Discusses his views on what he calls the Foreign Policy elite. Anthony brooks. He will begin the panel. Thank you. Thank you for that introduction. I think you all for coming out. I just want to say really quickly how it means that partnership for the boston book festival. It is a partnership that we believe and wholeheartedly. Its all about Building Community and you are part of that. Im going to introduce the two guess. The author of numerous books. Including the war for the greater middle east. His latest book is twilight of the American Century. Also president of the in situ. I think tank which will be opening in washington soon. I think we will have an opportunity to talk about a little bit. Anthony, thank you for being here. Thank you. The global response. Americas Foreign Policy elite into the decline of u. S. Privacy. Sivan welcome to you. Thanks for being here. [applause]. Ive been really looking for to talking to both of you. I want to get into those arguments. But i also want to start if i can with the news and what we are reading about. And to get your reaction about what has been happening along the syrian border. Obviously i will know about this and im to skin a summarize it. In a phone call present trap cleared the way for Turkish Forces to move into turkey and clear out the kurds. This was made possible by Trump Holding back a small number of u. S. Forces. There was a shocking and abandonment of u. S. Allies. It has only helped americas adversaries. I would love to just get your response to this and how you been thinking about it. This will be starting off on a very provocative note here because i actually think that what has been typical in the presidency they have the right instinct which they have managed to pursue in the worst possible way. Russia had a very simple objective, keep assad in power, full stop that was their only goal, not a particularly nice goal, in fact, in some respects thats an awful goal but a very simple, very feasible and achievable goal, so the United States has ended up through somewhat longer process backing this kurdish rebel force against isis, not as a favor to us, but out of own selfinterest and ran parallel but the United States did not back kurdishstand and one isis was controlled, that partnership was living on borrow ed time, the last point i would make is the United States should have been doing all along, working out a diplomatic solution, complicated set of conflicts resolving in the area but way back when syrian isis we let iran in geneva talks, we are not participating in talks between russia, iran and turkey, we have been out of the diplomatic game entirely and till some extend clinging to the hope that some day we can get assad out of power there and the fact is we wont talk about to the russia because we are mad about ukraine and we wont talk to iran because nominally, we went talk to assad because hes a war criminal and the result is we have really no diplomatic process involved there. No leverage and in a sense by pulling American Forces out, trump has made the whole thing come to roost in the worst possible way leaving the kurds in much more worse situation than if we helped manage a diplomatic solution that ultimately might stabilize things. How do you see, what are you thinking about . Weve already arrived at central of the panel that i agree with everything he said. [laughter] the only thing i would add is that in order to understand the mess that we are in, its crucially important to acknowledge our contribution to creating that mass, you know, the conversation about syria, kurds, tends to focus on things that happened in the last week or ten days, but if you ask yourself how did it come to be that this part of the world has been so destabilized that theres so much disorder, that theres so much violence, where did this come from . Many different people can have different opinions but i will give you my opinion, this stems from the invasion of iraq that the United States undertook in 2003 and we are still seeing the effects of that catastrophic decision play out and i think until we as a nation and our Foreign Policy elites acknowledge the dimensions of that failure on our part, then it becomes much more difficult to undertake dialogue that steve says will be necessary. Let me stick with you because i want to ask you about one of the central ideas in your collection of essays, you have this when it comes early in the book talking about the origins of this sort of guiding principle of the American Century and you talk about how it dates back to henry, the famous publisher of Time Magazine and life magazine in an essay that he wrote in 1941 urging america to get off the sidelines, get involved with the war and you argue that that has that sort of view guided americas idea about its power and its projection of power for a long time to america and the world. Yes, this is an email published in february, i think it was february 17th, 1941, thats to say before u. S. Entry into world war ii in life magazine, at a time when life magazine was, i think, fair to say, the most important periodical in this country, the most important influencer of opinion, there was no internet. It was, anthony, it was a call for us to get off the sidelines and played into the notion that we had been on the sidelines, but wait a second, back in 1776 at the time of american independence we were this tinny Little Country on the eastern sea board, 13 little colonies became 13 little states, by the time that essay appeared in 1941, the United States of america spread from sea to shining sea and we had long since become imperial power, you know, we took the philippines, we took hawaii, we took panama, arrangement in panama