Host richard, congratulations on your book tickets not only the most thoughtful but its very timely and i think we do show that there on the screen. Very timely in discussing a world of disarray. Let me ask you right off the bat why did you write it . Guest i didnt know paula when i rode it who was going to be the president. I simply knew that this was going to be the inbox that would greet whoever was the president of United States but a lot of these trends have been long in the making. Some of the more recent but the bottom line was that whoever wins an election will choose just about everything, theyre running mate, their policies. The only thing they can choose is their inbox and what i wanted to do was talk about the next president and just as important how we got from the optimism of 25 years ago to something that shall we say its decidedly other than optimistic in the last part of the book i talk about what is it we should avoid about doing it. Whose though i noticed in the beginning of the book you also discuss the fact that you have the opportunity to teach at Pembroke College in cambridge and richard gere love of mi6 or even as a visiting professor of statecraft and diplomacy. A great title. Guest a great title. Host yes it is. What is it during those lectures that you are delivering . How did this again gel. You didnt know what it would become but were you impacted somewhat by your students, by the lectures you were giving . What about that connection . Guest anytime you give three formal public lectures it helps you organize your thoughts and i gave those and i got lots of feedback and it got me thinking and actually when i came back i thought what i will do as i will take these lectures and i will transcribe them and have them transcribed and do a quick book based on them so i did the transcription and for several months i tossed with the manuscript to make just couldnt get there. It turns out what they were a set of lectures did work as a book so i literally threw it out theres a great quote from the famously yiddish writer that a writers best friend is his waste paper basket. I got in touch with my best friend and dumped the manuscript and i started over and i started over from a question that had been bothering me while i was giving the lectures and afterwards which was why is it that things are better in the worlds . If boyd usually determines history is largely absent paid by that i mean if Great Power Competition and conflict for quite muted why was it still such a disorderly world in disarray and it was the solving of that puzzle. I had been Walking Around central park which is how i think when i write that essentially told me okay ive got a book here and i can explain why things are working better than they are and what explains what similar but also whats different about this history and again i can explain how was it we arrived there . What were the forces that were structural . What were the things we essentially do to ourselves and then i knew i had to be somewhat prescriptive. He cant write a depressing book or sober book images say thats it. I thought i needed to suggest what could be done about it. Host we are going to get to the substance of the book in a minute but i want to ask you a few more background questions. I know this is the beginning of the book that you dedicated to several of your former teachers. What influence did they have on this particular topic if any . Guest the teachers at oxford who i worked with and those were three of the teachers i mentioned here had tremendous impact. Headley wasnt australian and became a professor of International Relations when i was a student in the 70s and headley later wrote a book called the nra called anarchical society. It suggests in any moment in history the world could best be understood the balance between force of the of anarchy which is pretty selfexplanatory and force a society where we are nationstates essentially that agree to some rules and follow them and whats revealing is this balance. I find that the single most useful framing for any take i may have on our history or International Relations so had he had a tremendous impact on me that i mentioned Albert Veronica was a great historian of the middle east and wrote a fantastic essay once a about the crisis of 1956 about the suez in the middle east in hungary and europe. That essentially ended the european era and the middle east in the superpowers took over. He got me very interested in transitions from one historical era to another and i also worked with Michael Howard the great historian about war and the two other professors i mention. One was my first foreignpolicy professor and the other was in progress that taught me religion and thats what got neat into the middle east and in some ways the explanation of what really launched me and got me going on the career path that im in. Host thank you for sharing that. I thought it was interesting that you cited them and i wondered what the connection was and i think you have well articulated it. Let me ask one more. I was also struck by in the introduction you also talk about how you spent some time with the word disarray, that you thought that maybe the best password to be used might be chaos or anarchy and you come to the end he looked for the source. Talk about how you landed on the word disarray. You are right im oldfashioned and i think i still have the word from when i had my bar mitzvah. Im lucky enough to be the president of the council on foreign nations and organization you obviously know well and i thought i could use words like medicine he in the title. Chaos or anarchy seemed to me to strong and other than large parts of the middle east i felt it didnt apply. One day things make come to that i obviously think they dont that we are not there yet. Theres