsoever, but the point is -- no sympathy whatsoever, but the point is that three things that tom introduced are the three things i think about, which are potential for global war, climate change, and artificial intelligence. to me, the best case outcome is that you have a government that is at minimum trying to avoid that global comfort ration -- confrontation, which would require some view of ukraine that manages to support the ukrainians without fighting to

the last one, in a proposition that is not going to achieve maximalist ends. >> if i may, if we take china, we take ai, we take the pandemic, we take inequality, we take all these issues of civilizational consequence that have to be dealt with today, not tomorrow, it is a very different sense of the politics of time. we need to do with these things today. democracy is about uncertainty. we have to be certain if we are going to come to grips with these challenges. veronica is a person who has now endured several months of a new reactionary president in your country, who seems to be another in a long litany of reactionaries globally, whether we think about putin, xi,

netanyahu, orban, the list is long and regrettable. but the question i wonder, veronica, is that we cannot ignore, if you can't be with the one you love, love the one you are with. i say that only because we can't necessarily decide who we want to be our elected officials. can we get things done with a hobby or malay --- a javier milei? can the u.s. work with xi jinping, or recently waiting it out four years or five years or six years until the next person may come in who will be of a different stripe? can you work with a javier milei, a xi jimping?

veronica: with javier milei, i hope no. i think he is a fascist. i don't think we can try to work with fascism. with argentina, we are in a terrible situation. for example, javier milei is saying that he will defund and close public universities, for example. he is accusing the people like me, who work at the university, that we are doing assorted indoctrination in marxism -- doing a sort of indoctrination in marxism. these sort of very aggressive politics are nowadays like in a

very destructive line of policies. i don't know if milei will depart europe, because argentina is a powerful country in terms of pricing, social movement, organizations. we have this paradoxical situation nowadays. two weeks after he took office, the protests started, and nowadays there are all the time protests. we are organizing different strikes and meetings. i don't know if you will leave. i want to add that for example, he is not a nationalist right wing either.

he assumes sort of what we call internal colonialism. he is complete fascinated with the united states. he is expecting that trump wins the election, and he is completely fascinated with the israel genocide and politics. for me, it is very difficult to think in a sort of negotiation with that kind of politics. ben: so, if donald trump is reelected president of the united states, do you think it is incumbent upon americans, incumbent upon american policymakers, upon people and the opposition, to figure out ways in which donald j. trump

can be supported to have more thoughtful, sympathetic, and reasonable policies? because from what veronica is saying with javier milei, the new president of argentina, nothing is possible. he's a fascist and thereby the idea of breaking bread in any way is off the table. now, the current administration empowered in the united states has in many ways foreclosed the possibility of working in a reasonable fashion with the people's republic of china. is that a thoughtful way of handling, in a future u.s. administration, looking past 2024, foreign policy? can you demonize countries, or do you need to figure out how to work with autocracy? >> it is always the hardest

questions i end up with. ben mentioned how to lose a country. it is this quote that argentinians love these days. i keep seeing it on social media. i said something like, i wrote something like debating whether right-wing populist -- with a right-wing populist is like playing chess. even if you are great at chess, they scatter the pieces, shit on the board, and fly away proudly. but this is the funny part. the not so funny part is i have to go down on what you mean on democracy, unfortunately, when i speak on these issues. democracy is such an interesting word nowadays. netanyahu uses it to kill palestinian people and to get aid from the united states, which happened on saturday. anyway, so, in coming days, i think we are going to do that.

what do we understand from democracy, and how has it become such a caricature of itself and so on? but would such men like -- when such men like modi in india, trump in the united states, when they come to power, there is this habit of equalizing their people with dictators, which is ignorant but quite powerful to do. there have been boycotts from israel, russia, and so forth. coming from turkey, it feels absolutely unfair to be equated with your dictator. whenever i am on a stage, by the way, they try to put this picture behind me of erdogan,

and he's always bigger than me. the new york times publishes a long interview with me, and i end up like this and erdogan is massive. this actually represents a mindset, like, how important it is to be powerful and reproducing that powerful as we amplify the pictures of these dictators any quitting them with their people. -- and equating them with their people. america, and of course, veronica put it more eloquently, america -- so funny, you look like captain america now and we are talking america. that is a very big word to talk about. but america can be more enthusiastic when working with the people of these countries for the people of these countries as they support the dictators before they become dictators.

