action. this is about one hour. >> we are pleased to have as the next speaker for our conference, perfetti barry posen -- professor barry posen. he's a director of the m.i.t. security studies program. he's the author of several works. an newcently, "restraint foundation for u.s. treasury." he is expanded on those arguments in his new book whose main points he will be presenting to us today. i had the pleasure of finishing restraint which laid out the major flaws. it outlines the basic structure and goals of the grand strategy matchesaint and then this new strategy with the appropriate military needs to carry it out.

anyone interested in reforming and improving u.s. foreign-policy will benefit from reading it. welcome barryto posen to make his case to us this morning. [applause] >> i have to get used to show biz with the lights. i want to thank the organizers for inviting me. thank you all for coming out. it comes as no surprise to you like many people in this town i am plugging a book. to. may have seen it alluded i am going to basically give a very encapsulated version of the argument here for you. the book essentially has four parts. it describes the evolution of

post-cold war u.s. strategy. it offers critique of how that strategy has worked. that was fun to write. it lays out the political outlines of alternatives a little more difficult to write. it lays out the military aspects. i lay out a notional for structure policy to support the political strategy that i talk about. it is a tiny package. it doesn't settle every issue. it opens more issues probably then it closes. i will talk a little bit about where we are starting from. narrowa fairly definition of grand strategy. grand strategy is about ensuring this country against the threats against territorial integrity,

its sovereignty, safety, and it's power position which is a means to its ends. not every ounce of power is worth every other outs. you want efficiency to achieve those ends. grand strategy is a theory about how to create security. it connects together political, military, and sometimes economic means and ends. it offers reasons for the connections and set some priorities about what happens the most -- what matters the most and what matters less. the problem i see, i think the previous panel talked about it a little bit, there is a considerable degree of consensus that americas foregign policy elite are on grand strategy and i think that crosses political parties. calledthink john icahn

that liberal hegemony. that is a good description. it is liberal because of the which is toject spread both liberal institutions and liberal ideas around the world. it is hegemonic because it depends on the very grateful severity against u.s. powers and others. it strategize is the maintenance at almost anyny cost. and ask fork down what matters in the strategy, just about everything matters. terrorism matters. rising powers matter. just about everything matters to this data g. -- strategy. it is not particularly well prioritized. the way everything matters is not always clear.

nevertheless there is this remarkable consensus and this consensus was born at a particular moment in american history. when the cold war ended, the u.s. was left with is really great gap between it and any other power in the world. our side won. the liberals one. the tariff aliens -- the totalitarians lost. some oddities about this because this very power position was also one of the most secure states. really secure. still is quite secure in my judgment. yet, despite the security, the united states has been incredibly active. this activity has generated quite a lot of military activity which is even more of a problem, a puzzle. bob work who is back in the

building across the river. he has a nice briefing he was giving a year or so ago that showed at least in terms of frequency, the united states has been at war in some way or another as twice as often since the cold war ended as it was during the cold war. here is this very secure country. fighting like crazy and fighting like what? about spreading liberal ideas or defending lebron ideas, fashion liberal ideas -- defending l iberal idea. s. i think the fighting is unnecessary because the u.s. is a fairly secure country, it is a pretty rich country. in terms of natural endowments. your main one of the top two or three powers in the world for probably the rest of my life. we sit between these vast oceans.

we have a nice buffer between countries. we have compliant neighbors to the south and north. we are nuclear weapons state. nuclear weapons are more than the two-edged sword. one thing that i think is pretty clear, nuclear weapons states are not going to be conquered by anybody else. the risk of trying to conquer a country that is nuclear weapons are so high. that conquest is off the table. that is an action source of protection for american sovereignty and territorial integrity. we have a great military backed by a great military rnd system. we have a defense system that builds fine weapons. this question about international trade which some people worry about. about a third of america's trade

many of america's trading partners are scattered across the world. it would take an awful lot of things to happen in the world to disrupt an international trading system with the united states. i don't worry about so much about trading national security objectives. i believe charlie mentioned this this morning. be that as it may, if you think you want to trade, u.s. has plenty of trading partners even if for acting as the global hegemon. is that it istegy unnecessary. it is wasteful. the military, political, economic costs are probably going to grow. they are not going to shrink. thinking is kind of motivated by certain general fundamental

theories about the political world. i am a realist. realism is a big tent but there are some things, some processes of international politics that realism eliminates. power is asthey great as ours has a sharp elbows and is pretty active, it is going to generate some counteraction. the difficulty of balancing the power of the state as great as we are, but the united states -- the distance between-based capabilities and economic potential of that other states is shrinking. getting moreare capability to balance and we are seeing that they balance. have try tohina either build or rebuild their military power to the extent that they can, largely to annoy us. other countries through monkeywrench is at u.s. projects

rendering them more difficult or more costly. we are seeing a bit of balancing behavior, not as much as people like me predicted. we are seeing a bit. we are seeing more than we saw before and given the economic trends, we are going to see even more. -- there was an illusion earlier to moral haza rd. much ofnd japan spends the gdp in defense. you're about 1.6% on average, japan about 1%. the u.s. has been sending data spending about 4%. bash the u.s. has been spending about 4%. we will get down to perhaps 2.5% of the gdp. i hope we do. there is still a lot more than

