we participate with the iraqi security forces in training them on how to train, you know, this initial capability there. that's important because, for this program to be successful, i firmly assess that it has to be done by the government of iraq. now, over time there are several versions of legislation, as i understand, and i talked to general west the 14th before departing, there are several versions of that language that have to go before the counsel of representatives to be approved. but i'm optimistic that it is going to go through. there are many that see this as a way to not only bring those tribes back in, the national guard piece, but also to bring some of those government militias back in as well.

>> general, thanks for your time this morning. i was hoping you could clarify how air strikes are being conducted without any j-tax on the ground in most cases and also how you assess civilian casualties in most cases, if at all? >> let me start with civilian casualty piece. you know, the coalition is really very deliberate about how it conducts strikes out there. and we have some great capability in terms of precision. what's in the balance here if you're not careful is you can be precisely wrong. you could strike, you know, tribe, you could strike iraqi security forces and you could create a very bad situation. to date we've got a very good record. i'm tracking no civilian casualties where we just -- if we even suspected civilian casualties, we would immediately

direct investigation, determine the cause and then seek to understand the lessons is learned from that and apply those lessons learned. so that's the civilian casualty piece of this. and again, a very deliberate process. and the second question? >> how you're working with -- >> so it kind of reminds me of back when i was a lieutenant and captain, and it starts with a good operational scheme of maneuver on the part of the iraqi security forces. now, what that helps you do then is, if you understand the concept of control measures and graphics on a map, it allows us to then track iraqi security forces and understand where they are. and we have capability in the form of isr platforms that we can actually, with that understanding where our iraqi security forces are, can

actually see daaesh's capabilities on the ground. and what we've done through our advise and assist teams, this is at the operation center, the baghdad operation center or the jazir operation center or might be an example down the road or with some of these division headquarters that are out there, but certainly they're backing something we call the combined joint operations center, which is at m.o.d. and we also have another one that works up in erbil. so we bring the right people into that to actually help us identify units and then what we call deconflictifiers. so there are iraqis in all these process. >> thanks. so why hasn't the vetting process of the syrian rebels

begun now three months into this? and does the u.s. consider the kurds to be its allies, and if not -- if so, why not arm -- do more to arm them directly? >> so the syria train and equip piece is what you're asking? >> the first part. >> i think part of that has been -- this was not cleanly my lane and i'll have to punt you back up to centcom. you may be aware there's a separate task force being established to actually handle the train and equip piece. part of it has been to get the legislation right to get the authorities and the funding to do a lot of what you're talking about. >> and the kurds. are they u.s. allies and why not do more to arm them directly? >> again, i'd have to -- i would have to defer you back up to

state and back up to centcom on that particular one. they are considered our allies and i think in a lot of ways we are enabling them when you look at the strikes that have been going on in places like kobani and some of the other places. i'm pretty comfortable that we are supporting them right now. >> lisa ryan, "washington post," thank you for being here. two quick questions. on the air strikes in syria, can you update what's going on with the khorasan group? there was a series of air strikes against them and now there hasn't for a while. are they as an organization and you mentioned the bridging strategy with the 5,000 tribesmen and 250 trained, can you give us any additional detail on that. who is tooing the training and where are the people being drawn from? the 5,000 are those people identified but not yet trained? >> so syria first.

okay. the khorasan group was request -- okay, my focus is daaesh and where we find violent extremist organizations we'll continue to work that effort in terms of precision strikes. i am -- i hesitate to give you any type of effect achieved on those groups out there. whenever we do that, we always wind up with them re-creating themself some place and creating problems for us. my principal focus in syria while we're working iraqi first, we want to make sure that we shape that deeper fight out there in terms of sanctuary, in places like raqaa, so it has an enduring effect on what we do in iraq also. second question was -- >> additional detail and who is training and who the trainees

are. >> and again, this gets executed through the government of iraq. as we see the isf conducting operations not only in anbar but in some of the places salaudin for example, a lot of these tribal members will want to come together and participate. so how the iraqi government pulls those in over time like i said is going to be pretty critical. and you know, exactly what their approach is in relationship to that, they're trying to link it to the campaign plan in relationship to a concept of operations and so in terms of sequencing that i'd like to not answer that because we might probably give away some capabilities there. >> sir, tony with bloomberg news. what heavy weapons does the

iraqi security force need that they don't have now? apparently they mentioned this to secretary hagel when he was there last week, they didn't articulate what they needed. but what's your understanding of what they need that they don't have now to pursue major offensives? >> again, i'll answer it, i'll defer you to further questions to the offices of security operations for that particular challenge there. one of the things we get into certain places to advise and assist. how do we get an advise and assist team that looks at what you have on hand in relationship to getting visibility in the heavy weapons and capabilities that are out there? a large part of the challenge right now is repairing what they actually have on hand and my kind of basic answer to you is we're going to help them baseline that especially as they

start to bring units into these bill partner capacity sites and give them a more accurate picture of potentially whatty this need out there. >> -- they think they do, but you're going to help and decide what they need. >> we're going to help them see themselves in this effort and then let them determine. again, we work with minister of defense directly. we'll give them an assessment and let them determine what it is that they need. >> general, jim miklaszewski with nbc news. what progress, if any, is being made in the reawakening of the sunni awakening? are any of those sunni tribal leaders being convinced that the iraqi government that they felt betrayed them is now an alternative to isis control and is that absolutely key to defeating isis in iraq, to have the participation of those sunni transcribes that were so

critical in the war on iraq and u.s. operations there? >> jim, i hesitate to call it an awakening. i would just tell you that the tribal piece of this i think is coming around. and we see more and more of it every day. the difference between now and then is that the government of iraq is in charge of the program, and i think that is an essential point in relationship to the future. i see a lot of opportunity out there especially as the isif conducts operations in anbar for the government to reach out and contact some of these tribal fighters that you're very familiar with and then bring them back in to decide the government of iraq. >> so they were reluctant to rejoin, to creating any alliance with baghdad, which they felt had betrayed them. can you somehow quantify in any

way the progress that may or may not be being made? >> let me back up a little bit. just remind everyone here that this current government is a little over 100 days old and they started several initiatives out there, one of them is the outreach tribal engagement, one of which is this national guard piece that they're trying to move the legislation through the council of representatives to do that. i would just say that what i see in relationship to bringing some of the tribes around is important to the fight but long-term enduring stability, that the conditions are getting better for that every day. i see the current prime minister at least moving in that direction and we'll continue to support them and encourage them to bring the rest of those that

want to come to the side of the government of iraq, support them to bring those around. >> take a couple more. joe. >> general, this is joe with -- four months of air strikes against daesh, and that group's still in control of parts of syria and also in iraq. when do you think your mission will reach a turning point in the fight against daesh. and also how do you assess daesh influence against the syrian/lebanese border? >> okay. i would just tell you i think we're in, you know, some patience in relationship to daesh. they've proved to be resilient. and again as i look at it from a military standpoint, the first strikes were 8 august? and so this is december.

what's that? four months? i think we've made significant progress in halting that offensive that i talked about. the ability for them to continue to expand in terms of terrain and geography out there. what we must do especially inside of iraq is continue to build those capabilities. i think you're at least talking minimum of three years. now, that doesn't mean we haven't started turning daesh in a certain direction. and that's going to be the power of the coalition. not only from a military perspective but how do you apply all those elements of national power along from the different nations along those lines of effort that have been laid out out there? so i hesitate to give you a time because i'll show up in six months and you'll ask me why we haven't gotten there. i think a lot of it, i see the conditions for right now being

set for a pretty stable environment. but i still think in terms of building some of the capabilities there three roads down the road minimum. >> daesh along the syrian/lebanese border. >> the syrian/lebanese border. certainly daesh has a desire to expand. i am not -- i'll have to get back to you on that one. in terms of influence, you're talking ability to enter and exit lebanon or influence the population or specifically what are you asking there? >> they do exist -- >>ed on the border. >> along the border. >> right. >> since your mission is to defeat daesh. >> right. >> anywhere, will you be willing to strike them in that area? >> inside syria, where we see

daesh and we have an ability to target them, we will conduct precision strikes. >> one last question. >> reporter with foreign policy magazine. during the visit of secretary hagel, one of the things that the iraqi prime minister asked was an increase in air strikes and just yesterday there was a big spike in the number of strikes reported by the task force why is the iraqi prime mib22 #r asking for more air strikes and is that something you do now agree they need more air strikes? >> i'd have to have you ask the prime minister that question in relation to why he's asking. my answer would be simply this, when the iraqi security forces plan operations and conduct those operations we plan to support them as i've described here today in terms of delivering those precision.

