Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Ian Bremmer:

If you have a world where no country is prepared to exert or capable of exerting global leadership, what you really have is a GZERO, lots of leadership, but no global leadership.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Ian Bremmer. He’s the founder and president of Eurasia Group, a political risk consulting firm and GZERO Media. He also recently had a successful side gig as a stand-in for me as the host of Stay Tuned. When it comes to breaking down the complexities of geopolitics, Ian is my go-to guest. In the latest international headlines, President Biden marked his presence at the G20 Summit in India where the leaders of China and Russia were notably absent. And the UN General Assembly kicked off this week in New York City as leaders debate tackling various global crises. Ian and I discussed the significance of it all, including the many series of G summits, Putin’s current predicament, and the shifting global order. That’s coming up. Stay tuned.

Q&A

Now let’s get to your questions. This question comes in an email from Mike who writes, “Hi, Preet. I continue to listen to all your podcasts.” Well, thanks Mike. Mike goes on to write, “I have a question about gag orders, presuming that one is issued against Trump, what happens when he almost certainly violates it? How is it enforced?” Well, that’s a great question. Obviously you’re referring to what prosecutors have filed in recent days, a request for a narrow gag order against former president Donald Trump reciting that time and again, Donald Trump has said offensive things and derogatory things about people involved in the trial process, the prosecutor, the judge, sometimes people who might become witnesses at the trial. It’s unclear whether the judge will grant the gag order and one potential reason why it’s uncertain is the uncertainty of how to enforce it.

So I guess the options are among other things, a financial penalty if Donald Trump violates the gag order. I don’t know how much effect that will have. As one commentator wisely pointed out, a day or two after Donald Trump was held liable in a case brought by E. Jean Carroll, he went right back on television and defamed her again after a $5 million judgment was found against him. So I don’t know that financial penalties will do much to enforce a potential gag order. The other thing that the judge has threatened to do is move up the trial date. Right now, it’s scheduled for March of 2024. Possibly if she makes good on what she said earlier, a violation of the gag order would cause her to move up the trial date, which is some sanction, but obviously doesn’t stop Donald Trump from making continued statements in the public. The real tool that judges tend to have when there’s a violation of conditions of release, or in this case a related violation of a gag order, is to put the person in jail, detain the defendant pending trial.

Now, some might ask, well, why can’t that happen here? I mean, I guess it could. It’s possible. That would be a big deal given that Donald Trump is running for president again, is likely to be the nominee of his party in primary start in relatively short order. So some people are speculating that given the difficulty of enforcing a gag order and the notoriety that would attach and the complaints that would attach to putting Donald Trump in prison pending trial, she might not issue the gag order at all. By the way, I would also note that Donald Trump clearly would be irritated and aggrieved by any kind of gag order, narrow or otherwise, but there is I think, reasonable speculation that his lawyers who want to make sure the trial proceeds properly may not be aggrieved at all.

This question comes in an email from Anne who asks, “What kind of punishment would be normal in a case like Hunter Biden’s illegal gun purchase? I appreciate your reports.” Well, we’re getting a little bit ahead of the game as people, remember, Hunter Biden was set to plead guilty to a tax charge and get a pretrial diversion with respect to some gun charges. That plea fell apart, as we’ve talked about on the podcast before and just in the last few days, the special prosecutor now David Weiss in Delaware, filed an indictment in three counts relating to gun purchase by Hunter Biden. So he’s only indicted. He’s not convicted. Should he be convicted? Your question I think is a reasonable one. I haven’t run the precise guidelines range, but I would imagine that offense, a 922g offense, would carry a low single digit years, guidelines range for someone like him with no criminal history and given the nature of the charges in this case.

Bear in mind there’s no mandatory minimum with respect to these charges. There’s just the sentencing guidelines, which for some years now have been discretionary, not mandatory on federal district court judges. And remember the backdrop of this case and these particular charges, whether or not the plea agreement fell apart at some point at a proceeding is that at one point the government seemed content with allowing Hunter Biden not to be prosecuted at all for these same gun offenses. They were going to allow him to enter into pretrial diversion, meaning no guilty plea at all and no prison sentence associated with his charge. So I wouldn’t be surprised given the nature of the offense, given the first time offender status of the defendant and given the context of what the government had previously agreed to, which is known to the judge and can be taken into account because the judge is a human being, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sentence is quite low.

This question comes in an email from Stuart. “Hi, Preet. Love the podcast. Here’s my question. If the Georgia RICO trials get split into two or more groups, a speedy group and a slower group, do the results of the early trial impact others that follow? Can the later trial refer to conclusions of the first or must it prove them again? Is it the same judge?” Well, Stuart, that’s a very good question and a smart question. Obviously you’re referring to the fact that the trial will proceed in stages in Georgia. There were 19 defendants charged by Fani Willis, the District Attorney there. It looks like we’re going to have a trial at the end of October with respect to two defendants, and then maybe the rest of the defendants minus those who might plead guilty will be tried at a later proceeding. Maybe there’ll be two, maybe there’ll be three. We just don’t know yet.

As a general matter, I don’t know of any circumstance in which the result of an earlier trial will become known or be disclosed to the jury or juries in subsequent trials. I don’t see any way that in particular a verdict of guilty, but also one of acquittal would be disclosed to a jury at a later trial. It’d be prejudicial. It’s not relevant to the guilt or innocence of the next parties that are tried in the second or third trial. So that’s not coming in. However, there are two other things I would say about this. First, if there had been rulings made about the admissibility of evidence or something else in the first trial, given that it will be the same judge for the subsequent trials, unless there’s a change, the reasoning that the judge would apply to the admissibility or non-ad admissibility of that evidence would probably carry on and be the same reasoning in a subsequent trial. So you can expect some consistency in rulings about evidence and other matters.

