Vital Interests: Alex, thanks very much for participating in the Vital Interests forum. You and Daniel Nexon recently published an interesting and timely book Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order. Our readers are a savvy crowd, but they don't necessarily hang out in international relations forums or understand the vocabulary used. In the context of your book what is a hegemon?

Alexander Cooley: Thanks again for the invitation, John. It's a pleasure to be with you. I would say that the easiest way to think about a hegemon is as a synonym for  global leader. That is, not only does hegemony refer to a single country having a preponderance of power globally, but also using this power to transform and shape the system through a series of institutions, norms, international organizations that it casts in its image to exert governance. So hegemony is about a preponderance of power and about the leadership function in governing with that power, with the proviso, of course, that on the international stage, we don't have the types of well-established institutions and governing mechanisms that we have domestically. That's what we mean by hegemon.

VI: In the book you examine the unraveling of the American global order and list three contributing significant factors. The first is the rise of Russia and China on the global stage. Then the second is that weaker states no longer need the patronage of the United States. Then, thirdly there's a new network of transnational organizations that are working against the dominance of liberal democracy, of the post-Cold War, American-led world order. Can you explain how these factors evolved to challenge American dominance?

Alexander Cooley: Yes, absolutely. One of the overall points we're trying to make in the book is that these mechanisms, these pathways of exit, as we refer to  them, historically have been salient in the international system. Even though these particular configurations might be new, these types of processes have always been with us. 

I think the most important thing to realize here is that a lot of the assumptions that academics and international relations  scholars, as well as foreign policymakers, had about how the world is governed and U.S. leadership in the world was founded upon the experience of the 1990s. In the 1990s, we had a very rapid transformation of international order, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its accompanying types of relationships and norms and infrastructures. All of a sudden, in 1991 the U.S. found itself as the lone superpower in what some would describe as an unprecedented unipolar moment.

It controlled a number of these functions, but historically the 1990s are an anomaly. I would just preface the commentary as we analyze  these pathways of exit.The first one, the Chinese and the Russian challenge- we call this “exit from above”. Here we had considerable debates in the 1990s or early 2000s about the role of both China and Russia in the international order. They've usually been framed in terms of whether or not  these countries are acting as “responsible stakeholders”. Do they want to change the rules or wouldn't they prefer to support the system, and especially in the case of China, participate in and support the world economic trading system that has been so beneficial to them? That's how the debates were framed.

VI: China’s eagerness to join the WTO and to play our game for their own purposes?

Alexander Cooley: Exactly right. They are “playing our game”, hence they are sustaining the order. But what we've seen is that China and Russia aren't just passively taking the rules that we've provided. They are actively constructing counter ordering mechanisms and institutions that take the form of the liberal order, and especially international organizations and regional organizations, but in content and in substance pushing new norms and the agendas of Moscow and Beijing. 

When we think about clusters of new regional institutions that have been established over the last decade, most of them are either China or Russia-controlled and directed, whether it's in the field of development, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), or in the security realm, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The Russians have done the same thing with security and economic organizations in the post-Soviet sphere. Groups like the CSTO, Collective Security Treaty Organization, which models itself on NATO, or the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Initially, commentators were dismissive of these initiatives saying, "Well, these are just symbolic efforts. They're just talk shops. They don't actually do anything," which is a curious standard given that most regional organizations don't do a hell of a lot anyway. But the way to think about it, and the way we presented it in  this book, is using the ecological metaphor. It used to be that all the plants and shrubs in the ecosystem looked a certain way. They look like the U.S. and European kind of versions.

VI: They look like Central Park or Kensington Gardens.