and we're conshub of any collateral damage, civilian casualties. my assessment is we've been very effective in delivering those fires. i think we've got it just about right. the key here is building the capability inside the iraqi security forces, given an offensive mind-set and we'll continue to strike. >> that's all the time we've got. >> thanks. on the next "washington journal" daily beast's gordon chang on what's next for kim jong un and the country's suspected involvement on the cyber attack on sony. then michael toscano discusses unmanned aircraft and safety regulations. and linda laughlin of the u.s.

census bureau and kristin moore from child trends talks about the bureau's recent report on the well-being of children in the united states. and we'll take your calls and you can join the conversation at facebook and twitter. "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. this month is the tenth anniversary of our sunday primetime program q & a and we're featuring an encore presentation from each year, journalists, historians, filmmakers. from 2005 kenneth feinberg's conversation, from 2006, the importance of the african american experience to u.s. history. from 2007, robert novak on his 50 years of reporting in washington. from 2008, the value of higher education in america. and from 2009 conservative commentator s.e. cupp.

q&a@10, a decade of compelling conversations, december 22nd through 26th at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. coming up real estate developer and television personality donald trump talks about running for president and building his brand in washington. this event is hosted by the economic club of washington, d.c., and runs an hour. >> okay. can everybody please, can everybody please quiet, quiet. thank you very much. so we're very pleased this evening to have as our special guest donald trump. as you all know, i usually go through elaborate introductions because i'm memorized them and i should show everybody that i've done the research. in this case, i don't really know that he needs a great introduction as some of the guests i've given introduction to. he's one of the best known

developer, businessmen, real estate developer, entrepreneurs, celebrity, tv hosts, golf promoters and developers and all-around well-known person in the united states. and i thought that it would be very interesting for everybody to hear from donald trump. so i wanted to thank you, donald for coming this evening. >> it's my honor. thank you very much. great honor. [ applause ] >> so let me start by asking you this. it's rumored that you are thinking of going to iowa soon to maybe do some exploratory work, and my question is why would you consider a job that has a smaller home and an older plane than you currently have. >> that's a very tough question. first david called and said would you do this. when david calls, i say yes. when other people calls not so much. so many friends, one of them is david bossy who is heading up

that dinner and that whole weekend, and he said -- >> in iowa. >> in iowa. and he said would you do it? and i have great respect for david and what he's done and what he represents. so i agreed to do it. and it's going to be a great event. like this is your biggest sellout crowd. i think we'll have the biggest sellout crowd they've ever had in iowa, too, from what i'm understanding. so i look forward to that. the night before, there's a real estate dinner in iowa, done by a very, very big company and a terrific company and they asked me to be the keynote speaker. so i'm there for two reasons, real estate and politics. >> so let me finish that up. are you considering maybe getting into the politics as a candidate, running for president or you're not sure yet? >> i've been building buildings all my life. we've done a great job, as you understand. one thing about david, if he didn't think we did a good job, i wouldn't be here tonight. that i can tell you. but we've done a good job. i'm considering it very strongly. a lot of people think i have fun with it, that i'm playing games, that i enjoy the process.

and i do enjoy the process to a certain extent. but the country's in serious, serious trouble. we just broke $18 trillion in debt largely to different places like china and others. and we just are in very serious trouble. so i am considering it very strongly. >> when do you think you might make a decision? >> probably at the beginning of the year, some time in march, april or may. >> okay. so you wouldn't start below the top job. you wouldn't start a little bit lower, you know, governor or something just to get a little experience? >> you know, i've dealt in politics all my life. all of my life i've been in politics. usually as a supporter on the other side and i support a lot of difficult people. and people that i think are going to be good. i'm a republican, but i'll support people that i really think are going to be good. and frankly, i just think we need something very good very fast or we're going to be in very big trouble as a country.

and a lot of it's common sense. for instance, the torture report. do we have to announce the torture report? which by the way cost 40 million dollars to do it. i'm trying to figure out how does this report does this report cost 40 million. they paid $80 million to come up with the process. and there's so much, there's so many things that i see in this country, whether it's common sense or whatever, and i have a big voice. i have millions and millions of followers on twitter and facebook. and when i say something, people -- some people don't like it but most people do like it. and whether it's jobs and the thing i like best, the thing that i think i'm best at is the economy and how to put people to work. and that's what we need in this country. >> the campaign is typically a two-year process. >> right frpts and then if you're elected president, you have to spend four or eight years at it right in the peak of your earning period.

you'd sigh that's okay? >> i have a great company with tremendously talented people. i have some of those people sitting right here at this table, some of my executives and three of my five children are in the company. don, eric and ivanka. they've done a fantastic job. four years ago i was leading in the polls, i was beating everybody in the polls. what happened was i just love what i do. i would rather do what i'm doing than run for president, but i also love the country more. and i just think, unless i see somebody that's outstanding, i would very much be inclined to do it. >> all right. well, i don't think you can make any more news than you just made. >> let's go home. >> all right. so let's start back at the beginning, if we could. your father was a pretty prominent real estate developer in -- not in manhattan. >> brooklyn, queens. >> queens. >> yes. >> so as a young boy, you would say you were aggressive maybe and you were sent to a military

academy? >> i was, i was sent to a military academy. my father said you need a little discipline, you're sort of tough to handle. they sent me up to a new york military academy where we had some really tough people working up there. and you know, i was supposed to be a very smart person but i was on the aggressive side. and they were terrific. these are drill sergeants. we had one major that used to be sergeant tobias at the time. he got promoted over the years to major. now he's actually a colonel and he's very old, but he's a great guy. and he was tough. you didn't talk back to him. today you couldn't do this. this is a different world. but you just didn't talk back to this guy or it was bad, bad trouble. and today they call it harassment, there will be the biggest front page of every newspaper. but it was a good place and it was a tough place. and i ended up graduating at the highest rank, so i acclimated. you know you have to acclimate. you have a climate.

it wasn't my climate. but by the time i was there five years and by the time i finished, i graduated at the highest rank and i learned a lot about leadership and i learned a lot about a lot of things. >> you were an athlete, you were the captain of a baseball team. >> i was. >> did you ever think about being a professional baseball player? >> well, i always was somebody that loved sports and i always did well at sports. and i love baseball in particular. i was on the football team and on the wrestling team. not a great wrestler, not a great basketball player. i had bad jumping ability. i just was not able to get up there. but i was a very good baseball player. i guess i always did thing, you know, i was recruited and they all wanted me to go in major league. and those days you'd make $3, there was no money, no anything. ultimately my father had a business in brooklyn, mostly in brooklyn, new york, as a real estate developer. ultimately i did that for a lot of the right reasons. and it became a lot of the fun.

i wanted to make it more exciting and i always always lod other things. i think we put some show business into the real estate business. >> you went to work after the new york military academy and did really well there. majored in real estate or -- >> i majored in finance. i liked finance, but i did well and i liked the wharton school of finance. >> i read that at one point you thought about going into the film business. >> it's true. >> and what took you away from that. >> that's sort of an interesting story. but i went to -- i actually applied to usc where they had a great school of cinema. that was like the wharton school of cinema. i applied. and what happened was a little interesting. there was a man who was having troubles in real estate. and he came to me. smart guy. he said, can you help me? and i was only 19 years old. i gave him a lot of advice. this was a top broadway producer. i'd love to go to usc.

i kept talking about movies. he said you really know real estate. you've got to be crazy to go into show business. it really affected me. i went in with my father. i was in brooklyn my first five years. went into business with my father. did some really good deals for him. he was very happy with moo. he was a tough guy. had a good heart, but he was a tough man and would never let anybody sign checks. he had to sign every check. today they sign them by computer. but today you press a button and everybody gets paid. if it's a mistake, they never find it. he'd sign every single check and study it and call the people. you're getting too much money. this is a little different than we have today. i actually continue that practice. i sign many, many, many checks. the company has gotten so big, it's hard, but i like signing checks because i see what's

going on much better. >> what was it like? you go to your father who was a tough guy to work for and you said, dad, i want to go out on my own. what did he say? >> he really respected it. and being in brooklyn and queens and we'd look across the river, the east river and i'd see those big tall buildings. i said i want to build those buildings. i want to be there. i love it. i've got to be there. he sort of said that's not our territory, like a lot of fathers would say. you don't know anything about that. that's not our territory. let's stay in brooklyn. my father started out building one family homes and middle income apartments. and some low income using federal subsidies. the 236 program. a lot of different programs. section eight. we had a section eight program which was amazing. and it was a pretty good program for the developer. it allowed people to live at a low rent. my father did a lot of that. and we did it well.