The second thing I would say is you might have some overlap in witnesses testifying at a first trial and the second trial. I think you’ll almost certainly have that. So if it’s the case that witness A testified in a certain way at the first trial and then that same witness testifies differently or in contravention of the earlier testimony at a second trial, the cross-examining lawyers will absolutely have the right to impeach that witness. In other words, present that witness with inconsistent prior testimony in order to cast out on the credibility of the witness.

Now, what I’ve seen happen is the jury is not told what the prior proceeding was, and certainly, as I already mentioned, it’s not told a result of the prior proceeding. But in fairness, if you have inconsistent statements in testimony at a prior trial and a current trial, you have to be able to let that come out.

I’ll be right back with my conversation with Ian Bremmer.

THE INTERVIEW

Ian Bremmer is an expert on geopolitics and foreign policy. He often joins the show to discuss important international news. Ian Bremmer, welcome back to the show for the umpteenth time.

Ian Bremmer:

Preet.

Preet Bharara:

How are you?

Ian Bremmer:

Preet, how are you doing, man?

Preet Bharara:

I’m very good. For those of you who are listening for the first time, I have anointed Ian Bremmer, the Regis Philbin of Stay Tuned in so far as Regis Philbin was the most common guest on David Letterman’s show. So Ian, there’s a lot to talk about. I thought we’d start with the G20 Summit. First of all, what is the G20 Summit and why is the number 20 operative there?

Ian Bremmer:

Number 20 is operative because we’re talking about the 20 largest economies in the world at the time that it was created. One of the reasons Poland was a little upset because they were 21. So like we [inaudible 00:09:02] G21.

Preet Bharara:

According to who? According GZERO?

Ian Bremmer:

Not according to GZERO. No, no, no. Poland was upset just because they are Poland.

Preet Bharara:

Is it the US News and World Report ranking-

Ian Bremmer:

It’s the rankings. It’s the rankings, yeah. The US News. Yeah. A lot of universities have pulled out of that of late. Is that not true?

Preet Bharara:

It is, but you’re getting off-topic.

Ian Bremmer:

No, you actually just shot off-topic.

Preet Bharara:

It’s a semi-serious question. How are the rankings of the world’s largest economies determined?

Ian Bremmer:

I would use World Bank figures personally, but I mean, for example, there are-

Preet Bharara:

What does the G20 use?

Ian Bremmer:

…there are people out there that talk about power purchasing parody, which means that China would already be larger than the United States, which is not the way that most people in the world think about GDP and I don’t actually know what the original estimation was.

Preet Bharara:

I have stumped Ian Bremmer. So wait-

Ian Bremmer:

No. That’s kind of random. Sure. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

But is it still 20 countries or is it more?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, it’s still 20 countries, but also multilateral organizations do come. So for example, the EU is a member of the G20-

Preet Bharara:

Outside of the 20.

Ian Bremmer:

…outside of the 20. This year, the Africa Union was invited to formally join. So that means that Africa, which needs representation now will have representation ongoing the entire continent through the Africa Union seat, the IMF, the United Nations, the World Bank, the leaders of those multilateral institutions also all attend the G20. The presidency rotates from one country to the next on a yearly basis. There are all of these ministerial summits that happen in the run-up to the big leaders summit that happens that we just saw this past week.

Preet Bharara:

Can we do a taxonomy of these? There are a lot of summits. I think everyone always assumes that everyone knows what every summit is about and the importance of it. There’s the G20, which we’ll get into more detail about in a moment because it just concluded. Am I right, there’s a G7?

Ian Bremmer:

There’s a G7. It used to be the G7+1. Before that it was the G7.

Preet Bharara:

So what’s the G7?

Ian Bremmer:

The G7 are the advanced industrial democracies, the most powerful among that grouping, and they are a group of much more like-minded, similar political systems, similar economic systems. And so if you wanted a group of countries that support rule of law, or at least in principle say that they will support free market capitalism, have democratic systems, that’s what the G7 is all about.

Preet Bharara:

Is India in the G7?

Ian Bremmer:

India is not in the G7. As I said, advanced industrial democracies, which means rich countries.

Preet Bharara:

India is not considered advanced-

Ian Bremmer:

They’re not considered-

Preet Bharara:

… even though it’s a democracy. Does India want to be in the G7?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, that’s an interesting question. I mean, I’m sure that if someone said, “Hey, you want to come and be a part of that meeting,” I think Modi would say, “Sure,” but advanced doesn’t refer to the state of your political system. It refers to the state of your economy and how wealthy you are and on a per capita basis, of course, India is a large economy, but it’s incredibly poor economy still.

Preet Bharara:

My recollection is according to recent data, India was the sixth-largest economy in the world. Is that not correct?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, but it’s still a very poor country.

Preet Bharara:

I’m just trying to figure out if it’s not US News and World Report, the basis on which we’re deciding which countries are advanced and or large economically, and if it makes sense. I mean, does it make sense for India not to be in the G7?

Ian Bremmer:

So the interesting thing of course, is that when you set up these institutions, they make an awful lot of sense for the leaders that set them up. Then over time, almost immediately after you set it up, things change, but the institutions are sticky. And so over time the institutions make less sense. I mean, the G20 is a newer manifestation that initially was created at the minister of finance level, and then after the global financial crisis, especially with China being so much more important economically than it had been heretofore, there was a recognition that you cannot respond to a big global economic crisis only with the G7. It’s not effective. So at that point, they created the G20 at the head of state level initially with special meetings and then basically installed it as new global architecture. And you could argue that the reason the G20 was required is because the balance of power changed a lot from the days where the G7 nominally ran a lot of big global affairs.

Preet Bharara:

Are there any other big Gs?

Ian Bremmer:

There’s the BRICS, and that’s not a big G, but that’s another new piece of architecture. Initially, a notion, a concept created by Jim O’Neill at Goldman Sachs that was talking about these emerging markets that were the largest emerging markets at the time, and that he and they expected would become the rise of the rest. They’d become the next new major powers on the global stage. They did not include South Africa at the time, so it was BRIC, but S, because it was just plural, those countries and South Africa decided, “Hey, we like this formulation for our own club because it will more represent and reflect a group of non-advanced industrial democracies and we can talk about our interests.” And so they created the BRICS. And now in the last BRICS meeting in Johannesburg in South Africa, they decided to invite an additional six countries, mostly Middle East and North Africa to join that summit.

