#132. Debora Malito: This Unstable World
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This episode won't be for everyone, right? Because it gets a little bit deep and for obvious reasons. And very specific. Yeah, very specific. But if you want to know a little bit more about how the world works and you're willing to follow along the conversation, like she's an absolute brilliant guest. Super duper smart. But it's not going to be for everyone. You got to think a little bit on this one. I really enjoy talking to her. Yeah.

Yeah, especially what, you know, the stuff that she said off air. I wish we had that on tape. Why does it happen? Like we turn off the camera, we turn off the recorder and freaking gems come out. I love what she said, you know, at the end when the microphones were off, she was like, you know, I kind of have to talk deeper about this kind of stuff and a little more technically and academically. Otherwise, it'll just come off as conspiracy theory. And I kind of love that. Love that idea.

Yeah, but I think that was a really cool discussion around intervention, good governance, and, you know, perceptions around those things and kind of the global order. We got into a lot of kind of big picture subjects towards the end. That was a really interesting one. I really enjoyed that one. All right, let's put on our little student hats and get into this one. All right. So without further ado, please give it up for Debra Melito. Hey, this is Italian wine.

Growing up in Italy, is wine like just a natural part of life? Is it like water for you guys? Is that cliche true? Yeah, somehow, yes, it's true. It's like pizza, right? At what age did you start drinking wine? Six.

16, 17, something like that. And he's still drinking wine? Yeah. It's like obvious we're American. We're like, wow, that's so cool. It's so young. I know. We have to wait till we're 21. Yeah, to them, it's like literally like water, you know? Water is actually more expensive than wine, right? A bottle of water would be more expensive than a glass of wine. Yeah, it would be like...

other people come into America and it's like, so you've touched a gun before? Like, yeah, yeah. Sleep with one. Yeah. And the first time you shot a gun, eight or nine? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I didn't shoot a gun early, but my dad had tons of guns. Really? Yeah. He collected guns. I mean, he was more of a collector, but that just shows you how normal he had like rifles, all this stuff. You never told us this. Did he ever take you out shooting? No, he never even shot any of them, but he collected guns and he had like, he was just into it.

Here you go, Deborah. Thank you. Maybe, what's the etiquette? Okay, we'll just watch you. Yeah. You're acting like you never had wine before. It's like ridiculous. What's the etiquette? What do we do? How do we... I've not had water before. How do we hold this glass here? No, I'm not going to tell you how to do it. I'm not going to be able to teach anyone on this. Cheers. Cheers. Okay. Anyway.

Welcome to the show, Debra. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. So your field of study is international studies? Yeah. International relations, conflict, issues of governance. This is my, yeah. And I teach international relations. Yeah. I first heard about you because you did a talk at China Crossroads. Yeah. Right. How did that go?

It was nice. I had a lot of interesting conversation, interaction about issues of governance, corruption, how do we measure those complex concepts. It was nice. Nice to meet a lot of interesting people there. Yeah, the title of that talk I remember was Western Bias of Good Governance. So how do you define governance? What does that mean? Before we get into how it's measured...

Good or bad? Like, how would you define governance? Okay, so good question. Difficult to answer because there are many different ways of defining it, right? So there is one fundamental disagreement on how to define it. It is whether we look at governance

principle or we look at outputs, whether we look at how it should go there or what people get in the end of the governance process. So you can disagree on this topic for weeks, hours. We are not going to solve it. But basically the idea is that governance is this capacity to govern, a capacity to provide goods to the people and

And this means providing the essential needs, the schools, the health system, education. So the essential needs for people to live. So I would say we have to combine both this input and output when we look at governance. It has to do with the life of people, but it has to do also with the system in place. It cannot be just done by people.

anyone randomly has to be organized as a system of government. Like the principle has to kind of make sense, but the probably the most important thing is like you're saying the actual outcome, the actual impact on the people. When you shared earlier, like the principles versus the outputs, the means versus the ends, like, because some people say like the,

know as long as the ends the ends justify the means kind of thing right yeah and so is there any relation there yeah absolutely it's a it's very much related and think about the fact that we have different system of coordinates different principle different values right and this goes back to the idea of the western biases around this idea that there is one form of governance so

having different inputs, having different principles also means that you might do things differently. So it's recognizing that means and ends are important in this discussion, right?

it needs to be clear in our mind that the world is governed in different ways. To put it simple. To me, I automatically think of it's in a way kind of fighting against just blind dogmatic belief. I think that gets very politicized when you're talking about governance. And the tendency, I think for many of us,

is to fall into dogma. And that is probably greatly influenced by the different societies we grow up in, the different cultures we grow up in. And so what you're doing, I feel...

is trying to break that down a little more analytically, a little more scientifically. What do you mean by, like, how would you interpret dogma in the context of, like, political systems? Well, I think there could be a lot of, you know, sensitive... That sounds like a little dogma. No, I'm just saying, I think people are pretty dogmatic and blindly think one form of government is automatically the way that all countries should be governed.

And just blind belief in that. Why do you say that though? Like what gives you, I don't disagree, but I feel like it's a very strong statement, right? You're throwing out there and you're saying, okay, like people are dogmatic. It's almost like you're getting on your high horse, but I want to like, where do you see evidence of that?

I feel like I see evidence of that all over. Headlines, if you talk to people. That still sounds very anecdotal though. It is anecdotal. It is anecdotal. Like my life, I'm just saying from my own experience. I don't know. How would you feel about that?

I think we would enter a discussion here on where there are other important terms to include. It's like the access to information that we have and the parallel and paradoxical age of disinformation we live in. Because the more we have knowledge, the more we have access to knowledge, the less we know, right? Yeah.

And so in this sense, there is what you describe as this dogmatic, dangerous attempt of simplifying things or believing in one dimension that determines everything else. So I think that this is nowadays very much visible.

and connected to this age of disinformation. - Disinformation? - Disinformation, it's related not to the amount of information we have, but to the fact how we manage information. And this is not true in all society. I see this a lot more in European societies.

I'm not going to blame social media, but there is a danger of detachment from the reality and this idea that you just can't take a position, an opinion on everything you say just out of typing on your keyboard without not really full experience of what you're talking about. Is it like a loss?

Yeah. But there's also this way in which you can fall in one type of opinionism, right? Or look at it because though Marxism is related to... Are there examples in Europe? Because you mentioned Europe. Is there an example? Because like,

It feels like when I just read on the surface about this in Italy and France, there are different factions. And then to Justin's point, there is almost like strong belief, like no matter what, this is what side I'm on, no matter what the facts say, right? But are there examples of that?

