In this two-part interview, Niall Ferguson and Gr\u00e9goire Roos exchange on how the Millenials are about to disrupt politics in the West, discuss the current crisis of the Atlantic community, and address the challenges of the rise of China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Niall Ferguson<\/strong> is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. He is also a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His most recent book, The Square and the Tower, was published in 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gr\u00e9goire Roos<\/strong> is a market analyst in the financial industry and has been a Leader of Tomorrow of the St. Gallen Symposium ever since 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the first part of this interview. You can find the\u00a0second part here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NIALL FERGUSON (NF): First, we need to remember that the significance of youth has radically changed over the last hundred years, because as societies have aged and life expectancy has increased, in Europe and Northern America (as well as some Asian countries and of course Japan), the proportion of youth (people, let\u2019s say, under 25) has gone down. So compared with any period prior to WW1, the young are just less important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Secondly, we have in our mind\u2019s eye an idea of youth as a revolutionary force. I think this is mostly the 1968 ideal, and that the memory of the generation of 1968 still lives on, leading a challenge to the established order that was primarily anti-war, but was also radical in a number of different dimensions, including feminism and racial equality. This leads us to expect youth to be radical, and each new generation of students fantasises about the Sorbonne and Woodstock spirit of the late 1960s. And this is misleading because actually in 1968, only a tiny proportion of young people went to university, only the elite. And so the people who were anti-war protesters at the time were not representative of their generation. We therefore have a notion that young people are supposed to be like Dany Cohn-Bendit. But that\u2019s not necessarily the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Well I believe this helps explain why we see a kind of revival of interest in socialism and in a bunch of more cultural ideas on the left. It\u2019s partly that the young feel powerless, and it\u2019s partly that they will go to college and be exposed to a whole range of ideas that would have previously been taught only to an elite. I think we are seeing a really radical divergence in political attitudes between the generations, not only in North America but also in Europe. And this has become a more important cleavage than class or race or more traditional cleavages. In the short run, it doesn\u2019t massively change the political game; the young are just not numerous enough to decide the next election. But over time, they will matter more, and figures suggest that by 2028 more than half of the US electorate will be generation Z or millennial. If they remain as left wing as they currently are, that is ultimately going to shift North America, and much of Europe, quite a bit to the left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: You\u2019re right. But that would therefore imply that they have a significant shift rightwards within the next ten years\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Exactly, which I refer to in the Atlantic\u2019s article you referred to earlier. But I\u2019m a little sceptical about that, and I\u2019m not sure that this actually is likely to happen. Because I think once generational cultures are formed, they\u2019re quite hard to change overtime; if we look at the baby boomers, people haven\u2019t massively shifted in their political attitudes over the course of their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Yes, you\u2019re right. But we should note that the term \u201celite\u201d has become part of the populist discourse on the right. What I see happening is that, in the wake of the financial crisis, the populists on the right had a terrific opportunity to change the political game by reintroducing concepts that had really become almost unacceptable: protectionism, restriction of immigration\u2026 Those policies made a come-back and they did so as part of an attack on a globalist elite, an elite that the populists identified with the socially, culturally and economically disrupting policies of globalisation. I think it was true to say that, from the 1980s, the elite, nationally and internationally, had more or less unanimously and unequivocally favoured globalisation. And as trade, capital and migration became freer, the pay-offs disproportionally went to the elite. Because there\u2019s no question that the returns of globalisation were heavily skewed in favour of the top 1% of income-earners in the industrialised world. And that\u2019s why the populists were right to say that the global elite was getting all the benefits of globalisation when the ordinary median household was not. That was true. I think we\u2019re now into a new phase, which I\u2019ll call the \u201cbacklash against the backlash.\u201d The populists won their victory in 2016, but we\u2019re now heading for a progressive phase when, as in the late 19th century, the populists have their days or their years in the sun and then, after a certain point, there\u2019s a backlash against the backlash, and along come the progressives saying: \u201cIgnore these protectionists! Ignore these nativists! What we need is a new progressivism, in which the role of the state will be greater: that\u2019s how we\u2019ll address the inequality you\u2019re all complaining about!\u201d And that\u2019s really what, in my view, we see on the left in Europe and in the US, with the emerging consensus around the fact that \u201ctaxation\u201d is no longer a dirty word\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Well it\u2019s a recurring leitmotif of democratic politics. And it is sort of absurd, because obviously there will always be an elite! By definition, the government will be run by a relatively small number of people\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: That\u2019s right. Actually Mr. Macron is talking about getting rid of the famous \u201c\u00e9narques\u201d [graduates of the National School of Administration, which forms France\u2019s top civil servants], which really seems like a mad thing to do, given the importance of those elite \u00e9coles for educating France\u2019s administrative elite. If you look at the UK, Oxford and Cambridge have continued to produce a disproportionate number of the political elite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: It\u2019s true that in the US, there is very little sign of institutional continuity or hereditary elite privilege. Actually if you look at the top 1% of income earners in the US, they\u2019re almost all self-made, and very few of them inherited their wealth or position: Jeff Bezos did not start out rich, nor did Mark Zuckerberg. And the political elite is not all Harvard or Yale. Actually there are barely any Harvard people in the current Trump Administration!