I would argue that those are the three most important sort of group of country meetings at a global level that exist. There are massive numbers of regional summits, of course, that exist. There are also massive numbers of multi-stakeholder summits that exist, governments and private sector and non-government actors, your Davos and the rest. And those are all interesting, but very different than the primary government summits that we have. NATO’s obviously incredibly important from a security perspective.

There’s also a lot of talk about a G2, which doesn’t exist, but nonetheless is the idea that when China and the United States are the most powerful countries in the world, that either the G2 is going to be aligned or confrontational, and that’ll tell you a lot about what kind of a world order you have. And my own GZERO that I started talking about, I guess about 12 years ago, which was the idea that no matter what your architecture, if you have a world where no country is prepared to exert or capable of exerting global leadership, whether we talk about being the world’s policeman or the architect of global trade or the cheerleader and exporter of global values, that what you really have as a GZERO, lots of leadership, but no global leadership. And I think we’ve kind of been in that GZERO now for a bunch of years.

Preet Bharara:

So background questions about the different Gs and their summits led you to give an explanation for the name of your company?

Ian Bremmer:

For the name of our media company. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Preet Bharara:

And what’s the G5? That’s your favorite mode of transport?

Ian Bremmer:

G5 is a plane. Yeah, I was going to say, wait a second. It’s a wholly different G. I’m like, Oh, that’s… Yeah, it’s okay.

Preet Bharara:

I know, I know. Another joke we’re going to have to cut. Another dad joke we’re going to have to cut from the… I don’t know.

Ian Bremmer:

Really? Why do you cut all of these jokes that you bring up?

Preet Bharara:

They surprise me sometimes.

Ian Bremmer:

You’re like a repressed funny person. I don’t know what’s going on.

Preet Bharara:

RFP. I’m an RFP.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

So just overall, do we have too many summits or is convening of leaders, finance leaders, actual lead political figures from various countries, is that always a good thing or can it be too much?

Ian Bremmer:

It can be too much when the institutions really are no longer capable of serving the purpose that they had been intended to serve, but they soldier on beyond their sell by date.

Preet Bharara:

So is that true of any of these summits that you’ve been referring to?

Ian Bremmer:

No, but I could argue that it’s true of the security council. We now have-

Preet Bharara:

At the United Nations?

Ian Bremmer:

Yes, and the United Nations as an organization is incredibly important. And we have now, just this week, the United Nations General Assembly, and everyone from around the world sort of lines up shows up in New York, and it does a lot of important work on global climate, increasingly on disruptive technologies, on sustainable development for the 8 billion people on the planet, food aid, you name it. But the Security Council, which was created back in 1945, you gave permanent membership, which means veto power to stop anything from happening to all of the folks that won World War II.

And turns out that was a really bad formulation for an organization like this, and it was really bad almost immediately. It was bad. At the end of the 40s when the Soviets decided to take a whole bunch of territory in Eastern Europe, and then you had the Berlin blockade, and suddenly the guy that you thought was your ally has become your erstwhile opponent and has the ability to veto anything at the security council. And nowadays you’ve got India, which is this incredibly important economy and the world’s largest democracy, and they can’t be a permanent member.

Preet Bharara:

Or not so advanced.

Ian Bremmer:

But still very important, playing a big role, an increasingly big role on the global stage. Can’t be a permanent member. You’ve got Japan, the third-largest economy in the world, completely aligned with rule of law, the UN Charter. They can’t be a permanent member because they lost World War II. Same thing is true of Germany, and yet Russia is a permanent member and we consider them a, were criminal. So it’s actually broken. It’s fundamentally broken, and by the way, everyone knows it and

Preet Bharara:

It’s irrevocably broken. Right. Is there any reasonable process by which you could unlock the security council membership?

Ian Bremmer:

There’s no way that you could get any members with vetoes to expand membership with vetoes or to get rid of or water down their vetoes because they are highly-

Preet Bharara:

By definition, if you have a veto, you’re not going to vote for yourself to be off.

Ian Bremmer:

But there’s this interesting thing, the General Assembly, which of course is the group that includes all of the member states of the United Nations. So it’s everybody. It’s Burkina Faso, it’s Malta, it’s Andorra, it’s tiny little countries that then have a spot on the global stage. There was an effort by, I believe it was Lichtenstein and Finland, and they together passed a general assembly agreement that whenever a security council member uses a veto, that member has to then come and explain why they use the veto to the general assembly. And it’s actually sort of annoyed the permanent members and has made them somewhat less capricious about wanting to use that veto.

Preet Bharara:

Who’s it annoyed more like Russia or the US?

Ian Bremmer:

Oh, it’s definitely annoyed the Russians more because they’re the country that has become a functional pariah when it comes to rule of law. There’s no other permanent member that actually wants to break the existing governance system of the world order. I mean, China absolutely wants a lot more power in existing multilateral institutions for itself. They believe that the West is very hypocritical in the way they use their power. They want to create additional architecture where they have influence, but they don’t want to break the existing architecture. Russia wants to break the existing architecture. So in that regard, they are the principle problem in the Security Council. And in many other organizations in the G20 where Putin was not allowed essentially to show up.

I mean, even the BRICS, he couldn’t come in person because South Africa is a member of the International Criminal Court, and they would at least nominally be required to arrest Putin if he showed up in South Africa. Lula, the Brazilian president who just took over the presidency of the G20 immediately in Delhi said, “We will not arrest Putin at the G20 in Brazil. We would welcome him to come to Brazil.”