i said, pop, i want to go in. i started with the grand hyatt hotel. i converted that. it was originally the old commodore hotel. interesting how my life progresses where we go from that to the opo. >> you were about 29 years old or something like that? 28, 29. and you bought an old hotel near the grand central station called the commodore and you put in no money. is that right? >> almost no money. >> how did you nothing do that with no money? >> it was owned by the penn central railroad. he happens to be a very good man. victor palm oeri and company. does anyone know john koskinen? he's the head of the irs. he's a friend of mine and did a great job running victor

palmeri. took options to the buildings. after i took options to the commodore, i went to the city. i was about 28 years old. the city was really in trouble. look. you'll have to give me tax abatement or this is never going to happen. then i went to hyatt. you put up all the money and i'll get the approvals. we built a hotel and it became very successful. then the convention center and other jobs. >> let's talk about one of the other famous buildings, trump tower. how did you get the right to build that piece of land and how did you finance that? >> that was owned by a company named conseco. originally ginesco. it was from nashville, tennessee. and ginesco was run by a father and son. a public company. they were fighting like cats and dogs. unlike your children and my children so far. we want to keep it that way. they were fighting like cats and

dogs. i love reading the financial papers. it was exclusively papers. today it's a little bit papers and lots of other things. i saw the trouble they were having. and i knew they owned a department store. so i called the has of ginesco and went to nashville, tennessee. i made an amazing deal there. i took an option to buy the site. and what happened is as soon as that option was announced, every developer in the world went there trying to buy. even then it was the best site. next to tiffany is the best site. it was too late because i already had it signed. they tried to get out of it because they saw it was much more valuable than what i paid. i dealt with a great man who was the head of tiffany. he took tiffany to great levels, from trouble to great levels. i brought the air rights over tiffany and another place and ended up with a 68-story

building that turned out to be a tremendous success called trump tower. when i bought the air rights from tiffany i had the right to call it tiffany tower. i went to a friend of mine, dennis stein. i said i have the right to call it tiffany tower, but i want to call it trump tower. he said when you change your name to tiffany, call it tiffany tower. so i call it trump tower, even though i had this incredible right to use the name tiffany. and it was one of the better things. >> if your name was ruben stein, do you think it would have worked as well? >> michael bloomberg has done very well. >> you came up with the idea of putting your name an things, when did you always you called get maybe a higher price for it? >> a lot of people -- they wrote a big article like i had this brilliant strategy of naming. honestly it just happened. it started with trump tower.

i did the grand hyatt first. i did the convention center. took options to the land. got the stake to build taun and they built the convention center. nobody knew that much about me. when i did trump tower, i never thought at a young age like 30 i'd have the best piece of land in the world. it never changes. that piece of land was the best then and the best now. we signed a lease with gucci. so i never really knew. when i called it trump tower, a lot of things happened because of the prominence of the location. i was able to get it zoned. you'll never build a tall building. you'll never be allowed to build an all glass beautiful building. "the new york times" critic, the architectural critic gave it phenomenal reviews. and later on they gave it phenomenal reviews. and what i did is it just

morphed into other things. then i ended up doing a book "the art of the deal." >> you live at the top -- >> i do. top three floors. >> a lot of wealthy people are being sought after to buy buildings in new york. do you think all these -- are there enough billionaires to fill these big buildings? >> no, i don't think they'll fill them. i don't think you're going to fill them. too many being built. >> have you seen the one that's like 90 stories. >> they have the advantage that it was early on. and they are very good people. and i think it's going to do okay because it's early. but the ones coming online, there's so many of them. i look at the plans. i know every inch of manhattan. which store is available five years before the lease comes due. i look at all the plans for manhattan and don't see any way. russia has been taken out of it. russia's gone. and a lot of the russians buying

these apartments are no longer buying apartments. and frankly, you know, i just don't see any way they're going to do it. it's an opportunity for you and for me. a man came to my office. he has a site to build a 100-story building on the site. i don't love the site. it's good, not great. the great always works. the good doesn't always work in real estate. and he has a 90-story building, 100-story building. do whatever you want. and he wanted to sell it to me and i've been through great, great times but i've also had to fight like crazy to keep everything going. and i said, you know, you do it because i don't have the guts anymore to do it. i promise i won't tell anyone you said that. but it's true. i see the market is, i think, will be oversaturated. >> let me ask you, when you were having this success, building trump tower, you bought an

airline, the shuttle and then got involved in gaming and, i guess in atlantic city. and then the economy collapsed and many people thought you'd not be able to survive. >> they were hoping. well, i just wanted to continue to live my lifestyle. i like planes and everything else. in those days i wasn't married. i liked planes and beautiful women. i liked my lifestyle. first of all, the shuttle was great. what happened, this was like 57th and fifth. in the airline business, that was like the best asset. i had that. the bank scared the market. banks came to me. i made a deal where it was a great deal to sell the shuttle, even in bad times. i bought the plaza hotel. made an iunbelievable deal. if that hotel was one block in any direction i would have died with it. because it was the plaza, i made

an unbelievable deal in getting out of the plaza. it just worked out really well. and other things i did, i was telling -- david and i were speaking before. i said crazy thing about atlantic city, i was there during the boom time when it was a monopoly and did phenomenally. then atlantic city changed. a lot of bad decisions. i built a convention center. they built the convention center in the wrong location. didn't do the airport properly. atlantic city for me has been a great experience, and i got out seven years ago and again, made a lot of money, but i do play the bankruptcy laws. and other people do, too. many of our friends do. every time they play the bankruptcy, it's like a standard story. i buy a building.

it is in turmoil. it's got a big morning. the bank is being vicious and ruthless. i buy the building, all up the bank. i get huge reductions. when i buy the building they say trump filed for bankruptcy. i didn't file for bankruptcy. i use it as a tool. i call them the losers and the haters. oh, trump went bankrupt. i use that as a business tool. you understand and so do many of your friends. whether it's sam zell, leon black, carl icahn with twa, we use the different -- the only thing is that with me, they always say, every time i do it to my advantage, they say trump went bankrupt. if david does it, nobody is going to say that, so that makes you smarter than me. >> i doubt that. >> he wants to get off this subject. >> you have been asked a number of times, you filed for bankruptcy and pointed out

you've never filed for bankruptcy. >> i've never gone bankrupt. >> one of the deals that got a lot of attention, i'd say you stole the property but legally, you bought lago for about $8 million. today it's probably worth $100 million or more, $200 million, i dont know. how did you come to buy that when it was pretty cheap. >> that was an interesting deal. from florida, that's one of the great pieces of land. the greatest house in america, i would say. turned it into the moral lago club. at the time in 1986 i went there and it was for sale for $38 million. i said i don't want to -- that was a lot of money. $38 million. that's like $300 million today. so they want $38 million. so i said, you know what? stupidly, the post fondation, the children were not smart like she was. when she died, they sold the beach and sold it to a friend of

mine. the friend of mine was a great guy. he founded kentucky fried chicken, a couple different -- hospital corporation of america. he was very sick. he had cancer. i went to him and said would you do me a favor? could i buy the beach? this is the beach in front of mora lago. they sold the beach for $2 million or $1.5 million. and he said, donald, you're a friend of mine. i will sell you the beach. i overpaid for it. i paid $2 million. that was the whole beach. and then i announce i'm going to build the ugliest building ever to take all the views because i department want anyone to buy mora lago. i put this thing with no windows, no nothing so you couldn't see the ocean. the ton almost got sick. i did it for a reason. and then people, ross perot,

many people wanted to buy it. they offered me a fortune for the beach. i said no, no, no. then a couple of years later i got a call and say said, we'd like to sell you mora lago. and i said what's your price? and they said we want $8 million. now they wanted in the 30s and -- they couldn't sell it without the beach. i didn't get along with dina merrill at all. she was upset that i bought it. i actually said the statement which is very good for relationship. marjorie was a great beauty. a magnificently beautiful woman on top of being smart. she was born with the mother's

beauty, but not the mother's brain. this was not a good quote in terms of long-term relationship, right? but she could have bought it, and she chose not to. she was in charge of the foundation. i turned it into a club. david negotiates. if you say a company is worth a billion dollars, he's going to say, well, i'll give you $500 million. when they said $8 million, i didn't negotiate. i said i'll take it. that's the first time that's ever happened. i bought it for $8 million, plus $2 million for the beach and turned it into a club. it's an amazing clb. >> after you bought it, you realized the flight pattern was over and you sued palm beach or somebody and in return for that, they gave you -- >> tremendous amounts of land in west palm beach. >> and then what did you do with the land? >> i made it into trump international golf club, about 15 years old. >> is that how you got into

golf? >> i bought one in foreclosure. i love foreclosures, especially when it's somebody else. always better when it's somebody else. i bought a big beautiful piece of land in west chester in foreclose are. i said what am i going to do with it? i made it into a golf club. i bought this one out of foreclosure, out of what i did. and i ended up with a tremendous lawsuit. had a good lawyer. and they ended up settling the lawsuit by making me a deal to buy 500 acres at a good price of land. i turned it into a club. and now mora lago and that club are like sisters and they do tremendously together the way they play off each other. you've been there. >> i have. food is great. service is great. hospitality is great. you always go around and say hello to people. let me ask you this. you now own a lot of golf

