A partisan political person answer when i use the term the west what i mean is 2 things one are geo political entities are generally u. S. Led you know western countries naser the western alliance and the u. S. But i also include in that definition countries that fight in the same way that the us fights and its really a military definition which a couple of years before was his testimony was the basis for the u. S. Victory in the 1st gulf war and i kind of argue in the book that that victory actually force pretty much everybody else to adapt and evolve in response to u. S. Military dominance and the u. S. Perhaps has become a little bit stagnant because it hasnt had to face an adaptive landscape that others have had to deal with each side just a moment ago that are in your book here. Specifically building our game and around the fact that after 99 to wind the west was left to fly be snakes while the dragons lay down once and watched closely from baghdad how to fly the west and now the
It for you. I think that so just to say this book is a book about military adaptation and its about how different players adapted over time and i begin the book at the end of the cold war and as i was casting around for a way to frame whats happened since then i found jim moses comments in his confirmation hearing extraordinarily apt its a rather prescient deer of the International Security environment of the ninetys but it really comes down to that one phrase where he says we slain a large dragon talking about this so he but now we find ourselves in a jungle filled with a broader and broader for the snakes and in many ways the dragon was easier to keep track of and i think what hes trying to say here is that weak states failing states and nonstate actors are the principal threat of the 99 is a. Minute or until it is the total color and. Its also way of categorising and its essentially putting legitimate state actors like russia or china into the same group as nonstate actors like isis
Confirmation hearing extraordinarily apt its a rather prescient dear of the International Security environment of the ninetys but it really comes down to that one phrase where he says was slain a large dragon talking about the soviet union well now we find ourselves in a jungle still with a broader and broader for the snakes and in many ways the dragon was easier to keep track of and i think what hes trying to say here is that weak states failing states and nonstate actors are the principal threat of the 99. 00 is a. Minute or until it is the total call and. Its also we have categorizing and its essentially putting legitimate state actors like russia or china into the same group as nonstate actors like isis and object terrorist groups isnt just al just a little bit to give this to folks contrary i mean if you are not with asio or against that. So actually i think hes making the opposite point what hes saying is there are 2 different characters that are very different from each other th
Or in your state adversaries russia china perhaps and then there are a completely different category which is the nonstate actors what he calls the snake and my argument in the book is that weve spent basically 20 years focusing on snakes on only particularly one snake International Islamic extremism and the related terrorism and i think that the world that rules he describes in 993. 00 was an accurate description for maybe 10 years but it is out of date now and we now harness if you like maladapted to the modern environment its interesting at the same because i had a chance to interview mr holmes a few years back that on the u. S. Russia relationship actually struck me as somebody that very. Well here and. He was speaking about russia as a School Principal to talk about hes behaving student and i thinking even viewed the world as a dram that the United States. Needs the time has long gone dont you think that batman of war no longer thinks the world that we all. So i actually talk abou
A member of the u. S. Led International Rules based order established by the u. S. And as i point out in the book for a lot of russians experiencing Shock Therapy and privatization and auburn economists coming in response to a lot of mockery c. E. At the west Foreign Policy i think thats also an immediate matter yeah i think a lot of people saw that as sort of terminate 2nd class status in a us led system and i think its pretty clear that russia in particular has been pushing back on that. Assumptions that a lot of us policy makers i wouldnt actually put will see at the top of the list there the person. Actually on albright who was the secretary of state for president clinton she made the comments in 99 when she said look if we have to use force if that is where the United States we stand tall we see further. And everybody else and sort of we know whats whats good for everybody well actually can see the number of cases i think they have gotten my next question if the well is populated