there's a commonality of sort of outlook and purpose and taste that was in these newspapers and organizations that i mentioned. and what was the second part of your question? i mean, there is -- i make it a vision -- most people who study the '60s make a distinction between the aesthetic wing of the counterculture people who were expressed this their radicalism and heedin nissic and wanted to create a subculture. they'd drop out. and then there was -- there's another sort of political wing that was very interested in finding the right formulas for ending the vietnam war and whatnot and in the underground press i think you see there's more overlap or intermingling between those two tendencies especially by the late '60s i think the divisions between political people and cultural people are really hard to discern. and you see that in the underground press but you don't see that in a lot of the writing that's been done in the '60s until recently. and thanks for asking about benedict anderson i got some

common curriculum in hate and white which was the bane of my existence in my college career but i found a way to work him in. yes. >> did any of the individual papers or individuals within the papers go on to evolve and go mainstream or become well-known in some other capacity? did they -- >> yes and no. there's one underground paper that has been running, you know, consecutively since 1965. it's called the fifth estate but it's mutated since its original vision. in the '80s you saw the rise, i guess, of the alternative press and this is -- i see it as kind of a second generation radical press. it's not radical. i'm sure. it's liberal. it's commercially oriented muckraking news sheets. i can't remember the ones in the san francisco. the bay guardian or the east bay express. these are the papers you see in these vending boxes and they give their writers personal

freedom to go their own way and they allow people to contribute who maybe don't have pedigrees to break into the daily papers. they tend to appeal to young people. they're going after this, you know, 18 to 34 demographic. they cover the arts very well, you know, rock 'n roll especially. and so these have some of the same qualities of the underground press. i mean, the huge difference is that these underground papers were always about, you know, movement building. they were staffed and run by people who generally saw themselves as activists first and journalists second. and then this, you know, network of alternative papers is maybe the reverse of that. but they were very successful in the '80s and '90s. they got gang buster results. they were profitable enterprises. i think they're falling on harder times, you know, like a lot of print media is generally. they played an important role because a long time before the advent of the internet, they were truly the alternative. they were the alternative to the mainstream dailies in their cities and so they had that kind of iconoclastic appeal.

>> john, looking at it globally with the internet and the advancement of having global readership do you think this wikileaks could be considered the byproduct of the american press or even in europe? >> not really, i don't think so. yeah, i think he has sort of -- i think he obviously has a left wing orientation and i think people are, you know -- if i was a person in government, i would be very threatened by him or i would be concerned about what he was doing so i think that guy is probably right to be nervous, you know, for his safety. i understand he's an eccentric guy but he's not building -- there's not a rising social movement today that he's connected with, you know, where these papers were joined at the help with the new left and the counterculture. but i think what he's doing is interesting. and i haven't really made up my

mind about it. >> hi. i was just curious if you could say more about how you did your research and if you talked to most of the people who founded these presses. >> you know, i'm lucky that a lot of these underground newspapers have been preserved in this microfilm collection. so i spent a lot of time in new york and also in the library in the basement going through these microfilms. in some ways it made my research easy but then i also -- i also discovered a lot of manuscript sources that people were -- that haven't been used before. and so, you know, one thing i'm proud of in the book is that i have brought a lot of primary sources to light that scholars haven't really attended to and i think that's kind of neat and so i found some manuscript collections and various archives across the country. i have a significant number of interviews and correspondences with underground press people. it's been neat 'cause a lot of these people have been so friendly and helpful. they're excited to see their history, you know, being told. and so it's been neat to build

relationships with some of these, you know, underground press people. there's someone back there. this is pretty dame for a city lights reading. i thought there would be a jug of wine being passed around. [laughter] >> yeah. you mentioned about the sexism. >> uh-huh. >> now, i was in the san francisco berkeley area in '67, '68 and i remember all these kids, long haired kids selling the berkeley barb and the san francisco oracle and you'd see these middle annualed guys going back to the suburbs and they'd stop, you know, and buy -- >> uh-huh. >> buy the barb for the sex ads. >> yeah. >> we'd all laugh at them because we wouldn't pay for it. we would share it and we would say, hey, the money -- we're

surviving on the money that we're making selling the berkeley barb to these guys who hate us and we hate them. >> yeah. >> i was just -- does your book go into the economics -- basically, a lot of the -- we came to the conclusion that a lot of these subversive ideas in the paper were being supported simply because of the sex ads or whatever, you know? >> yeah, i mentioned that briefly. and what you're saying is exactly correct. i mean, especially by the late '60 and early '70s especially in the big cities, you know, these sort of randy back-page sex ads seemed to draw attention -- i don't want a dirty old men but people from the suburbs that you probably didn't like. [laughter] >> and what happened after several underground press publishers started finding their own apolitical porn magazines. there's several examples of that in the early 1970s. and so there's a sense that these papers were losing maybe a little bit of their relevance or it was wrong to draw, you know, so heavily -- they're becoming

more apolitical in that sense so i think your observation -- it squares from what i've heard from other people as well. >> i know your book is about papers in the united states, but did you find there were underground papers in europe as well? >> there were. there were. i don't write about them a lot but they were all throughout europe. but they were much more substantial in terms of readership but i think the international names was the first international newspaper in europe. some of these european papers were part of the international press sinned account. if you were lucky to score an interview with janice joplin it could be reprinted in a paper in europe so there were a few of those such papers. i just don't write about them all that much except for a couple of canadian papers showing up. >> did you --

[laughter] >> i only drink red wine usually but i think i'm going to have beer tonight. i think we're going to go to vesuviols i'm going to go with a couple of old friends but you're welcomed to come. thank you very much. i appreciate it. thanks. applause laws [applause] >> our special booktv programming on c-span2 continues live today with don peck, author of pinched discussing the social and cultural effect of the slow economy. mr. peck who's featuresary for the atlantic will be at the politics and prose bookstore in washington, d.c., live at 7:00 pm eastern. later tonight, our prime time booktv programming will include current and former members of congress. massachusetts senator scott brown has written against all odds, my life of hardship, fast

breaks and second chances. and then bernie sander's book is the speech a historic filibuster on corporate greed and the decline of our middle class. and former representative james rogen is the author of catching our flag behind the scenes of a presidential impeachment. booktv is in prime time all month here on c-span2.

