Seeing the World as Mary Kaldor

This is the (somewhat edited) transcript of a Project Save the World forum – a chat between our editor Metta Spencer and the British peace scholar Mary Kaldor, who was in Barcelona teaching a course early in March 2025.

Metta Spencer: Hi, Mary. So, retirement isn’t really retirement, is it, for folks like us? I understand you are writing your magnum opus, which will summarize everything you’ve learned in your illustrious career.

Mary Kaldor: Yes, I’ve been writing this book for a long time, and it’s difficult to write. With a theory of everything, you always think of objections. And also, as you may know, when you get older, it gets harder to hold a lot of different things in your mind at once. I used to be quite confident of my views, but I find myself questioning them more and more, trying to understand political change. It starts in 1989, which was in a way the moment of my intellectual formation. At the starting point is something I was very influenced by when I was young, which were theories of long cycles in history and moments of paradigm change. I worked in something called the Science Policy Research Unit, and we thought a lot about long waves in economic history, which were characterized by different technologies over time. I was struck by the fact that in other fields of social science, such as international relations, there are theories of long waves in world order, or long waves in war. I was really interested in how these two connected. I don’t want to prove the point about long waves, but we’re at a moment in history when our narrative about world order – and we have several competing narratives – no longer fit the deep-rooted economic, social and technological changes. My interest is: how do we get through paradigm shifts? If you look at these long wave theories, there’s always a moment which people often call critical junctures, at when change happens. Usually it’s a major war. In goes one period of history, and out comes another. And I’m interested in what happens in these periods.

One big important idea that animates the book is what I call “experimental junctures,” moments of history when politicians really don’t know what to do, but they experiment with different approaches. Some approaches are incredibly disastrous, like killing all Jews or, as is happening at the moment, taking over the Panama Canal, or getting into bed with Russia. It’s only when you hit upon less disastrous approaches that you lay the basis for a new period of history. That doesn’t mean you will hit upon the right approach. Experimental junctures may go on for a very long time.

Metta Spencer: I have never read about long waves, and that doesn’t connect with anything I know. Are you saying that these experimental junctures somehow occur at a certain phase in long waves? Or would experimental junctures occur at all kinds of times, especially if there’s a crisis going on that’s baffling?

Mary Kaldor: Cataclysmic, experimental junctures occur at the moments when waves in world order are out of step with economic and technological waves. Economic change happens all the time because of markets. Markets are a mechanism for change, but political change either happens very slowly in long periods of history, or it happens dramatically. And because the rate of change of institutions is different from the rate of change of economies, you reach moments of huge contradiction. I’ll go back to experimental junctures. It’s quite good explaining this to you, because I need to learn to explain it a bit more simply. But the other thing to say is that the experiments are drawn from the ideas that are around in civil society. People also talk about cycles of social movements. At certain moments, social movements win or lose, and when they win, their ideas get accepted onto governmental agendas and also become, as it were, institutionalized. The labour movement became institutionalized as social democratic and labor parties and trades unions. And so historically, these experimental junctures have occurred at moments of revolution and war, which I think are linked. The Napoleonic Wars was one such moment. The wars of the middle of the 19th century were another moment, and obviously the two World Wars were another moment. And now we’re in another moment, right?

I have a specific idea of civil society. What do we mean by civil society? Well, we mean a million different things, but if you think about it conceptually, over the last 300 years, we’ve developed a whole set of mechanisms for the nonviolent resolution of conflict in society, whether we’re talking about justice mechanisms, elections, all of these things. And all of these mechanisms are the consequence of the institutionalization of social movements. It’s offering a sort of bit of hope. Because 1989 was my formative moment, I still believe in agency, as no doubt you do, despite all the horrible things that happen. And agency is important in these moments. What came together after the Second World War was, on the one hand, the Cold War, which, as you know from the past, I call “imaginary war,” and it was a binary framework for the world. On the other hand (which I think was true of both communism and capitalism) there was the rise of a model of development which people call “Fordism.” Mass production, intensive use of fossil fuels, cars – all of these things became terribly important in the Second World War, and I argue that the Cold War provided a framework for Fordism. You look very unsure of that.

