Global Flashpoints — 2025 College and University Educators Workshop
About College and University Educators Workshops
In this session of “Global Flashpoints,” Steven A. Cook discusses the Middle East, Mvemba Phezo Dizolele addresses Africa, Jill Dougherty speaks on Russia and Ukraine, and Zongyuan Zoe Liu talks about the economy and U.S.-China relations. The conversation is moderated by Reena Ninan.
The goal of the workshop is to find new ways for college and university educators to encourage their students to learn about international relations and the role of the United States in the world. It provides an opportunity for educators to explore the wide array of CFR and Foreign Affairs teaching and research resources available to the academic community, participate in substantive briefings with subject experts as well as in group discussions, and share best practices and educational tools for bringing global issues into the classroom.
Global Flashpoints
Steven A. Cook, Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, Jill Dougherty, Zongyuan Zoe Liu
FASKIANOS: Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Welcome back. We are about to get started. So, I’m happy you all came back in the rain. Welcome to the second day of the College and University Educators Workshop. We have a full day planned for you, so drink lots of coffee.
And I’m very excited that our first panel is Global Flashpoints. And—I think they’re coming—and Reena Ninan, who’s a journalist and founder for Good Trouble Productions, will be moderating. So I’m going to invite our panel out now. And we have Jill Dougherty join joining us via videoconference, or Zoom. So, we will get started right now.
NINAN: All right. Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. What a great, full, on-time crowd. I love it. Thank you for joining us for this conversation where we’re looking at the geopolitical landscape. We’re excited to talk to you all. There is so much shifting in the world today, so we’re going to get right to it. We’re seeing so many global implications, from a recalibration in the Middle East, to African countries navigating with global powers. And Jill, who is joining us on screen here—hey, Jill, good morning to you—we’re going to take a look at also Russia’s war in Ukraine and the situation out there.
So, I want to introduce, as you see here, Jill Dougherty is going to be joining us from Georgetown University, and well renowned and well known. Worked at CNN and the Bureau of Moscow for many, many years. Jill, so good to see you.
And right next to me is Zongyuan, Zoe as we’re going to call her, Liu. Thank you for joining us. She is the Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies right here in the Council on Foreign Relations.
Next to Zoe is Mvemba Phezo Dizolele. Close enough? Did I get it? If I can’t get the name right, something’s wrong. (Laughter.) Also here joining us as the director and senior fellow of the Africa Program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
And a face you all probably know well, Steven Cook, who is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies here at the Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you guys so much.
Well, I want to kick it off. So much is changing. I keep checking my phone to see what the latest is in the world by the minute. So, I thought we’d kick it off first and kind of look at what is one key driver in all of your regions that you’re seeing right now that has major global implications. Jill, I want to go ahead and start with you and Russia, if you don’t mind. But what are you seeing in that region?
DOUGHERTY: Well, there is—number one, it’s great to be able to talk to fellow educators. And, you know, I’m trying to get my thoughts for my students around this very question. So there’s no question that in the neighborhood that I look at former—I hate to say former Soviet Union, but there doesn’t seem to be much better way to describe it at this point. It’s Ukraine. It’s the war in Ukraine. As some would say, the war against Ukraine. And, you know, this morning, Reena, I sat down—and panel—I sat down and just thought, almost mapping it out, how this is connected to everything else.
And if you look at—number one, this is the biggest land war in Europe since World War II, right? Then you have just sheer numbers of people who are dead, wounded, et cetera—both military and civilian. Then you look at Europe transformed. You know, NATO has two new members. It’s much bigger than it’s ever been. Europe now is looking at—and this is kind of more a political, geopolitical question, will the United States be there to defend them if Russia decides, after this war, to attack more countries? So, you have this complete, you know, change in Europe that we can get into, Germany, rearming.
Then you have, I would say, you know, for young people, a generational effect. That this is a generation that’s going to be affected in, really, every country, certainly, in Europe—Russia, Ukraine, Europe, and, I would argue, even in the United States, by this. Then you have food prices. And this is where Africa comes in, the Global South—another term that I don’t particularly like, but let’s call it—you know, developing countries hit by increased food prices because of the war. Then, you know—(laughs)—I won’t go on forever—but you have Russia and its friends—China, Iran, North Korea, of all places. And North Korean forces fighting in Europe. I mean, it’s unthinkable a year ago, you know?
I would say regional fears. Central Asia is rapidly transforming, the Caucasus. I’ve been to the Republic of Georgia three times last year, I was there. Grave concern there. And then, the last thing that I would just put on the map is this developing rapprochement or reset with Russia with the Trump administration, which also is, you know, connected in direct and indirect ways to Ukraine, which could transform yet—(laughs)—the world even more. So, that’s my spin around the world.
NINAN: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jill. I want to get more into the Trump administration in just a moment. But, Zoe, what are you looking at in China that you think is a big driver, that maybe people might not be thinking not be thinking about at this moment?
LIU: Yeah. Reena, first of all, thank you for agreeing to do this. And I also wanted to thank everyone here in the room for your commitment to America’s education and to educating the next generation. I understand how much commitment you have made, especially at this moment. So, thank you for your service. And also thank you for joining us here at CFR.
I think Jill did a very, very fantastic job laying out the map. What I wanted to do is I wanted to zoom in on China, as you suggested. And I wouldn’t say that what I’m going to say right now is going to—is going to be something, like, groundbreaking. It’s not going to be. And this is what I think the driver, not just inside China but also across Asia, across Eurasia, and across the global system, perhaps, is the transformation of the Chinese economy. And the reason I mention this is because—let’s sort of—let me take a step back by going to the first Trump administration.
In 2017, that was the first time America’s national security strategy defined China as a strategic competitor. For lack of better words, from there on, I think, you know, that has become the lens through which China views how the United States views the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China. And then, continuing forward, over the past few—over the past few years, a growing body of literature basically started talking about great-power competition, and in the context of strategic rivalry. But the fundamental change here is not necessarily how much the Chinese Communist Party has changed, or how much China geographically has changed. Nothing has changed.
But what has changed is the Chinese economy, not just in terms of its size but also in terms of its quality, and also in terms of what the Chinese leader wants China, or the Chinese economy, to be. And, associated how the leader has measured China’s progress towards national rejuvenation, no longer just in terms of pure GDP growth number but perhaps the fewer numbers that he cares about, such as rural rejuvenation, or technological development. So, in that particular context, a lot of this could be—could have direct implications for great-power competition. Not just in terms of economic competition, but also national security, but also in terms of technology.
And a lot of this has a lot to do not just with what we have seen in terms of China’s regulatory changes, what—the war in Ukraine, but also how China views its own vulnerability. China recognized that it benefited tremendously from joining the WTO in December 2001, and somehow, perhaps starting from the global financial crisis, kind of realized that, well, the more China get intertwined and integrated into the global economic and particularly financial system, the more likely it become collateral damage. And this is not just in terms of China, but also in terms of a lot of developing countries. Or, again, I agree with Jill, you know, the contested meaning of Global South, for lack of better word.
