watching c-span 2 at politics and public affairs, weekdays featuring live coverage of the u.s. senate. on weeknights latchkey public-policy events in every week in the latest nonfiction authors on booktv. you can see past programs and schedules at our website and you can join the conversation on social media sites. >> nathan hodge is the author of "armed humanitarians." >> nationbuilding is one of those tricky terms that are never wants to own and that is one of the reasons i chose to write about it. i am not using it as a political science of the development. i'm using it in the way that people like george w. bush, barack obama or even petraeus would use it, which this is a way of describing the mission of our nationbuilding that were

involved in. it has been described in some ways as the armed social work. and i am trying to really describe this phenomenon to the ordinary reader. when they look at the news and they see what journalists call the bang bang from places like iraq and asking if tnn show them another picture of what goes on, sort of the three cups of tea cited the war. that is what the military calls an academic side of things. what i really wanted to get out was the very people who are really getting their hands dirty doing these kinds of things, rebuilding schools, digging wells, building roads, fundamentally nonmilitary situations in iraq and afghanistan. >> is the u.s. military building schools, building roads to nonmilitary functions? >> you use a price to see the extent to which they've embraced that especially in places like afghanistan, where doing these nationbuilding mission is a cornerstone of the exit strategy, creating a local government is capable of delivering things like criminal

justice. the big concern is the taliban could now covered the coalition so that's really where civilians who have nonmilitary expertise baby step in. >> her determination to make a mint? >> nationbuilding is one of those terms that is kind of woolly. and sort of very unsatisfying. precisely what i really wanted to dig into it because i can than 1890s, there is a lot of handwringing within the national security said the u.s. military was to tie down the nationbuilding. it's going to become sad really. when he was running for office, george w. bush said he didn't believe we needed a nationbuilding condrey that the u.s. military should be involved in this kind of thing. by the end of the turn he had embraced it to the extent to which he had even called for the creation of a sort of civilian nationbuilding was on score in the state of the union address. so it's really a dramatic turnaround and part of it was just because this kind of armed

humanitarianism was the scene of the way of getting out of the mess we've gotten into in iraq. >> how was it an nationbuilding became a political term for george w. bush in 2000 had, we don't nationbuilding. >> were barack obama in december of 2009 saying that he wanted to send more troops to afghanistan. with the caveat, the nation he wanted to do, the nation he wanted to build with their own. nation building in some circles is kind of a dirty word. you know, it's not what the military is supposed to be doing. you're supposed to be trained for the high-end force on force conflict, kind of conflict in a lot of ways but equips around in a lot of ways pines for an away because it is a simple direct. your opponent wears the uniform. they've got formations that you can count. this is a lot more difficult and involves navigating tricky cultural differences with the barriers and try to get these

problems has proven a lot harder in this than it is in theory. >> so what has been the reaction of the pentagon to its new role? >> interesting if you see some of the more recent remarks by secretary of defense robert gates come he talks about his worries that the military could become a sort of 19th 19th century victorian constabulary. at this point yet, but the military is trying to master a lot of those chores, those fundamental kind of nationbuilding tasks. but there is a worry within the military establishment that the pendulum may have swung too far in that direction, that there is a need to go back and concentrate on the basic fundamentals, get that to sending tank rounds down range, that kind of thing. but there is a reasonable argument behind that which is the fundamentally are not military missions. do their missions for the development agencies and development. they are there for diplomats. part of the problem is

diplomats, aid workers are necessarily trained to operate the kind of hostile environment where basically they are doing development work while being shot at. and there's been this sort of difficult permission for agencies like the department of state or usaid to try to send their people sort of built around the embassy. and this kind of these organizations and get people to be willing to go out and volunteer on the frontier in afghanistan, for instance. >> nathan hodge, and this diminished the role of the state department and foreign policy? >> what i try to raise the book as there is a fundamental disconnect between the ambitions that defend, you know put more wingtips on the ground so to speak and the ability of agencies like the state department is a simple matter of math. the department of defense at this point pens somewhere in or around $700 billion a year.

just look at the japan relief operations going on right now. they've got personnel, equipment and training to get to places in a hurry. i saw it and i describe in the book, with tahiti relief operations and military side looks like as well. part of the effort underway as part of the bureaucrats because 8016 or agencies. we need to get these diplomats to get out of there and we'll all be together jostling along in the back of a humvee, going to drink three cups of tea with an elder. it's not as simple as that because what happens if you're getting shot at along the way? >> has it been an effective foreign policy tool? >> i would argue that it sends mixed messages about who we are as a nation. >> it's a contradiction in that sends a signal that, you know, for instance it we are talking about in parts of the developing world we think an important principle of civilian control of the military and the edits are

