[applause]
John Battelle: Let's talk about politics,
shall we?
These are all extraordinary people and as
we reset behind me, I want to set the scene.
For the last two days, we've had a roundtable
here at the St. Regis with the Club de Madrid
World Leadership Alliance, which is a nonprofit
in Europe that is the largest membership organization
of former world leaders of democratic republics.
When I ran into a friend who was connected
to them and he said, "Would you like some
of them to show up at your conference?"
I'm like, "Oh, yes, please.
Former world leaders, I'm in."
What was really interesting is they have a
program around the world where they discuss
the future of democracy, called the Next Generation
Democracy, and they run roundtables.
They've never done one on this topic here
in the United States, because most of the
time they would focus on areas where democracy
was fragile, newly emerging, or imperiled.
When I spoke to the executive director of
the Club de Madrid, she told me that they
were considering doing one in North America
now, and that perhaps democracy is, as one
of the members said during a round table,
a fragile flower that needs cultivation.
Perhaps we should think about that here in
North America.
We spoke about that for the last two days
here.
It was a fascinating conversation.
I'm very pleased to bring up John Heilemann
and the former world leaders who have been
part of this conversation.
Esko Aho, the former prime minister of Finland.
[background music]
JB: Luis Almagro -- I'm going to screw up
these names -- the general secretary of the
Organization of American States and former
financial minister of Uruguay.
Jorge Fernando Quiroga, the former president
of Bolivia.
Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the former president
of Latvia.
Of course, my partner, John Heilemann, who
is running most of the political conversations
this conference.
Please join me in welcoming all of them to
the stage.
Welcome.
[applause]
JB: John?
John Heilemann: This is the definition of
a global power panel.
We have two ex-presidents, one ex-prime minister,
and one current secretary general.
I'm in awe of this group.
Luckily, I did not have to pronounce any of
their names.
That's one of my contractual rights here.
I'm going to be referring to you all either
by your first names or by your initials, because
VVK I understand is the...
Vaira Vike-Freiberga: F.
JH: VVF is the right way to...I've even screwed
that up without even having to pronounce the
name.
It's not a sign of disrespect, but merely
a sign of my own inadequacies when I do that.
We are going to talk about a big topic as
the way to start and kick off a couple days
of discussion of politics and policy and business
and how they intersect.
The title of this topic, which talks about
whether democracy is in peril, is a topic
that you all have been discussing in various
ways over the course of the last two days
as the club de Madrid has been meeting.
I want to start with this question and I'm
going to start with VVK on this matter.
VVF: VVF, if you will.
JH: VVF.
I did it again.
[laughter]
JH: VVF.
VVF.
I have to figure out some kind of an anagram
for that.
VVF: Call me Vaira, It'll be much simpler.
JH: Probably.
John mentioned earlier, was talking about
China.
I just want to read to you something that
was when we got this news about President
Xi.
"The New York Times" coverage of it began
with this observation.
"The surprise disclosure on Sunday that the
Communist Party was abolishing constitutional
limits on presidential terms, effectively
allowing President Xi to lead China indefinitely
was the latest and arguably most significant
sign of the world's decisive tilt toward authoritarian
governance often built on the highly personalized
exercise of power."
That is a sweeping statement to say that the
world is now trending towards authoritarian
governance.
True or false?
VVF: We had an opportunity to meet President
Xi last November 30th, a half dozen of us
from the Club de Madrid, the World Leadership
Alliance.
At the time, President Xi was already in a
very good mood.
The 19th Party Congress had enshrined Xi's
thought into the Constitution and tasked all
members of the Communist Party, the whole
hierarchy. to think about it, to digest it,
and to explain it to their subordinates all
the way down the hierarchy.
It was quite evident that his intention is
to have that thought turn into action.
At the same time, his rhetoric is not aggressive.
When he talks about the Belt and Road Initiative,
he sounds like a benign godfather, who is
ready to collaborate with countries big and
small, and not from a position of strength,
but from a dialogue and win-win situation.
That is the rhetoric, the actions.
They remain to be seen.
