Giving you a frontrow seat to democracy. Victoria coats security adviser to donald trump. He joined the discussion to Foreign Policy. Topics included israel and gaza, continued u. S. Support for ukraine, china and iran and how Foreign Policy has differed from various administrations. The discussion hosted by the Cato Institute. Welcome, everybody. My pleasure to welcome you here this morning to the Cato Institute for our then future of gop Foreign Policy. Thanks to those who are here in person, thanks to those who are watching online and cspan and always thank tech folks by the grace of god made all of this happen and the conference folks to make sure i showed up where im supposed to be at any given time. For people who are watching online and have questions that they want toat pose to our panelists, you can use the catofp to ask a question on twitter or facebook or whatever the case may be. But i will just set it up that we have the gop is in the midst of a meaningful debate on Foreign Policy as global power and has luxury of choice and can choose more, it can choose less Foreign Policy and can choose more Foreign Policy in one place and less in another place. Theres a lot of room to run in terms of choice. You can index the debate by looking at, for example, two leading president ial candidates that represent two factions within the gop Foreign Policy debate. One emphasizing europe. That side frequently gets called isolationist, ugly word but that side of the debate argues that focusing on europe comes at the expense of other u. S. Interest that may, in fact, may be more important such as the u. S. Position visavis asia. The other side of the debate that as goes europe so goes the world. Everyone is, connected to everything else. So without u. S. Leadership the global order would collapse. I refer, of course, to the of 1952. Ial election theres some echoes of the debate that took place during that president ial election in the contempt the rare gop and i think we will do our best to kind of pull at some of the similarities and distinctions between these two moments in time. There are echoes of that past debate into today but i think there are a number of different ways of getting at the problem. If you look at the faction that says, the United States needs to play the leading role in European Security those there tends to be a generational split on that question. If you look at the people who are calling for a fundamental reorientation in the senate, for example, youre going to see people like jd vance, josh howley and rand paul and if you look at the people who have grand vision and liz cheney, mitt romney is retiring and the majority leader, Mitch Mcconnell is 81 and theres the generational divide that we may want to talk about. The american conservative has a larger role to play in the party that it has historically. The president of heritage it said it rankk and file donors down firmly on the restraint side. So both as a scholar and selfishly this is a very interesting moment to be working on restraint and u. S. Foreign policy. We have two very distinguished scholars here to talk about the nuts and bolts of the debate at that it is happening today. On the broader context in which it is happening. The first presenter this morning will be victoria coast who is the Vice President cap and shall be calm Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Previously National Security advisor and 2020. She had 2016 joined Donald Trumps is assistant to the president and director for Strategic Communications in 19 she was promoted to Deputy Assistant to the president deputy National Security advisor for the middle east and north africa, which will again be relevant to our discussion today. Previously she had served former secretary of defense donald trump fell director of research firstt personal office. National Senior Security advisor to senator ted cruz bachelors degree in art history from College Masters degree in Williams College and a phd from penn please do not ask me any questions because i will embarrass myself. In front of doctor coates progressed to be happy to talk with the william penn statute. That is just come up the pen statute may beat we could avoid that hopefully. We have branded bucket was a phd candidate in history at george mason university. He recently worked as an intelligence geospatial analyst with an gis and gia. Its got a in their. I also serve u. S. Army complete multiple tours to afghanistan. His Research Interests which are germane for discussion today include 20th century u. S. Military diplomatic history but u. S. Afghan relations the managerial state which is setting off the libertarian sirens and me and other people here in the room. Current Research Focus on the domestic politics of u. S. Foreign policy from 1934 through 1992. Again germane to our discussion today the evolution of foreign foreignpolicy attitudes within the Republican Party. His work w has appeared numerous outlets including responsible statecraft the Libertarian Institute antiwar. Com. Here in a batch of arts in history for the university of denver master of arts in history from george mason in 2016. So with that i think victoria, if you want to set the table for us a little bit today and tell us where you see things going. Sure, thank you very much for that kind introduction. It is good to be with both of you. And i appreciate everyone coming in person and joining us online. And on cspan. For this very timely discussion of a topic has been seizing us at the Heritage Foundation and the