About his recent atlantic article aboutthe end of the 9 11 era in a few minutes im going to introduce been. Ben will speak and he and i will havea conversation. We encourage you to post questions through the two and a feature. And we get to the second half of the hour i will begin to wrap up our discussion and start posing some of your questions then and we will run about one hour. So i also want to mention next week, next wednesday in fact were going to do i think our last webinar for the summer. Which will be with our partner, peter singer of near america talking about his new novel burn in which is a kind of look into the future of warfare and cyber warfare in particular so peter does a fantastic thinker and writer and i look forward to seeing that so for today as mentioned ben rhodes. Ben is former Deputy National security adviser in the Obama Administration. Lcurrent cochair ofNational Security action. Cohost of pond save the world which i highly recommend. Both organizations and a longtime friend of ucla so then, take it away and i will be back to have some conversation with you in a few minutes. Thanks cal, thanks everybody for joining us for this. Ill just make some opening comments. Summarizing the argument i was making in this piece that can set up all kinds of directions that we can go in in our conversation. Just to situated, for me , what is the genesis of this idea about the end of the 9 11 era is everybody else, the extremity of the lockdown in early march and for me, it was, i was taking a walk with my daughters and we went down to venice beach which was completely empty, desolate which ive never seen before. And my daughter picks up a dandelion and i said makeawish and she said that her wish was to make the coronavirus go away. And for someone who worked in National Security for eight years in the white house, wh what really hit me about that moment is that this crisis, is something that has hit everybody in america. Including my daughter. She understood that the crisis we are in. Th in a way that terrorism never would have. No terrorist could kill as many people as this disease already has read no terrorist act could have the Economic Impact this has had. Perhaps the societal impact when we think about what the fallout is going tobe as were already seeing. And when you consider that we spent trillions of dollars preventing terrorist attacks relative to what we spent on pandemics, it hit me but it also wasnt a surprise. A pandemic is something people have been warningabout for many years. In the Obama Administration we dealt with h1 and one and we dealt with evil, more acutely 2014 and by the end of the Obama Administration we were seized with the fact that the dangers of issues other than terrorism far outweighed the risk of terrorism itself and ill come back to that in a second. So for me llits recalled a sign that isaw once in a tour of the cia operations center. That said every day is september 12. And i understood the mentality that led the agency to put that sign up probably on september 12. And i also understood that is kind of where america has been. Both the American Government and american politics and in some ways American Society more than we can ever since. I understood it i was in europe, i witnessed 911 and that Public Service led me down to washington with the 9 11 commission fora few years. Kind of deconstructing that event and what it meant for our National Security apparatus. I entered partisan politics largely because of the iraq war which was how we had gotten aresponse to 9 11 wrong. I went to work for barack obama who never would have been elected president were it not for the iraq war. So i was someone even before i enteredgovernment services been shaped by 9 11. And as i reported on the Obama Administration, i could see that many ways in which that presidency was shaped in partby 9 11. We entered office inheriting 2 wars in iraq and afghanistan with over 300,000 troops and massive counterterrorism apparatus that reshaped the Us Government to prioritize this one issue, terrorism above all else. E theres probably a bank shot to the financial crisis being inherited, the trillions of o dollars poured into counterterrorism in those years. And in the first obama term in particular, you can also feel working in National Security and the Us Government the kind of Gravitational Force of 9 11. So president elected to end wars that we did to move on 50,000 troops from iraq gets pulled deeper into afghanistan with the surgeon 2009. We had aggressive counterterrorism efforts in the first obama aterm. We had controversial counterterrorism efforts like the drone policy. The arab spring in some ways probably has some roots back into the post9 11 environment including the iraq war and the kind of hyperpolarization of the middle east from us military interventions and from the kinds of leaders in places like egypt and saudi arabia who in some ways legitimize themselves as partners of the us because of counterterrorism. At the same time particularly in the second term of the Obama Administration , obama was very deliberately trying to end this era and move into a new one and if you look at the signature components of obamas foreignpolicy in that second term each of them in their own way are trying to move up into a post9 11 world. A post post 9 11 world i should say. There are Nuclear Deals to avoid another war in the middle east that could have been precipitated by iran Getting Nuclear Weapons dealing withthat challenge diplomatically. The terrorist climate of course meant to signal that Climate Change was going to be the new focus of American Foreign policy and i think people dont fully appreciate how much work went into the paris accord not just in negotiating in the room in terms of using all of our bilateral multilateral relationships to prioritize Climate Change in the second longterm. The kind of to asia, the transpacific partnership, the focus of the asianpacific region was in many ways playing catchup to the rise of china which should basically i think then had been largely ignored by the after 9 11 so we were seeking to build an infrastructure in a specific region rise of china and shape rules of the road on everything from trade