preventing the emergence of a european or a eurasian hegemon. that is, a single, hostile power or alliance of hostile powers which would control the three significant regions of the eurasian continent, europe, the middle east and east asia. the consensus, much to the surprise of many of us in the more realist camp, but the consensus in washington that emerged by the year 2000 was that the way to avert a hostile european -- eurasian hegemon was for the united states to become the eurasian hegemon. ..

took place gradually as a result of various conflicts. the u.s. expanded into the vacuum made possible by the collapse of soviet power in the middle east with the gulf war and then became even more deeply involved with the iraq war and afghanistan in central asia. i will get to that in a moment of the in europe, although the presidency of the george herbert walker bush had promised gorbachev as a condition for german reunification within nato that the u.s. would not expand nato eastward, the clinton administration reneged on this promise and did so. finally in asia the united

states simply kept its cold war alliances in place with no practical plan for revising them for incorporating china into some kind of a new regional order although china was invited to join the world economy. if there's a single statement of the bipartisan hegemony strategy would sum it up, i think george w. bush's speech at west point in 2002 where he said competition between great nations is inevitable but armed conflict in our world is not. america has and intend to keep military strengths beyond challenge. making the destablizing arms races of other eras pointless. in limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace. and if you parse this what he is actually saying is that the united states will be unique in being the supreme military

overlord of the world. other great powers voluntarily, america hopes, will cede the responsibility for retaining their security interests in their own regions to washington and they will specialize in trade and other pursuits of peace. in effect, what this was doing was offering all of the rising and existing great powers in the world the deal which had been offered to defeated japan and west germany after world war ii. that is in return for becoming u.s. military protector rats, call can trade and governed systems established and supported and policed by the united states. so, that to the extent there was logic to this strategy and it was simply response to opportunistic exploitation of power vacuums after the soviet

declines, the idea as the united states as this sovereign would create a world in which really there would not need to be any other great powers because the united states would be doing the policing everywhere in every region and the other great powers would be one-dimensional powers, they would be economic powers and china incorporation into the world order in this american view would take place under these circumstances. it would be kind of a bigger version of japan or of first west germany and then united germany. the u.s. encouraged china to join the w tough o, to become integrated in the world economy. at the same time the u.s. insisted on maintaining its cold war era alliances and its prerogatives as the domnant military power in east asia. so that was the hard military underpinnings. the united states would conclude these three 20th century struggles to prevent eurasian

hegemony establishing eurasian hegemony in the near future. the world order it would promote in recent years has become known as the liberal world order and this term is bandied about as though there is some consensus bit. i think the liberal world order in the sense in which the bipartisan u.s. foreign policy has used the term since the 2000s began actually is a fairly novel thing. it is not the old 1945 united nations charter world order. it's something new. it has two components. this is the new liberal world order, if you want. the old liberal world order. the new liberal world order redefines sovereignty and weakens it compared to the 1945 u.n. charter which the u.n. charter recognized basic human rights and it also made genocide a crime of universal

jurisdiction. but other than that, both in practice and in theory the united states accept ad high degree of sovereignty from most of the other states in the world and beginning more with the europeans than the americans in the early 21st century, the idea of the responsibility to protect justified interventions by outside powers, particularly the united states in countries which were not actually guilty of genocide. as i say that was always an exception to solve sovereignty in the u.n. charter but for various less offenses. suppressing rebels, massacres, ethnic cleansing all of which are terrible things but which were seen as internal events for the most part in the post-1945 era but are now seen as proposed exceptions to the rule of sovereignty along with actual genocide. the other part of the liberal world order as it was pushed by

washington was a kind of economic liberalism which was much more thorough going than anything washington had promoted after world war ii. after 1945, the u.s. tried to create an integrated world economy so you wouldn't have rival imperial blocs and particularly among the industrial nations through the general agreement on trade and tariff the u.s.-led an effort successfully to pretty much reduce or eliminate tariffs on exports and imports. but what was called the washington consensus was much more radical in the 1990s and the 2,000s. it required that all countries adopt a particular model of capitalism with clinton ain't reagan and thatcher and blair's britain. would you have deregulation of finance. most forms of pro-industry support would be delegitimized

including tariffs and most radical of all, you would have regulatory harmonization among countries and that really digs deeply into basic domestic, economic, policy sovereignty if your rules how you treat your workers, treat the environment, consumer safety regulations are removed from national parliaments and transferred to an international legal regime. but that was the consensus in the united states until recently and i think among foreign policy leaders in both parties that remains the consensus. now in practice the washington consensus was observed more by the u.s. a few other countries including britain than bit other leading industrial economies and america's major allies, japan and germany, particularly japan which like south korea and

taiwan and other american protector@s in east asia have a ruthless version of mercantilism and industry promotion in the expense of some cases their industry trading partners. that was american, america's vision of hegemony. the u.s. would be dominant military power in the europe, middle east and asia and would promote a new world order based on weakened sovereignty in the name of human rights and responsibility to protect and also a much more thorough going version of economic liberalism than had earlier been the case. now skeptics throughout this quarter century period since this hegemony strategy coalesced, and i'm one of them. thought in the long run it would

fail for three reasons. first, other powers, potential great powers would reject u.s. hegemony in their reasons. second, the united states would not adequately resource its own strategy. third, the u.s. public would rebel. all three of these have now come to pass in the 2014. first the rejection of u.s. hegemony in the your rabe shun entities -- eurasian. iraq and afghanistan and perhaps some middle eastern central asian states would become permanent base for u.s. power projection the way japan and south korea have done in east asia. this was not to be. the united states so alienated the iraqi people and afghan people there is some question whether we'll remain in

afghanistan and under what circumstances and in iraq a refusal to do status of forces agreement basically led to the u.s. departure. this is the enormous blow to the project of establishing u.s. hegemony in the middle east. other blows are increasing u.s. independence of turkey. egypt where advocates of american hegemony in the middle east initially welcomed the democratic revolution in tahrir square. we have an egyptian strong man, general sisi elected 93.3% of the vote, something democratic politicians can only envy who is quoted in the "new york times" as saying, and i quote, he is suffering in torture and the general made one of his first foreign policy trips before he became president to meet with vladmir putin in russia.

