Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
"Isn't politics magical" - Tom Switzer
1.9k Plays1 year ago
As we approach the end of 2023, it’s easy to become despondent about the fate of the West. War rages in Ukraine and the Middle East, as China eyes off Taiwan. The cost of living crisis is becoming unbearable for average families. Illiberal ‘wokeism’ continues to infect our institutions. And the Anglosphere leaders elected to guide us out of this mess appear woefully ill-equipped to do so.
To discuss the state of the world, and the small matter of the future of western civilisation, Will is joined by the Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies, and former Editor of The Spectator Australia, Tom Switzer.
Follow Australiana on social media here.
Subscribe to The Spectator Australia here.
Learn more about The Centre for Independent Studies here.
Recommended
Transcript
Concerns About the West
00:00:14
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator Australia. I'm Will Kingston. As we approach the end of 2023, it's easy to become despondent about the fate of the West.
00:00:26
Speaker
War rages in Ukraine and the Middle East, as China eyes off Taiwan. The cost of living crisis is becoming unbearable for average families. The liberal wokeism continues to infect our institutions. Eco-zelectry has reached the point of farce. And the Anglo-sphere leaders who we have elected to guide us out of this mess appear woefully ill-equipped to do so.
00:00:49
Speaker
At the same time, has it always been thus? I can hear my forebears in 1915, 1940, and 1962 asking for a touch of perspective.
Introducing Tom Switzer and Geopolitical Discussion
00:01:00
Speaker
To help me understand the state of global geopolitics and the small matter of the future of Western civilization, I'm joined by the executive director of the Center for Independent Studies, former editor of the Spectator Australia, and my old university tutor, Tom Switzer. Tom, welcome to Australiana. Well, it's great to be with you and the Spectator.
00:01:20
Speaker
It's great to have a specky alumni on. I should say at the outset, Tom, you've just said this to me when we were off air, if there is any background noise that is coming through for listeners, there is a very good reason for that. Tom, do you want to tell listeners why that might be the case? A week or so ago, we were inundated with protests from this left wing outfit called Extinction Rebellion. And they consisted of about 10 people, primarily in their 70s.
00:01:47
Speaker
So they weren't young and they had spray paint and they put graffiti all across the CIS building on 131 Macquarie Street overlooking the Botanical Gardens. And our sin apparently was to be affiliated with a very sound classical liberal foundation called the Atlas Foundation.
00:02:04
Speaker
They don't give us any support financially, but we're part of that broader network that promotes free markets and individual liberty. And somehow we are denounces climate deniers, even though we've rarely done research on energy policy or climate policy.
Carbon Emissions and Global Reliance on Fossil Fuels
00:02:17
Speaker
And these fruit loops just completely desecrated our lobby and my office overlooking the Botanical Gardens.
00:02:24
Speaker
That noise you may well hear sporadically throughout this discussion is the cleaners trying to wipe off all the graffiti. I just hope it's not at taxpayers expense and that these bastards at Extinction Rebellion are responsible for the bill. A classic case of how their idiotic protests serve no purposes whatsoever other than to show their foolishness.
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, I saw it may not have been Extinction Rebellion, but a similar group in Venice the other day died. The Grand Canal, a particular colour of green to protest the climate movement and the lack of movement on
00:03:01
Speaker
It made me realize we've reached the polluting the environment stage of the environmental movement. Look, in fairness to these extremists, they're right about one thing. Despite all these climate change conferences, the cold hard reality is that carbon emissions are going through the roof. Coal, gas, oil, the world's never been more dependent on them before, despite all the investments in renewables.
00:03:27
Speaker
So if you're really worried about emissions, then they probably have a point that they are skyrocketing. But it just shows that you can't really control emissions unless the developing world, especially China, are on board. And if you really want to look for culprits here, it's China and India.
00:03:42
Speaker
and the non-OECD whose emissions are going through the roof. And I can't blame them because their leaders want to grow their economies and reduce poverty. And the cheapest way of doing that, at least for the foreseeable future, is on the back of fossil fuels. The countries that are reducing our carbon footprint are countries like the United States and Australia. But of course, the extinction rebellion people don't want to hear that. It's intellectually unsound logic for them.
00:04:06
Speaker
Well, you know, I mentioned in those introductory remarks that eco zealotry is just one of several characteristics of the perilous state of the West at the moment. You would have recognized those, those remarks because I partially plagiarized them from one of your articles, which you wrote at the end of 2022. Fast forward. How are you feeling about the state of the world today?
Fiscal Irresponsibility and Cultural Issues in the West
00:04:29
Speaker
Well, I've will always like most classical liberals been an optimist about the world. And I think all the available evidence indicates that living standards have improved the broad cross-section of society all across the world. I mean, poverty levels have come down dramatically. Living standards have improved.
00:04:46
Speaker
environmental standards have improved. There's a wealth of data on these basic statistics provided by the likes of Stephen Pinker from Harvard University. Matt Ridley, the distinguished British scientist who was a guest here at CIS recently, he writes a lot for the UK Spectator. Kishore Marbobani from Singapore, my friend Marion Toopy from the Cato Institute. Fraser Nelson, our editor or your editor of the UK Spectator, has written a lot of
00:05:12
Speaker
Columns over many years about how the world by any objective criteria is getting better. I think that's still true. However
00:05:19
Speaker
This is where I become more pessimistic. I think there are several reasons to be distressed about the state of today's world and Australia's place in it. I just think that in the Western world, and I include Australia, there's a sort of naive view that the magic money tree can solve our problems, that budgets can be automatically balanced and money can be free. And this mindset, I think, helps explain why we are facing cost of living.
