Global Megatrends in a Multipolar World

Transcript

What are the main economical, political and cultural drivers that are changing the world today, and what are the consequences for international institutions and relations in the future?        

Thank you Sverre [Lodgaard] and thank you Professor [Dominique] Moïsi. At this point in your lecture I was about to tell you to continue. You could, I believe.

But, first of all, let me thank the Polyteknisk Forening for convening this group. Let me also thank Pax Forlag for having translated professor Moïsi’s book (*) and let me thank myself for having co-financed it. We have this series we call Mundus that the Foreign Ministry and Pax Forlag established back in 2006, when we agreed that we would take a few key books on globalisation and translate them into Norwegian, so that they could be more accessible. I believe it is a very good choice that we have Professor Moïsi added to these very prestigious volumes.

And I feel, I must say so, in this group, among friends if I may say so, humbled to speak in the same room as a professor from Sciences Po. It is a shiver you know, which I thought I had thrown off some 30 years ago.

I remember, in one of my first sessions at Sciences Po, a vulnerable, indecisive young man, with a weak and embarrassing level of French. I raised my hand to the professor, and said, “Professor, there is one thing I have not understood” [in French], and the professor said: “No, no, no. Mr Store, there are many things you have not understood.” And then the case was closed.

And then, as Professor Moïsi has been teaching European Institutions, I will underline that this next example is not about him, but my then teacher of European Institutions, who dealt with a co-student of mine who had failed her exams, and who passed her final year the second time round. And she did not do much better that year. So in April, a month before the exams, we stood before the teacher, and she was trying to say “Hello, please give me advice and insight, because I am really working so hard, I am trying my best, what should I do?” And the professor looked at the student, and he said: “Get married!”

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Anyway, I would like to praise the work of Professor Moïsi in general, who is combining great academic insight with the ability to communicate this through excellent journalism. And I will also compliment you, Professor, for daring to venture into new areas of conceptualising the world, because that is so much needed. And not by undermining the key analytical tool of understanding the “cold monsters”.

I remember your co-professor from Harvard, Stanley Hoffman, who wrote a morale for  cold monsters – for states. So he was getting somewhere close. Could there be a morale for the behaviour of states? You are not undermining the world of political science, history, interest or international relations, but you are broadening the scope, and I believe, the understanding. Your book, The Geopolitics of Emotion (*), is extremely useful, and I think it is touching on the theme tonight, namely “megatrends”.

Now, I will try to make two or three reflections, and they are not directly connected, but they are inspired by what I have read, and what we have heard. I will touch upon the notion of emotion, and my view of it. I want to reflect for a while on China, and then a bit on the issue of governance, on the global scene – given what we see – and then I would like to end up with geography.

First, a reflection on emotions.

Dominique Moïsi has referred to Huntington, and I believe that when we discuss Huntington, and the “clash of civilisations”, we – in our discussions, at least in Norway – are about to make the same mistake as when we discuss the work of Adam Smith. Now, Adam Smith became famous and is referred to for his “theory of the invisible hand”. And he has been defined as a market fundamentalist, whereas, as I understand it, his analysis is much richer, much more nuanced, and much more clairvoyant on the need to frame the role of markets and shield other areas that should not be exposed to markets.

Likewise, I think that Huntington’s analysis is kind of being simply reduced to his idea of a clash of civilisations, which I believe needs to be debated very profoundly. But his identification of the maintenance of military, economic and political power, from the West to other areas of the world – OK, call it civilisations – is simply correct.

And he did it quite early, compared to many others. I am more in line with Amartya Sen, who argues that the root cause of violence is when people see each other as having singular affiliation – as Muslim, Christian or Hindu, whereas we all are a composition of many different “minorities”. We may be at the same time a Christian, a man, a father, a Norwegian, and temporarily a minister, and we need to be defined by all these different categories, and not be sqeezed into one box. Professor Huntington’s observation of China’s rise is key, however, and I think we have a very good illustration, so I will not dwell on that. We are not seeing the rise of a new power; we are seeing the return of a power. And we all know the famous Mao quote when he was asked about the significance of the French revolution and he said: “It is a bit early to draw a conclusion on that.”

