with only 1 millennial in 30 American, who in the world wants US to be gloab leader of everything
Octo9ber 2021 Oxford Union hosted this debate
Oxford Union on Twitter: "Professor Amitav Acharya ...
Proposing the motion This House Would Still Look to the US for Global Leadership”.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Robert Spalding
Jane Harman
Motion lost by about 2 to 1
Opposing Orof Acharya, Ambassador Andrey Kelin
Youtube Professor Acharya http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGJsk5JjMCg
Oxford Union President
now i look to professor amitav acharya to continue the case for opposition
00:22
the proposition has claimed a lot of knowledge but actually has shown very little light
00:31
let there be light: i represent no country, no branch of government, no diplomatic service
no cabinet no congress, no house of representatives no parliament
i speak as an independent person
i'm a citizen of united states ; citizen of canada and half a citizen of india
i have taught in south africa, thailand, hungary, united kingdom the great university of
bristol…from that perspective some of the things i heard from the proposition
sound to me as unbelievable
01:16
in arguing against the proposition, let me start by giving you two very memorable lines about american leadership
01:29
one comes from madeleine albright- congresswoman harmon had referred to her in 1998
referring to iraq albright said “if we have to use force it is because we are america; we are the indispensable nation
01:56
a few months later she said if we act others will criticize us, others may not like us but why should we care” this was her interview with william safire
02:11
a decade and a half later, another american statement, former president barack obama
another liberal multilateralist stated in a speech to West Point:
here is my bottom line- america must always lead on the world stage
if we don't,,noone else will
that was in 2014- the same year i published my book the end of american world order
02:37
i don't see this as leadership; i see this as hubris:
it is dangerous for the world and it is dangerous for america itself
let me give you three reasons why (now my fine colleague from the opposition simon has preempted me somewhat but let me emphasize the points he made)
03:16
first us leadership has failed in many critical junctures especially when it comes to this weird
idea of regime change -changing governments to make them democratic
03:27
so we have examples in iraq , libya even afghanistan which was originally started as probably a
justifiable intervention but trying to change the regime and the way the withdrawal happened--
it's a failure of policy
i've heard the statements from many people that in the liberal order led by u.s disappears , then the world will be on fire; my question is who started those fires: who started the fires in iraq,
who started the fires in libya, who started the fires in afghanistan
04:01
Second again simon has made this point it's about capacity but let me give you an
Example: nothing is more important to the world than economic development
That puts people out of poverty
04:16
Today china spends more money on international development than the united states: i'm
not inventing this college of william and mary in us has done a study on this
china consistently annually spends more money on international development than
the united states so why should china lead? why shouldn’t the united states lead in one
of the most critical aspects of international relations
04:41
china and india have spent billions helping hundreds of millions of people out of poverty why
shoukld they lead when the world is still mired in poverty inequality and lack of progress
04:55
finally third point domestic politics in the us we would love america to lead in some
cases would the congress allow it? Would congresswoman jane harmon..
05:07
partisan fractious domestic politics of the united states has drained it of
any credibility of global leadership; there was a time which recalled american
foreign policy consensus during the cold war so republicans and democrats agreed
with each other on a whole variety of issues
05:28
Today the extreme polarization, the extreme mood swings, when administration changes
makes it very difficult to take united states foreign policy seriously
05:44
to the house then, suggest a schizophrenic nation cannot be an
indispensible nation
05:50
look at what donald trump did
05:52
he reversed a whole range of policies of barack obama not because they were wrong
not because they were obama's policies;I’m talking about trans-pacific partnership
the iran nuclear deal, talking about the paris agreement climate agreement
06:13
there is no basis to it just personal vendetta policies;
and immigration howcan countries trust a country whose
politics is so divided so franctious
06:25
to be a leader you know credible, american commitments to the
world are no longer credible because domestic politics is so fragile and
poisonous
06:35
so moving on:i believe the us must not always lead as
obama put it; it should sometimes be led,sometimes you should step back,
let others lead.. and this point has been made by some of my colleagues also by ir malcolm there are many other countries to lead, we always think it is either u.s or china or u.s or china and
russia…what about the rest of the world what aboutce what about france oir uk
now here is one important thing : regarding the mentality that if we if america doesn't
lead nobody else can lead
07:15
this have led to free riding this is why sir malcolm's government cannot lead.
because you have become dependent on the united states of america you cannot think
clearly for yourself
07:27
this is very very common in academic literature called “free riding”
https://warontherocks.com/2014/06/unipolar-no-more-the-obama-doctri...
