think helped lay the basis for the bay of pigs, which in turn laid the basis for those hideous 13 days in 1962. >> fascinating. so many so many stories that we could tell. i want to thank all three of you, steve, kathy, tom. [applause] >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was cratered as a public service by america's cable-television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> welcome to the yale bookstore. tonight one of our ongoing author event series and in conjunction with the law library

we are pleased to have with us oona hathaway and scott shapiro, the authors of "the internationalists." a look at provocative history of the main who fought to outlaw war and how an often overlooked treaty signed in 1928 was among the most transformative events in modern history. oona hathaway is a professor of international law and counselor to the dean at the jail law school. she is professor of international law in area studies at the yale university mcmillan center. in 2014-15 she took leave to serve as special counsel to the general counsel for national security law at the u.s. department of defense where she was awarded the office of the secretary of defense award for excellence. professor halfwit earned his ba at harvard in 1994 and her j. d.

at yale law school. she served as a law clerk for justice sandra day o'connor and for d.c. circuit judge patricia law. she has published more than 25 law review articles. scott shapiro is the professor of law and professor of philosophy at yale law school. he joined the yale law school faculty in 2008 as a professor of law and philosophy. he's the author of legality published in 2011, and editor of the oxford handbook of jurisprudence, and philosophy of law. he earned a his degrees in philosophy from columbia university and a j. d. from yale law school where he was senior editor of the yale law journal. after the discussion it will be a q&a. if you're going to participate in the q&a please wait for someone after you raise your hand to come to you with a microphone. so without me talking any further its my pleasure to

introduce professors oona hathaway and scott shapiro. [applause] >> thank you. i realize your bio sounds much more impressive than mine, which is only fair because you are more impressive than me. thank you everyone. welcome. this book, "the internationalists," it's about the origins of the modern world order, about the people who help to build it and why, despite its imperfections, it's crucial that it be defended now more than ever. the general argument of our book is that the origins of the modern world order can be traced to a specific date, 27, 1928, when the great powers of the world assembled in paris to

outlaw war. the treaty that was signed on that day which is often called the kellogg-briand pact, although and our book we call it the peace pact, has either been forgotten or has been treated as a laughingstock. i should say when oona and i taught international law together at yale we back treated it that way. it just seemed absurd that you could into end war by signing e of paper. but as we engaged in different research on the history of economic sanctions, we came across something that we really didn't expect, that far from being ridiculous, outlawing war turned out to be transformative. it was a hinge in history whereby one world war ended and another one began.

before 1928 war was legitimate. it was the way in which states righted wrongs that they had suffered. in fact, and this was astonishing to us, before 1928 war was legal but economic sanctions were illegal. after 1928 war became illegitimate, indeed criminal, and economic sanctions became legal and now the routine way in which international law is enforced the world over. we describe this tectonic shift in the international system in the book narratively to a cast of characters that we call the internationalists who played a crucial role in outlawing war. a lot of these people we had never heard of, and we were really taken by their imagination, their patient, their brilliance, their determination. and, in fact, there can in this in their ability to figure out how to take their ideas, get

them to the right people and get them into action. we came across another group which we call the interventionists who fought very hard as well to uphold the moral and legal status of war. and one of the most interesting things for us i think in researching this book is it overturned virtually everything we had thought we knew about international law. so one of the things you are taught is that the father of international law was a great man, was the prince of peace when, in fact, he was really an insufferable, irritating corporate lawyer who fought long and hard to enrich his client, the dutch east india company and a summary. book has three parts. the first part we call the old world order which is the international system before 1928

in which war was legal and might was right. part two recalled the transformation, in which the internationalists are successful in outlawing war but unleash chaos as the removed the linchpin of the international system and struggle to figure out how to rebuild a new world order around the illegality of war, and finally the new world order where we describe how the world in which we live is a world in which the internationalists built and why their success has made our world more peaceful and more prosperous. though i think one of the reasons that people think that outlawing war is ridiculous is that we don't appreciate the crucial role that war used to play before 1928. today we think of war as the

