rebuilding the fort and now we are giving it back to you all new and improved. that was further angering the colonists. another quick one. >> this might be jumping ahead, but was there another -- [inaudible] that ends thet next war is the treaty of paris. that is not very good for the french or the spanish. all right, thank you for coming. i appreciate it. [captioning performed by national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captioning performed by national captioning institute, >> you are watching american history tv all weekend, every .eekend, on c-span3 to join the conversation, like us on facebook.

>> coming up next on american history tv, author elizabeth calls hoffman explores the costs and consequences of the u.s. role in world leadership, asking the question, is america an empire or empire? i looking at key turning points, she argues that the u.s. has played the role of umpire since 1776, but she also says umpires cannot win. this program is about an hour. >> >> thank you so much, kay, and thank you all for being here. i can't tell you how pleased and honored i am to be here addressing the world affairs council and especially because what i hope we're going to discuss tonight is i think one of the most critical questions of our time, which is, you're not going to know it because i didn't turn the microphone on. [laughs] >> look, you are human.

>> well, where's the button here, kay? the green light, right? the classic green light. anyway, i'm here to discuss one of the critical questions i think of our times which is why the united states assumed the role of world defenders after world war ii, and the question of whether we must continue this role indefinitely. this conversation springs from my new book which i hope is available outside but also from an op-ed that i wrote for the "new york times" last year with the title "come home america," and this was subsequently the subject of a morning joe show on the same subject and in the essay i observed that everybody talks about getting out of iraq and afghanistan, but what about germany and japan? and in essence, what i'm trying to raise here is a very fundamental question which is

-- where do we go from here, and do we need to be considering some more basic changes in thiscan foreign policy at turning point in our own national history? the cause i think in many ways for me -- and i'm a historian -- that our nation suffers from a lack of historical self-awareness about our role , and it's a lack of historical self awareness that makes us a target and that obscures and confuses our future choices and this is why history is important and i'm kind of a cheerleader for history. because history shows us the big picture and it gives us those , long range trajectories that help make sense of the mess and the turmoil of everyday crises. when i say everyday crises, i'm aware that sounds like a put-down. like, everyday crises -- what i mean by that is that in world affairs, there are crises every day so we need to understand the big picture to help make sense of our choices.

to give us an example of what i think of as historical confusion, i like to go right to the top here, and president obama said last year when he was addressing our nation about the question of intervening in the syrian civil war and he said at that time that the u.s. has been the chief enforcer of international law for the past seven decades, and then the president asserted, america's not the world policeman. well, what do policemen do but enforce law? he also said a couple of weeks after that addressing the united nations, he said that the u.s. seeks a world in which state sovereignty is respected but also in which sovereignty cannot shield a regime from outside intervention. this is a flat contradiction. the whole point of sovereignty is absolutely authority within

territorial boundaries. in a sense, what the president is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. what he was really saying is that we seek a world in which sovereignty is subject to external checks and balances to protect individual human rights. much as the federal government operates in the united states. by the way, i want you to already be listening. checks and balances, that's such an american term but in a way this has to do with the american view and also, i think, the american role in the world. i think that this kind of double speak isn't intentional and i think we see it in president after president so this is not a democratic or republican problem. it's an american one that we suffer from not knowing exactly where we come from and why. and i think it reflects a lack of understanding about the structure of the world in general, and if we don't understand our history, no one

else will. because we're the ones who write about it, we're the ones who tell people, this is who we are and if we don't understand it, they won't, either. i hate to be a tease because i can't possibly answer all of the really big questions in 45 minutes and my idea is to give you 300 years in 45 minutes but i will do my best, because the fact is that the u.s. exercises a very unusual role as the and,n with the greatest yet, nonetheless, very limited power in the world, the power to determine outcomes in foreign affairs. when things go wonky, people invariably ask, don't we all ask, what is the united states going to do about it? they don't say, what's mexico going to do about it? or switzerland, or france, or iran. 95% of all soldiers serving on soil other than their own are americans. and that includes u.n. peacekeepers and nato troops. so these are americans solving

other people's problems and sometimes creating new ones in the process. so this raises very important questions and possibilities. for example, are we the world's policemen? or, from another perspective, are we a self-important bully that imposes its values on others? worse, are we an empire that, as many claim, seeks to dominate the world for its own geopolitical benefit and economic prosperity? that's door number one. door number two, are we, as many realists believe, instead, the only power that stands between the world and armageddon, between a repetition of the great depression or world war ii, or even nuclear devastation of the planet? is that our role and if that's

true, must we play that role forever, regardless of what it costs to what it costs our schools, infrastructure, domestic security, our treasury, our soldiers, our psyche? door number three, or is it possibly -- and this is what my research suggests, that the road we have been on for the past 70 years has been a detour, a necessary detour, on the main path to which world history has actually been heading since about 1648, and that now is the time for a course correction? if i'm right, then my book challenges us to transition to the next phase of our national epic, confidently and affirmatively, learning from both successes and failures.