00:05:45
Speaker
troubles right now because the RBA did not raise interest rates fast enough and the federal governments have been spending like drunken sellers. There's always a consequence for loose fiscal and monetary policy. And I don't think our policymakers have recognised that we really need to be fiscally disciplined if we want to have prosperity tomorrow. And the other reason why I'm pessimistic will is because of the state of the culture in the West.
00:06:06
Speaker
You know, there's this constant denigration of Western civilisation because of the sins of the past, most notably slavery and colonialism. And a lot of that is true. But there's also a lot of good things about Western civilisation, such as the creation of a great country like Australia.
00:06:23
Speaker
I am concerned about the net zero emissions obsession, not because I carry any brief oil or gas or coal. I couldn't care less for those industries. I just think that energy needs to be affordable and reliable. And unless there's a technological breakthrough at this stage, there's no evidence that there is a technological breakthrough for batteries.
00:06:41
Speaker
We are at the risk of replacing a lot of those oil fossil fuels with frankly unreliable and expensive renewable energy. Now I know the enthusiasts for renewable energy say it's the cheapest form of energy, but if it's the cheapest form of energy, why does it require an increasingly high government, that is, taxpayer funded subsidy?
00:07:00
Speaker
And then the fourth reason why I'm increasingly distressed about the state of the world is not just the polarisation and the bit of divisions in America, our most important strategic ally.
China's Rise and Its Global Implications
00:07:11
Speaker
I mean, just recently we've had a Democrat congressman
00:07:14
Speaker
call the new Republican House Speaker more dangerous than Al Qaeda. I mean, this is ridiculous. I mean, people complain about Trump and his antics, but the left are just as bad in my judgment. It's very depressing, the state of public discourse in the United States and taken together with not so much Russia or Iran. I'm not so worried about those countries. I'm really worried about the rise of China. And this year we've had all this outpouring of good feeling. Normal programming has resumed between
00:07:42
Speaker
Washington and Beijing and Canberra and Beijing don't believe it. China is bent on converting its economic power into military power. And China's leaders will go to great lengths to try to kick the Americans out of the Asia Pacific and create their own sphere of influence in our neighborhood. And to the extent that happens in the next five, 10, 20 years, or if it happens, that's a problem for our future because we'll have to live in a world shaped and influenced by the People's Republic of China.
00:08:11
Speaker
My instinctive optimism is clashing with that pessimism. And I know I'm not alone. I know that there are people with a spectator who broadly agree with my worldview. There's a bit to unpack there. Let's take each of those separate issues in turn.
00:08:26
Speaker
First on macroeconomics, I spoke to John Anderson quite recently. He mentioned a conversation he had with Peter Costello on this very point. Peter Costello, I think, made a very good point. He said, do you think we had the constituency, the Howard Government, the Howard Government have a natural constituency for lowering spending, for budget deficit reduction?
00:08:47
Speaker
He said, no, of course not. We have to go out and make the case. We have to make the argument that whilst lowering spending may temporarily create some losers in society, it is on balance overall a good thing.
Australian Political and Economic Challenges
00:09:00
Speaker
It feels like today there is no one both on the left and on the right who you would expect this messaging to come from that has either the intellect or the courage to go out and make that argument.
00:09:10
Speaker
How can we make the argument for fiscal responsibility better on the right in Australia? Look, it's easier to criticise than to understand the dilemma faced by politicians and policymakers on both sides who are generally interested in this very issue. I think there are a few on the coalition side such as the Shadow Treasurer
00:09:30
Speaker
Angus Taylor and the Senator James Patterson. The problem here, Will, is that in the Australian case, since the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, Kevin Rudd, who was then the Prime Minister, injected into the political bloodstream
00:09:50
Speaker
that neoliberalism, that was his word, which basically described the economic reform agenda of the Hawke, Keating, Howard Costello era. That had failed Australia and that made us ill-equipped to deal with financial contagion abroad. His narrative
00:10:08
Speaker
was injected into the political bloodstream, so much so that both sides of politics, now both Labor and the coalition, don't really challenge that mindset. Tony Abbott tried to with the 2014 budget and he met overwhelming backlash for suggesting we make some moderate cuts to certain welfare programs. But the problem we have now is that since Rudd's
00:10:30
Speaker
rant against neoliberalism. The size and the scope of the government has actually increased, so there are certain runaway government spending programs such as the NDIS, the National Disability Program, the Gonski Schools, childcare, aged care, public hospitals,
00:10:48
Speaker
defense spending now with the AUKUS agreement and also interest on debt. This is Peter Costello's point. John Anderson would agree with this. So we're getting runaway spending programs and there's no attempt on either side of politics to try to rein them in. Now, one day there will come a time where we have to pay these bills.