breakdown of the system. before 1928 war was the system war was the legal mechanism by which victims sought reconveyance for wrongs done to them -- we compensable. i mean any violations of legal rights, not just self-defense which is what we recognize still today any type of legal violation, nonpayment of debts, property damage, enforcement of inheritance claims, sorting out of succession disputes, all these wrongs that states claimed they could pursue forcefully using violence, killing people, seizing land in order to write those wrongs. as mentioned in the old world

order before nike to eight states have the right to work with it writes that went with the. most crucially that the right of conquest. if the states had claimed to be wronged, they had the right, if their demands were ignored, to use force, and they territory and seize land as their own. which of course makes sense from the perspective of the old world order, the point of war was to compensate for wrongs committed to them. so the right of conquest only gave them the right which would enable them to be made whole. many people don't realize that in 1846 the united states went to war with mexico in order to collect unpaid debts mexico owed the united states, american citizens about $6 million. the united states took about 20 years to try to collect it and finally in 1846 invaded and

seized california and most of southwestern united states in compensation. states not only have the right, they had the right to threaten two-stage war. so when japan in the 19th century refused to trade with the united states and other western powers, in violation of their legal obligation to engage in global commerce, the united states sent commodore matthew perry and his gunboats into tokyo bay and threatened to destroy the port unless the japanese signed a treaty of friendship. they did and that treaty was legally valid and in violation of the treaty would of been a just cause of war in the old world order. because in the old world order states have the right of war,

anything that states did on the battlefield that would ordinarily be considered a crime, they could not be prosecuted for. so if outside of war and individual killed another, that would be murder. but if an army killed thousands, millions on the battlefield, well, that was war. in the treaty oversize the victors pledged to prosecute kaiser wilhelm the second for having wage an aggressive war and the netherlands which had granted the kaiser asylum refused to hand him over on the grounds that war was legal so the kaiser could not be prosecuted for having wage world war i. finally because war was legal,

certain types of nonviolent ways of stopping war were prohibited. economic sanctions that is treating one belligerent different than another belligerent in economic matters was a violation of a neutral states duty of neutrality. even if the neutral state at not fired a shot, if treated one belligerent any differently than it treated another belligerent, that was an act of war. for this reason political science, scientists cannot find any examples of economic sanctions before world war i. and the reason is simple. because economic sanctions by neutrals against belligerent violated the right of war over the state and, therefore, was legally prohibited. the picture here is of an entire world order centered on the right of war which gave states

that only the right to wage war, but the right to conquer other states, to engage in a form of gunboat diplomacy, immunity to prosecution for crimes committed on the battlefield and finally immunity from any type of economic sanctions. and that will all change. >> is as scott said the book is broken in three parts. the first part lays out the old world order which scott has just laid out for you. the middle part talks about the transformation, if in the last part talks about the new world order, that is the world of the transmission gave us. it was a bit about the transformation. so the transformation really get started right after world war i. and after world war i, the world has been devastated by horrific

fighting, the death and destruction was on an unprecedented scale and there was this desperate desire to do something, anything, to stop that from happening again. and there were many different proposals that were batted around, but in chicago there was this man, samuel levenson whom no one has ever heard before, and he got this kind of crazy idea which was maybe the best way to end war was to outlaw war. that seems kind of outrageous, the idea that you would in war, past a law against worker housing going to change anything at all? he was a bankruptcy lawyer. it seemed the way this law could change behavior. yet the thought that war was so distracted that if we just remove the legality of or maybe we could actually change something on the ground. he began working on his ideas in this, call the book "the internationalists," with ideas

like samuel is so powerful,, interesting and important in this transformation and he is one of them. so he begins writing on his ideas. he sends them off to a friend of his, john dewey, who happens to be one of the great public intellectuals of his time. he was not think about this question of the time but he was willing to work with samuel levinson to help him refine his ideas. and, in fact, to get them out into the world. sam is in in these letters, these long, long letters of ideas and eventually he thinks maybe john will publish it under his own name in the new york public which is relatively new magazine at the time, the source of many interesting ideas of the time. so he suggests to dewey he publish it under his name, and john dewey sends along the new republic and hassan publish it under levinson snake.