to technology to governance and in ways that were meant to influence chinas behavior. Even the human mobilization which i negotiated was meant to lowes a chapter in our history, tie up loose ends so that we could get past that and engage not just cuba but our own hemisphere. Without the baggage of history , not only 9 11 but a similar mindset of seeing. An island of 11 Million People and the same time that we were doing this we were told back by world events and also by american politics into this post9 11 era. Isis and its emergence in the second obama term obviously guaranteed we were going to remain militarily involved in the middle east albeit with a very different model and the post9 11 wars without large us Ground Forces present. But even that is interesting to look back on because isis and people of, terrorism and a potential pandemic, emerged at the same time and one so much more dangerous in a way than the other c. Evil law threatened to kill millions of people. And yet think about how much tension was paid to isis and our media and our politics versus evil. It just shows you how hard wired we had become as americans to the terrorism as an inextricably linked to our National Security, our concept of National Security in a way that we dont think about pandemics. But the on that, its not just for 9 11 and the center of National Security but its what its done to our politics and what so evident to me in the later obama years area particularly as pin the Republican Party and certainly key elements in the Republican Party. Kind of demonstrated almost all radicalization in a way around this kind of securitized us versus them post9 11mindset. There was this toxics two of issues, why didnt obama say radical islam, all of the then godly investigations of course. Demagoguery refugees, demagogy illegal immigration that all very much tied back to this idea of fear of the other. And you know, polarization or the purpose of security. It is very characteristic i think the post9 11 america and it shows you how, what might have started as a very legitimate fear of terrorism morphed over time into this us versus them approach to politics that into that current steps donald trump. And i think part of this to is the psychology of a nation that after 9 11 was promised great victory. I tried to imagine what it was like to consume fox news throughout the bush presidency. You were constantly on the precipice of a great victory in iraq and afghanistan and of those victories did not materialize and never will materialize and i think we haventthought enough about the country about the fact that we did not win those wars. When countries dont win wars often politicians look for people to blame within. Thats the most tried and true tactic of how these things happen in history so it became blame obama or blame the muslims of the United States. Blame people, blame illegal all these things kind of got melded together in the person of donald trump. And as a president despite his rhetoric about ending wars hes done quite the opposite. Hes escalated every war he inherited. There are 20,000 less troops in the us than when he took office because of the state were in with iraq but even more so the securitization narrative that i talk about. Either ms 13 has this focus. Immigrants of course is his focus, even recently antifa he wants to designate as a terrorist organization, the language of 9 11 weapon knifed in this mindset so here we are in the mold midst of multiple crises, covid i think perhaps the s most performative but an economic crisis and of course the response to structural systemic racism in this country and police violence. This is a time to i think for a fundamental transformation of how we think about National Security. The threats that we face, the challenges we have to deal with are not terrorism. Im not suggesting we dont Pay Attention to it but we measure it against Climate Change, against pandemics, against the emergence of new technology and how thats going to pose risks to privacy and Economic Security and when you look at the national authoritarian trend around the world that is challenging the very idea of democracy, the rise of china utis a part of that. And look at all that, were not focused on the right things w. Our eye is not on the ball here. And at the same time you have to fundamentally get our act together at home which ill come back to in a second. So ill close your because we can ask some of this into an a in terms of what does that mean . In terms of our National Security prioritization it means shale shifting to the things that i just talked about. That means resources. We have a pentagon budget that is way too big in my judgment. It makes no sense that we have a plan in the country to spend 1 trillion in the next decade modernizing our Nuclear Weapons infrastructure. What for . Why is that not being spent on the things i can prepare us for the world that we are actually facing. Why are we not investing more in researching the development of Artificial Intelligence when we are being beaten by china and health so that were better prepaid prepared to deal with things like a pandemic, our basic researchbased that helps us win the cold war has been fully neglected under this trumpadministration. These are the kinds of investments that were goingto have to make and its Climate Change , its an accidental threat to the climate which is it is and the amount of money were spending on that challenge and support for other countries, or the development of new technologies that can accelerate our ability to slow global warming, that resource allocation has to shift. So does the personnel structure of the Us Government. The promotion structure, the experts brought in in the last 20 years. State dod and elsewhere,their focus and terrorism in the middle east. Theyre great people and they need to be part of the answer r to but we have to shift to this other issue set so its this fundamental realignment of what the United States thinks about his National Security and how we build our government to deal with that is whats required and thats not easy to do but one of the things about that in government if you can say what you think should happen and recognize that its going to