You started to see the rise of—or, the blocing, grouping of Global South, with the start of BRICS around the time of the global financial crisis. And people—folks started to realize that they do not want to be collateral damage anymore. Fast forward, COVID happened. COVID happened with the supply chain disruption. The reverse—the reverse image started in the rest—in developing economies in terms of, geez, what do we used to think, economy of scale is good for business, reduce costs, but now economy of scale becomes concentrated risk that cannot be diversified. Let’s fast forward, not just in terms of companies, but governments started to implement policies, fast track de-risking or decoupling.
So, this is sort of the world we are in now, with the transformation of the Chinese economy. Not only the content of great-power competition has changed, but how different levels activities—in terms of firms, in terms of government policies, and perhaps in terms of human resources going forward. And that’s the battle of education.
NINAN: And, Zoe, I want to get into the battle for education and also tariffs a little bit later, but when I get to our other two panelists here as well.
Mvemba, when you look at Africa, it really is a battleground for global power competition right now. What are you seeing that’s a driver right now that people might not be thinking about in Africa?
DIZOLELE: Thank you, Reena. And thank you, friends. Good morning. When it comes to Africa, I think the biggest problem is the state as a source of insecurity. In other words, it’s not fundament—anything fundamentally wrong with the Africans, but the model that became the state in Africa is the old colonial model. So, it’s not a model that was designed based on the social contract. It’s a model that was based on predation and exploitation. All roads led to Rome. You know, you visit any African countries, the roads don’t make any sense. The airport don’t make any sense. They don’t make any sense because they were not built to make sense. They were built to drive you to Hoboken, Belgium—not the one in New Jersey—(laughter)—for the refinery of copper from DRC. They were built to drive you to Liverpool for all the resources they were taking from the so-called commonwealth.
That state, sixty years later, has not changed. So, Africans have not had the time nor the space to sit down and say, what will work for us? There is no organic state in Africa, with a few exceptions. Everything was patched together for the interest of somebody else. That has become the basis of what we come to know as the predatory state. And it’s the only thing you could have, because the mother of that predatory state was another predatory state, led by gouverneur général who went to Sorbonne or Oxford, but was no Democrat. So today, we have the consequences of that with the militaries in a lot of these countries, based on one region, from one religion, or one tribe, and trying to promote—to promote security. They can’t.
We have demographic pressures with the youth demanding the real change, because the youth are technologically savvy. They know more about Kim Kardashian than we do. They’re very much into 50 Cent’s motto—get rich or die trying. (Laughter.) So, they expect change to come today. And we see this with mobilization. We see this with Y’en a Marre in Senegal, Balai Citoyen in Burkina Faso, LUCHA in DRC, #FeesMustFall in South Africa, and so on. The world is not responsive to that either. So, not only the world is not responsive, in as much as the world responds, as it happens in Europe, it responds with the rise of the extreme right. And the extreme right to this African youth is dangerous. They talk about replacement and so on.
So, the failure to read Africa properly continue leading us to that competitive—the field of competition from the rest of the world. There’s misreading of Africa in the U.S. There’s misreading of Africa in Europe. The rise of the extreme right in Europe, and also in the U.S., make it so that it’s even more difficult. I prefer talking about replenishment as opposed to replacement. With the median age of nineteen in Africa, and in many places fifteen years old, that’s the future of the world. That’s the future of Europe, which has the median age of forty-nine. So Europe, when it becomes a fortress with 30,000 feet walls, is not going to rejuvenate. So the survival of the very culture that Europeans want to save from the Africans, is going to be saved by Africans.
So, if you were to take France, the future of French as a language is in Africa. It’s not in Paris. We have spiced it a lot in Africa—(laughter)—but it’s still French. It’s Kinshasa that is the largest French speaking country. Is Zaire, DRC, that is the largest French speaking country. Not—so the French have not gotten the memo. (Laughter.) If you look at the music, and art—
COOK: They should. Have you seen the pictures of the French national soccer team?
DIZOLELE: I know! (Laughter.) So, you look at the comedians, all the musicians, the arts, Aya Nakamura, Master James, all those guys, they’re all in the first generation French or second generation. And during the World Cup, as Steve just said, as long as Nigeria is out, Senegal is out, and so—but if France is still playing, Africa is still playing. (Laughter.) So that’s—
NINAN: That’s wonderful.
LIU: Really good.
NINAN: Thank you so much, Mvemba. (Applause.)
Steven, you know, you have actually written about sort of the recalibration underway in the Middle East. And interesting, you know, Mvemba was talking about the younger population. The Middle East as a significant younger population as well. What are you watching and what are you seeing as drivers of change in the Middle East?
COOK: Yeah. Thanks very much for the question, Reena. And it’s nice to see all of you. Good morning. I’m sort of taken back to my days in the classroom because there’s a number—there’s a smattering of open seats here in the front. (Laughter.) Bring everybody forward. Don’t be afraid. (Laughter.)
You know, if this conversation was happening before September 15, 2024, I might have said a driver of change is the extraordinary transformation happening within Saudi society. I might have said, prior to then even, probably the prospects of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Of course, everybody talks about the Middle East being very young, and they’re a youth bulge. Although the youth bulge is kind of the dog that never bites. We’re kind of waiting for that change and it never—it never really—it never really happens. I guess people wanted to connect it to the Arab uprisings, but it didn’t happen.
But what I would say now is—as of September 15, I would say the real driver of regional change is the force of Israeli arms. I picked that date specifically because that’s the date, I believe, because I was there at the time, when the Israelis kicked off their real war with Hezbollah, with the beeper attacks and then the next day the walkie-talkie attacks, and then a devastating six to eight weeks of conflict in which the Israelis basically—didn’t wipe out Hezbollah, but rendered Hezbollah incapable of doing the things that Iran and Hezbollah’s leadership had sought for Hezbollah to do. Which was, to be Iran’s second-strike capability that would devastate huge parts of Israel in the event of a major regional conflict.
That has had a number of domino effects, including the fall of the Assad regime. Hezbollah was the expeditionary force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that helped to save the Assad regime. So, when the Assad regime fell and Hezbollah is devastated, Iran has lost its access to the Mediterranean and its entire western front. Its entire forward position in the Middle East is now gone. Hamas has been greatly damaged, although it remains a potent fighting force. They fired ten rockets into Ashdod the other day. But there is a reordering of the region. Suddenly, you have a much better government in Lebanon. Like, oh my god, lightning struck twice. There are all kinds of possibilities and range of outcomes for Syria. But one, finally, that may—among those ranges may be better.
