As part of a series of conversations with the 2024 Class of the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program, Abla Abdulkadir, Sarah Jeddy, and Owen Haywood of the YRIS Interviews and Events team sat down to interview the founder and Group CEO of Affinity Africa, Dr. Tarek Mouganie. Affinity Africa is a digital bank that specializes in providing banking services to underbanked populations in Africa, as well as lending for small businesses and micro-enterprises that otherwise struggle to access credit.

Mouganie discussed his journey from childhood in Ghana to the founding of Affinity Africa, during which time he obtained a PhD in physics from Cambridge and worked for eight years as a director at a hedge fund. Mouganie has sought to apply his financial experience towards his goal of African socioeconomic development by focusing Affinity Africa’s efforts on providing banking services that are more readily accessible in Africa. During the interview, Mouganie also shared his love for science, triathlons, and Afrobeats, as well as his advice for students looking to the start of their careers: “not to take things too seriously.” Mouganie’s desire to apply his talents to make a positive impact on the area of socioeconomic development shines through as an example for any student looking to make a difference in their career.

You can listen to the full interview linked above, or read selected quotes from our discussion with Dr. Tarek Mouganie below. All quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Abla Abdulkadir: Could you go into depth on what Affinity Africa is, your role at the company, and what led you to found it? I am also interested in how your scientific background and interest in exploration and design shaped your ideas for Affinity Africa.

Tarek Mouganie: I was sort of obsessed with this idea of investing in Africa and the knock-on socioeconomic implications. After spending all this time at this hedge fund, I decided to get up one day and I quit my job, thanks to my mom. She was the catalyst. She said I was intolerable working for this fund, “What have they done to you, quit your job and come back home.” I quit my job, moved back to Ghana, and started focusing on this idea of getting investments into the continent, and in particular, supporting small businesses. I became obsessed with that idea. After trying to figure out how to build a fund that would invest in African startups and African small businesses, I then had this sort of aha moment. I had all this guilt of, like, eight years working for a hedge fund. “What did I do? Why did I waste my time, my life? Why was I there for so long?” And then I kind of paused, and I thought to myself, “I understand banking because of these eight years.” All the pieces just clicked, you know? And I was like, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna start a bank. And that was it. 

The first thing that I did, getting back to your question on informed design, is I tried to figure out why banking has failed Africa. Just to throw out the statistics, looking at Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, only 42% of adults have a bank account. It’s crazy. I mean, the start of your financial freedom, financial journey is to actually be included in financial services. Even worse than that, less than 10% of businesses have access to credit. How can you grow without a loan? You have an idea. You want to start a business. You might be able to survive on the revenue that you generate in the cash flow, but to unlock your full potential, you need access to credit.

I realized that banking was invented and developed in the Global North, right? So it assumes, like all of us here who have a bank account in a country from the Global North, it assumes you’re formalized. It assumes you have a formal ID, you have an address, and you can prove that you have the address, too. You probably are formally employed and getting a check or at university, and you have to show that. So as a result, those are the three kinds of documentation that you need to actually go into a bank here in the US and actually open an account. Well, guess what? The majority of Africans, 87% of Africans, don’t have that information. So we had to try and understand, using informed design, how we could reinvent banking for the masses. 

And it wasn’t easy. We had a lot of stages of iteration…We actually only launched in January this year with a product in the market that we’re happy with. In March, we put out a product that we’re super happy with, and since then, we’ve actually onboarded 40,000 customers – and almost 10,000 accounts in the last six weeks alone. So it’s going like gangbusters. 62% of our customers are women, which is awesome. And almost 90% of our customers were opening their first ever bank account, which is pretty cool.

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Sarah Jeddy: What makes small businesses so important for economic development?

Tarek Mouganie: I often use the comparison between OECD countries and countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.  So small businesses and micro enterprises are the drivers of social and economic growth. It’s crazy, you know. In the US and UK, they are actually 99.9% of registered businesses and they employ over 60% of the population. We have a highly informal sector in Ghana and in Africa in general. By creating companies that employ in the formal sector you actually unlock that potential. It’s crucial because there’s a huge opportunity in our part of the world. By 2050 one out of four people will be African, and one out of three young people will live in Africa as well. The Global North is shrinking. The global majority is growing, and Africa has a huge potential to unlock its human capital so job creation needs to follow through as well too. That’s the first thing I wanted to say. 

The second thing is, if you take a look at OECD countries the tax-to-GDP ratio is around 36%. If you take a look at countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, it’s 18% – and if you take a look at countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and any of the countries that have extractive economies like Angola, South Africa, it’s as low as 6%. Our governments make money from extractives. They sell extractives. For example, if you have a chocolate bar, the cocoa probably comes from Ghana. Gold, oil are other examples. But what’s very important is diversifying that revenue for governments. Our taxpayer base is very, very, very narrow, so part of additional revenue is generated by generating and supporting small businesses. They are the drivers of revenue for the government. We’re talking corporate tax, we’re talking income tax, we’re talking VAT [value-added tax], we’re talking everything that is collected through those small businesses. 

The other thing that’s super important about this tax, the thing that I’m kind of obsessed with, which forms the majority of that OECD 36% tax-to-GDP ratio that I talked about, is that it creates accountability between civilians and their governments. If I buy a bottle of water and I’m poor, I’m rich, I’m paying the same amount of VAT. It’s indirect and it’s regressive, right? But if I’m earning an income or I’m a small business owner and I pay tax, there is a fiscal contract between me and my government. I’m paying money to you, for you, to provide you with a service that doesn’t really exist in that part of the world, because of the hugely informal sector. So if we see an element of formalization, and I don’t know what that looks like, and I’m not here to villainize the informal sector, you know, or romanticize them, but they’re a huge part of our economy. But over time, if we see an element, basically, of formalization and an increase in the taxpayer base, and an increase in direct taxation as well, too. I would like to think that there would be more civilian accountability to leaders in the continent as a result.

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Owen Haywood: How have you worked to bridge your diverse array of interests and experiences throughout your career?

Tarek Mouganie: I guess my life and my career only makes sense now looking backwards and trying to connect the dots – I think Steve Jobs said that, right? But in the middle of it all, I wasn’t really thinking. I knew I wanted to work in investment management. It was actually a friend from university that said, “Oh, I work for this company. Why don’t you consider joining?” And I thought, “hey, sounds great. I’ll give it a shot.” You know, what’s the worst that could happen? I would fail. I would move on with my life. And then when I left, the idea of starting a bank was out of coincidence, because I’d spent all this time, even though it wasn’t intentional, working in financial services, investing in banks, and understanding banking strategy. I think it only makes sense looking backwards at it.

The only kind of advice that I can give is not to take things too seriously. I’ve had a lot of students reach out to me here [to network], which is somewhat disappointing. Like 20 years ago, when I did my undergrad degree, everyone would go into investment banking and work for like a consultancy firm. I thought those days were over. surely there are other options out there, you know. And I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with being an investment banker or, you know, or working for a consultancy firm. I did in the past, too. But don’t be afraid to make mistakes in the early stages of your career. You have chances to mess up and correct them later in your career, and when you make a mistake earlier, it’s a lot less grave than it is in the later stages of career. 

But what I wanted to say is stay curious, don’t lose that. Think to yourself, “What is your North Star?” If you want to fix health care, if you want to fix inclusion, if you want to work in the field of climate justice or whatever, why do you care about that? Which part of the value chain do you care about as well, too? And how do you start thinking through how to get to a situation where you think you can maximize your impact. Whether it’s working for a consultancy firm, fine, as long as you’re aware of that and getting the right skill set. Whether it’s working for an established startup where you get a ton of exposure because you want to be an entrepreneur yourself, or whether it’s working for a corporation that has a department in there that looks at sustainability, is also another option. Just make sure that you have all the options laid out to stay curious and always question everything.on, if you want to work in the field of climate justice or whatever, why do you care about that? Which part of the value chain do you care about as well, too? And how do you start thinking through how to get to a situation where you think you can maximize your impact. Whether it’s working for a consultancy firm, fine, as long as you’re aware of that and getting the right skill set. Whether it’s working for an established startup where you get a ton of exposure because you want to be an entrepreneur yourself, or whether it’s working for a corporation that has a department in there that looks at sustainability, is also another option. Just make sure that you have all the options laid out to stay curious and always question everything.

Image courtesy of the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs

Last month, the YRIS Interview and Events Team sat down with Babra Ontibile Bhebe, a member of the 2024 Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program. A native Zimbabwean, Dr. Bhebe has been at the forefront of democratic and civil society activism in Zimbabwe and across Africa throughout her career. She has experience working in numerous organizations in the governance and human rights sectors. This includes her current role as Executive Director of the Election Resource Centre.

The YRIS Interviews and Events Team discussed a range of issues with Dr. Bhebe, from her motivation to work as an advocate for civil and political rights and her career experience to her thoughts on American democracy and advice for how young leaders can support global democratic activism. Dr. Bhebe’s open passion for political rights and compassion for her fellow humans was made clear throughout the interview. At a time when democratic backsliding is a major concern across Africa and the world, Dr. Bhebe’s optimistic, diligent, and thoughtful approach to addressing this problem offers a compelling model for anyone looking to make a difference in the fight for civil and political rights.

You can listen to the full interview linked above, or read selected quotes from our discussion with Dr. Bhebe below. All quotes have been edited for length and clarity.

Owen Haywood: Can you briefly introduce yourself and explain your background?

Babra Bhebe: Sure. My name is Babra Ontibile Bhebe. I am a Zimbabwean. I was born and raised in Bulawayo, which is the second-largest city in Zimbabwe.  I started having an interest in human rights and governance work because of the environment that I grew up in, an environment where I witnessed a lot of poverty around me. When I was growing up, I interacted with some families who were struggling to send their children to school. For a long time, I tried to help these children to get access education by paying their fees, buying their school uniforms, and giving them all the material support that they needed

Then, after high school, I decided to do temporary teaching. This is where you go to a school and teach for a few months before you start university in Zimbabwe. I started teaching at a school in one of the marginalized areas in Zimbabwe that is called Binga. What I saw in that community was quite striking for me. Some of the students were coming to school barefooted, and without warm clothes when it was cold. That really touched my heart. I started helping again, paying for shoes and uniforms. 

When I went to university, the same thing happened. I began to interact with children that were in the same situation, and I started doing the same thing – paying fees, tutoring students.. I also started asking other students to join me. We started an initiative called Little Souls Foundation to help take care of these children. But after college, we all went in different directions. It became difficult for me to continue to support these children.

That was when it dawned on me that the problems that were facing the different communities in my country were bigger than me and that I needed to join a movement or an institution that was directly influencing policies around anti-corruption or accountability. Policies that were going to help ensure that the government becomes more accountable and more responsible in terms of supporting communities and addressing the root causes of these problems. I realized that just paying fees and buying shoes wasn’t going to be enough because more and more children kept coming. 

Most of the work that I’m doing currently is more related to civil and political rights, but that I do that work because of my desire to see the socioeconomic rights of the citizens in Zimbabwe being realized. I do not see you know the disconnection between the two sets of rights. I think civil and political rights are connected to the rights that have to do with people’s lived experiences, in terms of whether they have something to eat or whether the children are accessing education, amongst other things.

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Hailey Seo: How can the global community do better to support pro-democracy movements and electoral transparency in Africa?

Babra Bhebe: There are many things that the global community can do to support our work – not just the Election Resource Centre’s work, but the work of citizen election observer groups across the continent. The first thing is to support the work of independent election observer mission groups. Deploying that work requires financial resources, but it is helpful in getting more independent views on how an election was held.  

However, I think there is a need to support the work of election organizations between election cycles. Funders must not just give to organizations when there’s an election, leave, and then come back only when there’s another election. The work of citizen election observer groups must be supported in between elections because that is where electoral processes are shaped. That is when you work on electoral reforms that are necessary for free, fair, and credible elections. That is when you get the first-time voter registrants to register to vote. That is when you get citizens to understand electoral processes and get them to decide on whether they are going to participate or not. That’s when you advocate for different things that you want to change, including some of the administrative processes that may need to be changed to make the environment more conducive. That work is critical between the elections; elections are not just an event.

… 

Ben Plana Trajtenberg: How do you view the state of American democracy?

Babra Bhebe: Let me say this with a disclaimer. I am not really an expert on American politics, so my comment is going to be based on what I’ve read. …  I must say that the interesting thing with America is that while democracy is under attack, we’ve also seen elements of resistance, elements that try to ensure that democracy is protected. We’ve seen how strong institutions enable resisting autocracy or resisting attacks on democracy. About 725 people who were involved in the January 6 attack on the Capitol were arrested afterward. I think that shows that the rule of law is still respected in this country. When I look at America what I’ve learned is that democracy will always be under attack. There are always forces that do not want democracy to thrive. However, there are others that want democracy to survive. And it is the institutions that are set up in a country that enable democracy to withstand attacks and not to fall.

