>> look for these titles in bookstores this coming week, and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> and now as part of a conference on the 50th anniversary of the publication of james byrnes "suicide of

thewest," a panel discussion on u.s. foreign policy. this is about one hour. >> good afternoon. my name is josh album. on the membership director of the program and it is my pleasure to introduce the moderator for our final panel, which is the drift of u.s. foreign policy and the challenges of western survival. professor koh is arrested and electric studies reveal. he served as senior advisor to george shultz, henry kissinger and ronald reagan just to name a few. professor hill is a research fellow at stanford's hoover institute and served as chief foreign policy adviser to candidate rudy giuliani. author of the books grand strategy and trial of a thousand years, he teaches in the

strategy programs. professor hill also teaches and directed study, western solution freshman year program. without further ado please join me in welcoming our moderator who will now introduce our panel is, professor charles hill. [applause] >> thank you, and good afternoon. my first job the forgetting to the panel is to wave this in front of you, "suicide of thewest," james burnham. it's just out, available from amazon and it is for the handful of you who haven't read this, it is eerie uncanny how relevant this work is to what we're talking about here today. i recommend you go out and get it online. today is the panel on the drift

in u.s. foreign policy. we have three remarkable public intellectuals of wide-ranging influence on the panel today. i will introduce them in the order in which they will speak for 10 minutes or so and then leaving is time for questions. kt mcfarland is with fox news, as national security expert, a columnist. she is the anchor for the "defcon 3" at fox served in the nixon, ford and reagan administrations. she, as i was once, an aide to henry kissinger, speechwriter she was for secretary of defense weinberger once deputy assistant secretary of defense.

chic has run for office for the senate and generally someone who really knows the foreign affairs business. second, james kirchick who i've known for some time since his degradation sure that you as a student. -- at geomagnetic has become a the correspondent of the kind we don't see much of it anymore. he has been most recently with radio free europe, radio liberty. his publication list is i've got to say is unmatched in its wide range of "the new republic," weekly standard "the wall street journal," "the new york times," the "daily beast," the australian.

it's really, really something. you be talking i believe mostly about his views on europe at the moment. and then in cleanup batting position, ibn warraq, who is founder of sticklers nation for islamic society and vice president of the world encounter institute. he has written on all things about the koran about secularization of islam, about his own life or not as a muslim. and he's done a fundamentally important critique of edwards site needs orientalism. and you can imagine from his work that he has concerns about his personal security. i would only say in this title the drift u.s. foreign policy

may not be exactly on target because it could very well be perhaps it is that the course of american foreign policy now is exactly what president obama once it to be. it's not drifting at all, that he is not disengage. he's not incompetent, it's going exactly as he hoped perhaps a little slower than he hoped but it is perhaps in his view of his finest hour which is his profile in courage as he stands up to the critics of his foreign policy. so we will begin with kt mcfarland. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> first let me ask you how many of you watch docs news? okay. forget all the stuff you said. i'm the brunette on fox news.

[laughter] okay, "suicide of the west: an essay on the meaning and destiny of liberalism"." the majority of americans think including the president of the united states believes that our best days are over. this attitude is contagious. i think the president feels very strongly that leading from behind means we will be left behind and that's okay because the world has not been a better place with american leadership. he looks at the last 10 or 15 years, certainly the last republican administration war in iraq and afghanistan and the president feels as to his like-minded contemporaries that the world is a better place if america takes a step down. why? because then the global community is somewhat going to run things. i don't think he's thought through what tends to happen when a great power steps back from a the world stage. instead of the global community, it tends to be dictatorships

monarchies, authoritarian governments who do not message you did not message you wish as well but who can take charge, if not that then it's global chaos. first of all i want to ask you how many of you have bought into america's best days are over our children are going to have as good a life as we have that it's been great but like all empires, america had its beginning and then it's rise and then its decline? how many of you really think you don't want to think this way but a lot of you think america's best days are behind? come on. the people outside of this room, 75% of them, think america's best days are behind us. they are wrong and you are right. i will tell you why. first of all decline as him is nothing new. we've had us at the beginning of time. in my lifetime in the 1970s there was a soviet union is going of the better economic system of the go to take over the world did work out so well so japan in the 1980s by