Yeah, there are many examples. Look at, for instance, during COVID-19, there was very much a strong opinion on vaccination, anti-vaccination campaign, war. There are a lot of dogmatic ways of looking at vaccines.

the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, looking at the geopolitical competition between China and the United States, there is a lot of diplomatic way or

very simplistic way of looking at those competitions. And this connects to the issues of populism, right? That is very much an important populism, right? A very important concept in those contests in Europe. It's not something on what I do research.

but it's something that you see a lot in the society. So this then popularizing and divide things and try to create opposition, right? They are a little bit more fictional in the discourse, in the positioning. Yeah. Well, so now you have this disinformation and there's a lot of factors now, but then 50 or a hundred years ago,

you didn't have anything. And so like your source of information might've just been your local politician. Do you have any sense of like how confused people are today versus let's say a hundred years ago? No. Because it's hard to compare, right? It's hard to compare. It's hard to compare, but it's every age has a different type of diversion or a different type of difficulty, right? So I think it's difficult to compare with different,

different means across periods of time. But of course, you're right. I mean, there have been other periods of time which there have been the same problem of disinformation, but informed by other aspects

aspect, by other issues, right? Like the inability to access to worldwide information. So I think that the problem might travel across time. The source of the problem might be different, right? I think back in the day, right, information was more spread by like the church, right? The church was the main authority in a lot of societies back in the olden days.

And there's all sorts of problems with that as well. I have a question. I know we were just kind of focusing on governance and plus even disinformation and dogmatism is from...

I'm just in here. In terms of... Like you guys act like I coined the term or something. Like the king of dogma. Like I'm the first person in the world... It's only because Eric harped on it. That's why I brought it up. First person in the world to say that. It's only because he harped on it. But I'm just curious because I kind of feel like we just jumped into it. What's the recent research that you've been really focused on or I guess the expertise that you've been really sharing? What is that thesis statement or...

you know, that you've been working on. Yeah. So I've been working on the politics of international intervention. So it's an idea that's

Intervention came with political means. When we talk about interventions, we have, of course, an immediate association to military forms of intervention, the military, occupations, war. But there are interventions that exist also in different other forms, in multiple forms. At the same time, you may have things...

that look different, but they are combined, they may have connected. So it's forms of intervention that overlaps when it comes to economic sanction or development aid or diplomatic humanitarian aspect of intervention. So what I've been working on recently is this idea of the dialectic.

of intervention. So this mutually constitution between realities of what is going on and also a mutual relation between who is intervening and who isn't receiving the intervention. How is this intervention in the anti-instrumentalized, used, transformed by populations that are subject to intervention? So I

Of course, I started working on a simple case of military one. So I started working on the intervention in Somalia. Then I moved to interventions in Libya. But there is much more than just those military strong form of occupation of war. So there are other aspects of intervention. So this is what I've been trying to do, to work on those complementarities, coexistences.

Has it been a general research globally or has there been focuses on certain continents or countries? It's a general topic. And then we used different case studies and we invited people from other universities, other continents to look at what they found in their cases. So it's actually, yeah, much worldwide.

Sounds like a big study then. Yeah, it's a big study. This is a two years project with a colleague of mine, an anthropologist. It's an interdisciplinary project because it looks at things from politics, economics, sociology, anthropology. So it's a little bit more of a... What made you feel the need to really want to dive in and research this? Ah,

Because I'm very passionate about the topic of intervention, even if it's a sad topic, right? Because it's about conflict, it's about destroying society. The negative. It's a negative concept, right?

And there is an equality there. There is an aspect of inequality that I am interested in. So this is, I think, what moved me there, right? This aspect of who is allowed to intervene and for what purpose, right? Who is allowed to interfere with another society? And how do we go around with this idea that it's a violation? Because intervention shouldn't happen in the reality, right? It's like...

It's like the friend that no one wants, but then is... They force themselves upon you. Yes. It's the friend that... Like the nosy neighbor. Yes. It's that one, right? You seem pretty impassioned with that. Is there a certain particular case or...

situation that happened that you came across that really triggers something in you to be like, I really got to get down to this. Yeah. So maybe this can come back to my second interest, to my second area of study, that this idea of how we measure the

political orders. So I started working on the case of Somalia because I was interested in why Ethiopia is occupying Somalia in 2006. So what's going on there? That was the triggering case.

as Italian, said, "Okay, let's look at what happened in our former colonies, in those countries that we already compromised with colonialism and we don't care anymore. We didn't care before, but if we'd care now, right? So let's see what is there." At the time, I was very much interested in this idea that there are weak states, there are states that collapse.

states where the central government is not strong enough, collapse. And then, because it's collapsing, an intervention is needed. This was going on in Somalia and this happened in many other places. But it happened in different forms. Regional states that intervene, an excuse or an argument of the war on terrorism often mobilized to mobilize those kind of projects. But the fundamental reason that the

that we are one worded is this lack of governance, is this lack of state, is this inability of the state to- Like a vacuum. A vacuum of- A power vacuum. Of power, right? So that is the tradition and the way of framing the problem. And then I said, okay, but how it's possible that then this tiny state is going to affect the security of the world, right? How is this turning around? Because I've

It looks to me a little bit weird, this jump from a tiny city that is not able to control itself, but then becomes a threat to international security, as it was the case of war on terrorism intervention. That was the period after the intervention in Afghanistan, after the intervention in Iraq. At that time, 2006, we didn't know yet where we were going with those failing interventions.

But I had a feeling that something was wrong. And so this is why I entered this topic saying, okay, I want to look at the other way around of the relationship. I want to look how the international system in the forms of intervention works.

compromising the state. So I wanted to turn the usual way, the usual lenses. - Well, in that particular case, I'm curious, like what was the benefit for, I know very little about this situation, but like you said, Ethiopia went and occupied Somalia, right? So what was the benefit for Ethiopia?

So the benefit was trying to control what insurgents were doing at the borders. So basically, what is my idea is that the topic of a war on terrorism has been used to fight any enemy, your own enemy. Whether you really can define it as a global war terrorist organization or not, it doesn't matter, right? Because you are just going to use that topic

statement to mobilize troops and to do things that you would do with your foreign policy, right? So the benefit is that any state has to control what happens and what is a potential threat. And those groups were considered by the Ethiopian state as a potential threat because of the

again, colonial problem created there of Somali population living inside Ethiopia with dissatisfaction. So a problem inside the state that becomes... Was it a legitimate national security risk? Because this framing, of course, is a way of just...

attaching something to something that everyone on the surface should agree with, right? When you have population from other neighborhood countries, then who defines legitimacy might be contested because if there are grievances there of dissatisfaction with the state, it's difficult. So even if the states say this is a national legitimate concern,

people are not going to buy that. And we see that actually this problem in Ethiopia came again more recently. So there are unresolved issues with the formation of the state as well. Well, in the case of Somalia, from my understanding,

There were many different interveners, right? It wasn't just Ethiopia. Yeah. I recently watched a little mini documentary about

on Somali pirates, like the rise of Somali piracy, which became like hundreds of millions of dollars industry. It was thriving and it was really invested and backed by many warlords. And basically, long story short, they were saying the rise of piracy around the coast of Somalia, the Horn of Africa, was really because there was a power vacuum there.

