coverage of the national book festival held at the washington convention center. this is the 24th year in a row that book tv has been live with the festival, which kicked off in 2001, founded by laura bush in about 20 minutes, bestselling author erik larson talking about his new book, which details the time between abraham lincoln's 1860 election and the firing on fort sumter in april 1861. that's in about 20 minutes. joining us now, though, is diplomat stuart eizenstat. his new book is called the art of diplomacy how american negotiators reached historic agreements that changed the world. ambassador eizenstat was domestic policy adviser for jimmy carter and u.s. ambassador to the european union during the

clinton administration. ambassador eizenstat, there's an old saying that politics stops at the water's edge. is that still true today? unfortunately, it's not, peter. and i think one of the things that inhibits u.s. leadership abroad in diplomacy is the fact that politics don't stop at the water's edge. they are very divisive. we saw that, for example, with ukraine. so when our negotiators leaders are negotiating with foreign governments and they don't have the full bipartisan support of the congress and the public, it weakens our position. i wrote this book for three reasons. one is that we live in a very turbulent time with seemingly irresolvable conflicts. and i wanted to show by looking at the major conflicts we did resolve over the last 50 years that diplomacy can. it did work and it can work again. second, i wrote it because we're

in the midst of two hot wars in gaza and ukraine. we've through an era in our own lifetimes of multiple wars, the vietnam war, the two balkan wars and bosnia and kosovo, the two iraq wars, afghanistan and and libya with very mixed results. so i wanted to look at when, how and whether u.s. military force can and should be used as a adjunct to diplomacy and third, and very of concern and this gets back to your first question that we're in a environment in which a significant percentage of the congress and the public are in an isolationist mood. and i wanted to show by this book how vital it is for u.s. leadership abroad to soar of problems, to solve conflicts, and that if we don't, we leave a vacuum in which our adversaries russia and china will fill. when you go into the mindset of

somebody who is perhaps isolated, honest, can you understand their views? of course. in fact, one of the things that i point out as an attribute of the 130 people i interviewed in the book who were the great diplomats of the time is the ability to be able to listen to your opponent. to put yourself in their shoes and to understand their point of view. so, yes, i do understand it, but it's important that we have a dialog with people who say, well, we can't afford to engage abroad. we have to devote ourselves to our problems at home. but the two are inextricably intertwined. if we don't resolve problems abroad, then we can't resolve problems at home supply chains with china, access to energy. all of these things require engagement abroad. if we're going to solve again, our problems at home, we need to be engaged.

and if u.s. leadership is absent abroad, then that will leave again a vacuum which our enemies will fill. and which will leave us weakened at home. should note that henry kissinger wrote the introduction, and james baker wrote the foreword they did to the book to republicans. exactly. and because i wanted to show the bipartisan nature of diplomacy and with kissinger, i have a chapter on his negotiations in in the vietnam war. his opening to china and his negotiations for the disengagement after the 1973 young kippur war in the middle east, where jim baker, i really highlight his engagement with george h.w. bush on the first iraq war. what i think is the good iraq war, but also his fantastic accomplishment, along with george h.w. bush of reunifying

germany under nato. and he had convince not only the soviet union, which had a deathly fear of germany for obvious reasons of that, but he also had to convince our own allies, the french and the british. margaret thatcher said, i love germany so much. i want to of them. so it was huge lift. and what jim baker showed was the importance of personal relationships. he developed a personal kinship with the foreign minister of the soviet union, shevardnadze took him to jackson hole for several days where his own retreat was and broke the ice so that shevardnadze could take positions which were at odds with his own foreign ministry on reunifying germany. but doing so with nato. that was a huge accomplishment by. both jim baker and by president george h.w. bush. and it's one of the reasons why that is one of the 12 chapters

that i highlight and why his preface to my book is so important as you can guess, we're talking about diplomacy and foreign policy. the numbers are up on the screen. go ahead and dial in if you would like to talk was to eizenstat, former ambassador to the european union, former chief domestic policy adviser to president jimmy carter, and in fact, when you were in the white house, the camp david accords were signed. but you were working on domestic policy at that time. well, yes, i was. but i had a significant role in that because i was the official back channel between the president and the israeli embassy transmitting, in effect, secret views of where the israeli prime minister bacon, was going to come, giving them a view of where carter was going to come. and then i actually negotiated a part of the treaty with egypt and israel dealing with giving israel access to the oil that it