rockefeller center, they're going to run things, didn't work out so well in the 1990s it was the european union. they were going to be the model for we were all looking for. didn't work out that well for them either. now it's china. china is going to take over the world. china is the great power. to the point lastly president obama was in beijing and he was treated like a lame duck leader of a has-been nation. the chinese media was full of all sorts of articles about america is finished, america's days are over. and again they agree with some of the leaders of our country that that's probably a good thing. let me to you why they are wrong. i think american is in fact, just a few political decisions and a couple years away from being the second greatest american century. i don't say that the way republicans ago, stand up debating in the primary season of our electoral annual for your elections would also i believe america is a great country.

it's almost like remember peter pan if you close your eyes and peter pan sprinkles fairy dust, tinkerbell was going to come back to life. i don't think that. i think it's the next great american century for very specific and real reasons. if you look at the history of the world since the industrial revolution, wars have been fought over energy. countries and regions of the world which have had coal oil natural gas up in wealthy beyond imagination. the countries which have not have tried to fight to get them. world war i in part was determine who controlled central europe. federal -- had to invade russia to get his hands on the oil. japan attacked pearl harbor because it wanted to get continuous flow of oil through the pacific. we went through two wars iraq, the two iraq wars, they may have been disguised by to in effect about oil. whoever has oil, whereas energy control the economic prosperity

of the world. we have a president who a few years ago talking about oil it was in decline. we now in the less overuse of had a revolution in the united states which is just starting to come into the national consciousness because american technology, engineering and innovation our people have looked underground, developed 3-d mapping have been able to look underground and realized that not only did we have energy, we have oil and natural gas in such abundance it is probably greater than some the oil and natural gas areas in other parts of the world. the second thing is develop the authority to bring it out of the ground safely and abundantly and the jury. things like 3-d mapping horizontal drilling, fracturing hydraulic fracturing. all those things event there are parts of this country and offshore chargeability get oil out of the ground for something like 40 or $50 a barrel. what does that mean?

what is going to happen in the united states if we did make the correct decisions, the correct decisions on things like keystone pipeline, no-brainer allowing the energy companies to drill on federal and state lands, or for tax reforms so we lower the corporate tax rates to repatriate probably $2.1 trillion that would come back to the united states and the ability to export all of that cheap energy. here's what i think happens. we take those decisions and who we are starting 24 months from now. number one they would be jobs that are directly related to the energy industry, oil and natural gas. we have seen that. the lowest unemployment rate in the whole united states is in north dakota because of fracking. connecticut, this state, you've embraced fracking. pennsylvania even more so has embraced fracking to the point where if i lived in new york state and people are moving across the border into pennsylvania because they can get jobs and pennsylvania is

embracing this and nuke state because of governor cuomo is not embracing it. there will be a direct number of jobs in the entire country as a result of fracking probably some estimates are two to 3% from. that's just directly related to energy. then what happens is a second wave of jobs because as united states manufacturing becomes competitive, our energy is going to be 25% cheaper than energy in japan, probably 15%, 10% cheaper than energy in europe. that means companies which have gone overseas in the last 20 years, come back. the traditional manufacturing maybe not the same things, maybe a new version of things that they are going to be made in the united states more cheaply than our competitors which is europe and japan. as a third way is i think that comes which is cheap energy is going to marry up with a $2.1 trillion would you come from overseas to be reinvested in the united states and table

invest in new technologies inside 3-d printing, robotics, better technology bioengineering, pharma. we will have a whole industrial revolution akin to what we had the first time and probably better to what we had the second time with the internet information age revolution. so we are looking at probably a generation of economic prosperity. what does that mean? the next decision we make is we export, once we get our own energy industry kick started the we can export. we can export lng more quickly but will start exporting oil. what does that due to the price of oil? the price is already dropping without us even exporting because we are using our own natural resources, our own oil. once the price of oil goes below $80 of the, it banks of the bad guys. russia is predicated on a budget that is $100-barrel oil. food to the budget in the last