07:31
free riding: if you take on this free riding if
we can explore the term (I call) multiplex world – this is not about g1 g2 g7 g20 or g0
07:53
it is g plus
07:55
If we value g plus then no country should want to lead in every issue area
i'll give you an example china leads in economic development no question about
european union lives in climate change- can't find a better leader
08:12
united states when it is not unilateral as it was in iraq war can actually lead to collective security
08:20
or America could lead in vaccines
08:25
but why america or any country lead everything?
this the vast majority of the people in the world don't live in these countries
08:34
they live in africa latin america middle east and asia they don't have to choose
08:39
Why force them to choose between one country to elad everything
08:41
so the united states therefore has to step back
08:46
let others lead and leadership also it's not just a question of governments it's also
the matter of people
08:54
now there's a lot of literature and global governance that says increasingly
leadership in global governance can not only be done by states or the big multilateral
institutions like imf
09:06
It can be done by civil socuiety networks, with digital media we can all join in
The world doesn't need a single leader; you certainly don't need the kind of
president obamacare rhetoric above or even madeleine albright kind of ethic i am a
09:35
big fan of president obama but i do not like the idea that if america doesn't
lead no one else can; that's not based on an unrealistic understanding of how the world
is changing and why we're moving so i
09:48
So I asked the house (Oxford Union)
to reject the proposition
This House Would Still Look to the US for Global Leadership”.
and to vote for the opportunity
Motion Context https://oxford-union.org/event/us-debate-this-house-would-still-loo...
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States has held a pre-eminent position in the Global Order. It has dominated the world stage diplomatically, economically, and militarily, leading the actions of NATO and the West in affairs ranging from Iraq to the financial crisis. However, as diplomatic power shifts from West to East, politicians on every continent are starting to question their nation’s position in relation to the United States, a process only accelerated by President Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy. Has time run out for American global leadership?
————————————–
Proposition Speakers
- Rt. Hon. Sir Malcolm Rifkind KCMG QC
Former Secretary of State for Scotland, Defence Secretary, and Foreign Secretary under Thatcher and Major. He served as Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, providing oversight of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ.
- Brigadier General Robert Spalding (Retd.)
Former United States Air Force Brigadier. He now serves as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, focusing on US-China relations and national security. He is the author of Stealth War: How China Took Over While America’s Elite Slept.
- Congresswoman Jane Harman
Former Democratic Congresswoman for California’s 36th congressional district and President of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She was the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and Homeland Security Committee’s intelligence subcommittee.
————————————–
Opposition Speakers
- His Excellency Ambassador Andrey Kelin
Russian Ambassador to the UK. He has been in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since 1979, serving as the Deputy Permanent Representative to NATO and the Permanent Representative to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
- Professor Amitav Acharya
Distinguished Professor of International Relations at American University, Washington DC, and author of The End of the American World Order. He has made major contributions to constructivism and Asian regionalism.
- TBA
About
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what can you tell us about ...
thanks to JvN
2025report.com aims to celebrate first 75 years that followers of Adam Smith , Commonwealth begun by Queen Victoria, James Wilson and dozens of Royal Societies, Keynes saw from being briefed 1951 by NET (Neumann Einstein Turing). Please contacts us if you have a positive contribution - we will log these at www.economistdiary.com/1976 www.economistdiary.com/2001 and www.economistdiary.com/2023 (admittedly a preview!!)
First a summary of what the NET asked to be meidiated to integrate trust during what they foresaw as a chaotic period.
