Good morning, everyone and welcome to the Carnegie Endowment or international peace. Im ashley tellis, c senior felw at the endowment and its a great pleasure for me to welcome all of you to this Book Discussion of age of iron which is a marvelous analysis of conservative nationalism. I see i will say couple things but the book in a in a t but before i do i want to extend on your behalf in mine a warm welcome to call in himself and our distance, duty, Danielle Pletka and Richard Fontaine. As you probably know, colin is a professor at the start school publicly and government at George Mason University andco is also a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise institute, neighbor nextdoor, literally. Colin has made his mark thinking deeply about american politics. And this book is trademark direct. 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 found manifestation in modern american history, especially in the debates about americas role in the world. So the book is both encompassing and grandiose 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 ihe commend it to your attention. So welcome, colin. As a pleasure to have you with us. Im also very grateful that danielle dutka and Richard Fontaine have consented to join us as discussants. We could not asked her better commentators, given both their intellectual interests in conservatism and their own practical contributions to the making and permitting of foreign and domestic policy in the United States. Danny has had a long career on capitol hill where she worked at the Foreign Center of foreign relationse committee. She has written extensively on u. S. Foreign policy especially on the middle east, appears widely on television and until recently was the Senior Vice President for a domestic Foreign Policy studies at aei where she continues to remain a senior fellow in foreign and defense policy studies. Richard fontaine has had an long career in public service. He is now the chief executive office of cnas, the center for new american security, which i say with some jealousy is doing incredibly Creative Work on operational issues relating to u. S. National security. Richard worked for many years as senator john mccains Foreign Policy advisor, and prior to that work at the state department, the National Security council, and also the Senate Foreign relations committee. So very warm welcome to both of you, dani and richard. Its wonderful to have you both here again. Without further ado, let me invite called in to visit the key themes of this book for us. Before yielding the floor today and richard for the comments, we will 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 very much for this invitation. It just so happens that this Panel Includes three people, all of whose experience and expertise and use i really respect, so its a real pleasure to be a with dani and richard. In fact, dani, without dani this book probably would not happen. She may regret that but that is the truth, at the American Enterprise institute. So glad to beer. Let me say a few words about the central thesis of the book. Whatat 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 back to the 1930s. Without downplaying some of the genuine causes for concern, i think thats overstated. I think it misunderstands the nature of american populism, american nationalism, and the administrations Foreign Policy. So the book isnt a political one way or the other. Its not a drawer at the trump polemic. An american creed with Classical Liberal elements, rule of law, limited government, sovereignty and american sense of nationalism so small see conservatives have sought to conserve that tradition and that the same time when it comes to foreignpolicy the founders had some key principles that were a consistent paradigm for generations. If you have a dollar bill in your pocket you see the new order of the ages. I hope popular selfgovernment spreads, that is a distinct the american hope, annulment of us Foreign Policy, doesnt mean you do it by force but as an example. The second element and this is in washington, the idea you maintain a free hand, as jefferson put it, there would be no entangling alliances, no permanent alliances. That was a key element in american Foreign Policy from the beginning and founders saw a contradiction between those two things. That was a dominant political bipartisan tradition well into the Twentieth Century so what shifted was, i argue, Woodrow Wilsons innovation in world war i. Wilson believed he not only needed to tie a new foreignpolicy paradigm we call globalism, domestic progressive reforms in every country including the United States, and you have to be willing to get multilateral commitments worldwide as intended with the league of nations under article 10. That is an alternative to the founders, and and have to accommodate that liberal tradition. We see this over and over again. One, conservative internationalist are skeptical of some of the rules and overkill when it comes to multilateral commitments. And that was the tradition of somebody like senator lodge who faced off against wilson during the treaty a sigh, wanted an alliance with britain and france, and wilson was overly optimistic and unrealistic. There was a second group who were strict noninterventionists. The us had to avoid military commitments, and interventions that it can trade peacefully with other countries but shouldnt have military rule. Outside of the western hemisphere. That is a tradition that goes back to that