Episode 14: An Asian Perspective on Global Climate and Geopolitics

"The Future of Power" der Geopolitik-Podcast von Agora Strategy. Herzlich willkommen zur 14. Episode "The Future of Power" der Geopolitik-Podcast von Agora Strategy. Mein Name ist Timoblenk, ich bin Partner Zio, der Agora Strategy-Gruppe. Und heute habe ich einen besonderen Gast mit Dr. Paracanna und wir machen eine Special Edition in Englisch. Die Apparach, danke so viel für die Zeit und willkommen zu unserer Podcast. Vielen Dank, danke sehr. Heute ist eine Art Ausgleichung von Global Climate und Geopolitik. Wir sprechen von Global Geopolitik-Giografie, aber wir werden auch in der zweiten Seite der Podcast zu zoomen. Wir können von der Podcast ein bisschen mehr in der Regel in der Region und in der anderen Seite der Podcast zu zoomen. So, bevor wir über die Topik kommen, let's briefly introduce dich an unserer Lösung. Paracanna ist ein well-known Academic. Sie haben einige books über Global Geopolitik, über Climate. Und auf die Global-Krise, du hast die A-Th-Werkung und wir sehen sehr viel nach oben. Du bist in der ganzen Region und die Studie von Deutschland und der Universität in der USA. Du hast auch die PhD von der Landen-Kolle von der Internationalen-Kolle. Und du bist der Founder und CEO der AI-Part Global Investmentplattform, der Global Investmentplattform, der Alpha. Und du bist auch Founder und die Partnerung von der Strategie von der Future Map. In diesen Roles, du bist auch viel mit den Companies, du bist viel mit den Governments, so, du bist auch der Saist. Du bist auch jemand, der im anderen Ländern lebt und du bist im Deutschland, aber auch in India, Singapore, der USA, der Erreine und der USA. Wir sind sehr viel angenehm und zu Hause zu sein. Ich habe nur die Punkte von dir und den Begriffen gelegt. Ich habe auch die Punkte von dir gelegt. Ich habe die Punkte von dir gelegt. snakeschimpx z., dass die juven fine Luft mit접ildaEvenheit eigentlich nicht sch intellectually sch мехs Macron - Sauber Branchmen und Menschen nicht. Diese ho Unternehmen und die es umgeblich positiv zu laufen, die das einen Ende der Allah-- Dayd Pas drastic. Und dann hat man einen Mehreniffer nicht interessiert. Friszer LIFE HEIN TEILSCHR Society utilization Reformatica und davor zu suddenly in einem Weltkommensamt, in dem die Weltpopulation ist, stagnieren und wir Soon decline, ist unchartig und charakterisch, aber es ist intensiv geopolitisch. Und einfach fast auf die Climate-Change, natürlich, das ist derzeit. Und die Climate-Change hat sehr globaler Konsequenzen, globaler Effekt, aber sehr, sehr unerblich in verschiedenen timeskriegen. Generally speaking, Climate-Change ist zu Recht, dass der Saat oder der Suthernehemispher, oder die Kontinente der Afrika und der South America, in ein mehr perniciousischer Weg, dann die Northern Hemisphere. Most der Weltpopulation macht das Leben in der Northern Hemisphere. Die Eurasie, mega-continent und die North American continent, die Afrika hat mehr Menschen in die North America, aber es ist geographisch, geologically, mehr circumskriert. Ich bin in den Weg, in den demographischen Ballens in der Welt, mit der Politik-Politik-Politik, in den Verwaltung der Praxmenheit, politischen Migration und die Climate-Change, der Migration, die wir zusammenkommen. forecasts within and across the regions of the world to predict which regions and which countries are most likely to collect the most new residents desirable or not in the future, and whether or not they harness them will play into whether or not those countries increase or decrease in power in the future. So that's just a big picture way of looking at how demographics and climate come into geopolitics in the future, but there's of course a lot more to say. So thank you very much for this big picture. So following up on this line of thoughts and this line of understanding of the current developments, my takeaway is that first the basic assumption the well population is growing and but resources of the continent of the world are limited is not going to hold for much longer. And in this regard, you see a stronger mobility movement from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere or in your assessment will just the balances change. And regions like the European Union, if they don't adapt quickly enough regarding migration are going to fail as a global power or lose influence at least. We can clearly see the thrust in terms of south to north migration as a major vector. And that's not only between continents such as South America to North America, but also Africa to Europe. We can also see it within particular continental land masses. You can see the movement of Asians within Asia, Asians to Europe as well. Europe is no doubt a growing collection point, you might say, for migrations and for vectors that we've really never experienced before in world history. This volume and scale and speed and intensity of Arab populations, African populations, Central and South and East Asian populations into Europe is really quite remarkable. And of course Europe is having a hard time integrating those populations. It doesn't have the Anglo-American history of mass assimilation over the 19th and 20th centuries. And yet if you compare to just 20 or 30 years ago, some European countries such as Germany in particular are doing a better job of it than one would have thought. I think everyone my age will remember the famous phrase. I think it was a German politician, Jürgen Lutzkursd, or Norbert Wurz, who said Kindoscht in the, right? And so one of the things I looked at in my recent research was, well, Vyfilah Kindagiptos in the Tat and the Eigelish in Deutschland, right? So I was like, oh my goodness, there's, you know, we're a couple of years away from there being more Indian ethnic Indian residents of Germany than children born to ethnic