more active in the future. this is a recent cover of scientific american. ten world changing ideas. number one was the e cagey on the phone. this is the logo for apple and this is the last thing i hope i can leave you with. a picture of medicine and health care can be exceptionally bright. thanks very much for your attention. [applause] fire away. [inaudible] >> c-span is recording this. that will be interesting if you want to get on c-span, this is your chance. yes. please go to the mike. i am sorry. >> it seems to me that oftentimes there are certain

economic advantages to things stay in the way they are for drug companies or certain aspects of the medical community that make money off of the way things are. do you see that slowing down progress? >> yes. that is part of the reason why our medical community is so sporadic and difficult to change. what you are alluding to on the life science industry they want to have skills like lipitor used by tens of millions of people. that is the ultimate blockbuster suggestion that we won't seen many of the 0 drugs because the opportunity now is to have more highly effective new drugs or devices or diagnostic tests for the right people so i think there's a shift in the life sciences industry but the medical community is resistant to change and that includes the life science industry.

the model that worked for so long was the charm. that is a challenge to a great degree and it is true that there's a struggle at this point as you say to move into an individual medicine era. we could do this but i don't think the industry will do without a lot of pressure. that is what i am hoping. remember what they did to us? and that worked really well. this is another phase of ask your doctor and it is with your information which you never had before. >> i am impressed with your talk. i am partial the technologist but also a senior and a few other things. from that point of view i am going to use a term i had some experience in but doesn't make me an expert related to the future of what you talked about.

i have no idea what instruments are that you are talking about. if i am looking around the room at this point there are folks here that are struggling with their laptop and with the e-mail, the reason is too much learning and it is complex. one of the reasons, there is greater attention to the digital stuff practically no attention to the human factors and ergonomics of learning and comprehension. now you come along and i certainly respect this book. i am even going to buy it and you are suggesting that we are jumping from dealing with computers that we hate probably, they do go bad, and designed a certain way and we are not the fishing in this kerri and you expect us to manage, understand, interpret, you just advise us -- they are smarter than we are presumably and now you're throwing it back in our laps saying you can do this for

yourself. my question is -- >> what kind of phone to you have? >> a cellphone. >> smart phone? >> it is a semi plain jane kind of phone. >> tell me what kind it is. >> wait a minute. i think i left it. >> you are the only one here. [talking over each other] >> i left it in the car because i didn't want it to ring here. i had it for the day. i could go on with the deficiency of technology. it is not perfect. i have been battling. let me tell you the problem that is not solved is how to we deal with this stuff? what is the remedy? what folks do you have the backup power ways of dealing with a much more complex system particularly when it relates to our health? it looks like i will have a stroke in the next five minutes. >> we get more warning than that. may be five days. >> that is my question.

>> great question. i knew this was a tough group as we were going through earlier. >> we haven't even started yet. >> this is silicon valley. this is the technology capital of the planet. it is ironic i come here -- >> people want nothing to do with technology. [talking over each other] >> we had it with all this stuff. >> i understand. there are more people with antibodies to facebook that are on twitter. let me just say that first of all it has to be released in. if you are turning your phone on and getting your blue coat and 100 is good and 120 is bad or 50 is real bad, buzzers or warning or whatever you want, happy music or whatever you want to go with it this has to work really easy for you and it is your data. i have to submit to you that when it is your data and not something you are reading about

on the internet but your data is transformative. you will learn it. it is easy. when you watch videos of 2-year-olds or 3-year-olds that can take and ipad and operate it better than an adult doesn't that tell you something? >> that is what they do. [talking over each other] >> this can make your life better. your help better. you also bring up the user interface. has to be incredibly friendly. i am suggesting by showing these devices you don't have to know how to interpret it. you just have to have your phone on. let's say you have high blood pressure. you don't want to measure your blood pressure. you just get a tax. i don't know if you use texts but you get a text and it says your blood pressure isn't good and you need to step up this particular medicine that is nice because seventy million americans today who have high blood pressure and over thirty

five million of them have it under control. they're the ones who are sitting ducks for a stroke or heart attack. i'm suggesting by carrying this phone and wristband that will protect you from a stroke or heart attack. >> what you are really saying is trust me. this is going to be user-friendly. i have seen other devices and that is not always the case. i think there is a big challenge to the folks who designed this equipment. that has to happen first. besides which one of the reasons you're getting the response in this audience which is the senior audience like myself is the fact that there are others things we like to think, read books, contemplate and so forth and we are not on facebook. >> i want to get back to -- i identify with you. your most salient critical point is the human factor. i don't know if you know a

stanford professor who wrote cutting for stone. on friday we had a debate. should be the tech side or the human side. really funny. you would have enjoyed it. at the end they said there is a new type of medicine and i didn't call in this term. it was topol geese or something. taking the best of both worlds. you want to have the compassion and human factor and being able to -- sitting and typing on a computer. to do the electronic medical records. you want to have that connection but you also want to leverage this technology was inappropriate. you don't want to use it in a promiscuous way but use it precise. what i am suggesting is it has to be very friendly and not requiring a lot of techno savvy nests but it will help particularly when coupled with plugging in to the human factor.

i don't ever want to say trust me. i am trying to break of the medical precept. i will never say trust me. i don't believe in the paternalistic way doctors operate. i am not going to ask for your trust to gauge your experience. that is my -- >> thank you for being here, dr. topol. my question and you alluded to united health, can you talk a little bit about how you envision insurance companies playing a role in this? >> really interesting. fit in some ways leading the charge. they're trying to come up -- we're in a crisis of cost of health care and they're trying to come up with remedies and they see for example a published yesterday united health a personalized medicine, white paper extensive report predicting that gen nomex was going to be transformed of of medicine and these pharmacy

benefit managers like medco are pushing gino types to make for much more efficient use of drugs and matching up the drug that will work in the right person. we are starting to see more of this. the nicholas volcker case, millions of dollars that were extended to the final point, what about doing the sequencing of front. now we have health insurers pay for the sequencing much earlier which is a really good sign so we're starting to see the earliest phase, health-insurance get it. they might not be as important as the outcome for the patient but we see the cost factor. it looks promising. much more to go on that point. >> if you find a genetic mutation which is causing a disease, how is the medicine

created for that one or two people who have that mutation? who is going to do that? >> great question. basically you are saying you have all the orphan type things, myriad of rare mutations. there are a zillion drugs out there in these databases and libraries so many of which are in popular use or put into a dead letter file or whatever and they can be repurchased so there are a lot of drugs that could be developed and there is a massive database. that is one thing. we purposing drugs that do not exist and the other is if you have a mutation and it is a serious illness you can have an accelerated program to develop a drug. there's a different way of developing it. it won't be the big pharma