courses. and some people say golf is going this way because people are playing less. why is golf a good business thing to have. >> for me it's been great. i've been buying them over the last ten years since the depression. it really has been for a lot of people. i've been buying them in loudoun county, 600 acres on the potomac river, which is phenomenal. i bought that for a very good price. one of the gentlemen i bought it from is here so i'm not going to talk a lot about how good a deal it was. and they are great people. we turned that into a tremendous success in washington. but what i do like is this. first of all, golf is doing very well internationally. asia, china, south america. they just approved it for the olympics. it's in the next olympics. it's never been. golf is doing really well, if you have good places, the good clubs. what i really like also is the real estate. when i have 600 acres an the

potomac, 800 aurks on the pacific ocean facing catalina island and 2 1/2 miles of frontage on the -- in los angeles -- >> you build homes around these? >> i do, but i hate to sell property. >> you play golf? >> yes. >> and you are a handicapper of -- >> three or four. >> you must play a couple rounds a week? >> two. >> have you ever played with tiger woods? >> i play with everybody. tiger and phil and everybody. it's great. it's great to play with them. that's when you realize you aren't a really good golfer because they are tremendously talented. you look at this little triangle and it's that tip of the triangle. they are tremendously talented people and really good people. one of the things i like about golf is when i buy these courses

i'm buying tremendous amounts of land. if i ever say, well, i'm going to close a golf place some place, i'm going to own 700 or 800 acres on the potomac river, it's pretty good stuff. or 600 acres on the ocean, on the pacific ocean, it's a statement i always make. i never lost money on a lake, river or ocean. i love that. in scotland, i just bought turnbury. the most important of the majors. and it's just a great thing. that's 1,000 acres on the old. you just don't lose money with that. i don't want to close it or sell it. it's great real estate. i've made tremendous deals because of my relationship to golf. i play golf with people that love golf. and i become great friends with them. i have so many friends. i dont want to mention names --

>> you make deals on the course? >> i have so many wonderful friends. terry lundgren. he's done an amazing job with macy's. a friend of mine. we play golf together, and others, that i could never have the relationship with these people if i said let's go out to dinner or lunch. i've made many, many deals -- the trump tower site, which is one of the great real estate deals, i really started that by playing a round of golf with somebody that was very attuned to that whole situation in nashville. >> you mentioned macy's. if you go into macy's and you want to buy some donald trump clothing, you can do so. do you pick the clothing, design it? >> i have people that are really good. they come to me and show me. we have really people -- pvh is a fantastic company. they do much of it. macy's does a fantastic job.

shirts, ties, suits, cuff links. >> you're wearing some of it now? >> this is a trump tie. anybody want it? but i figured in case they questioned, i had to wear it. >> i used to spend a fortune. i get them free because of "the apprentice." still, $500 ties. little piece of water gets on the tie, it's destroyed. these are like steel and they look better. so much for my relationship. >> you mentioned "the apprentice." how did that come about? >> "the apprentice" is interesting. my father was all business. for him to even see -- he got to see a little glimpse of it. but mark brurnet who did survivor, a great guy and a great friend of moon. and i have the trump rink in central park. formerly the wallman rink. i took it and fixed it and made it great and have had it for

many years. the number one rink in the world for ice skating. they wanted to do a survivor set live so they built a jungle on the ice skating rink with the big buildings behind and it was live and great. mark burnett called me and said would you do, i have a concept for a show and i'll only do it if you do it. he said it's called "the apprentice." you are doing this and that and ultimately firing people but said you're getting rid of a person a show. it's been copied 15 different times "the apprentice" and i'm happy to say every single one of them has been a fail are. you know all of the people that did them. anyway, so i said let's take a look and we did it. i have an agent from william morris, a big agent. and he said it will never work, don't do it. you'll embarrass yourself. i said i shook hands with nbc

and mark burnett. i have to do it. he said don't do it. i'm not going to let you embarrass yourself. i said, i have a problem. i happened to be -- two things they don't know. my hair, which it really is. i think you know that. i hope you know that. also i'm an honorable person. but i shook hands. they assume i'm not. that's because i'm in the real estate business in new york. they assume i'm not. i shook hands with the head of nbc and mark burnett, i have to do it. anyway, the show goes on. it started at 10:00. it went to 8:00. 10:00 is massive. so everyone was shocked. and it was not supposed to do well. there was a critic in "the washington post" who said to have a successful show you have to have women as a preponderance of the audience and what woman is going to want to watch donald trump. i was insulted. so it went on at 10:00, went to 8:00, went to 5:00 and went to

one. i've had the number one show in the world. i was the number one show in the country. and the agent called me up and said, donald, could i see you? i said about what. he settior show just went to number one. it's a fantastic tribute. i'd like to come over and say hello. what do you want? he said i think i'm entitled to a commission. how much do you think you're entitled to? he said would $4 million be fair? i said you're fired. now "the apprentice" this is now, it's ten years, 14 seasons. and one thing about that business. it's sort of not likor business. it takes an a deal years and years for a deal. with that business, it's all about ratings. we're going on january 4th with a new season. >> the phrase "you're fired," whose idea was that? that was my idea.

the concept was we'd let people go over the course of 16 weeks an television. the first show, the first season there was one guy and he was a nice guy but he was really pathetic. so bad that i got angry at him. i said -- i won't use his name but it's easy to find ot. i said you're fired. everybody went crazy. and that's how that came about. it wasn't scripted. there's no script. it's all -- >> so now, where do you shoot that? in new york? >> we shoot it in trump tower. we have a special board room that's made. they all say, why don't you use your real board room? >> it's a studio. they have cameras all around the wall. about 32 -- at least 32 cameras in the board room. >> anybody you've hired actually work out? >> i hired a couple of guys. bill rancic did a great job. he was the first one.

andrew letinsky. numerous people. when i was going to hire them -- if i thought they were really good i'd never let them win because the price goes up, so i would always -- it's true. i would always make sure i fired them some time prior to the end. but i've hired a number of them. >> let's talk about two things you've done in the washington area. you bought out of bankruptcy the cluvey estate. how did that come about? >> it's in charlottesville, virginia. it's 1500 acres. it's phenomenal property. he was a friend of mine. i was much younger than him. he used to go around saying donald trump is a really smart guy. he used to say donald trump is the smartest of the young people. he married patricia and that marriage was a disaster. he had this piece of property and gave it -- intelligently

gave it to her and said you should build a winery with the money i have. he wanted this to happen. she went bust and the bank took it over. i bought it from the bank and they had hundreds of millions of dollars in it. i bought it for a very small price. it's the largest winery on the east coast. trump wine and champagne and everything. and my son eric trump runs it and it's become fantastic. it's so beautiful and people are getting married. he had a car collection where he had these massive buildings. i turned them into ball rooms. people are getting married there. right next to the university of virginia. right next to thomas jfrson. it's a great area. really a beautiful area. we're very proud of it. and the winery is beautiful. they built a magnificent winery. sad they never really got to use it. >> now closer to here on pennsylvania avenue, you won the right to build a hotel out of

what is the old post office building. >> that's right. how did you win that? you paid the highest price or -- >> i think we had the highest concept and one of the great financial concepts. and i have to say, and i don't know if dan tagliarini is here. is he here? somebody said he was here. >> head of the gsa? >> head of the gsa. the gsa was so professional, and maybe -- i would say it anyway, but the people in the gsa were so -- i go around talking about it. people in government, you have people in government, some of them are phenomenal people. they are phenomenal people. and these people were very professional. this was a job, an rfp, request for proposal. and it was really about concept, almost more importantly than price. a lot of jobs would be provided. so some people had it as an

office building. it was the highest and most sought after piece of property in the history of the gsa. we put in a proposal. it's one of the great hotels of the world. we have the boenss. the building is magnificent. the exterior walls. and it's been a very controversial thing because as you know, they wanted to rip it don and people were marching in the streets to stop it. they chose us because of the fact i was able to easily get it done. and because we have a great track record and because the concept of the hotel puts more people to work. >> how many rooms will there be? >> 300 rooms. the largest luxury ball room in the entire tri-state area. it's going to be a magnificent ball room. many meeting rooms, spas.

