Global Perspectives on the Changing International System: Lunch and Discussion with CFR’s Global Board of Advisors

At the midpoint of CFR’s Global Board of Advisors’ annual two-day summit, we invite you to a seated lunch with members of CFR’s Global Board. The lunch will be followed by a discussion featuring Global Board members on the shifting international system and the future of global governance in an era of geopolitical and economic uncertainty.

SORKIN: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations meeting, “Global Perspectives on the Changing International System.” We are joined here today both by CFR members and by members of CFR’s Global Board of Advisors.

So welcome, everyone. My name is Amy Davidson Sorkin. I’m a staff writer at the New Yorker. And I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion.

I’ll be very brief with my introductions, since you have our speakers’ biographies. And they’re also well known to many of you. David Cameron, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton, as he is known—(laughter)—was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Foreign Minister from late 2023 to mid-2024. James Mwangi is the group managing director and CEO of Equity Group Holdings, a financial company with a presence across Eastern and Central Africa. You have a client base in Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda, and offices in Ethiopia. Dr. Mwangi is a leading voice when it comes to questions of development and access.

Now, our topic, the changing international system, is something of a sprawling one. So I thought it might be useful to focus it a little bit, to give it some shape, to talk about pressure points and junctures that have brought this change forward. And you know, and there are a lot of them—from Ukraine, to climate, to tariffs, to maybe a non-functioning escalator at the United Nations. (Laughter.) But, Lord Cameron, since today, as it happens, is October 7, the second anniversary of the Hamas attack that precipitated the war in Gaza, let me begin there, and with you. You became foreign minister just weeks after that attack. From your perspective, how has the Gaza crisis tested and changed what we’re calling the international system? Has it risen to the occasion?

CAMERON: Well, I think—thank you, first of all, for inviting me. And great to be with you today. First of all, perhaps just right, two years on to the day, to remember the horror of what happened. I became foreign secretary, as you said, a couple of weeks afterwards. And one of the first trips I made was to Israel to meet with the prime minister, and obviously to go and meet with the Palestinian leadership as well. But I took the opportunity to go to Kibbutz Be’eri, which was the kibbutzim which was attacked by Hamas. And I’ve seen some horrific things in my life, but I think this will stay with me forever—to walk through this incredibly peaceful village, where house after house had been burnt out and you can still see the blood stains on the floor, the bullet holes in the wall, the safe rooms that they all had but that had been bashed down.

And I met subsequently one of the hostages, Eli Sharabi, who was married—his wife was English and children were British citizens. And they bolted themselves into the safe room, and he effectively gave himself up. Said, look, I’m the Israeli. Take me. And they took him. He was a hostage for almost two years. And they then butchered his English wife and children. And all the time he was in captivity he never knew that this had happened. And meeting him when he came out, and welcoming him to the Houses of Parliament in the U.K., and talking about it—one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. But it’s worth remembering the sort of horror of what happened.

To try and answer your question, how has the international system coped? Well, obviously the United Nations has not been that effective because it’s so riven with the divisions between the countries that sit on the Security Council. I mean, some work was done. And I did some as foreign secretary to try and push for more aid to be delivered to Gaza. We eventually got a U.N. resolution on that. And so some good work was done. But I think, from the perspective of today, I suspect it was always going to be the case that until you had a situation where the leadership of Hamas was prepared to release the hostages and, in some way, commit to leaving Gaza and to the organization being disarmed—until that happened, I don’t think there was ever going to be progress.

I always say, look, it’s OK asking for a ceasefire. We’d all love the fighting to stop. But it’s got to be a sustainable ceasefire. It’s not sustainable if the causes of the conflict are still there. And I think that’s the biggest change that’s taking place, and literally in the last few weeks, is that there is now a concept that that Hamas will be disarmed and the leadership will leave. And I think that’s not a question of what, you know, Netanyahu thinks this, or Smotrich thinks that. Ask any ordinary Israeli in a street in Tel Aviv, are you happy with the two-state solution? Well, probably not. But I can contemplate it. Are you happy with the idea that Hamas are still going to be controlling Gaza, still with arms? No, that’s—that’s literally unconscionable.

SORKIN: So the peace deal that’s on the table, that you alluded to, that foresees a real role for the international community, and maybe for a former—another former—British prime minister.

CAMERON: I think one former British prime minister is probably not in any—(laughter)—actually, I admire what Tony Blair has done. For years he’s worked at not just trying to achieve peace in the Middle East, but also trying to work on one of the vital things, which is, how can you have better economic prospects in the Palestinian territories? I think it’s important that this board leads a way towards a prospect for Palestinian statehood. And that will obviously be helped if it has Palestinian leadership on it. And so yes, there might well be a role for other outside experts. And, of course, there’s a role for neighboring Arab states, and Gulf countries, and the rest. But I think the more we can see, you know, it goes—it stands to sense that ultimately the Palestinians want to be led by other Palestinians. Now that shouldn’t be Hamas, obviously, but the more there are prominent Palestinians who start to take part in that governance, the more likely it will lead to success.

SORKIN: Dr. Mwangi, one of the shocks to the international system has been Donald Trump, by his own account. I wonder if you could talk about the administration’s conception of America’s role and its obligations from an African perspective, from the perspective of an African businessman—keeping in mind, of course, that different countries on the continent are in very different positions.