so u.s. hegemony in the middle east looks fairly insecure. in europe as we know from the news, russia pushed back against the expansion of u.s. military force and influence in its neighborhood with its short war in georgia in 2008 and this year, 2014, its seizure of ukraine and fomenting of trouble in eastern ukraine. shows that russia is not satisfied with u.s. hegemony in europe. in china as we know from the news has been steadily pushing back against american power in its region east of asia. so how does the hegemony strategy stand now on software, the rules of world order? now that the hard military underpinning of it is under assault or under question in the middle east, in europe and in

east asia? well, the liberal world order is not doing very well either. the so-called brics, useful but somewhat misleading term for rising powers, brazil, russia, india, china, are now associated with something which liberal critics call sovereignism. they are pushing back against the north atlantic democracies ideas that sovereignty need to be weakened. many are postcolonial countries and formerly european colonies and see this as new form of western imperialism. the washington consensus is widely rejected among developing countries including brazil, and even india under its new premiere modi, to read the western press he is like margaret thatcher and ronald reagan and supreme market champion has come to power. in fact india will continue to

be more statist and nationalist in many areas even it was somewhat less in the past. finally there is the possibility of anti-american balancing, something which proponents of the hegemony strategy had dismiss ad decade or two ago but with the, increasingly close alignment of russia and china and even india, whose premiere was blacklisted as a supporter of anti-muslim riots and vowed that he will not set foot in the u.s. except to attend the united nations. you do have the major populations centers of the old world, the two biggest countries, china and india, in terms of population and largest country in terms of geography, russia, alienated from the united states and it is very difficult to see american hegemony surviving that.

finally two other factors. inadequate resources, according to projections of the results of the budget sequester that was recently agreed upon in congress, u.s. defense spending will go down to slightly more than 2% of gdp in the 2020s, which is probably adequate for most of our actual defense needs but i would suggest it is woefully inadequate if you wish to be the eurasian hegemon in perpetuity. the public rebelled in 2004, 2005, 2006 and against costs of iraq and afghan wars. that is one of the main reasons return to democrats in power in 2008. barack obama became the democratic nominee largely because unlike hillary clinton, he had opposed the iraq war. and most recently we've seen first the british public and then the american congress rebel

preemptively against the idea of deeper nato military involvement in syria. so inertia accounts for a lot in politics. it will take some time to go from one, paradigm and strategy to another. but i think that if this is not the beginning of the end for the hegemony strategy at least we can begin to go back to where we were at the end of the cold war and discuss what would alternatives be like? i discussed that in my article for the national interest. i won't go into detail except to make a couple of points. the last time there was a real serious attempt by american leaders to think through what u.s. strategy would be in a multipolar world i think was the nixon administration. now you could argue that the presidency of george herbert

walker bush envisioned something like this because of the loss of the election in 1992 it was never really developed. the clearly the second bush went in a quite different direction. so you really have to go back to richard nixon who said in the interview with "time" magazine in 1971, i believe in a world in which the united states is powerful. i think it will be a safer world and better world if we have a strong, healthy, united states, europe, soviet union, china, japan, each balancing the other, not playing one against the other an even balance. now thanks to the influence of the hegemony strategy even in a democratic primary, any presidential candidate who said that the united states itself should be balanced by other great powers would be considered, you know, just beyond the scope of reasonable discussion and yet this was the hawk, richard nixon, in the

1970s. once more nixon was arguably in the mainstream tradition of 20th century american foreign policy. in his 1910 lecture, theodore roosevelt said it would be a master stroke with the great powers weren't on peace, would form a league of peace amongst themselves and prevent by force of necessary its being broken by others. this view was shared by woodrow wilson who is sometimes caricatured and he made many mistakes, but the plan for the league of nations there would be a great power directorate or concert. it was not a purely utopian experiment. franklin roosevelt, if anything was as much of a real is as his -- realist as his cousin theodore. he mocked the pact of 1928 that tried to outlaw war. war can not be outlawed by

resolution alone. in 1942 roosevelt, who came up with the phrase, united nations but didn't put a whole lot of stock in the actual details of what became the u.n. world organization, he left that to his secretary of state cordell hull. he envisioned great power concert with the regional hegemones policing the world and keeping peace after the war against germany and japan. he said the real decisions should be made by the united states, great britain, russia and china, who would be the powers for many years to come and it would have to police the world. so in different ways, in different decade, what theodore roosevelt, franklin roosevelt, richard nixon and perhaps the first bush shared in common was the assumption that if you want world peace it has to be primarily peace among the great powers and that means that their legitimate prerogatives as great powers including their

prerogatives in their own regions will be recognized by the others including the united states. so it's completely different perspective from the bipartisan policy we have followed since the 1990s of trying to encircle and pin down all of the great powers in their own regions. i call it quadruple containment. the phrase is development of the phrase, dual containment from the cold war. quadruple containment means that we contain our allies as well as our enemies. if you look at four major powers, the two major powers of europe, germany and russia, the two major powers of east asia, japan and china, we contained germany and japan by keeping them as military weak dependent protectorates and at the same time we encircle other powers in the region, russia and china on their own borders.

now the problem with this strategy is, quite apart from their pushing back and the unwillingness of the american people to pay for that, is it requires american leaders to engage in a, orwellian kind of news speak. so that if any power, anywhere in the world, no matter how remote from north america objects to being encircled by american military forces or allies on its own borders that power is guilty of aggression in trying to overturn the world order. this would have seemed crazy i think, not only to richard nixon but to fdr and tr, and to most american statesmen through most of american history. so i don't want to go on too long. we can have a conversation. just a few final thoughts about beyond the hegemony strategy and i developed this at more length in my national interest essay, the promise of american

nationalism, i think the "brics" are going to win the debate about the rules of world order. if we have not persuaded china, india, brazil, russia, you know, russia's a somewhat second-tier country but china and india at any rate are going to be two of the three major nation states along with the united states in the 21st century, if we have not persuaded them to abandon economic nationalism, and we've not persuaded them to water down their sovereign claims and claims against foreign intervention, then the fact that we have won over the support of members of the european union, europe is not the world. the north atlantic is not the world in the 21st century. so, and i think we should consider if you can't beat them join them. in fact, much of the american public, and at least half of the

american political spectrum is on the side of the so-called brics with this so-called sovereign tim. the united states did not ratify the international criminal court. the bush administration withdrew the u.s. the united states did not ratify the law of the sea treaty. we're now in the somewhat orwellian position of denouncing china for not observing the norms in the south china sea of the law of the sea treaty which the american congress rejected. so, in a way backing away from the more extreme versions of what is being called the liberal world order is actually a return to america's practice. i would argue it's not a matter of liberal democracies versus authoritarian states. it is a largely a matter of large populous countries which of tend to be the great economic and military powers versus small countries. small countries, including the united states, in its very origins have a much deeper stake

in a rule governed world order than large countries do. this is true even when it comes to globalization. i will end with a few remarks about trade. the fact the countries most dependent on the global economy are not the ones that prosper from it the most, the united states, germany and japan. the larger the country is in general the smaller the share of its economy that is involved in international trade. if you're singapore or finland you have much higher share and you're much more dependent on foreign trade. when it comes to multilateral regimes, you can, if you're china, india and the united states, which according to most projections in the year 2050 will be the three largest economies by gdp, a trilateral deal among them will open up more trade and investment you know, than any kind of doha round or anything like that where you have to line up dozens

or hundreds of lesser states. so while it is conventional wisdom that we want a rules-based international trading system the fact is that a results-based system in which a few larger economies including the european union just cuts deals with each other can accomplish a great deal of economic integration by less involved bureaucratic means. let me finish by quoting ambassador jean kirkpatrick whom i quote in my article. by the way, this is my privilege to know jean kirkpatrick fairly well and one thing that she returned to again and again and again was something she had learned from one of her mentors, the political scientist at yale harold laswell. she often repeated it and i have never forgotten it. she said, when you're designing the constitution, imagine your worst enemies are in power.