he has been shown as the exemplary leader for the middle east. he presented the perfect combination of islam and democracy for a long time, and he was already showing dictatorial attitudes. this goes for argentina as well. i hope the same enthusiasm can be shown in supporting people of argentina, the same enthusiasm as supporting the president. that enthusiasm created -- supported the creation process of dictators, and it can be replaced with the enthusiasm of supporting genuinely progressive people who are really working for democracy, despite all the pressure of the oppression. i wanted to reword the question.

>> we have five minutes to do questions and answers, and i should have said before that there are people collecting questions, so write your questions down and hand them over so we can begin those in just five minutes. but ece mentioned greg remotely -- mentioned narendra modi. president biden gave narendra modi the biggest, most elaborate state dinner in american history. does that send, for those who feel that narendra modi is taking india into a sort of regrettable trajectory with deeply chauvinistic, xenophobic forms of hindu, does the united states in celebrating him, is that an era that will hopefully -- an error that will hopefully

not be reproduced in subsequent administrations, or is it simply geopolitics? china is there, therefore india has to be treated differently? lenny: it is an example of a recurring pattern. ben mentioned the international order not existing. i agree. in a sense, we had this moment from the fall of the berlin wall to sometime decades ago, a few years ago, which was this moment where america had enormous power, but even then it was not a unified order, but it is receding. now i think what we are dealing with is in america's -- i should say in american foreign policy establishment's desire to retain primacy, a sense of primacy in the world, america is engaged in a series of actions

that are hugely counterproductive for the united states and for the world. the idea of embracing modi so closely is that india is the only country big enough, next to china, to count the ballot of the chinese threat. but the question should come before that. how big of a threat is china, and china is a threat to who? what are we even talking about? it seems like -- quite clear that we will not as humanity betty able to address the challenges we face unless countries like the united states and china work together, at a basic level. how are you going to deal with climate change and the rise of ai? how are we going to deal with all this stuff? we really do not have the luxury of entering into this kind of a conflict.

again, i revert to my own pakistani experience. so much of pakistani civil society was eviscerated and we were bequeathed a political social environment. the same way that pakistani society was transformed the 1980's, india is being transformed that way now. you would think india would look over at pakistan and think this is not really a model we should be pursuing, but unfortunately that is not the case. i think it is worth stopping and asking the question, why are we doing this? what is this position we are trying to defend? the truth is, we actually have no idea. the world is a confusing place. >> isn't going to be confusing,

and i would like to ask ben before we move to questions, for the donald trump administration, ben, can you give one or two more aspects of a donald trump foreign policy that you feel would be beneficial for the relationship between the u.s. and the world? ben: the thing about trump that is interesting is he has given voice to certain critiques of american foreign policy that are not taken seriously because of the form in which they are presented, but are useful in the sense that -- it is perfect to focus on a lot of the trump base. some of them are people who

fought in iraq and afghanistan. some of them were people who were fed a steady diet of information that victory was just on the cusp. if you watch fox news in the bush years, the insurgency was always going to be defeated and george bush was going to be validated. when you are lied to like that for a long time, you don't trust your leads anymore. in that type of republican party, those people stopped leaving what they were told. i think trump's correctives are the wrong ones, though, because they kind of revert to this transactional is him that makes it hard to solve problems. while there is some utility in the critique that trump gives expression to, his answers are kind of just to tear things up and then try to pursue a transactional approach.

