How the US should use its superpower status

When you come to TEDx,
you always think about technology,

the world changing,
becoming more innovative.

You think about the driverless.

Everybody's talking about
driverless cars these days,

and I love the concept
of a driverless car,

but when I go in one, you know,

I want it really slow,

I want access to the steering wheel
and the brake, just in case.

I don't know about you,
but I am not ready for a driverless bus.

I am not ready for a driverless airplane.

How about a driverless world?

And I ask you that

because we are increasingly in one.

It's not supposed to be that way.

We're number one,

the United States is large and in charge.

Americanization and globalization
for the last several generations

have basically been the same thing.

Right? Whether it's
the World Trade Organization

or it's the IMF, the World Bank,

the Bretton Woods, the ?? currency,

these were American institutions,

our values, our friends, our allies,
our money, our standards.

That was the way the world worked.

So it's sort of interesting,
if you want to look at how the U.S. looks,

here it is.

This is our view of how the world is run.

President Obama has got the red carpet,

he goes down Air Force One,

and it feels pretty good,
it feels pretty comfortable.

Well, I don't know how many of you
saw the China trip last week

and the G20.

Oh my God. Right?

This is how we landed

for the most important meeting
of the world's leaders in China.

The National Security Advisor
was actually spewing expletives

on the tarmac,

no red carpet,

kind of left out the bottom of the plane

along with all the media
and everybody else.

Later on in the G20,

well there's Obama.

Hi, George. Hi, Norman.

They look like they're about
to get into a cage match, right?

And they did. It was 90 minutes long,

and they talked about Syria.

That's what Putin wanted to talk about.

He's increasingly calling the shots.

He's the one willing to do stuff there.

There's not a lot of mutual like or trust,

but it's not as if the Americans
are telling him what to do.

Well, how about when the whole 20
are getting together?

Then, surely, when the leaders
are all onstage,

then the Americans
are pulling their weight.

Uh oh.

Xi Jinping seems fine.

Angela Merkel has, she always does,
that look, she always does that.

But Putin is telling
Turkish President Erdogan

what to do, and Obama is like,
what's going on over there?

You see. And the problem is
it's not a G20,

the problem is it's a G-Zero world,

a world order where there is
no single country or alliance

that can meet the challenges
of global leadership.

The G20 doesn't work,

the G7, all of our friends,
that's history.

So globalization is continuing.

Goods and services and people
and capital are moving across borders

faster and faster than ever before,

but Americanization is not.

So if I've convinced you of that,
I want to do two things

with the rest of this talk.

I want to talk about
the implications of that

for the whole world.

I'll go around it.

And then I want to talk about

what we think, right here

in the United States and in New York.

So why? What are the implications.
Why are we here?

Well, we're here

because the United States,

we spent two trillion dollars
on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

that were failed. We don't want
to do that anymore.

We have large numbers of middle
and working classes

that feel like they've not benefited
from promises of globalization,

so they don't want to see it particularly.

And we have an energy revolution

where we don't need OPEC
or the Middle East the way we used to.

We produce all that right here
in the United States.

So the Americans don't want
to be the global sheriff for security

or the architect of global trade.

The Americans don't want to even be
the cheerleader of global values.

Well then you look to Europe,

and the most important alliance
in the world has been

the transatlantic relationship.

But it is now weaker than it has been
at any point since World War II,

all of the crises,
the Brexit conversations,

the hedging going on
between the French and the Russians

or the Germans and the Turks

or the Brits and the Chinese.

China does want to do more leadership.

They do, but only in the economic sphere,

and they want their own values,
standards, currency,

in competition with that of the U.S.

The Russians want to do more leadership.

You see that in Ukraine,

in the Baltic states, in the Middle East,

but not with the Americans.

They want their own preferences in order.

That's why we are where we are.

So what happens going forward?