talk that directly about it. but i do. i believe that is exactly what we are staring at. and it is a very ugly face indeed. in american politics right now. the choices are tough. that rig and had to make over the next several years. and we are can anita tough leader. this president has proved that he is tough and strong and smart as hell. they never want to acknowledge how smart he is. he has great judgment. he's a great leader. he is smart. he cares about this country. to watch the rest of this program visit our website. and click on the afterwards tab to find his interview and all previous episodes of the program. >> charles kupchan is the president of the school of

educational affairs. and the senior fellow on the council of foreign relations. he served as the obama administration a special assistant to the president on the national security council. he also served on the national security council during the clinton administration. he has been a visiting scholar. in the international in city for strategic studies. and the numerous articles. the author of nine previous books including the end of the american era from 2002. 2010. how am and enemies become friends and no one's world. the rising west and the global turn in 2012. he is a fellow in strategy at the hudson institute. and a professor of foreign affairs in humanities. before joining hudson.

he was in the council of foreign relations. and he has authored numerous books himself. the special provenance. and the american foreign policy and how it has change the world in 2001. next year i hope we will have the chance to host at life. for the art of the covenant. the united states israel and the jewish people. the tenth book isolationism. the history of america's efforts. shields themselves from the world. please join me in welcoming walter russell mead and charles kupchan. >> think you for that introduction. it's really fantastic to be here. i hate to think how many years now. quite a while. i can certainly remember back in the clinton administration doing the pbs thing together and i think it was on bosnia back then. so that was like 30 years ago.

you have written ten books. i don't know how you do it so quickly. and they're good. this book. number ten. on isolationism what invited you to the subject, and what do you find it's kind of a deep dive into history. what is the relevance of all of that history for what we are looking at today. >> thank you walter. for joining me tonight and thinks for organizing this event. and i will answer this question by discussing three revelations that occur to me while i was working on the book. the first and i think this will be music to your ears. because i know you feel the same way. is that is the policy.

and the thinking about america's role. and what came before pearl harbor. i put myself into that category in the sense that until i wrote this book. i knew a lot about world war ii. i could tell you what happened after september 11 but i could tell you very little about american policy in the early decades. in the 19th century. it was eye-opening for me. in fact my have exploded when i started to read this history. because my first reaction was what country am i reading about. there is so little resemblance to the america that i know and i had grown up in. because that america was very engaged in the world. in military forces around the world always at war. is not what we were like for most of our history.

the second revelation that i think i will put out here at the front of our conversation is that one of the reasons we were isolation lists and reluctant to extend our strategic reach around the world was american exceptionalism. the founders propagate this notion at the expense of liberty and prosperity at home. by keeping the world at bay. intending our own garden. that was also a revelation to me because since world war ii american exceptionalism has been the opposite. mainly, a narrative that says america has to go out and run the world. that's new. it is really a post-world war ii phenomenon. this will come directly to your question. about relevance for today.

is that i started this book while before trump was elected. but then when trump came into office and on his first date right after his swearing-in. he said, from this day forward it's america first. it was like whoa. this president is going back to the pre- pearl harbor narrative. and the isolationism. the unilateralism. that we see in his trump -- in his approach to the world. in your own book special providence. he is tapping in to a more populist jacksonian tradition. that was really very powerful during much of american history. it is still powerful today as we are finding out during the presidency.

it's hard for people. isolationist is kind of a dirty word in american history. one of the interesting thing about the cold war era and beyond if we should make a conception. you are an appeaser. if somebody said we need to worry about what are we outsourcing to china. as a first a protectionist. a lot of the foreign policy arguments in the cold war era and beyond really kind of came down to pinning nasty labels on the other person. it was assumed that it was a singular truth. the right way to do foreign-policy. when we compare with what we

are now in that cold war thing. did you find it. or was it all kind of or is it all bad. we tend to have two different modes of strategy. when we began life as a federation until 1941. is basically the only game in town. just to make clear what i'm saying. it is about the extension of teacher commitment. beyond north america. we were very engaged commercially from day one and culturally from day one. we sent our mirror military abroad on a short-term basis to defend our commercial

interest interests and our citizens but for what we did not do is follow in the footsteps of great european powers and take over colonies and territorial possessions to extend our reach and into the affairs of other countries. that is what the founding fathers said we should not do. with the commercial relations. political connections was no one. it lasted up until 1941. as we were just saying. it was the only game in town. if you said why in afghanistan. everyone said isolationist. one of the things i want to do in the book. is leverage the national debate.

