including diversifying who is in each of these roles we would have this problem. >> [applause]. i want to think the audience for so much interest in speaking with these authors. we are out of time and yet their books and authors themselves are available to talk to right outside this room. i want to ask you to please stand and join me and thinking each of them. [applause]. now from the boston book festival is a discussion on american foreign policy. one of the authors you will hear from is stephen walt who

discusses his views on what he calls the foreign policy elite. anthony brooks. he will begin the panel. thank you. thank you for that introduction. i think you all for coming out. i just want to say really quickly how it means that partnership for the boston book festival. it is a partnership that we believe and wholeheartedly. it's all about building community and you are part of that. i'm going to introduce the two guess. the author of numerous books. including the war for the greater middle east. his latest book is twilight of

the american century. also president of the in situ. i think tank which will be opening in washington soon. i think we will have an opportunity to talk about a little bit. anthony, thank you for being here. >> thank you. the global response. america's foreign policy elite into the decline of u.s. privacy. sivan welcome to you. thanks for being here. [applause]. i've been really looking for to talking to both of you.

i want to get into those arguments. but i also want to start if i can with the news and what we are reading about. and to get your reaction about what has been happening along the syrian border. obviously i will know about this and i'm to skin a summarize it. in a phone call present trap cleared the way for turkish forces to move into turkey and clear out the kurds. this was made possible by trump holding back a small number of u.s. forces. there was a shocking and abandonment of u.s. allies. it has only helped america's adversaries. i would love to just get your response to this and how you been thinking about it.

>> this will be starting off on a very provocative note here because i actually think that what has been typical in the presidency they have the right instinct which they have managed to pursue in the worst possible way. .. ..

russia had a very simple objective, keep assad in power, full stop that was their only goal, not a particularly nice goal, in fact, in some respects that's an awful goal but a very simple, very feasible and achievable goal, so the united states has ended up through somewhat longer process backing this kurdish rebel force against isis, not as a favor to us, but out of own self-interest and ran parallel but the united states did not back kurdishstand and

one isis was controlled, that partnership was living on borrow ed time, the last point i would make is the united states should have been doing all along, working out a diplomatic solution, complicated set of conflicts resolving in the area but way back when syrian isis we let iran in geneva talks, we are not participating in talks between russia, iran and turkey, we have been out of the diplomatic game entirely and till some extend clinging to the hope that some day we can get assad out of power there and the fact is we won't talk about to the russia because we are mad about ukraine and we won't talk

to iran because nominally, we went talk to assad because he's a war criminal and the result is we have really no diplomatic process involved there. no leverage and in a sense by pulling american forces out, trump has made the whole thing come to roost in the worst possible way leaving the kurds in much more worse situation than if we helped manage a diplomatic solution that ultimately might stabilize things. >> how do you see, what are you thinking about? >> we've already arrived at central of the panel that i agree with everything he said. [laughter] >> the only thing i would add is that in order to understand the

mess that we are in, it's crucially important to acknowledge our contribution to creating that mass, you know, the conversation about syria, kurds, tends to focus on things that happened in the last week or ten days, but if you ask yourself how did it come to be that this part of the world has been so destabilized that there's so much disorder, that there's so much violence, where did this come from? many different people can have different opinions but i will give you my opinion, this stems from the invasion of iraq that the united states undertook in 2003 and we are still seeing the effects of that catastrophic decision play out and i think

until we as a nation and our foreign policy elites acknowledge the dimensions of that failure on our part, then it becomes much more difficult to undertake dialogue that steve says will be necessary. >> let me stick with you because i want to ask you about one of the central ideas in your collection of essays, you have this when it comes early in the book talking about the origins of this sort of guiding principle of the american century and you talk about how it dates back to henry, the famous publisher of time magazine and life magazine in an essay that he wrote in 1941 urging america to get off the sidelines, get involved with the war and you argue that that has -- that sort of view guided

america's idea about its power and its projection of power for a long time to america and the world. >> yes, this is an e-mail published in february, i think it was february 17th, 1941, that's to say before u.s. entry into world war ii in life magazine, at a time when life magazine was, i think, fair to say, the most important periodical in this country, the most important influencer of opinion, there was no internet. it was, anthony, it was a call for us to get off the sidelines and played into the notion that we had been on the sidelines, but wait a second, back in 1776 at the time of american independence we were this tinny little country on the eastern sea board, 13 little colonies

became 13 little states, by the time that essay appeared in 1941, the united states of america spread from sea to shining sea and we had long since become imperial power, you know, we took the philippines, we took hawaii, we took panamá, arrangement in panamá to build the panamá canal, we transformed cuba and other parts of the caribbean into a network of american protectors and we had not been on the sideline and in the context of 1941, so many argued that we were sitting in the sidelines at that particular moment because a considerable number of the american people were hesitating to intervene in the ongoing european war which at that point pitted great britain against -- against nazi germany.

why the hesitation? because at that point 1941, many americans had rather sharp memories of another war against germany that occurred just barely 20 years before where we had set out to make the world safe for democracy and end all wars and that war, we forget 116,000 americans lost their lives in world war i despite the fact, large numbers were engaged in combat for only the last 90 days of the war, september to november. 116,000 lives, fast-forward to 1941, with reason, americans are saying, we are really not keen to once again intervene european war and bail out -- bail out the brits.

but yet this idea that out of world war ii something called an american century had begun, a period of time -- period of american preeminence in which the united states was called upon to fulfill its mission to redeeming the world had been a theme in american diplomacy and binding theme that was powerfully reinforced by the end of the cold war, when it was then declared loud and clear from senior u.s. officials and from journalists that history had, indeed, anointed us as the indispensable nation, great phrase, i was amazed, mitch mcconnell published an op-ed in the washington post, is it today or yesterday denouncing the --

and mitch mcconnell specifically refers to the united states as the indispensable nation. now, i'm a believer and i checked with the lord before i came here -- [laughter] >> and i said, lord, have you, indeed, designated the united states of america as the indispensable nation and i can report to you that the lord said, no. [laughter] >> so here we kind of get to a large part, i know i'm taking up too much time -- [laughter] >> we are kind of getting into one of the greatest obstacles to self-funding and we can't figure out how to get in the middle east, we are not the indispensable nation and until we get over that it seems to me that we will continue to compound the mistakes that we've made since the end of the cold war and 9/11. >> you need to tell pompeo with the conversation with the lord.

[laughter] >> you're getting a different message. [laughter] >> i like the way both of these books intersected and shared sort of points of view even though you arrive at them from different -- from different directions, but when it comes to you, if -- if andrew is talking about this idea of the american century assort of -- the u.s. being the indispensable nation, you denounce the pursuit of what you call liberal which you argue has been embraced by presidents, republicans, democrats, bush 2 and obama, so can you start with the definition, what do you mean by liberal, what is that? >> i argue is the strategy we followed since the end of the cold war when we arrived at that moment and andy just mentioned and notice that's the moment where we could have had a really serious discussion about america's role in the world, suddenly the soviet union disappeared. we face nod peer competitors, we are on almost good terms with everybody, we are pretty good terms with china, we are pretty

good terms with russia at that point, we might have said we will not retreat to isolationism, we will not retreat to fortress america but do we need to be doing the world the way we did during cold war, do we want to rethink this? >> beginning with the clinton administration, bipartisan consensus emerged around what i call liberal jameminy, by liberal i don't mean left wing, seek to go promote the classic liberal values, democracy, human rights, rule of law, open markets, things like that, it became america's mission to spread those things as far as we possibly could. they already existed in many parts of the world and we were going to take it upon ourselves to push the project peacefully if possible but if necessary using military force, eastern europe by expanding nato, whether into the middle east by strategies like dual containment

or eventually topping saddam hussein. >> this process has to be led by the united states, that's the indispensable part, america's power has to be directed at this and has to be used against any countries that are getting in the way of this particular process, we can put sanctions on them, we can try to form alliance against them and in extreme cases we can use military to try and overthrow them, now, the idea of spreading those values around the world appeals to lots of americans and certainly appeals to people who are in the foreign policy establishment if for no other reason because it gives them plenty to do. bring turns out to be almost impossible, it's a deeply flawed strategy and we may get into all the ways it went wrong but liberal, commitment to use

dimensions of american power to make the world more or less america's image. >> why would you use jigeminy, why not call it imperialism? >> you could argue that's what we were trying to do in iraq temporarily. but the united states as an empire is a funny empire, we actually have not created a lot of colonies around the world, we never had anything quite like the british empire where you can mark out large sloths of nonamerican territory and say that belonged to us, we did it in many subtle ways, terrific book by daniel that i recommend called how to hide an empire which deals with this -- how extensive american influence has been without having the kind of formal empire that britain, france and some other countries

did. >> let's talk about the results and how it went wrong, i will come back to you, andrew, this belief as america indispensable nation, launched back then, 1941, how is this concept and belief in that let us stray? >> well, i think steve put his finger on it. when the cold war ended -- i was born in 1947 which in many respects would say the year that the cold war began, the year of famous essay in foreign affairs, it's the year of the marshall plan, the year of the truman doctrine if i'm getting my dates correct and so i grew up with the cold war and i believed or came to assume what manyover people i think believed and came to assume, that is that the cold war defined international relations, it was the only fact that really, really mattered and

secondly that the cold war was never going to end. that our composition with the soviet union, with the soviet empire, with communism was destined to go on forever and i was certainly among those who had head snapped back when lo and behold in 1989 it ended, and that was the moment that changed, steve allude today this, this was the moment that seemed to me that the american foreign polls establishment to step back, first of all, they had not anticipated it was going end. >> let's reflect on what -- what history may now hold in store and try to make some prudent adjustments with regard to posture in the world, our sense

of what we are called upon to do, vital interest. what happens to cite a very famous essay, we concluded that history had literally ended, we had reached the end of history and -- and when history reached its end, it declared a winner and that wases and that was the key fact, we thought it was a fact, it was an allusion, that was the key fact that would then shape american policy going forward and therefore created the -- militarism that has been such an important characteristic of what we have gone through since, combined with this unwillingness to sort of learned, to imagine that mitch

mcconnell still indispensable nation despite all that has occurred in the past at 20 or so years. >> go ahead. >> it's very important especially in the 90's, we have won the cold war and everything seemed to be going our way, remarkable optimism, yes, we reached the end of history, the world has come to understand that the american model is really the best one. other example you would think of is tom freedman's book, olive tree about globalization, if you want to prosper in a globalized world you have been like the united states, not in every detail but pretty much like the united states, we've really mastered this, so people say in clinton era were optimistic about how easy it was going to be to spread, transform the world, china was going to become as it developed, had middle class, democracy, if we had to get rid of dictators in some

place, that's okay, the people will will be grateful, they will soon form political parties, they will have nice orderly elections and be really happy that they can become like us now. this is not going to be costly, it's not going to be risky, history is running our way, you know, life is good, the winds in our back, that allowed us, i think, to adopt a very ambitious grand strategy and think we can do it all on the cheap, it would never face any real resistance and all of these projects in various places would go pretty swimmingly and turns out the world was not quite as cooperative as we thought it would be. >> yeah, steve is right to -- i do think our consciousness today is kind of shaped by at least some awareness of what's occurred since 9/11 which steve just said, no, no, the pivotal moment is 1990's when we thought the path was clear and it's not simply the optimism that he was describing,

reinforcing the optimism, was perception of what american military power could now do, remember what's not forgotten what seemed to be great victory of operation desert storm in 1991 which seem today show that we had solved the mysteries of warfare. remember then the follow on, clinton era interventions in the balkins, drop a few bombs and be able to achieve political objectives, this became a template for expectations going forward. the great forgotten, sadly forgotten military episode of the 1990's is the clinton era was the somalia intervention. the famous fire fight,

october 1993, turns out in retrospect that there was the template for future war, the nasty, ugly irregular conflicts often in an urban setting where we didn't do too well, but certainly clinton and also the military, you might talk about somalia, you want to talk about desert storm, want to talk about bosnia, in other words, creating from a military perspective, crediting a sense of expectations that are right there in 9/11 and the people in the bush administration to say, well, we need to put our military to work, let's go invade a country. does not have necessarily to do anything with 9/11, invade a country, bring regime change and make a point and it's not going to cost us very much. >> this is very important and

the one other episode which is quite critical in iraq story is afghanistan, so when the united states goes into afghanistan to oust the taliban, all right, lots of voices saying, afghanistan, graveyard of empires, the soviet union didn't do well, be afraid, be very afraid, this could be trouble and the first 6 months look like the american military is positively magical, the taliban are routed in a few weeks, hardly any casualties, we can do anything and that plays perfectly into this idea that you can now do a rock, of course, we now know in afghanistan the american military is very good at throwing weak regimes out of power, the american military is not very good at running those societies after those weak regimes have been toppled, totally different job, not really what we train our military to do, but that's the really important task and back

in 2001, 2002 we had forgotten that. >> steven, you have this moment in the book where you sum up the sort of blowback of -- of years of liberal. >> fallout from nato expansion, libya, else, where the open-ended war on terror, mismanagement of the middle east process, continuing spread of weapons of mass destruction and antidemocratic backlash that's occurred since 2008 financial crisis, so safe to safe -- say not a great record. offshore balancing and i would love for you to explain that instead of trying to make the world an america's image, focus on something more limited, offshore balance. >> so -- so andy andriy sometimes labeled this restrainers, another label for this and i would characterize it as a view as the united states as having interest in the world but more limited than the ones

we've been pursuing. i've taken to t saying the united states should define interest more narrowly and then defend and advance those interests more vigorously. do smaller number of things but do the things well, let me say what i think it means, this begins with the assumption that the united states is actually a very secure country, not against all possible dangers but we are continent-size country, we are still protected against many dangers by the two enormous oceans, no hostile powers anywhere nearby, lots of nuclear weapons, i don't know how any of you feel about nuclear weapons but makes it really scary to think about someone attacking us, right, we can deter a lot of threats, we are very secure, what the united states should do is basically go back to the

strategy we followed up and until 1991, '92 or so where we were offshore balancer, we cared a lot about the global balance of power, we worried mostly about the emergence of very powerful rivals, peer competitors, particularly of those peer competitors controlled their immediate neighborhood so extensively that they could protect power around world. ask yourself why can the united states wander all over in the world getting into trouble because we are not worried about canada taking minnesota. we are secured here. if another nay juror power if like a nazi germany controlled europe, didn't face any enemies, defeated the soviet union and now reign supreme in europe, the continent-size power could have started projecting power into various other places including the western hemisphere, which is roosevelt was most worried

about, offshore balance with the united states tries to stay out of trouble where possible, but it keeps a close eye on what the balance of power is in key parts of the world, in europe, in asia, and to some degree still in the persian gulf due to oil and gas, if the balance of power is pretty even, no country threatening to dominate, we don't have to be all that actively involved. if a potential dominant power emerges in one of those areas then the united states should try to line with the united states, get them to pull their share of the weight and only when necessary should the united states intervene. i will just add, this is the policy the united states followed in the middle east from 1945 to 1991, we had interest there, we had partners there, we didn't have a lot of troops there. we created the rapid deployment force after the shock fell, we kept it out of the region because putting threat would only have caused trouble.

offshore balancer would have a more limited view of interest, today what that means basically the united states should not be actively committed to defending europe because europe has the abilities to defend itself, we would be focusing primarily on china and trying to make sure that china is not in a position to dominate asia and that meant mostly maintaining a set of powerful alliance relations with our asian partners as well, finally, we should be getting out of the middle east militarily because every time we go in there to do something, we make things worse and there is no country that threatens to dominate the middle east right now, the middle east is if anything more divided and contentious than it's ever been and from an american point of view, that's okay, it's not wonderful but it means we don't have to be there because, again, every time we go there, we tend

to make the problem worse than it was. >> andy, does that sort of view of restraint and restraining american power sit well with you? >> yeah, i think i can sign up for that. you introduced and posed the last question, i think it was, introduced the i word into the conversation and the i word is isolationism, and the posture that steve just outlined will elicit from many, oh, you're an isolationist and my point which is not true, but my point is that one of the difficulties that we have in engaging in a sort of sobber reason conversation about this overextension that i think would describe present posture is that it immediately elicits this

response oh, you're on isolationists which by the way also implies that the conditions that existed in europe in 1938 or 1939 describe the global conditions today. and this overhang of world war ii, you know, this inclination probably more with journalists than anybody else of constantly referencing back to the period of -- the period immediately proceeding world war ii, i think it's one of the things that makes it so difficult for the kind of recipe that -- that steve outlines here to get the kind of thoughtful hearing that it deserves particularly in policy circles, you know, because you don't -- if you're in the congress you don't want to be called an isolationists. >> so in a minute or two, we will open this up to questions

and they're going to be microphones i understand that will be handed around to you, so just thinking about that and we will get there in a minute. i wanted to come back to donald trump because you both write persuasively and interestingly about the trump moment and i will come over to you first, steven, you write that among the consequences of embrace was the election of donald trump, i'd love you to spin that out a little bit. >> well, i don't believe foreign policy was the primary reason that trump got elected. it was much more anger at things happening inside the policy, but foreign policy is not irrelevant. he's running against a former secretary of state and principal credential was the fact that she now had the cabinet level experience and trump said in his first foreign policy speech in april 2016, he called american foreign policy a complete and total disaster, right, and to a

first approximation he was correct, if you look where the united states was in 1993 '94 and you look where it was in 2016 and you already listed the litany of failures and what big successes could hillary point to? either from her period as secretary of state or john kerry's period of secretary of state or the bush administration or even the administration of her husband. no big foreign policy, a few successes along the way but far more failures than successes and the failure much more consequential so he was issuing an indictment of american foreign policy and dove tailed perfectly with the rest of his indictment namely that america is being governed by an out of touch and unaccountable elite who keeps making mistake after mistake and still stays in power and that was exactly the message that his base wanted to hear, he

was telling them that on economic, he was telling them that on trade, et cetera, so in that sense foreign policy of critiques reinforced the appeal, it was all -- the appeal and helped undercut her claims to expertise. >> now, you have an essay in the book slouching toward mar-a-lago and i want to read -- [laughter] >> it's a good title. [laughter] >> clearly, here is what you write there, the unspoken assumptions those determine today vanish him, trump, from public life appears to be this, once he's gone, history will go to intended path, breathe sigh of relief, all will be well again, what's wrong with the assumption?

[laughter] >> the problem with the assumption that 60 some million of fellow citizens voted for the guy and they voted for the guy i think pretty much for the reasons that steve was outlining, because they believed that the elites, maybe that's an overused term these days but they believed that the elites had failed them, that -- the promise -- the promise of the indispensable nation presiding over a peaceful world order hadn't worked, the claim that globalization, you know, the neo liberal economic policies on a planetary scale were going to make everybody rich, somehow it didn't work out, left a lot of people behind, those are the factors that set the stage for his election and -- and those complaints, if you want to call them that, aren't going to go away and that's why, you know,

all this talk about the impeachment as coup, in the one hand you say, that's really inflammatory and dangerous language, on the other hand, if, indeed, he is removed from office there's going to be a whole bunch of our fellow citizens who are going to be mighty, mighty angry and -- and it does seem to me that -- that the rest of the political establishment and i include the republican party here needs to anticipate that and -- and begin to think seriously about what -- what can be done to address the complaints to have people who voted for trump beginning with the recognition that their complaints were not unjustified, so we just can't pretend that 2016 never happened and we will go back to -- go back to

business. >> sorry, self-promotion here, there's a chapter in my book is anyone accountable, and gets at the point andy raised earlier, why don't we ever learn from past mistakes so that we do better, partly because the process of learning, what is the right lesson to draw from vietnam or from desert storm or from afghanistan, it's often a complicated and political process but it's also because we now have an elite that doesn't hold itself accountable, right, it's quite remarkable that it doesn't seem to be there's anything that you can do in the conduct of foreign policy that would disqualify you from another appointment when the political stars line up, if you look at the career of someone like elliot abrams, for example, who is now our special envoy for venezuela despite a checkered career and very few successes in his history and i recount examples of people who seem to have quality to come back, john

bolton, one of the main architects of the decision to invade iraq ends up being until trump fires him, one of the reasons 60 million americans a, voted for trump and some will vote for them next time around is their sense that the other never holds itself accountable, never is -- never -- wall street bankers crashed the world economy and retire to their houses in the hamptons, all right, the same sort of thing that fuel it is popularity of bernie sanders, to some degree elizabeth warren, people like aoc, on the other side of the political spectrum is the sameceps -- same sense at anger and resentments at fat cats that seemed to be immune from either learning or accountability and that hasn't disappeared yet. >> interesting.

[applause] >> one more question about the current sort of election cycle that we are in, i just want to get your response to this because what you two are talking about the space strike me fundamentally important to everything, survival of our democracy and talking about the way the united states projects power and acts in the world and has done so for decades. this is never talked about on the campaign trail. it's absent. i will tell you that goes to campaign event after campaign event even people like are doing well organized like elizabeth warren, bernie sanders, amy klobuchar, pick your favorite democrat, they do not bring this stuff up, how worry does that make you or how much a concern is that? >> well, first of all, i think there's a long tradition that most presidential elections are not decided on foreign policy grounds. just how lucky we are as a

country that all sorts of things can be happening in other parts of the world, sometimes we are busy screwing up and the immediate consequences here at home are relatively small. financial crisis was more consequential, you could observe it than some of the foreign policy misadventures, when people are out on the campaign trail they want to talk about health care, they want to talk about jobs, they want to talk about communities, they are not going to want to talk about what's happening in northern syria, right, a lot of the problems out there far away, a, americans don't care about and they don't have easy solutions and you can't deliver -- >> can't put it on a bumper sticker. >> you can't put it on a bumper sticker at all. i think that's a big part of it. >> yeah. >> two reasons why people in a political arena hesitation to ask critical questions about war, about our military

policies. and the first of those reasons is the, you know, the money laundering call to military, industrial congressional complex which, which has worked to the advantage of the united states military, the defense industries and members of congress who are reliant on campaign contributions from -- from defense contractors, they don't want to ask critical questions about that and the second reason i think is if you say something bad about our wars, does that mean you're saying something about about the troops? nobody, nobody wants to be caught -- to open themselves up to criticism for failing to support the troops. >> unless you're donald trump and you can criticize a gold star family. >> well, he's unique. >> right.

[laughter] >> questions from the audience and the microphones these two poll welcomes the redshirts, so, yeah. here we go. >> you commented steven that the u.s. should pull out of the middle east, we don't have legitimate interest, what about israel? >> fortunately for israel it doesn't need enormous amount of american support at this point. it's got substantial nuclear weapon's arsenal of its own, it has the most powerful military forces in the region and has sophisticated high-tech economy and it increasingly has good relations with other countries in the region, egypt, saudi arabia are israeli allies because they are all word about

iran. israel's immediate security situation it's probably better now than it has ever been. they have a problem because they refuse to allow palestinians to have a state of their own, internal problem within israel that they have no solution for long term, political divisions within israel that we have seen manifest themselves but those aren't solved by additional american support, so my view in the middle east is the united states should have business-like relations with everybody in the middle east, we should support those countries when they are doing things that we agree with, we shouldn't support them when they're doing things we don't agree with, we should not have special relationships with saudi arabia, egypt and no relationship with iran because that just weakens our influence, how are we going to have influence in broader region if we are not talking on a regular basis to one of the regimes there, so when mike pompeo goes to riyadh i want to saudis to

know that the next stop is tehran. and when he's in tehran, i want the iranians know that the next stop is tel aviv and maybe after that ankara because each of those countries has an incentive to tell pompeo something that he wants to hear for fear he might be getting a better deal at his next stop, right, that's how you maximize american leverage as opposed to giving unconditional support to some of those countries no matter what they do and not talking to others at all. >> is there a question up high, yes, ma'am. >> yes, how are we secure if russia interfered in our election and is interfering at we speak, how is that security -- how do we trust our elections and the next election? >> well, i'm not sure the issue is security there in the sense that we have been using the term

security. i do, we should take seriously the need to ensure that -- ensure the integrity of our elections and therefore if there's evidence of russia or anybody else tampering with our elections, then seems to me that'll be an urgent priority to make sure that that can't happen. on the other hand, maybe it's in addition, if we don't like foreign governments mucking around in our politics and we shouldn't, perhaps we should look at means to muck, go beyond simply tampering with elections, you know, it's remarkable when you think about the amount of money that foreign governments spend to lobby in american politics, it's also shocking that to consider the extent to which it's usually retired politicians, collaborate in this

process so just speaking personally, yeah, we need to ensure that we have integrity in our elections but i think there's a lot of other ways in which if foreigners interfere in american politics at least reprehensible. >> well, what about russia? neither of you have spoken about russia. >> well, there's always context, i think steve mentioned it very briefly, it's always good to put yourself in the shoes of the other guy, the adversary, when the cold war ended and this is a contentious point, when the cold war ended the soviets then believed that they had been insured that nato would not advance east ward, whether or not that commitment ever existed

we certainly disregarded it and the expansion of nato has brought russia, has brought nato up to the borders of russia indeed has incorporated into nato republics that were form early part of the soviet union, look at that from their point of view and created antagonistic russia, we can waive that away, we've done that, my parents came from lithuania, lieutenant -- it's important to understand that there are reasons why russia may have concerns about their security and will react accordingly, the second point is, however, russia is not the old soviet union, putin is not joseph stalin, if i'm not mistaken the total economy, gdp of russia is more or less on par

with italy, yes, they make apparently good make good weapons but the threat posed by russia to europe is, in fact, a limited one and as steve mentioned a few minutes ago, if the europes were actually concerned about this russian threat, they are more than able to deal with it on their own, the federal republic of germany currently spends 1 -- >> 1.1. >> 1.1% on dgp on defense. guess what, they can afford more, so it would appear that the germans and i'm not picking on them but as an example, it would appear that they are not necessarily all that concerned about a russian threat, so we should just try to keep things in perspective and not panic just because putin is a really bad guy and, you know, no need for us to pretend otherwise. >> question here in the middle.

>> thank you. what should the united states reaction be to china's initiative and posture in the south china sea? thank you. >> who wants to take that? >> i will take it. i think we should be do i think pretty much what we have been doing, vis-a-vis the south china sea, don't accept territorial claims. we go within 11 nautical miles to demonstrate this is open ocean, i think we actually could do more of that, and we should be doing not just heavily armed forces but maybe other country, i think the british have done it

once, we should perhaps occasionally be leading some tankers or freighters along with us along the establishing that whatever china's claims are in south china sea, neither we nor the international tribunal that ruled on this, nor the rest of the international community accepts any of those claims as well, belt and road initiative is more complicated. i have tended to be more about it than many who have seen it as this great game changer where they are going build lots of infrastructure and acquire lots of influence, for a couple of reasons, one some of their projects have not gone particularly well and some of the countries that they've done them are actually quite resentful of this. more of these countries are now worried about being indebt today china and what that might mean, also it's not clear how much

long-term influence you actually gain by building a rail way or building a port in some other country, it's not like you can take the railway home or take the port home if that country doesn't do what you want, right, and if that matter if that country can't pay you, that ultimately comes -- becomes you problem, you know the old joke if you owe the bank a thousand dollars, that's your problem and if you owe the bank a billion dollars, that's the bank's problem, china has made unwise loans, i do not see built and road by itself as a particular game-changer. i will say that, you know, because i worry more about china than i worry about other countries, i'm bothered by the fact that we keep getting distracted by problems elsewhere that are less significant, right, and therefore we don't devote as much time to nurturing the political relationships we need to nur sure in asia and

don't give me started on how badly president trump has handled our entire portfolio of relations in asia. >> i don't follow the built and road thing closely, but seems to me that if, indeed, they have developed an effective way to gain influence, investing in these projects in countries that need to have their infrastructure developed or modernized, scratch my head and say, well, gosh, maybe we should do that. maybe we should be following in there, using the chinese model, that seems -- in order to see if we can also acquire greater influence in some of the countries. >> question up there in the back. >> professor walt, i didn't quite understand your response

about the u.s. support, israel doesn't need the support of the u.s. in that i believe the tune of $3 billion a year which is mostly about them buying our armaments, could you clarify that? >> yeah, i think that israel is a country that ranks 27 investigate the world and per capita income and therefore no longer needs the kinds of subsidies that we have been providing, on a per capita basis the united states gives more military and economic aid, mostly military aid now to israel than any other county the world and it's no longer necessary for israel's security. >> but i don't understand that sentence, it seems to be necessary for their security because the united states is giving them $3 billion a year. >> that's not why we do it, i wrote a whole book on why we do that which is all about, i think, mostly american domestic

politics. >> so we will have to end it there because our time is up, gentlemen, i want to thank you -- by way -- hold applause. >> chosen profession and what i like about my job is on any given day i get to carry this microphone which is virtual microphone today and kind of gives me permission to ask questions of a lot of really smart people and i gain enlightenment; i gain all kinds of valuable information and this is such a day because of you, so thank you very much. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> starting now boston book festival keynote address and discusses his book, open season.