Lord Chris Patten, currently the co-Chair of the International Crisis Group, spoke at the LSE last Wednesday to mark the release of the paperback edition of his book, What Next? Surviving the 21st Century.
Professor David Held, the Graham Wallas Professor of Political Science, began the night by asking Patten why he wrote the book. Patten replied that there were two main reasons. Firstly he “blamed” Sir Martin Rees, author of Our Final Century, who stated that we have a 50-50 chance of surviving the 21st century. As the grandfather of five under-four year olds, Rees’ claim did not settle well with Patten. Secondly, Patten wanted to enforce the point that dealing with the problems we face today required more global and regional cooperation than ever before.
The intellectual framework on which Patten thinks our approach to global issues should be based is liberal internationalism. According to Patten, a liberal internationalist believes in “pluralism, the strengthening of civil society, accountability, openness, democracy and open economies” but they do not think markets regulate themselves. He argued that there has to be a pragmatic effort to deal with global problems in equity through the use of market instruments and government intervention.
Held went on to ask how this framework could be applied to tackle the various issues facing the world in the 21st century, starting with globalisation. In his book, Patten argues that globalisation is the driver of positive change. He explained that globalisation is inevitable and beneficent on some levels, but it does not make everyone better off and those without skills or education are “likely to get left behind”.
On the financial crisis, Patten stated that the greed of bankers was to blame for aspects of the crisis but that governments also need to take responsibility for their failure to regulate the shadow banking sector. In addition, he argued that “no amount of tinkering of financial institutions or mechanisms can save you from bad macroeconomic policy”, which is partly why the US and UK are in the positions they are in.
He then explained that Greenspan’s idea that markets would regulate themselves was fundamentally flawed. In Patten’s opinion, the implications of the crisis for the future are that countries who borrowed a lot of money will soon undergo a “painful period of adjustment” and that banks will be obliged to “operate in a more restrained environment than…in the past”.
The dialogue then turned towards security issues, focussing on 9/11 and how the Bush and Blair administrations could have dealt with the problem differently. Patten firmly claimed that they should not have invaded Iraq. He agreed with invading Afghanistan, but said there should have been enough “boots on the ground”, once the Taliban regime had been eliminated, to create stability and provide enough resources for development, instead of invading Iraq straight away.
He thought the question we should ask now is, “what is the political strategy we are trying to operate in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and how can the military support that,” placing more pressure on matters of local autonomy and corruption.
Another topic addressed in the book is climate change. Held asked whether a failure to reach a deal at Copenhagen would place the world climate in greater jeopardy, or did Patten agree with Obama that we shouldn’t let the search for the perfect be the ending of the world for good. Patten was strongly in favour of the perfect solution and thought that Copenhagen will give us the start to a process which will make the US seriously address its carbon economy and will help differentiate between per capita and aggregate emissions.
Finally, when questioned about global governance and whether the G20 is a move in the right direction to fixing the current dysfunctional system, Patten answered that international institutions need to recognise countries like China and India as global powers, as many of the problems facing the world will not be solved without their cooperation.