MWANGI: Yeah. Thank you very much. I think the administration—the American administration today has brought two big perspectives. The first one is maybe what we see as the beginning of aid—USAID. The second one is the issue of transactional mineral-related agreements, which are defining bilateral relationships between countries. And, of course, this has come at a time that the continent is recovering from the pandemic shock, the disruption of supply chains. And so the governments are constrained. And what I see is a response where there is a wake up, that may be a better partner for the development and transformation of Africa is the private sector. And there is a significant move where governments are propagating for private sector-led development financing.

And you see huge models like PPP, private-public partnerships, where infrastructure is now by the private sector. Whether it’s the ports, whether it’s roads and airports. Particularly the ones that can easily be commercialized or have commercial viability. The second one, of course, is the question of the end of aid means the end of soft power. What does that mean? And you see significantly African states are now taking positions because they are not tied to a position because of the aid they have been getting. And lastly, is the issue of thinking how do they fill the gap. Of course, the assistance of aid, particularly in education and health and agriculture, was significant. And increasingly, what I’m seeing is they’re turning to the private sector to provide scalable, sustainable solutions.

SORKIN: What you’re expressing, I think, is some ambivalence about the old aid model, that maybe its loss isn’t an unmitigated disaster. Maybe it had its own problems, and its absence might have some opportunities, if I’m hearing you correctly.

MWANGI: Yeah, I think you’re spot on. Aid has been with us for the last eighty years. But while you can’t deny that it has helped individuals, in terms of transformation of the continent or creating viability, it hasn’t. What it has created is dependence. And so some of the critical thinkers think that the best thing that has ever happened was the end of aid, because then we’ll create sustainable solutions and we’ll reduce dependence, and particularly we’ll have independence of decision-making because there is no soft power that comes behind the decisions being made.

SORKIN: Lord Cameron, as a former wielder of soft power how do—

CAMERON: I’m sort of nervous about disagreeing with James. (Laughter.) James is an African. I’m a, you know, posh white English bloke. And look, I think it’s absolutely right that the emergence of the private sector in Africa is going to be a huge driver in investment and change. I would just say the biggest danger in all this is we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Now, maybe some aid programs were overblown. Maybe there was too much lecturing and hectoring from the West. But let me just give you one example.

You know, the decision we made in government to fund Gavi, the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunization. The British contribution alone led to the vaccination of eighty-two million children, mostly in Africa. That would have saved, we reckon, at least two million lives. That’s two million people they’re going to be contributing to this economy who otherwise would have died of diseases that we’d never let our own children die of. So let’s not—literally, not throw out the baby with the bathwater. There is some need still for basic aid and development on things like health and education, water and sanitation, where that aid money can help.

I’d make one other point, which is I think that, of course, private sector development is what ultimately drives economic advance in all countries. But it’s sometimes necessary to help prime the pump, particularly with investment. And another decision we made, which I think is still good for the future, was refinancing what was called the Commonwealth Development Corporation, I call British international investment, which is, I think, providing lots of particularly fragile countries with what is needed. Which is not so much loan finance, but actually helping with equity finance, helping to invest in companies.

Because there is—you know, here we are in New York, the headquarters of the amazing global private equity industry. But how much private equity is really being invested into Africa? How much capacity is there? And I do think there’s a role for countries like the United Kingdom or the United States to think, well, there is a role for institutions like that to try and help with economic development. But James is completely right, ultimately economies only grow when private sectors grow. Private sectors grow when private sector businesses make a decision. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

MWANGI: Allow me maybe to—(laughter)—and I’ll just speak on the same example that we talked about. When COVID struck, and the entire world was disrupted, it took two years to get vaccine in Africa after vaccines were available. So that is how the system works. So, yes, there is a merit that bits and pieces have worked, but the solution that particularly—I was the chairman of the COVID response for Kenya. And what it took us was to really hire McKinsey to even build PPEs in the country, because we could not achieve anything. And there you are, even—so the issue of global responsibility, I think what was demonstrated to Africa is we’ll look after your problem after we have looked at and solved our problem entirely. And—

CAMERON: I think that’s very fair. And I think we made a huge mistake by putting so much of the world’s vaccine capability in large countries like India rather than actually having more manufacturing in smaller countries. If you put it in Singapore, they could produce enough vaccines for their whole population in the morning, and then the rest of the months they could be producing for everyone else. We made bad decisions about our resilience for things like vaccinations. And that was shown up by COVID. So I completely agree with you.

SORKIN: Listening to both of you I wonder, have we underestimated the impact of the COVID shock? Particularly on the younger generation, and as well as on the international systems that you’ve been talking about?

CAMERON: I think it has, I mean, it had an impact, clearly, in terms as a health pandemic. But I think it also—I saw it as quite an accelerator of trends that were already happening. I think already countries were beginning to worry about the resilience of supply chains. That’s now a much bigger worry. Already, governments were beginning to think, do we need to be more involved in promoting and defending some of our own domestic industries? I think that’s definitely grown. I think it’s led to a greater skepticism about, as James was just saying, is this international system working for me? Do I need to make sure that we are more resiliently positioned? All that—it’s definitely affected us in all those ways. Some of them for the good, because I think there was a certain naivety before that supplies would always arrive in the global market economy. And actually, we didn’t have nearly enough stress on supply chains and resilience and things like that.