<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Except Mr. Kushner, indeed\u2014although he is not a member of the Cabinet or heading an executive federal department. Anyway, one of the striking features of American life is that there are higher levels of inequality than in Europe, but there is also higher social mobility. By that measure, the elites are constantly changing; the richest are never the same after ten years and the political elite today doesn\u2019t look like Jack Kennedy\u2019s political elite. There\u2019s much less continuity. And therefore to talk about the elite in the American context is a little misleading, because there\u2019s so much less hereditary privilege.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: I see your point, but I think not. Coming back to my argument in the book, the dream of a decentralised, distributed network taking over power from the hierarchical towers has already been shattered. With amazing speed, the World Wide Web went from being a decentralised network to being a very hierarchical one, in which network platform companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook dominate it all. There are therefore new towers, in Silicon Valley in particular, in the form of the network platform companies. Secondly, the challenge to the established towers (i.e. the administrative State, the bureaucratic State\u2026) has only really been partly successful, even in the US, where a very disruptive figure was elected President by an electorate that was ready for him to act as a wrecking ball. The administrative State looks remarkably intact at this point. What strikes me when I go to Washington is how little the Deep State has really been weakened by Donald Trump\u2019s election. So I think we pretty much remain in the realm of towers and hierarchical structures of power. There have been some really irreparable disruptions; some giant corporations have been brought low by technology; political parties are much weaker than they used to be. But I\u2019m struck by the power of the Federal Government and its agencies\u2014that seems to be remarkably resilient. And I\u2019m also struck by the speed with which Silicon Valley has built new towers of hierarchical authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Absolutely. Can the Federal Government regulate Silicon Valley? Or does Silicon Valley successfully dominate the Federal Government through its lobbyists?…<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: In Europe I think the story is somewhat different. Because the project of European integration, very much an elite project, had as its primary goal not only the creation of a federal Europe, but more importantly the stabilisation of the Nation-States. I think [British historian] Alan Milward was very right when he said the real European project was to rescue the Nation-States from the calamitous mess they were in in 1945. And that\u2019s been quite successful. So there\u2019s not really any big question mark over the stability of France as a Nation-State or even Italy, despite its many problems. And within European politics, I think there is significant continuity despite seemingly big changes. So apparently the whole party political system in Europe has been blown up; Christian-Democrats and Social-Democrats are both in decline and new parties are coming into existence overnight (En Marche in France, Vox in Spain\u2026), and it all seems to be in flux. But on closer inspection, I think there\u2019s remarkable elite continuity, both in politics (at least in the sense of Government and bureaucracy) and in business. So you have the illusion of disruption, but I\u2019m not sure you have that much real disruption. In the case of France, you still have verging on hereditary continuity of the political and business elites, which are closely intertwined. And Monsieur Macron is the master of the sort of fake revolution that has the appearance of change, but only the appearance. In fact he\u2019s a sort of personification of what has been typical of the French elite for the past 30 or 40 years\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Yes, that captures pretty much the mind-set of continental Europe!<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Well talking of alliance, I\u2019d first say that the central one, i.e. NATO, is still here, and despite President Trump\u2019s ambivalence about it, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s about to be dissolved. So there is still an alliance, as such, and it\u2019s a pretty important one. Would it survive a test, such as a Russian invasion of Lithuania? I don\u2019t know. I hope so. I think it probably would, because although President Trump is a sceptic about NATO and strangely friendly with Putin, the American national security establishment is overwhelmingly committed to NATO and it would be very hard for Donald Trump to renege on Article 5 in the event of a Russian move. In fact I think he wouldn\u2019t be able to. So I think the Alliance is real, in that if it were put to the test it would pass the test. But what I think is striking is that it remains as unloved as it was in the 1970s. Complaints about burden-sharing by Americans actually go back to the 1970s, indeed to the 1960s! Kissinger even wrote a book called The Troubled Partnership in 1965! Europeans are always hostile to Republican presidents. They hated Nixon, they hated Reagan, they hated Bush, and they hate Trump. And yet we act like this is new! So we have these conversations about the Atlantic relationship every ten years or so, and it\u2019s always when there is a Republican president in the White House, because Europeans really dislike Republicans. It\u2019s very strange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Actually you\u2019re right. But nobody in Europe ever criticised him!<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: The relationship was the same: the Germans weren\u2019t spending enough on defence, there was all kind of disagreements over Syria, but we pretended that everything was fine. So I think Europeans have a complete myopia, an inability to realise that we\u2019ve been having this conversation since at least the 1970s. It always intensifies when there is a Republican in the White House. Europeans always hate the Republican presidents, until it turns out that they were actually great presidents, like Reagan, or for that matter Bush Sr. And as far as I\u2019m concerned, it will always be like this for the rest of my life. I think the terrible truth is that the Americans have been right for 40 years to complain about insufficient European expenditure of defence. It is inexcusable that the security of Germany, the biggest economy in Europe, is still dependent on the US. Why? Why is it actually the responsibility of the US to defend an extraordinarily wealthy country like Germany? The Germans should be paying for their own defence. It\u2019s a long time since 1945! So I do think that the problems lie more on the European side than on the American side. The Americans have been remarkably indulgent and patient in putting up with the