so we can talk about the pros and cons. we can talk about the pros and cons of american internationalism. and hopefully find a middle ground. between doing too little which is where we were in the 1930s and doing too much is where i think we had been a mid are amid our forever wars. and when i look back at the history of the united states prior to world war ii i see a time during which the aversion to geopolitical detachment made great sense. they rose in the 19th century in part because it focused on the home front. on western expansion. investment in the united states not in battleships and colonies. in the interwork time isolationism went way too

far. when the unavoidable threats were there. the goal is to look at the long duration. when does strategic this attachment take place. when does it not take place. when does it tell us today. when it comes to america moving forward. we will move the conversation up into the present tense a little bit more as we go on. i think it's important to kind of look at the historical case that he is working with. and some of these issues. i think one something that we can recite the name of. it is the monroe doctrine. in its role is sort of an element of an american grand

strategy. how did you come to think of it. end of its place. in american history. before i get to the monroe doctrine. i think it will convey to the listeners today how tenacious this version was going right back to the beginning. in the revolutionary war they were getting the best of us. they were against alliance and attaching ourselves to any foreign powers. aside, we need an alliance with the french otherwise we will lose. and what happened, the french came over.

in 1793. britain and france go to war again. and the french asked george washington how many troops how many ships are you point to send across the atlantic. he issues the proclamation of neutrality in which he basically said to the french despite the alliance good night and good luck you are on your own. and that was the last alliance the united states have until after world war ii. and then coming to the monroe doctrine. monroe, issues a declaration in which he says no, no new european colonies in the western hemisphere. this was after many spanish colonies have turned into republicans and the americans

were afraid that the spanish might come back. >> in the conventional wisdom in the public mind this is the great declaration. most of the rest of the 19th century. did not lift a finger to defend hegemony in the western hemisphere and a couple of years later in 1826. when an american delegation was invited to panama. i talk fast about the future of republican government in latin america. and the president at that time was john quincy adams. congress went berserk. and they said we have no business interfering in the affairs of latin america in any way we don't want to sit

down at a table with people of african descent with latin americans with catholics, that is not us and our business. there was a strong racist reaction. eventually they approved the declaration but it was so late that one of the delegates died before they got there. and the other one arrived so late. that the congress was over. so much for the monroe doctrine. when they broke the treaty with france. he just said i'm breaking the treaty. i have an excuse. how did he handle it. >> he would not tell a lie to his dad about the cherry tree. how does he break in alliance with france. .. ..

in the north were pro british, and so when washington said that we're not coming, we're going to remain neutral, the jeffersonians went crazy, but washington was very smart. he was very strategic, and he didn't say that we're reneging on the alliance or we're annulling the alliance. he basically said under the current circumstances we don't think it's in the american national interests to involve yourselves in a war between britain and france. despite the fact he was careful in not annulling it, the opposition still went crazy, they said you don't have the constitutional authority not honor that alliance because

alliances are ratified bid the senate and only the senate can undo them. and in some respects the farewell address of 1796 was washington's effort to thread the needle because he came back to this theme and he said, we really don't want entangling alliance with anybody. you know what? we'll honor those that we have sorta maybe once in a while but let's not do this again, so even though the alliance was basically defunct it wasn't until 1891 it was mutually pulled down by the french and the americans in creating a new treaty. >> let's jump forward a bait. how did this isolationist empire so to speak, the dominance of this isolationist current in american history -- what made it go away? why did it ever -- why didn't we just go right back to being

isolationists after world war ii? what happened? >> well, we start off particularly after the civil war, at finishing westward expansion and it's important to put a caveat out there that even though the out saw itself as a chosen nation, that was following the path of enlightenment-that was anti-empire, antiexpansionist it was ruthless expanding westward. a lot of people died, indians were put on reservations weapon grabbed a big churching of lan from mexico, tried to take over canada on multiple to indications so it's not like the united states was sweetness and light out there the 19th under but it did adhere to the founding fathers acclamation to good no further than the pacific

coast to tend our own garden, knock to look for trouble abroad or in the words of john quincy adams we go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. but you then get to the end of the 19th. the out turned into a world class economic power in part because it was focused on domestic development. and the frontier closed in the words of he history yap, fredericks jackson turner, and so americans began to worry that the american experiment, the dynamism, the democracy, the prosperity could begin to wane, industrialization was kicking, in so a new narrative emaked -- emerged that if this experiment is going continue we need a new front tier. where is that new frontier now that we made it to the pacific coast? it's overseas and that's the narrative that president

mckinley, teddy roosevelt, the admiral used to justify the spanish-american war to basically say, we now need to take manifest destiny on the road because we have completed the mission here at home. the main problem, as you know, walter, i that in making that argument, and in kicking the spanish out of cuba, we also took over cuba, cook over puerto rico, and annexed hawaii occupied the philippines, took over samoa and the wake islands and midway. americans said you told us we were taking manifest destiny abroad to spread democracy in the american way, and suddenly we are colonial occupiers of the philippines and that then set the stage, both for the wilson