[inaudible conversations] >> good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. welcome to foreign policy at brookings. i'm the director of the foreign policy here. it's very good to see you all here in the dog days of august. but we thought that the topic of today's conversation was so compelling that it shouldn't until after labor day. we're here to talk about the

foreign policy consequences of domestic political dysfunction in the united states. a subject that has been highlighted by the crisis of raising the debt ceiling and the impact that appears to have had on the brand america abroad, a brand that had already suffered some considerable tarnishing in the bush-era. something that president obama was determined that he would refurbish to enhance our influence abroad. but now things only seem to have gotten worse. and so we wanted to bring together some experts from brookings to talk about what's

happening domestically and how that's impacting america's ability to promote and protect its interests abroad. let me introduce quickly the various panelists we have today. first of all, tom mann, who is the have a recall harriman and chair and fellow of government studies here at brookings. tom as an expert on all things broken and how to fix them. [laughter] >> about congress. i say that because his most recent book he wrote with norm ornstein called the broken branch: how congress is failing america and how to get it back on track. to my right here is fiona hill. fiona is the director of our center on the u.s. and europe. and a senior fellow in our

foreign policy program. she is an expert on russian affairs, the author together with cliff getty of the siberian curse, how communist planners left russia out in the cold. and she was recently the national intelligence counsel's officer on russia. next to fiona is bob kagan who's also a senior fellow in the center on the u.s. and europe, an expert on u.s. foreign policy. bob is the author of a number of bestselling and profound books including about paradise and european relations, the return of history and the end of dreams and his major work on american foreign policy called

dangerous nation: america's place in the world from the earliest days to the dawn of the 20th. many of you will know bob as the columnist for the "washington post" and contributing editor to the weekly standard. next to bob is ken levinthal who is director of john l. thornton to china. he served as senior director for asia on the national security council on the clinton administration and has written a huge number of books on chinese politics and economics including -- i'm looking for your last book. you want to tell us -- i don't have it here. >> the china challenge. >> the china challenge which is about how to do business in china or how not to do business in china.

mauricio cardennas is the director of our latin american initiative. before joining brookings mauricio served as director of national planning and minister of economic development. he's published several books and academic papers in his period as a think tank researcher. and has taught economics in various places including university of california at berkeley. so i wanted to start with tom mann and have you, tom, just analyze the nature of the dysfunction and whether you see this as somehow getting fixed

anytime soon. >> i can only smile, martin. i'm afraid i'm going to start this session off without my normal burst of optimism. you mentioned the broken branch and we're working on a title, it's even worse than it looks. [laughter] >> listen, the signs of dysfunction are all around us, most immediately was the dreadful experience that charles krauthammer has seen as a sign that the american system is working but everyone else sees as truly an embarrassment. a matter of great seriousness and potential damage, but of

utterly unnecessary and i'm talking, of course, the hostage-taking of the debt ceiling increase and that was planned earlier used in a way that it has never been used before. forcing -- it was hoped a set of changes, but in the end produced a paltry payoff that left most observers sickened by the risks that were taken on. and very much unimpressed by the results came from it. and you put that together with sluggish growth, high unemployment, projected increase in the debt to gdp ratio and the fact that no action on any of these matters is likely to occur

before the 2012 election and it's not clear how things will get themselves resolved afterward. the s&p downgrade was part of this although i think the global rush to treasuries remind all of us that s&p is likely to suffer a greater downgrade than the u.s. i think underlying these specific things are sort of too widespread views about the craziness afoot in america. the first has to do with the contempora contemporary republican party. its ideological extremism and a sense to deny reality whether it's the efficacy of the

financial stabilization and stimulus, the utility of the tax pledge, the nonexistence of climate change, this occurring both among prominent leaders and members of the party in congress and among all but one of their presidential aspirants and it sends a message that america is trouble, it's fallen off track that something is amiss. that it's not just sort of temporary episode of conservative populism but one of our major political parties is no longer maintains an adult status. one in which they can wrestle

and are willing to wrestle responsibly over legitimate differences with the opposition and have something coming out of it. and finally, coming out of this there's developing a perception of the weaknesses of our president in the face of all of these difficulties. people see him in his futile search for a negotiating partner and politics to deliver on his promise of a post-partisan politics and government. and see him sort of maneuvered misplaced emphasis on deficits and debt at a time when the economy is floundering and there's little sign of growth in jobs that would show a serious action of deficits allow us to

regain our footing and some traction. i think all of these contribute to the perception of dysfunction. if you see what's coming in the next few months in the time before the election the only soleas you take is i don't think we're going to have quite the crisis of that was contrived around the debt ceiling. it's past the election. we'll return to that in 2013. there's basically agreement on the budget for this coming year. some minor adjustments have to be made. but there's no opportunity to really shut the government down over that. so at the very least it's possible that we won't be put through the mellodrama and the

so-called super committee a joint committee of congress, 12 members, equal numbers of democrats and republicans, all of whom are viewed as reliable players by their respective leaders it, wouldn't matter if they were all wild independents. they're operating under a set of imposed political rules, the most important of which is no increased tax revenues that mean nothing of consequence is likely to come out of this so we will fall back on the triggers, of course, those don't go into effect until after the election so there's still time to ward them off but i think the safest bet is, nothing will happen and that will contribute to the sense that we can't function as

a democracy. and as you are seeing, we are in full campaign mode. the media is so relieved to get away from the debt ceiling story. it was really hard making it interesting and now they have, you know, iowa straw polls and governor rick perry and michele bachmann and -- what more do you want? i mean, the campaign is underway. barack obama is on the campaign trail for the better part of this week. and, frankly, i see that is it a plus because this congress is faded to get absolutely nothing of consequence, a positive consequence done as a result of the objectives of the people who

are in a position to drive it. and god knows we need some clarity from the electorate. we may not -- we may not get it, but i think you will see lines drawn in a way that we haven't in a very, very long time. it's partly as a consequence of the right word move of the center of the republican party. its partly where the energy lies and it's partly because even president obama has lost the patience for making nice bipartisanship and doing what responsible people in washington feel he should do and so you're about to see sort of lines drawn. but the real question is, will any clarifying signal from the electorate emerge? it's mushy.