a degree of order. They are nothing like the way they were in most of the 20th century. What i was looking for was a word that is messiness or disorderly mess and what i wanted to do was give a sense of something that was dynamic and again i went through the thesaurus and i went through the dictionary and disarray came the closest so iran it by my editor and originally they wanted to call the book disarray and i said thats much too general. That is is a book about your sock drawer when things were a mess. I thought we needed a frame in terms of what was going on so i suggested a world in disarray and everybody said thats it, that sums it up. Just getting ahead of ourselves for a second its funny ive written any number of books. This is the first book ive ever written word on how to tell people what the subtitle is. People say oh youve got a new book, whats his called and i say a world in disarray and they look and they nod and they go yes, it is. It checks the box of having a selfexplanatory title. I guess toiling over your dictionary and the book, the source data resulted in a good outcome for you in that sense that people immediately embracing it and grasping it in understanding it and you dont have to go to the subtitle. Lets go to the first part. You do buy the book and into three parts in the first part traces as you call it the International Relations starting in the mid17th century in through two world wars and into the old of the cold war. The thesis that you primarily put forward is you say there was considerable continuity and how the world works during this. Back. Describe that. Why was there this continuity . Guest there are couple of features. Nationstates were the principle actors on the world stage to use a cliche and a lot of history was about powering competition is spilled over. Look at the 20th century and two extraordinarily costly world wars as well as the cold war and a lots of the structures of the world such as it was was based based on this idea of sovereignty, the idea that borders were significant, that they define nationstates, countries and that there was a deal out there that we wont try to change your borders by force if you dont try to change ours and we wont mess around inside your territory if you dont interfere inside of our so its a kind of live and let live society. This wasnt self banding. Then there was peace in the world it was largely because there was a balance of power and when there was an peace in the world that was because one way or another the balance of power broke down in one or another country saw advantage in trying to change the map. For me to answer questions as hinckley, the continuity with nationstates, Great Power Competition being the principle driver or the shaper of history and the centrality of sovereignty as the organizing principle. Host also what was the Lesson Learned . In this section of the book you do provide analysis, contrasting one period to another and share with us what were the Lessons Learned particularly from as you put a quote the unprecedented disorder of the 20th century in other words looking at the two world wars. To me the most fundamental lesson is its necessary but not sufficient to have a shared understanding of what others have called and i call legitimacy. Legitimacy is essentially the idea that we agree on what the rules are, International Relations and how they are to be set and change so on one hand you need legitimacy and then secondly you need a balance of power. Its inevitable that one day or another some country will get to a point where you wont like what the map looks like. You wont like what the chessboard looks like him if he cant get its way peacefully its going to be tempted to act coercively essentially with military force. That seems to me the basic lesson is that you need this set of rules and the process for setting and amending them but you also need a balance of power in order to lock them and because again its inevitable that you will always have what Henry Kissinger called a resolution very revolutionary space where if you see an opportunity to change things who will do just that. Host let me bring in the fact that in 2014 russian president Vladimir Putin held the valve guide cant conference and i believe that was the tenth anniversary in the title of the conference was world order, new rules on again without rule. How does that relate to the thesis that you are putting forward and looking back historically how do you set the stage in the book . I think its relevant in a couple of ways. Here we are now roughly a quarter of a century since the berlin wall came down, since the end of the cold war and i would argue that several things are happening. One is that there is less consensus than there was. There wasnt that much to begin with on what the rules ought to be pretty exactly what ought to be the principles that organize the world . What ought to be the behavior shall we say that arcs up to blend those behaviors. I think theres growing friction between particular russia, russia, china and the United States and others including europe. I think the balance of power. Nato in many ways demilitarized after the end of the cold war. Russia did many things but it clearly is not demilitarized. Thats the Russian Foreign policy. China has remilitarized or militarized in a significant way so it certain shifts in the balance of power in some ways commensurate with the changing balances of economic wealth. Youve have had the rise of all sorts of nonstate actors. The al qaedas in the isis who have taken significant power and you have the north koreas in the irans who could erupt after the region and above all there is globalization. Youve got these enormous flows of just about everything from viruses whether they are real, two guns to drugs to Greenhouse