A New U.S. Grand Strategy: The Case for Multipolar Pluralism, With Stephen Heintz

Stephen Heintz, president and CEO of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss how the United States should adapt to an era of renewed great power competition and domestic disagreement over what it should seek to achieve abroad. This episode is the fourth in a special TPI series on U.S. grand strategy.

This episode was originally released by The President’s Inbox on August 20, 2024.

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Host

Jim Lindsay
Director of Studies, CFR

Episode Guest

Stephen Heintz
President and CEO, Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Mentioned on the Podcast


The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher.

[kalipotmeng]

Thank God that the US has such thinkers as Mr. Heintz. Jeffrey Sachs is another one. These people are too rare in the US!

[paytonmcdermott]

The answer to international relations isn't behaving more aggressively? What's happened to the council on foreign relations, did they go woke?

[kinngrimm]

27:17 finally someone who seems to understand

[Nik-ikmv]

US and China can do whatever they like. Other nations have a voice too. Mostly, all major nations are developing economically and they will develop in other domains too. They will simply reject these fantasies like G-2. Instead, the power will be distributed in the world in this century based on their population sizes. More people mean more wealth as developing nations' per capita income/wealth converges or catches up to those of developed nations. In this world, the first rule will be that there will be no "hegemon". Instead, this world will be through and through multipolar in all dimensions of national power - economically, technologically, militarily, politically, diplomatically, and culturally. The countries will have to live with their bitter enemies and friends alike. Nobody will set up "rules" or be able to and neither nobody will be able to enforce them even if they set up those rules. This happens when all 8 billion people in the world and 206 nations they represent will be gradually converging upto with their more prosperous and powerful counterparts, respectively. Everybody will have to make up peace with equalized geopolitical jungle this world is. 1945-2016 was an aberration, not the rule.

[gileschance]

This is all wonderful and I agree with Mr Heintz's analysis. But as can be seen from some of the comments, his ideas are utopian, and won't come about on their own. Typically it takes anywhere between 20 and 200 years for a global hegemon to recognise the reality that their hegemony is no more, and the US is no different. However, the US has a big debt problem, which will start to constrain its freedom of choice. Can America afford to pay $2 trillion / year in interest on its public debt ? It cannot, and so a hard constraint, not an idealistic movement, will bring Washington from its current neocon-driven, unrealistically hegemonic position to a recognition of multipolarity and the kind of co-operation that Stephen Heintz talks about.

The UN was a great invention in 1945, but sadly it has become useless since America ignored the French Security Council veto on the Iraq war in 2003. It has also become outdated and needs reform, which America won't permit. So it needs to be replaced.

[justwanderin]

you should google "The grand design" By G. Edward Griffin here on the tube

[hydroac]

A fourth threat is depopulation.

For example, the Chinese have one of the lowest birth rates in the world. The UN projects that the Chinese population will decrease from 1.4 billion today to 770 million by 2100. By ~2085 there may be more post-65 pensioners than workers. Consider the implications of that for a moment. Let them have their moment in the sun. In the long run it won't last.

In the meantime, the the UN projects that the population of the US will increase from 330 million today to just shy of 400 million in 2100. It is one of the only large countries that will actually grow it population.

Heintz has a pollyannish view of geopolitics. I don't think the US will give up its hegemony any time soon.

[branscombeR]

Definitely utopian ideas that have no chance of success in a world full of religious intolerance, mass poverty and autocratic rulers whose hubris has no bounds. The wealth of China, Russia and india is the result of centralised economic planning by a political elite that treats working age citizens as factory fodder. They have no interest in sharing power and money with the proletariat, while sheltering behind a fig leaf of sham elections. These are not the people who will sit at a table in Singapore or Geneva and seriously discuss distributing equality across the globe. We are all still driven by hunter gatherer genes that dictate "winner takes all". Human nature will not tolerate world-wide fairness. R (Australia)

[drscopeify]

His view point is totally and absolutely false!! The issue is that the USA was never a Hegemon by choice and would decline it if it could! The USA only acts due to a lack of anyone else capable of doing so. Did the USA really want to go and stop Saddam in the Gulf War? or help Europe with the issue in Serbia? or respond to 9/11 events? Or Vietnam war? or Korea war? It was faced with situations the force the USA to decide, and so has always acted totally reluctantly by it's position on the world stage. This is NOT the actions of a Hegemon but a matter of occurrences and situations that lead the USA. Anyone who knows the American mentality deeply knows that the USA focuses inwards, 99% of the RNC and DNC convention was inward focused.

The USA was given the chance to become a global Empire, take over from the British but it of course declined doing so. A little foray in Philippines that soon ended. The USA does not want to be an Empire or a Hegemon, it never wanted to be such. It was thrown in to that seat by situations the world had lead to but never used that power other by choice rather was lead in to situations that developed on their own.

HOWEVER if the USA were to fully step away from the world stage would Russia, China and others seize the opportunity and revert back to pre-ww2 era? Of course. China is only waiting for the time to go in to action, why would it prepare itself for the last 25 years for war? Why build a massive navy? Why build a fast rising nuclear arms industry? Why reach out and dominate world trade links with no benefit financially like belt and road. The issue here is simple, the USA does not want to dominate the world and never has, but China sure does. Just listen to the Nationalist rhetoric in China it is clear as can be, they want to dominate the world not by financial needs, or desires for future of the world but by TOTAL DEMAND for POWER. You cannot and never will have a peaceful world when nations demand power. China and Russia demand power. The USA only by the occurrences it was set in to landed in a potion with power and yet 99% focus is totally internal.


The world is waiting for the USA to step off stage but by not becoming an Empire or really being any sort of Hegemon by choice it does not wield around it's power and as such the USA's staying power on the world stage will outlive us all. And many generations to come. But China and Russia and others will try to make that future as hard as possible as their desires are the opposite.

[drbrainstein]

It sounds like Heintz agrees with the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin; interesting 🤔