it's complex. it's one of the challenges. the politicians and all of us have as to try to make that clear because right now what we have the public send to washington is basically ungovernorable and that has everything to do with the nature of the party system and the asymmetric nature of the exists right now. finally, i don't see any prospects for a dramatic sort of transformational leadership opportunity breaking us out of all of this. i think we're going to have disappointingly slow growth for a long time as we squeeze the leverage out of the system, private and public and that's

going to put enormous pressures on those who are in charge and continue to make our mics dysfunctional. if the public wants to see something else, if they want to see some real clarity, if they don't like the blocking and so on, they will -- you know, they will empower a single party, and they will lend their support to produce some parliamentary-like institutions that can allow that party to govern and then hold them accountable. we're not there yet. thank you tom. it's an uplifting presentation. >> i warned you. [laughter] >> so now we go to mauricio for something even more uplifting, i suspect. i want to ask you, mauricio, the way in which this fits into

global economic developments. today we had some very of gloomy news of growth stalling in germany and france. we heard time allude to the idea that growth could solve a lot of these problems. what are the prospects for economic growth from where we are today? >> thanks, martin. well, they are limited. we're talking about leadership here. and leadership -- no matter how you define it requires a strong economy. strong economy is not an economy where recessions gotten happen. actually, recessions happen. a strong economy is an economy that can overcome rescissions. can adopt countercyclical policies but countercyclical policies need to be credible and to be credible, they have to have certain characteristics,

like not incurring huge debts that are not sustainable. and i think at the end of the day, what we need and the dysfunctionality we're talking about is the ability to conduct countercyclical policies that stabilize the american economy but at the same time provide a long-term plan for fiscal sustainability and it's the ability to provide that plan that is causing these turmoil in today's world economy. and i would say that to restore the leadership, to make sure that the u.s. economy is a strong economy, we need to provide that type of plan and whether the political system is able to do it, that's to me the question. what's happening in the world economy? well, if the u.s. is in trouble,

if the u.s. political system is not working, i think things are worse in europe, where the levels of debt are even higher. where the sacrifices that are necessary are much greater. and whether it's going to take a long time before we see fiscal sustainability. so facing that reality, the reality of the advanced world, the advanced economies of the world that are highly leveraged there's a group of countries, the emerging countries that has much lower public debt, that is representing a much higher share of growth, that, of course, is seeing this with great preoccupation. >> who are we talking about? >> we're talking about the bricks primarily but we're talking broadly speaking about

asia, about latin america, where you hear words irresponsible policies in the u.s. or phrases talking about the parasite economies of the world like prime minister putin put it recently and, of course, this is creating an environment where countries are looking for some of them with an agenda for filling up the vacuum and the space that is being led by the advanced economies and some others with preoccupation, with genuine preoccupation that the world is losing a key engine. we're now flying with this just one engine which is china. and i don't think that works. i don't believe that's good news for the world economy as a whole. so this is why the world is looking at washington with

concerns. and it's not just about the u.s. economy. i think it's a broader problem. it's about the world's economy at large. primarily because the levels of

debt are still oh so causing the kind of concerns that we have here in the u.s., concern about downgrading of the treasuries or concerns about how the markets respond to an increase in the fiscal deficit. there is that maneuver, but it's limited in its capacity to fear the economy -- to steer the entire direction of the economy. i think they'll be unreasonable to expect because of domestic policies, expansion fiscal policies in brazil, china, india, russia, the economy in the world as a whole can get back on track. >> i want to go and talk about, ask her to talk about europe. because clearly this is something that affects america but affects the west more generally because of what's happening in europe today.

give us your assessment of where things are going up. >> the point that you just made about the figures coming in today about growth stalling in germany and france, it certainly increase concerns on the european front. if we don't necessarily -- a week ago, we might be singling out germany, for example, as being another major driver in the global economy. and germany still does have the prospect. germanys on the most are still pretty found. the debt levels been higher in europe, that's the case in individual countries. if you look at the eurozone as a whole, the debt level collectively are not really as grim. but what the europeans are really worried about are just what you pointed out is the contingent effect from the united states. so if the u.s. loses its aaa rating, what about france? what about germany?

eurozone contagions from the great crisis going over into italy. also questions now about spain and the spanish are extraordinary concern in particular about this. they were on the brink of having the markets respond to some real serious problems in the spanish economy. there's certainly a feeling in a strange way of double standards in your. the crisis this time around was made in the united states. it's the united states that is being downgraded because of its political dysfunction. it to the united states that seems of the largest sense, and at the same time when there's a downgrade by s&p, where the markets fully to is the united states. this is being pointed out. and much of the commentary we've seen, some of the u.s. analyst who we are competing for, a dysfunctional europe and dysfunctional japan. so the west, weirdly a good job

states. is not kind of the question, and i'm sure bob will comment on this, there's the question in your about the volume of u.s. leadership. they are concerned about populism in the united states but they have plenty of their own problems with the riots in london, the various massive debates in terms of people than having no, country at what went wrong. we have seen plenty of a people's, sort of the fringes of european space of people protesting, populist parties have certainly a lot of fraction. elections coming up in france next year in 2012 where the main

competitor for president sarkozy is not perhaps the socials we saw, a new brand of populist politician in france. and we have the elections in germany in 2013 where the coalition that angela merkel has tried to keep, how politics in germany are going to go. so dysfunction seems to be working out all over. that's what dysfunction does. bring everybody into it. on all sorts. how does one prevent this effect from the fact we're all talking about being dysfunctional. >> ken, china, is dysfunction -- >> stop talking. sorry, what? >> first of all, tells how the chinese view all of this.