I also find, you know, a lot of fascination about the thesis, I do not know if it is true, but historians pretend it is true, that the decline of China really occurred when the Chinese fleet returned from India, and did not sail beyond. So it is a kind of expansionist view back then that met some kind of wall. I also think it is interesting to follow, in the literature on international politics, the analysis of clutching power from the fleet, from the navy, which still has remnants. [US Secretary of Defence] Robert Gates was asked the other day whether he was concerned about the state of the US Navy, and he said: “Well, everything is relative. We are stronger, our navy is stronger than the 13 next navies, and among them 11 are our allies.”

But I think what is interesting is what professor Moïsi is underlining: a very strong message that we need to dive into the understanding of this phenomenon with China. And there is so much left to do. Talking about books and literature and analysis, I see many who are actually speaking and communicating change and the rise of China, but there is so much more we need to understand.

One of my colleagues in the Ministry, who served in China in the eighties, remarked the other day that we actually knew more about what was going on in China in the eighties than we do today: where China is going, how the Chinese think, how the leadership thinks, and how the party thinks, how the party works. What I note now, simply, is that the perception in the Norwegian debate is that China is a place with large emissions and cheap production. Both of them are true, but what is really now emerging is that China innovates, China researches, China has technological breakthroughs that we cannot even imagine, and China is going beyond as number one, not only in emissions of CO2, but also in production of renewable energy. So, defying a lot of theses. And I believe this is happening much faster than most people conceptualise.

Will China overtake the US as the world’s leading economy in 2030? Does it really matter? Because the weight of that economic and technological rise is here now. And I believe that it has never happened in history that a country, or a civilisation if you like, does not translate its economic and technological power into political interest. How it will happen this time, with a country that is not a carrier of a universal message, of ideas they believe have universal applications – that remains to be seen.

By the way, one reason why I am making changes in the way the Norwegian Foreign Service works is so that we can increase our ability to be present in China, to understand China, to recruit people who know how China works. And, by the way, “cherry-picking”, the Professor mentioned, we have found that interest in Norway, since the mid-nineties, the Chinese obviously have cast their eyes on this small, open, social market-orientated economy – which is Norway – with very high-level delegations, politically, but also in the academic field, coming here to study how we do things. But some in Norway have kind of misinterpreted this, that this is an interest in copying, importing. Well, that is not what happens, I believe. They are drawing on every example that can inspire their solutions. So be it a visit to the Oil Directorate in Stavanger, where they get a glimpse of how we organise such an institution, or the Oslo Stock Exchange, or other kinds of controlling institutions that we may have, to see how we do it.

And when I come to China as a foreign minister, I am invited to the Communist Party to meet the head of the international department, who may be more important than the foreign minister himself, the question he would like to discuss is how we do social insurance. How can you create a mechanism under which the Chinese will dare to invest, because they have some kind of set-up through insurance or other mechanisms that will take care of them in their days of need. So, I think this is of great interest.

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And then, I’ll end this kind of China, geopolitics and emotion thing. I believe that the “emotion prism” of Professor Moïsi may be more useful than the dividing into civilisations. And I think his point, which he made just now, is extremely interesting: although they are not driven by Western values, they are driven towards Western lifestyle. Be it Apple or Microsoft, clothing or cars or whatever.

Think about the significance of language for a moment. Here in this hall, we have a French professor and a Norwegian foreign minister, and our language is English. That is tougher for you than for me, because for the French it is almost a humiliation, whereas we Norwegians are used to it. But, isn’t this an example of a more cultural dimension to emotion that is so strongly dominated by the English/American language. I think this of great interest. When it comes to emotion, now speaking as a European, I think it will be interesting to see in the months to come whether elections will be won by fear or by emotion. Fear or hope. Whether that will be in the inner strategy circles of parties – to say that we will face this election – and will we appeal to fear or to hope?

Now, having spent a few days in the United States, I thought the Professor would end his idea about Obama differently, because whereas he was elected on a tide of hope, what we see now is an avalanche of fear, splashing through the whole US society, with quite extraordinary implications. And that again will translate into a world view, and again it will influence foreign policy. How? We’ll see.

