Along with newly created countries and borders. They look at the consequences of the changes and how they continue to impact the region. The world war i museum organized this. It is in kansas city missouri. Kansas city, missouri. Good afternoon, i want to thank you all from coming back from a coffee break. I think you will it very warning. I want to think all the panelists for joining us this afternoon. Introduce david and he will introduce the other two panelists. David and i were in college together 20 years ago or something. More like 15. That it afraid to say would consider him to be the preeminent Foreign Affairs columnist in the country. He is a columnist for the Washington Post and the cohost of post global, which is an online discussion. Commend to you, if you really want to get an understanding of the middle east, read davids novels. They are outstanding to get a real understanding of the very subtle and byzantine trends going on in the middle east. David will go ahead and introduce the other panelists. Thank you all for coming back after your coffee break. We are glad to see you. This is kind of the conspiracy of old friends. Todd and i go back to college or test college, back to college. Evan and i also go back to college. We begin as journalists together at the hartford crimson in addition to being outstanding journalists with time and newsweek. Time. Newsweek is now prominent, his amazingent book is an effort to get inside that extraordinary difficult personality. Evan is going to discuss an historian of the cold war thinking about the issues that underlie today. The reading list would begin with the book that evan m Walter Isaacs wrote. Evan and Walter Isaacs wrote. It discusses president eisenhower. More of those discussions of our issues for our interactions. Emma and i have known each other since 2003. We met in the most unlikely place. It was iraq. Emma was the representative of the u. S. Led Coalition Provisional administration. Whatever it was called. Clarity asget emmas we arrived, i was traveling with senior moroccan officials and explaining just how complicated ethnicsy cook was in divisions. People have said that emma is the modern bell. Thinking of the great middle east expert. I think it is apt. Emma has written a really and book about iraq called the unraveling. The subtitle i think it is high hopes and missed opportunities. She is both fair to what the idea was, the ambitious was ambition was, and absolutely merciless in talking about the failures. I commend that book. A word of introduction about our subject. This has been a day in which we have had a beautiful commemoration of how america got into world war i. It wasagnificent magnificent and rousing and that many moments patriotic. I still have the music from the woman who saying if he can fight like he can love, good night germany. Museum, whichful is our host for the event. It is a nicely cheer rated museum that i have not seen in a long time. Thanks to the people who did that. For me and i, i think for all of us, thinking about world war i is also hunting. Aunting. Haunting in the question of how it started. To ambitions of how it led the beginning of the war in 1914. The subject of our panel, which is the inability to build a stable new order. Oftable peace after the end world war i, after all of that suffering. You can walk into any church, in any village and go into any town square and you see the list of names go on forever. War just how that war wound across europe. Two decades later europe was at war again. Should inc. About this quest for a stable order. Think aboutshould this quest for a stable order. By this described historian as a piece to end all alle peace to endall peace. It was almost inevitable. Seens a week where we have a nightmare of the syrian war. It takes us back to images of world war i and world war ii. A country where half of the population is displaced. Chemical weapons featured in world war i were being used. We look at what is happening in think, how is the war in iraq, the war against isis going to create some kind of stability. We think about the meeting that is taking place today, in which the new rising power, the country that seeks to order the jinping isident xi meeting with our very inexperienced and ambitious President Trump. Obviously form the context in which we will talk with a Reference Point to the end of world war i about this issue. How you create a stable order, a stable structure in which nations and ethnic groups can live. We will ask emma to start off. Talked before our discussion a little bit about tainagreement between bri and france to carve up the ottoman world, anticipating its collapse after the end of the war. Its become a truism to say that sykespicotel world is over. Maybe that is a good starting point for you to start as we look at the cluster of issues. Emma it is hugely complex and it is always difficult to know where to start. We look at the problems today and think to date back a century, all of the new problems that have materialized. Was going on, war they made a series of contradictory promises. Richard wanted the support of the arabs to fight against the ottomans. You had this correspondence going on between them, whereby in said the arabs rise up and fight against the ottomans and the turks down in the middle east. Ritain were turn will give them an arab kingdom afterwards. Then the brits, without the declaration, committed to a jewish homeland in the holy land. Part of this was to get jewish support and it was also a buffer. Then there was the sykespicot whereby britain and france agreed to split the region. At least with the massive nations that were going on. All