>> let me talk about beijing and in get a sense of whether we can still rely on china to be the engine that's going to pull us >> a comment on how the rest of asia's view on it i think the chinese and people throughout asia, first of all, considered u.s. still to be by far the mosb powerful dynamic country in the world. so it isn't like everyone has written off the u.s. but any interest. we garner a lot of respect. having said that, i think we are known in the region, rightly, ac being a country that does not at avoiding huge errors in what we do domestically. but what we have a terrificta record at is recovering fromgú those errors and emerging stronger than we were before. the genius of our system is in

recovery. it's not in avoiding mistakes. is recovering from those mistakes. the big question around asia now is are we losing our bounce back capability? has our political system become so dysfunctional that we can nop longer reach the kind of accommodations and pragmatic mobilize enormous resources we our society to move forward in the future and capture the future. that's a very, very bighdcbah question.i# i think the events, especially the last couple of weeks, have added an exclamation point to that question. because seeing as a cell phone as tom mentioned, one that waspé handed monumentally badly and is out, does not bode well for the future so i think this is also tarnished the u.s. model of democracy, you know, because when you talk about china, what china is saying is you need a bigger stake role, a more cohesive state to do with the problems that confront us.

i think chinese have it wrong but it's hard to argue on the basis of the last couple of weeks, just look at us and that's how you ought to managet@ things. the u.s. is also seen in the region, perhaps actually, as a country that in the past could always be counted on to be thea. go to country. today we think globally and with unparalleled resources. will we be a country short of cash. so really does not have thed. capability to step up what is av global stimulus program, whether it is peacekeeping or whatever it may be, we are not going to will kind of encourage others to put up the resources. perception of the u.s. role in3& the future. and then you go to the trigger(v mechanism, that tom mentioned.4& it really worried me that you said we are almost going to end

up with a trigger mechanism because that trigger mechanism has a strong year and half ofcz the savings that are band-aid it out of our broadly defined security system.óuo9o9 and that will really, if that ij implemented, that will really force serious changes. otherwise might have done. i can tell you what we otherwise are doing, we're increasing our security forces in asia, and so( be sure countries around region are looking at that. that relates to a bigger issue which is the issue of how everyone relates to china. to date as you look around the region every country in the region wants to benefit from china's economic growth. and they all are. china is the largest trade partner of every single country in the region. as of the year 2000, we were. so the change has been extreme

significant. so they all want to get the economic upside. what they don't want to have is the chinese leverage the economic power to diplomatic in military advantage. so countries throughout the region are turning to the list is a protect us from that. essentially bound the chinese diplomatically on a secure site so we can benefit from economic but in so far as our capacity to side, they are going to hedge more in the direction of china. china of ready access to the web, who argued that the u.s. is clearly in decline and will not recover. and, therefore, it is time for china to press its long-standing positions on issues of long-standing neuralgia with the u.s., whether weapons sales to

taiwan or whatever it may be. chinese leadership doesn't sitting there saying, you know, very serious and they may be gracious in the long run. we aren't sure so we have to hold back and watch what happens commitments. this is the shadow of the future, really hard to asia at this point. and the shape of that shadow is shifting. and unless we get our act together better it's not shifting in the right direction from our perspective. in terms of the irony, china will continue to do very well. i think the reality is that's not certain. if you look to china for the next in this program, you're going to have a very long wait before they will move in that direction. inflation, asset bubbles and decline in exporting markets, all kinds of problems, and very substantial levels of potential

instability. so they are not about to start turning on the money spigots again. especially when their level of bad debt at local levels is very high. so that they're still trying to figure out how deep in the hole they are. they can manage it but we are talking trillions of dollars, not billions of dollars. picture. we'll have to see how it plays out but i think we're all much better off if china does well. but china may not do well in which case i think all the problems we talk about are further complicated. let me conclude with one last remark. and that is 2012 is an utterly extraordinary year in the asia-pacific region. we have an election here. the chinese have their succession in the fall of 2012. 70% of the top leadership will

march 2012, south korea later in the spring of 2012. potential political changes in b 2012. there has not been a year in several generations when all of the top national leaders were essentially focus on domestic politics and the politics of succession as 2012 will be. that's a terrible time to have a lousy economy and a lot of concerns about the future. >> one of the things, one of th> reasons i left bob taken to last year, we can always count on bob to take the long view to tell us it's not as bad as we really think it is. but let me just quote was something david wrote in the near times. he said the debt crisis chipped away at the global authority of

president obama, celebrated by we came to office as a man who attended an air of -- now the topic of discussion on capital is whether the age of obama is giving way to an age of austerity, one that will inevitably reach american influence internationally. >> do i have to respond to what he said, or can i move on? [laughter] >> maybe he is. >> i do think we are in a serious crisis. i like a good crisis as much as the next person, but there is a way in which we are in an election season. we want to start casting blame. we want to make sure that the other party or the other president is blank not only for domestic crisis but also for tarnishing america's reputation in the world. when it's important to step back a little bit and see what the measures of american power and influence really are.

