Everyone, andoon, welcome to our ninth jackson virtual discussion forum, our series of online gatherings on covid19 and Global Affairs exploring the farreaching impact of this pandemic. We are thankful to senator murphy and jackson senior fellow governor dean for joining us this afternoon. We will introduce them in a moment. Attendees, have your volume and video muted but we are excited to incorporate your questions as time allows. You can submit those using the q a feature in zoom. We will record this session and post a video afterward to the benefit of everyone. Stay tuned for Upcoming Forum discussions, former under secretary of defense will join us next thursday, may 28 and now i will turn it to jim levinsohn, director of Yale UniversitysJackson Institute for Global Affairs to introduce our special guest. Thanks, ted, and welcome everyone. As we grapple with the ramifications of this pandemic, we are grateful jackson to have a Wonderful Group of faculty and senior fellows whose expertise we can draw. Is dr. H individual howard dean. Physician, six term governor of vermont, president ial candidate, president of the National Government association and the Democratic National committee. Much of that is well known. What may be less wellknown is in new haven, governor dean is professor dean and he teaches an incredibly popular undergraduate seminar on the politics of American Foreign policy. For grateful governor dean is here with us today and will help us moderate the session. Senator chris murphy has represented connecticut in the senate for the past seven years following six years in the house and eight years in the connecticut general assembly. As a member of the Senate Foreign relations committee, the senator has emerged as a leader in Global Affairs, articulating a full Foreign Policy vision for the United States. He is an outspoken proponent of diplomacy, International Human rights and American Leadership abroad. Sessionte has been in the past two weeks, i believe, as we speak. We are deeply appreciative of senator murphy to take the time to join us. Howard, perhaps you can kick off the conversation . Dean thank you. Senator,mbarrass the he was my candidate for president. He chose not around for a variety of reasons. I am incredibly glad to have him here. Pleased to be interviewing someone who was one of the upandcoming stars of the Democratic Party, especially in Foreign Policy, which is what jackson is really about. This is a person who will be, whatever he chooses to do, leading the Foreign Policy and thinking about Foreign Policy in a future oriented way, in ways not many do. Chris, thank you so much for coming on the program. Question,e opening since i know you think longterm and not shortterm is we are in the middle of covid. Im interested in what you are thinking about in terms of where the u. S. May be in terms of our position in the world, five years from now, after we presumably have a vaccine and this is in the rearview mirror. There will be tremendous economic on it and global displacement. Economic carnage and global displacement. I am wondering your thoughts . Sen. Murphy it is great to be here with all of you, great to have this conversation with governor dean. It is possible to lead a fulfilling life without running for president , contrary to popular belief. I am grateful to get a chance to do this job on behalf of the new Haven Community and connecticut. Thanks to the jackson community. It is a big question. The most important one. The covid19 crisis has taught us lessons about the importance of interdependence cooperation with allies and adversaries but also the exposure that countries dependentn we are so on other nations, especially for critical supply chains which help us respond to a crisis. As we look ahead, that is largely dependent on decisions the voters make in a few months. The future of americas role in the world will be fundamentally different if joe biden is president versus four more years of donald trump, but my arguments to whomever is occupying the office, would be twofold. Thet, lets understand, greatest and most immediate threats to the United States today are not conventional military threats. They are pandemics. They are a warming climate. Actors withteless very little effort, that can kill thousands of americans. Yet, we are totally resourced for a world that largely does not exist anymore and a panoply of threats that still israel, and invading army that still army, butn invading which is unlikely. When you look at the spending of the military, you can understand why it feels as if a, americas influence in the world is moving down and our ability to manage crises is less capable than ever before. We will have to have a reckoning about the tools we deployed friends,to try to win influence free agents protect interests. Now, china will be more powerful than today. That is inevitable. We have something to say about that as well. As much as donald trump has waged a threeyear war with europe, our ability to manage chinas ascendancy we cannot onvent it is dependent our ability to work with europeans. As a question for the next president , we also have to understand, this crisis is exposing massive vulnerabilities with respect to dependence on china and other players to supply us with what we need in order to beat this virus. China was able to stand itself up pretty quickly, which means we did not have medical supply chain crises in the medicines we rely on but we are clearly still dealing with supply chain crises for other goods like testing equipment and personal protective equipment. Some ofhave to resource the equipment that helps us respond to emergencies, whether Public Health emergencies or others. This is both an invitation for us to set up a new set of apogees to deal with the rest of the world, set up alliances and