other spend. while others sort of tell us they feel frightened, the japanese fieleel frightened, their defense budgets have not gone up very much. concern --s race and recent concerned, there hasn't been much change. i believe australia cut its defense budget. allies who profited greatly from the american security commitment don't feel incentivized to do very much. they do contribute that much when the chips are down. they do like to include the parentheses and that is that many of our allies to send soldiers to the fight. the good many died in afghanistan. i think those soldiers were killed used in some ways by the government. i'm happy they were there, i am

sad they died. when you look at the resources behind them and the various caveats that are put on them when they participate, it looks to me that their governments are trying to make the kind of minimum contribution. a lot of the cost of making us happy rests on the back of those european soldiers. it is perfectly rational. if they can get someone else to enjoy their security, it is perfectly rational to rely on the power of others. we are in a situation where the americans are happy -- they're happy to watch the americans spend securing these folks. then, they will spend what they need to spend on defense. other allies also because of self-interest exhibit another problem which i call reckless driving. close allies,re

some of them are one of the advi -- one of the allies -- wannat to be allies. they do mainly things in their own interest. the georgia government drove recklessly and got themselves in a war with russia. if you want to use his concept, there can't be a worse reckless driver than him. he drove recklessly while we left. same for the karzai government. i think the israelis are reckless drivers.

they know to talk down american credibility. look at what they do. it shows they trust us. there is another problem happening in the world which is not generated by my theory. consume- i like to this intelligence into them document. there are lots of stuff in those and i suppose you can find bits and pieces of information to support many positions. what i find most arresting is basethe base, the gap and capabilities, the gdp between americans and other powers is shrinking. it all but disappears.

in terms of base capabilities from which military power is extracted, it's going to be easier for others to tilt with us. so that's important. it's easy to forget that during the cold war, the u.s. outweighed the soviet union. g.d.p. had purchasing power parity by a factor of two. almost never had more than half of our g.d.p. and p.t.p. purchasing power, mever had more than half of america's g.d.p. chinese g.d.p. to equal ours this year, right? chinese g.d.p. is half ours at market prices. they could never have produced for half of america's market prices. so the chinese are already

moving in the direction of being a pretty tough competitor. one doesn't have to make linear extrapolations out to the future that says that their per capita g.d.p. equals ours to know that this country is going to be much more able to tilt with the united states as the years pass, barring some major social upheaval, which could certainly happen. weapons are turning up in strange places. the iraq war cost more. vietnam, the other side, had like open mastercard accounts in the arsenal of china and russia. that's not true of the adversary we faced in iraq.

i noodled around trying to do a cost comparison. this is pretty soft analysis. but it looks to me like maybe on the basis of what we can measure we outspent the other side by around 10-1 in the vietnam war. nd in the iraq war, 100 or 200 -1. and that's basically to fight yourself to a kind of a stalemate. a stalemate that had positive potential embeded in it, but still basically a stalemate that when we took our hands off the back seat of the bicycle, the bicycle wrecked. so the trends are not good, right? if it costs -- if it requires to kind of cost exchange ratio in dollar terms and these kind of lumpy sums to be able to bring a country of 25 million with maybe 5 million or 10 million people who really don't status o a state of

this, is a way of grinding up american capability in the out years. now, there's all kinds of things within those numbers that are part and parcel of it, which we can talk about later. vast amounts of money are spent to avoid casualties. that's a good thing. i'm not going to say it isn't. but at the same time, would you look at sort of the any amount of money to prevent casualties kind of calculus? this is, in a way, a kind of a dollar measurement of the political constraints that i think leaders actually do believe, which is that they got a lot of americans killed in these wars, people would start to ask a lot of questions. as it is they started to ask a lot of quells. part of the incredible patience of the american people i think is the ability to suppress the casualties, right? so you'll spend any amount of money on it, money that you

would borrow in any case. another problem which does come from political analysis is this problem of nationalism and other forms of identity politics. ? are a lot of books written about this. people don't agree on it. there's quite a strong position in political science that nationalism or ethnicity are not nearly the strong force that's some think they are. but i'm he in the other camp. i think nationalism, ethnicity, these are all very strong forces. whether they've gotten stronger in the last 25 or 30 years than they were in the preceding 25 or 30 years, i'm not sure. but they seem plenty strong to me. i think there's things going on in the world that keep identity politics a powerful force. some of it has to do with modernization, urbanization, population growth. there's a lot of things that stir people up and cause them to fall back on their

communities as a source of security. and this, i think, is a very important phenomenon. and the united states in some ways -- well, i think in many ways doesn't really understand nationalism. has kind of often surprised by the problems we have. so one problem you have with nationalism, which i think is -- most people would agree on -- is if youdsers show up and start telling you how to live, start trying to organize your politics for you, there's a good chance to local people are not going to like it very much. there's a good chance that you're going to cause solidarity and cause opposition against you. there's a good chance it's going to work out that way and it's worked out that way for us, right? the second thing is is that in this world of ferment, of social mobilization, the hygemity liberal