Gases, the components of missiles or bombs, the hacking and the things that hackers would send around the world, you name it. Essentially everyone and anything that goes across borders with tremendous speed and tremendous volume. So i think the old rules to one extent or another that helped us through four centuries have essentially been overwhelmed by this combination of globalization, this dissemination of power into all these actors state and nonstate alike in the rise of some new powers that are totally comfortable with the distribution of arrangements in the world and the rules such as they are. So when the russians Start Talking about not having rules for the end of the old order i think this is their way of saying we are not comfortable. We think what exists out there is a bias against us. Its there to help the United States and its allies and as as the guys in the movie we are not going to take it anymore and i think thats what we were getting to see. Host all right, let me stick with the historical backdrop of this. You have a section devoted to the postcold war period. Talk a little bit about that he could you do discuss the progression and also how the world order was defined at that time and you focus on the issue and the importance of isnt that still part of the discourse of today . Guest it is and after world war ii you had the two principle sources of order. One was various dimensions of the cold war, the Nuclear Dimension which introduced and straight. We also accepted one other spheres of influence. The United States was limited in what is right to do and say Eastern Europe to weaken the soviet holdover is warsaw pact neighbors so were mostly circumscribed though not always and what they have try to do in the western hemisphere. In some ways the greatest crisis of the cold war was in 1962 when the soviets went too far from the perspective of the United States and put missiles into cuba. That was obviously the crisis of october in and the end of the day the soviets, they back down so i think that tells us something about one source of order of the poorest world war ii period. There are a whole bunch of institutions, the u. N. , the International Monetary fund, the world bank. There was the alliances and the Marshall Plan that will strengthen and allies of the United States and europe that gave them the capacity to withstand local communist movements to what you had coming out a world war ii are these cold war related arrangements in these large institutional rights was so when the cold war ended in 1989, 1990 you had the breakup of the soviet union the breakup of the warsaw pact. You have for example the fun mom on a big foreign state like iraq something it would not have done without the cold war cu had a loosening of the bonds and the relations would you still had them play some of these institutions in some of these rules but what i argue in the book is that as welcome as things like the one of the world bank or the imf or other arrangements were they werent enough to contain the new sorts of pressures and dynamics that emerged in the world over the last 25 years. Host let me also go to the part in the book where you do discuss as you put it, the other order, the postworld war ii order, the liberal democratic order. Many would subscribe today to that order and say that the issue is that the value, the institution that has been put in place, that framework stands but what needs to be modified in many ways is things need to be updated not on values but in terms of the institutional arrangements that the world has changed and it has to be greater impact ability there. How do you move on to those who argue aggressively that the real issue is the maintenance of the liberal democratic order . Guest i think the liberal democratic order is despite as far as that goes. It just doesnt go nearly far enough. It was invented or designed in the world 70 years ago and a lot of the challenges that exist in the current world simply didnt exist then and the big concern of the liberal order in many ways was to promote peace, to get other countries to respect the sovereignty, not to use force to change order and that continues to be relevant and continues to be necessary but is not sufficient. The shortcomings of the liberal order had one position. No one on gods green green earth for example given a pencil and paper would design the current u. N. Security council. There is no way we would get these five countries the u. S. Russia china britain vetoes and not have significant roles for other countries like japan to india to germany so the institutions themselves are kept pace but theres also how do you regulate cyberspace . How do you deal with Nuclear States once the nonproliferation treaty prevents them from becoming Nuclear States . Would you do about global terrorism . What he do about global Infectious Disease and on and on and on. My argument simply what we need to do and i dont care if you call it up dating or complementing that we need to take the basic mechanisms of world order from four centuries ago and update them. The biggest single change we need to make is we need to introduce some idea but i called sovereign obligation or the heart of what i also call world order 2. 