u.n. responded to the genocide. now american history tv in prime

time features a panel on totalitarianism and communist governments focusing on world war ii, the cold war and america's involvement in the middle east. this 90-minute event was hosted by the james madison program at princeton university. the association for the study of free institutions and texas tech university. >> on behalf of the directors, i want to express our gratitude to the james madison program for inviting us to co-sponsor this panel on foreign policy and the challenges of totalitarianism. this is a privilege for me personally also when i arrived at princeton in the fall of 1986, the age of 17, one of the faculty that i met early on was a young scholar then in his first year as an assistant professor. that was robby. i've been very pleased to work with him on a number of occasions over the last nearly 30 years. i can hardly believe it.

now you may be unaware that the madison prap was under some pressure to recind the invitation to the hamilton society. elements of the princeton community discovered that i wrote my junior paper on the role and function of the servant in the comedies. and threatened to teach him unless i publicly disavowed the imperialist pat arky of 17th century france. instead of giving into such threats, robby and brad simply scheduled this panel for 8. 456789 -- 8:45 in the morning. it's fitting we should address foreign policy on a conference and not merely for the sake of comprehensiveness. there is a debate in america as old as the republic about the nature of our relationship tw the rest of the world. on one side are those who view foreign policy mainly as a tool for responding to threats.

they see the international state system as largely or at least potentially self-sustaining and foreign affairs as something of a distraction from important domestic concerns. on the other side are those who like alexander hamilton believe that the preservation of civil lib irt and economic prosperity at home requires the constitutes lead in the defense of a world order hospitable to freedom. given the many unknown unknowns in international affairs, even when we agree on principles, there's a need for debate and for wisdom from the past and applying those principles to difficult circumstances and that is the subject of our panel this morning. we'll proceed more or less in chronological order of global totalitarian movement and you'll find detailed introductions of your speakers in the programs. i'll introduce them at the beginning in the order in which they will speak.

first is ann rice-pierce. she is author, scholar and commentator on the american presidency and american foreign policy. she's the author of "woodrow wilson and harry truman: mission and power in american foreign policy" and the perilous path of obama's foreign policy much she holds her bachelor's degree from corn he will and doctorate from the university of chicago. next, aaron freeburg is professor of politics and international affairs in the woodrow wilson school here at princeton. he taught since 1987. now as you will not fail to notice from the introduction in your program, aaron has had a distinguished, fascinating and even pleasant career. but then he decided to find the alexander hamilton society and he hasn't had a moment of peace in 4 1/2 years. aaron continues to serve as the president of our board of directors. and finally, michael duran is the roger hertog fellow at the

brookings institution. he earned his bachelors degree at stanford, his masters and doctorate here at princeton and he serves on the national board of advisors of the hamilton society. now michael is as jane austin might have said, a man of information. and he tweets prolifically under the handle duranimated. he is the most popular member of our advisory board apart in john bolton. each of our panelists will speak for 15 to 20 minutes and then we may have some discussion among themselves after which we'll open it up for questions. so dr. pierce? >> i contend that we're forgetting lessons learned the hard way. lessons we thought we had learned that american presidents and secretaries of state seemed to have learned after hitler's immediate orric rise and his near success in creating a totalitarian world order. the unwise foreign policy

reveals forgetfulness. it reveals a fog when it comes to the lessons of history. history, especially the history of the world wars and of the totalitarian movements of the 20th century must be remembered and assessed if we are to have hope of moving toward better policy. and if we are to have hope of digging out of the mess we're in now. just how bad is the mess we're in? pretty bad. look around. the arab spring is in shambleses. syria is a mess. and there are human rights atrocities go unchallenged. the russian reset is an obvious failure. china is flexing its gee yoe political muscle. countries like iran, syria, russia and china are strengthening economic military and strategic ties. islamic extremism and anti-semitism and persecution of christians is on the rise.

violence and global instability are significantly worse than in 2008. and democratic allies and pro-democracy groups are increasingly disillusioned with the united states. for 21st century problems such as these, we need policy that absorbs the lessonsst 20th century and of world war ii. but current policy is confined by the supposed lessons of the iraq war and some of the lessons we are taken from that war are the wrong ones. obama administration policies reflect the post iraq war equation of active involvement in the world's trouble spots with boots on the ground. since the iraq war, many succumb to the either/or assumption, either we refrain from an active foreign policy or we'll end up in another war. reminiscent of the post vietnam era, here is another war the gripped the american public. that event used by the foreign policy team as an excuse for

military weakness, lack of grand strategy and indifference too human rights and democratization issues. as hitler's triumphs showed, we are more likely to be forced into war by events spiralling out of control than by exerting influence in far off lands. disengagement and detatchment allows the escalation of atrocities, weapons programs and hostilities. moreover, as cold war policies show, involvement need not mean military intervention and the united states has multiple means to influence events short of war. nazi germany's concentration camps and world war ii taught us that we should never again be strategically unprepared militarily weak or morally detached. the refrain never again was born out of reaction to hitler's concentration camps and nazi germany's brutal subjew gas station of foreign people

through war. it stated the importance of focusing on the suffering and repression of others, not just ourselves. it warned of complaisancy for how many at first thought what was happening in germany, us aindustry yashgs poland and czechoslovakia was not our problem. it implied that had not so many individuals and nations looked the other way, or let their literal and figuretive defenses down, hitler's plan for world domination would not have come so close to fruition. after hitler and the 5:00ism powers put the world through living hell, everyone knew there were less tond to be learned. the total war brought by nazi germany and the empire of gentleman was an apocalypse. 60 million casualties, the holocaust, mass executions of civilians, death marches, routine torture of pows, and the desecration of everything held sacred to religions and civilizations were among the markers of this extraordinary

period. if anything good were to come from this loss, it would be a new understanding of what allows totalitarians to come to power and to make war. the united states, therefore, emerged from the war determined to see the signs and do things differently. we would stop expansionist aggression in its tracks and counter extremist ideologies with ideas of political freedom and human worth. we would keep both the ideals and the armies of totalitarians at bay. in a world where global threats lay beneath the surface, america had to enhance its defenses and project its principles. what policymakers understood is that american foreign policy had to be both principled and wise. more than ever before, american foreign policy had to pay attention to both power and ideals. i believe that this forgotten wisdom still pertains.

it emphasizes the security of the free world necessary in a world where global threats lie just beneath the surface and the principles of freedom and universal rights, essential to promoting and defending human dignity. it revolves around negotiating with dictators, being careful not to offend them, offer them concessions. the hope is that we can create a harmonious world if only we stop being arrogant about our own democratic way of life and if only we stop being greedy about our own power. but the world doesn't operate that way. what we see as outreach and engagement, others see as weakness and naivety.

other anti-democratic power see this has an opportunity. the unfortunate result is a more hostile, more oppressive world. let's delve into world war ii and circle back to the presidenten to the find more principled whys for american foreign policy. hitler's ascend ents taught us not only of the dangers of complaisancy and a difference but also of the danger of ideas. for the nazi movement which hitler defined as a struggle, was not primarily gee yoe political but rather ideological. god creator was to be replaced by man the creator of new men, new worlds, new societies. it was a toxic grew of socialism, racism, determine inism, athism and imperialism. planners lusting for power and fueled by ideology that's deny

the existence of god given rights and the innate worth of individuals. the story of the 20th century is also the story of moderate or democratic people and governments being taken unaware by the aims and exploits of extremist leaders and societies. what better evidence of the western world's unpreparedness for tow tail takerianism than world war ii and the years and events that led up to it? shell shocked from world war i, holding on to the hope that that war and all its obvious horror had been a war to end all wars, finding an impossible to believe that world would ever again subject itself to such horror, the western powers signed disarmament treaties and focused on the economic relations between states. similarly to today's globalists, many in the 1930s believe that global nature of modern economic activity would lead to more peaceful political ties.