makes the seeming agent of social changes that peoples are experiences as being quite unpleasant ant difficult. if they get to the other end of this, they may be happy. it may lead to liberal states around the world, freer states, richer states, it may. but the process of change is wrenching. and to make the measures the face of this is probably not so smart. it's kind of self-targeting. the marriage of large 18-year-old males who are deadly weapons with identity defusion of the technology is that outsiders who come to visit with scarce military manpower because we've professionalized our forces are

basically going to have a handful. i think we've seen this in the past and we're going to see it again in the future. another contribution to cost. what's the remedy? restraint. the u.s. should do less than it has been and focus what it does on the main potential problems. now, i think there's still three potential problems. ne is the old one. the british before us, the americans, we've been worried that a power could become so strong in the eurasian land mass that it could dominate and make trouble for us. for all the reasons i talked about earlier it's hard to make trouble for us. but i don't feel like i'm smart enough or wise enough to be sure that a successful eurasian is not going to be a problem for the united states. so i think the united states, o remain vigilant of the

possibility of eurasia. fortunately the odds of them emerging are rather low. the russians are a former shell of what they used to be. the europeans are well able to deal with whatever problems the russians create on their own. the americans shouldn't have to be involved in this anymore. in the east and with china the problem bears watching for all the reasons i talked about earlier and things we've seen about chinese behavior. but even there, the united states should be wary about rushing the net for a new cold war. and even if china requires some form of containment, to me it seems unwise to organize a balancing coalition in the way we organized the last one, precisely because the chinese seem more capable relative to us than the russians were. not at this moment, but probably in the fullness of time. the americans will need real allies, if we ever have to do this again, right? allies that contribute. not the free riders, reckless drivers that we've accumulated

during the cold war, which was fine because we were strong enough to deal with them on our own. it was a convenient, easy way to run the alliances. if we ever have to do this again, i don't think that's a smart way to do it. there are other issues that we can talk about later that's attached to it. china, watchful. vigilant, yes. rush the net to a cold war, no. organize the coalition the way it has been organized, that's got to stop. we've got to re-engineer the way our relationships with these allies work now and illicit more contributions now. econd proliferation, very hard problem. if north korea can build nuclear bombs, i'm not confident that a world with zero nuclear weapons is in our future. a world with no nuclear proliferation is in our future. i think it can be slowed and managed. i think we really want to try and confine it to states, who can be deterred and keep these

weapons out of the hands of groups who may not be deterable. preventive war, which is somehow always on the table as a way of preventing nuclear proliferation is a bad strategy. the gains do not outweigh the costs. we should be working cooperatively with other nuclear powers to maintain custody of weapons and be quite vigilant to the possibility that weapons could fall into the wrong hands. now, it's not always going to be easy to prevent that from happening. we need a variety of tools. but in some cases it's just going to be tricky. and i think we have to accept that. because the alternative is going to visit places and occupy them, and i think the cure ends up being worse than the disease. the final problem is the example of al qaeda. this is all in the press. we have a new boogie man, isis. i think we have to accept that

if there's been one kind of annihilistic organization that identifies the united states as the course of all their problems and identifies violence against the united states as some sort of a solution, if there could be one, there could be more. and i think we've learned that because of the world that we created, which allows a lot of movement of peoples and has produced a lot of capability in groups, we have to be alert to the possibility that there are threats to u.s. safety. these are not going to bring down the republic, but it would be better if they did not happen, right? so what do you need to do? well, defense is an important part of that. actual defense, denial, hardening up the country, hardening up the targets. we've done a lot of that since 9/11. in many ways probably more than we ought to have done. but defense is one good tool. you do need a certain amount of offense. but it should be used

sparingly. and the main thing you need is intelligence. what you want is groups who decide to get into this business. you want to be able to identify them and you want to be able to hunt them. hunting them is more important, really, than killing them. they have to feel hunted, because if they feel hunted they spend resources trying to protect themselves that they can't spend trying to attack us or others. again, any one of these things, if you pursue it to its ultimate, you can get yourself into all kinds of trouble. so i try and talk about moderate policies to pursue these objectives that keep benefits and costs in some kind of a balance. this is a subjective statement. now, regional strategy. we should turn most of our alliances into more political and less military kinds of exercises. that's particularly true of the north atlantic treaty organization, which i think our work there is done. now, i tend to be a small c

conservative on doing these things. you can't turn off all these relationships overnight. but you need to set goals for yourself. i said let's do this over a 10-year period. i think that's a reasonable period for making changes in the way we do business. in europe the first thing i would do is have the europeans allied commander and have people start running their own affairs. in the persian gulf we should think about what we can do, what we can't do. what matters, what doesn't matter. at most, i think what the united states could do is keep one oil state from agressing against another oil state. it probably is in our or somebody's interest that large amounts of the production capability in that region not be in the hands of a single power. but this is actually pretty easy, because this is really, in the end, about keeping iran and saudi arabia apart,

preventing iran from thinking about conquering saudi arabia or vice versa. neither is thinking about it, so it's not very hard work. the deeper question for america and the persian gulf is our relationship with these regimes relative to their internal politics and whether there's a game that's worth a candle in trying to keep regimes alive. this will become congenial to us, but nevertheless, strange regimes. saudi arabia is a strange regime. doesn't seem like it can last forever. dot americans really want to be in a position of helping that regime survive by fighting on its side in an internal war, even if its enemies in that internal war seem pretty awful, too, right? we got involved in civil wars in iraq and we paid a high price. i think saudi would be worse, right? and that's the temptation, because anybody who knows anything about oil knows that the biggest producer in the gulf is saudi. they're the big casino.