companies but companies like -- is part -- they are into that stuff. identifying drugs. the only problem is it is not a matter of coming up with the drug but a palatable price. it is outrageous. the drug for cystic fibrosis. you know what that costs? $294,000 a year which is a tragedy. molecular triumphs of the disease is the problem. >> i am aware of all the air one out there like my heart rate and great ones coming. the interesting thing i am unclear about is so you get -- even if you get this great data aren't you going to end up having to go back to the same physicians who don't want to hear it, don't want you to be educated, are not familiar with

this stuff so there's a cycle here -- what is happening from that side? >> there's a whole chapter in a book about digital doctors. there are some of them but body of. basically there are places like hello hell where they do a lot of visits through skype, facetime and data sent through sensors. during the visit that is done -- practices of medicine. we get physician based, that is a big part of the problem. trying to connect with con academy here, 6 jimenez you saw the segments sunday evening and you knew about con academy. if you have never been decent

enough to respond we have written about it but we need to educate the physician that -- at least give them a shot why this is the future of medicine. if they don't get into genomics or wireless sensors, why don't they use ultrasounds rather than antiquated stethoscopes? you start to save a lot of cost and just delivering a whole lot better care. education is a big part but the willingness of physicians to adapt and we will see. you will go to these but you won't go if they don't speak. >> are you ever afraid if we have the human genome at our fingertips it will end of manipulating it and there won't be a lot of genetic diversity in our society? >> that is a long-range concern. there already is the issue of

genome editing. don't know if you are familiar with that. you can take cells from a skin biopsy or even blood cells and make them in to stem cells in a dish and reconstruct the disease in a dish and for example a genetic disorder--a serious disease of the liver you can take those and edit out the mutation and fix them so they are perfectly normal. we are at the point of putting these back. in that way you can fix the genome potentially to help someone. you bring up the potential editing of genome to be predicting the end of the species or the end of our diverse personhood, i don't think that is likely to happen. ever. but we are so far away from that, we are scratching the surface of understanding the genome.

it is a great point. there are ethical issues as well. >> that was a really good talk. really impressed. diana ph.d. scientists. the work at a small startup in parallel co -- palo alto. we get molecular -- cancer and profiling and how do you balance all of this information coming your way? you get blood pressure or you know what your blood sugar is and there are balances because should you take stands because cholesterol is too high but what if it causes diabetes? i wonder if there are tools you know about or part of it is stalking your physician. just for our consumers. i want to know if there are tools that help us deal with that information so our startup helps cancer patients figure out

how to figure out within the context of their situations. or mutation -- i wonder if there are tools like that that we should be looking at? >> a great way of integrating this stuff. you could be:cancer and the resistance to the drug. you have to know the gene interactions and other metrics we are talking about like different physiology. there is no place to bring that together yet. some companies will figure that out but at this point in time that is a significant thing you are bringing up. really important. what you are doing in the cancer space is important. >> that induced diabetes

reversible? >> no one knows. has been denied for so long even though it is noted for five years. it is not known that the glucose will go away. what i have seen in patients if you follow their glucose and it is climbing if you catch it before it can improve. at the very least if you are on a potent staten particularly as high dose you want to know what the glucose is as going in the wrong direction. that might be the time to strike. we don't know if you crossed the line. my guess is it looks like you can but no one has stated this let's. i hope it is one of the reasons for doing the opposite, get people to start studying the phenomenon. about of people have e-mail me. i wish we knew the answer.

i wish we knew. i think we got to wrap. thanks very much. [applause] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2. forty-eight hours of nonfiction authors and books every weekend. up next a panel discussion on president obama's foreign policy successes and failures. taking part are the three office of bending history, martin indyk, kenneth lieberthal and michael o'hanlon. this is 1 hour and 20 minutes. >> good morning and welcome to the brookings institution. appreciate you are all here on time despite the time change. that is impressive. highly intelligent audience. my great pleasure to be moderating and i guess introducing these three gentlemen who have produced this

fascinating book called bending history, barack obama's foreign policy. there's nothing more difficult than trying to write what is in effect contemporary history to analyze and administration while it is still in place. it must be taken with a bit of modesty and humility. everyone knows things will be seen differently in the future than they have been now. i am reminded of a book i recall from the reagan years called landslide. it was written at the height of the iran-contra crisis. reagan's presidency was finished. he was going to go down in history as a total disaster and i always look back on that as one of the perils of trying to

predict the future based on what is happening in exactly this moment. all these offers are aware of that issue as they approached us. let me introduce the authors. on my right is martin indyk. they're all on my right. president and director of foreign policy program at brookings. my boss and all of our bosses. ask him what he thinks of his book. kenneth lieberthal of the john thornton policy on global economy and development at brookings and on the far right, and the 11, senior fellow in foreign policy at brookings refresh applies is in u.s. defense strategy and use of military force and homeland security and american foreign policy.

these gentlemen are practitioners and scholars and bring a wealth of understanding and particularly in dealing with an issue like this, trying to evaluate the president's foreign policy they bring historical comparative understanding and it is easy to look at a press and see either in isolation or only in comparison to the last presidency. there was a broader historical context in which we have to look get the obama administration and this book really does put it in that context. i thought i would ask -- try to start a discussion and talk about issues raised in the book and ultimately open it up to you for your questions as well. i want to start with the basic concept and our will ask you to describe the concept. you describe obama as a

pragmatic progressive, progress of pragmatic, which is it? >> progressive pragmatist. >> is that different from a pragmatic progress of? let's explore that. >> the answer is no. >> i have to say i am always suspicious when i hear the word pragmatic. in the first place people generally think whatever they are doing is pragmatic and whatever people who disagree with them is doing is not pragmatic. but more generally i always want to know. pragmatic in to what end? what is the purpose of pragmatism? seems to me a tactic rather than a dachshund and seems to be pragmatism in some direction. in the book i often see the definition of pragmatism seems to be maintaining good relations with dictators. that is described as a pragmatic policy on several occasions in this book. how had -- having said that i would love to hear what your

definition of that phrase is. >> first of all the title of the book, bending history, is taken as an adaptation of president obama's favorite quotation he even has embroidered in the oval office which is a quote from martin luther king jr. from his famous speech in montgomery, alabama which he is asking how long will it take? not long. because the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice and the fact this is barack obama's favorite quote and he uses it on several very important occasions like when hosni mubarak steps down as