he is the face of this outlaw read this and meant. he then works together with politicians, with nongovernmental organizations including women's peace groups. he spends a lot of his own money founding a nongovernmental organization called the american committee for the outlaw of war. he goes all around the country. he works to send out pamphlets and he's really working hard to get this idea out into the world. not just trying to get people kind of out in the world to think about it but also connect that i get to politicians, get politicians interested in ideas and intellectuals interested in ideas. he almost single-handedly gets the idea of outlaw into the public conversation. over the course of a decade and a lot of the stories we tell, it's kind of how it works together with other people, sometimes fighting with some of

his fellow internationalists about how exactly to do this. he worked together with him and ultimately succeeds in getting this idea into law. that is, into this 1928 kellogg-briand pact. and then this is law, there is a giant signing ceremony in paris. it's film and its widely reported in the newspapers. and then they have a question, now what, right? without loss war and the packets officered brief treatment literally fits the back of a postcard, so it really says very little other than you can't use war anymore to solve your disputes. that just begins this process. the middle part of the book which is the bulk of the book is trying to tell now they have outlawed war, not hard work has to begin in which you to pick up

how to make this into reality. how do we take this idea that war is no longer legal and translate that into the world in which war doesn't happen anymore? so one of the first events that they're confronted with his that the japanese invaded in 1931. such event had ratified the treaty. it had been at the fancy signing ceremony, and yet it had broken the commitment that it made when it invaded manchuria and china was a fellow member of the pact as well. so the nation's of the world work flummoxed. what do we do? we just signed a treaty to outlaw war, and someone is going to worker how do we enforce it against this state? we've outlawed of war. we can't use war to enforce the prohibition of war. they struggle with this question for some time.

ultimately they come up with a solution. it turns out that henry stimson was a secretary of state at the time had been classmates with samuel levinson, one of our heroes, they been corresponding and the levinson sent him what a mini articles in britain which was a about the sanctions of peace. the idea of the sanctions of these was you are not going to enforce with war, , you not use war sanctions but you can refuse to recognize the seizure of territory by a state that is acting illegally. this is a revolutionary idea at the time. up until then when states conquered territory even if they did it for illegitimate reasons once their control of it, it was theirs. if you look at maps of europe from the 1600s up to 1928 lines are shifting constantly. the borders are constantly moving. if you look at a map from 1650 1650-1750, everyone looks different because wars are

changing and shifting borders left and right. he says we are not, the ideas the way we're going to prevent states and engage in war is what just going to recognize the things that they take any longer. stimson thanks is is a brilliant idea. it's great because we don't have to go to war -- thinks -- we are in an economic recession leading to depression and the last thing we want to do is send troops halfway around the world, and this seems like an easy solution. so he issues these notes to japan and china saying we're not going to recognize the seizure. this becomes known as the stimson doctrine, first time nonrecognition is used to enforce law in the world. that's just one instance of the working out of these ideas. so that is, that first step is the first step to unraveling conquest. so escott really set in the old world order, war was legal

because war was legal conquest of legal because if you did go to war to right wrongs you could take territory and make it yours as compensation. so now interesting world where war is a longer legal, there to unravel conquest. the way to unravel conquest is to say will not recognize the seizure you have taken. eventually it's going to have to be reversed and effect after world war ii all the seizures that happened between 1928-45 with a very rare exceptions are reversed. that was the first time it'd ever happen and allies who won the war, i can with a few narrow exceptions, didn't take additional territory after the war. so the process from 1920-45 is a working out of these ideas, the consequences of the decision to outlaw war. and the story we try to do is people struggle with these ideas. this is not just an abstract kind of theoretical process happening behind closed doors if this is kind of in the trenches,

people's war in the midst of trying to figure out how to solve problems trying to figure out how the world should be organized now that we've changed the basic rules of the system. the way in which we used to run the system, that is, war is a way which we resolve our disputes anything you take in war is yours, 20 world in which war is no longer legal and all the things we used to solve with war we know how to find other ways to solve. that's complicated and difficult and it's messy and it takes some time to work out. the story we tell in the book and am happy to walk to each of these but i think rather than work through each of the themes, the main point want to get across is that the process of unraveling and then reconstructing a new system takes some time. it takes people committed to these ideals. it takes people were willing to find solutions to really difficult problems. and in the end what they come up with is a system for reversing each one of those roles. so were conquest used to be perfectly legal, , now it is no