if that government were to change for the worse, we'd have to make some adjustments. the question is, are those adjustments more or less difficult to try to fight a war to protect that regime? i suspect they are. so ashe yaes the hardest case, but -- asia is the hardest case, but still we need to do things to change the relationships. one of the things the americans should be doing is they should not be afraid to cut military forces in the region or move them when it makes strategic sense, when it makes strategic or political sense. the locals should get used to the idea that american military forces come and go o'an as-needed basis. they're not there to protect them for all time against all things. i have been puzzled why we don't take advantage of the difficulties we've had in okinawa finding a new base for the marine helicopter squadrons, that we haven't

taken advantage of this to pull the marines out of there. i think we're getting ready to shrink the marine corps. i know a perfect place to shrink it. in okinawa. what role do the marines play in asia? i'm not really sure. it's not clear to me. airplanes, ships, i understand. the marines there, a small force. generally we have to try to convince reckless drivers that we're going to be less supportive. this it is going to be difficult. and we have to set a very, very high bar for wars of choice. military strategy and capabilities -- i don't want to be talking here for too long. but i wrote an article some years ago called "command of the commons," which is an updated, conceptualization of command of the sea in modern times. and i think that's the kind of thing that the american military should be focusing on. the americans will need command of the sea. if we ever do need to go back to the eurasian land mass to help preconvenient the rise

there. command of the sea gives you some capability to exercise a kind of -- i wouldn't say gentle, but a kind of limited coercion versus countries that are involved in international trade. it's a nice tool to have. it's not going to cause countries to surrender to you, but it may give them pause. if you're concerned about terrorist groups and the need to hunt them, you need access to the rest of the world. command of space helps you with the intelligence capabilities it needs to support this. and command of the air, where you can have it as a natural supporting capability. these are things that are america's strong suits. they cater to the kind of technological skills, military skills that america has, the things that we have aplenty. it's going ashore and trying to reorganize countries who require ground forces, which is the thing we do not generate aplenty. and in my defense budget, which gets smaller than the present one, the army is a big bill

payer. every corps shrinks in the defense posture that i offer, but the army shrinks a lot more. and it pains me a little bit, because back in cold war days i was kind of a friend of the army because i fought the central -- i thought the central front was kind of important, and i cared a lot about how things went. but in this day and age, i think the navy is the american arm of choice. so in closing, the argument of the book is pretty simple. the u.s. is entering a new period. we're going to have greater scarcity of resources at home. should be a pren they sees here. this is because of our politics. we could generate more security resources at home if our politics are different. but they are not. we're cutting ensite lments and defense spending because of our politics. it's easy enough to wave your hand and say this is just a political problem. it will go away. well, just because it's a political problem doesn't mean it will go away. we got here through oon

elaborate process and the budget control act isn't just an act, it's a reflection of big political forces in american society. so if that changes, ok. you can go back to spending 5%, 6% g.d.p. on defense forever. maybe you can run this project for another 40, 50 years. but that's not what our politics is saying. it seems to me it would take something special to flip our politics in another direction. greater scarcity of security resources at home. more consequential powers abroad, more politically mobilized and capable arms groups of every kind. this all necessitates that u.s. play a much tighter game. to me incremental adjustment is insufficient. we need to set political and forces more generously. thank you. [applause]

>> we'll have time for a few questions about professor possen. zsh posen. >> i think they want us to sit over there. is that what they want us to do? > yes. go ahead, sir. >> i'm john with the american conservative. professor, how about our llies? can you add, in view of the prior panel, we are compared sometimes to what happens to gleaped, our empire. but we have -- to england, our empire. but we have all these eye lies that can trigger or get us into wars very closely. we discussed a few islands uninhabited in the pacific. can you elaborate, how would your strategy work and do about our allies and their

commitments to there, and can ? ey drag us into wars i ghess serbia, who triggered the first world war. >> is that it? >> yes. >> so this is the problem i talk about in the book of reckless drivers. i see that you see reckless drivers as well. i mean, this is a problem of alliance management. but acknowledging the problem is the beginning of wisdom, right? so first of all you have to get used to the idea that these little e not your brothers. they are pursuing their own interests in the context of their relationship with you. that's point one. point two, we have to figure out ways to -- this will sound more coercive than i mean it, but allies have to see some sort of cost to their reckless driving.