president of egypt. it is emblematic of the president's own view of what he is trying to achieve and that is the progressive side. as mike can explain in greater detail he spent a lot of time on the campaign trail not just distinguishing himself from george w. bush but laying out a vision. broad and dramatic vision not just for changing the country but changing the world. for improving the world. this is barack obama's progressive vision in which he sees a more humble united states adjusting to changes in the balance of power in a way that would preserve the international water you have spoken so much about your recent book but would do so in the presence of shaping and emerging global order that

involves china and others as well, in the andia and turkey. but in the process bended toward progress and prosperity and that vision which he sold to the american people and sold to much of the world as well not surprisingly was not that easy to implement especially when he faced the great recession and had to focus on that. but all the time all along the way we see him looking for the opportunity to advance this vision. doing it in a way that is

pragmatic. the term the reluctant realist, it is pragmatic in the sense of being a realist in his approach but he is not just adjusting to events and trying to do the best pecahe can. has a sense where he wants to take america and the world. there's a considerable gap between the vision and the result and that is partly because of who he is. he is not just a progressive. not just a liberal. he is a pragmatist. he is a compromise. we see that so much in the way he handles domestic politics. you see very clearly in the way he handles foreign policy. you can make the argument that

it has been good for the country and we do argue in terms of bottom-line the nation's interests have been fairly well protected. there is no breakthrough moment. no inspirational transformational event under this presidency. what there is, and i think he would accept this, is kind of slow progress where he can make it towards the role of objective of improving the world. >> let me pose this. in theory is it possible that ultimately the pragmatism over well with the progressiveat ism or the progress ofism, a very nice perfect balance between pragmatism and progressiveism

but they may clash and i think it might even be instances in this administration read a clashed. can you take a crack at that and expand? >> i will add a word. he did a good job summarizing. generally favorable review how we handled near-term issues on broader issues the grant suggests -- grand strategy has been too ambitious. and some extent the world intervened and he had to deal with crises and immediate challenges that greater than he could have anticipated when he began his campaign. i do think having sold big visions about dramatically reducing global poverty and doubling foreign aid to help do that about repairing the breach with the united states and islamic world pursuing nuclear disarmament. not just non-proliferation the disarmament as the goal, ending global warming or at least making a major dent on that and having big ideas in his campaign

in a way that he was so good at the rhetoric that people found it be beatable that he was going to try to do all these things. he created an expectation gap. it sets up the challenge for him in his remaining year of his first term and if he wins reelection about what will his final big priority be? time to try to emphasize one of those big goals. as opposed to just using the five six pragmatic visions as the cornerstone of speeches but not really using them in governance. ..

>> and, in fact, the major point that you make, it seems to me, is that there is a gap and potentially a big gap between what the administration has promised in the region and what it is capable of delivering. and that would seem to me to be a highly unpragmatic approach. do you want to expand on that point? >> no. >> no. [laughter] okay. then i will continue expressing your view of -- >> seriously, the pragmatism comes in, you're right, i don't use the term constantly -- >> or at all. [laughter] >> or at all. >> i'm sorry, go ahead. >> no, the pragmatism comes in as you look at the entire analysis of what he did toward china. he came in hoping to bring china to the table on global issues. given china's rapid acceleration

up the global table of big powers with interests around the world, he felt that we had to move from dealing with them primarily on bilateral issues and issues right around the periphery to dealing with them on the major issues of the era, climate change, etc. and then you see an evolution of his dealing with china as the chinese, basically, proved not sufficiently responsive on those global issues and then became more assertive in asia as region. and so you see him begin to build, to put greater emphasis on stitching together an asian-wide strategy including china, but also with enormous attention to india, to indonesia, japan, south korea, etc. so i think it's in the evolution of his thinking about china you see his innate pragmatism.

we conclude with his ash ticklation of this asian -- articulation of this asian strategy which was concluded at the end of his 2011 trip to honolulu. on the one hand, he laid out a set of initiatives, a relatively integrated set of initiatives that were economic that was really impressive, frankly. it kind of highlighted that despite some skepticism in the region, america can walk and chew gum at the same time, is going to be around for a long time, and we can get our mojo back, right in the soft underbelly of that is the question of credibility, are we going to be able to pull that off. and the assessment in the book is, ultimately, probably the biggest single factor there will be whether we can get our domestic house in order. everyone in the region, people in the united states and also

around the world, appreciate that america has never been outstanding for avoiding domestic problems and domestic missteps. our unique capability has been in making the adjustments necessary to confront domestic crises, resolve the crisis and emerge stronger than we were before because of the adjustments we've made. i mean, it's the nature of our system to be able to do that unusually well. the big question now is whether we've lost that capability, you know, or whether it's eroded or not. or will we get it back, bounce back in which case everything he's tried to do in asia is perfectly credible. so we conclude saying effectively, you know, this whole book is about foreign policy. rightly so. but let's not forget at the end of the day you can't have a robust strategic foreign policy unless you have domestic credibility and your domestic house in order. >> but the chapter also talks about, um, and i think it's

critical the administration at least implicitly at creating a kind of feedback loop where the chinese are worried about the united states trying to hem them in, the administration is worried about china overplaying its hand, the administration response feeds chinese concerns which feed chinese behavior, and you refer to it as a closed loop. so it seems to me if you add that idea that i think you're effectively saying that the administration's potentially more recent policies are increasing tension in the relationship, including the increasing emphasis on democracy which is the particularly neuralgic point is increasing the tension while at the same time not backing up increasing tension. that seems to me i would say that's a pretty strong indictment of a china policy if you think about even recent presidents. >> um, i guess life is

complicated, you know? the democracy side of this came into, you know, obama has not had that at the center of his foreign policy for most of his administration. it's been there, but it's not been the central focus unlike, say, the george w. bush administration that said we're all about democracy promotion. the arab spring, obviously, forced more central play than global foreign policy. and developments in burma drew the administration into democracy promotion in asia or the rhetoric of that or the actual efforts vis-a-vis burma. you're right, to the chinese this is especially neuralgic. obama has not pressed this with china. he's raised it, but not aiming it, the center of his policy, toward china. but it worries the chinese when america has democracy promotion high on its agenda because they see that as regime change. let me say as obama has tried to