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Ben Plana Trajtenberg: What advice do you have for young leaders who are looking to make an impact on the future of democracy but feel like the issue is out of their control?

Babra Bhebe: Young people have an opportunity now to take the stage and say, “This is our time.” Now is the time for young people to stand and support democracy. You can join an organization that’s dealing with issues that you are passionate about. If it’s elections, you can join an organization like the Election Resource Centre.  You can join either as a volunteer, or you can apply for a job.  But there are other organizations, some that are way bigger than the Election Resource Centre, that are doing work in different parts of Africa, or globally, that you can join. Join these organizations and join the group of people who are making an impact.

Secondly, you can also find a way of helping these organizations to think about how they can harness technology to advance democracy. Do research on that. Some are working with technology, or are even developing new technology, that can be tested in different contexts to improve the civic sphere. There are more innovative ways that we need to employ in doing work in civil society as it pertains to civic engagement. Young people have an opportunity to do things in a different way. You cannot join the movement and still do things the same way. You need to bring in innovation from past [methods].

…

I think you should also write a lot. Follow events. Write. Get your voices to be known. Get your opinions about democracy known. The internet and technology are both a force for good and for evil. So we need more people, more voices that are going to speak the same language, and that are going to say we need a more equal society, we need a more just society.  And I’m hoping that you all are going to be amongst that group of people.

Image courtesy of the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Haywood: Could you summarize your career and what has brought you now to Yale and the Jackson School?

De Ruyter: I’ve been working in the energy sector for more than 30 years. I started in coal, I’ve worked in natural gas, I’ve worked in oil, I’ve worked in electricity. I worked in many African countries – Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, Ethiopia, and Nigeria – and then also lived for a period in China where I led a very large energy project, and I also ran a business in Germany for a while. My really broad range of international experience eventually culminated in my being appointed to the position of Group Chief Executive of Eskom, the South African national power utility. I was in that job for a period of three years. That sounds like a very short time, but it was the longest tenure of my ten predecessors. So it was quite a remarkable achievement in and of itself to stick it out for that long 

Eventually, I was confronted with a significant degree of corruption and malfeasance in the energy business there in South Africa. That made it extremely challenging to turn the business around and to implement some of the decarbonization initiatives that I had identified and for which I’d obtained significant financing from the international and multilateral financing communities. I then tendered my resignation. I also wrote a book about my experiences at Eskom, Truth to Power, that has been a bestseller. The Guardian in London has nominated this as one of the top five books by whistleblowers internationally. I was also recently nominated one of the top 100 Most Influential Africans by New African magazine. 

I was very happy when the opportunity came along last year for me to share some of my experiences and insights into decarbonization and climate finance with Yale. This opportunity is mainly due to the Jackson School, but also because of the Yale School of the Environment and School of Management, where I am currently lecturing on climate finance with a particular emphasis on developing countries. 

Haywood: That’s fantastic. If we can back up to right before you joined Eskom – what drove you to want to take the position as Group Chief Executive, especially when you knew about the high turnover rate among Eskom’s leaders in the past?

De Ruyter: I’ve often described my motivation as a combination of naivety and idealism. I strongly believe in a sense of civic duty: I think that citizens who sit on the sidelines and criticize and complain without being prepared to go out there and be part of the solution to the problems that they’re criticizing, forfeit their right to complain to a certain extent. If you’re not prepared to be part of the solution, if you’re not prepared to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in the mud and sort out what irks you in the society that you live in, then maybe it’s time for you to go look for another country. 

So when I received the offer, I thought to myself that, yes, electricity shortfalls, corruption – these are major issues plaguing South Africa. I had been fortunate enough to gain experiences that could be relevant in helping to address these shortfalls. And when the call came to ask whether I would be interested (it wasn’t a job that I applied for I must add) I accepted. I said, I’ll do this because I feel it’s my duty as a South African to do so. 

Kushi: I’m curious to learn more about Eskom’s leadership and how appointment to that role works. How did the government decide on you? What do you think the future leaders of Eskom will need to do to turn it around? 

De Ruyter: I guess that I was a fairly controversial appointment. For key government and parastatal appointments, of which the Eskom job certainly is one, the ruling party and government typically appoint somebody who is a loyal party member and can be counted upon to toe the party line. I definitely don’t fall into that category as I was a member of a political party thirty years ago, but since then, I’ve had no formal political affiliation, and certainly have not been a supporter of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party in South Africa. Be that as it may, I ran an industrial company as chief executive, where the chairman was the former Central Bank governor, similar to the chairman of the Federal Reserve in the US. Eventually, this gentleman left to become South Africa’s Minister of Finance. He and I got along really well at a personal level. There was a lot of mutual respect, I have a very high regard for his integrity and intellect. He was instrumental in suggesting me as a potential candidate for the job. Apparently, this was after they had already offered the position to 23 other candidates, who had already turned it down. I was the last man standing. 

Darragi: Mr. de Ruyter, the South African government has made several proposals for reforming Eskom. One of them is to divide Escom into three separate entities for generation, transmission, and distribution. Do you think that this proposal is efficient? And if not, what is perhaps another alternative that you propose? 

De Ruyter: I think this type of structural utility reform is absolutely critical for the electricity industry in South Africa to move forward. It’s not a particularly novel structural reform; this path has been trodden by, I think at last count, 126 other countries, where generation was separated from the transmission business and from the distribution business. It’s pretty much how the US electricity industry is set up as well, obviously subject to appropriate regulation and oversight to ensure that the environment is protected and that the rights of the consumer are protected, and so forth. In order to attract sufficient private investment in energy, and in particular to the generation sector which is where the biggest demand is for new capital, a disaggregated utility has proven to be a critical enabler in other cases. The old days of a monolithic monopolistic utility that could supply electricity at a rate below the cost of production, to a small minority of people in the country – those days are gone for good in South Africa. And there’s absolutely no way in which that construct can, or should, be resurrected. I’m fully supportive of that structural reform; it’s the right way forward for the utility to go.

Haywood: We’ve been dancing around the topic of the South African energy crisis for a bit here and I just want to make sure we take a step back and ask you, what do you think the root causes of the current energy crisis are and what is the context that led to the current situation?

De Ruyter: I think for students attending the Jackson School this can serve as a bit of a case study, really, as to what happens when there’s a policy failure. So in 1998, the South African government published a white paper, which was essentially a policy document that set out what the objectives are for dealing with the electricity industry going forward. And in that document, a mention was made that Eskom would no longer be allowed to build new generation capacity because the paper said there would instead be reforms to the energy sector that would allow the private sector to come in and build that generation capacity.

Now, building that generation capacity was crucial due to two factors. First, an expected growth in consumption, bearing in mind that the economy was growing and the largely African community that had been disadvantaged in terms of electricity supply, amongst many other things, under the apartheid era, were now being served with electricity connection, so the demand for electricity had suddenly increased substantially. The second element is that it was already anticipated back then that the aging coal fleet would have to be retired and replaced. Any mechanical piece of equipment has a finite age – you don’t see many 50-year-old cars on the road anymore, they all eventually break down and then need to be replaced.

Now, what happened was that the government effectively told Eskom they may not build new power stations but did not follow through on the policies required to enable the private sector and private investments to come in and fill in that gap of electricity demand. As a consequence, the reserve margin that South Africa had available very quickly got eroded by poor performance from the aging fleet, exacerbated by corruption, as well as an increase in demand. And that led to the first incidences of load shedding, which are rotational blackouts imposed on the community from between four to twelve hours per day. Load shedding is quite onerous and disruptive not only to domestic life but also obviously to business and industry. This has now been a feature of the South African landscape for 22 years and counting. The whole situation is really a classic case study of what happens if ideas are not translated into policies that are not translated into legislation and then implemented in order to achieve the objectives that governments have in mind.

Kushi: You mentioned a little bit about corruption in South Africa and Eksom, and it’s something I’ve heard you talk about in interviews before. What do you think made Eskom particularly vulnerable to corruption?

De Ruyter: I think that this has been the result of the change in the nature of Eskom from a standalone power utility that had one objective – to generate, transmit, and supply electricity at the lowest possible cost – to what is known as a state-owned enterprise, run by a board that was appointed by the ruling party. And that created a temptation to appoint people who would be pliable, people who would accede to the wishes of politicians, who wouldn’t have moral qualms about engaging in corrupt practices. That’s exactly what happened. There have been many cases that have gone through the courts here or have been exposed in the media that contained the elements of what’s called state capture, where the resources of the state are abused by politicians in corrupt association with private sector actors, and where these malfeasances then translate into corruption. And you actually create an environment where corruption can thrive, because you allow the normal principles of good corporate governance to be thrown out the window.

Just to prove the hypothesis that I’m putting forward, just about every state-owned enterprise, – and there are over 400 of them in South Africa, some are big and some are small – just about every one of them has been a hotbed of corruption since changing this model. So there are clear structural reasons why corruption got a foot in the door very soon after this change in political oversight and political involvement, or even interference, in running the affairs of state-owned entities.

Haywood: Why do you think corruption in South Africa is so persistent, especially given its broad recognition among the people? Public figures like you have called out corruption, I’m thinking of the recent commission into the subject, the Zondo Commission, which gave a very deep dive into looking at corruption in South Africa. It’s a very acknowledged problem. But what makes it so stubborn?

De Ruyter: You know, one of the spokespersons of the government, Smuts Ngonyama, made a very revealing comment about five, six years ago. He said, “I did not join the struggle [against apartheid] to be poor.” So there is this prevalent notion that access to the levers of power entitles you to access to financial wealth. Of course, one must be very careful. You cannot blame only the politicians, because in every corrupt relationship, there are two parties. There’s a corruptor and a corruptee. I think we absolutely need to acknowledge that private sector actors gleefully participated in the corruption. Some of them were very well-known international names: Deloitte; McKinsey; SAP, the German software company; and ABB, which is a major Swiss company. So it’s a two-way street.

But I do think that the opportunity that people had to abuse the positions of power that they were put in without appropriate checks and balances, and without the right consequence management in terms of successful law enforcement prosecution, followed by exemplary terms of incarceration; in the absence of those normal measures of control, corruption just took over and ran like wildfire. There was a specific focus by the ruling party, the ANC, to reduce the effectiveness of the anti-corruption entity, an independent investigative body called the Scorpions. The Scorpions were disbanded at the insistence of the annual Congress of the ANC which said we can’t have these people prying into our affairs. This was the same conference at which the very effective but fairly unpopular President of the African National Conference, Thabo Mbeki, was unceremoniously defenestrated and replaced by Jacob Zuma. And if you’re familiar with the Zondo report, you’ll know that during the Zuma years, state capture and corruption became completely rampant. This was because the institutions that were supposed to maintain adequate oversight over government procurement practices, which is how funds flow from government to private sector actors, were deliberately dismantled and undermined.

In your studies, you’ve likely already come across a book called Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. What that book really is about is institutions. Once you undermine institutions, that’s when states fail. Corruption and undermining of institutions has not particularly got anything to do with Africa, per se. The United States also went through periods of rampant corruption and the undermining of institutions. You might argue that’s an inevitable cycle that societies go through. But we certainly are in the middle of fighting corruption in a very challenging and very significant way.

Kushi: What do you think are some strategies that South Africans, whether they be government members or people in the private sector can take to stop corruption?

De Ruyter: One of the big elements that should be implemented is to ensure that there’s adequate transparency in public procurement. Thirty years ago, tenders – bids for providing goods or services to public entities – were opened in public and the numbers were read out in public. Now, of course, some of these tenders are very complicated, they’re very technical, they’re subject to adjustment, and they’re not always easy to compare. But the transparency that is introduced by a public opening of documents, so that there’s no opportunity to “lose” a bid, or there’s no opportunity to quickly adjust the numbers, because it’s opened right there when everybody’s present, and all the bidders can say “yes, that’s the number that I wrote into my document.” That public opening, I believe, is one of the critical steps.

There’s an old saying, ”sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Transparency in any public process is a sine qua non for good clean governance. And unfortunately, the public procurement processes in South Africa are incredibly complicated. They have scoring mechanisms that are based on adjustments for the race, gender, age of the bidders. In that complicated process, of course, the opportunity arises for non-value-adding intermediaries to inject themselves into the process. Also, by the deployment of bribes, brown envelopes, paper bags, cars, and even in a couple of instances, cows that are delivered to farms, people can influence the process in a way that would in a transparent environment not be possible.

Darragi: Mr. de Ruyter, while we are on the topic of transparency, I have seen references by some journalists to an “energy apartheid.” Some allegations have been made that Eskom segregates load shedding based on where you are in South Africa. For instance, townships like Soweto (which has a large black population) have experienced more load shedding than places like Sandton (which is more white). What is your response to those allegations?