she applied this to rules for world order. i think one of the things we've done is, we've designed a constitution that empowers the temporarily-dominant nation, the united states and we haven't thought about what this means for us in the future when we may no longer have that position of dominance. but what i want to quote is from kirkpatrick's full 1990 in the national interest entitled, a normal country in a normal time. she wrote, the united states performed heroically at a sometime when heroism was required, al true is i cannily during the long years when freedom was endangered but she argued it was now time for the u.s. to adapt to multipolar world while focusing more on nation-building at home. she said with a return to normal times, we can again become a normal nation and take care of pressing problems of education, family, industry and technology. we can be an independent nation

in a world of independent nations. thank you. [applause] >> thank you for anyone who is just tuning in. that was michael lind of the new america foundation talking about his new article in the national interest, the promise of american nationalism. and now i would like to anyone in the audience who wants to ask a question to raise their hand and to identify themselves, please, for our television audience as well. jim? >> jim henderson with fox news. >> hold on a second. they need to get you with the fox news. >> jim pinkerton with fox. mike, that was really, really interesting. i did however hear much about the obama administration and where they fit in this. furthermore seems to me while you're quite right about quadruple containment being very

ambitious, seems to me the obama administration has made quintuple containment if you add carbon dioxide which appears to be the among the most important domestic and international initiatives that they have. >> in my view the obama administration continues the hegemony strategy that was settled on as the consensus in the clinton and george w. bush administrations. is changed its tactical and operational approach but has not changed the strategy. so it is not questioned the basic premise that the u.s. will continue to be the military hedge -- hegemon. because of public backlash of cost of iraq war and because of genuine concerns about the costs of blood and treasure, it has tried to achieve what david colayo, international relations scholar in a different context

once called hegemony on the cheap. so we will continue to intervene in the middle east but we will do so by sending drones to extra judiciary assassinate criminal suspects rather than to invade countries and try to remake them. the united states will reaffirm its alliances in east asia the so-called pivot to, the so-called pivot to asia. but it will not offer china any vision of an integrated security system other than perpetual subordination to the united states in its own region. so i think it's a difference of tactics and important difference but not a fundamental difference of strategy. in terms of carbon, the obama administration, i think is following the lead of germany and some other industrial countries in thinking that the great economic challenge is to promote rapid decarbonization of

energy supplies to avert the consequences of global warming. now, at the same time, with if you look at the world outside of the north atlantic democracies, this project is not being carried out by the countries that would have to carry it out for it to really be effective, that is, india and china particular. and of course china has just signed the biggest trade deal in human history with russia, to import natural gas which many environmentalists are trying to prevent being produced at all by fracking in the united states. you know what everyone thinks about the severe, urgency of global warming, it's clear that if you fairly rapidly moved to replace coal as the source of energy and electricity generation with a natural gas, you would slash the amount of greenhouse gases even though you

would continue to have some slower growth. so, is also clear that if you really, really are serious about combating global warming, as a result of greenhouse gases, you would favor nuclear energy, which is expensive in the initial investment but once it is up and running and much cheaper than renewable energy sources like hydro and solar power and wind power. . .

>> the obama administration strategy as fine tuning the prevailing foreign policy strategy. but i want to raise the question and really maybe challenge you on the point you were making originally in their remarks that maybe we're at a moment where we're beginning to see this consensus collapse. you mentioned the nixon/kissinger period, and there i think you're correct, but it was a pretty unique moment in the sense that there were real challenges in the end, in the course of the vietnam war. the protests here in the united states, a real sense that the united states needed a new strategy. and there was a willingness, perhaps, of a very experienced president with strong advisers

around him to think about alternatives. and looking ahead, i just don't see that emerging in washington. jacob, you called michael one of the most creative people in washington, but, you know, creativity in washington is sort of an oxymoron. [laughter] and i look ahead and look at, you know, both republican and presidential candidates for 2016, i don't see the likelihood of somebody necessarily challenging that consensus. so how realistic is it to argue or believe that we're likely -- short of another kind of iraq-style debacle -- to see a new strategy emerge in the near future? and i just, would just simply say it's striking to me so soon after that iraq experience and afghanistan that you have an

administration that's pursuing the same strategy as you argue it is, that it's coming under real criticism from both parties as being too weak, too prudent and not strong enough. >> well, when you put your finger on the basic problem which is, it's very difficult for great powers to retrench. for both external and domestic political reasons domestically. any retrenchment, no matter how prudent, will be attacked as weakness. particularly in democracy. so democracies probably have more difficulty backing down carefully from overexposed positions than autocracies do. you can just turn on a dime, and who's going to question, you know, the authoritarian government? but that is kind of a trap. that is, as i said, if a candidate in the republican or democratic presidential

primaries used the kind of language about the in a multipolar world that those well-known hawks richard nixon and theodore roosevelt used, they would be attacked east from within -- either from within their own party or from the other party. and another concern which does bother me because i want the united states to be as secure and as respected as possible is even if you're engaged in prudent retrenchment, will other countries view this as weakness? so even if you were overexposed in the first place, how do you back down? so there's an enormous temptation simply to maintain the overexposed position, and you don't have to worry about sending signals of weakness to your opponents or being attacked at home. but the actual economic and political underpinnings of your power are just eroded and eroded and eroded. essentially, you could argue this is what happened to britain

and france after world war ii. in the '70s, britain was sending troops to yemen and the persian gulf. at some point someone needs to tap a country on the shoulder and say, well, maybe, you know, you should think about scaling back, if not retiring. but, you know, the concern would be that you need to have an exit strategy. that's just the way i would put it. we needed an exit strategy from the cold war in the 1990s at which point we could say germany and japan and south korea are not going to be our protect rates for the next hundred years, and russia and china -- given, you know, the appropriate decisions on their part -- can become, if not allies, at least other great powers and that there will be some kind of system of order which is not america's allies versus america's enemies with these trip wires drawn between them. we missed the opportunity to do

that in the 1990s, and i don't know really how you can do it at this point without assuming weakness. if president george herbert walker bush had proposed turning the organization for security and cooperation in europe into a larger structure and then gradually letting the warsaw pact and nato dissolve, that would have been bargaining from a position of strength. if the next president proposes this following ukraine, following the south china sea incidents, it will look like weakness on america's part. and, but having said that, that's the situation we are in, and i do think that the face-saving way to back down from what i do think is an overextended strategy is to propose some kind of regional security structures in which all regional powers and the united states as an extra-regional power if we have interests in these regions and i think we do, can participate as respected equals instead of on an

ally/enemy basis. and you're quite right, this is still completely provocative idea in washington, and you're not going to hear it in 2016. maybe you won't hear it in 2020. but at some point i think we have to think of what is the exit strategy from this permanent cold war alliance system which has now gone on a generation after the cold war. >> mike, pbs "newshour". >> you just alluded to this, but you're a fan of t.r. who's very much in the hamilton school of realism. t.r. was a great advocate of mahan whom you criticize. we have the specific situation now in the south china sea/east china sea in which beijing is extending its perimeter way, way beyond its borders.