of this was happening before the versailles treaty. When versailles happen, britain and france were there, colonial powers were there. Delegations were not. They were at a disadvantage because there was no agreement about what sort of future they wanted. Some delegations wanted their own nationstates. Like the ones from egypt for instance. Egypt is a nationstate. To a were others who want broader world broader arab world. She aing that they should n arab world, arab country land as promised by the brits. They had different objectives. The colonial powers had their own interests. The colonial powers basically said, these countries are not yet ready for independence. Ain andtutoring and brit france will have mandates to tutoring through the process. The term sykespicot, is used to in body colonial deception. Cliche a cleese a of such. Border today, the between the countries, that is not that line. The borders were set later on. Again, people like to save these borders were thrown out by colonial powers. These borders for the most part were based on ottoman and minister lines. They did not come out of nowhere. Those borders have proved remarkably resilient. There has never been a movement to unite syria and iraq. There has been a movement to get lebanon and syria back together because they thought the same. On the whole, the borders have proved resilient right up until the emergence of isis. We saw that a couple of years ago, isis announce that it had erased the border between iraq and syria. We will come back to these issues, especially to the stability of the borders and the future of the nationalities. Somet to ask evan to offer starting comments. As i said, your book, the Wise Foundation of people who look at how the postworld war ii era was created. What wasld talk about right in one and not so right in the other. Evan it is wonderful to be here, what a fantastic is em. After world war ii, most americans just wanted to go home. Harriman, who was a diplomatic a said most americans want to go to the movies and drink coke. A small group realize that was really not possible. Britain, the pox brittanica was falling in the United States could not go home again. In 1947,n a crisis basically inherited the prudish mantle. In a small group, we called them the wise man wiseman. Hey were businessmen it encourage the United States to become involved in the world in the war. Shrugging achievements in retrospect. The United States basically helped rebuild europe. Generous,dinary, actually self interested act to rebuild europe with american dollars to create a strong, democratic europe and to create a system of alliances. Try totern alliance, to contain the spread of soviet communism. This formula of economic strength, of economic free trade, open borders, treating with each other, global trade and military alliances and military dependency to check our enemies. Men stem, which these and their names are pretty its pretty obscure than an today. Not so obscure. Not exactly household names. Maybe edgerton was because he was secretary of state. Helped president truman and secretary of state marshall to take this role. This role has been pretty hardy. This system of alliances, this world order of free trade and the spread of democracy has worked pretty wall pretty well since 1945 to keep the larger piece. Yes, there has been big mistakes. Vietnam, a terrible, tragic estate. Lots tragic mistake. Lots of falling outs. Thes dropped out of nato in 1960s. Persisted forer the past halfcentury and more. That order is now at risk. We have a president of the United States who has pretty openly said that it is too expensive, i do not like free trade, we are being duped by allies. Ets and of his twe statements he sounds like an isolationist. The order that these men in these days created is now in question. Emma, one of the things that wilsonianeacemaking division about the world that should come after focused on was the idea of selfdetermination for the peoples who have suffered to the war. Arguably the great unredeemed of promise of that period. Always reminded of that time when i visit my friends in kurdistan. They have been principal victims during the 20th century in promises that were made and not kept. They would say if they heard mines that were drawn, these borders that were remarkably durable, they have suppressed our kurdish nationality. Lead to oppression regime after regime, it is time for that to end. Im sure you have read the articles by various members of the family you had to negotiate with for all those years. What do you think taking the issue of kurdish ambitions, both in 1918, but really more right as kind of a test case, what do you think about that . Should be kurds have their own selfdetermined homeland . Is that too dangerous for the region . What is your answer. Emma the region has always been multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual. It has never been anything other than that. Kurds believe that they were promised a homeland and that has never been implemented. So, they feel a grievance. But almost for 100 years, the ds have been the deviled have been bedeviled by not having agreements on where their border should be or who their leader should be be. The kurds that you were talking about are the kurds of northern iraq. Iraq, as of northern nationalist movement, you could say is in opposition of turkish nationalism. That the curtis the Kurdish Nationalist Movement has grown particularly after the imposition of a nofly zone in 1991. Kuwait, the invaded was a nofly zone to protect that area and in that area, the ards developed basically taunus, they developed the institutions of state. They have their