i think relations are not just between the leaders, though. this is so important. ai is about what american technology companies are doing and what american academics are doing, and what the civil society is now looking for. the guardrails that have to be built up around ais, i think they ideally would involve the u.s. and china getting together instead of just seeing this as a domain of competition, to figure out everything from how to prevent worst-case outcomes relieves ai to how to not turn the world into two completing supply chains -- competing supply chains around ai and clean energy. climate change involves everybody from activists to asset managers to governments. part of what trump has been forced to do by being such a responsible actor is he is forced to see that we are not just leaders.

we don't just sit back passively and wait for a heroic president or prime minister to solve problems. and to kind of regain that confidence that frankly the great success in washington's conception of itself, particularly in the cold war, was not because reagan sent surface-to-air missiles to afghanistan, it's because more people on the others of the wall wanted to look like people on the west side. i think what trump forces us to do that is constructive is to see our own agency in trying to solve these problems. yes, ideally the u.s. and the prc would be, at a government to government level, participating constructively in that. trump kind of accelerates the degree to which we have to take more agency. >> thank you, ben, for that. we are going to move to questions.

veronica, this may be useful for you, but for anyone, please, chime in. the first question, from one of our students here, is a majority of americans, especially young people, currently oppose u.s. foreign policy on gaza. but it remains unchanged. how can we make our foreign policy making process more democratic? veronica: i think it is very important, the politics from below, to change also foreign policy to open up spaces of change. for example, i want to make an example, a couple of weeks ago, milei was here with elon musk. the part of the conversation was about the concern from elon musk

about the declining population and the threat of abortion politics. we can see how our struggles for abortion rights nowadays come from part of the patriarchal reaction that we see in a vector of foreign policy the ultra right wing. i truly believe in the capacity of struggles from below to open up the state of foreign relations with an impact in foreign policy. i think it is not disconnected. what is happening here in the campus come at the universities, i think it is very important for the world also to see that the u.s. is not only the power that we know, that there is an

anti-colonial struggle from below, that it is a concrete basis to imagine other possibilities. >> for those of you who do not know, veronica was part of and a leader of the feminist movement in argentina that got abortion legalized, reproductive health, reproductive rights. so while the united states has overturned its reproductive rights, constitutional provisions, and veronica, places like mexico, ireland, all catholic countries, by the way, reproductive rights are now part of the law of the land. thank you, veronica, do you have as much faith in the people as veronica does? the next question asks, how can young people advocate for a

better future and help build stronger democracies? often they say young people do not care about foreign policy, foreign policy is not a part of elections. it seems as if this election may be, for the first time in any dramatic way, foreign policy will matter. moshin: it mattered in 1968, the last time there was a democratic convention in chicago and people were active. we will see what happens if there are any parallels to what is happening this year. for young people, young people have to grapple with the fact that in the west and countries like the united states, we -- society is structured in a way that it has never been structured before. it is structured due to the decline in the birth rate, the number of old people, world or

people, my age and older, as a share of the population of the countries of the west is much bigger than it has ever been in human history. and the share of young people is much smaller. now, this has the effect in democracies, alongside the fact that young people vote less, of severely disempowering young people and privileging policies that help the old, piling up massive debt that you will not be around to have paid off. not being concerned with the climate crisis, because who cares? you are old. not investing in schools. your time has passed to do that. this is a very pernicious thing, because i think society has changed less because we as individuals become somehow more wise and more able to realize that this person is equal to us, the way society has changed is,

my sense is, people grow old and die, and young people grow up with different points of view. and over the decades, over the generations, countries hopefully become more inclusive, more tolerant, more democratic. not necessarily. but it is a process of generational shift. in the west, inc. you -- including the united states, that process is now stuck. there are just not enough young people. there are too many, in a historical sense, older people. what are young people to do? they do not have the capacity to shape their society's politics perhaps in the way the people in the 1960's did when they were young, when the baby boomers were a much bigger share of the u.s. population then young people are today. but it does not mean that all is lost. it means that young people have to reckon with the fact that they cannot count on numbers to make their point. they will have to be much more active. in a sense, young people will

