What is the legacy of the Cold War?
When the Cold War ended in 1989, much unexpected... ...and hardly anybody predicted it, you should always remember that...
...I would say that this changed the world and the world that we're still living in...
...has been shaped by the events of 1989 in Europe and the impact that then had on the rest of the world.
Firstly of course it brought about a unified Europe, which we still live in today...
...it brought about a united Germany, it changed the ideological debate in the world...
...in the sense Marxism as a political project was no longer viable, either in the Third World or in Europe.
In the end, what happened in 1989 also led to the disintegration of the USSR...
...two or three years later...
...so it ended the bipolar world and I suppose finally, what the end of the Cold War did...
...was not only to unify Europe but to change the structure, the balance of power...
...in the world to America's favour.
Whether American won the Cold War or whether the West won the Cold War...
...whether it was economic reasons that led to the end of the Cold War...
...or military pressure on the Soviet Union, it doesn't matter, at the end of the day...
...what emerged out of this was a much more powerful United States.
We moved into what people then called the Unipolar Moment...
...and although there's a big debate going on today about whether or not we are still living...
...in that Unipolar World, I actually happen to think that we probably still are...
...in terms of the power structure of the world, nonetheless America emerged from that...
...and that I think has been the great defining reality of the last 20 to 25 years...
...which I outline in the chapter in my book, yeah.
How has 9/11 affected US foreign policy?
Well, it hasn't changed the structure of international politics...
...that the end of the cold war and the collapse of the USSR did...
...in that sense is a less important event if you like than the end of the Cold War.
On the other hand, we are also now living in a world which has been shaped by the...
...attacks of 9/11, more importantly it's been the American response to 9/11...
...which could not have entirely been predicted, that's the point...
...you then had a particular kind of president in power, G.W. Bush...
...with a particular kind of ideological and political outlook...
...with a lot of American power behind him, again the Unipolar Moment gave America great power...
... and the American response to this was extraordinarily muscular...
..not only led in the sense to the war against Afghanistan...
...but they translated this into a wider war on terror...
...and the translated this to attempts, to regime change a number of countries in the world...
The most significant being Iraq.
And in many ways there was great controversy about the Iraq war...
...but I think the consequence of that...
..and I think even those who once supported the war in the United States...
...would not admit this, that while Afghanistan was a necessary war, Iraq was a war of choice...
...it did not lead to easy peace and it has led to what many would say is a much more de-stabilized...
...Middle East today but its consequences long term are huge.
We are still living with terrorism, the issue of terrorism remains with us...
...and we see this in Syria, we see this in large parts of the Middle East...
...we are now seeing this in Northern Africa and Middle Africa, Somalia etc...
...so we are still living in a world which has been very much shaped by what happened...
...over- over 11 or 12 years ago.
What are the consequences of the ongoing financial and economic crisis on international politics?
I would call this the second great crisis facing the United States...
...in the period between 2000 and 2010...
...and right until the end - and here again is a classic case where most people did not predict...
...the crash coming, although one or two did by the way but nobody wanted to hear what they said...
...when the crash finally came, I think it's done three or four things...
...firstly of course it has made the financial system...
...that much more unstable and we're still living in a very deep financial uncertainty.
The reason why the financial system is still alive and well is because government...
...is now pumping billions and billions of Dollars, of Euros, of Pounds and Yen...
...into the international financial system.
We're being held up by a massive debt, quantitative easing,...
...so it's left the financial system much weaker, more fragile...
...and only kept alive now by government, in that sense, that's the second problem with the 9- with the...
...with what happened with the financial crisis.
In a sense it's brought market, pure market fundamentalism, market ideologies...
...into stark relief and a, and a lot of people no longer believe that markets alone...
...are the only way in which we're going to resolve the problems of the modern capitalist or market order.
I think the third thing it has done and I think this is a larger question, is generated a...
...what I would call a psychological as well as an economic crisis in the West...
...people are no longer as self-confident as they were before about markets...
...about Western economic models and of course it's spilt over to Europe...
...in 2008, 2009, within a year it had spilt to the Euro Zone and we're still living with that.
So the consequences are both deep and long term and they're more than just economic...
...I think they've done a lot to dent and weaken Western confidence in their own...
...institutions, particularly economic institutions...
Can China rise peacefully?
Well this is the big question and China itself claims and has constantly claimed for the last 10 years...
...that it can rise and it can rise peacefully, that it has learned the lessons of history...
...that it is not going to be another Germany in the 1930s or another Japan...
...and that it has to rise peacefully and if it doesn't rise peacefully...
...the consequences could be disastrous for the region and most important of all, disastrous for China.
So I do think the Chinese or the Chinese government rather more precisely...
...both the old government and the new government in Beijing...
...really does have an interest in rising peacefully.
The question is however, if they are rising and they clearly are rising economically...
...and they will begin to translate this into more political muscle, more diplomatic muscle...
...more military muscle and we're beginning to see in 2012, 2013...
...signs that China is pushing its weight around, that it's translating its new found economic power...
...into new found diplomatic power, conflicts with Japan, conflicts with South Korea...
...conflicts with the Philippines, conflicts with the Vietnamese.
So we will have to wait and see, I think the bet is still on that China will continue to rise peacefully...
...because it's in everybody's interest, including China's, that it does so.
War would be a total and utter disaster for the region and indeed for the world economy.
On the other hand, even if China continues to rise peacefully, we don't see generalised...
...war or conflict in the region, I think we can predict some greater instability in state to state relations...
...as China begins to adjust to its new found position and its neighbours and the United States...
...begin to adjust to the reality of this new found Chinese power.