So there is a reordering of the region. It doesn’t seem that way, given the kind of devastating conflict in Gaza that has gone on for the last eighteen months. But in fact, Iran is far weaker, and its Axis of Resistance is far weaker. And I think everybody—leaders in the region, many, many people in the region—believe, and they believe strongly, that a region where Iran is—the Islamic Republic is either weakened or gone, and its proxies are defanged, paves the way for a much better region. The problem is, is that a lot of decisions, and really difficult decisions, have to be made in order to get there.
And there’s a debate in Washington right now about how to get there. Clearly, President Trump has decided that negotiation is the best way to get there. I will tell you, a lot of people in the Iranian opposition think this is the exact wrong way to get there, because it throws a lifeline to an Iranian regime that isn’t really serious about negotiating.
NINAN: Steven, I want to get to Iran, but can I ask you about Gaza? Sorry, do you have one more point you want to make?
COOK: No, no, no. Just to suggest—they’re all connected, of course. But just to suggest that this is a moment where decisions that are made now are going to have an effect on the regional order in the region. And it’s up for grabs. And that’s going to have an impact on the global order, because the Middle East, despite all the patter about withdrawal and it’s not important and so on and so on, is critically important to the United States, the status quo power in the global system, and China, the rising power in the region. And if I remember Robert Gilpin’s hegemonic stability theory—I’m talking to academics—(laughter)—you’re going to have conflict between China and the United States. It doesn’t have to be military conflict, but—and the Middle East is going to be a region where that jockeying is going to happen.
NINAN: Can I really quickly get your sense on Gaza?
COOK: Yes, Gaza.
NINAN: Just before, you know, I feel like—
COOK: For my sins?
NINAN: Everything else in the international order is sort of sucking up a lot of attention, but we haven’t heard a ton on Gaza. The president has said he wants to do a massive hostage release soon and talk to Iran. We’ll get to Iran in a moment. Where do you see that going with Gaza?
COOK: OK. Everybody take a deep breath. (Laughter.) Remove all sharp objects from the room. (Laughter.) I think that all of the discussion of Gaza for the last eighteen months is airy-fairy and detached from reality. And what is happening and what was bound to happen was an Israeli reoccupation of parts of, if not the entirety of, the Gaza Strip. Which, after kind of dancing around this issue, Israeli leaders are now—I mean, the Israeli defense minister and the Israeli chief of staff are talking about we are going to occupy large parts of the Gaza Strip. And that will be a prelude to an effort on the part of Israel’s radical right, which is now part of the government, and to some extent—to some extent holds the prime minister hostage—to resettle the Gaza Strip. No two-state solution, no international force, no revitalized Palestinian Authority. None of those things. Something closer to a status quo ante than anybody could have imagined after this horrifying, horrifying conflict. That’s what I think is most likely in the Gaza Strip.
NINAN: So, the Israelis go back into Gaza, is your assessment?
COOK: And there’s going to be an Israeli military occupation in the Gaza Strip, of at least parts of it. And then once that happens—it’s already happening; it’s happening prior to it—tremendous pressure from the Israeli right wing, which is relatively small but has a more potent political argument today than it did when Ariel Sharon withdrew Israel from the Gaza Strip in 2005. And that resonates with a larger group of Israelis after the horrors of October 7. That’s where we’re going.
NINAN: Yeah. OK. Jill, I want to turn to you, because you mentioned a little bit about how this is a massive change and different perspective with this administration on Russia. We’re now, what, two years-plus into this war. How do you interpret—oh, sorry. Excuse me. Three years. You’re correct. How do you interpret Putin’s endgame in Ukraine? Is there one? Where is this headed?
DOUGHERTY: Well, that’s a big debate right now. But I think very easy to say that if you look at what he wanted to do initially when he invaded, it is to essentially take over Ukraine and use it as kind of a buffer against the West, against NATO. And take over—initially, you know, three—more than three years ago, was you physically roll in there, you take over the capital, Kyiv. Maybe you kill Zelenskyy, or at least you force him from power. You put in kind of a puppet government that is friendly to Russia. And you rule it just the way they rule some of these, I would call them puppet republics that are in the eastern part of the country, controlled by Russia right now. So, that didn’t happen. So he is not—and I think this is significant—he was not able, with the Russian forces, to take over Ukraine. And Russia is a much bigger country. It is a richer country and a more powerful country. But Ukraine has been able to hold them off for three and a half years—more than three years. So that’s significant.
I think ultimately what he wants to do is, I think I’d use the word, neuter Ukraine. If he can’t completely take it over, and, you know, there’s a footnote to that. You can take over countries in many ways. You know, tanks. You can also bring in corruption, and buy off politicians, and create—with a hybrid approach, you can create a lot of chaos without really kinetic fighting. But I think what he wants to do is neuter it, maybe leave it as a country. He does not believe—literally does not believe that Ukraine is a sovereign country. But you neuter it so that on the map it looks like a country, but realistically it has very small military—this is a specific demand from Putin right now—very small military, no aid from the West, no Ukraine prospects in the future, and some type of control by Russia.
And why all of this? Well, that’s in the mind of Vladimir Putin. But I think he believes that he has to have this kind of belt, you know, the region where Russia influences the rest of the former Soviet Union, all that west of Russia area from the Baltics down to Moldova, to keep NATO out. And I think at this point, just one last thing, I believe that even though he didn’t—was not able to do this militarily in the beginning, he is willing to wait. He’s willing to wait for some type of deal with President Trump. And he’s willing to wait for the allies to fall apart and Europe to fall apart, so that he can do what he wants. So that’s, I guess, my best interpretation.
NINAN: So, Jill, it sounds like Putin is patient, going to wait a little bit on this, and thinks that there might be some sort of a deal with Trump that’ll be in his favor in all of this.
DOUGHERTY: Yes.
NINAN: Great. Zoe, I want to turn to you because—I don’t know what the latest is on tariffs. I think the last when I checked this morning was the Chinese have hit back with 125 percent tariff. But, I warn you, you may be watching this later, or in this very moment it could change. It’s that fluid. (Laughter.) What do you think, when people are talking about China’s approach with the economy, you’re talking about what a key driver that is right now, there has just been always a significant amount of capital flow into the United States. When it goes out of the stock market it tends to maybe flow into the bond market. People are saying this could be a key moment where you are seeing further investment by China into countries where, you know, what, the United States might be a little bit unreliable now, is what China might be saying to people, come on over. We’ll help you out here. Are you seeing a strategic reorder in China’s position in the economic landscape here?
LIU: Reena, that’s an excellent question. Even though a lot of this reordering of global trade system, global economic system, seemingly to have been driven by the United States or the user’s guide of—a user’s guide to how—A User’s Guide to Reorder (sic; Restructuring) the Global Trading System, by Stephen Miran, I do see a lot of initiatives coming from not just China, but Russia, India, South Africa, Brazil, and elsewhere. It’s just that the sheer size of China is big. And the Chinese has also laid out the infrastructure, not just in terms of, you know, road and airplanes and a physical asset, but also the renminbi-based global finance—the renminbi-based alternative global financial infrastructure, centered with the so-called Cross-border Interbank Payment System, combined with a digital renminbi.