SORKIN: Dr. Mwangi, Kenya, your home, has been among the countries that have been experiencing what have been called the Gen Z protests. These are driven by some of the young people we’ve just been talking about, who came of age during COVID, who are short on opportunities, often though long on education, concerned about corruption, angry about corruption. What sort of answers are there for them? And how does this international system play a part in coming up with a response to what they’re asking for?

MWANGI: Yeah. To put this in perspective, the mean age of Kenya is eighteen years. When I left university, we had almost 100 percent employment for university graduates. Today, we have an employment—open unemployment of graduates of up to 46 percent. And that’s actually their experience. In 2003, Kenya declared the free primary education, and subsequently after free secondary education. I think Lord Cameron was very helpful in getting Kenya play a very significant role. Now, the population is educated, but the opportunities are not expanded.

So the Gen Z issue is not a political issue. It’s an economic issue that has vented itself from scrutinizing whether the economic problem is being caused by a political problem. So they are questioning the issue of realities of the country, the allocation of resources, the returns and effectiveness of such allocation. And they’re also questioning the issue of debt burden. And they are seeing themselves as the people carrying the debt burden into the future, of not effectively, efficiently used debt. That is the debate. But it’s simply because they’re educated and they’re able to analyze things. I think they have been supported a lot by social media platforms so that—and technologies. That they’re able—communication is better organized than we could have had before.

SORKIN: And in Europe, are you seeing—

CAMERON: Well, sadly not. I wish Gen Z in Britain and France and across Europe, and maybe even here, were more militant about arguing that government was mortgaging their future. I would definitely advise them to spend less time singing “from the river to the sea,” and less time worrying about trans rights, and more time worrying about the extent of government debt, because ultimately we are building up debts for the future, which will fall on them in their working age and will compromise their retirement and their ability to lead a good life. I mean, I was attacked by many after 2010 when I became prime minister, and we introduced so-called austerity. Well, we did though for a very good reason. We had an 11 percent budget deficit, bigger than any country’s budget deficit that year, including Pakistan.

If we go on borrowing at that rate we’re going to be racking up debts in a totally irresponsible way. And it is, in some ways, a moral issue. I’m not saying we managed it—the deficit came right down to below 3 percent. We didn’t slash our debt to GDP ratio. But luckily, we held it at a level of around 80 percent, which meant when the next crisis struck—which was COVID—the government had the capacity to borrow effectively another 20 percent of GDP to make sure Britain could see through that really desperate threat to our lives and way of life. And so to me, it’s a moral issue. If you land yourself—if you land your country in a position where it’s so heavily borrowed and so heavily indebted it can’t cope with the next crisis, you are literally letting down and wrecking the futures of the next generation. And it should be Gen Z, as much as, you know, soon-to-be 59-year-olds like me, that will suffer. So I think it’s a really important issue. You know, I think the young people in Kenya are—they’re on the right issue, it seems to me.

SORKIN: Dr. Mwangi, as we talked about the U.S. pulling back, Europe has its own problems, what are the other—how is the configuration of the international community in Africa changed in recent years? Think about China filling some vacuums, other countries, Gulf states.

MWANGI: Yeah. We are seeing significant impact of geopolitics. But I think it’s not more of politics, but it’s the global reorganization, or global research from an economic perspective. The templates that worked from 1947 to date are significantly questioned. A significant shift. The biggest investment, well, people think, is from China. That might have been in the past. The biggest investment in Africa at the moment are from Middle East. The Middle East, that is taking over ports, airports, agriculture. And the viability of the African continent as an investment destination is being proven by Middle East better. The Chinese were more in public infrastructure. So that was not private sector-led approach. And the proof of economic viability, based on size of population, if IMF is right Africa will be home 25-26 percent of the world population by 2026—by 2050. It will be home to 42 percent of the global labor.

So if you combine global labor and the wage rate, and then amplify that to a youthful population of a mean age of below twenty, constituting 26 (percent), you will see there will be a significant shift in the purchasing power and the consumerism. And then with that volume, not underestimating Africa’s endowment with energy. Sixty-two percent of global renewable energy is in Africa. So essentially, if the world is to do transition, it has to develop that energy. And if that energy is developed, then it will dictate the location of manufacturing and industries. And Africa is endowed in natural resources, particularly minerals and agriculture. If you look at DRC, DRC has 70 percent of the world’s known reserves of cobalt—one country alone. And is then about 38 percent of the entire strategic green minerals are in DRC.

If DRC is able to pull through, for instance, the 11,000-gigabyte power generating plant that the World Bank has given the first $1 billion, then you’ll see industries—the private sector will start realigning. So if you take 62 percent of all renewable energy, you take 65 percent of all—(inaudible)—it tells you (agroprocessing ?). And then you take 26 percent of the world population and 42 percent of the working population, it starts giving you an equation that the factors of production will be more concentrated in one area. The only thing that will be missing is risk appetite and depth of capital. And because of all these—and if you look at data, the out of the ten fastest-growing economies in the world, five of them in East and Central Africa, as a concentrated area. That is DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. That’s just neighboring countries. And that starts to reflect that domestic capital is becoming of size to start powering economies. So that incremental power, I hope the Americans will not miss the opportunity.