year about russia's going to spend its money on and it is predicated on $100 a barrel and we took it to committee that oversees this and they said that's a little optimist, maybe it will be lower. he basically by the committee and senator of the guys who said $100-barrel oil. the russians have rainy day funds to compensate for a low price of oil but they are not infinite and probably last 18 months, two years. they will have to compensate for low oil prices. oil prices are not going to go back up. they may not state 80. then they go to 90 they may go to 70 but they will hover below 100. is oil doesn't get to $100-barrel oil, they don't make payroll and their two goals, proven schools for the next five years our infrastructure rebuilding and the defense build a. he can't afford either of those. as a result of the people have very unhappy russians. i'm happy military if he doesn't spend it on that. unhappy russian retirees it

because it subsidizes them. the second thing that happens is of the countries we don't like and don't like us, start to run into trouble. iran venezuela. they also need high oil prices because they have spent the last 15 years of the oil windfall profits that they have had not investing. they have not build infrastructures but have not built alternative industries for the people. they have taken the money come in some cases they bought military and in most cases they just subsidize their populations. ones those prices of oil and natural gas go down, they have nothing. that is exactly where we were in the late 1980s when ronald reagan helped push the price of oil down when charlie was writing the speeches for him. the price of oil went from $40 to $18 a barrel in nine months and it bankrupted the then soviet union. that's one of the key factors in the fall of the soviet empire. what's going to happen?

united states will have a manufacturing renaissance. at the same time that the bad guys are going to go broke. now let's look at china. china will take over the world. if you look at china they are a demographic timebomb. i was in china in beijing in the spring, it was a beautiful sunny day and what did equivalent of central park. i live in new york. when i could central park on a beautiful sunny spring day, what lacy? you see moms two strollers maybe two sets of identical twins because of other reasons but anyway you see a lot of little kids and dad and maybe grandma. they are hovering. there's a dog. you go to china what do you seek what you see one stroller one little boy child who is three years old and for, sometimes six hovering adults mom, dad grandma grandpa grandma, grandpa. they are looking at the little child, little in first, because of the one child policy, the

chinese have a much higher percentage of male birth. every 120, everyone had 30 males their 20 the most. their economy is on the downside for several reasons. they are militarism and nationalism is on the upswing. the chinese are looking at i think not only a period where they went demographic problems remove or the six adults hovering over the little little boy emperor who's going to support them all into old age because there's no social welfare system in china, they are going to demographic problems with the aging population. they will have demographic problems with one child policy and all the boys. and i think they will have social unrest problems because they can keep the lid on social

media forever. they have reacted as they have seen the arab spring in the middle east and other parts of the world they have gotten very nervous that could come to china. they have started to crush the whole exposure to the outside world. i think we look ahead and i think it's going to be a lousy couple of years because i think the president is now he's on his jihad, and he's going to do whatever he thinks is his time. is going to of immigration commies going to do all the things you've been dreaming of doing is going to do. a couple of really tough years but eventually change of leadership but also just the american people are not jokes despite the fact that one of my mit colleagues thinks that they are all so stupid. but anyway, by the way, if you don't watch fox news you to be realized that that mit professor sedona reason they would sell obamacare was because the american people were so stupid. last couple of years of the

market is going to take over i think the united states is for an absolute boom time for the rest of our days but i'm telling my five children, you've got jobs, you'll get more jobs, and i'm going to be able to retire because you're going to dorky for a man who's going to be great. so thank you very much. [applause] i hate to be half empty glass -- [laughter] i blame it on the last three in f. years i spent living in europe probably. i would recommend as an addition to the suicide of the west how democracies perish, sony recalled the also very present in reduce books in what they do with the russian threat. what was then the soviet threat

which another russian threat and the similarities that existed between the two today. i just got back from berlin two days ago where i was there for the 20th -- 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. who is a very ominous occasion almost of the people there didn't seem to understand why it was so ominous for only several hundred miles east the russians are busily militarily dividing europe once again. something that no one in europe really thought possible that could ever happen on european territory, and onslaught is what it is on the european continent took place earlier this year and there is still work going on on the european continent. and for the past several years i was living in europe, working for radio free europe, and our polish colleagues would warn us

