America has been through viciously divisive periods before far worse than what we live through today with the hindsight of history we can see that as the Inflection Point between an old system that is broken down and a new one sorry at the Inflection Point . Absolutely right in the middle of it the best example is that in 2016 with the republican primary there was a real civil war and the Republican Party the establishment representatives like jeb bush and others didnt get the nomination or the support of the American People it was donald trump the democrats are going to the same thing right now they are having a civil war in their party is it going to be a traditional democrat or the outsider or socialist and then to govern the people but after a long period of thoughtfulness to go through the divisive periods we are a dynamic country geographically economically we are costly reinventing ourselves as individuals and as a nation and government by our very nature and then they get stuck so all of these revolutions but ever since then mostly have the revolutions that play out. One of the things you said at the beginning of the book and that talking past each other before we spoke today we had a conversation and then and the more productive conversation is common ground. So explain what you mean by nationalism and more populism. The four things to define nationalism and populism and globalism. For decades i had jobs in those administrations with over the last ten or 20 years i rejected a lot more a lot of thinking i had about globalism. In my mind the idea of a sophisticated economy at the world is flat National Boundaries are not important if you think of the internet monday ish internet so they are less important because it is the free flow of information and ideas and individuals and finance of business the internationalist globalist thats new world so we really dont need to think so much about the National Laws and regulations we need to have so with that elitism from a complicated world and to have graduate degrees in Nuclear Weapons so those two together. But experts do and to say we only have this group of enlightened people they could better govern the world we would be safer. Thats where i was. The elitist are not taking care of all the people i really believe the people are not selfselected group of experts to have the right to choose their leaders. But the other part which is globalism versus nationalism we have spent far too long dominantly and militarily the what we did is we were very generous and to have those societies devastated by world war ii entering into that Security Agreement as well as trade agreements to our disadvantage. Putting up 75 percent of the resources for nato for example and then at the expense of the industry and the devastated nation of japan so that is how things were 60 or 70 years but i didnt think that made sense anymore because the world had changed they had not only recovered economically but surpassing us. We did the same thing with china where we said to ourselves we will give a helping hand and help them economically develop and they will be our friend. That didnt work out the same way. Thats why i broke with globalism and elitism well before donald trump came along. I was already there went around the country and im and elitist i live in a nice cocoon bubble in new york but as i went around the country so i did my own informal polling and would say how many of you think to have the opportunities for your childrens generation. And to get kicked around the countrys we should not be getting kicked around. And what we think of as American Values of selfreliance and independence and ingenuity. How many things its washingtons fault. And womens groups in College Students and security groups and Foreign Policy experts we were not suffering and that is when i had the awakening and the convergence so the country had kept the peace and govern itself for a decade just wasnt working anymore. I became a committed nationalist, my version and populist, my version before donald trump ever came on the same one on the scene but i do want to point out to me it is an xena phobic where you hate to the other guy and my populism isnt we dont have to do anything. Give everybody everything. That is somebody else but for me it is getting back to our roots. Talk about your own experience. So to talk about your time in the white house between National Security advisor. And then to in the marines and the need for the expertise dealing with the worlds most conflict complex problems those who have psalm experience and with the ideas. Absolutely. We get the best advice you can get and then you decide if you want to take it or not. I have known her for years from the Brookings Institution and i thought she would be a really important addition. I knew she wouldnt agree with me but i thought before Trump Took Office to improve relations with russia. But i thought that doctor fiona hill would be a very good advisor to trump because i had hoped he could get into negotiations with putin and i wanted her to be able to say to him lets have the back story. Lets drive a harder view. Sadly thats not how it worked out because of the Russian Investigation but i thought that would be a very good advisor and that he would respect her views. But thats not the way we worked out. Now, what i thought was good about him was experience and journalist world and the marines and he wanted to take a much tougher stand on china that i trump wanted to do. Talk about china you have been very clear they have not recognize the rise of china is the challenge for the country. Im interested your thoughts of competing with the economy and