CAMERON: I would say, I mean, that figure is—I mean, in twenty-five years’ time, four out of ten of the world’s workers is an extraordinary figure. And it does beg this question if you’re in politics and you’re facing these pressures, why can’t we get the economy growing, how are we going to control immigration, should we put Britain first, do we put America—you actually should—you should be thinking, well, do we put America first by actually disengaging with Africa? You know, thinking everything, just in terms of migration flows, rather than thinking, how do we engage? How do we invest in and benefit from this growth? It does help you reframe the whole question. And I think it’s really important.

SORKIN: Yeah. And not just Africa. Obviously, there’s a(n) isolationist tendency within President Trump’s party that’s uncomfortable with, even angry about, our continued support for Ukraine. So is it fair to say that the war in Ukraine is in some ways about international systems, about NATO, about Russia’s projection, about China’s energy needs, about how all of those things pull together? And what would need to change for that war to end?

CAMERON: But it’s about all of those things, but it’s about something much more simple and profound. In today’s world, are we going to allow a dictator to invade another country that is a sovereign, independent member of the United Nations, and let them get away with it and keep a huge amount of territory, and subvert that country, without countries that believe in democracy and all the rest of it do anything about it? And to me, it’s absolutely foundational. It’s not just that Europe’s security will be threatened, but I think America’s security will be threatened too. Not just because if Putin succeeds in Ukraine he will be looking at Moldova, he’ll be looking at the Baltic states. He’ll be trying to piece back together whatever bits he can of the old Soviet Union, which is a threat to all of us. But also, Xi Jinping sitting in Beijing will be watching this as closely as anyone.

And if we can’t support an ally and friend and country that wants to be Western-orientated, democratic, market economics, you know, member of the European Union, member of NATO, potentially, friend of America—if we can’t support that country, well, what chance is there of us helping Taiwan in any way? So I think it’s absolutely—

SORKIN: What are the chances of us helping Taiwan in any way?

CAMERON: Well, we’ll come on to that, but let’s just finish with Ukraine. (Laughter.) Look, to me, what needs to change—because there’s certain things that won’t change. Is Putin going to give up on his efforts to subvert Ukraine entirely? No. Is Ukraine going to throw up its arms and hand over masses of territory in order to achieve a phony peace? No. Is Europe going to really step up with support and armaments and help? Well, yes, I think we’ll do a lot, but can we do that enough to replace the support the United States has been given? No. So the crucial question is, will Donald Trump, now that he can see that Putin has been playing him and that Putin has no intention of making some sort of cozy peace deal, will Congress and will the American president step up and continue to put pressure on Putin and help Ukraine?

That is the one that could change the dial on this. And as I always say, there are two wars going on. There’s the war for Ukrainian territory. Clearly, Ukraine has lost territory. But the more important war is the war for Ukrainian independence. At the end of this, are they going to be a sovereign, independent country that can choose their own future and decide how big their army is, whether they join the EU, whether they’re Western orientated? If they can make that choice, that’s the end of this—that’s the case at the end of this, then that is—that will be a success for Ukraine and a defeat for Putin. And it’s all our interest that that happens.

Now, I’m trying to be optimistic. I’m hopeful. I went to see Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago when I was foreign secretary to persuade him of this position. And that—

SORKIN: Was that fun?

CAMERON: It was great fun. I’m pleased to report that he did help release that money from Congress back in 2024. But it’s still a work in progress.

SORKIN: I don’t want to let your remark about Taiwan drop, though. What’s the answer to that question?

CAMERON: Well, I don’t have the answer. All I know is that if China thought they could take Taiwan and not suffer consequences, they’d take it tomorrow. I mean, they see it as an insult to China that somehow China is still divided. I remember once having a meeting with President Hu. And he said, I know, David, you think we should be a democracy. If we were a democracy, let me tell you, the Chinese people would elect a farmer and he’d invade Taiwan within the week. (Laughs.) So we can’t stop them wanting it. But the one thing we can do, and particularly America can do, is to set out the support we’d give to them, the help that we’d give to Taiwan, in order to ensure that China realizes there will be a very big price to pay, militarily and economically and everything else, if they were to take that risk.

Because I still think fundamentally the question the Chinese asks themselves every day, before they ask how can we get back Taiwan, the question they ask is, how does our regime—how does the Communist Party survive in China? How do we stay in power? And so making sure there are real consequences is the best way of making sure that it doesn’t happen.

SORKIN: Now, another point you mentioned, you presided over the Brexit referendum, your unhappiness, and I—

CAMERON: Well, I was unhappy with the result. That’s true, yeah. (Laughter.)

SORKIN: Yeah. So a few years have passed now. And one of the—one of the fears at the time was would the U.K. be weaker, would the EU be weaker? What do you think? Do you think the U.K. is weaker outside of the European Union? Do you think the European Union, for whatever reason, is stronger?

CAMERON: I think, look, to be as frank as I can, I mean, I wanted us to vote to stay in on the basis of the deal that I’d set out. We didn’t. I’m a democrat. I accept that—small-D democrat, I’d say. We accept that result. I think the net result Britain has suffered economically, perhaps not quite as much as I predicted at the time, in terms of some of the jobs I thought we’d lose in finance. We’ve lost some, but not as many as were predicted. So there have been economic disbenefits for us. There’s certainly economic disbenefits for Europe. Britain, as well as being the second-largest net contributor to the EU, was the second-largest economy, the largest military power, with the best diplomatic network, the biggest aid budget. And, of course, 36 percent of Europe’s financial services are based in London. So both sides have disbenefited.