about russian aggression, but the spread of russian influence and money and aggression against their neighbors. they were always derided as being these silly cold war era people stuck on the pass comment on to understand we have a new relationship with russia? and what are you dragging us into the all these problems? they have been proven right and i would say that the worst nightmares have actually gotten that they could've said even worse things. look what putin this week has defended the hitler-stalin pact of 1939. this is very scary stuff. i don't think most people in europe have come to terms with it and i don't that most people in the united states have come to terms with it how unpredictable this regime in moscow is. in the past year has shown some very discomforting fissures within the transatlantic alliance, the countries we thought are expected to of been very firm supporters of nato of

the unified western response to russian aggression have actually proven to be very weak links to the president of the czech republic soy, the defense minister of the check with public and the president of slovakia, both of them like and the stationing of their trips on their territory, a member both of these countries are members of nato, likened the stationing of nato troops on the territory as being akin to the 1968 warsaw pact. these are leaders of democratic allies, members of nato in good standing. hungary at this point would probably not be able to join the eu given the democrats backsliding that we've seen there. the russians have been expert at using edward snowden however you think he got to moscow whether he was a russian agent from the beginning or was he just come ended up righteously

in moscow. they have used them remarkably well in turning european public opinion against the united states, particularly in germany where most of the most embarrassing leaks have been directed at the german public opinion. i do see michael hayden here. when i was in germany i told my german friends that i'm sorry, but chancellor merkel should not have been discussing anything other than potato soup recipes on her cell phone. it is not a safe form of communication. but that has provoked very strong anti-american sentiment in germany. real unprecedented having rca station chief kicked out of our embassy. that happened in germany this summer. it's easy to lament european pacifism, we've been doing that for decades since the end of world war ii and start of the

cold war and called on europeans to pay for more of the own defense, take a tougher line. but i think there is a lot of blame has to be laid at the feet here of the administration in washington. i think when you take a policy of leading from behind particularly in europe, the first post your president we've ever had has no real connections to europe, no real affinity for europe. i think every other president has had some connection. this was her asian president, he's going to give it to asia. this is what happens when you lead from behind and you basically leave allies to do as they please but they have to make their own arrangements. if you're a small country in the middle of europe oftentimes those arrangements are going to be some storm to put some form of accommodation with the bear. i am i was in estonia a couple weeks ago and i see a real possibility that you could have

crimea type situation in estonia where there's no russian soldiers going in, no russian tanks. it's literally a handful of russian special operations forces without any insignia taking over a government building in the town on the border. all you would need to all putin would have to do to destroy native is have the estonian government invoke article v, which mandates that an attack on one is an attack on all and have had the portuguese and spanish say no we don't think this is an invasion to nato is destroyed. the most successful international security alliance the world has ever seen could be destroyed in one simple step. in the middle east, what happens when you leave allies to your own devices and to withdraw? no one in the middle east believe president obama when he says that he will prevent iran from getting a nuclear weapon. no one believes that. shortly, certainly not after the

syria redline was announced and then promptly ignored. the saudis will have pretty much said openly that they would develop their own nuclear program, or simply buy them from the pakistanis. we now have a rather remarkable alliance with israel and egypt, jordan and saudi arabia and the sunni arab status quo powers. basically taken on the role of what the united states used to play, which was that of the regional hegemon. but because we pretty much announced that we have no interest in the middle east anymore, we basically left all these countries to sort it out for themselves. two months ago egypt and the uae launched airstrikes in libya. do you remember libyan? do you remember that country where the old lady from the hind thing started? they launched airstrikes on libya to prevent islamist militias from taking over the country. we left libya behind.

this was according to the present insufferably in a recent interview with tom friedman, he considers the signal foreign policy achievement of his of administration pic it says something that he would consider this to be the signal foreign policy issue of his administration. the egyptians and the uae are launching airstrikes without even warning the united states beforehand. behavior like this would've never been tolerated 10 years ago. you just wouldn't have been able to get away with it, but now it's just what happens. i think one of the key lessons we take from burnham is how vulnerable democracies are to being manipulated, to being co-opted by authoritarian powers. it's very easy to spread disinformation propaganda,