0. Its the idea that what goes on inside of other countries can no longer be their business alone, their promise alone if what goes on has the ability to affect other countries and other populations negatively. So again you cant have terrorists in your country if they are going to do terrorist acts along your borders. You cant allow computer hackers to operate freely. You have to make sure the Infectious Disease doesnt break out and if it does you got to be willing to take steps to bring it under control. You have to act responsibly about Climate Change. You cant just burn coal for electricity and so forth and so on. What im arguing is what we now need is an American Foreign policy that is increasingly informed by both the old basis of stability which was sovereignty but now something that adds a layer to it, call it sovereignty plus where countries have obligations as well as rights. In some cases we are going to have to set an example. In some cases where going to have to incentivize. In some cases we have to be prepared to penalize those who are not willing to fulfill these obligations. This is not a bunch of either idealists. This is good oldfashioned realism updated or adapted for global world where everything is so interconnected. Host it might be worth stepping back and just stating specifically because the primary thesis of the book you do talk about world order one point zero and the world order 2. 0. Go over the heart of it, the fundamental difference that you mention sovereign obligation which is a development distinct from sovereign responsibility. Make the distinction so our viewership can understand the difference here. Guest let me go to the most basic distinction. World order 1. 0 whos been around for four centuries is about sovereign rights. Its about the right of countries of nationstates to live in peace and pretty much do what they want within their own border. These orders are not to be changed by force and no one is meant to be in a position to tell them how they act within their own borders. Thats the basic idea. This is all well and good. My argument is its no longer adequate for world where inside the country are virtually any country things are going on that will have repercussions not just for them but for everyone else so we dont have the luxury of simply saying whatever goes on inside the borders is your business alone because it turns out what goes on in the borders is our business. Computers operate freely and they are selling stuff around the world from guns to drugs and nuclear and missile parts. They are acting a responsibly with regard to the environment. If they are producing and them enormous part of Greenhouse Gases those gases arent going to stay in the border. They will spread around the world and contribute to Climate Change. On issue after issue regarding globalization we have to accept my favorite phrase that nothing stays local long. Trying to get countries to behave responsibly to accept those obligations in those aspects of their behavior that has the potential negative implications for other. This to me would be the basis of a new era of International World order 2. 0. Host in the book you say quote to say there is a substantial gap between what is desirable when it comes to meeting the challenges of localization and what is possible and you speak of the global gap. One of the principle reasons is disarray. What does this mean . Guest yorks ackley right. You put your finger on what i think is one of the main problems out there. We have got all these global challenges, terrorism to climate to proliferation to open World Trading and investment, regimes and many things but the willingness and ability of governments to sign up to do things that will make sure the positive aspects of globalization are able to bear fruit and the negative aspects of localization dont overwhelm us, the willingness of the ability of governments to sign on and follow through in what is needed is not there. There is a large gap between the scale of the challenge in the nature of the response. I call that a global gap. One of the consequences of it and this phrase is often used in our Business International community is much less of it than meets the eye. Indeed, one of the reasons a wrote this book was to put forward ideas and suggestions about how to narrow this gap between the challenges of globalization and the responses to it. The fact is this gap exists and i actually think in that gap lies many of the defining challenges, the defining problems of this era of history whether its proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and materials or largescale terrorism or Climate Change or a break down of trade or some pandemic or Infectious Disease that could wipe out tens of millions. This has got to be increasingly our focus to concentrate where we can on narrowing the gap between global challenges in global responsibilities. Host i was struck in the book that you did among a number of issues cite the fact that the area for example of local health you view it as more intense in this regard were countries have come together maybe in some cases by necessity and also by the fact that their own countries are impacted and they are looking to others to combat pandemics. That area has been marred as it is somewhat of a model to look at. A question here is you know institutionally i think back in my time in government in dealing with that is one of the global issues that was on my plate but actually we werent looking institutions to correct that but rather we were looking at coalition. In fact there was a Global Coalition that dealt with and that was very effective. Say a bit more in this particular area that you selected that is one of the areas that should be looked at. Guest again youre right here, Infectious Diseases something that doesnt respect orders and as we saw with sars and zika or ebola and influenza it quickly travels. People get on airplanes and people across borders and we are all vulnerable to outbreaks just about anywhere. Everybody realizes that so this is a good example where ideology tends to get cast aside and you have very practical responses. It often means countries doing things to make himself them selves less ramapough. Youve also got to go to the source and deal with these issues so the world often rallies to respond to these outbreaks when local countries can handle