longer legal. when a state takes a territory we will not recognize it anymore. whereas gunboat diplomacy youth be perfectly fine, now gunboat diplomacy is illegal. if you threaten to go to war to get an agreement, that agreement is no longer legally enforceable where as it used to be perfectly legal -- legally enforceable. with youth be no crime of aggression, we couldn't try the kaiser because is nothing illegal about war, all of a sudden war can be criminally prosecuted as we see in nuremberg, the allies to prosecute the nazis for waging a war of aggression. and that is because in the specifically identify the pact of paris as the legal reason they could, in fact, prosecute. but not seize for the crime of aggression because war is legal and war -- ratified the treaty. you can put in place economic

sanctions in disney world because war is now illegal in some states were acting illegally can be penalized to economic sanctions. then of course after world war ii, these rules all get reaffirmed and solidified in the u.n. charter. and, in fact, one of the internationalists story whose we tell in the book, shotwell, who is arrival/ally, a frenemies of levinson disagree but how exactly that law of war. he is a key figure in the creation of the kellogg-briand pact. in fact, he also has discovered wrote the very first draft of the u.n. charter. we found this first draft in the bowels of the library in the papers of sumner welles, and a

dissected state who story is also equally fascinating. we tell in the book. in this early draft of the u.n. charter which is right when no one is ever seen before, he literally cut and paste the pact into the beginning of the u.n. charter. it is literally exact words that put at the very beginning of this first draft of the u.n. charter for this committee that's working on what's peace going to look like after the war. he gets convinced to rewrite it again and it becomes article ii for the winter which prohibits use of or from one state to another. the u.n. charter builds up the whole institutional structure to try to make this promise of the pact a reality. so now we outlawing war and reaffirming that in article ii for the u.n. charter. creating a whole structure to make that work, structure we didn't have under the pact of paris. but a central argument we make is you can't understand that moment unless you understand the moment in 1920 when it decided

outlaw war. you can't really understand what's going on in the u.n. charter without understanding a way in which decided to reject the central organizing principle of the old world order and put in place a completely different one. and then the hard work that took for them to figure out what that meant from 1928-1945. answer yes, 1945 is incredibly important in the u.n. charter that we look to today, but you really can't understand that without understanding the process from 28-45 that made that possible. so that's the argument in the book. the last part of the book talks about the new world order and how we see the world differently today and some of the consequences of this transformation. just to give you an example. we have one chapter where we say okay, what happened to conquest? our argument is in territorial conquest becomes illegal and so, therefore, it becomes more weird, but did it really?

so we gathered data on every territorial conquest from 1918 to the present, sorry, from 1816 to the present, and we analyze it with the help of some brilliant yale law student. we found whereas before 1920 the average state could expect to suffer conquest once in human lifetime. after 1928 the average state could expect to suffer a successful what we call sticky conquest roughly once or twice in a millennium. so the numbers really do bear out, get get at something important is change. it's not that there are no conquests in the modern era. the russian siege of crimean is a good counterexample, but those are rare. those are relatively rare. certainly compared to the time prior to 1928 when conquest was like, and was sort of acceptable way in which states would

resolve their disputes with one another. but the latter part of the book tries to lay out what other consequences for the modern world order. not all of them are happy. some of them are not so happy. good example is even as u.s. a decline at the end of interested or, you have rise of civil wars, what we call intrastate wars. in part because states no longer have to protect themselves from outside conquests. they don't necessarily have to have effective governing institutions in order to survive and that does lead to weak states and, indeed, sometimes failed states we think the answer to the problem isn't to give up on the new world order and the prohibition on war, to recognize part of the problem is we don't have the same kind of reasons for having strong states we once had and we need to once and we need capacity building and we need to invest in other ways of improving domestic institutions within the states and recognize the failed states are going to be more of a problem in modern air and international community to