00:11:07
Speaker
We can't just keep relying on the export sales of coal and gas as we did at the last visual budget. If we're serious about decarbonizing the economy, we'll stop exporting our coal and gas abroad. We won't have that comparative advantage. We won't have the revenue to pay for these programs. How do we pay for these programs in another 10 years' time? No one in Canberra, with rare exceptions, is raising these questions. So until you have people raising the looming car crash, nothing will get done.
00:11:36
Speaker
We need to experience the car crash in order to to take the medicine. Well, 40 years ago, just last week, we'll we're in the process of experiencing a major car crash and it was due to the leadership and I can't believe I'm saying this about Paul Keating because one people like us rarely quote Paul Keating with approval these days, but credit where it's due as treasurer 40 years ago, he and the Prime Minister Bob Hawke with the support of John Howard and Andrew Peacock in opposition flow to the dollar.
00:12:04
Speaker
and they deregulated the financial markets and that set the scene for tariff cuts, competition policy, deregulation, the very neo-liberal policies that Kevin Rudd derided, that was responsible for a huge increase in wages and the best times in Australia since the gold rushes of the mid-19th century. But no one champions that economic reform agenda anymore. No one talks about productivity.
00:12:25
Speaker
They just talk about increasing spending programs to pay for these welfare programs that are frankly not sustainable, unless we heavily increase taxes, which of course would place a huge burden on our way of life.
00:12:37
Speaker
You said that the politicians are aware of this problem, but they are unwilling to go to the electorate to be able to try and sell it. Is there a way to sell it or do you think that the electorate will not accept lowering spending on programs, will not accept kind of a fiscally responsible position from either party? Yeah. Well, it helps if it's bipartisan and there's no evidence that either party is even committed to it. But if one party is prepared to do it,
00:13:04
Speaker
they unfortunately run the risk of a scare campaign in an election campaign. So it is very difficult. And I think what makes a bad situation worse is the polarisation on social media.
00:13:17
Speaker
In the old days, the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s, before all of this onset of digital media, it was a lot easier for a Prime Minister or a Treasurer to sell in a reform agenda through the confines of a few elite journalists in the Canberra Press Gallery. And that worked for a long time, from 1983 to the mid-2000s.
00:13:38
Speaker
Those days are over. It's very difficult. And as I said before, it's easy for intellectuals and columnists, people like us, to criticize the government. But I'm well aware there is a problem. But the circumstances justify it because if we don't find a way of embracing some kind of fiscal discipline and putting in place productivity economies to grow the economy and pay our debts, then the car crash will happen. And believe me, when it happens, or if it happens, it'll
00:14:07
Speaker
heard our living standards dramatically and it'll be very tough, especially for younger people who already are priced out of the housing market. So it's incumbent, I think, on political leaders to raise awareness of the problems. And I think that's where magazines like The Spectator and think tanks like CIS play a role. But I readily concede it's easier said than done. Your second area of concern is around culture. Now this comes under
00:14:34
Speaker
several guises, some people call it wokeism, some people call it social justice ideology, cultural Marxism. Whatever you choose to call it, it is characterized by a growing illiberalism across all of our, almost of our public institutions. Some people say in Australia that the
Identity Politics and Western Backlash
00:14:50
Speaker
culture wars aren't something we should be concerning ourselves with. It's US imported distractions. It doesn't matter. What do you say to those people?
00:14:59
Speaker
Well, I would profoundly disagree because I think that when you denigrate our culture, you're basically denigrating our history. And I think it's important to recognise that there have been mistakes made in our past, that all things considered, Australia is a much better place because of things like liberal democracy, a market economy, a free press, an impartial judiciary.
00:15:24
Speaker
all those things that make up the notion of Western civilization. If we start trashing our past and our institutions, we are basically consigning ourselves to the notion that we should be ashamed of ourselves. And we start preaching this tirade of victimhood that doesn't solve problems. It just makes people feel worse. So I think a classic case in point is Australia Day. I wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal about this earlier this year. And I wish I had a copy of it on hand to quote from it.
00:15:54
Speaker
But, you know, one of the most significant developments that took place this year, Will, was the referendum on the Voice to Parliament. And that was on October 14. And throughout the course of the year, the overwhelming conventional wisdom in the media and the institutions, the universities, the corporate elites, the philanthropists, was that the Voice would win and it should win. And they had all the big money from the corporates and the philanthropists to support the Yes campaign.
00:16:23
Speaker
And yet it got absolutely smashed by 20 points, 60 to 40, extraordinary. And as our friend and colleague Fraser Nelson from the UK Spectator pointed out in an outstanding article in the UK Telegraph, in my judgment, it was the best article written about the referendum. He said this was the first time the Western world has had a referendum on identity politics.
00:16:50
Speaker
and it was a massive repudiation of identity politics, this idea that we should divide society according to race, religion, ethnicity, and gender. Huge repudiation. And what do we have this week? We've got the High Commissioner in Britain, Stephen Smith, who frankly should know better, saying that the British government, sorry, the Australian government in Britain, the embassy at least, or the High Commission, won't be marking Australia Day because of the sensitivities involved.
00:17:18
Speaker
What nonsense do these guys learn nothing? 20-point referendum loss, and they still carry on as if identity politics is popular. It ain't. And it's not only not unpopular in Australia, all across the Western world there's a backlash against identity politics, especially across Europe, where we saw the success of Gert Wilders and the Netherlands, and we're seeing the rise of other populist movements. So I think this is a real problem for the body politic, but I take solace will, as I'm sure you do, that
00:17:48
Speaker
that the broad cross-section of the Australian people have no time for the notion of cancer culture or identity politics.