Germans in Germany. And so in a way it failed, right? There is more in there than Kindos soon enough. So of course, the fastest growing fertility rates are among migrant populations. And yet despite the off day party and so forth, you still have a fundamental stability in the German polity over this issue, significant reforms, of course, in the citizenship laws and these kinds of things that have been happening in Germany. So I do think that this phenomenon of, you know, the Neu-Indochen is playing out in a generally acceptable, you know, in progressive way. And I think that other countries can learn from that even though it's uncharted territory and it's very difficult. And again, those of us who were teenagers in Germany in the 1990s can remember that there were parties that were much more troublesome than the off day is from a ideological standpoint. There was the NPE Day, for example, in the 90s that I remember from, you know, practicing around East Berlin. You know, there were actually areas I was afraid to go. But I wouldn't say that today about the, the off day, you know, I wouldn't be afraid to talk to or confront, you know, a politician from the off day. So getting into a bit of detail there, but I think overall, the most important thing to remember is there are, there is politics and the rhetoric of leaders, who may be xenophobic, racist, nationalist, anti-immobrant. And then there's the empirical reality of the numbers. And to be very, very clear whether it is the pen, whether it is Gertvildos, whether it is George Amelani, whether it is the off day, it does not matter. What you consistently see year after year after year after year is that the actual number of migrants, legal, illegal, skilled, unskilled, keeps on going up. So again, as an, as an analyst, you should always focus on the actual reality, not just the rhetoric. And it points to, again, Europe just one region in particular with a very fast-growing migrant population. And that is a can be, can be a source of strength. But as we know, the ground reality depends very much on where you are. This is why cities that harness migrant inflows will ultimately succeed more than cities or regions or provinces or nations that do not. So if you look at the cities in Europe where you have fast-growing migrant populations and maintain that stability and that absorption, right, those places succeed. That could be Berlin, that could be entire countries like Switzerland, which are of course very, very selected about which migrants can come in. Or it can be cities like Milan versus regions like southern Italy, right? So you see these spatial dynamic shifting. And that too is fundamentally geopolitics as well, because we are entering a world in which you have devolution, growing fragmentation, and these tendencies where the political units that matter in terms of those that have the most authority are not necessarily just the sovereign nation states as we define them today. When we look on the government side of that, so in terms of, for example, past dependencies in the US and the German democracy, you often have established rules, procedures, and it's hard sometimes for policymakers to break out of these path dependencies and adapt to actually a changing world. As from an outside perspective, we could say, okay, things are changing. We need to embrace new data, the analysis, and change quickly. And governance structures often have troubles changing or shifting that quickly. So in your view, if this is happening fast enough, taking the example of Germany or the US or other countries like, for example, the government and Singapore, Asian countries, Middle East countries quicker in acting. Well, perhaps the gold standard in this regard would be the United Arab Emirates because it has a very unique particular experience. Now, of course, it's not replicable and won't be replicated in other places, but just so that people have a benchmark in their minds. This is a country whose population is the fastest growing in the history of the world. So no country ever has grown from 200,000 people at independence 50 years ago in the early 1970s to 12 million people today. So that's a 60, 60 fold increase in its own population. Of course, the indigenous Emirati population is less than 10%. So this is the most nationally diluted country that has ever existed. And yet, of course, owing to the fact that it is a monarchy and is effectively acts very much as a transnational, interregional commercial agglomeration of merchants from everywhere. It has devised a strategy to harness this potential, this manpower in a way, this labor force to serve its national interests as defined by building demographic connectivity with the rest of the world. So that's really up here. In countries like Singapore are in a slightly lower tier. There's a very large indigenous population. It's more homogenous in terms of being Chinese primarily with a lot of Indians and Malaysians. And so forth as well. But if you look at the, and then you have the Anglo, the Anglophone countries, the United States, Canada, UK, Australia, in those countries, you do have a very substantial increase in the percentage of the population that is foreign born or a foreign ethnic origin. And there those percentages are rising towards anywhere from 20 to 30%. And again, they're doing a much better job than the European, you know, sort of more historically homogenous, ethnically homogenous nation states of the past. But again, even there, you're seeing significantly more dilution than you would have expected 20, 30 years ago. And I think countries are realizing governments are realizing they do not have a choice. They do not have a choice from the standpoint of their labor force and to maintain their physical health and balance and all of these other things. So what I have not heard European leaders say, forthright. is we have no choice but to pursue a strategy of very active, proactive, absorption, integration, assimilation of migrant populations because our fertility rates are so low, beyond the point of no return, we have staggeringly high public debt, we have a major need to provide for caregivers, elderly care, basic jobs in the services economy and the goods and manufacturing economy and even agriculture and we do not have the manpower or the talent to do it. I don't hear any politicians simply coming out and saying it in Europe the way they need to say it. I certainly have a lot of sympathy with you know whether it's not that it's just conservative politicians. I have sympathy with the ethos that says there used to be this predictability, stability, comfort, and you know sort of comedy with knowing what it is that German society is. Again I've lived in Germany during that time when it was very clear what German ness is and who German Germans were and I understand that there is concerns about security, about cultural integrity and all of these things. So I don't think that there is just one correct answer for you know being treating this as a culturally neutral landscape where there is no space for that desire to have common identity. I don't deny the need for and desire for that nostalgia right. I think it's actually very important. So each country will move at a different pace towards that truth, that migration and assimilation are absolutely paramount strategically but it will depend on their cultural evolution. And again I applaud Germany for just being more culturally evolved and that's based on a certain cultural confidence. It takes a confidence to say we can let them in and denouin Deutsche will become more like Germanness you know than taking or hijacking the national identity and I wish simply that more European countries could develop that confidence. So thank you for this actually to do reason through through the world and especially your assessment on Germany from the outside. Speaking of moving forward and we've talked briefly about the US but if we think about different bases you could always imagine that a country is also going back and having the elections in the US in November of this year with potentially Trump coming back and you've lived in the US you know the country you think there will be a strong cultural clash in the US which actually is growing or that a country which has been built on migration like the United States will always continue the path but maybe the ethnic groups of migrants might change or how's a bit your look on the upcoming US elections specifically with the scenario Trump coming back to office. Well fundamentally the cultural clash or the growing divides over policies of race and immigration are very strong and they've probably reached the point of no return in the sense that it's hard to imagine subcultures or geographies in the United States that are hyper conservative you know from turning back from those views against immigration anytime soon and certainly not within this political cycle. So I do think that that is you know again that has become a litmus test in one of the key third rails you know in the US election right now among many many other you know challenges and intentions as well. On the Trump issue I urge a lot of caution I say this you know very much as a political scientist rather than just focusing on this election. Any time you're in a situation in any country where the system is dependent upon a savior or when the society is looking for a savior a single person one person or the other person Biden or Trump you know Obama or Trump whatever the case maybe that is itself inherently dangerous. I'm a proponent of a school of thought known as technocracy right you know leadership by meritocratic selection and a very strong independent civil service that fundamentally governs the society. There is still a strong scope for democratic input you should have you should have free and fair and frequent elections I believe in universal participation in elections I believe it should be mandatory for every adult age 16 and older to participate in democracy this is a thoroughly consistent with democracy view however the governance and the execution the administration of the public sector and the vision of the people the will of the people must be done by competent officials and executives and that is not happening in many countries right now right and that is that is the problem. Again I think that that Germany is an exception to the rule the Anglo-American countries have kind of gone off the deep end right now in abandoning the commitment to actual functional governance and that almost gives rise to the situation where since you cannot rely on the state you focus on the figure on the individual on the savior whoever it may be is controversial as it may be someone like a Trump or otherwise and that is again such a problematic situation to be in this political pendulum kind of dynamic rather than the state I remember living in Berlin in 2017 2018 when you had you know you had a period of about four or five months without a government formation and I was living in Berlin at the time but of course the German state carries on you cannot imagine that happening in the US or the UK for example so in a way Germany is more technocratic than people realize because of the strength of the state institutions the independent state institutions and that's very important so you know to your point about Trump I think again you know we the US had Trump once it will have Trump it might might have Trump again if it does have Trump again then you know again the state the nation survives in some way it certainly is derailed or delayed from the kind of progress that it could be making collectively because it will obviously further divide society it will probably further accelerate the federalist trend in any case towards certain states really acting in autonomous ways setting their own laws on things like abortion on migrant rights tax policy climate policy many of those things labor policy a lot of these things will continue to fragment but fundamentally if you want to tie it to issues of migration remember that even in the most conservative places the percentage of the population that is foreign is growing right it cannot be stopped this is irrevocable and secondly some of the most conservative states particularly the South and the West are among the most hard hit by climate change and so you will inevitably and in geopolitics you can speak in decades long time scales you know you will probably have states of the northern regions of the of the US be more you know you know better benefiting if you will from climate change and absorbing greater or larger populations and those some many of those states at the moment tend to be governed by the Democratic Party yeah we've talked about bigger trends at the start of this podcast episode talked about demography climate geopolitics of course one mega trends at least throughout the last year seems to be conflict and global conflict so just looking on the last ten years the number of roughly 33 conflicts at global scale has increased up to 55 this year with also the average time of conflicts growing so if we have these developments with for example Trump coming back to office and more radical parties be it in Europe from the far right or in the US the conservatives coming to power do you see this conflict trend continuing and actually becoming at a certain point very unculculable or very hard to to predict in terms of what is happening verse something happening do we have an explosive mix sometimes in the US towards other global powers or considering your assessment of global climate and demography data this trend would actually be reversed with the world and maybe different countries taking or regions taking more care of themselves but having less interactions among themselves also thinking of the keywords de-globalization which seems at least to be considered in some parts of the world so how's your your take a bit on that I do certainly see a trend towards regionalism and it's just something that I've not necessarily been a proponent of though I am to some degree but I've been analyzing for for about 20 years you know and I've always felt that in international relations we do focus too much on the level of the nation state and too little on the level of the region but now the data is very clear that North America North American countries trade more with each other than they do with China for example they each have each other is the largest trading partner. Europe, that was always the case in the recent decades. Asian countries too, that's been true for about 10 or 15 years. So clearly the three pillars of the world economy, North America, Europe and Asia, are increasingly intense in their systemic intra-system dynamics. And that's clearly a geopolitical mega trend. And I don't think that will be reversed. Not least as a result of either cost pressures, geopolitical pressures, mistrust, automation of labor, many, many factors are driving that. That said, I do not believe in deglobalization because the total volume of trade is still rising. Global capital flows are very high, global migration is high, global digital connectivity, the services trade are very high and growing significantly and so on and so forth. So the volumes of inter-regional flows across all categories of flows, goods, technology, people, talent, labor, whatever the case may be, digital finance are all extraordinarily high. So to speak of deglobalization is really a really misleading myth, whereas again, it's always patterns of re-globalization and new vectors of globalization, perhaps replacing or substituting for previous ones, but it's not actually deglobalization per say. So long as you have a growing pie such as the world economy is in fact run. So let's not focus on that, but let's focus on these regional dynamics and therefore the more retrenchment you have into that regional level, potentially you have less incentive for there to be intervention, interference, conflicts in other spheres of influence. That said, we are obviously in a transition phase where even if America could feel perfectly secure and self-sufficient and autonomous and autarkic in its own North American domain, it still has legacy obligations, commitments, desires, ambitions to either be an arbiter of policemen, a reliable ally or a guarantor of freedom of navigation, freedom of the seas and so forth in other parts of the world. And that therefore means that there are still these frictions between the old era of global commitments and the new era of regional preferences. And so that's part of what makes the situation in Asia so tense because you have China rising and its desire to assert itself in its so-called sphere of influence. I do think though that you can have an equilibrium and an equilibrium is really one of the most important concepts in geopolitics, right? It could be a unipolar order and a stability that is maintained during a unipolar system or you can have a multi-polar, multi-regional, multi-civilizational order of distributed power and have something of a dynamic equilibrium among them, right? That can be stable, it can even be peaceful. I think we want to have our eye on that, right? That is my aspiration. It's what I devote maybe my normative, you know, geopolitical work to arguing for is a division of labor. What I call a global strategy, not just grand strategy, every superpower has a grand strategy. A global strategy would be a common denominator among those grand strategies where they agree in principle and in practice that they want to work together on areas like stabilizing conflict zones, confronting climate change, managing migration, keeping a global trade open to a certain degree and so on and so on. So to me there is a global strategic agenda, even amidst strategic rivalry. You already mentioned Asia-Pacific region and most like there's a South China Sea, that we really see this global power competition at least between the US and China and you're much, much closer to the region than we are. If you just zoom in a bit on the South China Sea and give us a bit as a political scientist, your perspective on what is actually happening there, what are actually current ways of strategic rivalry. We always look of course on the US and China, but there are also other powers in the regions like for example Japan, the Philippines had several clashes with their navy, with Chinese vessels. So it seems a bit from the outside, a bit like an explosive mix at least somehow and China of course is gaining global influence and wants to take their key place as a global power. So does it come in a more balanced way or you really see that this is something we should use your vort's Keepara ion to know what's going on. I think the South China Sea is a really good example of of course a conflicted region, a tense region that is searching for an equilibrium and we don't know what it's going to be, but we do know which approaches or assumptions have been wrong in the last 10 to 15 years. A couple of examples that would be the notion that this will simply become a Chinese lake, a zone of unipolar hegemony and a Chinese equivalent of the Monroe doctrine. That is not what is going to happen. Secondly, it's also been incorrect that the fate of the region will be determined purely by the outcome of the US China rivalry to the extent that there is ever going to be such a clear outcome whether in Asia or globally. Instead what we find is that is much more fluid as a region and today you would characterize it as one that is increasingly multi-polar. The United States has successfully brought together, well it was others idea but the US has been a very strong proponent and convener of the quad set of countries whether it is together with India, Japan and Australia and secondary powers that are associated with the quad whether it is South Korea, Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia and the quad members have provided very significant capability, support and in a way just confidence diplomatically and strategically for those states to stand up to China and in doing so I think they've said a very good example for how one manages China's rise in a way where despite its power it doesn't simply get to call all the shots and I think that the last couple of years have been characterized by China being somewhat taken aback and perhaps learning some lessons from the fact that many countries despite their power asymmetry and relative weakness vis-a-vis China are in fact quote unquote standing up and in doing so whether alone or together that gives a hint that even a region and even despite China's very stratospheric media or a rise you can have this region remain multi-polar. I have long argued that Asia is a multi-polar region in a multi-polar world. Asia has been principally characterized by multi-polarity for about 4,000 years. Asian civilization diversity is such that it is almost inconceivable that any one power would actually be able to generally be a hegemonic power in all of Asia the way that the say the Mongol empire was and even that wasn't all of Asia. When people look to the Chinese dynastic tradition of the tributary system they are really referring to an extremely narrow set of geographies in a very limited time period which will really never repeat itself. So you have to think of Asia as being multi-polar with China, Japan, India, Australia, Russia is an Asian power as well and then external parties such as the United States. So truly a multi-polar region in a multi-polar world and my firmest belief in the context of also being an advocate for global equilibrium is that Asia maintain that multi-polar equilibrium that is characterized the vast majority of its history. So it is very well known and appreciated and generally accepted by Asians that there are limits to the extent to which they can genuinely dominate over others. And I feel that Asians inherently understand this and therefore from a theoretical standpoint the application of western models of polarity and global dynamics onto the Asian geography is really really miss application of theory and it really has led many many scholars astray. Over the last 25-30 years as they've been looking at models for the geopolitical dynamics of post-Cold War Asia and instead they should really always have been looking at Asia from the inside out rather than the outside in. And in the last 10 years that I've spent living here in the region that has really struck me as a very clear truth. We're coming slowly but sadly to the end of the podcast session just two points towards the end. The first one as you were also born in India and India seems to be one of the rising stars at a global scale. What's your take currently in India also subcontinent heavily impacted by climate change? So will India be one of the key global powers at least in the region but most likely also in the world and what is a bit their political stand in your perspective? Well India is of course growing very quickly. It's certainly the fastest growing you know large economy in the world but it's still punches below its weight from a geostrategic standpoint even as a nuclear power large military. But that doesn't matter. Again, we shouldn't be measuring India in terms of its global power, but rather it's influence in Asia, because Asia is the reprimsipology of political theater. It doesn't really matter if India is influential in South America. It doesn't, right? It doesn't really matter. What matters much more is India's role in the greater Indian ocean region or what scholars and historians call Afro-Uraja, right? The maritime and terrestrial domain linking Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Africa, and India as the predominant power of astriding the Indian ocean is obviously a very, very key arbiter there. Twenty years ago, US military officials wanted to project onto India a role as a continental military terrestrial balance or in Eurasia to China. India has chosen not to play that role because it can't because of the hostility with its neighbors, the geographical boundaries of the Himalayan mountain region. Instead, India invested very heavily in its navy, and we're clearly see that that is paying off. The Indian ocean is not going to be renamed the southwestern Chinese ocean anytime soon. Really never. It is the Indian ocean for a very good reason. So I think in that sense, India is starting to fulfill its geopolitical destiny in that Afro-Urajan Indian ocean maritime space and doing so quite successfully. It's really attracting global supply chains and investment. But yes, among the major red flags, beyond, of course, the demographic demands of having to absorb such a fast growing young population into the economy, our climate change is climate change. And so if you look at regions of the world measured by the future climate stress from rising temperatures and the number of people affected by those rising temperatures, and the lack of adaptation towards or for climate change, India is very, very stressed. And South Asia as a whole is very, very stressed. And that is the most populist region of the entire world, just so that everyone is clear across Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, the principal nations of South Asia. You have about 1.8 billion people. So this is by far the most populist region of the entire world. And it's also among the most climate stress. So I do think that individually and collectively a lot more will have to be done there around managing flooding, drought, sea level rise, hurricanes, and so forth. And that is not yet being done. One of the consequences, by the way, to bring it back to demographics is that it means that many more Indians, in addition to, again, given the demographic drivers and the labor market drivers, but there's also the climate drivers and political drivers of outward migration. And India is the largest single source of immigrants in the entire world by this much, you know, by, by, by a very, very wide margin. And that is, that has been true for several years. I think it will be true for our entire lifetime. You know, India will continue to export that many people or more. And therefore, what you're finding more and more is that Indians are preferred as migrants in many societies because actually not just their geopolitical orientation or lack of a kind of threatening nature in Western societies, but also the fact that they can be Anglophone and have been studied nursing or IT or other skills in which there are precisely those areas where you have deficits in Europe. So for many reasons, Indians are growing in population or the world of the Indian diaspora is becoming something of a diplomatic and commercial force multiplier for India to help it achieve its geopolitical weight. All right. So we've jumped a bit around the globe. So, probably the last question we talked about your background as a global citizen. So if you're going to open up another company in 15 years, and taking all data and developments into account, where would you open up your next company and would you also be willing to live there in that country? Well, I get asked this question a lot in a different guy's people simply ask, where will you retire? And I'm remarkably consistent in this. You're not retired. I have no doubts. You always have something to do. No, but it's effectively the same question since I won't retire. And the answer has always been Berlin. It has always been Berlin. I've written it. I've said it. It's been Bellina. I'm going to always be Bellina. So I hope that your audience in particular feels reassured by that sentiment. And I think that again, when you put all the trends together, we started by talking about complexity. How do you determine winners and losers in a future where you have to balance and juggle geopolitics, demographics, economics, technology, climate, all at the same time? I came to the conclusion that the countries that are in cities that are absorbing young people will be the winners. Young people want to be there. Young people have options in the global geographical marketplace. And young people today are choosing Dubai, Berlin, Toronto, and Almaty, Kazakhstan, and Singapore, and so forth. So where you see young people congregating today, you can be very confident that those are the winning societies, whether it is the nation or the province or the city of the future. So I'm very pleased to see my Berlin, the city I've known since the event, a place that becomes such a cosmopolitan melting pot. And really emerging is not just a national capital, but a global capital. Thank you so much. My heart cries a bit because of your Munich company and based Munich, but Berlin is always very nice to spend some time. And the Agorah Berlin team will be very happy to hear that actually. So thank you so much for taking the time. Very much appreciated. And I hope we'll have a chance to continue that in a year to see where it does in our planning stand, where it's your assessment in the future. And I also thank our listeners for tuning in. And the next episode, as always, will follow in a few weeks. Then again, in German. Thank you so much.