jamil crawford the editor of the drone memos and on tvs afterwords program at 9 pm eastern radio host hugh hewitt has a blueprint for how the gop can successfully govern in conversation with new york daily news columnist sc cop. bennett 10, kay heimlich offers her thoughts on the up and down sides to the revival of brooklyn new york. we wrap up our sunday primetime lineup at 7-eleven with michael can assess biography of former president bill clinton. it all happens tonight on c-span2's book tv.>>. [inaudible conversation]

>> good afternoon everybody. my name is thomas mahnken, senior research professor and ceo of the center for repeated and it's my pleasure to welcome you here for a discussion of this book. the big stick, "the big stick: the limits of soft power and the neccessity of military force". what we're going to do is let the authors always should have the last word even if he doesn't, we will give him the last word. what i'm going todo his first turn to my colleague , ambassador eric edelman, a practitioner here at skype and counselor to the center for strategic and budgetary assessment for comments. i'll turn to my other friend and colleague, how branch, henry a kissinger distinguished professor of

global affairs for his comments. and we will turn to the office, to elliott and then opened the floor to you for your questions, and go from there.so with no further do, eric. >> thank you, great to be here. >> i think it's important that every book event remember the important part of a book event is to sell books for the authors so i think all of you need to get a copy of the big stick, particularly our television audience, you need to get a copy available on amazon. >> is a very important book, particularly important at this point in time. we are meeting today on groundhog day. and i think that's very apropos. by the way, those of youdon't know , punxsutawney phil saw

his shadow so we're in for another six weeks of winter. but the movie groundhog day is one of my favorite movies and for those of you seen it, bill murray wakes up every day in a groundhog state. and in some sense i think that the metaphor is for what professor cohen is writing about because it seems every so often, the united states needs to relearn the lesson of military power is important and we've had to relearn the lesson after world war ii, korea and vietnam. and i think we are now going to have to relearn it again after the lessons of the last 15 years and in some sense that is the subject of professor cohen's book. and that has now last diplomats, i've been a practitioner for 30 years. i certainly associate myself with comments that george brennan made although he's not my favorite foreign service officer but he's sort of the archetype of the

diplomat and in 1946 in addressing the national war college, he said you have no idea how much it contributes to the general pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a quiet armed forces background. the mere existence of those forces he said is probably the most important single instrumentality in the conduct of us foreign policy. and i thoroughly agree. with ken and that's not to say that one would use those forces promiscuously and sometimes people think the foreign service wants to do. but it does mean that of the sinequan out of effective diplomacy is the availability of usable military power. and if you need any better example of that, i would argue that the it's rather feckless and the point was diplomacy that former

secretary carry engaged in over syria over the last year and a half of the obama administration would be exhibit a. professor cohen began his book, his book is really by the way, about war. more than the use of military power and an important part power. >> is really a book about the role of the united states in the international system and why hard power and the alliances which it sustains are a crucial part of that role. >> and i think he makes an excellent case of both for the importance of that role. in the first instance. he makes a excellent case about why the united states can still afford to play that role. and it does play that role and the challenges that we face, a multiplicity of

challenges in the form of a rising china, in the form of a revisionist russia, the continuing challenge of jihad is him and the danger of fragile and failing states. to the international order. and how only the us military power along with other instruments of massive power can address those challenges. and he concludes the book, just to give you a sense of what you will read if you taken my advice and go and buy it is also some very good propositions about how one ought to think about the use of force because as i said, i don't think i40 would argue that promiscuous use of military power is called upon. the challenges that he describes an eye out and bought this before i go over to my colleague how branch. , the challenges he describes

in europe and the middle east to me are very reminiscent and i think he agrees with this, and the book supports this . of the kind of challenges that states face in the interwar period. and i wanted to conclude my remarks with a consultation from winstonchurchill . a book on the governing storm which i think speaks to most of what professor cohen is addressing in his book and also the current moment. >> and he says that it's his purpose, turtle that is. as someone who live and did during that period, to show how easily the tragedy of the second worldwar could have been prevented. how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous , how the structure and inhabitants of democratic states unless they are welded into larger organisms lacked