to build the panama canal, we transformed cuba and other parts of the caribbean into a network of american protectors and we had not been on the sideline and in the context of 1941, so many argued that we were sitting in the sidelines at that particular moment because a considerable number of the American People were hesitating to intervene in the ongoing european war which at that point pitted Great Britain against against nazi germany. Why the hesitation . Because at that point 1941, Many Americans had rather sharp memories of another war against germany that occurred just barely 20 years before where we had set out to make the world safe for democracy and end all wars and that war, we forget 116,000 americans lost their lives in world war i despite the fact, large numbers were engaged in combat for only the last 90 days of the war, september to november. 116,000 lives, fastforward to 1941, with reason, americans are saying, we are really not keen to once again intervene european war and bail out bail out the brits. But yet this idea that out of world war ii something called an American Century had begun, a period of time period of american preeminence in which the United States was called upon to fulfill its mission to redeeming the world had been a theme in american diplomacy and binding theme that was powerfully reinforced by the end of the cold war, when it was then declared loud and clear from senior u. S. Officials and from journalists that history had, indeed, anointed us as the indispensable nation, great phrase, i was amazed, Mitch Mcconnell published an oped in the washington post, is it today or yesterday denouncing the and Mitch Mcconnell specifically refers to the United States as the indispensable nation. Now, im a believer and i checked with the lord before i came here [laughter] and i said, lord, have you, indeed, designated the United States of america as the indispensable nation and i can report to you that the lord said, no. [laughter] so here we kind of get to a large part, i know im taking up too much time [laughter] we are kind of getting into one of the greatest obstacles to selffunding and we cant figure out how to get in the middle east, we are not the indispensable nation and until we get over that it seems to me that we will continue to compound the mistakes that weve made since the end of the cold war and 9 11. You need to tell pompeo with the conversation with the lord. [laughter] youre getting a different message. [laughter] i like the way both of these books intersected and shared sort of points of view even though you arrive at them from different from different directions, but when it comes to you, if if andrew is talking about this idea of the American Century assort of the u. S. Being the indispensable nation, you denounce the pursuit of what you call liberal which you argue has been embraced by president s, republicans, democrats, bush 2 and obama, so can you start with the definition, what do you mean by liberal, what is that . I argue is the strategy we followed since the end of the cold war when we arrived at that moment and andy just mentioned and notice thats the moment where we could have had a really serious discussion about americas role in the world, suddenly the soviet union disappeared. We face nod peer competitors, we are on almost good terms with everybody, we are pretty good terms with china, we are pretty good terms with russia at that point, we might have said we will not retreat to isolationism, we will not retreat to fortress america but do we need to be doing the world the way we did during cold war, do we want to rethink this . Beginning with the clinton administration, bipartisan consensus emerged around what i call liberal jameminy, by liberal i dont mean left wing, seek to go promote the classic liberal values, democracy, human rights, rule of law, open markets, things like that, it became Americas Mission to spread those things as far as we possibly could. They already existed in many parts of the world and we were going to take it upon ourselves to push the project peacefully if possible but if necessary using military force, Eastern Europe by expanding nato, whether into the middle east by strategies like dual containment or eventually topping saddam hussein. This process has to be led by the United States, thats the indispensable part, americas power has to be directed at this and has to be used against any countries that are getting in the way of this particular process, we can put sanctions on them, we can try to Form Alliance against them and in extreme cases we can use military to try and overthrow them, now, the idea of spreading those values around the world appeals to lots of americans and certainly appeals to people who are in the Foreign Policy establishment if for no other reason because it gives them plenty to do. Bring turns out to be almost impossible, its a deeply flawed strategy and we may get into all the ways it went wrong but liberal, commitment to use dimensions of American Power to make the world more or less americas image. Why would you use jigeminy, why not call it imperialism . You could argue thats what we were trying to do in iraq temporarily. But the United States as an empire is a funny empire, we actually have not created a lot of colonies around the world, we never had anything quite like the British Empire where you can mark out large sloths of nonamerican territory and say that belonged to us, we did it in many subtle ways, terrific book by daniel that i recommend called how to hide an empire which deals with this how extensive american influence has been without having the kind of formal empire that britain, france and some other countries did. Lets talk