Alexander Cooley: Now the landscape, especially if you are in areas like central Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, the kind of thicket of international ecology that you deal with is a lot different. You spend a lot more time preparing for these Chinese and Russian led organizational summits and meetings and agendas. Then we have examples of efforts to remake the international order by each of these countries individually. The most prominent example is the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, which we argue has important ordering consequences. It's not just about Chinese investment in local infrastructure projects. It's about drawing countries into partnership, getting them on Chinese technological and regulatory standards. Then, of course, there have been debates about debt dependency and quid pro quo and so forth.  You've also seen similar Russian unilateral assertions, whether it's military intervention in Ukraine and  Syria or informally supporting Libya, or opportunistic ventures in sub-Saharan Africa. Russia also wants to be engaged and involved in world affairs beyond its regional sphere, especially when it senses power vacuums that it can exploit.

It's not that Russia and China were outwardly playing by or rejecting the rules, it's that they were very much interested in transforming the rule set. What we see now is the shift in power operating at all levels. Within existing international organizations, you see China exerting leadership in a lot more UN bodies than it did before, but you also see a thicket of new types of regional organizations that are friendly to Moscow and Beijing.

The second mechanism is what we call “exit from below” and that is, as you correctly characterized, driven by what we typically regard as a “small” or “weak” states–like Ecuador, Tajikistan, Djibouti– leveraging the fact that the U.S. has lost what was once a patronage monopoly. It used to be, in the 1990s, if you, as a country, required emergency loans or assistance or development assistance you had to turn to U.S. and Western-led international financial institutions, the World Bank, the IMF, perhaps the EBRD.

VI: USAID

Alexander Cooley: Yes, exactly. Now, you have the rise of alternative patrons. I mentioned China and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, but there are other  regional powers, for example, Persian Gulf countries, and also Turkey for a while.  When it had petrodollars, Venezuela was playing this type of role.

What happens with the entrance of additional patrons is that weaker states can actually leverage the presence of an alternative to push back against the conditions and the parts of Western aid packages that they don't like. Again, there's a transformative effect here. That Western money tends to come with conditions, either political or economic, and regimes, especially autocrats, don't like conditions that constrain their rule. It's natural for them to try and leverage alternatives into pushing back against these. China does not demand the same kind of domestic conditions oir changes, often disruptive to autocrats, and so its patronage is more appealing. The patronage monopoly has been broken.

It has also transformed many of the international functions that we once considered to be sacrosanct. I'll give an example. This might seem a little obscure, but I think it illustrates the point well. Think about international election monitoring. In the 1990s, states consented, as an international norm, to have their elections monitored, even  though this is quite distinctly a violation of sovereignty and potentially politically threatening to a country if it intends to hold rigged elections.  And yet it became a standard practice to allow this. Most of the initial outfits were reasonably good election monitors. They were skilled, they had codes of conduct, distinct procedures, especially the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the Nixon Center, etcetera.

As election monitors have become more and more critical, regimes have taken it upon themselves to either actively solicit or hire alternative election monitors who give different assessments of what are obviously flawed elections. A lot of these monitors come from these new regional organizations I just talked about. You see this dynamic in Latin America (UNASUR and CELAC monitors), you see it in Asia, you see it in Central Asia (SCO and CIS monitors), that the traditional election monitoring bodies have been drowned out. Their critical assessments are watered down by the influx of these new kinds of providers.

Then the final mechanism is the rise of competing transnational networks with illberal agendas. In the 1990s, we became accustomed to equating transnational networks and activist networks with Western-style NGOs that worked to promote liberal principles, like gender equality, protection of the environment, human rights, the anti-landmine campaign. There was an assumption here that NGOs operated on principles, that they were quite nimble, that they could boomerang around sovereign states, and that they could forge like-minded coalitions among like-minded activists, international organizations and sympathetic states. What we've seen, really since the beginning of the 2000s, is that states have taken concrete steps to restrict and stop liberal NGOs, whether it's enacting foreign funding laws and restrictions, or in the case of Russia, just  criminalizing membership in politically threatening  organizations.

You see very little pushback on this backlash against NGOs. Then at the same time, we've seen the rise of illiberal types of networks, composed of both GONGOs-  government organized NGOs that promote government and national agendas- but also transnational networks with illiberal agendas. For instance, we talk a little about the World Congress of Families. This is a group that was started in the 1990s by two Christian right organizations which then started to network globally. Over the last 10 years it has held annual summits in locations like Moldova, Hungary and Georgia, and increasingly is pushing an agenda that includes a  focus on the traditional family, restricting reproductive rights, and anti-LGBT rights.  You've seen illiberal leaders like Victor Orban in Hungary give keynote speeches at these gatherings in support of these agendas.