own security forces, the peshmerga. They almost pursue their own Foreign Policy. They have their own flag. They have all the symbols, if you like, of independence. But they also have their own problems. When they got that safe haven committed to them, within two or three years, they were having an internal civil war, kurdish civil war they have power struggles in their region. Taliban split into two, and we have the pkk also playing out in that area. You have a lot of internal kurdish competition. Yeah, but they would say problemsthe internal of Iraqi Kurdistan, they want their own country. This conglomeration that is sunni,t that confuses shia, and kurdish places together has outlived its viability and we should just accept it is over. What is good policy. What is the right thing for people to think in terms of policy terms . Its difficult because where would be border be between the kurds and the rest of iraq. They had annexed could cook her k and otherku territories that are disputed. You have a border issue. Direct is not want to seek Iraqi Kurdistan, because then its own its land. Want the kurds in turkey have been calling for equal rights in a democratic turkey, not for independence, and then you have the kurds in south syria. So, the danger is not the danger, the challenge is if Iraqi Kurdistan gets manage . Ence, how do you so we start to see the breakdown of the states. Take that basically as a caution, be careful of a if there declaration structure is in the interest of the countries in the region and also, probably the u. S. I want to come back to your about the stability, farsightedness of the post9 11 order, and ask you, by extension, what was missing in 1918 and after . Was the problem that america came home after that war ended not staying gauged . Was the problem that wilson was not tough enough to force the kinds of changes that he wanted. Because of changes that he wanted . What was missing . Looking through the eyes of people in the postworld war ii world, they were looking at what went wrong in 1918, what went wrong at per side. I think what they saw informs everything about our Foreign Policy. They look back at wilson as toog too idealistic, dreamy. We allonta do the right thing and make the world safe for democracy . On the other hand, they are not idealistic enough. In American Foreign policy, i think, since 1945 at least, has been an attempt at balancing idealism and realism. And i think they were informed an excess of idealism in 1918 and an exit e of realism, and combine in excess of realism, and combine that with america coming home bad combinations. Then you have the dreaminess, too much cynicism. We give up, lets go home. That does not work. Instead, lets balance this. Lets be idealistic. And individualom freedom that is good for the war good for the world. But also its not just the american boat, but all boats will rise if we have this world order for the future. That is idealistic, but it is also practical. They are also realistic about what works and what does not. Teen actress in who was the great creator of this was always looking making fun up he did not believe in the u. N. At all. He did not really believe in collective security. He did not think it was an human nature. He did not think the human beings running these countries were capable of maintaining that idealism. Still, he was willing to be somewhat realistic. Think of Henry Kissinger and the balance of power politics and come heating competing interests balance against each other. They tried to have this group im talking about have a balance and idealism. And it worked pretty well not perfectly but pretty well for a long time. One of the elements i would add where itbecause opper washave come a cr when we were not balanced. When we thought we knew best because from a realist point of view, we could, like kissinger, or some kindwar, of dreamy aspect of we will geoeye and there and they they will accept americans because we are great and of course, they will want to be like us because we are great. American hubris, either in the realism camp or the idealism camp. When we were more humble, things went better for us. I think for people in our division ofthis fusion of idealism and realism plan,ed in the marshall the truman doctrine, the idea of a strong, benign america creating a liberal International Order that was the air that we breathe. It is just kind of hardwired for our generation. For people not throughout our country who are now very skeptical about it. The questionshave that a lot of people have that were reflected in our last election, to ask you to take a more skeptical look at this. You lived through the attempt to rock coming on the heels of a regime that, literally, i felt was governed by torture. That Saddam Hussein in iraq was by raw physical intimidation. It is hard for people to remember just how horrible it was. Watched as that experiment unraveled. The title of your book is the unraveling. Maybe you can give us a few snapshots that maybe check or vision ofs marvelous intervention, post1945 idea how that came undone as after. Ch in 2003 and go to iraq outt of idealism. Fear. T out of anger and we went based on faulty intelligence. Put that in mind. This was not a humanitarian intervention. That is not how it started. In 2003 there was no agreement on what should be done after saddam has been got rid off. Could it handed over to the United Nations . Could it hand over to the iraqis . Taken verydecisions early on in the occupation were devastating. Basically, the decisions to tosolve the civil service, dismiss all of the people in the security institutions led to the collapse of the states and any country