declining america, declining europe. how do you make money and create jobs? it is a very complicated, scary place. bhay did is what they did in bhay did is what they did in washington. but it's more creative and you can do it actually for clients and be a little bit more honest about it. brian: where do you live? >> i spend most of my time living in germany. one of my clients is the dutch government. i spend time in the hague as well but most of the time in germany. brian: why would someone hire you? >> i have a unique background. educated in the u.k., so i understand europeans but i lived and worked in washington. i worked for the heritage foundation on the right and the council is in the middle so i know the points of view of every major school of thought in washington so that's a good reason to hire me. brian: where was home originally? >> ohio. a place called rocky river about an hour from cleveland. i had an idyllic, eisenhower childhood it was lovely. i go back to that, pocketbook issues are what matter to a lot of people. and in foreign policy we have lost that thread and we're very elitist. brian: we first saw you on this network at an event six weeks ago at the cato institute. i'm going to run some clips from that to get you talking about what you do. why cato? what brought you to that spot? >> one of the things i love about cato, and i've worked with them for about a decade, is they let the politics fall where they fall but they rather trendy and they have been deeply unfashionable at points too and they actually say we have to have a foreign policy where we live within our means. back to eisenhower, it's what that was about, and my favorite president for that reason. how do you do political economy? really focusing on the economics affecting foreign economics affecting foreign policy and politics, not the other way around. if i'm asked by anybody at cato to do anything i will take the trans-atlantic flight. >> why would a dutch government want you as a policy analyst? >> the funny thing is when you're in europe, they talk about american decline. and they worry about it. they're not doing cartwheels in the streets. they think it's terrible, but they care intensely about their greatest ally getting weaker. when i'm in america i talk about europe. where you aren't, you talk about the other guy. i have a unique point of view. brian: so give us a scenario where the dutch government is using your expertise. do you go to them? write for them? talk to them on the phone? how does it work? >> i work at a think tank called the hague center for strategic studies. the dutch government funds my work there, half comes from the hague and half from the dutch government. they call me up and say explain the tea party. we all talk like we understand it but nobody really does. what is the philosophy about this? what is driving this? rather than read a newspaper of a european guessing, that's a great example. brian: do they ever ask you to come to washington and lobby for them? >> no. i would never lobby. one of the great things about this is i can do and say what i thought. i wanted to say what i thought was empirically the truth and if you are your own boss you can do that and you have to be able to say no to every client. that is the selling point perfect i'm not owned by any of them. i can say and do what i wish. i would never lobby for anybody. brian: where have you lived in the world? >> i lived in scotland. went to st. andrew's university. best decade of my life. i lived in ohio where i grew up. i lived in berlin for three very interesting years and i live in bavaria. it is the headquarters of my office but we do work in london, the indian ocean rim and the united states as well. brian: have you ever worked for an american politician? >> no. i did a lot of indirect work for them at heritage indirectly and that soured me on it. it's one of the things i love about this network, is actually, facts do matter. and they didn't know enough about that. and, too, i love the politics of washington, but if that's all it is, it's a pretty shallow, useless life. brian: what politicians did you work for? >> well, everybody, i did work for joe biden on nato issues, chuck hagel on trying to work out a common sense policy for republicans. we briefed senate staff. i did work for the finance committee, treasury committee, foreign relations, international committee, testified for these people. talked to tons of staffers. last night i talked to hill staffers again, to constantly do what you do, to educate people as to what is going on. brian: do these groups pay you to do that? >> not in this case. the way that this makes money is that the way i'm connected in washington, that's the selling point. i don't have to charge for being here. they know i'm a member of the council. and the good news and we shouldn't say this too loudly is i don't have to charge american clients as much because the fact of being plugged in is what they care about. so i can charge my corporate clients for that. but i do a lot of other things for low levels or next to nothing, just for friends. brian: you don't have to get specific, but what kind of different organizations are paying you? >> no, it's perfectly >> no, it's perfectly reasonable. the dutch government, the british government, the german government, the brazilian government. the cameron people, some of whom i knew in college, which is odd for both of us. is odd for both of us. banks, like barclay's bank is a customer i've worked with on the gold price, which is really political. people like bank of america. merrill lynch is a very good client, where i talk about the arising in the middle east and arising in the middle east and how it will affect oil prices, for instance. brian: how many people like you are out there? >> it's a growth field. it came out of nothing. people like ian bremer and the eurasia group. they hit it big. they hit it big. they are now a big corporation. but the small boutique type people like me, 20 or 30 of them out there, varying degrees of being good or bad but it's becoming a thing because you don't have to argue to businesses and governments in the world that you don't know very much about. so what we do is take the knowledge we had in a think tank and monetize it. you can be both wealthier and more honest. frankly, i would never go back to a think tank. brian: you