E-mail a friendParag Khanna
airdate March 27, 2008
Parag Khanna is an expert on geopolitics and global governance. As director of the World Economic Forum's Global Governance Initiative at the Brookings Institution, he works to find innovative collaboration strategies to redefine diplomacy for the 21st century. He was a senior advisor to U.S. Special Ops forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and has written for major global publications. He's also the author of The Second World. Born in India, Khanna is completing his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics.
Full Interview. (9:52)
Parag Khanna
Tavis: Parag Khanna is the director of the Global Governments Initiative at the New America Foundation. His acclaimed new book is called "The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order." Excerpts from the book were a subject of the recent "New York Times" magazine cover story called "Who Shrunk the Superpower?" He joins us from Washington. Parag Khanna, nice to have you on the program.
Parag Khanna: Thanks so much, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me ask a question that might be a bit unorthodox, but for those who reasonably, Parag, pay attention to the world that we live in, this is no surprise that we are losing our status, losing our stature, losing our influence in some ways around the world. So why are folk so, you think, gravitating to this text?
Khanna: It's interesting. I think you're absolutely right, that those people who travel a lot, who spend a lot of time overseas, that every book signing I've been at in the last few days, people have said, "Wow, I've spent half my life overseas, and this is exactly capturing the spirit of what's happening." The difference is between knowing and recognizing that our influence is declining and recognizing and explaining what the alternate future model is of world order beyond us.
There's a lot of people who just say, "Well, if it's not us, then does that mean it's the Chinese?" And the answer is no, the future world order that I write about in the book is something much more complex and diffuse, and it's about the increasing gravitational pull of Europe and China and India and Russia and the ways in which those compete, the different forms and styles of influence that they have, in the really important future sort of swing states, as I call them, of the Second World.
It's Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Turkey, Venezuela, Brazil, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and so on and so on. And those are the places that I've been traveling to, to explain not just how our influence is decreasing but what other kinds and styles and forms of imperial influence there are in the world.
Tavis: So who then - I assume that you believe that there is an audience, obviously, given that you wrote the text, there's an audience of folk who don't get what you've just explained. Who is it that doesn't get it, and what's the danger in their not getting it?
Khanna: Well either they don't get it or they don't want to get it. Sometimes it's a fine line between the two, or a very conscious difference, and you know who I'm talking about when it comes to people in the administration, some of whom I've been speaking to in the last few days here in Washington who I still feel are ideologically predisposed to want to disagree and frame things in terms of where they sit.
In other words, well, we are the United States, we have these military assets here, there, and everywhere, we have all of these embassies, we have all this money. But they're not asking to what extent it's translating to influence overseas in the key countries that I'm talking about, and to what extent other players are getting in there.
For example, if you even read just our media, you will hear, well, X million dollars goes to Africa in trade and aid. Nowhere is it mentioned well, what about how many billions Europe is giving, and what influence is that having? We're not comparing ourselves to others, and those who fail to compare us to others are missing the other two-thirds of the picture.
Tavis: Isn't that the American way, though - let's be honest about it - that we don't have to compare ourselves to other people? Isn't that what we mean when we say, "the American empire?"
Khanna: One would like to believe that we don't have to, but that is simply false.
Tavis: You think that's hubris?
Khanna: That's part of the definition of hubris, absolutely.
Tavis: Let me take a few parts of the globe and get you to talk specifically then about how they factor into this notion of the Second World. As a matter of fact, before I do that, you intimated earlier, let me ask you very specifically, for those who may have just tuned in, what do you mean to suggest by the title, "The Second World?"
Khanna: Absolutely. The title "The Second World" used to mean, or the term used to mean the former socialist world, the Soviet Union plus the Warsaw Pact, but we don't say that anymore. We still, however, casually, albeit, say First World to refer to rich countries and the Third World to refer to poor countries. For me, the Second World is this huge swath of countries and societies around the world that appear to be both First World - modernizing, globalizing, connected - and Third World - disenfranchised, disconnected, and backwards - at the same time within the same country.
This is the trend I'm finding everywhere. I don't think of the world anymore in terms of concrete, coherent, unified states. I think of it in terms of these patchworks where development and underdevelopment coexisting, and the tensions within those countries have big implications for our foreign policy.
Tavis: Let's talk then about some specific parts of the world and the impact that they have or will have on the development of this Second World. You mentioned earlier Europe. Let's talk about the E.U., the European Union.
