Several books including think tanks and power in Foreign Policy and foundations of the American Century and in oxford we cross to could see he is a senior policy consultant and British American Security Information Council retired u. S. Diplomat and an expert on strategic intelligence and conflict resolution all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in fact that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate let me go to london and we were talking before this recording about the novelty of this Quincy Institute coming into being the media has commented on i was obviously because of the who is going to be funding it someone very much to the left and somebody very much to the right before we talk about the principles involved in it what do you think of the idea itself i mean it is coming out against the endless war wars that do not need to be started in the 1st place i mean there is a need for it and im all for it i raise my hand in agreement well talk about whats problematic about it go ahead. In london. Yeah i think where when i read about in the last couple of days i it was a Surprising Development but when one kind of sits on the thinks about it a bit more its quite clear that since the end of the cold war and particularly since 911. 00 there have been tendencies both on both right and left and probably longer as well if you look at the Cato Institute and right through the year after the iraq war into libya theres been a kind of growth of a kind of right wing anti military intervention feeling among military families and so on in the tea party including that is also against military spending so and as well as on the left so i think its interesting that weve got this kind of union occurring at this particular time so its a very Interesting Development and we need to wait a little bit longer to see exactly what the the principles are and how theyre going to be put into practice but to say that youre against endless walls which has been a big complaint of most americans really for the last 25 years or so i think in that is a very progressive principle but we need to see the practice or little let me let me go to ted it could be a very conservative principle as well theres a lot of conservatives like me that are against these foreign interventions and ive been making a living are on this for 10 years on this program fighting against the senseless wars ted what is your reaction to the Quincy Institute because i mean it on the face of it yeah this is a good idea but im just a little worried about the fund the funding of it go ahead ted in oxford. Im not particularly worried about the sources of funding i find it interesting that 2 such disparate sources have both decided this is a good idea but that doesnt stop me from thinking that its a good idea too and looking at the contributors i see in andrew bass of each and there whos very much along my lines of sort of conservative libertarian on a lot of International Issues i see parsi from georgetown with whom i agree on almost nothing but the. All idea i would think is to have people of various points of view coming together to discuss these issues and get people outside of their echo chambers thats wonderful don ok im going to start throwing some cold war out what water on it here ok you have george soros and his relationship with the Atlantic Council a very you know that is the mouthpiece of nato its staunchly anti russian and if you look at the Koch Brothers they have been supporting this illegal who and venezuela i could go on and on ok so im im just happy im im left but willed and by all of this because are they going to separate themselves from their business interests and and this is going to be an intellectual process i find that hard to believe go had done well the question is is this is 13 chick change or a tactical one and id argue clearly its the latter their interests as you mentioned havent really changed the Playing Field has changed the rules of the game have changed weve seen expressions of this certainly of the 2016 election when you saw trump who wasnt even a republican really rise on to the top of 16 candidates in the Republican Party essentially because people said as they told me at the r n c he said hes going to get me a job thats how desperate people were these saw sanders rise in the Democratic Party the same way and you saw up and over the same issues a sensually and use of people who streets every time something happened when a kid got killed or some other event happened people had one foot out the door were already the institutions in the west have not been responsive to the needs of working people for at least one generation now 30 years 40 years youve seen a steady erosion of peoples purchasing power and wealth their equity so that now people who used to own their homes or have. Your rental place to live our home and secure their food and secure they have a massive debt for education they have health care is security and there is no solution in sight the thing that really got me. When people said to me well trumps it is going to get me a job and i said look hes a politician what does that mean they said no one else is even saying that yeah good point i mean let me go back to london interview i mean you know if we look at in the past few weeks here and i dont want to micromanage management too much but it seems quite obvious that donald trump is looking for advice outside of his inner circle because i would argue and argue strenuously that hes getting very bad advice from his inner circle and he should do in a lot of she do a lot of firing i would say and i think everyone knows who im talking about with the Quincy Institute did that could be a new source for trump to you know you guys kind of talk about both sides here i think they see themselves as an issue and i think they would find themselves they could get closer to power and thats exactly what think tanks want to do they want to get their ideas in front of people who have power and i think this is a very good gambit as long as its a good idea that theyre pushing go ahead in london. I think youre right i think when we look at some of the scholars and what theyve been saying about american Foreign Policy and its overstretch overreach in the last 2025 years they come from both