although some doo d. fear the rise of communist and fashionist ideologies and russia and germany, the socialists and statous aspects of the ideologies appealed to those tired of the messy business of checks and powers and parliamentary procedure. and who longed for a more efficient path to what we now call social justice. even among those who saw how hostile the ideas were to democracy, there were many who convinced themselves that accepting our differences was requisite for peace. we might not agree request natsism but we can live and let live for the sake of avoiding more. if hostility ever actually manifests itself, negotiation was to be the first line of defense. negotiation was rightly considered an underused tool in a world that until then had allowed small shifts in the balance of power to lead to seismic changes. the attempt to use negotiations to solve the problem of hitler's

military mobilization and war is often acknowledged as the crucial lesson. while england and france negotiated, hitler continued on with his plans violated every agreement and played england and france for fools. the attempt to conciliate germany is a lesson in the dangerous futility of appeasement and self absorption. as the most widely acknowledged case in point, czechoslovakia, the only new democracy surviving the post world war i settlement was deserted by friends and devoured by the enemies. the case of czechoslovakia remains instructive. czechoslovakia's so-called crisis which, of course k. not help but remind us to have day's crisis in ukraine, was fanned by nazi propaganda that claims

germans were brutally oppressed minority. they induced separatist sentiment and intentionally provoked turmoil and violence. although the frinch at first reminded germany of their aid pact with the czechs, with britain and russia following suit, the closer germany came to war, the more other powers retracted. desiring above all to avoid war themselves. through the mission of other diplomatic efforts, the prettyish pressured the czechs to comply with german demands. in the hopes that compromise would nullify the germans. without options or allies, the czechs yielded again and again and concessions were formalized when chamberlain, hitler and others met at munich where they signed a pact turning the land over to germany.

the rest is history, so to speak. hitler was not surprised with the land. one nazi conquest would follow another. and so reads the story of the failed munich process. there are other lessons. the lesson that emerges from a deeper look is the futility of negotiating without possessing enough force to gain leverage and enough conviction to have a line not worth crossing. as others demonstrate, england's weak military position limited england's options. the disarmament they embraced after world war i weakened the negotiating hand. this is not to excuse chamberlain. he not only failed to con front hitler, he enabled him. still, ripsman and leafy remind us that chamberlain's government didn't simply accept hitler's territorial advances. they hoped to forestall german

aggression through disarmament negotiations and through addressing sh of germany's grievances. they hoped negotiating if a relatively weak position would buy them time too rearm and negotiate from a stronger position. but it was germany, not britain that, knew how to use negotiations to buy time. while england placed hopes in negotiations, hitler negotiated not out of hope but out of a calculated assessment that talking would buy time. by encouraging the deception that germany was ameanable to some ultimate compromise, negotiations lessen the urgency with which germany's rearmament activities were seen. by the time england realized compromise never had been in the cards, it was too late. austria and czechoslovakia had been swallowed whole and germany's military strengthened to the point that germany was positively poised for the next

act of war. today we many ask are rye ran's and north korea's willingness to negotiate also designed to buy time and cover for their actual plans? the preponderance of evidence supports this conclusion. when we look at the history of germany then and iran and north korea and syria today, we're justified in asking are some regimes so radicalized and bent on control of their populations, so mired in deception and pr propaganda and so open opportunistically determined to expand power that negotiations for them is necessarily a ruse? unless that is opposing power a line so overwhelmingly against them but they have no choice but to compromise? are we americans weary ourselves from involvement in afghanistan

and iraq allowing ourselves to be deceived by authoritarian leaders? like other leaders, hitler was a very clever man. he played western guilt over the punishing terms of the treaty and the western longing for peace for all they were worth. hitler used the language of democracies to deceive democracies and to weaken their resolve. negotiating gave hitler time to mobilize armaments, armies and people, it gave him the opportunity to use the powers of persuasion he so masterfully used with his domestic audience with an international audience. hitler claimed germany's rearmament and invasion of foreign soil were only right given the wrongs and used lies and fervor to back his claim. he insisted germany was only seeking self-determination for

german ethnic groups and reconciliation in czechoslovak yachlt all germany was asking for was ee quality, justice, and, yes, peace. but the tragic truth is that hitler had revealed his real opinion about democratic ideals and other writings and speeches. we must see that today as then oppressive regimes extend massive energy spreading ideas through propaganda and stamping out others through repression. it is no small fact that nazi germany had a minister of propaganda and that hitler rose to power on his credentials as a socialist propagandist. he saw ideas as tools of mobilization and excited his domestic listeners with extreme nationalism combined with anti-capitalists and anti-jewish tirades. jews and others, he claimed, were intentionally holding germany back from a glorious

idyllic future. thus did hitler distill a hate filled idealology that made imacceptable to devalue human life and disregard assume an suffering. this points to another lesson we seemed to have learned after world war ii. because of hitler's success in rallying the german people to his fanatic all cause, post war theirs understood the power and the danger of ideas themselves. i say this with a thought that far too few were willing to admit that social communist ideas were at least as dangerous as facist ones. in the buildup to the war, very few in the west had taken hitler's extremist ideology seriously. as michael points out, there were even academic debates about what hitler really ment about it world elimination in reference to the jews. indeed, truth had been sacrificed on the alter of hope

and fear. hope that radical regime was be reasonable if presented with the right diplomatic opening ands fear that if we insulted hostile powers, we might make the situation worse. this hope and fear too often guides american foreign policy today. witness hillary clinton's assertion that ideology is so yesterday. we must ask, would history perhaps have been different if people in the west not to mention in germany itself had called hitler's hate filled ideas and rhetoric what they were. if human beings had actively argues against and resisted hitler's inhumane world view. petter thought so. and he, therefore, insisted upon the value of what he called soft mindedness. as they saw the lesson of world war ii was not just that we needed better defenses, it was also that we needed better hearts. he thought the lesson was clear enough that we wouldn't have to

learn it again. the best post war theirs understood that moral concerns and power concerns were intertwined in american foreign policy and that giving up either or both revealed a poverty of will and a poverty of spirit. how far we are from that realization today. and so many of our political and academic leaders insist that we overlook what's going on within horrible regimes as the best way to achieve arm onny between nations. for every word and jess cure of outreach to dictators about it obama-clinton-kerry foreign policy team, there have been infinitely more moments of silence and indifference regarding the individuals within severely repressive regimes such as syria and iran. even saying a heart felt word for the people within north korea, a country so abysmal and cruel that country itself can be

said to be a concentration camp is avoided for the sake of the diplomatic process. engagement and diplomacy are indispensable tools but we're paying too little attention to the political moral and strategic goals of american foreign policy. as i said before, many of us now recoil from american attempts to influence events and ideas in dangerous parts of the world fearing that influence will translate into military involvement. yet if we learned anything from world war ii, it is that war is more likely when democratic nations bury heads in the sand and retreat from the world stage. as we have seen all too clearly in syria, doing nothing to defend democratic interests and principles allows the escalation of atrocities, weapons programs, and hostilities.

through hitler's successes, we learned that totalitarian use views are indifference to evade public judgment. conversely, when we shine light into dark regimes by exposing their crimes and speaking out for the oppressed, dictators view that as a threat. why would they spend resources on suppressing the truth? they know that truth about their rule is the biggest threat to their rule. why would we want to prop up such regimes by going along with their deception? world war ii proved that indifference is onest seeds from which totalitarianism grows. that terrible results of passivity and silence in the face of tyranny made it clear that with our emphasis on individual rights and human dignity we had something valuable to offer.

and the subjew gas station of eastern europe after the war ment we also had something to fear. thus, unlike after world war ii, after world ware ii, america faced the responsibilities head on. the united states gave massive aid to war ravaged europe, created the national security council and the cia and formed and joined nato and other alliances. truman's approach which culminated in the reagan presidency, was to respond to social and internal oppression and external aggression with two weapons. the straight ji of containment and projection of american ideals. it was thus that speeches for freedom and programs such as the voice of america existed alongside of our buildup of military defenses. none of our post war foreign policy successes dame from

downplaying atrocities from appeasing tyrants, from ignoring the oppression of hostile powers, from buying security and comfort at the expense of those living in camps anticipate political prisons, for standing up for no one or standing for nothing. we should therefore bring into question whether current calls for realism, whether of the progressive international variety, the down play so-called norms for the sake of peaceful he could existence with our adversaries or if the balance of power variety that down plays democratic principles for the sake of the dynamics of power are realistic after all. in the 20th century, united states was faced with terrible obstacles and it took political moral and military will to overcome them. in a world where totalitarian ideas and schemes continue to threaten liberty, such resolve still matters.