JH: Jorge, I ask you this question.
However things play out in China, is the trend
towards authoritarianism across the globe?
Is democracy, in some global sense, in a greater
degree of jeopardy than it has been in our
recent memory?
Jorge Fernando Quiroga: John, thank you.
It depends on where you are.
China had a single party system that controlled
all the media and social media.
This change will probably affect the system
by which they establish the pecking order,
succession, and transfer of power.
I'm going to stay in the Americas.
I think there is one place where authoritarian
has not only been creeping up, but it's outright
front and center, in Venezuela.
The country that had Bolivar, the liberator
of several of our countries is now, in April,
under the possibility, after having destroyed
its economy, of having a full second Cuba
installed in the midst of the Americas.
That is a premier issue in our part of the
world.
Is there a tendency that can happen somewhere
else?
Yes, but generally speaking, democracy in
the Americas, with an exception that I mentioned
and some other ones, free and fair elections,
independent institutions, free press, do an
opposition without being thrown in jail, and
term limits has been applied as part of the
OAS Democratic Charter.
Luis is the one that is charged with overseeing
that.
Generally, all of those things are there,
but we have exceptions.
I would submit that the premier hotspot right
now in the Americas is Venezuela because that
is well beyond populism.
It's an outright narco-tyranny that can be
set up in the Americas, while we watch in
the year, 2018
JH: Luis, is democracy in peril, yea or nay?
Luis Almagro: Sorry?
JH: Is democracy in peril, yes or now?
LA: No.
We have to have hope and faith in democracy.
Of course, we can't take democracy for granted.
We have to work at it every day.
There are challenges in the continent, and
there are challenges out of the continent.
To foresee what we can do to make the systems
work better, that is our concern in the Organization
of American States.
Democracy's a process.
We're never at the end of that process.
We are always building democracy.
We are always building access to rights and
equity.
We are always trying to take people out of
poverty and try to bring them into a political
system where they can participate.
I am very positive that democracy has a bright
future, but we have to make it work every
day.
We have to eradicate bad practices.
Bad practices are very contagious, are bacterial
diseases that spread very fast, because you
don't need projects.
You don't need financing.
Bad practices are just passed from one country
to the other without any kind of project.
We work to eradicate bad practices at the
same time we keep building better rights for
more people.
At the same time, we are doing the system
to work better.
At the same time, we are eradicating these
bad practices.
I think the future for democracy is good.
JH: Mr. Prime Minister, you look at Xi, you
look at Erogan, you look at Putin.
These are some pretty big countries with some
pretty authoritarian leaders.
All three of your co-panelists right now seem
more optimistic than the New York Times does
in interpreting this move in China.
What say you?
Esko Aho: I think we made a mistake after
1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and the
socialist system in Europe collapsed.
Now democracy has won.
We all know what happens when you are overestimating
your capacities.
There is going to be a way to problems.
Now we have faced rather substantial problems,
not only in Europe but here in the United
States as well.
Democratic institutions are not working like
they should.
Trust in democratic institution is on the
low level.
Sometimes, democracy is like health.
When everything goes fine, we don't give any
value for that.
The day when we are starting to recognize
that something goes wrong, hopefully, also
with democracy we start to understand that
we have to work for that.
We have to improve the performance of democratic
institutions.
I'm optimistic as well.
I believe that we are able to improve our
efficiency and democratic systems.
To be honest, we are now challenged.
JH: I'm going to ask you a question now.
This audience is almost exclusively, not just
American, but United States, North American.
I want to ask and take this question and put
a very fine point on it.
Hopefully, I will at least one of you in trouble
with the president of the United States by
asking.
He will be watching right now and monitoring
closely.
Everybody watch President Trump's Twitter
feed.
Last week, Tom Friedman at the New York Times
wrote a column.
He felt compelled to do this even though it
was not his time to be in the newspaper.
He went home and wrote this column in a bit
of a fever and posted it on the Web.
It went crazy viral.
It became the most read Tom Friedman column
of all times, and one of the most read columns
in the history of the New York Times.