those elements of persistence and conviction. which can alone give security to humble masses. how even in matters of self-preservation no policy is pursued for even 10 or 15 years at a time. we shall see how the councils of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger and how the middle course adopted by safety in a quiet life could be found to lead directly to the bull's-eye disaster. we shall see how absolute is the need of a broad path of international action pursued by many states in common across the years irrespective of the evan flow of national policy. >> thanks tom. it's a great pleasure to be here to have the chance to offer comments on what is a terrific book by somebody i consider a colleague and

friend and i suppose i could go on at some length about the virtues of the book but frankly all you have to do to get a sense of that is to read the glowing reviews that have been written everywhere from the new york times to the wall street journal to the weekly standard to get a sense of how good it is. that wouldbe much fun anyway so in the interest of perhaps providing some fodder , i'm going to briefly mention five thoughts that elliott's book provoked in me. one where i violently disagree with it. and four, which all you have to do is the state of us military power today where i suspect we violently agree. and so the first one and this is truly in the best interests of the best tradition of academic hairsplitting i'mgoing to take issue with the three paragraphs i didn't like . as opposed to the 225 pages that i did. and elliott knows where i'm going with this. so eliot lays the dragon of strategy in this book i pointing out that any sort of grand intellectual design or

theory or blueprint or plan isn't going to survive very long in the real world. and as someone who actually came from teaching a class with the words grand strategy in the title, let me push back because i think that your critique of grand schemes, i think you may actually be critiquing a strawman version of grand strategy so we believe that grand strategy is indeed a step-by-step plan or something that can lend a seamless coherence to foreign policy, you're right.it is truly hopeless in any interest but i would say i think most people who argue in favor of grand strategy think it's something a little bit different and perhaps more modest. it's just a very basic set of principles, ideas, of priorities that guide how you react to a chaotic world and even how you adapt in the face of unforeseen event. it's a sense of what is most important as a country?

what are the things that most threatened that? and in general, how can i apply what resources i have to fix it? if you take that as the definition, you can find a lot of historical examples of grand strategy from fdr to truman. and furthermore i would point out that i think the grand strategy, as i can see is absolutely essential to good defense strategy and decision-making as you call for and you outline. i think you have to have a grandstrategy , some conception of how your foreign-policy fits together to know what interests are worth fighting for and which ones aren't. it's difficult to apportion resources across the years without some global integrated conception of what you're trying to achieve and how your objectives relate to one another. the grand strategy is not the enemy of good military policy and strategy, it's actually the allied thereof. the second point, and this

it's to the area where we probably agree, it had to do with what you described succinctly as the american hand. i love this chapter, it does a great job of laying out the numerous strains the united states has, how rumors of our demise have been exaggerated in the past and they may be so today. the counterpoint to that and i imagine you would agreehere that is that although at a global level , the us has great advantages over any challenge here. as a regional picture, the picture is getting quite dreary. the key challenges and competitions today are not primarily global . china is not challenging us on a global basis yet. the real challenge is east asia. and here and elsewhere the regional balance has become problematic. i think it's quite doubtful whether the united states today could extend the baltics and even parts of eastern europe for resources. there are real questions about whether we can defend

taiwan today are other parts of asia. so there's a crucial global regional distinction that all of us have to keep in mind and thinking about the question of how strong is the american hand? we outstrip all challenges when it comes to global power production capability but in the key regions which is where the rubber hits the road, i think we are actually headed differently if we are out there already. that brings me to a third point which the book addresses nicely which is that when you look at these regional balances, not just the adversaries that make up the equation, us allies are a big part of it to us allies at immensely to the strength of the united states wields. host of them are in decline. you point out how the relatives and absolute military capabilities of most of our european allies are based off the past 20 years and that the client is adding

tremendously to the difficulties we face in our defense strategies and is making for hearty vice, we have to defend taiwan and japan or the baltic because it's increasingly overmatched by russia or china. it's undercutting the ability of the allies to contribute meaningfully to expeditionary interventions in places like the middle east at a time when the instability is traditionally evoked those interventions. what we seen over the past 20 years is that the allies have led in fact in all of our conflicts in afghanistan to libya to counter i so they brought lester the table in each of those and because our strategy is always a coalition strategy, that's a significant problem.and it brings me to i think a fourth point in your book that it fleshes out nicely which is the issue of strategic solvency where if you put these last few issues together, i think what emerges is that we are rapidly approaching the point