Preet Bharara:

I want to go back to this point you made a moment ago about a potential G2. That’s confusing to me. If it’s two countries, why can’t they just decide on an ad hoc basis to have meetings? And they sometimes do that. There have been bilateral meetings that happen on a sort of ad hoc basis. What would be the advantage of having a sort of regularized G2 summit?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, first of all, it’s more of a concept than it is a summit. But when you talk about the G2, you talk about the idea that there are a series of meetings and relations, kind of like the old strategic and economic dialogue, the SED, and that the Americans and the Chinese together put together an entire sort of network of high, mid and low level meetings involving the entire sort of how we think about the things that matter for the US and China in their ability to maintain a stable and hopefully sustainable relationship.

Given that the US and China are the most powerful countries in the world, that means that what you put in that architecture, what you decide is important, ends up being things that get addressed at the global level and things that you don’t really don’t. And to the extent that you have a formidable network of relationships at the G2 level between the United States and China, other countries matter a lot more, and other countries’ ability to put things on a global agenda matter a lot more. Having said that, there is no G2, there’s nothing close to a G2. The strategic and economic dialogue has fallen apart, and that has made lots of other countries in the world a lot more important in what they can get done and what they can influence and also what they can ignore.

Preet Bharara:

This is maybe a dumb question, but we say very blithely now that the two most important countries or powerful countries on earth are the United States and China. In what year would you say, or if you can say, did that become true? I mean, with the fall of the Soviet Union?

Ian Bremmer:

In the fall of the Soviet Union, Japan was still the second-largest economy at that point. So first of all, you would say when China outstripped Japan as second largest, and that’s very meaningful because-

Preet Bharara:

I’m not just talking about the economy-

Ian Bremmer:

I know.

Preet Bharara:

… I’m also talking about the possession of nuclear weapons and military. I assume you’re talking about both of those things when you say the US and China are the two most powerful. So how does that factor in?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, Russia has a lot more nuclear weapons than China.

Preet Bharara:

Which is why I thought you would’ve said that at some point in the late 80s or early 90s, the two most powerful nations-

Ian Bremmer:

Were the Soviets and the Americans.

Preet Bharara:

Correct. Not the Americans in the Japanese.

Ian Bremmer:

But it turned out also that the United States really misjudged the size of the Soviet economy. Its capacity, CIA and other estimates radically exaggerated what the Soviets were capable of doing. And so-

Preet Bharara:

Like they did with the army?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. And the perception of how powerful the Soviets really were, I would say 70s, 80s was mistaken, was mistaken. And there’s no question that perception of power and reality of power, they affect each other, but they aren’t the same thing.

Preet Bharara:

So you think China did not assume the number two spot for these purposes until sometime in the 90s?

Ian Bremmer:

Until later, until sort of around the turn of the century, I would say. Even a little bit later. Because keep in mind, the Chinese technologically, the Chinese were still seen to be a backwater. They were a very poor country, so they were the factory of the world for low cost labor. But people never thought the Chinese would be able to build anything. The Japanese, I mean, think about how the United States used to believe that Japan was going to be able to take over because of Kaizen. And there are-

Preet Bharara:

When I was in college in the late 80s, the fad on campus, one of my roommates did this, was to learn Japanese because we thought all business opportunities or many business opportunities would be concentrated in Japan. And that didn’t quite come to pass.

Ian Bremmer:

And it required not just China having 40 years of 10% growth, but also required China showing that they could first make meaningful innovations on the back of existing Western technology, not just steal it and rip it off, and then show that no, they could actually create new advanced technologies themselves and be world leaders. I mean, right now I don’t think about nuclear weapons. I think that in the areas of advanced technology that really matter, the commanding heights of the 21st century, sustainable energy, wind, nuclear, solar, I think about biotechnology. I think about quantum computing. I think about AI. The United States and China overwhelmingly, space, are number one and two. And in some cases China’s number one. In most the United States is number one. In some cases and significant cases, China’s number one, and no other country is close. That makes it very easy to say that the US and China are the two most powerful countries in the world.

Preet Bharara:

I’m just reminded of the heyday of people’s thinking about Japan in the late 80s, and I just remembered an old joke by Jay Leno that kind of crystallizes this sentiment that people had about the rising economic power of Japan. It was something like, people wonder what’s going on here. Is there really a threat from Japan? And Jay Leno goes, “Well, look at it this way. The Japanese are buying our cities. And we invented the McDLT,” which is a McDonald’s cheeseburger whose innovation was you put the meat on one side-

Ian Bremmer:

The cold is on one side and the hots on the other side, right?

Preet Bharara:

… and the other side while the Japanese are buying our cities.

Ian Bremmer:

Well, I thought that was a big deal. Speaking of that, did you see that meaningful South Korea innovation in produce?

Preet Bharara:

I did not.

Ian Bremmer:

It’s quite something. So they will sell you a seven pack of bananas already taken off the bunch. So there’s seven individual bananas that are in a plastic wrap, one tray of seven bananas. You visualizing this?

Preet Bharara:

I’m visualizing it.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, they’re lined up and-

Preet Bharara:

Should all our listeners visualize this as well?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, it’s almost like you’d see a pound of chuck steak. I mean, this is like seven bananas lined up just in a foam and the plastic on top of them. But here’s the innovation, Preet. Here’s the innovation is that the seven bananas actually are at different levels of unripeness.

Preet Bharara:

Oh-

Ian Bremmer:

It’s a one a day banana.

Preet Bharara:

… so it coincides properly with the passage of time.

Ian Bremmer:

It coincides. If you are only one person, if you’re living at home by yourself, and a lot of South Koreans apparently are, at least the banana eating South Koreans, or maybe there’s only one banana eater in your household, and you eat one banana say every morning or every evening. It could go either way, but the point is over week.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, by day seven it’s going to be over ripe.

Ian Bremmer:

Exactly, unless you have this South Korean innovation.

Preet Bharara:

But then you make banana bread.

Ian Bremmer:

The South Korean innovation. When I saw that, you know what I thought?

Preet Bharara:

What’d you think?