You know, when we hear people talk a lot about central bank digital currencies, Chinese not only—has not only pioneered it, but also when President Xi Jinping visited Saudi Arabia he was telling folks in the region, saying that, you know, we wanted to—we wanted you guys to start using renminbi to price energy, natural gas in particular. And I also wanted folks to start collaborating on mBridge. I’m not exactly sure President Xi Jinping, sort of, he personally, has that much technical expertise on those issues. But the fact that he pointed it out there goes to show where he wanted the future collaboration to be.
Now, in terms of capital flow you talked about, it’s very interesting to see that in the—as the tariff tension come back and forth—I don’t want to use the word tariff war, as Secretary Bessent, at his press talk he said he does not want to use the war, signaling, I hope, intent to negotiate. But on the Chinese side, in order—I would say, they still have capital control. But they have been trying to have a broader and more internationalized version of the use of renminbi in international payment and in settlement. And in a lot of ways, I would have to say, perhaps, the Communist Party of China, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, he probably has spent a lot of time, if not his entire career, has been preparing for this exact moment. And starting from—not to just, you know—
NINAN: When you say “moment,” meaning that?
LIU: Meaning, as he often says, you know, we are in a moment when there are unseen—there are unseen changes in the global system for a hundred years. So this is the moment. It’s just that perhaps leaders in the White House have our war in Ukraine and the West sanction of the Russian banks accelerated how he views China’s vulnerability, hence how he should reduce China’s vulnerability, by providing an alternative payment and a settlement system such that in an extreme scenario, China can continue doing international transactions. After all, China is still an export-dependent economy. And about 30 percent of global manufacturing output is from China. Put this in context. It basically means China’s share in global manufacturing is bigger than the combined share of the U.S., Japan, Korea, Italy, France, and Germany. So, China relies upon the rest of the world. And it needs ways to continue business if it were under Western sanctions.
NINAN: I just want to turn to all of you—let you know, in a few minutes we’re going to turn to all of you for questions. So hope you might be ready with some thoughts to ask our great panelists here.
Mvemba, I want to ask you about—there’s just such an aid crunch right now. You know, a cut of aid. When you’re looking at a room of educators here, how can they look beyond, sort of, the aid dependency narratives we’ve talked about with students? Where do you see the best help in this situation of having, you know, drastic USAID cuts to Africa and throughout the world, where do you see that—how do you see that transforming the region?
DIZOLELE: I started by saying, Reena, that the state is the source of instability, not because people are mad. It’s just the structure that they inherited. Aid became a serious problem for Africa because it was not the kind of aid that augmented governance. It was the kind of aid that crippled governance and tried to substitute itself for the government. So, if you look at the public sector, public health sector, which is one very blatant sector, in case of, let’s say, PEPFAR in South Africa, or the entire eastern side and southern side that were heavily affected by HIV/AIDS, those countries, for the most part, did not build the capacity to provide the antiretroviral drugs and so on. They continue to depend on the U.S. and other donors for a good thirty years.
That is not acceptable. So in the words of former President Uhuru Kenyatta, this is somebody else’s money you were planning on. So, whether the Gates Foundations and others who come into the spaces, I, for one, always have problem with this kind of aid, because, again, it’s crippling the government. You cannot have the Norwegian and the Swedes come and fund all the girl-boy parity education in Uganda, or in Rwanda, and then allow them to attack their neighbors, right? Because every time you do this kind of funding you actually not pushing for better government.
And so, I think it’s actually—in French, we say quelque chose, le malheur est bon, sometimes bad things lead to good outcome. We hope this is a chance for African governments to go back to the drawing table and start wondering, what are we doing? Why is it we have to depend on Ukraine for grain, when Africa is home to most arable lands in the world? It makes no sense. Why are you eating wheat in the first place, when you have fonio, you have sorghum. Why don’t you develop that? Because the moment the Ukrainian and the Russians start fighting, you are suffering because of bread. So this is where I see the transformation.
NINAN: So, you think this will help these countries stand up on their own?
DIZOLELE: I hope it will help. Yes, I hope it will. But if the state is so broken because of the wrong model, I’m not as hopeful.
NINAN: OK. Steven—if you look at your tables there is a great article that you’ll see right there from Steven Cook, called “America’s Universities Could End Up Zombies”. What a headline, Steven. What a headline.
COOK: I don’t write headlines. (Laughter.)
NINAN: You’re looking sort of at U.S. higher education. It was the envy of the world, but with state interference it might not be for long. I know this is a topic that’s top of mind for universities. The administration has come in and cut, in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars, or threatened to, I should say. What’s your outlook? Because there are many students being deported in universities. What are you picking up on the landscape in higher education right now?
COOK: (Laughs.) Well, I—these are the folks that—what are they picking up on in higher education? But this is sort of my statement on what’s been happening broadly at the universities. And let me just say that, if not for a chance meeting of someone at a gym in Washington, DC in, like, 1997, I would be on the other side here. I would not have been at the Council on Foreign Relations, because that chance meeting led to a chain of events that ultimately led to my coming to the Council on Foreign Relations, not long after defending my dissertation. I would have been very, very happy going off and teaching at, you know, like, my alma mater, Vassar, or someplace like that. It would have been great. Totally fun. Which is why, when I’ve had opportunities to adjunct, I’ve always—I’ve always jumped at it, despite the pay being, like, five bucks an hour. (Laughter.) In any event—which I haven’t made since I delivered newspapers in suburban Long Island in the early 1980s.
In any event, I have been disturbed by events on campus beginning with October 7. And I don’t need to go through the litany of horrors that have happened on campuses where university administrators and professors have basically lost control of their campus, some in cahoots with the chaos on these campuses. At the same time, I think what the Trump administration is trying to do to establish political control of the campuses risks destroying the crown jewel that is not just great for America, but it’s great for the world. Sure, there are departments and schools that have veered very far from what their missions are, but for the administration to try to dock universities hundreds of millions of dollars will impact cancer research, research into quantum computing, understanding AI, understanding things like de-democratization, understanding ancient civilizations, all of which enrich our lives and advance our lives and our civilization.
And the Middle East angle of this is, I went into the QS ratings of world universities. And I’ve lived for long periods in Egypt, Turkey, and Syria. And I looked at the flagship universities in those places, all of which are controlled by the government, or mass—I mean the mukhabarat—you can’t, you know, swing a dead cat in Cairo University and not hit a member of the mukhabarat posing as a student. And these crown jewels are ranked incredibly low in those global rankings. And it doesn’t matter, you know, what you think about these rankings. It’s clear that these universities are compromised.