correction to idealism and the isolationism era. so, how. >> how did wilson's reaction against this earlier rooseveltian policy take shape in your view? >> well issue think that port of what happened here is that there was a sharp backlash against real imperialism. americans aren't imperialists. eight not in our dna. it's not in the constitution. in fact there were very interesting debates in the early 1900s but what do we do with these territories? what do we do with puerto rico? with samoa? because they weren't on the path to statehood. in part apologies they are not occupied by white people, and this was a big part of the qualification for integration

into the union. they're debates today about should puerto rico become a state of the union. but anyway, you go through this movement, away from umpire there was a so-called antiimperialist movement that the democratic candidate for president, a successful candidate, william jennings bryan ran on and then wilson is an idealist/isolationist, who pulls out of european and asian commitments, maintains a strong interventionist stance in the western hemisphere but sees the united states as a country that is going to spread democracy around the world, and he basically disavows any realist ambition, and he then takes the country into world war i in 1917

after the germans began to sink american vessels, but he does so on at the basis of pure idealism. when he goes before congress in april 1917 to ask for a war declaration, he says, we're here to save the world for democracy. we're going to war simply on the matter of principle and human right. and suddenly americans are dying in the trenches and they're asking themselves, what is wilson talking about? and then he tries to sell the league of nations to the senate. that doesn't work. three vote, all of them down. and so wilson finally says, well, i couldn't convince the senate so i'll convince the american people. and he says the election of 1920 is a referendum on american internationalism. and his -- the opponent, the republican candidate, warren harding, basically says, make my

day, i stand nor policies of george washington, i am against foreign entanglement. he was running again james cox, handpicked by wilson. what happened? warren harding wins, one of the most loopsided elections in american history and that clears the way for the stub bon isolation jim of the 20s and 30s. >> in some ways it's always seemed to me the 1930s were the most isolationist decade in american history that -- at least in the 20s they had the idea that, well, the federal reserve should work with the bank of england. the young plan to get financial flows going in postwar europe. so there was a -- it was inadequate, sort of hyperoptimistic that simply by keeping the economies of the

world going, we could keep -- oh, and nave disarmment. >> and kellogg, every now and then i do ask myself for the viewers, it was the wonderful 1929 treaty, was it ratified. -- 28, signed -- but it outlawed war, and really just in the nick of time, too. can you imagine what history would have been like if war had not been you lawed in late 1920s. the murder, the may hem that -- mayhem that would have taken place. they weren't completely idiots, complete idiots the isolationists of the '20s but for one thing the idea of self-determination, breaking up the european empire, it's a wonderful humanitarian thing,

let people govern. the but you divide it into countries and two halve a quarrel it's not like the quarrel -- not dragging in a big empire that could drag in america. so they had some thought. and then naval forces at the time were the only ones that could get to the united states so the u.s. pushed naval disarmament very hard. and they had this sense, okay, we prevented the broken up the empires, gotten rid of monarchies, and we'll keep the economy going so in the '20sty there was a kind of internationalism light in a way. no institution building. no formal alliances. but then in the '30s when the depression hits and roosevelt -- we cannot -- just have to look inward right now. so they -- roosevelter to pea to

the london economic conference, an attempt for an internationalist approach to the depression, and so really up until i would say the fall of france, in 1940, when people really began to worry in the administration. we're just out of it for those ten years. s to that sound right? >> yes. i think you're spot on in the sense that the '20s, the u.s. practiced what i call in the book borrowing a term from an historian, christopher knick koles, isolationist internationalism in the sense that the u.s. was internationalists bus it continued to be involved commercially, continued to essentially conduct diplomacy through wall street. wall street was in europe and in east asia, trying basically to run the world through investment and trade. the other thing that occurred in

the 1920s there was a new multilateralism and naval arms control that interestingly these were all pacts of inaction. the united states was willing to make commitments as long as they were commitments to do nothing. that is to say, not to build a navy, and to outlaw war. you would have never gotten the senate to ratify something that committed the out to do something. that doesn't happen until world war ii. and then the great depression is the turning point, and that's when the u.s. not only detaches itself geopolitically and also commercially, and roosevelt says i'll be focused like a laser on the domestic front, and begins to shepherd through the congress one neutrality act after another which more or less cuts the united states off from the out world, the bell ledge residence

of the outside world to avoid being drawn into a war. this is another revelation i came upon. roosevelt is remember for the new teal and also with this great wartime leader but until pearl harbor, he really was part of the isolationist mainstream, yet he did change course in '39 and began to argue that the u.s. needed to provide assistance to the british and others that were the victims of naziism and fascism and then started the lend-lease in 1941. his main objective was not to being the abuse the war. i was to prevent the u.s. from going to war by letting others defend themselves and keeping the nazis from becoming strong enough to come to the western hemisphere, and he did not go to war until he had no choice because japan brought the war to the u.s.