need to do much more work to influence the policies of the countries that people had to do before. for young people in the united states, i think what we are beginning to see for example, with the gaza protests, but perhaps in other areas as well, is the realization that much more bold need to be done to affect any change. if you look at the u.s. presidential candidates, people are astounded at these two old people that nobody seems to much want who are running for president. it should not be surprising. it is the natural product of a society that has grown, demographically speaking, old. and the younger going to need to figure out ways in which they can infuse their views, their values, their ownership of a future that they will hopefully live to actually see, into american political discourse. lenny: to take the case of gaza,

because ece mentioned a a little while ago the disturbances happening at columbia university and in new york. lots of things are happening hereto that we have not yet witnessed, but it is happening on a lot of campuses. why is it that an occupation that is now many decades old, why has it reached for young people such a point of profound concern, where people are willing to take steps that they had not, in most other instances, for this particular political moment? and what are the implications of that for the u.s.? ece: first of all, there is a genocide going on that is already massive. right or wrong, i think humans are doomed to understand the

difference between right or wrong when it is shown in the context of historic documents. but now it is so blatantly unfair, unjust, and devastating, inhuman, what is happening to gaza in gaza. i think it is impossible not to see it. the and humaneness of it. but most importantly, young generations do not know what we know. we were talking earlier, our dictators were great friends, no, seriously. that is how i know pakistani songs. in the 1980's, they were both good friends with the u.s. government. they were celebrating each other's birthdays by sending

cards to each other. that is how i know the pakistan song. why am i telling this? because we know how things can get ugly, what dictators can do, what torture is, actual, physical torture is, and how people are exiled and oppressed by fascism. but the new generation, i think they still have this notion of justice in them. so they are acting upon it. of course, there is social media. they are literally talking to each other, with the young people in gaza right now. so that makes sense and makes an impact. they listen to stories, they see

the faces, and gaza is not this place in the wilderness and so on. they see the people. social media, i think, is one of the factors. but we are coming to the edge of history. there is a feeling we are approaching the edge of history, that something is going to shift dramatically. these things, movements, they don't necessarily change things. they don't necessarily shape foreign policy, let's say, but they make something morally impossible to do. occupy movement, argentina, the feminism in argentina, or right now, colombia. it does not necessarily change the decision of decision-makers,

but it makes it so embarrassing to take these decisions, it polarizes the political system. it actually shapes the political narrative, but not necessarily in a very direct way v. e-- in a very direct way. it is gradually changing everything. one day, you will wake up and, like with black lives matter, for instance, you wake up and doing that racist thing you did one day ago becomes impossible. thomas: ben, i wonder if i can beg your indulgence. please be open and say i shall not answer the question, but if barack obama were in power today , as president, would he have

handled the gaza situation differently? ben: i don't want to take the easy way out and say of course he would have, because it is counterfactual. i guess i will say he did not get along with jim and netanyahu. -- with benjamin netanyahu. that was no secret. i do think that at the outset, post october 7, i am not sure that he would have as fully and comprehensively embraced netanyahu, and been quicker to be vocal and be

willing to differ with the israeli government. this was evident during a time in the obama administration. this is not me putting words in his mouth, but the way you embrace israel and keep any disagreement private and that embrace allows you to do certain things. the lesson i learned that the differences we follow all the way to logical conclusions with the netanyahu was on the iran agreement. part of what we were able to demonstrate is it is ok to just disagree. if netanyahu is going to fly to washington and give a speech to the u.s. congress opposing our foreign policy, we are willing

to live with that. you have to be willing to accept -- and this is what i have seen the administration has struggled with, is they want to be seen to be evolving to a more critical place but they do not want to just say we totally disagree here and you are doing the wrong thing. there is no threading the needle here. you're either fundamentally supportive of israeli government policy, or you are taking clear steps to pursue a different policy. i would like to think that we made that more definitive break. i cannot say for certain. i will say it actually relates to young people. nobody brings them into these conversations. lenny, when the iran deal was reached in the summer of 2015,

