Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Point Of Attack 20140511

Next on booktv john yoo argues International Law has very little effect on the behavior of powerful nations when they deal with each other but acts as an impediment when powerful countries try to do things like fake terrorism and to stop the spread of weapons through disruption. This discussion is about an hour and a half. Welcome everybody. Thanks for braving the weather to make it to the American Enterprise institute today. Im a resident scholar and i direct the center for Security Studies here at aei. Todays event which is being cosponsored by the society is a discussion of john yoos latest book point of attack the work of International Law and global welfare. The format of todays great a quite simple. John will start with an overview of the books thesis and then we will follow up with our panelists comments and i might throw in a point or two as well and then following that, we will open up the floor to your questions and have a good robust discussion. Before turning the microphone over to john, however, let me first briefly introduced the guest panelists. From the biographical materials that you have in hand but have had quite distinguished careers. Michael is a professor of law at Ohio Northern University and a former navy pilot at harvard law graduate and more importantly, graduate of the navy top gun program. Michael has written extensively in the areas of the law to the war ended appointe up later to e current war on terrorism. Harvey chairs the Advisory Committee on the wall and International Security and is a former professor at the National College and also serves as the chair at the College Strategy department. Among other important posts, he was the Legal Counsel to the fbi Deputy Director in the late 90s and has had his hand in drafting several Important National security related president ial directives. Thank you both for joining us today. Now let me introduce john yoo who has been teaching law at the university of California Berkeley Law School for 20 years, more than 20 years and has been a colleague here at aei for the past decade. The former Deputy Assistant attorney general and law clerk to Justice Thomas and silverman and the author of five major volumes and numerous scholarly articles on the power, the law of the war and International Law. His most recent book on the one wabout whatwe are talking about, point of attack, there is nothing shy or retiring in his argument. Nor do his books ever lack intellectual courage. Who else could be a visiting scholar and write the surge in iraq might not have been as important as we claim and who else would dare to argue that the International Regime is problematic precisely because it discourages the use of force rather than encouraging it . I can see john now being offered a record contract with the idea of remaking the give peace a chance and give war a chance. [laughter] like all of his books point of attack is a deeply serious work and has great merit pushing his readers to think anew in their assumptions. In short while provocative, point of attack is provocative in the best sense taking all of us ask the important questions and interim. When it comes to enhancing the global prosperity and security. John, over to you. Thank you for that introduction. It is a great pleasure to be here. Its been my home away from home for the last ten years. And like all homes away from home, the people are happier here, the food is better. Its too expensive for me to live here. But its been a great ten years. This is my tenth anniversary here at aei and this book is the product of that ten years i started working on when i came here after the iraq war and a lot of the other conflicts we have been going through as a country. Its also great to have dairy as a moderator and the perfect person he is one of the few people that shares the intense interest of the framers. I would be remiss if i didnt say that id stolen one of the ideas from his dissertation for my last book on Thomas Jeffersons view of executive powers and gary actually has the view that jefferson had quite a robust approach to the presidency but not in theory to try to disseminate the work. Its also a great pleasure to be with mike lewis and harvey mmike is on the front lines at the National War College that he was on the line i guess. Its great to be with them both and look forward to the discussion. He was my mentor for many years. Hes very angry at me for writing this book but he claims i stolen the idea from him. And with many other things i admit i did steal it from him, but he didnt publish it fast enough. He was someone i started working for right after law school in the interest of National Security and law so he was an inspiration for this book and he is responsible for its faults. And maybe about east asia we will have another panel tomorrow about east asia. And the russian invasion of crimea highlighted this as the Current International legal system of collective security i think has failed. The one that centers around the United Nations and the un Security Council, the primary rule is the use of force. I think historically that rule is incorrect this is the work of Woodrow Wilson in establishing the league of nations and the idea that this rule, this criminalization of oral harkens back and built on trust tradition that ran from cicero on the way through the great medieval thinkers. This is very wrapped up in the legal theory. They talk about lots of things we tal talked about today like humanitarian intervention, preventive and preemptive war and ways that go well beyond the simple idea that any use of force other than self defense is illegal. The countries havent followed this idea of the just war crime allies of selfdefense historical. They were not doing it under the charter institutionally dead but plenty since the charter in selfdefense and to the un i think has been fairly careless to stop it and the invasion of ukraine is a good example. Part of the rule is an institution that if you require the full agreement of the Security Council to authorize measures against any kind of aggression and china and russia said on the Security Council. They are going to veto any effort to respond to the invasion of crimea or any military engagements that might arise in the South China Sea or asia. Essentially renders not just of the rule being denied in practice but it also means institutionally that the charter the effort to create a system to manage the conflict after world war ii which doesnt work and its really not going to work for the future that they cannot respond and control into the other remarkable thing during the period after world war ii and the amount of death and destruction from the great power of the war has actually fallen to below that is unheard of in Human History but by the whole order of magnitude the deficit that we have experienced from the great power has fallen to never before seen level since the peace in the modern nationstate system. Its an incredible record but i dont think it has anything to do with International Law. Few historians and Scientists Say theres a number of different reasons. The one is clearly the Nuclear Weapons makes it such harder, much more expensive and dangerous to come to the conflict. The balance between the superpower for much of the cold war actually has the effect of suppressing the conflict between the great powers and since then the collapse of the sovie sovien after the rise of the United States is a sort of supplier of peace and stability and free trade around the world has also reduced the power but one way to look at this is that the great source of the war the world war that kills the most people in Human History both started in europe and were between the european powers had spread to the rest of the world. The invasion is a good symbol of what had preceded until the invasion of ukraine. There had been no unilateral withdrawal of the borders in europe by the force. The one area that had produced all of the conflicts that had caused so much of the deaths off the last two or 300 years and i think it is barely responsible for the Nuclear Weapons into the bipolar struggle between the u. S. And soviet union and ultimately since then, the u. S. Role in maintaining the Certain International orders. At the same time, there are threats to the order that are being posed by what we used to call the rogue nations that want to challenge the International System like iran, maybe china, russia and its caused by the proliferation and the rise of International Terrorist groups and even large humanitarian catastrophes. These are all challenges to the International System that has produced a great period of peace and prosperity. And this is where hes quite right to say give war a chance. A certain kind of war is undersupplied because of the ban in the International Law on the end use of force that prevents the western allies and the United States from intervening to shore up the International System. These are all places committees are all areas where the system actually prevents and discourages nations from using force where we might want to because they are going to be much higher and the cost of conflict. As it is now all of the conflicts would be illegal and i think the system and the set of rules ought to encourage the power to use force to control those kinds of threats to the International System. It doesnt need to worry about the war between the great powers where it doesnt have much effect and its been kept for other reasons anyway. This is very similar to the way the law and economics scholars think that the contract law where you should keep the promise is what you should obey the contracts, but the law encourages you to breach the contract if you can do something thats more efficient that is a greater benefit and something lawyers fought over for many decades under the influence of the judge richard poser and so on in the 70s at the university of chicago they began to prevail and actually it has become the law in many jurisdictions. Its similar in the International Law if there is a norm against the war it should be one countries can breach andf it makes the world better off after the war. Let me now turn to what this means about russia and ways to respond to russia and maybe this will be a good focal point for the discussion. We are paralyzed looking at california about what to do in response to the invasion of ukraine. Part of it is we cant get the other International Institutions to cooperate and in part that is because there are several prominent members that are opposed to anything. So here are somethings i think we could do to respond to russia that i think would be consistent with this approach, but which may well be seen as troublesome. If they should terminate the start treaty as one that limits the u. S. And russia to 1,550 Nuclear Weapons and it pleases other limits on the delivery vehicles but it is an effort to treat the United States and russia as the same when it comes to the Nuclear Arsenals even though russia isnt really projecting power around the world and the u. S. Has a lot of other responsibilities for peace and stability. It doesnt make sense for the United States to treat russia as an equal terminate a treaty and the Nuclear Arsenal can float to whatever it needs to be for our security obligations rather than any kind of commitment with russia. Obviously the second thing this is as if someone was describing in a position of president obama took in malaysia about how hes only trying to hit singles and foreign policies of these days and it seems to me that in ukraine right now we are just looking at the call of the third strikes because only the military aid that we are given is the meals ready to eat and it seems to me that even under president carter when the soviets invaded afghanistan we did more than give the afghan rebels food. It seems to me another thing we could do and this would be very difficult under the charter, but under the set of rules i think it would be fine to give military aid to the ukraine and to supply any kind of rebels that there might be in the region to the soviet russian control. The third thing i think you could do would be to restore the Ballistic Missile systems that the Obama Administration pulled out as a sort of diplomatic authoring of the reset of relations that has clearly failed if russia wants to go around invading its neighbors and they could send a strong signal of the support for its allies without any boots on the ground or military conflict with russia by putting those systems up. Thethey worked before and helped the russian soviet go bankrupt and caused them and help contribute to the fall of the soviet union. Why not give it another try. And the last thing that i would say we should end our cooperation with serious. I dont see why the u. S. Should be a partner with russia in the action that is having the effect of propping up the Syrian Regime and actually switching momentum towards the regime. Last, i think this is difficult to see this happening quickly but it could have been in the longer term it is institutionally creating an alternative to the un and to the Security Council. Where you still need an institution and a process to legitimize the use of force, then create one. It doesnt have to be focused around the un and at the charter. It can be focused around those countries that are democracies that have open markets and have the same values as the United States. With that, thank you very much and i look forward to the comments. Thank you for coming out and for having me here. I think the professor is absolutely right that the un Security Council was broken into un Security Council is broken and prevent a veto is going to prevent the use of force in the places where the use of force would improve Human Welfare. He had mentioned that the number of great power wars and the people that died in the great power war diminished to near zero since the institution of the United Nations. But at the same time, the number of internal struggles of the civil war, low intensity conflict around the world has gone way up and have had a number of people buying in those conflicts over the world. And the idea of saying you can improve Human Welfare by intervening in these conflicts and preventing these conflicts from having the kind of humanitarian disasters they become in many cases is a legitimate use of force but its a use of force is absolutely forbidden by the un charter unless we can get russia and china to all agree at the same time that this is a place we want to use force. The other exception with the article 51 of self defense, and in most cases, that does not apply. Another point that the professor makes in his book is that there is at least an undercurrent of nations that have sort of through state practice indicated a willingness to go beyond where the un charter says they are supposed to go. In terms of using the force to prevent either humanitarian crises or other kinds of disasters. So whether it is tanzania intervening in uganda or cambodia or bangladesh all of which werent in a lateral interventions or collective intervention like nato and kosovo where you had a group get together and decide we need to stop the humanitarian crisis in post coas kosovo. But they have been praised for the kind of good and they have done. One of the central themes to the buck is to say how do we figure out when the war is going to be a net benefit to Human Welfare effects it has a law and economics in that it is saying you have to calculate here are the benefits that are going to a group. Here are the lives that will be saved and here are the lives that will be approved as a result of doing whatever happens, whether that be libya, c. , iran etc. And while that is i think a laudable idea, in practice it is going to be very difficult. And i think that we can look at perhaps the best way of looking at things is to look at the example that would be rwanda. Everybody looks back and says how could 800,002,000,000 people be killed with machetes and small farms in the late 20th century while all of europe and the rest of the world stood by and watched . It seems that they cry out for intervention. But looking at the one intervention that has happened in the past few years, libya is a good example of the indeterminacy of the good of that is done. And i guess what i mean by that is that whenever you intervene, and intervention is a nic nice d about whathat what you are doins killing people you are going to go in and kill people. Whethewhether its the utility d command control Communications People were the air defense people or some of the Libyan Special forces or Ground Forces that we attacked. Youre going to kill those people and sometimes youre going to cope the wrong people. Youre going to have collateral damage. The french and the british were criticized for the strikes in libya but killed civilians when they were going after the command control in tripoli. So you are going to hold up and say these are people that died that should not have. Now you tell me who you saved and i dont know how we can tell exactly how many people were saved by libya. I dont know exactly what the estimates are that the best you can do is come up with a historical counterfactual saying if we hadnt done this, this is what would have happened and you have to convince the skeptics and other nations that are opposed to the actions that this in fact would have been the case and i guarantee had we intervened in rwanda if you are going to try to convince the world that you have saved 800,000 lives there is no way that anyone would have believed you. It would have been a neocolonial act by the french, belgians and the americans to go back in and reestablished control over the lost colony. And the counterfactual nature of this means that while i agree that there is value to intervention and intervention should be undertaken on a number of occasions that if you do so, you have to be very clear right about the facts nobody is going to thank you for doing it. Nobody is going to look back and say that you should do that. Nobody is telling us that. As long as you dont expect people to thank you. I guarantee that russia, china and others would criticized the actions you take. Heres the counterfactual but we avoided. Ive been here before and its always great to have a forum like this. Its deeply committed to the principle of having open debate about interesting and hard subjects. So, they dont represent any of those that i am associated with or involved in, so this is quite fascinating for me because on the tenth anniversary hes revealed himself to be a Canadian International idealist interventionist, which is fascinating. And the book that i find intriguing in the earlier work probably woul would have come fd extremely compelling is the current ambassador for the United Nations Samantha Powers. So if you read the book you can make a strong argument that john has become samanta out of power. That happens all the time. He reads all of the classics. First it is almost the beginning of the International Relations i used to teach, but it was a completely different than everyone else. He comes to a different conclusion about what is indicted in the doctrine. In the event allows them to make an argument of why you can have a principle of prevention tied to the morality. And it is tied to much mor too e of a classic poster conception or the conception of the costbenefit analysis. So she marries the economic theory to the International Policy based on the principal global good and the Global Common good so it is a very creative argument when you get the literature that you dont normally see today. His classic you. Is it good or bad . It depends. As my colleagues to the left that have actually been at the point of this, john rejects the concept of just that as being tied and being ripped apart from its tradition. Therefore, the traditional would really teach you go through the steps of their just cause, the comparative justice and the sort of content authority, the intention is the probability of success in the last resort to use force into the classic way that we teach it and he really honed in on that but he doesnt talk about the classic doctrine about how we make the distinction in the personality to come back to the noncombatant. The other absent part to become like those where and the to be produced is the great line about postbellum is escrow croft five they would intervene in the internal issues. Also we will get to this notion but most of them the civil war and the ethnic conflic conflictn the morality of hard for them to stand on the site and watch that take place particularly for many of us that would have deep experience in world war ii. The irony with so croft is to see intervening in these cases doesnt solve them. It gives you yo un the righto try to solve them in the intervention because the assumption is that the people you are intervening with will embrace the ideas and the values that we carry as americans and the values of what we understand the world should be. That is unclear actually and not only that but the assumption in the higher level of what the values are in our interests but how far do you go someone of the great cleavages i cleavages ande system is how do you treat women . You have gone through quite a struggle in the United States for the quality of rights but if you do certain ethnic groups such as Orthodox Jews they say how they see one in which isnt particularly in accord with the way that we understand the violation of equal rights. So how far do you want to push what we see as the american way because as you know there are many parts that are resisting the american way. Where do you stand on abortion and a whole range of issues . What is the logic . So when you start at that level of the distraction and you then have to dive down into the specifics, thats where the devil is in the details and why you explain that. We have not been very good at nation building. Weve been very good at nationbuilding when we occupied. And whether we like it or not, the american way of wa way of wt its Unconditional Surrender which is the story in world war i or world war ii and then we occupied germany and japan. The irony is that we win the war in the negotiations. Webster responding to the ambassador necessity was instant overwhelmingly be no choice of means and no moment of celebration and the british forced supposing the nasa says of the moment authorized him to enter the United States and did nothing unreasonable or excessive which i would say is no sense say is null since the act justified the act justified Vanessa Sethi of selfdefense costbenefit analysis of selfdefense must be limited by that necessity and kept clearly within it. And there was very simple because the object was clear. They blew up the ship. The object had been the prevention of the National Level is much more different than blowing up a ship. So i will leave you with this famous annual bell problem the problem of sovereignty in states and we all agree with the United Nations having trouble being effective is that the problem with the nationstate is that its too big to deal with ethnic problems and problems of identity and its too small to deal with transnational problems like the warming of the environment, the global environment. We dont have a mechanism. But nonetheless the state is proven to almost extraordinarily resilient because down deep i am a closet they pour in which i believe the state is the monopolization of coercive force with an applicable territory. The argument is that what john is asking for if you take the logic of the victorian analysis he would like america to be an entire state. Alone because we will do it unilaterally. As you know its harder for democracies to historically have firepower around the world. So thats sort of the deep paradox of the book which is it sets the principle of morality but then it doesnt have really a mechanism of understanding once you exercise that principle in the end what would the world look like based on that particular understanding of your sons and i will and with we always agree that wilson was an extraordinary idealist but with it was the first only time we elected a president with a ph. D. In public science. And we try not to let anyone from princeton in which is also a good rule. With that i will turn it back to john. John. Someone who has a ph. D. In Political Science i appreciate the fact that i should never be president. John has given me license to be the moderator so im going to actually throw in a few tidbits into the discussion. One of the nice things about johns book which i agree is he actually unpacks in a graceful way the scholarship in and the literature on just war tradition and it shows i think the poverty of where it has been taken over the last century and the last couple of decades. It does remind me that in some respects when augustine is talking about just war theory or talking about war it becomes very analogous to policing. A gust intends to think of military efforts as keeping order. Obviously this is within the context of the roman empire. But there are sort of an analogy to johns argument about the role of the United States and other democracies when it comes to policing the world, when it comes to wmd and terrorism and the like so its a valuable part of the book. But it did strike me there was a couple of other will a number of things i wanted to talk about john also talks about you know the history of the development of the u. N. Charter and points out rather conclusively that the american and those involved in drafting didnt believe that it would be this restrictive. They wouldnt have the restriction it has come to have fun u. S. Behavior. If we needed to do something to maintain International Stability and security there is nothing in the charter they thought which would stop us from doing so. And the truth is and if i was a realist i would say well the u. N. Charter hasnt stopped us so therefore why not go ahead and accept the fact and probably make them more robust argument raised upon the founders and the drafting founders and say look we never signed up to this as being this kind of restriction and whats more our practice has followed that along. I suppose the answer to that is that americans because Democratic People like to have legitimacy and so this issue of having others agree with you that you are doing the right thing is not unimportant. But then i think that also flips into one of the things i think that perhaps john was writing the book now as opposed to a year ago you would have to wonder about it. In the book there is an optimism about the fact that great writers are not interested in territorial acquisitions. We have certainly seen the case of russia. Thats not the case and we worry on a constant daily basis whether the next will be the chinese. They have a lot of territorial claims on islands and egg islands and small islands, lots of islands in the neighborhood. They have not given up. And so then the question is whether or not the u. N. Charter is understood and provides a useful pause or at least gives their desires and their acquisitions a little less legitimacy than otherwise. If we open the door as john suggests one wonders about what the effects on those powers thinking about what they can do on an International Space so theres an optimism about the great powers that pervades the book and one has to wonder whether that optimism is warranted or whether its warranted in the decades ahead. This brings me back to my final issue or question is john talks about the new International Order that he was proposing and he tosses out the idea of analogous to the console of europe and democracies. But when you look at for example which i think is a really fine interpretation of that consulate which is in kissingers diplomacy book kissinger points out essentially that there are two elements to that. The first one had to do with coherence between the continental powers having to do with the kinds of regimes they were and what they felt was legitimate. The second element of course was in terms of the balance of power element effort that system dependent upon great written london taking an active hand in maintaining it. As we know castlereagh failed in that regard and thats basically did Everything Possible to stay away from an active role. That brings us to today where theres a real question about whether or not if you did have a counsel of democracies whether the United States a would help the willpower to provide that kind of leadership. We certainly have dealt about it over the last few years in the second thing of course is that these other democratic great powers be they germany, britain, japan its not the case that they are spending much on their military is so one wonders about the effectiveness of their ability to help maintain that International Order. So this just as a practical matter while i accept johns argument about the nature of the flaws in the Current System i wonder how effective the mechanism for maintaining what he proposes will be. Many theorists of always generate the internationalist theory. My good friend generated his book about the seven different ways we could have to exercise authority whether offshore balancer whatever it is. Its really great that im in the world of what does the force structure look like . What is the force structure for the different views because we are not that mobile. The interesting question for john is what you perceive as the force structure that would be used and then how do you see the concept of title x and title l because if you look at russia there is a lot of the use of what we call title l using of surrogates not an open the recognition of the title x in the traditional military. So some food for thought so i guess we should allow you to respond. That was a lot of really interesting questions and points i dont think i have enough time to respond all of them so i will respond to some of them. In response to the professor lewis point about the cost benefits i think its true. I dont think its a reason i dont think its a reason not to reject the approach. Its right to say its going to be difficult to put into practice but it does remind me of the early criticisms of costbenefit analysis of the predatory state. Criticism on going and getting louder and louder. People make similar arguments today about how do you do environmental recognition . How do you value human life versus precautionary measures about pollution or Global Warming and those involved those exact same kinds. How do you value or know that there was a certainty that a life was saved . Theres a huge bureaucracy over the white house and the office of management and budget that tries to do this but there is an interesting paper that shows the cost of federal agencies that do cost benefit analysis. Each agency had a different value for human life. They were all calculating it differently when they decided which regulations to issue. So its going to be very hard. I think its the right start and hopefully when we start doing it we will get better at it. At least it would allow us to identify the easy pieces where the system doesnt even allow it. Libya is a harder case but row one this seems like the easy place. There we could say there would have been a million lives saved if we hadnt have used five or 6000 troops so at least we can pick out those in the harder ones are closer to the Natural Balance being equal. It would be very hard i agree with that. I take the point that no one is going to thank us. Part of the book the International System as it is now is kind of tragic because theres a huge disincentive to lift your finger to help any of these countries to intervene anywhere. Gary makes the point that the resources involved are going to be so expensive. Why should any nation undertake this thankless task collects part of what id should show in the book is containing the system is much to the benefit of the United States as well as their allies. The system that i argue for will have enormous free rider problems because if we do create the force structure and take the opposite of where the administration i think now is going i think we are actually pulling back from parts of the world. We actually enhance our position we retooled the armed forces to play this more which makes it more of a naval and airpower and less land power which is more in traditional American Force structure. If we go towards this force structure that intervenes to keep the balance of power intact and stopped these affairs. You dont agree. But if we do that thats going to call for increases in defense spending on the drop downs we are seeing that the president and congress seem to agree on right now. Thats part of the tragedy of the way the system works now. No nation should have an incentive actually to produce this kind of Law Enforcement or peacekeeppeacekeeping or this level of war. To Harveys Point i think hes quite right that one thing that i lack is a theory of use postbellum and one thing is artificial about the way we study war is we think of those as three distinct subjects. There different rules for each one and youre supposed to when you start a war you throw out the reason she started the war and then you just use the laws of the warfighting. Then you toss it out and you get to reconstruction law. Use postbellum is the law that governed reconstruction in the south during the civil war. Part of the analysis carried forward and i believe thats the plan. Jeremy is in the audience and we have been talking about how to reconceptualize the laws in war. But i think they all have to be connected. You have to have a common analysis for all three and you shouldnt actually think of them as separate and distinct and certainly the reasons you go to war should shape the rules you were going to use once you are in the war. I completely agree. I think thats actually the nexus of work to get to. Just one idea though with the that if you are going to take this kind of efficiency approach to war than it should allow you to use all kinds of warfighting you could attack certain kinds of metastructure without destroying them but it wasnt truly military. It was connected because of the straight way he wanted to achieve a certain narrow and which was a defeating and conquering serbia but to get it to leave kosovo. If thats the case then cyber also. If we were at war with kosovo or serbia today and we were trying to persuade them to leave kosovo what if we shut down their stock market for a week . That would no lives lost. Much better than dropping real bombs. Under current war youre not allowed to do that. As a civilian target so it seems to me if you did employ this global approach that brought together all three types types of war you would have to reexamine all the fundamental principles because they would identify why he went to war in the first place. And one last piece for gary until we turned over to the questionandanswer piece. Theres a lot of great points there. On the u. N. Charter it may not stop them all the time. I think its a much bigger deal in other countries. To take one example the libyan intervention example this Administration Want to get u. N. Authorization to intervene in libya and it delayed our intervention almost until the rebellion was wiped out. Today you are a better expert at this that i bet people sometimes say there are our delay allowed the radical elements to have a bigger voice in the libyan rebellion. They be the Obama Administration didnt want to intervene anyway and was using the charter as a convenient excuse. Who knows . It seems to me they seem quite committed to it. Its also syria and the lack of u. N. Authorization is the reason the Obama Administration has been giving for not intervening more directly into syria. I do think it is having some effect. Maybe in the margins is just another thing that gets added to the cause of this war will be illegitimate and lead to political resistance. The iraq war germany france and our supposed allies use the u. N. Charter is a reason not to help us in iraq. Youre you are quite right its hard to find cases where its a soul dictating reason why we may not intervening. I think its an additional political cost to going to war. Its a disincentive. When some of these wars say wed be better off if we did go to war. The other thing that is very hard i think youre right what is the future look like if you move away from the u. N. Charter system . What is the institutional quite . The concept of europe is an analogy to the past. One thing that is successful is our colleague john bolton came up with the Nonproliferation Initiative which has a kind of system but theres no formal treaty. There is no formal place where they meet. The governments coordinate their actions politically to try to stop the proliferation of wmd technology as i understand quite successfully. I think that would be the way to go to start starving those kinds of successful informal methods of cooperation. They are not be telling us when we walk. If that has been the success we should study that more closely and use that as a model to build a new kind of concept of democracies by requiring. If you get rid of the charter and replace it with nothing you will have these problems up whenever any wars legitimate everybody will always say when they intervened that the war is legitimate. The rushes are saying they are invasion of ukraine is legitimate under national law because they are protecting russian citizens although it sounds a lot like what hitler said in 1938. Again it has to do with further development of the idea but also like professor lewis says its very hard as he gets into the nittygritty details of how you actually designed the follow on system. Thanks john. Open it up to questions from art guess. Please identify yourself and then ask a question. In the back. From say foundation. Mr. Yoo you have been active in the new norm way of doing business particularly when he wrote the preventive legal torture memo for the bush administration. Of course it was approved not just by you. I just learned that you are a native citizen so maybe you have american citizenship. No, no. I was born in canada. I am just kidding. Its good to know. Is this book also to create this kind of opinion which in my opinion is totally barbaric International Media we are talking about. In fact most of the people did not stand for you maybe didnt convince a few radical rightwingers in america. They would probably follow it until it becomes iraq and afghanistan where they finally have to be kicked out being told that thank you we didnt need you. Anyway. Thank you. Actually i dont think this theory is going to apply to radical rightwingers. These days my sense of american politics is that the rightwing of the Republican Party wants to withdraw from the world fast. If you look at rand paul is the representative of that wing of the party Republican Party strikes me very much like the 1930s in the United States and other western democracies. The they are radical in that they want to change american policy. They think the United States ought to do nothing in response to ukraine and nothing in response to the rise of china and that we have they would say we have put a lot of money into maintaining peace and what do we get out of the . We get nothing. Nobody gives us any thanks for saving lives anywhere. All we get his criticism like yours when we actually do go to war. So i dont think its a radical rightwing idea. You are quite right some people will criticize replacing the u. N. Charter as barbaric as is going to invite great power and competition again and neocolonialism again and but i actually think gary is right. Those countries are no longer Strong Enough or interested enough. We see france or Great Britain and germany really using force to try to reimpose the system. I do think the u. S. Is different so maybe we disagree. I think the u. S. Is an exceptional country and that even though it has gone to one places and it does maintain a system its not an empire like the British Empire or the french empire or the chinese empire. Its not interesting in taking over territory to add to the borders of the u. S. It does seek to give other countries part of the system of economics and trade them to suppress complex so in that respect it has aspects of an empire but its very different in the sense that it doesnt try to run those other countries. If you look at the wall street journal today it demonstrates 45 of that population prefers isolationist policies and the diocese foreignpolicy sticks to roosevelt, teddy not fdr has always had strains of isolationism versus interventionism. Thats the classic dilemma and a whole range of strained foreignpolicy of values or nonvalues and you can trace it back to the founders and different evolutions. One of the things in debate for the next period is we have an extremely expensive tory and evolved over the last 12 years. We are clearly theres a sentiment in the republic is john was saying of wanting to go back. Thus pulling back what is the net benefit or cost to nations . One of the examples of pulling back is whats happening right now in crimea and the ukraine. You are not happy if you youre in those countries now because it means you do not have the force to respond. The issue is what will be the United States response at the strategic level . When john talked about when he immediately went to the missiles treaty i would take a step back. I think what that is saying is you want to give the russians and the europeans a clear sense that the United States will be serious about stopping the expansion. We have different ways of trying to do that. Thats what thats about telling the russians you have to pay a cost if you continue to do this. We are serious but thats not the way you should involve International Relations. How you do that is the struggle. How you intervene to make it clear to them into the europeans that they have to stop. Do we really want to get into a fighting more . One of the ironies of the United Nations is that we havent had a good exchange. If you ask shelling what has been the best surprise shelling will say when the greatest advantage of International Public policy is that when he was one of the creators of mutuallyassured destruction they thought that the turnofthecentury we would have 25 Nuclear Powers. We dont. That issue is we are now at an interesting point. Tipping point in the Tipping Point is creating disincentives for how we understand intervention and in the air the world where you came from the idea of more Nuclear Powers and that geographical area given the propensity for this extraordinary border that really makes everyone nervous. Where would be the principle notion particular in the Nuclear World where we are concerned about having a whole range of countries Going Nuclear and then we are all staring at each other saying what will happen if a mistake is made . This book starts the conversation about how we think about doing that. One other thing with regard to the claim that under mind or move the u. N. Charter is barbaric would not be something most of the world would accept. While this is not an in mind but a good portion of what john is talking about is a justifiable use of force to prevent humanitarian custers catastrophes. Which has a lot in common with responsibility to protect. His theory is not exactly the same and wouldnt want to be compared entirely to that. The responsibility to protect for something that has been debated in the United Nations and accepted at least in some way. As a mob vacation of the limitations of the use of wars. Unfortunately in a final outcome document they again tied into Security Council approval. But the initial idea behind it was to say that the Security Council does pass here are ways that force can be used by organizations for the improvement of Human Welfare. In much of the same way of many of the examples john is talking about and thats something world has approved. You can amend or soften the edges of the u. N. Charter without being internationally rejected. Eight i might add that its a canadian dr. And which is part of the revolution. And also be an dr. And that our current abbasid or to the United Nations was strongly pursuing before taking power. To use the american western power to do it. Just one other comment. But just a historical note. Interventionism is quite bipartisan in this country. It wasnt a republican white ring crank that went into the balkans or north africa. We have a artist by partisan tradition of being barbaric. You cant have it. I want to ask about john yoos theory of global where warfare with respect to crimea. Its seems to me entirely plausible if you just look at this from a very abstract global welfare point of view to say the citizens of crimea are better off because they have now been brought into a Richer Country and a stronger country and a country with a much more effective Central Government in the way that the mort jorde of them are russians and seemed to be happy. Why cant putin say on the yoo theory yes it was u. N. Charter but it was an official breach. Cspan sir. [laughter] its not clear to me that the people in that region wanted it so one thing you would want to maximize as the preferences of the people who live there and its hard to tell because there was an election that was a classic soviet election 99point whatever voted for the annexation but their only choice was i think do you want to annex right now or annex a little slower . I just want to press you because its very possible that the majority of people in crimea favor this. Its pretty clear that the majority of people in ukraine didnt favor this. But its not clear which is the constituency that matters. You might say this is an inherent problem with global welfare and you can actually do a global poll all of the time. You always have to wonder are reconsidering the people in rwanda or how the neighbors feel probably the neighbors would have liked the intervention away. I take your point because the last chapter tries to grapple with this. Its about failed states. [laughter] it starts well after page five actually. [laughter] so in that chapter i tried to figure out what this means. The two big phenomenon of the post1945 with world that fought fascism is there is a enormous leap in civil wars. Almost to the point where they are replacing almost perfectly replacing the number of deaths from interstate wars and now with intrastate wars. So i think thats a problem that you have people perhaps who are living together in states which are not viable states and they actually hate each other enough to go to war. So the other statistic that is interesting is that during the past 70 years the United States has promoted this in many cases. The disintegration of states into smaller states. I think the number of states has almost tripled. Many people in the United States thought that was a terrible thing. You might remember 1991 the push of administration opposed the devolution of the soviet union and the former yugoslavia. In iraq and afghanistan we had to keep countries together. I actually make the case in your criticism that actually global welfare is maximized when you let people with common ethnicity or religion live together if they are going to be better off. Part of its up to their own wishes but we are trying to maintain nations together that dont want to be together. This is where i disagree some other colleges. To let it devolve into three independent countries based around religious of ovations. A lot of people thought its better to search and keep the country together as a unit. It they record show that john u and Vice President are and disagreement. The other is the son of the economist. Galbraith. The other event that i would say a striking about the way we are looking at it is many people would say the striking event post1945 is the decolonization of the world. Is the decolonization that helps bury the states. And then its the semisovereign people which is what is the size of the unit that you feel comfortable making that both for what they want to do for collectivity. You say maybe the people in crimea feel the same and the people in ukraine dont. The wellknown fact is all modern states are as a result of the use of force. We had something called 18621865 if i remember correct way. United states is United States because of the use of force. If you look at england if you are a brett the brits take umbrage if you are a scotsman and you say you are english or you say im scott tron irish. I didnt voluntarily join this group. Almost every entity that you see thats a power has resulted take germany. Pressure is the one at germ germinated modern germany. When you start unpacking this issue so the logical way of course is ironically the theme of the battle canada. We have federalism. Canada has federalism and if quebec decided to vote itself out of its confederation i dont think ottawa would have used force. Trudeau used force because they use violence but if they had been more and misuse the ballot box i think ottawa would have had to have said this is the will of the individual of this group. In the question is which is the empire question, of all the small entities how did they sustain themselves and the genius of the american logic is you sustain yourself by signing up to our market value which is another book that is quoted by john which is the phil bobbitt analysis that we are moving to the market stayed and we dont need a state. Which is native state that reinforces these Economic Issues but the problem is the value problem. These different states in these different ethnic groups have come with different values. I have no interest in moving to china given the values that i may have no interest in moving to india given was happening and that religious area or pakistan or afghanistan given who will take power legitimately and enforce their religious views on most people. Im not interested in that as an american. I believe the wall of separation of church and state. Thats almost unheard of in the rest of the world. Thats our values and thats really whats going to be a think at stake with this issue when we start thinking through when to intervene in how to intervene in what purpose you intervene in what value projection you want to intervene in. Thank you. Ted brogan from the i look forward to reading the book. One of my favorite lines in essays is jon Stewart Mills where in the midst of an extraordinarily erudite analysis how do you deal with the problem of the British Empire in india . He has a line which im taking slightly out of context the rule of international reciprocity but barbarians will not reciprocate. From that you can generate analysis which i think is paralleled and maybe even close to yours which would pull in a lot of other distinguished thinkers who are largely generally liberal side certainly not conservative side of the analysis. Individuals like berg as a whig would fall in this category as well. I was struck by your comment just now that you are suspicious of the number of states out there as many of them are artificial in one sense or another. I take the point entirely that this leads me to think that the mirror image of your argument when you get a civil war nowadays what is the First Response . The u. N. Or a group of powers with the peacekeeping proposal. They reinforce the existing state. That is what they are therefore. And then the conflict continues because these proposals never and death were solving the problem. They prolong the war. I take your point them International Law preventing intervention. The kind of intervention that doesnt actually bring the war to an end that does not allow england to create the United Kingdom doesnt allow paris to create france and doesnt allow pressure to create germany. Doesnt International Cut up ways, constructive and intervention also distraught if prointervention . I think its a really great point. I think some thoughts and response. There are things in the world. Decolonization is one. The spread of free markets and actually another if you have an International Free market thats another reason you dont have to stick together. You dont need a Customs Union anymore. The other one is actually think this idea of looking at the United States is a provider of security and stability around the world is another key ingredient to why you are seeing country split apart. Harvey is quite right war has been the motivating factor for the creation of nations and nations have used defense as a reason to get a grip. If United States is there in asia for example you are guaranteeing the peace then why does italy need to stick together . Why does prussia need to have all the other german principalities as part of the common germany any more . And thats the United States policies spreading free. Guaranteeing International Stability is a motivating force in causing these collapses of nations. You are quite right. I share your criticism. International law swimming against the tide are trying to reverse this natural decentralization of governance around the world. Sometimes we act that ways the government. We tried to keep the countries together but the u. N. System is committed to keeping the status quo attached. When you have peacekeepers and you want to keep you and initiative wanted to keep yugoslavia together settled at the very end of the book definitely the part in germany i talk about how to use force in discrete ways to allow this kind of decentralization of countries to have it more peacefully than it has before and i look at the iraq surge a gary mentioned in the introduction. Why did the iraqis surged more . There were more people there. They did reduce this area of security. It didnt look like anywhere near the numbers that people thought that we would need to actually be on the ground to protect the population. If you look at examples like kosovo and so on. My argument was that the problem with trying to do the occupation was that these warrant groups of civil wars no one forces them to reach an agreement to settle their piece. Its impossible for them to trust each other. Its impossible for them to sign an agreement and live up to it. Thats what the surge did. It became the enforcer of the agreement between the shiites and the sunnis in iraq. He became an enforcer of other civil war environments because then they can make it a Peace Agreement and some has to keep it. That doesnt mean you need huge forces involved either. As for keeping the 10,000 troops in iraq are keeping a force in afghanistan rather than pulling out could contribute to the stability of those countries. To me thats less the withdrawal from the surge. Thats an era were use of American Force. Its not as violently destructive as full occupation. I cant remember one u. S. Soldier for x number. The issue that you pose which i think john has addressed is the do you think america is a revolutionary power or a status quo power . Thats the irony that the issue of when you look at what we have been doing in iraq and afghanistan is one of my marines said we are doing expeditionary counterterrorism which is a contradiction in terms. Unless you have a center of gravity on the location that you can trust that has that legitimacy in the system you are on a very difficult airing because you are building on sand. That is the issue that this book raises. If youre going to to be doing these interventions understand the principle but the post fell him problem is who is your legitimate entity left on the geographical territory that will assert and have legitimacy to have order inside the geographical area that controls force . That is the problem with afghanistan now and that is the problem with iraq. As i said its the problem of no legitimate and we are in a very difficult talks because of that. That is the yoo program and our problem with those which is based on sound principles and noble things but that is why this is almost more idealist than realists. I have got a question. One comment and i wont defend this urge. On this issue of there is a sentiment in the book which is we can get by doing these things with less force than perhaps we have done in the past. This is the classic line if we had only let the iraqi army stay in big duplication of is we should be in the business of regime change when it comes to other great powers like russia iran and china. So i dont mean to put you on the spot for something that obviously is right but it does seem to me thats one look at the discussion. You now thats a great point and i thought a lot about about the Democratic Peace theory or the Democratic Peace theory since the 18th century i think the idea is no democracy has gone to war with its mother democracy although a lot of it depends on how you define democracy. There was the war of 1812. I was wonder how does the war of 1812 when we shouldve invaded and taken over canada but we left the job. There we go canada again. The articles of confederation of a clause inviting canada to join the union. What the bin smart to do so. Oh smart ones just move here anyway. Is fast with the british say about themselves and the french. I think the radical implication if it were true would be that which would try to convert as many people into democracies as we can. The reason i didnt no one is sure why it works. There is no real theory about why the Democratic Peace theory actually is true. Its as statistical correlation but theres no convincing theory that anyone at greece about on causation. I had a lot of difficulty and was due with it because theyre different theories but no real theory there. The other thing thats interesting about the Democratic Peace theory is that democracies dont go to war with each other but they love attacking nondemocracies. Actually if you are democracy your rate of four is higher than an autocracy overall because you attack a lot of nondemocracies and try to do what youre converted to democracy. I think that actually if you were to draw project out and use them below and the war the piece that might be the third part would be if we really want the nittygritty of what kind of regime are you going to try to help create after you have gone to war and then after you have fought the war. This does seem to me what we try to do in iraq and afghanistan. He tried to go all the way and end or start with a democracy. Then i think that does bear back on the first question. If its a question of cost versus benefits you have to factor that into the overall cost of the war and our experience in afghanistan and iraq if you really do want to take that reconstruction role on an tournament to democracy that raises the cost of the war we have. I would think it would in the end produce a lot lower interventions where he can still save a lot of lives with the minimal amount of intervention if you are going to be agnostic about the regime youre going to leave after. Maybe that goes to your point about the iraq army. If we invaded iraq and left Saddam Hussein is left across would have been lower for the United States in things couldve been equally bad. Maybe they mightve been just the same as they are ending up turning out to be now. The canard of only seeing the end of four. If you believe the opening bits we can never eliminate it. The notion of only democrats are worth it. I admired your citation on authorities. Cf. I fact is a fact. You quoted plato. The issue is there is an underlying assumption that is deep in the dna of the west that if you have Economic Development rises up middle classes middle classes support democratic institutions. Its a bad war argument because it demonstrates is those relationships that form between the elite groups and the people that are receiving consent from can create a very dynamic economic market with a great deal of growth with a middle class that sells off democracy for economic stability which one might argue is russia. Putins economic friends. Then the issue is that is fine. We are willing to deal with you as long as you stay in your box. If you are willing to maintain the economic relationships with us and. And partnered the bond gained is eventually we think you will have internal development and pressure for more democratic institution. Thats the assumption. Historic liane clear to me if that working assumption is true and then it becomes a different type of format. A word member one kesser used to say convergence used to be russia and the United States. They used to be the convergence airbrush and brazil. Its a different way of understanding. Thats the enigma for the book. The book wants to intervene on a certain base of western principles and values that you may have great stability with Economic Development and nondemocratic regimes. China so this is one of the more interesting modern day phenomena that when i was in graduate school we didnt think like that. We thought stages of growth would be good for the middle class. That is proven not to be correct. The same way we felt that religion would fade out. That religious ways of thinking about the world was an old way of thinking about it. Absolutely incorrect but its happened over the last 30 or 40 years. Also fascinating on that phenomena. I think we are about ready to wrap up and i wanted to give everybody a final word if they wanted. One quick thing on china. You mentioned the mcdonalds theory i think the South China Sea complex are going to rapidly test that whether its China Vietnam china and the philippines or any of those may well find themselves breaking that paradigm. The chinese reaction to the conflict that they are having with the various other states ordering the South China Sea or ingesting. They are claiming its the democracies that are dangerous. The democracies like the philippines are dangerous because people have this sway over their government. If the populace wants to go to war and you are democraticallyelected then you have very little choice but to go to war whereas the chinese dont have that problem. It doesnt matter what our populace wants. We will do what is right is the claim that they have made in the various standoffs they have had with some of the other countries around the South China Sea. Obviously the flipside of the peace theory in some ways. Harvey in a other thoughts . What is great about john yoo is he is the acronym of the conservative movement which is that he basically explains there will be the more books based on his footnotes which is a classic xmen. I look forward to coming back with him for book six, seven and eight of this trilogy. Iowas muttering. I was insulted repeatedly. First i was called Samantha Power in them or is ackerman and hell smile and being the canadian. Im never going to live any of this down. May cause me to stop writing books altogether. One small point best based on the headlines today there was a pullout that harvey and gary referred to the said americans are wary of four. They dont want to pay the cost for maintaining the system tray that i want to intervene and this combines our common interest in the presidency and National Security and International Law. This was exactly the same attitude United States had in the 1930s. You could almost take the poll results were very similar to the interwar period and the United States attitude. It may seem mike we are going to save him money now. It may have seemed in the 1930s who are saving money on defense and it ended up costing the country in the world a lot more. This is actually moment for congress by itself cannot do the job and you need president ial leadership to explain and justify to the country whats at stake trait i have to say theres not a partisan Franklin Roosevelt his finest moment was he did work on persuading the American People that they had to bear burden to make sure the world came at in a certain way. I think thats the current president and i worry theres a lot of war fatigue and we are going to regret getting into it. This final footnote. Actually not so much in this current hole today but there was a similar one that came out with pua couple of months ago. I have a colleague here who is spending time going through the pew data. There is that headline which is we would rather leave the world alone but if you ask a second or third question do you still want america to be the primo country been overwhelmingly its yes. Do you want American Leadership the answer is yes. So implicit of fat was back to johns point which is there is still something to be worked with not only with the president but i must say as someone who works closely with a lot of members of congress its only in the last couple of months that you have got members of congress who are interested in reviving some of the discussions about when this can be done when it comes to americas defenses