>> host: that phrase of his, arsenal of democracy which sounds internationalist to people somehow today but was we want to supply them with all the weapons they need so we can sit here safely and have it basically-the, russian blood and british gold was more or less the way he hoped to be able to win the war, and even when we did get in one notes the russians continued to take most of the casualties, and antihe thought america hat two wartime goals, one was to tee troy the british empire and the other was to destroy nazi germany else and what clear to keene which objective was upper most in the americans' mind at any particular point. >> it's worth pointing out that even though roosevelt was justifying giving aid to the

victims of nazi aggression, he nonetheless had to fight the america first committee that founded in 1940 because they were against any assistance. they wanted tight, rim jihad, hemispheric isolation because they thought it would be a slippery slope weapon give arms to the british and we would end up in war. the public opinion in 1941, before pearl harbor, 80% of the american public was against entry into world war ii. that gives you a sense how strong the isolationist sentiment was. >> you sort of understand it. it's like here's this wood chipper. do you really want to stick your hand in the wood chip center and too you want your kid to good die on some island in the pacific you dope even know the name of and people would natural live say no. i found -- i didn't really understand this part. heard of it but hadn't thought

pout it until i started doing my work on u.s.-israel realization -- relations and i not realize after the end of world war ii americans immediately reverted essentially to an isolationist approach that we dismantled 90% of the army, apparently one reason that roosevelt made as many concessions to stalin also he did at the yalta was he believed that there was just no way we could keep american troops in europe for more than a year after the end of the war. and it really -- it 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 simple my hitler. was that your reading?

>> yeah. roosevelt himself was worried that the internationalism wouldn't last and that after the end of the war, the u.s. would revert to its default position, which he took to be, isolationism, and after the end of the war, as you know, there was a demobilization, even tho the u.s. did keep forces abroad and even though there was bipartisan support for a new grand of what we now call liberal internationalism, the u.n. passed with the senate with very little objections. but you right after that that over the court of the late 1940s and 1950s the isolationists reappeared and dug in their heels. at first they -- the cold war, the onset of the cold war did push them to be more quiet but then when that cold war heats up and you get the korean war, and then we get the decision to

deploy three divisions to europe in the early 1950s, people start to get worried and you see various congressmen, senator taft, for example, and others, say, hey, wait a minute. this is going too far. we don't want to go down this road. and in '52, '53, '54 there were various amendments that it came forward to try to curtail the ability of the united states to deploy forces abroad and to take the kinds of actions that ended up being core to the cold war. that -- >> maybe you should hit your refresh button. you have frozen. >> can you hear me now? can you hear me? >> this is bruin know it's

walter having a connection issue. >> all right. there we go. charlie you froze for a while so i couldn't see -- >> i think that the russians have stopped messing with our communications so we can continue. >> all right. good. i've been interested a bit in the way that if you look at some of the key documents of that period, like the u.n. charter itself, also i read it, they actually incorporated lodges reservations into the u.n. charter. that is that if you look at the way the u.n. differs from the league of nations, without saying anything about it, they quietly turned from wilson's league to lodges, and actually some of the weaknesses in the u.n. today are -- you can trace them to that. also, if you look carefully at the nato treaty, it's

fascinating, the historicry the nature of an alliance is what they call out maticity if countries a and b are allies and crownry c invades country b then country a is legally obliged to go to country b's offense but under the nato treaty, actually each country is obliged to consult it constitutional process because the senate would not have ratified a nato treaty that took the power to declare war out of the hands of the senate, out of congress' hands and also in a sense -- so even nato is not quite what, say, tally would have meant by an alliance. >> just to clarify for everyone what you're tuck about when you

mentions lodges reservations, when wilson brought the very say treating to in the senate, when -- they came to wilson and said, listen, if you are willing to revise the treaty to water it down a little bit so it doesn't look like an international league can tell us what to do then we'll go ahead and ratify it. and wilson said, no. that would for me be a moral compromise and i'd rather go down in flames than make moral compromise etch that's exactly what happened he went down in flames, and roosevelt, you're right, walter, learned from those mistakes, and he made sure that the document that emerged to put the u.n. forward was one that could pass the senate. he made sure that there were always republicans involved in

working on the u.n. he was very, very conscious of the need to keep the bipartisan aspects of foreign policy going, and the way that was drafted, the way that nato was drafted there was no automaticity and this goes back to a long strain of isolationism and ewan nat'll jim unilateralism more than isolationism and we see it today big time in the republican party and president trump, this idea that no commitments that we make abroad can impair our sovereignty and the ability of our congress and executive branch to make their own decision. >> in the column i have coming out any journal tonight and tomorrow i talk about how the modern republican party post trump is -- what you have left or two factions, one of the rand

