Its not a coincidence that its the First Amendment to our constitution. And its not a coincidence that the terrorists chose an element of the press in france, the free press, as their target. Yet here in the United States and in europe theres there are signs, have been signs of a sort of unilateral intellectual disarmament in the face of these kinds of threats. We all saw the pusillanimous initial reaction of sony to the threats of the north koreans. We saw that the Associated Press pulled Charlie Hebdo cartoons from its gallery because they were afraid some of them might be hurtful to people. For a week the Washington Post here refused to publish the cartoons. Thanks to the brave men who run the editorial page they did publish the cartoon on the editorial page last week. But the paper itself refused to publish it. They did in the end finally. And the American Government took quite a while to figure out what to call these events. First they didnt call them a terrorist event. Then they just called it a terrorist event. And they still wont call it what it really is, which is islamic terrorism, jihadist extremism. They still wont say that. Why is there this reluctance to call things as they are . My own view is a lot of it has to do with the atmosphere of Political Correctness that has overtaken a lot of america and a lot of europe, i must say. If you look at colleges and universities, there are these codes of conduct. Codes of verbal conduct. Things which are allowed and not allowed to be said which have had the effect of tamping down freedoms in those let me tell you the two places the general mentioned. At yale, where i went. Yale published several years ago an Academic Book about the danish cartoons. You remember the danish cartoons by the joelland post. They published a full academic study and decided not to put the cartoons in the book. An act of exemplary cowardice by yale. At harvard, not to be outdone, the president of harvard had the timidity of suggesting that a useful form of research would look into the question undeniable fact that women are not as well represented in the Hard Sciences as men. And he thought that would be something that an academic would be worth studying. Why is that . He got fired. Hes no longer president of harvard. So these this unilateral intellectual disarmament is a serious problem. What are the implications of all this for American Foreign policy . Just to move to a broader point. First of all, 3 4 of all americans alive today were born after world war ii. They have grown up in a world of expanding freedom freer trade, freedom of expression, freedom of the high seas. They take for granted the limited political atmosphere we live in. I use the word liberal just so i dont confuse people in the classic european sense of liberal. Open and free. Progress toward a more liberal world was not inevitable as a scholar known to many of you here, robert kagan has reported the values of the worlds hegemon at any given time, the values of the worlds hegemon determine the values that are adapted by the international community. And the internationally liberal order in which we live today, weve grown accustomed to, is actually quite young. It dates only to the 1830s. Which is when britain abolished their corn laws to open borders to trade, outlawed slavery, and reformed the rotten borough political system. And for the next century it was the royal navy that policed the seas to have freedom of the seas. This was not inevitable. As kagan points out, if you go back to spain under phillip ii or france under the louis or the soviet union or nazi germany, none of those countries will have imposed or imposed a liberal economic and political value system. Now, at the end of the Second World War the United States inherited the role that Britain Britain was exhausted and we got the job of being the hegemon and of policing the freedom of the seas, promoting free trade and defending the freedoms that are listed in our very constitution. All of this order it seems to me is potentially at risk. Which is have its so important that we react vigorous lyly to these acts that happened last week but more broad lyly to the overall geopolitical problem. Now, i know from reading the polls and listening to all the pundits that americans are tired of war. For the first time in 70 years pew polls are showing that both Political Parties are calling for america to pay more attention at home. We hear from politicians not only are they tired of war but its time to mind our own business. Where polls show the americans no longer want to be the worlds policeman. Of course these comments raise two questions. What is americas business . And what kind of a world would it be if were not the policeman . In my speaking around the country, ive been to a lot of cities, i often ask when this question comes up about not being the worlds policeman, if im talking in chicago do you have policemen in chicago . Do you have policemen in des moines . Do you have policemen in eugene oregon . Of course you do. What kind of a city would it be if there were no policemen . What kind of a world is it going to be if there were no american policemen . Now, American Defense spending is at an alltime low as a percent of the federal budget. I wont go through all the details. But if the budget and the sequestration stay in place, we are on track to have the Smallest Army weve had since 1939. The Smallest Navy since 1917. And the Smallest Air Force in our history. That does not suggest a country which is prepared to continue to be the leader in defending liberal world order. Now, of course military power isnt the only way to defend and advance american interests. But as frederick the great said, who knew a thing or two about both diplomacy and war, diplomacy without arms is like music without notes. It isnt going to work. Now, some people argue and ive heard it say over