I think, though, you know, in life there’s much point looking back. The question is, can Britain and Europe now forge a relationship based on being friends, neighbors, and partners, rather than members? And I think that’s what’s happening, particularly with respect to Ukraine, where Britain has been one of the leading supporters, alongside the European Union. I think we can make that model work. If you had another later British prime minister sitting here he might say, well, of course, if we were still in the EU we wouldn’t have done our trade agreement with Donald Trump that has got us lower tariffs than the rest of Europe and a better outcome for our steel industry, and a better outcome for our automotive industry. So, you know, there are—there are things that go the other way.

Britain and America have both decided, wisely in my view, not to pre regulate AI, but to wait to see how it emerges. Europe’s taken the other approach. And don’t read the EU Directive on AI. I’ve done it for you. And I can tell you it is absolutely—it’s well intentioned, but it’s trying to pre-guess every outcome in every industry, and will discourage investment in a big way. So, anyway, people will still be arguing about this in another twenty, thirty years’ time. But fundamentally, Britain is a big enough country to make a success of being friend, neighbor, and partner.

SORKIN: Dr. Mwangi, one of the lessons of Brexit, I think, is that the value of international—of the international system is not—is rated a bit differently by elites and by the general population of different countries. Obviously, we’re at a moment where not only—not only Trump supporters, who are, you know, populist pushing views that are hostile to immigration. How does that look, from your perspective, that hostility towards newcomers, towards a broader world, a different, changing population, where you’re sitting?

MWANGI: I think, as we earlier said, there is a global research not just on the economic perspective, but also on our governance structures and our politics. And what we are seeing is an expression of the populace on frustrations. I don’t know—I don’t think they know what is good for them, but they know they are frustrated. And they are trying what would be the alternative. But I will give it to Lord Cameron. He’s very good at research. (Laughter.)

CAMERON: Well, what’s the question? (Laughter.) Why is there so much populism? Or how is it—

SORKIN: No, I—well, you know, in a minute we’re going to go to questions from the floor, but I just—quite quickly, your party is—has fallen onto hard times. There’s indications that if there were an election today it would be the worst result for the Tories since the 1830s. And a lot of that is—and that’s not just a British issue, obviously.

CAMERON: It’s all over Europe. You can see it. Any European country you pick, you can see there’s been massive disruption. So France is on its fifth prime minister in last few months. Biggest party in France is what was the Front National. You look at Germany, you can see that the Alternative for Deutschland, you know, which was thought of as really quite right wing and extreme, is now on, I can’t remember, 15-20 percent in the polls. Got the same situation in Holland, in Sweden, if it doesn’t matter where you look. And to me, understanding this is incredibly important. To me, there are a couple of forces that have been driving the disruption of our politics, and the rise of populism.

One is, I think, the sort of cultural dislocation from wide scale, very large-scale immigration, but illegal migration that has infuriated people. The second is, look, globalization has been a good thing, but some people in some parts of our countries have not been left behind by it, and have not had enough help. So that’s sort of the economic dislocation. And then married to that is the social media issue, where when I went into politics, you know, we all read pretty much the same newspapers and watch the same television channels. There was a sort of umpire. There was a referee saying that’s truth, that’s a lie, that’s fact, that’s fiction. Now everyone’s got their own television channel and their own truth and their own facts and their own fiction. And so we’re living in a very different world.

But this is—it’s happening all over the world. It’s a huge challenge for us. I think the question to ask is, are we dealing with the causes of populism? Because if our—if all we’re doing is complaining about it, we’re just going to get more of it, because unless you deal with the fundamentals you’re not really solving the problem.

SORKIN: Speaking of having many different voices, I don’t want to monopolize the conversation. I want to open—I’d like to, at this time, invite CFR members and members of CFR’s Global Board to join our conversation with their questions. And I just wanted to remind everybody again that this meeting is on the record. And with that—

CAMERON: You should have told me that before. (Laughter.)

SORKIN: And with that, some questions from the floor. How about there? And please say your name and affiliation when you—

Q: Hi. Jay Markowitz, Regeneron Ventures.

You both mentioned COVID. I think that many people have forgotten about it. And it may be that it’ll be another century before we have a pandemic of this magnitude, but it may not. I’m curious what, in your experience, you’ve seen the international community do to prepare better to respond, whether it’s inventing new medicines, manufacturing, distributing them fairly. Thank you.

MWANGI: I think, from an African perspective, the lessons were learned. We now see we have five vaccine manufacturing plants in the continent. So the dependence has significantly been reduced. I don’t think it’s only on health perspective, but goods that are of critical importance—because you’ll notice the cause of the problem was disruption of supply chains. So the case for local manufacturing, or regional manufacturing, has won the day. And the question of the theory of economies of scale, competitive advantage, I think that, I think, is back in professor classes to be debated more.

SORKIN: Lord Cameron?

CAMERON: Well, I agree with what James has said. I think we’re better at developing vaccines. There’s more distributed international production. My worry is still that the WHO, which I think failed over Ebola. When I was prime minister we had to deal with the Ebola outbreak, and the WHO was too slow, and it was too slow again with COVID. I don’t think it’s been fundamentally reformed.