it's a big project. we'll be spending over $200 million on the renovation. i had a choice. i arrived a couple minutes early. do i go over to the building? it's under demolition right now and massive. do i go over to the building and get dust, my shoes, everything dusty or sit around in a corner somewhere in the hotel here and wait for david and say, okay, dave, i'm ready in two hours. i said i'm going to go to the hotel. that's an entrep noor. so my shoes are a little dusty. so is my suit. but these are minor details. it's going to be one of the great hotels. i shouldn't say this. we're in a very nice hotel, but washington doesn't have the great luxury hotel that it should have. and everybody knows that. this will be one of the great hotels. the hotel i have some chicago was rated the best hotel in

chicago boo conde nast. and that's why they chose us. >> so will it have trump on the outside? >> why but very, very little. >> oh, okay. i was in chicago the other day and the trump name was there very big, right? >> that's a -- that's a 94-story building. but that was very controversial because i got the approval to put it up and when i put the letters up, everybody went crazy. before the letters were up when they heard 28 feet. these are letters as big as the ceiling, right over the river. so they said this is terrible. we're going to pass a law that nobody ever can do it again. never can anybody do what trump did. i said i agree 100% with that law. and they just -- the law just passed and i'm very happy about it. i agree. >> so you mentioned your

children. let me talk about that. it's difficult for a wealthy parent to raise children who want to go into their own business, let alone do it in a sensible way. how did you raise children that don't seem to be spoiled and don't seem to be rebelling against their father? >> it's such a great question and somehow i hope i'll be here in ten years saying the same thing with you because you have great children, and i know your daughter. she's so amazing. and it's very complicated. i get that question so much because people see ivanka and don and they are just doing well. and from the time they were -- i tell this to everybody. from the time they were 2 years old, old enough to think and speak, i would say listen. no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes. i don't want drugs -- they didn't even know what it was. there would be 15, no drugs, no alcohol because i've seen people like you, like me very

substantial people where they have children and they become alcoholics, drug addicts, they become other things. i add the cigarettes because if you can stay away from that, it's good. i have friends of mine that are very strong that can't stop smoking. i have a friend who hated the taste of scotch. but he tried to develop a taste for scotch. and i saw him recently. he's a total alcoholic. all he had to do was stay away from it. i say no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes because i've seen many people that are very smart and very successful that have children that are very smart, as smart as you're going to find. children that can go to harvard, yale, wharton, any of the schools but they're addicted to drugs or alcohol. i throw the cigarettes in. i also say no tattoos but that seems to be failing if you look at television. i think the tattoo thing i'm just going to have to stop.

i was always very strong on that. you are put as such a tremendous disadvantage as a child that you're never going to make it. you hire all these young geniuses. if somebody is a drinker, an drugs, it's not going to work. and i just say you just can't do that. i tell all my friends, you got to just drum it into their heads. >> so what would you like, not that you're going to slow don. let's suppose you don't get to be president of the united states. the chance of getting elected is relatively small for anybody. >> i agree. i hate to admit it. >> if you don't get to be president you'll do this for another 20 years or so? >> interesting about real estate, a little bit like that in your business but not as much, that everybody in real estate is old. they never retire. you see guys 89 years old. they really do it instead of plastic sergea iic surgery.

i can fix the old post office instead of getting a face lift because i can make it so beautiful and that's my baby. but real estate people don't retire. other businesses that retire, i have friends. my father used to have an expression. to retire is to expire, which is a tough expression. but i've seen it. a banker, big banker friend of mine had to retire at 65. he was a vibrant guy. a great guy. you would know him. a great guy. and very powerful. he could approve a $500 million mortgage or loan without even going to committee. that's not bad. and he was forced to retire at 65. i saw that man get old within a period of one year. it was the most incredible thing. i also heard him say, when i retire, i have so many friends. a lot of people aren't going to call you back. they all call you back right now. he came to me about three weeks

ago and said you are the only one that calls me back and talks to me. he said all those other guys, new york developers mostly, i call them, they don't return my calls. they used to return my call before i made it. but that's life. that's a sad thing but that's life. >> you'll keep doing this for quite a while. >> i would. i love doing it. i love doing that more than running and get abused by chris matthews. mrs. matthews is in the audience. i love her husband. boy, did he turn liberal over the last ten years. it's incredible. he interviewed me years ago and want that way. >> people are fascinated by your lifestyle and so forth. and take your plane that has your name on it. is that an advertising device by putting your -- >> i guess. it's a boeing 757, a great plane. you put it at the airports. it can only go to the major airports. it's probably a form of branding

that i don't even think about. it was a little bit by osmosis. it just came. trump tower, then another building. i did really well with it. i'd get higher rents and higher numbers than other people. then started building these trumps all over the place and the brand became very valuable. >> people are often fascinated by your hair. >> yeah. >> why is that? >> i don't know. well, it is mine. it's legitimately my hair. i had a story recently. it was the best story i've ever had, but in the second paragraph, but he wears the worst hair piece of any human being. but it's my hair. it's an embarrassing story but it was a good story, a financial story. no, it's my hair. and i've always combed it the same way, more or less. i do get abused about the hair, but i've actually become somewhat immune to it.

if it wasn't mine, i think it would be harder. when you know it's yours -- it may not be pretty, but it is mine. >> on the economy, what is your projection. do you think we'll grow at about 3%? >> i think a lot of things are happening. i love that oil is dropping. i always said oil should never be up at those levels. it was a fixed level. it's interesting where they say saudi arabia is purposely keeping the price don to destroy us. look. you do business with saudi arabia, i know that. and so do i. i have a lot of friends. they buy a lot of real estate and apartments and space in buildings that i own. but i don't really believe that. but there's a theory that they're keeping the price low to destroy all these new people with fracking that are coming out. who knows what it is. i love low oil prices. a lot of people are saying it's no lowe because there's no demand.

obviously, russia is getting killed right now with so many things going on. they are so strongly based with oil. a lot of bad things could be happening. the unemployment rate, the rool rate is probably 20% because people stopped looking for jobs and they consider them employed. you stop looking for a job. there are so many people ot there that gave up looking for jobs or they are part time or something else. but the fact is that i think your economy is obviously not doing so well. the stock market is the one ray of hope. i've never been a stock market person. but about three years ago, 2 1/2 years ago, i bought a tremendous amount of stock. first time ever. i never believed in letting other people run my machine. i see some of these guys making tremendous amounts of money to run a company that's easy to run. i never liked it. i bought stock. the reason i bought stock, it's

free money. interest rates are so low. and also in my cds, they were offering 0.25%. so i bought a lot of stock and the stocks have gone up tremendously. i feel like such a genius. and i sold my stocks, everything, because i'm not a great believer in the leadership of the country, and i'm not a great believer in decisions being made with respect to the country. and usually that would lead somebody that's intelligent to go and do something. so i sold all of the stock that i bought. but i'm not a stock market guy, but the reason i did it was because the interest rates were so low. at some point those rates are going to go high and that will be a difficult time. >> you don't suffer from a lot of self-doubt. you seem to be -- i am more like woody allen. i don't really know what i

should be doing. you don't really have that issue so much? >> well, i probably do have that issue. i think a lot about different things. and alan greenberg, ace. he used to buy stocks from me early in the process. when i did it in a small way. i never heard this before. i bought a stock. it went up a lot and i sold it. and a week later, somebody announced it was going to be bought. i would have made double the money which i would have kept it. ace, we did a horrible thing. i sold that stock. i should have kept it another week. the first time he ever got angry at me. never, ever talk about a deal that's been made. cross that deal off your head. he's a trader, a great trader. he said never, ever talk -- don't even think about. he said it with anger. it was interesting. a lesson i learned. i'm very happy.

i sold off the stocks. they've been having some bad times the last week or so. it will be interesting to see what happens. i look to be invested in things that run. i like to be invested in things that i run. i don't run these companies. i see too many people that do that i know. i have tremendous respect for this man but in a lot of cases, i don't have great respect for the people running -- >> i understand. >> what's the most fun about being donald trump? what's the best part about being donald trump and is there any down side? >> i have to be very careful. i will say that i have had a good time in my life. i have a wonderful family, a wonderful wife. i have my children have been great. i think the best part is that i just love what i do. i really enjoy what i do. i think the hardest part is the fact that i can't go anywhere.

in the real estate business i could walk the streets of manhattan and see signs that something is for sale. i can't do that anymore. a lot of that started with the art of the deal when that became the number one book and then "the apprentice." but it's very hard to do that now. but i will tell you, i just have a great time with my life. i have a lot of incredible friends, including you. a great honor to be asked by you. this is one of the truly great men and great success stories. it's an honor to be up here with you. >> my pleasure. let me give you a gift. >> thank you. >> wow. >> beautiful. >> the first map of the district of columbia. okay. thank you very much, donald. >> that was a great honor.

president obama is holding a year end news conference at the white house. the president's likely to discuss new cuba policy, the cyberattack on sony pictures, combating isis, ebola and the immigration executive order. live coverage at 1:30 p.m. eastern an our companion network c-span. this week on q&a, katie pavlich on what she perceives as the hypocrisy of liberals on their war on women rehetoric. >> it goes back to, like i said, the idea for this book came from was the 2012 dnc convention when they were showing this tribute video to him because he had passed away and portraying him as a women's rights champion when he left a young woman to drown in his car.

if he had not gone back for nine hours and tried to save his own behind, she would have probably survived. and you can't do an entire video at a convention claiming to be preaching and fighting about the war on women and glorify someone like that while not including that part of his life in a video about his women's rights record. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c-span's q&a. and to mark ten years of q&a we're airing one program from each year starting december 22nd at 7:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. coming up, a discussion on the future of u.s. foreign policy. panelists on a range of issues including america's leadership and power in the world. lessons learned from the ooh rack and afghanistan wars and future relations with russia, china and india. this event is hosted by the center for american progress and runs 90 minutes.