That column began with the sentence, "Our
democracy, meaning the United States, is in
serious danger."
It ended with the sentence, "The biggest threat
to the integrity of our democracy today is
in the Oval Office."
I'm pretty sure that's a reference to Mr.
Trump, and not to Hope Hicks or Jared Kushner.
I ask you all, none of you citizens of this
country, but all close observers of it.
We can't recapitulate the entirety of Friedman's
column, but on the question of the health
of democracy that you see here in the United
States right now with President Trump in the
Oval Office -- I'll start with you, Jorge
-- are we in trouble?
JFQ: If you want to switch places, be my guest.
It's not so bad.
I come from a place where we are in real trouble.
We're copycats of Venezuela.
I know that you can complain for a long time.
If you want to get me in trouble and deported,
I'll say the following about the US.
Generally, in Latin America we'd always be
asked in an election, "Which one do you prefer,
democrats or republicans?"
I would ask for the blender.
Generally speaking, democrats were more open
to our people, not our products.
Republicans, generally speaking, were open
to our products, not our people.
Lo and behold, here we are.
I got the blender.
[laughter]
JFQ: For the first time ever, we have someone
who doesn't want our people or our products.
[laughter]
JFQ: That was a heavy-duty campaign platform.
[laughter]
[applause]
JFQ: I'm going to be deported now.
It hasn't been delivered on, but it's certainly
worrisome, particularly if you consider that
in 2018 we have a heavy-duty election cycle
in Latin America.
If something is Latin America, is Mexico,
Brazil, Colombia.
We have elections.
We'll see what the denouement of what at least
was proposed in the campaign, vis-à-vis trade
and migration.
It is difficult.
I almost got in trouble one time.
I came to express those concerns.
I was asked at a fine American university
to not name any names.
I did not.
I said I was worried about T-R-U-M-P, a proposal
based on deporting 11 million Latinos, remittances
that could be seized in the U-USA, and the
muro, the wall, the first one in the history
of humanity that has to be paid by the aggrieved
party -- the Russians were nice enough to
pay for their own wall -- and P, protectionism.
I think it is a worrisome agenda and it could
create friction.
The sad part is it comes at a time when in
this city you have American leadership of
the corporate kind that is admired in Latin
America.
The soft power that's represented in rooms
like this, the low cost of energy, the integration.
There's plenty of opportunities.
I think Winston Churchill was always right.
America will always do the right thing after
exhausting all the other alternatives, so,
hopefully, you will.
[laughter]
[applause]
JH: Whoever's doing security in the back,
tell the ICE agents to wait until about half
an hour.
Then he'll be free at that point.
Luis, I'm going to stick with you, just to
stay in the Americas.
I'll get to the Europeans in a moment.
Trump, how big a problem for the state of
American democracy, if any?
LA: The article you referred refers specifically
to the involvement maybe of Russia in the
electoral process.
Then we have to talk about the electoral integrity
of any process in the continent, especially
in the United States.
So far, we don't have enough elements in order
to have a definition like the one you're trying
to have.
What I'm trying to say is that, for us, for
Latin Americans it is always a challenge.
First of all, we are experts in foreign involvement
in our elections.
[laughter]
LA: That is a trademark of the continent.
Second, our situation always when there is
a new American administration is to re-adapt
to accommodate the best possible that we can
do, always trying to help, if possible.
If not, we try to defend our interests in
the best possible way.
In fact, what we have is that the new administration
doesn't have such a distance with the previous
administration.
Maybe, the speech is a little bit more rhetoric,
but the Obama Administration deported more
people than any other administration previous
in the United States of America.
Already it's 600 miles of wall that costs
the lives of 500 Latin Americans every year.
Those are facts.
They have always existed, and they are there.
On the contrary, what we see with this administration
that they have been very committed to defend
democracy in Venezuela and in Cuba.
So far, that is a partner in order to reveal
some democracies in the continent.
I hope they will stay committed to that.
In fact, my first option is always trust and
move in that direction.
JH: Vaira, I want to ask you this question.
Trump does not exist in a vacuum.
