And welcome to the society for historians of American Foreign relations 2019 conference on this, the longest day of the year. Hopefully this panel will not be the longest panel of the year. Im aaron. I teach u. S. Military history and Foreign Policy the university of texas at austin. Im pleased to be chairing this panel today on the deep state. Joining me here to talk about i think this quite important topic are three fantastic historians, all of whom study politics and power in American History. Professor beverly of yale university. Professor dirk bonker of duke university. And professor Michael J Allen of northwestern university. Im going to set the stage with four or five minutes of introductory remarks and will introduce each panelist visually before they speak. Just 15, 20 minutes apiece and then we will open the floor to discussion in this roundtable. So we are here today to talk about the origins and the effects of this thing we call the deep state. It is important to say at the outset what historians always like to say. This is not really new. Today, we call it the deep state. In earlier eras, activists talked about the washington establishment, the power elite, the system, and even the militaryIndustrial Complex. Even though those terms have varied throughout the ages, they usually share a lot in common. So the arguments that typically accompany these terms about the deep state or the washington system, they are almost always conspiratory. They almost always talk about a cabal within the government that is working in secret to drive policy towards their own ends, the cabals own end, not the good. The people in the deep state seem to range all over the map, depending on the politics of whomever is talking. They can be the intelligence agencies, the cia, the fbi, the military, the National Security council, the bankers, and the globalists, the fossil fuel companies, or unspecified elites. But they almost always have or are pursuing some sort of effort that undermines the government. The message over and over again is that this cabal is either illegitimate itself, it is making the government illegitimate, or it is in cahoots with illegitimate unelected forces, and those bad actors must be opposed and uncovered for the nation to return to its true course. One of the things i always found interesting about it is the arguments really span the political divide in this red and blue state america. You can find common usage of the deep state on both sides. Today, we are mostly about it from President Trump and his allies in the Republican Party who want to cast out some motivations on the Law Enforcement agency, the fbi, judges, at times the cia. But it was not too long ago when leftwing critics were alleging there was a deep state alliance between, say, halliburton and the Oil Companies and the white house that was ostensibly driving policy in iraq and even afghanistan. So where did these terms come from . What were the earlier analogues . Did they come from the United States . Were they imported from outside the United States . Perhaps the most important question by my light, even more important than asking where they came from is where they are going and what deeper coach will commence are empowering and propelling these arguments forward, giving them force . Historians usually like to look for underlying structure, for specific events or key arguments. What persistent or common conditions exist over time that produce a common response . Even if it has different names and in different places. Thats basically what we are going to do with our introductory remarks here today. We have three historians here who will speak for about 15 minutes each, and then we will open the floor to the audience and have a roundtable discussion on the deep state. So our first panelist is Michael J Allen. He is associate professor of history at northwestern university, where he researches the history, memory, and politics of american empire in the 20th century. He is the author of until the last man came home pows, mias, and the unending vietnam war, which export the legacies of american defeat in the vietnam war in u. S. Politics and diplomacy. And i just want to add after teaching it this past semester for the first time, it taught me an enormous amount about the strange legacies of the p. O. W. Flags icy in every cemetery and parade i go two. I learned a lot about john mccain and ross perot, too. Thank you for that book. Michael is currently working on a book called new politics, the imperial presidency. The pragmatic left and the problem of democratic power, 1933 to 1981, which offers the first indepth study of how debates sparked by involvement in vietnam altered the very structure and terms of the postworld war ii u. S. Politics and Foreign Policy. So michael is going to start us off with some remarks on how the legacies of distrust from the cold war era actually shape the conversation on the deep state today. Michael . Michael thank you. I would just like to start by thanking aaron for stepping in. Our original chair and commentator, robert dean, is unable to be here due to a family emergency that call him away. Aaron was generous enough to join us today. And im sure he will have many valuable insights to our conversation later. Let me get started so we have plenty of time to have that conversation. My task here i think is in part to lay out the current conversation about the deep state in the United States and to talk a little bit about american thinking on this problem of state power, particularly in the postworld war ii era, and how it led us to our present moment. In his recent book the deep state how would army of bureaucrats protected barack obama and is working to destroy the trump agenda, former chairman of the house mitty on oversight and government reform retired congressman the the subject as a permitted class of democrats, republicans, federal bureaucrats, and entrenched washington, d. C. , and corridor insiders trying to weaponize everything in their power to destroy President Trump. Aided by trumps endorsement over twitter, his ex debuted at number seven on the New York Times best seller list where enjoyed another book, the russia hoax, which debuted at number one on the list and has spent 10 weeks there. And Jeanine Pirro liars, leakers, and liberals the case against the antitrust conspiracy, which also debut number one and spent 13 weeks on the list. These are just three of the many many books that have been published by trump insiders, supporters, fox news analysts, and the like over the past 18 months or so. These three titles, which were all on the New York Times best selling list at the same time in the fall of 2018 improved upon the general course hes improving the deep state, the fight to save President Trump, which spent three weeks on the New York Times list earlier in 2018. It also includes leading media and intelligentsia that dominates the Global Economy and geopolitics. As jason put it, u. S. President s come and go. Political parties win one election and lose the next, but the deep state goes on. It is the state within a state. What from calls, the swamp, or at other times, simply the elite. These ideas are broadly understood. The march 2018 poll showed just 37 of americans had heard of the deep state or were familiar with that nomenclature. However, it also showed that three quarters of americans believe there was a group of unelected government and military officials would equally manipulate or direct national policy. The broad distrust of such people helps make trump president. It is fundamental to all he does. From his hatred of the press to his disdain for traditional allies and security and trade agreements to his embrace of rogue regimes to his open contempt for diplomacy or even civility. In trumps estimation, the powers that be have bullied, bankrupted, and belittled him and his people for too long. His presidency represents their comeuppance. However reductive, this is a systemic view of power in its operation in the world and america. Trump has upended politics. Since the nixon election, republicans supported themselves on their close ties to the Nations Armed forces and its National Security agencys while blasting democrats as weak on defense. Democrats have tried to disprove such things. Both bill clinton and barack obama have at times conceded the case to their republican opponents by regularly appointing republicans as secretary of defense and naming republican holdovers to head the fbi and cia. The cia which corsi locates as the center of an extraconstitutional deep state that controls both parties. This tendency to follow in republican footsteps on display in obamas decision to keep robert gates as the secretary of defense despite his services as george bush seniors cia director and his oversight of george bush juniors wars in iraq and afghanistan. Along with keeping Robert Mueller on the bip report it was possible for the idea of a private security establishment in the present moment. Former republican congressional staffer put it in his 2016 book the deep state, did hope change anything . It is a question that sarah palin famously said after, how did the whole hope and change thing work out for you . It is a surprise to see a republican president embroiled in such conflict with the National Security bureaucracy, including fbi director james comey, who trump fired soon after taking office, secretary of state mattis, and former cia director john brennan, who trump threatened to strip of his secret clearance after brennan repeatedly accused trump of treason along with the aforementioned mueller and his after mentioned administration. Mueller and his witchhunt of the administration. s hostility surprised official washington more than anyone. When president elect took to twitter to needle brennan for what trump called an intelligence briefing on the socalled russian hacking, suggesting more time was needed to build a case, and then minority leader Chuck Schumer took to him is msnbc to warn them. Let me tell you, if you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways to sunday getting back at you. Unbowed ands democrats have no plan for bringing him to heal. Heel which really underscores the question, who rules washington, elected officials or washington bureaucrats. On super bowl sunday, 2017, trump answered critics who accused me of accused him of overly close ties to Vladimir Putin by retorting you think our country is so innocent . Our country does plenty of killing. This frank admission of the bloody truth cause the ranking democrat on the House Intelligence Committee adam schiff to sputter this is inexplicably bizarre as it is untrue. Does he not see the damage he does with comments like that . , trump does,dly but he calculates the damage is to washington bureaucrats. Hiseter dale scott wrote in 2015 book the american deep work, the sole scholarly on the subject, though we made to be eight may debate how scholarly it is it is to condition americans to accept security measures at home. Enlists those who teach voters to think in these terms that were once reserved for via his owninars reality show theatrics, but these ideas predate trump. They explain his rise more than his rise explains them. The deep state makes sense to trump voters. It accounts for the pronounced economic inequality and explains how and why the privileged and powerful profited so handsomely in the their failures iraq war and the Global Financial crisis. Bifurcated the system where they are unable to address the basic need support near american spirit finally explains why in search and political movements have come themselves stymied at every turn, defined as illegitimate and unamerican by government insiders who insurgents do not respect, that cannot the flight deflect. While such frustrations have become more acute. It is the existence of the National Security state. Distrust of centralized executive power defined responses to Franklin Roosevelts managerial approach in the 1930s and 1940s. Which conservatives like senator robert cap mourned put the theed put the state country on a slippery slope to Security State. They lacked to be cold war consensus required for the promise of social democracy offered in the new deal. In the 1956 book the power elite argued that American Power had become concentrated among a small cadre of executive decisionmakers, the ones who decide, who operated according to what he called a military definition of reality. Small groups that were inaccessible to the public rather than to paint this in economic terms. He says the interlocking and overlapping nature of corporate and state power. On wallngton as well as street in west point, he argued a small group of men gained power through appointments rather than electric elections. With the power and challenged in congress, where the differences between the two parties are very narrow and mixed up. His contemporaries soon coined the phrase good the establishment, the antecedent to the deep state to disturb. His describe this William F Buckley may have been the first to use this, admitting that his audience was confused by his meeting, but he borrowed the term from a british journalist to use it in 1955 to describe a matrix of official in social relations within which power is exercised, a web of associations so deep he said that they did not need to be articulated. He referred in his work to what he called the executive establishment, the military establishment, the permanent war establishment and the National Establishment in his book. The establishment is a general term for those who hold the principal measure of power irrespective of what administration occupies the white house. Was theect description republican called to service in a Democratic Administration or vice versa. They were the pivotal figures who made possible cold war consensus. For mills, gall brave, and contemporary revisionist historians busy redefining u. S. To emphasizestory continuity in consensus, there was something inherently suspect about such shape shifters who won power not just by contested elections but forging consensus closed doors. These men raised a new generation of new left scholars and academics learn to scrutinize washington establishment. Claimed figures , who led twoundy democratic president s to disaster in vietnam. While conservatives blamed henry for what foolish left lay called the convergence between the republican and parties to eliminate Foreign Policy from political campaigns. But both of these sides, buckley and shapley, agreed the only way to fix the broken system of miss governance and establish greater democracy in america was to abolish the parties about us Political Party stalemate in favor of two Genuine Party centered around issues and essential values. Both sides set out to do just that. The left liberal reformers stripped cold war democrats through power through interparty reforms while conservatives purged conservatives from their ranks. All of this was backed up by liberals who launched at decade ending withof angry the Church Committee hearings in 1975, which dragged deep state 30 laundry into the harsh light of public scrutiny. Neocons lost tribe of wandering in the wilderness of figures like jimmy carter and ronald reagan. But it sheltered in place within the Security State it helped to build, uncovering down into what we might call the deep state to defend its guiding presence despite more partisan rhetoric, only to emerge with new power after 9 11, although perhaps with no Greater Public legitimacy. To conclude, what takeaway does this history offer . Can teachurse diplomatic historians . I would like to offer three thoughts. I hope to elaborate on these and q a. First, public distrust of the National Security state is not new. Nor is it limited to the political french. The persistence of the public debate on the role of the looks poorest and foremost to internal dynamics. Third and finally, this history illustrates the danger that. Mpire poses to democracy trumps rise to power feeds on the same fears of unchangeable revisionist power. Unlikely it is that trump will address the conditions that give rise to those fears, there is a broader loss of faith in american democracy. Empire as aude with way of life imperialism has our irreducible meaning. The loss of control over essential views and issues. In that fundamental sense to continue the proper cost of empire is not tabulated in debt or the loss of resources but be lost vitality as citizens. We grant sovereignty to the establishment, those in and out priorityment who order relationships around the world. In a democracy the citizens are supposed to be the establishment, but by describing in ascribinge our governments to vague shapes in the corridors of power we limit ourselves to choosing minor variations and foster and illusion that appointing different people will bring change that never comes. Its an analysis that is as much about where we are and how we got here, but offers no easy solutions how to get out. Thank you. [applause] thank you michael. Speaker is associate bonker from duke university. He is the author of militarism the, third world age which talks about the transnational culture of military elites on both sides of the atlantic. He is currently working on a book on the