De Ruyter: I think you need to distinguish first of all between load shedding, which is a way of managing the demand for electricity in order to allow the available generation capacity to meet the demand. That is done on an equitable basis across the board. There’s absolutely no discrimination. But what has happened in a place like Soweto, for example, is that years ago, at the advent of democracy, some irresponsible politicians went to Soweto and said, as a reward for supporting the ANC, we will absolve you from ever having to pay your electricity accounts. As a consequence, the payment rate in Soweto during my tenure at Eskom was hovering between 13 and 17%. Now, just what happens in the US, if you don’t pay your bill, electricity gets cut off. The utility just comes and disconnects you. But this has nothing to do with race. It’s got everything to do with whether you buy your bill. And the extent to which there is widespread meter tampering, electricity theft, and nonpayment, those feature quite strongly in electricity distribution, and unfortunately, the perception has been created that this has somehow correlated to race, which is not the case at all. In fact, I think Eskom was particularly lenient in still providing electricity in spite of the fact that revenue collection was so poor.

Haywood: Speaking of revenue collection, one of the things we noticed is that South Africa still exports energy to its neighboring countries. Do you think that behavior is incompatible with South Africa resolving its energy crisis? And to what extent do you see solving the South African energy crisis as involving other regional actors?

De Ruyter: South Africa is one of the members of the Southern African Power Pool, which pools electricity supply into one interconnected grid, across countries. Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Eswatini, Lesotho, and obviously South Africa are all members. South Africa dominates the power pool – it generates about 73% of all the electricity that is consumed in the pool. But it is also a significant buyer of electricity from Mozambique, for example. Mozambique has a very large and very successful hydroelectric project called Cahora Bassa and there’s a high voltage direct current line that has been supplying electricity from the north of Mozambique to South Africa for many, many decades. So if we were not a member of the pool, if we did not provide electricity to other countries, and we did not buy electricity, then the shortfall in our own electricity would be even greater.

Now, what needed to be done on this issue was a couple of quite unpopular things which I introduced. I said, first of all, Eskom needs to make a profit on the electricity that it sells and that is a process where we significantly increased the tariffs charged to our neighboring countries. But also we said, like we did with Soweto, well, you actually have to pay for the electricity that we provide you. We went so far as to demand cash upfront from Zimbabwe, which had an extremely poor payment record before we would supply them with electricity because we just had no faith in their ability or their willingness to pay for the electricity offered and supplied. So I think regional integration generally is a positive thing.

We know that Namibia, for example, is going to be investing massively in renewable energy and for South Africa to be able to tap into those resources as part of the Southern African Power Pool makes absolute sense. So I think buying and selling electricity across the region is a good idea and is to be supported.

Kushi: There’s been some talk about South Africa trying to transition away from coal. What proposals are out there for that transition? Do you think that they’re going to work?

De Ruyter: This was one of the main thrusts of my tenure as Group Chief Executive of Eskom is that I very quickly came to the conclusion that we had to produce new generation capacity as quickly as possible. If you compare different technologies, the lowest cost and the quickest to deploy these days are solar and wind energy. Even if you ignore the negative environmental impacts of the externalities imposed on the environment by coal-fired power generation, which you shouldn’t, it still makes perfect sense to roll out wind and solar as quickly as possible. There are technical challenges with the fact that these are variable renewable energy sources, but these can be resolved and certainly only become a critical problem for the grid when you get to a very high penetration of renewable energy sources.

This drive ran into considerable opposition, in particular from the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy, which had a focus on prolonging the life of coal-fired power stations because it had a dual mandate to both promote mining and provide policy direction for the energy industry. The inherent conflict between those two mandates, in addition to the very significant political sway held by heavily unionized coal workers, caused the process to be, pardon the pun, undermined.

That being said, we still made very good progress in our energy transition. We were able to deliver a groundbreaking $8.5 billion Just Energy Transition Partnership agreement, which was signed between the US, UK, France, Germany, the European Union, and South Africa at COP 26 in Glasgow. We were able to secure more than a billion dollars through concessional financing to repurpose and repower a decommissioned coal-fired power station, in order to ensure that the transition to a decarbonized electricity industry would be a just one. This is something that I feel very strongly about: without ensuring that there is social and environmental justice that accompanies the transition, it is highly likely that those kinds of energy transitions will not succeed. They will be held up by interference through the vested interests who have been involved in the coal industry or have made investments in the industry over many decades and have legitimate concerns about the transition’s effects.

South Africa is very fortunate in that it’s got some of the best wind and solar resources in the world. I’m still firmly of the view that in the absence of any sort of likelihood that the government will solve the energy crisis, there will be a de facto liberalization of the electricity sector that will cause the electricity industry in South Africa to decarbonize. Just in the last year, privately distributed energy generation through renewables exceeded the capacity of one major coal-fired power station in South Africa without any incentive or support from the government. So load shedding is forcing people to take matters into their own hands and decarbonize. Whether the government wants to promote that or not is no longer relevant. It’s happening because people need electricity to live their lives.

Haywood: Do you foresee a future in South Africa where the growth of the private sector energy generation and renewable energy push out Eskom or state involvement in energy? Or how do you see that future playing out?

De Ruyter: In the future, I think all of Eskom is going to be very different. As we spoke about the restructuring of Eskom, I think we were going to have an Eskom which will have a very reduced presence in the generation sector, which will be largely operated by the private sector. It will still have a substantial presence in the transmission industry, that’s a natural monopoly – it is infrastructural in nature. Typically, that is the last element of the electricity industry where the state maintains a significant degree of involvement. The distribution parts of the industry, I think, will either go into the hands of private distributors, very much like mobile phone operators, or it will go into the hands of local authorities. So the role of Eskom, as I said earlier, the monolith that was able to meet all of South Africa’s electricity needs, that’s going to change and it’s going to become a much smaller, much more focused business with a significantly smaller presence in generation and distribution.

Kushi: While we’re looking ahead, do you see yourself returning to South Africa in the future? And if not at the moment, what will it take for that to happen?

De Ruyter: I’d love to return to South Africa. It’s still a place that I regard as home. It’s a place that I’m very fond of. I’m fond of the people, I think we’ve absolutely fantastic people who live in the country. So yeah, I absolutely intend to return to South Africa. Much as I appreciate the opportunity of living and working in the US, I do miss South African sunshine and South African wine.

Haywood: I wanted to ask you personally about the circumstances under which you left both Eskom and South Africa. I’ve heard that’s a complicated and fraught story. Can you tell us about that?

De Ruyter: Yeah, it was a very interesting period. On the day that I tendered my resignation to the chairman of the board, I returned to my office and was provided with coffee. That coffee turned out to be laced with poison, a mix of cyanide and insecticide – which by the way is apparently a Russian recipe. I’ve since learned more about poison than I ever wanted to. So I became quite ill. But fortunately, I survived the attempt. I was told by a toxicologist that I was very, very lucky to escape. I won’t go into all the gory details but yes, I made it.

Soon after that, as I was serving my notice period, I started to speak up more openly about the reasons why we have not been able to make as much progress as people wanted to on solving the energy crisis. In particular, I spoke out about some of the vested interests that underpinned corrupt behavior in Eskom: coal theft by organized crime of very, very significant proportions, and to a large extent a supine police force that wasn’t particularly interested in ensuring that there were consequences for these criminal activities. That then led to some considerable pressure on me at that stage. I was driving around in a bulletproof Land Cruiser accompanied by bodyguards due to various threats that I’d received. So life was getting quite interesting. You always watch movies, but once you start living it, it’s not to be recommended.

I decided I’d rather go abroad. This was achieved by some sleight of hand. At that stage, various people were looking for me who wanted to apprehend me and force me to testify and so forth. I’m told they were watching the airport in Johannesburg, so I then hitched a ride on a private jet to Cape Town, got on a plane there, and made my way out of the country.

Haywood: Wow. That is truly remarkable. I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for you and everyone close to you. How do you manage to stay committed to speaking out against corruption and working to improve South Africa even when there’s all this persecution against you?

De Ruyter: You need to be a bit bloody-minded when it comes to principles relating to honesty and integrity. I’ve often been asked, you know, why? Why did you speak out? And I guess one strategy I could have followed was to just keep my mouth shut, attend all of my farewell parties, and just go off quietly into the sunset. I could have had a very nice retirement and served on a couple of boards, and that would have been the end of the story. 

But I do think that there is something like principle, there is something like right and wrong. By not speaking out when you see something that is wrong, you become complicit. You become part of the problem, even if you’re not a direct beneficiary of corrupt activity. If you’re aware of it, and you don’t speak out, you are compromised, and you are complicit. And I just thought that the people of South Africa deserve better. They deserve to know why the lights were off for many hours every day. It was not due to people who work hard and try their best, but it was due to a toxic combination (I guess I shouldn’t use that phrase) of poor policy and corrupt and criminal activity.

Kushi: South Africa has an election this year. What are you looking for? What are your hopes?

De Ruyter: One of the frustrations with the South African political environment is that parties have been quite poor about articulating their policies. If you look at the ANC, I think we know what the ANC’s policy agenda is because they’re in government: they publish white papers, they push laws to Parliament, so we know what the policies are. But most, if not all, of the opposition parties define themselves by being opposed to the ANC. So their election strategy, by and large, is to say, please vote for me, because I’m not the ANC, which I find to be a very unsatisfactory approach to canvassing votes from the electorate. Yes, you might not be the ANC, but does that mean that you’re going to be better or worse than the ANC? And if you don’t tell me what your policies are going to be, well, I’m really going to struggle to make that decision 

There is a dearth of good policy thinking in South Africa, that is coherent, that is consistent, that hangs together across the various aspects of policy. For example, if you think about energy policy, it’s not only about energy policy, it’s about environmental policy, it’s about fiscal policy, it’s about industrial policy. All of these policies have to hang together and integrate. Sitting in Parliament and shouting at the Minister for not doing his or her job is necessary, I guess, for there is some form of political accountability. But what is your alternative agenda? What I’d be looking for in the selection is a party that articulates policies that I believe have a high degree of successful implementation to address the very significant challenges that South Africa faces.

Haywood: I think we have some time left for a few more questions.

Darragi: If the government chooses to make Eskom a private company, do you think that would help solve its corruption problems? If it’s not owned by the government, would this mean fewer opportunities for corruption and corrupt actors to be in control?

De Ruyter: I think more private involvement in the electricity industry would be beneficial. I think it’s highly unlikely that the current ruling party will privatize Eskom because it’s ideologically opposed to doing so. Part of the ANC’s policy is a very strong preference for significant state control and state involvement in the economy. I don’t think that privatization is likely to happen.

What I do think is that transparent market-based competition will be a good check on corrupt activity in the electricity industry. Once you’ve got monopolies, and you’ve got the coincidence between politics and commercial interests, that’s generally when things go off the rails. But when people have to compete for business, and they are properly regulated, and there’s adequate transparency, things are much better. So, my preferred solution is not so much to privatize Eskom, but it is to enable far more private sector participation in the electricity industry.

Kushi: Do you have any message to the next generation of leaders in South Africa that are looking at this corrupt situation and thinking what hope is there? How are we going to get out of this?

De Ruyter: South Africa is a very interesting country. We seem to have this knack for peering over into the abyss and at the moment when it seems inevitable that we are likely to topple over the edge, we manage to pull back and somehow make it work. This characterized the greatest challenge of all, which was the transition from apartheid to democracy. The transition was fraught with risk and the potential for very, very significant bloodshed and eventually went off largely peacefully, which was a minor miracle at the time.

I still back the resilience and character of the ordinary South African – let’s forget about the politicians – to do the right thing, to do the decent thing, and to pull through. But they need to do so with proper leadership. My appeal would be to the next generation to step up to the plate, do your duty, and take the lead in doing what is right for the country and its people.

This interview was conducted by Nour Darragi, Owen Haywood, and Ty Kushi on January 30, 2024.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Haywood: When most people hear Howard Dean, they think of you as someone with experience in domestic policy — as Governor of Vermont, obviously, as well as being the chairman of the Democratic National Committee [DNC] and your experience running for president in 2004. Can you talk about how you have since begun to transition towards working on issues of foreign policy?

Dean: That is a very interesting story. When Madeline Albright was head of the NDI [National Democratic Institute] I knew her, and when I was chairman of the DNC, Obama was about to be elected. I recognized how important it was for Obama to resurrect the American image abroad, especially after George W. Bush, who I personally liked but thought was a pretty awful president, as did most of the world – with the exception of the people who benefit from PEPFAR [U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief], which I think is a major international achievement, and getting the three Baltic countries into NATO, which turned out to be prescient given how the Russians are behaving. Anyways, so I as Chairman controlled roughly 600 tickets to the DNC, which usually go out to various politicos: I gave every one of them to Madeline Albright to distribute to ambassadors from around the world. I thought it was really important for people from around the world to see that America is back. You know, the international election to Obama’s election was extraordinary and it was because America is always expected to do unexpected things and break new barriers in ways that nobody else can. And that was a big barrier he broke.