put together an asian strategy with a more activist china in the region and one that harbors deep structural distrust about american long-term intentions. they fundamentally think america's number one, china is now number two. it is an article of faith that, number one is going to try to prevent number two from ever becoming number one. and that casts everything we do in a kind of very us pix light in their -- suspicious light in their mind. he has worked very hard trying to engage the chinese across the board. but i will say at the end of the day i think this distrust over long-term intentions has actually grown in the last few years. i think it's something that very much needs more attention than it's gotten to date and more creative attention on both sides, or we are potentially headed for a very serious problem a decade from now. >> yeah. well, let's talk about this increasing emphasis on democracy that's occurred in the administration, and i think it

makes sense that it's probably response to what's happened in terms of the arab spring. and maybe, martin, i'm wondering -- >> i thought it was a response to your constant lobbying. [laughter] >> well, you're right. we all know my ability to influence successive administrations is overwhelming. [laughter] but would you like to take -- give us your thoughts, because i know it's a complex picture in the book. i have to say one of the really good things about this book which i commend everyone is it's actually a very meticulous walking-through of what's happened, and it is a diplomatic and strategic history. and i found this is true in all the chapters, but i was particularly struck by the way the book walks through the various stages of the administration's response to the arab spring and. and not surprisingly because i think it's common, it would be odd if it were not true, but the response has been a kind of mixed picture in terms of how the administration has approached the arab spring.

i'm wondering if you'd like to give us a bit of an outline of how it looks to you. >> well, as ken has already suggested, it's complicated. barack obama did not make democracy promotion especially in the middle east an objective of his foreign policy. in fact, democracy promotion more generally is not something that he saw as important particularly because he was trying to distinguish himself from, from the what he saw, i think, as the disastrous efforts of bush to try to promote democracy in the middle east. and so you see it, you see it in the national security strategy paper that the white house put out. it's kind of referred to on page 35 of a 48-page document, and it really, basically, lays out a justification for how to work with authoritarian regimes

rather than overthrow them. and so it certainly wasn't on his agenda for the middle east in particular where his first priority was resolving the israeli/palestinian conflict which we can get back to but is the clearest failure of his foreign be policy today -- foreign policy today. but all of a sudden the people of the arab world start to come out in the streets starting in tunisia and then spreading quickly to egypt and across the whole region demanding freedom, democracy, accountable government, the very things that we as americans hold dear. and i think here at that particular moment the president made a strategic judgment that was correct, in my view, and critically important. it had several --

[inaudible] first was this is not about us. this is, this is arabs demanding a change in their government. and we need to get out of the way. and that, i think, was critically important that we not become the story. because it could easily have happened that way. that we need to be on the side of the people, and we need to be on the right side of history. that's the way he saw it. and the critical way of manifesting that strategy was to push mubarak out the door. or to help the egyptian people push mubarak out the door. and that was not just in terms of how he wanted to position the united states in the face of a

revolution that was going on in the arab world, but also was important in the egyptian case because in the process -- and i describe this in detail -- he is not, i don't think it's very well understood that he also made the judgment that it was critically important in terms of our strategic interests in the region that we preserve, help to preserve the role of the egyptian military to be the, as it were, the midwives of the democratic transition. now, it didn't quite work out that well, but he at least did actively engage with the military and get them not to fire on the people. and to preserve their role as the agents for change. and so, you know, why do i say egypt's most important? it's because it's the largest,

most powerful, culturally most important, geostrategically, most centrally-located country in the arab world. one in four arabs is an egyptian. and it's the cornerstone of our whole strategy for maintaining stability in a volatile but vital part of the world. so what happens in egypt is really important. and he, at the outset, he basically got that right. now, it didn't work out so well because the egyptian military turned out to be feckless and useless and counterproductive, and there's not a lot that we've been able to do about that. but the basic, the theory of the case was right, and i think he deserves credit for that. but across the region it became also a lot more complicated. in bahrain where you had a good

one-quarter of the population of the country in the streets and occupying that polar circle, he took the other approach which was to back the king and the royal family against the demonstrators. and that kind of tension between on the one hand promoting our values in egypt and on the other hand protecting our interests in the oil-rich persian gulf by essentially allow -- not standing up to the saudis when they sent their forces in to suppress the demonstrators was, you know, i think in a way you could justify it as the right judgment at the time. but it really did create this kind of tension between our values and our interests which we can't get away from in the middle east.

it's always been a problem. up until the revolutions, we were totally focused on protecting our interests and in bed with all the autocratic regimes and the kings and the sheikhs and the mubaraks to protect. now we couldn't do that anymore, so we had to find a way to balance values with interests. and in the case of bahrain, it was all about the oil, and so it was all about protecting our interests in stability there. in the case of libya which was a strategic side show for the united states, he could promote our values by helping to protect the libyan people and helping to overthrow gadhafi. in syria which is the issue du jour, our interests and our values coincide in our view in terms of helping the syrian people overthrow a horrendously brutal regime. but on the other hand, or i

should say on the same hand strategically, this would deal a devastating blow to iran because assad is the con due bid to -- conduit to influence in the israeli/arab heartland. so our values coincide here in supporting the people of syria in their desire to overthrow the regime. and yet the president has been reticent in terms, first of all, of calling for the overthrow and in terms of actively engaging in the effort. and i've already been too long in this answer, but i think that that's a mistake. i think it comes from an awareness on his part and within the white house of this fact that we point to the gap between

his vision or his rhetoric and the ability to produce results. in the case of libya, he did, he called for the overthrow of gadhafi, and he achieved that. in the case of syria, he's called for the overthrow, but he does, you know, he does not want to put forward the means to actually achieve that. military intervention from his point of view is off the table. and it's difficult to see without some kind of military intervention, i think turkish military intervention it's going to be possible to achieve the clear objective of overthrowing assad. so in a sense we've done as best we can, and i think he deserves credit for that in a very complicated, fast-moving situation in which we don't have a lot of control.

but the story on syria is unfinished, and i for one would like to see him being a lot more assertive than he is. >> well, we will get to that in a second, i mean, but as i was reading that section of the book where the book, again, marchs very methodically through the various phases of president obama's policy towards syria including what i would have characterized as a very pragmatic decision not to get too far out in front for several months, um, but then, of course, he does call for assad last august. he does call for assad to depart which is not then followed up by any particular decisive strategy to get that. um, i don't know, where does that fall on your continuum between pragmatism and progressivism? i mean, i think i know what the answer is, but -- and lying behind all this, so i think i'll go to mike for a second because -- >> pivot?