Roughly they foresaw population growth quadrupling from 2 billion to 8 billion
They were most concerned that some people would access million times moore tech by 1995 another million times moore by 2015 another million times moore by 2025. Would those with such access unite good for all. If we go back to 1760s first decade that scots invented engines around Glash=gow University James Wat and diarist Adam Smith we can note this happened just over a quarter of millennium into age of empire. WE welcome corrections be this age appears to have been a hectic race between Portugal, Spain, France Britain Netherlands as probbly the first 5 to set the system pattern. I still dont understand was it ineviatble when say the Porttuguese king bet his nations shirt on navigation that this would involve agressive trades with guns forcing the terms of trade and colonisation often being a 2nd step and then a 3rd steb being taking slaves to do the work of building on a newly conquered land. I put this way because the NET were clear almost every place in 1951 needed to complete both independence and then interdependence of above zero sum trading games. Whils traidning things runs into zero sums (eg when there is overall scarcity) life critical knowhow or apps can multiplu=y value in use. Thats was a defining value in meidting how the neyt's new engineering was mapped. Of course this problem was from 1945 occuring in a world where war had typiclly done of the following to your place:
your capital cities had been flattened by bombing - necessitating architecture rebuild as well as perhaps an all chnage in land ownership
your peoples had gone through up to 6 years of barbaric occupation -how would this be mediated (public served) particularly if you were a nation moving from radio to television
yiu mifgt eb britain have been on winning side but if huge debt to arms you had bought
primarily you might be usa now expected by most outside USSR to lead every advance'
in population terms you might be inland rural (more than half of humans) where you had much the least knowledge on what had hapened because you had been left out of the era of connecting electricity and communications grids
The NETts overall summary : beware experts in energy will be the most hated but wanted by national leaders; and then far greater will be exponential risk is the most brilliant of connectors of our new engines will become even more hated and wanted. We should remember that the NET did not begin with lets design computers. They began with Einstein's 1905 publications; newtonian science is at the deepest limits systemically wrong for living with nature's rules.
WE can thrash through more understanding of how the NET mapped the challenges from 1951 at http://neumann.ning.com/ Unfortunatnely nobody knew that within 6 years of going massively public in 1951 with their new engineering visions, all of the net would be dead. One of the most amzaing documents I have ever seen is the last month's diary of von neumann roughly October 1955 before he became bedridden with cancer. All over usa engineering projects were receiving his last genius inputs. And yet more amazing for those interested in intelligence machines is his last curriculum the computer and the brain scribbled from his bedroom in bethesda and presented posthumously by his 2nd wife Klara at Yale 1957 before she took her own life about a year later. A great loss because while neumann had architected computers she had arguably been the chief coder. Just to be clear Turing also left behind a chief coder Jane who continued to work for Britain's defence planning at cheltenham for a couple of decades. Economistwomen.com I like to believe that the founders of brainworking machines foresaw not only that women coders would be as produytive as men but that they would linking sustainability from bottom up of every community. At least that is a valid way of looking at how primarily 1billion asian women batted the systemic poverty of being disconnected from the outside world even as coastal places leapt ahead with in some cases (G Silicon Valley, whatever you call Japan-Korea south-Taiwan-HK-Singapore access to all of 10**18 times moore
Epoch changing Guides
1 AI Training AI Training.docx
2 Exploring cultural weaknesss of encounters with greatest brain tool.docx
help assemble 100000 millennials summitfuture.com and GAMES of worldrecordjobs.com card pack 1
i lets leap froward from cop26 glasgow nov 2021 - 260th year of machines and humans started up by smith and watt- chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk-
WE APPROACH 65th year of Neumann's tech legacy - 100 times more tech decade - which some people call Industrial Rev 4 or Arttificial Intel blending with humans; co-author 2025report.com, networker foundation of The Economist's Norman Macrae -
my father The Economist's norman macrae was privileged to meet von neumann- his legacy of 100 times more tech per decade informed much of dad's dialogues with world leaders at The Economist - in active retirement dad's first project to be von neumanns official biographer - english edition ; recently published japanese edition - queries welcomed; in 1984 i co-authored 2025report.com - this was celebrating 12 th year that dad( from 1972, also year silicon valley was born) argued for entrepreneurial revolution (ie humanity to be sustainable would need to value on sme networks not big corporate nor big gov); final edition of 2025report is being updated - 1984's timelines foresaw need to prep for fall of brlin wall within a few months; purspoes of the 5 primary sdg markets were seen to be pivotal as they blended real and digital - ie efinance e-agri e-health e-learning and 100%lives matter community; the report charged public broadcasters starting with BBC with most vital challenge- by year 2000 ensure billions of people were debating man's biggest risk as discrepancy in incomes and expectations of rich & poor nations; mediated at the right time everyone could linkin ideas as first main use of digital webs--- the failure to do this has led to fake media, failures to encourage younger half of the world to maxinise borderless friendships and sdg collabs - see eg economistwomen.com abedmooc.com teachforsdgs.com ecop26.com as 2020s becomes last chance for youth to be teh sustainability generation
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