and the americans, as i said earlier, do exactly the opposite. in other words, we are obsessed with the credibility of our commitments to our allies. every time some little problem happens that gets them upset and they point their fingers to us and say we're concerned about your credibility, we rush to reassure them. so we overinschure the re-assurance side. we have to do some things to suggest this is a two-way street. sometimes when they asked to be reassured, we should not reassure them. sorry, we don't care about this issue. some of it can be done privately. some things you can do with your military deployments. i think in jernings as the american military shrinks, which it's going to do and as its global footprint shrinks, people will scratch their heads and say if most of the american forces are con sen streeted somewhere and it's essentially a maritime strategy, which permits them to come as well as to go, then we have to stand up

a little bit to mirror the american support. now, those are the few ideas that i have in the book. t i think -- and when i talk about this book it usually starts an argument. i think there's work to be done on trying to device a whole diplomatic approach to the problem you're talking about. disciplining the reckless drivers as well as encouraging the free riders to do a bit more. > yes. >> i'm afternoon li wein with the allied corporation. first of all, thank you for your presentation. i really enjoyed your book. the question i wanted to ask has to do with what i think is a growing fear expressed on a bipartisan basis and a growing fear that if the united states is indeed in relative decline and the united states has anchored this international system in the post-war era and

if there isn't any country or coalition that could replace the united states in that capacity, that in the next, say, 20 or 30 years -- and this is a scenario that the n.i.c. points out -- that we might be headed for a system of global disorder. >> that was some global disorder. but go on. >> if another country or coalition can supplant or replacing that role, that we might be headed for a world of an narcy or global disorder. so i guess, one, do you share that concern? and in the scenario of global disorder, if it were to emerge, how might your grand strategy of restraint work? > well, first i'll say something that's like -- i guess it's uncharitable. this is a wonderful argument for protecting the status quo on american ground strategy. so when you hear it, you should

ask questions, which you're clearly doing. a world of a small number of great powers is not a world that can't organize things, right? in other words, if there are three or four or five or six great powers, that's not 50 trying to make a deal, that's five or six, right? algop lease work, monopolies work, right? why not an alo goply? why not cooperation where interests overlap in the ntext of composition where either the american-led world order or anarchy, this seems

like an overdram taization of the outcome. people in our business are -- they're obviously concerned about change, and rightfully concerned about change. was that my heart beating? was that what it was? [laughter] did it sound ok? [laughter] fun with technology. so people are right to be concerned that the world could go to hell in a hand basket. we're always concerned. but i don't think that's inevitable or even likely. and then the second thing, which i would add, is -- is my heart beating again? you're not supposed to believe these things, but i kind of have a soft spot for nuclear weapons. they make great power relations a little bit different than the way they've been in past

anarcies, right? the principal powers are not in a position to prey upon one another. it's wildly risky. people will o say, what do we do about japan? it's not a nuclear power. what about germany ? it's not a nuclear power. i have say nothing is forever. and this is a sin. it's a sin in american discourse to say that in the fullness of time, world war ii will be sufficiently far behind us that japan and germany can be normal, developed states with the normal weapons that developed states have, right? so this also, i think, mitigates the an narcy concern. -- anarc key concern. so the larger question -- and i'm not sure i agree with bill so the point --

related question, there's large parts of the world where the states are weak, right? and weak states both mean that there is scope for wars against all, and weak states also mean that natural disasters just simply come along, like earthquakes, and some which may come along more frequently will hit weak states harder. so there may be -- there may continue to be significant parts of the world where things are not very pleasant, right? and the question will be, how is that going to be managed? and that's kind of a -- for me, that's not much of a security question for us. there are americans who care about that. and i always -- and those problems -- some of them may require military power. and my answer is always that just because one sometimes engages in philanthropy with

military power doesn't make philanthropy something other than flan trope. we decide to embark on it and we should ask ourselves, why are we doing it? what are we willing to pay? what are the odds of success? at what cost to our more conventional security objectives? and even that complicates things too much for intervenors and will basically probably induce fewer interventions. but nevertheless, there will be such interventions. i think you want to understand what you're doing when you do them. >> next question. >> good morning. i wanted to bridge between something i heard in your remarks and something we heard just prior. you mentioned that you do perceive that there's at least me devolution of the new global order with the subnational with more local allegiances. and in the last panel we heard

remark that such identity -- religion, nationalism or subnational identities may even be posing a threat to the state. now, you seem to be fairly strongly set on the global order as an interaction between states. do you see this devolution of identity in any way as, you know, threatening the more prevailing order of state versus state, or just -- if you could elaborate a little bit more on your notion in all this. >> i think the question is, a threat to what states? i mean, in many parts of the world where we see intense identity politics it's because the states were weak or the states were only half foreign. so in iraq, even under saddam hussein or under the assad egime, under mubarak in egypt,

-- as a police and institution was very strong. these states were hard to shatter and would continue to be hard to shatter, right? on the other hand, because of the conditions under which these particular warfare states were born, they didn't have to do the other things that western states did. they didn't have to cut the deals with the middle class, learn how to nurture an economy. because they either lived off the cold war, or they live off raw materials. so these warfare states are grafted on to policies that are not fully formed and not . cluded and there's going to be a tension between these two things and that's going to endure. now, those warfare states can , the se, and when they do

identities that are present will either form their own statelets, because people want government, so you'll get more states, or you'll get unusual states, states that are single states in name but multiple states in practice, right? i think if you ask me where i think iraq is going and where i've basically been suggesting for years iraq should go, it should be self-governing regional entities that are as much as possible in these situations congruent with the ethno-religious maps. and those people will want to form state-like entities. so states have a certain function. people want them. the problem is that some groups don't want to live under somebody else's state. thrgs an old european joke that says -- there's a minority in your country when you can live

as a minority in mine? nations want states, peoples want states. >> yes. >> hi, i'm shelton roy, president of the osgood center for international studies. robert osgood was my mentor and was known as a major realist. but he also wrote a book called "ideals in self-interest," which speak to america's role in the world. one of his principal point is that the elite must establish a grand strategy that links commix, politics and military -- economics, politics and military to convince the american people that it's within their interest, within their etiological point of view and a change in the grand strategy changes underlying economics and politics. what's the role of leadership in changing the grand strategy ? it's not going to just evolve. it's going to have to have some sort of leading spokesperson or

leading politician. do you see that coming? is that necessary? mean, it think -- i is necessary, and whether it's coming or not i think is an open question. there was a debate about foreign poll sigh in the united states, replaced the debates about strategy with debates about minor tactics, that are made to seem as if they're debates about grand strategy, right? so it's often about tools and about priorities. but the basic consensus is very strong across both parties. i once wrote abarticle about the clinton strategies. i read every one of their

national security documents. they started off with kind of a certain coloration. but by the end, they were liberal high gem nifts. they started out as world order liberals, so the dems found their way to liberals. the democrats found their way. and the elites from both parties, what they disagree about often seems rather minimal to me, right? you can't look at what's happened to american media and say that there's anything about the way disagreements are presented that would give the american people or those who watch tv some sort of sense of more fundamental choices. so we were having a screaming debate about whether to bomb or not to bomb in the outskirts of baghdad. this is not productive. now, that said, alternative views that were sort of like

what's in dracula movies, this is how you keep the ogre away. you couldn't even voice views that gave any credit to any isolationist position during the cold war without being laughed out of the room. that is no longer true. when my friends, who began thinking about restraint 15 years ago, there was a little it of, oh, this is neoisolationist. even i had different views as well. but that hexing power is gone. so there's a variety of folk, many of them in this room, institutions in town, that are trying to formulate and share with a wider aud generals different conceptualizations of u.s. ground strategy. some people would talk there's offshore balancing, restraint. some people may genuinely wish

to be as neoisolation nift as they could be. so we're sharing these ideas and promulgating these ideas and it's no longer laughable. it's no longer it can be debt with by saying one or two voodoo words and making it go away. at as we look at the -- what public opinion polls are making of the views in american ciety, it's clear that there is some feeling out there in the policy that the americans have done too much in the world and can do less. the americans have been too open, too active. not all of that is pretty. so there's ferment in the body of politics about this. five, six, seven, eight years ago people who defended the

present strategy would pound the table and say to someone like me, your strategy is not consistent with the liberal values of the american people that they want to see implemented in their foreign policy, right? now, you'll still hear that, but it rings hollow now because the american people, to the extent that one can define their attitude, have discovered the costs of this project and they're not sitting around over the breakfast table weighing these things. there's some large-scale set of intuitions that are saying this does not seem worth that much. now, i always say to people on the other side of this debate, i say, look, what i want you to do is go to the american people with an honest story of what the strategy costs and see if you get all kinds of support. that's what i'd like you to do. go to it with an honest accounting.

chris pebble and a colleague had an article in -- was it "the times" the other day, the article about front-loading your assessment of the costs for veterans of the war? i don't know if that's exactly the right thing to do. but conversations that talk about plausible costs rather than low-balling, which is the way we sell everything in america, we low-ball. that would be something i would expect from them that they've been cherry at doing, because i think they know -- they know that a more honest discussion of cost to the american people and the duration of this project and the uncertainty of the outcome would make a lot of hard-headed americans scratch their heads and say, gee, you can't come up with anything better than this? so those of us who think maybe we could, we have to try and give them lots to look at. and i like the book i wrote. i think the ideas hang together. i think it's a direction the

country could go. but, hey, we need more voices. and the situation seems to be receptive to those voices. >> we have time for one more question. >> leandra burn steen. i'd like to ask you a specific question about the nato alliance, which is what your view of the future of that alliance is. you said earlier that you wanted to turn alliances more to more political than military. do you believe the crisis in ukraine is an attempt to egitimize an essentially anachronistic alliance? and the second question has to do with saudi arabia. is it correct that you stated earlier that defending the

current saudi regime would be worth the potential costs of losing the largest oil producer in the region? and if that's the case, what is ur view of the saudi sponsorship of jihadism, much of which we're currently engaged in fighting in the middle east today? >> two really big questions. you worked two in. [laughter] less vladimir putin is the ricature sort of committed rebuild the soviet union character he's been portrayed -- if he's not that person, instead he's essentially a traditional european states minneapolis trying to do the best he can for -- statesman

trying to do the best he can for his country, catering to a renaissance nationalism in his own country, etc., etc. so unless there's a whole lot of additional energy coming out of russia, i don't think this is going to inject that much new life into nato. i think before this happened you could sort of see what was happening to nato. it was a kind of a genteel, incremental hollowing out of the american forces on the continent, war of which was bound to happen as the structures began to bite. that was the trend. and the europeans would have continued to spend less or not spend more and shrink their forces. so all forces were going to shrink. and yet all of the rhetoric would have remained the same d all of the customary religious activities, shall we say, right? so you have meetings. you announce new strategies.

