John Gray: "La paz, tal y como la conocíamos, es irrecuperable" · La March

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:04]I'll make um a brief introduction of yours. You know that you know I've constructed it you know from picking in different places of the internet but so the the main ideas coincide. Um John Gray is a British political theorist and public intellectual whose career has been defined by a sustained refusal of comforting certainties. Educated at Oxford and long associated with the London School of Economics, Gray emerged in the 1980s within the liberal tradition influenced by Isaiah Berlin and Fred Hayek at a time sympathetic to free market ideas. Over subsequent decades, he underwent a decisive intellectual transformation that would make him one of liberalism's most unorthodox critics.

[00:00:57]Rather than rejecting liberalism wholesale, Gray reccasted in austere historically grounded terms. He rejects the belief shared by both liberal and socialist thought that history tends towards moral progress or political convergence.

[00:01:16]In Grace account, liberalism is not a master plan for human flourishing, but a fragile set of norms and practices that help contain conflict among incommensurable values.

[00:01:32]His liberalism is minimal, pessimistic in its anthropology, and wary of grand political projects.

[00:01:42]Um, Grace's most recent book, The New Leviathans, Global Powers at Moral Lauder in the 21st Centuries.

[00:01:51]You can you can see it over there. We'll show you some some covers of some of of of John's um of John Gray's uh books.

[00:02:01]And this book, he develops um these themes for our current era. Here he argues that contemporary global politics is defined not by by a universal liberal project but by a multipolar struggle among rival Leviathan states and blocks that claim moral authority while pursuing sharply divergent visions of order.

[00:02:26]The result, he suggests, is a world in which political legitimacy is no longer anchored in any shared narrative of progress, but in the contingent balance of power among competing sovereignties.

[00:02:42]I leave it here, as you have seen, unorthodox, critical, realist. I've even read that you're you you're considered to be an to have an unscentimental view of the human condition. I don't know if you would agree agree with that, but there's something with which I would like to to start before we we we deal with geopolitics and all the rest, which is that um the first time that we met was in the early 90s.

[00:03:14]>> Yes.

[00:03:15]Um so after the I mean immediately the post uh cold war period >> and at that time you know there was um an absolute consensus regarding regarding you know the future of liberalism. Uh the idea was politics can be can be um put towards working towards not just peace but also greater degrees of freedom, greater greater unity among the peoples. Globalization is really a gift for humanity and you were um absolutely skeptical regarding regarding that position. Um so you you um departed absolutely from that dominant that dominant discourse. But then um um you know your position seems to have gained considerable credibility nowadays once we see what's going on around. So less Kant perhaps and more hops. So do you feel more vindicated now?

[00:04:25]When you ask me that question, Fernando, and you're right that in the early 1990s or in 1989 when I published my first skeptical piece in October 1989 in an American conservative magazine, the title was the end of history or perhaps the end of liberalism. I argued that history couldn't end, wouldn't end, that history is um a succession of stages and cycles, but has no destination. and that Fukuyama's Francis Fukiamyama's argument about that which remember this was actually before the fall of the Berlin wall and before the uh but when it was clear it was all ending uh before the um um uh collapse of the of the Soviet system that what would follow would be um a reversion to a more traditional normal type of history.

[00:05:22]The normal type of history I said was conflicts of ethnicities, conflicts over resources, conflicts over religions.

[00:05:30]These conflicts going in cycles, the rise and fall of different regimes, some empires, some nation states, the periods of in which parts of the world became anarchical, stateless zones. This is what would happen. And um that was regarded as um apocalyptically pessimistic which in itself is strange because an apocalypse is a change a radical change from one kind of world to another world. What I was saying was we're going to live in the same old world that we've already lived in. And the cold war was itself anomalous was an aberration. It was basically at its ideological level a contest between two enlightenment projects.

[00:06:12]And once this has ceased, once this uh um conflict has ended, it will end not with an unconditional victory for the liberal side, the Russian side will and the Chinese side will revert to more traditional um uh ways of thinking. And that has indeed happened in Russia. So that now is Putin is so to speak a Zarus political mystic.

[00:06:36]he's uh moved to a more Eurasian anti-western stance and that was regarded as a very strange thing to say.

[00:06:45]But if you ask now, do I feel vindicated? Um, uh, 30 years later, I'm reminded of the anecdote which perhaps was based on a true story of what the, um, emperor of Mexico said when he was taken out by French forces in the 1860s to be shot as he was shot. And as he was taken out to be shot, he paused because his chef, his cook was standing in the audience. And he turned to the cooker as he was about to be shot a minute later as it was. He said, "I told you this would happen, but you wouldn't believe me.

[00:07:21]I warned you that this would happen and you said it was impossible and you've taken out and shot." So I I don't feel vindicated in that. I feel vindicated, but only in that rather ironic sense, which is that all that I much that I warned against has happened and much that I warned against will still happen. There is yet to be um um some of the uh conflicts I warned about.