how specifically is the united states, if they stick to the principle of free navigation, open access, maritime access, how is the united states supposed to deal with this? >> well, that's a very good question. i criticize mahan because i think that his view of world power as depending on control of sea lanes was already obsolete in his own period. if you look at leo amery who was a parish strategist of that period -- british strategist of that period in responding to mckinders' theory of your ace ya being -- eurasia, he famously said it doesn't really matter where a country is located. the country that has the power of science and technology and engineering is going to be the leading military power. so my first response would be if we're really going to have a rivalry with china, it's not going to be decided by whose

navy controls which sea lanes. it's going to be decided by whose factories, whose credit system, whose infrastructure, whose r&d is more fundamental in the long run. particularly if, as seems likely, it would be a cold war in which just as during the soviet-american cold war, yes, the navy has to plan for these naval confrontations, but frankly, i don't think it's a great investment of effort on the part of the u.s. military to plan for limited and able wars with the people's republic of china on the assumption that these would not turn into all-out war very, very, very quickly. if we have a sustained confrontation with china -- and we may well have one -- more likely to take the form of a cold war with arms races, proxy battles in areas remote, possibly, from china such as africa, such as central america. again, we tend to forget about our own neighborhood, but that's

always contested in great power struggles. so i just think that -- and one more point about the south china sea. during world war ii, the united states proposed to give the islands to china, our ally during the war. it would give them responsibility for it. franklin roosevelt hoped that china would be the hegemon of the east asia and, in fact, part of his plan for the four policemen -- russia, the british empire, china and the u.s. policing the post-1945 war -- was that china would be the hegemon of indochina and replace the french. since fdr thought american interests would be better served by hegemonic china in asia than the european powers, the british or the french. and let's be clear, roosevelt was a realist. the china he was talking about, this was chang chi check's china. i've read the book, "the chinese

economy." it's pretty much like the modern chinese economy. it's a plan for a mercantilist, state-driven industrialization which violates all of the rules of neoclassical economics and is a developmental state. so that's just one of the paradoxes of our time. the china that we are afraid of, a developmental capitalist state that dominates east asia, is what we actually wanted during world war ii when it was simply not considered by anyone, i think in the 1940 or even during the cold war, that the united states would permanently be not a major power with interests in asia, but perpetually the major asian power. >> i think it's time to go to, perhaps a, a premiere exponent of neoclassical economics which michael has just derided. chris preble from the cato institute. >> thank you, jacob.

thank you, michael. michael, as you know, i hope you're right that we are at an inflection point, but i agree with barred burke that i'm -- ambassador burke that i'm afraid you're not. and maybe that's because i'm listening to people like robert cay began and charles krauthammer who say, no, we're not. the question is, what piece of evidence would convince them that the time has come to change course? you cite resistance from others, other great powers, the unwillingness to resources here at home and the resistance from the public at large. there are still some of them who say we could clearly resource this without with any difficulty at all. simply raise taxes or cut either spending. we -- other spending. and where's the actual evidence of balancing by other great powers? can you point to something there? because it seems to me we still don't have sufficient evidence to convince the other side that it's time to change course. >> well, that's a good point,

particularly about the other great powers. now, it was once observed to me that in one of the crises over north korea the closer you got to north korea, the more relaxed everyone was about it. it was actually in washington where people were much more exorcised, you know, than in south korea. and i think that's the case with russia. the germans have made it clear that they're very dubious about another cold war with russia. i read that the czechs are debating raising their military spending, i believe it's to 1.5% of gdp. well, if this really is a moment and vertebra shah is this -- russia is this great threat it's being portrayed as, i assume the czechs would be debating 15% of gdp, you know? [laughter] they seem fairly relaxed. if we look at the neighbors of this china that we're supposed to be so frightened by, china is

now the number one trading partner of south korea, and it's up there among -- japan has increasing trade and integration. so i think we have to take all this with a grain of salt. and one of the dangers of our alliance system is that it enables irresponsible behavior for domestic political reasons. on the part of nationalists in japan and south korea and not so much in germany at in this point. but it allows the leaders to talk tough and, you know, poke either russia or china, at the same time while profiting from their increasing economic integration, and that's fine, it's sort of a game. i'm from texas, you know, we have a rivalry with oklahoma. oklahoma calls texas baja,]) oklahoma. so we know that this is not a serious security threat.

so, now in terms of what pieces of evidence would convince hard-line neoconservatives that the united states does not have a stake in global hegemony, well, i gave up. when i left the neoconservative movement, i gave up trying to analyze the hard-lineerer mind. but i think even they would say at some point that it's clear that the united states is not you are suing the policy they -- pursuing the policy they favor. and it would probably have to do with the defense budget. in the 1990s robert kagan and bill kristol published an article calling for was it permanent 4% or 6% of gdp being spent on defense? >> [inaudible] >> the u.s. has now -- at the end of the cold war, we went down to about 3% of gdp, which is respectable. it's a little more than britain and france, which are -- have the greatest military spending in western europe. >> [inaudible] >> a lot more now.