What we are seeing is the transnational sphere becoming increasingly contested, with networks promoting liberal and illiberal norms. Historically, that tended to be the case in international relations. When you think about interwar years and the capture of governments by right-wing and fascist movements. Or my co-author Dan has written  about the transformation of dynastic monarchies that was unleashed by social movements from the onset of the Reformation. This social contestation over values and norms is something that's a much more natural state of affairs but again, in the 1990s, we were missing it because we just assumed that with Fukiyama’s  “End of History” pronouncement, there was only one set of liberal values and governing principles. Governments were either more quick to adopt them or slower to adopt them, but history was trending in one direction.

VI: This notion of one set of established values brings up an interesting point: social consensus and the ideas of governance are also tied to culture. The American global order brought with it a strong cultural aspect where American ideals about freedom and democracy - free expression, creativity, entrepreneurship, and individual rights - attracted people around the world to the” American way of life.” Is this cultural aspect of U.S. power also diminished as American hegemony fades on the world scene?

Alexander Cooley: It's an important question and it's also quite a complex one. For a while, many other countries have accused the U.S. of hypocritical behavior,  especially in this kind of cultural and human dimension - that we preach freedom of the press and individual rights and all these “values”, but in practice, we have the NSA spying scandals and support authoritarian rulers when they are helpful to us. We don't practice what we preach. Hypocrisy, however - and scholars like Henry Farell and Martha Finnemore have argued - is a necessary lubricant when you're a world hegemon that aspires to universal values. Because, of course, you have relationships with certain countries, autocracies, or monarchies like Saudi Arabia most dramatically, that don't conform to the tenets that you were espousing. But the very fact that you're being accused of hypocrisy speaks to the fact that the norms and image that you've established for yourself are powerful. They resonate and are associated with your leadership. Otherwise, you wouldn't be hypocritical. It would just be another great power acting out of a sort of self-interest.

The chipping away of that is quite important. The fact that you have leadership now that very much downplays American exceptionalism is also important, as is the perception worldwide about U.S. incompetence in its handling of the pandemic. All of these have converged. At the same time, you do see a type of cultural and social production taking place in other parts of the world. This was true in the 2000s as well. It's not just a recent phenomenon and, of course, social media then amplifies these types of messages. I think the critical difference now is that there is no consensus, even within the core in America, as to what its mission overseas should be. Nor is there a consensus about what types of identities comprise the “West” itself. Is it a common belief in civic and liberal values of governance, or is it a belief, as commonly expressed by the alt-right and other illiberal social movements, that the West at its core is composed of racial and religiously exclusive nations and groups?

This is what we're now seeing in terms of debate about U.S. aid programs or soft power, or even international broadcasting by Voice Of America. These are issues where we once had quite a strong bipartisan consensus about the way we're going to behave, regardless of what others are doing. VOA was going to have a certain set of principles, not like Chinese CCTV, or Sputnik or RT, it was going to adhere to these principles. One by one we've seen a lot of these foreign policy institutions or initiatives start to be questioned and start to be refashioned in a way that tracks onto domestic political polarization.

Then the final thing that I would say in answer to that question, which isn't so much treated in the book but is a longtime interest of mine, is that you've also seen the unwinding of an assumption that was made in the 1990s about the global reach of Western cultural institutions. The idea was, we will spread them around the world and countries will take our values and ideas but we will use their money. Sectors like higher education campuses overseas or the globalization of sporting leagues. I think the recent controversy about how the NBA reacted to the players speaking up about what was going on in China and Xinjiang is absolutely telling.

Then you could make that argument about the cultural spheres too and pop icons– once regarded as the vanguard of free expression– giving concerts for the autocrats like  president of Turkmenistan and so forth. There is a lack now of American consensus about what it should be doing overseas in terms of projecting its image and its values.