Metta Spencer: I am. Now, what do I want to pursue here? This Fordism thing. What’s that got to do with anything?

Mary Kaldor: The basic argument is that we’ve never really managed to dismantle the fundamental Cold War structures. We started dismantling it in the post-‘89 period. But along came the War on Terror, and then came the return of geopolitics, and that legitimized the continued structures of the Cold War, which were completely out of keeping with reality. Globalization, which was happening after 1989, fundamental changes in technology, in the way we ran our economy and so on, which were completely at variance with our political institutions. That’s how I see the contradiction.

Spencer: Are you thinking of NATO when you say, “the structures of the Cold War”?

Kaldor: I’m thinking of NATO. I’m thinking of military structures all over the world. I’m thinking of military structures in Russia and in China. And I’m thinking of the national organization of the world, despite the rise of global institutions and despite globalization.

Spencer: Well, what is the incongruity? Where is it that militarization or NATO and other alliances are somehow incompatible with economic globalization? Is that your assumption?

Kaldor: It is my assumption. Yes. Well, politics is still organized at a national level, and what we have at a global level is the rise of neoliberalism, which is another story.

Spencer: Rise and fall of neoliberalism now?

Kaldor: I’m not sure. I was just listening to a seminar about Syria and what was striking is the way the new Syrian regime is already adopting neoliberal policies.

Spencer: Tell me, is Trump a neoliberal?

Kaldor: In a way, he is. I think what neoliberalism did was two things. First of all, neoliberalism constructed oligarchy through privatization and contracting out. At the same time, it contributed to extreme inequality and produced all sorts of left-behind people who were able to be mobilized by the oligarchs. It did those two things. It did inequality, and at the same time, it constructed a whole new class of capitalists who are entirely dependent on the state, which is what we mean by oligarchs.

Spencer: But states differ. The interesting and dramatic question is: Are we talking about democratic states in the future, or are we talking about authoritarian states? The US is becoming, overnight, an authoritarian state.

Kaldor: I think what Trump and Putin are, is a huge assault on democracy. All these silly Europeans somehow think they can pull him back into Europe! He’s fundamentally opposed to the European Union and democracy. The fact that J. D. Vance came to Munich, and the only people he wanted to see was the AfD is evidence of that.

Spencer: I agree.

Kaldor: So, we’re in the middle of a huge struggle between authoritarianism and democracy.

Spencer: That’s exactly what the issue is.

Kaldor: But I feel we can’t solve the problems of democracy and our economic problems, except at a global level.

Spencer: Okay, I’m happy with that statement too. But I’m stuck trying to fit the notion of neoliberalism into this because I’m not sure I know what it is.

Kaldor: I’m saying that these changes come about because of the rise and fall of movements. And you know, for the ‘50s and ‘60s, there was a consensus, and then you started to get reactions, both from the left and the right. From the left, people like us were concerned about issues like peace and environment and democracy and women’s rights and all of these issues. There was a kind of frustration with the overbearing state, I think, both from left and right, but whereas the left wanted to democratize, the right wanted to minimize the state and escape.

Spencer: So, where does Trump belong in that polarization? Maybe this is a past tension that you’re seeing – the “building-a-strong-democratic-state” versus “minimizing-states” period.

Kaldor: Well, the way I’m telling the story at the moment is that neoliberalism produced these oligarchy types who needed a narrative. (You can’t win power by saying, ‘I want money.’ You have to have a narrative.) And so, Reagan picked the Christian right. Thatcher had her Falklands moment, and they all pick on a kind of scapegoat theory of history. For Trump, the scapegoat theory is: “Everybody’s against America. I’m against immigrants who eat pets. I think Canada and Panama should all be part of the United States.” You know, the mad ideology that’s taken over at this point.