Ian Bremmer:

McDLT

Preet Bharara:

McDLT. Look-

Ian Bremmer:

That was a meaningful innovation.

Preet Bharara:

I have a chapter in my book that’s about meaningful innovations that you wonder why they didn’t happen earlier and it doesn’t require… And I make the point about institutions generally, that they don’t have to remain static. And you think, well, I need an engineering degree or some advanced scientific knowledge and expertise to invent something better and new. And the example that always got to me was the person who decided one day, maybe we should make ketchup bottles upside down, put the opening on the bottom-

Ian Bremmer:

Oh my god.

Preet Bharara:

… to take advantage of gravity.

Ian Bremmer:

Exactly.

Preet Bharara:

And you remember the commercial, I mean, we had ketchup for a long time that Hines used to have a commercial.

Ian Bremmer:

You had to hit it.

Preet Bharara:

Right. But the commercial was they paid money to get Carly Simon’s song, the rights to Carly Simon’s song, which is Anticipation.

Ian Bremmer:

Anticipation. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Anticipation is making me wait. So they turned the idea that it was really difficult and time-consuming to get ketchup out of the bottle, to put on your burger or on your fries.

Ian Bremmer:

To make that a feature and not a bug.

Preet Bharara:

Yes. To make it something that’s… I remember thinking, how would that work for some other product or service like airline travel?

Ian Bremmer:

Like toothpaste. So which came first? Because toothpaste, now you do have. There are some brands of toothpaste where you can buy it and it has the plastic thing on the bottom. It stands upright and you just squeeze, and it’s already down there. But most toothpaste still is sold the wrong way.

Preet Bharara:

The one I’ve been talking to my kids about recently that I didn’t mention in the book was I explained to them until fairly recently, quite recently when you traveled and you had a shitload of luggage, you carried it. I said, Your 83-year-old grandfather would be carrying on his back or lifting up a suitcase. The guy who decided to put wheels, which had been invented many thousands of years ago on luggage, deserves some kind of Nobel Prize, but I don’t think it’s forthcoming.

Ian Bremmer:

And that the more recent wheel innovation on luggage where it kind of rolls up right next to you as opposed to you having to tilt it, that’s a significant innovation.

Preet Bharara:

So first they put two wheels.

Ian Bremmer:

Two wheels, and now it’s four. That’s beautiful. The four wheel innovation, I think is a significant innovation.

Preet Bharara:

I’m waiting for the motor.

Ian Bremmer:

There is a motor.

Preet Bharara:

In the suitcase?

Ian Bremmer:

In the suitcase. You have the little remote control or you have the thing and it just follows you along. That exists, of course.

Preet Bharara:

I’m ready for drone baggage. Okay, so I’m going back to China for a moment. And the G20 Summit, so the leader of one of the two most powerful nations in the world, Xi from China did not show up.

Ian Bremmer:

True.

Preet Bharara:

What’s that about?

Ian Bremmer:

Doesn’t like India, but first of all-

Preet Bharara:

So it was a boycott of the fact that India by rotational requirement was due to host the G20 Summit?

Ian Bremmer:

It wasn’t only that. It was that these guys have been increasingly fighting over lots of things. The border zone, of course, where there’s been a fair amount of violence over the past years, it’s gotten more militarized. The fact is the Indians have a higher level of export controls against Chinese goods as well as investment reviews than the Americans do against China right now. And the Chinese really didn’t like that. The Indians are portraying themselves as the leaders of the global South saying that China’s not really a member of the global South, that they’re wealthier, they’re massive carbon emitters. They are the biggest creditors to a lot of the developing world. They can be rapacious in the way they treat these countries. And so India’s standing up for the little guy and put all that together. And by the way, this wasn’t new news. The Chinese told the Indian government that Xi Jinping was not going to show at least a month before the summit and send their Premier instead, which is not low level representation.

And he did participate and participated constructively. And also the Chinese have been speaking with the Americans for months about when Biden and Xi can meet, and the plan has been four months, the Apex Summit in San Francisco in November. So this was not the Chinese saying, “We don’t want to be a part of the G20.” I fully expect they’ll show up in Brazil going forward next year. But they made a statement that they were going to, in a sense, display their displeasure at Modi. Also, of course, on the back of Russia, not showing up at the head of state level. Putin was not there. And that made it easier, frankly, for Biden to show the G20 as a summit where the Americans were very simpatico, very aligned with everybody there.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with Ian after this. So as someone who is decidedly not an expert in diplomacy or international relations, I find that kind of puzzling these kinds of actions or stunts, whatever you want to call them. Does it have meaning that Xi decided not to go? Or am I correct to think of it or for people to think of it as kind of a meaningless stunt? Does it have an effect?

Ian Bremmer:

No, no. It matters.

Preet Bharara:

It does matter. Why does it matter?

Ian Bremmer:

It matters because the Chinese are also saying in part that they just had a successful brick summit, which doesn’t have the United States or the G7, the advanced industrial democracies participating. And this is a place where the Chinese can set more of a global agenda that they want with those countries. They have the Belt and Road Summit where they, even though lots of countries are invited, this is primarily bilateral hub and spoke China and their investment partners all over the world, they can have much more dominance of those organizations. It is really displaying some gravity, some trajectory of how the country relationships that will affect the way power is distributed around the world and how decisions are made that do affect all of us, how that’s likely to continue to emerge. I mean, geopolitics is a constantly shifting thing. It’s kind of like a living, breathing organism. And-

Preet Bharara:

As far as I can tell, not any particular clear rules or principles or rules of the road.

Ian Bremmer:

With a bunch of principles that are agreed to in very specific areas that countries will sign up for. Again, we talked about there’s a non-proliferation regime that a whole bunch of countries generally agree to. Everybody agreed to the basic principles of the UN Charter, and when the Russians break it with their invasion of Ukraine, a large majority of general assembly countries are willing to stand up and criticize that and condemn it. Why is that? Because the rules of the road have been broken. A country has had its territorial integrity breached by an outside invader. That’s a rule of the road.