live in bavaria. what part? >> i live in the north. i have to be near an airport because i'm gone about half the time. i have working with me directly and indirectly about 20 people around the world who are all think tank friends. the good thing about the low number is i can manage quality. i don't have to question them, check the footnotes and make sure the english makes sense. that's what i rely on. these years of being in washington, and really deciding who is good. brian: are you married? >> i'm about to be, to a very pretty german girl. hello, ava. i'm madly in love and that's another reason i probably won't come back. brian: what languages do you speak? >> i speak very poor >> i speak very poor french. but i can write in it and i can understand it. it is important for europeans that americans speak a language. they assume none of us speak any. latin and english and i can get by in german. brian: got to ask you about that comment about what europeans assume about americans. what else do they assume about us? >> we don't care about what's going on in the rest of the world, we're self-involved, for good and bad reasons. they would accept that we're the greatest power in the world but we're woefully ignorant of how the world really works. brian: is that true? >> yeah. so are they, though. the interesting thing is i agree with their critique but they don't apply it to themselves. i've never met anyone as isolationist as germans. brian: are they angry about us in any way? >> yeah. i have a classics background, and if you go to greece you can find graffiti the greeks wrote about the romans being thugs and taking their place in the and taking their place in the world. part of that is the new power. there is a sense of that. i think it's a little unfair. if you look at eisenhower, kennedy, acheson, truman, nixon, we've run a really grown-up foreign policy for a long time and i think it's rather unfair. what worries me is the congress and both parties are parading their ignorance and it's a tragic thing. it isn't just europe any more it's india, china, the gulf it's india, china, the gulf states, south africa, malaysia, singapore and turkey. you have to know more, not less. so when people pride themselves on never leaving the country i have to say it makes me roll my eyes. brian: where are the american politicians parading their ignorance? how do you see it? >> well, when they say i don't have a passport and they're proud of it. i don't leave the country. you should. look at the people that ran our country in the cold war. at the last real change, the cold war, these were international businessmen. if you see butch cassidy, it's his father's railway they're robbing. an international businessman who understood the world and the linkages in it. we really miss those wise men, people with global experience who are quintessentially american. i love bush one for that reason. i think president bush's people were the last ones to really do that but if you don't have those global linkages, the world won't make any sense right now. brian: january 11, the cato institute. here is a clip. it's about eisenhower's farewell address? >> yes. >> another thing i learned in washington is it is almost impossible to lose your job in a think tank. it's not the real world. i worked hard at it. but in the real world it's really easy to lose your job, and if you look at the numbers, the pew numbers about what the elites think about foreign policy and what average people do, it's the greatest disconnect in 60 years. two quick numbers. the second most popular way to tackle the deficit, 26% of the people say cut defense spending. the number one area that needs to be fixed, washington. 36%. >> and you just almost can't be fired. we live in a world with other powers. if you just describe and are inoffensive and play the game, i know almost no one who has lost their job. the only one i know is my co-writer on the left. for writing the book with me. it is really difficult if you just go along with prevailing winds, not to have a wonderfully secure life. i understand the value, i'm not belittling that. to do what we did was not an easy thing to do, to speak out about iraq planning not going well. at the time, remember, president bush's approval was 80%. it's easy to speak out now. but at the time that called for courage. he was good in saying you believe in our lives, our fortune or not? and i had to be quiet and agree with him. either you serve the country and play ball and not the man or you game all this out. most people game all this out because they have a livelihood and families, i totally understand that and they'll have a lovely life if they say nothing. part of the disconnect is that most people in washington have a very, very secure livelihood and most americans don't. brian: so if you're a viewer out there and you watch a lot of think tank sessions on this network, what would you advise people to do? >> differentiate in things they actually say. we all agree america is not as powerful as in 1945, the soviet union doesn't exist any more. people who speak in these platitudes, regardless of party, very suspicious. if people say because we live in a multipolar world, and america should change the policy to do these things -- the more specific they are, probably the more real and genuine and interesting work they do. but these platitudes, they keep you going. they may get you to be assistant secretary one day, but you're not serving the public by that. brian: did you ever find yourself in a difficult position with the think tank where you were saying things they didn't like? and they suggested maybe it was time for you to leave? >> they did. and i won't go beyond that. it certainly wasn't personal. it was at heritage. i enjoyed being there. it started out as a very broad tent. they had everything from libertarians to neocons to old eisenhower style thinkers like me. but as things got worse for president bush, it became a circle your wagons policy and i couldn't go along with a policy i believed to be flawed. brian: circle your wagons because of george bush's position on what? you're talking about 43? >> 43. after "mission accomplished," it was very hard to argue that things were going well. i didn't feel he was running a conservative foreign policy, which was what the book i wrote, the "ethical realism," was about. it wasn't burkian. it