The Munk Debates
THE
MUNK
DEBATES
volume one
INTRODUCTION BY
PETER MUNK
EDITED BY
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS
Copyright © 2010 Aurea Foundation
Introduction copyright © 2010 Peter Munk
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
The Munk debates / edited by Rudyard Griffiths.
ISBN 978-0-88784-285-6 (ePub)
1. Munk debates. I. Griffiths, Rudyard
AS42.M86M86 2010 081 C2010-902472-9
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Cover design: Bill Douglas
We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
INTRODUCTION BY PETER MUNK
Since we started the Munk Debates, my wife Melanie and I have been deeply gratified at how quickly they have captured the public’s imagination. With our first event at the Royal Ontario Museum in May 2008, we have been able to host what I believe are some of the most exciting public policy debates in Canada; debates that have made a real contribution to the intellectual life of our nation. Global in focus, the Munk Debates have tackled a range of issues such as humanitarian intervention, the effectiveness of foreign aid, the threat of global warming, and the future of health care in Canada and the United States. In the debate transcripts, the reader will have the opportunity to reflect — and in a sense hear first-hand — from some of the keenest minds of our time, debating issues that affect us all. Where else would you have a hard-hitting debate on U.S. foreign policy with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Samantha Power taking on Charles Krauthammer and Niall Ferguson? Or hear stimulating arguments about the obligations of rich nations to the developing world, whether in the form of foreign aid or humanitarian intervention, by pitting speakers such as Ambassador John Bolton, General Rick Hillier, Dambisa Moyo, and Hernando de Soto against Paul Collier, Stephen Lewis, Mia Farrow, and Gareth Evans?
Let me say a few words about why we started this program and why we believe so strongly in holding the Munk Debates in Toronto. There are many charitable foundations and worthy causes in Canada. It is part of our national tradition to support public and private charitable initiatives. They form the backbone of Canada’s civic life. As a Canadian who wasn’t born in this country, a country that has accepted me with open arms and provided me with endless opportunities, I believe strongly that Canada must be a vital participant in world affairs. That was the primary reason that Melanie and I helped found the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, my alma mater. It was the same thinking that led my Aurea Foundation to launch the Munk Debates. We wanted to create a forum that attracts the best minds and debaters to address some of the most important international issues of our time, and make these debates available to the widest possible audience. And we wanted Toronto to be at the centre of this international dialogue to affirm Canada’s growing role as a world economic, intellectual, and moral leader. Melanie and I are extremely gratified that the Munk Debates are making significant strides towards fulfilling the mission and spirit of our philanthropy.
The issues raised at the debates have not only fostered public awareness, they have helped make Canadians more involved and therefore less afraid of the concept of globalization. It’s so easy to be inward-looking. It’s so easy to be xenophobic. It’s so easy to be nationalistic. The hard thing is to go into the unknown. Globalization, to the average Canadian, was an unknown idea. So these debates are meant to contribute to overcoming our fear of further engagement in the world. These debates are meant to help people feel more familiar with the issues, and more comfortable participating in the global dialogue about the issues and events that will shape Canada’s future. It is essential today that we equip ourselves, and especially young Canadians, with the skills and knowledge to be vital participants in global affairs. Canada is increasingly a world leader, and we have to assume global responsibilities commensurate with our growing stature.
I don’t need to tell you that there are many, many burning issues. Whether you talk about global warming or the plight of extreme poverty, whether you talk about genocide or whether you talk about our shaky global financial order, there are many, many critical issues that matter to people. And it seems to me, and to the Aurea Foundation board members, that the quality of the public dialogue on these critical issues diminishes in direct proportion to the importance, and the number, of these issues clamouring for our attention. By trying to highlight the most important issues at crucial moments in the global conversation, these debates not only profile the ideas and solutions of some of our brightest thinkers and doers, but crystallize public passion and knowledge, helping to tackle some global challenges confronting humankind. Just as important, they seek to make Canada the forum where Canadians and the international community can observe world-class thinkers engage each other on vital matters.
I learned in life — and I’m sure many of you will share this view — that challenges bring out the best in us. I hope you’ll also agree that the participants in these debates challenge not only each other, but they challenge us to think clearly and logically about important problems facing the world.
It’s easy to come up with ideas about holding debates on this scale. But unless you can execute them, ideas only call attention to what might have been. If this series of debates has succeeded, as a gratifying demand for tickets suggests it has, it is because our organizers, Rudyard Griffiths and Patrick Luciani, have been able to attract great minds and great debaters. We owe a debt of gratitude to them for helping to pull these extraordinary events together. I also want to thank the Aurea Foundation Board for their sage counsel and insights into topics and speakers for our debates. And finally, I want to thank all those who have come out to the live events in Toronto, or to watch them on university campuses across Canada and follow us online. Their enthusiasm validates the Aurea Foundation’s vision in launching the Munk Debates four years ago.