and asked ourselves in a kind of sober way how much of a decline, how much can a decline in the future? i have to say, i really very substantial agree with what ken said, much to your dismay, i'm sorry. this isn't on the record, right? [laughter] >> i mean look, bottom lines are these, the united states provides, continue to provide very important global goods to much of the world. including to china. whether it is through its security role, whether it is the fact that its economy still the largest economy in the world and everybody depends to some degree on the health of the american economy, and i think there is no other real competitor for the role the united states place and i don't think anybody in the world thinks there is either. we can get a little bit too caught up in our impression of brand america, but as i look back and you asked us to take a long view, but as i take a look

back over the past six years we can overstate how wonderful brand america was. i remember periods in the past, 1974, for instance, to pick a date or anytime between 1968 and the mid 1970s when the american brand was very badly tarnished by vietnam, watergate, by assassinations, i don't think would even in the ballpark now. we do have a certain degree of political dysfunctionality. i don't think it's quite shocking. but the question really is, you know, are we able to provide these kinds of public goods that the united states has been providing in the past? i find it interesting that in the midst of this dreadful crisis that we been in, much of the world will still come especially year, still looking to the united states to please use its military power in libya. i must say coming after iraq,

coming after george w. bush, coming after the economic debacle, coming after the tarnishing of brand america, that the arab league and the europeans were practically begging the united states to please use force in libya is rather astonishing, and worth noting. now, what can happen? i think the debt crisis is serious, and i must say when tom was saying there's too much fixation on the debt problem i really want to go up to alice rivlin's office and bring her down here. i think the debt crisis is the big crisis. i think that's what the world, mauricio, that's what the world is paying attention to. they want to know whether the united states can get its debt under control. but for me the question in terms of foreign policy is, and ken touched on this very importantly, what is the impact going to be on the america's ability to provide these goods and particularly in the security area. and as a consequence of our debt

crisis is in my view entirely pentagon coffers at precisely the moment that many people around the world, particularly in asia but also in the middle east and europe, are looking for the united states to continue playing its military role, that's when the decline begins. when we begin to cut our capacities so that we are not playing the role that everybody expects, that is when the decline start. and i really worry that we are talking ourselves into a decline that needn't occur and that we are committing kind of preemptive superpower superb -- we move through this very political environment we try to keep our eyes on the ball. just to end, i think that the people who think the united states is going to recover from this are right. i don't think it's going to be in 2012. i think it's going to be it in barack obama's second term for somebody else's first term.

i think that sometimes in american history, go to american history, look at the years before, look at the 1850s, look at the 1930s. the american process sometimes has to go through a tremendous dysfunctionality before arriving at some kind of solution. i'm fairly optimistic we will get to a solution. >> let me just get tom to come in here off the triggers because triggers, that could, in fact, have a pretty dramatic effect on the defense budget. just explain what might happen and what you think that is very likely. [ the second part of the debt ceiling increase agreement was a gñrget for additional savings toward the deficit. the first was roughly $900 billion, to a trillion over 10 years. the effect was about 1.1,

1.2 trillion. if the congress fails to receiv from joint committee and enact, followed by the president's signature of a plan to do that o; a rational way, then the backup is a set of automatic reductions. and those are divided roughly evenly between the defense budget and, get this, medicare providers. now, the irony of the last is of course the grand balanced budget agreement of 1997 that everyone is so proud of had as the onlyx cut of that on medicare providers, and we have been fixing that ever since every year. so it doesn't go into effect.

so there was no savings and spending back in 1997. now, the other part of it is, because i said earlier it doesn't go into effect until 2013. i don't think either party, any president could live with that backup mechanism. so i'm absolutely convinced tha= something will replace it. it. so as bob says, there is, you? know, there is some give and flexibility in the face of nonnegotiable demands, d- one, by the time you get to keep us three as churchill reminded us, we finally figure out what to do. so i presume we will do it. one of the most obvious ways in the short term, i think deficits and debt are big problem but i think everything we've done so far is counterproductive to it, and what i think has to happen

is is for obama not to bargain away his most powerful lever for getting something constructive; done, which is the expiration of the bush tax cuts at the end of 2012. that is the one thing that makes the status quo unacceptable to republicans who are likely to control one or both houses of congress, even if obama is reelected. and would in and of itself would almost instantly, along with the restraint on discretionary spending, eliminate our immediate drop them and allow us to make reasoned judgments about defense spending. so there is hope out of this in that sense, but only if the actors who are in a position to do something about it don't act

foolishly and give away the levers they have for forcing some changes i would actually do with the problem. it's all about taxes and health care costs. everything else is a rounding error in deficits and debt. and so we don't want to repeal the affordable care act or disable it. we want to build on it so we can actually deal responsibly with those health care costs. >> and it's not going to happen in 2012. i mean, one of the aspects of america's inability to renew itself is that it renews its political leadership in a regular fashion. and often in a dramatic fashion. and either you're going to havej a president obama with a second taken in a first term, or if you have a new president who has run on some plants which either will or will not be enacted but i think has a better chance than

right now. >> but in the meantime the world waits and watches. >> they have done that before, right?(' the world had to live throughúg the world had to live -- right? [laughter] >> in a certain sense it wasn't the same. i remember in 1998 death of all( kinds of editorials all over the world, what do we do while the united states takes its vacation?x& because clinton was paralyzed anything. republicans were actors though. we've been through the watergate scandal. we went to iran contra. does anybody remember what happened with iran-contra? and now reagan is remote as our greatest president since the last 150 years. [laughter] >> it is true that the world can wait. [laughter] >> it is true of the world has been used to that. it is true that a superpower

gives more degrees of freedom path under but they are not unlimited degrees of freedom and i think they are changing. >> really wrecks among whom? >> there is waiting. >> who? >> brazil? india? >> we are measuring these in decades, right? >> wake me up. [laughter] >> let me jump in on this. because undeniably it is a balance of power is shifting. is taking some time but the little hard to maintain. china is emerging with a powerful economy, and a huge budget surplus, which is putting

into its military amongst other things. so i mean it's not as if the world now is just watching and waiting. the world is also acting in ways that we don't have as much ability to control or even shape. so is it there a danger that in this period where we become preoccupied politically that their own way in a way when we finally get around to it in 2013, and hopefully all of this will work itself out, that we find ourselves in a situation which is which -- which is much more difficult for the united states to influence? >> i'm in favor of being obama i a lot of things but really i want to push back a little bitr; on this judgment in two ways. perspective.