VI: Alex, what you're basically saying is the world is holding up a mirror to ourselves. It's making us evaluate our own society and government. The Black Lives Matter movement resonated around the world and exposed police violence and systemic racism in the United States. Could that be reformative - to provide a moment for Americans to consider our participation in a new  global order, in the global community?

Alexander Cooley: Absolutely. Even when you look at the Cold War there was a strong connection and interplay between civil rights movements here and geopolitical circumstances, where policymakers increasingly saw a real international vulnerability, beyond just the moral imperative, in the civil rights movement, that it was seriously undermining U.S. credibility abroad and that increasingly there was a national interest imperative to adopting comprehensive civil rights legislation.

And the Russian state media reaction to Black Lives Matter, is very interesting.  On the one hand, there is this kind of perverse exuberance, that there is racial tension in the U.S. and wanting to magnify it - we see frames that promote that the U.S. is on the brink of civil war and socially disintegrating. On the other hand, what is not covered and what makes Russian official circles more nervous is the fact that these protests seem to be effective. They seem to be generating responses by policymakers, whether it's changing flags or taking down monuments or acknowledging the problem. That is very dangerous because the greatest fear of Russian, post-Soviet and other autocratic leaders is the power of the street protests. It's an uncomfortable position.

At the same time, I think we need to distinguish between what is achievable now in terms of the U.S. place in the world. We need to decouple this idea of primacy and hegemony from supporting liberal ordering institutions. American primacy is gone. It's not coming back. In fact, attempts to resurrect it, either through more international interventions or a very active agenda pushing certain types of economic transformations or liberal financial policies overseas, is actually only going to extend a lot of these tensions between the pillars of the liberal order. I do think it's realistic in a Biden administration or somewhere else to get back to some core principles, shoring up and maintaining commitments to alliances, whether it's in East Asia or the European Union.

Again, it's talking about the importance of the human rights regime while acknowledging failures at home, getting on board with a serious attempt to combat kleptocracy and corruption internationally, which the U.S. has the tools to do if they're not used for political purposes. The tools and the experts  are there. What's needed is staffing a lot of these institutions and setting our sights a bit lower, so that the U.S. can remain an incredibly influential player, the most influential player in world politics for some time to come, but it has to start governing not in terms of global primacy, but by becoming an attractive and competent beacon in all these spheres of international governance. If it can't do that then actually this goodwill isn't going to go that far, if countries are seeing a lack of capacity. Again, I think this is about not resurrecting the 1990s, but rather moving forward in a much clearer fashion in defining U.S. interests and core relationships.

VI: It certainly seems that the whole concept of hegemony is unraveling, not just American, but any possible hegemony by the Chinese, the Russians, or any power. What seems to be trending, to use the term of art these days, is cooperation, is that the global community needs to cooperate. Certainly, the pandemic has shown that to be an absolutely necessary reality, and then there's climate change and other existential threats to the planet, not just individual governments. Can't that be the future direction of a new American government, of a new administration?

Alexander Cooley: It certainly can be but  I think you've seen this also with pandemic politics because, regardless of what the U.S. response has been, China has come out of this looking pretty badly as well especially given all this politicization in the World Health Organization.

VI: And China’s new “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy...

Alexander Cooley: Exactly right. I would say one of the problems, really challenges, that we face is that intergovernmental politics and multilateral institutions don't look the same now that they did in the 1990s. They're increasingly about preserving regime autonomy and stability, rather than actually facilitating international cooperation. Then in international relations - not to get too wonky -, cooperation means mutually adjusting our preferences so that we can get a more beneficial outcome. It's not about shielding regimes from accountability or hiding their actions. A lot of our multilateral politics now, where the U.S. has previously led, left vast holes for Chinese leadership to step up and provide this kind of shielding mechanism to regimes as opposed to fostering actual cooperation.