And other nations kind of were taking advantage of the waters around Somalia and using them, dumping waste products there, overfishing. So really kind of devastating the entire Somali like fishermen community. And if you know anything about Somalia, it has probably I think the longest coastline of any country in Africa, right? And so that's kind of like gave rise to the Somali pirates, right?

And so I say that to say that is there, I mean, is there a legitimate concern of, let's say, terrorism when you do have a power vacuum in a place where it can become a breeding ground for, you know, for bad actors to operate? You know, is that a legitimate concern as well?

So, yeah, it's a legitimate concern. But then the problem is that the type of intervention, this is the topic of my book, is that the type of intervention we have been supporting, we as international community, right? It's a very vague we. This type of intervention doesn't allow a new emerging authority to become stronger. So it's actually destabilizing even more.

Because what we had in this case, but in other cases as well, there was a competition for power. So the concept of vacuum of power is very limited because it's not true that there wasn't power. There is a fragmented power. It's different. There are many actors competing for power. But now, if I continuously intervene this conflict, no one is going to win.

It's a very simplistic, realistic game, right? So especially when you have so many forces empowering insurgents, no one is ever going to be able to win and stabilize their settlement into the government, into the country, because you always need external sources. So those external sources create a

A simulation of power, a simulation of authority, but as soon forces withdraw from the country, those actors on the ground are not able to really govern, maintain, control the militias on the ground. And that's what we saw with Iraq, right? Exactly. I was going to say that. Exactly. So this has... I said in the case of Somalia, but unfortunately, this is what I said, it's very unfortunate for the people that are subject to interventions. The

This has come through many other cases. So basically, there is a fragmentation of power and the intervention feed this. Well, do you think... Okay, so that is a consequence of the intervention. Yeah. If we...

Want to get into a little bit of motive here. Do you think for the interveners, whoever they may be, and they're usually stronger countries, right? Do you think that's the point? That's the purpose they want to keep it destabilized? Depends on who is intervening, because intervention is some...

It's a multiple instrument for doing many different things. So, of course, when the United Nations is the most important authority on this, when the United Nations is trying to promote peace operation, peace process, we trust the United Nations' genuine willingness to fix, right?

But then how to keep on balance the interests of other actors that align on theory on the idea of respecting those people's sovereignty

But in the end, the reason why they have to intervene is because they have to fix their own problem, whether it's a problem of security, whether it's an economic problem, whatever it is, might be different, right? So this is where I'm saying sometimes the interest of the interveners don't really...

align with the necessity of a country that has to sit down, understand the conflict and resolve that conflict beyond all the implications, beyond all the things that are as a consequence of that conflict. But the process that we have seen in the last 20, 10, 20 years of international negotiation is actually to try to resolve the external environment before we actually

fix or facilitate a power sharing agreement inside the society, inside the conflict. So this is creating a disaster. It's a disaster. Interventions are failing. They are having disastrous consequences. And we have been seeing this for the last two decades. And still, still,

This idea is still mobilized today in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger. And now a regional organization, ECWAS, has threatened to mobilize economic military means if the military junta doesn't leave the country. But there is no way in which they are going to

really threaten and then force the military junta to leave. And this has a lot of ramifications because in that area, we already have war on terrorism intervention. We already have the presence of France. We already have the presence of the United States. So we already have existing forms of intervention. And so the new cases are actually polarizing

old colonial master with the new forms of interventions on the ground. There is also the presence of Russian Wagner group inside Niger. And there is a mobilization of this idea of anti-colonial feeling against France and those that are defending the old regime. And when

this regional organization said, you have to leave, otherwise we will opt for an intervention. Then the leaders of the other military groups in Burkina Faso and Mali said, if that happens, we are going to react, right? And so this is going to be a bigger conflict. So intervention, who is intervening still is always on the agenda of our... Have you seen any major...

obvious patterns between the different types of interventions that, well, more of the negative interventions that you've seen around the world, or in particular, you've been mentioning in Africa. Do you see any type of patterns that are repeating? Or maybe it's a, we're using intervention as a term, but it's actually just a modern form of colonialism. So, yeah, there are different patterns there, I would say. One pattern that I see is this, the problem of negotiation, right?

a negotiation that doesn't address the problem inside the country. I've seen this in Somalia, I've seen this in Libya as well. And a coexistence of multiple interveners that creates what is often defined as a mission creep. The mission becomes too much stretched, it's trying to do too many things and there is no agreement, no cooperation between the different forces.

So there are those hard kind of logistic technical problem, but they contribute to the failure. So the pattern that I see is the failure of the intervention. Right. But I also see this common mobilization of the humanitarian cause nowadays is called responsibility to protect for

justifying military actions, right? This is the most important pattern. But however, this creates a problem, right? Because we are

in principle saying that intervention shouldn't happen, right? And it's just a very dramatic decision that we make to save people's lives. So we shouldn't really play with that. It's like a chicken or the egg kind of thing. Yes, exactly. Right? We're intervening because we want to help, but we shouldn't help, right? If everything was good there because of non-intervention, right? Or figuring out internally how to fix the issues, right?

So I feel like it's almost like this chicken or the egg kind of situation. Have there been any successful cases of intervention? That's a good question. That depends how we define success, but very limited, I would say. I would say there have been limited successful interventions where...

when it was related to security reforms of the military sector, like in Sierra Leone, but also that case after a while might relapse again on conflict. So defining success is very difficult because many of those cases then after a while might have some legacy. So...

There are very limited cases of intervention that really manage to keep things under control in terms of governance or conflict. But unfortunately, the unsuccessful cases are taking the lead. I have a question around the countries that need intervention, because that just seems unfortunate. And I wonder if it's like, are the companies that needing intervention like...

Did they show up over and over in history? Like, you know, like why do companies, why do countries need intervention? How do they get to the point where they're so weak that they maybe threaten somehow the stability of the region or other countries want to come in and exploit or whatever it is, right? Like, why does that even, like why do countries get to this point? Very good question. This actually goes back to your question on the pattern. This is another pattern.