His election was surprising to a lot of people,
including me.
It's the case that we are seeing around the
globe, in Europe and elsewhere, an uprising
of a certain kind of politics that's a populist
politics, a nationalist politics, protectionist
politics, often a nativist politics.
This is not a uniquely a Trump phenomenon.
It's happened in France.
It's happened in other places.
Generally, not leading to someone capturing
the presidency or the prime ministership,
but there's these movements that we see in
many Western advanced democracies.
What explains that, at this point in human
history, that suddenly those kinds of attitudes
and that kind of politics seems to be finding
traction in so many advanced, Western, rich
democracies?
VVF: I would say that we should consider them
seriously as symptoms of an underlying malaise.
People will not follow leaders that promise
them the sky and then don't even give them
the ground to stand on if they didn't feel
insecure on where they're standing.
I think Prime Minister Aho was quite right
that the end of history that we thought, with
the collapse of communism on the European
continent, did not mean that there was a definitive
victory of democracy in the world, that we
could all go home, relax, and do nothing about
it.
The only thing that is new is that it seems
an American White House is taking lessons
from a neighbor of ours, with whom in my country,
Latvia, we have had certain sad experiences
and disagreements.
We usually look to America as, well, the light
upon the hill, the place where democracy has
been around for a long time, which can serve
as an example.
If now they're taking lessons from a vertical
consolidation of power in other countries
or allowing them to influence both public
opinion and public action in America, then,
of course, it's alarming to Europeans, also.
JH: Mr. Prime Minister, I want to ask you
this question, just to take this into the
heart of this conversation that we're having
this conference here.
For most of the post-war era, business, corporate
sector was a part of the post-war consensus
about how progress would happen.
We had big multilateral and multinational
institutions that were promoting free trade,
free minds, free markets, democracy, and so
on.
Companies were aligned largely with governments
in industrialized countries and advancing
all those causes.
We now have a different situation where, because
of the populist impulse, the nationalist impulse,
the protectionist impulse, those are symptoms,
as Vaira just said, of a bigger phenomenon
and one that has caused a lot of voters, a
lot of ordinary citizens in a lot of places,
to come to profoundly distrust the corporate
sector.
It's also been driven to some extent by income
inequality, plutocracy, and kleptocracy and
some of these phenomenon that we see around
the world.
I ask you this question for all these civic-minded
business people largely who are in this audience.
What does the business sector do now when
it is distrusted, but it wants to obviously
participate in a way in strengthening democratic
institutions and democratic norms?
How does it deal with that conundrum that
it faces, that a lot of citizens look at businesses
and say, "Hey, stay out of our democracies,
guys?"
EA: May I first very briefly comment on this
Trump administration's, let's say, role?
JH: Yes.
EA: I don't remember who was that American
political leader who was criticizing Europe
by saying that we don't know to whom to call
if you want to reach Europe.
Was it...
JH: Kissinger.
EA: It was Kissinger.
I think that in Europe, we are thinking roughly
in the same way today about the United States,
to whom to call in order to understand what's
going on in this country.
[laughter]
EA: To this very critical question about the
role of business, I'm coming from a small
country, Finland.
We are extremely open economy.
We are extremely dependent on global trade
and global business.
Our guarantee for us is that there is trust
in rule-based system in the world.
I believe that the United States has become
rich politically powerful just because of
the fact that it has been like an anchor of
rule-based system in the world.
Now, I think we are a bit concerned.
Is America changing its course?
If it's doing so, it's not only bad for America,
I believe, but it's going to be bad for the
whole at least Western world.
That is what I am worried about.
By the way, my last message, I'd like to encourage
business community to speak loudly and to
take a stand.
I have seen American companies to participate
political discussion in China.
It was a bit exciting experience.
as well.
It was China Development Forum.
Maybe 40, 50 global major companies were there.
I was representing Nokia there.
American business leaders were teaching Communist
Party leaders in China how to become more
social.
They invest more in pension systems, social
security, and to take more care of rural part
of China.
