Realism and Restraint: America's New Foreign Policy

I get evenin ladies and gentlemen my name is in went to cram the director of strategic content at the Chicago Council on behalf of the council thank you for joining us all this evening before we begin please just sounds your phone's we welcome social media but please silence your phones before we begin know that we are on the record a Moroso live-streaming this evening's program please also note that views expressed by individual individuals we host are their own and do not represent institutional positions or views of the council thank you to our members in attendance today your sports critical to our work if you're not a member please consider joining we have a wide range of other levels for you to choose from Japanese membership questions we have a table at the back there with one of our young professional ambassadors if you remember you can also join the exclusive conference call on Wednesday morning it's an update on the brexit deal we have Eva on the call and a few other experts including Martin wolf from the Financial Times if you're going to our cocktail and conversation social after the program has taken place at free rein that's this in Jane hotel formerly the Hard Rock Hotel on Michigan Avenue tonight's discussion will be followed by audience Q&A I'll take your questions from in the room and also from our online browser launched app that's the CH i dot CNF dot IO put that into your browser it should be on the screens the rotating screens and I verbally it's my pleasure to introduce this evening speaker Steven Walt is the robber and Renee Belfort professor of international affairs Harvard's Kennedy School of Government he previously taught at Harvard Princeton University the University of Chicago and has been a resident resident associate at Carnegie Endowment for peace and I guess scholar at Brookings is the author of numerous articles and books including the hell good intentions America's foreign policy elites and the decline of us primacy that's his new book and it's available for sale and signing from the bookseller after the program so ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Steven wall to the canceled good afternoon or evening it's a real pleasure to be back here in Chicago where I spent ten very happy years at the University as especially a pleasure to be here to talk about my new book and I want to thank Ian for the introduction and thank all of you for coming so I'm gonna focus on two main questions tonight first is how did we get here there was tremendous optimism when the Cold War ended but that doesn't seem to be the world were inhabiting today so the question really is what went wrong and I'm gonna argue that the United States deserves a lot of the blame not all of it by any means but a lot of the blame for where we are today and then the second question of course is how can we do better in here I'll lay out the case for a different grand strategy and along the way I'll explain why Donald Trump is not the guy who's going to provide us with it so let me start with the bad news you remember the unipolar moment the United States was dominant the wind was at our back our problems were basically confined to a few pesky tyrants who hadn't gotten the memo yet think back to the early 1990s the United States was on good terms with all the world's major powers including Russia and China Iraq was being disarmed Iran had no enrichment capacity we thought we'd capped North Korea's nuclear program to globalization is spreading rapidly with the formation of the World Trade Organization the opening of financial markets NATO and the European Union are expanding democracy was spreading in Eastern Europe in Latin America the Oslo Accords gave hope of a lasting peace in the Middle East the American military seemed unstoppable the US economy was doing well pundits were telling us that we had reached the end of history and that american-style democratic capitalism was really the only model that could work in a globalized world now look at the world we're in today China's power and ambitions have steadily it's now clearly regarded as a major US rival Russia has seized Crimea interfered in several other states and relations with Moscow are worse than at any time since the end of the Cold War moreover Moscow and Beijing are increasingly aligned cooperating against us in a variety of ways democracy is in retreat according to Freedom House 2017 marked the 12th consecutive year of an overall decline in global freedom and The Economist magazine's annual democracy index in 2017 downgraded the United States of America from a full to a flawed democracy since 1993 North Korea India and Pakistan have all tested nuclear weapons and Iran has acquired the capacity to get them if it ever wants to repeated American attempts to broker an israeli-palestinian peace were all humiliating failures and the two-state solution is now farther away than ever of course the United States was also attacked on September 11th 2001 we responded by invading Afghanistan and then Iraq both of these wars were costly disasters that weakened our overall position the American military no longer seems quite so unbeatable indeed much of the Middle East is now in flames and American interference help create failed States in Libya and Yemen and yes even Syria so back in 2016 when Donald Trump called US foreign policy a complete and total disaster and he accused the foreign policy establishment of being out of touch and unaccountable a lot of Americans nodded their heads in agreement the taproot of most of those failures I argue in this book was our commitment to a grand strategy of liberal hegemony it is liberal not in the sense of being left-wing but rather because it seeks to promote an advanced classic liberal values democracy markets rule of law human it's one of hegemony because it sees America as the indispensable nation that is uniquely qualified to lead that process and to bring other states into a web of alliances and institutions that we designed and that we will lead when you think about it it's a highly revisionist grand strategy instead of defending American territory or upholding the balance of power and a couple of key strategic regions liberal hegemony seeks to change the status quo around the world and remake it in America's image the problem is that this strategy is fundamentally flawed liberal values are terrific and I'm glad I live in a country where they are still deeply rooted but they're not a particularly good export commodity and trying to spread them far and wide was a mistake for starters this inflates our defense requirements by 2016 in fact the United States was committed to defending more states than at any time in its history and of course extending security guarantees all around the world encourages those same allies either to freeride