this program at noon this program is about an hour. >> welcome to after words, and welcome especially. it is a treat for me to see you after a long time away. it is re-you here. i have to tell you, i did enjoy a book for different reasons that i will go through, but i wanted thank you very much for coming in today. the dean of the school of advanced international studies at johns hopkins, and author of the book, the dispensable nation, which i have here. american foreign policy retreat. he is briefed presidents, congress, many influential and not so intelligent people. he was born in tehran in 1960, and his family came to the united states having left tehran after the revolution. he has a bachelor's from masters , and earned his phd. well done. i won't go through your long list of accomplishments. there are special. but i would especially draw attention to a great part of your book which is the time you spent working under richard holbrooke in 20005-11 as part of the special office, special adviser on pakistan and afghanistan. special advisor to the secretary of state. there are always other offices one discovers that do the same thing you do, and that is part of the problem as you liotta your book which i found fascinating. other share how complex within islam will shape the future, forces of fortune, the rise of the new middle-class and what it will mean for our world. and in the you foretells certain great events that become the rise of sectarianism, although i did not always agree with the full-scale war. i have to say to my think you will allow the people of the law was clearly coming. also the potential for the arabs spring, although i have to say, i think that we have all been surprised. where it happened and certainly where it is going. so i also want to say before we get started to his confession but i have almost a fatal attraction to reading your book. the kind of fatalism that if you have been around and watched, and as i have observed many of the inner struggles call for me this was a revelation. one of the revelations of your book, this shows the golan and the making of policies that few people seat. most people like to see that everything is fine. the great minds. after careful talking and analysis they come to decisions on policy. uni know that it is not quite that simple. it is certainly not that easy process. sometimes, the old saying, if you like sauces' don't watch it made. if you're interested in policy you don't want to know too much about the bind the scenes. but i think back at the past ten years in particular, regardless of the administration, we have been watching how sausages being made. so much has been brought out into the open that it has been, i think, it has made the art of critical compromise and negotiation within government, let alone for policy much more difficult than it used to be. it is hard to see that it could have been worse, but i think that the point is, it is not always as per your is tasteful or as thoughtful as it would like, and it is not always about principle. sometimes it is about something which i think you lay of very intricately and clearly, it is about power. it is about the influence. is about what the arrow bald calls waft the. so much to you know what you can basically getting your way. what i would like to do is go through some of these things. a long list of questions come to mind, tsongas and there are two parts. much of the book, and i think the greatest value and the greatest contribution is on the time you spend as participants, what you were able to observe and your work with holbrooke and how he worked. the man had a reputation larger-than-life and was a very forceful actor on the scene. watching someone like that operation is always important and influential. it reminds me that, you know, watch out policy is made. i don't need to talk too much. i just want to start here. you do have the professionals, the diplomatic corps. you have generals are professionals and diplomats and know how to operate in an environment. and you'd like to think that the goal is conflict resolution in peace without war. u.s. interests and those of our allies and friends. how to initiate. >> right. >> it is not. so much in terms of personal satisfaction, the deal is of the players involved and their vision and their view is the most important and sometimes it is where you sit. sometimes it is not. and that is the dockside. i think a lot of this. and there's also a problem of insiders defining the need for waste. the insiders are around the president or around the secretary of state. every secretary of state has their insiders. every president has. sometimes the consult with the professionals, sometimes they don't. exactly. and sometimes the principles that they operate on do not upset many things. think about the election. there is always an election coming. think about interest groups that you don't want to aggravate. adds a layer which is very difficult to deal with. so let's start with some of these very basic questions. >> sure. >> you talk a lot about the different influences, military, in to this picture and the professional, diplomatic corps and the friends of the president and his advisers and you have the intelligence community and certainly some choice things to say what the cia. welcome back to that. but -- and the vice-president to also especially in this a administration and the last has insisted on playing a larger role, whether that is you're not, that is not the point. the point is it is another voice to deal with. tell me, who decides the options? how are the options framed? and who should be? who really should have the -- more of the employed, if you would. >> well, very good question. and we came to afghanistan pakistan, which was really the big with the obama administration set before itself , had to manage. was there war. he wanted the main issues, and still there, really it's over and. so we started actually looking afghanistan, not really on the basis of its own merits in terms of what it needs, p interests are, how we eat come to some kind of conclusion enclosure l.a. that is good for the region and the texas. restarted relief from the premise. so bush did expiry therefore we should do why. we cannot do x because bush has done wind. and this was a problem to begin with, and that of the demonstration was ever going back into the campaign able to craft for the president and national security image which was not constantly measured at. so he was a good president because you would do exactly the opposite the bush. if you look at it right up to now the claim to fame is that bush took us into the region, and we are taking it out. every time you talk about of afghanistan policy we inevitably end up comparing it, and that that is a big problem. the second is that it did produce the u.s. military as a two-time foreign policy elephant because they are not the ones who cause the war, because the war, the decision of the civilians in the pentagon, and the white house, and some in the state department. and the way that the war played out, in the end the military began the savior. and it the general and the being the hero. the surge in data being the military's solution to a catastrophe caused by civilians. in the military also, as a expression goes to madrid its own kool-aid too much. came back thinking that it deserves all the resources it can get. it definitely does not the diplomat and does not need diplomacy. and it saw that really it has reinvented the ending of the war. so in world war ii you go to vietnam. you go to the balkans. the wars around the world. the war fighters fight the war. the diplomats and a bigger share the end. when you look at the balkans war in vietnam, you know, kissinger or holbrooke were in charge. the military was providing new of muscles so that they could go to initiations in paris or in dayton with the backing of the military. there was no negotiated settlement. so did general and his team in the military came to say that the savior of the war was this : strategy. not only was the savior of the war on capitol insurgency, which she was the architect of, and it is not only will will end the war, when actually can be america's global strategy in dealing with terrorism and fail saves and the pentagon, if you would, came up sort of all of america is the least and south is a policy. so you are right. the overhang. the military has an enormous amount of influence on the strategy. very early on the president succumbed to that and therefore the strategic review according to which she decided to put troops into afghanistan, first the smaller number in january 2009 and then a larger number in the fall of 2009, but essentially he ended up accepting that the solution to afghanistan was to export their coin strategy from barack and afghanistan. at that point general patraeus was head of center, but lazar this was the united states version for afghanistan. we ended up going in the sense of taking the military as the forefront. the civilian, the state department, the civilians at the white house essentially, i would say, on a marginal role, and i think within the white house there is a sensibility of a domestic political adviser with the president, that this is the sensible way deal because it is too difficult for democratic presidents to argue with success, which was the way we have defined iraq command was too difficult for democratic president as young as president obama was to basically tell the triumph at military coming out of iraq that their strategy may not be appropriate. and therefore we sort of succumbed to embracing iraq or afghanistan. >> not the first president to be afraid of dealing with the military directly. if i remember correctly clinton has similar problems, both of them lacking military experience . careers dealing with the military. in the end, the old image of the democrats, soft on war, not really good at this. there have been some difficulties in the democratic president's approach in the military. one of these has been giving them what they want which clinton certainly did, and that think that obama is reluctant to take them on full bore, but when you're in the middle of the war you're not really going to argue and i think the other part of the problem, and, you know, to a disclosure having spent the past almost 50 years the national defense university and seeing a lot of the military, the general and reputation that is almost like a star. >> yes. >> several, several of our generals acquired this kind of laura as a superstar, and he had this very successful strategy. and i was interested in your description of that because i don't think that we really -- when we look at the surge in iraq that was so successful, we look at it as our surge. it was our success. and yet that is not the whole truth. dell is not what really made a successful. and i think of this in part because so much of my life has been looking at things from the iraq side, but really iraq was ready to make that strategy work in ways that i'm not sure. >> year actually -- and i do agree with you that president obama is not unique in being pushed by the surge of military popularity and to be fair time it was quite difficult to after iraq and after the way in which u.s. military in our's as heroes of the president was sort of argue with them, but the devil that is in the details. as your president could have unleashed the state department and the civilians in ways that could have complemented were provided an additional air. in particular, you know, secretary clinton was much more powerful than the president. in situation room she was probably often the strongest character in the room and the toughest. the only civilian in the middle of a number of intelligence and security officials would dominate the national security team of the president to mustachio around. she was highly respected. extern the tough. but i think the way it worked out is that the state department , and particular holbrooke also put up a very important role in balance in the military given his experience in vietnam and his experience in the balkans. put in a position to say, your job is not to make policy. you are not equal partners here. you basically are there to implement this civilian needs of coin strategy. so this is not about cole the policy. it's of this to go around the world and make sure many more countries in troops and money. but your input into the american strategy is now welcome. so it is the time which is not just about war strategy. think the balance is lost in that the war fighters became america's chief strategist. our foreign policy and not just in afghanistan, but largely even in the middle east, we still see this withdrawal argument in the region. essentially passed from the hands of the diplomats to the hands of the war fighters. and in many ways the state department fought very hard against hillary clinton and richard holbrooke trying to argue that it would be a mistake for the united states to put all of its eggs in this region on a military solution that the president actually in his heart did not believe in. and that they should be given a far more brought birth in terms of thinking about the regional architecture, a peace settlement , a global engagement that provides for a framework to an end to afghanistan. enables us to leave the some kind of a political solution. if you look at afghanistan now we did not win the war and we did not arrive a settlement. in no way there are a lot of loose ends. you're basically saying the war continues as before except we let the afghans do it. there is no reason international agreement or consensus on the endgame in afghanistan. we will pass the baton to the afghan army and that was the case by the resurgence of? you could have done the training from day one. and i think, you know, the state department argues very aggressively, part of the fighting that happened, and i described in the book to mullahs because the white house was highly resistant to the state department making any policy. it would like them to be the employment ears. and if it had, hillary, who continuously remained a very strong influential voice and was able to single-handedly carried a mental and also have an enormous amount of influence, largely the entire afghanistan issue would have been completely reduced to a military strategy and the pentagon would have become de facto state department. >> well, if i put this in some kind of context, the pattern is not original with obama. much of this for better or for worse was the pattern learned or imposed under the bush a ministration. w. bush. and that case leading up to the war in it iraq and afterwards the pentagon was the source of everything. c-span2 diplomacy, the pentium will set it up. you want strategy, it is the pentagon. intelligence, the pentagon will do that. a at the your assistance, the pentagon was the source of all knowledge. this was rumsfeld and the people working under and did not see a need to look to anybody else. it is hard to say this, but maybe the pentagon got used to this pattern. it is hard to change that. maybe that is part of the problem. that is not the whole problem, but i think that it raises some serious questions in terms of the role that you have been conditioned or have taken in don't want to concede. >> you are absolutely correct. and particularly because we came out of iraq with a feeling that the pentagon said the date. it was very different from vietnam. the military did not come out with a sense that they have saved the day. the day was saved by civilians and negotiations in paris. but in iraq they were the ones to solve the problem in their own mind. and, yes, i think that is actually raising an important question as to whether the obama administration has really actually been able to move away from the bush strategy, and i make this argument. you look at the drone strategy, it often is bush policy improved and better implemented, but it does not mean a real effort to reinvent american foreign policy one thing that is important is that the domination of the military did impact america's global image. so when president obama came in there was a sense that our image in the region had been tarnished . our global standing had been y diot to rebalancenk there the that. in the sense that, you know, by giving the state department a lot more visibility internationally, but i also trying to, you know, even influence the decision making on war in the white house, i think she went along way of writing that problem because to me know, under the bush a administration the state department lost and was using humiliated. the thing was demoralized and arista point where the state department was not respected at a level policy-making in a major way. nothing she decided that to rebuild the state department's influence within the u.s. government was a tactical diplomacy as well. says she spent her time, you know, continuously talking to the generals, talking, you know, with the white house staff, finding ways to sort of reverse the attitude that had been in built, as you mentioned, about the state department. and i think she left, you know, the state department in a far better position that she found it. even to this date the continuous problem with the state department is the reluctance in the my house with the pentagon to accept the state department's primacy in setting america's global strategy and then being in the implementation of that will strategy in every issue other than war. and i think that is a challenge even today. it was a challenge then, and that the secretary clinton probably was during that time, and the outset, keystone, far better than her two previous predecessors, and i think we will see whether her successor can change this trend significantly. >> all important observations, and i think the trouble, right about hillary clinton. she does not tolerate fools easily. she was very clear. she knew -- she knew what it took. you have to be assertive. you have to make herself heard, and she had to rebuild an institution that has really suffered a lot in terms of its role and the perception of its role. the fact that it was not seen as a shaper but more just and implemented to will tell you what the policy is in your job is to carry it out. that is not very helpful in terms of building the institutions and supporting the mission. but i think there is a couple of other things. one of the things that bothered me, having in my lifetime covered several of these crises, including, you know, all of the iraqi crises, watch everyone five overall this. we always used to shutter to if there was a hand that the president was going to announce a deadline. deadlines are not a good thing. i never understood. why you need an exit strategy. i used ask myself, what is this great urged. an exit strategy. if you announce at the same time as afghanistan you're going to have a surge. you're going to send more troops and you're going to announce a withdrawal that begins in 2014 or whenever, is in that self-defeating? >> it was. i can say that from firsthand experience of that time from. first of all, we have a great deal of difficulty even convincing people that the idea was good. people in the region were highly suspicious. they keep telling us iraq is not afghanistan. afghanistan is not iraq, not only for reasons that you mentioned, but the mindset was different. but it is the flat country. it is much easier to think. the taliban and a very different from the insurgency. they also have strategic depth and pakistan which, you know, but they did not have it. iraq has a much more educated society. military has more of of fiber because it used to be a real military at some point. so there was a lot more work with. and in the region, you know, when you went to pakistan, saudi arabia,