Spencer: Do you have a theory about where it’s going?

Kaldor: The theory about where it’s going is really depressing. Because what I think is that what happened in Syria, what happened in Bosnia, what happens in large parts of Africa, are a long-term intimation of where it’s going. These authoritarians thrive on fear and the extraction of resources, and that combination actually requires violence. So, the most likely outcome of all this is a long-term violent condition that will be very difficult to change. But on the other hand, as I said, I still believe in agency, and actually in all the new wars that I study, there are always very active civil society people, because those societies would collapse without civil society. They just would literally collapse. Civil society provides humanitarian support. They do everything, they provide schools, they provide clinics, they do all of those things. And it’s particularly striking actually in Ukraine, where – do you know that 15% of defense spending has been crowdfunded?

Spencer: From the world, or from Ukrainians?

Kaldor: From Ukrainians, some of them living abroad.

Spencer: I’m not surprised.

Kaldor: The 1990s was a moment of institutionalization, and we did set up some institutions, like the ICC. We increased the emphasis on human rights and so on. And I do think, whether we’re talking about Gaza, where we saw the ICJ decision and the ICC decision, global public opinion really does support the idea of a kind of liberal human rights-based order.

Spencer: I think probably that’s true.

Kaldor: And so that’s where our hope lies. And our hope lies in that the Europeans will get it. I mean, they’ve been terrible on Palestine, but they are beginning to get it, that they’ve got to support Ukraine. It also requires the opposite of neoliberalism, which isn’t necessarily a return to statism. It’s more about global redistribution than about national redistribution, and the EU is in a key position to be able to do that. It could be hugely increasing borrowing from the Central Bank. It hardly has any borrowing. It could be hugely increasing taxation of multinationals and the rich and of financial speculation. And it could be spending all that on climate change, on welfare, on education. That needs to be at the level of the EU, not at the level of the nation states. The nation states are completely stuck. They’re kind of confined by the IMF. I can’t see that happening without a notion of a rights-based liberal world order. I emphasize rights because, you know, everybody talks about a “rules-based” order, but they don’t necessarily include rights. And it has to include economic and social rights.

Spencer: Well, I would be on your page on that.

Kaldor: I need to learn how to explain it in a few minutes.

Spencer: You say there are moments of experimentation, and I have to hope that that gives an opening at some point for experimentation with new institutions that are capable of addressing what, frankly, I don’t think your opinion or many other political analysts are taking account of. Two things are coming at us that are going to change everything, and one is AI, and the other is global climate change. And those two things are going to happen fast and make many new challenges that we have no grasp of how to address. And both of them, in my opinion, do require global political institutions to solve them, and they need to be democratic. But I don’t see where we’re going to get them. In terms of what you said, where can we pin our hopes on getting the kinds of changes that we need?

Kaldor: I totally agree with you, although I’m still getting my head around what AI really means. I find it really difficult. I agree with you about both climate change and AI, and I guess that’s actually part of the story, because the institutions are biased – at least against climate change. That’s what I mean about “Fordist institutions.” They are biased in favor of oil.

Spencer: That’s absolutely true. And I spend a lot – probably the great majority – of my energy working on that issue. AGI within the next two or three years is going to mean that there is no comparison between the intelligence in the human population and this machine. It’ll be necessary and will happen that policies and decisions will be made by machines, because they’re so much smarter. They’re already the reason that Musk is tearing up the US government – to make it easier for these machines to take over. They will take over, and I’m not even sure whether I like the idea or not. They might be better. I don’t think we can predict whether they’ll be more ethical. But we can’t leave them out.