lies. and i'm very interested in what the russians are doing in this field and the disinformation field. if any of you have ever seen the network are key, it is a thing to behold. it is horrible it's evil and its sinister but it's brilliant television and it has a huge audience -- rt. it is not soviet style propaganda. this is real high tech stuff that appeals to people of all political stripes from the far left to the far right. its chameleon like and it works because you have a democratic society. we don't kick out of their journalist. we don't censor them and they do our site. so that's a major challenge. so i hate to be so pessimistic but i am very worried about the state of your and our alliances structure there. i think the next years are going to be very difficult, but i do ultimately agree with kt that in

the end america will most likely endure, i hope. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you very i like to thank the william f. buckley program for inviting me. i'm a little bit puzzled as to why i have been invited because i'm really not a foreign policy expert unlike my copanelists and professor hill. however, i will make a few comments but to keep that door open. [laughter] professor hill mentioned someone has done their homework. i did not send this in my bio data to the organizer your professor hill mentioned, i found a something called the institute for the

democratization -- know secularization of islamic societies, which gives you the acronym isis. [laughter] and i had to abandon that okay? [laughter] i should also like to thank some of my friends who have influenced me in what i'm going to say now people like sebastian, robert reilly and hugh fitzgerald. now, james burnham the book "suicide of the west" is full of insights on american foreign policy which i find relevant to this day. in fact, one has only to substitute islam for communism in many of his observations to realize they're continuing pertinence. i should limit myself to one of his observations from chapter 12, quote, the communists divide the world into zone of peace in the zone of war. the zone of peace means the

region that is already subject to communist rule and label signifies it within the region the communists will not permit any political tendency violent or nonviolent whether purely internal or assisted from without to challenge the rule. the zone of war is a region where common as rove is not yet but in the course will be established, and within the zone of war the communists promote, assist and where possible, lead political tendencies, violent or nonviolent, democratic a revolutionary, that operate against non-communist rule. clear in of these definitions you smashed the hungarian freedom fighters in support for dell castro. you know where you are where you were going. this is end of quote. the above could easily have been a dictionary definition of the islamic doctrine of jihad and its notions of the zone of peace

and zone of war. now my main points. i have broken them down into numbers, points but perhaps i can develop these during question time. one comment we are engaged in a war of ideas with their principal enemy and ideology and ideology that will not collapse of the economic incompetence. number two, the ideology of the terrorists is a religiously-based and derive from islam and its founding text the koran and the history of the early caliphate. three, one but not the only one way of knowing this is because they tell us so. first, if you want to understand the enemy read what they say. they constantly justify their acts with accurate and

advocation from the koran. they refer to him among other books works -- milestones is so important both for the islamists, abdullah's defense of muslim lands the concept of power, and the knights under the prophet's banner. some of the latter have doctorates from recognize islamic universities commit to hear john kerry trying to tell them that i did have nothing to do with islam is comical. islamic terrorism is not caused by poverty, lack of education, sexual deprivation psychological problems, or lack of economic opportunity, western imperialism or western decadence, or even the arab-israeli conflict. five, there are two kinds of jihad, terrorism and slow

penetration of western institution, subverting western laws and customs from within. sex, ignorance naïveté arrogance, political correctness, sheer laziness, sentimentality and on top of that saudi qatari and iranian money have led to islamist succession -- successes from the voice of america, the pentagon cia. i have the documentation to back up all that. i'm not sure we'll have time afterwards. bitingly, the pentagon, cia, fbi, to universities and colleges with islamic propaganda is famously openly decimated. while groups such as isis al-qaeda and others are nonstate actors they are funded by states such as qatar, saudi arabia and iran. these three countries, for example, also applied the necessary islamic support

framework, propaganda that spews forth anti-western and anti-american hatred. they should be warned at least or face the consequences. number eight come as it is also important to point out that it is not something we have done that isn't telling the islamists. constantly apologizing mr. president, is not go to help at all. it's pointless. nine, we must learn the lessons of the cold war for the striking similarities between islamists ideology and that of soviet russia. this was pointed out even in 1920s by burton russell and then in the '50s, and more recently by maxine waters. number 10, you must speak out in support of the christians who have been persecuted and killed almost every day in islamic countries. there are also part of humanitarian reasons i believe there are other reasons which to

do with what i hoped would be the secularization of islamic societies. in order to succeed we need urgently to recover our civilization self-confidence. 12 last my number to point, one would've to fight jihad is undermined their certainties, and one can accomplish this with a red criticism in the west spinoza, especially with his book spinoza hastened the enlightenment by his biblical criticism. and there are, jonathan israel in his three enormous volumes on the enlightenment begins with spinoza and his importance for getting the whole enlightenment agenda going.