And I think the one area where I hope that, I think, G-7 countries have made announcements about this but whether it’s actually happened or not I haven’t yet seen, an early warning system based on using genomics and screening that actually could be, like, an organization set up on a sort of partnership basis, rather like a Global Alliance on Vaccines. I think that is very necessary. You’ve got to try and take the politics out of this early warning system. Because often the WHO doesn’t want to upset countries by saying there’s a problem when they don’t necessarily agree. So trying to have a networked organization in the modern world that’s using genomics and using all sorts of tests and trials, including in sewage systems and elsewhere, could be a better way of seeing the emerging pathogens and what’s going to hit us next.

SORKIN: Yeah. Yes, you.

Q: Dan Martin, Oxfam International.

To what extent do you think it is likely that the United Nations will be reformed enough to give a greater voice to the Global South going forward?

SORKIN: I’m struck by actually how little we’ve discussed the United Nations.

MWANGI: I think the governance structure of the U.N. will be difficult to reform because of vested interests and who it empowers. If it were easy, I’m sure by now we could have seen the changes being debated. I think the structure of permanent security members who have a veto against almost the entire world, I’ve seen two or three resolutions with 150 members, but they are vetoed by one member or two members. That question begs, if you can’t change that governance structure, what else can you change? So I don’t see. And I think the bigger issue is—that is being debated, is not the reforms. It’s the relevance of the U.N.

CAMERON: Yeah. I mean, look, obviously, the U.N. should be reformed. We’d all agree with that. The question is, will it be reformed? And there, I’d be skeptical because fundamentally, the people sitting on the Security Council, there are those like Britain and France that will sort of entertain the idea of reform, and there are those that won’t even entertain it. And so is it going to happen? I think no. So I think, first of all, as I’ve just said, I think trying to find new organizations where we can work together, whether it’s on global health issues or whether it’s on AI issues, in the modern network digital world it’s easier to build virtual organizations where you can have like-minded countries working together. I’d focus more on that.

I’m not actually personally mad on the whole Global South label. You’re lumping together lots of countries that are in many ways completely different, and at different stages of development. I think it’s better to try and form alliances between like-minded states to try to solve problems. And I think lumping everyone together, you know, you can take neighboring countries in the Global South, one of which is a massive success story and one of which is a disastrous failure, and it’s because of the choices they’ve made. Actually reminding ourselves that not inevitable where you end up in development.

You know, why is Colombia a success and Venezuela a disaster? Why is Rwanda a success and Burundi not doing so well? Why is Botswana a success, but Zimbabwe struggle? Well, it’s the choices, most notable, North Korea, basket case, South Korea, massive success story. Same part of the world, same climate, same geography, same—but two different—why? They chose different pathways. I think, sort of reminding ourselves that you’re not condemned to poverty just because you exist in one part of the world rather than another is something that’s quite a useful thing.

SORKIN: But you both sort of condemned, to the question, the U.N. You both sort of said you don’t see it reforming. Well, what then? Does it just—

CAMERON: Well, the point is, in politics you’ve got choices. You could become prime minister and say, I’m going to devote myself to the reform of the U.N. I just would not advise that—(laughter)—because you’re not going to achieve anything. You have—you know, politics is the art of the possible. If you say I’m going to devote myself to structural reform to try and get my economic growth rate up, you might just achieve something. But if you devote yourself to the reform of the U.N., pick another career. (Laughter.)

SORKIN: All right. Constance.

Q: Thank you so much, both of you. This has been wonderful. Constance Hunter. I’m the chief economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

And I wonder if either of you have views on the private investment lab that Ajay Banga has developed to bring private capital into emerging markets, notably Africa? And if you think this is the right type of focus for convening global organizations, marshaling resources, and, dare I say, organizing private investment, not aid, towards the Global South?

MWANGI: I seem to take the sentiments that Banga has taken. And if you look at the resolutions of the fourth conference in Seville on development financing, a consensus was that there isn’t much headroom in most countries for debt or for tax revenue. And the option that was available is private sector. But what it also then means is that countries must develop innovative ways of engaging the private sector. They must find appropriate ways of incentivizing and signaling on their intentions. There must also be a consistent way of policies that are predictable and that the private sector can depend on.

I strongly believe that entrepreneurship and innovation, and the ability to price risk, will be able to provide solutions because it will be choose and pick based on the environment created, based on the ability to price the risk, and so forth—and stability of policies. And as Lord Cameron earlier said, you can see the countries that are making the right decisions are being driven by private capital, as opposed to public sector capital. It’s the investments that are generated. And when you look at the case, for instance, of Africa, I am convinced that Africa, given that when you talk about minerals it’s a commodity. And that is best dealt with by the private sector. If you talk about renewable energy, the best people to develop renewable energy will be the private sector. So when you talk about agriculture, the best—it’s not government. And that has to be private sector driven. So I could place my bet on it.

CAMERON: I agree with James. I mean, I think Ajay is a great guy, and I’m really glad he’s doing the work he is. When I left office, I did a report with Paul Collier from the Oxford School of Government. And we did a whole lot of work with a lot of African leaders as well and economists into how to help the most fragile states. And the conclusion we came to was that far too much money was given in terms of debt rather than equity. Far too much was on public projects rather than helping the conditions for private sector growth. And in the end, it’s a very simple point, which is a country can’t succeed without a healthy SME private sector firms economy. I mean, even at the basic level, if you want to give people the chance for a future outside either joining the military or working for the government, you need an expanding private sector. Firms are—we sometimes forget the magic of the firm that has been so transformational for our own economies. We sort of forget that when we look at how to help other countries to develop. And I think this is where we need to focus.