and then it shot up again after 9/11. but under current budget plans, as i understand it, it's arcing downwards. it's even below 3% in the 2020s absent changes. so i think even the supporters of the hegemonny strategy would say at some point that it just cannot be carried out realistically. now, that doesn't heene you won't still nominally have these alliances with japan or south korea, they may last indefinitely. but the other thing that may mark a clear break from the present period is if there are enough challenges to u.s. hegemony in europe, eurasia and asia by russia and china and the u.s. backs down enough, that will create a new situation, new facts on the ground. and that, remember, a lot of foreign policy is psychological. it's intimidation. and this is why i'm concerned. that is, i think it's very

likely the u.s. will back down again and again and again because of what the australian diplomat hugh white calls the asymmetry of resolve; thatc÷!$s, something that's very important for them like crimea to russia is just not that important to the united states, so it's not going to be worth going to war about. and that's why we need an exit strategy where we need to say here is our american vision of a europe that is not divided between american allies and american enemies and an asia that's not divided between american protect traits and outsiders. so it's not seen as backing down or unilateral retreat, but it's seen as building a new order with former enemies. >> the next question is from james mann who has written several books on the realists and neo-cons and on the obama

administration and told me he's just completed a short biography on george w. bush. so -- [laughter] >> michael, thanks for this. i had one question on something you haven't mentioned but that i read is in your article. which is immigration. i'd be curious to know how it fits into your thinking in your article both, maybe it applies equally, as to low skill immigration, paradigm in central america, and high skill, i guess, india. >> well, i approach this from the view of strategy in general. if you have a rule-governed global market with relatively free flows of capital and if not of labor, then you can have a shrinking population, and you're -- as long as per capita gdp is going up, then your

country can get richer and richer. you know, so that japan, say, could shrink and have fewer and fewer people every decade, but those fewer people would be richer because productivity growth in japan is growing up, and they're better off. in a mercantilist world, in a world where some or most powers are treating economics as an instrument of statecraft rather than as a rule-governed, zero sum gain, then the logic is quite different because of the high degree of overlap between population and military power. it's not perfect overlap. you have large countries like india which are relatively weak, and you have small countries which punch beyond their weight as britain's done since the industrial revolution. but in the long term, as productivity diffuses and converges among countries, all things being equal a country with a larger population is

going to be more powerful both this trade and in military -- in trade and in military than a smaller country. now, this goes -- that's the geopolitics of it. what you see happening in the countries of the developed world is a very deep backlash against immigration in the united states on the right and in europe even more so. now, artily this is a back -- partly this is a backlash against a particular kind of immigration, muslim immigrants, rather than necessarily against others. but in the european case, it's against immigrants too. having said that, and perhaps this will be my most visionary counterintuitive prediction of this talk, i think that in the 21st century this defensiveness towards immigrants is going to be replaced among many nations,

if not all, by competition for immigrants. which will be seen as a source of gdp growth and also of military power, frankly, and of a revenue base. right now only a minority of countries have population growth rates above the replacement level. most countries are scheduled the stabilize and then start declining. it's largely parts of africa, parts of central and south asia. even china, you know, is beyond the demographic transition. now, it seems inconceivable at this point that you could have the major nations of europe and east asia become relatively immigrant friendly. obviously, there's tensions in the united states, but relatively immigrant-friendly nations the way the united states and some other western hemisphere countries are, but i think that if the alternative is loss of military security as well as of economic clout, then

you're going to see a shift. and this will be really one of the most radicalç changes in world society in centuries. because the pattern until recently was that the major countries of europe and asia sent people, they didn't import them. now where the birthrates are so low, the only way they can stabilize their population is by imor thing people. at the same time, that raises questions, okay, if you're going to bring in people merely to stabilize your population much less expand, in order not to deepen divides along ethnic lines within your territory, you need to have assimilation and inte galatian of immigrants. this is a place where maybe i'm showing my biases here. i think the united states, you know, can -- had a pretty good model, at least until recently, both economic integration and cultural integration integration

of immigrants. economically if you have a booming economy and jobs for the middle class and so on, it is much easier for outsiders to get a stake in society. at the same time, the melting pot idea did not require immigrants to cut off all subnational identities, but we had the hyphenated american. you were irish-american, jewish-american, have both identities. this is still quite alien to the other industrial nations, and i don't know which way they'll go. >> [inaudible] i have a hard time seeing japan in this, which for a long time has had low growth, and you don't see the impact on changing immigration policies at all. >> well, then to the extent that population is a basis for power, they will slip down the world power rankings as well as the

gdp rankings which is not to say that they will be poor, you know? luxembourg, i think, has the highest per capita living standard in western europe. so countries may make that choice. >> michael, i wanted to ask you about something very contemporary now which is we've had bob kagan's essay in "the new republic" declaring that superpowers can't go on vacation. today there was an op-ed by walter russell mead, whom you know well, in "the wall street journal" declaring that america can't go on break and that we're seeing the dangerous consequences of a lack of resolve in american foreign policy and failing to stand up to vladimir putin. and mead's thesis was that putin

is, in a sense, rescue us from our own sins, awakening us to our pad behavior that we need -- our bad behavior that we need to reform and buck up, start exercising more vigorously, take a much harder stance towards foreign foes. so even though the president obama, whether you think he's a realist or not, he certainly enunciates realist, some realist themes. this is a real you pushback, i think, in washington against the notion of realism in american foreign policy. there's a very explicit denunciation in both kagan's piece and in walter russell mead's piece and by charles krauthammer of the idea that

america can, in fact, act more prudently abroad. they would characterize it as cowardice and defeatism. and many of the things that you are talking about in your earlier really date back to the paul wolfowitz document, don't they? in george h.w. administration when he came out and was slapped down for espousing a strategy after the cold war this which the -- in which the the united states would retain hegemony in all parts of the world. it seems to me that this consensus may not exist in the american public, and the obama administration, as i see it at least, is waffling. but the consensus among elites, i mean, i'm also -- this is also coming to mind because strobe talbott introduced bob kagan the other day, is and they had a

discourse where, essentially, no one really disa agreed with what kagan was saying. it seems to me you do have a consensus at the elite level that whether we call it liberal internationalism or neoconservativism or some hybrid really is still dominant at least among the foreign policy elite. would you disagree with that? >> no, no. i think there is this biartisan consensus. i think it will start showing cracks. but the problem with it now, it's not that it's fissuring in, it's still a solid consensus. the problem is the enormous gap between claim that we need to show resolve and the actual actions we will take. so, you know, we have to stand up to russia over crimea and ukraine. okay, so we might send some advisers to a baltic republic, right? well, putin retaliates against that by eliminating

american-manned space flights for a decade. it's amazing. it's amazing. the united states no longer has manned space flight capability. we were hitching rides to the international space station on russian rockets. oh, and it gets better. the united states doesn't make many of the rocket engines it needs for our own spy satellites, which is just as well because the spy satellite the u.s. is temporarily using to communicate with its african forces is a chinese satellite. [laughter] right? so on the one hand, we have the leaders of the foreign policy intelligence ya saying -- intelligent ya saying we just stand up to russia and china, and at the same time they've spent a generation dismantling the military industrial complex. the united states does not build a single civilian ocean-going ship thanks to president ronald reagan. from 1930s under franklin

roosevelt all the way up to the reagan administration, the united states government had a simple policy: whatever subsidies are offered to civilian ship makers by other countries, the federal government will match. no questions asked. the reagan administration came in, we're strong, we're number one, we're going to win the cold war. but they decided that this was a waste of money, so we would get rid of the subsidies. consequently, the united states apart from specialized navy ships and domestic barges protected by the jones act on inland waterways, we have to borrow all of our ships, all right? so that is my answer to all of these triumphalists, you know? teddy roosevelt said speak softly and carry a big stick. he didn't stay denounce your rivals and ask if you can borrow or buy a stick. [laughter] >> aaron -- [inaudible]