take a lot of work to get there. A couple of things though beyond that, i think that we have to also recognize the change in mindset that has to take place. One of the things i talk about in pieces, the mindset towards government itself. Theres been this multidecade assault on the role of government, government is bad and bureaucrats are bad. I think we learned in covid thats your backstop against all of these threats that we are going to face and we need to reinvest in the idea of what government can do for people in this country and bring more people into serving government and try to reenergize t the United States to deal with this new set of challenges thats going to shape our world. At the same time i think we obviously have to deal with ourselves at home and in terms of Foreign Policy america is not going to have credibility understanding of anything in the world if where not seen as getting our act together at home. We can even try to do everything right at home, where making it hard for this people to vote, theres a connection between how we get our democracy in order at homeand what we do around the world. Where not going to be credible on Climate Change if we dont do something substantial and aggressive at home. Were not going to be credible in dealing with the regulation of new technologies and this information and Artificial Intelligence were not doing this at home with Companies Like facebook so we have to see that the line between what were doing here and what were doing around the world has to go away because these issues are all fundamentally interconnected and of course most profoundly as you take a little young people have reminded us the last few weeks if we are not seen as dealing with our own systemic issues involving race and immigration, how people are treated in this country we have no moral authority toleave the world. On the e other hand if were seen as correcting those issues r, if were seen as making progress that gives us a lot of leverage to once again have some World Authority so allthese things i think are very much connected. Ill just end before we move the conversation, one piece that drives this home is that when i taught at ucla last year i was teaching president ial speeches and i remember we read that speech that george bush gave to a joint session of congress after 9 11 which is a wellreceived speech at the time and i thought it was well done at the time but bush is calling for nothing ki less and americas entire National Purpose to a global war on terrorism. Theyre going to have to reorient all Government Society to the challenge and compare terrorists to nazi germany and soviet communists. Reading that 20 years later, it was like reading another language. I understood but my students who are 19, 20, 21 it was like this document came from another planet and we have to reckon with the fact that we got the response of 9 11 wrong and its time to move on and that the National Purpose of this country has to be about bigger things than just fighting terrorism. And in government and National Priorities should reflect more the interests of those young people who are the future of this country then relitigating and trying to course correct and do one more search in the middle east. To deal with the fact that we got this wrong. Its time to move on. And in the strange tragic way , i think this moment offers that opportunity if theres a change in presidency certainly but it goes far beyond the presidency, this has to be embedded in lots of different aspects of american politics, government and society so ill stop there and look forward to the conversation. Thanks ben, that was fantastic way to open. Let me ask just in a very end viewpoint and you talk about that moment as being a particular opportunity and obviously in the pieceitself which i read recommend of yours. You did your remarks and you had the anecdote about your father at the end about the same message comes through and i guess i just wanted to get you to expand a little bit on what you think that particular impact of the covid moment is for your argument so in other words were we already and the end of the post9 11 era, covid just makes it clearor didnt really have kind of a causal impact. I think personally i think we should have been at the end of the 9 11 era about a decade ago and i thought all bothese battles and let the Obama Administration with a lot of scars forfighting this battle. But i dont think its an infusion, one of the things i plan on pieces almost absurdly to think about the same time covid was already out, the president knew about covid and this country came this close to going to war with iraq. That happened in like january and i know it seems like a decade ago. So dont think thats not post 9 11 war. Thats this kind of we can unpack the fact that getting Saddam Hussein involved in iran which led to the same people that governed us on the hot hot Saddam Hussein but that to me is the clearest indicator and lookat what we talk about. We talk iran, terrorism area so i think we were still very much in 9 11 even as it wasnt quite as prominent. And i think we still very much were incentive, trumps land of politics is poimpossible without 9 11. Its, the kind of xena phobic America First mentality is a very post 9 11 thing. So i think it was still very much the case and i think covid and frankly trump was probably a slight to be reelected before covid and i think thats change. So because its of them, i think covid communicated to america the cost of having an incompetent government and having an incompetent demagogue as president and not being engaged in the world in a way that would allow you to work with other countries to stop this disease or mitigate it at least before it became here and did. The other thing id say about this is that having lived through the financial crisis which is a seismic event, albeit one probably not as big as covid transformed Politics Around the world. My basic theory is that events caused the collapse of confidence around the world particularly in the west in globalization and democracy and all this nationalism and terrorism we see as roots in inthe financial crisis. A backlash to globalization and to liberal democracy where people