>> let me pivot over to mike, right. which does not imply leaving you in any way. [laughter] >> and mike has always been here, we never left him. [laughter] >> and i want to add another element because i want to say if i had one critique of this excellent book, i would say there's not enough pom ticks -- politics in it. there's not enough president obama as a political figure and a political actor as well as a decision maker and a strategic thinker. and i want to pick up on the point that you just made. the president walked himself out rhetorically as far as you can go on syria. but the white house, and i would say particularly in an election year, is loathe to contemplate another military action. now, mike, you talk a lot about, i mean, you have and this book addresses, you all address at great length the wars that the president has tried to wind down, and yet the president did order an intervention in libya

which i think most people were surprised. i'm not going to tell my john mccain joke again, but that was kind of a surprise. where is the president now on the whole idea of the use of force? james trout wrote in "the new york times" recently that it's the end of intervention. there's not going to be anymore interventions. but where do you think the president actually is as a theoretical matter, as a matter of principle in the theory on the idea of using force? >> thanks, bob. and, of course, this does get to the crux of the dilemma you pointed out earlier about contemporary history, because i sense that the president's views have evolved during his time in office. and i think that's part of why he's reluctant to be forward-leaning on syria. i think he's a little more tired of war now than he was three years ago just as the country is. that's not a reason to stay disengaged if immediate security threats are on the line, and in regard to his iran stance lately, he's been more clear, i think, that if certain actions

were to take place, i interpret them as making it more likely the united states would militarily intervene. so it's a mixed thing. i think he is a realist in the george h.w. bush camp in some ways, that he will make a call about whether he sees an interest as vital or not, and his military thinking will be adjusted appropriately and accordingly. >> you can count on two more major interventions in his term if he's like george h.w. bush. >> at that pace, i guess, yes. but, you know, i think people doubt at this -- a lot of people doubt whether he's still got the willingness to use force, but then he talks tough on iran. he also still has 90,000 u.s. troops in afghanistan on a very sad day, very sad week in afghanistan in a war that's been very tough without, but we have 90,000 troops still there. despite the accelerated drawdown which last june when it was announced i was against and thought was too fast, it's still worth pointing out we're going to have roughly twice as many

troops at the end of his first term in afghanistan as we did at the beginning of his first time in afghanistan. and on iraq even though a lot of iraq watchers wanted the united states to find a way to keep forces longer than through 2011 -- and i was hoping we would too -- at the end of the day, barack obama kept u.s. forces in iraq 20 months lodger than he had originally promised on the campaign trail, and he only left when the iraqis said themselves we're not going to give immunity to your troops. now, some people think he could have found a way to stay anyhow, and perhaps a third term george w. bush would have, but it's worth pointing out that bush and maliki signed the original deal that would have had forces leave at the end of 2011, and we give obama some credit even though we -- myself at least and i think in the book we say there was a chance to stay. we were right to leave. so again, i think obama makes his calls case by case, and there is a sense of which

interests are vital, which interests are secondary. but there's also a pragmatism. and last point on this quick overview on afghanistan, i don't know how to predict his next move because the past three years would suggest he's going to be hawkish. but i think he's constantly assessing the doability of the mission, and he also knows al-qaeda has been largely decimated on his watch -- to some extent to his credit, to some extent to the credit of our broader intelligence and communities. therefore, the stakes of afghanistan may be a notch below what he thought ask can what we all thought three years ago. so i think he will continue to assess not just where we've been on afghanistan and where he's been, but what's doable in the future. he's very in that sense, sorry, very prague pragmatic. >> are can i just address the politics point here? >> yeah, yeah. >> which to the other side of your question that, clearly, as he, as he prepared to move into

election mode again, he wanted to be able to be the president who was ending wars in the middle east. not starting new ones. and i think that was a very political judgment. he also made a political judgment that he wasn't going to keep on pushing the israeli/palestinian issue because that was bad politics here, and he just dropped it like a hot potato, turned his back on it. but, and you could say that afghanistan is exactly as mike says, an indication of his realism and his willingness to use force, and in particular a willingness to go after al-qaeda, osama bin laden in a very tough and be effective way -- and effective way, and we give hem create for all of that. but afghanistan is also a story

of going in to get out. and the policy, the effectiveness of the policy was affected by his desire on the one hand to be tough and to be seen to be tough to give him a kind of political teflon coating that he was weak and feckless. but on the one hand, the desire to be tough, but on the other hand to be seen to be ending wars rather than prolonging them. and so i think afghanistan policy was affected by that political calculation. >> yeah. >> let me add an asian dimension to the politics side of this which is, i think, that at least in terms of the packaging of his november trip last year where he articulated this asia strategy, it was in no small part a highlight that this administration is now delivering. we're not only exiting from wars, we've now got our attention where our biggest opportunities are, and we know what we're doing, and we're very

forward-leaning and dynamic. also on china, i think from the start the president has had a very, very jaundiced view of china's economic trade policy. this has been an area that's been neuralgic for him. but i think the rhetoric has got knocked up a notch because, a, he thinks those policies are reducing his capacity to generate the jobs that he feels he needs for america to be reelected and, b, he wants to be seen very clearly as strongly defending economic trade interests here. so he's at it, you know, full bore this year. >> let's do a little bit of prediction because you guys have been now steeped in obama's brain, you -- as well as anyone, i would say, you know where he's been and have watched him evolve and have written very intelligently about it. let's for the sake of argument say that he's elected and has a second term. my rough reading on history is that it's often the case that

presidents wind up defining their foreign policy legacy more in a second term than they did in the first. i would say that was true of the clinton administration, i would say it was true of the reagan administration. sometimes it's because what they started in the first term bear fruit in the second, sometimes it's because events change, they shift. in any case, let's look ahead to a second term, and let me ask is you, martin, some very bold questions. will barack obama use force against iran in the second term? >> yes. >> okay, good. [laughter] moving on, do you want to -- go ahead. >> i'm not sure. >> no, you can't back off your own witness. >> i've thought for a long time that barack obama will end up using force in a preventive strike on iran's nuclear facilities. and it's not to do with politics. it's very much to do with his

progress vision of this role of the united states in shaping a multilateral, global order. non-proliferation is a fundamental pillar of that order. and he as president in his second term is not going to be the one to preside over the collapse of that pillar which he sees, and he's laid it out in this atlantic monthly interview that he did last week, he sees as threatened now. the collapse of that is threatened by iran's determination to acquire nuclear weapons capabilities. as he explains it that would, if unhindered, the iranian move towards weapons capability would trigger a nuclear arms race in

the middle east. it would be a case of a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty actually acquiring nuclear weapons, notwithstanding its obligations. and in that context i think he is not prepared to tolerate that. and he's trying to make that very clear to the iranians now by taking containment off the table which, again, he did last week. he's basically saying, look, you guys have got a choice. you either give up your nuclear weapons aspirations, or if you keep on going down that road, i'll use force against you. and so that's why i say that's the direction we're moving. there are and, of course, in terms of second term work, it's deeply ironic because in effect, and this is what we said at the end of the book, what's emerging out of this progressive pragmatism or reluctant realism is a strategy to rebalance and

focus u.s. interests on asia, east asia in particular. and where ken has described a strategy that is fairly coherent and could work. and it's described in some quarters of the administration as a pivot. well, if you pivot towards something, you're pivoting away from something. and what he's pivoting away from is the middle east. and that's, you know, he's ending two wars in the greater middle east, he's dropped the effort to resolve the palestinian problem, and i don't see him picking it up again. we can get back to that if you want to. and the underlying little secret that people are kind of finally waking up to is that in his second term we will no longer need middle eastern oil. we only import 10% from the middle east today from the gulf. china and india will be highly

dependent and, of course, we will still have an interest in the free flow of oil. but the idea of, in effect, turning his back on the middle east and focusing on our interests in asia is, i think, where he wants to take the united states in his second term. and that's why i say it would be ironic indeed if for the sake of preserving the non-proliferation pillar of the new international order he ends up starting a third war in the middle east. >> well, it would not only be ironic, it would seem to be disruptive of his strategy. i don't see exactly how especially at a time when our military resources are constrained he can undertake a war. i mean, it's not just a quick war, and it doesn't end when we finish shooting, so that'll be a major recommitment to that region. and then at the same time, um, maintain this allegedly, you

know, position in east asia. but, ken, you wanted to jump in. >> yeah. if i look ahead, it seems to me there are three huge variables, exactly what martin just said, which is to say all of this is premised at least in part on being able to shift our attention to the middle east -- >> [inaudible] >> i'm sorry, to east asia and on the military side there it isn't a commitment to build up military resources, it's a commitment not to reduce military resources when they're being reduced globally, right? but if we get sucked back into the middle east in a major commitment, that obviously has enormous potential repercussions. two other things are going to effect this. one is that we're going to be changing our team even if obama's reelected. but bill clinton has played a huge role in asian tragedy, and some of her key staff have been very dynamic on this, and they're going to leave. so, you know, with new folks in place you have to ask how, you know, what modifications will

occur, including capability for effective execution. and then finally i come back to what mike raised at the beginning which is to say elections are the american equivalent of chinese five-year plans. they kind of say this is where we're headed for the next few years. this election, no matter who wins, enables us to get back on our game economically, build confidence that we will get ahead of our fiscal train wreck that's going to hit us a decade from now if we don't start really moving ahead on it now. if it enables us to do that, then we're going to be much more effective on an asian strategy. if it doesn't, if we look as dysfunctional in this city after the election as we were before, you know, a lot is going to change in the second term in directions that obama does not want to see occur. >> let me just ask you quickly flashpoints that could erupt, the known/unknowns in east asia in the next four years. >> the biggest unknown in east

craze is north korea d east asia is north korea. this is a complicated place, we don't know a whole lot about it, and if things really began to melt down there, it would change the future of northeast asia for a long time to come. just the dynamics are so dangerous there. the other big unknown in the region, frankly, we know more about it, but at the end of the day a huge array of judgments on it is how dynamic china is going to remain. we talk about our own economic difficulties, our need to change some pretty basic things. the chinese recognize full well they need to adopt a new development model. the model that served them so well for 30 years has now largely run its course and is producing increasing negative outcomes there. it's very unclear whether they have the political capability to actually implement it, and if

they don't, the forces of instability in china grow and, again, no one's ever been very good at predicting the future. when things might actually become a major problem. but the chinese are certainly worried about it, and if they do trip up, a lot of the current expectations about the politics of the region will have to to be recalibrated quite seriously. >> and, mike, afghanistan in a second term. get out as quickly as possible? recalibrate? try to, um, stay in and achieve some acceptable outcome especially in the wake of the shootings and the quran burning and the rising polls in the united states which show americans have tired, long since tired of this conflict? what does barack obama do in a second term in afghanistan? >> well, i think he will have made his big decisions before such a term because i think they'll be made primarily, not exclusively, in the next 2-4

months as he decided what happens after september when we get down to that 68,000 troop number which will still be twice as many as we had in afghanistan when he was inaugurated. but the question is, and i think it's no particular secret among leaders in afghanistan, that they would like to see a bit of plateauing in our presence for a while. there's a lot of work left to do. there is a campaign plan in afghanistan. there's a sequence of events that's being carried out as you know, and a big part of the focus now is the east of the country where we've never had the resources that we really wanted. stan mcchrystal didn't get his full array of forces in the fall of 2009, and after that last spring president obama accelerated the drawdown meaning that the east remained deprived of the forces originally intended for it. so the campaign plan requires us to do some work in the east, and then the highway from kabul to kandahar and, of course, keep building up the afghan army and police. and that implies, frankly, a fair amount of hard work through

2013 and into 2014. and i think the president's going to decide in the next few months whether he still believes in that campaign plan. obviously, commanders in the field, ambassadors in the field don't get to make these decisions, presidents do, and i think obama's at this moment sorting through how he feels about these questions. >> i must say i'm somewhat surprised at that answer because it seems to me i understand presidents running for re-election have one view about how they feel about a conflict they're in, then they get to be president for another term, and if they've made a certain kind of decision that was unsuccessful it may mean in theory the united states heading out of afghanistan with its tail between its legs on his watch. and is there no way in which he might launch or recalibrate where exactly he wants up in

afghanistan, or will he be bound by whatever decisions he's made two months before he's reelected? >> are you saying there's a chance he could become tougher, more resolute and more patient on afghanistan once reelected? >> i'm asking you whether you think that's a possibility. >> no, i don't. if he's decided to cut forces below 68,000 and he does it during this fall's big election campaign season, there's no putting humpty dumpty back together again. you will have, essentially, begun to leave the bases and, essentially, sent afghans the message you're not going to partner with them in the field as previously intend bed. so, i mean, you could also imagine in theory, sure, you know, if he really wanted to just fool us for six weeks, i guess he probably could and then immediately pull back as of the day after re-election. but i think as a practical matter if he decides he's lost faith in the strategy, we're probably going to see evidence of that before election day. further cuts that would begin perhaps even in october. and i don't think he will

reassess that. now, it doesn't mean he goes down to zero, but it does mean he goes to -- >> one final question on this. do you think he phases a potential helicopter -- if i were a journalist, i would be asking that kind of question -- helicopter off the american embassy moment in his second term? >> i think there's a chance afghanistan could fail. i don't think it's likely to fail quite that way. i think it's more likely that large swaths of the south would go first. but, you know, second terms are long, and this is a lot of time, a lot of things could happen between now and then. so, yeah, there's a chance this mission could simply fail. and i don't think it's likely. even if we get to a poor outcome, it's likely to be one where there are elements of the country still held by the government, but an increasing sense that the big swaths of territory where al-qaeda and other terrorist groups could find sanctuary are increasingly beyond the government's control and our control. that would be a mediocre to poor outcome, but it still has the

afghan government in charge of kabul for most scenarios i could envision. >> let me just turn to the middle east and we can then move on and, ultimately, go to questions. martin f i read you correctly, i look at a middle east in an obama second term that includes, um a preemptive strike against iran without a u.n. security council authorization, obviously, because the russians and chinese are unlikely to approve a military strike with whatever fallout comes from that attack in the region. a completely stalled middle east peace process, i think you were suggesting you did not anticipate him picking up that hot potato anytime soon. and i suppose given that you don't think he's going to use force in syria, and i would imagine you would say partly because he may have to use force in iran possibly an ongoing, bloody, you know, at least for the first period of his term

bloody outcome in syria, very uncertain situation in egypt. i'll leave it there, but we could go on. that's not a very pretty picture for the president's second term. >> well, you've described the middle east, you know? that's the middle east. >> well, begin that he came in -- am i in too stark of terms? well, give me the more positive spin. >> we know in the middle east something always turns up, and it's usually bad. [laughter] all kinds of things can go wrong, but sometimes it's not. and you never know what currents and conflicts are going to produce what kind of opportunities. i do think that the basic strategy that presidents both

republican and democrat have employed for the last four decades no longer applies. the most obvious point about that is that egypt is no longer the stable ally of the united states. the egyptian parliament today is debating whether to renounce american military assistance. i don't think the military's going to go along with that, but, you know, it shows you where things are going this. we no longer have an egyptian pillar on which we can base our strategy. saudi arabia remains a pillar, but we have some deep differences with saudi arabia about what should happen politically in places like bahrain and other kingdoms. we think they need to get on the road of political reform, and the saudis say you've got to be

kidding me. and on the peace process, you know, we haven't really talked about it, but -- >> you can talk about it now if you want to. i don't want to steal your opportunity to talk about the peace process. >> i think the audience has some questions, but, you know, i think the president has been so burned by his experience there, an experience which is much of his own making. but i find it hard to imagine that he's going to go back to it unless something dramatic changes. unless you've got the leadership on the israeli and palestinian side that are really prepared to take the risks necessary to make peace. and then he can come in and support them as previous presidents have done when he had those circumstances. but looking out there today, that doesn't look very likely. and so i think that inevitably, you know, it's the old bicycle

theory. so many of you have heard this. in the middle east, if you're not pedaling forward, you fall off. and we're not pedaling forward. and so one thing or another whether it's iran or a flare up of the israeli/palestinian conflict, something will drag us back there. but when we are dragged back, we're going to be more awkwardly placed than we've been for a long time in the terms of trying to preserve our interests and be try to make progress in the proper world. >> i must say listening to you all talk about a potential second term and where things stand and given that the general approach of the book is to say that obama's done pretty well, i'm reminded of that scene in the diner, i don't know whether you all remember, in "diner," remember that movie? a guy's about to get married, steve guttenberg's about to get married, and he asks the guy that's married what married life is like, and the guy basically

says, well, it's terrible, you know? we have nothing to talk about, and we really don't get along, i don't even know why -- you know, it was more fun before we were married. and at the end guttenberg says, but it's nice, right? and he says, yeah, it's nice. [laughter] let me just -- >> if i could just add a word. >> yes. >> let's face it, what he is coping with -- setting aside the arab/israeli peace process, separate issue. what he is coping with in the middle east is what the bush administration sought to see occur which is pro-democracy movements from the bottom up. and the problem with those is you never know where they're going to hit. and the forces of reaction in the middle east are extremely powerful, deeply rooted. and the sectarian issues are very tough issues. so with this having started, you know, you're riding a tiger. >> no -- [inaudible] all right. one final thing, and then i'm going to open it up because i

get to be in this role now, i love it. [laughter] i want you to give two grades to two different presidents and, no, you don't get to grade george w. bush. [laughter] in your particular areas, grade bill clinton's presidency and barack obama's presidency. and we'll start with mike. >> may i do it in the first three years of each, or do you want the eight years of -- >> the full clinton picture. you can give separate, you can give term grades if you want. >> okay. [laughter] well, it's worth saying obama's been much better than clinton in his first years on -- >> grade. >> i know. but i needed to say that. [laughter] over the eight years i think clinton increasingly did well, and i'd say on balance i'll give him a b+for national security, and that's the ballpark of where i am on obama. >> okay. ken? >> you know, frankly, mike wanted us to grade obama, and i'm the one who refused to do

it, so it's not in the book. >> right. >> so i don't believe in that. i would give them both an a- on china. >> you're grading yourself, so -- [laughter] >> clinton is in the second term. i thought his first term he tripped over himself so much from his own campaign rhetoric -- >> right. it averaged down to a -- okay. you're grading yourself, too, but -- [laughter] >> you're right. i'm not objective. on the middle east, you have to say that i think that obama deserves pretty much an a to a- on the arab awakening. i think he's done pretty well in terms of protecting our interests and promoting our values. on the peace process, there's no way of getting away from it, and i should take a powder like ken, but it's an f.