Madeline eventually, when I left the DNC, asked if I would join the board of NDI. So I said of course, and I stayed there for probably 12 or 13 years. The European people all knew me because they didn’t like Bush and I was the only Democrat running for president in 2004 with the you-know-whats to take on the War in Iraq. Everybody, all the other top candidates voted for the war and voted for Bush’s tax cuts, which mostly benefited the top 10%. If the election had been held in Canada or Europe I might have won because they all knew me. So, I was well-known in Europe and had a lot of supporters, so they were thrilled to have me over there. I started in Eastern Europe – the NDI doesn’t do much work in the European Union, except for a few programs to deal with discrimination against the Roma people. But most of our work is on the fringes of the EU. I spent a lot of time in the Balkans, and I spent a lot of time in Ukraine, including coming in after the Maidan after the dust had settled. And from there, you know, we began to expand into Burma and other places.

Abdulkadir: Turning towards your time in the NDI doing work on integrating the Roma community into Eastern European politics, I’m curious to hear what you think the link is between integrating ethnic and gender minorities into the political mainstream and maintaining strong democratic institutions? Do you think one causes the other?

Dean: From a purely calculus point of view, if the minority is small, you can probably get away with abusing them. But from a human rights point of view, I don’t think any of us succeed in the world, any society succeeds, unless everybody succeeds. The long-term goal is to make sure everybody has human rights. Now the Roma are complicated. Many of them are living with 15^th century traditions, which may not be the healthiest environment for small children, as in they might not permit their kids to go to school. Not all Roma live in wagons or tents someplace, there are members of the German parliament, for example, who are Roma, but there are some communities in Eastern Europe that are very insular and removed. And the question is, how do you integrate them? There are Roma who have been successfully integrated into the political process in some places and can speak for their brethren. But there are also some members of the community who don’t want to be integrated. The trouble is, then, that if you don’t choose to be integrated then your kids can’t make a living and so have no choice but to live in conditions that might not be considered acceptable. So the big thing for us to do was foster programs for those who wanted to be more integrated and wanted to have a livelihood. We also tried to get local people not to “other” the Roma. The Roma are very famous for being “othered” throughout history. There has been a lot of scapegoating of them and their culture in Eastern Europe especially. The real guts of the problem is about trying to improve the lives of the Roma people without telling them how to live. And part of our role was to make sure the people who might be tempted to abuse the Roma understood that they were being watched by the United States.

Haywood: Can you talk more about your experience in Ukraine for a second?

Dean: Ukraine was wonderful. The first time we went there I think was after the overthrow of former President Viktor Yanukovych. And Yulia Tymoshenko and others were expected to run for president at that time. We met with someone called the “Minister of Lustration” which we had no idea what that was. Turns out, it was the minister who fights corruption – of which there was a great deal in Ukraine, as in most post-Soviet states. Well, it also turned out that he had no office, no staff, and no money. So we bought him a cup of coffee and that was our meeting with the Minister of Lustration. So we started at the bottom.

Then I did a lot of coaching of political parties in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Georgia – I spent a lot of time in Georgia – Kosovo, and Armenia. To have a political party in a country that hasn’t had a real political party for generations is quite difficult. They don’t really understand everything that is involved. At one point I had a meeting with Tymoshenko (this was when Yanukovych was in power) and it was ten people around a table in a relatively small restaurant. Tymoshenko had the big game: when I sat down in front of her, she had my chair a little lower to the ground than hers. That’s a whole bunch of Washington crap but everybody does it, you know. I’m looking over her shoulder and I see Madeline Albright’s biography. Well, that didn’t get there by accident. They knew who I was, and who would be coming in, and so rearranged the books. I mean, this is the big game, right? So we’re sitting around this table in some fleabag-ish restaurant with all the political parties, there were about eight of them. The idea was to get them all together behind a candidate and then we’d challenge Yanukovych. None of the parties had any clue what they were doing except for Tymoshenko’s. So Tymoshenko’s person proposes we have a primary. I said “Great! How would you run that?”, since they had no experience in running primaries at the time. So he says “we’ll just have a poll and whoever leads the poll is the candidate.” But Tymoshenko had already been Prime Minister and so everyone knew who she was – she’d win easily. It was just ludicrous.

There was some real talent in Ukraine. One of the guys, who started a party of young people and had some enthusiasm – in addition to being the only person who understood organizations besides Tymoshenko. His name was Arseniy Yatsenyuk – he ended up becoming the Prime Minister of Ukraine. He had a real problem with corruption though and left after a couple of years. But then along comes Volodymyr Zelensky and along comes the Russians and the corruption gets rooted out and so forth. It is not totally rooted out now, but it is a democratic state. Kyiv is a modern city – it’s a lot like Berkeley in the 1960s. A lot of young people and coffee houses (except now the young people of computers, of course).

One of the most moving things that happened to me is that there was one guy at the end of our roundtable discussion that came up to me – he didn’t speak English, he had a translator who spoke only Russian. This was in 2014 after Putin had already illegally seized Crimea from the Ukrainians. He told me “I was raised by two good communists who taught me the Americans were the bad guys and the Russians were the good guys. I’m married to a Tatar, and we had to leave Crimea and she’ll never be able to go back and see her parents again as a result of this. So I just want to thank you for your support.” That kind of stuff makes it all worth dealing with. It’s the big picture and the diplomacy and all that. But stuff like that is what really matters: when you move people’s lives, that’s what matters.

We did the same thing in Burma. I knew about the persecution of the Rohingya long before anyone else I knew did because I did a meeting with young people in Yangon. The NDI always tried to meet with young people. And it was extraordinary – there was a civil war going on. This was followed by a peaceful transition to democracy. The civil war has since been rekindled when the military decided to become unpeaceful and untransition. Anyways, it was during the transition that I met with many young people. Obama was following me by a week (which terrified me because I have a penchant for speaking my mind and I was worried I was going to leave a mess for him. Luckily I didn’t). Among the young people there were members of every ethnic group in the country, and these ethnic groups had all been fighting each other for thirty years. What I discovered is they uniformly hated the Rohingya. I kept asking them all about it. Finally one of them got annoyed – which was surprising since it’s a very polite society, they certainly treat their elders more properly than the Americans do. But even they got upset sometimes. He said “how come you’re asking these difficult questions?” My answer was if you don’t ask difficult questions you don’t get truthful answers. But all of them, including all the minority groups that were being persecuted by the army, hated the Rohingya. It was really scary because usually what happens when I go to a country, I find the older folks have the same old ethnic hates they’ve always had but the younger folks are starting to get together and become less interested in these divisions. And that was not the case in what is now Myanmar.

Haywood: Why do you think that is? I’ve heard discussions of social media as having  a particularly bad effect on the conflict in Myanmar – do you think that’s the case?

Dean: Social media is a negative influence on any conflict because you get so much disinformation, and the people who are spreading the disinformation know how to appeal to the worst prejudices of people, and they know exactly where to hit them. That was part of it. Part of it probably was these kids have not had this much exposure, if any, to democracy. There had been a junta for years, and Aung San Suu Kyi had only been in power briefly before being deposed by the military. There’s lot of theories. The guy who took over after Ken Wallach as president of the NDI, Derek Mitchell, had been the ambassador when I was in Myanmar. Derek is just a stand-up guy who really understands all this stuff very well. He used to joke that the junta got tired of retirement and was looking for something to do so they decided to come back. That’s not exactly true but it seemed like it sometimes.

Tauch: I’m curious, besides Myanmar, what are your thoughts on democratic backsliding in Southeast Asia in general?

Dean: How about democratic backsliding in the United States of America? That’s not so great either! None of us are immune to appeals to people’s worst instincts instead of their best instincts. I’m worried about it. I spent a lot of time in Vietnam with NDI and IRI – the International Republican Institute.  Interestingly, both organizations were formed by the same legislation under Reagan, and we work in parallel (although they have a little more of an ideological agenda than we do). We sent a joint delegation to Vietnam. Vietnam is not a democracy. But it is also not as authoritarian and controlling as China. Especially the southern part of Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City is very lively. If you didn’t know you were in Vietnam, you would think you were in any big Asian city in a relatively free country. Vietnam is very business-oriented. When we would meet with the local and provincial and national officials, every one of them started out with a five-minute diatribe about how they were shooting at us 40 years ago, and then a 45 minute dialogue about how terrible the Chinese were. They had been paying tribute to the Chinese since 941 AD and the United States was only a relatively recent irritant. That’s why now Da Nang is the only port in the world that services both Russian and American naval vessels.

So our relationship with Vietnam is actually quite good.  Is it an authoritarian country? Yes. Do you get in trouble if you criticize the government? Yes. But is there free enterprise? Also yes. I would call it a thriving country, which we’re investing a lot in because it’s a friendlier environment than China right now for American companies. I won’t say it’s a good model, because it’s not a democracy, but I will say for all but a relatively small number of political dissidents, it’s a fairly safe country to make a living and have children in. 

The other funny thing about our trip to Vietnam was – and this was just like the United States – we’d go to see the big shots. And then we’d go down to their version of a county government, and all they would do is complain about the big shots. And then we’d go to the local people, living a village just like the United States except for everyone was speaking Vietnamese, and they’d all complain about the authorities and the counties and the government. They weren’t very measured with it. I don’t want to be a fool and say it’s a free society – it isn’t. But there’s a real spirit of capitalism in Vietnam and I’m guessing the government is a little bit behind where the people are.

There is a lot of rural poverty in Vietnam – which we weren’t shown much of on our visit there. The rural areas are different. I took the U.S. embassy staff out to dinner there and one of the things I heard from them is their main immigration situation is going out to the villages and seeing who really got married to who and who didn’t. Because of course if you’re an American citizen, which many Vietnamese people are after the Vietnam war, then you get to come over to America without any problem. But it turns out a lot of those “marriages” to U.S. citizens weren’t quite true – they would be married to someone else.

Haywood: Do you foresee a role the US should play in encouraging countries like Vietnam towards more liberal democracy? Or do you think we should be focusing on our own problems with democracy that you mentioned earlier?

Dean: Well, I think that we as a country have to be careful. I’m obviously in favor of democracy, absolutely in favor. But I think our efforts to influence that process in other countries depend on how much repression there is in that system. For example, I am much more worried about Uganda because of its murderous anti-gay policies than I am about Vietnam. Are there human rights violations in both places? Yes, there are. But we cannot force a government on every group of people in the world. So I think we have to be judicious in where we apply our efforts for democracy.

We just taught a class on Africa, I had a woman named Michelle Gavin come in and speak to my class, she was an ambassador to Botswana and now works for the Council on Foreign Relations. One of the things we talked about is how the United States recently cut the Ugandan government off from an African trade association over their persecution of gay Ugandans. But the hard question is: do you cut them off like that and punish them? Or keep them engaged and try to influence them? That’s a discussion you have to have, and the answer is not clear-cut. Policymakers have to ask themselves how many human rights violations and abuses they are willing to tolerate before disengaging. And it’s not universal. We put up with more human rights abuses in Egypt than we would in, say, Algeria. Why? Because Egypt is, from a strategic point, more important to us. So we give them tons and tons of money and they mostly align with our priorities. But at the same time they put a hell of a lot of people in jail just for trying to be democrats (small D).

Haywood: Switching gears for a minute here. Do you mind talking about Donald Trump and his effect on foreign policy both in and out of office?

Dean: Trump was a disaster. And he was a disaster for foreign policy – first because he was inconsistent. Second, he has an affinity for dictators that I don’t understand except that he’d like to be one himself. Third, he took away all of America’s leverage on the world stage because no leaders were able to take him seriously. His four years were tempered only by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who knew what they were doing, and some public servants who also knew what they were doing. I personally think he’s mislocated a couple of brain cells in general.

Haywood: I assume then you’re concerned about his intent for a second term?

Dean: Sure. Wouldn’t you be concerned if somebody openly advertises that we’re going to get rid of your democracy?

Haywood: Can you also talk about the general trends toward isolationism in the Republican Party that have expressed themselves more recently?

Dean: Well, we pay a price for isolationism every time we do it. We were isolationist after the First World War and got Nazi Germany as a result. You’re going to pay a much bigger price later if you choose not to be involved in the world now. Trump is known for that. I mean, in his hotel business he always had a policy of “take what you can now” and is paying for that in New York State Court. I grew up in New York and no real estate guy I know in New York will do any business with Donald Trump. His word is no good. But he has an incredible gift for grievance politics, and this is a good time for that in the world. But I think he’ll set the country back terribly if he’s elected, especially setting our international status back dramatically. Europe doesn’t like him. Guess what? Europe is pretty powerful these days. They can do without us if they have to, except in defense.

