U.S. Foreign Policy in the Trump Era: The Future of Great Power Politics

we have a extremely high-powered panel this morning with four of the greatest strategic minds working today I'll very briefly introduce each one of them and then we'll go straight into their remarks I am by the way Daniel McCarthy from the fund for American Studies I'm also a longtime associate of the American Conservative magazine and it's editor-at-large first people have Michael C - who is director of the Notre Dame International Security Center he's also the author of privileged and confidential the secret history or the president's intelligence advisory board among other books at the very end of our panel here we have Paul Kennedy he is the Jay Richardson Dilworth professor of history and also director of the international security studies at Yale University he's the author of course of the rise and fall of the great powers which is a classic that is now celebrating its 30th anniversary in print also the author of a great classic of strategic thought is John Mearsheimer his great book is of course the tragedy of great power politics and he is the R Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service professor of political science at the University of Chicago last but far from least we have Christopher a Preble who is vice president of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute he is the author and editor of several books including the power problem how American military dominance makes us less safe less prosperous and less free Mike we'll start with you great thanks very much I want to make some very brief remarks on the future of great power politics in the Jacksonian moment and I want to make three points in about five minutes one is I think we're in a Jacksonian moment in terms of US foreign policy to Jacksonian ism and realism are kissing cousins but they're not husband and wife and then three I want to look at as an example of the difference between kissing cousins and husband and wife the current place of the debate about Iran between Jacksonians and realists so Walter Russell Mead wrote a very influential article in the national interest I think in 1997 called the Jacksonian persuasion and u.s. foreign policy and this one of these articles that I think was way ahead of his time I think he was wrong about who he thought was the key Jacksonian candidate at the time John McCain has turned out to be very different but he was right about a new mood foot in terms of foreign policy interim Ungh the American public and basically I think Jacksonian is has six key premises first of all its advocates a more assertive Lee nationalist foreign policy America first of course naturally flows from that secondly it takes its center of gravity in a clearly populous stance let's get rid of Davos man and get real Americans back in the foreign policy process thirdly it has sort of a negative or an exemplary view of American exceptionalism and stark contrast to the crusader view of American exceptionalism that's dominated u.s. foreign policy in recent years fourth it has a pessimistic view of IR maybe a Hobbesian view on steroids fifth honor is as important as interest to the Jacksonians and then finally it has an all-or-nothing view of the use of military force basically it's a civilian version of the famous Powell doctrine now second point I want to make is the Jacksonian moment is a double-edged sword for us realists there's no doubt that there's a lot of overlap between Jacksonian ISM and realism and I would say points one three four and six and we'll have a quiz about what those were at the end of my remarks but the big differences come on points two and five and I want to try to illustrate this very briefly in terms of one of the big foreign policy issues going forward which is US policy towards the Islamic Republic of reign of Iran and I think most realists are troubled by America's demonization of Iran to be sure I think we're clear eyed about the defects of the current Iranian regime and they're by no means a model citizen on the other hand as with the previous panel on Russia I mean it's sort of gotten a little bit crazy our key allies in the Gulf and on the Arabian Peninsula are far less pluralist than the Islamic Republic and on many important issues include including the big fight against Isis we're on the same side of the barricades now I think part of the problem is that two elements of Jacksonian ISM are pushing the Trump administration against what would be a more realist and a more balanced policy dealing with Iran and the problems here really focus on points two and five realism is an elite intellectual movement based on a deep knowledge of history and based on a complex theory about how the worlds were world works Jacksonians don't want to hear about that boobas americanus doesn't do history and doesn't do theories and that's a problem secondly the fixation with honor leads Americans and particularly the Trump administration to let the perfect be the enemy of the good and the joint comprehensive plan of action for the Iranian nuclear program is a good case in point nobody says that it's a perfect deal but on the other hand it's a pretty good deal and the perfect deal is unattainable so let me just conclude really quickly this Jacksonian moment really is both a moment of opportunity but also among of great peril for realism to be sure because realism and Jacksonian ISM are kissing cousins we're getting a lot of what we want in the Jacksonian moment but remember kissing cousins aren't husband and wife anywhere outside of what eastern kentucky yeah and given that it's not going to be a perfect marriage thank you so the recession is the future of great power politics I'd like to make four points ladies and gentlemen the first is just to pick up on those words great power politics it does seem to me we are back if we ever were in a unipolar world but we are back in a multipolar world we are looking at surely a Bismarck came back he would say looking across the globe that we have we have four large great powers we have the United States we have Russia we have China and we have a I think we have to recognize it India and and three of us great powers are regional great powers and one of them us declares that we are global global great power as well as a regional great power like I like our being reminded of a special sphere of influence we have in in the Monroe Doctrine area but so we have to think that this world of in the future and now is one of four big guys and I'm sorry for that gendered remark but that's that that's the way I do see it and if we think that it's one in which we have a particular specialness we have a larger row then it's just that to me is the unreal part of it to get real would be to see that we are in a world of four large powers and also some other significant players like Iran and increasingly say Indonesia who will not want to be pushed around in this world I think we will not see a Europe except in economic terms being able to play a big power role or a great power over the fission's there are two great Somy the first aspect of a realist understanding of great power politics the second would an assert that I'm going to mention would be about the United States itself as one which claims to be different from all of the other powers the the second is this world power this great power is clearly when you look at the military record and when you listen to the military leaders of this country is suffering from quite acute wear and tear it's not just as I think you now all know it's not just the wear and tear of our machinery on our main focal women-folk in all of these places across the globe it's a winter of our aircraft it's a winter of our communication systems it's the thinness of our logistical base it's a thinness of our supply base it's now clearly the wear and tear of the US Navy I mean just strike me is really curious that the Navy is now the lowest number of functioning warships that has been in the entire post Second World War period and yet does functioning warships are running out of effectiveness in a home in a whole number of ways we had a visit recently from Vice Admiral John Richardson the CNO to Yale for other reasons but we had a chance to talk with him and it was just as the second or was it the fourth u.s. warship in we had encountered its collision had encountered its breakdown and rather man looks really really worried he he is he is running a navy which is full of he doesn't quite know where the next case will happen and this is supposed to be in a period of peace time when you could like so reinvest in your navy it is not extreme stress and yet it is stressed out so this list number one lead power is suffering the third point I want to make and I feel when I make this I may be I'm banging my head against a wall thirty years after the rise and fall of the great powers came out we live in it we live in an age of an in this city we live in an age of fiscal amnesia unknown to history patient Chennai there is no other system in the world which could have bourbon Kings would have loved the idea that they could just float deficit spending year after year after year after year somebody else inside the country were chiefly outside the country picks up the bill and the historian in me says like how long for hem sake how long is that going to last I sometimes think that the the the fiscal condition of this country is a bit like that Disney cartoon the roadrunner who goes right over the edge of a cliff and keeps like going and going and going and going and everybody thinks well wow that's really impressive but we we don't have wings we don't have long-term sustainable fiscal winch we don't there are other things one can say about the future of the other of our planet I do think that conservatives and realists or two or two agree with Obama that perhaps the single biggest long-term threat to us could be in the environmental arena I don't see it as any reason whatsoever not to concur in that as a as it as a different type of threat but of the of the world of the great power realists the world of four big powers a world in which this country is suffering from wear and tear and the world in which this country has fiscal amnesia is a future of great for politics which is not a very happy one and far as I'm concerned thank you I wanted to talk about the subject of the relationship between realism and restraint and how that applies to great power politics and I want to proceed with three different parts of the talk one I want to talk about realism and what it has to say about great power politics and restraint then I want to talk about the post Cold War period and then I want to talk about the future so let me start off by just talking about realism and restraint in theoretical terms the key thing to understand about realism is that it's a theory of great power politics it's all about the relationship between the great powers in the system because realists believe they're the most important actors and actually almost all realists believe that minor powers don't matter much at all and from a realist point of view the idea of fighting and what's sometimes called the developing world or the third world and or in areas outside of Europe East Asia in the Golf make no sense at all it's no accident that virtually every realist except Henry Kissinger opposed the Vietnam War Hans Morgenthau and Walter Lippman were two of the biggest thorns on the side of LBJ ken waltz was an adamant opponent of the war virtually all the realists opposed the Iraq war in 2003 just stay out of the third world and it's it's an argument is to stay out of the third world for two reasons one it just doesn't matter strategically and two you get yourself into a heck of a lot of trouble you end up jumping into Quagmire's think of us in Vietnam think of the Soviets in Afghanistan and so forth and so on second part of my talk let's talk about the post Cold War period pretty much up to the present if you believe is the vast majority people do that we lived in a unipolar world or we have lived in a unipolar world there is by definition one great power in the system and if there's only one great power in the system you can't have great power politics because you need at least two great powers to have great power politics right so it's no accident that realism has not held much sway since 1989 or 1991 pick your date because the United States is the salt Paul well from a realist point of view given the fact that you have one great power and no great power politics and number two the developing world or these small countries don't matter much for strategic reasons you should have had an enormous amount of restraint well this is to say that the realism arrow and the restraint arrow are pointing in the same direction but of course we know that that is not what happened and that's in large part because the United States is a country that has liberal imperialism hardwired into its DNA and in a world where there's a salt Pole and that's all poll is liberal America it's gonna turn into a Crusader State almost overnight and that's what happened but the realists and the restrainer 's were on the same side of the debate and both were pushing to limit the efforts of the crusader state now the question is where are we headed and let's start by just assuming that China continues to rise that the Russians are back from the dead and we can even throw in Paul's example of the Indians if you want to make it four great powers but either multipolarity has arrived or it's about to arrive but it's largely irrelevant for our purposes the point is once you're in a multipolar world great power politics are back on the table and realism becomes more relevant so I think given the fact that China is likely to rise over time the Russians are not likely to go back into chaos as happened in the 1990s that great power of politics is on the table in the future and realism will have real relevance the question is what does this mean for restraint and I think you can make a good argument that the realism arrow and the restraint arrow stand a good chance of pushing in opposite directions and the main reason is that if China continues to rise and become really powerful it will try to throw its weight around in East Asia in ways that it will almost certainly cause the United States to put together a balancing coalition to try to contain it much the way we did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War you can already see evidence of this happening in terms of how the Chinese talk about the South China Sea the East China Sea Taiwan the Korean Peninsula and so forth and so on there are all sorts of friction points there China has declared that it is not a status quo power it is bent on changing the status quo in East Asia and the United States as you all know is not going to tolerate that in the pivot to Asia is what that's all about well if that happens there's not going to be a lot of restraint so bringing realism back into play with the transition from unit hilarity to multipolarity begins to create a situation where there's a real tension between restraint on one hand and realism on the other hand which again was not the case during the past years since 1989 in large part because we were in a unipolar world now let me conclude with one final caveat and that is that China may not continue to rise and if China does not continue to rise when you couple that fact with the fact that Russia is a declining great power Russia's future is not a bright one right for largely demographic reasons but also for economic reasons you could imagine a situation we're in the year 2050 the United States is more powerful relative to the other main actors in the system than it is today or was even in the year 2000 in other words we're back in a unipolar world and the realist arrow and the restrained arrow are once again pushing in the same direction and the question you have to ask yourself is if we sort of re-enter that world would we be better able at constraining defeating however you want to put it the Crusaders here in the United States then we were the first time round and I think the most important reason for being optimistic is basically a learning argument that we've now run the experiment one time it was a colossal failure and number two all sorts of groups are now beginning to organize witness this operation today to make sure that that doesn't happen again but again my final point is it may all be rel irrelevant if China continues to rise because great peril politics will be back on the table in a really intense way and it will be much harder to pursue a policy of restraint thank you [Music] Thanks one of the dangers of appearing on a being the fourth person on a panel with Mike - Paul Kennedy and John Mearsheimer is they will inevitably say something that you had planned to say and they will say it way better than I ever could have said it all right so I want to put that on the table right out of the gate in the context of the future of great power politics I've I've framed my four brief points as being a great power isn't all that great and it isn't what it used to be and and I have four ways to sort of make that argument first of all there are more challengers and less acquiescence on the part of lesser powers middle tier and and even small powers now insurgents and insurgencies and resistance is not new hardly but insurgents with access to technologies that used to be exclusively the province of states are new fairly new and I think that explains why it is that it's harder to be a great power than it used to be because you're going to face a more capable resistance than in the past on a related point the second point is that we're moving into a period of defense dominance but the danger is that our doctrine may not be catching up to that reality so you have the ability of again fairly small states and and small actors being able to deploy quite capable technologies that can and quite cheaply that can put at risk very very exquisite technologies the most sort of iconic being you know the 100 thousand ton aircraft carrier things like that so in that sense we continue to invest heavily in very very exquisite technologies that we believe have sort of full spectrum dominance and things like that but we are entering a world whether we wish to admit it or not where others are able to resist the good news could be that in the same way that that technology makes it difficult for the United States to operate far afield it would also make it easier for some of the lesser powers that are our allies to defend themselves to John's point about China's rise China will bump up against other countries who could take advantage of these new technologies to resist more effectively than they have so far but the point that we're dealing with right now is that the military that we have which is just the finest in the world the most powerful military in the world struggles to win struggles to win wars decisively and as John said you know the Quagmire's that we have seen and the disasters that they have wrought that leads to my third point we have in this country because of these military operations that have not ended in clear victory we have this profound crisis of confidence here in this country that the greatest country in the world the the greatest of the great powers certainly for some time maybe of all time out I'll defer to Paul in terms of whether or not that's true that we cannot manifest who else who else would I defer to and so because we've come to this realization that we cannot win Wars decisively even though we have this exceptionally capable military it invokes it manifests itself in a search for scapegoats that there must be some other explanation for why it is that the greatest country in the world is not able to win these decisive victories over tiny weak feckless enemies what are those you know what other explanation can there possibly be and the scapegoats include those among us who are not like us who do not look like us who do not come from where we come from and I think we say that we see that manifesting itself almost daily and my fourth point somewhat related is I'm in the threat deflation business among the books that I've edited or written over the years one of my most recent is called a dangerous world world question mark co-author would my Fran and co-editor John Mueller in which we spend a lot of time sort of diminishing the threats that people say we should all be worried about but the more I think about this I do think there is a real threat that is a genuine challenge to this great power and it's us the you know it's it's it's the it's the people in this country it's our inability to deal with problems that are clear to anyone who cares to look at them and yet we refuse to deal with them the fiscal amnesia that Paul talked about right we are apparently incapable of dealing with obvious challenges in a timely way until I guess we assume the situation has to get much worse before will ever actually fix it I just checked this morning the latest estimate on the tax reform proposal that was put forth yesterday will add 1.5 trillion dollars to the deficit over the next 10 years 1.5 trillion well I guess once you're you know once you're in the habit of spending into the many trillions of dollars of debt what's another one point five trillion among friends but I mean this is a serious point right if we are not willing to take on this challenge now when will we do it and my last point I think the reason why we are incapable of dealing with problems here at home in a timely and effective manner is because we are living in not one country but several countries I go to the gym not as often as I should you can tell but I go to the gym sometimes and at the gym there are three there are three shows sort of routinely displayed simultaneously ESPN which I'd much rather watch CNN and Fox News on CNN and Fox News on the same day at the same instant are almost never talking about the same story and when they are talking about the same story you wouldn't know it right this is a problem right now there is a solution to this problem which the founders anticipated and we'll bill Wynn talked about it in the current issue of the American Conservative which is federalism right we can all sort of go off to our happy places and we can be surrounded by people who are just like us and we can let live and let live the others in our in our large country covered by the the sort of Tolerance inherent in federalism but I worry about that and about our ability to continue to be a great power sustained by this steady erosion of a common sense of American identity so I leave it with that well thank you we have about 20 minutes for questions we have a microphone here at the centered stage please come down and queue up and I'll kick things off maybe by making a an observation and then lobbying a question at our panelists my observation is that we've had a fascinating range of analysis here as to what kind of great powers environment the United States occupies paul-jean park n a-- d has made the case that we are already in a world of emerging great powers India China Russia Chris Preble at the very end made the case that in fact even if you have a relatively few great powers small powers are now capable of inflicting great harm on a great power like the United States and then of course John Mearsheimer said that really it's there's a binary that is the most important thing the question of whether or not China rises to prominence but it seems to me the one thing perhaps all the panelists agree on is that we the United States is one great power does the US have the wherewithal does it have the constitutional and perhaps psychological strength to continue to be a great power in the world where must it change I think Mike Dash's remarks really pointed to this tension in our character that we have this Jacksonian impulse and yet as Paul Kennedy has pointed out our ability to actually feel the navy the size adequate to the tasks we want to assign to it seems to be rather lacking so I thought I'd really ask the panel does the US have the wherewithal to be kind of the Paramount great power of the world is it realistic for us to expect that the unusual period from 1993 until recently would continue forever I mean I think the big fallacy of American politics a bipartisan fallacy has been to believe that this unprecedented period that came about as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union would continue forever and I think a lot of the mistakes that we've been making that we've made along the way have been in our effort to perpetuate a system that's highly unnatural I think there's no question that the United States has been since at least 1990 and how smartly will it behave right and what will it do with that power I mean one of my favorite lines from the book that was making the case for a continuation and primacy in the mid 2000 Michael Mann Obama book the case for Goliath Michael admits perhaps a bit too candidly that our ability to sustain our posture depends on the American people not scrutinizing it too closely and it's almost a direct quote and and I think it was not so unreasonable for Michael to write that in 2006 or 2007 because precisely for the reasons that John has said that the American people didn't scrutinize it very closely we were able to sustain this without much effort we weren't even able to were able to do so without sort of realizing the trade-offs and the opportunity costs as we went along and did that but it's much easier to do that when you when you're accounting for 40% of the global GDP as opposed to when you're accounting for 21 or 22 percent of global GDP it's just going to get much harder to sustain this overtime and expect the American people to tolerate greater and greater burdens to sustaining that kind of that kind of global posture I always like to phrase ladies and gentlemen the unipolar moment it reminded me of Elizabeth Monroe's classic work was called the British moment moment in the Middle East and of course she put dates around that from 1917 to 1956 Suez but nonetheless there was something interesting in using the term historically and in international relations terms the something moment so the question I think it's been answered here by the other three already is how do you know a when do you know that the moment is over is over and I think what you're getting from us is it is over and realism the realism comes in recognizing that and not panicking about it but trying to do a successful management of the post unipolar moment marvelous well we'll go to the first question right my name is Jamal Khashoggi I'm from Saudi Arabia the Arab world hardly was mentioned even though it should be important or still important to the relative states in the form the things we export oil radicalism and refugees now and you are you should be concerned with with the three three of the countries in the arab world or in total chaos they are in civil wars and there is hardly an american intervention there is no regional power that is able to stop the chaos on those three countries how can how can that be changed how can the great power get interested again in a crack in a crisis as serious as that three countries falling apart Libya Syria and Yemen thank you thank you I think you have this all wrong we helped create that chaos all right you're asking us it's all set up [Applause] this is this is crazy this is crazy who tore Iraq apart we've played a key role hardly reported in the mainstream media in wrecking Serbia Syria Libya Yemen were involved with the Saudis in Yemen were refuelling their aircraft giving them bombs supporting them diplomatically the United States has been the principal source of this murder and mayhem in the Middle East [Music] yes my name is kami but I'm that the Pakistani spectator and I want to give the example of American Conservatory conversa conservatism foreign policy it was in 1973 when Indira Gandhi occupied East Pakistan and then Indian generals was ready to take over West Pakistan that is now but it was Nixon who gave the established the example of American conservatism by warning indra gandhi that don't take over west pakistan the current pakistani prime minister is graduated from this school and he has same kind of vision of bringing America and Pakistan closer to each other do you think that President Trump could meet his expectation Thanks as a fellow GW alum I'm glad to learn that a yet another international statesman came from this school I think that fairly or not right now the us-pakistan relationship is defined by the by the war in Afghanistan America's longest war President Trump have alluded to it in the speech in August so again fairly or not the ability of the United State of President Trump to to work constructively with the Pakistani government I I hate to say it is going to begin and perhaps end with whether or not the president feels that we're getting the cooperation we need in Afghanistan I think he approaches that from a fundamentally flawed perspective but that's I'm just trying to explain what I think is likely to occur and really good program my name is Gerald Scott 40 some odd years in the State Department if you're looking for realists somewhere in the system surely you need to look to the State Department ambassador Matlock and his detailed analysis of what was Russia is not alone but it gets very little support from the larger world this panel for example is hardly not this panel all three have discussed the Pentagon and declining capacity of the Navy nobody has mentioned at the State Department we have no weapon systems we simply have intelligent people who have been in touch with the contradictory gritty realities of the exterior world and who are there to be exploited by a government and a people who for the most part ignore them it is being to a great degree destroyed by the present administration the senior levels of the department have too many cases vanished in the past six months if the same equivalent levels had vanished in the Pentagon there would be outrage and calls four four four four four examination there is is silence on the part of the intelligentsia and them and the press in this matter I do ask you to reflect on this it is the Department of State analysts in the agency people in the Pentagon who are trying to deal with the realistic understanding of the world and who are not being supported thank you so I I think the the key issue that you raised is that the tool of diplomacy in our state craft has been blunted quite a bit in recent years and the previous questioners comment about the Nixon administration led me to reflect that Nixon and Kissinger were practitioners of diplomacy they didn't always use the State Department but their vision of statecraft was more than just military force and instruments like that and maybe what realism could bring back to the table would be - point - realist practitioners who use diplomacy as a force multiplier as I think one of the positive legacies of the Nixon period would certainly be that can I say I'll weigh in on this III I'm allegedly a diplomatic historian or at least I started out that way and so I actually read you know the read volumed fruits for many years I knew what diplomats did but I have to confess that I am genuinely puzzled by the different reaction that proposed cuts to the State Department budget elicit from my fellow citizens if in fact the Trump administration were to suggest 30 percent cuts in the Pentagon there would be wailing and howling in protests like you couldn't imagine and yet when he proposed that with respect to the State Department you heard not nearly as much criticism some but not nearly as much and I think it's just something to say I don't have an answer to this it's just sort of an observation and I don't I don't know why that might be so I thought the gentleman spoke well and is well said in his remarks and his concern if ladies and gentlemen we are returning to this multipolar world then that means that it isn't just a single spoke system or United States diplomacy goes out to this or that or the other power it becomes at least a quadrilateral diplomatic system in which case we have to understand the way in which the Russians and the Chinese or the Russians and the Indians together will think of how they relate to this country and if we do not have the Train diplomats and the people understanding the cultural and geographic and other concerns of the other big powers let alone a whole grade of of countries and I'm sympathetic to the question also from from the Arab world if we do not have good Arabists if we do not have good Persian s if we do not have like Matlock good Russian it's in the future we as a perilous lack of investment could you say that part of the reason why we don't we don't have we don't invest as much thought in the State Department as real as react is sort of relating to the rest of the world and understanding the rest of the world is the creation of the vast intelligence service that didn't exist of course when the State Department was created and now we assume or hope that the intelligence services will do what we used to expect of our diplomats is that is that at least part of the explanation it's fair to say to how how but how did anybody intelligence will be like the American ambassador in Moscow or the American ambassador in Beijing right first let me up please pause if I could just add one thing though I think our notion of what diplomacy is all about has changed pretty fundamentally used to be that diplomacy was about talking with your enemies today diplomacy is a gift that you bestow on people you think are like you or on the right side of the fence and that change I think has undermined the utility of diplomacy this one very quick point we still do believe in diplomacy it's called big stick diplomacy in akasha I'm a senior at GW in this week's Time magazine cover Ian Bremmer claims China won blatantly in Burma obviously has studied IR theorists in practice and a big part of that he alludes to his the influence in Africa and my question for the way China had a series of investments and that's helped sort of increase their power and make them a more contender in this multipolar world my question is is it in the United States realist or restraint is it in its realist interest to engage directly or indirectly in Africa in terms of investments are directly and militarily or is it better off in our to just maintain the restraint that we've sort of exhibited in the past decade I'll take a quick stab at that it's not in our interest to compete strategically with the Chinese in Africa just like it wasn't in our interest to compete with the Soviets in Africa during the cold or because Africa is not of strategic significance to the United States - three areas of the world that matter to the United States East Asia Europe and the Persian Gulf and those the three areas where we should worry about the Chinese we don't have to worry about them in Europe I don't think at all the two places we're worried about if we're gonna worry about the Chinese so our East Asia and in the Gulf and not in Africa and it would be the height of foolishness to get deeply involved competing with the Chinese in Africa but the question can I come in on it yes please do it seems to me sir your question is a really really good one because it's it's if you like it's the litmus question test - this is your realism versus restraint if if like John Mearsheimer you have that hard-nosed realism that Africa does not is not anywhere close to the significance of the maintenance of our position in Europe the maintenance of our position in Japan East Asia then you would have to agree that it why not just you know stay back you know for a long time as Bismarck did and say let let the other powers do what they will in Africa I probably find it is to their disadvantage exactly they're gonna get in trouble right when the Soviets went in Afghanistan in 1979 virtually everybody in the national security community was a guest they thought this was the end of the world my view was this is the best thing that could happen in the United States you want to go and Afghanistan be my guest you want to go into Vietnam be my guest stay out of those places it ends up with no good thermals with the national interest magazine my question is for dr. Mearsheimer it was an apology it was kind of a throwaway line at the end of your prepared remarks but do you think is actually in play that China will be not that powerful in 2050 and that the United States is going to be more powerful than it is today I haven't heard that said by anyone full stature yeah I've probably given my talk 150 times that China cannot rise peacefully probably about 50 times in China itself and one of the three arguments that's used against me the most often used argument is the economic interdependence argument there would be no problem because of economic interdependence the second most important argument is that China's not going to rise and the problem is moot and you'd be amazed at how often you hear Chinese people talk about demographic problems institutional problems legitimacy problems and so forth and so on my view is I don't know what the answer is to your question but I think the best piece you could read is an article in international security by someone named Michael Beckley and he has a forthcoming book coming out from Cornell University Press that makes the argument that all these people who talk about China's rise and the idea that China's burying the United States are simply wrong and China has all sorts of problems and when you look really carefully at the indicators we're in quite good shape over the long term again I don't have an opinion on that I've never studied it carefully but you ought to look at the Beckley piece because he has a sophisticated rebuttal to the conventional wisdom thank you hello my name is Jake Brooke I'm also a I'm a senior here at GW and Apple my question is also for you doctor of muri muri so with regards to the us-china rivalry and with the recent closure of the 19th Party Congress what particular role do you view for ideology in the us-china rivalry or what dimension deeply that will play in coming years well as you know during the Cold War ideology really mattered because it was communism versus liberal democracy and capitalism I think geopolitics was the bedrock but nevertheless ideology mattered a lot I don't think communism versus the West is going to matter for much in the us-china relationship so I think that ideological dimension is pretty much off the table where ideology matters is inside China itself and that is the Communist Party there has a legitimacy problem and the way they've been dealing with that legitimacy problem is by playing the nationalism card in which the center of their nationalism story is the century of national humiliation and the century of national humiliation is all about what happened to China roughly between 1850 and 1950 and the two bad guys in the story of the Japanese and the Americans will humiliated the Chinese at every turn so we have a real possibility here that if the United States and China get into an intense security competition that that nationalism turns into hyper nationalism and puts all sorts of pressures on Chinese leaders in a crisis to do something rash against the United States so I think nationalism is the key variable not communism all right thanks sir okay we are almost at time but we have two more questions and we will take them please just keep the questions brief and then we'll get responses my name is John Whitehead I'm with the consistent Life Network and GW alum a professor - talked about the relationship between Jacksonian ISM and realism the question about the other side of things why is the overlap between realism and the political left or the more traditionally piece for lack better term oriented constituency thank you yeah that's a group should we take the questions or go ahead and respond and we'll take the last question at the end yeah I think in some respects the the left and realism can also be kissing cousins in terms of concrete political issues for example the Iraq war the realists and people associated with the left we're on the same sides of the barricade but I think again there are real limits to that because it was very different rationales that brought these two camps to those positions and sometimes those rationales in other cases lead to very different outcomes and sometimes the the rationales themselves are so odious to each other that it makes them very uncomfortable fellow travelers thank you hi good morning everyone I'm from China I'm a visiting scholar you know Americans this year I'm very happy to here to meet professor miss remar and professor Paul Kennedy yeah in China your books very popular not happy being translated into Chinese yeah sometimes we use in our class for our students to read yeah we're for international students yeah so here I have two questions the first for Professor miss remar yeah you just know you say if China continued to rise the word we're return to to to politics as a great great power Palio politics yes so do you think now China and the US we are going to fall into suceeded trap mm-hmm first question for professor Muir screamer second for Paul Kennedy professor professor Paul Kennedy yeah well in my university I ever teach American foreign policy oh we use the textbook Oh American for America is a great power in the world our superior in 21st in 20th century its American Century and in the 21st century oh it's a market century all China century what's your opinion first I have a couple of remarks thank you for that wonderful leader may I say that if you look at Pam as my students have told me my Chinese students have told me that the Chinese translation of the rise and fall of a great powers has in a translators note it says various parts of the text have been a little bit corrected because it seemed to us the revered professor Kennedy did not fully understand the principles of Leninism Marx which suggests actually professor Kennedy knew too well of lenders and Marxism were so you just put your cook your finger on the big debate to China versus us or China's number one versus us is number one may I just offer what thought to the audience as we as we as we close now you know it could well be John Mearsheimer that China stumbles and it could well be that the United States stumbles there is nothing inherently wrong with that we could actually be going into a world of great power politics in which maybe was the exception of India think of that Russia stumbles China stumbles the United States stumbles God knows everybody else stumbles it's possible we could go into an inlet this what I'm saying is it just Christ about who will be number one or who century is it it could be very much the wrong question the question could be well there's a kind of coherent world order and great power relationship or a set of frazzled relationships between a set of frazzled great powers I agree that the United States could stumble and China could stumble and I tried to make that clear my point is if China continues to rise what will the us-china relationship look like and I don't think of it in terms of whether it's America's century or China's century or whose number one or whose number two my question is what will China try to do if it continues to rise with all the attendant military power that comes from that and my argument is that states try to dominate their region of the world much the way the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere I think it's no surprise at all that China believes that the East China Sea is a Chinese lake that they basically own it I think they basically want to do the same thing in the East China Sea and they want to take those islands back from the Japanese this is just the way great powers behave the Chinese are going to build the blue water Navy they're in the process of doing that and they're going to project their power into the Persian Gulf they're already playing kissy-face with the Iranians they're playing kissy-face with the Turks you could expect more of that as time goes by Welkin times when I go to China I posed this question to people I say listen starting in the early 1980s you began to integrate yourself into this liberal international order that the United States created and as a consequence you've done incredibly well you've gotten really rich there no there's no military threat from the United States why don't you just accept the fact that we run the world and sit back and relax and let us pay all the military costs of keeping the order in store right and just continue to get rich and rich and rich and there'll be no security competition and everybody will live happily ever after I have never met a single Chinese who accepts that proposition and what they want to do is they want to have their own blue water Navy they want to control their own sea lanes they'll tell you time after time that the international institutions that now dominate in the world were largely created by the United States who wrote the rules and what they'd like to do is now begin to throw their weight around in terms of rewriting the rules to increase their influence I don't blame them one bit this is the way the world works if I were in Beijing I would want to dominate East Asia and by the way I'd want to have my own Monroe Doctrine and I'd want to push the Americans out beyond the first island chain then I'd want to push him out beyond the second island chain as a good American I don't want the Soviet Union in the Cold War Nazi Germany Imperial Germany Imperial Japan interfering in the Western Hemisphere from an American point of view this is our backyard and no distant great power is allowed it well my mother taught me when I was a little boy what's good for the goose is good for the gander so if we can have Monroe Doctrine don't you think they don't want to have them on my doctrine don't you think they're gonna want to nominate it don't you think they're gonna want to project power into the Persian Gulf just the way we do they get 25% of their oil from the Gulf today and if you look at projections into the future they're gonna get more of their oil from the Gulf so of course they're gonna want to wield influence there this has nothing to do with communism or Marxism or anything like that this is basic realpolitik and in international politics because you live in an Antarctic system where there's no higher authority that could come to your rescue when you're in trouble if you want to be really powerful you want to dominate your region of the world and you want to do as much as you can to control the resources coming out of places like the Gulf so John let me ask you though why a world like that between the United States and the Soviet Union would be incompatible with restraint I mean it sounds like the his United States in the Soviet Union no United States in China it sounds like the world of the United States and the Soviet Union which you know led the United States in the Soviet Union to be fairly restrained I mean Vietnam was the exception rather than the rule well restraint is different than restraint right the United States did not pursue a policy of restraint during the Cold War in large part because it was bent on containing the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union because of geography was an East Asian power European power and it was adjacent to the Persian Gulf so we contained them in all three areas and that's not a policy restraint we know he debated the alternative rollback and know included we weren't gonna do it know it was I don't think we had a policy of restraint during the Cold War and what I'm saying is that I fear that if China continues to rise we will not have a policy of restraint visa via the Chinese and as I just said I think that will have global dimensions to include the Persian Gulf we are just about at time but crisp rebel hasn't had a chance to speak on them no no IIIi I could watch Mike and John do this all day long very good I know I will they will leave it there well I'd like to thank our panel and please stand by for some closing remarks from Robert Mary thank you hey thank you gentlemen that was a most most enlightening and thank you all of you for coming we're very very pleased I have to say that based on these presentations today I feel better I don't quite know why so I think that I think that argues for another one of these events in a year so see you then thank you for coming and have a good day [Applause]

Channel: The American Conservative

Views: 59,731

Rating: 4.7305388 out of 5

Keywords: politics, foreign policy, international affairs, realism

Id: TLxkHSX6cZI

Length: 60min 10sec (3610 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 09 2017