The last president ial campaign and Hillary Clintons notorious description of many of trumps voters as a basket of deplore believe people im think of David Camerons approach to brexit. There is not good politics just on a practical basis to write off people who could potentially vote for you. And it is not very fair. What trump says and what trump is, is not necessarily it what his supporters are and we must for many, many reasons lose the habit of thinking all trump voters are racists. There are many who might fit that description but there is a Bigger Picture that the antitrump voters whether democrats or republican libertarians need to grapple with about their frustration with politics as norm, about their deep economic pessimism that do not correspond to being deplorable. Host we have seen those frustrations unfold in Great Britain with the election earlier there month. Theresa may losing seats in the house of commons and uncertainty on when the house will meet with the opening of parliament. There has to be the formation of a government. Guest yes rbgs there is the increase in majority and strengthen negotiating for the great talks with the European Union following brexit and she lost seats and lost her majority. So it is a far weakened Prime Minister. The vote for the labor party under Jeremy Corbin who is an extreme leader by recent standards, he has some very hard line Old Fashioned socialist viewpoints. The vote for him i think was a vote to weaken theresa may by the british people rather than strength everyone her. So confusion reigns in britain. Only one thing you can say is you have this very unpredictable spirit of antiestablishment ism. Host you tie in with president obama will a deal with and one of the legacies of george w. Bush it is hard to overstate the damage the iraq war did to americas global soft power. And credibility of west democratic mission. It is one thing to go to war in the name of liberty quite another to be clueless about it. It was the desire to avoid repeating bushs pwhrupbtder that caused barack obama such indecision when the arab spring erupted in 2011. Guest we had the rebellion against the autocracy that covers every square inch of the middle east. I think that the west and obama in particular was caught in a great dilemma. Because if you are going to give backing to democracy the chances are that people will vote freely and fairly in open elections for islamist governments like they did in egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood and that these governments are going to go about shutting down the very operators that helped get them elected. So there is a very difficult dilemma. Obama of course had an extra inhibitor if you like stemming from what he called the dumb war war, the 2003 invasion of iraq. The fact that it had been, the aftermath was so disastrous and obama himself arguably won the nomination in 2008 by opposing the dumb war. A war that Hillary Clinton had voted for. So i think that this caused something of a paralysis in obama. He wanted to promote democracy but definitely si promotions democracy promotion was associated with incompetent basically military led that he had reached the top by repudiating so we got paralysis. And democracy around the world receded under Barack Obamas watch. There are now 25 fewer democracies in the world than there were at the beginning of the century, just 17. Many of them seek to be democracies under Barack Obamas watch. Host our guest is edward luce a columnist with the financial times. We will get to your phone calls in a moment. You wrote that the u. S. Is the source of global instability. How so . Guest i think that the u. S. Under donald trump has become a source of instability. 70 years ago just after the Second World War america under the tourismen administration and dean amp check list son was brent at the creation. American created the united nations, bretten woods, i. M. S. World bank. All the institutions we see as naturally part of the area were created with an extraordinary effort of vision and will by the United States. Whatever the United States did wrong in those 70 years generally speaking america was the upholder of global resumes based system. It was the generator of stability and rightly seen as such because america believed in the rules that it had receipted. Donald trump doesnt believe in these rules. Donald trump sees the outside world basically as a source of as a dark place. He doesnt see Foreign Policy as shared values. He sees basically as a transactional one after the other with countries that are ripping us off that have been playing us for suckers. And that have been stealing jocks from the jobs from the United States and that is a radio camp radical departure from how american president s of both parties have spoken and operated in the last 70 years. That generates instability. We can not predict what america will do under donald trump. We could broadly speaking, predict what the values were of all of his predecessors since truman. There is very new. I think that americans should not underestimate how confused and worried this makes americas allies and how much of an opportunity it presents to america aes americas potential adversaries such as russia and china. Host a followup, does that make us less of a global such power . Guest potentially it does. I think that nothing is preordained. Trump could, i guess sort of give in into this mattis and Rex Tillerson but at the moment he doesnt seem to be taking their advice. I fear it hrwill squander america aes americas reputation and influence. Host we will go to leann from hurst, texas. Welcome to the program. Caller good morning. I just want to say im a firsttime caller. I have been watching cspan since 2010. My comment