Khanna: Right, the European Union is actually the rival imperial center of gravity to us and to China. It represents its own independent model. It has been developing for generations and for decades, certainly underneath the shadow or underneath the umbrella and protection of the United States and NATO during the Cold War.
But the European Union has taken on a life of its own. It is a market that is larger than the United States, that has a larger population than the United States. It invests more money overseas than the United States, it gives more development assistance than we do. In a wide variety of was, the European Union is as or more influential than the U.S. around the world, in many ways except the military way.
It is a preferred model of parliamentary democracy. Its regional mode or mechanism of aggregating countries together is something other regions are trying to follow. So in soft power sorts of ways, Europe is tremendously influential around the world, and that is what I've seen literally everywhere in all corners of the planet.
Tavis: You referenced China earlier. Talk to me more specifically about China.
Khanna: The Chinese model of diplomacy is different from and unique from Europe and from the United States. It represents the first nonwestern major superpower in the last several centuries, and that poses a challenge to the western institutions and norms such as the United Nations and so forth that have been the bedrock or part of the foundation of western dominance of the international order.
There is a Chinese way of looking at things. They prefer sovereignty and noninterference in domestic affairs, they're very concerned primarily with securing resources for themselves without deference to the agenda that the U.S. has in terms of the internal transformation of countries. So China represents a very different way of doing business, and they are doing business their way in many parts of the world right now.
If you look at every country that the U.S. considers a rogue state or a state of concern, it's also a country that is backed strategically, militarily, financially, diplomatically, and otherwise, by China.
Tavis: As you well know, as we all know, for that matter, watching the news of late, this crackdown by the Chinese in Tibet, the Olympics, of course, to be staged in that part of the world in their country, a lot of talk about human rights violations, etc. Tell me how the perception of China, to say nothing of their actual actions, impact their development and the relationship to this notion of the Second World, how we perceive what's happening there right now?
Khanna: The long-term trend for China itself has been overwhelmingly in their favor with the western media, western corporations, and neighboring countries, and even the United States being far milder in our criticism of China than in years past. We no longer ask them or they no longer release political prisoners in advance of high-level U.S. diplomatic visits.
The western media, Rupert Murdoch and the like, have gone and bet heavily on China. There have been the controversies over Google, Yahoo!, and others providing the kind of decryption technology that has allowed the Chinese Internet police to crack down on dissidents and the like. So the protest in Tibet and by Tibetans worldwide notwithstanding, it certain stains the image of the Chinese, but in the long term, they seem to have won the battle to convince the rest of the world of their ascent to glory, and the Olympics are meant to sort of cap that.
And they're obviously going to try and suppress this and many other issues as much as they can in order to sort of get away with it. One finds, for better or worse, that a lot of Second World countries across the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, even Latin America, the emphasis is to sort of lean towards the Chinese way of doing things.
Just let everyone achieve their own goal, their own model of success. Take Venezuela and Brazil and Saudi Arabia, countries that are very happy to sign huge agreements with China and focus more on the revenues that it can bring them, the autonomy that it buys them from American pressure, rather than focusing on sort of normative human rights issues.
Tavis: But what does it mean, though - and I'm asking the questions, I want your take on this - what does it mean, quickly, though, if human rights are going to be sacrificed in the development of this Second World? How do we read that?
Khanna: Well, it obviously means that we have an uphill battle in terms of pursuing the political agenda that we and the Europeans have in a variety of countries, particularly in the Middle East and elsewhere. I believe, and this is a very bold and provocative sort of policy prescription, but I think we need to make ourselves irresistible.
I believe that our packages and our incentives and policies really are falling short, because the alternative, working with China and Russia and others, is clearly holding an increasing amount of appeal. So we have to do more, we have to put more on the table. We have to say, "If you work with us, you will have western investment, western universities, more aid, more technical assistance."
We have to really up the package, and we see that across Africa where Chinese development policy is getting - by and large, there's certainly some amount of backlash - but quite a warm reception, from Senegal to Angola and Zimbabwe, Zambia, and elsewhere, and even the Horn of Africa. I think that that forces us to either say, "Oh, okay, we give up?" No, that's not what we should do. We should, of course, increase the attractiveness and the appeal of working with America and Europe.
Tavis: His new book is called "The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order." A lot of buzz around this text. His name is Parag Khanna. Parag, nice to have you on the program, thanks for the text.
Khanna: Thank you so much, Tavis.
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