was missionary. it was utopian, robespierrism, expansionistic. if conservatives think they can't socially engineer america, why in the world would you think you can socially engineer a country you know far less about? brian: how often is it that a think tank is doing what they're doing because of where the money comes from? >> one of the strengths is big ones like heritage. if you get a whole bunch of different donors, you can ignore them. the little ones i think are more amenable to the financial pressures. if you have two or three big donors, you pretty much have to do what the donors say. heritage and the big ones don't. i don't think they do this about money. i think they do this, worse, about conviction. i think they really had forgotten what it was to be a conservative and that's where we parted ways. they didn't like me saying that and president bush and his people didn't like me saying that, but if you see the money spent on iraq where paul wolfowitz said the war would cost nothing and they made him head of the world bank. that's what countries in decline do, they reward people who shouldn't be rewarded. it -- the war made iran the dominant power in the gulf. you have to accept that. if you don't do well in analysis, you ought to be fired. brian: what's the most prestigious think tank in the u.s., viewed from overseas? not inside the united states? >> council on foreign relations. i still always pay my dues. i don't know that it still does the best work, but in terms of prestige it has the magic, kind of woodrow wilson on through. and it's worth my dues because the europeans are deeply impressed that i'm a member. when i give them a list of when i give them a list of titles that i have, that's the one they always pick. brian: how much a year does it cost to belong? >> because i'm just a lowly non-business new york guy, about $400. brian: here's more from your cato conference. >> 1954 the french are in agony over dien bien phu and there is trelled pressure on eisenhower to intervene. eisenhower realized general ridgway is against intervening. what does he say? think of the difference between how it's done these days. he said cost it, cost what it would take to go into indochina in a real way. ridgway does this. remember wolfowitz saying iraq would cost nothing, and because he's so good at math we made him head of the world bank? i find this incredible, absolutely breathtaking. that the man was rewarded. i was in the room when he said it and i thought i had a heart attack, thought i had misheard. the one thing that doesn't happen is -- we know that we want our trillion dollars back. that's a totally different way to look at things than we do in washington. anyway, ridgway comes back, the hero of normandy, and he says $3.5 billion back then. i don't know what that is now, but it is a large number. i'm confident it is a big number. so what does he do? does he call in a neoconservative decision maker, a democratic hawk or nation builder? no. he calls in the secretary of the treasury and says to george humphrey, what would this mean? i made three campaign promises in 1952, get out of korea, balance the budget and cut taxes. what would that mean for two of those three promises? and mr. humphrey says it will mean a deficit, mr. president. and he says, well that's the end of it. boy, do i miss this. brian: do you think it was that simple? >> i do because i think that eisenhower, unlike the guys we have now in both parties, had a strategy, a basic, fundamental, simple view, five or six things that you lived your life by. one was you have to live within your means, be you a government or be you a person. or be you a person. if you don't live within your means, yeah, we can print money for another 10 years and nothing much will happen until the bond markets attack dollar, but in the long run you are selling the silver to pay the butcher bill and that's a really bad idea. all our strength is economic strength. look at world war ii, which eisenhower knew intimately. the fact that we could increase the army 35 times only makes sense if you understood what general marshall and he understood about the united states. that's the notion of our strength. if we lose that, if we sell the silver to live in a silly way, very quickly we're not going to be able to do that. that's the magic of eisenhower and america and why i came back to do the cato event and which neither party is addressing in a grownup or a forthright manner. >> which country in your opinion lives within their means? >> there are two. mrs. merkel's done well lately. they had welfare reform and also a constitutional amendment whereby they can only run deficits of very minor quantities and they've lived up to them since. so i would say that would be one. they have done very well. the other country, the really interesting one, is david cameron's britain. the cuts are about 25% department to department. because of the problems they have run into. frankly, this is something you can only dream of. -- thatcher can only dream of. my tag line is these guys make her look like a maoist. it's radical reform. and look at cameron -- the bond markets stopped attacking the pound, and the pound strengthened almost immediately upon him doing that because people believed he was trying to reach these numbers. that takes courage. that takes honesty with your people about what can be afforded and what can't be. that's totally different way of doing business than we are in america. we really haven't had to make a strategic decision in america since 1943 and 1941. once you go all in in world war ii, you do everything. if it's somalia, like clinton you can shrug and say it doesn't matter. but you -- you can do that in when you are the only power but not in a multipower world. all of these other countries breathing down your neck. brian: the united states has 310 million. we spend as you know close to $750 million a year at least on defense. how much does germany spend? >> almost nothing, and that's a tremendous difference. the real number if you add in veterans affairs, which you have to for defense spending and the wounded who are coming back horribly maimed and we owe them the care and should pay that, probably about a trillion dollars when you are done adding everything in. the germans spend about 1% on defense. they have 14,000 deployable troops. that's a high school. they