Peter Munk
Founder, the Aurea Foundation
Toronto, July 2010
GLOBAL SECURITY
Be it resolved the world is a safer place
with a Republican in the White House.
* * *
Pro: Niall Ferguson and Charles Krauthammer
Con: Richard Holbrooke and Samantha Power
May 26, 2008
GLOBAL SECURITY
INTRODUCTION: In the early summer of 2008 it was far from certain that the Democrats under Barack Obama would win the election in November. One of the key issues in that political campaign was national security and whether the Republicans would do a better job of protecting Americans and the West than the Democrats. This debate, which made headlines in the U.S. media, played to an overflow audience of 800-plus at
the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. As Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said, such a debate, for political reasons, could not have been held in the United States.
Charles Krauthammer argued that a Democratic victory would jeopardize the gains made in Iraq. He reminded the audience of the failed policies under former president Bill Clinton after the attacks on U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Uganda with, as he says, “lobbying of missiles into empty nets in Afghanistan.” Holbrooke countered that under President George W. Bush, the Republicans allowed Iran to grow into a major international threat along with North Korea.
Historian Niall Ferguson, an adviser to John McCain during the campaign, reminded everyone that wars were fought under the leadership of both parties. Even President Bill Clinton had authorized the use of American troops against Yugoslavia in Kosovo. But in this case the qualities of McCain as a soldier and successful politician were superior to his opponent’s. He argued that it wasn’t the party that would protect the West, but which candidate in this election would do a better job.
Samantha Power, an adviser to Obama, made the point that the U.S. under President George W. Bush’s leadership had lost credibility to confront China over Tibet and Burma when the U.S. was so indebted to the Chinese. Or the needed UN support for Darfur when America defended water boarding. According to Power, only a Democratic victory could restore international credibility to U.S. foreign policy.
* * *
LYSE DOUCET: This debate comes at a time when the Ipsos Reid polling agency tells us that in Canada there’s a very deep public malaise about the quality and the quantity of public debating. Even worse, this debate comes at a time when in the United States there is an impassioned debate about politics in every form. So let it be resolved that tonight — here on this inaugural debate, in this magnificent museum — will be the start of a new and more vigorous debate in Canada.
We’re going to start on an issue that all of us, no matter where we come from, have to be worried about: the world being a safer place. Would the world be a safer place if a Republican was in the White House? Again, Ipsos Reid posed this question to people in the United States. Fifty-two percent of Americans said the world would be safer with a Republican in the White House. However, in Canada only one in four agreed with the statement.
Both sides of the argument would agree that no other president and commander-in-chief could take over the White House at a more difficult time. The next president of the United States will be challenged to restore American respect, American moral legitimacy, to win over friends, and to decide how to deal with foes.
First for the motion, Niall Ferguson.
NIALL FERGUSON: Thank you very much, Lyse, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen. As all Scotsmen have Canadian relatives, I knew entirely what to expect when I came here this evening. My uncle, aunt, and cousins warned me that trying to defend the Republican Party in Ontario was a suicide mission straight out of the Pacific War.
However, it seems to me that there is a case to be made for this motion. As an historian I find the idea that over the last hundred years Democrats have consistently made the world safer than Republicans implausible. A moment’s reflection on the history of the United States will set the record straight. All the major wars fought by the United States in the twentieth century were fought by Democratic and not Republican presidents. It’s easy to forget that even under that great peacenik Bill Clinton, the United States took military action in three different countries, and when it took Kosovo it was far from clear that it was within the scope of international law.
But I’m not going to weary you with a history lecture because this motion isn’t really about Republicans; it’s about that Republican, John McCain. It seems to me that this distinction will make a significant difference to this debate.
I wouldn’t be standing here talking to you now if any of the other potential candidates for the Republican nomination had been voted in. Providentially, the Republicans nominated the one man who is ideally suited to lead the United States out of the legitimacy crisis, the diplomatic crisis, and the military crisis in which it finds itself. John McCain is a man with an extraordinary record: twenty-two years as a serving naval officer. Five and a half of those years were spent as a prisoner of war, and his spirit was unbroken by that experience. He has received seventeen military honours, and served twenty-six years as a legislator, twenty-two of them as a senator. The word “experience” matters in this debate.