MWANGI: I think the private sector deals with the demand side, where governments help on the supply side. And global competitiveness is about producing goods and services. That is best for the private sector.

Q: Thank you so much. My name is Amy Ho from JPMorgan.

Lord Cameron, you had mentioned that fiscal debt is an imperative, possibly a moral issue. Simply, I know this is more complicated than just—you know, how do you—how would you address this? Especially in the United States, where the administration is not raising taxes, tariffs are probably not a sustainable long-term solution, and cutting spending seems to not really resolve anything either. It seems as if they’re just going to try and grow out of the issue. But how would you address this?

CAMERON: Well I think you’re right. You’ve got, you know, very simple choices. You can either try and grow faster, you can reduce spending, or you can put up taxes. All the economic evidence is that, you know, taxes ultimately are quite growth destroying in many cases. We were advised economically when we did our austerity program after 2010 that we should try and do 80 percent spending reductions and 20 percent tax increase. Quite right. I don’t accept that cutting spending is impossible. If you look at my own country, we now have, in a country of—(audio break)—billions of pounds that can then avoid the tax increases we’re about to be subjected to.

But the much more profound question is, I think for all Europe—Europe seems to have fallen out of love with growth. We’re trundling along at 1, 1 ½ percent, while here in America you’re growing more like 3 percent. And just to give you one example. I mean, you’ve got the miracle of shale oil and gas which has given you cheaper energy. Europe as a whole has about the same amount of shale capacity. We’ve not extracted one single drop. Now I’m not saying our whole economy should be based on shale. Of course it should. But it’s an indication of, you know, if you want growth, you’ve got to do lots of things to deregulate, to change regulations, to take the bureaucracy away, to license new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, for instance, in our case. To make it easier for people to set up a business, to make it easier for people to employ more people. Make it easier to invest, to grow. It’s a thousand different actions that make your economy more investable.

And I think the problem we’ve got in Britain, and to an extent in Europe, we don’t seem to have the courage to make these decisions that will increase our productive capacity. And it needs a really well thought-through plan to help deliver that. But I certainly haven’t—you know, there’s no reason—Europe could end up as a sort of vaguely prosperous museum, or it could end up as another area of dynamic growth. The choice is with us. But we have to choose to take these actions. And at the moment, we’ve got a government in my country who rightly says number one priority is growth, but it’s reregulating the labor market, it’s reregulating the property market. It’s not allowing more oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, and thousands of other decisions. And ultimately in politics, as I said about the U.N., if you want something, growth, everything else has got to be subservient to that aim. You can’t have growth on the one hand, but reregulate the labor market on the other hand. Really got to want it. And I think Europe and Britain has got to prove that we want it.

SORKIN: Yes, you. (Laughs.)

Q: Hello. Thank you very much. Alex Farman-Farmaian, Edgewood Management.

I wanted to square some numbers up, Dr. Mwangi. You mentioned two 40 percent numbers, which were quite significant—40 percent of the global working population Africa would be in 2050, I think you said, and yet also the upheavals in Kenya were due to educated youth being 47 percent unemployed. Maybe I misheard, but those are big numbers. So how do we get to 2050 and not have that 40 percent of the global working population age not be that high unemployment? Kenya today has about a 30 percent youth unemployment level. So how do we get there? And how do we mitigate that? How do we grow? And, in a way, it’s it strikes a little bit, you’re sixty-six million people with ten million unemployed, this is a problem as we go forward. And how do we—how do we avoid that? Is there a solution? And how do we mitigate those particular forties getting together?

MWANGI: Yeah. I think you’re spot on. And as Lord Cameron said, employment is created by growth. And growth is by the thousands of correct decisions that you make, particularly to stimulate private capital to invest and create job opportunities. And I think that’s where Africa is. If you look at the biggest problem in Africa, has been that employment has been heavily relied on to be created in the public sector. It’s governments, parastatals. And you see each country with 200 state corporations that are all making losses, and that all required to be subsidized every year with allocation from treasury. And that has been the biggest problem. And of course, because they are not making money, they can’t continue to employ because that continues to increase the losses that they are recording. The governments themselves, if you look at Kenya, more than 50 percent of the tax revenue goes to paying the payroll, which, again, is not really sustainable.

So the issue is, how do we attract the private sector? And it’s not just to invest, but also we may want to outsource some of these ventures, privatize these ventures. Second issue is, how do you create competitiveness so that the private sector can be able to do it? If I were—and I am not—I would spend most of that money maybe giving incentives, because you don’t give you incentives forever. You give incentives for people to set up and then create jobs. And then you create a loop. People get employed, they earn, you tax, they consume, because they are consuming they open opportunities for production within a country. It’s a question of promotion of trade. It’s not necessarily sufficient that small-unit countries in Africa will be able to have domestic adequate market. But when you look at cross-border trade, then that starts giving you huge opportunities.