of strategic insolvency. the point where our allies cannot do things we have traditionally done that we have pledged to do that we think we want to be able to do. the united states is not an authentic regional more capacity anymore. we now face a three-tiered problem, there's the ability and all of the eurasians fears that we carry and if one believes this as i do and if you are right the military backbone, military power, the background of international order is raises troubling questions. so i think we're approaching a stark choice and this is something derek and i are working on right now. where you are going to have to pay significantly more to maintain a defense strategy and the primacy of the international order that we've enjoyed or we're going have to be accustomed to doing less in the world. we should take the first choice and i think you've actually do that with breaking the bank if you were willing to make some difficult but fairly common adjustments with respect to

entitlement spending and revenue but the gap in our capabilities becomes too big to afford and that's a fundamental question going forward. and then this brings me to a final point that the book flagged for me and it's one i know you would agree with. which is that military power is utterly crucial to american policy and international order but it isn't enough. and we're reminded of this every day right now. you can imagine a scenario in which the united states opens the floodgateson military spending . in which we reinvest the basic but in which we still come out on the other side geopolitically weaker. because in this scenario we have also, we pursue trade policies that work against the international and national prosperity we've enjoyed for the last seven years. we stop reassuring countries around the worldwhen we started employing , we decimated our reputation for steadfastness and

reliability. that's not such a crazy scenario these days. so by all means, yes the importance of doing this but also yes to all the other aspects of american statecraft and policy that have traditionally made this nation so great. >> elliott, what say you? >> know, first i want to thank my friends and colleagues here and i want to thank all of you are being here. this is a book which i think i could only have written with the colleagues i have read with the people i have and with the environment that of this remarkable institution which brings together this i think quite unique mix of history and policy and practice, i'm looking at my three colleagues up here, all distinguished scholars.

all this government experience. and i hope that's made the book distinctive. furthermore i think i've always found part of this the right way, it's to do it in a way that is out in the public square. i wrote this book with the intention that it would be read by people you are not students of military affairs and don't normally think about it but it ended up being pleased with the new york times review. which was by somebody who i think is an expert on family kinds of issues, she paid me the nicest complement i've ever.which is it's organized like a bento box. [laughter] i'll take that. and finally, part of this tradition is a tradition of civil and spirited disagreement so we will do that too. before i address some of these previous remarks, i'll say one or two things about the writing of the book. for me, one of the most challenging parts of it was a chapter called 15 years of

war. and that's in part because i felt obliged to tackle the question of iraq and the question of policies in which i felt had been engaged and advocating and in some cases implementing once i went into the government and i have to say that was very tough to. i'm not entirely sure how well i did it. because it meant it was really looking hard at the things i thought or some which i no longer think. that's never easy. on the other hand, i would also say and this certainly also having been in the thick of it, it does make it harder to be a dispassionate observer and critic. once again i think one of the great things about size is that it enables you to do that. >> president daniels, were going to see a 40 right over here. sorry.

>>. >> let me move from that to talk a bit about what how race because in a way it does get more of the book. i think somebody said our distributors may be semantic and what you call friend strategy i call policy. and i think my general editorial principle is one word is always better than two. particularly if you're going to use words like brand oh i prefer just problematic. but i just prefer the word policy. there is some disagreement about how effective policymaking gets done. it is partly because i think

at any time there is enormous uncertainty and you're reacting to events and a particular mixture of people and so forth. but i think that's goes to an even bigger problem now so although i quite agree with you that you have to have some general principles, general ideas, those will only give you limited diagnosis. very limited guidance. the more important thing is how you go about once you are actually in the midst of the fog and the merc and struggling with it. i very much agree with you and i think the three of us would agree that one of the difficulties that we have is although the american hand is basically very strong, we can really screw it up. as some of you probably know we've already gotten off to a good start. in a couple weeks doing that. particularly in the way that you describe, that is blowing up relationships. i would have been more optimistic about it because