weve heard it really for almost 20 years that the era of great power conflict is over. But this is exactly what the pundits and cognoscenti said. The conventional wisdom was nat nation state was becoming irrelevant. Dont forget that in the 1890s and right through the first 15 years of the 20th century travel was freer in europe than it is today. There was no need for all that. There were no visas. There were no passports. Dont forget that britain and germany were each others largest trade partners. Their royal families were intermarried. Wilhelm was after all the granddaughter of queen victoria. They regularly visited each other. I sometimes point out that wilhelms visits to the annual regatta in the isle of white was they were always conducive to better relations between germany and britain. But the fact of the matter is absolutely nobody thought there would be a reason for a great power war or particularly between britain and germany. And yet europe 101 years ago staggered into the biggest political catastrophe of modern european history because i include one of its results was world war ii. It was an absolute catastrophe. So it is not enough to say that just because everybody gets along along there isnt going to be a war. I know history doesnt necessarily repeat itself, but as the great Great American philosopher mark twain said sometimes it rhymes. Its worth paying attention to where we are today. Because weve all heard the same arguments. Modern communication. Ease of travel. The internet. Dependence on each other for trade. These are all the things that were said all throughout the 1890s for the first 15 years of the 20th century. And yet the war came. So heres the question for us. If america is not prepared to continue to be the global hegemon what are the alternatives . I see there are three in theory. None of them very tasteful. The first is that we get replaced as the worlds hegemon. There are three possible replacements. Russia, china, and europe. One can dismiss russia and china rather quickly if you want to have a liberal world order. No need to argue about that. Neither of them are politically or economically liberal. Europe certainly shares our values and has significant soft power. But the europeans are completely transfixed by their own political and now economic problems and have so cut their Defense Budgets that they cannot even, as we saw in libya and mali they cant even project power across the mediterranean without american help. So there isnt going to be a single hegemon to replace us. Second alternative is you have a multipolar world. You say you dont really need a hegemon, we just have everybody get along. Since one of my professional deformations is as a historian, i would just point out that the multipolar worlds of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries led to essentially perpetual war. And today with many states, syria, iraq, lebanon libya, mali, maybe others potentially falling apart on a sectarian basis, then i would refer you to the prewest in europe. Youre going to love a multipolar 20th century. That option doesnt look very appealing. Well, the third option not going to have a replacement hegemon, not going to have a multipolar world, is well, we can maybe hand off all of our responsibilities to the u. N. Or some international organization. I wont spend a lot of time on this because the failures of the league of nations, the u. N. , and i would argue even the difficulties that the europeans find trying to run a Multinational Organization structure, political structure suggest that option isnt going to work. So there actually is no alternative to continued American Leadership if we want to have a reasonably peaceful 21st century. If we want to enjoy the kinds of freedoms that were trampled on last week in paris and are challenged around the world not just by muslim extremists but by other autocratic regimes, americans are going to have to advocate and yes where necessary fight for those freedoms. June 15th this year we will celebrate the 800th anniversary of the signing of magna carta by john king john. Those events at runny meade 800 years ago this summer really set in motion the entire difficult long struggle to reach where we have reached in terms of individual freedoms because magna carta established that there was no single political power. In that case the king had to share power with the barons. It was an important signal first event toward the freedoms we enjoy. I hope this june 15th well be able to celebrate again that weve got a government here and in europe, governments that are prepared to stand up for those same freedoms. Thank you. Go ahead. Sit down. Very good. You can make a speech. No, no speeches. Stand up here. All right. I guess were doing questions. Right. As moderateor i would like to open the discussion with you. And if i may i have the privilege to ask you one or two questions questions. You obviously tried to provide a Historical Context and we know from history that unfortunately we dont learn from history. But at any rate we learn from history we dont learn from history. Yeah. There are different views about 33 years ago and by the way, as academics obviously we look at the calendar every single day. And the month of january i recall 33 years ago, malcolm care was the president of the American University in beirut. Was assassinated because i knew him at ucla and all that. By the Jihadist Group there under hezbollah in iran and all that. So my question to you again, since you began with the lessons of history, what in your view are the most critical challenges on the terrorism level that we have to be concerned about those policy makers that wakes memorandum up at night. Is it homegrown terrorism in terms of the perpetrators . Is it cyberterrorism or weapons of much discussion . Is the nature of the threat in the United States and of course globally. I think the homegrown terrorists, which is sort of the fashion of the day because of a lot of things that have recently happened, at least for the time being it certainly is a danger. Its a very hard one to deal with because these people travel can travel and get training as we saw in the case of Charlie Hebdo and come back using in that case french passports. They were french citizens. From a practical point of view its very difficult to stop that. And the only good news is at least for the time being they are relatively restrained in terms of the damage they can do. Not to suggest any lack of sympathy for the people who died in paris. But theres a big difference between 15 people dying and 3,000 people dying. However, we cant rest. We must assume, because they said so, i read some statements i could read more, that the terrorists, particular lyly would like to have an ability for mass casualty terrorism as we predicted in the National Commission on terrorism, as we predicted they would. The most significant way for them to do that would be to get weapons of mass destruction. Where i think the biggest danger is biological for a lot of reasons. All of which means what do we do about it . All of which means intelligence. Now, ive been at this game of Foreign Policy for more than 50 years. Twice before i saw what happens when we start to dismantle our intelligence capabilities. We did it in 1975 to 76 and 79 and we paid a very big price. In not being able to understand what happened in iran in nicaragua, and particularly russia when they went into afghanistan. In the 1990s we did it again when the then director of cia put very restrictive guidelines on how to go about recruiting terrorist agencies. And we paid a price. I dont say that 9 11 would have been caught if we hadnt had those in place. But its absolutely clear we paid a big price. Were in the next cycle now. We have discounted the terrible effect of what snowden has done whom our president called a hacker. Hes not a hacker. Hes a traitor. And what he did was substantially hurt our capabilities to get good intelligence about terrorists. We now have the fight going on between the parties, and im not going to get into it about the enhanced interrogation techniques. But the effect of that i know from talking to friends still in the Intelligence Community is to put a damper on their enthusiasm to take risks. And im telling you, theres no point in having a Covert Intelligence service unless it takes risks. You have to have a risktaking culture. Intelligence about terrorism is about the most difficult target there is in the world. Much more difficult to understand that than to understand the chinese order of battle because we have ways of knowing about the chinese order of battle. But terrorists are organized on a cellular basis so that everybody is kept in the dark except the top guys. So you have to have somebody inside the terrorist group, inside the cell at a reasonably high level to figure out whats actually going on. So if you say to me against these dangers what do we do, the very first thing weve got to do is weve got to Pay Attention to our intelligence capabilities. Both our electronic and our human intelligence. Thats what weve got to do. And we need to be very concerned about the potential of terrorist groups getting weapons of mass destruction. And i would of course nuclear would also be a big but thats a much more complicated problem for the terrorists thank god. One more question. On the response how do you see the role of the Civic Society to combat terrorism . Because according to our studies we do know that governments cannot do it alone without the support of the public. And my question is for example if we take different segments of the society the role of religion for example, the religious community, because of the propaganda elements and the exploitation of religious ideas, concepts and all, that or the role of education dealing with that you spoke about, intellectual maybe bankruptcy and the role of the media that covers terrorism so on and so on. In other words can we focus on the role of Civic Society in the United States and around the world . There are a number of answers, yonah. Of course in the end you have to mobilize the population. No question about that. On the question of religious communities its not for us to define the bounds of acceptable wrong word. Its not for us to define the bounds of what is permitted or not permitted in islam. Thats for muslims to do. And basically, ive said now for 40 years it is moderate muslims who are going to have to stand up and do the fight. And i must say to my surprise president sisi gave an extraordinary speech in Al Azar University i think january 1st in which he basically said to the this is you all know, its the intellectual center of the arab world for 1,000 years, and he said we have got to come up with a reformation of islam to deal with these extremists. He is, after all, somebody who knows something about the muslim brotherhood, which said qutub founded who i quoted earlier. Thats what we have to see not what we heard out of the turkish president the day before yesterday where hes condemning us, its our fault we were attacked. Thats not responsible muslim leadership. In the end this problem is going to have to be solved by muslims. We should support the moderates wherever we can through whatever means. The media social media all that good stuff. Speaking of the media i will know that we are on the track of beginning to get rid of this Political Correctness when our media starts attack the speech codes that are at every single American University. How can that possibly be in the interest of the journalists to allow these speech codes, its not allowed, you cant say this, you cant say that because its considered hurtful to someone. Well, a lot of things are considered hurtful to people. But thats not a