is today basically im looking at our Current Administration as basically a personal vendetta against the previous administration. It seems like everything that obama tried to do or did on behalf of the American People is basically he is trying to get rid of it for his own personal reasons. Host agree or disagree . Guest i agree. I think the repeal of obama care is very much an taepltattempt to erase Barack Obamas principal domestic legacy. The same applies to President Trumps decision to walk away from the paris deal on Climate Change even though this was a nonbinding deal and even though all of its other signatories including china, European Union, canada said they would stick to it. I think that what really motivated trump to walk away from it is it was an obama accomplishment and a couple other examples. One is the uncubacuba policy the partial opening he undertook toward the end of his presidency and trump is beginning to partially close again. Then there is the iran deal. The iran deal we have to wait and see. So far it is intact but trump has made it very plain during his campaign that he doesnt like the deem and his deal and his trip to saudi arabia last month he broadcast that very strongly. I do think that theres an attempt simply to erase obama yes. Host we will go to bill san diego republican line. Caller good morning. I was brought up with the definition of a democrat being butter and the definition of republicans being guns. I dont know if you remember it. But now i understand that the definition of a democrat is someone who is antiamerican and the definition of a republican is being pro american. Guest so i would quibble with a couple of throws points. Those points. I mentioned president truman who was a democrat and created this muscular and fairly gun based nato system and the postwar world in which america, you know, won the cold war with the soviet union eventually. That was a bipartisan endeavor but it was commenced by a democratic president. Antiamerican and pro american, that is such contentious language. If you are saying that president obama or Hillary Clinton or indeed democrats on the left such as Bernie Sanders are antiamerican you are saying something really profound and makes it impossible for those who believe that believe that they are antiamerican, to work with them. The system cant work. Your beautifully designed separation of powers set up by the Founding Fathers is not going to work if you think that half of the country, one party, is antiamerican. Because it disagrees with your politics. So i appreciate your question. I fundamental lyly disagree with theism my kickses of what you are saying. Host birmingham, alabama. Francis. Democrats line. Stkpwhra good morning. This last caller that just called i definitely also disagree. Im a democrat and i am definitely pro american. And christian. So he is truly ignorant to Say Something like that. Also i was listening to the gentleman who was talking about the Foreign Policy with obama had receded. I sort of disagree that. Im agreeing with some of the things you are saying about trump and everything. But i sort of disagree with that because obama had inherited the problems of america. It was like shoved in his face and he will to clean up the mess that the Republican Congress and administration had made when he took office. Guest thank you for that comment. I certainly agree obama inherited a maelstrom and sort of an emergency situation. The bank bailout and fiscal stimulus was major responses and it was a crisis. America was losing 700,000 jobs a month when he came to ophthalmologist. But the support for democracy promotion, the guideline of that while barack obama was president , i think that i would stick it my point there. For five consecutive years the Obama White House submitted budgets to congress that asked for acut in funding for usaid and National Endowment for democracy. They are wonderful bodies that provide very practical help to young fledge like democracies about how to go about conducting free and Fair Elections and obama was very ambivalent about promoting democracy, for good reasons because he had seen the effect of the iraq war which was justified as an export of democracy for the middle east and turned out very differently. Nevertheless, obama was for those and other reasons very lukewarm about democracy promotion. That did have an effect. Host our guest is edward luce the retreat of western liberal inch. This is live on Bbc Parliament channel. Our next caller is from oxford, england. John. Caller i would like to comment on how nice your program has been. My question is with the [inaudible] and so much in america where nobody seems to want to have a discourse with the other side no matter what point you want to try to make to somebody the other side isnt listening. Do you think this is something that is in your book which i havent read or something that could be doing to allow people to listen to the other side . Because at the moment without actual discourse we will never get to an understanding and hence to any kind of conclusion. Guest that is a very good question. It is an issue that causes some anguish in me and anybody else in my profession that essentially we have got whatever we write, for example or speak the negative comment from people can disspirit you as to whether in is a reasonable dialogue out there to be had. You asked what the solution could be to this. I think we have not yet learned to grapple with a world where we can anonymously on the internet basically assassinate the motive and character of people with whom away disagree and go beyond that it a more civilized dialogue. The great liberal thinkers of the west and britain John Stuart Mill and john locke Founding Fathers talked about a public square. That is the place where you come together and the clash of steel between opposing arguments, the best argument will win. We no longer have a public square. We have different public squares and there they are bombed off. There walled off. We have separate debates in separate universes. Until we can find a way to connect those public squares if not have one, i am rather pessimistic about our ability to break through the problem that you have described. Host john, democrat line from florida. Caller good morning. The gentleman was talking about deplorable. Say if i shot someone [inaudible] that mean you will go on to win. Why not have assurance that this fellow would vote for him . Guest if you are referring to the candidate donald trump saying im so popular if i went down fifth avenue i cant remember and shot somebody people with still vote for me. I agree, that is an extraordinary incendiary comment he made. Host he is also saying he couldnt lose any votes because they were supporting Hillary Clinton. Reference to new york liberals. Guest we are saying the same thing. I think that some of temple and this sis referring back to the previous question a lot of the terms for how people talk if you think of when south africa, when apartheid collapsed, if it had been other than Nelson Mandela who led the African National congress, somebody not as forgiving and didnt set such a high tone south african democracy may have quickly dissent grated into racial cyst sent great dissent grated into civil war but he understood how they speak and conduct themselves acts as a cue for everybody else. I think that a negative version of that is donald trump. Im sorry, i do try as a journalist to sound even handed but im a columnist and im allowed to make my judgments is and my judgment is that while we have a president in the United States who conducts name calling, who calls opponents nasty things, who alleges conspiracies and lies and fakeness all around him, you are going to get a broad climate of that. He enables a lot were what we are seeing now. Host our guest is edward luce a graduate of oxford. You can read his work online at ft. Com. The book the retreat of western liberal inch liberal liberalism. Mark from massachusetts. Caller i think [inaudible] enabler is a great term for the president. I want to speak to the contradictory actions they have made in the past few months starting out with assault and battery retain hosting saudi arabia hosting the turkish Prime Minister and denounceing qatar and there is a 12 billion f5 f15 fighter purchase with qatar just agreed to since then. I want to speak to by denouncing qatar and greater scope iran, does the president or does anybody in his administration realize that most of the people fighting isis in the middle east are Shiite Militia in addition to iraq forces but on the ground it is mostly shiites and kurds. Guest that is true. The Kurdish Group is perhaps the most fighting isis. If your bigger question is does donald trump understand the middle east i think clearly the answer is no. If the followon is does he want to understand the middle east, i have to say im very skeptical based on the evidence so far that hes got any curiosity or thirst for ufpbsing what is going for understanding what going on there. I think he went to saudi arabia and chose it because of the possibility of arms deals to say im delivering jobs as america aess president. Iran and saudi arabia the most powerful shiite and sunni countries they are great enemies so the iran deal is opposed by saudi arabia and trump opposed it because obama negotiated it. I dont think it is were more complex than that in terms of how trump approaches the middle east. But of course the reality is multidimensional ly multidimensionally more complicated. It would take Henry Kissinger times 10 to unravel the various enemy of my enemy is my friend or is my enemy situations and alliances that we have in syria and beyond. Host from the book, you write the following. As recently as the turn of the 21 the century the United States accounted for almost three times as were global trade as china. The return of china and 15 other fast growing nonwestern economies which together account for half of the worlds population is dramatically reconfiguring the global power structure. How so . Guest the right of others, if you look at the beginning of this Century America had about a third of the world economy. It is tkphoupb to between a quarter and a fifth. In 17 years. By the mid 2020s, by the end of trumps second term or his successors first term china will have over taken the United States and the United States will be below 20 of the world economy. So the rise of others is reconfiguring where the power goes globally. It is shifting east. The center of gravity is shifting east. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Millions are being lifted out of poverty in india china and africa. That is a part of the global System America has upheld. But it does have geopolitical implications. Americas pure is waning. Its need for alliances and leadership by example is growing. I think that it is a great tragedy that at this moment this Inflection Point we have a politics in america that is essentially withdrawing from that role. Therefore, in a way it is accelerating that shift of power to the east. Host how worried are you . Guest im very worried. I lap happen to be a strong believer in democracy and americas role for the most part up holding it. If we have a president which is now the case who appears to have no respect for those values, then it is unclear why others should aspire to our model and our which of life. Host we have a call from oklahoma. Caller yes. Host good morning, clyde. Please go ahead. Caller [inaudible]. He got kicked out of heaven for. Host thank you. Comments or we will go to a question from donna on the republican line. From chicago. Caller i want to make the comment that mr. Luce made reference to president truman and what he did with nato and uniting our world. That was at a time when democrats were really democrats. Today we dont have that unity that we did back in the 1950s. That is why i think we have problems is that society has changed. Our values have changed. And we just need to go back to that time. President truman was criticized a lot for dropping the h bomb but at that time what were we going to do . That is what we have to do. We have to go back to the way democrats and republicans were back at postworld war ii time. Guest an interesting question. You need to remember what republicans were like in the 1940s. If you were to pick an era of republicans that actually agreed with what a lot of trump stood for it would be van denburg and taft from ohio who were very much against american involvement in the world neo neoisolationists and opposed to trumans plan, nato, u. N. All the things that we now associate as a bipartisan thing. So, i dont really know what to think when people say democrats are not democrats or republicans are not republicans. I think that you judge parties by their actions and individuals by their actions. And President Trump has to be judged for what he does and doesnt do. So do the democrats. Host from hastings, england. Caller am i on air . Host you are. Go ahead, norma. Caller the gentleman is british and from the same neck of the woods i come from which is from the north. Could you ask him are you from the north . Guest im not. Im actually from where you are calling. Im from sussex. You are in hastings. Caller ok, i got the country right. I just got the region wrong. Im what my grandson calls very old and you look at life and humanity i lived in america when i was in my teens and attended four schools two on the east coast and two on the west coast and every school after appear assembly they would electric clear on colonial inchsmism and when i quemont to the assembly in california my contemporaries were standing there saying how terrible it was under commune inch commune inch and i we go on about the russians as they are hiding under your bed. If i found one under my bed and he is a bit of all right and im going to lock the door from the inside. The point is that it doesnt change. People have reasons and sometimes i think why dont people just go in a room and reason. Because how Many Americans actually know a russian and how many have had a russian come to try to change them . That is just a viewpoint from somebody that looks at life and thinks just donald trump says one thing and next week he will say the opposite as if he never said the first. Host thanks for that illustration. We will get a response. Guest im still toying with the idea of the lock the door locked door with the russian. Thank you for that. Donald trump says one thing and does another. I think of the snapchat image. He is in favor of nato and you look at the picture it vanishes before your eyes. Host david joins us from fort worth, texas, independent line. With edward luce on the decline of western liberalism. Caller i would like to know democrats or republicans why dont we take care of the United States states . We feed half the world with our food and i want to know why we cannot get the democrats and republicans together and take care of us. I was in washington, d. C. Last week and im a vietnam vet and i saw a vietnam vet sitting on the ground begging for money. We need to take care of our people. Welfare people Social Security people. Get more jobs here and stop giving them out to other countries of the world. Host i assume you voted for donald trump . Caller yes, i did. Host what would you say to that caller and many like him . Guest indeed. Im aware that a lot of people think like you and believe that american feeds half the worlds. America has been a generous aid giver giver but it gives about 0. 3 of its economic in foreign aid. Which is less thapbn a fifth of the bucket budget. It is more like 2 or 3 of the u. S. Budget. But none of that aid is in the form of subsidies to domestic exporters. It might be arms companies. So even that 0. 3 is an exaggeration of american aid. America doesnt spend were on aid. That is just the plain fact of it. Im aware that politics is about perception and that people think america spends a lot on aid and subsidizes the rest of the world. It is not true. And i dont know how else to say that. People have a belief about there and beliefs are hard to shake. But please, i urge you check the facts. If you. To liberate money to help veterans which is a very laudable aim or any other priorities you dont think are being addressed theres a lot of low hanging fruit in the federal budget. One of them is not the federal foreign aid budget. Host the book cover the retreat of western liberalism. Tom from kalamazoo michigan. Caller good morning. Edward, i completely agree with your insight. I caution all of the viewers to remember i have been through 14 president s in my lifetime and i caution the viewers to think about what the presidency is today is nothing more than a working reflection of the previous president s. And if they cant take that into consideration then i think that we are missing the boat in many respects. Guest american president s tend to be sort off polar opposite to the predecessor. You couldnt think of anybody more different than donald trump to barack obama. Likewise you cant think of anybody more different from barack obama to george w. Bush and then bill clinton. There is this strange sort of switch switch maybe understandable switch because the president plays such a role in our living rooms that we get sick of him or hopefully her at some stage in the near future. So i understand your point about the rhythms of american politics. Host independent line is john from troy, michigan. With edward luce. Good morning. Caller i just want to make a comment. You mentioned isolationism and i have a problem with the left referring to conservatives who believe in sovereignty and every time sovereignty comes up it completes conflated with isolationism. They are two different things. Guest i think that is a fair point. I think that rand paul who was a president ial contend erer this time around. He changed the word isolationist to nonintervention ill. I think that is non noninterventionist. Isolation implies 1930s we dont want to be involved with anybody and rand paul argues we should not get into wars of choice. Host dan from virginia. You are next on the republican line. Caller hello. Host go ahead, dan. Caller i have lived through 14 president s also. I grew up in washington and georgetown and chevy chase. I study politics and past 14 president s have made a mess. I voted for trump for one thing to solve problems. The people in washington, the elite on both sides are not solving problems. We have a lot of problems specially in the middle east. The number one problem that all 14 president s had is keeping israel from attacking our allies there in the arab states. The second thing is since the nine 1950 1950s russia had a warm waterport in syria when it was the united arab republican kwraoeufrpbted with nasser. They need that. That is why they are in syria. They are in syria because the gulf states led by saudi arabia, qatar and other guys have put their proxies sunnis in there fighting assad. And then basically the big problem with our country is facts and history are not reported correctly. Guest i believe so the frustration with politics as normal in both parties and i think that is a big reason that trump benefited and won the election. He was about as far as you could get as politics is normal as you had. And that is part of the reason he won. I fear that hes a cure worse than the disease particularly when it comes to the middle east. Particularly when it comes to the middle east. This is a combustible region and it is sort of a pre1914 with the arch duke of ferdinand assassination and we could have a very big war in the middle east. I see trump as a guy Walking Around striking matches in the middle of sort of a petroleum infused hangar. The guy doesnt understand the region. He is making no effort to do so and he is not a cure to the problem of meddling or mismeddling in the middle east. He is arguably a draft deterioration. Host one final point from the book on another subject you see when Economic Growth slows Society Loses pace. Having hundreds of faculty friends is no substitute for seeing people. Western societies are getting older. They are less likely to launch businesses. Your point is what . Guest the rate of business formation in america has been slowing for many years now. Partly this is because it is more difficult. There are more regulations. Washington and states have burden ed burdened business entrepreneurs with regulations. But partly because we are getting older and they are less entrepreneurial. That is sort of the natural progression progression. I think that here is a classic bipartisan issue. Both parties have basically become dependent on funding from businesses that already exist. Neither is funded by entrepreneurs yet to create their business. We forget this is the life blood of new york is new ideas, new business and master rates of change and everything is slowing and clogging up. We are sitting on a beautiful morning in d. C. With capitol hill there. Capitol hill is not going to have a bonfire of regulation. That is what small business, the core of the American Dream in my view, one of the cores, it needs it to be were easier to get a business, practice, get out there. Host so in our remaining 45 seconds you have germany, theresa may, macron and Prime Minister trudeau what would you tell our allies who have the concerns that you talked about with regard to this administration . Guest very good question. I would say look, hope for the best, hope that trump will be sort of educated about the value of alliances but prepare for the worst. Take out insurance against being his worst several because that might happen. I think mac chronology are very thoughtful and oriolesthers need to step in. If america is temporarily stepping off the stage others need to uphold the system that america created. It is too valuable to be lost in the space of one presidency. Host the retreat of western liberalism. Thank you for being with us. You can check out his word at ft. Com. Hes writer for financial times. We are back tomorrow morning at 7 00 a. M. Eastern with the American Enterprise institute and author letters to a young education reformer. Host more details tomorrow morning. You can listen to the washington journal on cspan radio. News makers is next. A very happy fathers day to the dads and grandfathers. Enjoy the rest of weekend. Have a great weekend. Here on cspan, newsmakers is next with Democratic Congress meant tim walz of minnesota. Thats public attorney general Jeff Sessions testifying before the Senate Intelligence committee about contacts he had during the 2016 president ial campaign and other issues raised by the investigation into russian interference during last years election. Later, Vladimir Putin talks about relations with the u. S. And other foreignpolicy issues while taking questions in moscow during his annual callin program. Greta this week, congressman tim walz, the top democrat on the house vetera