you say as i point out in the book, the european sample of falling off the cliff but i think it's coming up differently with japan coming up, smaller, partners like vietnam but allthat , , eric edelman is my master of destructive diplomacy, i learned from him, i'm not joking about that. and one of the things i learned from him is the wisdom of what george said, this is like gardening. the constantly have to be tending your allies. it's not natural. this is not something that is imminent in the world and i agree that we are, each of those regional balances is more difficult. i argue in the book that the big strategic challenges that we face are very disparate, very different, they require different kinds of ways of thinking so i think i would

have thought anyway this was a much more precarious situation. then in the past. , if you nasty a year ago, i would say the reason why i'm writing the book is is going to be precarious but i think we think about it the right way . with care we will be able to make the world we are in. but we have been joined by president ron angle and i like to give him the opportunity to make any remarks. either from the audience or from the others. >>. [inaudible] >> wonderful to have you. >> you don't usually get the president of the university . i will say something.

which is the motto of this university is the truth will make you free. and i've never thought is more important than that. >> i will use the privilege of the chair to make a comment and then asked the first question and we will open up to questions. the comments aims to the first full paragraph on page 121 and the comment is interesting. let's see if you agree or disagree, we can discuss it. the question is very particular question. for an author. you have had the last word in print. and courtesy of a commercial publisher, you've been able to put the book to bed fairly close to the time that it actually appears. i know it went through multiple revisions so i think you must be reasonably

satisfied what you hear in these pages. but there's got to be something. there has to be something that now on groundhog day you wish you'd said more about or you wish you'd added that it didn't meet the word limit but what is it that if you coulddo this , the directors cut at the february 3, what wouldyou have their . >> i think what i would have emphasize a lot more, something that is increasingly it's me when i talk about the book, so we are now heading to the great state in american foreign policy that in many ways was triggered by the end of the cold war or should have been triggered by the end of the cold war. cold war consensus was a consensus that grew out of world war ii but wasn't really solidified until he

early cold war, 59 states will be a global power. that will help create global institutions. and set rules of the road that we will be globally deployed area with military power to back it up, parts of our diplomacy and that we will bear those burdens and as i point out, those burdens have been inseparable in terms of loss of life, and so on. that great, and is basically a national consensus. and beyond that i would say pretty much throughout the cold war. cold war ends at the end of 17 but at the end of the communist era. there should have been some kind of general reassessment, that did not happen. why did that happen? i think there are two reasons, one is that you had journalists, a kind of. where first the first. in the 1990s when our great

poly had a great, predominance was chief. >> but it's amazing to think we did not pay for the first gulf war. other people pay for it. we ended up with a surplus. that's unheard of. casualties, thank goodness were low and also in the islam force so you had over a decade where predominance was achieved. so why even discuss it? then you have a crisis of 9/11 andeverything that followed . and the debate that took that direction so in some ways this is sort of the late version of that. it would have come even absent trump. you could argue that the burden centered candidacy but it would have come sooner or later. why should that happen? the second thought i want to talk about more and i will be

writing about this, it has to do with the nature of the policy in the intellectual community concerned with foreign-policy and i will go back to the early days like arnold walters which you maybe don't hear very much anymore. that people really are thinking about first-quarter questions about international politics and the role in the world and so on. that's not what most people like us now do. we have a firm policy elite that argues with each other about all kinds of things which a vast majority of americans couldn't care less about. which when you step back and think about it are matters of technique or kind of rather narrow technical concerns as opposed to first-order questions. and it's a problem because you've made this really disabled itself from being able to talk in an effective way with the american people.

the business people, journalists, so on are not used to doing that and i think one of the reasons why it's great to see the kissinger center and how joining us, that's part of what we should be doing anything. so that's the issue i would have liked to tackle more. >> i also would have liked to be clear about my views of donald trump. >> you have the opportunity to back by. will open it up for questions and i do mean questions and the more concise the better. right there. >> there's a microphone on its way. >> thank you. regarding speaking of our recently elected president, he had apparently one could say a contentious, maybe ill advised conversation with the prime minister of australia. what impact might donald trump have on are