okay, so more comments. and ideology to understand the mindset of the islamic terrorist. terrorism is not caused by poverty and someone. it is to their ideology, it is the ideology that is the source of his moral legitimacy. without it terrorism cannot exist. terrorists are produced by a totalitarian ideology justifying terrorism. while america has had some impressive tactical successes and has managed to kill osama bin laden and anwar awlaki it still fails to understand their goals, their ideology. the reasons for this failure are many. first, there is reluctance to address the religious inspiration of the acts of terrorism. to admit that ideology is derived from islam and its founding text, the koran and the early history of the caliphate.

instead, the present administration exalts us to use euphemisms such as violent extremism. to quote my friend, kathleen who did a report on this, whereas the 9/11 commission report published under the presidency of george bush in july 2004, had used the word islam 322 times muslim 145 times jihad 126 times, jihadists 32 times the national intelligence strategy, the united states issued by the obama administration in august 2009 used the term islam zero times, muslim zero times jihad zero times. now, obama's policy applies to internal government documents as well which can only have

disastrous consequences for our understanding of political groups and events in the middle east. afghanistan, pakistan and south and southeast asia. how can we possibly analyze the power and the pale of ideology way that ideas second strategy and tactic, why such a huge menace if any reference to the islamic religion and its text all doctrines isn't permitted? perhaps it was only in 1946 when george kennan wrote is classified long telegram that america began to understand the nature of the soviet union. why it acted the way it did and have the kremlin thought, why the ussr was a great threat to america. in other words, it took three decades to understand the mind of the enemy. to complicate matters further, today there are two enemies first non-european religiously

informed nonstate terrorist groups like isis. second and equally dangerous, states that, in fact, fund and support them. there's evidence that just recently the atlantic reported in june of this year, two of the most successful factions fighting besides forces are islamist extremist groups and the islamic state of iraq and syria. and their success is in part due to the support they have recovered, received from the two persian gulf countries, qatar in saudi arabia. that was a quote from the atlantic. our ability to fight al-qaeda and similar transnational terrorist actors will depend upon our capacity to communicate to our own citizens and to the world what it is we are fighting for and what it is that the ideology of jihad threatens in terms of the values we hold so dear. to quote him anymore it is not

enough, to know the enemy in order to win. one must first know oneself. however, with the end of the cold war, america and the west understandably perhaps loss clarity with regard to what it was about its way of life that was precious and worth fighting for. james burnham explains exemplary clarity the reason for this loss of self-confidence and what he wrote is still relevant. quote, judging a group of human beings a race in addition, a class or party that he considered to possess less than their well being and liberty. the liberal is hard put to it to condemn the group morally for acts that he would not hesitate to condemn in his fellows. when the western liberals feeling of guilt and his associated feeling of moral vulnerability before the sorrows and demands of the wretched become excessive, he often develops a generalized hatred of

western civilization and of his own country as a part of the west. we can frequently since his hatred in journals like the nation, end of quote. in order to succeed -- this is my last point -- we need urgently to recover our civilizational self-confidence. ronald reagan was able to succeed because he was supremely confident of the moral and spiritual purity or to -- superiority. he was able to state with certainty and without hesitation that the soviet empire was evil. he was not afraid to confront reality. he was able to defend our voucher because he believes in them totally. he told an audience at moscow state university quote, going to any school room in america, and there you will see children be taught the declaration of independence, that they're endowed by the creator with and certainly the sure and certain

unable rights and the pursuit of happiness that no government can justly deny, and, of course. it was describe reagan dedicated unapologetically, quote this is a quote, he worked for reagan, altogether the various ideas of freedom, democracy and human rights, moral order and dignity of the human person were promoted not only by the president's rhetoric and personal moral witness, but by the administration as a whole in numerous forms it into voice of america editorials, radio free europe, radio liberty broadcasts, in articles in the united states information agency, published magazine, targeted at soviet bloc populations, on the u.s. i a run billboards on the side outside the u.s. embassy in moscow. and american diplomats addresses

