It yeah this is a good idea but im just a little worried about the fund the funding of it go ahead ted in oxford. Im not particularly worried about the sources of funding i find it interesting that 2 such disparate sources have both decided this is a good idea but that doesnt stop me from thinking that its a good idea too and looking at the contributors i see in andrew bass of each and there whos very much along my lines of sort of conservative libertarian on a lot of International Issues i see parsi from georgetown with whom i agree on almost nothing but the whole idea i would think is to have people of various points of view coming together to discuss these issues and get people outside of their echo chambers thats one to please put don ok im going to start throwing some cold war or water on it here ok you have george soros in his relationship with the Atlantic Council a very you know that is the mouthpiece of nato its star in chile anti. Russian if you look at the Koch Brothers they have been supporting this illegal who and venezuela i could go on and on ok and so im just happy im left but willed and by all of this because are they going to separate themselves from their business interests and and this is going to be an intellectual process i find that hard to believe go had done well the question is is this is 13 chick change or a tactical one and id argue clearly its the latter their interests as you mentioned havent really changed the Playing Field has changed the rules of the game have changed weve seen expressions of this certainly and thats when the 16 election when you saw trump who wasnt even a republican really rise on to the top of 16 candidates in the Republican Party essentially because people said as they told me at the r n c he said hes going to get me a job thats how desperate people were these saw sanders rise in the Democratic Party the same way and you saw up and over the same issues a sensually and use of people who streets every time something happened when it when a kid got killed or some other event happened people had one foot out the door were already the institutions in the west have not been responsive to the needs of working people for at least one generation now 30 years 40 years youve seen a steady erosion of peoples purchasing power and wealth their equity so that now people who used to own their homes or have a very secure rental place to live our home and secure their food and secure they have massive debt for education they have health care is security and theres no solution in sight the thing that really got me at the r n c when people said to me well trump said is going to get me a job and i said look hes a politician what does that mean they said no one else is even so. A. Good point that i mean let me go back to london interviewee i mean you know if we look at in the past few weeks here and i dont want to micromanage management too much but it seems quite obvious that donald trump is looking for advice outside of his inner circle because i would argue and argue strenuously that hes getting very bad advice from his inner circle and youre doing a lot of she do a lot of firing i would say and i think everyone knows who im talking about with the Quincy Institute here that could be a news source for trump do you know you guys kind of talk about both sides here i think they see themselves as an issue and i think they would find themselves they could get closer to power and thats exactly what think tanks want to do they want to get their ideas in front of people who have power and i think this is a very good gambit as long as its a good idea that theyre putting go ahead in london. I think youre right i think when we look at some of the scholars and what theyve been saying about American Foreign policy and its overstretch overreach in the last 2025 years they come from both the right and from the liberal kind of. Part of the spectrum so steve alter Harvard Johnny smith a tough for example a very representative and what each of them is saying is that they basically fundamentally agree that america has been trying to do good in the world but they are dog you that theres been a lot of hubris involved too and overstretch and theyre both urging restraint and one of the key things that steve walt has it in book the hell of good intentions for example is that there is no if you like set of the cagers or trained people from a kind of more realist perspective that the administration be administration in washington can really choose from and in his book or towards get deeper has virtually put forward a manifesto which would suggest how that cadence set of cages might be might be generated and and we know that in that book hell of good intentions steve actually acknowledges the support that. Until support of the foundation in any case i think that is exactly what is happening here and i think that will kind of possibly bolster some of the advice of President Trump may get to back up some of his his own instincts. Bill kristol came out. With a very solid criticism a very pretty good one as usual coming from bill kristol it kikuyus is the idea of quincy and stupid is a promoting isolationism it is so i mean i find that just absolutely absurd rethinking a failed Foreign Policy is not isolationism its always the 1930 s. For bill kristol go ahead in oxford in oxford. Here its a case of same stuff different day from crystal im sorry to say look this is a necessary point of view being put forward and it has been put forward individually by a number of people and when you find people as disparate as rand paul and Bernie Sanders agreeing on American MilitaryForeign Policy needed to take a backseat to american diplomatic Foreign Policy and i say that as a diplomat of 26 Years Experience with the u. S. Foreign service then i think something good is blossoming here now if were still