We refer to this, and the literature refers to this, as coloniality of intervention. Where coloniality means that there is something that is surviving about colonialism. So it's not colonialism, right?

But it's a colonial pattern that is still alive in what's going on in those societies. It's a modern version of it. It's a modern version. A colonial tendency? Yes, it's something that is inside the legacy that has affected the society and has affected in a way that makes this weakness visible.

where we all start from the state weakness, right? To come up again and again. And this is also the issues of the timeline and the times of interventions we are talking about. Because intervention, as you correctly pointed out, I mean, doesn't even stop. It doesn't stop anymore. It's a continuum, right? It's always there for some of those countries.

Almost like a policy. Exactly. I've been working on the case of Libya and Somalia, as I was saying, because I'm Italian, right? I didn't go back yet to look at the colonial interventions. This may be something that I'll do in the next project.

But those countries have been subject to intervention since they interfaced with colonial powers. It's not that the interventions came when the government collapsed in 1991 or 2011. There are things that are

are there well before in different forms. So there is a history and there is a coloniality of intervention that is as a very dangerous pattern. So like kind of continue on that point. Is there an aspect of this where like societies over time have developed at different rates? And so that when there is a wider disparity, right? Because you have these colonial powers, like there's so much more, so much richer and more powerful that

that then they can actually have the resources to go in and look at stuff. Cause if everyone was pretty much equal, then you wouldn't really have the ability to intervene. Right. So it's, I wonder how much of that. And then there's this guy that blogs and he seems quite interesting. And he, he said, he wrote this article of like, why isn't Ukraine a global superpower? Like, why is it like subject of conflict and stuff? And he,

Long story short is basically the land in Ukraine is like among the most fertile in the entire world. So basically it's a land of like riches, but then geographically the way it's set up is that it can basically be invaded on all sides. So like throughout time, it's always been like an intersection of some type of intervention just because of like where it is like sort of geographically, right? So...

So I guess what's the role of geography and what you look at in terms of the research? And then what's the role of, I guess...

overall like societal nation state development so that when you get to this disparity because like the u.s seems to intervene they like to intervene right but then like it's because they got a navy and they've got a lot of stuff positionally look at the country yeah because it's protected because no one else can attack it and then it can go out and do whatever it wants right exactly

Yeah, I'm making some drafts while you're speaking because you're going to the second dimension that we deal with in our work on dialectics. So we look at this dialectics from space, time and scale.

So, we already touched on... Space, time and scale? Yes. So, we mentioned time, now we go on space, right? You're absolutely right. There is a geographical dimension. There is an issue where space is important there. Because first, there is a fundamental center-periphery relation here.

that has to do with that inequality that you were mentioning. Now, the fact that a strong state can intervene in another one means that there is a relationship between the two. And what I've been working on across these years to demonstrate that the

weakness and the inequality of the intervened one is produced by the intervener. So, how I did this, I went back to this very basic neo-Marxist scholarship on center periphery, right? It's a world system, neo-Marxist approach to the study of world systems. And they created this idea in the 1970s that underdevelopment was a product of development, right?

So if you have winners, you got to have losers. Exactly. Yeah. So there was a dependence and they call this relationship a relationship of dependency. So the reason why a state is in a situation of poverty, conflict is because it's dependent on others.

a foreign country, right? Now, what I did is to translate this concept and to use it into nowadays international politics, because formally we don't have colonial powers and empires anymore. So formally dependency doesn't exist from an institutional point of view, but it exists in the way the relation between the center and the periphery still exists.

communicate and still dusting. And so the weakness and the humanitarian crisis becomes the source of the strength for the intervener. It's a way also of reinforcing the idea of sovereignty, of who is a strong state. A strong state is the one that is going to take care about his own citizen and other citizens, right?

Now, this becomes politicized. This becomes an object of exporting democracy, exporting this idea of protecting human rights everywhere they are. Then you might ignore your own violations of human rights, but it doesn't matter because you're using that as an instrument of foreign policy. As the optics around it. Exactly.

this is where there is this connection, right? And this inequality and this connection between the strong and the weak is based on space, is based on geography. And borders are important there, right? So this is the geographical aspect you were mentioning is absolutely central. Well, talking about like geography for a second, in terms of

The interveners, and going back to what Howie was saying in terms of patterns, do you see any patterns of which parts of the world are the most common perpetrators of intervening?

Or is it kind of pretty evenly spread out throughout the globe? Interesting question. Here we see very dynamic changes now because basically we have seen very important pattern for a certain long time of history, like Cold War interventions.

Cold War intervention were basically the result of Soviet Union-United States competition, often in Latin America. Those have been destabilizing countries for decades because of the capitalist communist threat and this perceived threat on their own countries.

And that was one big pattern. Then the second pattern is the pattern of post-Cold War interventions, where it's more the United Nations intervening in the name of global community, but the United Nations need the help of other states. And sometimes it's alliance, so sometimes it's NATO. Sometimes are willing coalitions, United States, UK, France, other states, right?

The second pattern is a pattern of humanitarian intervention where basically it shouldn't be anymore an intervention for geopolitical interests like the previous one, right? It should be only for humanitarian reasons. And those that intervene should be

sanctioned by the international community. You can't do it for your own interest, right? Now, humanitarian intervention as a notion entered in crisis because this idea of impartiality, of focusing on the benefit of the country wasn't really there.

This has entered in crisis and the actors there were different from the actors that we saw before because often we saw NATO. Often we saw unilateral, bilateral interventions done without United Nations agreements, right? And this compromised the...

global system of institution we live in, right? Because the intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq violated this. So that is the period of U.S. New World Order, U.S. Global War on Terror. So of course the U.S. was the principal leader. But what we are going now, it's different. So since I would say...

2011, with the spread of the anti-government revolt in North Africa, we have seen a variety of interventions in North Africa. Actually, we see a reluctancy from the global powers to intervene and more regional powers involved.

where regional powers, I'm in Turkey, I'm in Russia, and I'm in all the states that are relevant for one conflict. So when it comes to Libya, it's Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia. So there is a competition. There are regional things going on. So basically, the intervention of the last decade is changing because it's becoming more diverse. And it's overlap with the pre-existing. What do you think is this new...

And is it a new focus on the African continent? In this modern day era we're in, it seems like a lot of players around the world are very interested

and focused on Africa in general, would it be oversimplistic to say it's because there's a lot of resources there? Of course, it's always about resources. Resources have always been there, have always been an attraction. But the problem is that to control those resources, you need intermediate means to get there, right? You can't escalate a war every time you need resources.

So you need friends, you need a relationship, you need good relationships, so you need the institution. So I think the intense struggle for power that is going on, that is domestic one, but is feeded by international interests, is what is making the current interest in competition even more.