paulite issue think isolationist in -- probably 20s isolationists and they would favor business engagement and so on. >> and nothing more. >> right. and then the sort of tom cotton unilateral hawks who want an assertive american power and don't mind having associated allies but don't want to see america compromise, and want to keep -- and so you now have these two wings, i think, between them are pretty much the bulk of the republican party today. >> i think it's very reminiscent of the '20s because then at that point you had a block that was called the irreconcilables and they were basically the nativist libertarians, the nationalists, and then you had an internationalist wing of the republican party, but it was

unilateralist internationalism. 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 become very much more committed to multilateralism and international teamwork. >> it's a little more complicated because when you had bora in the '20s a progressive but irreconcilable and i would think today somebody like a bernie sanders or some of these other figures on the democratic left, are much more cautious about really do want a much more restrained foreign policy. so looks to me as if -- it and is by the way interesting of you think about the float 2016 and 2020, if you combine the sanders vote and the trump vote, you get a majority, who are support

candidates who fundamentally dissent from the kind of internationalist orthodoxy you and i grew up with. >> history is rhyming if not repeating in the sense you are seeing this strange alliance between progressives on the left and a kind of libertarian wing on the right that are calling for a pullback and for a different kind of foreign policy. in fact we recently saw george sorrows, a progressive, team with charles koch, right wing leber tarean to found a new think tank, the quincy institute and what brings them together is a desire to demilitarize or lower me militarization of american foreign policy and stay out of foreign wars. this is very similar to the alliance that woodrow wilson

confronted between emily ball. and other progressive activists on the left and people like barr you just mentioned on the libertarian nationalist right. >> so it's funny how national character -- i don't know if that's the word for it but how enduring some of these cultural features are. we have a question from the audience, and charlie and i have had a great conversation. we would be happy too spend the next three hours going down various historical blind allies together, but let see what some of the audience -- if anybody else would like to ask a question, you can use the ask a question feature. click on that and should allow you to put a question in. so, we have from canvass here,

said i just finished reading the plot against america by phillip roth that plays out what might have happened head we stuck to isolationism during world war ii. one thing it seemed to lead is to an exposure of our worth notions of racism, is racism more easily tapped into under an isolationist foreign policy? >> excellent question. historically, racism, nativism, antiimmigrant sentiment and isolationism have been entangled. they nod not be entangled 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 racism, but

in the 19th century as i mention he earlier part of the break on expansion wastive comfort with bringing into the union or attaching to the united states lands that were not populated by whites. you then get antiimmigrant sentiment kicking in in the 1880s. first against chinese and then against all asians. then in the interwar period when as walter and i were just discussing, isolationism comes back with a vengeance. the u.s. passes draconian antiimmigrant legislation. not 24 legislation that took down incoming immigration of jews and catholics from europe by 90%. in the 1930s, a million americans of mexican heritage war deported. so, yes there has been a general correlation between the country is more isolationist, that also tends to either be antiimmigrant

or more racially sensitive, and ait's happening today. if you kind of peel back the onion on trump's america first policy, you see the isolationism and the unilateralism we have been talking about, harkening back to earlier periods in american history and is a been intertwined with and conflated with antiimmigrant and identity politics. the two often go together but logically speaking there's no reason they need to. >> actually were times a lot of what was drying the imperialist movement was in fact racism. if the idea that the philippines simply could not govern themselves and that if once spain was gone, if we left, they would fall into chaos and then be taken over by either germany

or japan. was actually a motive force that influenced some of the policymakers there. so there was a -- i can would say you go back at certain points in history and find that just about everybody, everybody's thinking is influenced one way or another by racial stereotypes or ideas of how history works that are in some ways racially inflected. so that teddy roosevelt and william jennings bryan in their a, one the leader of the imperial and one the leading antiimperialist, both we can see had a lot of racial influence in their thinking. >> that's exactly right. and the anti imperialist movement basically said that the people in the philippines or the people in cuba, they're never going to be able to govern

themselves dramatically because they're the wrong race or they're the wrong religion or the wrong culture so let's not barret the imperialists said you're actually right. they don't have the tradition but a that's why we have to go out and show them how to do it. so they were both racist in their own way but one camp was saying, say, that's not our problem, stay away. the other camp was saying we need to go out there and save. the and christianize them and that was really the anywhere tv that in some ways caught on of world war ii. not so up much in the need to christianize and save them and make everybody a certain race but this idea that the american experiment could be universalized, we could really good out there and spread the gospel. >> it's interesting that a lot of the skepticism, wean as late as the vietnam war, somebody like william fulbright, he was