costs of defending Western Europe, in return for which they get vicious criticism (and I think this is especially true in Germany, where you have almost every week a negative cover of Trump on the Spiegel)\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Well\u2026 this is a question partly about the nature of the Iran deal\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Well, look. The US and Europe have tended to take very different lines on the Middle East, really, from as far back as the 1950s. Remember, the Suez Crisis was not really the high point of Transatlantic cooperation. The attitude of European governments towards recurrent Middle Eastern conflicts involving Israel has been quite different from the attitude of the US. And looking at the specific issues you\u2019ve raised (Iran and the climate accord), I think there is less of a discontinuity than you\u2019re implying. Because I honestly don\u2019t think there has ever really been a period (other than maybe briefly in the wake of 9\/11) when Europeans and Americans agreed on the policies that should be pursued in the Middle East, or indeed those that should be pursued with respect to fossil fuels. Because there are just fundamental differences of interests: the Europeans basically have no oil, have to import oil, have strong incentives to do business with Iran. The US is on its way back to being energy-independent as it was in the mid-20th century. So there is a conflict of interests, there is a conflict of philosophies, about how you deal with the Middle East. And so it\u2019s not surprising that the very fragile and circumscribed agreement on Iran didn\u2019t survive a change of government\u2014also because there were so many flaws in this agreement, the fact that it simply didn\u2019t constrain Iran from conventional military action or sponsoring terrorism being the most obvious. So I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s such a huge departure, and I think we should stop exaggerating the degree of discontinuity that the Trump Administration represents, because, in reality, there have been discontinuities every time there has been a change of party in the White House. It\u2019s only, after all, a couple of decades\u2014 less\u2014since the period when the Bush Administration very rapidly burnt up the good will that followed 9\/11 in Iraq. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s ever been a period, in other words, when the US and Europe have had a uniform and united policy towards the rest of the world and especially towards the Middle East. I would even go so far as to say that if you look at what all the Obama Administration did\u2014from the vantage point of the Middle East, not from that of Europe\u2014it was the real discontinuity. Because what Obama did was to say, \u201cActually, Saudi Arabia and Israel are no longer going to be treated as having special relations with the US; I would rather bet on Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Absolutely. It was striking to me in this interview how dismissive Obama was of nearly all America\u2019s traditional allies, including, by the way, Great Britain. So I think when you turn the question around and ask which government was the real source of discontinuity, from the vantage point of the Middle East it was clearly Obama. And what Trump has done is to revert to a US policy based on Israel and Saudi Arabia. So that\u2019s the real continuity there. Europeans have never been comfortable with that policy; they were not comfortable with it during the 1970s either. We shouldn\u2019t really expect the US and Europe to have the same policy towards the Middle East, because I think their interests are fundamentally different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n NF: Right!<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was the first part of the interview. You can read the\u00a0second part here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Youth, Politics, China & the Future of Freedom In this two-part interview, Niall Ferguson and Gr\u00e9goire Roos exchange on how the Millenials are about to disrupt politics in the West, discuss the current crisis of the Atlantic community, and address the challenges of the rise of China. Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":1483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[23],"class_list":["post-1482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"acf":[],"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web.jpg",1500,1000,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web-1024x683.jpg",1024,683,true],"xl":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web.jpg",1500,1000,false],"xxl":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web.jpg",1500,1000,false],"xxxl":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web.jpg",1500,1000,false],"xxxxl":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web.jpg",1500,1000,false],"xxxxxl":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web.jpg",1500,1000,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web.jpg",1500,1000,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Nial-Ferguson-web.jpg",1500,1000,false]},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":" Youth, Politics, China & the Future of Freedom In this two-part interview, Niall Ferguson and Gr\u00e9goire Roos exchange on how the Millenials are about to disrupt politics in the West, discuss the current crisis of the Atlantic community, and address the challenges of the rise of China. Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, where he served for twelve years as the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History. He is also a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing.…<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"INSIGHTS<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"wordpress@weitblick-online.ch","url":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/author\/wordpressweitblick-online-ch\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","authors":[{"term_id":23,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"gregoire-roos","display_name":"Gr\u00e9goire Roos","avatar_url":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/gravatars\/762b22de4bf1bf3924204e9b02554eaa","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1482"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3170,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1482\/revisions\/3170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1482"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/symposium.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Interview First Part: Youth and Politics<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
GREGOIRE ROOS (GR): Earlier this year, you published an extended paper in The Atlantic<\/a>, deep-diving into the complexity of the X & Y generation\u2019s electorate in the US. You stress how profoundly this electorally-emerging generation will disrupt American politics in the decades to come, displacing its gravity centre to the left. What has been the role of youth in the transformation of political systems and society as a whole since 1914?