dizzying heights of economiccñ power while the united states was preeminent. and i would say that the rise of the japanese economy and theç( germany economy dwarfed the rise of the brazilian and the indian of at least what ought to have as it turns out they did not an; idea leads retrospectively impact negatively.cq5i so i don't have brazil and india really can't even begin to there's no question china is not the time it was before but when again, we didn't have china. we had the soviet union. we had the soviet union occupying half of europe with" massive forces, with a massive nuclear force, with real global reach. i would venture to say we are still better off today, even with this rise in china as the preeminent power, then we were in that period.cv

and so yes, things are shifting and i agree with mauricio, these nothing to do with what happened this year. power has been shifting to asia for decades and will continue to ship for some extent and less and until ken's concern about china crops up. and on this point. in 1987 paul kennedy wrote a very small book about american overstretched, and it was well it wasn't that america change. the soviet union suddenly and united states be so much wonderful that it was the other guy collapse. if it asking what is more likely that the united states is a we're going to be witnessing decade after decade after decade, or that china is going to run up against some challenge which they seriously shake its

do too, to. >> you want to respond on that, ken? >> not really. [laughter] >> let's talk about one of the other established powers, russia, and how they are viewing this political dysfunction here. >> there's a great segue from where we were just left by bob in the ruins of the soviet empire, the u.s. is now. one of the narratives of this is indeed the paul kennedy rise and fall of a great power. and the united states is not immune to this in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary. and this is a narrative we're hearing quite a lot now in the russian context. you have to ask yourself why.

>> was mentioned they were about to be into election in 2012. and while while ken was talking very eloquently about this enormous leadership transition in asia, about 70% of the chinese party and then all the leadership transitions there's not going to be much of a leadership transition in russia. we've got very limited options for who's going to move out of this even if it's the testing of the various tests we've still got a same group of people for the last 10 years certainly been at the uppermost russian politics. so they got to make this exciting and it's a great reflection away from your own problems at home if you can burden basically people for economic issues, and the russian economic engine is also slowing down. that they won't be able to withstand a double-dip recession because they spent so heavily the first time around. the united states pulled europe down and that goes obviously

directly where it hurts in most because of the russian economy because the economy is still fueled by oil and gas revenues in terms of the political dysfunction this is a great way of deflecting criticism is that there's not going to be a leadership per transition in russia. and that russia has all these democratic dick tape heaters and you want democracy look at this dysfunction and just as the united states has lost its aaa rating, the somehow diminishing of obama's presidency, a presidency based on consensus on negotiation, of basically multilateralism, this also weakens to some degree medvedev, his presidency in russia. it goes again back to the whole call ken was pointing out on the chinese side of a strong hand and that plays very well into the politics in russia right now about the question that mr. builten does come back as

president well, this will be justified because look at this chaos in europe and the united states this political dysfunction we can't possibly want to have the reputation of that and strange and economic times and where crisis needs strong leadership. an extremely important narrative and even over the doesn't help russia economically and it certainly doesn't correspond in the reality. and the chinese are about where the united states stands. >> can i come back about russia? >> as you do that, does the change leadership changeover is going to be affected the same way and be able to look at the same argument and look at the dysfunction there and justify our system? >> they have made that -- they've made fundamentally that argument in two different guys over the last 30 years.

the first guise was when the soviet union collapsed. they said effectively, folks, look at the chaos over there. look at the declines in standards of living and decrease in mortality declining and national power, et cetera, et cetera. if you want to change our system, that's what it's going to become. that's what the future looks like. and what we can offer instead is very rapid economic growth, social stability, et cetera, et cetera. more recently, they point to the united states and say effectively, you know, democracy -- party -- they say they're dramatic in their own peculiar fashion but multiparty kind of free swinging democracy like we have produces chaos. there's not a way to husband resources and get from here to there. now, so for athlete until they become a fully middle incomed company which keep in mind chinese per capita of gdp still puts it number 100 in the world. china is still a developing

country. it's not a middle incomed country. and until they become a middle incomed country, effectively, we need the capacity to mobilize and focus resources in order to do the tough things necessary to manage urbanization and, you know, the massive changes in society and without producing social breakdown and they point to the u.s. as not a complete and negative example but let's face it, folks, democracy doesn't get a lot done when you face critical issues. i want to, if i can, get back to bob's framework here because i know you're correct me in i'm mischaracterize it. well, is the u.s. going to be up in china and up and down is china going to trip up or is the u.s. going to recover. >> i wasn't going to put it that way. but anyway.

[laughter] >> and there was a comparison to the soviet union, what happened to the soviet union. and, you know, thinking back in terms of the u.s. and the soviet union, preworld and the soviet bloc and the cold war, china's advances in recent decades has been integrating into the global economy. including integrating our entire country. we are in china in a major way and they are in the u.s. in a major way. in ways that you couldn't have dreamed of with the soviet union. their increasing stature in the world has not been based on military power. if anything their military advances have decreased their status in the world. why are you going in that direction, you know, totally different the way the soviet union managed its situation. i would argue and this goes back to some of the issues that was raised in the beginning, we have an enormous interest in china's

success. the kind of success and does already bring enormous benefit, and enormous opportunity. i worry about china's success would be if they succeed and they are able to shape international practice in ways that are profoundly illiberal that are really revisionist to the current system, that works against our interest and i would argue against the interests of most folks we care about, right? so what we want is a successful china that fits into a global system that continues to operate at least broadly of the principles of the system that was set up during world war ii. that system has that risk if the u.s. isn't powerful enough to really support it. if we aren't successful ourselves. so our ideal outcome is u.s. success and chinese respect. the chinese respect power and respect dinamism and that will produce on balance the best overall outcome. the chinese failure is, frankly, going to impose costs on all of

