The World in 2025 with Robert Kaplan: Finding A Way Through Permanent Crisis (Part Two)

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 April 2025

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We are entering a new era of global instability. The world is facing an era of war, climate change, great power rivalry and unprecedented technological advancement. In April 2025, geopolitical expert and bestselling author Robert Kaplan came to Intelligence Squared to analyse where the world is heading in 2025 and beyond. Drawing from the themes of his new book Waste Land, he argued that history can help guide us through a world that is changing at an unprecedented pace. Kaplan drew comparisons between today’s challenges and the Weimar Republic, the post-World War I democratic German government that arguably paved the way for Nazism in the 1930s. Just as in Weimar, which faced crises inextricably bound up with global systems, the singular dilemmas of the twenty-first century—pandemic disease, recession, mass migration, the destabilizing effects of large-scale democracy and great power conflicts, and the intimate bonds created by technology—mean that every national disaster has the potential to become a global crisis, too. According to Kaplan, solutions lie in prioritising order in governing systems, and he will argue that stability and historic liberalism rather than mass democracy will save global populations from a chaotic future. ---- If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full ad free conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events ... Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet.
0:03.3	I'm producer Mia Serenti.
0:05.4	Today's episode is part two of our recent live event with Robert Kaplan for the World in 2025 series.
0:11.7	If you haven't heard part one, do just jump back an episode and get up to speed.
0:18.4	I mean, I share your perspective and insight, as it were, into the change of the nature of the last four Chinese leaders.
0:31.2	But when you look at Xi Jinping's China, even as it is, as you say, increasingly a state that is, is, is, whose
0:40.3	organizers are sort of trying to run by the precepts of Marxist-Leninism, nonetheless,
0:47.1	it is also taking revolutionary steps in technology.
0:52.5	It may be the first electric state, effectively,
0:55.0	quite something given the size of China's population.
1:00.0	It is also, of course, developing year by year
1:05.0	an ever bigger and better equipped navy and army.
1:11.6	And just this week, there were these exercises around Taiwan,
1:17.6	including a massive Chinese aircraft carrier, Shandong or something.
1:23.6	I mean, could it be actually the case that on this one thing, a focus on China that the Trump administration is right,
1:31.2	that for America, the big issue in terms of its competitor is China, and it needs to prioritize that?
1:39.8	No, that's a very fair argument, but how do you deal with it?
1:44.4	Let me make the case for Joe Biden's foreign policy regarding China,
1:48.7	which I think was very smart and very well executed.
1:53.0	The Biden administration got two historical enemies,
1:58.3	Japan and South Korea to agree to a trade deal, and more or less dampened
2:03.6	down their hostility and allowed them, though this went unspoken, to focus on the Chinese
	...

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