worried about the Koch Brothers and show us you know half a 1000000 each thats thats a rounding error on their petty cash account sure they theyre not deeply invested here but theyre certainly making a point of investing and i think theres a difference ok don you seem to be more of the skeptic on the program react to that. Well 1st you know the objective conditions are such that imperial retreat is you know on the agenda of the ceci and trump represents that certainly the policy that he espoused as and that he muttered out loud to out all the heresies that he spoke that provoke such a massive response from from the elites here had to do with imperial retreating does nato obsolete cant japan defend itself that we have to have military bases all over the world do we need to have of war games around korea all the time theyre so expensive you know that hes looking at it or any of that whoever is making policy around are looking at the overhead of you know of empire and seeing it as a drag on an economy that is out trying to compete with china that has no such drag. So you have that objective condition now you have people like soros and the Koch Brothers and others who resist very strongly trump articulating this you know soros wrote almost the same things back in 2003 in december he wrote a piece in 2003 called the bubble of American Power or exceptionalism or or some such thing but you know what criticize the war in iraq and similar water yeah but don but at the same time to. Have solid evidence that he was funding n. G. O. S in ukraine and georgia i mean and that is and thats part of the furthering an agenda and its a its a nato agenda ok so i mean i could i could really care less about his op ed i care about how he spends his money and thats perhaps brought up the money because i happen 1000000 is not a lot to him but it can be a lot for people in ukraine and georgia going to 10 right seconds go ahead go ahead up bed and so thats what thats exactly my point right now were talking about another op ed lets see what kind of policy comes out. You know where he stands ok gentlemen im going to jump in here were going to go to a short break and after that short break well continue our discussion on strange bedfellows staying with our city. If you will not obey the voice of the lord your god will be careful to do all the long months and. Then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. And then the white people the stolen property and must pretend to. Get rid of whites only problems will go away. Within the. Presence of the physical the. People being tortured to death expression the elderly people in the. Company. Not been the case why of course will find themselves affected by. Means and dreams oh its all swept and. What are you going to have for dinner today we dont have anything im asking for a name i mean. Civil war in south africa. Brother frederick was there and he chong not be in the code of your and to the. Financial survival guide. To your. Yanks this is what happens to pensions in britain. You watch kaiser report. My 7 years doing drugs my nephew was still in drugs my sister just with doing drugs it was like an epidemic of drug abuse america. Public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse sort of going after the users in the prison population who are we started treating sick people people who are addicted to these drugs like criminals while i was on the hill. The war on drugs. There are countless numbers. In prison for. Sins for owner minor offenders in the drug trade its a lot watching your children grow up in issue in way and say by day as youre walking out of this its just it doesnt get easier. Magic mushrooms use down some contacts used in the wrong way carry carry potential like any any psychoactive substance. Used in the right way they seem to have quite. Profound therapy to potential and quite a good safety profile as well. Welcome back to cross talk were all Things Considered im Peter Lavelle remind you were discussing strange bedfellows. Ok lets go back to london and one of the problems here is i think we have all described. The Current Situation with think tanks and how they enter influence policy but thats for a good reason because the military Industrial Complex really likes it here i mean don was absolutely right about the condition of the American Public ok over the last 40 years or so i dont theres no i have no disagreement with it whatsoever on the flip side here theres some people a small group of people that are become fabulously rich off of this gambit and the status quo is just jim dandy with them. Thats why when trump says hes going to pull out of syria washington went into a meltdown i mean absurdly so it that was patently obvious theres a lot of money at stake here and they dont want that to go away because they need a threat they need a threat to stay in business i dont think they necessarily want to go to war but they want to have a threat they have to have multiple threats here how can a think tank like the Quincy Institute fight against that because that is really the beast you have to slay and youre and its a david and goliath situation you can have these and wonderful man steps manifestos and good people like ourselves in our audience will read it but will it have any impact go ahead. Well i think the 1st thing i would say to that peter is that i dont think we should dichotomize the new think tank from the military Industrial Complex i suspect that this is a readjustment or recalibration of elements of that and the fact is that theres a selfperpetuating character to the to kind of the existing think Tank Community and its relations with big corporations and so on and that has actually led america down a kind of a dead end when you look at around the world the United States despite having spent so much money on so many wars is actually has lost positions whereas other countries which have not wage wars on anything like that kind of scale of actually improving their position so i think what is going on here is really a kind of self criticism from groups which are slightly outside of the mainstream establishment which are arguing that actually america stands to lose even more position unless theres a recalibration so the likes of steve walter and others whose work i know well who are arguing for a new position is not that the u. S. Retreats away from the world but what basically argues is that basically you park your aircraft carriers in 3 spaces. Which are all at sea which is the east asia regarding china that is a threat in the persian gulf in regard to iran and other countries and in North Western europe in regard to russia so its not like that there are people in this new can go conglomeration who are not arguing about the existing these threats theyre just saying that there are different ways in which we can conceive of stretch threats and deal with them and thereby maintain American Global power through a policy of a bit more restraint than liberal head germany has been has been doing over the past 25 to 30 years so i dont think its a kind of fundamental challenge i think its a recalibration but politically they will have a lot of problems because theres an entrenched elite which has got great levels of power and that is what this this is a titanic battle i think beginning within 10 you were nodding your head in agreement were you agreeing with go ahead. Pretty much all of the above but im thinking that whats called for here is not a realignment its not a retrenchment its actually a massive paradigm shift because its going to take that to get people out of that old way of thinking and frankly a think tank which is dedicated to demilitarizing and bringing diplomacy up is pretty much an ideal bench to start doing experiments in paradigm shifting now what im thinking is we have to get away from what i call the para bellum paradigm which is this idea thats been with us for at least a century and a half that its necessary to continually prepare for war to achieve peace and the classic quote there is probably j. F. K. Saying we dare not tempt them with weakness but what no one ever seems to focus on is the other side of that same coin which is we dare not terrify them into attacking us preemptively and god knows thats happened before this is been a bad idea ever since the crimean war and its still a bad idea that saber rattling is somehow going to improve diplomacy and what we need instead is a new way of looking at things and i actually think that as a Businessman Donald Trump is ideally suited to be sort of benevolently in the background running things while these new ideas are coming forward because hed much rather be trading with moscow than pointing this is at them its a very good point john i mean some people have argued this Quincy Institute its a trojan horse i mean it will say one thing but really what it wants is to be able to walk the corridors of power what do you say to that. Well you have to consider both the intent of the parties and then the actual role that its going to play in events that are still unfolding regardless of the intent of the parties. You know again its a reaction to the reality of rising multiple arity of you know this system sort of collapsing under the weight of its own history with military budgets with you know placement of troops and materiel and 800. 00 bases around the world the expense of maintaining empire you know its big big made empire almost not profitable and so what theyre trying to do in my opinion at least some small part of some part of the elite is looking to either. Not just 3 evaluate the tactical mode of attaining global hegemony but the question of whether or not the gemini should be the goal and rather if there can be a more collegial way of managing the affairs of the planet and so you know i see the United States for example going to sit at the table with a dozen other players you know that are Major Players you have a don that would be him that would be the paradigm shift that ted is talking about and looking at it looking at your interlocutor as some kind of equal appear that its a dip every difficult thing for American Foreign policy i mean republican or democratic that that is the paradigm shift i think that needs to be overcome and accepted because you know essentially you have people like bolton in palm peo is that with their idea of negotiating is you surrender and then we talk thats what needs to change here go ahead and so what is their intent basically is that the intent of soros and koch you know every else is involved in this to use this to facilitate their way through this moment to attain a gemini in other words is it just the faint to. You know knowledge the existing situation and its change it or is this basically what like like ive heard others say here and its you know there was a lab but lets see if we cant come up with some things that will help us accommodate ourselves to a new paradigm and you know its go back to an intraday one of the things thats very interesting that i think that the people that are so in weve mentioned some of the People Associated with this Quincy Institute is that they have their pulse their finger on the pulse of Public OpinionPublic Opinion repeatedly is that there is a good exhaustion when it comes to these foreign adventures that never and are never successful are terribly expensive and there is a reminder what is said ive heard conflicting numbers. Numerous that trains every single day commit suicide every single day and that is a legacy that is left at home for an tear so it seems to me and i want to be hopeful here an optimistic but these people that are involved slightly the left slightly to the right they understand tha