indeed, to be objective, scholars must be as rigorous identifying what went right as with what went wrong. as i said, i can't cover all this material and get it owl out -- get it all out there, but i'm going to come pretty close and for that you will have to read my book. every author has to put this plug in there so i'm hoping you will. because what "american umpire" does is to try to take essentially 300 years of history and make sense of it so that we can understand where we might go. in today's talk, i want to do three things. first of all, i want to tell you a little bit about why i wrote the book because as kay said, i'm also a novelist so i have lots of irons in the fire and i also like to explain why i think the reigning scholarly paradigm -- my second objective -- is not only say why i wrote the book but why the way of looking at the world, i think most scholars adhere to, is i think, simply wrong. and this is the paradigm that the u.s. is an empire.

nestly i want to propose an , alternate explanation because this is a very persuasive explanation and in fact people all around america are starting to call the u.s. an empire. i was watching jon stewart the other day and what did jon stewart say? isn't the u.s. a big imperial nation? no, jon, you're wrong but he hasn't called me yet, so. [laughter] anyway so i'd like to propose an , alternative explanation which is that the world has imposed new norms over the past four centuries. and that these norms are not made in america, they are worldwide. under the catastrophic events in the 1940's, the united states for -- reversed its ofg-standing policies non-entanglement and adopted a function that can, but not identical to the one used to

state -- thewn role of an umpire, to impel acquiescence between squabbling governments in moments of crisis. at the time we did this, we were the only nation with the relevant nation and requisite capacity. so, why did i write this book? why is a long story, i won't bother you with the whole thing but in a way it goes back to when i was first interviewing to be a graduate student and i was interviewing for a scholarship, an important national scholarship. i was very excited and nervous about the process and there was a panel of experts who were interviewing me and i was going into the field of what's called diplomatic history at the time and i was asked, eager young thing i was, why do you want to enter a dying field? well, i didn't know it was dying until he told me that so i had

to bunt, very quickly, and say, well, because we can't let it die, right? this is too important, the subject of america's relationship with the rest of the world. but he was right. and as i discovered, in the field of history, it was dying, i think for a couple of reasons. one is that cultural and social history had become very attractive after the 1960's and then the 1970's and 1980's. but i think the other reason was, i think that probably a lot of young scholars were instinctively repelled by a field in which there was only ever really one answer to every question, which, if you were looking at what had happened in the world, the answer was always pretty much, america messed up. so whatever the reason, scholars left the field of american diplomatic history and what happened is that political scientists took it up and they are mostly concerned with modern policy issues. their knowledge of history is

not deep. that's not their field. and the historians who stayed in the field were historians who generally subscribed and often generally still do subscribe to the idea that the american record is one long story of empire and imperialism and that goes back to george washington and ben franklin. but empire, i think, is a terribly misleading term that obscures the challenges facing us today and a misdiagnosis, as we know, is often more dangerous than no diagnosis at all, because with a misdiagnosis, you can make the wrong prescription, and, in fact, there are groups like al qaeda which also claim the u.s. is an empire to which there's really only one answer, which is death to the empire, or death to america. so what i'd like to do is tell you a little bit about who some of these people are. i, myself, even think, am i exaggerating this, that this is the reigning way of understanding the role of america in the world amongst my

peers? i'd like to roll through a couple of titles for you. a book by neil ferguson, a brit, "classus, the rise and fall of the american empire." another one, "empire for liberty, a history of american imperialism." or how about "among empires," by charles maier, "american ascendancy and its predecessors." and "american empire, the reality and consequences of u.s. diplomacy." and one of the basics, "empire," the 50th anniversary of this book. or "irresistible empire." one historian said that the u.s. and europe does not have the

monroe doctrine, it's the marilyn monroe doctrine. she's not a blonde but it's the same idea. or how about "the empire trap," a colleague at harvard university, talking about america as an empire. or, "in praise of empires," a historian at ucla. i want to suggest this is not all criticism from the left. sometimes people from the opposite side of the political spectrum will say we need more empires and we wish the u.s. was a better one. that's another way of interpreting it. this is one of the most famous interpretations who wrote "the empire trilogy" so sometimes i feel like i'm arguing against "lord of the rings." the interesting thing about this term "empire" is that nobody

defines it with any precision. it is an absolutely sloppy catch-all phrase that's used to describe everything from tourism and religion to foreign investment and war. now, i know you're saying, why don't you be more direct with what you don't like about that term, because i feel strongly about this. the term is used to describe most every catastrophe in the world and any catastrophe with which the united states is associated, as an outcome of our attempt to control and exploit the rest of the world, as if this is the only possible explanation for america's mistakes or its successes. so to give you a little sense of the peek into these books, as

well. all you've seen are the titles. i want you to get a sense of what's the flavor of this criticism. chalmers johnson, for example, has described america's bases abroad as "striking evidence, for those who care to look, of an imperial project that the cold world obscured." andrew baseovitz, who sees himself as a conservative, although some historians say he's so far to the right that he's come around to the left, that the intervention in iraq as he put it was "a war for the empirrium because the purpose of american policy in total is to expand an american empirium." on the left side, the world socialist web says "iraq was a predatory imperialist war, carried out as part of a long-term strategy for reorganizing the middle east for american interests."