military people doing the training. it says a little something interesting about who we are. and i worry as well, especially when it comes to operating in places like this, that we adopt a little bit of a fortress america mindset. i talk a lot in part by what they called force protection in the military and inevitably sometimes that ends up putting, because of the risk of a situations, putting barriers between you and the people you're trying to reach out to. >> you mentioned craig morton's three cups of tea a couple times. you also mentioned thomas barnett. who is he? >> thomas barnett in a lot of ways was a guy who is best-known for a briefing call the pentagon's new map. even the early two thousands was really kind of a guy who captured the department of defense and had a couple of famous briefings, powerpoint briefings he would go out and delivered to military audience, which really explains how the

post-9/11 world had shifted. i dove a little bit more into what he was arguing. part of what he was getting a was there needed to be something like kind of a nationbuilding cadre available on ready on call to address what he called the scabs, these failing state. i think he called it the suspense scores. he got leviathan the army, debate forces that going into regime change, go knock over nations who call in to do so and then you meet people on call who are a mix of diplomat aid worker boy scout u.s. marine, this mismatch of different things. he was one of these people who articulated in a lot of ways and try to explain what the new reality was to people in the department of defense. so he's a baffling about. >> how does the center for new

americans care deeply into your boat? >> well, this became the focus they started beating the home for the counterinsurgency. prolific counterinsurgency washing 10 in a lot of ways was a rebellion by kind of the rank and file within establishment in intellectual development, by people who had experienced tours in iraq and afghanistan and came back and work roping intellectually for answers to why the u.s. military was failing to why we're losing in iraq and they reached back and found sort of these intellectual antecedents and for instance french counterinsurgency. that really did talk about, you know, the roles and missions in how you needed to refashion government to get at this sort of really tricky problem. they played an interesting role in advocacy and they become in some ways and been described by

other reporters at the farm team for the a bomb at the station's foreign policy. >> what is your day job? >> aire for "the wall street journal" and cover nationaljob? >> aire for "the wall street journal" and cover national security. >> finally, nathan hodge, what is the image on your book? the young boy for the wraparound and soldier. where did you get this image? >> i think the image conveys a little bit of sort of how i felt about this mission as i observed it unfold. it is at times brought to mind the ronald reagan fan i am from the government. i'm here to help. yes, our military is there. they are there to help. they are there to do fundamentally humanitarian things and that's a mission that embraced. it's a rewarding mission, but it's one that also has some unintended consequences, so i took the show there's a little bit of an ironic position.

>> firm humanitarians -- "armed humanitarians." author is nathan hodge. >> let's go back to education. he pointed out the u.s. used to be at the top and now we are 31 oecd countries and we are down around 20. what we spent per pupil more than any country other than switzerland. so it's not a question of resources. we are just not allocating resources very intelligently. what is wrong with our education system? >> it's exactly the point. it not about quantity of money. it's about the quality of education being delivered. i have to say having spent a lot of time reading up about the american education system but also listening to experts who focus on the education system. there really reminds me of the

babe factor, aid to africa. two things in particular. one, people are being rewarded for poor performance. it's quite clear for american education funds are going down and you have these last 10, first-out types of policies that getting rid of peaches regardless of performance because they cannot miocene stew beef and dislocation there. the other thing is we are as a society essentially been held hostage by a vested interest. you know, the trade unions and teachers unions i think is rather problematic that we are sacrificing our children's education and education performance in their abilities to compete internationally and therefore the ability for america to compete in the interest of teachers unions. there is nothing inherently wrong with that, but i think there's something particularly sort of rot with an idea that in a society can do that education funds are going down, but we are

not penalizing people for lack of delivery. >> is the problem structural, though? we talked about how they have higher corporate tax ranks, but also in europe you find a lot more school choice. the system nationwide, netherlands have school choice, even germany has a lot of school choice. we only have a few tiny little programs in a few cities in the states. of that solution? to remain a competitive auto with the parents in charge of her teachers? >> at it's absolutely much more involved in the question becomes what can we do to make a parents that are much more involved in ensuring that this lie doesn't have been. i am not too sure about whether it really boils down to this idea of more choice or less choice because we look at the education requirements across europe, they too are seen a backside, you know, certainly on this oecd standards relevant to the rest of the world. i mean, if were about choice he wouldn't have expected them to be with the united states

sliding down. i think one of the things they talk about in my work that possibly could be something worth thinking about is this idea of conditional transfers. simply put, it's very popular in mexico and brazil can also ruled out of the pilot program by mayor bloomberg in new york at paying people to do the right thing. so your child goes to school in 90% of the time but the attendance record it a hundred dollars. you get immunized -- are targets immunized for disease you get a hundred dollars. there is discussion in europe about whether or not people should start getting paid so their children go to study mathematics or science, thinks the united states and european countries need to remain competitive. obviously this is not what we expected the society. we need to pay people to do the right thing? given were the societies are, everything seems to be on the table. this is quite