Weve also got the bug in a moment before i do, i want to extend on your behalf and mine a warm welcome to call colin himself and a dani pletka and Richard Fontaine. Im George Mason University and also a nonresident of what the American Enterprise institute nextdoor, literally. Colin hast made his mark thinkg deeply about politics and this book is a trademark that examines the concept of conservative nationalism a phenomenon that has been brought to the attention conspicuously to the rise of president of trump in terms of both the history of ideas and how these ideas have found manifestation especially in the debates about the role in the world. So, the book is both encompassing and granular simultaneously and despite the gravity of the subject i can assure you it is also a delightful read. I read the book over the last weekend and commend it to your attention so it is a pleasure to have you with us. Im also very grateful dani pletka and Richard Fontaine have joined us. We couldnt have asked for better commentators giv given bh their intellectual interest in conservatism and their own practical contributions to making the domestic policy in the United States. Dani pletka has had a long career on capitol hill where she worked in the Senate Foreign relations committee. W shes also written extensively on the u. S. Foreign policy especially the middle east and appears widely on television and until recently was the Senior Vice President for foreign and domestic studies at aei where she continues on foreign and defense policy studies. Richard fontaine has had a long career in Public Service and is now the chief executive officer of the center for new American Security which i say with some is doing incredibly Creative Work on issues relating to National Security. Richard worked for many years as senator john mccains Foreign Policy adviser and prior to that workwork for the state departmet National Security council and also the Senate Foreign relations committee. A very warm welcome to both of you it i which is wonderful to e you here again. Without further ado but we invite dan colin to present evey move to the floor for comments. We will have a brief conversation and then i will open up the conversation to the floor and i look forward to your interaction duringfo which time. Thank you and welcome. Thank you very much for this invitation. It just so happens this Panel Includes three people all of whose experience and expertise interviews i really respect so its a pleasure to be here. In fact without dani pletka this book may not have happened. She may regret that that is the truth the American Enterprise institute. Glad to be here. Let me say a few words about the central thesis of the book. What motivated me among othersi things was a common argument over the last five years that the Trump Administration represents something completely unprecedented in American History and that this striking rise of populist nationalism on both sides of the atlantic is a close for comparisons back in the 1930s. Without downplaying some of the causes for concern i think that is overstated. I think it misunderstands the nature of american populism, and american nationalism and the administrations Foreign Policy. It is an attempt to situateot ts moment in a broad Historical Context which i think is often missing in its today. But i argue is that american nationalism. They kind of american Foreign Policy going back to the founding of which is quite the opposite. In the american case at least, there is a civic nationalism which involves an american creed with powerful classical elements rule of law, with a government, sovereignty and that has been bound up in the sense of nationalism from the beginning. Succumb in a sense conservatives ndom the beginning of. At the same time when it comes to Foreign Policy, all the founders had a couple of key principles that were really a consistent paradigm for generations. If you have a dollar bill in your pocket you can see the new world of the agents. The hope going back to the founding has been an element of the u. S. Foreig u. S. Foreignpoy nationalism doesnt mean you can do it by force but at least as an example. The second element and this is in washingtons federal undress you maintain a a free hand. In the american foreignpolicy nationalism they saw no contradiction between the two things and that was a dominant bipartisan tradition well into the 20th century. Whats shifted was i argue Woodrow Wilsons innovation during world war i. Wilson believed not w only that you needed to tie a new Foreign Policy paradigm of liberal globalism, you have to type the possibility of domestic progressive reforms and be willing to intervene on the ground militarily in europe to indicate democracy overseas, but you also need to be willing to make the global multilateral commitments. So that is a paradigm shift to the founders of. Theyve never quite agreed on how to tackle or counter that liberal internationalist tradition. Thereve been internal divisions and debates and we see this over and over again and keep saying it. When it fits into the multilateral commitments, they basically believe that you should have alliances overseas, a robust american prisons and active overseas. He wanted i in alliance with britain and france into the league of nations and thought that it was overly optimistic and unrealistic. Then theres a second group on the other end of the dark bonne interventionists and yononintere this with libertarian, conservatives say they should avoid commitment altogether. Alliances where they can trade peacefully with others but shouldnt have a military role outside of the western hemisphere so that is the