period as well. Often populists from west of the mississippi. Then there is a third strain in the middle, a hawkish or hardline unilateralism which doesnt get as much attention. It has been underrepresented. A lot of conservatives at the time had a strong willingness to spend on the military, willing to counter concrete adversaries in the soviet union and al qaeda but are enthusiastic about brought liberal international projects. It actually requires a response and that is the Pivotal Group over time. We pivot back and forth. It depends on the circumstances. In the moment of that debate, all factions agree that wilson was wrong, but they didnt agree with why. In the 20s and 30s. Conservatives agree the us should be detached from military affairs in europe. Pearl harbor settled that debate and the rise of the soviet union led many hardline conservatives to support more robust military role overseas but if you think back to barry goldwater, he was not enthusiastic about liberal internationalism. It is staunchly anticommunist. The soviet union as welcome as it was, and it was wide open. You have ron paul and conservative internationalist and everything in between. Most republicans supported him in that for much of his administration. And during the obama years your back to that period they are asking what now. The big surprise of 2016, 201516 in the republican primary was a candidate could win the republican nomination and the presidency campaigning against that 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. Group that had been marginalized felt better represented, groups that had been in charge were deeply concerned, but what trump was doing, im not suggesting he personally read these older documents. My suggestion is he instinctively is a kind of american nationalist who draws from older traditions. When trump ran for president , particular american nationalism of his own but he said the same thing for 30 years and his own unusual way, he said over and over that he viewed us allies as free riders. Rather than assets. That is not my view. It is his view. He was quite consistent about that. He said they were taking advantage of the United States economically and militarily, politically. He aimed to somehow fix this through his own negotiating skills. It with a complaint. It wasnt really a plan. There was no sense of a policy alternative but it was a complaint with some popular residence as we saw in the 2016 primary particularly when you tie in frustration over military interventions in iraq and afghanistan not to mention libya, patterns of economic mobilization that seemed to benefit the well off, chinas middleclass, working americans, and National Sovereignty to supernatural organization but bundled together a sense of frustration and turned it into a winning platform. His own particular version of american nationalism we have seen resurgent and that is 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 people in this room, then the question is what now . What is the plan . What is the policy . There is digitalized uncertainty from the beginning, severe personnel challenges. In reality the trump foreignpolicy is a mixture of nonintervention, hardline unilateralism and continued us foreignpolicy activism and engagement. It is a mixture, a hybrid. The personnel around him, partly because of his own adaptation over time. He is likable to a fault. He is flexible to a fault. There is a pattern to harry handers foreignpolicy. There is Something Like a trump doctrine. If you will indulge me, i picture at as a 2 x 2 grid. He launches pressure campaigns against allies as well as adversaries. He launches pressure campaigns on Economic Issues and security ones. In other words pressure campaigns against security adversaries, north korea, iran, isis, taliban and. Another president might have done the same thing in a different way but that is part of what you are seeing and in the case of iran and north korea. Then you see pressure campaigns against allies, not entirely new but in a way we havent seen before. Pressure campaigns on the economic front against china, us competitor. That is a trump innovation that was not nearly as much, to really push china on the commercial side and finally pressure campaigns against us allies on trade, that is very trump. I dont think any other candidate would have done that, pressure canada, mexico, japan, south korea, the eu looking for renegotiated trading arrangements. 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 and lower it. He will make threats and be willing to sell or talk to almost anybody. This tends to unnerve people. It unnerves allies, adversaries, some of his own staff but what i find striking, if you turn down the volume which tends to be very high it is not obvious that he himself knows the end point. Im not sure he himself knows his own Reservation Point on any of these fronts. He keeps his options open. That is different from saying he is hellbent on dismantling what we call rulesbased liberal international order. Im not convinced he has that is a Reference Point one way or the other in fact i doubt he could describe it to you. He is interested in renegotiating existing arrangements consistent with his 2016 campaign promises. It is a portfolio assessment of us commitments overseas, commercial, diplomatic, military, hes reserving the right to walk away from some commitments, renegotiate others, maintain or even bolster some. There are us troops in poland more than there were under obama. The outcome is not predetermined. A significant amount of the us presence is still there and may in some cases be increased. And that seems to be the foreignpolicy. We can talk about assessments of each of those fronts but that is what it looks like to me. A few final thought. How my doing on time . I also talk a little bit about Public Opinion, and i found to my surprise the distribution of opinion hasnt changed that much over the last 5 or 10 years, trump took advantage of one end of the spectrum, the less international, the more protectionist and managed to turn it into a winning argument politically but distribution has not changed that much. The average voter has next feelings about us policy activism but no less support for than 5 or 15 years ago so that is interesting. He hasnt changed voters minds as much as you think. Hes made a difference in capturing certain segments of opinion. For example most republicans had a negative opinion of Vladimir Putin ten years ago, most have a negative opinion of him today. There was mixed feeling about globalization 10 years ago and is mixed feeling about globalization today. Most republicans supported nato 10 years ago, most republicans support nato today. Go down the list that is the reality politically. Having said that i do think there has been a longterm shift whereby the Republican Party has become more populist, culturally conservative, workingclass voters have become the base of the party. That is bound to have an effect on foreignpolicy including trade policy. There is no getting around it. He is as much a symptomatic cause. He has accelerated that but also represents longterm shift. I would not assume just because he has seen these longterm shift disappear you cant assume he is a one off and as soon as he is gone everything will snap back to 2014. Im skeptical about that. My conclusion would be that in the future, conservative leaders will have the opportunity to make foreignpolicy cases they believe in, they can play a leading role, the public is open to it, theres a fair amount of support among conservatives about us activism in the world but some of these shifts are real, they created trump and will probably outlast him so there will have to be collision building, more than one type of conservative and they have to figure out how to live within the same party, not to mention other independents and democrats. One way or another conservative american nationalism is here to stay. Thank you. [applause] can i ask you to stay here . Thank you so much for being here. I love the fact that i didnt even need to put on a coat to come over from my office and i appreciated it. Very kindly, colin dueck said he wouldnt do this but i knew he would have but he was the first cohort of the program of which we are really proud which we named after james kirkpatrick, one of the first teams kirkpatrick scholars, the first of academia to a think tank to work on policy related issues and move away from your academic and he wanted you because we knew you would be productive and indeed you were and everybody is happy about it. Sitting next to richard i feel like i am the full crumb because he was a legislative assistant when he was a we thing. That was a long time ago. You havent changed a bit. There is that. Onto the subset. This is a very sober treatment of the questions that confront us all and the thing i like best about it is not that it delves into the origins of different types of american conservatism and foreignpolicy and National Security but does so in a way that the absolute hysteria characterizes every conversation about these issues, going to have a sober serious conversation that doesnt reference twitter in any way although one little part of this, i know what we are talking about here. So then in your final chapter colin dueck rights he is highly optimistic about this new era, scoundrels will be honored and shame will vanish. And it is true, but the reality is if you set aside what goes along with with we are going to abandon nato or the United States will honor article 5 or we are walking away from our global commitments the reality, what i see as a typical reversion to the means. We can all debate whether now is different as almost everybody has at every turn where there has been this reversion. We had a project some years ago in reaction to what we found a rather nervous making rise of libertarian ideas, with rand paul at the forefront of what i would call isolationism. I dont think of him as a realist but as isolationists and plenty of people represent that viewpoint on the left as well if you watched last nights debate, you saw that on display a little bit. We started this project. One of the things we looked at was polling over the years about American Public interest in Global Engagement and what you see is a very cyclical engagement, interest drop. If you go back to pretty much every president of campaign, lets just take this century or go back further to bill clinton every single one of these campaigns, republican and democrat, has been about turning inward. Its the economy, stupid. We can go on and on, nationbuilding here at home was Barack Obamas slogan but it could easily have been donald trump. In each instance would be signed as they run on the slogans and then we end up, as a middle east specialist i took is on my area and we end up with a complex in the middle east and donald trump has been no different, no different than that. The other point is the American Publics views on this are fairly co