>> from much of what you've said, it seems to me the best friend a neo-con could ask for is mr. putin, because there was sort of a natural withering away of this overblown role we were playing toward end of the cold war. in fact, there was a conversation between senior bush's either while vice president or just after becoming president with francois mitterand where bush is meandering around saying -- mitterand says it would help a lot if you could explain to me what this new role for nato is, and bush starts saying, well, we've got to think in political terms about a new role in this period. he doesn't know, he doesn't have an answer. and mitterand, while we don't have an enemy, and he said, yes, isn't it inconvenient not having an enemy? putin now has basically come forward and is the answer to every neo-con's dream, because he's changed the rules of the game at least rhetorically. and made it much more difficult for anyone to calmly talk about

the sort of standing down of american power. >> i think that's right. but, again, the question is what are the concrete actions if the united states is going to respond? now, it would not be a bad thing if this were a sputnik moment, and the response was -- as it was to sputnik -- let's upgrade our education, let's invest in infrastructure, let's redouble funding for r&d. because as i suggested earlier, if you're really going to have genuine great power rivalries, and we want to have great power relations, but we may end up being on rival sides, then at the end of the day the country with the best technological, economic base and the deepest pockets in terms of credit is going to be able to hold out longer, particularly if you have cold wars which are primarily wars of economic attrition. with the neoconservatives and, i think, many of the neo-liberal hawks have forgotten that foreign policy has more than one instrument.

the military is not the only instrument. and we've allowed our other instruments to decay by focusing on having marines in australia to contain china or, you know, putting some nato troops in estonia or something like that. i'll give you an example. the united states during the cold war competed with the soviet union in the terms of foreign aid and foreign lending. africa is going to be two billion people by the end of 2100. two billion. enormous needs for infrastructure. the chinese are building highways and ports and railroads in africa around the indian ocean and so on while we have people on the left and the right in the u.s. congress trying to abolish the u.s. export-import bank which on a much, much, much smaller scale helps to finance infrastructure be and manufacturing with inputs from u.s. exporters in the rest of

the world, right. as i, if you look at what's going on in eurasia now, this is one of the greatest periods of infrastructure construction in history. pipelines, high-speed rail from china potentially to europe, and congress cannot agree to come up even with a tiny, modest pilot program version of a national infrastructure bank much smaller than the european investment bank or then the state develop banks that are possessed by brazil, by india, by russia, by china, by all of these other countries. so i don't want to suggest by any means that we should relax and that we won't have great power conflicts, but we need to stop thinking in terms of sending divisions here and submarines there. a lot of the struggle -- and we knew this during the cold war. the cold war was, first and

foremost, an economic struggle. the reason the soviets cracked was their economy cracked. and we were so rich and so prosperous and so innovative that for a fraction of the money they spent on the military, we could outspend them. at the height of the cold war, we spent no more than about 15% of gdp. that's how rich we were. that's how britain won the napoleonic wars. it was much smaller than france, but it had better credit and a more prosperous economy. it's, your example in the world, it's ideological war, it's propaganda, you know? even in the past few months these, well, this revelation now about the nsa taking faces from the internet, the revelation that the cia and the afghanistan/pakistan was using hospital operations as a cover for getting dna from potential terror suspects including osama bin laden's family. this is enormously damaging, you

know, to america's image in the world. so, you know, i share some of the concerns of mainstream foreign policy establishment with america's power and resolve, but their thinking in this kind of board -- they're thinking in this kind of board game manner where it's like moving troops here and there. and what we need is a conversation, okay, assuming we really do face great power challenges, let's look at every dimension of power including economic power and the power of influence and example. and not simply think it's a matter of sending an increasingly whittleed down military as a symbolic presence here or there. >> michael, as a final question, let's test the powers of creativity that i mentioned and ambassador burke commented upon.

2050. what does america look like domestically, and what's its standing in the world? >> well, there have been a number of studies of what the world will look like in terms of gdp in 2050, and they tend to agree that the four major economies will be the united states, india, china -- at least in terms of gdp -- and the your even union. and -- european union. and if we're looking at the middle of the 21st century, it's only a few decades from now. the united states will still be in a very enviable position, it will be the only big country that's rich. so unlike robert kagan and many of the neoconservatives, i think we're in fairly secure world. the united states really does not have to control the south china sea or, you know, the marshes of prussia in other words to be a world -- in order to be a world power.

we're the only country on the scale of india and china, they're going to be much poorer per capita and have less dispose able power. and the fourth area of major wealth, the european union will, i think like us today, there will be some mix of cooperation and local sovereignty, and it will not act as an entity in world affairs. probably by that time you will have a somewhat more liberalized, mellowed russian nation. and russia is part of europe. it has always been part of europe. this idea that it's not a russian company. the next time i hear somebody say germany is europe's largest company, no, russia is. absent some major change in british policy, britain will have more people than germany. now, these things can change as a result of policy, but if you're looking at a large, rich europe in which the two large

nation-states are russia and britain, that's somewhat different. from this german-dominated eurozone. so i think there's reason for cautious optimism. and the fact is, this is the world that we sought to create in the world conflicts of the 21st century. we wanted china to be free from colonial domination. we wanted india to be independent. we wanted a whole europe that wasn't divided by an iron curtain. and having achieved it, we're now saying it's so dangerous that, you know, we can't demobilize, we can't pull back, you know, we can't abandon anything. so, you know, maybe what we should do is declare victory in the world wars. [laughter] >> well, thank you, michael. having known him for many years, i was able to assure my colleague, paul saunders here, that in some meetings, you know, you get these air gaps where the

room sort of goes silent. but i assured him that with michael, there is never a dull moment. and we have barely scratched the surface with his talk which you may either find daunting or invigorating. but i am very grateful to michael both for his cover story and for speaking with us today. [applause] [inaudible conversations] con