would lose by moving out of the egyptian sinai, leaving those egyptian oil fields. and we guarantee that if, in fact, there was a cutoff of oil from egypt, israel, that the u.s. would step in. so i was very directly involved and in many occasions when president carter shared his frustrations with me, and i have whole chapter on the middle east negotiation from kissinger through gaza today. he shared his frustrations with the both with opposite, often from the jewish community. the difficulty of getting prime minister bagan to go along with some of the proposals that we made. and so i was engaged, even though my mandate was domestic policy, i was very much engaged in the whole middle east peace process. ambassador eizenstat, since those 1978 camp david accords, we've had the abraham accords

and we have issues right now. anthony blinken is over there. often in the middle east. what's your take? well, first of all, i am special adviser to secretary blinken on holocaust issues, not on the middle east, but the gaza issue is as difficult and complicated as any i've ever seen and that i write about it. and the reason is that hamas has to be disabled as a military and governing authority. no country can accept on its borders a government that's dedicated to their elimination. but this cannot be solved. peter but military force alone, it requires to palomas see as well. and israel made several mistakes that i catalog as lessons learned from all of the wars. i look at. and i've looked at all the major wars of our time and talk to the

generals, for example, very poor intelligence, not realizing that had morphed from purely terrorist group into a full blown terrorist army organized by an attack battalion and with the most sophisticated arms invited by iran, not realizing the surprise attack that they were going to do, they actually had a lower level intelligence. so the whole battle plan on october seventh and they said hamas is not capable of doing it. but the biggest mistake and one that continues to this day and it's confront secretary blinken, who just came back from his ninth or 10th trip, is that one of the lessons i learned from all of the interviews i did, the two iraq wars, afghanistan is you should never fire the first bullet. and two, you know, beforehand what the political outcome is you're seeking.

steve, who was george w bush's nasser security advisor, said that that's one of the big mistakes they made in deposing saddam hussein in the iraq war. they got into it before knowing what outcome was going to happen when they did depose him. and that remains the problem in gaza today. the last problem with gaza is that you have two entities, the hamas government, what's left of it, and israel, who have diametrically opposite final outcomes. hamas wants to keep its military and political power in israel for good reason, doesn't want that. so that is what's really stalled everything. it's not just how many hostages are turned over, it's what the final outcome is going to be. and phase three of the biden plan, who is going to rule over gaza and israel properly says it can't be hamas. it has to be not hamas.

people. but hamas says we want a role in it. the other role is do you reconstruct gaza? it's destroyed 80% of the infrastructure. we need the gulf states to get involved. all all of whom except the saudis, already have peace agreements with israel through the abraham accords, through president carter's efforts, and president clinton's efforts with jordan. but they are setting a key condition that is, we are not going to reconstruct gaza unless there is a political horizon for the palestinians in the west bank and gaza to have a state of their own. and that's something the current israeli government can't get to. so having the right negotiator is critical. i focus on the great negotiators of our time and all the skills they have, the preparation, the intelligence, listening, sitting on the other person's shoes, the political courage to depart as

happened in northern ireland from long held positions. but when you're dealing with two parties who have dynamic, strictly opposite outcomes, even the best negotiators and tony blinken is one of them, have difficulty finding a common solution. going back to the trump administration, the u.s. embassy move to jerusalem, the abraham accords. two things. were you consulted during any of that? and what do you think of those two? well, i think that the abraham accords are truly historic because they broaden the peace dimension from egypt that we did in the carter ministration, that jordan, that we did in the clinton administration to include the gulf states, bahrain, the uae, then morocco. the key is saudi arabia and in the biden administration, i am convinced we were within weeks

of having a normalization between saudi arabia and israel, which would have been transform it if and that's one of the reasons october seventh happened. the iranians couldn't tolerate that. and hamas couldn't tolerate it. now, putting those chess pieces together is much more difficult. but we were within really a few weeks a truly historic agreement. i whoever the next president is and i hope it's kamala harris. but if it's mr. trump that they will continue to work on the saudis, because that would be truly transformative. but again, the price is a political perspective on sovereignty for the palestinians, which israeli public at this point for understandable reasons, because of october seventh, is saying no, even the moderate left doesn't want that. so you have to start building. and one of the things that i