For me, that is one serious challenge that we have: that the mechanisms of global governance aren't functioning. They never functioned ideally but now they are functioning poorly in response to our important challenges, and so when you think about mitigating climate change or any of the other kinds of global commons issues, that is going to be a problem beyond just us re-establishing our credibility as a leader in global governance. I think one takeaway from the book and its analysis is that political actors that might seem familiar have actually transformed into less liberal versions of themselves. I would make that argument about certain UN agencies, I would make that argument about non-governmental actors. All of that adds to the challenges that we have, as does this global rise of misinformation and the politics of posturing.

VI: When we look at the powers that be, there is the United States - with the challenges and problems we have discussed - China, the ascendant one, and then Russia, the old power that keeps trying to have a role in the world. If you look at Russia, there is Putin and the oligarchs around him, a pretty strange governance structure, and a one-horse economy, based on oil and gas. Russia seems to be operating in global affairs just by what is being characterized as meddling. They meddle in elections in the U.S. and Europe. They meddle in the Syrian and now Lybian conflicts. They're trying to meddle in Latin America. Is that sustainable? Is Russia really a challenger?

Alexander Cooley: It's a good question. I would say the challenges of Russia and China are quite different. I would say the Chinese challenge is much more potent. It's operating on multiple levels. It's well-funded. It has a global vision behind it, in terms of the Belt and Road Initiative. Also, there are substantial resources behind it. The Russian challenge is different for a couple of reasons. One is, the Russian challenge is outwardly revisionist. This has been the case for some time now. Russia was saying, "We are dissatisfied with the global international order. We don't like the U.S. setting rules. We don't like its hypocrisy. We want to move to what they call a more polycentric world." This has been founded on a number of things. One is, Russia is exerting this governance over a sphere of interest, which is strictly defined within the post-Soviet space.

VI: Ukraine, for example. 

Alexander Cooley: Yes, interventions in both Ukraine and Georgia, but it also operates on the level of deploying what we call in the book “wedge strategies” or trying to drive splits within the political consensus of liberal-core countries about commitments to Trans-Atlantic institutions like NATO or the EU. This is why Russia supports parties of both the extreme right and extreme left. The thing that they have in common is opposition to this kind of Trans-Atlantic and liberal consensus. They'll operate on that level, and then, yes, they will react opportunistically. The Syrian intervention is not costing them a lot of money. Similarly, this plays out in Africa, when they see French troops withdrawing from the Central African Republic and then go in on a limited basis to support the government and secure diamond mines and security contracts. They're very opportunistic in nature.

What Russia wants out of this is a seat at the table in these hot spots, to be consulted, to be deferred to, to be listened to. I would argue that they're achieving that relatively on the cheap, they've become much savvier. When we think about the mechanisms of exit that we talked about, the Russians failed in a number of ways in becoming an alternative patronage provider. When they tried to pay off Kyrgyzstan to evict us from our military base there in 2009, we outbid them, and they were embarrassed. When they tried to pay Belarus to recognize the illegal statelets of Abkhazia and South Ossetia following the Georgia war in 2008, Lukashenko took the money and said, "We can't do it." When they try to do this competitive patronage politics, they fall flat. And it's expensive. Instead, what they're doing is targeting with this kind of plausible deniability, using low-costs diplomacy, cyber and mercenaries, and funding political actors that break the traditional political consensus in the core itself. Then, within these institutions of global governance, they align with China whenever they can, as well as looking after their own interest.

Is it sustainable? No. But I also think it is a mistake to equate Russia’s revisionism with the personality of Putin. Russian foreign policy probably is not going to look a lot different post-Putin than with Putin, if we ever get to post-Putin, just for the simple fact that there is little support in Russia for going back to this liberal order which is associated with the chaos and weakness of the Russian state in the 1990s. Whatever the concerns about China are, I think the Russians feel much more comfortable maintaining a close relationship with them, than being lectured at or sanctioned or having to endure Western institutions and rules sets. No matter what you hear some liberal critics in Russia say about this, I think there is a comfort level there.