[00:07:45]What I thought would happen was that the world would return to something like the pre-1940s, pre-1914 dispensation, >> a world not of a single hedgeimon, a single superpower. I did not think then and I do not think now that the United States America will be replaced by China say or another hedgeimon. We live in a world with several great powers uh competing and collaborating but largely competing for resources for influence for technological advance even for territory in parts and this as we know is a rather dangerous because after what happened in 1914 was a first catastrophic war what's sometimes called the European civil war and I think we're somewhat in that position again not that war a world war is inevitable certainly Certainly not. Um, but there are many risks of war in many parts of the world and in Europe. I think there's a clear risk of the war in Ukraine if it is resolved or ended in a way which is advantageous to Russia being followed by further attempts at advance within Europe. So, we're back to classical history with all of its dangers and all of its risks. And I think what we need then uh what we need in the circumstances which we're now in and that are unfolding are some of the classical virtues. Stoicism, determination, realism, uh courage. We need these old virtues, these old classical pagan virtues, though they're also to some extent Christian virtues rather than the um thin and brittle hopes of liberalism as it as it has been.

[00:09:27]Yeah. Well, you have in part answered already to my to what would have been my my second question because in the um in in in your last article in the New Statesman, you you start um defining our current situation, you know, and in terms of of this this concept of the interregnum, you know, by by Kruxine, the sense that you so the the old order is dying yet the new has not fully emerged. emerged right so my my question would have been as I told you you have already answered part of it uh my question would have been so what is dying and what is emerging >> or are we or we don't have still the the means in order to to be capable of of anticipating you know any any result everything you know it's radically uh impredictable >> well the idea of the interregnum um of course was popularized on the left by the Italian marxian theorist um Crunchy and he said that the old order of capitalism had um was dying as you and uh and there were many pathological or morbid symptoms of its dying but the new order um had not emerged and uh we were living in this painful awkward uh uh intergenum. I think the indirectum will be permanent.

[00:10:58]That's to say um Gracy took from the enlightenment um uh what many liberals and neoliberals and even some conservatives have taken from the enlightenment. The idea that human history is a series of successive stages or phases which we would go through and the end point is somehow programmed. It may not be strictly inevitable. There might be reversion to barbarism. There might be a nuclear war or whatever. There's a kind of built-in tilos as the Greeks called it a built-in end state which is a universal civilization modeled on the west modeled initially on Europe. If you want to know where this idea first emerged, I think in a clear form, it was the French positivist thinker August Compt, mid-9th century thinker. He said basically um the west by which he then meant Europe uh is um um the engine of modernity. It's created what is modernity is basically a movement uh a universal movement eventually from uh societies based on faith and magic and religion to societies based on science. And what the end point of this movement is is a universal civilization based on science. And I think many people who have never heard of August compt uh or have not thought about this very deeply um take that as an assumption. And so when they talk about an intergnum they'll say well there are kind of anomalous phases there are regressions there are difficulties there are periods of barbarism but the history as a whole is moving however painfully however slowly with however many deviations towards that. So I take the view which is more like actually the ancient pagan view or the or the or the or the Indian view or the Chinese view or the Japanese view non-western view but which was also the view of ancient Europe. That history is more cyclical.

[00:12:52]Civilizations rise and fall. Um there are different regimes in the world, different types of civilization, different types of politics. It's always been the case. It always will be. So the question then is how do we live successfully and uh uh in such a world?

[00:13:08]How do we live in a world in which a certain kind of dis radical disorder conflicts of values conflicts of regimes is endemic? And that I think is the precondition of living well. Now we have to put aside these hopes of a um a universal order and particularly we have to get over what I think is the a deep-seated weakness of a thought in Britain and other European countries which is of thinking of this the Trumpian period the period of um of Mara and the period in which the United States itself has actively rejected the order it used to support.

[00:13:47]the basic regime change in the world is in Washington. Um the the the Washington was the basis of oh I I mean I think most of us in this hall now are old enough to remember the semi-forgotten Washington consensus an economic consensus partly but also political emerging partly from um Fukuyama's uh writings but those are many others too according to which um the type of democratic capitalism that existed in um in the United States in the '9s say would become universal. iversal the the deep irony the deep paradox is not that it hasn't become universal of course it hasn't I never it was never possible actually the deep irony is that it's been actively rejected in America itself is protectionist free trade is rejected the government uh um the Trump administration is deeply involved in various aspects of the economy in the crypto economy the virtual economy in the banking sector rare earth's resource uh companies they're taking active states in them. It's become a durist economy actually not a free market economy and that's come from the very source of this supposedly eternal um um neoliberal order. I mean, I think the most um in a sense alarming or offensive thing I said in the 1990s is that this order, which was believed not just by Fukyama but by practically everybody to be permanent, would be very shortlived.

[00:15:21]Um it turned out to be what um 30 years tops. Yeah. I I remember when when we first met, you know, in the early '9s that you were telling us that you were being constantly invited to United States because they wanted to be scandalized.

[00:15:41]>> You probably don't remember that, but >> they were scandalized.

[00:15:43]>> Yeah. Yeah. But look how much >> But they learned nothing.

[00:15:46]>> Yeah. How much the country has changed, right?

[00:15:48]>> Yes.

[00:15:49]>> Because they they have now an absolutely affirmative culture. So they they don't want even be slightly criticized.

[00:15:57]>> So and and one thing I think the idea of decline in America >> hasn't been so much um canceled but it's always used in a pedagogic way because the assumption is if we can identify any aspect of American decline we can reverse it.

[00:16:13]>> Yeah.

[00:16:14]>> Within eight years. Well the decline of great powers does not take eight years and it cannot be reversed in eight years. So you're right now they don't want to hear any of this because it's more realistic because it's near at hand. They they they they're not interested in the entertainment value of sc being scandalized. They're frightened by that possibility. So they adamantly deny it.