And I don’t think Columbia is in danger of becoming Ain Shams University, ranked 592nd in the world. But I do think that more government interference undermines academic freedom and undermines research that really enriches all of our lives, saves lives, and helps us be more competitive. At the same time, the academic freedom is not something to hide behind and doesn’t shield people from legitimate criticism of things that are, I think, just inappropriate. I think the moral absolutism that has taken over some campuses, rather than investigating and examining the incredibly complex issues that face us in the Middle East, and elsewhere, is bad for—is bad for all of us.
NINAN: Zoe, I mean, part of the thinking on this from the Trump administration is we want to make America great again. We want American workers to be the AI experts around the world. We don’t want to import them from China. What’s the thinking when people—the mindset is, we don’t want to give people in other countries an opportunity that should be for American students? How does that backfire?
LIU: It backfires both in terms of short term and also in the long run. I think in the short term, we started to see not just U.S. students starting to wonder, is it just—could I still even get a job if I spend the time to study Mandarin, because it seems like China is no longer a good place to do business. And if I’m MBA student, I might as well—might as well do something else. And, by the way, artificial intelligence is going to help me understand a different language without having to study it, without—I can spend other time, do something else. So, that’s one side of it.
And you see with the right—this new round of U.S.-China trade tension, you’re starting to see Chinese parents and the Chinese government starting to ask the same thing. Literally, about one or two days ago Chinese authorities issued two warnings. One is a travel warning to the United States. The other is education, talking about if students are going to study in the United States, you ought to be aware of all the security risk.
NINAN: And that’s something they haven’t done before?
LIU: To my knowledge, I haven’t seen anything like that. And these are—the short-term turbulences might mean, well, you know, like, the good Chinese students are not coming. That basically means university labs might not necessarily get cheap but a good quality research assistant. (Laughs.) But in the long run, I think the damage is even bigger, because less Chinese students coming to the United States means, for the U.S., this is bad. Bad in the sense that for the future generation in China you are breeding people who do not understand the complex of how U.S. politics work, and vice versa. Less Chinese—less U.S. students going to China, it basically means less U.S. people going forward is not going to understand how complex the Chinese system works.
Imagine a future—wouldn’t this future be a better version? Imagine this future. You have a future Chinese leader who can speak English, who can understand a rap, or who can sing a Taylor Swift song, or whatever that generation’s Taylor Swift is. Or, even better, they can go to a baseball game together, they can go to a football game—American football—game together, and share some jokes. I think folks in that kind of scenario would be way much better than whatever situation we are in today.
NINAN: So, you’re saying it’s not just about brain drain or, you know, academics. It’s also about culture and understanding between two countries that might not have existed if they didn’t come and study in the United States, and likewise for our understanding here in the U.S. as well.
LIU: Exactly, Reena. And I really appreciate the question about people. And the reason is because when I was—I consider myself as, and people, like, in my generation, as the golden era of U.S.-China relationship. I was born and raised in China, become naturalized citizen here, and I still have friends, family back in China, and vice versa. A lot of my American friends, they now live in China. And both sides are frustrated by the situation we are in now. What saddens me on a day-to-day basis is that great-power competition at the state level, at the system level, renders individual, normal people, like us, as collateral damage. Renders a small business unable to do their work. It’s the great power of the United States, the great power of China is not necessarily all the gigantic bureaucracy in DC or in Beijing. It’s the individuals. It’s the people.
NINAN: Thank you. I want to open it up to the audience here, to all of you. We’ve got mics around. If you wouldn’t mind just identifying yourself, tell us who you are. I think we’ve got a question right here. If you could tell us who you are. And I’d just ask that you ask a quick and pointed question, so we can make our way around.
Q: Sokol Celo from Suffolk University in Boston.
Question for Jill. So for us, the common mortals outside the academics of foreign relations, we tend to describe the relationships between countries in dyads. So, country A and country B. So for change, I would like you to discuss a triad, namely, China, U.S., and Russia. Does the triangle make sense to you? If I would make a thought experiment and give you information about China-U.S. relations, and China-Russia relations, and tell you to predict the third side of the triangle, what would you say?
DOUGHERTY: You know, I think that is a really important point. If you look at the way Putin looks at the world, and probably the way Donald Trump looks at the world, they do tend to look at big countries. You know, big, sovereign countries—U.S., China, and then Russia, which, of course, is diminished but still sees itself as a major power. But I think, you know, based on the conversation that we’ve been having for half an hour, that is a very shortsighted view of what is going on in the world. I mean, I’ve gone to Central Asia quite a bit. And there is a lot of change there. Countries that used to be under the sway of Russia now are being influenced by China, but are kind of making their own way. So I think, yes, you could look at it as a triangle. But I really think that that is an outdated view of the world. Where is Africa? You know, where is Africa in that? I just think that that’s not the way the world functions. And especially for the young people that we’re teaching, we have to explain to them that it really matters that, you know, some kid in Kazakhstan is going to do something. That’s the way I look at it.
NINAN: Thank you, Jill. Yes, right over here.
Q: Good morning. Jessica De Alba from the University of Maine.
I have two very—two quick questions. One for Steve. So, knowing that the two-state solution might not really become, or ever, so do you think that there is an opportunity for Saudi Arabia and Israeli normalization that would help, actually, the whole Middle East? And the other one is, I know that the process for decolonization between Africa and Latin America were very different, but I do feel that there is a common link. And having this mentality, do you think that our countries cannot just become developed countries because of how we think, as, you know, not the state, because the state is just a thing, but individuals who run those countries have a specific type of idiosyncrasy that does not allow for us to thrive?
COOK: Let me just underline the fact, used the word “might not,” the two-state solution might not happen. The two-state solution is not going to happen. And let me just quickly—I mean, I could go on for hours about this. But let me quickly offer you two reasons why. I’m not just saying that because that’s what now people have said. What you have—the most dynamic end of the Israeli political spectrum is the religious Zionist movement, the kind of right that I was talking about before. And the most dynamic end of the Palestinian political spectrum is Hamas. I mean, they’re not—neither are the most popular, but dynamic in the sense that they know what they want, they have a program to get there, and they have a world view that mobilizes people. Those are one staters against one staters, right?
Hamas attacked Israel on October 7 not because it wanted to liberate Gaza, not because it wanted to liberate the West Bank, but because it wanted to liberate all of historic Palestine, from Metula to Eilat, from the river to the sea. And the religious Zionist movement wants to establish sovereignty over the West Bank, and increasingly sees what’s unfolding in the Gaza Strip as an opportunity to resettle the Gaza Strip. Under what circumstances there are we thinking about a two-state solution? Then let’s play a thought experiment. Let’s imagine for a moment that we have a Palestinian Authority president who has some authority, and we have an Israeli prime minister wants to do—wants to have negotiations. Israel’s minimum requirements for peace are not anything any Palestinian Authority president, who even has authority, can provide. And it’s vice versa. The Israeli prime minister could not satisfy a Palestinian president’s minimum demands for peace. So, you get stalemate. And in that stalemate, you get more settlement, annexation, et cetera, et cetera. So there isn’t.