at various international fora, in the distribution of books the soviet bloc audiences. there's a recent book which has come out on how the cia distributed doctor zhivago and its influence, impact it's had. and so on. to quote a nation columnist from the economist a couple weeks ago, quote for all its flaws and missteps, america represents not just economic and military might, but an ideal to aspire to in a way that china does not. when america leaders appear to give less weight to their ideal, they not only diminish america's attractions, they also lend more credence to the idea of its relative economic and military decline, end of quote. the rest of the world recognizes the virtues of the west, and as arthur schlesinger once remarked, when the chinese

students cried and died for democracy in tiananmen square, they brought with them not representations of confucius or buddha but as a model of the statue of liberty. thank you. [applause] >> thank you all for these insightful comments and insights. we have time for a few questions. if you will raise your hand and if you wish to directed to particular member of the panel do so. >> thank you all for being here. i agree with all of you. my question though goes to the characterization of islam and islamic extremism. i remember very clearly on 9/11 or 9/12, when president bush said this is not an attack, we are not enemies of islam. we are only against a small

percentage of islamic extremists. now, i know for a fact that he didn't believe it. because the bush administration didn't act on that mythology. as a former diplomat, i felt pretty good tactical strategy at the very beginning of what everyone knew would be a long war. but you pointed out, our current administration does believe and there is an enormous pressure now toward the political correctness that islam is a peaceful religion. i know something about the koran. you can find peaceful mentioned in it, but basically as you say, islam and islamic terrorism feed on each other. and all you have to do is to find the worldwide polls of september of 2001 that showed

him a muslims around the world supported the attack on the united states. my question is, given all these years of political correctness, given the kinds of things that the yale muslims student association were saying in their fortunately unsuccessful attempt to squash all these appearance at yale, how long is going to take? what will it take to convince the american people to understand where we're going? you mention it took 30 years after 1970, 40 years for americans to understand soviet communism. i don't think we can wait 40 years for americans to understand the true nature of islam and islamic extremism. what will it take?

>> i think the distinction between islam and islamism might be a necessary fiction for political leaders but it doesn't hold water. you out so the right. but, in fact i think also the american public is far better informed than it was 10 years ago, and i don't think they'd by the administration's line about islam being a religion of peace. but how can we get them mobilized? how can we get successive administrations to wake up to this reality? i'm not certain, but i know that certain within the republican party, they also don't buy into this idea of islam being hijacked by minority of islamists. there's michele bachmann and others, also allen west.

he's no longer in congress, but he was a former house of representatives. but i have known apart from people like me continuing to write books, giving talks i have no great grand strategy for it. >> i do think that you have to distinguish between islam and islamism, or islamic extremism. i don't have the figures but there are obviously millions, hundreds of millions of people a practice that faith peacefully. they may support terrorism but that is an important distinction to make. i mean indonesia is the world's largest monarch democracy, over 200 million people. certainly we can't ascribe the ease-of-use to the the majority of people living in that country.

i think that's the case -- described these views. i think that cities are many countries around the world. we have to be careful in distinguish between those who seek to use violence against civilians to enact their political agenda, islamists, and the meaning, if not most people who identify as muslims and don't support similar tactics. i don't think that you can say that every person who is a member of the muslim faith is a potential terrorist. >> i think also if you look at just law of sheer numbers if there's a billion muslims in the world and only 1% of them are sympathetic, you're talking about 1 million people. but the answer is to when we wake up? my guess is -- sorry? 10 million. sorry. i was thinking 1% right. >> simple math. >> these math majors.