>> and we're back with derek morgan who's the domestic economic policy vice president over at the heritage foundation. immigration reform is our topic here.rati mr. morgan, what are the prospects for immigration reform before the november 2014 elections?he p >> guest: well, i think it's pretty clear that there won't be any kind of comprehensive bill like was passed in the senate. that seems to be dead on arrival ined the house, and even though they've kind of recalibrated their expectations to try to get something much smaller done, but even that is going to be a difficult task in the republican house. right now there's just not a loh of trust for president obama on immigration or many other matters, so i think thet ob prospects are very dim rightw. now. ryu59ujtráy sect tear, was up on -- secretary was up on capitol hill. talking about the administration's deportationport policy. what are they looking at right now? are what impact do you think that has on this debate? >> guest: i think what we runsgu arees looking for in the house s

a president who will enforce the law, follow the letter of the law and also when looking at deportations consider things like this report that just cames out from the center for immigration studies. instead of being deported. so i think the deportation review will have to be multifaceted. there's some on the left who seem to think that any deportation is bad, but on the other side, i think republicans are going to have to see a willingness to enforce the laws. >> host: the administration has said we're going to put a hold on releasing this review to give speaker john boehner more breathing room to the try to work on immigration reform. >> guest: yes. the cynic in me would say it perhaps coincides with the political calendar when you have a number of republicans that are going to be facing primary

challenges. after those subside, the conventional wisdom goes republicans would be more likely to sign on to some form of immigration reform. >> host: the republican party appears to be a bit torn over immigration reform. you've got business, chamber of commerce, others saying we need to do immigration reform, and if republicans don't do it, don't even think about running a candidate in 2016. you've got then other people are saying you've got to secure the border first before you tackle immigration reform. >> guest: that's right. >> host: from your perspective at the heritage foundation, what does immigration reform do to our economy? >> guest: well, i'd say immigration is generally a very good thing for the united states. it headaches us stronger. -- makes us stronger. we get the best and brightest from all over the world, and that's great for our economy. however, it isn't only an economic issue, it's also a rule of law issue. so in that vein, we have to be sure that those who are coming are following the law. and really it's a matter of fairness too. so the president has advocated

for an amnesty approach where he would forgive those who broke the law and came to the united states and are now undocumented. he's decided that he wanted to push in that senate bill and others that, in fact, they would be allowed to stay. and that's not fair to those who follow the rules. so in mexico a poll was done by pew, i believe it was, and they polled people in mexico who would consider coming to united states, and a little under half said they would consider coming to united states. but just under half who said they would come to the u.s. said they would not do so without authorization. so you have millions of people who would like to come to the united states but don't because it's against our laws. if we provide amnesty, we're not being fair to those people. >> host: bipartisan policy tweeted in this out: without immigration, the u.s. would grow slower and age faster. without immigration america's population would stop growing around 2040 and would age 30% faster. >> guest: uh-huh. yeah, the immigration is

important for demographic reasons. not quite the silver bullet that some of its proponents purport, increase population, and our fertility right now in the united states is under replacement, so that means without immigration we would, indeed, lose population, and that's why legal immigration is an important part of growing this country. >> host: on the economy side of it, for our economy to grow. immigration works usa, they put out this: less than 5% of high school dropouts today are willing to do physically demanding, low skill work. over the next decade, the u.s. will need three million workers to fill these low-skill jobs. only 1.7 million new workers, skilled and unskilled, will enter the labor force in these years. >> yeah. i think this really points to a larger cultural problem. and i've talked to many people about this across the country s and day that see the same thing. unfortunately, we seem to be denigrating the value of work

itself. the fact is that hard, demanding physical labor is honorable work. it's not to be looked down on. there was an adviser to a president who once said we need immigration reform because he didn't want his son picking tomatoes. i think that's denigrating to work. the fact is that people who are out there in the fields doing that kind of work are serving all of us in the economy. so i think we just actually need a broader conversation about the value of work in the country as a whole. and to give you one more example, there's about 80 different means-tested welfare programs today, and only one or two have a work requirement, and president obama's actually scaled those back. so i think we need to, as a country, talk about the value of work and encourage work in all of our welfare programs. >> host: what impact do immigrants coming into this country illegally or legally have on our government programs? >> guest: well, this is a question we're very curious about. robert rector, who works at heritage, wrote a report last year, one of the nation's top welfare experts.

he looked at the census data and calculated how much taxes undocumented workers pay and how much benefits and services they receive, and he added it up over the lifetime, and he found it was a significant deficit. and that counts expenditures at all levels of government, local, state and federal. so it accounts federal welfare programs, but also state schools and roads and things like that, they found a trillion dollar deficit. >> host: we're talking about the economic impact of immigration reform with derrick morgan of the heritage foundation. we have a forty line this -- fourth line for business owners, 202-585-3883 is your line. lowell in fredericksburg, virginia, republican caller. go ahead. >> caller: good morning. thanks for taking my call. my question is, what should i do? i'm always out, and i'm shopping for things as i take care of the family, and people have these cards, and i'll have a basket of food, and their basket's always much longer than mine.

they use this card, and they get free food. and when they don't have enough on the card, they pull out#qpn d of $100 bills that is often difficult to get out of their pocket. and they peel off, you know, they're all laughing. and then just recently when we -- >> host: walt, what does this have to do with immigration reform? >> caller: yes, i'm asking all of these individualings are, in fact, illegal immigrants. >> host: and how do you know that? >> guest: well, they don't speak english, they usually are reluctant when they see even a guard. they are kind of shunning away from them. and i could positively be wrong. it smacks in the face of being right versus wrong. and thank you for taking my question. >> host: all right. let's ask mr. morgan then. the you're an illegal immigrant, can you get food stamps? >> guest: unfortunately, there's a lot of fraud in our food stamp programs, and we've gone from stamps to these electronic cards.

and there's some who think it's actually easier to commit fraud with those cards now. so, you know, we don't know if the people who lowell's seeing are legal or illegal, but the fact remains that there is a lot of fraud in the food stamp program. one of the things we'd like to see at heritage is a food requirement for food stamps. it goes back to the old admonition, if you shall not work, you shall not eat. we should require that and encourage people to work for food stamps. >> host: robin is next, green ridge, missouri. democratic caller. >> caller: hi. thanks for taking my call. i would like to respond about the immigration. around here where i live we are overran with illegal mexicans and illegal russians. ask like the guy be -- and like the guy before me, the way that we tell is they're very shifty when it comes to the law. they don't speak no english, and and like he said, they have a food stamp card. and also they work our jobs, and

they don't get paid by a check, they get paid cash. so on top of getting paid on cash -- and i know this because there's a company in sedalia that hires all these people. they keep enough legal people in there in case immigration comes in. then they have these americans in there doing the job. they hide the immigrants. but, and i know this because i was there. i seen that with my own eyes. >> host: and so, robin, what's the impact a on your local economy? >> guest: okay, the impact is these people, they do work our jobs and kicks the american people out because they work for wages, and they, and also they get loans to start businesses, they get loans to buy land and build houses here. and they talk about it too. i mean, it's nothing, it's not a secret. >> host: okay. let me just begin with one thing that robin said though, i mean, there are immigrants that come