us that are huge, dramatic u.s. failure leaves open the possibility of a global system increasingly dominated by chinese-style values. let me tell you, i don't know about but that's not a system i'm going to be very comfortable in. so i think we need to think in terms of those, you know -- that varying mix and not so much in terms of kind of the cold war. >> i'm glad i got you set off on that i mean, i agree with what you're saying. i was just saying -- >> you keep saying that. >> if you were doing a predictive. your visa to chinese is in trouble right now. [laughter] >> i was just making predictive questions. i was asking a predictive question about whether the united states was necessarily on decline or not. >> before we go to the audience for questions, just tell us about the western atmosphere reaction to all of this. >> i already love the argument. [laughter] >> but honestly, i think, let me

insist on this point. i think if we think of the debt and it's going from 70% of gdp to 80% of gdp in the next few years just by pure inertia -- if we think well, the u.s. has a supremacy there is no contender, the next one in this marathon is miles behind we can enjoy the summer and when the bipartisan commission comes from the proposal and if something comes out of that then we'll wait until after the election. i think that sense of complacency is misplaced and it's misplaced for one reason. because the damage is not by to empower the contender. the damage is the u.s. economy. as you said, i think, the u.s. center of government is trying

to do too many things at the same time. it's trying to do a welfare state and reignite the u.s. economies and infrastructure. it's becoming the provider of global public goods of last resort and in many cases the last resort and with all those burdens, and with the levels of taxation, the current levels of taxation i think that's not sustained but at the end of the day that hurts the consumer, that hurts the investor and that hurts the economy as a whole so i think the motivation for doing something is not necessarily because of losing the supremacy. it's because of the weakening of the economy. that in turn loses did leadership anyway, back to brazil, you know some people are thinking, well, let's find ways of weakened u.s. economy or a

weakened u.s. dollar. let's find other reserve currency. let's promote a dialog between emerging countries. let's figure out a way of setting the recession in the u.s. if it happens a second recession with more stimulus. this is the dialog that's taking place. it's not about basically becoming the and you say becoming the world's leaders, it's about figuring out ways to handle the change in circumstances which basically mean a change in the role of the u.s. in the global economy. >> okay. let's go to your questions. i'd ask you first of all to wait for the microphone. secondly to identify yourself so you can ask your question. let's go first. over here at the front.

>> thank you, adam nixon with broadcasting. i want to follow on your original comments and i wanted to see if i could offer a diagnosis of political hypocondria and you discussed about tax rates and entitlements but what about foreign policy spending? on particular we spent trillions of dollars in the war on terror, iraq, afghanistan. we fund about 70%, i believe, of nato operations, troops in asia, libya. and we're about to spend the next month looking backwards to that 10 years of foreign policy expenses. what do you see happening in the next 10 years to those expenses? are they necessarily going to have to be cut as part of this debate or is the status quo maintained because most of the money as you say would come from entitlements and tax rates? >> well, almost certainly others here can speak with more

authority than me. my own view is that some expenses will inevitably be cut back. the chances of us engaging mill taylor again of the scope of iraq and afghanistan without a clearer notion of how we come out of it and how we finance it is pretty farfetched. i think out of this could come some very healthy adjustments in our whole sort of defense strategy and expenditures. and that would be a good thing. what i do see, though, is the easiest cuts are on the nondefense foreign policy side of the budget. i see those being cut back.

areas initiated by president bush where we really have some leverage to do some very constructive things will be cut back harshly. there's a whole host of kind of irrational cuts that are being made right now. because those are the easiest places to achieve it. so i think there are -- there are some real adjustments. the entire sort of budget will be -- will be scrutinized and scrubbed but the -- all i was saying is the bottom line if you're concerned about deficits and debt, the answer is taxes, health care costs and growth. everything else ends up around

there and concern about our financial well-being but the other pieces that gets -- get here. >> and with assistance and in the arab world it could be critically important in terms of democratic transitions there. isn't there a danger in all of this that our levers of influence or soft power or so on is going to be affected? >> i mean, it's hard to measure exactly how much is going to be affected but it's foolish. these are trivial amounts of money that we're talking about. they are the easiest low hanging fruit for congress to go after 'cause they have no constituency. and, you know, unfortunately, i actually believe that the president has not helped the case. when the president says in his

speech about afghanistan say people need to focus on their own home and let's by all means. and, unfortunately, it always rests on the administration in power to make the big case for why these expenditures are necessary. congress is never going to make that argument and the opposition party whether it's democrats or republicans rarely make that argument so -- i mean, if the administration really cares about these cuts they're going to have to fight for them. >> thank you. i like bob's optimism but let me throw out a few other thoughts that might weaken the u.s. role overseas and then have you shoot them down as to why -- >> it's my job. i'm up here alone on this. [laughter] >> the first is declining public confidence in the ability of the federal government to do right thing. in the '50s and '60s, if there

was a problem it was easy. the public believed. give it to the federal government, they'll solve it. that confidence is no longer there. therefore the likelihood of the u.s. public searching the federal government to be active overseas isn't what it used to be. second, our alliances aren't what they used to be. nato was really powerful, u.s., japan, et cetera, '60s, '70s, '80s, it's not there now. thirdly, we solved a lot of global problems in the past by just throwing resources at them. massive amounts of money, massive delegations overwhelming other countries with just our manpower and people. i don't see us having the kind of resources that we had in the past to throw at international problems and the last one and i'm not sure about this, declining public interests in international affairs. the focus all now is domestic. it's jobs.