>> good morning. welcome to the center for american progress. we are extremely pleased to be sort of drawing to the end of the year with what we think will be an extremely lively discussion about future directions for u.s. foreign policy. it's an interesting time right now. the world is certainly in a state that many are describing as chaotic. it's hard to see how to balance threats from everything from terrorists and, you know, ungoverned spaces and large refugee flows to the trajectory being chosen by big powers like russia to rising powers like china that might be looking to change or up end the international order. and many of us in washington think tanks from across the political spectrum struggle with these issues every day. today we're very fortunate to have a unique cross-cutting

spectrum of views. right now the left and right are divided not only left and right but within the left and within the right on how america might think about its role in the world and the coming 10, 15, 20 years. we're very lucky to have with us people who are actually spokesmen from all of these different vantage points. this event was unspider by an recall that jim mann had in the "american prospect." he put out an article that looked at realism, old and new, and explored the idea of whether the obama administration has sort of been tugged between two different views of america's role in the world. one being the one rooted in american leadership and the sense of america having a unique role in leading on the world stage. another being a more pragmatic

perhaps look at what america's power and capability is to influence world events in an era of great change and with rising powers challenging american privacy really in a way that we hadn't seen since the end of the cold war. we thought in a conversation that it would be a good time to bring in not only his voice but the voices of others who have been writing on these issues. all of you know jim well. one of the greatest communicatators and observers of american foreign policy over the last 30 years. his more recent books "rise of the vulcans and the obamyans" are well known by anyone who looks at american foreign policy and tries to figure out how decisions are maid and how we choose various courses of action. along with jim we're going to have chris preble, vice president at cato for defense and foreign policy studies. he's the author of several books including the power problem, how

american military dominance makes us less safe, less dominance and less free. chris is a well-known and thoughtful critic of american overextension and american interventionism overseas. he often suggests we should focus on truly vital national security interests that we often exaggerate threats and often find ourselves squandering precious resources in efforts around the world that are not only unwise but also unnecessary and very costly to the united states. he's also joined by kim holmes. long time vice president and one of the pillars of heritage's foreign policy and defense program. kim has recently authored a four-part series in foreign policy magazine saying america needs a new foreign policy for 2016.

he talks about a more active american role in the world. stepping away from any notion of retrenchment. and committing the resources that would be necessary for robust american leadership and for intervention in world affairs in order to advance american interests. brian katulis is the author of the prosperity agenda and republicansor middle east program but thinks very broadly about how america functions on the global stage. he argued vigorously from a progressive standpoint against dis-engagement in a recent article in "democracy." so we look forward to a very robust discussion today. the panel is going to be moderated by our own larry korb, our senior fellow and former assistant secretary of defense who needs no introduction and is a frequent and prolific

contributor to the debate on all manner of national security issues. i'm really pleased all of you are here at the center for american progress. we start entering a political season and run towards 2016. we're really thrilled that all of these very thoughtful leaders in national security and defense and foreign policy have joined us. please welcome our guests. thank you. let me join vikram in welcoming you all here today which, given the folks we have, is going to be a very vigorous and enlightening debate given all the challenges that the country is facing right now.

as vi kram mentioned, this was -- this event was a result of jim's recent article. and by the way, they are out there, if you didn't see them, the copies of articles all these people have written. and jim, again, you are the one who started this debate so we're going to let you go first and tell us about the realism, old and new. >> all right. thank you, larry. glad to be here. i've spent most of my life as a jornlist, a writer. i consider myself an foreign policy mostly a critic. i've sometimes told conservative audiences when i talk about foreign policy you'd not want to hear my views on health care or on taxes. but my role in foreign policy is simply to question assumptions

that take hold on the idea that trade and investment would lead to political liberalization in china. in this piece, i focus on the current fixation with calling the united states the indistensable nation. it's a phrase that goes back to the 1990s. usually madeleine albright is given credit for it, although it really started with bill clinton and some of his aides in 1996. and it's not a uniquely democratic -- it's sort of a democratic phrase, but essentially the same idea comes up in the republican inkantations of american leadership in the world. and what i want to do is question whether that's a viable phrase or whether it actually

gets in the way of american policy or even american power in the world. the place i want to start is with a disagreement i noticed between the clintons, bill and hillary, or if you look at it differently, between the public and the private bill clinton because after bill clinton left office, he at one point told his friend who wrote about it, strobe talbot, that he really thought his job as president was to build the world for our granchildren to live in where america was no longer the sole superpower for a time when we'd have to share the stage. and talbot -- how come you never said that when you were president? and clinton, bill told him, that's why you're a wonk and i

was president of the united states. if i go around saying that -- talking about a time when america is not going to be the top dog in the world, i'd be ridden out of town on a rail. nevertheless, his own administration's phrase indispensable nation lives on as strongly as ever. and what i want to ask really is, do we really play that role today? can we play that role for the foreseeable future, and should we? and my answer to all of those is no. do we play that role? yes, but not always. we tend to not notice when we're not playing that role. and the example i would use is ukraine where it looks from over here where this is a cold war-style dispute between american power and russian power. if you get to europe or you look

at what's going on, you see tha dominant, the interlock tor is angela merkle and germany. and sometimes people think here that she's too accommodating. germany has stepped up the sanctions, their own sanctions, slowly. when they do, putin notices. we can't do this on our own, because actually, our trade with russia is much less than germany's. i'll not saying that's a bad thing. but the truth is germany has much more influence with russia than we do. and that gets to the issue of whether we are as powerful alone as we are when working with allies. so we can talk about stepping up sanctions against russia. but in fact, we work with germany.

and the larger point is that our alliances are the basis of our power. that if we get out too far -- and that's true to dealing with russia. it's true in dealing with china as well. if we get out too far in front of our allies, then it weakens our power. and we've had to learn some of the hard way, the realities after the end of the cold war. i'm sure that many people in this room think that the intervention in iraq was a disaster, as it was, but what you don't see is that one of the disasters was a diplomatic one. because i was covering the bush administration and writing, preparing to write about it in the run up to the war. i can tell you that they sincerely believed what i call the leadership hypothesis, that if the united states took certain positions at the u.n. and elsewhere, ultimately, the

allies, like the french and the germans and british would follow. and they, they honestly believed that. and they were wrong. they were spectacularly wrong, because they didn't quite analyze the fact that after the end of the cold war the allies were less dependent on us than they are, than they were before 1989. and so the other problem with indispensable nation is the more we run around and tell everyone that we're the indispensable nation, the less other countries are willing to do on their own because the united states is taking care of it and the more they get a little bit offended. so in short, when bob cutner, the editor of the american prospect called me with a random question, would you like to write a piece on what a realistic, what a policy of realism means today, and i said sure, but i thought that

progressives sometimes don't quite understand what realism is. since the end of the cold war, younger progressives have taken realism to mean antiinterventionism. because that's what it meant in 2002. but in fact, realism has a butch broader history of believing in, simply balance of power politics and power diplomacy at the expense of values, and that those are views that i thought progressives should mott buy into. but in thinking about it i thought that realism in a new way would be a realistic view of an america which is not always going to be the world hedgeman. and finally, i do think that on

this, for all of the criticism that he gets, that obama has been ahead of his time. i think he has recognized and will be recognized in history as having tried, whether it succeeds or not, in moving towards a more modest and therefore realistic view of america's future role in the world the and i'm sure that i will be criticized by some of my colleagues, but the example i would use is libya, where in describi describing, first of all, the intervention in libya came about for two reasons. one is the one that most of you read about, that there was a strong desire for humanitarian intervention and that many people in his, in the administration believed it. the second strand was that the british and the french, particularly, the french,