for instance, aipac announced they were going to spend $40 million to defeat it and they mobilized a lot of infrastructure to pressure democratic members of congress. they could have killed the deal if they had gotten a few democratic votes. one of the things we did is we turned to the broader progressive infrastructure and we said when these members of congress go back, here are the arguments that you can bring to town halls. i actually think one of the things -- obama did not do everything right by any stretch of the imagination, but he did try to enlist young people. that whole campaign was predicated on basically having thousands of young people in

their 20's were going to knock on doors and try to convince their balance -- parents. nobody asks young people to do anything in politics other than vote. and young people are onto that. you just cannot ignore me and then show up in the summer and tell me, you better vote for me because this other guy is much worse. that politics does not work anymore. so i think if you truly want to thread these questions together come a lot of politics is designed to make young people either cynical or apathetic. cynical, nothing matters. apathetic, it is not worth trying. and therefore the tremendous reservoir of energy that young people have, which i now appreciate as a mentor -- as i entered middle age, they are the cultural shapers of society. they are the people with the most energy and time to be politically active. they are the target consumers

for the corporations that are doing so well in society. there is a lot of effort made to make young people feel like that energy is disconnected from politics. focuses on consumption, on social media, on anything but political outcomes. frankly, young people themselves , and more and more politicians, need to try to have more connectivity. even what has happened with the protest movement. it needs to pour into some organized politics. the way things will change is if the number of democrats who voted against the eight assistance package is higher. that is not to say everything has to be an inside game, it doesn't. you need protests, activism, culpable -- cultural narrative. you need all of it. but you also have to be aware of the fact that the system is

designed to tell you, we have no alternative but to fully support this israeli military operation. >> outside washington, from where i come from, or in europe as well, there is this myth of washington, that it is impossible to disagree with israel. ben: at risk to any future career in politics, just on the spokesman ship of the iran nuclear deal, which donald trump tore out and joe biden did not go back into. you can take both lessons from the experience. it is possible. but it's also very hard, and it is hard to make it stick. >> yes, it was an extraordinary achievement of the obama administration to get the jcpoa deal. for those of you who don't know, the person who worked also with ben and others on that deal is now suspended from the state

department. has not been told why he has been suspended. but these tragedies continue to unfold. let's hope that in a future administration, that jcpoa, iran , is one of the most profound civilizations in human history, can come back to some sort of effectuation. ben, there was a question, but because we have around eight minutes, anyone please chime in. it says ben brought up that nationalism is now the guiding principle in domestic and international policy rather than the liberal international order. is there a scenario where nationalism can be harnessed for good? can nationalism be productive, and can it be useful? and if not, how do we defuse it? ece: he was not a nationalist.

for example, in terms of currency. also, he is very committed with obstructionist policies around this. with bolivia, chile, and argentina. so, he's a person who wants to get rid of any sense of sovereignty. the idea of columbia lives him i was coaching before. for example, it is the difference between him and bolsonaro in brazil, who embraced a very nationalist sense of governance.

i think this is a very particular feature that is very interesting to also analyze the geopolitical moment. lenny: but if you think about nationalism in a very analytical way about making nation and state congruent, so, supporting kurdish nationalism or palestinian nationalism or what have you, is just about allowing one to have their self-conscious cultural community sovereignty. is that not an unproblematic thing and something we should all get behind? mohsin: i mean, it gets very complicated, very fast. and the problem is that we live among each other. and so, the kurds live with the arabs, and the punjabis live with the batons, and blue states and red states. we have all these different people mixed together.