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Now, my second observation is completely cut off from this emotion stuff. But it is simply that, from a perspective of governance, this world is changing. Yes, we need to reform the post-WWII institutions, yes we need to change the way we are represented abroad through embassies because it cannot resemble what it did some years back. Yes, we need to include rising powers, China, India, the BRICs... But we see that the real effort to reform the UN Security Council stumbles primarily because those who sit there do not want to change. It is not very diplomatically put, but I think that is a root cause at least, as to why that is a bit difficult.

Then, all of a sudden, we have the G20. Not all of a sudden, because it was created in the late nineties and it really came to prominence exactly two years ago, when the world was standing there in the midst of a financial crisis. And let me start this point by saying that we should applaud and say thank you to the G20 for intervening at that time, calming things, agreeing on measures. So, that is good.

But now, it is time to ask the hard questions. And these are the following I believe. The G20, which is not the G20 by the way, it is the G23, but now the question is whether the Netherlands will be invited or not to Seoul. And whereas Spain, as I understand it, may be invited because it has had an influence on the other countries, so they can get in. But it is a self-appointed group. It was not appointed by any international body. We discussed, the professor and I yesterday, whether this was a kind of Vienna Congress of 1815. That was also a self-appointed group, and its purpose, he reminded me, was to restore and uphold world order. What the G20 tries to do is to organise and keep the present world together, not restoring the old world, but preventing this one from collapsing.

But I believe that the question of legitimacy is key in the international system; it is a key Norwegian interest that international law is respected, developed and anchored. So that is one issue. I do not favour a G192. That is the UN General Assembly, but although the G20 represents 85% of the world economy, there are still 170 states floating around with no formal ties, no inroad to decisions being taken.

One question here is this: the legitimacy of representation. A second question is agenda and mandate. And here, the views differ. Some say that it should be there to stabilise markets, keeping the financial setting stable, but we hear from the incoming French presidency that this body should also deal with faith, environment, climate and a number of other issues. So their missions creep into different areas. And what then, we see, when we show up at Bretton Woods institutions, or at the UN and the decisions may be pre-cooked, discussed and already shaped.

Now, you may think that here is a minister who terribly regrets that he is not a part of this. And that is probably true. But that is not my main point. I think the main point is to ask these questions now and to ask these questions of the G20 countries. Take great care, you can make changes to the way you are set up, and become representative, and become legitimate, become anchored, in a different way, and the whole thing will look different.

So, I think that this is an issue which we need to keep focused on. It has real significance. Who should qualify and – by the way – we speak now in Norway in Europe, but outside the European Union, and inside the G20 we have two representatives of the EU institutions, and then we have Spain, France, Germany, Italy, UK and the Netherlands. So is that Europe today? Which could lead to another point, which I will not make, which is the question: where is Europe these days? And I will not ask that question, because it is not perhaps proper for a non-member to ask that question of the group of members. But I would assume that this idea of having the EU plus six EU member states is at least a challenge to the idea of the Lisbon Treaty: that Europe would speak with one voice, would speak with one focus, and would act as one key global player.

And what I fear, not because I am in favour of membership, which we do not seem to be approaching, because I believe that for Norway it is not good to see Europe’s interest and position weakened,  is that Europe will enter a phase in which it will be pre-occupied with internal issues, ranging from the financial crisis, budget deficits, cuts, social struggles and finding out the logic of Lisbon. How should that one voice be organised and structured?

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Now, a third observation that will be very short, because I believe it may be a part of our faith. You know: what about models? Professor Moïsi – I expressed interest in your reflection on the northern lights. I am not in a position to really comment on that, but what I find interesting, however, is the point that the new emerging countries do not have universalistic aspirations for their values. Now, we say at every corner that freedom of speech, liberal human rights are not Western values, they are universal, because they are set out in charters that all countries have signed. But they originate from a kind of universalistic aspiration of values coming out of the West. That is not yet the case for what comes out of China.

But what is interesting, is that countries that are on the rise, may be looking to the Chinese development model as more interesting, as more inviting, than the traditional Western one. And it is not only China. They can be looking to Turkey, Brazil, South Africa for certain perspectives. This, I think, is an interesting debate, that we should follow carefully. My point here, about the northern lights, and you touched upon it Professor – fear, humiliation, hope – and there is one word in addition that I think we need to dwell a lot on, and that is trust.