I haven't seen American companies educate
their own government yet, but I hope it will
happen.
[laughter]
JH: Luis, let me ask you the about this.
Obviously, there's a critique of how capitalism
snaps together with policy and politics in
this country.
Many people focus on money.
This is obviously a system, particularly in
our campaign system, where there's an extraordinary
amount of private capital that flows into
the system, and people want reform of various
kinds.
There are people who sit in other countries,
who look at the US and say, "This problem
is a problem, but it's not as great a problem
as the more clandestine secret corruption
that you see in a lot of other countries around
the world."
Just talk a little bit about how money works
across American politics, but North American
politics, South American politics, and how
to deal with that, how a properly functioning
democracy deals with the influx of capital
from businesses that want something for their
dollars.
LA: Our countries in the continent, they are
much more aware these days that the way that
politics are financed can completely corrupt
their political system.
We have a set of new laws, practically in
every country in the continent, about financing
political parties -- the limits that they
should have, how political campaigns should
go, and how the system should operate.
I think we have some challenges ahead, but
we are in a much better position than some
years ago.
Some years ago, we had Odebrecht and PDVSA
corrupting practically everybody in the continent,
and we were pretending that everything was
fine.
That is a bad practice that we are starting
to eradicate, and somehow it's working.
The civil society is much more aware and they
have better tools in order to fight against
corruption.
They have better tools in order to fight against
the money of organized crime in the political
system.
They have better tools how to control the
interest of companies and how they finance
the elections of political parties.
We are trying to find a good set of rules
that may allow us to make our democracies
stronger.
We are coming from a very bad period, that
is that period of PDVSA and Odebrecht, but
we are moving forward and we are leaving that
in the past.
All those that have received money, they have
been jailed or prosecuted in most of the country.
It has been a very painful experience, but
is a very, very good experience, in the sense
that we are cleaning our political system
and we are better preparing them for the future.
JH: Vaira, when you look at the way that companies
and government relate to each other in Europe,
versus the way the companies in government
relate to each other in Americas, but particularly
in the United States of America, what do you
see as the differences?
What can America learn from Europe in that
respect, if anything?
VVF: The business practices in a capital system
have certain fundamental rules that are much
the same.
Seeing an organization, such as the one that
we're sitting in front of, I would say that
there are certain elements that are changing.
You just had somebody from the Bill Gates
Foundation.
There's an outreach that goes way beyond what
normally businesses everywhere in the world
are concerned about, and that is making money.
It was believed for a long time that as long
as businesses made money, they would contribute
to the good of society.
Any number of social movements in the past
decades have shown us that tobacco companies
and their lobbies were responsible for millions
of deaths a year from lung cancer and other
diseases.
Rachel Carson, way back with "Silent Spring,"
pointed out how large chemical companies manufacturing
pesticides were making great profits and doing
great as businesses, but poisoning the environment
not just for existing generations, but for
future generations.
That concern of the unintended side effects
of successful businesses remains the same,
both in Europe and in America.
The means by which they react, Europe does
go in for more regulation.
America is much freer in that respect.
Civil society has, in a way, done much the
same as regulations in Europe by calling companies
to account when the unintended consequences
of their making money and profits for their
shareholders are such that they cannot be
considered a public good, but quite the contrary.
JH: Jorge, let me focus on a specific thing
that we've already started to talk about here
today with Google and that we're going to
talk a lot about over the course of the next
couple days, which is social media.
In this country, there's a very new phenomenon
happening right now, which is a backlash,
to some extent -- in some cases, to a large
extent -- against the social media companies,
whether that be Google, Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, YouTube, the various divisions
of these giants and the role that they are
playing in our democratic discourse.
There are some unintended consequences, some
intended consequences.
Give me a sense, as you look at this unfolding
here and on the global stage, whether you
think at this moment...Let me put it this
way.
I don't think government is equipped to deal
with this.
It hardly ever is equipped to deal with rapid
technological change.
How ill-equipped do you think government is?
What does government need to do to start to
address some of the negative externalities
that we are seeing play out because of the
pervasiveness of these social media companies
in our civic discourse?