SORKIN: Let me push you both on the answers you’ve just given. It seems that there’s a big asterisk. Questions about decisions, about growth, about how sure we can be about where all these charts are heading. And that’s the climate crisis. How does that figure in? The possibility of disruption, the choice about fossil fuels—

CAMERON: No, I was one of the first conservative leaders to be, as it were, openly green. In fact, at the time the only other one was Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was the governor of California. I remember getting Arnie to come over and talk to the Conservative Party in parliament in about 2008. And I said, Arnie, you can say whatever you like to them, just at the end as long as you say together let’s terminate new Labour. (Laughter.) Then, you know, you’re really helping me out. And to be fair to Arnie, he did just that. But the point I’d make is I believe in the energy transition. That we’ve invested massively in offshore wind, in onshore wind to an extent, in solar. We restarted the nuclear program with Hinkley Point. I’m a big believer in that.

But I think there’s a—there has—and there has been a tendency in the U.K., and perhaps in parts of Europe, to set very unrealistic dates without properly thinking through whether it’s achievable, and at what cost. And so we have to have some realistic dates where let’s phase out diesel vehicles and petrol vehicles and have electric vehicles, but do it in a framework that will enable the British motor industry to succeed. Let’s have a net zero approach, but let’s do it in a way we don’t have to rip out every gas boiler in every house in the country and put in place something that’s not as good. So it’s about being—look what Conservatives are meant to be, we’re meant to be practical, non-ideological people. And so let’s approach this in a practical, non-ideological way.

And that’s why I mentioned the North Sea oil. I’m beginning to sound a bit like Donald Trump. North Sea oil, it’s great. (Laughter.) But he’s right, which is, you know, if we’re going to go on using oil and gas as transitional fuels, which we are, what is the point in importing all of it from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, when we could produce some of it ourselves? It’s about being realistic and practical. And then you can take people with you on the journey to tackling climate change and energy transition. If you take an ideological, target-driven approach, I think you’re going to lose—you will lose the rest of it.

MWANGI: And I think here is where, if the world came together to sincerely wish to solve this problem, Africa would play a very significant role. In the sense that it has no legacy energy systems. It only produces 2 percent of the world’s energy. Yet, it possesses 62 percent of the entire renewable energy reserves. And it has the raw materials for industrialization. The question is, can we be more objective and realize we have a common problem that we didn’t need to solve? Again, private sector comes in because it is not about energy transition. It’s what you do with that energy to create jobs, to create products, and services for the world. So the private sector is the center of it.

But the risk of climate change is greatest in Africa because of small-scale farmers. And the small-scale farmers, they are reliant in agricultural practices. And in some areas, like the Horn of Africa, you get five cycles of droughts, one after the other. So you can see the risk that this is exposing everybody to.

SORKIN: Thank you. We have about one minute left. So who has a—who has a quick question? (Laughs.) All right.

Q: I have a quick question. As an observer of the United States and seeing the changes here, especially things like the H-1B visas, the lack of research grants for basic research and innovation, do you think the changes are irreversible or not?

CAMERON: Very dangerous. (Laughter.) There’s a—I always used to say that I was the youngest prime minister in the United Kingdom for 200 years. And of course, there were people who worked that out. That took us all the way back to 1812. And we know what happened just shortly after that. (Laughter.) You know, the redcoats landed at Chesapeake Bay, marched on the White House, and burnt it down. Nowadays, you don’t need a bunch of redcoats to foment an insurrection in Washington. You’re more than capable of doing it yourself. (Laughs.) Serious point. Right, the question was about—(laughter)—look, it’s clear to me that one of the most successful industries in your country is life sciences, drug development, the treatment of diseases.

One of the things I do now, I chair this thing called the Oxford University Harrington Rare Disease Center. Alliance with Oxford University and Harrington, which is part of the Ohio Hospitals Group, sixth-largest group of hospitals in America. And we are developing drugs and treatments for rare diseases. Incredibly exciting. And one of the most inexplicable things that’s happening at the moment is, you know, your life sciences industry does require that sort of seed corn investment from NIH, the work being done at great universities like Harvard, and, you know, I think it would be a terrible shame for your economy if you lost that great engine of jobs and investment and growth. And it’s an engine that fires up the world as well as your own country.

So but all these things are reversible, you know. I think we’ve just got to make sure that the administration can see the benefits of this industry, see how many jobs and what it brings. And I think sometimes it’s clear to me that there are industries in this country that have an absolute direct line to the White House. When the first bunch of tariffs were put on with China, I think the heads of, you know, Macy’s, and Home Depot, and Target, and others went to see the president said, look, this is over the top. We’re not going to have goods in the shops for Christmas. This is going to be a disaster. And he changed direction. And so we need to find that ideal person that can make the argument about life sciences and basic scientific research, because I think it’s very important for your economy and for all our futures. Although, of course, the scientists are very welcome to come to Oxford, to Cambridge, or wherever else they’d like to come.

SORKIN: I think we’re out of—I think we’re at time. We’ll have to be sure to have you back next year for the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. (Laughter.)

CAMERON: President Obama said he forgave me. We had a long chat about it. (Laughter.) He took me on Air Force One. We flew all the way up to Ohio. And when he flew me back, during some basketball game which I didn’t understand, he actually—I was—he tucked me up in the bed in the nose cone of Air Force One. And as he did so he said, I know people think that I don’t care about the special relationship. But I bet, David, that Roosevelt never did this for Churchill. (Laughter.) So I’ve been forgiven. I’m all right.

SORKIN: I think we’re at time. I just want to thank you both. Dr. Mwangi, Lord Cameron, and thanks to all of the members and Global Advisory. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.