about the results and how it went wrong, i will come back to you, andrew, this belief as america indispensable nation, launched back then, 1941, how is this concept and belief in that let us stray . Well, i think steve put his finger on it. When the cold war ended i was born in 1947 which in many respects would say the year that the cold war began, the year of famous essay in foreign affairs, its the year of the marshall plan, the year of the truman doctrine if im getting my dates correct and so i grew up with the cold war and i believed or came to assume what manyover people i think believed and came to assume, that is that the cold war defined international relations, it was the only fact that really, really mattered and secondly that the cold war was never going to end. That our composition with the soviet union, with the soviet empire, with communism was destined to go on forever and i was certainly among those who had head snapped back when lo and behold in 1989 it ended, and that was the moment that changed, steve allude today this, this was the moment that seemed to me that the American Foreign polls establishment to step back, first of all, they had not anticipated it was going end. Lets reflect on what what history may now hold in store and try to make some prudent adjustments with regard to posture in the world, our sense of what we are called upon to do, vital interest. What happens to cite a very famous essay, we concluded that history had literally ended, we had reached the end of history and and when history reached its end, it declared a winner and that wases and that was the key fact, we thought it was a fact, it was an allusion, that was the key fact that would then shape american policy Going Forward and therefore created the militarism that has been such an important characteristic of what we have gone through since, combined with this unwillingness to sort of learned, to imagine that Mitch Mcconnell still indispensable nation despite all that has occurred in the past at 20 or so years. Go ahead. Its very important especially in the 90s, we have won the cold war and everything seemed to be going our way, remarkable optimism, yes, we reached the end of history, the world has come to understand that the american model is really the best one. Other example you would think of is tom freedmans book, olive tree about globalization, if you want to prosper in a globalized world you have been like the United States, not in every detail but pretty much like the United States, weve really mastered this, so people say in clinton era were optimistic about how easy it was going to be to spread, transform the world, china was going to become as it developed, had middle class, democracy, if we had to get rid of dictators in some place, thats okay, the people will will be grateful, they will soon form political parties, they will have nice orderly elections and be really happy that they can become like us now. This is not going to be costly, its not going to be risky, history is running our way, you know, life is good, the winds in our back, that allowed us, i think, to adopt a very ambitious grand strategy and think we can do it all on the cheap, it would never face any real resistance and all of these projects in various places would go pretty swimmingly and turns out the world was not quite as cooperative as we thought it would be. Yeah, steve is right to i do think our consciousness today is kind of shaped by at least some awareness of whats occurred since 9 11 which steve just said, no, no, the Pivotal Moment is 1990s when we thought the path was clear and its not simply the optimism that he was describing, reinforcing the optimism, was perception of what American Military power could now do, remember whats not forgotten what seemed to be great victory of Operation Desert Storm in 1991 which seem today show that we had solved the mysteries of warfare. Remember then the follow on, clinton era interventions in the balkins, drop a few bombs and be able to achieve political objectives, this became a template for expectations Going Forward. The great forgotten, sadly forgotten military episode of the 1990s is the clinton era was the somalia intervention. The famous fire fight, october 1993, turns out in retrospect that there was the template for future war, the nasty, ugly irregular conflicts often in an urban setting where we didnt do too well, but certainly clinton and also the military, you might talk about somalia, you want to talk about desert storm, want to talk about bosnia, in other words, creating from a military perspective, crediting a sense of expectations that are right there in 9 11 and the people in the Bush Administration to say, well, we need to put our military to work, lets go invade a country. Does not have necessarily to do anything with 9 11, invade a country, bring regime change and make a point and its not going to cost us very much. This is very important and the one other episode which is quite critical in iraq story is afghanistan, so when the United States goes into afghanistan to oust the taliban, all right, lots of voices saying, afghanistan, graveyard of empires, the soviet union didnt do well, be afraid, be very afraid, this could be trouble and the first 6 months look like the American Military is positively magical, the taliban are routed in a few weeks, hardly any casualties, we can do anything and that plays perfectly into this idea that you can now do a rock, of course, we now know in afghanistan the American Military is very good at throwing weak regimes out of power, the American Military is not very good at running those societies after those weak regimes have been toppled, totally different job, not really what we