in the world that survives those policies being implemented, furthermore, the nature of the hes settlement we put in place was not inclusive and i think that is one of the big learnings from versailles, of a peace agreement, the humiliation, what that leads to. There was a peace settlement we put in place in 2003 which was in the form of a governing council we established. Really privileged those who had been in exile. And those who had been in exile and those who had been islamists had been on the wrong side and the iran iraq war. And those who remained on the sunni mainstream really felt excluded and with the collapse of the states, these new people put in charge of very quickly created chaos, led to gangs and the dissent into iraqs civil war. The borders were open. G hatties came through. You can look from 2007 through 2000 nine, which is an extraordinary time. In 2006, iraq looked absolutely on the precipice. There were dead bodies in the street. You could tell whether they were sunni or shia by the way they had been killed. Iraqis stopped eating fish in the river because they said it had changed flavor from living off so many corpses. You see american idealism at its best because everybody thought the country was lost and the decision to send extra forces in , which was decision president bush took against the advice of had avisers basically huge psychological effect. Because the sense of we are not hard, but itsbe not hopeless. We can come back. And this new energy, this new release, you saw extraordinary readership, the right resources being applied, and a strategy. The violence went way, way, way down. For me, that was extraordinary. No other country could have pulled that off. Lets put our resources into afghanistan because there is more hope there. In america there is a sense of we cant leave it like this. Lets turn it around. It is this extraordinary period. Theyat sacrifice, but what achieved was extraordinary. For anybody who lived through that, it shows what americans can do. It showed their potential. I should note for those in the audience who do not know was one of the people who was the architect of this, advised the core commander who became the commander of all u. S. Forces, general odierno, and speaks about this with authority. The question i am left with when you say this, one of the kind of, you know, pieces of conventional wisdom today shared by everybody from donald trump to pretty much the whole political spectrum is that iraq was a catastrophic mistake. So, i want to ask you the what if. What if better decisions had been made from the outset about irans bestot friends, but people in the country . ,hat if rather them pull back begin to get out in 2010, 2011, we had built on the surge and been persistent . Is there an alternative history in which this does not look like the biggest mistake we made in modern times, but looks like the Successful Use of American Power . Think we came very close to it by the end of the surge. We believed, iraqis believed the country was beyond the civil war, headed the right direction and had a great election in 2010. Turnout was high. People who boycotted elections before turned out to vote. The insurgents put forward the best candidates. There was a bloc that came erect forampaign for iraqis. That was a sense of not a sectarian country, but a country for all his people. It was a very, very closely contended election. To cut a very long story short, the party that won the most votes, the most seats in the election, was not given the opportunity to try to form a government, and this led to a breakdown in the politics, a real breakdown in the politics. America seem to have all of influence. Iran sensed a big opportunity. Iran stepped in. The Prime Minister that lost the election was kept in power, swung over to the iranian side, and then took revenge on his rivals. They were accused of terrorism. They had to flee the country. With our help, they fault against al qaeda. Sunnis en masse. Out of this, you saw these protests, which then were violently crushed. The Islamic State rose up out of qaeda iraq, al which had been defeated, and basically said, we will protect sunnis from the regime of nouri almaliki. Isis was theded last of the two evils and explains how isis managed to sweep and through a third of iraq. If the government of iraq had been formed in a better way, iraq would have set a model for other countries in the region and you would not have isis rising up. Syria could be very different than what we are seeing today. What we are seeing in the middle east is not really an issue of borders. It is an issue of competitive politics. A crisis of governance. Argues this is the medically in her book. I really encourage people to read the book. She makes a case she just made orally. Im again asking you to be a little contrarian. I was talking about your book the wise men, and this legacy of American Leadership in Foreign Policy with a mutual friend of ours, bob, who has written wonderful histories, a polk, butf james k. Was deeply skeptical about the intervention, he thought, of American Power. Conservative, but very much limited government. And i said, bob, you ought to about this world we are living in an you ought to call it the unwise men. Let me ask you about the subject you introduced, which is hubris hubristic side of our policy. We are looking at the generation of covert practitioners. En . T about nonwiseman the smaller group, and sometimes they were unwise. And why . If ever there was an evil seed in policy and in life, it is pride. Human errors, the of pride gets us into there is a reason why it is the the bible. Sins in we make mistake after mistake