So yes, I’m concerned. But what I’m more concerned about is the failure of the Republican Party to stand up for the country. Republicans and Democrats, I always knew we’ve had disagreements about spending money on programs and things like that. But the disagreements ended when had to defend the country together. That’s gone now. Some elected officials are more afraid of Trump’s anger than they are of Putin. That is a gross misjudgment in a public servant. And there are a lot of those people in the Republican Party.

Haywood: On a related note, you mentioned Europe and our defensive relationships there. Can you talk about how perceptions and the role of NATO have changed since the end of the Cold War?

Dean: The attack on Ukraine has created a sense of solidarity among NATO countries, as well as better arming and a better approach to the budget. I think the countries of Europe understand now, too, that they’re going to have to pay more for their own defense. Europe’s coordination and NATO’s expansion has been very, very helpful. To have 800 miles of frontier with Russia that we didn’t have before is a big deal. But NATO has problems. We have dictators or wannabe dictators within the European Union – the Law and Justice Party (PIS) in Poland, which is the sitting party currently (and hopefully soon to be opposition) [Note: Since the recording of this interview, Polish national elections were held in which the PIS did not win a majority of seats.], and Viktor Orban in Hungary, who is a disaster.

Haywood: This is a broader question. From a high level, what do you think the goals or guiding principles of American foreign policy should be?

Dean: We need to encourage to the best of our ability, first of all, dealing with climate change, which is the biggest threat to the world right now. Second of all, we need to find ways to respect people that we didn’t use to respect. You know, we were never a quote-unquote, “colonial power”, but we acted like one using other methods than the British and the French and Spanish and so forth all did. This change is happening — it’s slow, and problematic sometimes in some countries, but it’s happening. When Ambassador Galvin, who I mentioned earlier, came to talk to my class, one of the things I said was I’m very hopeful this is going to be the African century. Everybody says, Oh, isn’t it going to be the Chinese century? What about the African century? Africa is going to become the most populated continent at some point. There is enormous capacity in that continent for creativity and development, and it ought to be our responsibility to provide reasonable, thoughtful help. Not that that process is going to be easy. I mean, South Africa is really scary considering the goodwill that’s been wasted by corruption and so forth after their incredible liberation. The EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters] there is terrifying though, they’re basically the Trump of the left. But it still is a democracy, which makes it stand out, and it is a multiracial society, which is terrific considering where that came from. So we need to be as helpful to South Africa as we possibly can.

You get a much better understanding of places and their complexity when you actually talk to people from there rather than talking to me. But I’ll share one story: NDI did an exercise with some southern African countries, which were fairly democratic. One of the problems in many democracies, including the United States, is that the major political parties don’t talk to each other. They look at each other as enemies. Particularly on their “home turf.” So the goal was to get members of the three largest political parties in each of the six countries we were working with. And one of the countries – Zambia – had just had an election. The top three officials of Zambia were women: the President was a woman, the attorney general was a woman and the chief justice was also a woman. Which is unfortunately unusual, especially in Africa. So we’re doing this roundtable with all the significant figures from each party and one of the men says “Well, what do you do if you have a woman who is the president who’s totally incompetent, and Chief Justice who doesn’t know anything about the law and an Attorney General who can’t win court cases?” And I said, “Oh, I understand just what your problem is, the women are behaving just like the men!” But working there was great.

Wright: I want to ask a little bit more about what you mentioned, about developing respect for people in areas of the world that previously America has not had so much respect for. We’ve been talking in this interview about the impact of domestic culture and politics on foreign policy, but I’m wondering about the opposite: what information comes from outside the United States into the US either by Americans or by people from other countries that can alter or deepen our understanding of foreign policy?

Dean: The answer to that is music. People will always write stuff, and the intellectuals will read it and everyone can “my-good-man” their way through cocktail hour and what not. But what really is changing is music. Especially in Africa – there’s this incredible fusion of Caribbean, black American, and more traditionally African music. It’s all over the place, and it’s really cool. That’s how you get understanding between people. Remember it’s the people that really matter, not so much the diplomats. The shared cultural stuff that’s happening more and more, that’s what I think is important.

Wright: Do you have any thought or opinions on the way the US has done cultural diplomacy in the past? Are there any strong cultural diplomatic initiatives you’ve seen, or is this something that will happen or perhaps happens best without the hand of government being involved?

Dean: It matters who the president is. Obama was great, especially regarding connections with Africa because of his personal ties there. And he hired some really great people who were able to reach out to various countries there. Obama appointed Patrick Gaspard, who was a big supporter of mine when I ran for president as well as a union guy for SEIU (Service Employees International Union), as ambassador to South Africa. Patrick is black, for context. That kind of representation and connection matters. And not only was Patrick a black diplomat in a majority black country, but this is also a guy who was a black union executive with one of the largest and most successful unions in the United States which matters because labor organizations in South Africa are very developed and an important issue. So Obama was able to pick Patrick as someone who transcended all the handshaking of the State Department and was able to form real bonds with the country and people he was assigned to.

Look, the State Department and diplomacy is important but it’s not everything. Culture and universities and student exchanges and music and kids staying at each other’s houses – that kind of thing is actually in the long run more important for building connections. Obviously, you need an experienced diplomatic corps so when the you-know-what hits the fan you know what to do. But the way people really get to know each other is to have, you know, student exchanges and things like that.

Tauch: What are your thoughts on the current conflict between Israel and Hamas as well as the Biden administration’s approach to the conflict? Can you discuss how the administration’s stance has changed from the start of the conflict until now?

Dean: I think Biden is moving in the right direction. To back up a bit, first I don’t think anyone is going to be able to solve this problem in the long run without a two-state solution. That’s going to require the United States to put pressure on Israel. Second, I’ve made my views on Benjamin Netanyahu well-known in the past. I don’t think he has served Israel well. Israel is in as much if not greater danger from internal threats than they are from terrorists, although I of course think Hamas is awful. I think Israel was better off when Yitzhak Rabin and even Shimon Peres were Prime Ministers than Israel is today, as the most right-wing government in Israeli has attempted to undermine Israeli law against the will of the people.

Many terrible things are going on in this conflict. One of the things I try to do is avoid focusing only on the terrible things without looking for a solution. People get incredibly emotional, as they very well should, about these tragedies, especially when they are close to home. But it’s hard to figure out what the hell to do to solve the problem when you’re clogged up with anger and fury. Before pontificating about which group is terrible or which isn’t, I try to look at the facts. Is Hamas a terrorist organization? Yes. Are they honest? Are they a good negotiating partner? No. Is there terrorism being perpetrated in the West Bank by the settlers? Yes. They’re shooting people and taking their land; that’s terrorism. So it’s a mess. It needs to be stopped: I’m in favor of the ceasefire, obviously. We need to get those hostages out; that has been happening, which is good. But in order for a long-term solution to take shape, the United States must insist on a two-state solution in a way that is fair for the Palestinians. Just for the record: Representative Rashida Tlaib, whom I have not met, was censored for saying “from the river to the sea” in reference to Palestine. You know who also used that phrase? Menachem Begin, when he was Israel’s Prime Minister. There’s two groups that want “from the river to the sea” but they don’t mean the same thing. In a long-run solution, no one is going to get everything they want.

Part of the problem is that, except for the Sadat-Begin agreement at Camp David (and Begin was pressured by Carter), we’ve never had good leadership on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict at the same time. That’s a travesty. That’s just been one of the tragedies of the Middle East is that there have not been leaders on both sides who are capable of moving their people at the same time. The trick about great leadership is telling your people something they don’t want to hear and getting them to do it. It is easy to be pushed along by the crowd to avoid court appearances or wherever your motivation is. But it’s not easy to face them and get them to do something they don’t want to do.

Now I think Israel’s Ariel Sharon would’ve been able to do it when he was Prime Minister. When Sharon was Prime Minister he had been a bit of a bete noire to the liberal Jews because he was very right wing and had stood back during a massacre of Palestinians in Shatila, which was a refugee camp in Lebanon. But Sharon had courage. That’s the thing about politics: it requires strong leaders with courage. I mean, he was prepared to tell his nation that they had to do something that they really didn’t want to do so that there would be a better long term future. And there’s not enough of that anywhere. But that’s what it takes to be a good leader.

Wright: Are their leaders elsewhere in the world who have that quality that you admire? Are there other people that you’ve seen rising in leadership positions or who are making a name for themselves that we should be watching and learning from?

Dean: My favorite was Merkel. Angela Merkel was, in my view, the leader of the free world when Trump was President. As for your second question, I think a lot of those leaders aren’t proven yet. One of the places I’m looking is Great Britain. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when power changes hands in Great Britain. Great Britain is in enormous amount of trouble as a result of their Brexit vote, which was dishonestly engineered. Keir Starmer is going to be the prime minister — for better or for worse, I don’t know him personally. But the Conservatives really screwed up Great Britain terribly, and now we’re going to see if Labour can do any better. The previous Labour leadership and Labour as a whole was a disaster. So they ended up being out of power for 14 years, and now Starmer will get a chance to turn things around. Supposedly he’s boring. I don’t care if he’s boring or if he’s thrilling. I just want him to tell the truth and be a strong leader, which means telling people what they don’t want to hear sometimes. That’s one problem about democracy. You know, people will say things that they think people want to hear. And that’s not what they need all the time. Sometimes you just have to stand up and do what’s right. And if you lose your office, you lose your office, but at least you did what you thought was important. 

But to answer your question, I’m sure there’s a long list of people who are up and coming. You guys should tell me.

Haywood: We’ve heard you’re an avid reader. Have you read anything on foreign policy lately you’d like to share?

Dean: Arne Westad wrote a really interesting book about 12^th century Korea and China, Empire and Righteous Nation, which was very interesting. Strobe Talbott, who was an undergrad at Yale when I was before ending up as Deputy Secretary of State, wrote an interesting book The Great Experiment about how nations have developed and grown together. Ned Blackhawk’s book, The Rediscovery of America, was great – really shines a light on all the hooey people learn about what Native American society was like. It really painted a comprehensive picture of what America was like before settlement by white people, which I found very interesting.

Haywood: Can you talk about how opinions and attitudes have evolved on China within U.S. politics, especially over the last few decades?

Dean: I’ve spent a lot of time in China. My first trip there was around 1999 – a business trip while I was governor. I was getting lunch with some Chinese businessmen, and after a few drinks they said some not great things about the Chinese government. And I asked them “how can you say these things about the government? Don’t you get nervous?” and one of them replied “there has been a saying in Guangzhou for many centuries: ‘the mountains are high and the emperor is far away.’” And that’s true. I think the people know a lot about the government that they don’t say.

Even earlier, my father was in charge of freight operations to supply Chiang Kai Shek during the Chinese civil war. My father had to return home to take care of his father and eventually Chiang Kai Shek was defeated. But one of the things he said was “the Chinese are never going to stay communist because they’re too entrepreneurial.” And they are. Their work ethic is unbelievable. They have made huge leaps since Mao, especially under Deng Xiaoping. I am very fond of China. And I’m not afraid of China, although I do think there are factions you have to watch out for. When I’d come back from trips to China I’d say “China’s a democracy.” Which would surprise people. But I’d tell them “all nine of the Politburo get to vote.” But the President does have to line up those votes – the three from the army, the three from the party, and the three from the bureaucracy.

I went many times with NDI to China. I used to go with other groups, too. At one point, Yale Law and Vermont Law School were co-running an NGO that sued provincial governors for violating environmental laws. We did this with the blessing of the central government there because, 20 years ago, the provincial governors had the strength to threaten the central government. Anyways, what I learned is that you can’t get a flavor of China until you spend some time there. I don’t think it’s possible. I think what people will find out is that we have a lot in common. The Chinese are so entrepreneurial. The young people especially were incredible. The first time I ever went to Beijing, I didn’t know what to expect. (Turns out it’s a big gray city with terrible architecture — go to Shanghai). But there were all these kids in blue jeans walking around hand in hand, you know, girlfriend and boyfriend. That wasn’t at all what I expected. It was indistinguishable from walking around the United States.