Now, it doesn’t mean that invasions never happen, but when it does happen, almost everyone in the world says, we have a serious problem with that. Now, if it’s the United States, what does it… Like in the second Iraq war and the US is the most powerful country in the world, they can get away with it. But countries will have long memories. They will be angry as a consequence, and they will bring it up for decades and use it to justify some of their own behaviors or some of their unwillingness to listen to the Americans. So I mean, the very fact that when you break the rules, it has consequences and lasting consequences also mean that those rules matter.

Preet Bharara:

So India got to host the G20 Summit, as we mentioned, and it has been reported and has been treated as a huge coup for Prime Minister Modi. Even though it was just their turn, they sort of acted like they were anointed by their peers according to one New York Times article in a show of respect and elevation. But that’s not quite true, but they made the most of it. Could you describe how big a deal the hosting of the G20 summit was for India, both domestically there and with respect to their image in the global community?

Ian Bremmer:

It’s a big deal because the timing was awesome. Hosting the G20 in and of itself is not necessarily a huge deal for a country, but Indonesia hosted the year before. It wasn’t nearly as important for the Indonesians as it was this year for the Indians, and it won’t be as much of a big deal for Brazil, though it’ll be a fairly significant deal because you’ve got a president of Brazil that’s really leaning into climate, reducing deforestation, having a carbon trading and emission scheme working with the rest of the world there. I mean, they will probably hit above their weight in ways that Brazil usually does not. But in the case of India, the timing was incredible. Why number one fastest growing major economy in the world at a time where global economic concerns are significant.

Number two, Modi is by far the most popular leader of any major democracy in the world. So he has the ability to get things done domestically and internationally because the opposition is weak and in disarray. Number three, the United States really is trying to build the relationship with Modi, and they’re the only major country out there where it doesn’t really matter if Trump or Biden wins in 2024. They’ll have a really good relationship either way, and not just in terms of this G20 summit, but the quad, which they are now a big piece of with three advanced industrial economies. So they’re the one piece that you’d say normally, well, they don’t really fit well, actually, they’re playing a significant role and it’s security oriented.

So for all of those reasons and others, I could point to all the technology investments which are now coming into India, the fact that they have engaged in a domestic policy of economic reform and technological innovation, all of those things really meant that this was a great coming out party for India on the global stage, A country that historically has not wanted to play a significant global role. And I think that that really made the Indians shine in this meeting, and it didn’t matter at all that the Chinese president didn’t show. I don’t think it undermined India’s successful summitry in the slightest.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think Modi preferred not having Xi there?

Ian Bremmer:

No. No. I think that on balance, you’re hosting the summit, you’d like all of the big powerful countries to attend, I mean-

Preet Bharara:

And it’s a snub. Whatever else you call it it’s a snub, and you don’t like to be snubbed.

Ian Bremmer:

It’s a snub. I don’t think you’d like to be snubbed.

Preet Bharara:

Right.

Ian Bremmer:

But I mean, again, because it wasn’t a surprise. It was orchestrated. I mean, the Chinese really didn’t like that two days after a meeting with Biden, suddenly they find out that the United States is going to boycott their Olympics. That kind of thing, when you surprise a country with a diss, with a snub, it goes really, really bad.

Preet Bharara:

So it’s a softer snub?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, it’s a much softer snub.

Preet Bharara:

What was accomplished? Let’s talk about some of the issues that were at the fore at the G20 Summit. Climate?

Ian Bremmer:

Nothing. Virtually nothing happened. Yeah, there was [inaudible 00:42:42]-

Preet Bharara:

Was that the expectation?

Ian Bremmer:

Expectation was climate would be a little bigger. I mean, there was an announcement on biofuels that the Americans were a part of. There was an announcement on green hydrogen, but really there were no significant new commitments, hard commitments that were actually made on climate at the G20, that was a nothing burger.

Preet Bharara:

Is that the place where those kinds of things should have happened? Were there other forums where climate can be advanced?

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, primarily, of course, the most important would be the COP summits, which coming up in Abu Dhabi, and that changes every year. And again, Brazil’s going to be hosting the global COP coming up, so that’s why I mentioned they’re important. Last year was in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. But having said that, this was meant to be a development summit and a climate summit. It was reasonably successful as a development summit. It was not successful as a climate summit. Modi cares about both of those issues meaningfully, and there wasn’t really global movement on the ladder.

Preet Bharara:

What do we mean when we talk about development?

Ian Bremmer:

We talk about the ability of multilateral institutions and the governments that are part of them, the World Bank, the New Development Bank, others to be able to effectively drive investment, sustainable investment, and also deal with high levels of indebtedness among the poorest countries in the world. On that front, significant movement, both in setting a new direction for the global agenda, the prioritization of that issue on the agendas of the main economies in the world, and also commitments to actually start putting more paid in capital to the World Bank, directing that money towards poorer countries in the world. Talk about increased infrastructure, rail, trucking and ports and the rest, shipping from India through Africa, the Middle East and Europe. All of those things were incremental but meaningful and a shift towards the global south with India playing a leadership role. That is a big deal. I expect that in 10 years time, we will look back at this G20 as a change of trajectory in that direction.

Preet Bharara:

Did they spend any time talking about artificial intelligence?

Ian Bremmer:

At the G20? Very little. That’s been primarily the G7, which started off with the Hiroshima G7 Summit. There’s been a lot of that at the European Union level with their AI regulations that are being developed. Probably the most sophisticated and complex so far. The United States, of course, with the White House meeting more dominated by the private sector, with the Senate hearings recently, and we’re also going to see some high level meetings this week at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. That’s where the action is. Nothing meaningful of the G20.

Preet Bharara:

More issue we haven’t mentioned yet in this context of the G20, the war in Ukraine.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

Any progress or further consensus building happening there?

