Vital Interests: Ahmet, thank you for participating in the Vital Interest forum. I am pleased and honored to have you as part of our discussion of global challenges. You have recently published  a very timely and important book - Systemic Earthquake and the Struggle for World Order: Exclusive Populism versus Inclusive Democracy.

Can you give us an overview of the crises that have shaped the early 21st century and your methodology for understanding them?

Ahmet Davutoğlu: In my recent book, I try to analyze how change and subsequent attempts to restore order have affected each other in the last 30 years. I assume that there is not an end and a beginning but a  process that is continuing like a wave, like a flowing river of historical events for which there is no end. In that sense, for me, process analysis was more important than picture analysis - not just looking at the picture conjecturally and creating a generalization out of this picture. I try to understand the dynamics of change and therefore I use the analogy of earthquakes because each of these changes shape the new conjecture, the new situation.

If we understand seismic moments in world order, in international politics, we can then predict the outcomes, the aftershocks of these seismic moves. Therefore I use the physical analysis of “earthquakes” and political analysis to understand the change. In that sense I identified four large, shocking seismic moves in the international system. 

The first was the geopolitical earthquake caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991 which made a dramatic change in the most important borders of the Cold War. From the Baltic Sea  to the Pacific, this territory constituting the two poles during the Cold War, experienced severe tremors whose aftershocks have shaped and created many conflicts.

The thesis I put forth in my book is that the aftershocks the crises produced were not properly resolved. There was no proper order being established after the disintegration of the Soviet sphere. We can see this in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine today, in Crimea, in disputes between Russia and Georgia, between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, and ongoing instability in the Balkans. None of these crises were correctly understood or addressed.

Therefore I call this, the outcome of this geopolitical earthquake, the long era of ceasefires. These ceasefires continue today. but there are still potential new shocks, a new destabilizing tremor. 

The second significant earthquake occurred in 2001 and changed the psychology of the international order. This was a security earthquake - the terrorist attacks of 9/11. This event caused a psychological shift, from a prevailing optimistic approach to world order to a very pessimistic approach, from freedom and the promotion of democracy in the 1990s to security and more autocratic tendencies in the decades that followed. There was an emphasis on more control, on more security. As a result of this security shock, the psychology of the world leaders, as well as the psychology of intellectuals, academicians, and civic leaders shifted to a pervasive pessimism. This was understandable because for the first time the people of the largest global power realized that they were no longer safe in their homeland - in New York, or in Washington. 

Think of the Roman Empire-  if there was a security crisis far away from the capitol , you could comfortably live in Rome without any crisis. If there was a crisis in Rome itself, then it became a state crisis, a crisis in the normal order. So 9/11 was not just a terrible terrorist attack, it changed the psychology and the orientation of the global order. This time the psychology was not like in Eastern Europe in the 1990s when the United States was intent on spreading democracy, helping new democracies. Instead, the psychology of punishment came out - in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and elsewhere in the world - where the new American led Global War on Terror perceived a terrorist threat to the homeland.

It is important to note, the aftershocks of the first earthquake were accommodated without any real resolution when the second earthquake hit and created aftershocks in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Somalia and demanded global attention.  Today, neither in Afghanistan nor in Iraq, do we have the re-establishment of order. Seismic tremors are continuing and threatening regional stability and global peace. Pledging to end America’s longest war, President Trump promised to get American soldiers back home but this is proving difficult because there was no real order established in this fragile zone that continues to be impacted by the security shock of 9/11. 

While these two earthquakes continued to destabilize the world order, in 2008 an earthquake emanating from the American economy sent shock waves throughout the global financial system. This time people realized that security meant not only military security but that economic security is equally important. If you do not have a well-regulated and functioning economy, wealth to be distributed to the people, you may face social unrest like there was in Europe.

 When I was the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, starting in 2009, in three years time I saw several Foreign Ministers change and many other governmental changes in almost all European countries. Even the most developed democracies were affected by this economic earthquake. 

All of these earthquakes I have described were being accommodated as another earthquake struck in the Spring of 2011. I call this shock the “structural” earthquake because it has shaken the structures of all nation-states, from North Africa to the Far East - the Arab Spring. Although it originated in Tunisia and spread throughout the Middle East, it did not only belong to Arab societies. Civic unrest inspired by the Arab Spring sent tremors around the world. In fact, this  “Spring” not only encouraged the liberation of oppressed societies but also motivated “Winters” of increased authoritarian governments. Today in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, and Libya, there is no stable central governance. 