[00:16:36]>> Yeah. Yeah. But on on the other hand, so I I want to stop for a while with with with Trump, right? So the because in a certain so lots of people believe that Donald Trump is um well it's a um a narcissistic um um president that his policies are based on wimps you know that um of him but but you know somehow do you think that most of his policies would have been taken anyway. So, has it been an accelerator of yes changes that were already on the way? And I'm I'm thinking particularly on on something that affects Europe directly, which is which is um you know to let us pay us for for defense >> or you know this this more um this more accommodating stance with Russia and and China >> or um even the you know the uh the idea of the NATO or the and I think I mean that would have happened anyway. way probably right. So >> I think that Trump is in part an acute accentuation um of um of trends in American thinking and policy that were going on under the Biden administration. Even the Biden administration was tilting towards protectionism in certain respects. Um, and the Biden uh there'd long been discussions in American defense circles about Europe not fairly sharing the burden of of its defense and of what to do about um the rise rise of of China.

[00:18:27]But Trump's uh um uh I suppose is more radical as well as being more in a way more coarse um uh in the way he expresses things. Um has been more radical. He's he's um he's he's accelerated uh that development to a point at which first of all I think it's irreversible a very the very important point uh many aspects of the Trumpian uh project or the Trump's America or or the Trumpian world um I mean he has achieved one thing which he wanted to achieve to be the best known person in the world uh the world's leading reality television showman penetrating deeply into the imaginations and consciousness and subconscious in mental life of almost every human being on the planet. He's he's he's actually achieved that. So he is a phenomenon. He is a world historical phenomenon. And I mentioned to a uh a group I addressed in Oxford recently. I said just as um um um Napoleon was the philosopher Hegel saw um Napoleon after a great battle, battle of Vienna, I think it was >> and he said this is the world's spirit on horseback and I said there must be many people in the world now who look to Trump and say here's the world's spirit in his golf cart.

[00:19:52]uh it is a and of course it's a uh Napoleon was a liberating figure but also a brought great wars and disasters with him. Trump is a more even more profoundly divisive and ambiguous figure but he's an enormous enorm I think in other words it's not only acceleration of existing trends though they were there he's accelerated them to a point at which they've entered um a new phase and it's it's hard to go back to the situation in in pre-Trump world I think impossible because America itself has changed remember he's achieved not complete but a high degree of control of the over the justice process um he in his first um period in uh in the White House he uh stacked the Supreme Court in his favor.

[00:20:42]It's not perhaps holy in his power. It could eventually rule against his tariffs and so on, but nonetheless um uh the uh separation of powers in America is not what it was. He's also brought the media to its knees.

[00:20:56]most of the American media, not just the Washington Post, which has been semi-destroyed by uh Bisos, its owner, in the last few weeks or days, uh but uh all of the different aspects of the American media have been um um reshaped.

[00:21:12]They're afraid of Trump, as most American businesses are, afraid of Trump's um um uh threats to them. So that America from being um the haven of safety in a capitalist world is actually in some eyes becoming not investable because any capital put that you don't know what's going to happen to it. You don't know how the barriers which under the liberal neoliberal period were never absolute but there were barriers between the powers of government and how markets operate have all have been largely um um dissolved. So uh um it is an accentuation of trends, the Trumpian order, but a but one which is so accelerated because of media, social media, and other factors. Everything's accelerated uh um nowadays. We're in a different we're in a different world. And I think it's that the hardest thing to do. Uh um actually um an American poet wrote this.

[00:22:12]Um um Wallace Stevens, great American 20th century poet. He said, um, the future is easy. It's the present that's uncharted.

[00:22:22]It's the present that's hard to understand. When the present is very different from even the recent past, even though there are some continuities with the recent past, they're so attenuated that we're in a new world which is quite different from the from the the recent past. And then you have a a permanent you have a deep-seated cognitive dissonance which is that people are continually trying to screen out aspects of the world which undermine their worldview.

[00:22:49]So I I mean I think I saw that myself a little bit in um um at the same time, think of this, at the very same time that um many European leaders were deeply worried about Trump's threats to Greenland uh which included at one point um threats of mil using military force.

[00:23:08]They were simultaneously having meetings about Ukraine which depended on Trump giving back stop to a peace settlement.

[00:23:15]to completely. On the one hand, they were afraid of being attacked by the United States uh European territory, EU territory. On the other hand, they were um looking to a solution for the for the terrible and tragic Ukraine conflict which would presuppose a reliable American backdrop.

[00:23:36]That's cognitive dissonance. Two things completely incompatible and yet they were doing at the same time. Um so grappling with these realities I think is a precondition of any kind of intelligent response to the world as it exists now.

[00:23:50]>> Yeah.

[00:23:52]>> Yeah. Why don't we switch to Europe? You know because here from the from a Spanish perspective I think this is the probably our greatest fear. Do you think Europe is resilient enough to be capable of of supporting you know this new changes or um >> I think the problem is that the European project that we now inherit was expanded and acquired its present form at the end of the cold war because it then incorporated most of the former postcommunist um states and the European project as it exists now unfortunately in many ways because it has many attractive and even ual features. I mean, one of the beautiful features of the European project is that people would not be identified with the identity that was projected onto them.

[00:24:39]I mean, the the history of Europe in the 20th century was a history period in which um people would say um I'm Austrian. And someone else would say, "No, you're not Austrian, you're Jewish."