tradition that goes back to the period as well. Often populists left of the mississippi that is a strain that runs true and vendors preferred in the middle which is a hard line unilateralism that doesnt get as much attention in and discourse that has been underrepresented that a lot of conservatives over time have had a fairly strong willingness to spend on the military, willing to counter concrete adversaries of the soviet union but they are unenthusiastic about the broad internationalist products and if you cant convince them that there is an enemy that requires response, they tend to shy away from the role. That is the Pivotal Group over time and what you see is they pay this back and forth between activism and disengagement depending on the circumstances, so in that movement of the treaty debate over three factions agree wilson was wrong but they didnt agree why. In the 20s and 30s conservatives for the most t pat agree they should be attached from military affairs in europe. Pearl harbor settled the debate and then the rise of the soviet union led many hardline conservatives to support a more robust military goal overseas. But if you think that to somebody like senator barry goldwater, he actually wasnt enthusiastic about the internationalism as such. The reason most conservatives supported this so they collapsed the soviet union and led to the question of whatst is now. In the 90s it was well hoping. You have pat buchanan, also conservative internationalists and everything in between. George w. Bush settled the debate for some time with the constant war on terror and i think most republicans support him in that for much of his administration, but one bush leaves office during the obama years, you are back to the period that conservatives are asking what now. The big surprise in my opinion of 2016, 2015 and 2016 in the republican primary is that candidate could win the republican nomination and in fact the presidency campaigning against the conservative internationalist tradition going back to the 40s. Donald trump led a frontal assault on the conservative internationalist tradition going back decades and he won, which was astonishing. He turned things upside down. There were groups that had been in charge that were deeply concerned. But i think what trump was doing in a way and im not suggesting that they read these older documents but my suggestion is that he instinctively as a kind of american nationalist who draws from older traditions the idea to maintain a free hand for example. When he ran for president he had a particular nationalism of his own if you go back you can see hthey said the same sort of things in his own unusual way 30 or 35 heirs. He said over and over again he viewed them as free riders. Thats his view merrily rather than assets. Thats not my view, its his view. He was quite consistent about that. They were taking advantage of the states economically and of the United States militarily and politically and he aimed to somehow fix this through his own negotiating skills. It was the complaint, it wasnt at plan of the policy alternative, but it was a complaint with popular resonance as they saw in the 2016 primary particularly when you tie it into the frustration over military intervention in iraq and afghanistan not to mention libya. Frustrations with the economic globalization that seemed to benefit the well off and chinas middle class, as opposed to working americans. Frustrations over sessions of National Sovereignty to the supranational organizations, right. A buddy bundled together a sense of frustration and turned it into a winning platform, so it is an older version of american nationalism and a particular version i think we have seen resurgent and that is a part of the Historical Context. Once they had to transition unexpectedly to the government because the election came as a surprise than the question is what now, what is the plan is the policy. There were severe personnel challenges. In reality the trump foreignpolicy is more of a mixture of nonintervention, hardline unilateralism and in some ways continued u. S. Foreign policy engagement. It is a hybrid that is partly because of personnel in his own adaptations over time he wasse t very flexible. Hes unpredictable day today. But there does seem to be a pattern in how she handles foreignpolicy and thats one of the arguments i handle as well. That is what you are seeing as a maximum pressure campaign. Then you see them against us allies to increase defense spending not entirely new but its in a way that you have not seen before and then on the economic front against china us competitor that is the trump innovation to really push china on the commercial side and then finally the campaign against us allies thats very trump i dont think and you can do what have done thate japan mexico canada to look for renegotiated treaties. So what he does is he goes up and down the ladder of escalation it can be subtle and unexpected he will raise the temperature the lower it. People make cuts and then be willing to settle or talk. With adversaries but what i do find striking if you turn down the volume which turns out to thbe high he keeps his options open that is different from saying he is in fact i doubt that he could but heri is interested and renegotiating with the Campaign Promises with the assessment of commercial diplomatic and military to renegotiate others there are more troops in poland and there were under obama the outcome is not predetermined the significant amount of the forward presences there and in some cases they can be increased and that seems to be the form policy. Know im happy to talk about the assessments of each of those but that is what it looks like to me. I also talk about Public Opinion and i found to my surprise it hadnt changed that much but trump took advantage of one and of thetr spectrum and managed to turn that into a winning argument politically the average voter in the Political Party has feelings about activism but there is no less support from 15 years ago but he hasnt really changed voters minds and then to capture a certain segment of opinion. Most republicans for example have a negative opinion of putin ten years ago and most do today there was mixed feelings about globalization ten years ago there is today. Most republicans supported nato ten years ago most support a today. That is the reality having said that i do think there is a longterm l shift that is become more populist and culturally conservative that will have an effect on the Foreign Policy including trade policy there is no getting around it. It is much a symptom as a cause but also represents longterm shifts. So i would not assume that the longterm shifts disappear you cannot just assume its a oneoffas and as soon as he is gone everything will snap back to 2014 am a little skeptical about that. So my conclusion would be in the future conservative leaders would have the opportunity to make form policy cases theyto believe in the public is open to it for us activism in the world but if they are real there has to be Coalition Building and they have to figure out how to live within the same party. So one way or another my proposal would be conservative nationalism is here to stay. Thank you. H [applause] thank you for being here ashley i didnt even have to put on a coat to come here from my office and i appreciate your words of thanks colon one dash i know of course he would have done this because he was already working onin it. He was part ofe the first cohort from a program of which we are very proud he is one of the first Jean Kirkpatrick scholars to come from act academia to with think tank to work on policy related issues and this is through the Academic Work they have been doing we wanted you because we knew you would be productive and indeed you were and this is fine work we are super happy about it. Richard it is nice to meet you if you like i am the fulcrum so this is a sober and fine treatment of what confronts us all and the thing that i like best is not not simply it delves into the origins of form policy and National Security but that characterizes pretty much every conversation and to have a sober and serious conversation that does not reference twitter in any way. Actually i bookmarked one part of this so talking about the title in the final chapter called the age of iron he writes the was hardly optimistic that scoundrels will be honored and fame will banish i said i know who you are talking about. [laughter] and it is true. But the reality is if you set aside what goes along with todays conversation if we will abandon nato or if United States is on article five or walking away from global commitments the reality is this is a very typical version and we can all debate whether in fact now is in different as everybody has, we had a project at aei in reaction to a rise of libertarian ideas of what i would call isolationism i think there are plenty of people that represent that view on the left as well if you saw the debate last night you saw that on play a little bit with National Security that got a vagueue h oha mentiot one of the things we looked at was pulling about Public Interest and Global Engagement which is very cyclical engagement interest drop. If you go back to every president ial campaign go this century or even further to clinton every Single Campaign republican and democrat has about been turning inward it is the economy stupid. George w. Bush the goal for was stupid that was dumb nationbuilding here at home was barack obama slogan but easily could have been donald trump said of course in each instance they read on these new slogans and then they turn inward and then we focus on my area of the world with a conflict of the middle east and donald trump has been no different. No different than that. The other point to make that is rightly described that the American Public views are fairly constant on these things. The only thing that really changes is interest and engagement so for example the American People think its great to be in afghanistan with the long running but hugely not successful war. Very low numbers of support during the Obama Administration when obama decided we need to have troops , he went out and gave a relatively rare speech talking about the importance and then the numbers went right back up again. The people want to be led they want their leaders to make a persuasive case to them and when they do, whether engagement, military commitment or economic commitment or disengagement , nationbuilding here at home foreign entanglements, whatever they choose for the moment the public reacts to that as well. I would not call that fickleness but the general normal lack of interest. I always try toes underscore here in washington we are weird. Most people dont Pay Attention toof this. That is just the reality of thats not a badth thing. To really pinpoint something i would call that an open question for the future as a populist trend this is rooted to my mind much more of a tectonic shift within society rather than the sudden appeal of the Donald Trumps of the world. We have Political Parties remaining relatively static over the years especially in the unitedic states with a parliamentary system to say i will create a new Political Party so what happens are these relatively static Political Parties that they over the years