another british commentator, tariq ali writes "when people tell me that the american empire is weakening, i say, don't underestimate it. europe and the middle east fall into line whenever the united states says, this has to be done and that has to be done. so the only really sovereign nation today is the imperial nation." now, this is not just in the ivory tower that these accusations are booted around. in fact, very sadly, after the great tragedy of the boston marathon last year, tsarnaev, the person who engineered that bombing, his neighbors said he went around ranting about the american empire before setting off the bombs that killed so many last year. and the accusation of the american empire has been out there so prevalently since 2003

that not only george bush but also barack obama have both come out about this and obama told the u.n. last year "the notion of an american empire isn't borne out by america's policy. we seek a world where nations do not covet the land or resources of other nations." the president said this. about an hour later, there was a commentary about this on democracy now, a radio station associated with the nation, and at that time the commentator said, "obama basically came out and said the united states is an imperialist nation and we are going to do whatever we need to conquer areas to take resources from the world." i don't know what machine he put it in to get that translation out, but the point is that when you wear certain kind of glasses or maybe a certain kind of hearing aid, you only hear it in a certain way and that's why i think this is a terribly

important conversation for us to have, and so when jon stewart and others say, we're an imperial nation, i say, don't take that line down, or at least submit it to analysis. so that's why i'd like to step now to talking about the reigning paradigm in the historical profession and on what basis the united states is called an empire by serious, well meaning, virtuous scholars, many of whom are my personal friends. one of the basis for this is the notion that the u.s. was expansionist and throughout the west, here we are in colorado, so we know that story. the u.s. expanded over native american nations, it went to war with mexico, that's why we call the u.s. an empire. other people say, no, the main reason to call the u.s. an empire is because of its 20th century military dominance, the bases that we have all around the world and the coincidental,

not coincidental, spread of american values that seem to trail along with the american bases. other scholars will say that it's the 21st century economic dominance and that our economic dominance -- how else do you explain it -- it must come out of this imperial quest. the interesting thing is that i was writing this book, i thought, my goodness, when you take off these glasses and take off the hearing device that filters evidence, you actually find that there's a lot of very obvious evidence that argues against all of these forms of interpretation. let's take the first one, the u.s. is an empire because it expanded across the west. that does sound fairly imperialistic, doesn't it, especially considering the war against mexico. it sounds that way until you look at the context of that.

in fact, in the 19th century, this was happening throughout the americas. i like this particular picture because it shows what a crazy quilt latin america was after it declared independence and, in fact, what happened is that there were 21 border wars very similar to the u.s.-mexican border war in the hundred areas following latin american independence because all these brand new nations were elbowing each other for better borders. this one shows you latin america before the war of the pacific when chile invaded north and took chunks out of peru and bolivia. similar and justified in almost the identical ways as american expansion. so if we want to call chile an empire or uruguay an empire or argentina an empire, but i say don't because those game nation-states in which the

rights were defined in different ways. by the way, the chileans didn't stop at butting up against their neighbors. there were 21 border wars similar to the u.s.-mexican war. they also expanded against native americans. we all know these campaigns were brutal yet this is what nation-states were doing. the 19th century is the era we know of nationalism and nationalism is often not pretty. by the way, the standards of nationalism have changed over the years but we don't call it empire because it's a little bit of a different thing. the other reason why we tend to compare the united states to empires of the past is because of military bases. that seems logical on the face of it except when you answer that when the united states has military bases abroad, it has it on the basis of a contractual

agreement with the country that is the host country and the host can kick us out and you know what happens when the host kicks us out? we go. empires don't act that way. they don't. i like to show this slide because this is the years that the united states was in france before our oldest ally kicked us out, after world war ii. they said, yankee go home. i'm sure they said it in a polite french sort of way, perhaps with a glass of wine. but the united states, they left, and they asked us to leave and we did. the same is true of u.s. bases in the philippines and elsewhere where the united states has left after a period of time and in fact everywhere the united states has intervened it has ultimately left, unlike military empires of yore. the other reason why people will sometimes say the u.s. is an empire is because of its economic prowess. i like to say, consider one fact. the united states has the

world's largest economy in 1890. 1890, before the first dough boy hit the shores of france, before the united states joined the united nations, any such thing. so america's economic story is a very different story from that of empire and yet, and this is where we all get stuck, we say, yes, but, the u.s. is the primary guarantor of world security. why do we get involved? why are we involved in all these other countries? by the way, the japanese call this more or less the yoshita doctrine, which translates more or less into "let america do it." this came out of world war ii. and in fact, one of the interesting parts of this story is that there wasn't one country other than the united states that was willing to sign a peace treaty with japan at the end of world war ii because of its

behavior in that war. you think nazi germany was bad, and it was horrific, but because of the treatment of prisoners of war, nobody was willing to sign a peace treaty so it wasn't until 1951 that australia became the second country after the u.s. to sign a peace treaty. why? because this all took place in the same week, a foggy week in san francisco -- this is where the novelist comes out -- what happened is in the very same week that the peace treaty was signed by multiple countries with japan, that was at the end of the week. at the beginning of the week, the united states signed the pact promising australia and new zealand that we would be there if japan ever rose again. immediately after that, the united states signed the u.s.-japanese bilateral treaty to assure the japanese that we would do this for them. please, don't pick up a gun, we'll do this all the time. after that, everybody was willing to sign a peace treaty to rehabilitate japan and bring

