9:00 p.m. eastern on our program afterwards, deborah stone argues that numbers are objective and followed by adam higginbotham on the 1986 nuclear disaster in ukraine. coming up at 11:00 p.m., talking about nonviolence and its power to affect political and social change. consult your program guide for more information or visit booktv.org. now look at american isolationism. >> the school of foreign service and government department at georgetown university and senior fellow of the council on foreign relation. 2014-2017, serving in the obama administration as special assistance on the national security council. he also served during the clinton administration. a visiting scholar including harvard, columbia and the international institute for strategic studies in london.

numerous articles, thought arthur of nine previous books including the end of the american era from 2002, 2010, how they become friends and no one's worlds, the rising west in the coming global turned. the fellow at the hudson institute. the wall street journal and professor of foreign affairs in new york. a fellow at the council and he is also doing numerous books himself including american foreign policy and how it changed the world from 2001. next year i hope you will have the chance to host in a live form. the art of a covenant. the united states, israel and the fate and jewish people. the 10th book, isolationism, healing itself from the world is

a subject of that discussion tonight. please welcome me in joining them. >> thank you for that introduction. it is really terrific to be here. i hate to think how long i've known him now. >> quite a while. >> i can certainly remember back in the clinton administration, doing a pbs thing together. i think it was bosniaack then. that was like 30 years ago. you have written like 10 bucks. it fil me with envy. i don't know how you do it. and they a good. is book, numbe 10 on isolationism. what led you to this subje? it is kind of a deep dive into history.

what is the relevance of all of that history for whate are looking at today? >> thank you for joining me toght. thank youor organizing this event. maybe i will ansr that question, walter, by discussg three revelations that occurred to me while i was working on the book. i thi that this will be music to your ears because i kno you feel the same way. those of us that write about american foreign policy, not knowing enoh about what came before pearl harbor. and i put myself into that category in the sense that until i wrote this boo i knew a lot about world war ii. i knew a lot about containme. i could tell you what happene afte9/11, but i could tell you very little about american policy in the early decades in

the 19th century in the early part of the 20th century. it was eye-opening for me. in fact, my head exploded when i started to read this. i first reactionas what country am i reading about? so little resemblance to the america that i know and that i have grown up in. that america was very engaged in the world. sendin military forces around the world. always at war. that is not what we were like for st of our history. the second revelation that i will put out is tha one of the reasons we were isolationists and were reluctant t extend our reach around the world was american exceptionism. the founders propagated this notion. foign -- this would come at

home. instead, we should perfect the american experiment by keeping the world at bay and attending our world garden. that was also a revelation to me because american exceptionalism has been the opposite. mainly, a narrative that says america has to come out and run the world. that is new. that is a post world war ii phenomenon. this will come directlyo your question about relance for today. i started this book well before trumpas elected. when trump came into office and on his first day, right after his swearing in, he said from this day forward, it is america first. well. this president is going back to the pre-pearl harbor nrative of america first and the

isolationism, unilateralism, protection elizabeth that we see in trump'spproach to the world it is right out of american history. as you wrote in your own book, special providence which definitely shapes my own thinking abo this, he has tapping into a more populous tradition. they are a powerful during much of american history. still powerfu today, as we are finding out during trump's presidency. >> you know, it is hard, isolationists is kind of a dirty word in american foreign policy. one of the interesting things is that, there is kind of a moralization of foreignolicy idea as scared if somebody says, we, maybe we should make a succession, you are an appeaser.

need to worry about what we are outsourcing to china. a lot of the foreign policy arguments in the cold war era and beyond, really cam down to pinning nasty labels on the other person because it was sort of assumed that there was a siular truth, the rht way to do foreign policy and then everhing else was law. as you went back and compare that older tradition, with that cold war and post-cold war, did you find that holding up? did you find thathere was merit or was it allind of, you know, is it all bad that it is coming back? >> well, you know, w had two dierent modes of strategy in this country.

in the sen that from 1789, beginning life with this federation until 194 isolationism was basically the only game in town. just to make clear what i am saying, it is about the extension of strategic commitment outside the motherland, beyond north america. were engaged commercially, we were enged culturally from day one, we sent o military abroad on a short-term basis to defend our commercial interest in our citizens. what we did not do is follow in the footsteps of great european powers and take over colonies, take over possessions, extend our reach and into the affairs of other countries. that is what the founding fathers said we should not do when george washington said commcial relationship with

everyone, political connections with no one. that basically lasted right up until 1941. it was the only game in town. after 41, running the world was the only game i town. if you said, hey, why are wen afghanistan, why are we in iraq, isolationists. bad, dark. one of the things that i want to do in the book is talk aut the pros and cons of a more isolationist strategy. you can talk about the pros and cons of american internationali and hopefully find a middle ground between doin too little which is where we were in the 10s, doing too muchhich i think is where we have been amid our forever wars

and yes, when i look back, that is the history of the united states prior to world war ii. i see a period during which the ad version two geopolitical attachment made great sense. the united states rose in the 19th century i part because it focused on the home front. on western expansion. advancement in the united states, not battleships and colonies. isolationism went way too far. it led the united states to run for cover when serious unavoidable threats were emerging in europe and asia. the goal is to look at the long duration and to askhen does strategic attachment make sense anwould it be good for us and when does it not make sense and what does it tell us today when

it comes tomerica moving forward. >> we will move the conversation up into the presence a little bit more as we go on. i think that it is important to look at the historical case that charles is working with on some of these issues. you know, i thinkne, something that everyone can recite the name of, but very f people understand is the monroe doctrine. its role as sortf an element of an american branc strategy. as you are going through this, w did you come to think of the monroe doctrine and of its place in american thought >> before i get to the monroe doctrine, let me tell a very quick story from 1793.

i think that it will convey to the listeners tay, just how tenacious this was going rig back to the beginning. right back to george washington. in the revolutionary area of war, w were losing the brith were getting the best of us and the founders that were against alliance and against attaching ourselves to any foreign powers said, we need an alliance with the french otherwise weill lose. they helped us when the revolutionary war. few years later in 1783, britain and france go to war again a the french ask george washington how many troops, how many ships will you send across the atlantic. what does george washington do? he issues the proclamation of neutraty. heasically says despite the

alliance, good night and good luck, you are on your own. that was the last alliance the united states had until after world war ii. th is how tenacious, even for george washington how this idea was. 1823, monroe issues a declaratioin which he says, no new eurean colonies in the western hemisphere. this is after many had returned to republins. they were afraid that the spanish may come back. in the conventional wisdom and the publ mind, this was a great declaration in the western hemisphere. it was nothing of the sort. it was mostly hot air. the united states did not lift its finger to defend the

hegemony in the western hemispre. when an american delegation was invited to panama, a conference, a talk fast about the future of republican government in latin america. the president, who at that time was adams, congress went berserk. they said we have no business interfering in the affairs of latin america. in any way, we do not wanto sit down at a table witheople of aican descent, latin americans, catholics,hat is not us. that is not our business. a strong racist reaction. it was soate that one ofhe delegates died before they g the and the other arrived so late that the coness was over.

so much for the monroe doctrine. >> washington, whene broke the treaty with france, d he just say, hey, i am breing the treaty, did he have an excuse? how did he handle that? he would not tell a lie to his dad about theherry tree. how does he break in alliance with france? >> this was a hugely controversial issue, as you can imagine. as you know, there were dierent camps in the united states at this time. those that dominated in the uthern part of theountry were very pro- french. the others domined in the north were pro-british. and, so, when washington said we are not coming, we will remain neutral, they went crazy.

but, washingn was very smart. he was very strategic. he did not saying we are no lengthy alliance. he basically said, under the current circumstances, we don't think tt it is in the american national interest to involve ourselves in a war ainst britain and france. despite the fact that he was careful and not unrolling it, the opposition still went crazy. ey said you d not have the constitutionaluthority not to honor tha alliance because alliances are ratified by t senate and only the senate can undo them. in some respects, the farewell address of 1796 was the effort to thread the needle. he came back to the scene and he id, we really do not want you tangling alliances with anybody. you know what, we will honor those that we have, sort of, may

, in a while, but let's not do this again. even though it was basically defunct, it was not until 1801 that it was mutually pled down by the french and the americans in creating a new treaty. let's jump forward a bit. you know, the dominance of this in american history, what made ito away? why did we just go back to being isolationist after world war ii? what happened? >> well, we start off after the civil war. finishg westward expansion. it is important to put a caveat out therehat even thoh the united states saw itself as the

chosen nation that was following the path of enlightenment, that was anti-emre, anti-expansionist, this was pretty ruthless. lot of people died, native americans pushed out of the way or put onto reservation. we grabbed a big chunk of land from mico. weried unsuccessfully to take er canada on multiple locations. it is not like t united states was sweetness and light but it diadhere to the founding faers to go a little further in the pacific coast. to tend to our own garden, not to look for tuble abroad. searching of monsters to destroy but, then you get to the end of the 19th century. the united states has turned into a world-class economic power. in part because it was focused

on domestic development. closed in t words of the historian frederick jackson turner. they began to worry that the democracy, the prosperityould begin. industrialization was kicking in. a new america emerged if this experent continues, we need a new frontier. where is that new frontier now that we have made it to the pacific coast? it is overseas. that is the narrative that president mckinley, teddy roosevelt, the admiralsed to justify the spanish-arican war. to basically say, we now need to take manifest destiny on the road because we have completed the missn here at home. the mainroblem, as you kw, walter, in making that argument

and kicking the spanish out of cuba, we also took over cuba, took overuerto rico,nnexed hawaii, occupied the philippis, took over samoa. suddenly, american said, wait a minute, you told us we are taking manifest destiny abroad to spread democracy and the american way and suddenly we are colonial occupiersf the philippines. that then sets the stage both for the corction to idealism, but als for the isolatiism of the interwar era. >> s how did wilson's sort of reaction against this earlier policy take place, in your view? >> well, i thinkart of what happened here was there was a

sharp backlash against real imperialism. it is not in our dna. it is not in the constitution. very interesting debate about what we do abo these territories. at do we deal with puerto rico? what d we deal with samoa? they were not on the path to statehood. they were notccupied by whi people. this was a big part of the qualifications of integration. they really didtruggle to figure out the state of these territories. were still dealing with that today. should puerto rico become a state of the union you go through this movement. in fact there was an anti-imperialist movement that the demoatic candite for president, a successive

candidate, wilson, the democrat comes in, he pic this up and he basally is an idealist/ isolationist hill pulls out of europn and asian commitnts. he maintains a strong stance from the western hemisphere. he sees the united states as a country that will spread democracy around the world. he basically dallows any realist ambition. he takes the country io world war in 1917 after the germans begato sink german vessels. he doesell on the basis of pure idealm. when he rose before congress to ask for a board declaration, he said we are here to save the world for democracy. we are going to war simply on

the matter of principle and human righ. suddenly, americans are dying in the trenches. what is wilson talking about. then heries to sell the league of nations to the senate. three votes, all of the down. wilson finally says, well, i could not convince the senate so i will convince the american people. the electionf 1920 is our referendum on american internionalism. the republican candidate, it sically says, mak my day. i stand for the policie of george washington. i am against entanglement. running against jes cox. what happens? one ofhe most lopsided elections in american history. that really clears the way for the stubborn isolationism in the

20s and 30s. >> in some ways it always seems to me that the 1930s wer some of the most isolaonist decade in american history. working with the bank of england skipping financial flows going in postwar europe. it was inadequate. hyper optimistic that simply by keeping the economies of the world going we could enable. that was the other. >> every now and then i do ask myself, forome of the viewers, the wonderful 1929 treaty -- >> 28. it outlawed war.

really just in the nick of time. can you imagine what history would have been like if war had not en outlawed in the late 1920s. the murder, the mayhem tt would have taken place. they were not complete idiots. the isolationists of the 20s. the idea of self determination, breaking of the european empire. what people govern tmselves. on the other hand, if you divide europe into lots of different countries, it wil not be like the quarrel between austria, draggingn america. they had some thought. naval forces at the time were the only ones that couldet to the united states. the u.s. pushed very hard. they had this sense of w

prevented the worst, we broken up the big empires, weot rid the absolute monarchies. we have nal disarmament and we will keep the economy going. in the 20s there was this internationalism white in a way no formal alliances. you know. in the 3, when the depression hits, basically, we just have to look inward right now. an attempt for an ternationalist approach to the depression. and, so, up until the fall of fran in 1940 when the people really began to worryn the administtion, we are just out of it for those 10 years. does that sound right?

>> i think that you are spot on. what i call in the book, borrowing a term from a historian. the u.s. was internationalist because it is continue to be involved commercially. it continued to essentially conduct diplomac through wall street. wall street was in europe and east asia trying basically t run through investment. the other thing that occurred in the 1920s is that tre was a new multilateralism. interestingly, they were all packs of inaction. the united states was willing. not to bill the navy and to outlaw war. you would have never gotten the

senate to ratify something that committed the united state to do sething. that does not happen until the 40s. until world war ii. the gat depression is really the turning point. that is when the u.s. notnly did detaches itself geopolitically, i will be cused on the laser on a domestic front. beginning to shepherd thrgh the congress one act after anothe more or less cuts the united states off from the outside world to avoid the prospect of bein drawn into the war. this is anotherevelation that i came upon. roosevelt is remembered for the new deal. also a great wartime leader. until pel harbor, he was really part of the mainseam. yes, he did change course and 3

and began to argue that the u.s. needed to provide assistance to the british and others,nd then he started in 1941. his main objective was not to bring the u.s. into the war it was to prevent the u.s. from going to war by letting others defend theelves. keeping the nazis from becoming strong enough to ce to the western hemisphere. he did not go to warntil he had no choice because japan brought the war to the u.s. >> the arsenal of democracy that sohow sounds internationalist people somehow today, we want to supply the with all the weapons that they needo that we can sit here safely and have, basically, think russian blo and british gold was more or less away he hoped to win the war. and even when he did get in, the

russians continue to take most of the casualties. heas written that he thought america has two wartime goals. one was to destroy the brish empire and the other was to destroy nazi germany. the objecve was uppmost americ mind in any particular point. .... ....

opinion before pearl harbor,0% of the american public was agait. that gives you a sense of how strong the sentiment was. >> you sort of understand it as here is thi wood chipper. do you really want to stick your hand in that wood chipper and do you want your kids to go by o an island in the pacific you don't even know th name of people would actlly say no. i didn't really understand this until i started doing my work on the relations that brought me into that postwar period and the whole palestine thing i didn't realize aer the end of world wa ii americans had reverted to an isolationist approach that we

dismantled 90% of the army and one of the reasons roosevelt made as many concessions as he did was he believed there waso way to keep american troops in europe for more tn a year after the end of the war. it really wasn't until stalin sort of began to loom much larger that actually that postwar consensus starts to take shape. it's stalin after hitler not to simply hitler. is that your reading? >>oosevelt himself was worried the internationalism wouldn't last and after the end of t war the u.s. would resort to its default position that h come to be isolationm and after the end of the war as you kw there was a demobilization even tugh they did keep forces abroad and there was bipartisan support for

a new brand of what we call the liberal internationalism, the path with very little objections. but you are right that over the cose of the 1940s and 50s, the isolationists reappeared and at first the onset of the cold war pushed them tbe more quiet but then you get the korea war and the decision to deploy the positions to europe in the early 1950 people start to get worried and you see various congressmen say wait a minute this is going too far. we don want to go down this road and in 52, 53, 54 there were various amendments that

came forward to try to curtail the availability of the united states to deploy forces abroad and to take the kind of actions that ended up being t core to the cold war. >> may be you can hit your refresh button. >> can you he me now? it'sctually walter having the connection issue. >> there we go. >> you froze for a while so i couldn't see. >> i think the russians have stopped messing with our communications so thate can continue. >> all night, good. i' been interested in the way that you look at the key documents of that perd like

the un charter itself as i read it they incorporated the reservations into the unharter that is if you look at the way that i differs from the league of nations without saying anything about it, they quietly turned it from wilson to lodges and some of the weaknesses that are in the un today i think you can trace the to that. but also if youook carefully at the nato treaty, it is fascinating historically the nature of the alliance thaif they are allies than they are legally obligedo go to defense but under the nato treaty, actually each country is obliged

to consult itsonstitutional process because the senate wouldn't have ratified a nato treaty that tohe power to declare war out of the hands of the senateut also even nato isn't quite what they would have meant by an alliance. >> st to clarify for everyone what you a talking about when you mentned the reservations, when wilso brought the treaty that contained the league of nations tohe senate the republican opponents, not all of them but the international party led by mr. vandenburg came to wilson and said if you are willing to revive the treaty, to water it down a little bit so that it doesn't like the

international league can tell us what to do then we will go ahead and ratify and wilson said no for me that would b a moral compromise and i'd rather go down in flam. well that is exactly wt happened. he went down in flas. roosevelt, you are right he lened from those mistakes and he made sure that the document that emerged to put the un forward was one that could passs the senate. he made sure that there were always republicans involved working on the un an he was very conscious to keep the aspects of the foreign policy goin the way that that was drafted this goes back to this strain of isolationism and uniteralism

and weee that today big tim in the republican party this idea that no commitments that make abroa can impair our sovereignty and ability of the congress and executive branch to make their own decisions. >> in the column coming out in the journal tonight and tomorrow i talk about how t modern republan party posed trump's sort of what you've got left are two factions one is rand paul, i think in isolationist and this is probably 20s isolationists they wou favor business engagement and so on and then the sort of unilateral hawks that want and assertive amerin power but don't mind having out

associated allies and don't want to see america compromised so you now have these two between themt is pretty much the bulk of the republican par. >> i think it is very reminiscent of the 20s because what you had was called the irreconcilable and they were basically the nativist libertarians, th nationalists and then you had the weighing of the republican pty but it was a unilateralist internaonalism and today we see more or less the same thing and the democratic party meanwhile has gone in the direction of the earlier democratic party and much more committed to multilateralism and international teamwork. it's a little more complicated because in the 20s we had a

progressive but irreconlable and i would think today, you know, somebody like bernie sanders or these other figures on the democratic left are much more cautious about and want a much moreestrained foreign policies so i looks to me as if d by the way it is interesting if you think about the vote in 2016 and 2020 if you combine the sanders vote and the trump vote, you get a majority who are supporting essentially candidates that funmentally dissent fromhe kind of inteationalist orthodoxy that you and i grew up in. >> history is rhyming if not repeating in the sens that you are seeing this strange alliance between progressives on the left and a kind of libertarian weighing o the right calng

for the pullback and a different kind of foreign pocy in fact we recently saw gege soros a progressive came up with charles company, a rig-wing libertarian to found a new think tank, the quincy institute and what brings them togethe is a desire to kind of demilitarized or lower the militarization of the erican foreign policy and stay out of the foreign war. this is very similar to the alliance that woodrow wilson confronted between emily and other progressive activists on the left and people like bar that you just menoned on the libertarian internationalis right. >> it's funny how national character, i don't know if that is even the word for it, but some of these cultural features

are. we have a question from the audience ande've had a great conversation and we would b happy to spend the next three hours going down various historical alleys together, but let's see what some of the audienceas and if anybody else would like to ask questions, you can use the ask a questn feature and it shouldllow you to put a question in. we have from kansas here i finished reading the plot against ameri by philip roth that plays out what might have happed had we stuck to isolationism during world war ii. one thing it seemed to lead to is an exposure o the worst notions of racists. his racism more easily tapped into under an isolationist foreign policy?

>> eellent question. historically racism, nativism, anti-immigrant sentimentnd isolationism has been entangled. they need not be in the sense that the united states could pursue a strategy in which it tried not to entangle itself in afghanistan and iraq and other places in a way that has nothing to do with racm, but in the 19th century as i mentioned earlier, part of the brake on expansion was discomfort with bringing into the union or attachingo the uted states lands that were not populated and you then get anti-immiant sentiment kicking i in the 1880s first against chinese and againstll asians and then in the interwar period when

lter and i were just discussing isolationism a comes back with inventions and the u.s. passes draconian anti-immignt legislation. 1924 legislation essentially took down the incoming imgration of jews and catholics from europe by 90% and in the 1930s aut a million mexican heritage were deported so yes there has been a general correlation when the cntry is more isolationist and it also tends to either be anti-immigrant or more racially sensitive, and it's happening today if you kind of peel back the onion on trump's america rst policy you see the isolionism and ulateralism we have been talking about harkening back to the earlier

periods and it's inflicted with anti-immigrant intity politics. the two often go together but logically speaking there is no reason that theyeed to. >> a lot of what was driving t imperialist movement was in fact the idea that the philippines simply couldt govern themselves and if we left they would fall into chaos and to be takebetaken over by either germr japan that was actually a motive force that influenced some of the policymakers. i would say you go back at certain pointsnd find just about everybody is influenced one way or another by racial steotypes or ideas of how history works that are in some

ways racially reflected so teddy roosevelt and william jennings bryan and early in their own ys the leader of the imperialist camp, one of the leadg both actually we can see had a lot of racial influence in their thinking. >> that is right. the anti-imperialist movement basically says the people in the philpines were the people in cuba, they will never be able to govern themselves democratically because they are the wrong race or religion or culture so let's not bother. and the ierialists said you are right they don't have the tradion but that's why we hav to show them how to do it. so, they were both racist in their own way but one was saying that isn't our problem and the

otr said we need to go out and save tm. and that is the narrative that caught on after world war ii not so much we need to go out and sa them and make everybody a certain race but the idea that the ameran experiment could be universal and we could go out there and spread the gospel. >> a lot of the skepticism even as late as the vietnam war with william fulbright, he was from arkansas and for someone of his generation he grew u with people among whom reconstruction was a living reaty and a lot of his was linked to his skepcism that could become democrats and so he saw

johnson's attempts in the delta and the new deal fosouth vietnam nation building. to fulbrighthis sounded like the kind of reconstruction and it just wasn't going to work. i think one of the interestin patterns i noticed is when the iraq war ces at the time they sort of forgotten about reconstruction or the white south has forgotten what it felt like to them to be part a northern nationbuildin exercise

about the revolions in latin amica or the 1840s about the volutions sweeping through europe they would say should we gout and help them and they always said no because it isn't going to work and it really isn't until you get to the 20th century in particular to the cold war era and after world war ii americans began to think tt they can actually go out and rebuild and i did work in germanynd japan. it hasn't word in many other aces and i think one of the reasons americans tod are so frustrated with american foreign policy is that it didn't really work to try to turn afghanistan and iraq into ohio as a fools errand. it turns out you have t subject them to the greatest levels of violence anyone has ever

experienced with japan and germany in world war ii. step two, occupy them, have them surrenr totally and then step three, have another power they hate even more than they hate you and if you can combine those three ingredients do think it is a little troubling to me modern social science and the developmt economics and so on a lot of this intellectual ener comes from developing a methodology for exporting the american way into otr countries and its one can see how people from another cultural background might look at that as a form of imperialism. i don't think that we in america thought about this enough even though i would say there's sti some merit in and a lot of the things we've done. >> we have another question here

from the audience from mary on youtube. with the hardship covid is inflicting ucor countries -- foresee countriesaking the oprtunity to regroup and rebuild and wt are some of the risks and everyone taking that approach? >> guest: in some ways this will allow me to talk about some of the lessons of history walter and i have been talkingbout for where we are today because i'm not someone who is an isolationist or councils isolationism far from it. i think the united stateshould stay engaged in the wld and continue to play an important role in keeping t peace in europe and east asia especially given the rise of chi but i do think that the coury today faces conditions that are not

unli those in the 1930s. covid-, the pandemic and the economic impt being chief among them. we are going through an econoc crisis that we haven't see since the 1930s. americanare tired of the war. we sent overstretchedust as we did after world war i. there is a sense that the ambition abroad has come at the expense of liberty at home either because big brothe broths overreached on surveillance or because we keep going to war sed on pieces of legislation from001 and 2002. that's not what the founders intended. they gave congrs the right to declare war for good reason they are not exercising that right so i think given these conditions, the next president needs t focus heavily on the domestic

front in the pandemic, getting the economy open, dealing with racial injustice, dealing with the fact that we are a deeply divided country and our democratic institutis are stumbling. that doesn't mean we cannot continue to engage aroad, but it needs to be a more modest form of engagement. we need to fin the middle ground between dng too much which is where we then for the last couple of decades, and doing t little which is where we were in the 1920s and 1930s so what i call for in the book is aight to size of the foreign policy that brings our ambition abroad back into line with our political will. that's the conversation i think that we need in this country and myuess is that it's going to start coming because we have no choice. and i doorry that if we don't

have that discussion, if we don't get ahead of the curve and craft this more modest and more pragmatic foreign policy by desi it could happen by default and if that hapns, then i think dangerous overreach could turn into more danrous under reach just as it did in th30s. >> let me throw you a curveball on exactly that. if we look athat is going on in azerbaijan and armenia right now, w see a very dangerous shooting war breaking out and it's not impossible that azerbaijan is going to start winning and start occupying territors that in some cases the armenians have lived in for centuries and some cases occupied after the more recent war between them. when that happens there would certainly be pretty masve flight of hundreds of thousands

ofefugees in the winter in t mounins. is tha the kind of thing where under your vision of the american engagement do we get into that or stay out of that, what do we do with a problem like this? >> you have your genocide, there's a lot of history, there will be a powerful lobby in the u.s. tha would want us to do something. d this is kind of in your area of expertise. >> when i talked about lightening the load and easing up on t gas, i'm speaking specifically about the military engagement in the sense that the war in iraq, afghanistan, libya

haven't gone well and they've zapped the appetite for the continued engagement of that sort. i do think that if we pull back on those kinds of comtments, we have to lean and on dlomacy diplomacy. >> there will certainly be cases that it just doesn't happen and you come down to the binary choice in the way what clinton face .co savoither you do nothinand seek hundreds of thousands of refugees or you risk war. >> the bottomine is the united ates cannot do everything and that i would want the u.s. to be very heavily involved in this conflict leaning o azerbaijan and armenia to resolve the conflict peacefully. if there is an outflow of

refugee i would want the united states to be heavily involved in humanitarian assistance. i would not advocate for u.s. involvement in a war in that part o the world and that's because i think one of th mistakes that we have made in the recent past is repeated involvemt in wars of choice and strategic periphery. in some cases we have done so for a goo rson. getting involved in some areas like libya we were intending to save lives a to protect vilians. but what happened, we intervened along with our european allies and the countries fell art and turned into a magnet for terrorism and so i think that yes there are times in which the s. should use military force but realize it has aects you efu cannot control so i am big on keeping the u.s. militarily

engaged o the big ticket items, eping great power and peace in eurasia. i'm more skeptical that the u.s. should send its sons and daughters into places like syria and that's w it's so important to get ahead of the issue on the diplomatic front and one final issue i think we are going to have to look to others to do more if there is a party that would depl a peacekeeping force or should be doing something it's the europeans. euro has a big market they should develop more capabity and become more capable of helping the united states in issues that require military force. >> now you almost sound like trump. >> i wouldldn't go that far. i would remind everyone that it was under the obama

administration when e president said y need to spend 2% of your gdp on defense and pick up more of the heavy lifting. this is the direction in which american foreign policy is headed with her the next president is donald trump or joe biden. a. >> a couple more questions here fromudience members. was worow wilson not us drivinstrivingby bringing amerid war i to lead andhape though world ter in ways that it would allow men to keep running the wor? was world war i a sort of polic aimed at cementing a racial gender a gemini? >> your question exposes what a

complicated guy woodrow wilson was in the sense that in many respects he was the most idealist president in american history. he did believe the u.s. could go out and transform the world and that we could create a globa landscape in which nations play by a new set of rules and open diplomacy, darmament, banding together against aggression that he was also number one in an imperialist not out of sight of the western hemisphere but in latin america. and a racist in favor of segregating the civil service and then when the war came to an end and the versailles trey was being negotiated, he basically turned down thbe bid y the japanese to include the clause on racial equality which

drove not just the japanese, but e indians and my others not because they saw this as a treaty that was in some ways doinexactly what you said which was ratifying the racial hierarchy in the world so yes there was a complicated dual nature to woodrow wilson but i think h needs to be remembered in both respects and idealist leader who tried to change the world in positive ways and soone who at the same time was a racist and imperialist. >> that'sow history works. it's a very complicated business. let's see h does the u.s. involvement in vietnam fitnto your analysis in yr opinion has the u.s. learned fm that experience? >> i think that it was in

instance of overreach. in general i think pretty highly of the american foreign policy during the cold war in the sense that we prevailed in that confli because of strategic patients. generally played it pretty well and we outlasted and outperformed the soviet union. the real concern i have is what we have done since the fall of the berlin wall when i think that the sense of experiencing the liberal order, turning the middle east into an islandf democracy this is when we really got ahead of ourselves but clearly in the vietnam war, the united states engaged in a level of military intervention that was far beyond what the interest warranted and that led t the

retreat because that didn't really happen but it d lead to the enenchment where nixon and kissinger pulled back and pursd. nixon introduced in the prison golf a strategyf relying much more heavily on irad saudi arabia to do america's bidding, so there was a trimming of commitment during that period, t there wasn't a collapse of the internationalistonsensus in part because the cold war was still on even though there was detent in some ways as a consequence of the vietnam war and had we learnedhe lessons, i fear not because i think some of the mtakes that we made in vietnam we have recently me in the middle east. that i to say as walter and i were talking about a little while ago going into a very complicated countries that we don't understand and don't know

much about and thinking that we can rebuild them from the inside out. >> it's surprisingly hard to learn. one of the things that struck me was that obama decision you mentioned earlier about going into libya where the whole basis of the original political appeal was what a terrible mistake it was to go into iraq and how you can't predict the consequences et cetera and we are now watching the libyan civil war multiple several years after the manitarian intervention which had great intentions but which repeated a lot of the iraq war also assumptions about what could be accomplished.

>> i wasn't working in the white house when that conflict broke out but i have to say i was surprised because i understood president obama to be someo who did believe the united states had bitten off too much and who really did want to pivoted out of the middle east and as an outside observer at the time, i looked at lydia that has about 140 tribes, and i said to myself anybody that wants to invade that count should think again. my own sense and this is complete impressionistic because as i sa i wasn't there at the time. kind of draed into it by the allies because the europeans wanted to do it th the support of the arab countrs and i think the sense was we will listen ifll of these other

countries don't want to do it i don't want to be the one that stands in the way, but as we now know, the results ofhat intervention were not much better than the results of iraq or afghanistan. >> so, it's harder to learn from history than it looks i think is one lesson. we have the question how do we get congress to exercise or debate its war power authority because think this is a smart queson. there has been a kind of coressional abdication of power. >> it is a tough question to answer in the sense that i would have thought that it would happen by now. it's now 2020. we have been fighting in the middle east continusly since 9/11 a congress continues to

go along for the ride. i guess my general answer would be i've come away fro the trump areahinking that our system of checksnd balances doesn't work well as we thought it did. i'm not a big fan of president trump even though walter accused me. i'm not goi to let that go lightly, walter. [laughter] i've actually been quite struck by the degree which it can do an enormous amount of damage and there's not much we can do about it despite the fact that the founders built what they called a compoun republic and dispersed power across the executive and the judicial and the legislave branches precisely to check everybody's wer. he hasn't checked his power that

well so i do think that whatever happens in the electn next week we ough to get together whether on capitol hill or a wise person in congress and simply say do we need to implement some kind o change whether it is legislative or constitutional or legal to make sure that we are not again experiencing thecceptance of this recent era and i do think that one of the issues at should be on theocket is reinstating cgress' role as the exclusive body that has the right to declarear and make sure that it exercises that right. >> i tnk that there were so many legislative permissions and emergency acts he was able to basically slap a tariff on any product he wants if he ss it's

a national security issue and he has the statutory authority to do it. there ought to be some kind of a sunset clause, but the congress has basically written an awful lot of blank checks over the last 50 or 60 years and it would be awfully nice to see a bipartisan committee come together and think aut which ones need to be repealed and ybe a new grant of authority should have a sunset clause. congress actually if it wanted it could call hi an awful lot of power ba. but it just does not seem to want to. >> i have to say that in this current environment where democrats and republicans rarely even speak to each other on capitol hill it may well be hard to reach a consensus b i think you and i agree the last four

years have illuminated some problems in the system that do need to be addressed. >> i think that the executive is mighty and that's another rerring theme in american politics is fromime to time people do dial bacand undermine the execuves. >> it started in 1898. a lot of it does have to do with the foreign ambition and policy that the founders were right that is what led to the executive overreach. then when you get to the cold war era and president truman enters without even thering to go to congress, the founders would roll over in their graves if they knew they entered with no resolution. a. >> but it' a little tricky

because with the soviet union and nuclear deterrence the president doesn't have time to ma phone cal before you decide whether to respond to an incoming missile strike. so, once the president of the united states has the power to destroy hundreds millionsf people by using the nuclear football it can't help but in fact the sort of political system in various ways. people see that power in a different way. charley's book thacharlie's booy recommend to everybody i think will help you think more clearly about not just foreign policy but as you can see from the discussion foreign policy and domestic politics and policy are intimately connected so i think

we've probably stressed the audience long enough and kept everybody on the equivalent long enough but it's been a great talk and i am so glad that you've written this book. >> i can't tha you enoughor joining me for the conversation. i also do need to blame you in part for the book because as i said a special providence was a book that influend me and encouraged me to kind of take on this effort to look back at the nation's history and i think you and i agree americans of all political persuasions need t know more about theountry's past, particularly the pre- cold war as we try to figure out where we go in the future. >> absotely, great. >> i just want to come back and thank u for tonight's tk.

it's been fascinating to have this lens to loothrough in the current events. thank you so much for your research and also fo moderating the talk. i want to thank the audience for watching tonight as well as walter said, please by the book with the button or the link that you have on your screen and that will take you right over to third place books so you can support them and if you would like to watch more content you can follow this podcast channel by clicking the follow button a the top right corner. we will hopefully see you both again sometime soon but thank u again so much for being he tonight and i hope you have a great night. >> thank you. >> thanks again.

>> the good thing about numbers is that to come up with a system

whether it's an algorithm or just a simple list of indicators is the exercise to measure things forces us to think about what we value and care about, what's important. >> watch booktv on c-span2 tonight. good evening and welcome to the 2020 prize award ceremony. i'm your host from the kirk reviews and i'm coming to you live from the beautiful central public library in downtown austin texas. in a typical year this room would be filled with the brightest literary stores in america, the kirkus editors around the country, publishers, agents and of course the readers clamoring to meet their favorite writers. the room would be loud with la