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A few snapshots from wonderful Iceland

Bill Clinton: interdependence means you can't get a divorce

Bill Clinton recently participated in one of London School of Economics public lectures - talking about the activities of his global initiative fund. Like all of the amazing LSE events, you can listen to it as a podcast.

During the Q&A (41 min. into the recording) he talks about some very fundamental political issues: 

"...The world has become completely interdependent, but we can’t make up our minds what that interdependence is going to look like. Interdependence simply means you can’t get a divorce. That’s all it means: that you can’t get away from each other. But it might be positive, it might be negative, it might be both. To pretend that the United States and China are not going to share the future is nuts. Or the US and India, or Europe and... You pick, fill in the blanks. So the world now is awash in a kaleidoscope of questions that all come down to this: are we going to share the future – or try to take it away from someone else?

Will we adopt a conflict model or a cooperation model to resolve our differences and to meet our own objectives? And I basically believe - in a world where growth and opportunity, and even basic humanity is drastically constrained by severe in-equality and the un-availability of jobs that pay an affordable living, by instability that is brought on not only by the aftermath of terror but by the financial crisis and by a totally unsustainable use or resources that causes climate change and local resource depletion - the only thing that makes sense is to try to develop a path to a shared future, where you have shared responsibilities and shared prosperity, and where people respect their differences, but think that their common humanity matters more. No other strategy will work."