to this country legally that -- to become a legal immigrant, you don't have to speak english, correct? >> guest: that's right. to become a citizen, you should have some proficiency, but not to be a green cardholder, that's right. and one thing she did say which struck me is this concept that of workplace enforcement. in fact, it was actually promised in 1986 when congress decided it was going to pass an amnesty at that time and say let's wipe the books clean, we have some people who are here illegally, let's make them legal and in exchange we're going to secure the border and have workplace enforcement. in fact, the american people are still waiting for those promises. so businesses that employ illegal labor really have not faced the consequences that they ought to under the law. >> host: we'll go next to dave in rome, georgia, democratic caller. >> caller: yes, thank you. you just hit the nail on the held, sir. this whole problem has come from a republican administration,

reagan administration, which devastated the united states. let me explain about what i'm saying. reagan granted amnesty, just straight out amnesty. they said three, but those ten million now are the ones that are here. basically, what i'm trying to say is this: now you have a problem, you have the republican party, they are against immigration. they are against anything that they used to be for. really it's killing this country. they messed the country up, george bush. reagan messed it up, and reagan should have been impeached but because here had a house -- he had a house with tip o'neill who was also irish. could you explain to me why how many immigrants are illegal or legal, came from reagan, the administration that granted amnesty. thank you. >> host: all right, dave. dave's a democrat in rome, georgia. >> guest: dave, i think looking back at that 1986 proposal,

there were republican and democratic supporters. it was kind of a bipartisan policy. and president reagan did sign it. i think he later regretted that. attorney general ed meese, who also works at heritage, he's explained before that reagan thought that was a mistake. you can forgive the mistake once if we try a proposal to grant an amnesty and see if we can then, you know, clear out the illegal population and start over again, but we have tried that now. so if we tried that again, i think it'd be with shame on us at this point. you mentioned about three million, we think. the fraud rates, i've seen some study that is show up to 25% were fraudulent inductee into that amnesty, and now we're looking at a pop haitian of over ten -- population of over ten million. no one knows exactly, but we have a pretty good idea from census data and dhs estimates. a lot of people think those estimates are short, but we know there's at least more than ten million. >> host: the u.s. chamber

disagrees. welcoming immigrants is good for our economy and our society. immigrants do not typically compete with americans for jobs and, in fact, create more jobs through entrepreneurship, economic activity and tax increases. immigrants serve as a complement to the u.s.-born workers and help fillet boar shortages across the still spectrum and in key sectors. >> guest: there's not a whole lot i disagree with there. i know some would. the fact is legal immigration, done right, can be really, really good for our economy. it can be good because we're admitting folks who have great talents all over the world, and they come the united states. and because of our rule of law, because of our economic freedom that we enjoy in our country, they can be really successful here and start companies like google and others. and that's terrific. i know at heritage we would like to increase the amount of high skilled innovation to try and encourage these kinds of companies and economies to form. so i think -- i disagree potentially is the fact i don't think you have to do amnesty in

order to get those benefits from strong legal, high-skilled immigration. >> host: well, then how do you get that factor into our chi without some sort of pathway to citizenship. >> >> guest: right now the united states anytimes more permanent residents on a path than the rest of the world combined. not very many countries have that kind of an immigration system. you can come from anywhere in the world and become an american. it's hard to become japanese or french, but you can become an american. and that's great. most people don't realize it, we're talking about a billion legal immigrants every year. so we do have adequate room for people to come in now. i think it's a good debate to have as should we increase the amount of skilled immigration and maybe reduce lower-skilled immigration, those kinds of debates would be good. but right now everything's being held hostage over the question of what to do with those who are here illegally now, any of these common sense reforms we can do. >> host: derek in stillwater, minnesota, independent caller. hi, derek.

>> caller: good morning. i have two quick comments and i have a question, because i know the heritage is somewhat of a think tank, so let's see what he can do about this. quick question is the chamber has absolutely no credibility on in this issue. they've been pushing for cheap labor, and they don't care if it's illegal or legal. so let's not talking about it as illegal immigration. of course immigration is good. our whole country's made up for it except for the american indians, except the chamber has no credibility period. second, the biggest incompetent thing i've seen this my 43 years in the united states as a citizen is the fact that the one thing the government's supposed to do is protect their borders and defend their nation. we have 19 million reasons why they are completely inept there doing that. one basic thing they're supposed to do. so here's my question. we have 19 million, let's call it 15 million illegal immigrants. has there ever been a discussion, i have never heard it, but has there ever been a

discussion about why don't we set up a refugee camp in mexico and kind of sweep through the nation and get with everybody into some sort of u.n. refugee camp? because, obviously, we have a huge problem. it undermines our labor prices, etc. and so torte. thank you very much. >> guest: i think it's pretty amazing we've had callers all outside of the beltway republican, democratic and independent that are really animated on this topic, and it's a lot different here inside the beltway when most of the powerful interest groups all want immigration reform, they want large increases in legal immigration. i think it's always good to talk to the american people, so i appreciate that call. in terms of protecting the border, i couldn't agree with you more. our nation's not a nation if we can't protect our borders. and we at heritage have written about how we can do things like involving more local law enforcement that know the area really well. we can have more high-tech solutions as well. so i think it's more a matter of

wanting to accomplish the goal and fixing that goal and sticking to it that is the main question. and i think also, frankly, at some point if we could have a guest worker ram and regularize those who want to come in this and do work, say, for an agricultural season and return home, i think that would also help us be able to secure the border better, because we'd with able to know who's come anything and who's going out. so there's a couple of common sense solutions that we could use on the border but right now, unfortunately, politicians aren't wanting to do that. >> host: "the washington post" has a poll from march of 2014. when they asked republicans only if a candidate for u.s. congress southerns a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, would that make you more likely to vote for the candidate, less likely or wouldn't make a difference, 60% of republicans less likely to vote for that candidate. >> guest: yeah. i think that's, you know, that's -- it's eye opening,

really, when you see the differences between the two. what people really want is fairness, you know? they want to know that there's a set of rules, and we're going to follow those rules. they don't want washington picking winners and losers on immigration any more than they do on energy policy, for example, where unfortunately this administration has decided to support some ventures like solyndra and others that have end up failing, so they're picking and choosing. we like to have a set of unitomorrow rules, let everybody compete, and don't -- >> you can watch the rest of this discussion online at c-span.org. going to take you live now to the floor of the u.s. senate. the senate gaveling in in just a few moments back from a ten-day me hoyle holiday break. they'll be starting the day with general speeches, and then at 5:30 they'll be voting to advance the nomination of keith harper to be ambassador to the united nations human rights council. if confirmed, he would be the first native american to serve as a u.s. ambassador. later in the week in the senate expecting to vote on advancing

the nomination of sylvia purrwell to be the new secretary of health and human services. also possible this week, consideration of a bill establishing a program to support mental health courts. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, dr. barry black, will lead the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. most merciful god, you have been better to us than we deserve. accept the grateful labors of our lawmakers, as they seek to meet the challenges of our times.