it back into the modern world at great expense to the united states. so the united states undertook this role and part of the reason, part of the reason, i think, it's so hard for us to understand exactly how the world unfolded, is because what we do see is the fact that the united states, its influence has spread at the same time that there has been a spread of certain values which we tend to call "american values" but i don't think we need to explain this as being part of a plot of the united states to rob others of autonomy and resources and the reason for that is because the very same 70 years in which the united states has had its greatest period of influence is the same period of time in which the number of sovereign countries, autonomous countries, able to make their own decisions, has actually quadrupled from 50 to 200 and the time of the greatest economic prosperity in all of

human history so how can that be an example of imperialism? what's the alternative explanation? phase three of this talk. this is why i wrote the book and this is why i think the other ideas are wrong. what is my idea? i think one way, the best way, we can explain the spread of american values is because they are not american. if we wish to understand america and the world, we actually need to know something about the world. and what world history shows is that the spread of useful techniques of human governance and economic production have always spread outward from their point of origin, that a lot of these values, some of them did not originate in the united states, and even those that did, they spread outward because other people wanted them, not because they were coerced in any way.

to give you an example of this. if about 30 years ago anyone had said to you, you will all have a computer in your pocket in 30 years, you'd be thinking, my god, how would i walk if i had a computer in my pocket? and yet the fact is that we all now have computers in our pockets and this is not because apple had to coerce anybody to buy its iphone. people line up to buy the iphone. so we now have these devices from silicon valley to siberia. in many ways, i think what we have to compare this to is the fact that there have also been other monumental changes in human history, which we don't deny, and similarly, human governance has changed. i think of this as being similar to the transition from the patho lithic to neolithic. what defines paleolithic is the fact that they didn't have farming. when plants were discovered, nobody had to force farming down anybody's throats. everyone said, this is better

than hunting and gathering. the other change in human destiny was the industrial revolution. nobody has to go around saying, you must drive a car. no, people want cars and they want machines because of the value they bring to human life and we don't go around, when we order a sandwich, saying i'd like a ham and cheese on iraqi bread because wheat was hybridized there or i want a mexican corn dog because corn was hybridized in mexico. but the fact is, and i think this is absolutely true, in fact, i know it's true, that a similar ethical transition has gone on in human government and the united states has been a big part of that but so have other countries. to give you a sense of this, the united states, i think, became a big part of the transition, which was a transition that took place over many centuries, from

monarchical empires that competed militarily, towards capitalist republics that compete economically. just the world we have. and the u.s. has been a big part of that not because it forced other people to do this. rather, they elected to. but it was also a big partly of -- part of it because it embodied so many of these kinds of characteristics. and in a way, stature grew because, like the iphone, it was cool. to give you a sense of this, the latin american republics after the united states was formed, 20, 30 years after the united states was formed, latin american countries, they weren't countries yet, colonies, began to break away from spain and portugal, they all declared themselves republics like the united states had done. did the united states make them do this? no, we were a tiny country at that time, we did not. in fact, they went one better than us. they took the ideas and ran farther.

they abolished slavery 40, 50 years before the united states did. france also declared a republic. did we make them do that? no. but nevertheless, united states was important because it showed that certain things could be done, things that people had talked about for generations and generations but they thought were silly pipe dreams. the united states showed that you could have a chief executive who retired after a designated term, also, that it was possible, who knew, to create a durable peace among competing states, in which would be on some basis other than a volatile balance of military power. and thirdly, that you could have open commerce across borders. if you want to know why the united states was wealthy by 1890, on global terms, much had to do with open commerce across state borders. we had the european union a long time before they had the european union.

in any case, what the united states did, is that it showed that there were certain kinds of pipe dreams that you could actually realize, and as was said by a french observer at the time, francois bourgeois, and he was the diplomat for france who arranged the louisiana purchase, and he came back to see america in 1830 and he marveled at it. he said, "i saw a former president walking along the sidewalk." he thought that was the most amazing thing and he said the government of the united states has no model in ancient or modern times. so the united states demonstrated possibilities, much as magellan demonstrated that the world wasn't flat. magellan didn't make the world round.