whethwere coming to the united states. they were more concerned with libya than the united states was. and saying things like, we are helping you all over the world -- translate afghanistan troops -- we would like you to help us out on this one. and in that context, the fact that obama allowed the french and the british to have the lead out front planes in there and to shoulder some of the financial burden, and that they described that as leading from behind, i have yet, i will hear answers, but i have yet to understand what the problem was with leading from behind. and the answer to me is that it touched this nerve that we have to be as the united states what we were in 1946 or 1956 and in 1990 and in '91 after the collapse of the soviet union, and i think that episode and the reaction to leading from behind shows me that we have not yet

begun to move off from this fixation that we are and have to be, always, front. thank you. >> thank you very much. jim, in addition to writing this article and books, jim was, worked for 20 years for the l.a. times, covered things all over the world, and really knows an awful lot about china. you're one of the first reporters that we had over there. all right, we're going to move next to chris preble, who in addition to being at kato is a former naval organizatier. you came in, and you were able to get out. >> they gave out certificates for everyone who served in the cold war and won. that's one of my diplomas. chuck went up to the good guys. i'm really thrilled to be here and partly because of larry's

invitation prompted me to read jim's article for the first time. and it had been discussed, but i hadn't had a time to sit down and read it. and my favorite part by far is the kind of bottom line up front, which is this conceit that we are the indispen penpen nation. he writes has become down right, well, unrealistic. and before i got to that line i started reading the article, and that was the word, unrealistic that sort of stuck out in my head. it's not unrealistic as far as alice looking through the glass or a salvador dali painting, but people inside washington believe that their world view is the proper one. the fundamental disconnect and the reason why the current grand strategy is not realistic is that it is so disconnected from the view of reality outside of washington and the beltway.

and there are so many polls that show this. but interestingly, i think a lot of astute observers of u.s. foreign policy have known this for some time and talked about it for some time. one of my favorite lines is from a book that didn't set as much attention as it should have called america at the crossroads. most people focused on this was a neoconservative. this rests on a belief in american exceptionalism that most non-americans simply find not credible. the idea that the united states behaves disinterestedly in the world stage is not widely believed, because it is for the most part not true, and indeed, could not be true of america, if american leaders fulfilled their responsibilities to the american people, right? we expect that any country around the world, when it executes a foreign policy, its primary obligation is the

interest of its people. and a core element, a core aspect of american exceptionalism is that we are different and do not behave that way. but i think it is hard to sustain that belief for a long time, both for the attitudes here in the united states but also abroad. another observer in making the case for goliath, the title of the book, he predicted that for american public, foreign policy-like charity begins at home and predicted that the american role in the world may depend in part on americans not scrutinizing it too closely, end quote. well, we all know what happened. he wrote that roughly 2005/2006, and the experience of the iraq war, the cost of the iraq war combined with the afghanistan war, the financial crisis in 2008 has really caused a lot of people to revisit some of the fundamental propositions of u.s. foreign policy. so my modest case today is that

we, one approach is to continue to count on this disconnect between the public and the elites. after all, it has existed for a long time. it is not a new phenomenon, and frankly, it hasn't mattered because there is continuity among the elites in the republican and democratic party, so if it doesn't have an outlet it doesn't manifest itself in elections. i sauna a little bit in reading brian and jim's articles. we'll see if it plays out that way in a minute. so the one approach is to expect it to continue. i think that's a reasonable approach the other approach which i hope we don't resort to is to obfuscate. and there's a couple different ways this manifests itself. jim talks about during the cold war, this presumption that we had these allies that were vital to national security interests led us to make truly outrageous claims about these people's commitments to liberty and human rights and democracy and again,

it was a bipartisan conceit. and he quotes both george h.w. bush and bill clinton about how vitally important these peel are. so i'd urge people to make a case honestly for american high homo homogeny. arthur vanderburg advised dean atchison to scare the hell out of the american people. and he said he would paint a picture clearer than the truth. so this is a long history of american foreign policy of speaking to the american people in a way that doesn't expect them to respond well enough or urgently enough unless things are painted to them clearer than

the truth. so let me lay out three aspects in which if we conduct this debate honestly, we'll bring the american people into this discussion. first of all is this argument about allies. what exactly are our relationships with our allies, what do they purport to do? what are they actually doing? are their interests synonymous with ours. and therefore our interests are served by that. can we make this case, without resorting to threat inflation, couple examples. terrorism is not an existential threat to the american republic. russia is not on the cusp of recreating the soviet union. fareed sakar yeah says if this is 1938 -- and another is tied

to u.s. continue the economic leadership around the world. and there has been a longstanding belief, just really an assertion that there are clear economic benefits renowned for the american people for spending as much as we do on our military. but i think there's some really good research that calls that into question, and i think that's on shaky ground. so i'll just leave those three on the table, and i'm sure we'll have a lot of time to discuss in the back and forth after. thank you. >> in addition to chris's article out there about hillary, isis and the interventionist bias, he's written a terrific book called "the power problem" how american military dominance makes us less safe, prosperous and prfree. let me move now to kim holmes. i went back and checked 30 years on and off, he has been there.

he and i were on a panel together in the early days of the bush administration. i said how come you're not in government. well, right after that, they made him assistant secretary of state international organization. what do you think, kim, in terms of what you've heard so far. ? first of all, larry, thanks for having me over and delighted to be here on this panel with our distinction wished panelists. i think that i was thinking back in the days, even in the reagan years and the first bush administration, there was a lot more interaction between people who called themselves liberals and conservatives back in those days than there are today. and we spend a lot of times, each in our own bubbles, and i would admit that i do that as well, and i suspect that you all do that as well. but i had the feeling that there's sort of a yearning that we want to move beyond that and see more what we have in common

than what divides us, and i'll say a bit about that at the end, even though i do disagree with some of the fundamental points here. so i'll start on the disagreements and try to end on something that's a bit more positive. the year after barack obama took office i wrote an op ed called "the new liberal realism." and it was the observation that you're seeing here. there was a new alliance forming in the wake of the controversies of the iraq war between groups that normally ideologically didn't have much to do with each other, at least not as much as they did with president obama's foreign policy. and i think at the time what was really driving president obama was less realism as it was championly understood as a doctrine and the way the kissinger people talked about which you mentioned, but more in the reaction to the perception that he and others had that the iraq war was a disaster, that we were overextended.

it was time to really just try the opposite, you know, whatever he did we'll try to do the opposite. and it ended up being very much along the lines of whether you intervened or don't intervene with military forces, and that became the driving controversy. and i think we are still in that. in some ways we see that here today, but i also think that there are some fault lines in that alliance. and i think it has something to do with the fact that many of the objectives and many of the policies that president obama tried to do, which were in line with this view of the world have been tried. it's not as if he's not been president for over six years. they have been tried, and they're not working very well. and the president tried to reset relations with russia, which was, he thought was based upon the fact that george w. bush had

been too harsh against the russians. he, forgetting the fact that frankly, the reason why we had in 2008 bad relations with russia is because of russia's intervention in georgia. prior to that, president bush had looked in putin's eye and said we could do business with this man. but after georgia he was disappointed, and there was a pulling back, and yet i think president obama overinterpreted that and therefore made it all about the sort of symbolism about the iraq war and interventionism and being too much of a cowboy and then applied that to the policies of russia. and frankly, it didn't work. we now have a situation where russia is a lot more aggressive in the near and broad and inside its country than it was before. and in some ways we did farm out our foreign policy to the european union regarding the ukraine, and they became quite interested in trying to get ukraine closer to the european

uni union. it wasn't a nato issue, it was a european issue. so we did lead from behind and let the europeans take the lead, and it didn't work very well. i would say the same thing over libya. i didn't support the intervention in libya. i didn't see our national interests involved in that particular intervention. i think the president did it primarily because the british and french talked him into doing it for hupt and commercial and economic reasons to do it. and now libya is in chaos. it's not just what happened in benghazi. there also is no order there. and so our intervention there was not followed up on, and it turned out to be a disaster, in my opinion. on this whole question of the indispensable nation. you know, a lot of times, those of us who work for foreign policy, we write about it. we grab these words, and the politicians grab them, and three are used in a certain way. in some ways we overinterpret

them and they become almost like buzzwords depending on who's using them they mean certain things. so sometimes the indispensable nation is used interchangeably request gchomogeny. i'm pretty pragmatic when it comes to whether america is dispensable or not. what other nation can perform the tasks that we perform in the world except us? we do things that even our allies cannot do, and it's not just military power, it's also economic interests, it's also other things we do at the united nations and elsewhere. so to that extent just as a matter of fact we are indispensable, technically to our allies, but that gets overinterpreted to mean that what we really mean is an

overaggressive foreign policy where we're going to be hedge mondayic and so forth. following the iraq war is a case example of this. i was at the state department. i worked in the u.n. when this came up. and i do remember that yes, germany and france had their own particular reasons to not want to support the iraq war, but i also remember going to moscow at the time and talking to the russian foreign minister at the time which at the time was more supportive of what we were doing in the german and french war. i don't see germany and france as an acid test as to whether we have a coalition. we have 37 allied countries in iraq that provided 150,000 troops, ground troops, which is not something anywhere near close to isis in iraq. i don't think that should be dismissed out of hand.