Ian Bremmer:

I think that the G20 announcement, they did have a communique that communique condemned any invasion of another country’s territorial integrity in the context of the UN charter. It did not explicitly condemn Russia for the Ukraine invasion.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. So isn’t it proper to view that as kind of softer than what we would’ve hoped?

Ian Bremmer:

Well, it’s softer than last year in Indonesia, but it does more accurately reflect both India’s sensibilities and the sensibilities of the G20 as a whole. The G7, they all believe that Putin is a war criminal. The G20 doesn’t really understand why Ukraine gets all the attention, aside from the fact that they’re white Europeans compared to all of the other places where human rights are being massively walked all over, in sub-Saharan Africa, in the Middle East, and where the Americans and the Europeans don’t care very much. So they don’t like it. They don’t like the economic impact of all of the sanctions that are hurting the poorest countries in the world a lot more than they’re hurting the United States, for example.

So I think that it was important that you got a formulation that allowed a communique to be agreed upon by all G20 members in attendance, by the way, including Russia, which was represented by foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. But it was also important under India’s presidency of the G20, that the description of Russia, Ukraine came in the context of something that has the sensibilities of the global south and isn’t Russia, Ukraine dominates the headlines all year long because that’s not the way any of the global south actually feels.

Preet Bharara:

It occurs to me to ask you this question as we talk about India and Russia and China, the United States and the complicated sort of chess game or dance that unfolds between and among those countries. Where does Pakistan fall into that whole dynamic as either an ally or an adversary of the United States, and certainly as an adversary to India, particularly with respect to how everyone deals with Russia? Does that question make sense?

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. It has become a subsidiary problem to the China problem. Pakistan, of course, used to have a much closer relationship with the United States. Pakistan is now overwhelmingly supported economically by China and is much more tightly aligned strategically with China. India’s relationship with China, as I mentioned, is deeply broken and confrontational. And India sees Pakistan as a component of that problem. There is obviously a direct India-Pakistan dynamic that plays out in terms of Muslim extremism and territorial disputes and water disputes. But the biggest reality is the context of the China relationship.

Preet Bharara:

I feel like as I was growing up and being from India and living in the United States and wanting the country of my birth and the country that gave me everything else to be allies and friends with each other, but then Pakistan was friendly to the United States. It was largely about the Russian equation. Is that just kind of out of the picture?

Ian Bremmer:

It’s really out of the picture. I mean, India, of course, historically had a very strong defense relationship with the Soviet Union, and that continued when the Soviet Union collapsed with Russia. That relationship has degraded dramatically in the last two years of the Ukraine war, in part because India is developing a closer strategic relationship with the United States. That is including strong defense agreements, including willingness to allow the Indians to produce fairly advanced componentry for military capabilities with the United States. So that’s a big win for them. But in part because Russian military technology, which was never very good, and their MiGs are colloquially referred to as flying coffins in the Indian press because there’ve been so many crashes and malfunctions of Indian pilots on training missions.

They can’t get the spare parts for this military equipment going forward. The Russians are focused on their own war. They have huge supply chain problems. So I mean, if you’re India, you don’t mind buying lots of oil inexpensively from Russia because oil is oil. It’s unrefined, and you’re doing the refining in India and you’re selling it on for a profit anyway. But on the military side, there are lots of reasons why that relationship is going away.

Preet Bharara:

Isn’t part of it also, there’s some drift between the United States and Pakistan because of arguably Pakistan sponsorship of terrorism-

Ian Bremmer:

Terrorism.

Preet Bharara:

… and harboring of Osama bin Laden, and is that a rift that is reputable or not?

Ian Bremmer:

It’s hard to imagine in the sense that the US India relationship has become so overwhelmingly strategic. It is much more important than it used to be. Modi, who has no real domestic challenges in the near term, has decided that he wants a much stronger US relationship to be his global legacy, his foreign policy legacy for his premiership. So for all of those reasons, it’s very hard to see a badly governed, deeply corrupt, very poor, kind of small Pakistan being significantly improved its relations with the United States. Especially now that the US has left Afghanistan. I mean that piece no longer is relevant. The US needed Pakistan to a much greater degree when that provides potentially useful intelligence and also does or does not put American soldiers in harm’s way on the ground in Afghanistan. That’s all over.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I should ask you then, since you raised it and some time has passed and people get to reflect and be thoughtful. Since we departed Afghanistan in total, is it your view that that was the right thing to do notwithstanding the way in which the withdrawal took place?

Ian Bremmer:

It’s my view that that war went on for way too long with way too much mission creep. It was incredibly expensive.

Preet Bharara:

So the answer is yes.

Ian Bremmer:

We needed to get out, but every administration since Bush has made serious serious mistakes on the ground in Afghanistan, every administration, the principle Biden mistake was not the decision to leave, but it was, I mean, not just the mistakes that were clearly made in estimates of whether the Afghan government would be able to continue to stand up for months or years as opposed to minutes and days, but also the fact that a nominally multilateralist Biden administration, which wants so much better relations with the EU and with allies around the world, made this decision unilaterally without the necessary communications and consultations with US allies. And I’m not just talking about the Europeans here. I’m talking about Middle Eastern countries, the UAE, for example, others, and I think that that did real damage.

Preet Bharara:

Could you very briefly do some global civic education? Because you mentioned a couple of global institutions and I thought it might be nice for you to explain what they do first. The IMF, the International Monetary Fund, what is the point of that organization?

Ian Bremmer:

The point of the IMF is to provide relief, debt relief and financing to countries around the world that are in distress and using the money that they have available to also provide a framework for economic and political reforms that will allow those countries to turn to a more economic, sustainable set of policies and growth. In other words, with financial crises and collapses around the world and spiraling debt and unsustainability, it’s an effort to try to help smooth some of the dangers of volatile financial markets and dislocations from globalization. They also have a lot of capability in modeling economic growth and projecting economic growth. They’re a place that everyone goes for ground truth around what our expectations are about the performance of various countries economies around the world.