[00:24:49]Which was not a very um apicious moment for them. people projecting other uh projecting identities onto other people very often have um uh fatal consequences which is one of the thing a little lesson of 20th century history is if someone tells you he's going to kill you he wants to kill you it's a good idea to believe him uh um some of these threats can then be can then be realized so the European project began I think as um in its uh in its in its attractive and uh um uh philosophical aspect as a way of in which people could live with plural identities without being threatened with with the but unfortunately um it thereby became after the end of the cold war a fukuyamist end of history project.

[00:25:39]In other words, the world it presupposed was one in which hard power, military power, the power to kill, the power to destroy was of declining significance.

[00:25:49]Which is I guess the deep reason why along there were other reasons not as well is that the European Union even to this day has no serious military existence. It's almost militarily non-existent as a currency. It has a partial very partial fiscal integration.

[00:26:06]It has a now rather partial freedom of movement within itself. Shenhen is semifunctional but not fully functional but doesn't have the capacity to defend itself uh separately. Particular nation states France, Britain and now Poland have significant um uh military power but as an institution as a project um the the European Union does not have the capacity to to defend itself. And the problem is that acquiring a capacity which would replace the American shield takes a long time. I'm not a defense expert, but I know defense experts and I've asked them and they all say if you're talking about replacing the American shield, you're talking about a decade or two decades or longer.

[00:26:50]Um I don't interpret I don't see Putin as being so patient. Uh I don't think he'll wait that long. I mean his point of maximum again this is what defense experts say not me but his point of maximum leverage will be maybe three years from now or five years from now not 30 years from now or 20 years from now what can be done is particular countries as I say the Swedes the Finns the Baltic states and the Poles can build their defenses as rapidly and as um firmly as possible to increase to have a deterrent effect So um the Finns have have a historical experience of that which they prevailed against the Soviet Union.

[00:27:33]>> Yeah. They won two wars against against the Soviets.

[00:27:36]>> Against the Soviets. I mean they know what it means to be attacked and they also know what it means to resist. So they'll build the Poles are now perhaps becoming outside the nuclear sphere the major military power in Europe. Um land army massive weaponries building them up every single day. um as a deterrent. Um and the Baltic states are all in readiness for uh um some kinds of incursions which might not take the form of traditional invasion but of hybrid war. There is already a hybrid war. I mean from some points of view I've heard this said by British and other military experts. From some points of view, Russia is already at war with Europe.

[00:28:18]There are strange balloons floating over airports. There are constant breakdowns in um um uh in uh in public infrastructure through cyber attack. There are even assassinations and sabotage of various kinds. So from their point of view, they're waging this um hybrid war. And one thing I would say is that although uh another world war is not inevitable and can be prevented, the boundaries between war and peace have been irrevocably blurred.

[00:28:50]peace as it used to be is in irreoverable condition. Whatever happens now uh uh in in Europe and elsewhere the um um uh forms of hybrid war, opinion information warfare, cyber warfare, mysterious uh um um breakdowns in public services and so on will continue uh what whatever else happens. So the I think a key problem for the the Europe is is of um uh res building its defenses at least to the level at which they they can't replace um the Americans. I mean one thing the Americans have for example the satellite intelligence the Europeans have some but not enough can't replace that quickly takes 10 15 years. Uh but then we get to the second issue which is that many European states including Britain and France and I think possibly Spain as well are fiscally challenged.

[00:29:51]They don't have they don't have the obvious fiscal capacity to um um spend much more to double their uh um uh expenditure on on on on defense which would be required even to do something quickly to act as a deterrent against. So it's a very perilous I would say um situation that Europe is in now and um I just add one further thing it will be it will be made more complicated perhaps by political changes because when um many people in the left in Britain now particularly now that our exist weak the the so-called soft left is becoming more and more strong and they they're very keen on reuniting with Europe Well um uh one contingent aspect of that is are you ready to reunite with Europe a Europe which in just over a year from now may have a national rally president in the LIC palace if uh Bardella or probably rather than Marine Le Pen wins that which which must at least be a reasonable possibility cannot be are are you willing to live in uh and and unite with um uh to be integrated into a Europe in which one of the great founding powers will have a populist government. I think you have touched upon um quite an interesting subject which brings me to another I mean to a small reflection and then to to another question which is um um we're talking about the the new the new breakdown between between on the one hand the United States and and Europe on the other hand but if we if we look at it um there's really you know a fracture that that that crosses both United States and Europe >> which is a political a political fracture.

[00:31:52]>> Yes.

[00:31:52]>> Which divides man. So a liberal camp on one hand and then a a populist camp.

[00:31:59]Right. M >> so um and this uh and I think this is this is another problem for for Europe but also for the United States because um um and if I talk to American colleagues you know they would all say well this is reversible you know Donald Trump may be reversible we can start now in November you know in the midterm elections so there's still people with a lot of optimism right which which I know you don't share right but And there's also a lot of people with with I think there's more pessimism in Europe regarding the possibility of key states falling falling in the hands of national populists. So Poland and 27 seems to be the key year. So next year >> Poland has um the legislative has >> Yeah. And then um the presidentials in >> in France. Let's see what happens in Germany because we, you know, if they keep on this um >> they keep the firewall or not. You know, we said we the uh uh the AFD. So um so what does it make out what does it make it out of the west? So because we were supposed to be a community whose identity was based on on principles and values >> exclusively, right? So and if if there's no agreement you know regarding that base on which we built a common identity so what does unitis so what's what what's what's the glue you know that really um make this civilization so-called western civilization >> survive in this next decades >> well there's a political level of this discussion and then what you described as a civilizational level I mean at the political level. I think there's a deep-seated um belief among liberals that what they called populism. Um I mean in the last since 2016 when Trump uh won and um Brexit happened in Britain, I think I've heard about um uh at least um 20 uh confident media predictions that populism had peaked.

