Welcome to the carnegie and almond for international peace. I am a senior fellow of the endowment and its a great pleasure for me to welcome all of you to this Book Discussion of colin duecks age of iron which is a marvelous analysis of conservative nationalism. I see a couple of things about the book in the moment but before i do, i want to extend on your behalf and mind a warm welcome to colin himself and to our two distinguished commentators, danny pletka and Richard Fontaine. As you know colin is a professor at the start school of policy and government at George Mason University read and is also a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise institute, our neighbor next door literally. Colin has made his mark thinking deeply about american politics. And this book is trademark colin dueck. It examines the concept of conservative nationalism, a phenomenon that has been brought to public attention conspicuously through the rise of President Trump. In terms of both the history of ideas and how these ideas have manifestation in modern american history, especially in the debates about americas role in theworld. So the book is both encompassing and granular simultaneously and despite the gravity of the subject i can assure you its also a very delightful read. I read the book over the last weekend and i commend it to your attention. So welcome colin, its a pleasure to have you with us. Im also very grateful that danny pletka and Richard Fontaine have consented to join us inthis discussion. We could not have asked for better commentators given both their intellectual interest in conservatism mmand their own practical contributions to both the making andimplementing of foreign undomestic policy in the United States. Danny has had a long career on capitol hill where she worked at the Senate ForeignRelations Committee. She has also written extensively on us Foreign Policy especially on the middle east. Appears widely on television and until recently was the Senior Vice President for foreign and domestic Foreign Policy studies where she continues to remain a senior fellow in foreignand defense policy studies. Richard fontaine to has had a long career in public service. H he is now chief executive officer of the center for new American Security which i say with some jealousy is doing incredibly Creative Work on operational issues relating to us nationalsecurity. Richard worked for many years as senator john mccains Foreign Policy advisor and prior to that work at the state department, National Security council and also the Senate ForeignRelations Committee so a very warm welcome to both of you , danny and richard. Its wonderful to have you here again. Without further ado let me invite colin to present the key teams of his book for us before i yield the floor to danny and richard for comments. Well have a brief conversation thereafter and then i will open the conversation to the floor and i look forward to your interaction during that time. Thank you colin, welcome. Thanks ashley, thank you very much for this invitation. It so happens this Panel Includes three people, all of whom experience and expertise and views i really respect so its a real pleasure to be here with danny and richard as well. Without danny, this book probably wouldnt have happened. She may regret that but that is the truth atthe American Enterprise institute. So glad to be here. Let me say a few words about the central thesis of the book. What motivated me among other things was the 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 the right on both sides of the atlantic is a cause for comparisons, really backto the 1930s. Without downplaying some of the genuine causes for concern, i think thats overstated. I think it must understands the nature of american populism, american nationalism and the administrations Foreign Policy so the book is not a polemic one way or another, is not a proor antitrump polemic but its an attempt to situate this moment in some sort of broader Historical Context which is often missing in this furious of the day. And what i argue is american nationalism , there is a kind of american policy nationalism going back to the founding which is not undemocratic at all, its quite the opposite. The american case at least, there is a civic nationalism which involves a american creed with powerful Classical Liberal elements. Rule of law, limited government, sovereignty and that has been buttoned up with a sense of american nationalism so i spent conservatives from the beginning sought to conserve literally that tradition and at the same time when it comes to Foreign Policy, the founders had a couple of key principles that were really a consistent paradigm for generations. One if you have a dollar bill in your pocket you can see the idea of a new order of will stand for something and hope the popular selfgovernment spreads. That is a distinct american hope going back to the foundingbest and an element of us Foreign Policy, doesnt mean you can always do it by force at least as an example. The second element leand this is in washingtonsfarewell address is the idea you maintain a free hand. That there is as jefferson put it later that there will be no entangling alliances. No permanent alliances. That was a key element in american Foreign Policy nationalism from the beginning and the founders for no contradiction between those two things. That was a dominant, what we would call bipartisan tradition well into the 20th century and so what really shifted was i argue Woodrow Wilsons innovation, during world war i. Wilson believed not only that you needed to tie a new foreignpolicy paradigm that we call