JFQ: Two points on this that we ought to be
careful about.
One is when people say where did the populism
and the backlash come from?
From here.
You're Ubering and not taxiing, you're Airbnbing.
There's massive tectonic displacement thanks
to innovation, and we will live in a different
world.
You cannot blame Amazon or high tech or robots
for what's happening, so it's easier to blame
the Mexicans in the US or the Muslims in Europe.
That won't go very far, but that is certainly
one issue on the table.
The second is social media and the impact
it has clearly changed everything.
It's changed the way you do politics, you
do campaigning, and what have you.
My only point of caution will be the following,
John, because I've listened to a lot of talk
about how the Russians, they did this and
they're gaming the algorithms and we're going
to regulate them and clamp down.
Think of the following.
Frank Sinatra rules apply.
If you can make it in New York, you can make
it anywhere.
If you can regulate it in the US, it affects
us everywhere else.
Let me tell you, there's a lot of authoritarian
dictators that would love nothing better than
clamp down on tools the democracy activists
have intensely used, whether it's Instagram,
YouTube, Facebook.
Any Venezuelan democracy fighter walks around
with a stick and three cell phones, so they
can Facebook Live, they can YouTube, they
can Periscope.
Without that, they would have no way of even
putting any complaints out.
The most retweeted man in Venezuela is Luis
Almagro.
His reports, that's the way they get them,
not through traditional media.
If you're going to regulate, think of the
two extremes.
I'll close with this.
Let's suppose Finland -- open, trustworthy,
traditional media, open social media.
Let's take China on the other extreme.
The state runs everything, the traditional
and the social media.
Somewhere in between, there could be the temptation
of saying, "Oops, Almura in the US, regulate
social media out the kazoo.
Beware of the fact that you could have authoritarian
dictators saying, "Oh, if the US can do it,
if you can call CNN fake news, then I can
kick them out in Venezuela."
Whatever rules and regulations, there's got
to be a government and a social media company,
but please always think that whatever decisions
get made here can be applied and interpreted
in a totally pernicious way somewhere else.
What you're going to do here is going to have
contagious effect, so think of the rest of
us when you're making rules and regulations
for social media.
JH: Esko, I ask you this live.
We're going to get to a question from the
audience here real quick, but I do want to
come to you just because you had this role
in Nokia.
You've been someone who's straddled the line
between business, politics, and technology.
It seems to me that the model of largely self-regulation,
these companies in the social media space
are now so large and so powerful that they
will not be able to evade regulation in the
way that many companies in the Silicon Valley
have for a very long time.
There will be more regulation of these businesses.
The question is, as Jorge has pointed to,
there's going to have to be some collaboration
between business and government.
There's going to have to be balances that
get struck.
What's the sweet spot there, especially as
the rest of the world looks, as Jorge also
said, to America to provide an example for
how to find the right balance?
EA: This is an extremely important issue.
I'm also reading the New York Times.
A year ago, there was an article saying, "Tech
giants see governments as biggest threat."
This is a fundamental mistake.
Until now, when these companies have been
doing mainly entertainment on social media,
I understand that governments are not that
relevant.
Maybe they are even irrelevant.
If and when we are moving to real economy
applications, we are trying to digitalize
traffic and logistics, financial services,
health care, manufacturing, education, how
come you can do that without having collaboration
with governments?
It's necessary to work with governments.
Every company that is able to work with governments
will make profit as well.
Secondly, I believe that companies have to
be worried about the state of democracy as
well.
It's very important to understand that there
is not going to be sustainable, good business
if democratic systems do not work properly.
JH: I was going to go on and ask the audience
to ask some questions, but we appear to have
run out of time, probably because someone
on the next panel has a hard stop at the end.
I'm going to have to say that's such a brilliant
ending.
It was so perfect.
We just want to end right here.
If anybody has questions for any of these
potentates, you can catch them outside because
the ICE agents will be detaining them as they
try to leave for their criticisms of President
Trump.
Let's give them a hand.
[applause]
JH: Thank you all very much.