The problem with China’s government, and the problem with authoritarianism in general, is in the long run it’s a losing hand. I’ve met Xi before, when he was Vice President. I have respect for him. He’s a tough guy though – I would not want to meet him in the middle of the dark in the night. But his great mistake was getting rid of the term and age limits on the presidency. There are two main problems in every society: asset allocation and succession. The Chinese had solved the succession problem. If you don’t have an orderly succession, you risk blowing everything up. Many societies have blown up because there was no order of succession. And the Chinese had that. And Xi took it away. Xi is very capable, but nobody is perfect. Everybody gets old and a little demented and can’t remember things [gestures at self and laughs]. That’s the mistake they’ve made. The real danger is then when they get into a position of losing stability because of a transition in power. It’s always easier to cause a distraction elsewhere, getting a rise out of people and inspiring patriotism to detract from the chaos and inability to have an orderly succession, than it is to just have an orderly succession process. Of course, most democratic countries in the world already have that process.

[Note: The above transcript reflect the personal opinions of Dr. Dean and do not represent the views or endorsement of the Yale Review of International Studies or the Yale International Relations Association.]

This interview was conducted by Abla Abdulkadir, Owen Haywood, Lisa Tauch, and Megan Wright.

Note: Questions 1-3 were submitted ahead of time by students. This transcript was edited for clarity.

Introductions:

[Guy Disney]: Hi all, thank you very much for coming out on a Friday evening. Guy Disney, from the UK. I was in the British army for seven years, did a trip to the North Pole, and then led an expedition to the South Pole. I’ve been working in Central and Southern Africa for the last five to seven years.

[Bam Aquino]: Hello everyone, I’m Bam Aquino, I’m a Filipino politician, so if anyone is interested in legislation or politics, feel free to ask. Thank you.

[Ala Qasem]: Hi everybody, my name is Ala Qasem, and I’m from Yemen. I work on different things: I established civic society organizations that engage youth in public policy, I established a boutique consulting firm that works on peacebuilding, and I work in areas of economic development, now as a part of the economic team advising the Presidential Leadership Council of Yemen. My career is wide and generalist, if somebody is interested in what it’s like to switch careers.

[Shamil Ibragimov]: Hi everyone, my name is Shamil. I am from Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet Union country in Central Asia. For the last few years, I was the head of Open Society Foundations in my country, and I am the founder of a data-driven, civic engagement startup. I work on the intersection of civic engagement and on social innovations, technology, and education. Thank you.

[Raphaela Schweiger]: Hi everyone, my name is Raphaela. I’m from Germany and I work at a big European foundation, Robert Bosch Stiftung. I work on issues of migration, climate change, global governance, and technology.

[Naasu Genevieve Fofanah]: Hello, I’m Naasu Fofanah and I’m from Sierra Leone. I work in different areas: I’m an entrepreneur, I specialize in gender and women’s empowerment, and you can ask me anything about that, including public service.

[Ann Iyonu]: Hi everyone, my name is Ann. I’m from Nigeria and I work on democracy, conflict resolution and governance.

[Abdouramane Diallo] Hi everyone, my name is Abdou. I’m from Cote d’Ivoire and am currently working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia at the Islamic Development Bank. This is a multilateral development bank that oversees 57 countries, 27 of which are in Africa. I am also the co-founder of two startups: Agrobiotech in Mali, which specializes in cloning plants, and Paygas in South Africa, which specializes in the distribution of clean cooking fuel to low-income families.

[Smita Rakesh] Hello, I am Smita Rakesh and I am from India. I work on climate change, and particularly with early-stage start-ups — investing in them but also supporting them in non-financial ways. I’m happy to speak about social enterprises, innovation, or climate change in India. Thanks.

[Binbin Wang] Hello everyone, I’m Binbin from China, and I work on climate policy and governance. I and my team are going to COP28 [United Nations Climate Change Conference] and we will host a particular pavilion there, so if you guys have any interest on COP, global governance, our planet, come talk to me.

First question: What advice would you give to young leaders (like ourselves) and changemakers who are passionate about making a difference in their communities on a global scale?

[Smita Rakesh]: All of us know a little bit about leadership; it’s about discovering what you think your style of leadership is depending on where you work, who you’re leading, and what problem you’re solving. So, without being preachy about “what should ideal leadership look like” or “what should I really focus on,” I would say that true leadership is one that one leads from the front but also, in a way, from behind, in order to make sure that you’re not just a leader as somebody who is heading something, but also engaging more from the farther quarters as well. So, leadership in climate change, for example, means making sure that it is inclusive and we’re not just talking about one country, one sector, or one community’s problems, but thinking of the globe as a whole. So, in today’s time, which is particularly divisive, just ensuring that we are factoring in multiple interests is a big part of leadership in any sector, particularly in climate. So, leadership must be empathetic, inclusive, and equitable.

[Bam Aquino]: If you’re thinking about development work, politics, or any type of work, go for it. Don’t wait. Most of you will say “I’m going to do that when I’m established,” “I’m going to do that when I have a stable job,” or “I’m going to do that when I graduate.” If you want to do something, do it. You can be an intern, at this age, and you can set up something — we know a lot of people who have set up things, even while they are in college. Look for good people and for your tribe who can be around you and support you, and look for a mentor. You can do it right now. I think most of you are eighteen, right? [Mixed answers from audience]. Nope, seventeen? [Laughter and mixed conversation in audience] Oh, older!

[From audience]: Twenty-one!

[Bam Aquino]: I see, so you’re old! So, you know… All I’m saying is, don’t let your age, status, or where you are be a hindrance. You’re all at Yale, so that’s a leg up already. Don’t let those things hinder you from doing what you think you would like to do, or how you would like to contribute. My school in the Philippines is like the Yale of the Philippines, and oftentimes there is pressure for us to go into business or the corporate world; the most difficult thing is just accepting what it is you really want to do. I think a lot of the World Fellows, at some point in our lives, said we were going to take the risk and do this thing even though we didn’t know what the outcome would be. So that’s my suggestion: go for it and see where it goes. And if it doesn’t work out, you’re twenty-two and you can figure something else out. But don’t let where you are now stop you from doing that.

[Naasu Genevieve Fofanah]: I just want to let you know that having difficulties and challenges is part of life, and I’m here because I’ve overcome very difficult challenges. The strategy for that is you take responsibility for your role in whatever is happening; you cannot be 100% sure over other people’s roles. So, there should be self-reflection and you should be humble in understanding that you cannot always be right. Accept constructive criticism and feedback — there is nothing like bad feedback. However bad it is, just learn from it. My motto is that challenges are growth poles and that’s how you maintain your resilience. Remain humble, be intentional, and if you want to learn more about how to overcome that, my book is out there. Leave it to Naasu: How to Take Charge and Go for What You Want has a chapter for each and every one of you. Read it.

Question 2: In each of your opinions, how can education and empowerment be leveraged to create positive change, especially within your respective fields?

[Ann Iyonu]: I work as the Executive Director of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation, which was founded by the former president of Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan. When you are working with a president, usually he is supposed to be smarter than everybody around him — that’s the perceived notion. But when you are working with the president, ideally you should be smarter than the president. You must always be ten steps, and if possible, twenty steps, ahead. That’s my own perspective. Education is knowing a lot about different topics — democracy, conflicts, context-specifics in the different countries we work in. I work in West Africa, so I have to know a little bit about politics, economics, socio-political life in all of the fifteen countries in the region. So educating myself beyond the education we see within the four walls of the classroom is very key. Learning from people, especially through assimilation (where you embed yourself in every community in which you find yourself), is another form of education. I allow myself to get assimilated; I learn the culture and the food, because we break barriers by being friendly with people. It’s not just the formal education that you need; it is the informal education — you can learn from peers, from people, colleagues. You can learn even by reading and keeping yourself abreast with current events. You must keep studying and studying. Just keep developing yourself; that has helped me. You guys are brilliant; I am sure you can help yourselves. Make sense?

[Ala Qasem] In my case, I’ve been educated in the West. I studied in Canada for my undergrad, I did my masters at Harvard University, and there was always this thought that maybe being educated in elite institutions would give you an advantage when you go back to your country, which in my case was Yemen. You’re going to get that advantage and you’re going to go back equipped with knowledge, and you will be able to push things in a direction that is necessarily better. One thing I’ve learned once I came back, and I came back to Yemen around the time of the Arab Spring, is that there is a level of knowledge that, as Ann mentioned, is not found in the books. It is the kind of tacit knowledge that needs only to be built through experiential learning. And that kind of knowledge only comes from being in the field and having yourself open to what the circumstances are going to teach you. It is only then that you will be able to understand systems that are not taught in books and relations that are not necessarily gained from just reading, but instead through experiencing. Those are very, very critical if you are to drive change in very difficult contexts. And they take time. Traditionally, this kind of tacit knowledge only comes from time, from putting yourself out there, and from being open to the fact that you’re not going to get it the first, second, or third time, but eventually you will be able to build it. That is the key thing — if you can link and connect that with the actual knowledge you are getting in schools here, then you will be able to create changes within complex systems that do not necessarily have pre-defined solutions. The solution only comes from being involved, and being able to adapt very quickly to changes and how the system pushes back. I think that’s one of the things that is very critical, and I have learned the hard way when I went back to Yemen and became part of the government. I hope that you get the chance to experience that, and to open yourself up to that level of training and education.

[Shamil Ibragimov]: I am the co-founder of a private school, the oldest private school in Kyrgyzstan, and I am mostly thinking and reflecting on the topic of high school education rather than higher education. Nowadays, in the time of high-speeds and tectonic changes that are driven by new technologies, we have to admit that the current system of education is outdated. It’s very static, it’s very slow. What you can do with this, this is my personal opinion, but I believe the most important thing you can get from education is to preserve curiosity, to make your passion to study, to develop it, to be curious. There is one phenomenon in school: when kids go to school in the first grade, on the fourth week they lose interest in studying. Because in the first four weeks [Shamil raises his hand above his head], they are so excited, they are so curious to learn something new, at the fourth week it’s like [Shamil drops his hand down low and makes a falling noise]. Their interest drops! Because the system that still exists kills their curiosity. They see that it is boring, that there is nothing to learn. My recommendation for you, for your age, wherever you are – twenty, thirty, forty years – preserve and nurture this curiosity. Because the moment you graduate from this university, the technical knowledge you are getting here will be outdated. Maybe in a year from now it will be outdated, AI drives a lot. You have to be curious, you have to find new questions, you know, that you will be curious to find the answer to. Thank you.

[Abdouramane Diallo]: I think my fellows here have said it all in the area of education and empowerment. I think what I’d like to share with you is that when we come from the kind of school we are in here, that we tend to want to be forward, we know a lot of things, I’ve seen and heard the best talk. I’ve felt the same as that, I did a graduate program at Columbia University. And then I went to work in the Middle East. So, I also was educated in the West, I come from the Ivory Coast, a French-speaking environment, a former French colony, so I studied in French schools, I studied in a French business school. I went to Columbia University. And then I went to the Middle East, to the Islamic Development Bank. And I went there with a conceptual framework of what I had learned in the West, so how to do peacebuilding in conflict-affected areas but I realized there it didn’t work like that. I was confronted with a lot of opposition of my views, and I felt that I knew things better than the people there. But it wasn’t the case; they knew much better. One of the best experiences I have had in my life is to learn from the people that I found there, in this institution where I was working. So, I founded an enterprise department in the bank worth three hundred thousand dollars, and then we brought it to forty-eight million dollars after four years, thanks to the people who were working there. Principally, because they had much better contextual knowledge of the place, they knew the players much better, and they were, especially, open-minded. That’s what I want to tell you. I went there with some ideas that I had from here, and whereas they had so many better ideas. What I am glad to share is to be curious, but to also let yourself be empowered by others. Don’t believe that you come from Yale or Harvard or from Columbia and then you are leading the world – those people, they know so much better. Just let yourself be influenced by others as well. Be humble and do that. I’ve co-founded companies, also, without having any knowledge of energy and agriculture or biotechnology, just because I’ve also worked with people from those fields who knew these things so much better. I humbled myself to the point where I could learn from them. That’s just a recommendation, learning actually happens both in the classroom and in the field, as my colleague said here, so just be humble and accept learning from others.

Question 3: In your individual experiences, what are some of the most pressing global challenges you have encountered in your fields of work and how do you navigate those?

[Raphaela Schweiger]: As I’ve said, I work on migration, and if you look at the world these days, you look at the high numbers of people displaced. You look at how many thousands of people don’t have access to education because they cannot continue with their life as they were planning and it was supposed to be. So, I think for me, when you talk about global challenges we can go through everyone here talking about migration, climate, agriculture, peace and conflict, the role of women in politics. For me it is a bigger question of how we envisage the world that we live in and how we create new collaborations and how we actually think and work together because we so many divisions and some of them are ending up in really big conflicts. Some of them are really visible, some of them are very present in the media, and others are not. I have been listening to so many colleagues, fellows, here. Over time, what it does to individual people’s lives and how much the geopolitics of it is influencing in that sense. If we are thinking about the [recording inaudible], thinking about how conflicts emerge and how to solve conflicts, thinking about different possibilities for the world, are we talking ourselves into conflicts between the US and China, are we talking ourselves into certain new challenges that we don’t need to have. How do we find different ways of thinking about it? And then you can go into all these areas that are increasingly interconnected and see how organizations and people are connecting. I work on how the climate crisis will affect migration in the future and already does. All the displacement we see all over the world is not only doing a lot of harm to people but is hindering economic development because people are being put into situations where they can really create. All the conflicts are hindering economic development. So what does that mean going forward, and I think places like here and people like you when you’re studying here, you can actually think about different possibilities for how to think about the world and how we can resolve some of those things in a very tiny way, having conversations about what are our commonalities as people in that sense. That was very broad, but I feel I wouldn’t only want to talk about migration.

[Binbin Wang]: So, as I mentioned, I work on climate. You may think the crisis I mention will be on climate, the climate crisis. Fourteen years ago if you had asked me the same question my answer would be “Yes! Climate! The climate crisis!” At that moment, I was in Copenhagen and it was also my first time participating in this kind of UN treaty policy, at this high-level, influential conference. I was shocked, and I said wow! So many people care about this issue, but it’s not enough. If other people don’t take action then we cannot address climate change together. Nowadays, through this program something here changed [Binbin points to her head], and the fellows here changed my mindset. Why? Because when we talk about climate change, now there’s a new goal, a new word and that’s carbon neutrality, right? And if we want to reach the carbon neutrality, net-zero future we should use more renewable energy, right? But renewable energy means that it’s another chance for humans to experience an industrial revolution. We can look back in the history of humans. Every time – the first industrial revolution, we found coal. The second one, we found oil. These are all fossil fuels; we need to use renewable energy. You can learn from the history, you can identify this is really a new chance for all of us. To only talk about climate is not enough. Renewable energy will change all our systems. Our lives, our working style, everything. Together with AI. Then when we talk about the future, the net-zero future, what should we think of? Beyond climate. This is now why I, together with my team, work on the synergy between climate and the other sixteen SDGs [UN Sustainable Development Goals], which we will reach the seventeenth SDG together when we reach a net-zero future. And then we can see what is happening around the world nowadays. As Raphaela mentioned, conflicts, right? And Janah [Binbin is referring to Janah Ncube, another one of the 2023 World Fellows who was not able to attend the event], Janah is not here, she showed us a map of the world this year. Only North America, part of South America, China, and South Africa are still in peace. All the other parts of the world are in crisis, conflicts. Civil wars or other kinds of wars. If we have more wars, then how can we reach the net-zero future? How we can we reach the SDGs? This is why we should care about this kind of issue together. We need to find the synergetic solutions, and we should open our hearts, open our minds to not only stand in our own silo, our own aspect of the future. It’s not enough. What I say is why should open our mind to the world, keep our curiosity, and think of what I can contribute. Otherwise, if we only stand in our own silo, and we refuse to learn new things then we cannot shake hands with other people. We should set up our connections between academics and practicers. This morning, one of my students called me and said “I got a new offer in the UN but I refused.” I said “Why?” He said “Oh, I have participated. You have given me a lot of opportunities, to support me through different kinds of UN conferences, and I feel tired. They are similar, you know. I don’t want to go to these kinds of fancy conferences anymore, I want to go into academia, to a university.” And I said “What do you need?” “I need to publish journal papers, more papers. I need to reach Nature, Science.” “I see. Any conflicts between these two, your experience in different UN conferences, and your research interests? Have you asked the people in this conference for their feedback, their own concerns about your research interest? Because they are in the real world! Have you tested your research interests with them? And if you can make good use of this opportunity, then you can identify the real problems, and then you can change your platform to that of a university and conduct research on that real problem. Then, you can contribute more to solving those real problems. There are also deep connections between these two.” So this is my suggestion: to keep open and to try and set connections to your world and open your world to the outside

[Questions 4 and 5 came from the audience]:

Question 4:

[Tomas]: Thank you all so much for your time and for being here, it has been great. This question is especially for those of you who work in development institutions, and economic development in developing countries (I, myself, am from Colombia). What I want to ask you is: how do you navigate the institutional challenges of the public and the private together? Of going into a national, institutional framework and trying to bring things from international governance, for example? Oh, and my name is Tomas and I am a sophomore in Branford.

[Abdouramane Diallo]: Look, how to navigate the challenge of international, public institutions and the private sector. To be honest with you, it’s very difficult, okay? I started my career as a banker, in Europe, so I’ve been always kind of private sector driven, and I decided to go back to school and join an international, multilateral development institution. But, you know, over time I got bored by the work in that development institution; it’s still very important what the institution does, but that’s the reason why I felt the need to go back a little bit to the private sector and try my way at entrepreneurship. That way, I could always be connected to some sort of world where I can see some concrete things. So, how I reconcile this is by actually acting, by trying to do my best to, you know, see private sector work, speak with companies, build companies, and understand those challenges. I had the chance to be in an institution where I understand the biggest issues and I’m connected with governments, with ministries, with influencers at that level, which is important. With resources, also, that they provide to do this work, but it’s also very good to be close to reality. Hence, being close to the private sector. I don’t really have a recommendation, you know, for that, but if you intend to do a career in a multilateral development institution, there is also always windows available at all institutions. They are always, I mean you’re from Colombia, you have the Inter-American Development Bank and you have the World Bank, and here you will always have some private sector sections that are there. Then, the biggest challenge is to overcome the administrative part of it, the red tape part of it. If you are someone who is really active, likes a fast-paced environment, then you know you have to make a choice where you would like to go: if you would like to go to the public part of it, or if you would like to strictly remain in the private part of it, that will depend on you. But what worked for me is to actually keep one foot in the private sector, while actually looking at the bigger issues and benefitting from the network of the public institution.

[Bam Aquino, addressing the audience member who asked the question]: Do you intend to work in Colombia or do you intend to work in the multilaterals?

[Tomas]: I’m still figuring it out, but I am leaning more toward the multilaterals.

[Bam Aquino]: So, from the perspective of a local practitioner, the big multilaterals come and there is a tendency to do everything they say. And that’s just not the case. You always have to remember, they come with good intentions probably, but sometimes things don’t translate the same – that’s happened in the Philippines many times. For example, policies that the World Bank pushed that on paper seemed really good but in practice didn’t really work. If you’re from the multilateral, just have the humility to understand how things really happen in the local setting because there’s a tendency for people from these multilaterals to come in with all the solutions. They say “oh, it worked in Colombia, it must work in the Philippines” and sometimes it just doesn’t. So always have that in mind.

[Ana Iyonu]: Let me just add to what Bam said. I think it’s all about context, knowing the context of where you want to work properly. Like he said, if they come with the idea that whatever worked in let’s say Venezuela should work in Colombia, I think it’s about understanding the context. Taking what you can, and applying it within in your own context. Because most times, they have the peripheral knowledge about the environment, but you have been somebody who probably comes from there, who understands the context and the issues better. It’s not about taking everything hook, line, and sinker, but applying it to your context.

[Naasu Genevieve Fofanah]: I will answer your question but because others have to ask, we can talk. I worked in government, I worked in the UN, I am now in the private sector.

[Ala Qasem]: I’ll add one more, one last thing. I think this is very, very important what you are trying to ask, and I have as well worked in the government, within economic development. One of the realizations that we have come to is the fact that, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected countries, or least developed countries, is that development will not happen by the government alone. You need the private sector, you need civil society organizations, you need all the actors. Now the challenge that we have faced when we are trying to mobilize the private sector is that in order for them to come in a context where there is a high cost for accessing finance, it becomes really hard. That formula of risk and reward, it is not calibrated in a way that makes incentives for the private sector to want to invest. So, what we are trying to do at this point in time is we are trying to work with development finance institutions and others to bring in some of the development financing to lower the risk for the private sector so that they can accept to work in countries like that. If I am, for example, the World Bank or others can I put in some money towards first-loss or [recording inaudible] so the private sector is going to come and it’s going say “this is going to make it now much more attractive for me.” This is where we need to start thinking of some creative solutions where you can bring the multilaterals or development finance institutions or others and bring the private sector and bring the government and get them to talk about what is it that is preventing that kind of synergy and that kind of collaboration and come up with solutions that are very pragmatic, that can be implemented. And that requires some dialogue, that requires some openness to thinking about some new innovative types of solutions. That is just one of the big issues that we are facing.

Question 5:

[Katia]: Hi, thank you so much for being here. My name is Katia, I am from Ukraine and I understand that if you want to go back and help your country it’s more about the skills rather than the concrete facts that you learn. And I love America, I love studying here, but I feel like my purpose here is to go back to my country and help there. But, for many of us, I feel that our home countries are quite different from where we study and go to university. So I was wondering: how can we be the most helpful and how can we overcome the fact the issues we deal with here and at home can be so different?

[Guy Disney]: Horrendous, to hear what’s going on at home for you. There will be light at the end of the tunnel. For myself, I mean from my point of view, while I was in the British army at [recording inaudible] I got my right leg blown off below the knee in Afghanistan, I lost a soldier, it was quite challenging. And then to lead expeditions with other injured soldiers – I’m not saying that to talk myself up but more seeing what human beings can do post-conflict. And you know I’ve been seeing the Superhumans Project you’ve got in Lviv which I think is exceptional. For me, it’s all about how do you empower society to be a better version of itself and it starts at the individual level and builds up. But you know, seeing the coverage that’s coming out, I’ve no doubt you guys have that in you, but it will take changemakers to do that. And it’s finding the grassroots projects that really can affect that, not losing sight of what you are as a society. There will come a point when it is over. And all of us, we still focus on the good society piece, and it’s fundamentally important. Making money — great. Being good politicians — great. But having people who are invested in what they believe and, I don’t want to sound too fluffy, but a slightly better world. Do go home. And make it better.

[Raphaela Schweiger]: Maybe I can just add, for my organization and philanthropy we work a lot with civil society actors in Ukraine who have left Ukraine for now, all across the world. And my sense specifically referring to Ukraine is that amazing people who can do great stuff are all over the place right now for all of the very dramatic reasons. I really believe all the people that I work with have the sense of “we want to rebuild” and are thinking about this and I think this will be an exercise where it doesn’t matter where you spent the time during the war, but more kind of what skills, what intents you are bringing to it. I think it’s horrendous what’s going on. There are coalitions that are being built right now for rebuilding, there will be major finances, there will be impact funds, there are already a lot of funds for civil society and social investments and start-up investments. When it comes to Ukraine I think there will be, on a positive note, a lot of opportunities that you can think about here right now, but probably you are in that world enough that you have and start something. What I’ve seen specifically from Ukraine is a lot of the digital connectivity of people just getting things done without being in the same place, which is very, very impressive, which is what I have seen coming out of this, even in this situation right now. So keep up that spirit, and go with it.

[Naasu Genevieve Fofanah]: So I returned home after living in the UK, I returned to Sierra Lione just after the civil war and I went back because I was feeling like you and needed, you know, I was hungry to go back home. So took the degrees, left everything here, a good job, and I returned home. I went back because nobody is going to build Ukraine for you. You are Ukraine [gestures at Katia]. You are the person who is going to build Ukraine. Because you understand Ukraine better. So you have to go with that zeal, understanding that you have more influence now. Networks. Education. That you can take to Ukraine and make Ukraine a better society. So what you have, which is really good, is the passion and the intentionality, which is all good, but you are going to make a difference. And when you get there – when I went back, I wasn’t expecting to do the things that I am doing now. I will tell you had I not gone back, I most definitely would not be at Yale University talking to you today. I am here because I returned to Sierra Lione. I learned, and I have supported, I have worked in Sierra Lione on post-war reconstruction. That’s the value I bring to places like this. So, go. You will find a niche. You will not find the big job you think Yale is going to give you, but you can create. And once you do that, it’s so valuable, you will expand; you are going to find all the rough diamonds. You will claim them, and come back here, and people will be in this room, trying to listen to you.

[Clapping from audience]

[Shamil Ibragimov]: We have an office in Ukraine, and the director is a good friend of mine. I noticed one thing, I was several times in Ukraine, what I really admire about the local initiatives in Ukraine. My point is that, after graduation from Yale, you will be inspired like I was to go big, to do something big, you know? To be employed by the World Bank, whatever. But the real things happen on the very local level. So my point is the best you can probably do for your country is to be “glocal”: think globally, and act locally. And that you will find, because you have a huge, great legacy in Ukraine of very local initiatives. I love them and I admire them. I love them so much that I implemented them back home, also. It is a competition between being humble and at the same time thinking big. And then you will end up with something really cool. Here at Yale, you will find so many opportunities. Then you can apply those opportunities. [Shamil expresses his support for Ukraine to Katia in Russian].

[Clapping from audience]

[End of transcript]

A History of Dominion

The region commonly referred to as Central Asia encompasses the states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan^[12] – a swath of territory spanning over three million square kilometers with just over 70 million inhabitants.^[13] Residents from these countries have long lived at the crossroads of great empires and are as diverse in language and culture as their historical occupiers. Notably, the arid steppes nd mountains of Central Asia conceal vast natural resources, the foundation of the region’s primarily export based economy.^[14]  Over the last century and a half, Central Asia has primarily been the domain of Russia, first under the rule of the Tsars as a part of the Russian Empire and then as member states of the Russian-dominated Soviet Union.^[15] However, Odd Arne Westad, Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs at Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, says, “the period of Russian ascendancy has been a kind of aberration in a broader historical pattern.”^[16] Professor Westad, who specializes in the history of the Cold War and China-Russia relations, says that Central Asia had been the realm of various Chinese empires up until the late 19th century, when the Russian Empire expanded eastward.^[17] The close proximity of the Soviet Union’s Central Asian holdings to China’s western frontier, Xinjiang, and Mongolia (a key buffer state between the two countries) contributed to rising tensions between the two communist superpowers in the mid-20th century.^[18] “China clearly regarded Soviet domination in Central Asia, including Soviet Central Asia… as being illegitimate, and underlined the need of these peoples to have their own states and their own futures,” Westad states, describing a fundamental opposition in China held during the 20th century over Russian control of the region.^[19]

China Steps In

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the newly independent Central Asian states found themselves in a new regional order very similar to the last.^[20] Russia remained the dominant economic power early in the century, purchasing a plurality of Central Asian exports and contributing billions to the economies of Central Asia both in direct investment and remittances from migrant workers.^[21] But even as Russian investment kept flowing into the region, the Russian domestic economic situation fluctuated greatly, subject to downturns as a result of the 2008 financial crisis and instability in the oil markets.^[22] While undergoing slight economic growth throughout this period, the Russian economy lagged behind increasingly prosperous neighbors in Eastern Europe, and, more importantly, China.^[23][24] This relative decline opened up an opportunity for China to replace Russia as the dominant economic partner for the region.

It is no secret that China has undergone explosive economic development over the past several decades.^[25][26] A combination of increased free market regulations domestically and a surge in the demand for cheap manufacturing produced overseas allowed the Chinese economy to take off with unprecedented growth.^[27] China’s growing economy has expanded trade on all fronts, including in Central Asia. By 2016, China had traded more yearly with four of the five Central Asian states than Russia did.^[28] China was also the number one trading partner for three of these states.^[29] This illustrates a level of economic supremacy in the region that has superseded Russia’s. China has not only increased trade with the region but has placed special emphasis on direct investment and support of infrastructure projects in Central Asia. Chinese President Xi Jinping announced China’s new “One Belt One Road” initiative in 2013, or more simply the Belt and Road Initiative,^[30] a program with specific emphasis on developing infrastructure in Africa, Central Asia, and other parts of the globe.^[31] China has since spent billions of dollars in direct investment payments to Central Asia. This includes working on projects from a China-Central Asia Pipeline^[32] to rail and highway linkages between China and Europe across Central Asia.^[33] The nations of Central Asia have also increasingly racked up larger and larger amounts of debt owed to China in large part because of these projects. China holds almost half the debt of Tajikistan, and billions of dollars more in the other states.^[34] The near uniform decline of Russian economic power in Central Asian states combined with military weakening due to the war in Ukraine has begun to lead to the diminution of Russian political dominance in the region as well.^[35] This is a trend that will only continue as Russian authority in the region continues to deteriorate.

But Russian influence in the region is not entirely diminished. Take the crisis earlier this year in Kazakhstan. When widespread protests threatened the survival of the regime there, Russian troops poured across the border to intervene.^[36] The presence of Russian soldiers played a large part in quelling the dissent and demonstrates the hard power the Kremlin still has in the region. However, this military action should be seen as a remnant of the past political order in the region, not an indicator of continued Russian dominance, Arne Westad argues.^[37] “If you look at everything, starting with economic relations but also now moving into political and strategic relations, it’s pretty clear that China is the one on the ascendancy” he asserts.^[38] China’s grip on Central Asia is only more likely to solidify as Russian soldiers remain bogged down in Ukraine and sanctions limit Russia’s ability to exert significant economic influence beyond its borders.

The Central Asian Perspective

China’s replacement of Russia has been met with mixed reactions by the people of Central Asia. A key concern held by some people in Central Asian is China’s pattern of human rights abuse in Xinjiang.^[39] The people of Central Asia share deep cultural connections with the Uyghur people of China’s westernmost province.^[40] This has inspired much citizen activism in drawing attention to the indoctrination camps in Xinjiang, which also imprison numerous people of non-Uyghur Central Asian ethnicity, such as Kazakhs.^[41] Central Asian governments, afraid of angering China, have responded to citizen attempts to draw attention to the abuses by harassing and suppressing activists looking to draw attention to this issue.^[42] Much like the Chinese government, the Central Asian states are largely regarded as authoritarian and engage in their own human rights abuses.^[43] The regional realignment with another authoritarian power is likely only to reinforce this status quo.

There is also alarm in the region about how two-sided an economic relationship with China these states can expect. Some fear that China’s economic policies will be purely extractive, looking to direct as many natural resources as possible into China’s growth, failing to make substantial investments in the long-term health and development of the region.^[44] Also of concern is that these countries will become entirely dependent on China economically.^[45] China would have such influence, the worry goes, that it would be able to effectively control how the states act—regardless of the states’ own interests.^[46] The people of Central Asia are likewise concerned about the increased role of Chinese business eroding their own economic and cultural standing.^[47] The people have responded with waves of Sinophobia and protest;^[48][49] however, this has not dissuaded Central Asian leaders from continuing towards the path of economic growth offered by Chinese involvement.^[50] This wealth, while enriching the elite and governments of these states, is unlikely to generate substantial improvement in socioeconomic problems that affect the region.^[51]

A New Future for Central Asia

As it stands, the Central Asian states will continue their turn towards China – with seemingly little alternative.^[52]  Fears of Chinese dominance and exploitation in the region have been set aside (for now) in favor of dreams of a prosperity that Chinese trade will provide.^[53] China, for its part, has added guaranteed itself even more global influence, bringing the Central Asian states – and their abundance of resources – into the Chinese sphere. Central Asia has the resources to fuel the economic heartbeat of the Chinese political machine,^[54] making China’s dream of becoming a global superpower^[55] a very near reality. And where is Russia? Trapped in Ukraine, with a struggling economy that stands no chance of catching up with the Chinese juggernaut. The region is all but uncontested: Central Asia has officially left the Russian Empire and has walked right into China’s open arms.

References:

[1] Berman, Paul. “The Intellectual Catastrophe of Vladimir Putin.” Foreign Policy, March 13, 2022. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/13/putin-russia-war-ukraine-rhetoric-history/.

[2] Troianovski, Anton. “Putin the Great? Russia’s President Likens Himself to Famous Czar.” The New York Times, June 9, 2022, sec. World. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/world/europe/putin-peter-the-great.html.

[3] Washington Post. “Ukraine Hammers Russian Forces into Retreat on East and South Fronts.” October 4, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/04/russia-retreat-kherson-lyman-ukraine/.

[4] “After Battlefield Setbacks in Ukraine, Putin Orders Mobilisation.” Al Jazeera. September 21, 2022. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/21/russia-reacts-to-ukraine-success-mobilisation-polls-and-threats.

[5] Snow, Shawn. “Central Asia’s Lukewarm Pivot to China.” The Diplomat, August 16, 2016. https://thediplomat.com/2016/08/central-asias-lukewarm-pivot-to-china/.

[6] Nurgozhayeva, Roza. “How Is China’s Belt and Road Changing Central Asia?” July 9, 2020. https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/how-is-chinas-belt-and-road-changing-central-asia/.

[7] Aminjonov, Farkhod, Alina Abylkasymova, Anna Aimée, Bahtiyor Eshchanov, Daniyar Moldokanov, Indra Overland, and Roman Vakulchuk. “BRI in Central Asia: Rail and Road Connectivity Projects.” SSRN Scholarly Paper. Rochester, NY, 2019. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=3505258.

[8] Global Times. “New China-Turkmenistan Natural Gas Field in Operation.” Global Times, June 20, 2022. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202206/1268601.html.

[9] Denis Volkov and Andrei Kolesnikov. “The Coming Deluge: Russia’s Looming Lost Decade of Unpaid Bills and Economic Stagnation.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. November 21, 2021. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/24/coming-deluge-russia-s-looming-lost-decade-of-unpaid-bills-and-economic-stagnation-pub-85852.

[10] Ben Aris and Ivan Tkachev. “Long Read: 20 Years of Russia’s Economy Under Putin, in Numbers.” The Moscow Times, August 19, 2019. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/19/long-read-russias-economy-under-putin-in-numbers-a66924.

[11] Raiser, Martin. “China’s Rise Fits Every Development Model.” Brookings, October 17. 2019.

[12] Uuriintuya Batsaikhan and Marek Dabrowski. “Central Asia — Twenty-Five Years after the Breakup of the USSR.” Russian Journal of Economics 3, no. 3 (September 1, 2017): 296–320. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ruje.2017.09.005.

[13] Batsaikhan, “Twenty-Five Years.”

[14] Batsaikhan.

[15] Dubnov, Arkady. “Reflecting on a Quarter Century of Russia’s Relations With Central Asia.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. April 19, 2018. https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/04/19/reflecting-on-quarter-century-of-russia-s-relations-with-central-asia-pub-76117.

[16] Odd Arne Westad (Elihu Professor of History and Global Affairs, Jackson School of Global Affairs, Yale University), in discussion with the author, Jackson School of Global Affairs, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, October 5, 2022.

[17] Westad, discussion with the author.

[18] Westad.

[19] Westad.

[20] Dubnov, “Reflecting on Russia’s Relations.”

[21] Batsaikhan, “Twenty-Five Years.”

[22] Andre Kolesnikov and Denis Volkov. “The Coming Deluge: Russia’s Looming Lost Decade of Unpaid Bills and Economic Stagnation.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. November 24, 2021. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/11/24/coming-deluge-russia-s-looming-lost-decade-of-unpaid-bills-and-economic-stagnation-pub-85852.

[23] Kolesnikov and Volkov, “The Coming Deluge.”

[24] Raiser, “China’s Rise.”

[25] Raiser.

[26] Congressional Research Service, China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States. June 25, 2019.

[27] Congressional Research Service, China’s Economic Rise

[28] Dubnov, “Reflecting on Russia’s Relations.”

[29] Dubnov.

[30] Snow, “Lukewarm Pivot.”

[31] Nurgozhayeva, “Changing Central Asia.”

[32] Global Times, “China-Turkmenistan Natural Gas.”

[33] Aminjonov et al., “BRI in Central Asia.”

[34] Dubnov, “Reflecting on Russia’s Relations.”

[35] Auyezov, Olzhas. “‘We Want Respect’: Putin’s Authority Tested in Central Asia.” Reuters, October 18, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/world/we-want-respect-putins-authority-tested-central-asia-2022-10-18/.

[36] Chausovsky, Eugene. “Why Russia Sent Troops Into Kazakhstan.” Foreign Policy. January 7, 2022. https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/07/kazakhstan-russia-troops-csto/.

[37] Westad, discussion with the author.

[38] Westad.

[39] Bradsher, Keith. “In the ‘Great Game’ of Central Asia, China’s Leader Seeks the Advantage.” The New York Times, September 16, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/world/asia/china-xi-central-asia.html.

[40] Bradsher, “In the ‘Great Game.’”

[41] Ramzy, Austin. “Critic Who Exposed China’s Muslim Camps Is Detained, Even Across the Border.” The New York Times, March 13, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/world/asia/china-kazakh-activist-camps-xinjiang-muslims.html.

[42] Ramzy, “Exposed China’s Muslim Camps.”

[43] Nurgozhayeva, “Changing Central Asia.”

[44] Snow, “Central Asia’s Lukewarm Pivot.”

[45] Bradsher, “In the ‘Great Game.’”

[46] Nurgozhayeva, “Changing Central Asia.”

[47] Snow, “Central Asia’s Lukewarm Pivot.”

[48] Snow.

[49] Nurgozhayeva, “Changing Central Asia.”

[50] Snow, “Central Asia’s Lukewarm Pivot.”

[51] Nurgozhayeva, “Changing Central Asia.”

[52] Snow, “Central Asia’s Lukewarm Pivot.”

[53] Snow.

[54] Bradsher, “In the ‘Great Game.’”

[55] Jake Sullivan and Hal Brands. “China Has Two Paths To Global Domination.” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. May 22, 2020. https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/05/22/china-has-two-paths-to-global-domination-pub-81908.