[00:34:19]So they think of it as a as an aberration and they can think of it as an aberration and an anomaly which will have a definite period of die out because they don't understand or deny their own role in creating it. I mean my understanding of populism a kind of rough definition of populism is that populism is what liberals call the political blowback against the social disruption produced by their own policies.

[00:34:47]In other words, they've outshored offshored industry leaving in the American case parts of um American uh uh America as post-industrial wastelands taken that out of I mean the employment has just gone they've um uh removed various controls on banking and uh a kind of consensus on corporate rewards so that large parts of the middle classes feel very precarious. They did that. They've also made terrible mistakes like the one that Hillary Clinton made when and when she did this, I I gave a talk on the BBC radio about this shortly after she did it in I think it was August um uh 2016.

[00:35:35]She referred to a third or 40% of the American population as deplorables.

[00:35:40]Remember that she said that this basket of deplorables. 40% of the American population were dismissed. What are they supposed to do? Say, "Yes, we are.

[00:35:52]We'll vote for you." And thank you for telling us. We're very grateful for for your identifying our morally atistic and intellectually subnormal characteristics. The moment she did that, I thought the game was up. And I thought then that Donald Trump had the ideal antagonist, one that would guarantee is the the the liberals by what they've done and failed to do have created the opportunities in which someone like Donald Trump could be could emerge and could gain power. Um, so before the election, I I said I think Trump's going to win. And I also thought he would win again because um uh um the uh uh Democrats did not reform their views of the majority of the population.

[00:36:36]basically their their candidates. Not only did they deny Biden's evident cognitive decline, but they also um put up a candidate who um um did not uh uh move away from the positions that had brought about populism in the first place. So, they need someone much more subtle or um substantial than Camala Harris proved uh to be. So the key uh I think uh um difficulty uh for liberals in understanding this situation is that they're bound to think of it as a sort of almost inexplicable out eruption of irrationality of populist demagoggery which in part of course it is but without looking at the underlying structural conditions and and the underlying policies which created it in the first place. So uh reformulate your question again. Uh uh um was just >> yeah thei civilizational one.

[00:37:35]>> The civilizational one.

[00:37:37]>> Well I think the civilizational one I mean the extent to which the west is a uh is it can become again um if it ever was an integral civilization. We have to remember that before the first world war America was building itself as a separative civilization from Europe.

[00:37:54]They called Europe the old world, the dying world, the corrupt world, the world that was passing away. And they were building a city on a hill which would have a different history. And I think this is been revived. It's a very deep element in American culture, a providential view of history. That what came about in America was radically different from what had ever existed before, which is one of the deep reasons, by the way, that Fukuyama was accepted in America. I mean when I saw Fukuyama um and I'd interacted with him on many occasions in Europe and in Britain and in China and elsewhere but when I saw him lecturing in um Vienna on the end of history I thought well that's a slightly comical episode if any >> does he talk to you?

[00:38:36]>> Uh yes >> because you were surprised >> yes we talk frequently >> uh we well we talked in Beijing and I say maybe half a dozen or a dozen times in the last 20 or 30 years. I mean he's he's a he's he's a he's a thoughtful individual. He's um a decent individual and he really uh um a very influential individual um with some interesting his best books are not those for which he's most um widely known. I mean some of his books on uh the emergence of modern political orders are really very interesting in part. So I respect him as I think even though I think he's radically mistaken and his problem has been somehow to um explain why he was either misunderstood to start with which I don't think he was. I think he he he meant what he said.

[00:39:24]>> Yeah. Exactly.

[00:39:26]>> What he meant what he if you boil it down to a to a kind of empirical prediction if you like he he he thought that the only legitimate governments in future would be uh regimes of democratic capitalism. all the rest would be rejected. That's what he thought. Now it's almost the opposite of that which has happened. What's happened is that what legitimates the government now is economic growth, the ability to achieve peace, but I think above all um um continuing growing living standards and this is and law and order and in this respect western countries have not been the most successful and are not the most successful. I mean, if you like, the underlying assumption of many Western liberals is that the whole of the rest of humankind long more than anything else to be like them, to be like the liberals. Do they anymore?

[00:40:13]>> Do they when they look at capital cities, when they look at how people actually live, when they look at levels of of Western debt, when they education, do they really? I I doubt it. But your question was um can there be an integral western civilization? Not in the old sense. I don't think not in the old way that there was. First of all, the Americans have again have rejected that.

[00:40:37]>> Um when they talk about Western civilization, they mean American nationalism.

[00:40:43]That's what they mean. Um I remember when um Professor Huntington published his book in the early 90s on um u the clash of civilizations and global order, I think it was called. I don't know if many of you remember this, Professor Samuel Huntington, the um um um Harvard political thinker. Very controversial book, but very influential as well. I read the book twice and I read it with a an a question in mind.

[00:41:10]What is a civilization according to Professor Huntington?

[00:41:14]>> Religion.

[00:41:15]>> No, civilization is an American minority.

[00:41:18]It was an entirely parochial contribution to an American debate about multiculturalism.

[00:41:24]the civilizations that were were represented that were ones primarily that were active in this debate. If there are other civilizations which weren't there, we never heard anything about them. So it was a sort of parochial debate. What he meant by civilization was America. And so already that's a fundamental difference, a difference between the rather complex and older civilizational matrix or matrices of Europe which included Eastern and Western Christianity, uh the Holy Roman Empire, uh nation states, modern radical republicanism, jacabanism in um in France, uh counterrevolutionary movements that is a in many respects a different civilization and of course it's also been changed by large scale immigration.

[00:42:08]So uh I don't myself see that a project of revitalizing an um an integral European civilization um uh can be made to work and in that respect I'm more skeptical if you like or they would say more pessimistic than many of my friends on the post um on the on on on the post-liberal right what we can think about is how what was and is valuable in the various elements traditions of western civilization could be which I think this could still could be preserved or extended because elements of it I think the old practice of tolerance that we had in many uh um in many countries in which um disagreement about certain fundamental issues was was regarded actually as normal. I mean what I think is a very to regard disagreement on um some important values and issues as abnormal is dangerous and yet there's the other side of it. The philosopher Vitkinstein said in order for there to be disagreement there has to be first agreement.

[00:43:09]If you only if if people don't agree on the terms they're using on the ideas the concept you can't even have dis disagreement. I put that differently slightly myself.

[00:43:19]Unless you have an idea of truth you have no use for doubt.

[00:43:25]Unless you have an idea of truth which which which we can approach or move away from. All there is is what you think or want or feel. And that's one of the great dangers now I think which is a kind of subjectivism when people well I just don't feel like that. Well then we can't talk to each other. We can't learn anything from each other. Then you get the great danger that the ultimate uh form of conversation is violence.

[00:43:47]The only form of conversation left is is violence. And even politics, I mean politics if you like traditionally in the in the views of thinkers like Hobbes or or Tega say was actually a kind of um alternative to war or a way or or or a a mild form of war if you if you like. But if you remove any possibility of discourse among people who differ in some fundamental respects, if you take the kind of man view that one view on abortion is um I'm pro-choice, that's for the record, but if you take the view that uh uh one view on abortion is the only view that can possibly be right and anything else is diabolical or monstrous violation of human rights or the sanctity of life, then you can't live together. And that's what happened in the United States in the early 90s. I wrote an essay suggesting which then considered slightly crazy. I say if America really descends into a period of of deep internal culture war, deep deep cultural divisions, the trigger may well be abortion.

[00:44:49]And the reason is that in the Americans um constitutionalized uh law on abortion so that it became a a right. Now if you if you if you constitutionalize a freedom or some particular moral position in a society in which maybe a third or 40% or at least quarter regard that as completely diabolical you can't have social peace anymore and you also have another possibility which I predicted then I said the result of this will be that the American judicial system will become an object of political capture.

[00:45:22]If you if you create a um a Supreme Court which uh um um implements these these these rights these so supposedly fundamental rights what will happen it took over 30 years is that the parts of American society of American politics which reject these rights which regard them as even as the work of the devil will gradually over time formulate the project of taking over the Supreme Court which Trump did in his first term.

[00:45:50]So now it's a question. No one knows actually anymore how the Supreme Court were going to react. Whereas earlier on the Supreme Court was seen as an embodiment of liberal values. It no longer is.

[00:46:02]>> Yeah. This leads us to um two another questions. I have to to I I want to bring in two more subjects. First >> the crisis of democracy and then we have to say something about China. So I'm interested to know what you think about it. So uh regarding the the first issue, I I remember the the words of a French professor who started a lecture saying I have um uh a bad and and and good news.

[00:46:33]>> So the the bad news is that democracy is in crisis.

[00:46:37]>> Um the good news is that it has always been in crisis, right? So, so the question would be um how deep >> is the crisis now and can we glimpse something like like uh the ending of what we now call liberal democracy and switch towards something that we may still be calling democracy but that >> won't be democracy anymore as we understand it.

[00:47:06]Um I think the change that has occurred is that uh when Fukyama said um in future there will only be one legitimate political system liberal democracy he crystallized um an almost universal consensus in the west. Um but democracy is actually not liberal democracy. It's not fundamentally different from other modes of government in that I mean all modern modes of government are forms of popular government. There's nowhere in the world any longer in which um government is a matter of divine right or pure legitimacy. They all turn on delivering um benefits whether they're the benefits of peace which Hobbes called commodious living are the arts uh he said and science but crucially prosperity uh safety in the streets but what we'd now call economic growth they're the conditions of legitimacy of every form of government now and in that respect democracy is not I don't think has any unique priority uh uh it's one of the competitors um uh and the the main weakness I think in democracy has the functional weakness is that its capacity for growth and even now I would say in Europe for technological innovation is has been surpassed partly by America even Trump's America a sort of post-liberal um majoritarian democracy almost uh um and uh and China to to get to China because if these non-democratic in the case of China or uh um uh illiberally democratic imagine Trump or a successor to Trump.

[00:48:55]Imagine if Trump gets to the end of his term. Hard to imagine, but uh get and uh there is an election that he's replaced by JD Vance. That's one possibility. not maybe the most likely but one then America will I would suspect then become an even more of a illiberal illiberal democracy would still be a democracy as in the sense that um for example Victor Orban's Hungary is a democracy in the sense you can imagine circumstances in which he will fall I would think that's even not unlikely in the next few years but it's not a liberal democracy in the sense of which we use it because there have been Orans Orban's Hungary Orans Hungary Victor Orban's Hungary. It's not a liberal democracy in the sense that we're used to it in that there have been many changes in the constitution. There have been concentration of media power.

[00:49:45]There have been uh various changes which have turned it into a it's still democratic in the sense that the government can be removed by by the vote. But in other respects, it does not embody what are regarded as as liberal democracies. Um um and that's a possibility for postTrump America. But there's also China itself that it could move on under this state-led type of capitalism it it has to ever more rapid and um substantial and consequential forms of uh technological advance that it can surpass the United States as maybe it already has done through Deepseek. the the uh uh chat chat system that's developed in a AI artificial intelligence in quantum computing in uh bioengineering in many areas of sciencedriven technologies it's catching up it's appear or it even is perhaps o overtaking um and that's where the the danger for democracy democracy can't survive as a system for long if it's if it becomes a backwater of poverty even relative poverty it can't survive for long because of course as part of that it will produce internal movements which are very unhappy with this the parts of the populations that are becoming poorer or becoming more precarious or more indebted or more taxed will resist uh uh and then there will be anti-democratic movements as they were in the United in in Europe in the 30s it's not like Europe in the 30s in many ways because what happened in Europe in the 30s was I think very largely the impact of the first world war which destroyed the pre-existing patterns of society destroyed um the old imperial imperial structures and so on but something like that can be can be happening so I guess the way to I would think of it is that democracy is one of several contenders for legitimacy in in in the modern world and nothing guarantees that legitimacy even in relatively longstanding uh democracies Um uh if if long-standing democracies suffer from apparently insoluble problems of overspending and debt, if they suffer from internal cultural divisions which seem intractable, um if they suffer from um if they're not militarily can't afford to be militarily strong anymore, then they'll become more and more marginal.

[00:52:19]And the more and more marginal they are in world affairs. And the poorer they become relative to other countries, the more they're threatened, the more they the more they the more there will be internal uh challenges to these uh these failing uh democracies. So I don't think the future of democracy is guaranteed.

[00:52:35]On the other hand, we have to remember that authoritarian regimes do make gigantic mistakes. The mistakes of authoritarian regimes are often larger than the mistakes of democracies. uh for example, she made a gigantic error I think over COVID, not only in incubating it, probably was incubated in Wuhan, but also the the shutdown in um China was even more uh harsh and uh brutal and >> during the pandmic >> during the pandemic.

[00:53:05]>> I mean, that was an overreaction on his part. the the problem democracies often repeat the same error um uh but authoritarians do the same but of sometimes on a greater scale democracies repeated the error uh of regime change they kept on trying to do it I remember when um after the Iraq war which I opposed before it started and said it would be catastrophic it was worse by the way people say I'm pessimistic I'm never as pessimistic as what actually happens uh I've always I was surprised that it was even as bad as it what I said would happen in Iraq and I said this in the new state from before the American uh uh invasion. I said what will happen is the break up of the Iraqi state because if you remove a dictatorial regime which has identified itself with the state and if you remove the dictatorial regime you destroy the state. That is what happened. But it was worse than I thought. There was ISIS.

[00:53:59]There was the attempted genocide of the Yazidi people. The only winner at that time from that uh disastrous independent was Iran actually which which which which which grew uh Starmmer. Everyone said at the time we'll never do this again. Then they did it again in Libya.

[00:54:18]Uh uh some people pointed out, not just me but others, if you topple Gaddafi, what happens?

[00:54:24]>> Well, but they learned they learned something, you know, if we look at what happened in Venezuela, right?

[00:54:29]>> They learned not to do regime change.

[00:54:31]>> Yeah, exactly. But they're talking about it in Cuba now >> and some people are talking about it in Iran.

[00:54:36]>> Yeah. But but Cuba is breaking down by itself anyway.

[00:54:39]>> Yes. Anyway, that's true. But some people thought the um the regime which is a terrible regime of course in Iran was breaking down but it still has the capacity which maybe it doesn't in Cuba for ferocious repression.

[00:54:52]>> It can kill thousands of people. So there was a very narrow or limited learning process. Um and it's but in authoritarian regimes which is the weakness of authoritarian regimes um it's a slower process and the the the the mistakes can be gigantic. I mean, think of if you think of it as an era, think of the cultural revolution. Think of the great leap forward. Millions and millions, tens of millions of people perished in those disastrous because under a in an authoritarian regime, there's no way for feedback to become relevant. And that's a risk, by the way, that the West faces in so far as it in a sense tries to emulate the authoritarian regimes. And this is a tendency as well of saying well shouldn't we control the social media and so on so that what they call disinformation is limited. Now there is disinformation on the social media. There are terrible things on the social media. there's been a re a reversion in um in uh all over the American media um social media to for example um hideous forms of anti-semitism have reemerged in uh become popular uh um uh on on the American so there are serious concerns but imposing a single narrative or a single type of um opinion a single version of progressive opinion on the social media um um is dangerous because uh um uh you don't actually understand then the underlying dangers that are emerging.

[00:56:27]You don't understand uh uh that there may be some um serious uh social roots not for anti-semitism but perhaps for anti-immigrant sentiment and so on that there'll be problems of in social services, problems in housing, problems in um education and so on that there may be real problems if it's all blanketed at all sensored. You can't find out about those those issues. Um so no form of government um is uh perfect. no form of government um is um free of these dangers and then it becomes a balance of relative benefits and costs as perceived by the population on which it depends and then liberal democracy really doesn't um it has no unique priority I think then um uh um it has no unique claim to be always more successful it's certainly not always more successful in terms of >> well China China is the counter example I mean >> China is the big counter example China is the big counter example because the Soviet Union was not an uh not not an economic success in general. Uh there was there was significant growth in the defense industry and parts of the Sputnik and uh uh various technologies it copied or stole from the west. But parts of the Soviet Union really never regained the level of prosperity they had under the Zars. actually the economic growth was rapid in the late Zarist uh period. Um it was not an but China is an economic success. Um and it hasn't stopped being an economic success since since it's become more authoritarian. One of the predictions by the way that people like to make in the in the west was that to the extent that China became more authoritarian as it has done under she technological progress would slow down has not happened. It's a kind of myth, a western myth that in order to have consistent economic pro technological innovation and progress, you need a kind of entrepreneurial liberal but it's falsified. It's as papa would say it's a falsified god papa it's a falsified theory and yet it's what western countries cling on to because they've got nothing else. This tells you by the way that in terms of its internal um uh self-belief is quite weak in the west. which we no longer have. There's no longer a theological basis. There's no longer even a strong philosophy of history. Secretly um I think many um westerners particularly in Europe regard their period of global domination or global power as an accident, historical accident which I think it was. But that doesn't stop us from trying to preserve what we inherit.

[00:59:11]That is still a value. And I think it's not cannot only be tolerance. You can't have a uh you can't live on tolerance alone. You can't live on irony alone.

[00:59:20]You have to have some commitments to things that you value. And I would say actually myself that human individuality isn't important which is why I'm rather critical of some post-lberals who say that what we we must all be part of integral communities. Well, what happens if you're belong to more than one or what happens if you fall between these communities? Where do you end up then?

[00:59:42]Um um I think that has to be reasserted that that that value and we need a certain confidence in re reasserting it.

[00:59:50]Um but we can't uh any longer uh think that there is a a recoverable integral western civilization when quite clearly there's not and even if there could be its future would be contingent partly on the type of life including material life including peace including what Thomas obs commodious living in a in peace with each other enabled to trade and interact with each other intellectually and and in economic ways and thereby um um benefit from each benefit from each other unless there are these material benefits, social benefits of western liberal democracy, it will disappear.

[01:00:33]>> Thank you very much.

[01:00:34]>> Well, I wish I could end on some not.

[01:00:36]>> Yeah, tremendous optimism.

[01:00:39]>> I wanted to ask you if you have um a last statement that can give us any hope.

[01:00:48]Well, I think there's one very hopeful thing which is that um um if we're um returning as I think we are or have already returned to the normal pattern of human existence in which every society contains conflicts in which the world contains many different regimes and they're not tending to convergence on a single regime. um if we're returning to that or have returned it.

[01:01:13]Many many people have lived worthwhile lives in those periods. Some have suffered badly. Many have been under underprivileged. Women and other groups have been shut out and so on. But countless millions of people have lived. I mean the uh uh the place of Shakespeare. So people falling in love with each other.

[01:01:33]They still have deep passions back then.

[01:01:36]It could end in tragedy as it always does or comedy as it often does. But the the richness of human life has not actually been diminished. The richness of human life and of human possibilities is what it always was. In other words, we shouldn't make uh the meaning of our lives or the richness of our lives depend on a rather shallow narrative of progress. Um I remember reading um a memoir by uh a woman writer who wrote of her time during the second world war and she said well what I did during the second world war was dance for five years. I enjoyed dancing. I had the best dances of my life during that period.

[01:02:17]Now now luckily I mean the experience of many people in Europe was different and much worse. But even in very trying circumstances can bring out not only the best in people, the most courageous, but also the happiest in in many ways. We shouldn't have a we shouldn't be possessed by an idea of progress or happiness which makes everything that we live a kind of prelude to something later that often doesn't come.

[01:02:44]It's better simply to deal with the circumstances as they exist now. Cope with them, enjoy them, and um uh don't uh uh don't make the whole of one's life a bet on some future condition of happiness or progress. That is that is hypothetical. Um um I've written um a little book on cats called Feline Philosophy >> and um it's my bestselling book probably ever which tells me something about about cats. Cats certainly don't live in on the basis of an expected utopia. They certainly don't live in in in the belief that some future state of their lives will be better than its their lives have ever been before. They live predominantly in the present and they don't live either. They're not haunted by bad things that have happened to them. I mean, one of the one of the difficulties of being a human being is that we have not just conscious but unconscious memories which frame our way of viewing the world. I don't think cat cats aren't like that. They can be reminded of traumas, but until they actually are reminded, they don't think about them. So, maybe we can learn from other animals and from cats in particular perhaps. Uh my wife and I we had uh our last cat died recently at the age of 23 and I think it had 23 happy years which is a long life for a for a cat. So we can learn from other species as well as from the wise writers in our own species. One writer I've learned a lot from was Ielin who I knew well.

[01:04:16]Another was Michelle de Montania.

[01:04:18]>> Oh yeah of course >> he lived through a dangerous time.

[01:04:21]Dangerous time. And yet he learned he was able to be happy in in a dangerous time. So um that's optimistic which is that the possibilities of happiness and of um fulfillment have not disappeared.

[01:04:34]What's simply vanishing is a certain myth, a secular myth of progress that whether or not people people adamantly cling on to it. They insist upon it being absolutely essential. Without that, they uh I've had many people say when I've given talks, well, if I believed what um you did, uh uh Professor Gray, I'd stay in bed. To which my reply is stay in bed.

[01:04:58]You shouldn't really need a mist to get you out of bed. Thank you. Thank you very much.