particularly close and long-lasting alliances. >> for the next four years. >> this should be a question because you get a lot of expertise around here but my think would be something like this. in the worst case, this does serious, maybe not irreparable but really serious damage to alliances and relationships that matter to us. it would be an australian thing, if that drives you crazy all of a sudden then it goes periodically to australia, i go there and off a lot. these are close allies. we have fought alongside them more than we fought with the british. >> they are culturally just like us. if you got to go to war, these are the people you want to go to war with. and to gratuitously insult the prime minister of australia in your first conversation , now the

question is how the australians will react. they might say okay, the americans are really much different than we think, i don't think that will happen. they might say this is this particular guy so you move on and you say well, man is through the dow or something like that but in the back of their mind will be the american people elected this. and that's a large part of what i worry about. >> i would just echo what you say, the good news is that most of our alliances and particular medium important ones in europe and east asia are quite deeply institutionalized so they are very robust and to be frank, australian leaders, european leaders help with what you might call interesting american presidents before and they will have to deal with them again there's a degree of resilience there. what's truly troubling is that the conduct that we've

seen over the past few weeks and remarks that we've seen over the past couple months seem to be taking dead aim at what i would consider a fundamental allegiance of american alliances but with relationships in the world more broadly. the first is that the united states is sort of a steady as she goes liable dependable sort of country. and it doesn't take much explanation to get at what i mean here but i think we're going to see a greater degree of volatility in american policy than we have before and if you are an ally who pounced on america being a utterly predictable and i will be there for you in a crisis, that's very bad.the second thing that has taken dead aim at is the fact that the united states was sort of an exceptional power in the sense that it tends to place a great amount of importance on the good opinion of its allies, that tends to exercise power in a generally

benign way. and i think that we're not necessarily going to have that switch turned overnight but you have a scenario in which american allies are repeatedly feel cajoled and bullied and narrated, and you start to tear that fabric of alliances as well. >> i agree with what sally said, i would make a couple additional observations. one is that although i think in certain orders there's a disposition to believe that what we've seen in terms of relations with mexico, as you recall with prime minister turnbull, you may recall when we have had some edge to it with chancellor merkel, that this is really just a bumpy beginning of an administration in the early days that most presidential

transitions are a bit rocky. and therefore one might not put too much stock in it.i think actually as our colleagues across the street thomas wright has argued, if you go back and look at what donald trump is in writing and saying about international affairs, since he first became a public figure in 80s, this is very consistent.he has always been complaining about trade, only the names of the guilty parties have changed. in the 1980s, mexico in the 90s and now it's china. and as far as our allies go, they've always been a bunch of exploiters. along the lines that he outlined in his inaugural address but what you see is what you are going to get and it's not going to change area this is his fundamental view i believe . second i think that it's also the case that this view that

allies are hearing is not just going to be attributed to the views of this president because it's also a view they heard from this presidents predecessor. who in his interviews particularly in the last several years of his presidency made it very clear that he thinks american allies are freeloading and they are getting a free ride on the united states. and i think in many quarters, you could see foreign leaders and foreign governments begin to wrestle with the notion of is this really a passing phenomenon or is this something deeper in the united states. it really goes back to elliott! at the american public actually elected as president. and then the third observation i would make it goes back a little bit to elliott's comment about secretary schultz, i was churchill's special assistant from 1982 to 84 and he's living proof of the adage that no man is a hero until he is wrong.

but academic international relations tended to, when it looks at alliances tends to form the proposition that there is a natural, certainly realist international relations, there is a natural propensity in the system for safety and balanced rather than bandwagon with other states and in my experience in government, that's not the case. and most practitioners spend a lot of time worrying about alliances, there are tender shoots that need to be taken care of in the garden all the time. and the impact of this is going to have could be notwithstanding what how correctly sandwiches that all these alliances are institutionalized and have deep roots, i think we might be surprised at how quickly some of these relationships could come unglued.

