Think is very interesting study, john f. Kennedy and the missile gap also in 2004. And finally we have Michael Cohen who is a fellow at the century foundation. He has been a columnist at the guardian. A blogger for the new york daily news. Hes the author of life on the campaign trail which is about notable 20th Century Campaign speeches of consequence and he is also published widely in wall street journal, new york times, l. A. Times, politico, et cetera. So john, over to you, sir. Good. Im supposed to speak here. You can all hear me. I thought the subject of this panel and of this conference had something to do with realism so im going to playoff that theme and ill get around to pl ticks at the very end. Theres a narrow version of realism. Im not talking about the academic theory of realism or the diplomatic theory that resinate with Public Opinion. Thats the idea that america should only deal with threats that directly concern us but in places like syria, the middle east and ukraine we should keep hands off . I want to begin by saying why i think that that view which i think is prevalent and is reflected in a recent wall street journal nbc poll about the opinion about Foreign Policy, why thats not a good approach for the country to take and then ill come back to it at the end. We could say its good because it will balance the israelis and there will be less chance of war in the middle east. The obama people could say its bad and it will start an arms race. Even though its very, very unlikely that the iranians will launch a Nuclear Weapon at new york, its still of vital interest to us because a nuclear war could most likely, i would say, begin in the middle east, if i had to choose a place in the world. Oil, the World Economy. So theres lots of reasons. And i think you can make similar arguments for a lot of the conflicts that we have engaged in that dont on the surface seem to directly threaten us. Second reason is more controversial. Theres a guy, a famous economic historian that had a theory about the World Economy, that the World Economy works best when theres one big, big dog on top of it and when the currency itself reflects the currency of that country. And, you know, if you look at the history of the World Economy, that theory works pretty well. I would make a similar comment about geo politics. About the world system. Maybe a bipolar as well as a uni polar world. Britain in the 19th century and the United States and soviet union in 1945, theres a certain advantage to the world. If there is a country, a big dog that exercises leadership in the world. Now, the question is how . And thats where we get to questions about Foreign Policy and theres two kinds of obvious choices that are under debate. One i would associate with neo conservatives, liberal interventionists, people that think in some respect that the way in which we can make ourselves most secure and the world most peaceful is to, in effect, create the world in our imagine. To spread democracy. To build, to help build nations that have institutions similar to our own or those of western europe. I think that there are a lot of reasons now to question that approach and i wrote a book called folley of empire that was about that because one of the first examples is Woodrow Wilson in mexico. But weve had a lot of them since and most recently we have iraq and even more and more recently is the example of libya where if you look at the news reports now, that intervention may turn out to have been a disaster and mistake and to have left the country and the region in worst shape than before. So i think theres the neo conservative and interventional approach. Theres Something Like the strategy that the british employed in the 19th century. And i think that in general, that is a wiser strategy even though it gets us in trouble to the event that we have to support bad people and bad regimes and to have reasoned for instance in 2003 that we were better off in the middle east with saddam than without him. A position that would have been very hard to sell in the United States. Foreign policy making is ze patched for the most part from the public. It only intersects at certain points partly because its complicated and partly because it deals with long range and the United States is an island nation, a nation most of which is internal and doesnt have a view of Foreign Policy similar to the one i sketched out at the beginning. So Foreign Policy is at these two levels. An elite level and mass level. For the most part, thats okay. Where its not okay is when we get into questions of war and peace and armed intervention and in those cases, the public has to be brought in and its often done in a most deceitful or dishonest way and im thinking of george w. Bush and the iraq war. In doing them we should pursue an option thats less likely to involve us in armed intervention. So thats my pitch for today. Thank you, john. Chris. Thank you, bob. Thank you to the organizers for putting on this even. I think picking up on some of that john said, i think its typical or the norm in Foreign Policy is for the public to have a relative indifference to what is going on in Foreign Affairs relatively speaking and certainly relative to their domestic policy issues. This isnt all that strange because after all it has been imp si emphasized a couple of times today already because the United States is secure relative to other countries around the world. Unlike in the past, other countries when they had Foreign Policy disasters the country ceased to exist and you think back to the war and the men were all put to the sword and killed and women and children are sold into slavery. Thats not what we worry about in the United States. So i think the publics relative difference to Foreign Policy can be explained by that to a large extent. But i think what we started to see over the last few years is not indifference but actual outward hostility and opposition to armed intervention and, again, theres a difference between kind of boiling down Foreign Policy to armed intervention but i also agree with john that on the issues of war and peace the public has to be engaged. That was not the case. One of the books i use as a jumping off point from my own book, the power problem, he said in 2005 that the american role in the world may depend in part on americans not scrutinizing it too closely. I think that was a fair statement. I think it was an honest statement. But i just want to focus, briefly, on what we saw in late august and Early September of last year. We had an incident in syria, obviously the Syrian Civil War was going on for some time. President obama earlier said that the use of chemical weapons would constitute a red line, what crossing that red line would result in he didnt stipulate. And at the time, in late august, there was a widespread expectation in this city that he would follow through on that, that pledge by some sort of military action. That was the all the reportings suggest that thats where the Obama Administration was leading. What did we actually see . It was i have to admit, i was a little embarrassed that i was caught off guard by this. Its my job to study Foreign Policy and particularly interested in the politics of Foreign Policy and i could never have predicted the level of public opposition, bipartisan that rose up to stop what in secretary kerrys own words, im going to get this wrong. This was an unbelievably small or incredibly small a smaller than small military intervention. I didnt get the adverb exactly right but smaller than small and yet even a smaller than small intervention mobilized the public in a way that i havent seen in studying 11 years here in washington and studying Foreign Policy frankly going back a couple of decades now. These sorts of instances are rare and the question is whether or not that will be a one off sort of thing theres even the military intervention that will influence u. S. Foreign policy going to waforward. A couple of months ago i reviewed bob gates book and he refers in the book several times to the con trant contract on him. Its always about ensuring the public we werent going to stay. We werent in there forever that we were planning for the exit sort of thing. Which if you know anything really cuts against the strategy because if youre trying to convince the people youre protecting in these countries, they want to believe youre sticking around and he had to worry about the public at home that was worried about us staying too long. So that is a constraint. Now, the neo conservatives and the liberal hawks both have an answer to this problem and whether you look at it as a problem or not, its a fact. The public is strongly opposed to military intervention. Even the smaller than small ones. Now the simple response is that this could be solved by leadership. You hear this all the time. Leadership. Strong leadership. If only the president or if only the National Security team were committed to a particular mission they could bring the public along so its solely a function of the lack of leadership, will, et cetera, political courage, pick your term on the part of the president and his advisors. If we remember back to what Franklin Roosevelt was trying to do in what i think was a war worth fighting, his efforts failed. Failed quite spectacularly. I recommend a great article on this subject several years ago called the deception dividend. So this is not a new phenomenon. What the public is strongly opposed to intervening militarily, theres very little that the politicians can do to turn it around, i think but people will continue to envolkswagen that because they could never prove the alternative. They could say the leaders didnt try hard enough. They didnt care enough. So you cant prove what happened. Were going to continue to debate whether or not public will is a constraint or not. I think it is and its a stronger constraint than it was five or eight or ten years ago. One last point theres one other constraint related to public will and thats the willingness on the part of the public to spend lots of money to support ambitious Foreign Policy. One that is not dedicated solely or even primarily to defending the United States in our National Security interests but that is also postured to defend them around the world. Thats been our posture for a long time. Contrary to what you might have heard, i have a visual aid here. Two new info graphics that cato produced are out there in the lobby that show that contrary to what you have heard, the u. S. Military spending has not been gutted. The u. S. Military is not on the verge of obsolescence. Were not at risk of being swamped over by our adversaries. What you do see, however, is a consistent lack of will and not surprisingly on the part of our allies to spend much on defense. Why would you . I would do the same thing. Youre not inclined to pay for things that other people will pay for you but its also true that in real dollar terms were spending more today than we did on average during the cold war. More today than during the cold war. That is increasing pressure on the Defense Budget and military spending. And crowding out expenditures on equipment and on operations and maintenance. Thats happening. Thats very hard to stop. The American People will more likely to cut it deeply to fund a larger military budget. We will choose because we cant do everything and we cant do everywhere. We can choose well or we can choose poorly and i worry that if we wait too long and figuring out what it is and we dont choose a grand strategy or Something Like it, if we dont make a conscious decision to adapt our Foreign Policy to these real constraints, then we will choose poorly. Thank you. Thank you, chris. Michael. First of all i want to thank them for putting this event together. Its really been a great day of conversation. So i want to pick up a little bit on what chris was saying and i think first of all the focus on syria is an interesting Inflection Point in american support for military intervention. Its actually an interesting one that i think not enough people have talked about it. Such a rare occurrence that it occurred and it has a huge impact at least on this conversation about the future of american Foreign Policy. But i want to get a little bit of what chris was saying and talk not just about american support or lack of support for military intervention but the interest in Foreign Policy which if you look at the polls is historically low levels. Its not just the opposition of force. Theres a broader sense that america spent too much. Its resources, too much time and energy overseas. I was looking at some of the poll numbers before came here today and i was struck by this from the fall of last year which shows that more than half agree the u. S. Should allow them to get along the best they can. In addition, 80 agree with the statement that we should think not so much in internationally terms but concentrate on our National Problems and building up our strength and prosperity here at home. Now 80 . In this country today when 80 of americans agree on anything it is a notable occurrence. Considering the Political Polarization we have. Its a broad base. It isnt just democrats or republicans or one party saying this. These are views widely shared across political spectrums. Theres not a huge partisan gap here. So i think, you know, the indication i think you should draw from this is that people are a little tired from Foreign Policy. They want america to focus on issues at home. I think its interesting by the way that 80 , the last time it was that high was the early 1990s. The obvious pair lrallel is its end of the cold war. They want to come home and the early 1990s were a pretty bad economy this in this country. Akined to what we have seen over the past several years. Not as bad but on par and i think thats also driving that. Ill talk more about that in a second. We should share burdens and this isnt a new view. People long thought that we should share global burdens. Just seems to be at a much higher level than in the past. What i sympathy the most interesting about these numbers is the divide that you see between the public and the elites. So for example, half of the public, 51 says the u. S. Does too much in terms of solving World Problems and 17 says that we do too little. If you ask them and these are cfr, Council Foreign relations members, 41 say we do too little and 21 say we do too much. Thats a huge divide between elites and the public. And if you look at Public Priorities where people think our foreign policies should be directed, the divide is even larger. This was fascinating to me. The number one concern among americans and also generally among elites is terrorism. So theres a broad conception that we should focus on preventing another terrorist attack. For the public, the number two concern, they want to protect american jobs. 81 say this should be a priority in american Foreign Policy. Among elites, its 29 . That is a huge divide. Its the largest divide, by the way in this poll. The only one close is Climate Change which elites think is more important an issue than ordinary americans and the odd element i think of this is if you look at american Foreign Policy, particularly in the last 12 years or so, theres very little focus on our Foreign Policy on jobs and the economy, right . Im reminded of in the first gulf war no blood for oil. You heard this in 2003 in the iraq war. I think of that now and i dont mean to be overly flippant but i wish we thought this was about oil because then you could justify all the blood. But its not. We havent fought them for economic reasons. And i could argue that, in fact, wars have undermined our economy dramatically. There isnt a real connection between our Foreign Policy agenda and the economy which is what you would traditionally think your Foreign Policy should be focused on aside from security. Thats something that americans are responding to. So, you know, if you think about why we have gotten to this point, why americans are so fed up part of it is the military interventions, certainly hang over from iraq and afghanistan. And i am actually struck by, i was reading, maybe youre familiar with the recent cover story in the new republic about why america must continue to be a forceful leader around the world. And of course he warns against isolationism. The irony of course is the individuals most responsible in some ways for isolationism are people like robert kagan. The ones saying we should fight stupid wars and get involved in iraq again today, they are, promoting, in a sense, this isolationism on americans. If you look at the polling today, this came out about an hour or so i saw a recent poll polling this on iraq. 74 of americans oppose intervention in i