President Joko Widodo’s speech during the plenary session of the 2018 Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund-World Bank (IMF-WB) Group was met with a positive response judging by the standing ovation he received.
Apart from its timeliness and thoroughness, what made the President’s speech more impactful was his pop culture analogy, specifically his reference to the popular HBO series Game of Thrones, in explaining what is happening in the world right now. The President bluntly analogized that feuds between major economies right now looked very much like the conflicts between the series’ great houses and families and their lack of awareness of a lurking global threat – an “Evil Winter” that seeks to envelop the world in ice and destruction.
If global conflicts continue, the losers will suffer – and the winners will, too. This reminds us of the nuclear war doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD), in which two opposing sides will be equally destroyed. Similar to a nuclear war, the “Game of Thrones” is an unwinnable war and all sides stand to lose everything.
We would like to highlight three issues in President Joko Widodo’s speech. First, this was the second time that he drew from pop culture to portray real-world global conditions. The Sino-US trade war is implicitly painted in his speeches. Previously, on stage at the World Economic Forum (WEF) at the ASEAN meeting in Vietnam in September, the President referred to Avengers: Infinity War in his speech.
Perhaps, the President used these cinematic metaphors to show that he understood millennials’ idioms and adages. Based on this, we appreciate his approach in conveying messages to global leaders on the world’s pressing problems.
Outside the cinematic analogies, President Jokowi was able to speak in detail about the latest technological advancements, such as the Hyperloop mass rapid transit system and the space tourism developed by SpaceX with its phenomenal CEO Elon Musk.
Second, international relations today have truly gone out of control. This spells trouble for the conflicting countries and may potentially cause global decline. We remember how the US, as the victor of World War II, launched the Marshall Plan to revive Europe’s economy. If Europe was neglected and left to rot, who would have bought US products? Common wisdom dictates that you cannot be rich on your own.
Third, and of no less importance, is that the “Avengers” and “Game of Thrones” the President used should not only serve as a warning for other countries. In this sense, we need an introspection. Thus far, in facing economic and other hardships, we tend to blame external factors, when we should have been cautious in observing international development and made smart anticipatory moves so that we would not have been easily affected when the storm arrived.
Only when we take lessons from the President’s speech for own our self-improvement will we be worthy of being named a nation that can walk the talk.