>> sir. >> third row. >> coming your way. >> thank you. i haven't read the book obviously but there's an old saying that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.similarly, to a man with a powerful military, things look different. and he's looking even just this century, would better decisions have been made perhaps if the decision-makers hadn't thought they had such a big hammer? >> it's an interesting question.the problem is that you could look at some military decisions and we might have different views about policy, you might say it would be better if they didn't have the option but the problem is never about a single option. if you didn't have a big

military, you might not have had peace in the cold war. and i think what one of the points that has often been made is that you always know the troublesyou had, you don't know the troubles you've warded off . and one thing i would say is the south china sea, east china sea. thank goodness united military has been quite powerful. we might find ourselves in a period in which we will begin to see what looks like when you don't have to predominate military power. i also think from my observation of political leaders, for the most part they are pretty careful. when the time comes to actually commit substantial american forces in the conflict. there is something in that respect sobering about the office of the president. whether that will find this case to, i'm not entirely sure. >> ... thanks.

what advice would you have as we work to manage what china is doing in the south china sea, land reclamation, militarization. is it a case of that it's closer to them and something they care about more than we care about. with that change our calculation? in what ways should we be using our military force to affect the outcomes we want? >> i think we shouldcare about it a lot because we do have large interest . first it goes back to what is in some ways the subject of the book which is rules-based international order that we helped create in the aftermath of world war ii. however for effect, however occasionally hypocritical we maybe it is the order we created and it's a good

order. china gets effectively disabled, south china sea or chinese territorial waters. that border has a very important respect and growth from point a to point b. if they get away with asserting the kind of power that they would like to, therefore endangering american allies. because this is a huge piece of territory that when you look at where the chinese draw the so-called nine ã line and again, to the extent the american position wrestle on our alliance system, if we fail to look after their interests, we are not going to have much of an alliance system left. i suppose, let me use that exactly where your original question is tom, i think one of the things i would put to the book, i would put more of in the book is a much more explicit argument about just

how bad things can get. if we don't have that international order i believe absolutely requires american military strength. and i think it could get very very bad. so when i say these are original conflicts, you can pull back from one and it doesn't have a bearing on the other, i don't think, i don't think that's the case. we do live in a globalized world, these things are interconnected and if we were to pull back from that i think the consequences would be felt not just in the region but more globally. >> i would say whether you look at the world through the lens that eliot described over rules-based order that we've created after 1945, with the help of other countries and international institutions or even if you're looking at it from the point of view of america first, more jobs from americans, our prosperity has rested historically on freedom of access to the global commons and

particularly freedom of the seas which we have advocated since our birth as a nation. and what china is doing is essentially giving away at that principle. and so yes, it goes to the strength of our allies but it goes to something even more fundamental which is the underpinning of the entire us system on which the free flow of global commerce and international trade and the prosperity of much of the world depends. and it's for that reason i think we, that's why we care about south china sea or the east china sea. the challenge that we face, this goes to house point of the changing regional balance . is that some of the rising regional powers or in some cases climbing regional powers that are exerting themselves and more completely dominating their own region, they have found that they can take certain actions that fall below the threshold that would normally

elicit a military response from which they can through a series of arty slices begin to chip away at the foundations of this order so we are faced with a very challenging question. as china military rises the land reclamation project, these provinces that they are building starts to put airstrips on them, at what point do you respond? when they put hq nine antiaircraft missiles, you take them out then? maybe not. that would seem like a small step towards, us military response in the country. so maybe you wait until later, not two hours, is that enough? what about three, what about 100. >> what about you wake up one day and find it created and air defense information zone over the area and they can no longer fly over. this is the challenge i think

that we face and it's not just in the south china sea, it's elsewhere. >> i'm not sure what's holding back means in a geographic context of the west pacific. whether the united states has territory, american citizens were represented in congress in the western pacific so pulling all the way back to, us territory and pulling all the way back to guam does not really, it seems to me that's never been a realistic geopolitical option in any event. just to brief points, one to echo this, we need to rediscover our imagination of the tragedy in terms of thinking about what a real breakdown of international order could look like as we've been blessed to have this order for the past seven years i think it's hard for people to understand what can happen when things really go wrong but the second point is that i echo everything that's

been said about the south china sea but i would add that for any administration whether thatwas the obama administration , for the trumpet ministration today, it's important to really have a firm idea of what you are trying to accomplish and whether you are willing to use a level of coercion that is necessary to bring that about so i'm all for taking a harder line in the senate. if you take the comment that rex tillotson made in his confirmation hearing that were going to deny china access to the artificial islands that bills, what is the level of coercion that is necessary to bring that out and are you willing to balance that. if the answer is yes, okay, as long as you understand the consequences of that. if the answer is no, that's a dumb thing tosay is it going to make you look foolish . >> one last question, henry? >> i tend to agree with the