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. The thread that runs through this is this self-flagellating instinct that I think was always there in the fringes of leftist academic thought. Self-flagellating instinct in Australia, but across the West. Yeah. This was a very good example of that. I think it's now spread further. You're right. It doesn't have mainstream support, but it certainly isn't a fringe feeling anymore. Where does this self-flagellating instinct when it comes to looking at our own history come from? Oh, I think a lot of it does come from universities.
00:18:26
Speaker
There's been a concerted campaign across the Western world, not just in Australia, it's actually more entrenched in the United States and indeed Britain, a concerted campaign to quote, decolonize the curricula. Now, when I went to university at our alma mater at the University of Sydney, well, you know, this is in the early to mid nineties and I studied modern history. Most of the courses were about European, American, Australian,
00:18:52
Speaker
colonial history or British or political and economic diplomatic history, pretty conventional history. Those courses don't exist anymore with rare exceptions. They're instead taught doing these courses on postmodernism, which basically looks at the past through today's lens. And that is always very dangerous. The past is complicated. It is another, it's another country of the past. But when you look at the past, when you look at our history, you've got to put their events in their proper
00:19:22
Speaker
context. And moreover, I think what gets lost on a lot of these groups that preach victimhood is that they fail to recognize that we in the West have this amazing proven record of correcting failure. Yes, slavery was part of the West's 1600s and 1700s, but it was also the West led by William Alberforce and the Brits that ended slavery at a time, by the way, when a lot of the African slave lords on the continent of Africa still wanted to support slavery.
00:19:49
Speaker
Very good piece in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago by an African academic named Ebenezer Obadari. He's from the Council on Foreign Relations. If listeners have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, just Google Wall Street Journal, African Slave Trade, Western Culture. Brilliant article, just making the point that there's a lot of hypocrisy around this subject.
00:20:12
Speaker
I spoke to Professor Bruce Gilly a few days ago who has come out with a book recently called The Case for Colonialism. This interview actually will come out before the interview with Bruce. Bruce has created a name for himself in academic circles and actually more broadly now is one of the few people who will stand up for the positive side of colonialism and make the argument that on balance, in every instance of colonialism,
00:20:37
Speaker
The arrival of a colonial power was a net positive for the colonized for that. He has been publicly ostracized. He's been shamed. He's had the full de-platforming phenomenon thrown his way. What are your reflections on public debate now and on, on the rise of cancel culture, both in academia and more generally? Well, it's, it's, it's ultimately very illiberal. I mean, the mark of a good education will.
00:21:06
Speaker
and this really should not be even said, it sort of just should be well understood, is to look at different schools of thought, different interpretation, different views. No one view is right. I was so lucky at the University of Sydney in the early 90s to have a lecturer and a tutor who ultimately became a very good friend and mentor, Professor Neville Mainy, whose politics were probably left to centre, but that wasn't the point.
00:21:34
Speaker
he made sure that his students always recognized it was a debate or competing interpretations about any particular issue in history. So on American foreign policy, there'd be three schools of thought. The realist school of thought that believed that America generally intervened in world affairs based on the national interests. There was a national liberal Wilsonian idealistic school of thought that believed that America played a very prompt,
00:22:00
Speaker
beneficial role in the world, a force for the good by promoting democracy and liberty. And then there was the New Left, or Marxist interpretation, which stressed that America was primarily motivated by economic imperialism.
00:22:14
Speaker
And on any given issue, each of the three schools of thought would have their merits and their weaknesses. And the task of the class was to always look at the pros and the cons of the schools of thought. Well, I'm afraid to say people like Neville Manley are fossils. They don't exist anymore. They don't teach those consequences. Instead, more often than not, students are taught only one view, and that view is invariably one to be ashamed of their country or their civilization.
00:22:37
Speaker
not intellectually rigorous. So I think that's ultimately the problem and I think it's actually as bizarre as this might sound, it's more entrenched in the United States and in Britain.
00:22:50
Speaker
And you're starting to see this now over the issue of Israel and Palestinians. I mean, we just had this congressional testimony from three presidents of Ivy League universities and they flunk the test. And it was a good, good PR exercise in highlighting the folly of a lot of these woke academics who are out of touch mainstream society, but they've managed to capture the institutions and peddle this victimhood, which I think is a bad thing for public discourse.
00:23:19
Speaker
Yes, and I note that one of the three have subsequently resigned as a result of flunking that test and only two to go. I'll move to your fourth area of concern that you mentioned in your first, your introductory comments, and that is on China. This feels to me like an issue where too many people have their head in the sand on the threat of China. So first question, will China retake Taiwan or try
China-Taiwan Relations and Historical Context
00:23:46
Speaker
to? And if so, when?
00:23:48
Speaker
Oh, I don't know the answer to that question. And frankly, I don't think anyone does know the answer to it. I think that until relatively recently, China's interventions on the Taiwan Straits has primarily been about just preserving the status quo that was formed in 1972 when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger formed the Shanghai communique with the People's Republic of China, where I think the Americans acknowledged that the Chinese view that Taiwan is part of China. But those days are over.