it could be transient, perry, keep the government small. make it a texas model. i don't see growing american public interest in ventures overseas especially in the wake of afghanistan and iraq. so my question is, do these for points leave further arguments for a less influential american presence abroad? >> the yeah, the one that is most constrained resources and if you have constrained resources then in a very mechanical sense you have less ability to wield influence on the world stage. now, again -- having spent a lot of time looking back at the cold war and other periods of the american history we can overstate the degree to which we can snap our fingers and get whatever we want no matter how much money we threw at it. and by the way, it did some real damage to our own economy and

the global economy as a result. so you can overstate this. as far as the public is concerned, i have been hearing -- you knew i was going to say this. i've been hearing every five years or less that the public has had it with foreign policy for the last 25 years. the american people are very interesting not to say peculiar people. they always say pretty much that they don't care about foreign policy. they never urge administrations to go off on foreign adventures. it's usually political leadership, whether it's in congress or more likely in the white house. it's events that american people don't think they're going to care about and then wind up do carrying about. and i would be happy to wager with anybody in this room including tom mann that sometime -- if averages hold, sometime in the next five years, the united states will engage in another moderately sized military action because, you

know -- >> why moderately. >> i don't know -- it's not world war ii and it's not 500 troops. but we have -- i've repeated this ad nauseam because you've heard this 100 times, forgive me we have on average since 1989 engaged in a significant military action overseas roughly once every two years. now, i believe that we will be in a post-afghanistan, post-iraq delay which will probably extend that two or three more years. but it is astonishing to me. if you would say to me at the beginning of the obama term that no joke. they told me if i voted for john mccain we'd invade another arab country and i voted for john mccain and that's exactly what happened. [laughter] >> if you told me that under barack obama we would yet again be engaged in a military intervention however limited in a place like libya -- i would have said that was odd but don't underestimate the american people's ability to pay no attention to the world and then suddenly support an intervention

in someplace they hadn't even given any thought to. >> okay, yes, please. >> i'm from american university. i have a question to ken and bob. i think china rarely has aggressive foreign policy -- i mean, to increase its power so why do we worry about china to use its economy power to strengthen its diplomatic and army power that wants to do that estimate before? thank you. >> i'm sorry. go ahead. >> no, i talk lastly. unless you want to say something you want to agree with you. i may agree with you. [laughter] >> as you can tell, bob and i enjoy agreeing with each other. [laughter] >> as i understand your question, why is the world worried that china's military

power is being strengthened on the basis of its stronger economy given that china doesn't have aggressive intent? >> as opposed to their acceptance and entire for america to have power. i think that was the other part of that? >> let me speak to the chinese side and you'll speak to the acceptance. [laughter] >> i think on the chinese side there are several concerns. china constantly asserts that it has no aggressive intent but its plans for development of its own military are very nontransparent. it has become more transparent over the years but it is by far the least transparent military throughout asia. and for frankly -- or the rest of the developed world. secondly, the kinds of things the chinese military is

investing in, in some cases are really quite worrisome. when you look at antisatellite weapons, they test antisatellite missiles, when you look at carrier killing missiles, when you look at global surveillance capability and that kind of thing, you know, that goes beyond taiwan. it goes beyond the area right around china. and china on the one hand says it has no kind of global military ambition but on the other hand, we keep seeing china develop capabilities at a fairly rapid pace that, in fact, can lay the groundwork for power projection well beyond its own periphery. and i think that disconnect worries military people to look at china and say in a sense we need to understand more what your plans are, what your thinking is about the different regions of the world that you're engaged in, how your military

development relates to the specific goals. you can find a lot of that information about the u.s. military, you know, you can generally find what we're paying for weapon systems and what we're going to develop and why we're doing that and all that you get do that with china. if you look at china's military white paper which they issue periodically, each year it's gotten a little more detailed in the past. it still, for example, doesn't break down the world by region and indicate its interest in any particular regions. you know the military thinks in those terms. but there's nothing in their white paper that addresses things with that level of specificity. and so i think that -- that worries folks. and then finally, frankly, the fact that china is not a democratic system worries folks because there is a sense in the i think around much of the world that if you got a nondemocratic system, it doesn't have the kinds of

constraints that democratic systems are kind of self-imposed by the nature of their decision-making. now, historians may or may not agree fully with that but i'm just saying in terms of popular perception there's a worry about systems that are authoritarian systems that are getting much more powerful, developing their military fairly rapidly and don't get into detail in explaining doing why they're doing. >> they say the united states is the world's leading democracy isn't very constrained according to bob's statistics. >> well, historians may -- i was dealing with the private question, why do people worry about why china is doing? >> i just want to go to steven's and ask bob to respond about this perception that nato is incapable of kind of military roll that it's played in the

past. >> bob you need to explain -- >> let's just move in about nato first of all. we got another question. >> well, on nato, we made a mistake, i think, in the in believing nato could be something other than it was during the cold war and what it was during the cold war was a static force in place. the role of nato during the cold war was the role of french, german, british forces was to stay there and not get beaten too quickly by the soviets. when the cold war was over, and i say this in all difficulty for when i go home and talk to my wife who is a nato ambassador, who believed in this and we decided that nato had to be out of area or out of business, had to start becoming a global player, we stretched union capabilities and desires beyond where they wanted -- where they reasonably could go.

and so when we compare nato to the past it's not that nato was worse than it was in the past. we're asking it to do more than it really is not capable nor desirous of doing the european elements of it. that has, unfortunately, created tensions in the alliance that were unnecessary. me the goal of nato should be to -- the goal of nato and the eu would be to continue the goal of create a europe whole and free it should focus on europe and the near reaches of europe. it should focus around things in the mediterranean and the middle east to some extent and things in the russia's near broad but to talk about russia as a nato power -- >> yeah, i agree with bob now. [laughter] >> i think bob is absolutely right on asking too much of the european allies and, of course, european is not just the european allies, the canadians in there and there's lots of powers who also have stepped up to the plate in a lot of these

out of area operations and what we've seen in the last few years in particular particular in afghanistan the non-european allies, the canadian, and the australians and the georgians as well who actually have stepped up when the u.s. has requested it. and probably the biggest challenge in this is germany. and one of the big debates and not so long ago, in fact, we had a debate between bob and a very famous german general who's a frenchman. he has many european guises and he has many about european security and what came out of that debate and some subsequent competency is that we forget in the united states how traumatized europe has been from its not too distant past from world war ii. and there's still lots of issues to be worked in the european context about the use of military force and the fact for the united states, the military is a point