have made a decision they will free-ride off american defense spending and they have benefited from that. the british spend more. they have made significant cuts but through the years they spend about 3%. they exceed the 2% that nato asks people to spend but they're cutting now radically. brian: what would these countries do if the united states all of a sudden cut 25% of its defense budget? >> be shocked. but not much would change. that's the thing. they realize in europe that the soviet union is nonexistent so they don't worry about that. they do intelligence and policing for al qaeda type problems and other than that they don't care a whole lot and don't feel the need to go nation-build in afghanistan or anywhere else and when they do nation build all they care about is america. they say, we need to be close they say, we need to be close to america so we'll send in some paltry number of troops to try to help them. it has nothing to do with afghanistan. we're the only country in the world that seems to take third-rate problems and make them financial milche cows. brian: how much have they cut the number of american troops in germany? >> it's significantly cut. ramstein, i go there when i go home. there is a movie theater there. it looks like ohio, where i grew up. it is very comforting, in the middle of this odd, german background. i love going, but it's like going back to rocky river, but it's not sustainable. frankly, we need those troops further east in places like bulgaria and romania, which are nato allies. there is no hassle. politically. we get tax breaks doing it. i think the whole german garrison thing is on its last legs. brian: how many are there now? >> i think 75,000 and going down. in the end, it will wind up we don't need those troops. there is no enemy there. if we're going to forward position troops as secretary gates says, we should do it further east, places like bulgaria and romania because they're pro-american. if you've been run by stalin, you will be that way too. >> back to cato. >> according to president obama's own ridiculously own optimistic numbers assuming growth of 4% a year until 2020, if you're brazil or less true if you're an established power like the united states, assuming these numbers are correct, 80% for these things, medicare, social security, interest on the debt and defense spending will be 85% of the department. you can't cut interest on the debt as the greeks have found out. you have to pay the bankers. we have seen the efforts of medicare and medicaid. i'll just move on. social security we're going to have to deal with, but nobody wants to with enthusiasm. the reality is whatever you do you have to cut defense spending the hence secretary gates trying to get ahead of the curve and do it on his own terms. the savvy infighter that he is. but frankly we're fiddling while rome burns. i'm talking swingian cuts. to maintain our way of life. that's not a discussion i hear from either party. brian: the interesting thing is secretary gates has an image at the moment of wanting to cut defense. but the budget coming out of the pentagon is more than either the house or the senate is willing to give them. so who is the cutter here? >> he's very good, isn't he? secretary gates, he's my wing of the republican party. he's the last eisenhower republican and i like him, but this is nonsense. limiting the increase in defense spending, which is what we're talking about here, given the three numbers that i always use and think are important and most americans understand but people in washington don't and they're kept simple for me by my staff, one third of all americans have no retirement, working age americans, other than what the government gives them. remember, social security was supposed to augment things, not be the retirement. help you over the last couple of years of your life. that's what it is supposed to do. that's not what it's doing. one third of americans have no savings of any kind. one quarter of all mortgages are under water and one fifth of all wealth was wiped out in the great crash. you cannot run an expansionist neo conservative foreign policy given that financial reality. why i came back to talk about eisenhower is he would have instinctively understood that that was our priority. that must be our priority, getting our house in order. i'm not calling on us to do nothing. i'm calling on us to make choices. even abroad, it reminds me of ex-girlfriends i have a love for, even from a distance. brian: people watching about now are saying you know, this guy's abandoned the united states, he's living over in germany. he's got all the answers, why should i listen to john hulsman? >> and i'd say because i put my money where my mouth was. it would have been very easy for me to be a think tank for me to be a think tank person who went along with the crowd when bush was at 85% and said nothing. or quietry voice even more damning. i have less time for these people. i think the neoconservatives are sincere. i just think they're horribly wrong. i dislike people in washington who voice doubts privately but don't do anything publicly. brian: how often do you see that? >> constantly. and it's moral cowardice. i put my neck on the line and gave up one of these incredibly secure jobs. i was in my 30's and was at one of the largest think thanks in the world. if i had said nothing i could easily have been an assistant secretary of state by now. brian: how old are you? >> 43. brian: at this stage in your life do you want to live in europe for the rest of it? what is your thinking here? >> no, i think of the show, "the west wing," if i find a guy that people say this is a guy you could really work for, i'd come back. i miss living in the united states. a great deal. europe is wonderful but it isn't home. brian: what do you miss? >> the vibe resistancey, the friendliness and frankly the decency. europe is obsessed about every social distinction. at home i'm john. everybody makes coffee badly. i miss the real egalitarianism of the united states, the tumult, the dynamism that you can be young with a good idea and do well. you can't do that in europe. i miss that tremendously. they are very hard-working. i have many friends and am in love with a european ,but i miss the quintessentially american. brian: go back to what you said in the last clip. you mentioned debt service, social security, medicaid, medicare, defense -- what else is there? >> well, earmarks, discretionary spending annoys the heck out of me too. some congressman builds a bridge and names it after himself or whatever. but it's one half of one percent. it is .5% of the federal budget. it just doesn't matter. discretionary spending, which is what obama and the republicans are fighting about, that's worthy but it's not the story and i'm outraged they're not telling people the truth. these five things are everything. and until we address all five of them, our status as a great power is on the line. brian: living in ba varyia, brian: living in ba varyia, advising the dutch, sitting there in the middle of europe. tell us the difference. is there medicare? >> there is. they have ridiculously cushy social programs in europe. part of why they can pay for that as you rightly said is they don't have defense spending. they would say we cross subsidize from an american point of view. point of view. we don't have one and we'll do more in the other four. in germany, the military is always last in every poll, not a left wing or right wing thing. everyone thinks this. they have wonderful safety nets. they have wonderful train systems. you can afford that if you don't spend any money on defense. but they're still in terrible trouble and have demographic problems worse than ours. they have problems with legal and illegal immigrants. i sit in a train in germany and realize i'm the only one of working age, everyone is very young or very old. it makes you crazy. leave me alone to do my work because you have to tax meit is not a sustainable system. they have their own horrible problems, but they're different than ours because they've put all the money into the social all the money into the social system. we've put more into defense. . we have more liquid markets. we have the reserve currency and the dynamism i mentioned. this is going to hit us later. we have five or six years on them. but ultimately it's the same problem, how do you pay for fewer -- people? people didn't expect to live that long. i'm glad people live to be 80 but we have to talk about the 18 years in between and how to fund them. eisenhower would know that and i think it's tragic no one in the republican party leadership bothers to say this. brian: the interest we pay on our debt here -- what's it like in germany? >> well, their interest rate is stable. that's one of the things they have done very well. depending on what you count, and this is always an obama trick, if you don't count state and local it's lower. but you have to. if you live in a federal system like the united states. as we all know, state and local, particularly california is an example, as is illinois, not doing well. basically their debt rate is between 60% and 80% depending on how you slice it. ours is there too. so you might argue, john, what is the big deal? but ours used to be 45. -- 49 and it is 60 and it has gone up because these people are spending money like water out of nothing. in a crash you have to do something. even if you're a democrat you say you have to prime the pump. ok. when that's over you need a debt plan. deficit plan in the medium term. bowles-simpson was a wonderful program and everyone is running a mile from that because it would require slaughtering sacred cows in both parties. no one is prepared to do than, and until we are i advise clients to bet against the dollar. brian: what do europeans blame on america right now in the way the world is going? >> it's interesting. the french are the most extreme and fun to use. i'll use the french example. when they got done -- there is the wonderful german word schaudenfreud which means to be happy about someone else's misfortune. when the europeans got over that about iraq, suddenly it occurred to them how terrible this was. a rising china, india, brazil is not necessarily a rising europe because of the are economic problems. their number one ally is now in terrible trouble. they are now deeply concerned. one of the things i love about the dutch government is they have meetings about what do we do about an america that can't pay its bills any more? brian: i wrote down some words to describe you based on reading your past columns. you call yourself a jeffersonian. jeffersonian. what does that mean? >> i believe in small, limited, accountable government. smaller governments. less government is always better. brian: you call yourself a moderate republican in one. >> it means i have an eisenhowerian view, that social engineering for the rest of the world say bad idea and we have to live within our means it. brian: but you said you voted for barack obama? >> i did. because given the choices, i thought mr. obama had never run anything which disturbed me given this crisis a great deal but neither had senator mccain and mccain a prisoner of the cold war because of what happened to him in his service is, which i honor. but the qualities that made him effective in this a bipolar cold war world, clarity, decisiveness, but in a multipolar world, it's bullying, he's a greek tragedy, he's outlived his time. i thought obama being younger and understanding this more was a better bet. also i'm no fan of mrs. palin and to quote teddy roosevelt, i couldn't leave that cowboy one heartbeat away from the presidency. brian: you talk about the democrats in your session at cato in january. >> i hear it from democrats who i talked to regularly and have known since my think tank days. it is all george w. bush's fault. i'm not a big fan of george w. bush as you can guess from my iraq experience. however, to blame the hapless ex-president for all this is a bit much and it's a curious reactionary comment from our secretary of state when she says once we get over these little difficulties we'll go back to the way things were in the 1990's. it's a curiously reactionary comment for a supposedly progressive person. are we supposed to get in our time machine and go back? why did she say such a silly thing? from an american decision-making view point think about that. it means before 9/11, before afghanistan, before the great crash, before the multipolar world. of course she wants to go back! you could do anything in the unipolar world. you had give. you lose vietnam in a bipolar world, doesn't really matter. the give, the amount of room for making mistakes was huge. in a multipolar world the margin for error is it very, very small and you can't do very small and you can't do everything you want to do. that's world that nobody in washington seems to be able to fathom. of course she wants to go back. utterly understandable and poisonous. to think these things will do away. it is not just china. this is shorthand. india, south africa, the gulf states, singapore, brazil, turkey -- this is a 500-year change in power in the world, and it's staring us in the face and nobody is doing anything here. brian: as you know, anybody that watches these networks sees these think tanks and sessions all the time. why do people go to these rooms and sit there and listen to people like you? i don't mean that negatively. >> i wonder that too! brian: and there's thousands of them. >> there are. i had a staffer who did just that. he was a professional meeting goer. if anything was interesting said he would tell me. not often, but he would tell me. couple reasons. one, and you know washington, it's a bit like high school. you want to be seen with the cool kids walking into the room. you want to walk in with, say, kissinger and brzezinski. you want to be seen to be part of the decision-making process, to have access to that power. being bit high school quarterback. that's what really matters. part of it is that, to be seen, this ridiculous juvenile games playing that i don't miss at all but boy, when you are back, it hits you. i do feel a bit high school like. that's one reason. second reason is why i sent people out to do it, you want to know what's going on. in the argumentation of ideas. so a lot of staffers, young people, are sent to take notes and they read some and say gee -- gee, this guy is interesting, we should have him in to see what he has to say. or i didn't like that but maybe we should have him in as an opposition research thing the -- one of the reasons i try to push the envelope when i speak is to change the responses, to do things people don't expect if you're just on a panel, you're in a level. are you a keynote, then you're just on one level. if you sit in the crowd you're in a level. everything is rigorously grade and we're almost like mandarins in the imperial chinese system. everybody knows their place based on do you speak, are you the keynote, do you end it? do you open it? people worry about these things constantly, and i have to say i haven't lost sleep about them since i left. brian: i've noticed in watching the affair with you speaking to them, you had some good zingers and a couple good remarks and the crowd was expressionless. >> yeah. absolutely no idea. one of the things -- i wrote a piece about this. one of the things that i think is mising in washington, think of lincoln, jefferson, adams -- they had tremendous senses of humor. it doesn't make you less grave, have less gravitas to see the humor in the world. these guys are humorless. like the romantic poets, they were humorless and none of them saw the back end of 40. that's not a great thing. seeing what is wrong with the world and finding -- you can either be full of rage or find it funny and try to make it better the but as i say, when i speak i'm often met by incomprehension and no facial expressions of any kind because they are simply not used to people talking to them that way. brian: why do you call george w. bush hapless? >> i think he will go gown as one of our worst presidents. i use historical arguments. he expanded the deficit. he's a herbert hoover kind of figure. did a new entitlement program for senior citizens that was totally unaffordable and is absolutely unrepublican and ruinous. i don't know what he was thinking. brian: prescription drug benefits? >> exactly. spending money like l.b.j. and he's supposed to be a republican. and he left iran the dominant power in the gulf after our excursion there. and i think it will be seen as a horrible moment and it will be seen as the boor war was for the british, high noon, the beginning of the end for the empire. i think bush will be tagged with that. brian: and you haven't heard of it yet but those who are saying what's going on in north africa and the arab countries over there, egypt and tunisia and all that say direct result? >> that's rubbish. ask the people on the streets. i talk to them. promoting democracy is a wonderful thing, but doing it at the barrel of a gun is different. because of very specific conditions. people in the street are clear there is a huge demographic problem in egypt. young people without jobs. 40% of the people live on less than $2 a day. it's the largest wheat importer in the world and the price of wheat doubled in the past year. so a lot of people became hungry. that's what happened here. this has nothing to do with george bush and the united states. that's what americans don't seem to understand. i give obama credit for this. this is about egypt. this is not what america did or this is not what america did or didn't do. we're -- we are utterly a peripheral bystander in this. a little humility -- it doesn't mean we can't do anything but we have to be careful. the people of egypt had enough and what set them off was tunisia worked. they saw you could go in the streets without being killed. they saw a dictator removed by people power and they were in this terrible position. thoits they didn't use america in -- notice they didn't use america in any of that. brian: another take, they may never, ever give this country credit for what happened but they sat there and watched saddam hussein go away, that gave them the power and strength, the internet helped them because they could see the other way of living and it all ends -- adds up to this country leading and them saying -- >> i have more time for >> i have more time for that. i think the soft power is often -- i think that's right. we had power but you don't manage soft power. when you watch a hollywood movie and you're abroad, i've been to egypt many times, they're not commenting on gosh, look how well these people live. look how free they are to see these things in this dopey movie. that you see power over time. the image of america. what i'm trying to protect a la eisenhower is our openness, freedom, that we enjoy. as a secondhand kind of shrug. i think that is tremendously important still and i think reagan got that right and clinton got that right. as an example, america still has tremendous power and pull around the world. in france they tax foreign movies but eight of the top 10 are still american. it's an attractive way of living and people like that and there is tremendous power in that and tremendous power in that and that's why if we fritter away our fiscal standing we are frittering away the greatest thing we have going for us. droip you were talking about think tanks earlier. think tanks earlier. are there many think tanks in europe? there's an aspen italy you spoke to. who runs that? is it heart of america's aspen institute? >> it's a great example of soft power. the aspen institute in the united states has branchion -- branches. there is one in italy, one in france. the italy one is the biggest and i write regularly a column for them on line. i write it in english and they translate it for me. but they have these ties around the world, some of these think tanks and that's a great source of soft power. you get to know the leaders of these countries. brian: who pays for aspen italy? >> i don't know exactly. they have dues-paying members but i think they do get some federal funding. i know companies like heritage didn't. i liked that because that's another paymaster that can get on your back and you don't have to worry about that. i'm not sure about aspen. i would say that i really don't know. brian: you lost your mike. pick that up if you would and clip it on there. the audience is going to wonder what happened. >> ok. if the federal government does fund that i would say that's a very good use of our money because you get to meet the leaders around the world. if you don't meet them, you don't understand their talking points. the fact that i know fini, now trying to unseat berlusconi, or the leader of the xenophobic northern league, the fact that -- not a fun conversation, but i'm glad that i talked to him. isn't that something that an american living abroad writes and injects himself into the italian discourse? hurrah for aspen and for me. brian: go back to rocky river, ohio. >> it's about an hour out from cleveland on lake erie. brian: what were your parents doing -- >> very wonderful people. my father was an executive, at a clothing company and my mother was a teacher. that's kind of a family business. my mother taught, my grandmother taught, my uncle say professor, education and loving books and books mattering is what we do. growing up in that environment, in a very nurturing midwestern community was the best thing that ever happened to me. brian: when did you first leave? >> i like most people threatened my parents with going to see the world and i actually did. i went to europe when i was 16 and it changed my life. i felt like an e.m. forster novel. seeing this stuff for the first time. i wanted to be part of it. if you see a leonardo painting, you learn things and think i could have a wonderful life, and i have. brian: when did you graduate high school? >> 1985. middle of the 1980's. grew up in reagan's america. i remember carter vaguely and the malaise speech, being confused by that but really the 1980's were the formative experience of my life, so again, i have a rather sunny view of the united states, which has sustained me in bad times. brian: you say you went to scotland. did you go here? >> i was a year at michigan. i went to st. andrew's as a junior abroad, was there one week and said did, called my father and said i want to stay. and to his great credit, he said we'll miss you, we're middle class people and can't afford to come see you. brian: and when did you know in life this was what you wanted to do? >> very early. in high school there is a debate, extemporaneous speaking, there were two components, international and the other. i never stopped reading the paper. >> are you saying that high school debate made a difference in your life? >> fundamental. and when i went to the u.k. to live and work abroad, st. andrew's was really the seminal experience. brian: if you were to name three or four people either national figures or others that had major influence on what you do today, who would that be? >> my father because he made history an important part of my life. my mother because of her love of english and writing and that was an honorable thing to do with your life and on the bigger side, people like eisenhower. when i read about the things americans could do and i still feel this way -- when we do something wrong i still put my head in my hands but then i say yeah, but we still produced mr. jefferson, mr. adams, mr. franklin. and people like ike and jack kennedy really did matter to me. that sustains you through some really lousy times. brian: back to your cato event and what you talked about, issues. >> here's what i would do. the dos are indian ocean rim and china are where it's at. look at the 10 years from 2006 back and look at the year on year growth rates. it's compelling that this is where it's coming from but almost every problem in the world emanates from this region too so let's actually learn about it again. let's be foreign policy analysts again and analyze because if we don't, we're going to be in trouble. what shouldn't we do? what shouldn't we do? nation-building. i will say this, it's eloquently silent about darfur now from the left because there is simply no money. who is going to go do what on what terms? how much per day? this is how things will this is how things will change. they will tack with the wind not because they like it but because they have no options. samantha powers is back at harvard or whenever. -- wherever. this is a change. brian: when i was listening to you it reminded, and you have written about this, that george bush said no nation building in the campaign and barack obama said i'm going to shut down said i'm going to shut down guantanamo, get out of iraq and on and on. why do we go through all of this if what they promise on all sides they don't follow through on? >> i think, and it's back to an earlier clip you had, part of it is the disconnect between the elites and the average person. the pew numbers are really good on those. it's at a 40-year high right now, the difference. most americans don't want to do nation-building, don't want to be the policeman. most elites because their jobs aren't on the line aren't aware of how bad things are out in the country. they don't understand. they say well, we're a rich country, the mccain argument, we have a 500 million army, why don't we use it? it's a good managerial argument and it's absolutely poison and all the presidents get dragged in because all the people around them live in washington and come from this background and they say mr. president, you didn't understand how the world works when you ran for president, we understand that and now we're going to lead you in the right direction. that's absolutely wrong. they should go with their first instincts. brian: and you have this book you wrote called "the godfather doctrine -- a foreign policy parable". why the title? >> wes is a good friend of mine. he came to visit me in germany and we were watching coppola's film and he said the funny thing is the three boys argue after the don is hit, the great character played by marlon brando. the three guys are arguing. sonny, the oldest, the james caan character, michael, and tom hagen the adopted son, the robert duvall character argued very similarly to the arguments you get in america. the neoconservative argument is sonny. pop's been shot, let's shoot everyone. we need clarity and decisiveness and strength. it's the neocon argument. tom hagen says we got to talk to everyone. let's negotiate, use institutions. the five families is their u.n. let's do that. they sound like democrats. michael is the only one who acts like a realist and says it depends on the situation, whether we use force, whether we don't, whether we engage or we don't, whether we engage or don't. it is that situational reality. all i care about is the family surviving. that's what he cares about. that's the al pacino lament and that's where i am. i don't care how we get there. i care that we use these things creatively to favor the benefits of the united states. brian: you have a book called "to begin the world over again" about lawrence of arabia. at the top you have a quote from lawrence wilkerson, around you talk about colin powell being a realist. people watching this would say he had a chance and he didn't stop the idea of going into iraq. how much of a realist was he there? >> i think he was a shakespearean tragedy. i think he was a realist. general powell, when it came to it did what he did the rest of his life. i have great respect for him and sorrow but he was a check of the system that failed because he chose to follow orders, which is what good soldiers do. my father was regular army. i don't denigrate that, i respect that. but if he had resigned over the fact that the intelligence was shaky we would not have gone into iraq. i have no doubt about that. so i think powell has a tremendous historical burden. the sad thing is i think he knows that, and that must be an awful thing to live with today. i like wilkerson the i think powell's doctrine to get involved in wars only very cautiously and only when overwhelming american interests are at stake is a good one. but given the chance to implement it, he failed. brian: go back to your comment about paul wolfowitz about it won't cost anything for the iraq war and he went on to be head of the world bank. what is it about this town that rewards -- and maybe you could shed light on this -- did the george bush administration think he had been successful? >> well, they did, and that is hard to explain in europe. they think it has gone really well. that's one of the marks of a zealot is you don't let facts get in the way of your theory. brian: let me inject. former secretary of defense donald rumsfeld was here i showed him a letter he and paul wolfowitz signed in 1998 where they wanted to go in and take out the saddam regime and they actually did what they said they were going to do. isn't that a plus then? that we knew what we were going to get and all those people went into the administration and they succeeded. >> well, they succeeded but what a realist would say, what an eisenhower would say always is yes, but what's the cost? yes, we took out saddam but what did we do? we spent a trillion dollars when we were told it would be nothing. i called paul wolfowitz the robert mcnamara reward -- you destroy the country and get made head of the world bank. this is what declining powers do. it is not based on reality if you reward people who for whatever reason make colossal mistakes. that's certainly what happened here. you've left iran the dominant power in the gulf. you've spent a trillion dollars. iraq is an unhappy place simmering along with low levels of violence. mr. malaki is no democrat. and the king maker of iraqi politics is muqtada sadr, the greatest enemy the united states has, who until recently lived in tehran. how much more evidence do we need of failure? my goodness, these are facts. brian: if somebody wants to read stuff you have written where is the easiest place to go besides these books, the "the godfather doctrine -- a foreign policy parable" and "to begin the world over again"? >> i write regularly for the >> i write regularly for the spectator in london. to for a journal in italy and if anybody bothers writing to me at these things, i write back to everyone who does write to me, which is an onerous but useful task. brian: today we find john c. hulsman in bavaria, soon to be married and has been my guest for the last hour. thank you for joining us. >> it's my great pleasure. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> for a d.v.d. copy of this program call -- for free transcripts or to give us your comments, visit us on line. >> monday on c-span 2, the american public transportation association is holding its annual legislative conference. you'll hear from the administrators to have federal railroad and transit administration as well as the chief of staff of security administration. they are scheduled to discuss the future of the public transportation system. live at 9:00 a.m. eastern on c-span 2. >> i do think there is increasing concern about the government's competence on the issue of libya. we had has fiasco. talk of colonel qaddafi leaving. we had the setback last weekend. does the prime minister think it is just a problem with the foreign secretary or is it a wider problem in his government? >> and now from london, "prime ministers questions." this week, prime minister david cameron and ed miliband face off to the u.k.'s response in the situation in libya.
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