It's a period of instability. It's a period in which former governments have been removed from power. So their relationship to the existing global power has to be renegotiated, has to be rebuilt. And so there are a lot of interests going on. So there is an interest from a global perspective on establishing power.

a successful relationship with African states, African elites. So this is part of what I see. Yeah, and that makes sense too, because countries wouldn't always just go in directly themselves, but get local partners. Exactly. Relationships is, you know, just from even a business standpoint, like if you were to open a business and want to do big business in China, you're best coming in here and getting a local partner to partner up with you to do that, right? Yeah.

And going back to, I guess, your point about kind of the humanitarian kind of intervention, I think a more cynical mind might say that, you know, as an intervener, you create the crisis first. And that way you can go in with the humanitarianism as kind of a packaging around that as a justification. Yeah. Is that more conspiracy theory to you or do you feel...

What have your research found? What is difficult to prove is always this intentionality. How do you really operationalize intentionality of a state in doing something that is difficult? And this is also why critical studies are often, or critical approaches to those issues are often conflated with conspiracy theories, right?

But what's the difference between them? It's exactly whether you have the data or you have a method or a theory to look at those aspects, right? Now, I would say, going back, that if you look at this way from a world systemic point of view, that might help you to explain how...

the weakness is created, right? But it's created, you have to demonstrate how it's created. And there is a lot of research already showing this, that the weakness is created by other means of economic, social relations or foreign relationships between countries.

If I think about the relation between Europe and African countries in the last decades, we see a lot of migration flow recently. And it looks like the humanitarian solution now is to welcome the migrants, right? But what we often miss is why are people leaving their countries? Why those countries cannot...

host their own populations. And certain policy assigned to the benefits of global actors that exploit some aspect of the economies and the exchange with developing countries or countries in transition.

And so this creates the imbalance that might lead to create a problem in the country. And then that country has to go for a humanitarian help or humanitarian crisis or intervention. And then when you give that help, you come out looking like the good guy. Exactly. Exactly.

when you cause the problem in the first place. How do you prove the relation? How do you cause the problem? You cause the problem with your existing foreign policy relations, what you do in the relation with the other countries. And this can happen in terms of

diplomatic or economic aspect that you negotiate. And your research shows this? I'm not working on this, but I have seen other articles working on it. It doesn't seem like it would always be intentional though, because these are just super complex things, right? And there's going to have winners and losers and different alliances. And so there's naturally going to be weaker states and then maybe there's a tipping point and then that weaker state then is unable to host its own

you know people and then you might need a broader authority like i don't know the eu like maybe it sounds like they they're a broader authority to make sure everyone is healthy because if there's anything anyone that's not healthy it can then spread to the other you know member um you know countries so it feels like a lot of this is like over time it's as the as the world as different

alliances get formed, then the alliance itself has certain interests. 'Cause like maybe like back in the day, I mean, there's always been alliances, right? But then at some point maybe the US was working, it was like US Soviet competition.

right? So there was basically two sides of the world. And then the US was just so dominant so that it went in and it was intervening and it just needed to make sure that all the governments were lined up in a way. I mean, it was self-interest. And then it seems like you say the UN, so then the UN, and then they realized that a lot of these states had common interests. So then they needed to do certain things in the name of humanitarianism. And maybe it was a little bit more altruistic or

you know, not as quite as self-interested as like just the communist versus democracy thing before. And so then it went in and intervened in certain states and maybe there's some genuine things in there. Like it's all basically about power and interest, right? But then some of it might be more benevolent in certain cases because maybe that benevolence actually creates an even healthier, because if everyone's like warring, it's not good, right?

But if you have like a system where everyone can kind of, the whole pie can get bigger, then that's better, right? You don't want to make it like a zero sum game. As long as your own personal slice grows. The selfishness will always drive that. And because these people now are all mostly elected, then whatever policy they choose, even before that, the greater good of their own country, it's their own policy.

For them to remain in power. For them to remain in power. Remain in office. So it's just like really, really complex, right? Yeah, this is at the center of the theory of democratization. I mean, the theory that especially European and American and USAs were interested in attempts at democratization in Africa because they believe that that system is the best one that is going to

preserve their interests. It's the best institutional mechanism to relate. And so this creates a distinction to make here because on one side there is this democratic peace theory telling us that democracy don't fight each other.

Because once you become a democracy, you belong to the club. You're on the same side. Yeah, you're respected, right? But in the meantime, they might engage in democratic jihadi against those that have to be forced. Now, this is a good example to see how

the value of the system becomes a mirror where states have to bring their interests, right? It's not just about ideology, right? It's not just that one ideology over the other one. It's how interests are attached to that, how interests are vehiculated in a system that maximize those interests within the frame of a certain system

political system. So this is also why it has become very complicated for democratization efforts to succeed. All the attempts to export democracy

have been very, very dangerous for many, many reasons. But fundamentally there was this attempt of using that mechanism as the mechanism of convergence between already liberal states saying, "Okay,

People in this state are dissatisfied. Let's help them to get rid of their own garment. And there's something anti-democratic about overthrowing governments. So essentially, there's like a...

there's a paradox there. So we're trying to reset a country to make it democratic. But the way we do that is we choose... It's so undemocratic. It's anti-democratic. Like we choose... We force them to be democratic. And I think the other thing is like the interest piece. I mean, there is a part of me, of course, that does believe that the democratic ideal, it's not only the system that we're fighting to preserve our interests, but

But it's also the people, most people in this system are fighting for this because this is a system that they want. So not only do they want their own system to win, but if a system were to win, they prefer this system over the other system. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So there is an ideology piece to it. Like, it's like if I'm playing a sport, right? I could play like different ways, but I want to win and I want to play in the way that I feel is the best way to play. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And then it's like Karate Kid.