address it needs to focus on investing capacity building within states. it's not simply everything is perfect story we recognize that there are still wars going on, many of the moors in total to states but the world is overall a much more peaceful place, a much more prosperous place. it's in general much better place to live in an old world order, and the story here we count is how that came to be and why it's important to continue to defend it. so with that i will stop and invite for questions. [applause] >> we are happy to take questions. since were being filmed for c-span you all will have to use a microphone. sorry about that. >> thank you so much. great. one of the sort of more

prominent critiques i've seen in the last few weeks has been about the question of causation to it seems a big part of the book is describing to the law sort of its caused certain things, , not just the piece sie world war ii but also the united states went to war with mexico because of these deaths and rather than others sort of competing explanations like manifest destination and imperialism, et cetera. what's the best evidence you found that the pact really, i don't think it's a it's only cost but what you think the best evidence there's a causal effect? >> thanks. i mean, that's like one of the big questions that one might have about the thesis in the book. thank you for asking it. one of the things, one of the problems in any attempt to give an explanation of a historical

event is the individually to run a counterfactual. you can't run the world again, though it might be cool, so you to figure out how does one give a causal explanation in the absence of the inability to run a controlled experiment, run it again. and so what we try to do is we try to use the technique that is sometimes called inference to the best explanation. what is the best explanation for what a certain series of events happen at a certain time? so we see that with some variations, state practice is largely consistent for hundreds of years. you have states going to war claiming certain justifications. so with mexico the claim is not that that's why they went to

war, but that's why they are claiming to go to work, okay? which would be unthinkable now. i mean, i guess nothing is unthinkable now. but, i mean, wobbly our president wouldn't say we could conquer mexico to pay for the wall. i mean, that wouldn't work. where as that's happened in the 19th century. the point being that you have a relatively stable set of reasons, basically any legal wrong, why states, that states claim, that's why they're going to work. your conquest which is recognized by all the other states. no neutrals or imposing economic sanctions on other belligerents, and their claiming, my hands are tied. so in the play hamilton the cabinet battle is all about this

inability or the claimed in the building of to be able to help friends of the great britain because it would be a violation of neutrality. as i mentioned kaiser wilhelm is not handed over by the netherlands. these changes all sudden and dramatic after 1920. so economic sanctions are imposed in 1932. conquest is not recognized suddenly in 1932, not just by the americans but by the league of nations, the united states treats the belligerents in world war ii differently that it treats, it doesn't, , excuse me, it doesn't treat the belligerents the same. it favors what came to be the allies over the axis.

so all these changes are happening rather suddenly. number two, they are happening and when they are happening the actors who are playing the role are saying, you know why? because war was outlawed in 1928, right, so the book is as long as it is because were trying to show at each point the arguments being made look, war is illegal now therefore we are allowed to act differently. the challenge would be to people who think that the pact of paris didn't have an effect is, what is your story? what is your story why all this changes rather suddenly, and why are people claiming something that, in fact, is unrelated.

last thing i would say is that everything changes exactly as it should, if we were right. and so we are in for the best expedition, which is we are right. >> i want to thank you for an excellent excellent book. just a wonderful book. especially for the levity you put to. it's a fun read. that something want to emphasize to the audience. this isn't a dry history. it's fun. just one example, when kellogg finds out about the agreement, he says he wants to exercise his degree and infection with profanity. >> and he does. [laughing] but there's all kinds of things like this and i'm very appreciative of it.

secondly, i want to thank you for your expression of gratitude to the libraries role in writing this book. that means a lot to us. now i want to turn to the first quote, which is a summary of the old world order, and ask you to questions, kind of a bifurcated question. what did you find is the earliest attribution of hugo grotius being called the father of a national law? i found a reference to a 1970 book book but i'm wondering if there's something going back further than that. it's a truism. something that librarians like to site. and secondly, i'm curious about your formulation. you stand on the idea that -- if i can paraphrase -- it's not an