[laughter] one of the ways people will wake up. one, there will be another terrorist attack which i think is likely. what kind, who knows? but the other will be there is a 30 year war, and it's going to be shiites versus sunnis, and the shiites iran the government in baghdad which is what's left of iraq and the shiite militia is there in what would be a fertile shia crescent which are bought away from tehran to damascus. that will be opposed to by isis and various sunni groups and radical sunni groups al-qaeda, al-nusra front, isis, any matters in the middle are squished in the middle but if there's a 30 year war it will dawn on people in the rest of the world that maybe there is something to both sides of the religion. most likely it will be another terrorist attack and i think, you know i think that's inevitable. >> thank you all for coming.

i want to ask i guess a more theoretical question, and perhaps this is unhelpful but in framing the way i think conservatives are kind of split on this issue, there seems to be a division among kind of a practical question of only considering foreign policy and a sense of what is going to be best for our nation. i think this is the more libertarian approach. and also being concerned about setting the precedent of a supranational kind of focus on human rights being the main concernsconcern of their versus same kind of a moral obligation to carry forth the message of liberty to the world and to basically in our power and in our opportunity tried to do good things for the international committee, the christians in

syria, the people who were under authoritarian regimes. is it a serious attention that needs to be confronted within conservatism, these two approaches of foreign policy and how should we frame this issue? >> i would love to answer that because i think there's a civil war coming in the republican party. you said it very well. you have expressed it very well interventionist versus non-interventionist. just by way of example, i'm going to be the chairman of the national security foreign policy committee, cpac. so this is a conference in late february in washington and i'm trying very hard to get people from all make a big tent so people who were from the john mccain when he was there when he to get us all go back into iraq and we may need 20,000 troops in iraq to the rand paul wing ss not at all. and everybody else in between. it's not an unusual debate.

when i was in the reagan administration we have the same debate where it was on one hand, the want to get involved in the road to intervene in the middle east other guys with american military forces, or do you not want to get involved and maybe use economic warfare or other forms of pressure to get the result you want? is a division that's always been in the conservative movement. it sometimes gets papered over but now it will be a major and i think it would be probably a major issue in republican primaries. republicans agree on everything else. taxes, less government, maybe there's a screw on immigration but a national security issue is the one that there will be a very, very wide and raucous debate over it because flash forward to a year from now, iran will be a threshold nuclear state. the middle east will still be at war. who knows what we will be in the middle of that war. at there will be increased conflict in europe and i think james is right, estonia is next.

you will see a roiling world in the sense of conflict around. >> i disagree that this is going to be a big fight within the party. i think if you actually followed the statements of rand paul over the past year, he has been all over the place. >> he's evolving. [laughter] >> look, at the end of the day at the end of the republican party is the party of national security hawks. it is. he has realized that. if you followed his public statements on isis over live early the week that first journalist was beheaded, it was like night and day. he had given to his views. he did a complete 180. personally i think rand paul is very similar to his father in his world outlook, but he's a lot smarter and understanding that he can't let the free flag fly off because he wants to be president. so i really think that this kind of rand paul he has hired some

mainstream advisers like richard burke who professor hill worked with, the former head of international republican institute. but i don't i really don't think most conservative republican primary voters are going to agree with what rand paul is presenting as actual foreign policy. >> i disagree. >> that's all right. >> i have a question for kt mcfarland. you mentioned you think a problem likely in china come in china's future growth is going to be the aging population. so do you think that there's a way to try to prevent that problem or tackled while also keeping in mind their population growth issue? >> i think china has some really, i think in their own country they have some fissures. they have come you know armed forces community and choking ash wasn't it in china the religion

is gone. communism is gone as religion. the religion since deng xiaoping in the late '70s, that religion has been get rich, make money. it's so good to make money. now that is all slowing down. so there's no glue that is holding you together except nationalism, except a chip on your shoulder of we used to be great, we are great again why doesn't anybody recognize that? you're starting to see it in territorial expansion. so where they're headed i think is a place where they're going to have a lot of in total domestic problems not just demographics not just aging population but expansionism. last time someone in that part of the world tried that japan. the other parts of that region asia writ large were kind of weak and couldn't challenge. but i don't think china does this without having real blowback from countries in the region who can either militarize nuclear rise or challenge the chinese. so my concern on the rising

china, do you prevent a rising china from the an aggressive rising china, it's probably more up to them than it is to us. >> i want to thank the painless for these remarkable presentations. [applause] -- the panelists. [applause] >> just a quick logistical note. for those of you who are going to go to the dinner and reception, it begins at 6:30. thanks everyone. [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend.

booktv, television for serious readers. .. >> makeing the arrangements. and, anne, thank you for your leadership, and thanks to all of you for having me. i wrote this book, "the iraq lie: how the white house sold