That’s where you get to now Saudi Arabia. On October 6, Saudi officials were—October 6, 2023, Saudi officials were saying it’s not a matter of if there’s normalization, it’s a question of when there’s normalization. Then this horrible war happened. And the price kept going up and up and up. At the most recent Shura Council meeting in Saudi Arabia—this is like the-the, Shura Council, right—Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler, future king, said: Our price for normalization is two states. It’s one thing for the foreign minister, Prince Farhan, to say that, but now the crown prince has said it. And once the crown prince says it, there’s no off ramp there. There’s no off ramp there.
So what will happen between Israel and Saudi Arabia as we get past this crisis—if we ever do, because we may really not if what I think’s going to happen in Gaza happens—is you’ll go back to some situation in which, you know, the Saudis and the Israelis have ongoing dialog in the basement of the Jordanian, you know, mukhabarat headquarters. Some Israeli businesspeople with third party—third country passports will get special visas to come in, because the two countries really do have things that they can do business on. And that’s what it'll be, without the normalization of relations between Saudi and Israel.
I will tell you this also, there’s—the number of Saudis who look favorably on normalization, low single digit. Low single. It was not high prior to October 7. It was also in the single digits, but it’s in the lower single digits now. Just as an anecdote, I recently messaged a friend in Saudi who—Mike and I were there with our term members in November. And I said, hey, there was a lot—people were really bullish on President Trump when we were there in November. It was not long after the election. So, you know, what’s the thinking now? And I’d read it to you but we’re in polite company here, about—you know, and a lot of that was there was an expectation that President Trump would change American policy on Gaza. And he has, but just not in the ways that I think a variety of Saudis believed and hoped he would.
NINAN: You know, it’s fascinating, Steven. I know you watch the region very closely, particularly Saudi Arabia, but twelve years ago Jill and I were with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Riyadh. And we checked into the Ritz Carlton. And Jill and I were insistent about going to workout at the gym. And they told us, no, no, no, you cannot go. And you should have seen Jill. She was not happy with that. (Laughter.) Very much not happy with that. You don’t know.
COOK: Love it. Love it.
NINAN: This was fascinating to me. And Jill insisted. We insisted. And finally, they agreed. They came back to us and said, you can work out at the gym. You have twenty minutes, from 5:00 a.m. to 5:20 a.m. (Laughter.) And we got there. We got our time. But so much has transformed in Saudi Arabia, Steven. I think it’s one of the hidden stories in the Middle East. I only know this having just gone back. I hadn’t gone back since Jill and I were there with Hillary Clinton. But I just went back in August. And the transformation for women, right, would you—for women being allowed—what the crown prince has done is—
COOK: Look, this is, obviously, not perfect. And Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is not a liberal. He is a top-down reformer. And the things that he has done has been an effort to create a vast reservoir of support of people between the age of eighteen and fifty, which are most Saudis and his age cohort, that to—so that they can enjoy lifestyles that, if some leader were to challenge him and try to take those away, there would be an uprising against that leader. It is absolutely extraordinary. And it is something that people have missed. And it’s what, you know, many of the, you know, most prominent critics in Washington, who haven’t been back to Saudi Arabia in ten years, are completely missing.
Now, it’s cynical, but it is a real change. And I have a hard time seeing how reversible it is. I went to Saudi Arabia for the first time twenty-three years ago. I did not see a woman for the first two days I was there. I had lived in the Middle East for a long period of time. Like, I did not expect a culture shock. And I completely culture shock. I didn’t see one. This was a country in black and white. You’d see these visages in black, like, darting from one place to the other, with their guardian, their driver, or their little son, escorting them. And then these guys in white. And now the country is sort of in color. It’s like what you’re wearing, Reena. I mean, you know, just women ever dressed every which way.
NINAN: And, by the way, just in the past week they said you can now wear whatever you want in Saudi—you don’t have to wear—yeah.
COOK: And they were doing that anyway. I mean, last April, not this most recent trip recent trip, a year ago I was in Saudi Arabia. I had dinner with a Saudi woman who I’m not related to. I’m not—I’m the little kid from Long Island. Not related to a Saudi. I went to dinner with her. Like, that’s completely unheard of kind of stuff. So—but it’s a political move. It is—and MBS has said this—MBS, not to be confused with MBF, Michael B. Froman—(laughter)—who’s a much more benevolent leader—is, I want this to be a normal country. And if you have Saudis who are in their twenties and thirties and forties, they want—and you want them to stay there, and you want to develop Saudi Arabia, and you want—you put the religious police in their place, you basically write out Wahhabism, you emphasize Saudi nationalism, and you give people this normal life. And, like I said, you create this vast reservoir of support for him.
The one thing—the one thing is when we were in Saudi Arabia I had a separate meeting over at the U.S. embassy with the embassy staff and the ambassador. And someone said to me, do you have any insight into, you know, the kind of bottom half of Saudi society? And I was, like, well, don’t you? And I don’t know. They don’t know. That’s one of the things that I think is a real open question, which was like Iran in the 1970s. Not saying it’s the same thing, but we don’t have any idea.
NINAN: Yeah. I think there’s a massive cultural revolution in Saudi Arabia. But I will say Riyadh, right, it’s largely—yeah, yeah. Yes, OK, I want—
DIZOLELE: The Africa question.
NINAN: Oh yes. Please.
COOK: Oh, yeah, sorry. I went off.
NINAN: Yes.
COOK: You dropped a quarter in me, I was, like, off.
NINAN: Oh, yes, thank you, Mvemba.
DIZOLELE: So, can they—is there mindset among the leadership or among the people for decolonization in the way? I think we saw this in the 1970s, where—at least on the African side—where country were thinking, and the leaders were thinking how to be themselves, right? So there were movements, like, with Anti-Cite, other movement, Négritude, for those of us who grew up there. In school you read primarily, especially in primary school, African writers, so you could be anchored into those realities. And this was across—at least in the Francophone world. There was literally an effort to shake off that system.
But I think that’s not enough. It’s no accident that you don’t read memoirs by African leaders. They are very rare because there was no Monticello to go to, right? In other words, you look at a country like the U.S., after—the U.S. went through a decolonization process, but they took their sweet time. You know, they meet in Philadelphia. They go back to wherever, Boston, to Farmington, back to Monticello, read Rousseau—(laughter)—and write letters to Adams—dear Adams, what do you think about this? And back and forth. That John Locke fellow. (Laughter.) You know, there was no such thing about African leaders.
If you are Lumumba, if you’re Kasa-Vubu, if you’re Kwame Nkrumah, the entire world is closing on you, right? The colonial never left. You want to undermine everything. You still want to take everything to Hoboken. The CIA is even there, the KGB. So, there was just no room to think. And that mentality has not changed, because in the space now is the Chinese, the MBS, you know, the Saudi, the Gulf Arab states. Everybody wants a piece of you. Look at Sudan, yeah, or DRC, you know? So all—and you have Africans who are willing to undermine other Africans for the crumbs. So, it’s not getting there.