impossible peace but an advocate for war. on wondering a discount on the intellectual tradition that someone else realized this earlier, or is this kind is your own unique contribution to the analysis? >> so i'd like to say a work ad that i will pass off the grotius questions to scott. so first we are an incredibly grateful to the library staff. this is this is a book that cout have been written anywhere but here for two reasons. one is the library staff is unbelievable. i mean, the amount of help we have gotten over the years, it took six years to write this book, and we assembled every war manifesto that we could find from libraries all around the world in order to make our argument that were used to look very different because arguments that states would make were very different. the library staff did the we sent in same request for documents that no real human being could find and osama

managed to track them down. it was really truly, and a multiple languages. we are not just talking about in english but in german, russian, chinese. we would say this one will stop them and it never did. so really we feel unbelievably lucky. and the other reason we are incredibly lucky and this book could have only been written it is because our students are so amazing. we had two big teams of research assistant students who worked with us on this book, again, with that who we could not have possibly written the book we are really grateful for that and so lucky to have been here. just a quick word on kellogg. kellogg i i discovered was jusa terrible man. he's a terrible human being. he's a hero of the book but is also, as a personal, like his personality is just awful. he's dour in mean and is kind of craven and it just gets angry at everybody around him. he would swear at everybody, and

he ends up, i mean, one of the kind of bittersweet stories, he ultimate does get on board the idea of the fact which becomes known as the kellogg-briand pact, part of the reason we don't call it the kellogg-briand pact in the book is i don't want to give them the credit because it's not really him. he's resisting it up until the very last minute. so we does eventually get on board and without his support it couldn't have happened. in that sense he does deserve, he does almost anything can to throw himself in front of it. it's people like levinson to basically make it impossible for him to ignore. it's a peace movement and its activists who won't let go of the idea, and who are pressing the administration to do something. that's part of or you find so powerful about the book is the way in which ordinary people really are the ones who are making the difference. yes, you have to get the politicians on board. you couldn't have done it kellogg cannot of been around.

you could not have done it briand had not gotten gun the idea. you could not have done if levinson had not persuaded the commission to get on board. these people and get on board but they were persuaded by ordinary people who had an idea that they were deeply, deeply believe in and that they fought for. one of the sad stories is levinson and kellogg are both put up for the peace prize for the fact, and kellogg says i've never heard of the man, i have no idea, he had nothing to do with. i'm not going to campaign for. meanwhile, he hires somebody to campaign for and he does, in fact, when it and levinson is confined to the dustbin of history and we are trying to pull him back out and put him back in center stage where he belongs. >> just to say, just to follow up about the library. i'm reminded of that old saying,

old skit with bill murray, gilda rad and steve martin and her at a site for anything steve martin built a nuclear reactor and bill murray says i could've done that if i had the plutonium. [laughing] you are the plutonium. so thank you. who was the first one to call grotius the international father law? i am blanking on that. we say it in the book, people were already questioning that, actually it escapes me about who coined that. i mean, you know, one of the things we discovered is that grotius was supposedly called the miracle of holland, but he probably wasn't called the miracle of holland.

there's so much apocrypha about grotius. about him, about him being the prince of peace, i think part of the reason is that grotius is called into service, he's like an ordinary lawyer working for his lines, and he gets called it at a very young age, around 20, he does really know anything about international law, and he gets called in because his cousin captures a portuguese -- off the coast of singapore and he holds it back to amsterdam and they sell it, offer 3.5 million guilders and the dutch india company wants to defend them against the charge of piracy so they give us, and it's a hard case so they give it to grotius was a 20-year-old

lawyer, but a child prodigy. and he comes up with a theory as to why his cousin was allowed to attack a portuguese ship off the coast of singapore. in this becomes the theory of war of the old world order, essentially that what he was doing was enforcing the rights of those who had been harmed by the portuguese in the east indies. now, what's fascinating is that this manuscript where he lays bare, like why he wrote, when he developed his theory which was to defend his cousin and this money, as a lawyer for higher, is lost. it's lost for 250 years and is

discovered in 1863. it's published only in latin in 1868 and it is only translated in english in 1950. most people don't know how we got into the business. they just see the later work where he refines it, but he's no longer a gun for hire. but is this idiosyncratic to us? no. that's a whole new school of grotius studies that understands his work within a colonial imperial framework. and i think it is the new emerging received wisdom, , buti think if you read his work, if you look at the early work that he wrote to defend his cousin and his letters, i think it becomes pretty clear that he's