today liberal internationalism or globalism, you need to tie that the possibility of domestic progressive reforms in every country. You needed to be willing to intervene on the ground militarily in your to indicate democracy overseas but also need to be willing to make global binding multilateralcommitments. Worldwide as the intended with the league of nations, particularly under article 10 so thats a paradigm shift, thats an alternative to the founders and wilson understood it as such and so did his republican critics which is what gave them pause. From the beginning republicans and conservatives have never quite agree on how wto tackle or counter or accommodate that liberal internationalist tradition, that will sony and tradition that had been internal divisions and debate and we see this over and over again and we will probably keep seeing it. I say theres remain groups of conservatives over the past century. One, conservative internationalist are skeptical of some of the will will sony and overkill when it comes to multilateral commitments but they basically believe that you should have alliances overseas, and robust american president s an active role overseas. Thats the position of somebody like henry cabot watch based off against wilson during the treaty of bursae debates. Vlad wanted a alliance with britain and france. He just bought wilsons was overly optimistic and unrealistic. Then theres the second group on the other end of the spectrum for noninterventionist and you see this with libertarians, from paley of conservatives who say that the us to avoid military commitments altogether, alliances, bases, interventions. It can trade piece but it shouldnt have a military role. Outside of lets say the western hemisphere. Thats a tradition that goes back to that as well, people like robert lafayette, a populist from west of the mississippi. Thats a strain that run through theres a third string in the middle which is kind of a hawkish or hardline unilateralism which doesnt get as much attention in elite discourse. I would say its been underrepresented but a lot of conservatives have had a fairly strong willingness to spend on the military, willing to counter concrete adversaries, the soviet union, al qaeda but theyre unenthusiastic about broader liberal internationalist projects if you cant injured convince them that theres some enemy that requires a tresponse ahand to shy away from a more active role. At the Pivotal Group over time and what you see is a pivot back and forth between activism and disengagement depending on the circumstances so in that moment of the treaty debate, all three factions agreed wilson was wrong but didnt agree why you and in the 20s and 30s conservatives for the most part agreed the us should be detached from military affairs in europe. Pearl harbor settled that debate for some time and of course the rise of the soviet union led many hardline conservatives to support a more robust military role for the overseas but if you think back to somebody like a goldwater, he was not enthusiastic at all about liberal internationalism as such. The reason most conservatives accorded this was they were anticommunist, monthly anticommunist so the lasix soviet union led the question tiof what now for conservative. In the 90s i think it was wide open. You had pat buchanan, you had ron paul, you also had interpretive internationalists and everything in between. George w. Bush settled that debate for some time with the concept of the war on terror and many republicans fought him on that for much of his administration but during the obama years . That period where conservatives are asking what now had the big surprise in my opinion of 2016, 2015, 2016 in the primary was that a candidate could win the republican nomination and in fact the presidency campaigning against that conservative internationalist tradition, going back to the 40s. Donald trump really led a frontal assault on the conservative internationalist tradition. Going back decades and he won which was astonishing. He sort of turned things upside down so groups that had been marginalized felt they were better represented. In charge were deeply concerned. But i think what trump was doing in away and im not suggesting he personally read these older documents, thats not my argument read my suggestion is instinctively is a kind of american nationalist who draws from older traditions, the idea that you need tomaintain a free hand for example. When trump ran for president he had a particularly american nationalism of his own and if you go back you can see the said the same sort of thing or 30 years in his own unusual way, 30 or 35 years. He said over and over again he viewed us allies as free riders, that is you. Primarily as free riders rather than assets. Not my view, its his view. S he was quite consistent about that. He said they were taking advantage of the United States economically kiand militarily and politically and he aimed to somehow fix this through his own negotiating skills. It was a complaint, it wasnt really a plan to read wasnt much sense of what is the policy alternative but it was a complaint with unpopular residents as we saw in the 2016 primary, particularly when you tie into frustration over military interventions in iraq and afghanistan, frustrations with patterns of economicglobalization that seemed to benefit the welloff and chinas middle class as opposed to working americans. Frustrations over sections of National Sovereignty. He bundled together a sense of restriction and turn it into a winning platform so its an older version of american nationalism, his own particular version that i think weve