felt it failed and theres going to be a backlash because of covid19 and particularly because of the economic fallout is going to come fromit , where is that going to hit and what lesson are we goingto draw from it. I hope this is a first effort inthis article. But everyones going to think about this. To try to figure that out. What, if this is going to play out in 3 to 5 years and what lessons does the world draw from covid and what do we do about that. Those are going to be huge issues and theres so many things that you raised or implicit in your remarks and in your piece but let me kind of focus on a few for the moment. One is china and you talk about china. Then i want to talk about the middle east lets start with china. Is it yoursense , a lot of people have this you and you might do but tell me how you think about this that one of the problems with the post9 11 approach that you talk about, this unyielding focus on terrorism that continued arguably through the Obama Administration to a large degree, it allowed us to take our eyes off the real ball which was the fact that china was rising with incredible speed economically, politically, diplomatically, militarily and now we face a very different world and in many ways it may be just accelerating that. So its not sort of the single biggest problem with what we get is that we were not now we are not prepared and im not trying to argue that china is necessarily, china is certainly a competitor or rifle and in many ways sto think about china but that we were not sufficiently focused on china. Theres no question thats true and i should add i want to say your point about, when i look back at the Obama Administration the things i find both with us on, worthy surge in afghanistan for ininstance. The kind of pieces, obviously the war in yemen. The things that extend out of the post11 mindset and whats interesting is those are not the things that we recall or were called for at the time. Particularly in the foreign policies policy establishment those were basically status quo policies. It was these other things we were trying to do that works wonders and the principal think that president obama was trying to do is get us out of the middle east so we could focus on asia and focus on chinaand that was the Strategic Point that he was making. That ran deal is part of the china strategy, we cant afford to fight a war with these guys. The chinese are passing us while we are focused on a relatively small country. Its totally bizarre. Historians will look back at this obsession with iran and it makes very little sense that at the time when there so was a massive emergent superpower in asia so much of washington was consumed with this relatively small country. Where the only real issue for our National Security in terms of an accidental threat , if we could deal with that we dont have to fight that war and iran cant make their Nuclear Weapon and we will deal with some of the issues related to irans Foreign Policy but its not, china is a much bigger challenge than and ran. So i think we totally, i remember one anecdote i can tell is i remember going to copenhagen for a Climate Change, conference that fell apart and we get there and the whole congress is in disarray and the reason why is the europeans were thinking that europe will would kind of crap this kind of change agreement and the americans are coming and we figure out a middle and get everybody on board. The chinese have a lot more floats in that room than we did read a had the entire block of a sickly the rest of the world and i remember flying home with obama and air force one and we had a conversation where its like if people like you write these articlesabout how china is rising , they already wrote, that happened in the first decade of the 21st century and then i think after the financial crisis they got okay we can start flexing our muscles a bit more. And yes, i think very much the case while america was focused on the middle east china was just generally advancing and asserting itself. And i dont want to suggest its all that. Its natural that a country that is lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty is going to win more iinfluence in the world but the question is where does that influence me and i think with trauma they realized they had a once in a century opportunity to essentially undo key aspects of the International Order because the us had left the table and just walked away from it and when you look at everything from the belt Road Initiative to how theyre asserting themselves in hong kong to their application of surveillance technology, construction of this no totalitarian model, putting 1 million uighurs in prison camps, they are accelerating their behaviors to take advantage of a moment when america is maximally distracted by the fact that donald trump is president. And what worries me i think the one way we could go on about this but i just point to the fact that its not, if you just look at it as china is a new superpower, their enemy read what we do about that i think thats the wrong prison and not just because theyre worried that prison could lead to conflict. But also because its not just china. Its whats underneath these issues. China, what do i worry about . I worry about the fact that china is basically perfecting this authoritarian model where you use Artificial Intelligence and technology to set up kind of a perfect medically sealed Surveillance System in your country and you basically like that any possibility or political opposition, any sense of liberty and privacy as i understand it you ask what the people ofhong kong are afraid of, thats what their processing because they see that coming for them. And i see that exporting beyond chinas borders. Thats not just a china issue , thats a technology issue. Ask whats going to be done with these technologies, what privacy concerns, what is the definition of liberty and andemocracy in a world in which states have access to that kind of technology. So its yes, china is the clearest manifestation of what you worry about in terms of this narrative but its a just bigger issue than china. When you look at territorial disputes and the risk at flash points of war in south china sea, and recently in himalayas and india, thats a more assertive china but it also shows you the International System is broken down and its capacity to resolve territorial disputes. What works in your is frayed and is not working in other parts of the world. I can keep going on, i wont because the point is that part of this is yes, china emerged and that they are throwing their weight around and their influence in africa and latin america and certainly in asia potentially in your that as they do that, theyre going to be the ones answering these questions about how our new technologies being used, whats the future of the internet, whats the futureof politics. Theyre not shy about suggesting we havea better model than your democracy. Everybody shouldsign on to this model. I dont want to live in that world but thats not just jubecause of china, thats because i dont like authoritarianism and i dont like a world in which there is no rule except might makes right. So thats, we both talk about china but what obama i think to his credit was trying to do is totally swimming against the current not just here but in many ways what washappening around the world is trying to put in place the new rules. The gdp as standards not just untreated but labor and the environment, your new form of agreement and allow for Climate Change. What are the rules of the government insider, if we can get china to sign in on those. Granted it would be a first step but hopefully you would have built on that so to me the china question is linked to the fact that we are paying attention to thewrong issues. Not just not paying attention to china, not enough attention to the issues china raises. I agree 100 percent and in fact you find a dress along the way the issue of focus on the middle east i think we both share a view that its been somewhat unrelenting for a period of time even before 9 11. To agree to agree thatdoesnt make sense for American Foreignpolicy. P it definitely doesnt make sense today but let me askyou about something else. You talk about a sense of new rules or lack of rules and china being emboldened. Im thinking yesterday i got a call from a reporter from a major japanese newspaper asking about trunks claim that he was going to withdraw a large number of troops from germany and what did that signal, what did that mean and obviously from the point of view of japanese newspaper what did it mean for japan and for american credibility in asia so im curious about you dont need to focus on asia necessarily but number one i know in the Obama Administration you did. You the president and u others did at times push our allies to spend more on defense. You think that that is a legitimate problem or to what degree do you think and do you think it makes sense to bring troops back . You talk about our overspending on Nuclear Weapons i completely agree with many people today are also, i personally agree less with this but focus on our overseas face thing out ofthe kind of wasteful exercise. I hear that rather around issues around policing that we should be typewritten money from overseas bases to put into social programs to be able to deep on the police, kind of logic so im just curious you see americas footprints abroad and do you think we need to rethink that in this current era that were entering. One obvious places the middle east where i think we have to bigger footprint. To me the issue here is that its the basis also what the basisrepresents to those countries. For japan for south korea, or germany, and her allies of the us. Its a manifestation of our absolute commitment to their security. Broadly defined. Its not just that is, we will protect them as in europe that the russians come in and asia. Its also the clearest manifestation ofthe fact that were on the same page. So therefore we cooperate. We start from the premise that we want the same kind of world. You know this, you sit down with allies you pretty much agree with where you are trying to go. You might disagree about some tactics but the starting point that we all agree and so thereforelets figure out what were going to do together about this issue. And because we have that kind of rule europeans for a long time look to us to set the direction on a lot of n geostrategic issues. The, that went beyond hard security. That went into development, to womens issues and human rights. Went into issues where european europe was having a lead on Climate Change and then we go in andwe can get a Paris Agreement. To the point what i see in europe as they dont feel like the United States cares anymore. That we dont have a fundamental baseline commitment that their security and we dont have an agreedupon set of common interests thats the basis for us banding together. That could be very dangerous for us. Its easy to say well they should spend more money on defense and ill come back to this in a second but heres s what theyre going to do. Theyre going to make their own deals with china. They prefer i think that on these issues like how are we going to set arstandards around the internet and how are we going to set standards on the development of 5g and how are we going to set standards on development of Artificial Intelligence, all this can implement privacy concerns, weaponization of Artificial Intelligence and all these things. Id rather we sat down with your and figured out what our standards are and by the way japan and south korea and when the chinese say heres what wevefigured out , what the chinese want to say is lets get the americans outof there and we will go bilateral. Lets figure out what the rules are and were going to leave and so i think people dont fully appreciate doing things like pulling troops out of germany like that without consulting with the German Government has all these other ripple effects. It will affect all these other issues and its not just whether we havetroops there is whether germany thinks we are in this together. And so on the basic question like should europe spend more ondefense , i am not at the scale of things i worry about but thats on the list. And frankly, when you look at our Defense Budget these spaces are not the preponderance of expenditures. So yes, i think over time we can figure out how to reduce our footprint. But we should do this in consultation with our allies. And the last thing id say about this is the idea that this has been a gift from us in this country is one of the worst ideas that emanates from that perspective. We have gotten so much out of the influence that we have the cause of our relationships with countries like japan and south korea and germany. That is what allowed us to basically write the rules that the rules operated under for 75 years area and to think that that was a charity , when we could count on. We could count on them for not just the military alliance, how much japan funded our development over the years . Every time we had a Development Like japan would step up to the plate more than anybody. Rewhy can they do that but mark in part because they dont have a huge Defense Budget because they have bases there so there are all kinds of secondary benefits that we get i think people dont see in this country but they see them in those countries and thats why theyre so offended frankly by rightly i have has approached this. I agree 100 percent owto so we have so many Great Questions from viewers so im going to go to them and i want to apologize in advance to the many people who pose questions to these questions i wontget to but let me start off with this one. So theres a long question but a good one, so the question is is part of the problem and absence of longterm Strategic Thinking . We spent trillions of dollars expanding the National Security state reacting to a singleterrorist attack. But of course 9 11 was a more focusing event than the multitude of echallenges we face now. So whats at the root of the problem . Is it the media, a failure of leadership, educationsystem , polarization r politically mark you see as the chief driving force. Thats a fantastic question and the question. I should be commuted now okay. Thats a fantastic question. The question. I think about building on because sundays some days i think our, ill tell you what not. Its not the fact that somebody had sat down and written the grand strategy. Its not about the Strategic Thinking. Not about the National Security strategy, not about that we need a new george cannon, its about our policy. Because ultimately our ul National Security as responded to our policy. Our grand strategy, obama had a grand strategy was to get us out of the middle east and deal with all that other stuff i. It was politics and the emedia Culture Holding us back. We if you look at the, i mentioned isis. Isis, when this became hyper focus of this entire country, it was when they killed four americans. Tragically and im not minimizing the loss of any American Life but what is it about our politics in society that terrorist organizations can kidnapped and killed four americans andturn this country completely upside down . I remember even early in the Obama Administration we were in the midst of a financial crisis and we got 180,000 troops in failing war and you had the Christmas Day bomber who didnt even succeed in hurting anybody except himself, letting hisunderwear on fire and consumed our media andpolitics for a week. Thisis what im talking about t , this kind of mindset. You can have the best rant strategies in the world but if the politics of this Country Congress response to, that the media response to his hardwired to be afraid of certain things and not others , youre going to do to quote my old boss stupidstuff. Like going to war after war in themiddle east. And. I dont think youre quoting your boss if i remember right but can i just interject on that, im not going to defend that position vociferously but isnt part of the issue people here that oif you dont react strongly you will embolden and so i the deterrence rationale and a credibility rationale, i totally agree we go overboard but its not like being hit by lightning. The. What id say here is that how Many Americans are killed by gun violence in this country. Llclearly americans and the resilient. Too much so in my view. We can be resilient to tens of thousands of americans getting killed by weapons that we know that if we just move those weapons, if you look at other countries that wouldnt happen. What is it ouacceptable that tens of thousands of americans get killed by gun violence in countries but its unacceptable or americans killed in themiddle east. Theres something, that happens because politicians. And by the way, to the question, its all the things you said. Its a politics in which after 9 11 americans were told by their leaders that terrorism can wipe us out. T. Theyll get Nuclear Weapons and wipe us out. That was the rationale for the iraqwar. It wasnt true. Its the media that loves to cover scary stories about brown people trying to kill americans, to put it very bluntly. And just every time i terrorist popped up it was like a herd that theyre going to cover that. Its a lot easier to cover than Climate Change. Paris for the paris talks around Climate Change, we kept getting thisquestion whats the big address, isis or Climate Change. Which is an insane course Climate Change but that was a controversial thing to say. In our media environment. Our Education System i think is the least appreciated of this and i absolutely agree and unfortunately im not a next for but something as borough in our Education System, that let us here and this one, all the smarter people about this can figure this out but there is something about how americans , their basic understanding of history and the world and ndim not saying this, i dont want to come across but were just not on the kind of. The fact that america as the only country in the world that has a Major Political party that does not believe that Climate Change exists. That denies the reality of thescience. Thats directly linked to the fact that there are americans who refuse to wear masks. Something is wrong in our Education System where science and fact are not viewed as science andfact. You can stop there but thatquestion is the whole ballgame. The next question, how does the issue of insecure Nuclear Facilities which terrorist groups try to infiltrate such as those in pakistan factor into the end of the 9 11 era that you identify. One more. Good one say that the insecurity of certain weapons of mass destruction and the desire for terrorist organizations to obtain them use a new wave of the 9 11 era in other words could come back. I dont want to minimize that there is, i dont want to suggest theres no threat from terrorism. But what i encountered in government is that we did the Nuclear Security summit which is entirely devoted to Nuclear Terrorism, bringing together dozens of countries to do very hard ersteady work on how do you set better security facilities at Nuclear Facilities, how do you dispose of certain materials. Preventing Nuclear Terrorism is about that, its not about invading and occupying iraq so its not that we should do counterterrorism, its that the most impactful counterterrorism is erlike an intelligence work, goodlaw enforcement work. Approaches about what Security Standards and facility should be. So thats whats so baffling to me about this is that even if you , the things that you need to do to prevent these truly catastrophic terrorist scenarios are not the same things we been doing. And. We have been doing them but theyre not the focal point which was the wars in iraq and afghanistan. Those were very very exciting to people unfortunately. But thousands of american lives have been saved because of americascounterterrorism construction and a wellmeaning hardworking brilliant people who work within it. But the point is that that work can continue without fighting war after the war in the middle east. Thats my basic promise. Next question, do you believe that the way the us has our covid19 response will affect its previous number one superpower standing relative to the east Asian Countries who strong responses so in other ntwords obviously we do not look good. How do you think this will play out geo strategically over time. I think were no longer seen as the superpower in the world and i think americans dont fully appreciate the extent to which everybodyelse has already moved on. Theres, this is already happening because of the rack. We were had kind of artificial and to the cold war that was never going to endure. No country is that powerful for that long. I think iraq really accelerated people saying well, this is an, having america be so powerful they can do something that stupid is not a good approach and you see that point russia beginning to push back more than, you see thechinese beginning to emerge from their shell a bit more but i think with trump , and obama in many ways was trying to manage this progress of america remaining the number one superpower but adjusting to a world in which america is not dominant and what was so controversial about him i obamas policy is acknowledging we dont dominate the world anymore and i think to the john boltons of the world that was offensive. Now because of trump where not seen as having any moral standing and were not seen as making progress and five years ago we took over the whole response. Im giving credit to other o people who were the experts in government but obama stepped in, the who failed and immediately went and said who were taking this whole thing over but were working through the who and saying were going to become the captain of the team, send the us military to west africa and theyre going to Field Logistics and we will divide this up us will take the liberia response and the french will take the response of ginny. Then we went around the world and said send us healthcare workers, send us healthcare equipment, give us money and basically pass the hat , en obama atcan go to tons of countries and we got all the healthcareinfrastructure we needed and we surged into west africa and we stamped out the outbreak. Thats what america did five years ago and in this we didnt even try so absolutely its going to create a sense that the chinese may have been responsible for this essential outbreak but they have more competent way of dealing with it in ways thats going to bedamaging to the us standing. I think where theres an opening to the us is nobody else can really fill that void. In its a World WithoutAmerican Leadership but china is not leading the world. And maybe more capable of shutting down the whole city but south korea is not leading the whole world. Theyre just doing their best so the opening from that administration the Biden Administration is pursuing for someone who can mobilize collective action. I dont think well ever get back what we had e, but we can still be the kind of the first among several in certainly mobilizing collective action and thats where i think weneed. I want to turn to something about the obama Biden Administration but i resisted raising john bolton since you mentioned him you want to take 30 seconds to talk about what you think should happen with this book and whats happening right now in terms of the lawsuit and whether you think this is kind of appropriate behavior or a president ial administration to clamp down on both of those things. Cllike number one, anybody should be able to publish their book area that we had the administration right books, including former secretaries in our, both secretaries of defense. They created new cycles for a week about saying they didnt like about obamas policies. Number two john bolton ifhe cared so much about , this is not solzhenitsyn here. He caredso much about the truth he could have testified in the impeachment inquiry. So what i think to that, he should be able to publish his book and i think everybody should read the newspaper summaries of his book and they dont have to buy it because if you really want to the truth out the could have delivered at an as is impeachment but as much of that as i dont care for john boltons use, it is pretty extraordinary. Theres a staggering no, you dont like this you cant publishit. Thats, that exhibits 999 of things happening in this country that we usually associate with authoritarian regimes. Next question, the Trump Administration has rescinded many foreignpolicy accomplishments of the obamaat administration. All you think future Foreign Policy initiatives can be insulated from volatility or is this risk unavoidable and you might want to opine on what you think biden will do. I think the rest to some extent is unavoidable and even Foreign Policy options which are painful to see underground, if joe biden wins we will come back in the Paris Agreement and i think probably resume like that you opening that we did and try to get back into Something Like the iran deal so these things never go away. They keep happening. You, and the tempting answer is to say you can exploit it by getting rational, by legislating these things thats not entirely true because frankly trump has also pulled out of a bunch of treaties that were confirmed by the senate. Basically every armscontrol treaty that the United States confirmed he pulled out of those two. So yes, you could make them more durable by having some legislative imprimatur on them. But the reality is that doesnt pull in. It gives you some greater guardrails harder. So ultimately you have to, you just have to win the debate in the long run. I think its destabilizing and terrible that for the us area and other countries, even if joe biden wins are they going to trust that we can make an agreement with joe biden but theyre going to rip it up, thats going to be the back of every government and. The biggest thing i can do an opening is humans totrust me. That we would recall them. And its an obvious thing for the cubans to open. While there still under an embargo. And they got burned and the people that i negotiated with suffered or it in the cuban system area thats a terrible precedent for an incoming president. Sometimes the onus is put on pursue whose International Agreements to somehow solve the problem area i think people shouldnt tear up International Agreements. Thats the safest way to not have eight foreignpolicy mindset that is predominant in the Republican Party that reps of any international agreement. That more than anything would solve this problem. Final question e. The question is your repeated use of the term the rise of china smacks of yellow peril mccarthyism. Why not promote collaboration with them as equals to deal with covid19, economic development,. Can we do that, is that something realistic . So i do want to make very clear you can talk about all the things you talk about our problem i did want to see mccarthyism. But just saying theres rise of china, thats just a reality. Let alone most of asia. Yes. We have to be able to talk, right wax but youre right, i mean, that part of it i would agree with is, if you look at steve bannon or the language of donald trump uses, yes, its driving us in this direction of racism and demagoguery. I think the basic point is, look, i think it would be a mistake to sugarcoat this. I am a liberal. I believe people should have i dont like the fact that there are people with Civil Liberties in hong kong today and the Chinese Government wants to take those away, you know . Thats an area where america should stand up and say we disagree with this. Im not saying we should go to war about it but we should have that debate with china. By the way, read Chinese Media about the u. S. It is not pleasant, right . Lets have that debate. But to your point lets cooperate when we can. We have to have mature enough relationship, the way in which it doesnt have to become a cold war. I want too have vigorous debate about political i want to try to putes in place multilateral frameworks for how you resolve territorial disputes in the south china sea. I could go on but it went to work with the chinese on Climate Change. If the chinese wantng to be in africa lets Work Together on development and Investment Strategies that can benefit the countries. I think you need to have space to, even if youre having very intense disagreements over here, that you still have some areas where youre working together. Independent witches with her through is a classic example. I would like to have the kind of relationship where we could be in a fight with the chinese about trade, international if the u. S. And china are working together from the getgo of this pandemic there would bego a lot better, a lot less people would have died. While i dont want to minimize some of the dangers i see of the Chinese Communist parties approach to politics in the country and around the world, i also dont suggest that has to take over American Foreign policy or even americas relationship with china. It should bee big enough that we can cooperate on some things while being competitive or confrontational on others. I think thats a great place to end. Was interesting about the china issue is are two economies and choose a side of a close intertwined but you can see aoc and tom cotton signing on to the same basic position around china, which you will see nowhere else. Kind of a unique political issue at the moment. We are at the end of our hour. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for everyone were tuning in, and this will be available on youtube and i believe cspan later on today. Thanks again. Have a great day. Take care, everybody. White House Press Secretary has scheduled a briefing today. We expect russians about the president s rally in tulsa as well as the firing of the week in the u. S. The turning for the Southern District of new york that is set for one p. M. Eastern today. We will have it for you live when it starts here on cspan2. The Senate Returns today at e debate on the judicial nomination of mississippi korey wilson to be a u. S. Court of appeals judge for the fifth circuit. About to advance the nomination takes place at 5 30 p. M. Eastern. Eastern. Later in the week debate and votes are expected on the Police Reform legislation introduced by South Carolina republican senator tim scott. Follow the senate live on cspan2. The house return for legislative work thursday at 9 a. M. Eastern as they take up their Police Reform bill with debate and votes happening as proxy voting is still in effect due to the coronavirus. Also on the agenda, washington d. C. Stated and an attempt to override president trumps veto of a resolution dealing with student loan forgiveness. Follow the house live on cspan. Host this week on the communicators our guest is michael powell, president and ceo of the ncta, the internet and television association. Mr. Powell, how has the coronavirus quarantine affected cable tv operators, internet operators and specifically, how was it affected cord