Kaldor: What you’ve just said fits totally the long wave theory, actually. Really, yeah. There are huge waves in technological development, and we’re just at the beginning of the AI wave. So, I think it fits quite well with that sort of approach. But I think we need to be thinking about what’s needed. I’m a member of the UN Secretary General’s advisory panel on disarmament, and we had a meeting last week, where we were discussing AI and I said what we needed was a world technology organization that would monitor, regulate, introduce, a set of principles, And the person who was most enthusiastic about this idea was the Chinese member.

Spencer: I wish I could believe that you can come up with some principles such that, if you just rationally and consistently apply those principles, we’d be all right, but no.

Kaldor: Well then, you’re not really believing in agency.

Spencer: I hadn’t thought about that. Well, do I…

Kaldor: Let me just say something else about democracy. There’s a huge problem about democracy at the national level. We have very limited choices at the national level because of globalization. But the answer isn’t to have democracy at a global level. The answer is that the job of the global institutions is to address global bans. So, there’s space, both at national and local levels, to be able to make democratic decisions. It doesn’t mean that international institutions shouldn’t be accountable. I draw a distinction between procedural and substantive democracy. Procedural democracy is having elections, having a rule of law, having freedom of association. But substantive democracy is about being able to influence the decisions which affect your life. The problem is that, because so much is happening at a global level, and because the institutions are so militarized and stuck in old Fordist assumptions, it’s very difficult for us to influence the decisions that affect our lives. What kind of multi-level governance would make that possible? My argument is that the job at the global level is not so much to be directly accountable (because the world is so many people we’d never know if you had majority decisions and everything else) but rather, the job of the global institutions is to create greater possibilities at a local level to make the decisions that affect your life, which means regulating or taxing global “bads” like climate change or AI, where AI might be a global good or a global bad.

Spencer: You mean that somehow, locally, you’re going to be able to affect taxation policy for the government for the whole nation?

Kaldor: Or for perhaps your local area.

Spencer: Well, I don’t give a hoot about my local area. Frankly, I don’t pay any attention. I don’t even know who the city councilor is.

Kaldor: I much prefer my local area. I mean, Britain is my state, but Brighton, where I live, I love Brighton, and I’m very concerned about who is the local council and all that kind of stuff.

Spencer: Well, we’re different. I just get bothered with that. I’ve got to solve the world. I can’t take care of my little neighborhood.

Kaldor: But solving the world is partly being able to solve the problems of your little town. That’s exactly the point.

Spencer: I don’t think problems are at the level of little towns. I think what I need is the government. But here I seem to be taking over.

Kaldor: I completely agree with that. Okay, I’d call those global bads.

Spencer: See, I believe in citizens assemblies. I don’t believe in elections. I think that voters in elections make very stupid decisions because they don’t think about it or talk about it in advance. They go in the voting booth and just pull any old lever that they see. But if you create panels of people who are really representative of the population with sortition, and you put them together and make them think together for weeks or months, with people coming in and presenting a variety of different ideas and issues, the outcome is generally at least as good, if not better than, electing Congress people or parliamentarians.

Kaldor: I agree with you about citizens assemblies. But I think we need both. Actually. I think we need to combine the two.

Spencer: Okay, I’m up for ways of combining the two.

Kaldor: They had a great public consultation last year on the future of Europe. You know, the European Parliament moves from Strasbourg to Brussels all the time.

Spencer: I’m not a European, so I don’t know how it works.

Kaldor: Well anyway, the European Parliament only has one chamber. We suggested that Strasbourg should become a second chamber, although it would be linked with transnational and it should be a permanent citizens assembly. The idea is that you can have different types of citizens assemblies. You can have the kind you’re talking about – sortition, which is really important – and you could do it not just in Strasbourg. You could move it all around Europe, or you could have it online, but also provide a space in Strasbourg for Helsinki-type citizens assemblies. So, this is what we proposed. And actually, for the future of Europe, the EU did actually organize its own assemblies.

Spencer: Tell me more about that, because I didn’t know that, and I want to know. I like to put on forums about citizens assemblies, because it’s my hobby horse.

Kaldor: You should interview Kalypso Nicolaidis. She’s at the European University Institute, and she’s passionately pro-citizens assemblies and has been organizing them herself. But they did organize them in order to get results for the future of Europe – not that the future of Europe ended up being that interesting, to tell you the truth. I don’t know why not, but anyway, they did organize them, so there’s a lot of interest inside the European Union in developing citizens assemblies.

Spencer: Okay, I really want to get back to your thing, because I’m not sure what you are going to recommend. I still don’t understand long waves.

Kaldor: But you’re seeing, I suppose, the end result, and maybe I should have started with that. We can’t solve the global economic problems without solving global peace and war problems. So, you and I have for long advocated for a human rights-based liberal world order, and that has to be linked with a new model of economic development that’s global green, addresses climate change, addresses new technologies and addresses global inequalities. So, the link, but we have to keep those together. You can’t just put them in separate boxes. I suppose that’s more than anything what I’m arguing for.

Spencer: Okay, got it. I don’t see any issue there. But we are not going in that direction. We are going in the direction of nationalism. Every little country is going to be trying to just retreat into its own borders and hope that Trump doesn’t come and gobble them up.

Kaldor: They’re all going to follow the Trump model, because that’s the only way you can win power, given that you can’t solve economic problems. You blame it on the other.

Spencer: Yeah. So, do you have any hope? Where would you put your bets, if you had some chips or something to invest?

Kaldor: I would bet on the European Union, but following a very different strategy than now. Which it may be on the verge of doing. The Chancellor of Germany when he was elected said, “It’s four minutes to midnight for the European Union.” The most likely outcome of Trump and Putin. Their goal is to destabilize the European Union and spread authoritarianism. And if the European Union succeeds in resisting this, that’s where I see hope.

Spencer: Well, God bless them. I don’t know what to make of Merz. Is he our savior?

Kaldor: He could be. He’s right-wing. He’s not at all what we’re thinking of. But his speech on being elected was that we have to deal with this issue. He wasn’t just talking about substituting for America in Ukraine. He was also talking about addressing the problems that have given rise to the AfD.

Spencer: What are the problems that gave rise to the AfD? That’s the question!

Kaldor: I think it is neoliberalism, and in the German case, it’s the debt brake, if you know what the debt brake is.

Spencer: No, I don’t know.

Kaldor: Neoliberalism is built into the German constitution. I think Merkel did that. So, you’re not allowed to exceed the budget deficit of 3.5%, which means that they’ve not been able to spend for a very long time. There’s a limit on how much they can spend, which means that you’ve got growing inequality. And particularly in the former East Germany, people no longer are working in the Fordist factories. Those are the sort of basic people who are attracted to the AfD.

Spencer: What can you say about the attraction to the AfD that explains attraction to similar movements elsewhere? What is it that makes a Musk?

Kaldor: Well, I think there are two things which are quite separate. One is the rise of oligarchy, which is very important. But the other is – you know, when we did local studies of why people voted for Brexit, what came out is something which comes out on the left too: this huge sense of disempowerment. That nobody listens to your problems, that nobody cares, nobody does anything about it, and you’re ready to vote for anybody who offers dramatic change, even if it’s horrible change. I guess the difference between the left-behind and the more middle-class student people is that the left-behind are willing to blame it on immigration, whether it’s true or false, whereas some of the left are now crazy. Then you combine that with Musk and social media and all that stuff.

Spencer: Sometimes Gallup polls and Pew go around asking: “What is it that really makes you mad? So mad that you just boil over and want to kill somebody? When was the last time you were so furious? What was it about?” And it was about seeing some kind of injustice, being victimized in an unjust way, and or being frustrated by the government or some big corporation or the Internet. Bureaucracy is inefficient enough and inhumane enough that they stick with stupid rules about how to process your application, and then they make it impossible for you to find your way through it, so you just plain can’t get anywhere. There’s no room for human mercy. So, this is where people are really angry, but that that you do not see any political movement offering them relief for that. And this is where I think there’s a useful Marxian concept – “false consciousness.” Nobody has given them a label, a proper analysis or diagnosis of that frustration and that distress.

Kaldor: Interesting. I mean, we had this brief period when Corbyn became leader of the Labor Party, and I’m not actually a fan of Corbyn himself, but nevertheless, they were explaining the problems as they are, and they were hugely popular. And the lengths that people, that the social media, the pro-Israeli lobby, all of these people went to discredit him! I think Corbyn made lots of mistakes, actually, particularly on Brexit. But in fact, he won a bigger share of the vote in 2019 when Boris Johnson won a huge victory than Keir Starmer did last summer.

Spencer: Well, I think the politicians have not given people any formula for how they’re going to solve that at all. And until they do that, people have to vote on issues that I don’t think really matter. I mean, why would the average person care that much about what toilets boys and girls use? They’re given a list of issues that they supposedly care about, which is not really what they care about, and they’re not given an opportunity to say what they really need to have done. So, I think that’s where we could introduce mechanisms for things like panels of global citizens assemblies, so that if you can’t find a way to fill out the tax form you can go to them. They can demand that the government create tax forms that a human being can actually fill out without having to pay an accountant to do it. And 60% of those accountants make mistakes themselves.

Kaldor: The other thing to say is, I thought Biden’s inflation, whatever it was called — Reduction Act. You know that those two things he did, he poured a huge amount of money into climate change technology, and so what went wrong? Why didn’t people support it?

Spencer: Most people are not aware of climate. Especially politicians are not aware that it’s going to happen. It’s almost inevitable. We’re going to have 10 feet of ocean rise, primarily because the Thwaites Glacier is going to break off because they’re not doing anything. I don’t know whether they could save it. It will raise global oceans and eliminate all the cities on the coasts everywhere.

Kaldor: No, people don’t care about that, but the theory was that if you put a huge investment into climate change, that will generate new jobs, will improve the economy, and that will improve people’s lives. The argument that actually investing in climate change is also a way of producing growth and improving people’s lives, seems to me a very good argument. That was the argument of the Green New Deal, and Biden tried to put it into practice, but it just didn’t have any effect. So why?

Spencer: Okay, I don’t know the answer, but I think it’s because most of the investments are not going to be visible in the economy right away. You can’t overnight build all the windmills in the ocean that you want. Or, let’s say, he didn’t invest in seaweed farms, which is one important possibility. I have 1000 different things that could be done, but they’re not being done. And I don’t know whether Biden’s investment would have actually led to any of those bigtime projects. I’m talking about things I don’t know anything about here, so forgive me.

Kaldor: Yeah, I don’t know the answer. I suspect part of the answer is that he did do it in the classic contracting-out way, giving lots of projects.

Spencer: The infrastructure. They’re going to fix bridges, which they need, but that’s not high tech. It doesn’t really solve climate. They’re not even making much progress with things like fast trains. The US and Canada still don’t have a good train system, and the one they’ve been trying to build in California for the last 20 years, they can’t get rights to build tracks. Okay, I’m distracting you, dear.

Kaldor: Yes, but it helped me in thinking. I need to find a clearer way to describe what my book is about.

Spencer: Well, yeah, you did lose me when it came to long waves, because I don’t know anything about that. Where’d you even get the idea?

Kaldor: They’re called cycles and sometimes called surges. And lots of people have observed since the 1920s that the global economy since the mid 17th century, has gone in 50-year cycles. And these 50-year cycles have been associated with a bunching together of technology. So, it starts with the Industrial Revolution and the factory system. Then the next phase is machinery and railways. The next phase is electricity, and I can’t remember what, and then comes cars and oil. And each of these phases have their ups and downs. You start slowly, then suddenly, it takes off, and then it gets subject to diminishing returns. And there are new inventions, but you reach a kind of crisis point, because the new inventions are, in a way, constrained by the past. That’s my brief description of long waves.

Spencer: Just economic. What does that have to do with political theories of long waves in politics?

Kaldor: The idea of the rise and fall of great powers. You know that there are big moments when hegemony shifts from, say, Portugal to the Netherlands, the Netherlands to Britain, Britain to the United States. And actually, these are sort of parallel. Long waves are a starting point for the book, but the book is not about long waves. The book’s about today. It’s about the contradiction between Fordism (which is my name for the American-dominated model of development based on cars roads, the intensive use of oil that we’ve experienced since the Second World War, and our institutions were really shaped around that) and somehow we haven’t been able to adapt to a world of information-communications technology, let alone AI, gene editing, and all the other things that are coming along. And it’s about adapting institutions. That’s what it’s really about. Because the key point I’m trying to make about civil society and social movements is that they’re the carriers of the new ideas that come out of this contradiction. And they may be very good ideas or they may be terrible ideas.

Spencer: If you were given control of all the EU decisions, tell me your game plan.

Kaldor: My game plan would be to greatly enhance democracy in the EU – both the real European Parliament and a parallel citizens assembly; hugely increase EU level spending, both through issuing debt from the central bank and through taxing multinational corporations, taxing the global bads, taxing carbon, taxing financial speculation. And then I would spend that money on adapting to climate change, on contributing to a global technological organization to think about AI and all these other technologies to redistribute, addressing poverty in the world, including inside the EU, and, I don’t know, strengthening the United Nations. Blah de blahdy blah.

Spencer: Okay, your blahdy blahdy blah there is interesting. You throw the United Nations in this as kind of an afterthought. I would have started with the United Nations. Figure out how to reform that. Not that I think there’s much hope.

Kaldor: Interesting about this meeting in Geneva. The Chinese person was just passionate about the United Nations. And she was the official Chinese delegate.

Spencer: Well, I don’t know what have they been doing at the UN, one way or another.

Kaldor: They’re the second largest funder.

…the key point I’m trying to make about civil society and social movements is that they’re the carriers of the new ideas…

Spencer: I haven’t heard of any reformist movement for the UN being led by any Chinese people.

Kaldor: Not reformist movements, but they fund the UN, and they think the UN is really important.

Spencer: Well, good. I do too, but I don’t think it’s the easiest place to start. But of course, I don’t know enough about the EU, and maybe you think you’ve got hope there.

Kaldor: I think it’s that the UN depends on its member states, and the EU is offering a kind of model of global governance that isn’t, of course, global, it’s regional. But if it acted together, it could really have a very powerful influence on the UN, too.

Spencer: But the UN isn’t set up with a seat for the EU. It’s set up for seats for the countries.

Kaldor: Yeah, well, that’s one of the reforms I will accept. I think the Security Council should be reformed generally. But it’s ridiculous that Britain and France are represented rather than what should be. Maybe regional organizations, the AU, the EU, you know, we could think in those terms.

Spencer: In a regional organization, not every country that wants to join is allowed in. It’s very questionable whether Ukraine will be able to join EU, not to mention NATO.

Kaldor: I’m talking about a future. Yeah. I think that Ukraine will join EU, actually.

Spencer: Well, here’s where I would agree that there’s something to hope for. Yeah. Do you think you have some influence in Europe, despite living in England?

Kaldor: I’ve just become a Hungarian citizen.

Spencer: No kidding. Oh, that’s wonderful. If I could become a citizen of about 10 different countries, I would.

Kaldor: It was an effort, and this was the easiest. I just didn’t want not to be a European citizen, and actually, I realize even now nobody’s noticed it in Barcelona. But in fact, as a Hungarian (I haven’t yet got my passport) but as a Hungarian citizen, it’s totally legal. But I certainly wouldn’t want to be only a Hungarian citizen.

Spencer: Certainly not today, but once you straighten them out, it’ll be a better deal. I’m sure you and Orban will have a conversation and he will be persuaded, and everything will be all right!

