[inaudible conversations] it is my pleasure to introduce anthony brooks. he will begin the panel. [applause].

thank you all for coming out i just want to say really quickly how it means to have this partnership with the boston book festival. a festival that we believe in wholeheartedly. all about building community and you are a part of that so thank you for coming out and supporting the boston book festival.

andrew bacevich welcome thank you for being here. stephen walt is the author of international affairs. including american power the global response. american foreign-policy elite. stephen walt welcome to you thank you for being here [applause].

the united states has ended up through a longer process backing this kurdish rebel force that was our partner against isis. not as a favor to us but out of their own self interest in that arena parallel with our self-interest but the united states has never supported the creation of an independent kurdistan. we were not willing to back that at any point so once isis was effectively controlled that partnership was in some respects living on borrowed time. the last point i will make here is what the united states should have been doing all along trying to work out a

diplomatic solution to the very complicated set of conflicts revolving in that area. but we first of all way back when when the syrian uprising began we refuse to let iran participate in the geneva talks which meant they were going to go anywhere. i ran was a stakeholder in all of this. we are not participating in the talks now. over us donna. we had been essentially out of the diplomatic gain. still clinging to the hope that someday we can get aside out of power there. the fact is we won't talk to rush about this because we are mad about ukraine we won't talk to iran, because we are nominally at war with the sod. we have no diplomatic process involved there. by pulling the forces out

trump has made this whole thing come to roost in the worst possible way leaving the kurds in much worse situation than if we have helped manage a diplomatic solution. what are you thinking about. >> we've already arrived at the central defect of this panel. i agree with everything you said. let's move on. the only thing i would add in order to understand the mess that we are in is crucially important to acknowledge our contribution. the conversation about syria

and the kurds tend to focus on things that have happened in the last week or ten days. how did this come to be that this part of the world has been so destabilized there is been so much disorder and violence where did this come from. i will give you my opinion and that means it all stems from the invasion of iraq that the united states undertook in 2003. we are still seeing the effects of that catastrophic decision play out i think until we and the nation and our foreign policy elites acknowledge the dimensions of that failure on our part then it becomes that much more difficult to undertake the

dialogue that steve rightly says is going to be necessary. >> and want to ask about one of the central ideas in your essay. they are talking about the origins of this guiding principle of the american century. you talk about how it dates back to henry luce the famous publisher of time magazine in an essay that he wrote in 1941. and you argue that that view a guided american's idea about its power and its projection of power for a long time into enormous detriment. >> this is an essay published in february.

before u.s. entry into world war ii and life magazine in a time when life magazine it was the most important periodical in this country. there was is no tv or internet. it played its in the notion that we had been on the sidelines. wait a second. akin 1776. we were this tiny little country on the eastern seaboard. by the time the essay appears in 1941 the united states of america had spread from sea to shining sea. with long since become an imperial power.

we took the philippines and we took panama and made an arrangement and it in panama. we transformed cuba and other parts into an american protector. we have not been on the sidelines. in the context of 1941. many others argued that we were sitting on the sidelines at that particular moment. they were hesitating during the ongoing european war which at that point pitted great britain against nazi germany. at that point many americans have sharp memories of another war against germany that

occurred just barely 20 years before. with set out to make the world a safer democracy and end all wars the large numbers of american combat troops were engaged in combat for roughly the last 90 days of the war. fast forward to 1941. with reason they are saying we really aren't keen to intervene in a the european war and bail out the brits. but yes. this idea that out of world war ii something called an american century have begun. of time the united states is called upon to fulfill its

self assigned mission of redeeming the world has been an abiding theme in american diplomacy. it 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 anointed us as the indispensable nation a great phrase. i was amazed. mitch mcconnell refers to the united states is the indispensable nation. now i am a believer and i checked with the lord before i came here. and i said have you indeed

designated the united states of america as the indispensable nation and the lord said no. working at getting to one of the great obstacles to our self understanding. we can figure out how to get to the mess of the middle east. we are going to continue to compound the mistakes that we have made since the end of the cold war especially since september 11. you need to tell secretary pompeo about your conversation with the lord. >> i like the way that they intersected in shared points of view even though you arrive at them in different directions. i want to come to you. if andrew is talking about this idea of the american

century you denounce the pursuit of what you called liberal hegemony. can we do start with the definition. what you mean by liberal hegemony. it is the strategy we followed since the end of the cold war. that's a moment we could have had a really serious discussion about america's role in the world. we face no competitor. where on good terms with almost everyone. we may have said at that point do we really need to be guaranteeing the world the way we did during the cold war. we don't really had that debate.

beginning with the clinton administration bipartisan consensus emerged around what i called liberal hegemony. seeking to promote the classic liberal values. it became america's mission to spread those things as far as we possibly could. we were now going to take it upon himself to push the project. by hegemony of course it is the process of being led by the united states. american power has to be directed at this and has to be used against any countries

that are getting in the way. we can form alliances against them. the idea of spreading those values around the world appears to a lot of americans. for no other reason because it gives them plenty to do. it turns out to be almost impossible. it is a deeply flawed strategy. but by liberal hegemony the commitment to use all of the genders of american power to try to remake the world. check why would you use this

the united states as an empire we have not created a lot of colonies around the world. that belonged to us. we did in many more subtle ways. without having the kind of formal empire that britain, and france and some others do. and how it went wrong. it was sort of lunched back then in 1941.

>> i think steve put his finger on it. when the cold war ended it is the year of the marshall plan. if i'm getting my dates correct if i came to assume that the cold war a defined international relations it was the only fact that really mattered. the cold war was never going to end. our competition with the soviet union and soviet empire was destined to go on forever. and i was among those who have

his had snapped back when low and behold in 1989 ended. it was the moment and seemed to me for american foreign-policy to step back they have not anticipated this. clearly this is an important moment in history was reflect on what has occurred during the cold war. our sense of what we call upon when we know are supposed to do. that simply didn't happen. instead what happened was they have literally ended.

we have reached the end of history. it declared a winner. and that was us. that was the key fact it was an illusion that would then shape american policy going forward and therefore created the impotence to this military is him that has been such an important characteristics. stilled still indispensable nation despite all that has occurred in the past 20 years. in the moment where we have won the cold war.

we have reached the end of history. the world has come to understand that the american model really is the best one. if you want to prosper in a globalized world you have to be like the united states now and every detail but we have really mastered this. china was going to become like this as it developed. if we have to get rid of some dictators some place that's okay because the people there will be grateful. they will have a nice orderly elections. and they would be really happy to become like us now.

history is running our way. that allowed us to adopt very ambitious strategy and think that we could do it all on the cheap. the world was not quite as cooperative as we thought it would be. the consciousness is shaped by some awareness of what occurred since september 11. when we thought the path was clear reinforcing the optimism. what american military power could do. it seemed to show that we have

solved the mysteries of warfare that we had process processed forces that were unstoppable. quickly, easily cheaply. remember then the follow on the clinton era. or just get a fly overhead and drop a few bombs and be able to achieve our political objectives. it became a template for expectations going forward. the great forgotten. military episode of the in the same as the firefight there was the template for future war. these nasty, ugly your regular conflicts often in an urban setting where we did not do

too well. but certainly clinton and also the military. creating from a military perspective. a sense of expectations that are right there in september 11 and it leads the people to say we need to put our military to work. let's go invade a country. not one that necessarily has anything to do was september 11. working to make a point in a sack and a cost very much. this is very important to one other episode in here which is really crate critical is afghanistan. when the united states goes into afghanistan there are a lot of voices saying the graveyard of empires.

be very afraid. this could be trouble. and the first six months look like the american military is positively magical. we now know in both iraq and afghanistan they're very good at throwing weak regimes out of power. it's not very good at running the societies after those weak regimes had been toppled. that is the really important task and back in 2001 or 2002 we have simply forgot about that. we sum up the blowback of liberal hegemony. the fallout for the native

expansion. the antidemocratic back lash. your solution is something called offshore balancing. i would love for you to explain that instead of trying to make the world and america's image. they are sometimes labeled the restrainer's. they have the united states as having interest in the world. i have recently taken to saying that we saint that we believe the united states should define the interest more narrowly. it's not a passive approach.

instead of trying to do an enormous number of things and doing most of them badly. to a smaller number of things but do those things well. we are a continent size country. we are still protected against many dangers. no hostile powers anywhere nearby. a lot of nuclear weapons. i don't know how any of you feel about this. we are very secure. what the united states should do is basically go back to the strategy we followed up until 199192 or so. we cared a lot about the global balance of power.

if they controlled their immediate neighborhood. so extensively that they could start projecting power around the world. we are not worried about canada taking minnesota. i suppose they defeated the soviet union and now reigns supreme in europe. that power could have started projecting power into various other places including the western hemisphere. the united states tries to stay out of trouble where possible and keeps a close eye on what the balance of power is in key parts of the world. in europe, in and asia and to some degree into the persian

gulf. no country is threatening to dominate. if a dominant power emerges. they should try to rely with other states. and only when necessary should the united states intervened. we did not have a lot of troops there. we created the rapid deployment force. we kept out of the region. we extended there for the first time. an offshore balancer would have a more limited view of american interest today what that basically means is the united states should not be

actively committed to defending europe. we would be focusing primarily on china and trying to make sure that china is not in a position to dominate asia. we should be getting out of the middle east middle militarily and every time we go in there to do something to make things worse. and there is no country that threatens to dominate the middle east right now. if anything they are more divided and contentious and they have ever had. it means that we don't have to be there. every time we go there we tend to make the problem worse than it was. i think i can sign up for that.

>> i think you introduced the i eye word into the conversation and the i would --dash mike i word in the posture that steve just outlined will elicit from many you are an isolationist. in my point is that one of the difficulties that we have in engaging in a sober reason of conversation about the overextension that i think would describe present posture it elicits this response of you are an isolationist. the conditions that existed in europe in 1938 or 1939 described the global conditions today.

in this overhang of world war ii the inclination probably more with journalists than anyone else of referencing back to the time immediately preceding world war ii. it makes it so difficult and what the outline here to really get the kind of thoughtful hearing that it deserves particularly policy circles. in a minute or two we will open it up to questions. i think there will be microphones that will be handed around to you. just be thinking about that.

i will come over to you first. among the consequences of the embrace was the election of donald trump. i would love for you to spin out a little bit. i don't believe foreign-policy was the primary reason that trump got elected. foreign-policy was not irrelevant. it was the fact that they now have the cabinet level experience. he called american foreign-policy a complete and total disaster. the first park park mason he was correct. if you look at where the united states was in 1993 and 94.

and you already listed the litany of failures and what big successes could hillary .2 either from her time as secretary of state or john kerry's time as secretary of state. or even the administration of the husband. far more failures than successes and the failures much more consequential. he was issuing an indictment of american foreign policy and dovetailed perfectly with the rest of his indictment namely that america is being governed and out of touch and unaccountable elite who keeps making mistake after mistake and still stays in power. that is exactly the message to his base wanted to hear. he was telling them that on economics and trade. it was all the appeal. it was illusory.

i do think that it helped undercut her claims for expertise. i just want to read here is what you right there. the unspoken assumption of those most determined to banish him from public life appears to be this once he is gone it will be returned to his past. what is wrong with that assumption that all will be well again once trump is gone. what is wrong with that assumption that all will be well again once trump is gone. sixty some million of our fellow citizens voted for that guy. they believed the elites that they have failed them the

indispensable nation presiding over a peaceful world order have worked the claim that globalization the neo- liberal economic policies on the planetary scale was going to make everybody rich. somehow it didn't work out. it left a lot of people behind. i think those are the factors that set the stage on those complaints. our not to go away. all of this talk about the impeachment as coup. on the one hand you say that is really inflammatory language if indeed he is

removed from office. there is can be a whole bunch of our fellow citizens who are going to be mighty angry and it does seem to me that the rest of the political establishment and the republican party here. need to anticipate that it begin to think seriously about what can be done to address the complaints of the people that voted for trump beginning with recognition there is a chapter in the book is anyone accountable. why don't we ever learn from past mistakes. and part of it is is the process of learning.

that's often a complicated and political process. but it's also because we now have an elite that doesn't hold itself accountable. it's quite remarkable that it doesn't seem to be anything we can do if you look at the career like elliott abrams. despite the checkered career. a people who have a tesla -like quality to come back. one of the main architects of the it decision to invade iraq. some number of them are going

to vote for them next time around. the crashed the world economy. on the other side of the political spectrum. as that is that same sense of anger. they seem to be immune from learning or accountability. and it hasn't disappeared yet. one more question about the current election cycle. what you two are talking about appear on the stage it strikes me as so fundamentally important to the survival of

our democracy and were talking about the weight the united states projects power in the world. and has done so for decades. even with people who are doing very well organized campaigns like elizabeth warren pick your favorite democrat. there is a long tradition that most elections are not decided on foreign-policy grounds. that is a tribute to just how secure the united states is. sometimes that we are busy screwing up those other parts of the world. the immediate, -- the way of

the foreign policy misadventures. they are not to want to talk about what is happening in northern syria. i think that's a big part of it. i think there's two reasons why people in the political arena there is a hesitation. the first of those reasons is that money laundering call. with the defense industries.

they don't want to ask critical questions about that. if you say something bad about our wars does that mean you're saying something bad about the troops. nobody wants to be caught to open themselves up to criticism. he is unique for sure. the two folks with the red shirts. here we go. you commented that the u.s.

should pull out of the middle east. we don't have legitimate interest there. what about israel. fortunately for israel it doesn't need an enormous amount of american support at this point. it has a substantial nuclear weapons and arsenal of its own. the most powerful military forces in the region. increasingly has good relations with other countries in the region. their pass is really allies now. the immediate security situation probably is probably better than it's ever been. they have a problem because they have refused to allow the palestinians have a state of their own.

there are political divisions within israel that we've seen manifest themselves. those are not solved by additional american support. the united states should have businesslike relations. we should support those countries. we shouldn't support them when they are doing things we don't agree with. we should not had special relationships with saudi arabia israel. that just weakens our influence. how are we can have influence and be in broader influence if are not talking on a regular basis to one of the regimes there. when mike pompeo goes to riyadh i want them to know that the next step is tehran. i want them to know the next stop is tel aviv. and then each of those countries is there.

as opposed to giving unconditional support to someone of those countries do matter no matter what they do and not talking to others at all. >> how are we secure if russia interferes in our election and is interfering as we speak. how is that security, how do we trust our elections and the next election. i'm not sure that issue is security there. i do, we should take seriously the need to ensure the integrity of our elections and therefore if there is evidence of a rush or anyone else

tampering with our elections then it seems to me it would be an urgent priority to make sure that that cannot happen. on the other's hand are maybe it's in addition if we don't like foreign governments mucking around in our politics perhaps we should look at that means to muck. 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 the considered extent. it's usually the retired politicians that collaborate with this process. just speaking personally we have integrity in our elections. there are ways in which foreigners interfere neither

of you have posted about russia. >> i think steve mentioned it very briefly. when the cold war ended. this is the cold war. the soviets then believed they would not advanced eastward. whether or not that commitment ever existed. we certainly disregard it. the expansion of nato has brought it up to the borders of russia. the republics that were part of the former soviet union.

look at that from the russian point of view. and it poses a threat. my grandparents came from lithuania sign me up as being glad. nonetheless it's important to understand that there are reasons why russia may have some concerns about their security. however, it is not the old soviet union. if i'm not mistaken the total economy they make some 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 europeans were actually concerned about this russian threat they are more than able to deal with it on their own. they currently spend 1.1 percent of gdp on defense. they can afford more. it would appear that the germans and i'm not picking on them but as an example they are not necessarily all that concerned about a russian threat. we should just try to keep things in perspective. what should the united states ask -- reaction be. and the posture in the south china sea.

it will coordinate with other countries in the region to declare that we don't accept their territorial claims. we had decided probably correctly that there is no way short of war to stop them. we send it streaming through the south china sea. we still believe that this is open ocean i think we could do more of that. we should get some of our asian partners to come along with us. i think the british head done it once. we should be leading some tinkers or fritters along with us. neither we nor the

international tribunal that ruled on this. i think it's more complicated. i had tended to be more sanguine about it than many i've seen as this great game changer. some of the projects have not gone particularly well. and some of the countries are actually quite reflecting on this. and what that might mean. it's not clear how much long-term influence you actually gain. it's not like you can take the railway home. if that country doesn't do what you want.

if that country can't pay you that ultimately becomes your problem. in some cases china may have made some and wise loans. i do not see belts in belton road by itself as a particular game changer. because i worry more about china than i worry about other countries i am bothered by the fact that we keep getting distracted by problems elsewhere that are less significant. don't get me started on how badly president trump has handled our entire portfolio of relations. >> i don't follow this all that closely but it seems to me that if indeed they had developed an effective way to

gain influence in countries that need to have their infrastructure developed and modernized maybe we should do that. maybe we should reapportion some of the money that goes to the pentagon that ends up getting poured into afghanistan and the like. and using the chinese model. there is a question up there in the back. i did not understand the support that israel doesn't need the support to the u.s. we are finding them to the tune of $3 billion a year. could you clarify that.

i think it ranks 27th in the world in per capita income. and therefore no longer needs of the kinds the kinds of subsidies that we had been providing. on a per capita basis they give more military and economic aid to israel than almost any other country in the world and it is no longer necessary for israel's security. >> it seems to be necessary for the security because the united states is giving them $3 billion a year. >> that's not why we do it. it's mostly about american domestic politics. our time is up. does hold the applause. i'm really lucky because of my chosen profession and what i like about my job is that on

any given day i get to carry this microphone and it gives me permission to ask questions of a lot of really smart people and i gain light meant thank you very much. here is a look at some books being published they shake the babe got on the supreme court. in the latest biography. in migrating to prison law professors reports on the incarceration of people accused of breaking america's immigration laws. peggy wallace kennedy reflects

on her life in the broken road. look for these titles in bookstores this coming week. on afterwards our weekly author interview program. matt gates of florida interviews senator rand paul. here some of their discussion. if i sell something i'm not caring about my desires. i have to care about what you want. everything is focused out word. if i am a socialist i really am not caring too much about popular opinion when we socialize things like healthcare.

everybody's can get it. it doesn't seem like you'd had to care. so how does that drive selfishness. i think it is true. and it's an irony in a way because they would profess to be the other man. and also driven by an elite in their society and they consume and accumulate power and money and homes. to watch the rest of this interview. visit our website. and click on the afterwards tab. at the top of the page.

some of the events at book book tv will be covering this week. they will reflect on the career. and we will also be at new york anniversary -- university that day. and why they think president trump should be impeached. we will be back in manhattan at the peter j sharp peter peter and on saturday at the fdr presidential library. lou paper will recount the efforts. the u.s. ambassador to japan. they attempted to seek a peace accord between the two countries. all of these events are open to the public if you are in attendance take a picture in tagus it's television for

serious readers. all weekend every weekend. join us again next saturday. for the best in nonfiction books. coming up this morning on c-span two. they talk about the future of the communications industry. .. .. >> for 40 years c-span has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, , and