after mistake when we are too prideful. Leaderst is not have to be proud. Arrogance tortain be a leader. So, it is tricky. In 2006. T we were done done for. The country was finished. But i would argue that george w. Pride led him to do that surge. All of the wiseman, james baker, the policy commission, all of that, they said, we are done. Lets get out. President pissed off bush to have his fathers senior advisers tell him he had lost, and he said, you know what . To hell with you. Im going to double down here and im going to surge, and he was going against the wiseman, the council on Foreign Relations view, and it worked for a couple years until we screwed it up later. So, to argue against myself, that is the moment when pride, human pride, was useful. So, its obviously a complicated equation. But more often than not, i would say pride gets you into trouble. You need pride. The one person that would balance this perfectly is dwight eisenhower. Notident eisenhower was supremely egotistical. Conquer europeo without being proud. But he learned to control it and discuss it. And his cultural norms were dont boast. He was political in a good sense. He let other people take the credit and world war ii. Stalin, churchill, de gaulle, pretty prideful people. Yet a way of laying low and letting himself be underestimated and he did this again and again. As president of the United States, he poses a genial, goofy, golf laying president. We know now from the historical record, thats not what he was at all. Behind these swings behind the scenes, he was pulling all of the strings. Eisenhower have this ability he did not have to be the smartest guy in the room. , that he confident could be humble, and that made him a very effective leader. To give a plug and push here, ameas sales the name of the book here i could go on for hours, but one more question. The event of taking place at a certain palm beach resort, and that is the meeting of President Trump and jinping. Thing xi what i want is each of you to talk about what would be wise policy for the United States toward china, a very aggressive, increasingly belligerent china in the South China Sea and elsewhere. What wise policy would be in light of what we have been discussing, the failure of the order, he success of the post1945 order, and all the bumps in the road we have been discussing. If you had to slip a memo at the 11th hour to Jared Kushner, who is really running everything [laughter] what would it say . Everything,e despite the hubris, arrogance, and mistakes, the u. S. Led world order has maintained for 70 years. Thats a long time. A really, really long time. And yet we seem to be at a crossroads. It seems to be the end of the postcold war era. We need to think very carefully about what this means. Because its easy to criticize the mistakes made, but a World Without americas engagement is a much more dangerous world. A much more dangerous world because who fills the vacuum . The vacuum gets filled by other powers, powers whose interest are not the same as our own. We have seen it with the withdrawal from the middle east. That has led to other powers playing a role there. Look what russia is doing. Look what iran is doing. Look at what these nonstate actors are doing. America does not need to go to word with go to war with china. We do not need to get into the thucydides trap. How to create order based on laws, how to help allies who are scared by the rise of china that america is still a player in the world and still prepared to balance other powers. Whats in your memo to Jared Kushner . What emma just wrote. [laughter] let me put a little more edge on it. There are a lot of people who think what is really happening is the beginning of a chinese lead order. Not just out in front, but because of the national exhaustion, skepticism, put in your word for that, the period of american retreat is much more powerful and profound than this past election. Do you think that is true . Do you think it can be averted . Do you think the future speaks chinese or matter what we do . I think it must be averted. If there is a vacuum. The chinese will feel it. Will fill it. The idea of a nuclear rise nuclear, militarized china, north korea, all facing each other with Nuclear Weapons and aggressive tendencies would be horrific for the world. Our great trading partners after all, yes, china and japan. Thats a lot of our economy, just to be tactful about it. If they go to war with each other, thats not good for the world. It already. Said trump needs to say, forget what i said during the election. Ignore all that. I said to kit i said that to get elected. The chinese will understand that. They are pragmatists spirit they will have a good laugh. And he should say to xi with a tok, eh, i just said that get elected. The southern fleet is going to be there. I do not want to get into a trade war with you. We are going to do a few things to get your attention. We need you on north korea. Inmight give up a little bit order to get you to do something about north korea. The nixonian, if you will, very pragmatic, but definitely not retreating, not disengaging, not going home. We are here to stay. We are working up the modalities of how to stay. So, the reason journalists , and we aresaries pay, is because we have a as we say, we get to hang what ever we want to talk about we can p y on which we we haveaeg in which a peg on which we can hang everything we want to talk about. I think the panelists and i are d, happy to be here with to who worked so hard to organize this. Thank you all very much. Thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. 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