on American protection or to behave recklessly confident that Uncle Sam will bail them out if they get into any trouble trying to spread liberal values also threatens any countries that don't have them currently dictatorships in particular and some of those countries found lots of ways to thwart our efforts furthermore it assumes we know how to create a democracy in the wake of regime change but of course toppling foreign governments led to failed states and costly military occupations instead when you think about it looking back the belief that we could do this kind of precise social engineering in places like Iraq Libya Afghanistan Somalia or Yemen was positively delusional globalization did produce real gains for many especially in Asia but not for the lower and middle classes in the West and it also created a global financial system that was far more delicate as we learned to our sorrow in 2008 finally liberal hegemony created a global order that depended on the United States doing the right thing in lots of different places pretty much simultaneously we thought being indispensable would enhance stability around the world instead that order proved to be rather fragile in short liberal hegemony was doomed to fail so then the question would be well why did we embark on this foolish crusade and why did we persist in the face of many disappointments well one reason is the remarkable position of primacy we found ourselves in back when the Cold War ended which made this whole thing seem possible but again if you think about it primacy also meant this campaign wasn't really necessary the United States was already an extraordinarily good shape so why did we do it well I think it's largely because there was a powerful bipartisan consensus in favor of this strategy within the foreign policy elite a consensus not shared by the general public now by foreign policy out elite I mean Americans who actively engage on a regular basis with issues of international affairs I'm talking about the blob we're talking about first of all the formal institutions of government the president the National Security Council the department's of State and Defense the intelligence agencies etc membership organizations like say the Council on Foreign Relations the Chicago Council on global affairs think tanks like the Brookings Institution the Carnegie Endowment the American Enterprise Institute and many many others various special interest groups and lobbies that are trying to advance some foreign policy issue from human rights to arms control to defense spending to regional policy and there's literally dozens of them as well I would add those parts of the media that deal with foreign affairs and of course scholars like me who write books and articles trying to shape piñon who sometimes serve in government themselves and who trained the people who go on to fill key positions in government that's who I'm talking about several features of this elite are worth noting first there are no formal requirements for membership there's no required degree you have to have there's no bar exam you need to pass no Medical Board you need a real estate license to sell real estate in the United States but you don't need a license to practice foreign policy all you have to do is convince enough other people in the foreign policy elite that you're smart energetic and above all loyal second it is a community especially at the highest levels leading members know each other well they belong to lots of different overlapping institutions and given those two features no formal requirements and everybody knows everybody else professional success depends on your networks and your reputation and because your reputation is important that means staying within the acceptable consensus and you all know pretty much what that consensus is NATO is essential Israel's beyond criticism Iran Russia and China are bad nuclear proliferation is bad but our nuclear weapons are good free trades pretty good terrorism is the absolute worst democracy and human rights are very important except when close allies fall short and most important of all the United States must exercise leadership on every issue and in every part of the globe oh and by the way it also has the right to overthrow any government we happen to dislike if we think we can get away with it questioning any of those ideas is not a smart career move in Washington DC now to try and show how pervasive this consensus is in the book I discussed three different task forces the Princeton project on national security which was done in 2006 the project for a united and strong Amer shaaka in 2013 and the Center for new American securities task force called extending American power in 2016 they're all bipartisan they're each produced by famous bold-faced names in the foreign policy elite but the circumstances under which they were written were very different before the financial crisis before Iraq went south or afterwards so the circumstances under which they're written a different yet each one lays out almost an identical agenda and justifies it in almost identical language they are in short interchangeable this is how the foreign policy elite thinks about America's role in the world regardless of what the circumstances are regardless of what the balance of power is America's financial condition the nature of our relations with other countries as well now to be sure there are sometimes disagreements on specific issues within this community such as the Iran deal or whether we should intervene in Syria but again in Washington DC voices supporting liberal hegemony far outweigh the number of voices saying the United States might want to act with somewhat greater restraint and why does the foreign policy community like this so much well I think it's partly because many of these people some of whom are my best friends really genuinely believe in these principles and think spreading them around the world would be good for the United States and good for everyone else but trying to remake the world in America's image also increases their power and status flatters their sense of self-worth justifies a bigger budget and gives them plenty to do in other words liberal hegemony is a full-employment policy for the foreign policy elite the American people however have a somewhat different view on the one hand they reject isolationism as the Chicago Council's many surveys of public opinion have shown but they also seem to want a more restrained foreign policy in 2013 for example 80% of Americans believed quote we should not think so much in international terms but concentrate on our own national problems and building up strength here at home in 2016 64% said the United States was playing the role of global policeman more than it should consider also that the last four US presidents were elected on platforms promising to do less in foreign affairs what was Bill Clinton's slogan it's the economy stupid george w bush promised you a humble foreign policy and said he would get out of doing nation-building Obama got to be a candidate because he opposed the Iraq war and he had promised to stop doing stupid stuff and of course Trump was critical of all of his predecessors and especially of the foreign policy elite so how does that elite convince a reluctant public to go along with this well of course by inflating threats to convince Americans they won't be secure unless they medal all over the world by exaggerating the benefits of this policy for example by telling you that and intervening all over the world will create stability even though in fact it's been creating instability in most of the places we're doing it or claiming that liberal hegemony will in fact spread our values around the world but as I said before democracy is now in retreat and liberal values are in fact under siege not only overseas but also here at home finally by concealing the costs so we financed our wars now by borrowing the money rather than by raising taxes meaning that we're shifting the bill on to our children and grandchildren and we rely on the all-volunteer force so we don't have to actually draft people who would be reluctant to serve we also rely very heavily on airpower and on drones to keep American casualties low which creates the interesting paradox right we have to keep casualties low in order to keep public support for wars in places like Afghanistan but that means we're fighting wars in ways to make them almost impossible to win and eventually the public wakes up to the fact that the war is endless and public support declines anyway there's one final step however and that's by not holding anybody very accountable consider that the people responsible for the Iraq war remain respected figures in the foreign policy elite and some of them for example john bolton are in top jobs today if you're a member of the elite you can give classified information to your mistress lie to the FBI about it plead guilty pay a fine and then quickly resume your place as a well respected expert you can be convicted of lying to Congress get pardoned go back into government screw up again and land a nice Cinna cure at a prestigious think-tank and become very close to being Deputy Secretary of State by contrast those who challenged the consensus view usually get marginalized even when they turn out to be right so for example I talk in the book about the case of Colonel Paul Yingling Paul Yingling served two tours in Iraq as an army officer and then wrote an article in 2006 criticizing the senior leadership of the army it was called a failure of generalship the article was widely hailed as an accurate summary of command failures in Iraq it was assigned at West Point and at the command and General Staff College suggesting that maybe he was on to something so the question is did Colonel Yingling rise in the army to a position of greater responsibility you know the answer of course he was passed over for promotion and is now teaching high school in Colorado in short the foreign policy world in Washington is in many ways a self protecting community lots of other communities act the same way by the way universities protect faculty when they misbehave the Catholic Church protected priests but the question you want to ask yourself is is this a healthy situation if the people who get it wrong not just once but over and over pay a little price the people who get things right don't get recognized why should we expect to do better now at this point the question is well wait Trump was gonna fix all this he was gonna drain the swamp challenge the blob and make America great again alas no which is why the chapter on Trump is entitled how not to fix foreign policy I think it's there's no question that in terms of personal style to include the style with which he conducts diplomacy Trump's behavior is unprecedented he's a clear departure in terms of style from all of his predecessors but not unlike the transition from Bush to Obama a lot of substance remains the same we end up with trade wars that thus far produce very mild changes in the existing trade agreement so we get into a spat with South Korea they revise the South Korea free trade agreement the changes are miniscule similarly we almost tear up the NAFTA treaty it's eventually rewritten the new agreement is virtually identical to the old one no real change there the American commitment to NATO for all of Trump's boorish behavior remains intact and by the way it's worth noting that his complaints about burden-sharing go all the way back to Eisenhower every American president has complained about this so there's nothing new there even if he's done it in a particularly pungent way we have the same commitments in the Middle East if anything he simply doubled down on the existing set of relationships we already have and it is not exactly a shift in US policy to be hostile to Iran as Trump is yes Trump left the nuclear deal but that was not a reversal of American policy when you consider that the Iran deal was very controversial from the beginning the Obama administration had to work 24/7 to get it through there were many conditions attached to it as well so in a sense Trump has just gone with the other side of what was a very contested issue all along just like President Obama Donald Trump sent more troops to Afghanistan and he used exactly the same rationale to justify it the need to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven just like his predecessors from attacks America's adversaries for human rights violations but not America's friends not America's allies nothing new there either Russia is still facing sanctions over Ukraine and its cyberattacks and other things China is still seen as our principal rival nothing new there and we're still spending more on defense than the next eight or ten countries put together point is here that the changes the obvious changes in Trump's presidential style are greater than the changes in foreign policy substance that's not particularly good news however we essentially have still have the same overly ambitious foreign policy but with an incompetent skipper at the helm of the ship of state and one clear sign of this at the very end of the Obama administration a survey of 37 countries around the world found an average of 64% of those people surveyed had confidence in American leadership a year after Trump became president that number was 22% heckuva and achievement so let me wrap up as I do in the book by outlining what I think would be a better way instead of liberal hegemony we I should adopt a grand strategy that some of us have called offshore balancing and let me explain what that means the logic is pretty simple it recognizes that the United States is in fact an extraordinarily secure country even today a large and growing population a diverse sophisticated wealthy economy a remarkably safe geopolitical position with no powerful enemies nearby still protected by the two enormous oceans which don't protect us from everything but are still important in other ways the main threat given how secure the United States really is would be a arrival a peer competitor a country with similar power to us that dominated its region the same way we tend to dominate the Western Hemisphere and therefore could project power around the world the same way we do after all the only reason we can run around to places like Afghanistan and Somalia and Yemen is we're not worried about defending Minnesota from those dangerous Canadians the United States should therefore out of self-interest try to prevent any state from dominating Europe Asia or the Persian Gulf those are the key power centers in the world that's why we fought World War one that's why we fought World War two that's why we waged the Cold War we should try to get regional powers to do as much of the heavy lifting as possible to husband our strength and to save American lives what does that mean today China is the only potential regional hegemon today the only country that might be as powerful as us and might be able to dominate its own region someday so we should focus most of our attention on balancing China in Asia together with our allies there that means we can reduce and eventually end our military role in Europe let the Europeans handle their own defense we want the Afghans to stand up and be self-reliant we want our allies in the Middle East to stand up and be self-reliant somehow we don't want the Europeans to stand up and be self-reliant this makes no sense we should reduce our military presence in the Middle East and we should have normal relations with all the countries there including Iran instead of special relations with some and no relations with others but needless to say we should get out of the regime change and nation-building business and stay out we're not very good at it and we're not getting better the more we practice we should place much more emphasis on diplomacy and think of military power sanctions and coercion as our last resort rather than as our first impulse and finally we should continue to promote those liberal political values on which our country is founded but primarily by setting a good example here at home in other words if we made the United States actually resemble the country we want it to be others are going to see that others are going to want something like it for themselves this is not I hasten to add an isolationist paw see the United States would still be engaged economically around the world diplomatically everywhere and in some parts of the world we would be militarily engaged in active my guess is that today's foreign policy elite is going to resist this so it won't be adopted unless over time we develop an establishment a foreign policy elite with a somewhat different view of America's global role one that is closer to what the American people say they want and the final chapter of the book offers some practical advice for how that might get sold the sum up Adam Smith once wrote that there is a lot of ruin in a nation which is why the wealthy and powerful United States has survived its rather haphazard cavalier and unrealistic approach to foreign policy or as Bismarck supposedly quipped there seems to be a special Providence that looks after drunkards fools and the United States of America that's a good thing the real danger I think we face is not a powerful array of clever foreign adversaries who will snatch our security prosperity and way of life a way of life away from us while we're not looking on the contrary the problems we face abroad in recent years at least are mostly of our own making as Walt Kelly said many years ago we have met the enemy and he is us though as a nation we stand at a crossroads down one road lies more of the same with the same unhappy results down another road lies a more realistic strategy that served the country well in the past it is not the foreign policy Donald Trump is likely to deliver it is the foreign policy most Americans want and the question is how long will it take before they get it thank you very much I look forward to questions comments and I also hope you'll buy the book thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] as I mentioned we are taking questions online at choc n F dot IO put that into your browser you can ask a question already awesome here but we'll take questions in the room as well we have microphones going around just raise your hand Q if you have a question right there just to say thanks thank you for your great speech and presentation I would just like to ask a question about Russia what stance should the United States take using your offshore balancing theory on Russians ambitious ambitions in the me in Eastern Europe so first of all Russia is I think declining power is not a potential pure competitor by any means the Russian economy now is smaller than Italy's in terms of GNP which captures some of how it now has been inflated into something much bigger than it really is and there's a real irony here there is a win-win-win available to us visa V Russia that were unable to pursue it would be in Europe's interest if Russia stopped interfering in Ukraine and stopped trying to intimidate the Baltic states and stopped interfering in European politics in other ways that would be good for Europe for our friends in Europe it would be good for Russia if the sanctions were lifted and if Russia no longer worried about open-ended NATO expansion eastward and it would be good for the United States if Moscow and Beijing were separated or at least not cooperating quite so closely so you have the makings of an agreement there's hard to work out but clearly a win-win-win for Europe for Russia and for us and the great irony is I think Donald Trump kind of at some lizard-like level intuited that but of course because his own relations with Russia and the relations of his subordinates and campaign associates and possibly the Trump Organization and possibly his sons are so entangled with Russia he's unable move in that direction he couldn't try to engage in a real reproach mo because his motives would be completely suspect at this point and therefore what I think would make a lot of sense trying to work out our relations and our difficulties with Russia it can't be pursued under Donald Trump at least not in the first term if he gets a second term maybe he'll try something else and that's unfortunate because it means that that set of problems will Fester Russia and China will continue to cooperate in ways that we find uncomfortable a great question here online do believe we should encourage Japan to acquire nuclear weapons to become a great power and contain China no no I think we should I think we I do think we should continue to encourage Japan to enhance its military capabilities I don't think Japan going nuclear is a good idea because I like to limit the number of nuclear weapon States in the world I should add that could happen China Japan is not that far away from being able to develop the capability it's often regarded as something of a latent nuclear power and I do think if security relations in Asia deteriorated if the United States were not engaged in it then Japan might well go down that road and I'd prefer to see that not happen thank you I'm given your comments about China I wonder what you think about the failed trans-pacific partnership it seems that many seem to feel that our our absence leaves a void that's being filled increasingly by China so I think that Trump's decision to withdraw from the trans-pacific partnership on but his third day as president son it was a blunder the agreement had a variety of useful although not revolutionary economic measures to it it did bind some of those countries more tightly to us we would have gotten some economic benefits from it it did allow us to bring some of our trading partners in Asia in conformity with some of our principles in various ways again I don't want to overstate its importance economically but I think it was positive as an economic move but it's real importance of strategic was a way of linking up with a number of countries in Asia who wanted to be close to us and very importantly some of those leaders in particular Japanese Prime Minister Abe a had paid a substantial price domestically they had pushed very hard to get Japan to sign onto it so they'd expended some political capital at home right so for Trump to walk in and sort of tear it up while he's taking off his coat was just a slap the only caveat I would note there is oh and by the way it's especially silly if from claims to think that China is a real rival right and so really strategically contradictory I would just remind everybody however that Bernie Sanders opposed TPP Hillary Clinton opposed TPP during the campaign I believe she would have tried to find a way to walk that back if she'd actually been elected and there's no guarantee that either Trump or Hillary or Bernie could have ever gotten it approved in the Senate right so yes it was a mistake to walk away from it but it's not entirely it's not a slam dunk that TPP would be in effect today if in fact the election that turned out differently Dennett friend here thinks oh I like to stay an Asian for a second the last ten years has been somewhat mystifying to me because after World War two when we implemented NATO in 1949 we put soldiers over there build bases so forth when Obama had mentioned that they were gonna do a pivot to Asia they're still waiting for it and now we have President Trump who just simply seems to ignore the region but everybody agrees that this is going to be the main strategic area of activity the next 25 years at least what is the problem why can't America engage Asia because many of our allies are getting very very nervous and I heard that the quad that is Japan Australia India they're all the quad is coming back in the back in the mode and stuff could you explain why we seem to have this to committing to Asia the pivot whatever you want to call it so part of it is that I think the situations are not completely analogous to sort of NATO in the Cold War China is a rising obviously a rising economic power and is modernizing its military it's not the old Soviet Union the its ability to project power in Asia is far more limited than what the Soviet Union might have been able to do say in Europe so the need to suddenly shift you know vast American resources to Asia I think isn't there yet some of those resources have already shifted I mean they did pivot maybe not as much as some people would have liked but there was a movement of an aircraft carrier or they've put Marines in a base in Australia as well so there's been some mostly symbolic but to some degree real shifts as well secondly the real challenge in Asia as I see it is mostly diplomatic and political not military so we've got a series of allies there but this is a difficult coalition to hold together unlike NATO and Europe where it's geographically pretty compact the distances in Asia are enormous right if you think of a coalition that might run from India on one side all the way around to Japan on the other side that's a distance of tens of thousands of miles right and land you know adding Australia and others as well and holding that coalition together is hard because if something happens say with taiwan is indy you're really gonna want to get involved on taiwan if is australia gonna commit itself to the defense of taiwan if that's where the crisis is or if there's a crisis in the East China Sea with Japan is Vietnam gonna get involved in that what about Singapore maybe maybe not um moreover unlike NATO the you're where the European powers really didn't have much to do economically with the Soviet bloc all of our strategic partners in Asia have close economic ties with China and we'd like to maintain those economic ties so their interests are somewhat divided and lastly some of those countries don't get along all that well themselves South Korea and Japan most most importantly which means there's a real diplomatic challenge for the United States to sort of hold that coalition together particularly if the Chinese are smart and look for ways to play a sort of divide and rule over time so it seems to me the the real challenge for us going forward is primarily to have lots of smart people who know these countries who are engaged there all the time the secretaries of state assistant secretaries local diplomats a president who understands the region and understands it's important and is willing to invest time and effort in building those relationships that's going to be have to be the secret of success going forward but what I agree with is that we have not made that kind of a commitment yet and certainly not in this administration oh one final thing I I meant to say this there is I think this emerging consensus now in Washington including within the Trump administration and you see that in the the sort of trade competition with China I don't think they've done it very smartly right if you're going to have a big fight on trade with China you would have wanted to get Europe Canada other countries Japan all on board and instead they've gone off and picked fights with all those countries too I mean which means we're on our own thus far dealing with China but I do think there's a growing consensus among the sort of economics people that China needs to be reined in and forced to live up to the agreements it's signed when it joined the World Trade Organization and that's being wedded now to a growing consensus in the Pentagon that China is a arrival that whose acquisition of us technology has to be resisted as well so you're suddenly seeing a much more of a consensus inside Washington for sort of being more competitive visa vie China on the economic front for both economic but also national security reasons doesn't behind you Serena we go back to Europe so many of your colleagues and friends I'm sure would be concerned about the future of Europe given a couple of things the rise of nationalism over there and the the prospect of a future war which many believe NATO sort of stomped out the warring tendencies on that continent and the other issue of course which you didn't address is the continued migration pattern that is going to overtake Europe in the next decades and so how does Europe deal with that and then how does the United States confront that and I don't know if your framework allows a way to understand or predict what our action should be well a couple things one if you those are all very very good points Europe clearly has the wherewithal to deal with the security problems it might face I always like to remind people that Europe today in the NATO NATO's European members spend three to four times what Russia does on defense every year put them all together they don't spend it very efficiently they don't spend it very well they've allowed their actual capabilities to atrophy but the idea that they can't deal with a potential threat from again the economy smaller than Italy I think is remote theirs is pretty fanciful I agree I think Europe's security problems over the longer term are not you know a tank army coming in from the East but rather the tens of millions of people in the Middle East and in Africa who may be hoping to get to Europe they don't have the Atlantic Ocean in between them they've got the Mediterranean and that's something you can cross and that's going to require I believe Europe to develop a set of common policies there which are you know border patrol and other measures as well not because Europe doesn't need immigration nerved actually does Europe has an ageing and declining population and some degree of migration would be good for them but I think one of the things that even you know good liberals have learned over the last few years is that if that process happens too rapidly it's polities begin to sense that it might be out of control the backlash against it is really dangerous so if you're worried about the emergence of xenophobic right-wing nationalism in Europe getting an ability to manage immigration into Europe is I think pretty important one final thing is I am and this is speculative but when I see the behavior of someone like Viktor Orban in Hungary who's you know clearly moving that country in illiberal directions I wonder to what extent it's enabled in part by the confidence that he has that the United States is going to be there to bail him out if he gets in trouble similarly the illiberal trends that we see in Poland right at the one European country that really likes Donald Trump a lot because they think he's one of one of them in a certain sense but again great confidence that the Americans will be there to bail them out I wonder if Hungary and Poland would be doing this if they felt and in fact their security depended on cooperation with France cooperation with Germany cooperation with other members of the European Union or with the European members of NATO and they were sort of less confident that a phone call to Washington would always be sufficient to solve whatever problem was in favor of them and I had one of the one final point is that yeah just I would say one final thing is I am still trying to figure out what President Trump's strategy towards Europe really is it appears to be divide and conquer that he would he doesn't like the European Union he supported the brexit decision he likes people like marine lepen in France etc and I think the theory is that if you can get the European Union to break up then the United States can deal with all the European members one on one and we're a whole lot bigger than each of them individually so that's gives us the capacity to shove them around whereas the European Union all together is more cohesive or of a rival I think this is extremely short-sighted if you're like me and you think the United States should not be trying to defend Europe any longer all right you want one as we gradually withdraw you want to be leaving behind a rather tranquil harmonious foreign continent that's fun to visit but not exciting history suggests an exciting Europe is not a good Europe for the United States when lots of lively things are happening in Europe it's usually not a good and we want Europe to be stable prosperous burgeois and boring right and that's not what Trump's doing Trump's egging on exactly the forces that will make European politics the subject of many future dissertations and that's not a good thing I agree with a lot of your points but I also think that there's as you've referenced a an establishment in place so that doesn't agree with a lot of the points right and there's a lot of history I've noticed yes so how do you get from where we are to where you think we should be like what are the practical parts of it yeah I do think that there is a there are a lot of sort of structural forces that are pushing the United States in more or less the directions that I'm suggesting partly economic conditions here you know rising deficits lots of deferred expenses here in the United States that we obviously need to address China's rise which does in fact over time focus the attention the fact that 25 years of involvement in the Middle East has sort of progressively made things worse all of these things are pushing in a particular direction but they're pushing against the resistance of a very activist foreign foreign policy community the solution I think ultimately is it has to be a sort of long term effort to build a somewhat different foreign policy Lee recruit people train them establish think tanks with a different point of view not to eliminate the existing elite but to supplement it in other words right now the sort of debates in Washington on grand strategy run the gamut from A to B and if we could get that to be sooner or a 2k a 2l that would be very healthy and if I in a spirit of ecumenical ISM I will say a nice thing about Donald Trump I think that's has been his one positive contribution in the realm of foreign policy which is that he has actually challenged so many orthodoxies verbally that were having a broader discussion than we were having five years ago or ten years ago and that's I think ultimately ultimately healthy for us so I think we're gonna get to a more sensible foreign policy I think it'll take 25 years and I wrote the book to try and shorten that to maybe 15 my question here by public diplomacy into your strategies is it does not matter what people overseas think of America in terms of our ability to achieve our objectives I think it does as I indicated at one point I think one of the areas where Trump has failed us is that he has behaved so boorish Lee towards other countries and most remarkably toward our closest friends I mean this is the amazing thing he's nicer to Kim jong-un one than he is to Justin Trudeau right which is when you think about it you're almost incomprehensible and the problem is that other countries have national pride too and other countries have domestic politics as well and what he's doing is he's making it harder not easier for foreign leaders to do what the United States might want because when you think about it if you're Emmanuel macron in France or your angle of Merkel in Germany if you do Donald Trump a favor right now you're gonna get in trouble in at home your own population is going to ask why are you doing is for this so I think you know public diplomacy in general diplomacy in general and showing a certain regard for the opinions of others so that even when you disagree with them right you disagree in a sort of polite straightforward forceful dignified way that doesn't belittle others as well is the only way to succeed over time in that sense that you know Trump instincts here I think exactly wrong than the front thank you I've given the role that Saudi Arabia has played in the relationship our relationship in the Middle East what should the United States a position with Saudi Arabia be now well let me be sort of really provocative I indicated this at one point I don't think we have any allies in the Middle East that deserve unconditional American support we have several that deserve support but that should be conditional on their behavior the same way our interactions with all other countries tend to be and you know for the last 20 or more years we've basically had kind of special relationships with Egypt in Israel and Saudi Arabia and maybe some of the Gulf states where it kind of doesn't matter what they do they still get American backing and we're now seeing some of the consequences of that with Saudi Arabia which under the new crown prince has behaved recklessly in a whole series of ways in dealing with Lebanon obviously this disaster that's unfolding in Yemen and also in a diplomatic dispute with gutter as well this isn't good for the United States it doesn't make it easier to contain or to deal with Iran as well so the United States should be I think putting much more pressure on Saudi Arabia to clean up its act and the latest incident that murder of this journalist in Istanbul you know is that just another example along with along with everything else furthermore we would be we the United States would be in much better shape if we had a more balanced set of relations in that part of the world because our ultimate strategic interest is just to everybody there be safe and secure and no country dominate the region so when the secretary US Secretary of State arrives in Riyadh I want the Saudis to know that after Riyadh his next stop is Tehran and when he's in Tehran I want the Iranians to know that his next stop is Tel Aviv and when he's in Tel Aviv I want them to know his next stop is in car or Cairo because if that's the itinerary each one of them has an incentive to do some things to make the American Secretary of State happy to try and get American support understanding that we've got lots of different options there that's where we get leverage that's where we get influence right now our current allies simply take our support for granted and we have no leverage and we have no leverage with Iran because we have a hardly any relationship with Iran so from a American point of view we ought to have businesslike relationships with everybody there and we support the ones who we agree with and we distance ourselves or at times put pressure on the ones who are doing things that we find objectionable it seems really straightforward but it somehow has not penetrated the American foreign policy mind yet at the front here Sarah the gentleman there Thanks what are your views regarding the Trump administration's dealings with Kim Jong GaN has been a successful policy shift and what kind of results so can we expect in the next five or ten years it has not been a successful policy shift III give Trump credit for understanding that this was a serious problem but in fact I believe that it's believed that one of the things that Obama said to him when they had their one-on-one meeting you know transferring the keys to the car as it were they did Bhama said look that's the single greatest problem you face is North Korea's emerging long-range missile capability and it's growing a nuclear capability if I give Trump credit for sort of taking let's call it an imaginative approach to the problem and being willing to sort of explore diplomacy after first of course doing some saber rattling threatening you know fire and fury and a variety of other other things as well the problem is that there was no diplomatic follow-up there's no preparation for that meeting in Singapore the agreement in quotes that he and Kim jong-un reached is essentially content las' North Korea did not in fact pledge to do anything so and they have not done anything they've dismantled some facilities that they don't need they have not reduced their military their nuclear capability or their missile capability at all and there's no commitment for them to do that so he in a sense trump the master deal maker got taken because he gave Kim something pretty valuable for Kim a one-on-one meeting with the American president something his Kim's father never got something Kim's grandfather never got tremendous legitimacy both at home and to some degree overseas and what did Trump get for it a piece of paper that sensitively content lists what worries me about it is it was essentially reality show diplomacy it was a great photo opportunity it did the thing that Trump is really good at it had an immense rating right tremendous audience every news organization you know here come there they are they're shaking hands all of that stuff so exactly the sort of thing president Trump likes what he doesn't want to do is the careful preparation figuring out exactly what we're trying to get them to do how do we get an agreement that might work how do we make sure that our allies in the region are on board we've got to make sure the Chinese are engaged in this because if the Chinese are opposed to it they'll find ways to derail it this is the real work of diplomacy which he has not been willing to do and not really been willing to delegate so you know I give him points for a creative approach but I wish they'd been some real follow-through thank you don't you think that since India is the natural counterweight to China the US should develop better relationships with India I just expand on the question it's because India's also allies with Afghanistan and it also happens to be the world's largest democracy and the world's oldest democracy and the world's largest democracy don't you think that we should be more of natural allies than what we actually are right now well certainly the yes but I just observed that beginning at the near the end of the Clinton administration and continuing through the Obama or through Bush and into Obama the American relationship with India has gotten steadily deeper there have been reservations on both sides so there were some opposition here in the United States because we basically relaxed or watered down some non-proliferation principles in order to pursue a nuclear sharing agreement with India and there have been some reservations on the Indian side who haven't liked different aspects of American policy and there's some issues about which we disagree still but the trend has been for 20 plus years now to have a closer partnership between India and the United States and I think that's been driven primarily by mutual concerns about China and I expect that to continue so you know I guess I'm in agreement the other place and this is true really throughout Asia the place where there's going to be real tensions is that both sides are gonna want the other one to do most of the work all right we would like India to know yes you should take in South Asian the Indian Ocean you should take charge there and we'll hang back and of course India would like us to do a lot of the heavy lifting as well so there'll be the usual kind of wrangling on that issue but I think the trendline is still going to be positive one hi yes my question is how does your framework allow our account for substantial humanitarian crises such as the current global refugee crises to the extent that we're reducing our presence or our involvement internationally overseas what do we do when there's millions of refugees without a place to go with an up two or three year timespan this is if first of all this is not a subject I know deeply you know it's not one I've studied carefully but I would not exclude various types of humanitarian activities to include in extreme cases the use of force I'm gonna attach a caveat there first of all I don't think the United States is well several points we've been I think shameful in our willingness to accept refugees from a number of places and especially places where we're the reason there are refugees there right so you know we are a country that I think could absorb a far greater number of refugees than we have that's not by the way where the country has been politically but personally I would be be open to that and especially places where we have a moral responsibility because we did kind of break the place as well secondly we should certainly be participating in efforts to deal with refugees wherever they are emerging and shouldn't be opposed to that third the more extreme cases which is you know potential genocides or potential mass killings I don't rule out American involvement there but I would set a pretty high bar that to it that it has to be a place where we really do are quite convinced that there's a possibility of a genocide occurring secondly we think that there's a militarily feasible set of options and third and very importantly we don't think American involvement is going to make things worse and I believe for example President Obama in deciding not to get more deeply involved in Syria we were involved all along in Syria but his decision not to go forward and say try to overthrow Bashar al Assad even in the face of horrendous civil war in which you know more than half a million yeah half a million people have been killed was because he felt that doing that was actually gonna make things worse it was going to create a complete anarchy there that possibly give opportunities to violent extremist groups etc and he might have been wrong but I think in other words he felt that American involvement for humanitarian reasons there was not wise because it would actually make the problem worse rather than better we have to recognize that that sometimes is going to be the case but I don't rule out humanitarian action I mean by the way under my framework the United States is not going to become at least if I were running it a week or insular power with the with no capacity to act in different parts of the world although I would be less active than we have been time for one very quick question just right there I'll make it quick the criteria you just laid out for one the US should intervene in a humanitarian crisis was exactly what the u.s. saw in Libya Muammar Qaddafi said that the streets would run with blood if the rebels continue to fight and I'm sure that there was an impending genocide that's why the US and NATO intervened and finally it seems to be looking at it with hindsight to say how could this make the situation any worse and if it isn't then that's when we should intervene how can you address those questions when we're not sure what immediate and long-term implications u.s. force has well I think first of all we have to be pretty humble about our ability to to govern other societies after regime has fallen even one as despicable as that of Gaddafi's in fact I think there was no certainty about whether or not there was going to be a genocide in the proper definition of the term there was some possibility of retaliation retribution against the anti-gaddafi rebels if he had been able to say retake Benghazi not entirely clear even that that would have happened the problem was that people did not think through what would happen if the regime was removed did we have any plan what so ever sufficiently intimate knowledge of the internal politics of Libya to be able to figure out who should be put in charge or what process should be put in place and I think one of the things we ought to be humble about now is our ability to figure out and manage the local politics of any society after whatever they have existing order that predates it has collapsed this is a cheap shot but I'll end on this it seems to me that when we become a little bit better at running say the state of Illinois we might start thinking about dictating the politics of countries that are very very different where they speak different languages that they're divided in very different ways just before the Bicentennial yeah but the engines is for sale in Iowa and please join me in thanking thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Chicago Council on Global Affairs

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Id: MmRhdYXgh3U

Length: 62min 8sec (3728 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 19 2018