to hunker down a little and stand up our domestic ability to protect our self in a way we did not, leading up to this crisis. In. Dean im interested your discussion on china a little more. As jim pointed out, i teach Foreign Policy from truman to obama and now trump. Also, i am on the board of the National Democratic institute, i spend most of my time in eastern europe, where you spend a lot of time dealing with russians. My conception is, we will not get in a cold war with china. Russia has been a destructive influence. Chinese are not a destructive influence. They are difficult group of people to deal with. Their business dealings certainly have political ramifications. They are a real economic power, which russia is not. How do we work with the chinese. I consider the chinese vigorous competitors but not necessarily enemies, as we did with russians for so long. I would love to know what you would think in the next few years, whether trump is reelected if he is reelected, i suppose the thing is at a standstill, but if he is not, where you see joe biden and what is your own belief, because you will be an influential member of the senate, as we proceed here, in terms of how to build a relationship with china, knowing they are an important economic power but also knowing they are authoritarian and will use things like interference, free speech in the u. S. And elsewhere, in order to gain an advantage . Sen. Murphy great question. Im interested in your thoughts as well, governor. Mitt romney had an interesting editorial in the Washington Post in which he proposed a coalition of democracies organized to blockade any imports from china that were connected to national security. His conception was broad. Anything in the rubric of defense, technology or health. Package that together and that is a massive blockade of chinese goods. Merits talking about some kind of approach like that. The interdependence we have, economically, with china, of course is a prophylactic against war. We should understand keeping those connections is probably part of what keeps us out of a dangerous, deadly conflict with china. Wars dont happen normally on purpose. They happen by accident. You have to make sure that if you sell your conflict with china, that they have not been able to build up a set of advantages that could lose the war for us quickly, so that is why you have to Pay Attention to what china is doing, for instance. South china sea, they try to potentially cut off routes of navigation for u. S. Military and commercial vessels. You are also right. Ultimately, chinas goal is to share the world with the u. S. They want to be at the table with us. Universesion a bipolar haveich they and the u. S. The predominant seats at the world table. While wen this is, dont want to copy what china is doing we do have to learn from the model that has allowed big marketsure overseas and critical technologies, like 5g. China has an industrial policy which has allowed them to midwife technologies inside the domestic market and unleash them to the world at a price that the private market cannot compete with. The u. S. And our European Partners have to be in that space. We have to have a closer relationship between the public and private sector so when you are thinking down the line about six g or ai or advanced battery technologies, that we have aoducts developed through Publicprivate Partnership that can compete with chinese products as well. This is been my argument about what to do with russia as well. We cannot be, business of perpetually changing sanctioning the russians and the chinese about their bad behavior. We have to compete with them. Massive rewrite of the ways in which government and private sector Work Together on the development of new technologies. At some point President Trump will not be president anymore. I am hoping that will be in january. If he is reelected, he will be there another four years. Steps you see the actual of trying to create what you just talked about . Im not sure we will have a bipolar world. One of the things trump has done is given the europeans a much greater status. They dont know what to do with that status yet. I would love your comments on this. I met with merkel three years ago and congratulated her on being the leader of the free world. She was suitably embarrassed. She is no joke. What president obama, one of the central parts of his foreignpolicy as far as i can tell, is based on the west point speech, was that we should live in a multipolar world. We should not live in a world where everyone has to check in with the u. S. Before they participate in some policy of importance to them that they should be leading. The europeans are now in the position, because of trump, and as Angela Merkel said, the americans are no longer a reliable ally, the europeans have to find themselves in figure out how to make this work while trying to keep the wheels on the European Union. I would love your thoughts on the European Union and on how we get to where we need to be with europeanswhere the stood in in any scenario you can think of over the next five years. Sen. Murphy what is so dangerous, as i mentioned, about the last three years is this fissure between the u. S. And europe. There is no way to confront chinas growing power without the u. S. And europe being bound together as closely as possible. We lost the trade war with china. Lets be clear about it. This tiny deal the president got is virtually meaningless for the u. S. In terms of economic benefits and it comes after we lost 300,000 jobs through his backwards tariffs. That are going to go into tough negotiation with china over trade policy, for instance, you have to do it with the europeans by your side. To me, this is a moment where we need to link arms, if we are going to develop through a partnership, 6g