the right and from the liberal kind of. Part of the spectrum so steve alter Harvard Johnny smith a tough for example a very representative and what each of them is saying is that they basically fundamentally agree that america has been trying to do good in the world but they are the argue that theres been a lot of hubris involved too and overstretch and theyre both urging restraint and one of the key things that steve walt says it in book the hell of good intentions for example is that there is no if you like set of the cagers or trained people from a kind of more realist perspective that the administration he had been in washington can really choose from and in his book or towards get deeper virtually put forward a manifesto which would suggest how that cadence set of cages might be might be generated and and we know that in that book hell of good intentions steve alter actually acknowledges the support the Financial Support of the Koch Foundation in any case so i think that is exactly what is happening here and i think that will kind of possibly bolster some sorts of advice of President Trump may get to back up some of his his own instincts ted you know bill kristol came out. With a very solid criticism a very pretty big one as usual coming from bill kristol it kikuyus is the idea of the Quincy Institute of is a promoting isolationism if so i mean i find that just absolutely absurd rethinking a failed Foreign Policy is not isolationism its always the 1930s for bill kristol go ahead in oxford in oxford. Here its a case of same stuff different day from crystal im sorry to say. Hey look this is a necessary point of view being put forward it has been put forward individually by a number of people and when you find people as disparate as rand paul and Bernie Sanders agreeing on American Military Foreign Policy needed to take a backseat to american diplomatic Foreign Policy and i say that as a diplomat of 26 Years Experience with the u. S. Foreign service then i think something good is blossoming here now if were still worried about the Koch Brothers and show us you know half a 1000000 each thats thats a rounding error on their petty cash account sure hey theyre not deeply invested here but theres certainly making a point of investing and i think theres a difference ok don you seem to be more of the skeptic on the program react to that. Well 1st you know the objective conditions are such that imperial retreat is you know on the agenda of the ceci and trump represents that certainly the policy that he espoused as and that he muttered out loud to out all the heresies that he spoke that provoke such a massive response from from the elites here had to do with imperial retreat and does nato obsolete cant japan defend itself that we have to have military bases all over the world do we need to have of war games around korea all the time theyre so expensive you know that hes looking at it or any of that whoever is making policy around are looking at the overhead of you know of empire and seeing it as a drag on an economy that is out trying to compete with china that has no such drag. So you have that objective condition now you have people like soros and the Koch Brothers and others who resist very strongly trump articulating this you know soros wrote almost the same things back in 2003 in december he wrote a piece in 2003 called the bubble of American Power or exceptionalism or or some such thing but you know what criticize the war in iraq and similar war yeah but don but at the same time to. Have solid evidence that he was funding n. G. O. S in ukraine and georgia i mean and that is and thats probably for the ring and agenda and its a its a nato agenda ok so i mean i could i could really care less about his op ed i care about how he spends his money and thats perhaps brought up the money because i happen 1000000 is not a lot to him but it can be a lot for people in ukraine and georgia going to 10 right seconds go ahead go ahead up bed and so thats what thats exactly my point right now were talking about another op ed lets see what kind of policy comes out. You know where he stands ok gentlemen im going to jump in here were going to go to a short break and after that short break well continue our discussion on strange bedfellows say with our city. As we speak large organize care of in our on the march to the United States. And then 70 and a player coming african. Muslims remain slaughtering that. This is a virtual invasion of our country for so far. Because theres anything anything. That i met then i thought that i meant a day out i. Know for nothing up on the farm i thought. You know its going to stuff it in. A knife our food. Is you know do is you know were going to see a more locals who noticed this is an issue for a player for 2 oceans that. We have to be experts haitian that when we lifted people out of poverty when we became richer then wed become. And i think families what a lot of people ah structuring was now the expected that once they reached a certain level of income then they would be happy. And yet we create new size we create new things we want and i think sometimes we run out of explanations for why we feel unhappy. Welcome back to crossfire where are all Things Considered im Peter Lavelle remind you were discussing strange bedfellows. Ok lets go back to london one of the problems here is i think we have all described. The Current Situation with think tanks and how they enter influence policy but thats for a good reason because the military Industrial Complex really likes it here i mean don was absolutely right about the condition of the American Public ok over the last 40 years or so i dont theres no i have no disagreement with it whatsoever on the flip side here there are some people a small group of people that are become fabulously rich off of this gambit and the status quo is just jim dandy with them thats why when trump says hes going to pull out of syria washington went into a meltdown i mean absurdly so it that was patently obvious that theres a lot of money at stake here and they dont want that to go away because they need a threat they need a threat to stay in business i dont think they necessarily want to go to war but they want to have a threat they have to have multiple threats here how can a think tank like the Quincy Institute fight against that because that is really the beast you have to slay and youre and its a david and goliath situation you can have these and wonderful man steps manifestos and good people like ourselves in our audience will read it but will it have any impact go ahead. Well i think the 1st thing i would say to that peter is that i dont think we should dichotomize the new think tank from the military Industrial Complex i suspect that this is a readjustment or recalibration of elements of that and the fact is that theres a selfperpetuating character to the to kind of the existing think Tank Community and its relations with big corporations and so on ad. That has actually led america down a kind of a dead end when you look at around the world the United States yet despite having spent so much money on so many wars hes actually has lost positions whereas other countries which have not wage wars on anything like that kind of scale of actually improving their position so i think what is going on here is really a kind of selfcriticism from groups which are slightly outside of the mainstream establishment which are arguing that actually america stands to lose even more position unless theres a recalibration so the likes of steve alten others whose work i know well who are arguing for a new position is not that the u. S. Retreats away from the world but what basically argues is that basically you park your aircraft carriers in 3 spaces which are all at sea which is the east asia regarding china that is a threat in the persian gulf in regard to iran and other countries and in North Western europe in regard to russia so its not like that there arent people in this new can go conglomeration who are not arguing about the existing these threats theyre just saying that there are different ways in which we can conceive of stretch threats and deal with them and thereby maintain American Global power through a policy of a bit more restraint than liberal hedge money has been has been doing over the past 25 to 30 years so i dont think its a kind of fundamental challenge i think its a recalibration but politically they will have a lot of problems because theres an entrenched elite which has got great levels of power and that is what this this is a titanic battle i think beginning within 10 you were nodding your head in agreement were you agreeing with go ahead. Pretty much all of the above but im thinking that whats called for here is not a realignment its not a retrenchment its actually a massive paradigm shift because its going to take that to get people out of that old way of thinking and frankly a think tank which is dedicated to demilitarizing and bringing diplomacy up is pretty much an ideal bench to start doing experiments in paradigm shifting now what im thinking is we have to get away from what i call the para bellum paradigm which is this idea thats been with us for at least a century and a half that its necessary to continually prepare for war to achieve peace and the classic quote there is probably j. F. K. Saying we dare not tempt them with weakness but what no one ever seems to focus on is the other side of that same coin which is we dare not terrify them into attacking us preemptively and god knows thats happened before this is been a bad idea ever since the crimean war and its still a bad idea that saber rattling is somehow going to improve diplomacy and what we need instead is a new way of looking at things and i actually think that as a Businessman Donald Trump is ideally suited to be sort of benevolently in the background running things while these new ideas are coming forward because hed much rather be trading with moscow than pointing this is at them its a very good point don i mean some people have argued this Quincy Institute its a trojan horse i mean it will say one thing but really what it wants is to be able to walk the corridors of power what do you say to that. Well you have to consider both the intent of the parties and then the actual role that its going to play in events that are still unfolding regardless of the intent of the parties. You know again its a reaction to the reality of rising multiple arity of you know this system sort of collapsing under the weight of its own history with military budgets with you know placement of troops and materiel and 800. 00 bases around the world the expense of maintaining empire you know its big big made empire almost not profitable and so what theyre trying to do in my opinion at least some small part of some part of the elite is looking to either. Not just 3 evaluate the tactical mode of attaining global hegemony but the question of whether or not the gemini should be the goal and rather if there can be a more collegial way of managing the affairs of the planet and so you know i see the United States for example going to sit at the table with a dozen other players you know that are Major Players you have a don that would be him that would be the paradigm shift that ted is talking about and looking at it looking at your interlocutor as some kind of equal appear that its a dip every difficult thing for american Foreign Policy i mean republican or democratic that that is the paradigm shift i think that needs to be overcome and accepted because you know essentially you have people like bolton in palm peo is that with their idea of negotiating is you surrender and then we talk thats what needs to change here go ahead and so what is their intent basically is that the intent of soros and koch you know every else is involved in this to use this to facilitate their way through this moment to attain to gemini in other words is it just the faint to. You know knowledge of the existing situation and its change it or is this you know basically what like ive heard others say here and its you know there was a lab but lets see if we cant come up with some things that will help us accommodate ourselves to a new paradigm and you know its go back to an intra day one of the things thats very interesting that i think that the people that are so in weve mentioned some of the People Associated with this Quincy Institute is that they have their pulse their finger on the pulse of Public Opinion Public Opinion repeatedly is there is they can exhaustion when it comes to these foreign adventures that never and are never successful are terribly expensive and there is a reminder what is that ive heard conflicting numbers. Numerous that trains every single day commit suicide every single day and that is a legacy that is left at home for an tear so it seems to me and i want to be hopeful here an optimistic but these people that are involved slightly the left slightly to the right they understand that the American People have had enough of this and they dont need the boltons in the pompei or people like that whispering in the presidency or going for another conflict that nobody in the heartland really wants and they certainly doesnt create jobs for them in a meaningful sense go ahead in london. I think a broadly i would agree but i would just. Note bit of caution on President Trump now President Trump has been the president who has called for a withdrawal of troops from syria as well as afghanistan did halt the attack on iran he claims with 10 minutes within 10 minutes of it being launched but on the other hand President Trump has boosted the military spending backed by the democrats very heavily yet he has also broadened the range of tools American Power uses in order to try to bring other powers to heel whether they are allies or associated or they are seen as strategic rivals so i dont think this this grouping necessarily thinks very differently fundamentally from that that is to say well that there is a growing sort of shift in World Distribution of power there are new rising powers and so on but at the same time i think the idea is that military intervention hasnt really worked and what you really need is a large amount of power a variety of powers which include diplomatic but also commercial financial dollar another in order to effectively try to subordinate the other powers in a system which looks a little bit more multipolar but actually will remain the kind of us remains a 1st among socalled equals so i would think that President Trump is actually actively trying to do that in his own incoherent way and that is what i think many people who are critics of him from the right suggest that he is that hes unable to see anything through to the end because hes got a number of other personal and other kinds of issues going on as well so i would suggest that this grouping is not going to lead to any kind of idea of endless war but i think theyre going to be much more selective about military engagement why should her leave me i believe theyre going to be spending a lot of money on a man. Committed to going full its not going to be easy to reverse this or as ted said the paradigm shift here cant jump in and finish it finish out the program for us go ahead. Well i tend to be more optimistic including about President Trump whos entirely coherent if you look at him from a business business perspective hes not terribly good about this World Domination through military saying if hes exceeded to requests from his own government then frankly hes still still around it by quite a bit of the deep state and he hasnt managed to purge all of that from his own department of energy from his own department of defense from his own Intelligence Community and hes going to be some time finishing that particular job as the you know the still the rumors floating around that d. O. J. And f. B. I. Are still after him for some unknown reason at this point so that paradigm shift can take place with the right intentions with a bit of backing and thats why im glad theres some finance behind this but we have to back away from the idea that its just going to be an endless you know red tooth and claw ascendancy as the next generation of you know overlords comes along i dont think thats going to be the paradigm that any of us will be dealing with 50 years from now i they were going to be trading with each other i think were going to lift african farmers out of poverty by stopping agricultural subsidies in europe and other places i think were actually going to start acting like this is the 21st century and that we dont need nato and other relics of dead empire to spend all of our mine im so glad were well well end on those beautiful words that you just thank you gentlemen rube run out of time many thanks to my guests in new york london and in oxford and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r. T. C. You next time remember hospitals. My son miss doing drugs my nephews was still in drugs my sister just with doing drugs it was like an epidemic of drug abuse americas public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse he started going after the users in a prison population sewer we started treating sick people people who are addicted to these drugs like criminals while i was on the hill. Vents that the war on drugs was a mistake there are countless numbers of people who are in prison for. Certain sins for boren or minor offenders in the drug trade its a lot watching your children grow up in issue in waves and say by day as youre walking out of a business its just it doesnt get easy. Magic mushrooms seized out of context used in the wrong way carry carry potential arms like any any psychoactive substance. But used in the right way they seem to have quite a. Profound therapy to potential and quite a good safety profile this while. During the Great Depression which im old enough to remember there was most of my family were Unemployed People and there wasnt it was bed much worse objective listen today but there was an expectation that things were going to get better. There was a real sense of hopefulness there isnt today todays america where shade by the turn principles of concentration of wealth and power. Reduced democracy attack solidarity engineer elections manufacture consent and other principle holds according to no on. One set of rules for the rich offset or. Thats what happens when you put her into the. Truth will switch who is dedicated to increasing power for chills just as youd expect one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of america. A trove of classified documents is found in a rubbish bin in london and a deeply embarrassing blow to the u. K. s top secret chemical lab the senates new polls and down the mystic ation hospital. Ill go e. U. 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