in a world where extremism still thrives and yet where so many people still strife for and fight for freedom and good government, we desperately need american foreign policy that is both principled and wise. >> professor freeburg? >> mitch, thank you very much. welcome to all of you. it's a real pleasure to be here, thank you for sharing this, mitch, and thanks to my friend for organizing this event. wish that i could join you yesterday. i was hope grading exams. i don't foe how robby managed to avoid that. but i'm delighted to be here. i'm honored to take part. i've been asked to pauk about communist totalitarianisotalita. and i think the two points that i'd like to make, although i won't elaborate the first, is

that while fascism hit larry and totalitarianism obviously did enormous damage, it also burned very quickly and burned itself out. and by comparison, communist totalitarianism managed to extend its life over a good part of the 20th century. this conference, i think appropriately is synchronized to the 100th anniversary of the start of the first world war. i believe it's correct to point out that the circumstances of that war and the aftermath helped to create the conditions that gave rise to the emergence of totalitarianism in the 20th century. if we were focused only on 1914, i think we might have picked the wrong date for this topic. i think actually 1917 is the appropriate date on which to begin a discussion of the totalitarian epic. of course, that's the year

russian revolution, giving rise to the consolidation of soviet power by 1920 and then followed in short order by the creationst chinese communist party in 1921 and then eventually its victory in taking power in china in 1949. so really i think the totalitarian epic is sort of short 20th century. it begins in 1917 and i would argue it ends in 1989. i'll say a few words about that in a minute. these regimes, referring here specifically to the soviet union and the people's republic of china, of course, were monstrosities. that was evident at the time to many people although many others chose to ignore it and the ambitions of these regimes, i think the reason why we refer to them using a term that is different than has been applied to other types of regimes is the

character of their totality of their ambition. this is nowhere better captured than in the 1984. the ambition of these regimes was to control not only every deed but of every thought of every citizen were captive within their boundaries and not only that, but to spread that form of government across the globe. they had unlimited total ambitions. and for a time, the totalitarian regimes posed a real threat to liberal democracies. but they ultimately failed. and what i'd like to talk about briefly is i didn't think was that they were so dangerous. why they failed and why what is coming after them may be in certain respects more difficult to deal with than they were. so why so dangerous? here i think the answers are fairly obvious. the soviet regime, chinese communist regime, created order

out of chaos, emerged revolutionairy circumstances and were able to establish order and then, of course, brutally repressed any dissent. they proceeded to mobilize national resources. they forced a process of industrialization on relatively backward economies and they were in that although at great human cost relatively successful. and they were able also to extract from those growing industrial economies resources that they deveoted to the acquisition of military power on a very large scale. they were ruthless but also generally prudent, open opportunistic and flexible. and here as george canyon pointed out in his famous long telegram, they were different than hitler and germany. the soviet union, prachl, of course moved into eastern europe when there was a vacuum created

there at the endst second world war. but despite fears of many in the west, they didn't then go on to invade the west. the costs were too high. the risks were too great. china, the communist regime in china reconquered portions of the previous chinese empire that had been lost in the period of chaos that followed the collapse of the last imperial government in 1911 and recaptured tibet and made them part of prc. but, of course, at least to this point they haven't also gone on to invade taiwan. they knew limits. they were prudent and careful. the soviets allied with nazi germany when it suited their interest and then, of course, they allied with the united states when necessary to' pose the nazis and to survive the chinese communist allied with the soviet brethren for a time but then turned to the united states when they began to fear the growth of soviet power.

so these regimes were cautious and flexible by contrast again to hitler's germany. and fourth and finally, they had what is for a time a significant asset. and that was an ideology that purported to be universal. that applied to everyone, everywhere. and this ideology was able to gain adherence in other places that these regimes were then able to use to advance the objectives at least for a time. so why did they fail to achieve the dreams of their founders? the most profound weaknesses of the chinese and social communist regimes were internal. they served as certain purpose at a certain period in the history of economic develop. industrial age and they were successful as i saidal be it at great cost enforcing industrialization. but these centrally planned

regimes also ultimately choked off incentives and choked off innovation. and they fell further and further behind. this is most notable in the case of the soviet union because it was more advanced and competing more directly with the united states, reached a point in the 1970s and 1908's where it simply couldn't keep pace with the development of technology in the west which was stimulated by expansion and growth of the commercial economy that produced many innovation that's were then used. the soviets got to the point where they couldn't imitate this. even when they could steal it, they couldn't reproduce it. last but not least, of course, these regimes in the initial forms demoralized their people. they were contrary to human nature in their most important aspects. based on the assumption or the belief or the assertion that people would work hard for annan

mus collective rather than favoring their own families based on the assertion that people didn't need belief in higher power in order to live their lives. so they were contrary to deeply rooted human characteristics. also, over time, the ideologies that they sought to promulgate lost a good deal of think external appeal. and last but not least, i think the reason why it was possible for others to oppose thee regimes successfully was that they scared people. and as a result, they were relatively easy to mobilize resources against. i don't want to overstate how easy that was to do but when faced with the soviet union, ultimately, the united states and other western powers got their acts together and did what they needed to do in order to deter aggression and eventually to outlast the soviet union. so as i indicated, i think the

short totalitarian century if it began in 1917 ends in 1989, the collapsest berlin wall, setting in training events that lead eventually to the collapse in fragmentation of the soviet union this is the year also, of course, that the anniversary of which we're going to mark shortly to tiananmen square june 4th, 1989, which i would argue accelerated a process of evolution or mutation of that regime. the fate of these two communist authoritarian regimes was, of course, rather different. the soviet union collapsed and fell apart. china has undergone this mutation or trance formation. but i would argue that there are some similarities in the entities that have emerged to take the place of the old communist totalitarian regimes

both russia in the present form and china in the present form combined authoritarian politics nationalist ideologies and at least some use of market mechanisms to allocate scarce resources. that said, of course, there are significant differences between russia and china today. i don't have time to go on at length about this. i think the comparisons are illuminating. russia i would argue is essentially a criminal enterprise. it's run by a small group of people who are in business for themselves and it really is a player in international politics primarily for two reasons -- one, it happens to sit on oil. it happens to have a large residual reserve of nuclear weapons. if not for those facts, i think russia would already be even less influential than it already is in which i predict over time it is going to become even more. it's a nuisance.

and sometimes a serious one. but it's not. it doesn't pose a profound challenge. china is another story. this is a regime which is as many people point out, no longer marxist but remains len onnist to its core. people believe in something and something they believe most strongly is the importance of maintaining the monopoly of political power of the communist party. since 1989, they used a mix of the promise of economic growth and increasing well-being and a newly emergent form of rather aggressive nationalism to mobilize popular support and to maintain the legitimacy of their

rule. so why is china more difficult to deal with in the long run in the current form than it was in the initial form? first, this is a true regime. it is certainly true of china that has proven to be extremely infective at mobilizing and generating resources. there is the allocation of scarce resources and certainly connected itself to global markets in the way that the soviet union and communist china obviously did not. those regimes cut themselves off deliberately from the world and denied themselves access to markets, capital, technology, all of the things which we now recognize as essential to the maintenance of economic growth. the chinese regime in its current form, of course, has

pursued exactly the opposite policy and benefits from its connection to the international economy gaining access to capital, markets, products and also technology which it acquires by various means some of them illegal. so this is a regime which has proven successful thus far in generating growth and mobilizing resources. prc has been able to sustain for 20 years and double digit year on year increases in military spending without significantly increasing the burden of its military apparatus on the economy as a whole, in other words, without significantly increasing the share of chinese gdp devoted to defense. defense is growing faster than the economy as a whole. so this massive military buildup in which china has been engaged has thus far been relatively burdenless. the second reason why i think it may be more difficult in the

long run to deal with china is that it has proven to be thus far more difficult to mobilize against. it's not seen for a variety of reasons by many people as a threat. or as a significant threat much certainly not on par with what the soviet union appeared to be in the 1940s and 1950s. and related to this and one reason for it is because of the integration into the international economy, china has been able to reach very deeply into the economies, societies and political systems of democratic countries including or particularly the united states. and i would argue in part for that reason it's been successful in dulling the competitive strategic resources and reflexes of the united states. and delaying the process by which it will be necessary i think to mobilize resources necessary to maintain a balance of power.

the failure to respond or respond with sufficient speed to the changes that are emerging in asia as the result of the growth of chinese power could lead to a risk of miscalculation and conflict. rather than end on a gloomy note, i'd like to say that i'm optimistic in the long run for a variety of reasons. i think we're beginning to see that china is increasingly assertive or really aggressive behavior towards the neighbors is stimulating, kind of balancing response on the part of many countries in the region which have reason to fear the consequences of the unchecked growth of chinese power. that is certainly true of japan. other countries in the region as well. secondly, although i think it's going to take time to emerge what the soviets or the chinese and earlier version of themselves might refer to as the

intern incontradictions of their system will ultimately assert themselves. the current chinese regime concentrates power even if not to the degree of its predecessor and in doing so, it is alienating its own people. regimes like this one, i think, may be particularly like this one with this mix of authoritarian politics and market economics are prone to corruption, at the very highest levels. i think that factor is eating away at the legitimacy of the regime. and at least to judge by their track record to date, they have proven to be incapable of undertaking the kinds of fundamental economic reforms that even chinese experts recognize as necessary in the long run. they're addicted to a model of economic develop. which among other things provides direct benefits for party members and state officials who oversee it and who drink at the trough in various

ways. >> the last reason i'm optimistic is that, again, contrary to the mood of gloom which prevadz at the moment, the resilience of the american system is enormous and the fundamentals of american economy and society are extraordinarily strong. one example i would point to and i think it's proof of -- i think it's mark twain that said god looks after young children in the united states of america is the recent discovery or development of technologies for the extraction of enormous quantities of oil and natural gas around the periphery of the united states and under our soil that are going to have tremendously beneficial impact on our economy. but, of course, it isn't only that. it's the stability of our political system, the depth of our system of capital, the quality of our universities, i can say that sitting here that

our positive demographic profile as a result of our openness, immigration which i think are going to be sources of strength in the long run. now i'll close by saying that i know that people are ultimately the product of their own experiences, so i'm a little reluctant to draw this analogy probably for that reason, partly because, of course, it also reveals how old i am. but more and more i'm reminded of the 197 o -- 1907's when i went to college. that is the period of deep gloom about america's economic prospect. it was a period of very deep political division, domestic political division. the united states was coming out of an extremely unpopular and unsuccessful war in which the casualties were in order of magnitude greater than those we suffered in the last ten years.

many mem thought the united states was entering into a period of terminal decline. within five years, let's say, by the end of that decade the united states had begun to mobilize itself and to mobilize its allies and began the final stages of the cold war which ultimately ended in success in the collapse of the soviet union. i would say finally the one piece of the puzzle that was critical there and here i am a little pessimistic thus far is political leadership. i don't see on the horizon any figure who will play the role in this story that ronald reagan played in the story of the 1980s and the end of the cold war. thank you. [ applause ] >> thanks. thanks, mitch, for having me. i'd like to thank you for coming. i'll try to be much more

pessimistic than aaron. as optimistic as him about the united states but not the middle east which is my subject. i think -- >> you need to talk to the microphone. >> if this -- i feel like with the two microphones i should plead the fifth. i have not now, nor have i ever been a member of the communist party. if my talk had a title, it would be totalitarianism is what happens while you're making other plans. i'm going to talk about the rise of totalitarianism in the middle east and the american attitude toward it. and that took place basically in the 1950s and then i'll make some comparisons to the president and then i'll stop. as i understand it, we're using the word totalitarianism flexbly here. in the middle east, i don't know how many regimes we had.

we had a lot of monstrous and we have a lot of monstrous authorityism. when i say totalitarianism, i mean monstrously authoritarian. so the era of -- the era of monstrous authorityism in the middle east begins really in the 1950s. and it's a product as i see it of a number of timing shifts in foreign you have the decline of the european imperial powers, the rise of the superpowers, and as the -- as the british and the french pulled back, the -- you had an upsurge in nationalism in the region. which led to two dynamics, one was an enormous amount of interarab conflict that had been

suppressed by the powers and wasn't really on people's minds. then also an upsurge in the arab/israeli conflict. the united states had an idea when the when basically with the truman administration and the eisenhower administration, they had an idea of aligning or channeling nationalism. in a direction that benefitted the united states. in the cold war. that was the aim of their. that was the aim of their strategy. and what happened is, though, as they were trying with the united states, this interarab conflict came to the fore. and by the time you get to the end of the '50s and into the '60s, you have, you have a polarized middle east with some arab regimes on the side of the

united states and some arab regimes on the side of the soviet union. they're both capable of reaching the arab regimes are capable of reaching into each other's domestic politics. and as a result, they start clamping down significantly on their own populations. and we get that kind of monstrous authoritarianism, really on both sides of the divide. more on the soviet side than on the american side. but it does exist on both sides. and that's what takes us all the way into the post cold war era. we are still really living with the results of this monstrous authoritarianism today. and if you just think about -- i'll come back to this at the end of my talk here. but if you think about what we've seen in the last couple of years, i think it's very much analogous to what we had in the 1950s. we didn't have the imperial powers anymore, but you had a lessening of the -- you had a lessening of the controls by the state. you had an upsurge of forces

from below. in the region. you had it in the west for a moment, in 2011, you had tremendous optimism about where this was going to lead. it was going to lead to democracy and freedom. and then you had the backlash. and we're seeing that now, you know, very clearly in a number of different ways. the two most prominent are the phenomenon in egypt and the sectarian war we've got in syria. and it's very difficult to look at that picture and say this is going to end up in the end in a good place or in a -- in a much more beneficial place than it was before it all began. so now, having said that, with the big picture, let me just turn to the u.s. attitude toward all of this, or discussion of it or thought about it back in the 1950s. and, as i said, totalitarianism

happens while you're making other plans. the united states wasn't concerned about these kinds of i-about -- about the rights of the individual, checks and balances, freedom, liberty and so forth. as i said, trying to channel arab nationalism into the western camp into the cold war. i've -- in looking at how the united states thought about this and the strategy they developed, i've come to the conclusion that there was a kind of map that the americans had that was above all of their -- all of their policy discussions. a kind of paradigm. i actually started thinking this way. i worked, if i could give you a personal anecdote, i worked in the white house in the george w. bush administration. and i had a -- had come from academia, which i thought prepared me for policy work. and then i went to the white house and realized, actually, it

prepared me for nothing. but one of the things that really surprised me was somebody who considered himself an expert. in the middle east. at the highest levels have simple ideas in their head. and i don't mean that as insult. i'm not saying simplistic, they just have simple ideas. and they have to. they're getting so much information from so many different parts of the world. and the trends they're looking at are so contingent on different things, at some point, they have to develop a simple picture and say, you know, i want to turn left, i want to move in this direction, i want to move in that direction. and these ideas they develop over time are incredibly resistant to -- it's very hard to argue against them because they are up above their

paradigms rather than strategic ideas. they're not the kind of things you can debate in a sea setting or something. it's a profound inclination people have. where do they get these ideas? by the way, since i am on the university campus, i would like to quote max vaber. max vaber said -- he said that's max vaber the father of modern sociology, for those of you who don't know. he says, not ideas, vapor wrote, but material and ideal interests directly govern men's conduct. yet, very frequently, the world images that have been created by ideas have like switchmen determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest. so basically as this idea of these pictures that people have in their head -- and that directs the tracks along which they act.

and i think this is very true in the middle east. and so i've started asking myself, where did the picture that the americans had at mid century of the middle east come from? and this inquiry led me to a really surprising, a surprising place. when you think about it, it's not that surprising, but it was surprising when i first came across it. and that is, basically, i think it came from religion. the experts on the middle east, the first experts on middle east were all missionaries. and the first ambassadors, the first people who worked in the cia, who established our expertise, they were all either the descendents of missionaries or people trained by missionaries. and i think the missionary world view had an enormous influence on what we thought we were doing in the middle east. i'm not the first one to point this out, but i don't know of anybody else who has poened in on the kind of specific

inclinations that the missionaries had. now, if i can take you back a little bit to the 30s and 40s, john foster dulles, secretary of state in the eisenhower administration, he first became prominent on the international diplomatic stage by his work in the churches. he worked in the federal council of churches, in the late 30s, early 40s after the war broke out in europe, to convince americans to build a better league of nations. john foster dulles was the single most pernt in the establishment of the united nations. which had a strong religious dimension to it. could talk to organizations and speak in terms of christ's will for humanity and then could walk into diplomatic settings and

pursue the exact same agenda without mentioning the ideas that dulles had about world order were, themselves, i think, were by the missionaries. there was debate in the world. in the 20s and 30s about whether we should focus our missionizing work on -- on deeds or on -- or on belief. should we actually go out and try to convince people to become good christians and to believe in jesus christ? or should we make alliances with people of other religions by focusing on those values that we all share, and that we as christians believe are are the

values and the teachings of jesus christ. but without actually attaching to jesus christ. to take care of health care and take care of the poor, the sick and educate people and so on. this line of thinking was particularly pronounced in the middle east. because in the 19th century when the missionaries went to the middle east and tried to convert muslims to christianity. so they quickly -- they quickly moved. now, there was a professor, i think, whose thinking is absolutely crucial for understanding all this from harvard in the 1930s. william ernest hawking who was tapped by john d. rockefeller jr. to put together a report on

missions and what our mission activity should be. rockefeller had very much in mind creating of the coming of the american age. and he picked hawking to do this because hawking had this notion of what's going on in the world is we are moving toward a world culture. and the key then for us is to create the world culture that will, that will be consonant with the teachings of christ. but we will not sell this to the world. we will not sell this to the world as -- as a christian vision as a general moral vision supported by all major religious traditions. the united nations is the constitutional reflection of that effort to create a global culture that is infused with christian, with christian values. and that's why -- to this day, there's this kind of saintly

afterglow that the u.n. has. you look at this organization corrupt and everything else and you think, how can people treat the secretary general like a pope? there's this little afterglow of that moment we remember in the culture somehow. so this was the vision. this was the vision globally. dulles was very much a part of it. and then there was a specific middle eastern dimension. and the motion in the middle east was that what we need to do is we need to create an alliance with the muslims. that's what we -- that is what we are doing in the middle east. now, hawking, the professor who had this idea of the global culture that will be infused with religious values, hawking said that missionaries have to go out and they have to stop behaving like preachers and they have to start behaving like ambassadors, like they're ambassadors of the west. what happened in the middle east, the missionaries did become ambassadors of the united states. and what they -- they just transposed the hawking,

rockefeller, dulles view from -- of what missionaries should do. they just transposed it on to the united states. hawking believed that the great enemy of the -- of christians on the global scene, in the 1930s, was secularism was secularism. and godless communism. and it was just a matter of transposing that on to the united states and saying that the goal of the united states is to put together a global alliance against communism and to try to make alliances with states. now, in the 1950s, what this led to, then, if this is the picture they have in their heads, the vabarian picture. it led to two priorities above everything else.

and one was disassociating the united states from british imperialism. because we're making an alliance now with the muslims as equals. and so the unequal -- the unequal aspect of the british imperialism was a wedge that was driving the muslims away from us and into the arms of the soviet union. and the other problem was israel. there were two wedges. the jews were also getting in the way. so our diplomacy, the goal of our diplomacy was to basically witness in a sense, witnessing for christ. of course, nobody's thinking about it this way. and the men -- many of the men, eisenhower isn't doing this from any kind of religious motive. but these are sort of deep concepts that are in the culture. we have to go out and we have to prove that we have the same values as the people we're trying to ally with.

and if we show our good intentions, they will come toward us. this kind of thinking reaches its logical conclusion in the suez crisis, when israel, and france attack egypt. and without getting any concessions any concessions, turns as a result into a hero and gives the wherewithal to sort of then take over a big chunk of the middle east or at least pull a big chunk, doesn't necessarily take it all over, but takes a big chunk out of the western orbit and hands it over to the soviet union. so that ends -- that effort -- that effort at witnessing our shared values ends up actually empowering the elements that we're most interested in moving to the soviet union. it has the exact opposite of the one intended. now, none of this has anything to do with totalitarianism.

but nobody is thinking about it at all. and then, just one minute on the -- i've been told by mitch here i have to cut off. let me give you one -- a little quick comparison with the present. i think, first of all, i don't want to suggest it's going to keep replaying itself over and over again. it's certainly not true. but i do think that some of the -- as i rain with the u.n., this saintly afterglow. i think some of these big ideas are still floating around in our diplomatic culture. if you go and look at -- some of these senses of what is a strategic imperative, right? it's the picture that existed in the '50s is still working on to a certain extent. if you look at president obama's famous cairo speech. what is that if not an outreach to the whole muslim world? and he says, there's this impediment to my relationship

with you, oh, muslims, the state of israel. and -- and the state of israel and, oh, there's this other impediment, which is the foreign policy of george w. bush. okay, so it's not the british and the french, but it's the imperialistic impulse that's in the dna of the west and i'm showing you i'm going to pull back and therefore we can get along with each other. the middle east blew apart and went in directions that nobody that nobody expected. and as in the 1950s, nobody's really focused on it. if i said to president obama and his advisers in 2011, you really ought to focus more on the relations that on the israeli/palestinian question would have been laughed out of the room. of course, now that conflict in syria has killed 150,000 people which is 30,000 more people than have died in the arab/israeli

conflict from the beginning to the end, a century of conflict. but those details about the middle east, they're not on our radar because it's not part of that big picture that we have. and with that, i'll stop. >> well, i think in the interest of time, we'll move immediately to taking questions. now, those of you who have attended madison program events will be familiar with their tradition of offering the first two or three questions to students. and i'm very pleased that we have a few students from the preston university chapter of the hamilton society with us this morning. so i will offer them the opportunity to ask the first question or two. >> okay. i have a question. >> wait for the microphone, please.

you can stand up, that'd be great. >> okay. >> so i guess professor pierce spoke on sort of the importance of bearing witness for foreign policy. but, i guess professor duran seems a little more skeptical. so i don't know who this is addressed to. either one of you can, but specifically for the middle east. is that kind of sort of bearing witness going to have any effect? or is it about having the kind of military and economic advantages that professor freedberg spoke about? >> i believe that the bearing witness -- i believe that the bearing witness does have a clear effect, especially when you're talking about the united states where the president and secretary of state by default have the bully pulpit. every time they make a speech. and it's not just what we choose to say. it's what we choose to avoid

saying. for example, i think it was really harmful when hillary clinton took that first tour of asia and made it clear in her statements she was not going to focus on human rights. that was devastating to human rights advocates over there. and all the talk in the papers was how devastating that was. then you look at syria, which i see is one of the worst humanitarian crises the world has ever seen. and in my opinion, it is one of the worst cases of moral indifference the world has ever seen. we should have been drawing attention to the reality about that conflict in so many different ways to assad's atrocities right from the beginning, instead of implying our reason for not getting involved anyway were extremists in the opposition. for example, it would have helped simply to point out that the syrian opposition movement

under the damascus declaration was a group of pro-democracy advocates who wanted nothing more than the rule of law, human rights, an end to the hated emergency law. and it was a peaceful group on top of that. only grew violent in response to assad's brutality, sniper firing the people from the hills, dragging children off from torture. then moving on to bombing civilians' towns and farms. but imagine what a real leader could've done in pointing out simply the reality about that conflict in the beginning. and of course, it's evolved to the point now where it's a very different conflict. but i always believe that the truth makes a big difference. >> so in the -- in the policy world, the debate on that is between the neo conservatives,

sort of meat eating foreign policy experts like erin freedberg and the realists who don't believe in pushing values. and i find myself in the mushy middle between the two. i actually agree that it's very important for the united states to project its values. and i also see our values as kind of a realist tool we have. it's -- people in the middle east actually care about these values. and it's useful to us in many respects, in many kind of practical respects to lead with our values. what puts me in the mushy middle is that i think that the impediments to democracy in the middle east are more deep rooted than some of my neo conservative friends have suggested at times.

it isn't just a matter of -- it's not as simple as removing this or that tyrant and then -- and then democracy and human rights will bloom. as you can see, i think if you look at what's going on on the ground. because there's a fundamental problem in many of these countries of political community. you can't have a limited government unless everybody in the -- the most politically significant elements in the society have a sense that they have a shared fate and they are part of a single community. and that the greater good of the community will be served by limited government. when everyone -- the major groups in the society have a sense of its winner take all. every middle eastern has a movie in their head, and the movie is what they're going to do to me when they take power. right, and you can see what's going on in syria right now.

they are doing -- the assad regime is doing to the opposition what it fears the opposition would do to it if it go in power. and these are powerful, powerful forces. and i don't think we should have any illusions about that. so i do believe that we should project our values. but i think there are lots of impediments out there and another problem, as well, which is the american public. the american public. and it has concluded after ten years of this effort that the candle wasn't worth the game. so those of us who believe in projecting our values, i think we have to take that into consideration, and we have to come up with a way of doing it that doesn't make our own society fearful that we're going to take them down and complet y completely -- completely futile adventure. >> any other questions from students?

we'll open it up. yes? >> thanks. thanks very much for the panel. i was wondering from beginning with the first talk. which mentioned lessons learned from totalitarianism. a more general question, are we done with totalitarianism? simply, this arises in the present context, there's a kind of discussion going on whether the various forms of authoritarianism seems to be regathering strength amount to something in the aggregate that has something in common. the usual suspects are venezuela, iran, russia, china, north korea. or whether it's simply a club of thugs. from about dealing with which we might learn some lessons from the 20th century. but it's not quite the same.

not really the same issue. and i was wondering what the panel thinks about that. i'll leave it at that. >> well, i think it is an important question, what are the commonalities among these various regimes we now find problematic. i mentioned russia and china, but as you point out, there are others that could conceivably included in the list. i think the defining characteristics of these regimes at the moment are their single-minded determination on the maintenance of personal power of the members of the regime. probably they define themselves in an ideological sense, on the one hand more in opposition to what they see as the prevailing liberal democratic american dominated order. so that's what draws putin and xi jing ping together. but it's an opposition to american imperialism as the

ideological imperialism as they see it. the other characteristic is resurgence or reemergence of a certain kind of nationalism. which does bear some resemblance to at least elements of fascist ideology of the 1930s. in particular on -- an emphasis on violence, militarism that, i think, east common. in the chinese case and the russian and other examples, as well. but for the moment with the exception of the islamist regimes, we're not talking about people who are actively trying to promote and promulgate a set of ideas. the last point on china, some people a few years ago were talking about a beijing consensus and alternative to a washington consensus which purportedly -- and market economics. that was a western construct and

the chinese ran as fast as they could away from it. they don't see themselves as promoting anything other than their national interests and the greatness of chinese civilization. >> if i would say that north korea is totalitarian as you could be, total control over citizens, over information. the camps, which are beyond belief, especially in light of the idea of never again. it's really a country, as i said, where the country itself is a concentration camp. nazi germany had camps as did russia. but we have an entire country that is oppressive beyond anything the world has ever seen. and it's just interesting to see the lack of effort in addressing it even on a moral basis, which you see if you go to the

american political science association. professors will stand up and with a straight face say north korea is a fear regime and you'll think, oh, yes, it sure is. but they'll mean the kind of regime they are because they're afraid of us. and if you raise the question, they don't like that. and this is pervasive. i make a point of going to panels on north korea. and this idea that it's really our fault. and if you ask the follow-up question, what would happen if the borders opened up? do you not think that people would flee? there seems to be no answer, but nevertheless that view of north korea remains in a lot of academic circles. that's been really shocking to me. >> thank you. >> mitch, i wondered if i could just put a follow-up question to aaron. aaron, i wonder if you could

give us your views following up on what you said to the thesis that walter russell meade has put out in a couple of provocative pieces of conceiving of the international system right now as the united states and the west against china, russia, iran, north korea. sort of looking to them as an alliance with the kind of unified vision of revisionist. >> i think they are in effect an alliance. and there have been elements of that that have been present for a while, iran and north korea cooperating in the development of missiles and nuclear weapons. russia and china cooperating to china's benefit in trade and technology and energy and so on. so, yes, i think there's a loose alignment of states see it as being in their interest to check and stymy and oppose american power, first of all, and also, which take their bearing to some degree by the u.s. and western

reactions to their behavior. so i think some of the problems we're having, for example, now in dealing with china in east asia and russia and eastern europe have to do with the fact that the leaders of those regimes don't assess the resolve of the united states as being very strong. and there may be deeper ties to come. one of the unfortunate consequences, for example, as western efforts fully justified in a moral sense to impose sanctions on russia in response to its actions in the ukraine is that it may be forcing russia further and further into china's arms, new energy deals have been announced that the russians are probably willing to sell certain kind of surface to air missiles they weren't willing to sell before to the chinese. so we may be in effect by our responses to their aggression forcing them closer and closer together. i don't know whether the absence of a common ideology is a disadvantage or an advantage for them. of course, in the great era of the communists totalitarian

regimes, ideology became the issue of division. so maybe the fact that these guys ultimately don't really believe in much of anything will be an advantage for them, at least in the short run. >> professor has a question. if you could wait for the microphone. >> let me just, i'd like to make a comment, which is that, first, i believe very strongly that values, i don't like to call them american values because they're by no means limited to the united states. democratic and liberal values are found all over the world. and they're highly attractive. i remember japanese foreign minister, ministry officer saying to me the great problem for china is that everybody bandwagons with the united states. and i said, what are you talking about? i mean, i've traveled all over. and wherever i go, i'm part of

the roast of the american festivities. and he said, well, that may be true. most people want to live in a country more like the united states than it is like china. which brings me to the point that at what point -- when did we -- when did the sort of human rights element drop out of our foreign policy. why is it that we say now -- we don't have any credibility of the subject at all. i would argue it's in the '70s with the nixon diplomacy to china. most of the papers regarding that have all -- they've all been declassified or almost all have been declassified. and i would challenge you to find any reference in the entire thing to human rights. in fact, nixon goes so far as to offer to sacrifice the alliance with japan, which is the democratic country. in return, by implication by an alliance with china. and i think once.

it's still an aspirationally totalitarian machine. and surveillance and so forth is more intense and more effective than it's ever been before. and if we give them a free pass, then the question is, what possible standing do we have say to condemn belarus, which i gather is in the deep freeze. i'm told the reason, that belarus has 11 political prisoners and we've come down hard on them. i promised you if i had the right friend in china and we flew there and landed in any city and got in a car and the guy knew -- i could find you 11 political prisoners, you know, in a couple of minutes. so what we have done with this massive change is really just to sacrifice our credibility on the whole issue. and it's going to be hard to rebuild. that's just a comment. thanks very much.

>> just very briefly on china in particular, arthur. as you know, there has been a cycle in the public emphasis placed by the -- on the human rights and political reform issue by american political figures. and, of course, at the outset of the opening as you say, it was utterly absent. but, it begins to come into the picture at the end of the cold war, and i think, particularly after tiananmen, which is a powerful reminder of the true nature of the regime. and at least for a while you have high-ranking officials saying, really rather remarkable things. sometimes sharing the stage with chinese counterparts and saying, you know, we're eager to transform into a liberal democracy, seemingly unaware that this is deeply threatening to the people they're talking to. but what's happened over time, i

think is that component in our policy has been suppressed more and more and more, which i take as a response to the perceived increasing strength and influence of china. i think we've become more and more afraid of talking about that. >> it is true. probably the best example of that is bill clinton. and we remember -- some of us remember the democratic convention with the tiananmen leaders and all the -- clinton was brutally disciplined by the chinese for having -- and he became the first american president to go to china -- on tape, recite the so-called three nos. and i point out -- he did it. quite amazing. and after tiananmen, of course, bush sent him off immediately to

tell ping he would always be his best friend no matter what, which might say in public. i think the chinese to some extent have disciplined us. but on the other hand, can think of people in american political history who simply wouldn't have submitted to that discipline. >> do you have something? >> yeah, just a couple of quick responses. with respect to the middle east, i'm not sure that -- i'm not sure, what i was saying is that the human rights and democracy component was never at the forefront of our policy in the cold war. that was one of my -- that was one of my points. we were always thinking of it in terms of this religious -- a big block of muslims over there. we wanted to move them as a block. and we weren't thinking about the relations between the muslims which have become much more apparent to us as major issues now. but then you have this other problem. i agree with you.

i do agree with you that we should have -- that are -- our values, universal values, if you will, should be a significant component of our foreign policy. but you run into -- you run into horrendous tradeoffs in the middle east very quickly. our closest arab allies, saudi arabia. are we going to -- are we going to stop having them as our closest allies? no, we're not going to. we promote a democracy in iraq. and that opened the door to iran. having an enormous amount of influence. and right now, we could've done it better, i believe. but these are not -- these are not simple problems that can go away if we just put values forward. >> well, we're coming to the end of our session. so the last question will go to professor levine who has been waiting patiently. >> thank you. it was a very interesting panel. i have a question about the historical analogies you've all used. i was very struck that comparisons made between today

in the 30s, michael duran between today in the 50s and aaron friedberg, and we're talking about world war i in the teens. from which, i conclude that some of the issues we're talking about are sort of permanent possibilities at any given moment in time. but those permanent possibilities have to be qualified with great detail, knowledge of the specifics of every individual case. i think you would all probably agree with that statement. so, but my question is, each of you based on the main analogy that you used, what would be the greatest difference in your judgment and between the 1930s and today might go between the 50s and today and 70s of today? thank you. >> okay. well, my orientation with american foreign policy is that at its best, it combines moral and practical concerns, concerns

of power and concerns of democratic ideals. and i believe that since world war ii, we have had some presidents and secretaries who have emphasized either one or the other. either power or ideals. nixon and kissinger, it was pretty much power. ideals were very secondary. with carter, ideals, although not so much anticommunist ideals, but his own variety of ideals were dominant. in the 1930s, we weren't paying enough attention to either power or ideals as these totalitarian powers rose. i see that as exactly the problem with our president and secretary of state today. as i said, after world war ii, we had presidents and secretaries of state who paid a lot of attention to one or the other. but never until now have we had president and secretaries of

state paying attention to neither one or the other. >> mike, the 1950s. >> so the biggest change between then and now is that there's no soviet union. and we're not even sure that we have to be deeply involved in the middle east anymore. we are pulling away. how far we're pulling away, i don't know. to add another decade for comparison. the one i always ask myself is are we in the 1920s or the 1970s? it mean, if you accept aaron's idea, there'll be a jolt. china will make a move in the south china sea. iran will get a bomb and the american people will wake up and the leadership will say, hey, we've got to be in the game. i'm more and more -- i'm thinking that we're in the 1920s. and it's going to take, we don't have that, we don't have that sense of a soviet threat out there, so we're reading these problems against the larger game

with this threat out there. so -- at what point we start saying, wow, we should be engaged. i'm very much in favor of a forward leaning policy. i think we should be very much involved in what's going on in syria and so on. the thing that has amazed me is how easy it has been for the president to say, i don't want to do anything. and that's -- that i never could've predicted. >> two differences. one having to do with what i see as a potential principal opponent. as regards china as compared to the soviet union, we now realize in retrospect by the 1970s was a burned out case, the economy has slowed so it wasn't growing at all. and most important, its leadership was utterly demoralized. they didn't believe in what they were saying. they knew they were lying to themselves as well as to their own people. and the case of china, this is not so. we don't know what the trajectory is going to be, but these are people who have experienced tremendous success over the last several decades

and who believe that they're on a path to continued growth and greater power. so it's a different kind of strategic competitor. the real question, i guess i have myself is about us and about our reflexes. and i wonder, too, as mike does about whether this is the '20s or the '70s. in the '70s, one thing you can say, although the divisions were very deep as some people in this room will recall. and there were people saying as the slogan of george mcgovern in 1972 is "come home america," real resonances, i think, in fact, this is a bit of a detour, but i think the core of democratic party thinking on foreign policy actually closer to what it was then than it was when president clinton was in office because he was an anomaly. nevertheless. so i don't know about the reflex. the reflex was still there. in the 1970s. it didn't take that much to get people refocused on something that they had been intensely focused on for 25 years

previously. some people said we were too much focused on it. but it was pretty easy after the soviets invaded afghanistan and so on to get geared back up for that and for the american public to be geared back up for it. i'm not sure that's so today. and one of the reasons i'm concerned about it and i believe so much in the mission of the alexander hamilton society is i think there may be generational shift underway. in which younger people are increasingly detached from the idea that the united states needs to play an active role in the world. that's a worrisome trend because that's means our reflexes will be very slow. and we could be in the 20s rather than the 70s. >> well, please join me in thanking the panelists. on wednesday, american history tv in prime time marks the 50th anniversary of the 1964

civil rights act. at the civil rights act signing ceremony. at 8:30, the congressional gold medal ceremony honoring martin luther king jr. and coretta scott king. later, at 9:25. senate historian donald ritchie on the congressional debate and passage of the bill with former cvs correspondent roger mudd. and at 9:25 p.m. eastern, a talk with the author of two presidents, two parties and the battle for the civil rights act of 1964. >> author alan huffman shares a tale of two mississippis as we visit prospect hill in jackson. >> well, prospect hill was founded by isaac ross who was a revolutionary war veteran from south carolina. and when he realized that he was going to die and the slaves would end up being sold or would just become common slaves, he wrote in his will that at the

time his daughter's death that plantation would be sold and the money used to pay the way for the slaves to emigrate to liberia where the freed slave colony had been established by the american colonization. they call it repatriation. they talk about them going back to africa. but you have top understand these people, most of them, they were americans. they have been here for three, four, five generations. so it wasn't like they were just going home. they were going back to the continent that their ancestors originally inhabited. it was quite the risk. and so they took their culture, what they knew here there. some of them took the bad aspects, too. the slavery, but that was all they had ever known. and they built houses like this one because after all, they're the ones who built this house. there were a lot of, basically,

greek revival houses that the freed slaves built in mississippi and africa and across the river was louisiana and liberia which was settled by freed slaves from louisiana. there was a georgia, there was a virginia, a kentucky, and maryland county. and all of those people came from those states in the u.s. >> explore the history and literary life of jackson this weekend saturday at noon eastern on c-span 2's booktv and sunday at 2:00 p.m. on american history tv on c-span 3. >> the privacy and civil liberties oversight board releases a report wednesday on the collection of electronic communications under the fisa law. we'll bring you at 10:00 a.m. sunday on c-span. >> book tv sat down with former secretary of state hillary clinton in little rock to discuss her new book, hard choices.

>> getting to the point where you can make peace is never easy because you don't make peace with your friends, you make it with people who are your adversaries who have killed those you care about, your own people or those you're trying to protect. you have to get into the heads of those on the other side. you have to change their calculation enough to get them to the table. i talk about iran, we have to get them to the table and we'll see what happens, but that has to be the first step. and i write about what we did in afghanistan and pakistan, trying to get the taliban to the table for a comprehensive discussion with the government of afghanistan. well, in iraq today, what we have to understand is that it is primarily a political problem that has to be addressed.

the asengs of the sunni extremists is taking advantage of the breakdown in political dialogue and the total lack of trust between the maliki government, the sunni leaders, and the kurdish leaders. >> more with hillary clinton saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern and sunday morning at 9:15 on c-span 2's book tv. >> now, american history tv in prime time features a lecture on egypt on the origins of al qaeda. this is part of a class taught by juan cole, professor of

history at the university of michigan in ann arbor. this is an hour 20 minutes. >> all right. well, welcome, everybody. we're going to talk about the roots of al qaeda terrorism today. of course, this is a complex subject. and i'm going to focus specifically on its roots in modern egypt. that's a topical subject. in the past -- in the past few months, the military government of egypt has abruptly declared the muslim brotherhood to be a

terrorist organization. this is a stark reversal of its fortunes. because in the summer of 2012 after the revolution of hosni mubarak, morsi won. so in from summer of 2012 until summer of 2013, not only was the muslim brotherhood not a terrorist organization, it was the government of the country. and now, all of a sudden, it's a terrorist organization. so this is, you know, makes your head spin, the redefinition of politics in this post, revolution period. but the roots of these attitudes toward the muslim brotherhood. and of the brotherhood's own, i think, political mistakes go back in 20th century egyptian history.

egypt was invaded by britain in 1882. it was just a colony. and there was a british -- one of the longer lasting one was lord chromer. and they ran egypt kind of as a cotton farm to produce cotton for british factories and for the benefit of the british as you might expect. they didn't do anything about spreading mass competition or literacy in egypt. he thought it was a stupid idea. he said we did that in india and they formed a communist party and started to try to kick us out. we won't make that mistake in egypt. and the british in egypt faced

some severe difficulties having to do with their management of the country's resources. and world war i was a difficult period economically because of the fighting in the mediterranean theater. there were disruptions of food supplies. there was a drought, there was substantial hunger in the middle east in this period. and some of that got blamed on the british. now, during world war i, the empire which ruled -- had ruled most of the middle east, some parts of the middle east had been taken over by the british or the french, but much of the middle east was ruled by the

ottoman empire. and threw in with the austrians and germans during the world war. that made them the enemy of the british and the french, and ultimately the americans. we historians widely consider this ottoman joining of the war to have been a mistake. and they were defeated. and when they were defeated, the victors add versailles carved up the turkey. and so, the british got iraq, syria went to the french. and so you had -- you had a new

wave of colonialism in the near east. that was provoked by the victories of world war i. and unlike in europe where the empire broke up into hungary and austria and where president woodrow wilson argued for 14 points and self-determination for the -- for the populations that came out of the war. the 14 points and self-determination were not applied to the middle east. and at the time, there was a kind of colonial, european sense of superiority. the rhetoric was one of -- of the juvenilization of the people of the middle east. so the -- the settlements that were made after world war i at versailles assumed people in the

middle east were kind of like, you know, they were adolescents. they were 15. you know, not ready for a driver's license. so the british and the french would adopt them as wards and would grow them up to the point where eventually maybe they could have their own countries. and suave, sophisticated iraqis and palestinians and syrians, some of whom had studied in paris and berlin were outraged to be treated in this way. and the iraqis actually staged a revolt over it, which the british put down. so the other thing that happened when they -- the powers aboli abolished the ottoman empire, the sultans in the late 19th century and early 20th century had begun trying to deploy some soft power against the encroachments of the europeans

into their territory. and one of the forms of soft power that they had was that the sultan of the ottoman empire was the leader of the muslim community. and at the time, you know, presided over the holy cities of islam. and so the sultan started claiming to be not only sultans, not only emperors, but also kalifs, and this idea of a renewed -- because they're kind of like muslim popes or sunni/muslim popes. this idea of a renewed caliphate, i don't think people bought it, but some did. but with the defeat of the ottomans and the rise of the secular republic of turkey after

the war, the turkish parliament abolished the sultan and caliphate. so became the french model and place in it for a muslim pope. but for a certain segment of the muslim community, the end of the caliphate was a huge disaster because it meant that there was no point of unity or authority for -- for the generality of muslims anymore. and they were divided up into these small, small colonies and mandates and ultimately nation states by the europeans. so there was a theory that, you know, the end of the caliphate was the end of muslim power. and this theory that the -- and there were conspiracy theorys. the british were the ones who put the turks up to abolishing the caliphate.

this kind of thinking has survived as a minority opinion. because the vast majority, i think, of sunni muslims are happy with their nation states and to have the religion organized along nation state lines sort of just as protestantism and christianity is now largely organized on the lines of the nation state. you have the swedish lutheran church. it was the same thing with sunni-islam. you have the religious authority in egypt. and in jordan and so forth. but there is a minority of muslims, and there has been for nearly 100 years now who really, really thinks you need the caliphate back. and al qaeda, the extremist organization is among those that wants the caliphate back. and osama bin laden gave a speech after the attacks of september 11th in which he

actually said that, you know, we destroyed amongst the greatest of their buildings and we have visited upon them some of the calamities for the last 80 years. and at the time, a lot of people kind of asked themselves, well, what have we been doing to the muslims for the last 80 years? but, he was referring to the 1924 abolition of the caliphate. so -- those muslims who took the ottoman claim to religious authority and not just political authority seriously, you know, wondered, can you be a proper sunni/muslim without a proper pope-like figure? and the more secular minded intellectuals in egypt actually wrote books in which they upheld that, yeah, sure, you know. islam, complicated religion, you pray, you fast.

why would you need a caliphate ? they argued that it was protectly all right to be a sunni muslim without a central source of religious authority of that sort. as i said, there were conservatives who wanted it, a caliphate back. and i think this discussion about religious authority and its place in the modern world after world war i fed into the creation in 1928 of the muslim brotherhood in the egyptian port town, it was founded by a young man at the time named hasa hasan al-banna who was a watch maker. but was, you know, fairly well educated in a contemporary arabic sense didn't know much about the outside world or

foreign languages or so forth. but he, from his point of view and from the point of view of many conservatives in egypt, egypt had been robbed. it had been robbed of its heritage, of its culture, of its laws by that period of british rule. and he said well why would our form of government, our personal status laws, why would those have been made in london? what's london got to do with us? we're here on the nile. and we've been muslims for, well at the time it would have been 1300 years or so. so why, why would these british christians come here and tell us how to organize ourselves? and so al-banna wanted to push back against the british shaping of modern egypt. and he engaged in what i would say as a his or it -- historian

in a certain amount of row the man sizization of the past because he had this idea that in the past, muslim societies had existed that were ruled by muslim law. and just as roman catholicism has cannon law, islam has an elaborate legal apparatuses coming out of the sacred text the kuran and replace british law with it. that's going back to how they behaved in the past. but while one would argue that islamic law wasn't important in the past, in my view, this particular kind of lattice work

of islamic law that al-banna had in mind was a minority affair in muslim world in premodern times. it was something that the muslim clerks, they were invested in, but much law was customary, laws were made by governors, but secular rulers, and the ottoman empire, in the empire, the sultan, the emperor was recognized as a legislator. and this was a prerogative that went back to central asia and the mongul tradition that the chief of the tribe would issue laws. so they issued, the ottoman's issued laws and those laws that they issued often touched upon areas of life that were also touched upon by islamic law, and they didn't always coincide. the ottoman would sometimes

issue a law that didn't bare any relationship to islamic law. it wasn't the case that there was this ideal society in the past ruled by this kind of, i would say fundamentalist understanding of what islamic understanding it. understandings of law change over time. and what things you emphasize and so forth are different over time. and again, al-banna tended not to recognize this. now when the muslim brotherhood began and started to get off the ground and it was moved to cairo in 1930. it came out of egyptians traditions of spear chul wallty including what is called suffism. mysticism is about the warm heart about a sense of getting a feeling of unity with the devine

beloved, and mystics in cairo would meet on thursday evenings at a mosque and they would chant together, and these things, you know, were frowned upon by some more conservative muslims. but the brotherhood originally wasn't coming out of saudi arabia kind of tradition which, which condemned the idea of saints and intersession and noncanon call kind of rituals. the brotherhood was rich in islam tradition and it wasn't a sufi order, but some of its emphases came out of that tradition. over time i think it became more literalist and less mystical. now al-banna was the leader of this organization. and it grew.

it grew quite rapidly through the 30s and 40s -- 30's and 40's. it was mainly at that time, ironically enough because things changed later, but at that time, it was mainly a, an urban organization. it was especially popular with the urban lower middle classes. they were either artisans or workmen of various sorts. it was said back in the 40's if you have really a lot of trouble finding a plumber in cairo, like joining the muslim brotherhood and you'll never want for a plumber. and then there were people who joined who had an education of a modern sort, but in arabic. they didn't know french or english, but they weren't, they weren't lacking