from arkansas, and for someone of his generation he drew up among people for whom reconstruction was still very much a living reality, and a lot of his doveishness in vietnam was linked to his skepticism that asiatics could become democrats, and so he saw johnson's attempts to have a tva in the mekong delta, a new deal for south vietnam, nation-building, fulbright -- this sound look the kind of reconstruction hubris, and it just wasn't going to work. and i think one of the interesting pattern is noticed in american history was that when the iraq war comes at a tim when she south has forgotten reconstruction or the white

south forgot what it felt like to them to be part of a northern nation building exercise. >> yeah. you're right, walter in the sense that really until the 20th century, most american policymaker were very skeptical you could go abroad and reengineer a society. so when they had the big debate in the 1820s, pout revolutions in latin america or the 1840s about revolutions sweeping europe, there was also if shoo we help them, intervene, give money? and they always said no because it's not going to work it and really isn't until you get to the 20th century and in particular the cold war era and after world war ii, that americans begin to think they can actually good out and rebuild societies, and it worked in germany and japan, and hasn't

worked in many other places, and i think one of the reasons that americans today are so frustrated with american foreign policy is that it didn't really work to try to turn afghanistan and iraq into ohio. >> well, step one is you have to subject them to greatest levels of violence than anyone has ever experienced with japan and germany in world war ii, you know. step two, occupy them -- have them surrender totally and then step three, have another power that they hate even more than they hate you, and if you can combine those two ingredients i think it's a little troubling to me that modern social science fish science of development, economics and so on, a lot of it is intellectual entering comes from developing a methodology for exporting the american way into other countries, and it

is -- one can see how people from another cultural background might look at that as a form of imperialism. don't think we in america thought about this enough, even though i would say there's still some merit in a lot of the things we have done. >> i think we have another question here from the audience. from mary on youtube. with the -- hello, player. with the hardship that covid is inflicting on all country do you foresee a lot of countries taking a more isolationist look to regroup and rebuild? what are the risks in everyone taking that approach? >> well, mary, this in some ways will allow me to talk a little bit about the lessons of history that walter and have been talk budget from where -- pout from where we are today.

i'm not someone who is an isolationist or who counsels isolationism. for from it. i think the united states should stay engaged in the world and should continue to play an important role in keeping the peace in europe and in east asia especially given the rise of china, but i too think that the country today faces conditions that are not up like those in the 1930s, covid-19, the pandemic, and its economic impact, being chief among them. we are going through an economic crisis of a sort we haven't seen since the 1930s. americans are tired of the wars. we sense overstretch just as with did after world war i. there's a sense of that our. pigs abroad has come at the expense of liberty at home either because brig brother has

overreached only surveillance or because we keep going to war based on piece office legislation from 2001 two 2002. that's not what the founders intended. the founders gave to congress the right to declare war for a good reason. they're not exercising that right. so i think given these conditions, the next president needs to focus heavily on the domestic front. the pandemic, getting our economy open, dealing with racial injustice, teaming with the fact we are a deeply divided country and the democratic institutions are stumbling. that doesn't mean we can't continue to engage a broad but needs to be a more modest engagement. we need to find the middle ground between doing too much which is the last couple of decades, and doing too little which is where we were in the 1920s and the 19 bes.

so, what i call for the in the book is a right, sizing of american foreign policy that brings our ambition abroad back into line with our political will. that is the conversation that i think we need in this country and i think that -- my guess is it's going to start coming because we have no choice, and i do worry if we don't have that discussion, if we don't get ahead of the curve, and craft this more modest and pragmatic foreign pollsive by design it could happen by default. itself that happens i think dangerous overreach could turn into even more dangerous underreach, just as it did in the '30s. >> let me throw you a curve ball on that. if you look at what's eggphone in icer buy january and armenia we see a very dangerous shooting

war break south and it's not impossible that azerbaijan will start winning and start occupying territory that the armenians have lived in for centuries, in some cases occupied after the more recent war between them. when that happens there would certainly be pretty massive flight of hundreds of thousands of refugees in the winter in the mountains. is it -- is that the kind of thing where under your vision of american engagement, do we get into that or do we stay out of that? or -- what do we do with a problem like this? again, with the armenians you have your genocide, there's a lot of history there, there will certainly be a powerful lobby in the u.s. that will want us to do something.

how would you -- this is kind of in your area of expertise, the policy expertise. >> yep. when i talk about lightening the load and easing off on the gas, i'm speaking specifically about military engagement in the sense that our wars in afghanistan and iraq, syria, libya, have not gone well and they have sapped the public's appetite for continued engagement of that sort. think if we pull back on those commitments we have to lean in on diplomacy and lean in on -- >> it doesn't work because i think it probably -- there will certainly be cases when it just doesn't and you come down to the binary choice in a way what clinton faced in kosovo, either you do nothing and see hundreds of thousands of refugees or you

risk war. >> yeah. think the bottom line is that the united states cannot do everything, and that i would want the u.s. to be very heavily involved in this conflict, leaning on azerbaijan, leaning in armenia to resolve the conflict peacefully. if there is aen outknow of refugee is would want at the united states to be heavily involved in humanitarian assistance. would no advocate for u.s. involvement in a war in that part of the world because i think that one of the mistakes we have made in the recent passion is repeated involvement in wars choice. in some cases we have done so for a good reason. getting involved in some areas like libya, we were intending to save lives, to protect civilians, but what happened?

well, we intervened along with our european allies in and the country fell apart and turned into a magnet for terrorism, and i think that, yes there are times in which the u.s. should use military force, but realize that it has effects you can't control. so i'm big on keeping the u.s. militarily engaged on the big ticket items, heating, great power, peace in eurasian i'm more skeptical the u.s. should send its sons and daughters into places like syria or in the -- and that's why i think it's so important to get hid of the issue on the diplomatic front. and one final issue, what at the. i guess we'll have to look to others to do more. if there is a party that would deploy a piece-keeping force or should be doing something think

identity the europeans. europe has a big market. they should develop more capability. and should become more capable of helping the united states in issues that require military force. >> now your sounding almost trumpy. >> i wouldn't go that far. i would remind everyone that it was under the obama administration when people -- when the president said, you guys need to spend 2% of your gdp on defense, you guys need to pick up more of the heavy lifting. this is the direction in which american foreign policy is headed whether our next president is donald trump of joe biden. >> awe couple more questions from audience members so let go through them. with one prescribing michael mcleod. was woodrow wilson not striving by bringing america into world war i to lead and shape the world after the war in ways

it would unable white men to keep running the world? is world war i other a sort of policy aimed at cementing a racial/gender hegemony? >> well, michael, your question exposes what a complicated guy woodrow wilson was in the sense that he was in many respects the most idealist president in american history. he really did believe that the u.s. could go out there and transform the world and we could create a global landscape in which nations played by a new set of rules, open diplomacy, disarticlement -- disarmament, banding together against demonstration but the was also an imperialist, the moe

interventionist president in the western hemisphere and he was a racist. who was in favor of segregating the civil service and then when the war came to an end, and the versailles treaty was being negotiated he basically turn downed a bid the japanese to include a clause on racial equality, which drove not just the japanese but the indians and many others nuts because they saw this as a treaty that was in some ways doing exactly what you said which is ratifying racial hierarchy in the world. so, yes, there was this complicated dual nature to woodrow wilson, but i think what he needs to be remembered in both respects, an idealist leader to tried to change the world in positive ways but someone who at the same time was

a racist and an imperialist. >> that's sort of -- kind of how history works am very complicated business. let's see. how does u.s. involvement with vietnam -- the vietnam war era -- fit into your nasa? in your opinion has the u.s. learn from that experience? >> well issue think that the vietnam war was an instance of overreach. in general i think pretty highly of american foreign policy during the cold war in the sense that we prevailed in that conflict because of patients, because of strategic patience. we a played pretty quell and just rafted and outperformed the soviet union. ther kearn i have is what we have done since the fall of the berlin wall and when the sense

of expand thing liberal order, turn thing middle east into an island of democracy, this is when we get ahead of ourselves. clearly in the vietnam war the united states engaged in a level of military intervention that was far beyond what the interests warranted and it led to not an isolationist retreat, because that didn't really happen, but did lead to a retrenchment where nixon and kissinger pulled back and nixon introduced in the persian gulf a strategy of relying much more heavily on iran saudi arabia to do america's bidding there was a trimming of commitments during that period, but there wasn't a collapse of the internationalist consensus in part because the cold war was still on. even though there was detente as

a consequence of the vietnam war. have we learned the lessons? i fear not. i think some of the mistakes we made in vietnam we have recently made in the middle east, that is to say, as walter and i were talking about at while ago, going in to 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 rarely works. >> it's surprisingly hard to learn some lessons. one thing that struck me is one of history's little ironies is that was that obama decision you mentioned easterliure about going into libya, where the whole basis of the -- obama's original political appeal was what a terrible mistake it was to go into iraq, and how you can't predict the consequences

and, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. and then we are now watching the libyan civil war multiple years after the humanitarian intervention, which had great intentions, about which almost -- which repeated a lot of the iraq war false assumptions about what could be accomplished i think. >> i have to say, i was not working in the he white house win that conflict broke out but i was surprised because i understood president obama to be someone who did believe that the united states had bitten off too much and who really did want to pivot out of the middle east and -- as an outside observer at the time, i looked at libya, which is a country that had 140 tribes, and i said to myself, anybody who wants to invade that