you commission new papers. all the pseudoenergy that nato generates for itself to make it seem like a living institution have continued and only a handful of folk like me would have been pointing out that emperor has no clothes. now, everyone would have continued to bask happily in the american claim that they would come back and defend if anything bad happens. this is very congenial. and the europeans are very good at convincing the americans that we have an absolute obligation and absolute need, et cetera, etc. so that, i think, was the trend, right? now, will that trend continue because of ukraine? i think it probably will. i thought it was just to take a cheap shot here, i thought the president was kind of misguided to run off to europe and offer $1 billion worth of exercise money over the next year, as if

the problem was mainly ours. even if you wanted to do something, the allies should have been obliged at those meetings to say, for every dollar you generate, we'll generate 50 cents worth of exercise money. this is an alliance. the president did nothing really to convey the image that this is an alliance in which the allies need to pony up. the allies enlarged itself to include poland and the baltics. that was a decision made collectively. that means everyone is on the hook to defend poland and everyone is on the hook to reassure poland, not just us, right? that's the way it should be. it's not the way it's going to be. that's my prediction. so i don't think my advice is going to be followed. i don't think the notion that there's going to be a renaissance because of ukraine is going to happen. i think it's a bump on the road on a kind of a slow decline of the real capabilities of the alliance married to a continued set of political assurances and

road shows. and, of course, there will be the obligatory speech by americans at the end of his or her tenure. every american has to pound the table and make a speech that the future of nato depends on americans standing up and contributing their fair share and how horrible it is that they don't. everybody nods their heads. the europeans say of course we have to do more and that's the end of it, right? why do they feel to go through this exercise, i do not know, because it has no effect, right? now, on saudi, i may not have been clear. i don't believe there's any -- i don't believe america's interests or the world's interests in the free flow of oil are sufficiently great to make a war to defend the saudi regime worth it for the united states. this is a way of painting a big fat circle and a zero on america's forehead, a target. for every jihadist entrepreneur in the world. so i would say this is something we don't want to do and we shouldn't do, right?

what to make of saudi involvement with jihadies round the world? some people believe that this is a real and deep thing. and other people would say, no, no, they're only supporting the moderates. i can't unravel this story. but i do believe that the weight of evidence is sort of -- the weight of evidence suggests that the saudis don't do much to keep resources from flowing out of their country and other gulf countries into the hands of people who are really not very nice. it's a puzzle to me that given all the money that we spend not only on intelligence, but all the energy we spend on tracking financial flows and squeezing the iranians and everything

else, that somehow, some way, if we had saudi cooperation, we couldn't do more about this. now, these are questions. i'm not telling you my conclusions. these are my questions, because i don't have a conclusion. the saudis clearly have their own interests. the one thing we have towns is they have their own interests, and their interests are not always coincident with ours. >> well, that's all the time we have for this panel. please thank professor posen. [applause] >> thank you all for coming out, i appreciate it. >> and we'll reconvene here at 11:15. there's a bit of a break. please enjoy and come back. thank you.

>> there's a big swath of america that is being ignored, left behind, not included in the discussion. i think for either party. particularly, though, i would argue the republican party. and that's -- i call them blue-collar conservatives, the folks out there that are working people, most of whom don't have college degrees, folks that really still understand the value of work and the important tabs of work and responsibility -- importance of work and the responsibility and people who understand the importance of family and faith, believe in freedom and limited government. so you say, wow, those are conservative republican voters, and in many cases they're not. in fact, a lot of them aren't voting at all because they don't really see either party talking to them about the concerns they have in trying to create an opportunity for them to live the american dream. >> former pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate rick santorum argues that working americans have been abandoned

by both parties. tonight at 10:00 reern, on "after words." on c-span2. this month on our online book club we're discussing "the forgotten man." start reading and join others to discuss the back at booktv.org.

there when their family needs them the most. that's wrong. and it puts us way behind the times. only three countries in the world report that they don't offer paid maternity leave free. and the united states is one of them. it's time to change that. a few states have acted on their own to give workers paid family leave, but this should be available to everyone because all americans should be able to afford to care for a family member in need. child care is another challenge. most working families i know can't afford thousands a year for child care, but often,

that's what it costs. that leaves parents scrambling just to make sure their kids are safe while they're at work. forget about giving them the high-quality early childhood education that helps the kid succeed in life. then there's the issue of flexibility, the ability to take a few hours off for a parent-teacher conference or to work from home when your child is sick. most workers want it, but not enough of them have it. what's more, it not only makes workers happier. studies show that flexibility can make workers more productive and reduce worker turnover and absenteeism and that's good for business. at a time when women make up about half of america's workforce, outdated workplace policies that make it harder for mothers to work hold our entire economy back. but these aren't just problems for women. men also care about who's watching their kids. they're re-arranging their schedules to make it to soccer games and school plays.