And then the last piece to this is the West is not rethinking their engagement with Africa. So, everybody says it’s very important. In any given week, I have meetings with ambassadors, special envoys, people come to Washington. And everybody has an Africa strategy, except that Africa strategy doesn’t have Africa in the center, yeah, it has that country. So you talk to the Europeans. They still think of Africa as their backyard, which is totally retrograde, right, to use a nice word. So, how is Africa your backyard? You’re not even connected to it, right? There’s a big sea between that you don’t like them to cross.
And then you have—you talk, like, to the Spaniards will say, we really care about Africa because they are our neighbors. And they always say, just because you’re neighbors doesn’t mean you’re a good neighbor. We all know neighbors who block the roads, your kids cannot play, don’t go there for cookies, the mother is not nice. So, it’s a rethinking that needs to take place. So if France is a nuclear power, without uranium what does that mean? It means they source 35 percent of the uranium from Quebec, from Canada, and then they want to take everything else from Niger at below market price, at the same time telling Nigerian women not to have babies. And next thing we’re surprised why the Russians are there.
So it’s this mentality need to go both sides. And I think there’s a lot of that in Latin America as well. But for Africa, that’s what I say. So Africa needs to take the time to rethink. The U.S. rethought its way. That’s why the U.S. doesn’t look like Europe. We build things differently. Our military operates differently. The senators still think they’re House of Lords—(laughter)—but it’s still different, right? It’s a different system altogether. But the U.S. benefited from 6,000 miles of distance from Europe, and distance from Asia, from everybody else, so they could have this organic, genuine rethinking and build something that is new, that is long lasting.
I said, in Africa we still talk like British, talk like—you know, you go to Nigeria you hear words that the Brits have not even used for a century. They’re still using them in Nigeria, yeah? (Laughter.) So, that mindset need to be flushed out and get a new system, where that we are—you know, I drive from my home to the office. I always—I’m on Massachusetts in DC where all the embassies are. And I always pass the Embassy of Bolivia. And the Embassy of Bolivia says: This is the embassy of the plurinational state of Bolivia. That’s what African state should be—plurinational states. In Africa, we’re still thinking about one nation, one people, when in fact you have fifty, a hundred nations. How do you build a nation like that? That’s where we have to start.
NINAN: Good points. I want to reach out to the back. I don’t want to neglect our friends in the back. Yes, right over here, and then we’ll go right next to you after. Yeah.
Q: Thank you very much. Roni Kay O’Dell from Seton Hill University.
And I really appreciate everything that you’ve said about the various issues, changes, challenges, also successes of the regions that you all represent. And one of the things that often is not discussed when there are challenges in the world, like wars, et cetera, is sustainable development or environment. It gets kind of, like, shoved under the carpet, but is one of the most important issues of our day because it’s a looming crisis that needs to be faced, and needs to be addressed. And this is much more challenging when multilateralism is at stake. So, I wondered if you could—especially for us who teach environment politics, who teach about sustainable development—could you talk about the countries or regional leadership that is possible, or whether or not the changes right now that are happening in multilateral governance are good or negative for environmental politics or sustainable development. Thank you.
NINAN: Right. Anybody feel strongly about sustainable development?
LIU: I can—I can chime in. First of all, thank you very much for asking this question. And I wanted to give a shoutout for my colleagues here which we just launched a new initiative called the Climate Initiative, which is dear and near to my heart, and also under the leadership of President Mike Froman. And I hope that going forward you can use the Climate Initiative, the website, and the expert listed on the website as a teaching resource so that you under—so that you can let us know how we can better help you to provide educational resources for the community.
And on top of that, I’ll just stay within my region in terms of—in terms of Asia. So I teach this class called Asian Energy Security at Columbia University. And I do recognize, despite, you know, what happened here in the United States with this new administration, I’m surprised how much my students are committed to the idea of sustainability, and they genuinely want to be part of this movement. And I have six Saudi students this time, five of which—five of them are women. And they were all among the first generation of women who are allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia. And they were all petroleum engineers. And one of them participated in UN climate negotiations. And this week my student just finished the climate—mock climate negotiation. And all my Saudi students, they joined the group called Climate Activist.
So, you know, sort of, in my region, broadly speaking Eurasia, you on the one hand see China, especially the government, really wanting to be this green leader. And it’s not just BRI. It’s the green BRI. It’s not just the China-made steel, it’s green steel. It’s not just the technology the Chinese government wanted to promote consumption in the—household consumption in the context of a green transformation. So, we see that in China. But on the other hand, I do also see challenges. And the way that I see challenges to sustainability is also—is not necessarily how much state is at play, but it’s really about the lifestyle.
In the sense that as long as we are still wearing clothes, and a lot of these are synthetic fibers, that basically means we are going to have a very difficult relationship to break up or divorce with fast fashion. In a lot of ways, I think we talk a lot about sustainability. At least the approach that I in my teaching, in my research, I tend to focus the lifestyle aspect of it, so that people on a day-to-day basis, they genuinely feel that the need of how being sustainable being environmental awareness can make a difference.
DIZOLELE: Yeah. I think for Africa, everything we talk about, climate change and so on, Africa has an important role to play—from its forest, from its desert, for solar, and everything else. The problem is, for a set of reasons that I already referred to, Africans don’t bring as much power to the table through this summit that we hold, COPs particularly, where Europeans and the powerful countries pledge and pledge and pledge and pledge. Yeah. So, if you’re asking the DRC to protect its forest, the question is, you protect the forest for who? And what is the DRC getting out of this, when the pledges are not coming true? So, you end up with situations where the largest, the oldest national park in Africa, which is Virunga, in eastern DRC, is being opened up for oil extraction because the Congolese are saying, well, why do we save this? For whom? For the Norwegians? When the Norwegians are pumping more oil themselves in the North Sea?
But there is also an issue because in Africa, even though we have less conflict now than there was in the 1970s, one area, one driver of conflict, Reena, is climate. So, if you look at the expansion of the Sahara and the expansion of the area we call the Sahel, the friction between herdsmen who come all the way from Senegal, who used to go to Lake Chad and then they would turn back, there was always a level of friction between them and the farmers along the way. But now Lake Chad is pretty much dried up. So, they can no longer just stop at Lake Chad. They go all the way to northern DRC. And then you add the al-Qaida in Maghreb, you add everything else, these people are heavily armed, so there is serious conflict. Every time in Nigeria you open newspaper, there is something in Kaduna, something in Katsina, and all that stuff.
But then if you look at places like Mozambique, that’s where we fail in terms of climate. Insurgencies are sexy, right? PhD students want to work on insurgency because they get funding. If you are the State Department, you don’t want to be on the Botswana desk. You want to be on the Mozambique desk. That’s where things are. That’s where you’re going to brief the secretary and the president. So if you’re an arms dealer, it’s good. If you’re Rwanda, you say this—I’m going to showcase my capability to export security. And if you’re Total, and TotalEnergies, and Exxon, you want the natural gas and oil.