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: In other words, young people are a smaller proportion of our society, and more likely to go to university than in the past. How does this change things politically speaking?
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: Yet history seems to suggest that politics is no exact science… Nothing could change that, really?
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: Yes, Irving Kristol\u2019s witticism \u201ca conservative is a liberal that has been mugged by reality\u201d\u2026
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: It actually comes out as a paradox that we\u2019re calling for more education to fight inequality and, to some extent, populism when, on the other hand, some complain that \u201cwe have too many experts\u201d. And as a matter of fact, if we look at it more closely, the elite hasn\u2019t always played the best cards; let\u2019s just think about Halberstam\u2019s criticism of Kennedy White House\u2019s Harvard-educated golden boys who pushed for disastrous policies during the Vietnam War, and whom he ironically called \u201cthe best and the brightest\u201d\u2026
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: But the critique of the so-called elite is still very much around, even on the left\u2026
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: Well the real question is: how do they get there?
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: But although the ENA and Oxbridge are two significantly different systems, these schools and universities branded as clubs for the happy few and elite factories (and rightfully so) are actually a very European characteristic. If you look at the US, for instance\u2026
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: \u2026 apart from Jared Kushner!
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: The reason why I\u2019ve wanted to get there is because your \u201cSquare and Tower\u201d concept, that you\u2019ve developed in the eponymous book last year<\/a>, is actually quite enlightening to properly understand today\u2019s political crisis. On the one hand, we have the increasing atomisation of society (the individual as the only common denominator in society), with growing decentralised and citizen-driven networks (the Squares). On the other hand, we have a dramatic fall of towers, the traditional institutions or hierarchies (trust in Government has never been so low, the Church is like a boat taking in water on every side, and unions have lost their members and become meaningless in the political discussion). And until recently, the last floor still standing in these old towers were the elite\u2026 So with the anti-elite movement are we witnessing the full collapse of the tower, and the emergence of what we could call a \u201cSquare civilisation\u201d (at least in the West)?
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: What will be interesting in the coming years will be how these two structures interact…
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: And how do you see Europe in all this?
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: Falconeri\u2019s paradox in Lampedusa\u2019s Leopard\u2026 \u201cEverything must change so that everything can stay the same\u201d
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: If we now look at the current state of the Transatlantic relationship, that seems to have been somehow weathering for some time, is it true to suggest that the rise of individualism that has marked contemporary societies has entered the realm of international relations? Can we say, to quote German foreign policy advisor Weiner Weidenfeld, that we\u2019ve moved from an Alliance to coalitions.
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: One cannot really say that there was anything particularly friendly or healthy under President Obama either!
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: Not openly.
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: Well one could also argue on the other hand that Mr. Trump, for that matter, has also had some very poetic words towards the Germans\u2026 But let\u2019s perhaps not count points here. What seems clear to every observer is that the American foreign policy of the past three years has definitely shown an objective disregard for multilateralism and dialogue amongst traditional allies. The unilateral withdrawal from JCPoA (the Iran Nuclear Deal) in particular, without any prior alignment with the Europeans speaks for itself. It sounds a bit like \u201cNow we just walk our own way, whatever our traditional allies might say\u201d.
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: Well, and also about the White House\u2019s method, i.e. the absence of real consultation of America\u2019s historical allies. The same method actually applied to the Paris Agreement too.
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: It\u2019s true that the famous \u201cObama Doctrine\u201d he highlighted in his political interview to Jeffrey Goldberg<\/a> of The Atlantic did not particularly point at any alignment with old Europe\u2026
<\/h5>\n\n\n\nGR: Well and in the meantime, there\u2019s one watching the game and counting points without taking the knocks, it\u2019s China\u2026
<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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