panels consensus of trunks danger to alliances. but to play devils advocate and apologized to harrison, mike trumps bluster be an ameliorative shot to avert military catastrophe that does inspire our allies to contribute more in manpower and resources? >> there's an argument that you can make to that effect. and i suppose if i thought this was part of a true strategy as opposed to poor impulse control, i could send it although i still think it's risky. >>

sector gates would be out there flogging the europeans. it really didn't work. what scares me is if people begin to think the united states is not reliable, i think there's a serious chance the americans would not be reliable, do i really think the reaction would be, we really need to rebuild, make it the good old days? or will they say let's just cut the deal. i think you're likely to get the second rather than -- the fact is a number of our allies are doing things. look at the australians, the

japanese, even in your defense budgets are gradually beginning to go up. this isn't the way to get it i don't think. >> i would basically agree. there is an argument to be made that trump has put his thin finn real problems with respect to burden sharing and things like that, but for him to solve them in the way that you propose would require trust not to be trouble. i don't think that's a expectation. when the united states has had success getting allies to do more, to spend more on defense in the past, it has been in the context in which we are also doing more as well and we're providing reassurance that if you stick your neck out, vis-à-vis the soviet union or another challenger, we have your back. if you look at the increases in nato defense spending in the '70s and '80s this is the context in which it happens. the bet trump is making is if

the united states does less, allies will have to do more, and that we may not pay off. >> in fact, i would argue historically it's almost never worked actually as a strategy. if you have allies it means one of the tasks you separate self is alliance management. as we said earlier on the panel requires a lot of time and attention of senior officials, particularly the secretary of state and defense. and there's no doubt that we can get more out of our allies. we need to get more out of them for all the reasons eliot was talking about earlier, and i think you have gotten the message. at the reagan national defense formed in early december, for the first time that event invited a couple of foreign dignitaries to join. we had michael fallon, secretary of state and the defense minister of norway, both of them

basically said look, we got the message. we heard president obama and president-elect trump loud and clear. we and nato, we have to step up our game and we're going to do that. but for god's sake, please comen we can only do that if we have american leadership. there's no substitute in the alliance for american leadersh leadership. and i think that's really an important part of the equation. i think it's sort of what you were saying. when we are doing more and leaving i think we get more out of our allies. but i would add kind of maybe two caveats to all of this. one is not everything to get out of our allies is necessarily their financial or military contribution to the alliance. we get a lot of value from our allies both by giving us access to territory, geographic position, positional advantage. the united states couldn't

operate in asia without its allies and japan and the republic of korea. we get an enormous amount of international legitimacy for our actions around the world will operate together with our european allies through nato. those are not necessarily tangible contributions by the allies but they are contributions and value added to the united states, nonetheless. finally i think we have to recall, hal talked about earlier, it's almost universally true, i think it might be one or two cases where it's not true, australia may be an exception, but most of our traditional allies are facing a less good hand than the one that eliot describes for the united states in terms of demographics and economics, et cetera. so while we can ask them to do more, we have to have some realistic expectations of what they can do and understand that there are going to be limits to

what they can do. part of what i think is the art of the possible is to have a better division of labor with allies, the more explicit division of labor with our allies over who contributes what to the common defense. they are the united states including my former colleagues in the department of defense will have to get a lot more directive with allies about what we want them to spend their pounds and euros on then we have traditionally been in the past. i don't think they can be directive in a way to assess to what i tell you or your fired as an ally. it's got to be done in a way more that co-ops our allies into a common agreement on what's the way forwardspeed i know there are many more questions, and i can say with grid assurance that the answer to some of them, lies

in east asia. what we're going to do and just an and is proceed onto the best part of it without refreshments, books eliot will stick around to sign them, but before we do that there's the important matter of thanking our panel, eliot, hal and eric. [applause] >> [inaudible conversations]

>> [inaudible conversations] here's a look at some of the books that are being published this week.