Right? And so, like Mr. Miyagi teaches, you know, his guy a certain way and then the other dojo, they're like hardcore, right? And then you take a side. And they're like the villains. Yeah, they're the villains. And that's a totally like this metaphor of like democracy versus someone else, right? I love the credit kid example. No, this goes back to when I mentioned dogma, I think what I mean by that is, I think what makes an ideology dogmatic within a person is when they start

attaching morality to that ideology. And I think we see that all the time with political ideas, right? And I mean, the classic example growing up in the States was democracy is the moral high ground. You're the good guy if you fight for democracy, right? Freedom, everything, all those terms, you hear it again and again. But every country does that. Yeah, every country does that. I'm just using that as an example because we grew up there. And

And then when you growing up there, when you hear communism, you know, it's associated with evil, like morally corrupt. And that's the association. And I think that's where it gets dogmatic, because when you just look at these different forms of government on paper in terms of the theory of it in its purest form, like,

there's really no moral implications to it. It's just different ways of governing. But through history, through different examples throughout history, and through propaganda, we start believing that there is this moral difference between all these things, and we start siding with

and dividing based on those moral differences. And that's the dogmatic thinking. Got to create an enemy. Yeah. It's interesting because what you're saying, you're saying that this moral dimension inside the idea of democracy, liberal democracy, to be clear, we are talking about one type of democracy here. It's liberal democracy. There are other forms of democracy. Now,

What you're saying is that this moral dimension is what is making it dogmatic, right? So what is making it dangerous, right? But quite interestingly, this moral dimension is the foundation of the idea of liberal interventions. So liberal intervention doesn't exist without this moral internationalism. And moral internationalism is telling us exactly that

When a war becomes just war, right? When it becomes justified. When it becomes justified, right? When it's a just war, right? So this debate is all that's...

I mean, as the word is, but came again during the Vietnam War, came out again during the war on terrorism war. And it's basically what I point out in one of my articles is exactly that morality has become the machinery of warfare.

It doesn't work. Contemporary intervention cannot work without morality. So it's like the engine of this car. So something that to you looks like problematic, it's the essence. It's the essence. And it's nothing new. My point is, it's as old as time, because I don't know where you stand religiously as a person, right? And...

But, I mean, going back in time, you know, wars at a certain time for much of humanity were fought on religious ideas and religious justifications. And that is...

That is morality. That is using morality. We are fighting for the true God, right? We are fighting for the true morality of humankind to vanquish those heathens or those people who don't believe in our God, right? It is exactly that moral thing. And I think in today's day, just replace...

God or your God with your form of government. Exactly. The state is the new God, right? It's a new form of religion, right? So actually the independence from the church as an institutional system doesn't mean that we haven't incorporated into the state those dogmas, right? So those are now alive in the idea of the state. You defend the state. That becomes the norm and what

the norm that tells you what to do or what not to do, right? You can't violate the state. That is the essence of the liberal national state formation as a system, right? Because then you seem unpatriotic. And in any strong culture and country,

that is almost like the worst thing you can be. - Yeah, exactly. It's not tolerated. - It's like, oh, you don't love your country. You're not patriotic. And that's just the current form of questioning the authority of the church, you know, back then when you could be, you know, killed, burned at the stake, whatever. - And I'm wondering, like, I mean, this would be a whole nother topic. It would just be the whole evolutionary basis of all this, right? - Yeah. - Because ultimately it just boils down to like different tribes.

And of course, like if you don't believe what your tribe believes in, then you're banished. You're banished. You're done. Pull away all the details. It just feels more complicated. It's just like there's limited resources on this earth. It's survival of the fittest. And then we have to band together in groups to maximize our survival. And then, you know, over time, human beings create stories and layers of meanings. And so now today we're just sitting in a podcast studio, but we are distantly linked to those tribes. Right.

You gave me a beautiful hint now, because the fundamental problem when we look at how states are going to be rebuilt after a conflict and when an intervention is failing, so people go there, blah, blah, blah, they try to do things that things doesn't work, right?

The explanation that is often used has to do with tribes. The explanation has often to do with those pre-existing forms of organizing the society, whether it's the clan, whether it's the tribe, whether it's an ethnic lineage.

So those aspects that are pre-existing in the nation state are often mentioned by the liberal interveners as what explains the state weakness. So the state is weak because tribes are fighting for power in the

in Libya because those quote unquote barbarians you know exactly we can't we can't civilize those barbarians this is the same pattern that I saw in Libya and Somalia right in the Somali case they were talking about the clan conflict as an existential one as defining the identity of the Somali while in Libya is about the tribes right now

this becomes an obstacle to modernity. This becomes an obstacle to the liberal peace intervention. So something that that

piece of territory has been living for centuries and negotiating their own demands, their own survival without interference, without major instability, becomes a problem for modernity when this interacts with the Western world. Because this is what colonialism told us, that those pre-existing systems have been working there

in peaceful relations until the Europeans came, right? So species evolution, the evolution of the political system is very much interrelated to what we are saying. And that argument is actually used for saying that doesn't work for this reason, right? And that is just to reinforce the idea that an external form of...

government has to be creating those places because have to be modernized, have to change, right? I wonder if conflict is just a foundational condition of human society. It seems like it is, right? I think the evidence would point to that. It's overwhelming evidence. Yeah, conflict and the aspiration of harmony are both competing endeavors. It's almost like if you use the example of, I mean, modern society as we know it now,

You cannot have a utopia where everybody is living happily and financially stable because who's going to do the shit? The shit work, right? You need to have different classes. And whether or not you want to face it,

That is the reality of the civilization we live in, the society we live in. Unless you wipe the slate clean in the first place. And that's usually kind of the storyline for, you know, a lot of movies. Thanos. Yeah, exactly. We talk about the Avengers all the time. And we always refer to Thanos, right? All the time. We talk about him more than we should. You talk about him more.

But we talk about Thanos and the idea of like to create that or to create what they think is the utopia, they have to first break the system, wipe it all clean because you can't build it on top of what the current foundation is. Right. And so it's this constant cycle of paradox, of paradox.

There has to be evil to try to ultimately create your vision of good. And around and around we go. But it's never static, right? So even like the problem boils down to like you get rid of one side, then everyone's good. However, human beings are not static. Like we're never content.

right? The hedonic treadmill. So now we have wine and then tomorrow we want even better wine, you know? So you get rid of half, everyone has something and then you start seeing differences, right? And then everyone's trying to get a little bit more and then you, and then you have two more halves and you get rid of half and it's, it's just, it's, it's sort of never ending. Well, that's why the idea of a, of a true utopia is kind of bullshit, right? Yeah. Because no one's ever going to be happy with,

forever right and there's always gonna be new things to fight about like we will like even if everything was equal everyone was rich and everyone can eat people don't want equal because that is not utopia yeah and people don't want equal like I wanna have more yeah right for those power mongers I want more shit

For those power mongers living in a very stable life, that's not utopia. It's not even power mongers. If you didn't have food to eat all your life and then all of a sudden you had regular meals, great for a while. Yeah. And then you start seeing people eating like beef and you're like, shit, now I want beef, right? And then you're like, no, but I want like Angus. I want a certain kind of beef. I want Angus beef. I want Wagyu. Yeah. That's wired into us. Yeah, it is. So, interventions. Well, I guess you'll have a job for a long time because there's always going to be interventions. That's so true. Yeah.

Yeah, unfortunately, it's true. So, Debra, with your work and your research, are you just trying to find out information or are you hoping that one day your research can actually affect change? Oh, yeah.

I mean, the true knowledge, as Marx was saying, is about changing the world, right? So it's about, I mean, the idea of revolution is not just about the theory that you accumulate, but how is this going to change dramatically things, right? When you do work on issues of injustice, inequality,

I think that there is always an aspiration to do good for societies. But it depends on many layers of communication, right? So at the moment, I'm just dedicating to my students, hoping they might have a better approach to world politics. Well, that's noble because that's where the future is, right? And policymaking, right? So that might be one way to do it.

But I often try to talk to the practitioners, right? I try to engage in conversation about different aspects of my research with the world outside. Just to mention, you know, this is what I'm doing. This is what I've been working on. I'm not the only one doing this. And I like to reach out. So let's see. Something that's... Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I'm going to, how do you, how do you feel about like, you know, current events and headlines? Like where, where do you think, where do you think we're going as a society, as a world in the short, short term?

Oh, this is difficult. I love that. Oh, a big sigh. That's common. A lot of our guests, when we ask that, they give a big sigh like, ah. Another podcast for that one? Yeah, sure. Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough. I mean, I feel, no, I think that there is something good going on. There is some light, even though there are very negative things at the horizon, but there

There are positive changes in the way we look at the voices that emerge in this world society. It's less and less one way of doing things, one way of saying and doing. It's a little bit more polarized recently, right? Because geopolitically, we look at this tension, China, US and Russia as determining options

all our discussion and all the perception of people around those countries look like there is an acknowledgement of that tension. But to be honest, I think that the fact that there is this discussion

it's already something positive. Because a period in which you see only one big power trying to do things and messing around the world is not really sustainable. It's not sustainable also for the global institution we try to build, right? That's been problematic.

a little bit of balance. Even if this balance now has a little more of competing or conflicting trends or characters,

I hope this is going to bring a little bit more of balance in the world. For the long term. For the long term. Because in the short term, it'll be shaky. Exactly. In the short term, it looks like we are in a more dangerous position. But I mean, I don't know. I think that unipolarity might be more dangerous. A bigger risk. Yeah, more risky than this one. We have to find a new system of balances among those powers.

And so this is why I want to see this period in an optimistic way of like building a new equilibrium of power that is going to keep more countries accountable for what they do. That is my hope. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think that's a healthy way of looking at it. That brings me a little more hope when I look at it that way.

is looking at it from the short term versus the long term. And any time you're kind of really shaking things up, shaking up the whole paradigm, really disrupting the previous order, I mean, there's going to be bumps on the road, right? And I think the turbulent times is kind of what we're going through now. But for the long-term health of the global kind of society, probably a positive. You know, it's like...

When there is a competition for the international order, the new order has still to be born, but it's not there, right? So you don't know it. You don't know how it's going to look like, and it's still...

very in early stage and that might be a little bit more troubled it's like the first two years of a baby right the terrible two right maybe we might be in the terrible two but i hope it's a lot of tantrums yeah

But I see, I feel like lately I see more sober voices coming out where I didn't notice those voices before. And, you know, I think talking to people like you and other voices I hear around, there seems to more and more people have a more sober take on it. Whereas feel like maybe a couple of years ago, that wasn't so much the case, or at least I didn't notice. That gives me some hope as well going forward.

going forward. Another thing, another article before we wrap this up, you were taught like your article you sent me, it was like talking about like global rankings. And this also kind of ties in a little bit with what we were talking about in the beginning with different ideas of good governance. Right. And I think,

it ties into this whole kind of human tendency we talk about on the show. And it's like, we like to rank things, right? Whether it's universities, right? Whether it's cities, countries, whatever it is, you know, sports teams, we like to rank things and,

What is your take on kind of the whole global ranking system when it comes to maybe different sectors of industry that have to do with, you know, nationality or different parts of the world? I feel like a lot of articles almost talk about that. They almost like to rank, you know, Asian things versus Western things. And so it's kind of like a competition. Yeah.

Yeah, you're right. There is a new competition going on in terms of the politics of shaming and blaming that is going on through ranking and rating of performances. But the problem is that we measure different things. We use different definitions. And then we end up saying, this is the comparison, right? But

Fundamentally, there is a methodological issue that has to be taken into consideration.

What I want to say is that I'm not going to say, no, we don't need ranking. We don't need rating. We need to measure things, right? But we need to be careful in the way we use those instruments. And this is not often the case when there is also politicization of, for instance, metrics of corruption. That is a very long story that has been going on for decades.

On the one hand, it's important to measure. On the other hand, we have to be careful in not creating the reality we want to describe. I mean, like the purpose of ranking is just to find areas of improvement, right? But if we go into it with the shaming thing by creating a ranking and basically using and weaponizing and saying all these people are bad or these countries are bad, then you defeat the whole purpose. And so you have to go like, why are you doing the ranking?

Rank your top five worst interventions. Yeah, like what's the point? Like the bottom five, the top five. Then the top five get probably like they get kudos or accolades that don't even represent the reality.

Right? Because these are things that are much more complex. Yeah. This is where it all started my interest in Somalia because Somalia was always represented as the first, the top failed state, right? Every year in the ranking that was. And then it's how I started looking into the story of this failure, right? As much as we have global definitions or global aspiration to the idea of governance, right?

there are still things that are done differently. So how is possible that one definition of a certain event, of a certain social event, whether it's governance, whether it's environmental protection, whether it's corruption, development, how is that particular notion is able to travel across the world?

So we are very careful in identifying the definition that makes sense for everyone, right? Or otherwise we might risk of over-representing or under-representing some realities. I think we need to be more careful in universalizing what I think it's, just because it's been defined by

one international institution says this is the definition and all those countries agree, then it's done. The discussion is closed there. Because when we see how a political system works in different realities, we see that those definitions have different meanings in different societies. So my argument in this type of research is to have a sort of methodological awareness

And also to go a little bit behind this metrological attitude, right? That the more I measure, the more I'm going to be able to

to get to the quality of things. Sometimes it's not like that. We need different approaches also to understand how to orient policy. Like you have to go and talk to the people there as well, because if the people defining it are just creating their own criteria and it doesn't reflect the reality on the ground, then there's a disconnect. Yeah. I feel like we see that a lot. And I like the idea because, um,

You know, it's not sort of like a country or, for example, like let's take that example for ranking countries or more complex things within society. It's not a balance sheet. You know, it's not like a financial balance sheet where it can give you a pretty good picture of how a company is doing. Right. Where the numbers do kind of tell a story there.