seen resurgent and thats part of the Historical Context. Once he had to transition unexpectedly to government because i think his election came as a surprise to a lot of peoplein this room , i can tell you it came as a surprise to me, the question is whats policy and of course a lot of uncertainty from the beginning. There were severepersonnel challenges , in reality the trump Foreign Policy is more of a mixture of nonintervention, hardline unilateralism and in some ways continued us foreignpolicy activism and engagement, its a hybrid partly because of the personnel around him. Thats partly because of his own adaptations over time, is very flexible, flexible to a fault. These unpredictable day today but there does seem to be a pattern in how he handles foreignpolicy thats one of the arguments i make as well there is Something Like a trump doctrine and if youll indulge me, not to sound like a political scientist i would picture the 2 x 2 grid. He launches escher campaigns against allies as well as adversaries. He launches escher campaigns on Economic Issues as well as securityones. So in other words , Pressure Campaigns against the purity adversaries in north korea, iran, isis, caliban and another president might have hadone the same thing in a somewhat different way thats part of what youre seeing, maximum Pressure Campaign in the case of the ran and north korea for example. And you see Pressure Campaigns against us allies on security to increase events. Not entirely new he is blunt in a way that we havent seen before. You see Pressure Campaigns on the economic front against china , us competitor thats a trump innovation i think. That was not nearly as high priority for tedious president s to really push china on the commercial side and then finally, Pressure Campaigns against us allies on trade. Thats new and thats very trump, thats trump. I dont think any other candidate candidate would have done that. Pressure canada, japan, south korea looking for renegotiated trade agreements so those are the Pressure Campaign and what he does is he goes up and down the ladder of escalation in ways that can be quite sudden and unexpected. He will raise the temperature temperature and then he will lower area he will make threats and be willing to settle or talk to almost anybody. This tends to unnerve people. At unnerve allies, adversaries, probably some of his own staff but what i do find striking if you try to turn down the volume which tends to be very high, its not obvious that he himself knows the endpoint which is interesting. Im not sure he himself knows his own Reservation Point and every one of these fronts he keeps his options open that is different from saying he is hellbent on dismantling what we call rulesbased international order. Im not convinced he has that as a Reference Point one way or the other. In fact i doubt he could describe it to me. Hes interested in renegotiating existing arrangements consistent with his campaignpromise. It is a portfolio assessment of us commitments overseas, commercial,diplomatic, military. Is reserving the right to walk away from some commitments and maintain some, maybe even bolster some. There are us troops in poland more than there were under obama so the outcome is not predetermined. A significant amount ofthe us forward presence is there and in may some cases be increased. And that seems to be the Foreign Policy. Id be happy to talk in discussion about assessments of each of those fronts but thats what it looks like to me. A few final thoughts, how am i doing on time . I talk about Public Opinion, the relationship of conservative opinion to the Trump Administration and i found to my surprise that the distribution of opinion hasnt changed that much over the last five or 10 years, in other words trump took advantage of one end of the spectrum, the less interventionist, the more protectionist and managed to turn that into a winning argument politically but the distribution hasnt changed that much. The average voter in the Republican Party has mixed feelings about us foreignpolicy activism but theres no less support for it then there was 10 or 15 years ago so thats interesting. He hasnt changed voters minds as much as you think. He himself has made a big difference and captured a certain segment of opinion area most republicans had a negative of opinion of putin 10 years ago, most have a negative opinion today. There was mixed feeling about globalization 10 years ago, there is mixed feelings today. Most supported nato 10 years ago, most republicans support nato today. Thats the reality politically. Having said d that i think theres been a longterm shift by the Republican Party that has become more populist, culturally conservative, white workingclass voters have become more and more important over time as the base of the party and thats going to have an effect feon your foreignpolicy including your trade policy. Theres no getting around it and he has as much a symptom as a cost he has accelerated that but he represents longterm ships. I would not assume that just because he seems that these longterm shifts disappear. We cant assume hes a one off and that as soon as hes gone everything will snap back to 2014. Im a little bit skeptical about that. So i guess my conclusion would be that in the future, post trump, conservative leaders will have the opportunity to make or in policy cases believe in and they can play a leading role. The public is open to it. Theres still a fair amount of support among conservatives for us activism but some of these longterm ships are real. They predate trump and will probably outlast him so theres going to have to be coalition