Trust is key to a value that Norway really should cherish. And on that we cannot report in today’s government budget, which has ample statistics on everything else, on human capital, real capital, financial capital. But what about social capital. We cannot put social capital into a government budget yet. But a key to social capital – and I shall now draw on a professor from Harvard who has written about this, Professor Putnam, about the role of social capital in almost everything that matters in societies’ ability to develop. Countries with low trust fare badly. A country where there is a high level of trust among people scores higher on almost all accounts. So, what does it mean to – how can we – create trust in a society? Where there is no trust, how can we create it? And what trends and developments will threaten trust? I think that is an important question.

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My final remark – and this one will be short – on geography. Because here in Norway, looking at global megatrends, part of my attention is drawn to the east. And every country in the world is doing the same, because we all see this historic shift. Not only east, but also south. All countries do but we, in addition, Professor are looking north. Because that – here, close to us – is where most is changing.

I have spent the day today in Bodø, in the north of Norway, which today is a port on the coast where coasts end. But tomorrow it will be the port of the coast mid-way to somewhere. Mid-way to the Barents Sea, the White Sea, as this region really opens up to trade, traffic, energy exploration and with the world’s richest fish stock. But also, an entry point to the North East Passage, from Europe to China. And this is also an element that is now emerging, I believe, beyond my reach. When I go to Washington D.C. and Beijing, this is what they want to talk about, in terms of Norway’s position – that we are the gateway to the Arctic.

A month ago, a ship sailed from Kirkenes to China. And that ship – well, there were two very important historic features about that ship. One was the cargo. The cargo was iron ore, from the mines of Kirkenes, Sør-Varanger. Those mines were shut down in 1997–8. End of story. A very traumatic chapter in my “political family” because it was the end of a very proud industrial chapter. It could no longer run, it was no longer economically viable. Ten years later it re-opens. With Norwegian and Australian capital, because China needs the iron ore, not the Chinese coastline, but the Chinese interior, where a hundred cities now are developing in a banana shape through China, creating that domestic growth that we all have been looking for and asking for.

So one thing is the cargo. The second thing is the ship’s route, which is the North East Passage, which people have dreamt about, had visions about. Arctic explorers spent years passing through; now it can be sailed in the months of August and September, and a few years down the road perhaps also in other months, then perhaps four months a year, not all year round. It needed to go behind a Russian atomic ice-breaker, but you sail in 11 days. And there are no pirates. If people in Finnmark behave, there will be no pirates.

So I believe, now coming back to the key sources of history and political science and international relations, leaving emotion aside for a moment, when we can combine new transport routes, with access to resources, and an increasing demand, then you have a hefty mix of history unfolding in front of our eyes. And when I talk to people about this, you know, people say: well, it is fascinating with all these opportunities for Norway, there are a few, but think about the responsibility.

I visited the Rescue Centre in Bodø today, the search and rescue centre for this area: the surveillance need, the need to develop standards, the need to move on the latest of the law of the sea (LOS). And we are fighting a battle, which we are about to win, which is to explain to people that the Arctic is not unchartered land, is no terra nullius where no law applies; the Arctic is an ocean with ice on top, and that ice is melting. Whether the ice is there, or the ice is not there, the LOS applies. The legitimacy of international bodies applies there, as they do in the North Sea, in the Bosporus, or in the Pacific. So there is a huge new agenda opening up. Perhaps we are staring at this because it is so close but again, I think, not to be Eurocentric, as this is shortening the route from Europe to Asia. Of course it works the other way round as well: it brings Europe closer to Asia the other way. And this is why Seoul, China, Japan would like to join the Arctic Council as observers, just like France by the way.

So, here we end. I think my emotions really are in the North, Professor, because I have great hope for it and I believe that it is an agenda that gives Norway both a purpose and direction. And if this had been an exam at Sciences Po, I would have been told that, well, you spoke with a lot of engagement, but perhaps your plan could be better organised.

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Moïsi, Dominique (2009): The Geopolitics of Emotion, Doubleday.

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