your thoughts the president has been tough with china and other president s have not. [laughter] with that balance or a symmetry. And in the state run economy. Thats why would like to finish. So lets start who are they and where have they been the last 23 or so president xi has essentially said to them give up the power you have no individual rights and we promise you will have prosperity and peace. That would be the glue that held the country together. Communism has faded away. There is no real ideology. And may be ethnic pride and historical pride. With chinese history. And then and prosperity has increased and chinas leaders advance its not like america or the west and in the United States senate together or the old candidate or the young candidate. So you start out may be ten years old as really smart so the chinese advance with their age group. So they have seen all the leaders they are now dealing with in their government bureaucracy and they have been working together for decades. You dont move with your class or with your age group. So people in their sixties. Where were they in the formative years of their life . In the middle of a cultural revolution. In the sixties through 1972 and 73 a lot of the leadership of china was the leaders of china than the cultural revolution happened that was chaotic and disruptive and universities that the wrong kind of populist revolution and sent them out to the country. President xi was one of those people. So for his childhood experience and his colleagues a lot of them had been in the top positions when they were young and all of a sudden sent to the country along with her family to be punished and beaten. So president xi to his group thats the worst that could happen as a disruptive Society People going crazy and order breaking out and are revolution of the wrong kind. So what they want to do it all cost as make sure china doesnt go there again. That drives the whole authoritarian system and their position in the world. They want order at all cost i dont think sometimes revolutions are good or individual freedom she will not have those. As the government tells you. Thats where they start out. They dont want disorder but they want prosperity. So the United States really tried to help china to modernize just like her rate one iran or korea but it didnt happen so the to go 20 or 30 years and they are very conscious of that people that were in starvation situation 20 years ago now building modern cities. So the United States we could safely say that america never really retrain those people we have unemployment or underemployment so we enable their success. But now the times have changed and it is time to recalibrate that relationship we dont need to treat china like a third world country with finance and market economies that they have enjoyed as a third world developing country. And not saying that they to keep them down. And the time is come to reconfigure the relationship. And this is the buying up and that is sort of colonialism. And to say you are the big brother that their ambitions have changed and the refusal to renegotiate a lot of these deal deals . So we have done three things geographically and militarily in one is the South China Sea. And the waterway through which all trade flows from europe and africa and the middle east on its way to china philippines japan and korea and they have aggressively moved to say that is an earned on internal chinese straight we have violence here we will build them up for the fishing fleet but no they militarize those islands now claiming that is the worlds greatest see laden of commerce should be internal. So thats a big problem so the chinese attempt to take the countries from to the middle east and then to recreate that it is called one belt one road so they would build this physical highway but also the virtual highway by going through all these countries. Not unlike the romans did during the roman empire in europe and that the maritime ambitions so the chinese look at pakistan and east coast of africa to say we will build ports and just like the South China Sea because we want to trade chinese goods but in fact some of those ports are militarized so now they are building a maritime route, a land route and trying to control the worlds Global Commerce route. In addition to that they have something called made in 2025 the chinese leaders tennis shoes and Technology Artificial intelligence to say we want to be good leaders and to steal intellectual intelligence and to turn over intellectual property all those things added to gather a much more aggressive attitude. The chinese look at the world and say we will dominate the world and the technology with the Huawei Global Network and dominate communications according to our specifications. And the multilateralism to say that would be china but one sample is where america and the dozen states decided in the trade agreements that they could constrain chinas ability and benefit but certainly the United States. That would be a great thing to revisit and trump second term but he understood if you rebuild the American Economy to make it the strongest economy in the world theres a lot of leverage just like middle eastern oil you have a lot of leverage of the energy world and also because we are the recipient of most countries goods others need to sell it to us so trump understood that and if you could fix the American Economy with middle east energy and could use trade wars to renegotiate with china and japan and south korea not on korea and mexico and canada. But the United States in a better position with much more leverage and then start negotiating so my advice to hear them is now that you have a trade agreement with mexico and canada and japan and south korea probably with brits by the end of the year now we have a consortium to go to china a lot of us have the same complaint and then go with the block led by the United States to say we demand a new deal stop exploiting the generosity we have given you over the decades. The what we visited and what we speak about china we have seen american interventions that has been seen as a complete waste so how do we extricate ourselves . We know there will be a vacuum and there are concerns. How do we get out of that at home . Its like childrearing you pick your fights and while isis is problem and all these other things but you dont want to lose track of the real problem. And he was really great understanding what is the real game . It is Nuclear Weapons. So why get sidetracked with all the other stuff that might prevent you from dealing with the major issue. What trump has allowed the Energy Industry in the United States and we are three or four years within a short period of time. So to get off their energy they have been fighting each other for thousands of years with tribal warfare they dont belong in the middle of that so that to me is one of the important things and if it distracts you dealing with asia and china and the five g Global Technologies of the future then you should have a very different approach. Yes. I was critical not going into afghanistan but we should not stayed around to rebuild afghanistan and we shouldnt have stayed to rebuild these countries that dont want rebuilt. You talk about the idea overnight even if that is 20 years but to build a society a better institution and to create a democracy that comes from the countries so with your views i have appreciated your candor with the president s tweeting for example but the importance of institutions in this country as the backbone of democracy i know you are not fan of arguably one institution but we have seen those that have meddled some way or another so talk to me about the importance of the institutions. So freedom of speech and freedom of the press so trump understands like reagan did tha that. [laughter] no but you can see some president s get better and George Washington talked about that with the newspaper men. Trump has understood the same way reagan did i think all great revolutionary president s did you have to find a way to get directly to the American People to jump over the heads of the establishment. Reagan did it by going around the country into cities and towns across the country and local radio and television stations. Fdr did the fireside chats directly to the American People trump did he understood the Washington Press corps does not like him. But he found a way to reach directly over the heads of those people by tweeting no say i dont like the tweets but on the other hand it has been very effective to get directly to the American People and so for that its an institution that he and reagan and fdr and lincoln going all the way back have preserved the free speech of the american leaders to talk directly to the American People. How do we find that balance that if we did not have watergate or the wall street journal the Washington Post so where is the balance between getting in the way of a president and ask the questions from the American People . So figuring out we talked about this at the very beginning of the conversation. You cant reason its like trying to reason with a tired two yearold toddler. You will never breakthrough. [laughter] so what happens is eventually those people become irrelevant. I cant believe you just said that. [laughter] professional women in midtown manhattan you and you are going to talk about Nuclear Weapons. How cool is that. You talked about elites and the way there are certain parts of information or policy that the average american doesnt get access to. The Nuclear Non Proliferation is one of those places they dont feel they have agency over that issue and it doesnt really come up in politics. Putting that aside, one question straight out of the gates, should prisoners sign the bilateral treaty with russia that is basically a nonproliferation agreement putin has said what are the pros and cons . Guest i worcons . Guest co. Ie Nixon Administration and i worked for reagan and there were the classes between the two of us. At the beginning of the administration, one of the things i did as the deputy National Security adviser is take the review of the american Foreign Policy in the next couple of weeks. Where are we now so one of the things that was clear is the russians had been cheating for years on the class of weaponry and it was also pretty clear the chinese were developing them and they were not part of any deal so our advice is lets get to where we need to get to. If we cheat, every reporter will say we are cheating. But nobody calls them on it so i think it was the right thing to do. But what i learned with reagan and trump if you have to have chips to play in the game and where is your leverage if you dont have the class of weapons. If they were able to say lets cancel this we have a lot of leverage and the threat of the Defense Missile system. Trump has gone to the right place. Moving on to north korea, we have a sort of cycle that youve explained beautifully in your book of committal and noncommittal and promises when they understood we were building a Nuclear Weapon program. What are your views on whether this is a solvable problem . Weve tried republicans, democrats and you have sanctions and economic problems. Its like working with a tired to yearold. I think trump has done the right thing and we had the review of the Am