The problem is, we forget one key element that is a driver of conflict in northern Mozambique. It’s climate. Cabo Delgado is exactly at the impact point of cyclone, typhoon, and everything else you know. So one thing that is predictable, we know that in six to nine months there will be a cyclone. And that cyclone is going to hit exactly where the insurgency is, which will remind the population why they don’t like their government. Which will tell them, maybe al-Shabaab is right. So we’re not engaging that space. We’re engaging all the “sexy,” quote/unquote, stuff.
My view is it’s time to start thinking about climate-smart crops for those population, because we know they will be displaced and flooding will come. It’s time to bring in the Dutch. The Dutch have been living under sea level for a long time. And they don’t live in the most beautiful place. It’s not—in Europe the weather is very inclement all the time. And they’ve not had a calamity since the 1950s. So maybe we should bring them in, in our package, to say, how do these populations build more resilient houses and roads, so that—so it’s those kind of things that we’ve not considered.
And then I’ll close with Ethiopia. Ethiopia is very proud of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. And every time I’m in Ethiopia you see bumpers on the cars that says: It’s my dam! They’re proud of it. The problem is, it’s built on the Nile. The Sudanese are not happy, and the Egyptians are pissed. And they’re pissed because they afraid of what it’s going to do to the water flow that feeds farming in Egypt. The Ethiopians will say, we already accounted for that. The question is, you accounted for what, since we don’t know what’s going to happen in thirty years with the weather? So these are kinds of things that—so it’s a source of tremendous conflict. It's not blown up. We hope he does not. But this is how climate is affecting some of these areas.
NINAN: Good viewpoint, yeah.
COOK: Two very quick comments on this question. First, I immediately—when you asked the question, I immediately looked at my COP28 bracelet. If you have a girly girl who’s a teenager you have a stack like this, and you can’t take anything off. (Laughter.) I think that is over. And I think that was sort of a farce to begin with. I mean, you could say, oh, well, you know, the Trump administration, you can’t even mention climate change in official Washington these days. But I think these things were never real to begin with. The European countries and the United States, they commit, commit, and then they don’t ever do anything, and then they ask poor African countries to do stuff that they couldn’t possibly do. So I think that this was kind of nonsensical, and for—you know, performative, mostly.
But you would be surprised at a lower level, at a smaller level, across conflict zones, when water is at stake, people get real about what it is they need to do. So, very quietly there are conversations between Palestinians and Israelis about the aquifers in the West Bank. The Palestinians complain bitterly that the Israelis waste all this water and take all this water from them, but there’s still negotiations that go on. There’s constant talk between Jordan and Israel about water resources. I mean, you would be amazed, again, at the robustness of these types of conversations that happen, even across conflict lines. And even with the GERD, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Egyptians, it hasn’t—the problem there is that there is—there’s actually a technical solution to the problem—is that it took too long to get to that technical solution so nationalism on both sides became engaged, making it impossible to move.
But no one wants to go to war over this. So, there are opportunities. And this is where I think, when you can’t say climate crisis or climate change in Washington, that it becomes problematic. It’s at these lower levels, not these grand, you know, we’re going to do COP in some major oil-producing country. It’s that American—and a lot of these parties want American technical assistance to solve these water problems. And we’re not going to do that. So it’s not really a multilateralism thing. People are interested in it. They just need the help. And we’re not willing. Maybe the Europeans can step forward. Maybe, like, the Dutch, teach everybody how to live underwater.
NINAN: All right. I know—gentlemen the back, I know I told you you’d have a question.
Q: Hi, Joseph Roberts from Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.
And my question, I share your hope that the declining reliance on foreign assistance from the West might be a stimulant for African reform. But the flip side, I think, is we’re seeing when the U.S., particularly, pulls out, China is moving in, in particular. And I’m what—I’m wondering if that just substitutes one problem for another, and makes it in some ways worse, because China often has far more conditions on their assistance. And so I’m wondering if the hope may be misplaced because, you know, we’re now seeing sort of great-power politics kind of play out in this—in this aid space.
NINAN: Mvemba, what do you—yeah, no, I’d love you take, because had said initially that your hope is that now Africa would be able to stand—or try to stand up on its own.
DIZOLELE: So, a good question. First of all, China is not a humanitarian type of personality, if there was such thing. That’s not China. That’s, like, American bleeding heart, we’re going to save everyone, and all this. The U.S. is very unique in that way. Like, humanitarian thing is an important—it’s baked into the way the U.S. sees the world and in its role, its community is helping. China plays a different role. I don’t think at this point China is going to feel that gap that way. So, there won’t be PEPFARs, and PMI, those kind of things. China has already been playing a role. You know, we talked about demographic—China is building roads. China is building the stuff that Africans wanted to get—you know, if you’re going to stem, what do you call it, rural migration or urban migration—people are moving to the city because there are no opportunities on the farm, where you grow your maize but you cannot send it to Abuja—by building roads, China is already helping stem some of these demographic pressures.
During COVID China tried to jump in with its own thing, but overall, China is not in that space. China comes on the economic side. They want your minerals for this. It’s the barter system. Sometimes it works well, sometimes it doesn’t. But you land in Kampala, or you land in Entebbe, you’re going to Kampala, the entire road is built by Chinese. It’s a beautiful road, with tolls and everything else, right? It’s there. So, government is collecting revenues in a way that is very clear, that it did not do before. And you get from the city to the Entebbe airport without much problem. And you multiply this all over the continent. China is very present that way.
So it’s not that soft power in PEPFAR, in giving you Malarone and antiretroviral. It’s not there in that place. And I don’t think China is going to come there as strongly, because China has a very clear sense of what they’re trying to do. And this is not one of them. It is the U.S. that does that. So, I’m not afraid—worried that China is going to come trying to fill that. And plus, everything we’ve heard about tariffs and China is going to have to rethink its own things inside. So I don’t see China necessarily filling in that space. They will try here and there, but they don’t have that DNA.
NINAN: I, sadly, I’m sorry, I know you’ve got a question, and we’re sadly going to have to leave it there. There’s so much I want to talk about. Steve, we didn’t even get to Iran, which are potential talks the administration said they might have starting on Saturday. You never know what’s changing in the world.
I want to thank all of you—
COOK: Could be Monday.
NINAN: —all of you here today. I want to thank the Council on Foreign Relations. This institution is so important, especially in times like this. I want to thank all of you. I’m going to quote a great global thinker, my mother, who said: There are two things in life nobody can take away—your faith, your belief system, and your education. So, thank you all for what you are doing. I also want to remind you we’re going to take a brief break and then we’re going to kick it off back again at 10:00 o’clock with The New Tech Era. Thank you guys for joining us. Thank you to our panel. (Applause.)
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