One final thing I'd point out about Russia though, in terms of the oligarchs, the ruling class, one of the things that has enabled their rise is  access to a lot of Western types of institutions - property rights guarantees, the shell company - to enable and  camouflage transactions.

VI: They learned those lessons well. 

Alexander Cooley: They learned those lessons well. I think that's something to think about, in terms of influence politics, that you see that a lot of these so-called Russian oligarchs are also global players with global reputations, charities, philanthropies, lobbying. There is a dual game going on here too.

VI: Let's talk a bit about China and its sustainability. You have mentioned China's influence in international organizations, investing around the world through their Belt and Road Initiatives, and the kind of aggressive diplomacy they are now engaged in. Will the Chinese coffers run dry, will the crushing indebtedness to China cause countries to question Chinese intentions and model? Are there cracks in that facade of China’s global edifice?

Alexander Cooley: For sure, there are some cracks and there are some downsides. But I think we have to distinguish between some of the problems in these relationships and then smaller countries' willingness to endure those problems because the regimes are getting something out of the partnership. For instance, the debt politics of a lot of these relationships, whether you're in Ecuador, in Kyrgyzstan, or in Cambodia, regimes that get something out of the relationship privately might be okay with pushing these levels of debt unsustainably, because they're receiving private goods and political support. To me, that may or may not be a mechanism for change. We'll see.

Certainly, though, your point about domestic indebtedness in China, if that were ever to explode, how attractive would the Chinese model be? I think that's a very valid point. Of course, what's also happened in Europe on the Huawei front, increasingly European countries taking a tougher line on China. Here, I think some of that angry diplomacy has also backfired a bit. On the other hand, I think you've seen a steady acceptance of Chinese concerns and transformative attempts.

Let's look at the world's reaction to what's happened in Hong Kong. That would be one. Two, if you look at the repression of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, certainly we've made a lot of noise about it here. When you actually look at the UN Human Rights Council, there were 22 countries that initially expressed concern about that. Then China mobilized 53 to support its position. When you look at a graphic of that map, Chinese supporters are a lot more globally spread out than its detractors that are basically part of the core members of the old liberal order.

I think we've already gone quite far down the road of transformation. I think, of course, China is going to encounter more and more problems and challenges, a version of what the U.S. has had, where different clients are being offered different kinds of deals and start to complain, and they start to learn from one another and look at each other. I think you'll see a little bit of this, of whether it's debt politics or basing politics and so forth.

I think China has a very long time horizon and has a very comprehensive strategy there. In other words, it's about carving out more and more policy influence in the existing institutions and about creating new institutions. It's also about a much longer-term transformation through these partnerships of the preferences and behavior of other countries. One final thing I would say is that, with a couple of exceptions, I think Xinjiang is one of them, you've also seen a lot of capacity for China to learn from mistakes and from bad PR there.

Again, do I see Chinese hegemony in our future? I don't. But I think the challenge is real. I think the possibility of a G2 type world is already upon us in some ways. I don't think we'll see the same dynamics as the Cold War. I don't think China wants or even is comfortable with client states in a block the way the Soviet Union had them, where you were part of one camp or the other. Instead, I think these levers of control behind the scenes– regulatory, domestic, elite capture, different forms of indebtedness, and investment– and I think they're much more comfortable having those kinds of levers across a solid block of states .

VI: Working through international organizations, isn’t that something the Chinese have really embraced?

Alexander Cooley: Exactly. There's a much more interesting multilateral, multipolar politics going on where China is doing actually very well. Even when you look at places where China has military bases, Djibouti, Tajikistan. You don't typically think of these as Chinese clients. They're actually engaged with many parts of the world, in part, that gives China a lot of sway, their presence amongst many there.

VI: They're about to sign a pretty impressive strategic and economic agreement with Iran which is going to be quite a finger in the eye of the Americans.

Alexander Cooley: That is a prime example of what happens when you withdraw from a previous consensus and you throw out all these agreements, institutions with nothing to replace them. Countries naturally band together. This isn't new to the post-American world, this is balance-of- power politics 101. I fear we have enabled that by withdrawing from agreements that we  helped bring about and offering no concrete alternatives.