lots of sons help care for aging parents. and plenty of fathers would love to be home for their new baby's first weeks in the world. in fact, in a new study, nearly half of all parents, women and men, report that they've said no to a job not because they didn't want it, but because it would be too hard on their families. when that many talented, hard-working people are forced to choose between work and family, something is wrong. other countries are making it easier for people to have both. we should too,. if we want american businesses to compete and win in the global economy. family leave, child care, flexibility. these aren't frills, they're basic needs. they shouldn't be bonuses, they should be the bottom line. the good news is some businesses are embracing family-friendly policies because they know it's key to attracting talented employees and i'm going to keep highlighting the businesses that do because i take this personally.

i take it personally as the son and grandson of some strong women who worked hard to support my sister and me. and as the husband of a brilliant woman who struggled to balance work and has raised our girls when my job often kept me away. and as the father of two beautiful young ladies whom i want to be there for as much as i can and who i hope will be able to have families and areers of their own one day. we know from our history that our economy gross from the inside-out, that our country does better when everyone participates, when everyone's talents are put to use, when we all have a fair shot. that's the america i believe in, and that's the america i'll keep fighting for every day. thanks and have a great weekend. >> let's talk about energy. how it affects our daily lives and how republicans are working to make it more affordable, reliable and beneficial. not too long ago we thought america's energy needs connell

be met through increasing foreign dependence. it's a scary thought, particularly as we watched the chaos unfold overseas and gasoline prices closing in on $4 a gallon here at home. i hear constantly from working families struggling with the cost of filling the tank just to drive to and from work. energy is at the core of american life. it supports jobs and our economy and it affects everything from the price at the pump and the monthly electric bill to the cost of grolsries. all of the things that americans need to make ends meet. schools, churches, hospitals, manufacturing plants in my home state of michigan and around the country, they all depend on affordable energy. that's why this coming week the house is going to vote on bills designed to make the most of america's abundant energy supplies by building pipelines and transmission lines to connect our energy abundance to consumers, and by using our energy strength to fight back

against hostile nations who use their resources to hold the rest of the world hostage. we've already taken steps to modernize permitting, approve major energy projects, cut red tape for hydropower plants and keep american coal in our energy mix. but we're not going to stop there. we're offering more predictable regulation that is encourage investment, lower prices and create jobs here at home. we're making targeted energy efficiency reforms which also is going to help reduce costs and eliminate waste. and we're focusing on the safety and reliability of the electrical grid to protect against everything from security threats to brownouts and blackouts. we're working to keep nuclear power safe and sustainable for the long term. that's what we mean by an all of the above energy strategy, fossil and renewable fuels, expanded production and conservation.

together these steps could help save money for american families, create the new jobs in industries that we want, and strengthen our position across the globe. it's very different than president obama's vision. his recently announced e.p.a. rules for power plants is going to make it harder to use all of our american resources and could well force states to ration energy, which certainly is going to make it more expensive to power our homes and factories. his record of energy development on federal lands remains dismal. and we all may rue the day that this president decided he could not say yes to the job-creating keystone excel pipeline which will display energy from venezuela and the middle east and replace it with supplies from our ally, our friends, canada. instead, the project is in regulatory purgatory and america waits and waits. we can do better, yes, we can. the u.s. has entered an era of

energy abundance and now we need the architecture, the infrastructure and policies to support it. that's exactly what republicans are working to deliver. thanks for listening. have a great weekend. >> on the next "washington journal," christian science monitor correspondent annan mulrine reviews u.s. military in iraq. an author offers a history of the sunnis, shiahs and kurds. and a news director, john kingston, discusses the impacts the unrest in iraq could have on the global oil supply and u.s. gas prices. 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. >> another one was gruesome, but it was an international

sensation. it was called "the trunk murder." it was in 1885. and there were two englishmen who came to america. they were traveling salesmen. they meet on the boat. they decide to go across america and they wind up together at a nice hotel here in st. louis called the southern. one of them was richer than the other, and the poorer guy suddenly has a lot of money flashing around. and he tells everybody that his buddy went out of town. and the hotel room starts smelling. and the chambermaids go in and it winds up that his buddy's in a trunk dead several days. the police try to start chasing him, but he's taken the ship from san francisco already. now, this becomes a big international case because you have two guys from england, you have st. louis, you have the manhunt to the other end of the world. and the new zealand police stop him. two officers from st. louis

actually went to get hill. took them 10 weeks for the roundtrip. and when they come back to the train station downtown, half of st. louis is there to see this guy. and interviews galore. he winds up being hanged. we used to have a gallows at the police headquarters like a lot of towns did. >> we'll look at the life of st. louis, missouri, throughout the weekend on c-span's "book tv" and sunday on american history tv on c-span3. >> coming up next -- the mmunicators, with lawrence strictling. after that, some of the "wall street journal"'s annual c.f.o. conference in washington, d.c. at 8:00 eastern, maryland

eastern, maled governor o'malley speaking at the democratic convention in des moines. >> and we'd like to welcome back to "the communicators," lawrence strickling. mr. strikeling, if you'd start by telling us what it is you do and when -- where you are in the organizational start? >> sure, peter. and thank you for having me back. i think it's our third or fourth visit here and we always enjoy sitting down with you and your guests. ftia is the principal visor to the president on communication issues. we're not a regulatory agency but we do work on internet policy, broad band sru