Davis Institute. This is sort of a conversation ive been having in different iterations from 2007 on. And i think what we have seen between the conclusion of the second bushbu term and what we e going into in 2024 has been a really radical shift in the way National Security policy is designed and executed. We have had kind of a remarkable series of almost screen shots within that period of time. Weve got the obama to terms in the record came out ofe that we have the trump term. We have again a very distinctive record and then now we are getting a full picture of what the by the administration Foreign Policy has brought on the world. Think well go into the historical roots of all of this. But there really has been a shift from the much more traditional caucus republican Foreign Policy to what i would refer to as a conservative National Security policy. O the way i conceived this in my brain because i am visual we are not hawks, we are not doves, we are owls i would reject the paradigm you have to either be an interventionist or an isolationist. I dont think that is applicable to the United States and the Second Quarter of the 21st century. We have to be able to doo better than just default to one of those two positions. And it really clarified for me in the 2016 republican primary when you had candidates such as jeb bush officer closely associated with his brothers Foreign Policy you go to rand paul who is the most formal libertarian and then at marco rubio was in the mix as well. Nobody bought either of those in the primary. I think marco won the minnesota carcasses the two candidates they came in first and second trump and cruz partial for both of them but they had fundamentally the same approach to internationalbu affairs which for trump summed up in America First. You serve the basic interest of the United States and build your approach from there. We can get into the relative successes or failures of thatt approach but it was one that was persuasive to the primary voters and then to the general electorate. I think that in many ways where werethe head of the american pee are. We could get into very specifics there but that is where i see things at the moment sprayis quickset is great, brandon give us low gloss on history here. How you are connecting gop to the gop of previous errors . It is important to note think history shows that meaning of conservative foreignpolicy is not preordained it could take many forms that might seem strange to us in the present if we look to the right it was led by robert taft of ohio. There were strident communists but they were rejected the liberal internationalism came with the early prosecution of the cold war as such they advocated for a model for the cold war that looked much more like fortress america and i think it is important to know their framework, the way they saw america and the world stemmed heavily from a a revisionist view particular of world war ii and for the manner in which the war ended. But more importantly is of the failings of american Foreign Policy over time as a product of American Action and not an action and that ran complete counter to us than the emerging liberal consensus that was the absence of American Power on the global stage that led to the rise of fascism and therefore the second world war. They are views became verboten by the mid 50s but nevertheless they carried them forward. That way of viewing the world from a conservative lens is largely lost to us because first they lost the political battle but more poorly the b loss the battle in the 50s and going through into the 60s. If you look at the history of the modern rights and its various flavors towards foreignpolicy had deeper roots than calmly appreciated. Modern age are more strident non interventionist especially if you look at grassroots they both use a vernacular to the veo describe american pouring policy than the early 1960s if you look at the base, that using the phrase the militaryindustrial complex which wells coined by eisenhowers kept alive in the 60s and 70s. It has widened into a97 place it is not been in decades. If we juxtapose the history that suggests conservative opinions on foreignpolicy are far more lasting and more commonly understood i think history shows conservative foreignpolicy emerge from domestic process it was not strictly informed by a reaction to events overseas no inherently global in its ambition. In going through some of the history was first constrained by the primary defeat of robert taft and later in july 53 the remnants were eventually ground down via attrition throughout the 60s so again when you look at the history shows the prominence of interventionist rings of conservatism be at the old guard unilateralism, reaganism or conservatism are more apparente than normative. Again generational turnover that we are seeing is not at all uncommon. That being said history shows the modern Republican Party is probably going to remain chaotic without a unifying figure to pik what i am a historian. [laughter] i dont look over the horizon too far without a unifying gear like a Dwight D Eisenhower without a narrative on recent foreignpolicy. And also without a foreign threats like communism was during the cold war on terror. I do not think that hypocrisy versus democracy framework is coming out of the white house. With 30 trillion in debt. Those are some of the similarities its important to o highlight less would make a model of the past to predict the future. Theres a regional basis at a time in which american politicse was highly sectional. They had ideas to go back to the founding of the country they had institutions built t up to imperialism the store with the spanishamerican war then reached the height during the wake of the great war. They had breath of a voter support they had a depth of institutional cover both in business but more importantly in congress. They had a confluence of interests that saw a Foreign Policy as detrimental to the interest but also the vision of what americas role should be. The pattern of dissent the more decentralized. They are even more rural than the old right was. They are aligned against social class is not an elite and similarly institutions are not quite there for theres been a lot of changes 2016. They certainly are not as robust as they were during the first of the 20th century. Also have a much heavier lift. They eradicate or redirect National Security and apparatus. And they also think there are susocial issues which can serves a impediment to their success the four coalitions with the counter person on the left particular issues like immigration and trade is also general difference of certain people on the left. Whatever comes next. That is very helpful. One things i let you both know the point of view of a scholar. Personnel is a policy and i think for my more trump friendsy and colleagues who say trump was in the right place and foreignpolicy from our point of view but at crucial junctures wasig undermined by people who work in the menstruation. We had for example james a jeffy said as a shell game we were hiding the number of troops we had in syria so that he did not know how my troops we had in syria and prevented the president from following through on his pledge to withdraw troops from syria. There are many, many of these instances. Myso might mort restrain colleagues will say a second trump term would be staffed by people assure the president s vision which is fill in the blank. You would see a more followthrough and more results. There is an effort to do that. To connect staffers to administration. May beat victoria, number one do you think there is a point to be made surrounding the personnel having a big impact on how policy is more wheat to get a Second Trump Administration that things will go differently in some way orou another . Quick sake and the second question first, absolutely. No matter what happens. I think this is a critical question. Particularly for any incoming Republican Administration. The fundamental bias of the bureaucracy in the federal government is liberal. It is just a fact. And amongst that group there are many patriots who do want to do what is best for the country. I was actually surprised by how many lasting friendships i forgewith these people. Be a great bonus. Because it will make cameen in with President Trump we had had the eight years of obama. Thats been such an unusual election. And so many of the former Bush Administration folks havent taken themselves off the table by the various letters and statements they had made regarding the president. So in a way we came in blind. Also the president has not been present before he had not served the government before. So it is not clear to him, he did not have a list in his head this is my secretary of state. This is my secretary of s defen. I think both of those initial pics were hugely problematic. I understand the logic behind them. They did not work out in terms of pertinent personality or policy implementation. The challenge the president hadd its National Security advisoror position. Because general flynn is the one who hired me was that when the president was t deeply comfortae with. In ways that parallel to Jeanne Kirkpatrick and reagan. She was the one he was comfortable with and for various reasons she did not become National Security advisor and heat want up with a rotating doorng folks because he could nt get suited mike it is such a personal relationship. The president did not of general mcmaster before. He did know john bolton a little bit but neither of them were close to him. Dramatically different is interesting to serve under both of them. And i think after impeachment when robert to brian kaman there is much a feeling of mnc which are in the president and that relationship never quite worked. What i would advocate for whomever becomes that we do have a republican become president next november that the full role as the president s mechanism to implement his or her will on this gigantic bureaucracy this big apparatus that has to be reconceived from a conservative viewpoint. The automatic response is to say make it smaller. I had this repeatedly with russ, not someone who likes make things larger. Butto that is the budget you should expand because that is your tool. The rest of you can its relatively small dollars not talking a lot of money here. That is the change i would advocate for between a first and second term or whomever it may be. Brandon, any thoughts on the notion of a different republican or Trump Administration having different connection between the principal and the implementation of the policy . Thats a little bit out of my wheelhouse. [laughter] as far as a menu of options it has the most buyin the various factions of dissent amongst republicans and obviously thats going to run into a buzz saw people who want to maintain the status quo and what ever. There how many active are we directly involved in right now . What is going to happen after that is going to really be dictated by how the war in ukraine either grinds to ara hat for someone once up in victory. Eu