there are pros and cons in nationalism. i don't want to go into too much detail with it. but if we look at nationalism in the united states, there's a ver y virulent anti-migrant nationalism. but also there is a nationalism which might ask the question, why is it that the prime minister of a foreign country can come to the united states and address congress on a matter of national security and be treated with such reverence and respect? it's an utterly shocking state of affairs. i think outside people watched this ansi, this is -- how is it possible that this can go on? to a certain extent, what the hell are we doing and let's wake

up, that can be positive. also, nationalism is one kind of narratives we have to combine disparate groups of people together. we're all muslims or we are all christians or we are all jews. i think we are reaching a state in a very interconnected humanity where we need to come up with other convincing narratives that allow us to begin to work together as human beings. and the narrative that has been tried which is it is all free markets, it seems to have not worked. what is this idea? i think it is dangerous to default back necessarily to nationalism or religious identity or whatever it is. i would be very curious to hear what others say on this, and hopefully we found out more this week. but we need to begin to articulate new convincing shared visions of the future that human beings can partake of that are

compelling to us, to lead us in this interdependent world to better son -- to something better. leonard: if that new narrative, cosmopolitanism, should we all be rallying around the flag of cosmopolitanism? ece: we spoke earlier about this. cosmopolitanism has so many bad connotations. because they belong to know where and everybody is suspecting them to do something wrong, and so on, these people. during the week we are going to talk about these things, but one of the things i am thinking about as opposed to citizenship is friendship. friendship is such a profound idea that has been written about .

several philosophers and so on. it sounds crazy to think of friendship as a political connection. but then citizenship also was a crazy idea. let's draw lines and then die for these lines, and then people belong to this part of the line and on the other side there are others. this is already a crazy idea. so friendship is less of a crazy idea when you think of it. but how can we cater to that to create an international, or supranational bond between people? several kinds of internationalism is being experimented at the moment. one of them is feminism and internationalism thinking together. we are going to think about these things. we will have to.

because nationstates are falling apart. borders are falling apart. and it is individuals who are carrying the burden of the failure of this grand finale of nationstates. but then these individuals, be it immigrant, refugee, asylum seeker, whatever, they are going to be the ones who are going to build the new world. new worlds are not built on the stages. they are built in measurable corners of society, in the margins of the societies. it is being built right now. because of the immigration wave and so on and so forth. this is the first time in human history, i think -- in recorded history, at least -- that we see such a big flux of population. and we are going to keep seeing that a lot.

so, new world is already in the making. and in order to replace citizenship, or such narrow and poor concepts, we're going to use everything we have. and one of them might be to think about friendship. and as i see it, friendship is the most noble attempt to ultimate justice between the people. leonard: i like that. we have like 30 seconds, i think. the one word we have not used at all in thinking about america in the future is the world of universality. maybe that term is deeply suspect for reasons we can induce. but i wonder if even if america is a declining power, is there still something about the american ideal around universality, universality

norms, human rights precepts, whatever, that we still should, in different ways, new animated ways, hold onto, or do we just want to sort of let it go? ben: i think you need to in that in america we have people from all over the world, and so the world's diversity is kind of encompassed within our own borders. i think the idea that utopian post-world war ii universality of a common set of rights and norms everybody agrees to seems further away. but really quickly, space is an interesting example in the past, where nationalism was harnessed around the space race. and that could have gone worse, in the sense you could have had the total militarization of space. part of what happened is you had russian and american nationalism and other countries coming in. and then ultimately there was a

development of the shared internationalization of space. i only mention that because right now the world order has kind of broken apart. and china, xi, modi, putin, trump, into some extent biden, these are the big powers. can you thread to gather a world in which the pursuit of new clean energy technologies or new ai is not a zero-sum competition, but something that can lead to a threading together of the next version of an international order? and there has to be some idea of universality, even if it is just the universal aspiration to not have global war, or the universal aspiration to not have an ai that can destroy humanity. universality around pandemic preparedness. it is not simply about political dictates and rights. i think those are important.

it is basically about the acceptance that we all have to keep living here. none of us are going anywhere. if we can avoid -- the reason i started with the worst case outcome, is i am quite optimistic we can avoid those. there's a more interesting world being generated. we just have to get through the next 10 years to allow that to generate. that is why i really do think the best case scenario is just getting out of the way of the regeneration that is happening. leonard: i think we are going to leave things in this guardedly optimistic note and thank ben, ece, mohsin, and veronica, for really thoughtful comments. and thank you all for your questions. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]