When we look at the international order we are now in, these four earthquakes all have to be accommodated, the aftershocks need to be accomodated. Now, in the first half of 2020 we are not facing a singular crisis of truly global proportions. We are facing a systemic crisis - the system itself is producing crisis situations. The abnormal has become normal. I warn in the book that this systemic crisis, which came out of the system itself, is being tested by another global crisis  - the COVID-19 pandemic. For me, COVID-19 is the first litmus test for such a systemic crisis because nobody is immune from this new crisis. Everybody is being affected, everybody is part of this process. With the dynamic analysis I am proposing in the book, not the static analysis, I am trying to re-interpret from the perspective of COVID-19, as the fifth but the most comprehensive systemic crisis. This is, basically, the structure of the book.

VI: Ahmet, you have presented an interesting narrative of the crises, the shocks, that have shaped world order in the post Cold War era. What about the causes for each one of these crises? While it is important to understand the impact of the initial shock and subsequent aftershock tremors, isn’t investigating the underlying policies and realities that precipitated the seismic events also critical?

Ahmet Davutoğlu: Certainly, each of the crises have different causes. What I can say is that there are certain problems, methodological and political problems, that can help us understand these new phenomena. First, from an intellectual methodological perspective, I think the policy makers and opinion makers did not see the full spectrum of changes emanating from the events of 1989. From that time until now, there was a paradigm shift from modernity to globality. Rather, they have seen this as a superficial series of crises, of individual crises that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In fact, this series of individual crises was a natural consequence of a much bigger transformation from modern society to global society, from modernity to globality. The individualized crisis approach prevented us from seeing the whole picture. 

In the book’s introduction, I make a comparison to the period from the French Revolution in 1789 until the Congress of Vienna in 1815, from the end of 18th century to the beginning of 19th century. Similar to today, there was a major transformation behind the Industrial Revolution -  the French Revolution, and Enlightenment. There was a new intellectual environment of enlightened philosophy. There was a new political revolution, the French Revolution. There was a new economic transformation due to industrialization. Today we can see this as the transition from the traditional world order to the modern world order. Today we can see all these aspects, but those who were living in that period thought of the Napoleonic Wars as a series of wars without understanding the whole picture. The real 19th century, the real modern era, started in 1815, almost 30 years after the French Revolution.

Similarly, in 1989, at the end of the Cold War, there was a major transformative paradigm change from modernity to globality. Policymakers, however, just focused on individual situations rather than making the needed intellectual shift to a global perspective as a new phenomenon. Therefore, they dealt with the Bosnian crisis, they dealt with the Georgian crisis, they dealt with Al-Qaeda individually but what was needed was a holistic approach, a more systematic approach. 

Therefore, I emphasize change that is systemic, rather than purely episodic. Today, we are going from modern structures to real globality. In fact, COVID-19 is the first real global challenge everywhere from China to Brazil, from the villages to large urban centers. But policymakers are demonstrating that they do not realize this.

There is always a challenge to determine definitive causes. For example, for the geopolitical earthquake, the cause was a reset as the Cold War ended. The balance of East and West Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall was an issue, but not a cause. This was not interpreted by policymakers properly and instead of establishing a new order, people dealt with crisis management. Crisis management is good to postpone the crisis. But if you have a vision, then you can have an order.

From this perspective I have to say that the political leaders of the Second World War were much more visionary than the political leaders after the 1990s.The legacy of the Second World War was, of course, much more destructive than the Cold War, and those who led the war, they themselves understood the need for alternatives. For example the ardent British national, Winston Churchill, mentioned Europe as the home for Great Britain. This was a huge progressive approach for him to say, "Now, Europe is our home."

These political leaders did their best, right or wrong, but they did something to bring about change. But after 9/11, after the Cold War, we didn't have such efforts. No new vision came out of this. When I compare the leaders in the early 2000’s, when I started my diplomatic mission with those confronting the ills of today, there is a huge gap, a lack of vision. 

The problem in this type of historical transformation is the vision issue. Who is the subject of this transformation? Who will be dealing with this problem? In the 1990s if you asked anyone in the world who would be leading the next order, without any doubt, they would say, "the United States." Now, if you ask the same question, nobody will say to you, "the United States." Nobody will say to you, "China or Russia." There is phantom leadership somewhere and people expect this phantom to solve critical global challenges.

We are human beings. Either we will change history or we will be victims of history. Today, humanity is becoming a victim of history. There is a need for a new intellectual revival and also political revival. It is difficult to identify one cause for this deficit. In the new introductory chapter to the Turkish edition of my book I say that this COVID-19 pandemic can perhaps help us in that sense. In the languages which I know there is a relation between stand and understand, standing and understanding. In German Stehen and Verstehen. In Arabic there are the same words - standing and understanding. In Turkish, we have the same.

In order to understand the phenomena, the objects, you have to stand somewhere. Today, we don't have this kind of defined political or intellectual belief. Therefore we do not understand the changes, the dynamics, in a proper sense. During this pandemic all of us were isolated, the leaders were isolated as well. Our lives stood apart from normal routines and obligations. Perhaps this experience can produce some reflection on our times. But the main course of history is flowing ever faster. The main cause is the inability of intellectual and political leaders to establish a new framework in this huge transformation, from modernity to globality.

VI: You talk about the comparison of modernity and new global thought. That was a key issue you had with Fukuyama in his End of History and with Samuel Huntington in his Clash of Civilizations. One of the problems you identify is that traditional Eurocentric thought needs to transform into a clearer vision of what it means to truly think in a global context - what you label as globality. It is important that we hear voices like yours, which comes out of the complex history of Turkey, out of the geopolitical dynamics of the Middle East, out of  the religious and cultural of Islam. Interestingly, you think and write about civilizations. Rather than focus on the more contemporary terms of societies, nations or peoples, your analysis is on civilizations. Your definition of  civilization is significant as you see it as the basis upon which humankind moves forward - understanding realities and works together for a positive future. Can you explain why you see civilization as such an important concept?

Ahmet Davutoğlu: The state is an important unit of analysis. But if you are only focusing on the nation-state as a unit of analysis, it is difficult to understand all the phenomena happening around us. In the 1950s and 60s, it was more appropriate to just make reference to the nation-state because that was a time of the emergence of nation-states and rise of nationalism. Today nationalism is also rising, but this is a different kind of nationalistic approach. It is not so determined by the times, and is best understood by other means that transcend this space. Civilization in that sense is, therefore, a more insightful unit of analysis.

In my analysis, I use civilization as a constructive historical phenomena rather than a destructive one, as Huntington does. Therefore, I criticized Huntington because civilization is a positive constructive element of human history. In that sense, for example, I especially made reference to self-perception. How an individual being perceives himself or herself.

For example, the COVID pandemic will make a civilizational impact in the next phase of human life because the needs of individual human beings are changing. The freedom/security balance will be altered as a result of this global pandemic. 

This is important for individual human beings as well as for nation-states, and therefore the freedom/security balance for me is a civilizational question. It is a factor of change beyond the national spaces. For example, freedom for a rural society is different than for an urban society or traditional society and industrial society. Today, even in this COVID-19 example, security and freedom, the essence of these concepts is changing. 

This, for me, is the beginning of a civilization change. Why? Human beings naturally need two things. One is security. This is something instinctive, for all  beings. They want to be secure. The difference for humanity is that security is not enough. As a human being, for us humans, will is important, and to have will means having freedom.

If you limit freedom for the sake of security this is tolerable for some time but, after a while, as we have seen in repressive systems, the essential human need for freedom manifests itself. On the other hand, If you provide freedom without security, this is an element of the COVID-19 threat, then this is also problematic.

In fact with this pandemic, our freedom is being limited. We are isolated at home. We're told, "You must stay there.” This is acceptable for one month, two months, three months, but it is against human nature for a longer extent. In my new introduction I use the terminology “biosecurity.” Before COVID-19, security for us meant being safe from the attacks of other human beings. In the context of the United States, national security means to secure the U.S. against terrorist attacks or the potential for nuclear warfare.

Now there is a new concept of security, biosecurity. Even a very strong state, a global power, cannot provide security for their people. This is a new phenomena. Without understanding this shift of psychology you cannot have a clear vision of a new post-COVID-19 world.

This is an example of what I mean. Civilizations emerge out of this need for evolving concepts of reality. How to have security and freedom together. Now this concept is changing for Western societies. It is changing for Muslim societies. It is changing for Chinese and Indian societies.This is a new challenge. 

This next question, is only one civilization, the effort of one civilization enough to resolve this question? I am saying no. Eurocentric modernity is not enough today to deal with all these questions. In Europe, in the biggest centers - Paris or London -  are less French, less British, Now these urban centers are more Muslim, more Hindu, more Algerian, more African. Now we need a new, more humanitarian civilization of revival that respects each other's need for freedom and security.

I introduce the psychology of biosecurity to demonstrate that civilization is not a static terminology, it is a dynamic terminology. Huntington tried to identify civilization as a static reality - that Chinese civilization, Islamic civilization, and Western civilization were defined societies that struggled with each other for dominance.This approach for me is too narrow. It does not take into account the complex dynamics of other aspects that contribute to human transformation. In my description of the psychology of biosecurity I present five levels of change and in each level, there is an input of transformation from modernity to globality.

One happens on the individual human being level, which I have described. The second is the sociological level, social mobility. Throughout history, all civilizational interaction occurred as a result of human mobility. Like Alexandria moved from Greece to India, or like Islamic civilization moved from Mecca to Andalusia/Spain and to China, or like Chinese expansion or Indian expansion of Ashoka to the Pacific, to the Indian Ocean, like Western civilization through colonialism, and the British colonization of India. Sociological mobility has been the locomotive of history as a civilization factor. This created civilization interaction. This has always been seen as a positive, constructive transformational element in human progress. Now, with the COVI-19 pandemic, we have a moment in human history where the  global mobility of people has become a threat and we try to stop all the mobility and limit social interaction.

We need to redefine this area. All these things cannot be understood just looking from a national perspective. Looking from a Turkish perspective, limited to Turkish geography, I cannot understand this phenomena. Even an American cannot understand this phenomena. This is what I mean by needing a global perspective. American strategy cannot be defined only by depending on the America First approach. Isolation is no longer a viable option.

VI: Many nation states today seem to be stepping back from democratic principles, adopting more authoritarianism, more populism, turning their backs on multilateral cooperation. How does this trend fit with your notion of a new globality?

Ahmet Davutoğlu: I mentioned five levels and have described the first two - human security/freedom and social mobility. The other three are national, regional and global levels. When we confront changes and challenges on the national level, these days in the United States you may feel this challenge more directly because of the protests over police violence against Black citizens. This shows that if you cannot meet the needs of all your citizens, then unrest is inevitable. The feeling of one, shared destiny is everywhere. We see demonstrations of solidarity with George Floyd and Black Lives Matter throughout the world because people understand the collective harm done to the human community by oppression and targeted violence by the state.

There is now a tendency towards autocracy and particularly more authoritarian regimes, - populistic authoritarianism is rising. Yes, in the first phase this may happen, but I don't think that this is sustainable. I don't think that this will provide  order. In that sense, the next stage will be a big challenge for how democracies renew themselves. The performance of autocratic regimes is important, but more important is whether democracies can reestablish themselves, can reform themselves to respond to these challenges. When we look at COVID-19 and the ways regimes handled the crisis, the first simplistic answer was autocratic leaders can be more successful because of the ability to control their people. But when we look at the actual outcomes, it was governments that had the trust of the people who were most competent in controlling the spread of the virus. It was a question of trust, not of democracy or autocracy.

There is a rising tendency, both in politics and in economics, for protectionism. Protectionism in an economic sense means the state will use the economic assets for the interests of the state. Governments will try to keep their economies closed to world trade with policies that encourage less export and import and more self-sufficiency. In Turkey we are facing this tendency as well. Trump has declared that free trade was against the national interest of the United States. But how will the U.S. economy survive when trillions of dollars will be lost if world trade starts to decline? 

For the future of the nation-state, I see three elements. One is that which I mentioned before, freedom and security. The second one is as a counterpart of this, a difference between public order and state authority. Public order, those countries, nation-states, which adapt the philosophy of public order, will be establishing a new democracy. New democracies should embrace the concept of public order, not state authority.

Today, President Trump is trying to show state authority, he is not using the language for public order. Public order means George Floyd or any of the police, they are all members of the same public. Black and White, Muslim and Christian, all are our citizens. But when you say state authority, those who are holding the power of state can enforce any authority over the citizens by their own choice. This is the end of democracy.

This is the same condition in Turkey, or in any other country. Some autocratic leaders are misusing power during these challenging times. They exploit them to extend economic power and maintain that the survival of the state is more important than individual interests. This is a threat for democracies. We have to make reference to a consensual relation between state and citizen. This is the new concept, the revival of the concept of public order. This will be the main point of separation between autocracies and democracies.

The third element is trust and control. When there is trust, these nation-states can implement controversial policies. After 9/11, many Americans were nationalistic, and supported George Bush’s policy of control such as declaration of the Global War on Terror, restrictions on civil liberties, and establishing Guantanamo. But in 2008 they elected President Obama, in part because the American people realized that the negative censequences of control policies were legitimized by these nationalistic tendencies. At that time people realized that instead of control, they preferred more trust.

I don't see the psychology of trust in President Trump’s, or Boris Johnson’s or other populistic leaders’ policies, including our president. They placed more emphasis on control. They can respond to crises, but they cannot establish a new sustainable order. Nation-states should now be restructured by a revival of democratic inclusiveness.

VI: Looking to the future, you do offer ways to create more inclusive democracies, based on pluralism, humanity, and human rights. Can you go into your description of inclusive democracies versus electoral democracies, of exclusive populism versus inclusive democracy? 

Ahmet Davutoğlu: As I wrote in my book, in the last 30 years, intellectuals and policymakers were divided into two schools of thoughts. One was utopian optimism, the other one was nihilistic pessimism. I try to introduce a new concept - realistic optimism. We have to be realistic. We have many crises in front of us, nationwide, regionally, globally because of the social, political, and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

There're many challenges in regional integration, many challenges in global affairs, in global institutions. The reaction against the World Health Organization is an interesting indication for me. The leader of a major power, the President of the United States, is attacking an international organization. As if that international organization is responsible for the virus. In fact ,what you want to do is strengthen institutions of multinational cooperation, this is globality. If you weaken the WHO, then you will be going back to a time before the League of Nations, where there are no ideas about international organizations where nation-states can interact to solve global threats and problems.

Now, this is an indication, if world leaders agree together that we need to have a much stronger World Health Organization. This is a vision. Realistically, today the UN system is not functioning properly, because it has become a place for bargaining between the five Security Council powers rather than a global world order. If within these five powers there are visionary leaders who are dedicated to making positive changes, that is a path forward. But if each of them just defends their own national interest, then all humanity will suffer.

This is the challenge. When I say inclusive democracy, those who are not implementing inclusiveness in their own country, they cannot be acting inclusively in global scenes like in the United Nations. If an American president is not inclusive in his own country, how can we expect from him to be inclusive globally? Similarly if a Turkish president, or Russian president, or Chinese president are not inclusive enough in their own countries, then what can be their contribution to world progress? 

My proposal is that we have to be realistic knowing the new reality. Inclusiveness, in that sense, is the key of many of the solutions and also is the key to understanding transformation from modernity to globality. Globality imposes inclusiveness. You may reject, but you cannot exclude, any human individual in the global processes. They are everywhere. I am sure millions of people from East to West, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from Australia to Brazil are using Zoom and other technologies to interact and share their experiences and hopes -  and no state can control this.

You must adopt technology and renew it, nobody can fight against technology. Whoever fought against technology in the past, they lost. Instead we have to make a substantive value-based effort to make technology fit into our human values. 

My suggestion for the future is the adoption of inclusiveness from national to regional, from regional to global. The implementation of universal values in all institutions. Defending human values everywhere, regardless of the political context and without internal conflict. Consistency is important. If we approach this from the level of an individual human being to the social environment, to the nation-state, to the regional and global plane, we can find a new approach to understand what is necessary to establish a new order.

VI: Ahmet - we have covered a lot of ground in this conversation. Your book on the consequences of major shocks contributes to realizing the origins of the crises that are now besetting the world community.  It is important to have new methods and frames of reference to assist in evolving a new understanding of challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic so that we can move forward as nations, as regions, as a global community. Thank you very much.

Professor Ahmet Davutoğlu served as the Prime Minister of the 62nd, 63rd, and 64th governments of the Republic of Turkey. Prior to this, he was Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister, and Minister of Foreign Affairs. In his academic career, he has held the position of professor at Marmara and Beykent Universities, Turkey, and the International Islamic University of Malaysia. He is author of many books including Alternative Paradigms, Civilizational Transformation and the Muslim World, and most recently Systemic Earthquake and the Struggle for World Order. He has received several awards, including the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service in 2010. He was named as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine in 2010, 2011, and 2012, and as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time magazine in 2012.