competitor, that is better off being between the u. S. And europe. We need to modernize our partnership. Trumps critique of nato is way off the mark in terms of a fundamental misunderstanding of how it works. It is also true our security partnership, which historically has looked only to the east, to the russian threat, now needs to be oriented in order to meet the chinese threat as well, which exists in the Technology Threat as much as anywhere else. First, preparing and modernizing our relationship with europe is a big part of that conversation, then recognizing, if you engage in this wholesale withdrawal from international forms, like the who, china will gladly step in to the vacuum. President biden will have a big job ahead of them, just to stick at foot back in the door forums like the u. N. Or the who, to try to muscle the chinese out of gaining a real position of prominence over the course of the last 3. 5 years. Gov. Dean let me switch geography to another troubled world. War,y difficult since the the middle east. [indiscernible] our supportn yemen, from the saudis and the civilian casualties that has come about as a result of that. There are some in our party that believed we should be doing what were doing or Something Like it because of the threat of iran, which is backing the houthis. This is an unfair thing to ask you to do in five minutes but i thinking, how you are how you take into consideration notgeneral iranian threat, to the u. S. But regionally, how do you see that puzzle fitting together . Should we just, as trump seems to be wanting to do, just get the hell out of the middle east and not be a player anymore . Sen. Murphy i think we have to understand the minimal return we get on our political and military investment. You have to spend an enormous amount capital, an enormous amount of Financial Investment and blood to move the needle an inch in that region. I think you need to take steps in order to protect our ally, israel, from threats that come from iran. We have no interest in iran continuing to feed the treasury of terrorists in the region which pose a threat to the u. S. Back andhould step question whether we actually have a dog in the fight when it comes to this defining set of proxy wars between the saudis and the iranians. I dont know the u. S. Needs to be involved in that contest for regional hegemony. My argument is that when we get involved in places like syria or inen, we end up throwing just enough support to keep those conflicts running but never enough to actually be the positive. I have been openly opposed to u. S. Involvement in syria because i think we have ended up getting more people, not less, killed, because we have been halfway involved for going on a decade now. In yemen, our support, both logistical, financial and moral for the saudiss allows them to saudis toight perpetuate a campaign of slaughter, that they probably would not have gotten away with if they couldnt lean on the u. S. Internationally. Our reliance on the u. S. Military as a mechanism by which we try to litigate interests has proven over and over again to ultimately hurt our interests more than they harm them while i argue for a robust diplomatic presence in the region, it is time for us to understand our military adventures ultimately get more of our people and their people killed. Gov. Dean i recently read cement the powers samantha powersautobiography. It was clear the Obama Administration got sucked back into the middle east, partly because they decided they had to be specific about the nerve gas thing, the assad regime was using and also they believed isis was a destabilizing force that could bring harm to the shores of the u. S. Emotionally, im sympathetic with your position. I totally agree with the eastsis that the middle has been a great sucking sound on American Resources for 50 years. What would you do about a threat like isis . Do you believe isis would have been a threat to the u. S. Or our interests had we not been there . If we had not been players, i dont believe for a second, isis wouldnt still be Holding Raqqa and perhaps mosul. Sen. Murphy i spend a lot of time thinking about this. I came into congress in 2007 as an opponent of the iraq war. One of the shifting rationales for that war was that we need to be fighting them over there so we are not fighting them here. For someone who has been a vocal critic of u. S. Military involvement in the middle east, i do have an obligation to pose an alternative policy. I think what is important, as you referenced, is the predominant extremist threats to the u. S. , have been sunni. There are plenty of terrible shia extremist groups, they do not tend to be the ones with the most dangerous plans to attack the u. S. Groups, isis sunni and al qaeda. Ofyou trace the roots those groups, you get quickly to an intolerant strain of islam funded largely out of the gulf by saudi arabia, the, ronnies, the qataris, the emirates. I gave a speech four years ago opening up this conversation about why we should rethink our relationship with saudi arabia, i came to the conclusion, if you really want to cut off a source of support for groups like al qaeda and isis, it is too late to be running a military campaign against them, once they are already marching on the foreign capital. If you cut off their source of funding and address the perverted strain of islam that forms the Building Blocks of that movement, youre much better off and much more likely to beat them. That is why i think the number one issue with saudi arabia right now needs to be their continued backdoor support for this version of islam that ends up becoming a foundation of groups like isis and al qaeda and instead, even under the Obama Administration, that was like issue 4, 5. I think you have to get to the roots if you have any longterm hope of combating the