The notion that John McCain is somehow too old for the presidency is easily dismissed. Relative to the median age of other American presidents, he is by far not the oldest president in modern times. In fact, nine other presidents in the past hundred years have entered the White House older in relative terms than John McCain will be when he becomes president at the age of seventy-two.
But it’s not just his experience that is relevant here. The thing that most impresses me about John McCain is that he understands the predicament that the United States finds itself in. He sees that there is no way that the United States can walk away from Iraq with the job unfinished, half finished, completely aborted. The stakes are too high. This is not 1968; this is not Indochina. We are talking about the most strategically vital region of the world, and the United States cannot afford to allow that region to descend into a maelstrom of sectarian violence and geopolitical conflict. Whereas a year or two ago many people feared that the ultimate outcome of the American invasion of Iraq would be a catastrophe, today the surge has proved those Cassandras wrong. John McCain took an enormous risk when he backed General [David] Petraeus’s strategy to increase troop numbers in the region; it very nearly cost him the nomination. But John McCain is not a man who’s afraid to take that kind of political risk.
At the end of 2006, the monthly fatality rate in Iraq was running around 4,000; it is now around 500. There is a realistic prospect that the situation in the country will be stabilized. There is also a realistic prospect of the Iranians being driven out of the south. This is not fantasy; this is fact. It is contrary to the expectations of Barack Obama but speaks very well of John McCain’s military judgement that, although he had repeatedly criticized the way in which the Bush administration handled the Iraq crisis, he saw that an increase in troop numbers was the only possible way in which that situation could be brought under some kind of control.
But this election isn’t just about Iraq. In fact, I think with every passing week it may become less and less about foreign policy and more and more about economic policy, and I just want to remind you that this is an unusual state of affairs. It’s not every day that the most important economy in the world goes into a presidential election during a recession, and with a realistic prospect that the domestic situation could deteriorate further. The question is, what do these candidates have to say about our economic safety and security? Only one candidate for the presidency is clear about the need to avoid raising taxes and raising federal expenditure at a time of recession, and is clear about the importance of free trade. Let’s not forget that Senator Barack Obama was not unwilling to stoop to a sideswipe against NAFTA in his pursuit of a few extra votes. It is extremely important for Canada — and indeed for the rest of the world — that the leader of the United States should have an unshakable commitment to free trade. We need a straight-talking president in the United States. We do not need the heir to Jimmy Carter, which is what I fear we could get. We do, however, need the heir to Ronald Reagan. Thank you.
LYSE DOUCET: Thank you, Niall Ferguson. Samantha Power, against the motion.
SAMANTHA POWER: Let me start by echoing what Niall has said about John McCain. John McCain is the most honourable, the most experienced, and the most knowledgeable of the Republicans in the field. First, a Republican president would continue a war in Iraq that has left the U.S. military at its breaking point, undermining U.S. military readiness — which in turn undermines the United States’ ability to concentrate resources in Afghanistan, a place that Canadians have a deep interest and inves
ted interest in stabilizing. Also, that undermining of military readiness interferes with the United States’ ability to engage in the strategic lift of peacekeepers from the developing world to places like Darfur.
Second, a Republican president will continue a war in Iraq, and policies associated with that war would undermine the United States’ ability to lead within international institutions on a range of other issues, from the hard security issues, such as nuclear proliferation or the containment of Iran, to Darfur and Burma. Even when the United States does change its foreign policy, as I think Senator McCain is prepared to do in some measure on the issue of climate change, our summoning power in the United Nations and in global bodies and regional institutions will have been undermined.
Thirdly, a Republican president, specifically President McCain, will spark an overdue internal debate about the role of torture in American foreign policy, a practice that has not only deep moral and legal implications, but profound national security implications. And here I quote none other than U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s famous standard whether the war on terrorism was working. As you recall, the question he posed was: “Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting . . . ?” And here, of course, because of Abu Ghraib and Bagram and Guantanamo, the answer is no.
Now, as many of you know, the honourable John McCain has pledged to reverse most of the egregious excesses of the Bush administration — to close Guantanamo, to return the United States to the Geneva Conventions. But will John McCain, who has shown very worrying signs of playing to his base, be prepared to convene a 9/11–style commission to establish meaningful accountability on the issue of systematic torture and systematic abuses as part of U.S. detention policies? McCain, who’s been well out in front of his Republican colleagues on this issue for obvious personal and I think deeply held moral reasons, recently sided with the majority of Republicans in the Congress in seeking to exempt the CIA from U.S. military rules of interrogation and engagement — military rules that are much more in line with international law. That’s a worrying sign.