VI: A major component of U.S. hegemony, in the American global order, has been what is known as “The West” which was the United States supported by former colonial powers in Europe. What role will Europe have in the new post-American world order?

Alexander Cooley: Certainly. I think Europe goes forward and then it goes backward. I remember in 2005 when Mark Leonard came out with a very influential book called Why Europe Will Rule the 21st Century. His vision was European soft power, and especially legal power and norms would become so attractive that they would start to influence by dissemination. I think what you see in Europe right now, both in terms of the forces that led to Brexit, but also that keep leaders like Orban and Duda in power, is this turn to illiberal politics and leveraging of these kinds of national values and strong man posturing while still taking benefits from the European Union. 

The two most challenging elements of European solidarity were the refugee crisis from the Middle East that opened the door to this populist politics, this going against EU directives and values, and then the fallout of the great financial crisis, where you were shown that the southern European states were not going to have the same kind of backing and solidarity as they had expected from the northern Eurozone states. At the same time, you see Europe muddling through.They certainly will be a prominent important player.

I think the challenge is, can they really get coherent national strategies to cope with, say, the rise of China and a common Chinese policy or are they going to be subject to Beijing's divide and rule tactics, where Beijing starts to pick off one member like another. For instance, Greece. In June 2017. For the first time, Greece vetoed a routine European statement that was critical of Chinese human rights practices. The Greek foreign minister said, "Well, this isn’t a very constructive conversation.”

A large Chinese investment in upgrading  facilities at the Piraeus port was driving this. I think that's the challenge confronting the EU on the Chinese front as well as, of course, simmering issues that are flaring up such as the lack of a pro-European orientation in the Balkans, or what's going on in Turkey, and the challenges there. There's a lot on the European policymakers' plates at the moment.

I think the whole question of the U.S. not supporting a united European Union has also done something. I think there's a realization that the U.S. has lost its credibility and that ultimately European states are not going to be able to rely on Washington and its enduring support. I think that has shaken a lot of policymakers. Whether that can go back to a type of a status quo ante next year, if there's a change in administration here, I think that's an open question. I think there'll be more goodwill but I think the trust there has really eroded.

VI: We're coming to the end of our time - we always like to end these conversations on a positive note. Your book is about the great global unraveling and you talk about a period of uncertainty but it doesn't necessarily have to be a pessimistic outlook.

Alexander Cooley: We try hard to provide some caveats that we're not romanticizing the civil order. This kind of active remaking of the world in our image was also used for great illiberal purposes. Think about the war in Iraq and all of the negative second and third order effects that it has had. Certainly, the great financial crisis, this unfettered, unregulated innovation and the financial products that were so destructive.

We don't want to apologize for these things. If it drives us to consider our own role and positive contributions and cooperative contributions in a more multipolar world, then we're all for it. This reflexive exceptionalism, we are the most powerful country so that we do whatever we want, we've skated on that I think too long. If this allows us to, once again, come to the table and think about who our allies are, what our interests, our values, our future challenges are. Rather than operating on this foreign policy inertia that we've had, to re-engage anew with these questions could be quite productive and could help us have a serious debate and discussion about what America's role in the world should be like for the next 20 and 30 years that, frankly, we have not had in any meaningful public way. I think that's the positive, potential opportunity out of this.

Alexander Cooley is the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard College and Director of Columbia University's Harriman Institute. Professor Cooley’s research examines how external actors—including emerging powers, international organizations, multinational companies, NGOs, and Western enablers of grand corruption—have influenced the development, governance and sovereignty of the former Soviet states, with a focus on Central Asia and the Caucasus. Cooley is the author and/or editor of seven academic books including, Dictators without Borders: Power and Money in Central Asia (Yale University Press 2017), co-authored with John Heathershaw, and most recently, Exit from Hegemony: the Unravelling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020), co-authored with Daniel Nexon.