the last point i'll make is it's not just the issue on russia. i think the president pulled out of iraq faster than his military advisers wanted him to. and as a result now, he's been forced back in under dramatically worse circumstances i think than if we had stayed. he had a very tightly focused counter terrorism strategy. as i show in my articles, the threat of terrorism is greater and worse today than it was six years ago. many of our allies are complaining, because they don't have the certainty of knowing what u.s. policy is. that is also a component of leadership, being straight and consistent, not just going out and bossing them around and telling them what to do but also playing the traditional role of consulting with them and doing only what the united states can do in that leadership role, in conjunction with her allies to get things done. i don't believe that it's

either -- i don't believe it's a case of simply bossing our allies around. and we define leadership by going out and telling them what to do, and if they don't do it we don't have anything to do with them anymore. i think it's much more subtle than that. and we have to figure out where we have a common interest with particular allies and realizing, by the way, that the allies will change. each one of them will have their own individual interests, not just france and germany with respect to iraq, but other countries, particularly in eastern and central europe who do very much still want the connection with the united states strategically and with nato because they fear russia. so it is true, given the end of the cold war we're not as indispensable in that strategic sense as we used to be. i'll concede that point, but that doesn't mean that we are not indispensable at all to them, particularly these new countries that depend on us. the last thing i would say, andon't mean to suggest, jim, that you're suggesting this.

i think your analysis is much more subtle, but i do hear it from other people, is that we have to be aware of any "ism" because you start trying to create a doctrine almost always created by intellectuals, and it becomes something by which we can discuss among ourselves, the obama doctrine and the like. but at the end of the day, there's going to be so many things outlying the principles of the doctrine that they're not going to give you a lot of guidance, and i think that's true whether you're a conservative realist or a liberal one. >> thank you very much, kim. in addition to his article out there, he's writ and terrific new book called rebound, getting america back to great. so anyway, our last speaker is brian katulis who's been a bulwark of the national security program here over the last decade. he knows more about the middle east than anybody i've ever met.

he's lived there, worked there, speaks arabic, and so he's got his article against disengagement. so brian? >> i want to thank all of you for your articles and coming here because i hope this discussion, and i hope we bring you all into this, comes at an important time. we're at a period of transformation about how we think about national security policy and politics. i think we've seen the politics quite clear. if you look carefully on the votes on the hill, it's not just what happened with the budget and the domestic scene, but there are things like the syria war vote, which i mentioned in my article, the one they had on the non-strike vend and the commity, it split within both parties, and i think in part, we talk to the hill quite a lot, and both sides. we're in this transformative

moment, and i thought i'd mention two quick comments. i have a lot that i agree with. the first point i would say is that i struggled a little bit with the realism and realistic term as somebody who's studied international relation theory at princeton under dick allman. i agree with your main point that obama himself is a pr pragmati pragmatist. i don't think it's balance of power theory or liberal internaggism. if you read henry kissinger's new book, i'm not always a big fan. but he talks about this delicate balance in between the two. and i think the main thing that has driven much of president obama's foreign policy, which i do think has been transformative has been what is the limiting factor. how do we limit our own

engagement on things, because i think we needed to learn from the previous decade. and i think for reasons why he brought the combat naz phase of iraq war and the afghan war which is coming to an end, what more can we do to extend that. it's pragmatic, a realistic assessment of after 15 years, what have we achieved. and i would use pragmatism as one reaction as opposed to realism. i don't think obama himself looks at state actors as the fundamental actor in itself which is the hallmark of realism. the second, which i think you definitely get right and i think we analysts and the political leadership in our country need to get more in synch with where the country's at is i think obama prag matically recognized that there is a rise of the rest, from the beginning, even before he was president.

when he was running for president, you remember his campaign events overseas, including germany, i was talking to a u.s. diplomat about this. it was an appeal to say okay. this period of perceived unilateralism is now over. we want to get others to pull your weight. i have no problem with the phrasiology personally of leading from behind. there are other ways you can describe it. politically i was puzzled as to why it was so pilloried. but i think it's a trend that if our next president doesn't recognize, we'll be in real big trouble, because others, as jim notes in his article, germany has a much more closer interest in dealing with ukraine. i think maybe sometimes you overstate the case of how much our actions or our sanctions and what key do distract them from that. i think they understand that they have an interest. and just coming back from jordan and the middle east, i think

there is a recognition that they have an interest in this anti-isil coalition, which i think we'll talk about. and finding the right fit, what do we mean by u.s. leadership because countries like jordan and israel do look to the west. not that we're going to do the shock and awe which we tried in the previous decade. the thing that i mentioned this already, the third point i'd say is that the thing that i don't think is terribly different in the obama administration, because i think the bush administration experienced this as well, this tension between how do we work with international institutions and liberal internationalism and where doey use our force directly. one of the things you mentioned in the article, jim, is the first two years of the obama vags was more realist. if you look at things like the

afghanistan surge and the smart power sort of campaign. if you look at the israeli palestinian effort, one would say that didn't produce the results they hoped. there was a strand of idealism, but it goes back to every administration faces that. i think we as a country, it's hard for us to simply sort of check these high ideals or we want to, there's that instinct there, and it's hard, i think, for many americans to just leave that at the door. but i think the one thing that has changed, which wasn't maybe so much in your article, but hopefully we'll talk about, is how the world has changed fund amountly. i think obama has adapted to it somewhat and certainly your criticism of the indispensable power framework is spot on. but it's not only the rise of the other countries like india and china which is quite obvious. that's nothing new over the last few decades, it's the diffusion

of power. i think it complicates things in ways in how we talk about diplomacy and foreign policy. whether it's the arab uprising or the arab spring and we see things every place. it leads to my last two sets of comments. those changes are, i think, fund amountly different. the way technology is bringing different value systems directly in odds with one another. the way it allows smaller groups that i believe are not an existential threat, i agree with you. it gets into our politics and consciousness in ways, it makes it very hard to put it in the space that i think obama's tried to do and make it very easy to say, look, they're all coming to get us. and that, again, i think they have values that are essentially different from ours. and that's where i would close, and that's what my article was trying to do.

i wouldn't say the obama vags was necessarily disengaged. i think it set the right balance on most issues. in some ways, though, i think some of the values issues, and its reticence to talk about this, and this is where we may disagree, but having been in the middle east and europe last week while the torture report was released, you see that people still look to america in some ways, and you see that that is a form of power that has been damaged by some of our past mistakes, and you see that people look at our politics in many ways and look at it as an ideal, but unfortunately, you see, also, they see the same dysfunction that we all see, that we often make these unforced errors that hurt ourselves. so i'll close maybe with a little bit of optimism. i think looking at sort of where america is today, especially when i was in europe last week and in the middle east, it's less pessimistic coming back here, i think, when you look at

sort of how people look to our country, still, as an economic engine, especially hin this yea and the fact that we're producing more energy. not that we're fully back to where we were. i don't think we ever will be. we need to prag matically recognize that. and i think the real trick will be, how do we actually adapt to these new trends that i talked about in terms of people being able to have more of a say in their own politics, in their own country's power, which makes for a much more sort of dynamic environment than east versus west or cold war politics. i think a much more forces this administration and the next administration to react much more quickly than i think it's capable of doing right now. >> thank you. all right. we've got about 15 minutes before i turn it over to you folks who have been very patient. let he begin by asking jim. do you want to respond to any of the comments made by your colleagues? >> just very quickly, on obama's

first two years, which i described as realistic, as an effort at realism. i do mean the old style realism. and i mean that when, when obama took office, he cited gol croft as a model and then the green movement in iran, which he decided to keep hands off on. so i do think that was realism. and you mentioned israel and the palestinians. that's interesting, because that goes back to a debate around the time of the iraq war and before, where the neoconservatives felt, having been most of them or all of them through the gulf war that a display of military power as they saw it in the gulf war opened the way for some negotiations. that was their belief. it cowed arafat, arafat was scared, or he was marginalized, and that therefore that would

work within the iraq war. >> you mean gaddafi? >> no, arafat. >> oh, okay. >> and the other side, this is the 2002 iraq war skol croft had been arguing you can't get anywhere in the middle east without an agreement between israel and the palestinians first, so that's where that -- and obama takes off as very much on the skol croft side of that. then obama gets swept up in the arab spring and my heart was with him. it did not work out well. he really, he really believed in sort of the idealist view that democracy was going to sweep the middle east. just one other response to kim. on europe, i mean, i'm not quite sure. the eu is the economic agency. i'm not sure how the united states would have, when you say obama would have, i