Preet Bharara:

Now do the same for the World Bank.

Ian Bremmer:

World Bank, and by the way, the IMF has always by convention, been appointed by the Europeans, the World Bank, by convention appointed by the Americans and the World Bank, providing international aid and support for developing countries, particularly the poorest countries all over the world, around things like food and energy and sustaining projects and programs that will allow them to become more successful, helping to develop programs around gender inclusion and equality and improved education and all of those things. The World Bank is a financial institution, a multilateral finance institution that has… And both of these are paid in with membership and votes from all over the world, but that is focusing on that.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have a view on the new president of the World Bank, Ajay Banga?

Ian Bremmer:

I do. I have a strong-

Preet Bharara:

Well, I should disclose he’s a friend of mine.

Ian Bremmer:

I was going to say it’s a good friend of mine too. He was just here at my house, what, two weeks ago. I really like him. I’ve known him for a long time. Ajay Banga, he’s someone who is, first of all, has a huge amount of experience in the developing world, understanding how challenging those markets are and will be given climate change, given lack of financial inclusion, given strong indebtedness, but also has private sector sensibilities. He was just CEO of MasterCard and wants the bureaucracy of the World Bank to be run effectively, wants to ensure that this organization can do the most it can with stretched resources in a global environment that’s becoming much more challenging, especially for the poorest people in the world. Extreme poverty is increasing in the last few years. The World Bank has, and the headwinds from climate change are growing. So the World Bank has a much tougher job to do, and they need leadership like Ajay. I think that he’s a great choice. I’m really glad he got the job.

Preet Bharara:

Me too. I think he’s an extraordinarily capable and visionary person.

Ian Bremmer:

He’s also just a lovely guy I should say. Right. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

He is. Does it matter to the world that the new world back president is an Indian American, someone who’s born elsewhere?

Ian Bremmer:

I think it’s nice, but I mean, I think it’s overwhelmed by his actual capabilities.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I agree with that.

Ian Bremmer:

I mean, it definitely mattered that his first major public multilateral summit was the India G20 run by Modi. That helped. That definitely helped, but that was coincidental and random.

Preet Bharara:

Ian Bremmer, thank you for coming on the show. As always it’s always a delight to talk to you.

Ian Bremmer:

Preet, it’s a lot of fun, man.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Ian Bremmer continues for members of the CAFE Insider Community. In the bonus for insiders, we discussed the death of Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin and the involvement of Elon Musk’s Starlink in the Russia/Ukraine War.

Ian Bremmer:

But increasingly in the digital world, technology companies exercise sovereignty. They decide who wins and loses. Sometimes they decide who lives and dies. That wasn’t true five years ago. That’s just a radical transformation of the way we think about power.

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership for just $1 for a month hit the cafe.com/insider. Again, that’s cafe.com/insider.

BUTTON

I want to end the show this week by talking about Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which took place of course, over last weekend. The festivities, which this year welcomed in the Jewish year 5784, is a chance to take in the sweetness of a fresh start before the more somber holiday of atonement, Yom Kippur, Jews dip apples and honey, blow the shofar or ram’s horn and perform Tashlich, a casting off of the old that usually consists of throwing breadcrumbs into a body of water. The holidays, all the sweeter in New York, given its staggeringly long history here. The first Rosh Hashanah in the Big Apple took place in 1654, and it’s a pretty inspiring tale. In August and September, 1654, around 25 Jews arrived in what was then new Amsterdam in the Dutch colony of New Netherland. They were the first Jews ever known to have been in what is now New York.

All but a few of the immigrants came from a single boat that had originated in Recife, Brazil. They were refugees fleeing brutal Portuguese persecution. Many of the new immigrants are believed to have held a Rosh Hashanah service only a week after their arrival on September 12th, 1654 or 5415 in the Jewish calendar. This is widely believed to be the first Jewish holiday ever celebrated in North America. No one is certain where the service took place, but many believe that it was at a private home on the corners of what are now Broad and South William streets in Lower Manhattan, pretty much exactly where Vox’s New York office stands today. The immigrants worshiped inside because New Netherlands, governor Peter Stuyvesant, was not known for being particularly tolerant of different faiths. In fact, Stuyvesant attempted to have the Jewish arrivals expelled, even calling the Jewish people deceitful, very repugnant and hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ.

The Jewish immigrants, however, petitioned to the Dutch West India Company, Stuyvesant’s employer of which several prominent Dutch Jews were members. The company overruled Stuyvesant and his bigotry and the Jewish immigrants were ultimately allowed to stay in New York where they thrived. One Asser Levy, who may have served as a cantor during the first Rosh Hashanah, went on to become the first North American Jew to own his own property, and became a respected merchant and supporter of Jews and Christians alike. The Jews who celebrated Rosh Hashanah in New York some 369 years ago, went on to establish in 1655 Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish synagogue congregation in the country. The Orthodox synagogue is still going strong today. One of over 1000 places of Jewish worship in New York City, serving some 1.6 million local Jewish people.

The spirit of religious and cultural tolerance that makes New York so special in 2023 also began to take hold in New Amsterdam. This was especially true a few years after the first Rosh Hashanah, when political leaders in old Amsterdam sent the still recalcitrant Stuyvesant new guidelines for how he should treat other faiths. The chamber’s words to Stuyvesant are just as powerful today, quote, “The consciences of men ought to be free and unshackled. So long as they continue moderate, peaceable, inoffensive, and not hostile to the government. Such have been the maximums of prudence and toleration by which the magistrates of this city have been governed and the consequences have been that the oppressed and persecuted from every country have found among us an asylum from distress. Follow in the same steps and you will be blessed,” end quote. L’shana Tova, or Happy New Year to you and yours, and may we continue to live by this policy of tolerance and mutual respect.

Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Ian Bremmer.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me @preetbharara with the #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producer is Matthew Billy, and the CAFE team is Noa Azulai, David Kurlander, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Namita Shah, and Claudia Hernández. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.