country should think again, and my own sense of this -- this is completely impressionistic as i said i wasn't there at the time -- is he got kind of dragged into it by the allies because the europeans really wanted to do it, there was support from arab countries and i think the sense was, listen, if all of these other countries want to do it i don't want to be the one that stands in the way, but as we now know the result athletes intervention were not much better then results of iraq or afghanistan. >> so it's harder to learn from history than it looks, i think is one lesson there. we have a question, how do we get congress to exercise or to debate its war powers authority? a smart question because there hat been a -- has been a kind of

congressional abdication of power. >> it's a tough question to answer in the sense that i would have thought that it would have happened by now. it is now 2020. we have been fighting wars in the middle east continuously since 9/11, and congress continues to go along for the ride. i guess that my general answer would be this. i come away from the trump era thinking that our system of checks and balances doesn't work as well also we thought it did. i'm not a big fan of president trump. even though walter accused me of sounding trump-like. i'm not going to let that good lightly, walter. [laughter] >> and i've actually been quite struck by the degree to which he

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 compound republic and dispercented power across the executive and the judicial legislative branches to checked everybody's power. hunt checked his power that well. i think whatever happens in the election neck week we ought to get together, whether on capitol hill or a wise person's congress and simply say do we need to implement some kind of change, whether it be legislative or constitutional or legal, to make sure that we are not again experiencing the excesses of this recent era, and i do think that one of the issues that should be on the docket is re-instating congress' role as

the exclusive body that has the right to declare war and to make sure it exercises that right. >> i think there were so many legislative permissions in various emergency acts that trump was able to basically -- he can slap a tariff on any product he wants if he says it's a national security issue. and he has statutory authority to do it. there ought to be some kind of a sunset clause or -- but congress is 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 about which ones of those needs to be repealed and maybe any new grant of authority should have a sunset clause, all kinds of -- congress actually if i wanted to

could claw an awful lot of power back. but it just doesn't seem to want to. >> and i have to say that in this current environment, where democrats and republicans rarely even speak to each other, on capitol hill, it may will be hard to reach a consensus but i think walter you and i agree that the last four years have illuminated some problems in the system that do need to be addressed. >> i think we have -- i think the executive has -- is overmighty, and that is another recuring theme in american poll sticks -- politics, from time to time people too dial back overnighty executives. >> this hat been building for quite a while. started in 1898. a lot inform this has to do with foreign ambition and foreign policy. the founders were right, that's

what led to executive overreach. and then when you get to the cold war era, and president truman enters the core afternoon war without even bothering to go to congress, the founders would roll over in their grave if they knew the out entered the war with no resolution. >> there's a little tricky because you have -- with the so if -- soviet union with number clearing deterrence the president doesn't have time to make phone calls to respond to a incoming missile strike and once the president of the united states has the power to destroy hundreds of millions of people by using the nuclear football, it's -- it can't happen but infect the political system in various ways. people see that man, that power

in a different way, but i think charlie's book which i highly recommend, everybody, i think will help you think more clearly about not just foreign policy but also you can see from our discussion, foreign policy and domestic patrol ticks and poll -- politics and policy are intime natalie connected. think we have probably stressed our audience long enough, kept everyone on zoom equivalent along enough, but it's ban great talk, and i am so glad that you have written this book. >> walter i can't thank you enough for joining me for this conversation. i also do need to blame you in part for this book because also i said, a special providence was a book that influenced 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 to know more about the country's past, particularly the precold war, preworld war ii past as we try to figure out where we go in the future. >> absolutely, great. >> and i want to come back on and thank you both so mump for tonight's talk. it's been fascinating. so good to have this different lens to look through at our current events so thank you so much for your research, charles, and also thank you also for moderating the talk. i want to thank the audience for watching tonight as well. believes buy the book, please buy the book through the buy the book link on your screen and that will take you over to third place books so you can support them and if you've want to watch more town hall content you can follow the podcast channel by clicking the follow button at

the top right corner. we'll hopefully see you both again sometime soon, but thank you again so much for being here tonight and i hope you have a great night. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> thanks again. >> you're watching boston boost on c-span2. booktv on c-span2 created by america's cable television companies. today wore bright by these television companies. >> booktv in primetime starts now. first, physics professors brian green and january in levin explore the origins and future of the cosmos. then authors talk about immigrants, refugees and the american dream. also tonight, environmental progress founder michael schnellenberger offers

thoughtsen what call -- and a discussion of race and caste in american and a talk about china's am boeing replace the united states as the world's leeding power. for full schedule visit booktv.org or consult your program guide. in... ... alongside contributor of the cds moderator ilisa barbash. tonight's event as part of the ongoing series as we remained digital for the time being were so excited to continue the work of bringing authors and their