Kaldor: Were you in the END [European Nuclear Disarmament] as well as HCA [Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly] or HCA only?

Spencer: In both. I attended some END meetings.

Kaldor: Did you attend the one in Lund?

Spencer: No. Evry. And Helsinki and Tallin. And Moscow, you know, the last one was in Moscow?

Kaldor: Orban was in Evry, I think, and definitely in Lund. The book is about great moments of historical change, and the one we’re in at the present. Maybe I don’t need all the background stuff, but it’s got me to here.

Spencer: And also the question of agency.

Kaldor: The contradiction between the political and the economic is hugely important. And the question of agency is hugely important.

Spencer: But right now, do you feel you have agency? I know, you’re a big shot, so you probably do have some agency. I don’t. I listen to people, and I have some ideas, but I don’t think they’re going to go anywhere, and I don’t see any plan.

Kaldor: I just thought of something you should put in Peace Magazine. Let me tell you about it. Before Christmas, I organized a meeting of Russian and Ukrainian human rights defenders from inside Russia and Ukraine, and they decided they wanted to run a campaign about calling for a human dimension to the negotiations. They’ve started a campaign called “People First,” which calls for freeing of all the captives of the war, prisoners of war, civilians, the children who’ve been taken to Russia. And the campaign’s really taken off inside Ukraine and inside Russia. And indeed, in Zelensky’s statement at the end, he actually refers to it. He talks about freeing the captives and how to take humans first. But it’s been really difficult mobilizing interest in the rest of Europe. So, it would be great if you did something in Peace Magazine on that, and got some Canadian interest in it.

Spencer: Okay. Let me see if I can connect this to something else I’ve been working on. Because, for one thing, it’s too late to do a new story in the April issue, but I can start a story for the next issue about what you’re suggesting, if I understand what it might amount to. What I have been working on with no effect whatever is the plight of the Russian men who fled to avoid being sent to kill Ukrainians. There were a million of them who left the country and they are stuck in various countries where they don’t really have any intention of being. Mostly in what had been Soviet – Kazakhstan, or Georgia, whatever. They can get into those with only an internal passport, whereas to get to other countries, they have to have an external passport, for which they’d have to go back to Russia, though of course, they’d go to jail if they did so. They can’t go back to Russia, therefore they can’t move on to other countries. And other countries will do nothing to help them and don’t admit them, and they regard them all as potential spies. Well, I’ve been trying for two years now to set up forum conversations about how to help these folks and sometimes their families, who have followed them. I can’t seem to get anybody in the government willing to talk about it. I talked to Bob Rae, the Canadian ambassador to the UN. He had to check and Ottawa didn’t allow him to be on the show if there were Russians there. So, he talked to me about it, and of course, he didn’t know much because he hadn’t talked to any Russians, Then I’ve tried to get people at the World Council on Refugees and Migration. They say, “someday we’ll do it,” or something. I can’t get lawyers. What is the matter with people that they don’t want to help these poor guys? We should be out greeting them with garlands of flowers.

Kaldor: Incredible. And there are also a million or so inside Russia who are in hiding.

Spencer: And not just in hiding, but many in prison. I read a number the other day. They’re not all men. Any protester can be.

Kaldor: They let everybody go who said they would join the war, and they’ve imprisoned everybody who was against the war. But what is amazing about the Russian groups at my meeting is they work undercover. They hide conscientious objectors. They help Ukrainian civilians escape. It’s amazing what they do.

Spencer: Let’s talk about having some forums with these people.

Kaldor: I’ll send you the link to the “People First” website. Also, I did a piece in The Nation last week, so I’ll send you both those things.

Spencer: Please do. It’s a treat to talk to you. I will be your follower, but I have to figure out where you’re going to lead!

Kaldor: And I have to figure out how to explain it.

Spencer: Enjoy Barcelona for me. Bye.