00:24:17
Speaker
The great hope, and I reflected this mindset, the Western mindset, was that China would, the more capitalists it would become, the more open it would become to the rest of the world, the more likely it would embrace, if not democracy, then more liberalism at home and its rise abroad would be relatively benign. I wasn't alone. I mean, this was the overwhelming conventional wisdom about engagement with China, which obviously worked for countries like Australia because it helps explain why we've become so prosperous, the China trade.
00:24:46
Speaker
However, those days are well and truly over, and now China is increasingly becoming more assertive on the world stage. And in some respects, this is not surprising because it's a rise in great power. And anyone who studies the history of international relations knows that as a power's economic rise continues, it's understandable that the leaders of that power will want to convert those economic assets into military assets
00:25:15
Speaker
and create a sphere of influence in areas on which its future stability and prosperity and security depend. And that's what China is doing. The problem for China, of course, is that the reigning hegemon in our Asia, thankfully, is the United States. And it's my view, and this is now probably a bypass and consensus in Washington, one of the few areas of agreement in Washington,
00:25:40
Speaker
America, whether it's a Republican or a Democrat, will go to great lengths to make sure that China does not dominate the Asia Pacific. And the goal for American Statecraft in the last few years, and this will intensify over the next five to 10 years, is to try to cobble together a group of states like Australia, Japan, South Korea, India, Vietnam, Philippines, among others, to balance against China.
00:26:08
Speaker
And hopefully that balancing coalition will exist. So we don't have to live in an Asia Pacific dominated by the People's Republic of China. Because if we lived under a China-led Asia, that would have all sorts of negative consequences for Australian prosperity and security, in my judgment. And I think that's a widely held view on the country. I want to dive deeper on that bet that the West made in the 80s, in the 90s, to say that economic liberalism would lead to political liberalism.
Post-Cold War Theories and Great Power Politics
00:26:39
Speaker
the Clintonian Blair right judgment in fairness. And I think you said this, this is based off historical principles that largely had been established over a long period of time. The end of history. Yeah. Which may have actually popped up in, in one of your, uh, one of your, your lectures. It didn't turn out that way.
00:26:57
Speaker
Why? Well, there's no such thing as the end of history because, because of the tragedy of great power politics, as John Mirshama calls his thesis. In the post-Cold War era, there had been three major post-Cold War interpretations of the future of international relations. One, Frank Fukuyama, the end of history, which talked about the end point of humankind's ideological evolution,
00:27:19
Speaker
the triumph of Western liberal democracy and market capitalism. The other interpretation was Samuel Huntington's Clash to Civilization, which got a lot of attention after the 9-11 terror attacks. The third most prominent post-Cold War thesis was my friend, very good friend and mentor John Mearsheimer. 2001, he turned his realist philosophy into a major groundbreaking book called The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. And what he said was, at the time,
00:27:46
Speaker
The world would become more interdependent, more capitalist, if you like, and therefore, according to the Fukuyamas and the Thomas Freedmans of the world, the world would become more prosperous and we'd have no more conflict because we'd all be democracies. Well, Nishema repudiated that mindset by saying that conflict and insecurity
00:28:06
Speaker
are inevitable byproducts of the international system. Even if all countries are democracies, you're still going to have tensions because that is the tragedy of the international system. In the human sphere, and I hate to say this as someone who's a conservative who believes in so-called family values, but the most interdependent unit in the human sphere is the family.
00:28:29
Speaker
and yet it's in the family where most murders are likely to take place. Or at least, put it this way, most murders are likely to take place among people who know each other well. You're more likely to be murdered by someone you know than a stranger. It's the same thing with international relations, has interdependency and knowing each other well played out well for the Israelis and the Palestinians, or the Indians and the Pakistanis.
00:28:54
Speaker
So why should, this was Mishima's argument, why should China's rise be peaceful? They'll want to exercise their economic power and turn it into military power and become the top dog. The Americans won't let it. And at the time, Mishima was laughed off because they said realism was for the 19th century European balance of power system. We're now liberals. We're all liberals. The end of history is triumphed. We're living in what Charles Krauthammer called the unipolar moment. Well,
00:29:23
Speaker
Krauthammer and Fukuyama look foolish today, and Mirshama looks increasingly intellectually vindicated. Now that's not a good thing for the world, but from an intellectual exercise, he was right, and his critics were wrong.
00:29:36
Speaker
Historians will say that there's maybe two ways of looking at history. There is the kind of forces view of history to say that history is shaped by macro forces that are above and beyond individuals. And then there is the great man view of history that people of particular personality in a moment can shape the times to their will. And look, as with most things, it's probably a combination of the two. You've just looked at some of the forces that are shaping the rise of China.
00:30:06
Speaker
To me, it feels like the personality of Xi is really important in this story. How does Xi as a person, as a leader, play into this? Well, opinion varies. I mean, you are not alone. I think there are a lot of commentators who agree with you that the arrival of Xi Jinping as leader of PRC, I think it was in 2012, might've been 2013, but it was more than a decade ago. That was the beginning of China's relentless
00:30:34
Speaker
rise both economically and especially militarily. Peter Hartscher from the Sydney Morning Herald, for example, is a prominent advocate of that school of thought. I think there's some truth to that. He is a larger-than-life figure. He certainly poses his will and influence on China, unlike any Chinese leader since probably Mao Zedong. So I wouldn't discount that argument. But Miesheimer's counter-argument is that what we've been seeing with China over the last 10 years would have happened regardless of Xi Jinping.
00:31:04
Speaker
because China wants to convert its economic power into military power and impose its will and influence across the region. The answer is probably in between. Nevertheless, regardless of who's right, the fact is China is a more menacing player in the world scene than it was 10, 20 years ago.
00:31:23
Speaker
You'd be aware of geopolitical analyst Peter Zion. Peter Zion would say something along the lines of demographics in China are buggered. They're done. They're set for demographics collapse sometime in the next 10 years. And that with a few other factors means that the rise of China will be over before it started. What do you make of that line of thinking? Well, it's a plausible argument.
00:31:50
Speaker
There's one problem with that argument is that I've heard that argument about China's demography for the last 20 years. I mean, Gordon Chang, I'm not picking on Gordon, he's a very good scholar, but he wrote a book about the coming collapse of China 20 years ago. And one of his main arguments was demography. Look at China today compared to 20 years ago. One of the advantages China has, of course, is that they're very good about investing in robotics and artificial intelligence. And to the extent those trends continue in China, that might help.
00:32:19
Speaker
with their looming demographic crisis. I'm no expert on the subject, but that demographic argument that Zion makes is not new. I mean, that has been around. China will grow old before it grows rich, as the saying goes. I think it'd be foolish to assume that even though there's a lot of merit to the argument, that'll be primarily responsible for China's coming collapse simply because we keep hearing this argument. Look, China does have a lot of weaknesses and limitations. I think a lot of the younger people
00:32:48
Speaker
getting fed up, the standard of living has declined. I think the unemployment rate for millennials and Gen Z is very, very high in China. That's bound to have some sort of consequences over the next few years. Despite all the talk about China investing heavily in renewables, they're still heavily dependent on fossil fuels, coal, gas and oil. Yeah, so I just wouldn't, I wouldn't take too much heart in the demography argument. I think if you're a strategist in Canberra or Washington or Tokyo or
00:33:17
Speaker
Delhi, you are on the side of caution. And Gisham himself makes this point, his whole thesis is premised on China's economy continuing to grow. Now it was going at like 12, 13%, 20 years ago, going to 10% and 8, 9%. Now it's come off dramatically in the wake of the COVID lockdowns. But I would not underestimate China's capacity to bounce back from their setbacks.
00:33:42
Speaker
Last week's episode was with Naomi Wolf. Naomi makes the argument that she thinks that Australia should be concerned with the level of Chinese involvement in Australian politics. She thinks that China has particular designs on Australia. She is very much in the camp that there is cause for concern here. The question is, is how worried should Australia be about Chinese involvement in our politics?
Australia's Resistance to Chinese Influence
00:34:10
Speaker
Well, I think this is a great credit to the Australian political system. Again, Peter Hartridge has written a lot about this over the course of the last eight years, and he was all too often mocked by the enthusiasts of the China lobby. But the Australian government, both coalition and labor, have responded to Chinese intimidation admirably. And the classic case in point was the foreign investment, sorry, foreign investment. Foreign, help me out here, the foreign interference laws that were passed by the Turnbull government with broad bipartisan support in late 2017. And during COVID,
00:34:38
Speaker
The CCP, with their wolf warrior diplomacy, tried to intimidate Australia's political leaders. Who can forget that long list of demands the CCP put to Australia so that we could resume normal trade relations with China? We had to conform to their expectations about how we conduct politics and policy in this country. And one of their ridiculous demands is we shut down a think tank that had been critical of China. I mean, the gall. So I think Canberra is well aware to the dangers of Chinese intimidation.
00:35:08
Speaker
And I think that both sides of politics should be commended for standing up to China. And we haven't given up anything for China to reach out to us. They recognize that wolf warrior diplomacy has been a complete and utter failure. Now they're doing the charm offensive. And I think the concern now is that Anthony Albanese gets sort of hooked into this belief that normal programming can resume. Well, that horse bolted several years ago during the Trump Turnbull era. We're not going back to those
00:35:35
Speaker
starry-eyed days of Western engagement with China, are we? Let's move to the US. You are one of the most esteemed observers of American politics in Australia.
Unpredictable US Elections and Political Shifts
00:35:46
Speaker
Be careful, I did get Trump wrong in 2016. Well, I'll invite you now to make up for that mistake. How will 2024 play out in American politics? You know, Will, I don't think anyone, even the most seasoned observers of Washington politics can answer that question.
00:36:02
Speaker
I think 2024 could be the most unpredictable and exciting presidential election race since 1968. Now, some listeners may not be aware of 68, but that was at the height of the Vietnam War protests, the race riots, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, civil rights leader, Senator Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy's brother.
00:36:25
Speaker
A lot of polarization in the political DNA in Washington. And the candidates were Richard Nixon for the Republicans, who no one thought would bounce back after his setbacks against John F. Kennedy in 1960. And when he lost to Pat Wilson for the governorship of California in 1962, he came back from nowhere to become the Republican candidate.
00:36:47
Speaker
Democrat candidate was supposed to be the incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, and he resigned spectacularly after a stuff up in Vietnam. And he was replaced by his vice president, Hubert Humphrey. And then there was a third party candidate, a former governor, a Democrat governor from Alabama, a guy named George Wallace, who's a bit like a Trump like figure, very polarizing populist type figure. And he got a pretty significant percentage of the vote. I think he even won something like six to seven states. So it was a highly unpredictable election. Nixon won just
00:37:16
Speaker
I don't know what the heck's going to happen next year. I mean, at this stage, Trump looks like the nominee, but there are several indictments on him. For all we know, he could even be arrested and sorry, he could be tried and put in jail before the federal, before the national election. I'm not saying that will happen. That could happen. Biden, I mean, he's one four from surely stepping down. He's just seems incapable of being in the office. Kamala Harris has not met expectations. She's been a big disappointment as vice president.
00:37:43
Speaker
There is Nikki Haley, who's very sharp and sound. She's relatively young in her early 50s. Wealth of experience. But she doesn't really dole out the ideological red meat to the conservative base. She'd probably beat Biden. She'd probably smash Biden one on one. But she's got to win the nomination and she's badly trailing Trump. And meanwhile, there's scope for other independents and third party candidates.
00:38:05
Speaker
I genuinely don't know what's going to happen next year. And frankly, even if you're a lead columnist at the Washington Post or the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, frankly, they're the last people I'd get for advice because those guys got Trump so spectacularly wrong in 2016, didn't they?
00:38:20
Speaker
I can see why you made that parallel with, was it 62? 68. 68. Because like 68, there will be a third party candidate, which will be RFK jr. Now I don't think this has been talked about enough in some polls and they're probably maybe the extreme end, but he's polling up to 20%. It's probably, probably lower than that, but it'll still be, I think a meaningful chunk of the vote. Well, it'd be unlikely to do to win, but when he does take that 10 to 20% of the vote, will that help Biden or Trump more?
00:38:50
Speaker
Look, it's hard to read. Well, it just depends on the state. It's a state by state issue. I just don't know how much he would hurt Biden or Trump. It's just very difficult to answer. I'm sorry, mate. I haven't stated the subject in detail. And frankly, I don't think even if one had, they could be sure who he hurts more. I suspect he hurts Biden more and that's good for Trump, but I don't know to what extent. The other thing you have to bear in mind is that there may well be some other third party candidates and they may win, you know, one, two, three, 5% of the vote.
00:39:20
Speaker
And that, so for example, if there's a Greens candidate who wins, you know, three, 4%, that's three to 4% being taken away from Biden. I mean, should be pretty clear to spectator listeners, but there's a big difference between the US and the Australian election system. There's no second preferences in America. It's just a first pass the post. So if you have a left wing candidate who does, you know, it's five to 10% of the vote, that's likely to hurt Biden. Biden's not going to get more preferences because you can't give preferences.
00:39:51
Speaker
Whereas in Australia, he's in Albo Lucky, he's got the greens. He gets 32% of the primary vote, but he still becomes prime minister because he gets all the green preferences and the teal preferences. That's another subject. Hard to be sure. This is the magic of American politics.
00:40:10
Speaker
We'll get to Australia before we finish, but one more question on the US and it requires us to zoom out. In my view, the story of American politics of my lifetime has been the inversion of the major parties. The Republicans are quickly taking the working classes as the Democrats have moved and taken the cities and the wealthy elites, for want of a better word. How has that inversion happened?
00:40:35
Speaker
Oh, well, look, I think this is a Western problem or not problem, but it's a Western trend. Well, I think you see the same thing happening in Britain at the 2019 general election. Boris Johnson, the Tories smashed Labour's red wall of working class constituencies in northern England and the Midlands. It's quite striking. And these are diehard Labour supporters. They voted for the Tories en masse. And intriguingly, at the same time, a lot of the
00:41:03
Speaker
Tory grassroots from the Tory Shires in the south of England, voted for the Liberal Democrats because they don't like the polarising politics of Boris Johnson. So the same trend's happening in Britain. I think you're starting to see it a bit here in Australia, although it may have even been evident when John Howard was Prime Minister when he won over a lot of Labor working class, so-called, bat-like constituencies.
00:41:27
Speaker
In America, it's really been intensified by the rise of Donald Trump. I mean, he has tapped into this widespread sense of discontent among a lot of working class voters, primarily white working class folks in those Rust Belt states, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania. These are folks who generally vote, well had voted Democrat from the end of the Reagan era, right through to the Obama era.
00:41:55
Speaker
And Trump tapped into their anxieties and he did so on not just identity politics and cancel culture and the woke cultural agenda, but he did it on economics. He did not appeal to this demographic by championing traditional Republican free market principles of low tax, free trade and immigration. He did it on high tariffs and more government intervention to save those welfare programs. So Trump.
00:42:23
Speaker
is not a right-winger in the conventional sense. He's hard to pigeonhole.
00:42:43
Speaker
It's hard to see the latter anytime in the foreseeable future. I think Trump has helped remake the Republican party. It's no longer the party of Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
00:43:00
Speaker
It's no longer the party of immigration or free markets and free trade and a Pax Americana. It's now a more inward looking, parochial, protectionist, culturally conservative party. And I think it's to Trump's great credit that he's been able to reach out to a completely different demographic and bring them into the Republican tent. The flip side, though, will is that as we saw the 2018 midterm elections,
00:43:29
Speaker
2020 presidential election, those two Georgia Senate runoff seats in early 2021, and indeed in the midterm elections in 2022. The flip side is that Trump's polarizing style of politics that may well play well with that demographic, working class demographic we talked about, that alienates a lot of more moderate traditional Republicans in the suburbs. They're just turned off by his polarizing style.
00:43:55
Speaker
And I get that completely because I think, I mean, in my experience, having lived in Washington and spent a lot of time in the United States over the years, I know a lot of those Republicans, they don't like the Democrats, but they just really love Trump. He upsets their sensibilities. And so the danger for Trump is that, yes, he might be appealing to this new demographic, but those erstwhile traditional Republicans in the suburbs are tuning out. They just don't like his polarizing style politics. So it's a mixed record, electorally, for Trump.
00:44:25
Speaker
And it's not altogether clear how things will play out during the course of 2024. Let's finish with Australia. It's an old Australian political maxim that we don't punt first term governments. At the same time, things have not been going well for the government since the voice referendum. How worried should Anthony Albanese be heading into 2024?
Australian Government Challenges and Resignation Announcement
00:44:47
Speaker
Isn't again, politics magical. Remember in April of this year, the Labor Party or the Labor government did something that no government
00:44:54
Speaker
which is win a by-election from government. From the opposition, in the Aston by-election in Victoria in April 2023, and the overwhelming conventional wisdom in the media, I descended, I wrote a piece in the Australian challenging this mindset.
00:45:08
Speaker
That's why I remember it. The overwhelming conventional wisdom, the Paul Kelly's, the Troy Bramson's, Laura Tingles, Nicky Sarver's, Canberra Press Gallery. Oh, this is doom and gloom for the Liberal Party. They're headed for, they're facing an existential crisis. Labor's going to be predominant forever. Oh, it's nonsense. Absolute nonsense. And look, here we are eight months later, and the same commentators are saying, well, you can't rule out Peter Dutton as prime minister.
00:45:37
Speaker
and they raise the prospect of a one-term government. These commentators, they oscillate from one extreme to another. What's happening here is normal programming is resumed. Politics in this country is always a 50-50 exercise. Every election is going to be close. There's going to be a landslide. It's going to be like
00:45:55
Speaker
47 53 and the two party preferred vote. You'll never get a 60 40 result as we did in the referendum at a federal election. Just doesn't happen. Both parties are competitive. Albo is bleeding, but it's not an open wound. He can bounce back. I think his biggest problem, of course, is the cost of living crisis. I think the voice referendum hurt him badly. And I do think that Peter Darden has a good chance of winning office. But it's going to be tough because although Labor
00:46:24
Speaker
has a majority of only three seats, I think, in the House of Representatives. It might come down to two after the by-election in Dunkley in February of next year. That will be one to watch. Look, it's still going to be tough for Peter and the Liberals because they
00:46:42
Speaker
They need awareness. I think it's something like 17 to 18 seats. That's very difficult in the first term. But look at some history. John Howard won a landslide against Paul Keating in 1996. In 1998, he lost the two-party preferred vote to Kim Beasley. He still won narrowly. Big setback for Howard. That was over the GST. Fast forward to 2010, first-term government. Rudd gets knocked off by Gillard. She takes the party, and she loses majority status for the first time since the Depression. She only just got in because of those independents.
00:47:12
Speaker
Oak Shot and Windsor as treacherous bastards. But she nearly lost power. Tony Abbott nearly won the unwinnable election. And then, of course, you go to 2016. Tony Abbott won a massive landslide against Labor in 2030. Malcolm Turnbull comes along, loses all of Tony Abbott's fat, nearly loses the election on the night. And what does he do? He calls the police. Remember, he called the AFP to complain about Labor's dirty tactics. So these are the last three first term governments they nearly lost.
00:47:41
Speaker
And Albo's only got a majority of what, 32.6% of the primary vote and only two, three seats in the majority in the House. So circumstances can change quickly and without warning in politics. And that's what makes it so magical. So I would not write Peter Dutton off, but I also would refrain from dancing on Albo's grave just now.
00:47:59
Speaker
Well, we will get you back onto Australia in 2024 once some of those circumstances become clear. Tom, you have always been one of my favorite analysts, not just on Australian politics, but global geopolitics. Thank you very much for coming on.
00:48:14
Speaker
How can people engage more with the wonderful work that the Center for Independent Studies is doing? Thanks for asking. I've been hosting a radio national program out of all places, the ABC, for the best part of the decade. And I've just resigned. I've enjoyed my time at Radio National. But one of the reasons why I've resigned is I just want to focus more on CIS. So thank you for the plug. Center for Independent Studies. It's a classical liberal public policy think tank. In Sydney, we do a lot of work on economics, education, indigenous affairs, welfare, housing affordability, among other public policy areas. CIS.org.au.
00:48:44
Speaker
Sometime in the new year, I will resume my YouTube channel, which has, I think, 90,000 subscribers, which isn't bad for an Australian think tank. And we'll be engaged with the rest of the world on big public policy issues. But this has been a lot of fun. Will, thank you so much for having me on.
00:49:00
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. Sign up for a digital subscription today and you'll get your first month absolutely free.