pretty bellicose. international lawyers hate when we say this, because like it's their payroll. -- hero. but it is what it is. >> at least in telling us i haven't read your book, but in telling us about it you start the story with levinson who you you obviously liked. but it maybe think about all of the peace conferences that were going sort of 1890 up until 1914. the quakers were behind and the

image flashed on my mind because mohawk, , countryhouse, are all the pictures of these 200 people in black tie in this country setting all meeting for peace which obviously didn't do them much good. so were they, these conferences that took place over a period of years part of what led levinson or help levinson? >> what i would say as far as ii could tell from reading his papers, it wasn't that he was influenced by the peace movements. he really had no interest in it. he was busy being in chicago and that's really his central occupation. he had to fighting aged sons and he suddenly that quite interested in the question of illegality of war.

he did some initial efforts to try and get people some people to talk to each other but they were nascent and that fell apart very quickly. and it was after the war that he didn't really launched on this mission. and then he plugged into a huge existing network. there was this huge peace movement out there that preexisted his coming up with this idea of outlawing war, this outrageous new idea. the idea that we should get rid of war was not at all new. there were lots of people at been protesting for peace for a long time and then build these networks all around the united states that even connected to, worked with, and used to help spread his message. >> one of the things that's been really terrific is that levinson

worked with the organization that jane addams formed, the women's international league for peace and freedom, and they are still around. we correspond with them. we have spoken with them. they are awesome. i wish the peace movement were healthier than it is, but there are still, there are still heroes fighting out there, , and it's been an honor for us to have worked with some of them. >> thank you for the talk and all that, interesting food for thought here i was wondering you could speculate now on the future of the world order based on what you said about its evolution of until now? it seems to draw two main challenges to its legitimacy. the first in war, there's a forward-looking one of saint okay, we can't go into syria.

russian involving is a legal one. what does this say about the international order, and then there's the regressive one of russia, crimea. and the second major challenge, the legitimacy is what you hinted on in the governance realm, the major assumption that's probably been i would call it neoliberal democracy as their main organizing principle. so what do you see as the main challenges to the legitimacy of the world order, the most significant ones, and where do you see that going? >> so we and the book really on this note, which is this book is really devoted telling you the story of what the world used to look like, how it transformed in this time from 1928-1945, and then the world that transformation gave us, this new world order. but we and on a somewhat

tenacious note which were at a moment right now of real uncertainty about whether this new world order those greater by the internationals is going to survive. we are at a moment right now where the commitment to the ideals of the new world order are sometimes being questioned. we see russia's seizure of crimea as a good example, the ongoing civil war in syria and the ways in which countries are feeding that, some legally, some illegally. the tweet storms, out of our president, some of them threatening actions that are not entirely consistent with the new world order and its rules, and that's a very dangerous. and part of the message of the book is the world as it is organized today is not how it has always been. it was not that long ago that

the word was organized around a very different set of principles. that is, that war is perfectly legal and legitimate this is the way states would resolve their disputes. that was a very brutal world, and that very brutal world was a brutal world what we did have the technology and the weapons we have today. and so part of the message of the book is to say be very careful about what you put at risk. because things have changed and things could change again. there's nothing inevitable about the world order that we have today. we have because people worked really hard to create it. they were dedicated to it. they worked hard to maintain it, and we have to do the same today. we can't let it slide and sympathy is going be fine, because it won't. that's all the more true because of the events of the last server use. so i do think we are at a very dangerous moment in the world, and that one of the messages we

hope the book will get out there is how important it is that ordinary people are committed to base ideals, let their politicians know that they care about the rules of the system, and hopefully do what we can to help maintain the legal order as it is today and approve it because there is room for improvement, but not throw it out. that's part of the message we are trying to communicate. if there are no other question, i think we're getting the signal we need to -- we have room for one more, great, fantastic. >> thank you. it's been really interesting. i think it's a most optimistic take on the kellogg-briand pact i've ever heard. it seems one thing that really strikes me about your knowledge is that it does change the way we think about war, , what is wr