that could derail challenges to get local countries position so they can prevent these outbreaks in the first instance or monitor them closely as they began to erupt and deal with them. Beyond the United States the centers for Disease Control in atlanta and the cdc is also an International Organization and has lots of back and forthwith its counterparts around the world. What would want to see her other countries having their own capable centers for Disease Control so they can take care of problems that might begin in their territory but would spread worldwide. I think this is an example where there is agreement in international collective selfinterest. This is not a question of war and its not a question of competition. Local countries have a stake in getting it right as well. They dont want to scare off business. Nobody wants to be identified as a place that no one wants to travel to. This is actually a rare instance where theres an awful lot of consensus about what needs to be done. The biggest problem not surprisingly is whether people are willing to put the resources into it. The answer is no and in some cases governments are slow to react. They want to admit they have a problem and they are scared of fighting off Business People or tourists and by not responding they take over large small problem make it large. Compared to other issues we talked about this issue is more of a global consensus. Host you also later in the book called talk about nonstate actors and certainly in many of the issues that you cite andy down with its climate, whether its Nuclear Nonproliferation or nuclear proliferation, whether its Global Health issues you do discuss this element of the nonstate actors being more relevant player in this particular day and age. Guest absolutely. Its one of the ways in which International Institutions going back to something you talked about with me a few minutes ago need to adapt. I was once asked by the secretarygeneral of the u. N. To help organize Global Health. You need to have big pharmaceutical companies, various ngos that deliver things on the ground things like doctors without frontiers or take another global issue. They try to set the rules for cyber space. How are you going to have that meeting without representatives of google, apple, facebook sales force and others in the room . The answers he cant. Governments are the only actors. You have ngos and companies so what we need to be is very creative and flexible about who we give a seat at the table too. The year of just nationstates has clearly ended and we have benign actors if you will and a lot of these companies and for example the Gates Foundation where you obviously have the maligned entities and groups like isis and al qaeda. You want to bring them to the table but you still have to deal them because they have real power. Host i was also very struck in particularly the third section. You not only talk about your primary thesis but you dig down and you go into the issue of preemption versus preventive action. I think its worth going into this because that also undergirds the thesis and looking at what needs to be done here and how you do it. Give some examples of where preventive action is relevant and preemptive action is relative, relevant to a new world order. Guest let me set the stage. I think theres a consensus out there thats been in place for decades that the world ought to do whatever it can to stop the spread of Nuclear Weapons and the nonproliferation treaty which was signed initially in the late 60s and became a force around 1970 and we have limited the number of Nuclear Countries in the world with Nuclear Weapons as best we can tell, the five original u. S. Russia china britain and france as well as India Pakistan israel and north korea. We do not want apple world with lots of Nuclear Weapons states. It would be extraordinarily dangerous and increase the chances these weapons are used and i would be off old from any and every perspective. What the world hasnt been very good at is necessary to with countries that ignore these pretzels and go ahead and get Nuclear Weapons themselves. They party gone from five to nine and one of the challenges say what you do about arth korea . North korea has several Nuclear Weapons and is quickly developing Ballistic Missiles that can go significant distances with considerable accuracy. Sometime in the next four years will mr. Trump as president he will have a north korea that could actually launch a Nuclear Missile that could deliver a Nuclear Weapon against the continental United States. If we dont want that reality to come to pass the question is how the headed off . One approaches through diplomacy and sanctions and thats what we have tried for is. In my view theres nothing while trying it but theres no reason to expect that well receive. It leads to a combination of deterrence where we said they favored its something we would obliterate them but that doesnt necessarily fill us with comfort given how reckless korea is. There are two International Law schools here. One is called prevention and that is where you take action against whats called the gathering threat and the other is preemption which is when you take action against an imminent threat. A very different standing entering International Law. Theres a lot of support for the latter for printing if for example we received intelligence that north korea was two hours away from launching a missile with Nuclear Warheads on it. That is considered legitimate under International Law to prevent this eminent threat of materializing. There is however very little basis in International Law for saying we are worried in two or three years north korea might reach this point that we are going to attack them now to prevent them from getting close. Where can you build International Support . My own guess is you could build a considerable degree of International Support when you have eminent warning when its minutes or hours away of something happening. I dont think there would be International Support for a world in constant preventative acts and the reason is because people see gathering risks risks everywhere. People constantly used oars on the basis they were preventing danger from coming to pass. Thats the sort of conversation we may well be having in one or two years. Sounds highly abstract and academic but my guess is a good come become very real. Host you cite in the book the reference of the National Security strategy published in september 2002 by the administration of bush. The document made this clear sink whoa in an age where the civilization openly and actively seek the worlds most Destructive Technology the penn state does not remain idle while dangers gather in quote. There you go on prevention principle provides the means to disrupt the program before Nuclear Weapons or even if one or more weapons exist to prevent the expansion of an arsenal and destroy those weapons. This is obviously i think a very crucial matter and certainly added is playing out relative to the question of north korea. Where does china fit into this picture relative to this question . Guest i will come back to china in 30 seconds. First they had the Iraqi Nuclear reactor years ago and a Syrian Nuclear plant that the israelis were acting against the gathering threat not an eminent threat and that is what they did. There is precedent for preventive strikes. I think in the case of north korea the chinese dont want us to use military force and indeed i think its one of the things that motivates the chinese to put more pressure on north korea. Probably 80 to 90 of koreas imports and exports go in and out through china. Chinas considerable influence. It doesnt want to destabilize the country. I think its worried about seeing a united peninsula has closed the United States and the american strategic orbit. Chinas trying to influence north korea without bringing it down. So far at least that hasnt been enough pressure on north korea to get it to back off its missile or nuclear programs. I would make this the principle priority in the u. S. Chinese relationship that i would clear the decks if i could make sure we didnt have problems or friction over trade or with taiwan and instead focus on this issue. I dont think im exaggerating. This could become the principle National Security issue facing the United States over the next three to four years. Host certainly i think the emphasis you have placed on this in my own view is right. Let me ask you about the question of selfdetermination. You have the discussion of selfdetermination and rtp, the whole issue of rtp. How does the question of selfdetermination and human rights and the tension that existed between idealism and realism, how does that play out in the world order 2. 0 . This is probably one of the more controversial parts but after world war ii we had a lot of colonies in the world with tremendous support to the default position was to support these colonies becoming independent countries and they were given tremendous latitude in deciding whether they would or could. We have now reached the point in history where the map is pretty crowded with 190 countries and the question is who decides who gets a new country . Every time you want to create a new country wouldnt be creating it out of the former policy. You the creating out of an existing country. I argued those people who live in this section of countries in a province they themselves should have the right unilaterally because as a web applications for neighbors and all have implications for the neighbors of which they are a part. My argument is we have as an outsider should look at their case and make an adjustment in some cases they may decide its warranted given the history and given the demographics and given away they were treated by the host country. We may decide in other cases it would be destabilizing that the case isnt strong and would create all sorts of havoc for human hardship so my view is simply that we have got to be consistently inconsistent here and judge each case on its merits. Its interesting with the palestinians because this is one of the areas of. The world never agreed that the palestinians should have the right to selfdetermination but when you go back to the camp david accords it was based that they have the right to participate in the determination of their own future along with israel and others. The idea then is to discourage unilaterally almost invariably yudin unilateral acts or when countries declare themselves independent will invite pushback which is an Academic Work for war. The idea to try to have these things organized in a way that it does not trigger a war if and when they do become separate. Host you also mention the same buying a font that is challenging combining a passive realism with idealism and as you you see if that doesnt always work. think you suggest that it doesnt work. But a challenge that a little bit. One of the areas which the presidency of george w. Bush has been commended for is the relationship with china and when you step back and you look at it there was a realistic approach to it at the same time he personally combined and brought in the whole question of human rights. In many ways very successfully. Are there other cases that can be cited . Share more previews on this. With that this is a i dont believe we are in a strong position to affect the political and other countries to china for the last couple of years have had a rotating up with things politically. The government has gotten stronger sometimes using the anticorruption drive as a force and sometimes intimidating or jailing the opposition. I dont think theres much of anything we can do to change that. We have other priorities like north korea so we are not going to make our work in north korea contingent on what it is they do or dont do at home. I also dont think this falls under what im talking about because of governments behave what i say someone badly towards their own people i do think its their problem and you have massive exodus is that people who become refugees or method thats qualitatively different. I think in those situations the International Community does have a right or an obligation to act. In those situations where its not nearly that severe and i think in many cases it may simply be something that we have to reluctantly live with the can speak out against it but i dont think we can base our relationship on a simply because i dont think we have the leverage and we do have competing priorities. Host does that minimize documents like the universal declaration of human rights and the role of the United Nations in that space . Guest i dont think it minimize it what it accepts the fact that these are not self enforcing documents. The declaration of human rights doesnt have an action clause. The u. N. Is never less than what the major powers wanted to be so its important to have standards. I think its essential that we live up to them ourselves. Think we should speak out on their behalf. I just dont think we have the luxury of basing our foreignpolicy on them. As you know from your career we had a very similar debate about how to deal with opposition figures and so forth, and dissidents in the soviet union while at the same time we are trying to carry out arms control associations. I think this has been in many ways one of the most basic persistent debates in American Foreign policy since the beginning of this country. Our American Foreign policy mostly about foreignpolicy or to what extent should American Foreign policy change to meet the more open economic as well as politically . Its one of those debates that never gets resolved and crosses party lines. Republicans and democrats on both sides of that debate. I clearly come down on the side of realism versus idealism. I just think we have enough on our hands right now. Well be lucky if we can deal with half of what we have to do without trying to get extremely ambitious. [laughter] ive felt it was important to raise because you address it in the book and the reason interestingly enough its very successfully weaves in a lot of issues and elements of foreignpolicy and looking at and examining where the world order has been and where you see it going or where it should go. Im trying to address this different issue. Let me take another one that i thought you had really a locked that went into a regional sections but im only going to pick out one in the time that we have and thats asia. You mentioned earlier about how the helsinki act was the document and in a later section you discuss how when looking at asia how it doesnt have the kind of Security Architecture and framework that europe does for example and you talk about look at the framework of the organization for Security Cooperation in europe. Say a bit about that because there has been also debate and the discussion in the foreignpolicy community. Does one need that kind of architecture in asia and what would fit in this timeframe and day and age . Guest you are obviously discussing those who are as bill maher with it as you are. During the 70s we introduced a degree of architecture in europe basically structuring to make sure the u. S. Soviet competition didnt get out of hand and the borders changed through the use of force. There were certain economic arrangements that were protected. There was the idea that human rights would be recognized and related to it with certain confidencebuilding measures about exercises. The whole idea was to reduce the possibility of a crisis in europe and for some people it was also to buy time for the internal evolution in europe so they would become more open over the decades and by the way it worked fantastically. You have all this dynamism and all this economic might and military might as a result. A lot of territorial disputes more than i can count and you have these forces operating in proximity to each other. Basically saying that we need to introduce a bit more structure into this part of the world . And wouldnt take the european example lock stock and barrel and try to impose it. They have a different history and i dont think we should introduce the human rights dimension but theres a lot to be said for structuring political military arrangements to decrease the chance of either accidental complex and to come up with rules of the road so countries can get along even if they still have significant differences over to borrow for asia middle east the final status of violence or areas of the sea. Host interestingly enough and thanks for articulating the contents of the helsinki final act. Interestingly enough one of the areas was the basketry, basketry been human rights area that has some relevance and is often discussed throughout asia and the rule of law. The chinese for example have focused a lot in human rights discussions on matters relevant to the rule of law. Let me go to in the time remaining to the United States. What is the role of the United States and all of this . Certainly an important player on the scene book and world order 2. 0 what role you see the u. S. Plane. The u. S. Its a plane active central role. The world will organize itself without us. When we pull back good things tend not to happen. People should misunderstand me. Im not arguing for american unilateralism. We have to do things together. I dont think it can be our goal to remake the world. Trying to make the middle east in our image in our likeness. We have to be honest about what can achieve the the bottom line is what the effort disarray in the world now there will be far more of the United States is in play a large leading role and that would translate into keeping peace in europe and making sure that nato is sufficiently strong and mr. Putin is not tempted to do this sort of thing he did in ukraine. I think in asia we have got to again be there to reassure allies so they dont feel the need among other things of having Nuclear Weapons on their own to reduce the chance of the conflict over territorial disagreements may be to deal with north korea. Think of them at least we have got to be active to push back against the terrorists to reassure countries that are standing up to iran which really is on a major push for regional primacy. I think we have to take the lead working with others in setting up rules for how the United States should be governed and what should be okay and not okay with terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. The world is not self organizing. It wont take place without us and if we pull back one or two things have to happen. Either others defer to powerful local countries enacted mean russia europe or middle east or china or asia they will take matters into their own hands. Well have an international selfhelp society where rather than deferring to us the saudis when they invaded yemen to matters into their own hands where they will increasingly armed themselves because they wont have confidence in american guarantees and that seems to me a reduce which will blow back on us. We cant insulate ourselves with what goes on out there pick one way or another disarray in the world will undermine the American Economy and the american society. [laughter] there really isnt another country or group of countries out there to take this on. You yourself and id like to read it yet the great quote no other Country Group of countries have the capacitor the mindset to build a world order. Guest at the virtue of being true, i think it was me. There is no virtue. Russia wants it tearing down more than the building up. That seems to be a step in the wrong direction. I want to see the United States play a large role in the world. Not as an act of charity and not of an act of philanthropy of but necessary selfinterest and when we maintain the peace in europe or asia only discourage countries from proliferating with Nuclear Weapons and we promote trade these are all things that work to our advantage and the good news is that the cost of doing and they are all of these things is far less than the benefits. The return on investment of American World leadership over the last 70 years has been fantastic. Anyone stock portfolio should do as well. The things that are going on, there are things are going wrong. We havent done what we should do with education array of a financial crisis. The things are real and they cant be blamed on what we are doing overseas. You cant blame the iraq war and how we fail to sufficiently regulate the economy leading up to 2007 and 2008 so i worry there is an increasing rejection or resistance to a large american role which turns out is not hurting us but is delivering good things for us abroad which in turn helps us here at home. Host richard my final question to you i want to go back to the beginning. The beginning of your book you yourself pose certain questions for yourself that you address in the book. Was this inevitable or preventable in terms of where we are and is it easily correctable . How bad is it . Will it get worse . What does that depend on . And summary can you synthesize those and take us back to the beginning and some rice the whole effort . Is it inevitable, preventable and even correctable and how bad is it etc. . Guest nothing is inevitable in history. People and ideas make a tremendous difference so yes there are some structural things like the rise of china at the end of the cold war but a war with iraq invading libya or not to do with president obama decided not to do in syria or libya pulling u. S. Troops out of iraq. These are all exit all mission. I disagree with all of those. My point is simply though we have gotten things wrong they have consequences but nothing precludes us from getting it right. People and ideas can get things right in the future shall this is not a book of fatalism. The arrows are pointing in the wrong direction. The world has greater disarray today in 2017 bennett had 25 years ago when the cold war ended and the world sorted itself out by itself it my whole impetus for writing this book is to some extent sounding the alarm to say this is what has happened and this is why its happening and heres what we can and should do about it. The good news is its affordable, the good news we will benefit but the reality is again we have got to do it. No one else is going to do it and it wont get done simply by itself if we dont take the lead. As the richard, thank you very much and congratulations and i think you certainly have wrong that alarm and a great book not just the foreignpolicy community but students at tambor college among other so thank you for coming today. Guest thank you paula, i enjoyed it. When the russians Start Talking about not having rules or the end of the old order, i think this is their way of saying we are not comfortable, we think what exists out there is biased against us and there to help the u. S. And its allies. As a guy said in the movie, were not going to take it anymore and i think thats what we are beginning to see. After words airs every weekend. You can watch previous episodes on our website booktv. Org. And so now, im very pleased to introduce tonights author, the author of the book that changed america. He is the author of emersons ghost, and some battlefields