he simply circumnavigated it. so my book argues that there were three, in a way, generic principles that were a part of what happened, and i call these access, arbitration, and transparency. i think it's better than life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, because those have too much of an american flavor, and these are really world values and they took place alongside another great geopolitical transition, the transition by which nations replaced empires. this happened, and this has happened over a period of many years. really, it begins with the treaty of westphalia in 1648 when the europeans basically kick out papal authority and say, no, we are states unto ourselves, and it continues through the breakup of the soviet union in 1991. it's a long process, but it does happen. what i mean by these -- and i'd like to explain them very briefly, i think access, i like to begin with adam smith who

wrote "the wealth of nations" in 1776 and he talked a lot about the fact that if nations were open, that if trade could proceed in an open way, that not only would society become freer but it would become more personally fulfilling and also more prosperous and wealthy. this, we think of the hidden hand of the market and all of that. so the idea of access -- but my more modern example is this fella, bing sho ping because we have to talk about china. historians to believe the united states is an empire, they often talk about the open door empire and trace it back to u.s. policy towards china in the 1890's but the fact is that the united states not only advocated equal markets for all foreigners in china but also the maintenance of chinese sovereignty. at that time, it was a possibility that china would

become like africa, divided into parcels and parceled out to the europe and u.s., always defended chinese sovereignty and that's what got us bombed at pearl harbor because no good deed goes unpunished. what they found, however, is that by closing off all access to the west, china was becoming poorer and poorer so in 1979, ping did a 180. not because china lost the cold war, not because china ceased being communist but because ping saw china falling through the cracks and he initiated a policy called opening up and as a result of that, 300 million chinese have been pulled up out of poverty. often people ask me, how can we trust china? and i say we don't necessarily have to trust china but we can trust the process. the process that has made it in

the self-interest of nations like china to open up their markets and compete with others. the principle of arbitration is a very old principle. this picture is the peace treaty of westphalia of 1648 in which the idea became, maybe, instead of nations warring with each other to advance their interests, maybe they could arbitrate their differences and that would be a better, not only a more moral way of getting on in the world, but a more profitable way of getting along in the world. the first example of this was the peace of westphalia but in modern times, the formation of the united nations is the culmination of this age-old dream that far predates the united states by at least 125 years, something like that. but the united states has its equivalent of it and i like to point to the constitutional convention, because you see, america was kind of weird. america still is weird. but part of its weirdness was that the idea that you could

have states that were neighbors and normally the traditional idea was that your neighbor was, you're always going to be your worst enemy, and why? who's going to steal your stuff first? it's your neighbor. look at ukraine and russia today? it's your neighbor to watch out for. so the united states formed a kind of arbitrational process by creating a federal government designed basically to corral states that otherwise might come to blows. the last principle is the principle of transparency and i like to show mikhail gorbachev because transparency serves arbitration and serves access but this is not just a western value. glasnost was the policy of gorbachev who instituted this for the benefit of his own country, not because they lost the cold war. this has become a transnational value. have you noticed the swiss have come into trouble recently because of non-transparency in

banking? who ever thought we would see glass windows in a swiss bank vault? this is truly an international value. the outward spread of new tools for human organization and self-organization explains the spread of american values without coercion. but it doesn't explain why the united states got involved, why the united states jumped, with both feet, in 1947, into the role we continue to have today. and i think that the answer is not just an answer which naturally enough historians will say, world war ii and then the cold war and the soviet union seemed on the verge of being western europe, everybody else was devastated, who else would take this up, and this is true. all that is true. the british were on war-time rations until 1955.

until 1955, the british were on rations for butter and cheese and meat and other basic foods. in any case, the united states, i think, did this for reasons that go beyond simply the historical moment. there's something in our d.n.a. there's something in our d.n.a., and it goes back to this word "umpire." it was a word that our founders used to explain what they were trying to create by creating a union of sovereign states that would prevent ultimately these sovereign states from falling out amongst each other. and so in the federalist papers, they explain this, and if you read the federalist papers, you'll see such quotes. john jay, one of the authors, wrote "in dispute between the states, the umpire would despite between them to compel acquencence." alexander hamilton said the

federal government would be an "umpire to inspire the parties because tiny states butting up against each other develop intense rivalries." james madison said, what better umpires could be desired than those in federal congress. so they developed a higher sovereignty with the job and coercive responsibility that imperial metropoles had played throughout history but in this case without a hierarchy so that new states could come in, no state could expand borders into a sister state, and the federal government inextroneus would intervene if truly existential crisis happened and you can count on one hand the number of

times the federal government has done this because it's dangerous out there. the whiskey rebellion of 1774, the nullification crisis of 1833, the civil war of 1861. the little rock integration crisis of 1957 and so on. and so today, the united nations enjoys a status which is similar to the u.s. before we had a constitution, which is to say that there is a union among states but the u.n. security council has limited powers of enforcement. it has no powers of taxation. it has no army. it has no navy. so how can it exercise this role? part of what happened at the end of world war ii is when the u.n. fell upon hard times fairly immediately and the u.s. was pressed, truly pressed, by its allies, not the soviet union, but others, to fulfill this role, the united states had experience in the role. explains why when france told us

to leave, we did, because the umpire is not there to take the place of the states, it's there to facilitate the functioning of the states. so what has been the consequences of all of this for the united states and the world? because being an umpire is a dangerous and difficult job, and the consequences, when you get it wrong, can be terrible, whether it's south korea, or south carolina, because our worst war ever was in south carolina, began in south carolina. so the results have been mixed. i think in many cases the united states got it right and in some cases we got it really wrong. the u.s. held the line in west berlin and that turned out very well. south korea, as well, we're still holding the line in south korea. we held what looked at the time like a similar line in south vietnam, and that was a terrible, terrible mistake, terrible disaster. and we've had to make a lot of terrible and hard calls. in iraq in 2003, we misdiagnosed

weapons of mass destruction. and we did function as an umpire, not an empire. i like to cite the suez canal crisis. we defended the territory of egypt, threw france and britain out of the game. we did not take the place of a government in egypt and after world war ii the world entered what is called an economic golden age. and it's also true that in every decade since the second world war, violence between states has gone down in every single decade since 1947. what have the results been for the united states? those are the results for the world. some bad, some dramatically good. one of the problems for the united states is that we have

become the defender of all. our best allies spend 1% to 2% of their gross domestic product on defense. we spend 4% to 5%. 85% to 90% of our defense budget goes to the protection of shores other than our own. as our muscles bulge, everybody else's muscles atrophy because that's what happens with muscles when you don't use them. we have close to a couple of dozen aircraft carriers. france has one. china has one. et cetera. we were first in per capita income in 1950. we are 17th in per capita income today. we are 50th in the world in life expectancy. the u.s. had a structural trade deficit beginning in 1971 and we have been a debtor country since 1985. our trade imbalance was $40 billion a year in 1992.

today it is $40 billion a month. we remain a prosperous and vibrant country but we don't have to remain the only umpire of the world. former defense minister peter mckay has called for allies to help share the burden and i think we need to hear more and we need to do more to create the expectation that it's time for others not to just step up to the plate but step behind the plate as the umpire. this won't be easy but it is possible. tragedies will occur as world history amply shows but the most stable system is one that all nations want and most are prepared to defend. realistic or unrealistic in had thinking america can or should do it all and those who describe america as an empire are naive in assuming only washington wants or writes the world. the other problem with the use of the word empire is that umpires are never popular about

and by definition they can't win. but to volunteer for this label, to put a large "kick me" sign on the back of ourselves. because umpires do make mistakes. they're never entirely neutral. their field of vision is imperfect, and they cannot win. but no one wants to play the game without them. understanding the need for better, more equitable, more sustainable mechanisms for global enforcement allows us to have better conversations here, in denver, and around the world about how to make this happen because good leaders develop new leaders. placing responsibility squarely on europe and other regions that benefit just as much as we do from a peaceful world is not a matter of cowardice or decline. it is a test of our courage. thank you. \[applause]

thank you very much. and i think jan will take some questions. i'm going to take the question but she's going to help me. i like to think i've solved everything. >> thank you very much. i haven't had a chance to read your book and you may have referred to this. but when you talk about the role of umpire, could you explain the role of the c.i.a. in that? could you also just talk a little bit about assassinations? we can talk about all those around the world, and what it that role? what is that role of america? >> absolutely. and the word umpire, it's not a perfect term, obviously. and an umpire on a ball field doesn't have a secret service running around, et cetera. in the united states, what's

happened, is that the united states took up a security role and sometimes we've played that very badly and sometimes we played that very well. i try to give you, i think there's some measures which suggest that overall it's gone well. it's gone disastrously in some places. one thing it certainly has done is bring us right into the thick of all the age-old forms of enforcement, and enforcement is rarely pretty. and as we know, police officers today in america, they're armed, citizens around them are armed. it creates very ugly situations. and the united states has had a policy. we ruled assassinations out and then ruled them in. it's been back and forth. but it's certainly created very ugly scenarios. i don't think those are inconsistent with the idea, however, that this is what has been a part of modern enforcement, whether that's true of the interpol.

most nation states, especially those of any size, do have secret services and intelligence services. the other weird thing about the united states, which goes back to the transparency, the united states is the only country i'm aware of in world history that created a secret agency and then announced it. in 1947, the united states passed the national security act and they said, we're starting a spy agency over here! by the way, when did britain acknowledge the existence of mi6? i think it was 1994 or 1995. australia, another very transparent, enlightened nation, acknowledged the existence of secret intelligence service in 2001. so spy services really are a part of the modern world but the united states is an odd hybrid. we try to do it consistent with our values but at the same time it's a tough situation. other questions?

by the way, i've got to tell you, i, myself, am shy about questions. i know you do not believe this but when i sit in your seat, i'm always thinking, oh, that sounds dumb, i can't ask that. so any question, i'll be thrilled. >> i have one. back to your interesting and provocative introduction, what happens now? where should we be going? do you have any thoughts? most of us are not as well read, and your background brings such comprehensiveness to it i thought you might have thoughts on our future? >> this is where historians fear to tread. to me it seems self-evident that if you have a world system that rests on one pillar, that's just not as stable as a system that has multiple pillars. certainly it was the case that both franklin delano roosevelt

and harry truman fully expected that all american troops would come home after world war ii. that the united nations would take on this role that would be a bumpy process -- as winston churchill said that the only thing worse than fighting with allies was not fighting alongside allies, so there was an expectation that the world wouldn't be a perfect place but with multiple supports, it got kicked out because of the devastation across europe and asia after world war ii, especially considering the expanse of the soviet role at the time. so 70 years, i think, is enough. and i know this is hard and it's frightening but that's why i say we need history to see trajectories. we can say, listen, we're not

the only ones whose interests are at stake here. in fact, i said this to an european friend once who was giving it out to me about we americans are such bruisers, and i said, you know, dion, we could probably afford better than almost anybody -- if anybody was going to be not trading with the rest of the world, we could roll up our carpenters from europe to asia and be more self sufficient than most countries. and he said, you wouldn't go home, though, would you? because the fact is that the moneys we all pay and the lives that we spend and families that we risk are ours so when people say what are you going to solve in pakistan next week? how are you going to correct isis and iraq the week after that, i think we must begin to say, what are you going to do? because honestly it's your homes that will be bombed and it's your lives that are on the line. because it's so easy to sit back. i think china's a good example of this in south korea. what are we doing there 60 years later?

we're upholding an armistice. there's not a peace treaty and there's not a peace treaty because we make it possible for that armistice to go on indefinitely. i'd love to see peace there but obviously 60 years of doing the same thing isn't producing that and maybe these countries which are now prosperous, thriving, democratic countries in the case of south korea and japan, maybe there's more they can do and maybe there's more that china can do because we always get to be bad cop if china gets to play good cop and it's time to reverse those things but i think unless we step back, others won't step back and it's a frightening process. we have the tiger by the tail. but unless you establish a goal, you will never get there. >> you touched on what my question was, but, you know, i think after afghanistan and iraq, most of us, including me, wanted to say, let's just look

at our home, let's look at what we can do for america, we have a lot of needs here, let's stop this. and then isis comes along. and i'm looking at russia and the ukraine and i'm thinking why are we involved in what russia does with the ukraine? is that any of our concern? isis a question mark right now, whether they really are a threat to america or not. so, yeah, if you would comment a little more about that, i would love it. >> well, these contemporary crises are always frightening. i'm actually involved in making a documentary right now on this very question of the balance between guns and butter, and what our foreign involvements do in terms of our ability to invest at home and how to balance those things out, but i agree. i think we have a concern

because we're part of the world. and the united states is a vibrant member of the international community, supports the u.n., is a big funder of many international institutions and that would and should continue but i think it's time to start distinguishing more clearly between existential crisis, which affect the entire global system, and things that are regional in character, as horrible as they are. i compare the syrian war with our civil war because they happened at the same time. there was a syrian civil war at the time of the american civil war and what happened in the syrian civil war of that period, 1860, was that the europeans were horrified at the bloodshed and they decided, should we intervene? and they did. they sent troops, they stopped the bloodshed. in the american civil war -- by

the way, 10,000 syrians died. in the american civil war, 700,000 americans died. the europeans also looked upon that conflict and thought oh, god, should we intervene there? it's a humanitarian nightmare. they didn't. our war burned out. it eventually burned out. and it's sad and tragic, as it was, even though it accomplished an important task, it was a very tragic war for us and i'm not sure anybody intervening in that could have changed that for us. the syrian civil war continues. so intervention isn't always the best thing. yes? >> thank you for your discussion tonight. it seems that much of your opinion follows along and supports the obama doctrine, if i'm right, that we are strong, we are leaders, we don't necessarily need to intervene or intervene with warfare, we are

already intervening with our ideas and our influence. but there in the ukraine, right now, putin is not renegotiating the borders of the ukraine. he is choosing to bring, to escalate it with the military. how does that fit into -- how should we respond, how should the u.s. respond, how does this fit into this new obama doctrine? >> several questions going on there. as a part of this work i'm doing right now, this documentary, it's mentioning, we interviewed general jim mathis recently who took over from david patraeus, marine general jim matis, in iraq. one of the things we pointed out, he said, "our enemies will bring us the opportunities for coalition building." it's like the old saying that you don't make peace treaties

with your friends, you make them with your enemies. we need to make coalitions with unusual partners, whether in fighting isis or the crisis in the ukraine and there's never going to be a good moment to say we step back, you need to step up. because there's always going to be a flash point. but we have to start somewhere, we have to begin that process. is that the obama doctrine per se? actually, i think the american people are showing, as one lady here just said, that not just what we call war weariness, i think it's a wisdom. there's been a poll taken since the early 1960's asking should we intervene in the rest of the world but let the world get along on its own and since 1960, the numbers saying we need to let the world make its own way, has gone up and up and for the first time this past year it's above 50%. that's not just a democratic sentiment. ironically, condoleezza rice,

george bush's national security adviser, was famous for saying in foreign affairs before the election in which george bush was elected, although that was a disputed election, we won't go there, but before his inauguration, she said it's time for america to not take on every humanitarian crises because people will see us as an empire and we need to let other people take care of their own dirty laundry and then we're presented with a crisis, 9/11, and when there's a crisis that hits us here at home, you can see why it's important to respond. but something that's 8,000 miles away, where there are a lot of other competent, decent, democratic nations, surrounding that area who can weigh in if they choose to and if they choose not to, shame on them. does that effect us? do we need to go in there and

save it? no and, of course, the odd thing about the end of the cold war is that it gave us more people to defend, before we knew there was an iron curtain, everybody backed their heads down and left behind the lines. now the iron curtain goes up and we have all the others on our laps. part of the problem, this is a larger question and at hoover institution i've discussed this with condi rice who i understand is coming to town here in denver soon which is very lovely but she was confirming something i was thinking about as a historical problem but one of the things that happened, nationalism has taken hold as empires have disappeared. it's like when predators go away, prey proliferate? we got more deer when you get rid of the grizzly bears. so there are no empires so the number of small nation-states keeps growing every year, the maps have to be changed. the problem with that -- there's

many good things about it -- but one problem with that is that when nation-states aren't competent, nobody picks them off anymore, the herd, so to speak, so what happens is you have a lot of small nation-states and we all applaud that but at the same time the fact is that not all these nation-states are competent to run their economies. they struggle with internal cohesion. and again, they has also increased the number of possible people we have to defend because they have a right to self-determination. but why us? why almost only us? that's not right, and i don't think it's not just not right, i think it's not sustainable, it's not practical. and we americans are practical people. yes? >> with respect to nuclear proliferation, how do you see that issue evolving in the future and why does the role of

the united states or any other country that is in europe, et cetera? >> that's such an excellent and complex question about nuclear proliferation, and that's the kind of issue where we can say, this is an existential issue, it could lead to the destruction of major cities and devastation of the planet. there, american leadership, using the soft power that we have, you know, putting forward a better example than we have done at times, continuing efforts that were made during the period of detente, during the presidency of george h.w. bush to dial back on nuclear arms, i think those are incredibly important initiatives. the united states will be and has been an excellent world citizen in most ways. in some ways we have been terrible. who's perfect? and some time it's been with

terrible consequences. but the fact is that we need to exert leadership on this kind of question. you have to distinguish between the big questions and the small, regional ones. >> just a question, using an analogy of a swamp and the alligators. i think we can all agree on the long-term goal and the movement of history but right now people in our government are saying we should bomb in syria regardless of if we have boots on the ground or not to bite the head of isis. others are saying, don't do that, let the locals take care of this, this is not our problem. so we have a dilemma and maybe tomorrow night we'll hear what is going to happen but from your perspective, if you had to make that decision now, i'm hearing you, i think i know why you're going to go but i don't know that because i don't know you. if you had to make that decision right now, do you bomb ahead in isis and syria without boots on the ground or do you say, you

guys have to step up, we've done our part? what would your decision be? call in the air force or say pull them back? >> if it were me and i'm an unelected individual perhaps for good reasons, i would say, absolutely you people need to figure this out. not because it's not bad. but first of all, isis is not going to invade new york, right? ok, they might try to bomb a new york tower -- i mean, bad stuff happens. but the fact is that the sunni shia divide which is part of what that's all about. the caliphate is a sunni thing, the shias hate it. they need to figure that out and there are sunni governments which are not stepping up and shia governments that are not stepping up and if we go in there to solve this problem, which is an important problem, but if we go in to solve it for them, it will probably not solve it. we started that press in 2003. it has not gotten better for the

most part, despite heroic sacrifices. yes? >> bill clinton has said that his biggest regret of his presidency was not intervening in rwanda. when do we, as a powerful, rich, wealthy nation, have a moral obligation to intervene in a humanitarian crisis like genocide? >> this really comes under the rubric of what the united nations is now calling the responsibility to protect which was, as i understand it, i'm not deeply familiar with this, but this was canada mostly initiating this motion and essentially the united states gets nominated to take on the responsibility. again, thank you, canada. this responsibility to protect is important. obviously, this goes back to the holocaust and the belief that we should not allow things like this to happen, again, and part of this goes back to the problems, the proliferation of nation-states, small nation-states, where you do not have imperial power which has

responsibility for policing the local populations. i know that's bill clinton's greatest regret. i think that other african nations had a much greater responsibility. not only did the united states under clinton apologize for not helping this country, which is maybe 6,000 miles away, but i think maybe -- maybe it was holland, somebody else also apologized. i did not hear an apology from the organization for african unity. i did not hear an apology from the arab states. i think that if we believe as a world community that these things are important, we must put the responsibility on the world community. and again, for us to take the shame of having not done that, i think just ups a little more everybody else's expectations for all the problems that the united states should, shoulda coulda woulda solved in country

after country when countries are not competent to solve their own problems. so it is tragic and my heart goes out to these people -- victims of isis to ukrainians. it really, really does. as a historian, you become very involved in the lives of people who have suffered historically. my heart is engaged now. but i think that long-term solutions, not band-aids, are local solutions. >> i think that's a terrific place to stop. i think i thank you. i'm not sure. \[applause] what i am sure of is that you have given us a whole new framework to analyze our thinking against, and it's going to be tough and i will also say that if you missed it last night, and you want to hear a different point of view, go

online and look at don lemon's interview with reza oslan, last night on cnn. he has a fairly different point of view, particularly about isis. and it was interesting, to me, to hear you tonight, having heard him last night. i think we all thank you so much for coming to denver and we hope you'll come again soon. >> thank you. \[captions performed by national captioning institute] \[captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] >> you are watching american .istory tv on c-span3 follow us on twitter to keep up with latest history news. >> be part of c-span's campaign 2014 coverage. all us on twitter and like us on facebook to get debate schedules and video clips of debate

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