I mean, we're talking about things that are way more complex than that, and you can't sum it all up in a balance sheet and just rank it from there. And there is a very important connection here to this technocratic aspect of analyzing the reality.

and the same technocratic way of fixing society. So what is in common between this metricological attitude and intervention is technocracy as a way of understanding. Can you explain technocratic to me? Technocratic has to do with this idea that I have a fixed way

way, impartial way of doing things. I can use a couple of spreadsheets to put the data there and I put in place something that is a little bit impersonal, right? It's not a political device. It's not a political solution.

But it's a technical solution, right? So it's a technical solution to a political problem and become technocratic, right? So it's something technical applied to the state. And there has been a huge tendency in public administration to use technocracy. Technocracy might work in some aspect, right? But...

we can just rely on this idea of finding a universal way of understanding the problem and solving as a way of going. I think, like, my intuition tells me that tech, I mean, because we've seen examples, it can solve a lot of, like,

important problems, but it can't solve maybe the hardest problems. - Exactly, there is a-- - You can build roads and you can do all these things. And I think it's necessary. You have to have consistency and you have to be able to be able to implement things, right? Part of the challenge of like, you know, maybe poorer societies that they don't have consistency. They don't have the will, like the processes, you know, the consistency, getting everyone on board to implement and to build the roads, the trains, the, you know, all the systems to make things better.

But there's probably a lot of problems that cannot be solved this way. Well, I think the most obvious would be like the human element, right? Like,

Like we're talking about things like building roads, infrastructure. Those are all things, right? But societies, nations, governments are all run by people. Relationships. Yeah. And people, you can't, are unpredictable, right? We're emotional. But you do, I think you do need technocratic solutions. Oh, for sure. I mean, that in a way is, you know, basically engineering, right? It's like you're engineering the problem.

Which is valuable. And what you're saying is very important because it's this idea that, okay, the state is quick in those countries that you want to intervene because there is an evident deficit of governance, right? Things are not organized. Things are not done well. And then the solution becomes a set of

external companies external agency external actors giving you those very wonderful McKinsey basically comes into your country your company and tries to solve everything it doesn't work yeah it doesn't work because it's like a consulting approach right and it's it's completely missing the state that is able to organize and homogenize things is to give a direction so the state is

All our discussion has been about intervention, but the opposite of intervention is sovereignty, right? It's the ultimate power of the state. So all our discussion can be mirrored into being

a discussion on the state, right? Why do we need states? - Like a global one world government. - But then here that now we make the case for intervention because the state is actually the intervening mechanism for human beings. - Exactly. - Right? And so there's no state, it ain't gonna work either. - But where exactly, but where there is a state. - Where is there a line? - But in those cases that you have a state that is intervening in the society,

Yes, you have a strong state, a responsible state that is dictating the line. But that is not the reality, I mean, of all the world. You have states where the markets tell them what to do. The capitalists... But I would say all states intervene because you have laws. I mean, it's like, however, I don't know. I don't have an academic or, you know, I'm just talking about my own...

kind of intuition on the word intervention, but intervention basically means you go in and you do some stuff that changes things, right? Every government does that. Otherwise we'd have anarchy. Yeah. But I think Debra, you opened up a can of worms with the whole capitalism argument, because to your point, Eric, you were saying, you know, the state intervenes because the state creates laws, right?

But the way those laws are influenced in terms of their creation and who influences their creation, differs from state to state, right?

So you're right in the idea sense that every state intervenes, but there is a spectrum here of how much and this creates different systems. But there is a level of intervention in every state by definition, right? It's just like how... Yes. That's the purpose of the state. Yeah, that's the purpose. Okay, before I let you go, Debra, we're going to wrap up here. It's been a fascinating talk, but...

Just because you mentioned it, I think, twice or three times in the last 10 minutes or so, I just want to get some clarification on when you talked about corruption. What type of corruption are you talking about? Where?

You know, corruption is a general term, right? Yeah. What do you mean by it when you brought it up a few times? When I talk about corruption, I mean the abuse of both private and public office for people.

you're private for your own interests, right? So there is a tendency to see corruption only as the violation of what happens in public spaces. But I think that for me, corruption has also a lot to do with transnational economic activities. So corruption is much more invisible than what we think about.

For me, corruption is ever much more attached to the economic system than what is often a little bit emphasized on petty corruption or the little things that... Yeah, like getting money under the counter, right? I'm not going to condone, but I'm going to say that I'm interested with the big corruption, right? The production that is anchored to the transnational economies of our

Can you cite some examples or some theories there? What are you talking about? I'm talking about when, for instance, corruption in one country is connected to activities that travel across states, but it's difficult to track them because no one has capacity to track very efficiently what corruption is doing outside our borders, right? So there is always a focus on corruption nationally, right?

And we see often what's going on at the national level with leaders and... Within the country, right? Within the country, right? So that is an important piece of the information, right? Then I think also we have to think about corruption in terms of the private corruption that's happening. Because it's not that the economy or the private companies are...

don't have anything to do with the state, with the public. They are part of this society. So I think we also have to take into consideration private forms of corruption and the transnational one, the one that travels across states that are possible, for instance, between countries. And they are a little bit more...

- Well, this is like creating the inequality you're talking about. - I mean, this is like the biggest level, right? These are the big players. If a powerful government then gets involved in different countries and then engages different private enterprises within the powerful country and the weaker country, like military contractors,

then you're crossing boundaries and then the entire system is corrupt. Like, because you are the, as a powerful nation have created systemic corruption in the governing fabric of the act, the whole freaking country, that whole government is corrupt. Or a whole region of the world. Yeah. A whole region of the world. Like the whole, like, I mean, like then it's like completely, the whole system is set up. The game is not fair at all because there's a greater God that's basically going in there and dictating the terms. Right.

Well, there's always that whoever that is, XYZ country, every generation or period of history has... Let's all stand up right now and salute the flag, guys. Well, every generation has that XYZ. It's also cyclical. Somebody's got to do it. Yeah, I mean... I'm sure somebody's got to do that job. Yeah, someone's got to do that job. I don't know. I think Debra would probably argue a different...

But Debra, thank you so much for coming on and taking the time.

That was a really interesting conversation. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate it. Welcome back anytime. If any of our listeners want to connect with you for anything, is there anywhere they can find you? Yes, my email would be, I think, easier. Yeah, what's your email? Deborah.Malito, M-A-L-I-T-O, at X-J-T-L-U dot E-D-U dot C-N.

Okay, again, Debra, thank you so much. Thank you so much. It was wonderful talking to you. Thank you, thank you. Water, the more expensive drink. No kidding. The fancy stuff. All right, that was Debra. I'm Justin. I'm Howie. I'm Eric. All right, be good, be well. Peace.