>> okay. >> i think obama would agree with that. >> well, thank you. we're looking toward to all your -- forward to all your questions now. yes, sir. gentleman in the front here. >> thank you. christopher graves with ogilvy. quick question for martin -- i doubt it's quick. i never heard mention of pakistan, and i wonder what role that might play in a second term for obama. and from ken, who would romney prefer, a -- who would china prefer, a romney president or a second term obama? >> i'll say a brief word on pakistan, obviously very challenging. i think our afghanistan policy could fail probably because of pakistan's role. that because the politics in many kabul and the future of karzai are the key threat toss the mission, i think. in terms of the u.s./pakistan partnership, i give this administration reasonably decent grades for keeping on trying when nothing was working. and on afghanistan i think their messaging and their teamwork was

relatively mediocre. by contrast, towards pakistan i think the strategic dialogue and a lot of the outreach was pretty good. mistakes we made on messaging in afghanistan affected pakistan policy, i believe, so i don't want to completely establish a distinction between the two. but i think this administration's been extremely mature and disciplined and realist on pakistan. we don't have any choice but to keep working the relationship. there have been things that have gone up and down along the way. bruce riedel has some good ideas on where we should go next with pakistan. you've got to keep trying, and that's what they've been doing. >> on obama versus romney on china, the chinese clearly prefer obama. but that's for two reasons. one is they always prefer the person they know if they have a reasonably good relationship with them, and obama's worked very hard on that relationship. but secondly, romney has moved pretty far in the direction that bill clinton moved in his campaign his first time around

and made a bunch of specific comments about what he would do, all of which are real sources of trial. so you don't know whether he'll try to back off, but when you get specific in campaign promises, they tend to come back to bite you, so romney has said, for example, he would declare china a currency manipulator on day one. he actually doesn't have the authority to do that if he were president, but setting that aside -- [laughter] it's a potential problem. so i think on balance they'd rather stick with the guy they know. >> okay. lady right there in green. >> diana negro uponty. multilateralism, are we getting tired of it, or will we keep up the effort? >> well, one of the big issues on multilateralism is not only at a global level, but at a

regional level. and one of the things you see in asia, certainly, and i think to some extent elsewhere around the world, the arab league and so forth, is regional organizations that are traditionally feckless are becoming active and important. my sense is in asia the obama administration has come to a very conscious strategy of kind of picking the multilateral platforms that it wants to see play a major role and others that it would like to see more marginalized. and so in asia the east asia summit, we have now moved front and center especially on east asian security issues. we're trying to build the trans-pacific partnership. so i would say they bought into regional multilateral organizations at least in asia very strongly, but with a real strategy behind that. it's not multilateralism for the sake of multilateral im, it's how to you advance american

interests and move them ahead. >> just as a quick coda, what's interesting in this arab awakening, you know, in terms of looking for partners who would have thought we'd be working with the arab league which was particularly a feckless organization and suddenly has become an important actor in this? >> let me just ask because that's an interesting question. as i recall in the bush years multilateralism tended to be defined as the united nations. i would say this administration looks to be a little frustrated with the u.n. security council. secretary clinton made some very strong negative statements about the utility of the security council. do you foresee and, martin, you mentioned that they might undertake an iran strike probably without -- >> [inaudible] >> i said that, but you disagree. >> obama, one of his signal successes was getting the russians and chinese to vote for a u.n. security council resolution on iran that imposed

harsh sanctions on iran. >> no, i realize that. so my question is where do you see the trend going, toward greater attention to the u.n. security council or lesser attention to the u.n. security council? >> i just think that, you know, obama's vision is of a multilateral order in which the united states will still play a leading role, but he recognizes that the name of the game has changed, and he has to engage with these other powers, these rising powers whether it be china or india. and it plays inevitably a major playing field for this engagement with rising powers. it's going to be the security council. and i don't think we have any choice about that because of the shifting of the balance of power. the days, and i think this is right, i think you would even agree that the days of george w.

bush-style unilateralism are essentially over, and the desire to have legitimacy for our military interventions is very strong certainly in this administration. but i wonder whether it would be that different simply because the way that the balance of power has shifted. >> well, it was also bill clinton who went to war without a u.n. security council authorization when he couldn't get it, and i would say in response to what you said -- not that i'm supposed to be responding -- that the trend of most recent american presidents, i think you could summarize their policy in the way the clinton people did, get a u.n. security council resolution when you can, but when you can't, find another way to legitimize it using regional organizations, by the way, whether it's nato, the arab league, so i would say i'm not so sure obama is any more theoretically committed to a u.n. security council than

past presidents have been, but i'll leave it there. mike, did you want -- >> better than i -- >> no, i doubt that. gary. >> thanks. i'm garrett mitchell, and i write the mitchell report, and i want to build on two questions that bob asked one at the outset, and the last one about grades. he asked at the outset, you know, what's the purpose or the end goal of pragmatism which is, actually, a pretty interesting question. so you have described obama as a pragmatic progressive or the other way around. put him in context with people with whom we have a little more historical perspective. and if you want to think about this while you're fielding other questions, that's great. if he's a pragmatic progressive, what is eisenhower's brand, what is nixon's and what is ronald

reagan? >> do you want to mull, or do you want to answer? >> i'll take a brief crack, although i'm going to take the liberty at answering about ten degrees incidence from your question because, gary, what i was driving at earlier when i said i think obama's done much better than clinton in the terms of the first three years, i think obama's done better than most post world war ii presidents and one of the reasons is adaptiveness. and so i think the, again, martin prefers the term progressive pragmatist, and i prefer the term reluctant realist, but they're sort of two sides of the same coin. i think that the way in which he has recognized that his big visions -- which i think he believed even more than most candidates and certainly articulated with more forcefulness and believability than most candidates in the modern era -- i think he realized he wasn't going to make progress on all of them.

and a chapter that my colleagues wrote is a chapter on the rogue states. we talked only a little about north korea today, but basically obama figured out pretty quickly in the first six months of his presidency that his efforts to reach out a hand wasn't being taken up. and when north korea detonated a nuclear weapon and iran stole an election, he quickly pivoted, he used the fact that the world saw him as having made a genuine effort to reach out, and he became a very effective reluctant realist. and so i'll come back to that phraseology, but i think he's a fast learner as well as the other things that we've said. >> i'm going to go out on a limb here and say i'm sure obama would rather be known as a progressive pragmatist than a reluctant realist. [laughter] it's just my guess here. yes, ma'am. right there. >> judith falk. with the recent visit of netanyahu, how would you assess obama's policies toward israel

and the israeli concern about iran's nuclear capabilities? >> i guess i've got to answer that one. >> go ahead. >> um, i think i've already, i've already answered the iran issue in terms of the way that the president sees it. he doesn't see it only about israel's security, he sees it very much as a world order issue. and critical importance of non-proliferation in his own mind for the order that he's trying to shape. um, but when it comes to israel, you know, the president, um, had a theory of the case. and i think we haven't remarked on this in the kind of internal workings of foreign policy within the obama administration, but this is a president who drives foreign policy. he's more, i think, directly involved in