International order

It will not want to overextend itself.

I also think that, you know, uh going back to to tax americana one of the one of the biggest weaknesses of that system is that uh too much depended on america and i think this is a lesson that china and others right india japan australia europe so on will will take on i think if you're going to talk about a more resilient system in the future a more resilient international order then there needs to be a greater share of burden sharing, of responsibility sharing among major and middle powers from across the world, right? Not just North America or Northeast Asia, but also the Pacific, the Gulf states, extremely cashed up over there.

And they will have to respond according to the issues.

Okay, we have less than a minute left.

That's how I feel.

I am also cautiously optimistic.

I think the international order is resilient, but we're going to head into a much more fragmented transactional period in the short run.

Now, it's resilient and the international order will change.

That terrifies me because I don't know who's supposed to organize the world and keep the peace, and the U.S. might have done it badly, but it could be a lot worse when we get, as I think we're likely to see, lots and lots of regional wars, small...

You know, a, a world where the global order is chaos.

And so I, I, you know, I, I think we're gonna have to figure out a solution to that.

As we say in California, that's a wrap.

But so I would like to for you, if you're comfortable with it, to fill us in a bit on your recent trip to Russia.

But I want to set the table with a clip from Marco Rubio saying we don't follow the international order and see how that plays overseas.

Yeah, it would be great if we had a functional international system, for example, that could deal with a war between Thailand and Cambodia that occurred or the potential conflict between India and Pakistan or what's going on in the DRC in Rwanda or what's going on in Sudan or what's going on with Iran in the Straits.

Right now, we don't seem to have a functional international system that can address it.

I will say this to you, and I want to be clear because this is not an attack on the international system.

But at the end of the day, the United States will always act, at least as long as President Trump is in office.

We will always act in the national interest of our country, not in the interest of the international order.

We will never put the international order above the interest of the United States.

To unpack what these findings tell us about global public opinion, I'm joined on the podcast today by Jacob Poshter.

Jacob is the lead author of the recent Pew report titled India and Pakistan Rivals with Divergent Views of the Global Order.

He's an associate director at Pew and an expert in international survey research.

He writes about international public opinion on a variety of subjects, including the international image of the United States and perceptions of global threats.

And, you know, what we try to do is try to bring that data in a more direct way, unbiased way, so that people can make, especially policymakers, can make decisions that best benefit people.

My guest on the show this week is Jacob Poshter.

He is an associate director at Pew Research Center and the lead author of a recent report titled India and Pakistan Rivals with Divergent Views of the Global Order.

Jacob, thank you so much for joining us.

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For decades, the West has championed a vision for global order.

China offers a different path.

China is doing basically trade with every country.

I think that, first of all, the concept of the West is very unclear to Chinese.

What does West mean? You know, it's G7 or it's US or Europe or...

The Western-led global order.

Yeah.

Countries around the world are adjusting to a new reality.

As the United States pulls back from many of its international commitments and pursues a disruptive strategy beyond its borders, middle powers are emerging to try and remake or refashion engagement with the international order.

And U.S. allies are taking a close look at their commitments.

So what does this mean for the international order? Is the post-World War II order coming to an end, or is this just a period of extensive adaptation? To help make sense of this, I spoke with Ishan Tharoor, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and Edward Murrow, press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

I'm Leslie Benjamori, president and CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and welcome to Deep Dish.

Let's maybe take a step back and look at the big picture before we get into some of the very interesting happenings that you've been writing about.

Is this just chaos inspired by Donald Trump and Donald Trump's America? Or is this period that we are trying to make our way through something much bigger than that? Where do you sit in this debate? I mean, when you look at the so-called international order from multilateralism, commitments to free trade, a sense that democracy is the gold standard for its founding members, at least, do you see it as, you know, all over but the shouting?

You know, of course, this is the essential question.

If you like this episode, you should check out our interview with Daniel Imovar.

It's about Trump's foreign policy and how it affects the global order.

We'll put a link for you in our show notes.

Lastly, a reminder that we are proudly and purposefully listener supported.

That is the world we are living in right now, and it may be the most consequential game in human history.

The great powers are repositioning, old alliances are shifting, and a new global order is taking shape in real time.

If you want to understand why the world feels so unsettled, this is where you need to start.

Hey, welcome back to Diplomacy and Discourse.

These organizations still do real work, distributing vaccines, facilitating trade, providing humanitarian assistance, and offering diplomatic channels that prevent small disputes from spiraling.

The question is whether they can be reformed to reflect the twenty-first century distribution of power or whether the world will gradually develop parallel institutions, one set for the Western bloc and one for everybody else.

So where is this heading? What does the future of the global order actually look like? Nobody knows for certain, but there are a few things we can say with confidence.

The unipolar moment is over.