take as a lesson from all of my diplomacy, diplomatic analysis is if you go for a home run, you try to include too much, you're going to strike out. you have to go for single. so, for example, with the good friday agreement for northern ireland, where again, you had two warring parties, the catholics and the protestants, the nationalists and the unionists, george mitchell, the u.s. mediator, didn't resolve the to fund a mental issues. what's the future of northern ireland? is it part of the irish republic or part of great britain that was left to a referendum? that's never happened to this day because the two parties are now in a peaceful relationship. the other was what happens to the guns the militias had. it took tony blair nine more years to do that. and the lesson is don't overshoot. and that's what i would say for the middle east. don't try to go all the way to a two state solution. build confidence, build economic

relationships, create an environ in which the israeli public has confidence that the palestinians, they will be peaceful. ambassador eizenstat, when you're negotiating a treaty, is the first rule. how does this the united states always but it's not a poker game and one of the things that i point out in my book is that diplomacy, to be successful, has to be a win win situation. you have to put yourself in your opponent's position. there, obviously representing a sovereign country, they have their own public opinion. they have their own political pressures. and you have to have what, by former boss? when i was deputy treasury secretary larry summers in the column, australian called a sympathetic empathy for the other side. you have to empathize with them if you don't agree with them. he called it a unsympathetic

empathy and that is crucial. so, yes, it obviously has to be in the national interest of the united states, but you have to recognize it has to be in the other side's interest as well. that's what makes it so difficult, so complicated. how did you get to washington originally? i had a summer in 1963 as a congressional intern for the university of north carolina. i was placed in congress and i got potomac fever from there. the next summer, i ended up working the political office of the postmaster general, who was then in the lbj cabinet. i went to the first democratic convention in 64, and that led me to work in the johnson white house in 67. and then the carter house. and i worked in six administrations and all. well, i know you're from atlanta. how did you meet jimmy carter? after we lost the 1968 election when i was working for hubert

humphrey against nixon, i went back to my hometown, clerked for a federal judge, and then i was going to work for the prohibitive favorite, carl sanders, who had been the former governor and was the odds on favorite. my high school roommate. henry bowers, said, you have to see former state senator jimmy carter. he's the underdog. but i think you'll like him. and i went to see him and carl sanders was in a very upholstered office of his law firm, jimmy carter. i met on a folding table with two irons folding chairs. and i said, what am i getting myself into? he had work boots on. it took me one hour to realize this was the real thing. he was from south georgia, but he understood urban issues. mass transit, education reform, and from me. he was someone who was supporting civil rights, even from south georgia. and it took me a second interview to convince myself i shouldn't work for carl sanders, who i had first gone to see.

and the rest is history. i became his policy director as governor when he ran for president. and then in the white house. stu eizenstat, you have one minute to tell us about your chapter on trade, nafta, usmca. one of the concerns i really have is we're moving into an anti-trade environment. and so i interviewed all of the trade representatives, including donald trump's mr. lighthizer, who was a first rate trade representative. trade is critically important, and it's the issue internally, certainly, peter, that has the most domestic political content, because you're dealing with jobs, you're dealing with plant openings and closings. you're dealing with imports of sensitive goods like steel and aluminum, which are going to compete here. and i found that what bob lighthizer said was the key to

his negotiations preparation, preparation and preparation. knowing what the other side was standing for, what you needed to have, and how you open markets like mexico, like canada, as in now, after, but do so in a way that protects the interests of american workers. well. stuart eizenstat, the art of diplomacy. how american negotiators reached historic agreements changed the world. thank you for spending a few minutes with us here at the national book festival. our coverage of the national book festival now continues with bestselling author erik larson. good afternoon. who here is a medgar evers fan of a mega-star and eric larson.

journalist and author. erik larson is author of six national bestsellers the splendid and the vile dead week in the garden of beasts thunderstruck talk the devil in the white city and isaac's storm. collectively, larson has sold more than 10 million copies. one of them amazing achievement. his newest title, the demon of unrest a saga of hubris, heartbreak and heroism at the dawn of the civil war. brings to life the five months between the election of abraham lincoln and the start of the civil war and describes the tragic miscalculations made by key men in power who ultimately led america to the brink. the session is moderated by david