and what's legitimate about it or not. since world war ii and the beginning of office, the united states specifically is clearly very comfortable with using force, but there seems to be a pretty significant trend of not being so comfortable, congress specifically being unwilling with that so we're willing to offer precious motive force but we're not willing to call it war. i wonder if there is a danger in that, that is may be contributing to some the things we are seeing now and syria and in yemen and in some unstable parts of the world where we are using pretty objectively violent force that amounts to war but not calling it war. >> so i'll say a few words about that. i think your absolute right about that. one of the challenges we face today is that so integrated the legal system that we have today,

the u.n. charter included the fact commitment to prohibition of war, the home prohibition use of force and it included explicit exception section for self-defense which was implicit in the fact. what we're seeing today is an expansion of that exception, a stretching of that exception, to a point where the exception is at risk of swallowing the rule. so you see the 2000 authorization for use of military force which was enacted within about a week after the september 11 attacks, which was justified by self-defense against those who had attacked us. and that remains a legal authority in which the united states can choose to operate in the middle east today. even when those who were involved in september 11 attacks are no longer part of the conflict that we are a part of in the middle east today. that's one of the dangers we do .2 in the book, and it is, we

do have to look very carefully at is whether we are stretching those exceptions to the point where they no longer are the exception. part of the cautionary note we try to sound in the book is these are rules for a reason. these rules are there to create a much more peaceful world, and that there's lots of inferences -- entrance -- use military force with what you want. there's a world in which you could use military force every time to get what you wanted, to collect that, to engage in humanitarian intervention, to enforce treaty obligations, to attack someone who is entering through trade relations. those are very brutal and dangerous with pics we have to be very careful not to find ourselves sliding back into that, perhaps inadvertently without realizing what we're doing. i think you're right that something must be very careful about.

and it's something i think our leaders haven't been at the tenth to keep it in the last 15 years and that's part of the reason we're in the mess we find ourselves in today. that's a great question. well, thank you all very much for being here. it's been a great pleasure. [applause] >> thank you, everyone for coming. if you'd like to get a book, scott and oona will be happy to sign them for you come on up. [inaudible conversations] >> a look at not as some of the upcoming book fairs and festivals happening around the country.

>> they had this idea where they would, they did a marketing gimmick where they created fictitious brands and syria because of wanted to pitch themselves as air bed and breakfast, and they did this whole thing where they made is to cereals captain mccain, over john mccain, and obama for obama. they were cheeky and fun and quirky and very rigid and they

sold them for $40 $40 a box asa collectors edition. they gave in to the press. the press ate it up. it ended up making $30,000 from the serial. that didn't turn the company around. in fact, i don't get it, are you a serial company now? he didn't know how to answer that question and that was the most depressing thing because technically they're making a lot more money on the serial than they were on the business. ultimately one of her advisers said you guys had to go apply for y combinator which is an accelerated program in the silicon valley, a very highly regarded and the three founders said but we launched we been written up on tech crunch. we don't need to go to y combinator. he looked at them and he said you guys are dying. you have to go to y combinator. the going to y combinator gave them, it was a surreal take up into y combinator because paul graham the ran y combinator at the time who was very tough

critic, he didn't think is a good idea either. he said what's wrong with people? they stay in peoples homes? that's crazy. they happened to mention they sold all the serial and he said, what? if you can convince people to buy cereal for $40 a box you can probably convince people to sleep and other peoples air mattresses. but then it was really advice he gave them once they were in, which was go to your users and shower them with love. they didn't have many uses but the ones i have are all in new york and the didn't think about doing that, coming to visit their users and a literally sat with them for hours on end and watch and use product. they realize they did know how to post photos very well. they deny how to write listings in with a make them appealing so they just sat with them and help them merchandise their listings in a a better way and dress thm up. and doing that they saw the numbers after a few weeks double. double from a very low base that's what turn the numbers around. from there it was still a long journey but that's what sort of,

that's when they kind of turning point hit. .. >> discussing national security tht an event in washington. and later, a senate foreign relations hearing on the food for peace program and other meds for distributing food aid around the world. >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought t