1869, Ep. 124 with Peter Katzenstein and Jonathan Kirshner, coeditors of The Downfall of the American Order?

4:42PM Nov 15, 2022

Speakers:

Jonathan Hall

Peter Katzenstein

Jonathan Kirshner

Keywords:

book

uncertainty

people

world

peter

american politics

united states

american

lead

order

america

important

political

politics

domestic politics

global financial crisis

future

concept

downfall

international

Welcome to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast. I'm Jonathan Hall. In this episode we speak with Peter Katzenstein and Jonathan Kirshner, co editors of the new book, The Downfall of the American Order? Peter Katzenstein is the Walter S Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies at Cornell University. He is the author, coauthor, editor and coeditor of more than 40 books, edited volumes or monographs. Jonathan Kirschner is Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Boston College. His recent books include American Power after the Financial Crisis, and An Unwritten Future. We spoke to Peter and Jonathan about the deep uncertainty that currently marks America's position in the world, what changes in the international order they see looming ahead in the future, and what their greatest hopes and fears are for the coming decade. Hello, Peter, and Jonathan, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, for having us.

Thanks for having us.

Of course, of course, it's a pleasure to talk to both you. I want to congratulate you on your new book, the edited volume, The Downfall of the American Order? And first question I had is how did this project come about? What's the backstory to this book?

Well, we have been living next to each other on the same floor opposites across the hall, and over the last 20 plus years, have watched this down for take shape. And it probably starts with the tech bubble and 2000 and the widespread criminal behavior Enron and others. And soon thereafter, started two long wars, which were, you know, wars of choice, certainly the Iraq War. And which turned out a total disaster.

Yes, and I think that what we saw from that, and also, of course, from the global financial crisis, and I would stress, really the aftermath of the global financial crisis and perceptions of fairness about it, and the Great Recession, was that there was a change underlying in American politics and elsewhere, that were very suggestive of the fact that what had been the American disposition globally, was likely going to change. And this, of course, comes to a combination with the rise of outsider candidates in 2016. And the rise of what can only be described as nativist nationalism or within the US, which is very much not how one would describe the image of America's engagement on the world stage, after the Second World War, and in the three quarters of a century beyond that.

I mean, there this was foreshadowed in the 1990s, of course, by politicians like Pat Buchanan and the Republican Party and Ross Perot as an independent who basically gave the presidency to Bill Clinton to take almost 20% of the vote from the older bush. But those candidates didn't bring the kind of animals and mass mobilization that the Tea Party did after 2012. Enraged by the fallout of the financial crisis, now, millions of people lost their homes, in the bankers ended up making more money. So that then leads to the Trump presidency in many ways. But we saw this unfold over 20 years. So this is not the downfall is not rapid. It's a long story.

And it also has its roots in really a 40 year story of widening wealth and income inequality in the US that I think is exacerbates the reaction to the global financial crisis and its aftermath, again, in the global financial crisis, the financial system almost certainly had to be saved. But there was the widespread and fair perception that those who perpetuated the crisis were people who had done really well for quite some time, and that they will continue to do well, whereas the vast majority of the population as a result were fed the Great Recession and political paralysis within the US meant that there was not going to be kind of big, bold policy initiatives that would help out what we could call the innocence of the global financial crisis. It's not our book, but I think Adam Tooze his book crash said very presciently that the election of 2016 was more about 2008 than the election of 2012 was.

Right. I think, I think Obama's presidency, considered the resentment and then intensifies that because the latent racism is brought about brought out by Obama as a president. And so that the Republican Party in 2012 says our only aim is to make sure that you don't achieve anything. And by 2015, you know, they actually deny the President making an appointment to the Supreme Court, charting the course towards a system of minority rule. So we see these, these as long term development, many of them rooted in American politics and intensified by international developments with feedback on the United States.

Interesting, interesting. Yeah, that all makes sense. And there's this move from order to disorder or even chaos. You also mentioned the word uncertainty. Here's a quote from your book, "Contemporary American politics reflects bone shattering uncertainty. And uncertainty also marks America's position in the world. admirer, admiring loathing and fear in America, have been complemented by something unexpected and new, pitying America." Tell us more about this.

So this, I think, is the reaction of the road looking at the million people dying as a result of COVID in the United States. Because of an inadequate public health system, skewed to the upper middle class and rich, but leaving behind minorities and the lower middle class, we intensified I think, by the steep skepticism about science, and a very substantial segment of the American public. And from other parts of the world, the East Asia be Western Europe, they look at us and saying, Oh, this is a really very sad and sorry, state. We we're not, you know, the beacon of the free world.

I'd also like to hone in on that word uncertainty that you flagged because in our work more generally, Peter and I are very invested in this concept. And it's a little bit of inside baseball. But I think it's important to emphasize the role of uncertainty and understanding both domestic and international politics, because people often think, well, it's we don't know what's going to happen. But it's more than that. I mean, if you roll two dice, you don't know what number is going to come up. But you do know exactly what the probability of any given number is that's coming up. In a world of uncertainty, we really don't even understand the likely range of the possible. And so part of this book reflects the fact that we are in world politics in this in this environment of uncertainty. And that's, that's part of which leads to the editorial compromise of the question mark, after the title of downfall of the American order. And that emphasis on the fact that we just don't know what's going to happen next. And we don't even have a full set of tools, so like, command with confidence to say, well, if this happens, then this happens. Rather, it's sudden events that really can transform expectations. Unexpectedly, I think the I think the current Ukraine war is an example of that. Most people didn't expect the war to unfold in this way, and neither side got the war they expected to get and the political reactions from that were also consequential and also consequential of the potential prospects for the American order. But again, I don't think these were on the front of people's minds. I don't think this was just a variety of probabilities that people could have anticipated in advance, but rather, it was almost what we could call an exogenous shock. That sort of shook things up. And then we had to imagine what the responses to it and consequences of it might be.

I think that's right. I mean, I actually just published a book this year, Uncertainty and Its Discontents Worldviews in World Politics. And, of course, uncertainty is a key concept in 20th century physics. But students of our politics are convinced that Newtonian ism is the science of the future, even though it's now 150 years out of date. And they often equate the concept of risk with the concept of uncertainty. And often they're very good at statistically measuring things after they've happened. But they cannot imagine writing about things which might be possible, or potentially just, that's just not in our not just theirs, but in our toolkit and There's a certain kind of hubris there. And as I say, I'm in a very committed view of science, which I regard as pretty old fashioned. I don't think many natural scientists would look at it that way. They think the world doesn't know its own future. So how would be.

And also, if I could shift gears slightly, I did want to raise this important issue of uncertainty. But another part of your question had to do with perceptions of America. And I do think that those have changed over the past decade. And I think that those matter dramatically, again, if we're living in a world in which uncertainty rules, then we have to try and make the best guesses we have, or can possibly make about the behavior of some countries, especially really big and important countries. And it's not surprising that lots of countries around the world are reassessing their guesses about the likely behavior of the United States on the world stage. And again, that speaks to the core theme of the volume, the downfall of the American order, American politics was always tumultuous. But nevertheless, I think people could be confident in their expectations about how the US was going to more or less behave with regard to its commitment to its alliances, it's engaged with us, again, with important exceptions. But nevertheless, we've entered into a period now, where actors it would be irresponsible of them not to reassess their expectations about how the US will behave. And that's why I think it implicates the so called American order and its future in our volume.

Right, I mean, Saudi Arabia right now, the crisis in energy pricing, you know, it's a good example of a very trusted ally, feeling it is time to break out from an alliance which the United States thought was fairly secure. And this is important international, but it is important also that Saudi Arabia wants to play a different role in a world, which is different from the world of 1945 or 1976, when the deal between security and oil pricing was really struck between the United States and Saudi Arabia, it's just one further illustration.

Exactly. And a good one, because the US has implicitly guaranteed Saudi security in the past would, as Peter just said, in the 1970s. But is that commitment, really currently credible, medical reasons to believe it might not be and again, Gulf states have to really make that assessment on their own and come to conclusions about their relationships with the United States. But this has to go along in Europe and in Asia as well. I think, personally, I welcome this reassessment with regard to America has come into the Middle East. But it's more problematic when you start to talk about the countries of Europe and Asia and their assessments of productive American engagement with the world.

Interesing. Interesting, interesting. So you, along with extraordinary group of contributors, have presented your ideas and prognostications. What do you both see as the largest and most consequential changes in the international order that are looming ahead?

Well, it's not an international order, it is disorder, and the disorder starts at home. United States domestic politics, looked at from abroad is not trustworthy. And it is likely to spiral downward further than it has so far. So people look at the election coming up in a few weeks, or 2024. But that may be too short a timeframe to look at the rise of right wing populist government, which will eventually of course, will also lead to left wing populist government led by political cadres who simply do not trust or want democratic politics. And that is a profound shift in American politics we've reverberating globally, and you find it of course, you know, in Brazil and Italy, wherever different reasons similar right wing. political movements have arisen, or Britain, the Conservative Party after 2016 Basically, Britain and the United States as leaders of neoliberalism have collapsed, the right wing has collapsed. And this is providing enormous shockwaves for international disorder.

I agree that it's these domestic social and political upheavals, are the things that are likely to define the messiness of the emerging international disorder. But I would also like to call attention to to themes here that are important for the book. One has to do with learning and forgetting and one has to do with bargains. I do think that this notion that the American order, which we oversimplify or I oversimplify, that emerges after the Second World War, one of the things that was built on was the lessons of the past the idea that the previous 30 years had gone rather poorly. And we didn't want to do that, again, from the United States perspective, that meant a sort of short sighted America first style foreign policy, which was replaced after the second world war with something that could be called an enlightened self interest, a more forward looking definition of what was in America's interest. And that was global engagement. But I think that the lessons of the interwar period, well, those lessons are now approaching 100 years old, and so people can learn, but people can often forget. Similarly, the American order emerges out of the trauma of the Great Depression. And there were certain kind of social economic bargains within an across the societies that were reached after the Second World War. And those two started to unravel. I think even earlier, we can trace this easily to some of the changes in the 1980s, which led to a shift from a more inclusive economic order to a more Dickensian interpretation of what capitalism looked like.

Yeah, I mean, the growth of the welfare state was really is predicated in Europe on a bargain, reset the inequities of the market need to be regulated, and the concept of embedded liberalism, which is very important in this book. And of course, John Ruggie, esteemed colleague and close friend over many decades, who died shortly after the book was completed. Very unfortunate loss for all of us coined this concepts, in order to point in the 1980s already to the DIS embedding of markets due to the push for the neoliberal policy solutions by the United States and Britain foremost. And the adverse consequences of that set of policy solutions, eventually had the pendulum swing back. And we are now in the era of right wing populism in domestic politics and with its nationalist status consequences in international relations, hollowing out what remains of the liberal order, or the American auto.

And indeed, many of the chapters of the book, including John's own chapter, route back to a revisitation of his notion of the embedded liberal order, and how it has to some extent unraveled in recent years.

Excellent, excellent. You talk about no one can predict the future, obviously, and you have a great quote where you say we want to be power walking into the future, when in fact, we are always just tapping our canes on the pavement in the fog. What's great, now clearly that we there's no crystal ball, there's no perfect prediction of the future. But I just wanted to hear from both of you. If we could, as you were saying, Peter moved from just the the midterm elections or 2014. But let's take a decade into the future. What is your greatest hope, given the current trajectory? And what is your greatest fear?

Well, I think the two responses are one is, there will be a lot of policy experimentation, and you never know what comes out of experimentation. Experimentation is not the same as an experiment. Many students of international nations are very much sold on conducting experiments with treatment variables and accurate predictions and confidence intervals. Experimentation is really a concept from Albert Hirschman says, You muddled through, you try things out, and you fall into truth, by trying things out. Falling into truth as a concept is sort of an interesting idea. So it's possible that in this year of international disorder, we will fall into some kind of truth, which we do not see yet. So that's one prospect over the next 10 or 15 years. And the other one is one thing which we do see is clearly the likely catastrophic impact of the environment. And that is a long term change, to which capitalism hopefully will provide solutions in terms of some technical fixes like geothermal, or hydrogen and an energy but which more importantly will energize the next generation in political ways which we cannot foresee, but which are likely to upset the established Political patterns based on fear, despair and hate, which we find particularly in those segments of the population who feel that over the last 1020 3040 years, long term developments have disadvantaged them. And they're not wrong. They have disadvantage them. But I think a new kind of politics is likely to upset that political standoff which we have these days.

Once again, I'd like to underscore one one comment that Peter made about policy experimentation. I'm not really in the hook business myself. But there is one chapter in the volume of written by Eileen Grable, and she very much influenced by Hirshman that, as Peter invoke, emphasizes that one consequence that is actually positive of perhaps an erosion of an American order is creating the space for policy experimentation, which she thinks will lead to a variety of possibilities that might not have otherwise taken place. As for pessimism, I'm much more at home in that area. And my own view is high from the obvious climate crisis that again, Peter invoked my own greatest current concern, and I think it will affect the nature of international politics. And of course, domestic politics, is this generalized global rise of personalist authoritarianism, it's shocking to me. But it is, I think, a dangerous phenomenon and not easily explained, again, to my eyes. But it is it is not something we just see in the United States. It's something we can see on every continent, in which many parties seem to be turning to very strong and often authoritarian leadership. And I think that this will be something that defines the emerging pattern of international relations, and not for good, but I do so that is the thing that probably concerns me the most, acknowledging the fact that of course, climate change represents a global looming catastrophe that we need to reckon with. But as a kind of political scientist, I do think this phenomenon is the one that I find very disturbing. And you can even see it within authoritarian states, right? So they weren't democracies. But even some non democracies have transition towards an even more kind of ruthless form of personalist authoritarianism, that has the support of a lot of people within their societies. And this, I think, is not a good recipe for world politics. And also, it's rather incompatible with my own personal preferences.

Yeah, it's a move toward Caesarism. I mean, you could call it Putinism, but it's a form of Caesarism. And the Caesar is normally overreach. So I think this what's gonna happen most likely within the next 10 years. And this may be, you know, with catastrophic consequences, it might be incrementally and creating new political possibilities, which we cannot foresee right now. But one man dictatorships are not a happy solution for the problems the world is facing, and the 300 million Chinese who are writing on the lock, would attest to that. But they can't do anything about it.

Do you think there's a correlation between this uncertainty that we see in American politics, but we also see around the world with the authoritarian movements, you know, that if they're in if you're in a situation that is uncertain, there's disorder, you don't know what's going to happen? Having someone that you can look up to and has all the answers might make people feel comfortable?

Yeah, I don't know whether these people have the answers. They pretend they're if the answer, like build a wall that turned out that, you know, President Trump's migration problem wasn't solved. So but I think it is true that no widespread sense of uncertainty, disorientation, hopelessness, that will lead to people saying, well, maybe maybe this person will be able to solve my problems. I think that is true.

I agree. I think that that that instinct exists, I don't think it will well serve those people. But again, the the despair, we've talked about the fact that many people feel left out or disillusioned. I think that in that context, people can be susceptible to a charismatic demagogue who makes promises that he speaks for them. But, but what's remarkable is how this appears to be a rather global phenomenon and that that is is a little more complex and for me, not as easily understandable.

But in the Ukraine well received, this is not necessarily leading to good outcomes for the strong men pretending to have good answers, right? So

Certainly. Wow. Well, I really appreciate you both as well as your contributors doing a deep dive into the subject. It can only inspire any hope. But realism is important here. But I do like your term, Peter falling into truth, that perhaps this chaos that we're currently living in will result in a new emerging order, which we don't know. But that may move us forward in tackling these crises. So I want to thank you both for bringing this project together The Downfall of the American Order? Thank you so much, Peter, and Jonathan.

Thank you for having us.

Yes, thanks so much for having us but a pleasure.

That was Peter Katzenstein. And Jonathan Kirschner, coeditors of the new book The Downfall of the American Order? If you'd like to purchase their new book, use the promo code 09POD to save 30% on our website at Cornell press.cornell.edu. If you live in the UK, use the discount code CSANOUNNCE and visit the website combined.academic.co.uk Thank you for listening to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast