It is my pleasure to welcome you for discussion of this book. The big stick the limits of soft power and the necessity of military force. What we are going to do is the author should have the last word even if he doesnt, we will give him the first turn to my colleague, and residents and counselor for budget chair assessments. Sounding conspiratorial here. Henry kissinger, director of Global Affairs for his comments. Then we will turn to the other, eliot cohen and open the floor to you for your questions and go from there. With no further ado, eliot cohen. Great to be here. Important that every book event remember it is to sell books. A copy of the big stick, television audience, a very important book. On groundhog day we are meeting and that is very apropos. By the way those who dont know Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, we are in for another six weeks of winter. The movie groundhog day is one of my favorite movies. Those who have seen it know that bill murray wakes up every day and it is groundhog day again. And some sense, that is a metaphor for what eliot cohen is writing about. Every so often the United States needs to learn the lesson that military power is important. We had to relearn that lesson after world war ii, korea, vietnam, we have to learn it again after the last 15 years. In some sense, that is the subject of eliot cohens book. As a lapsed diplomat having been a particular practitioner for 30 years am i associate myself with comments that George Kennan made, though he is not my favorite Foreign Service officer, but the archetype of the diplomat and 1946 addressing the national war college, you have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have acquired armed force in the background. The mere existence of those forces is the most important single instrumentality in the conduct of us Foreign Policy and i thoroughly agree with that. Not to say wanting to use those forces promiscuously is sometimes people think the Foreign Service wants to do but it does mean effective diplomacy is the availability of usable military power and if you need any better example of that i would argue the feckless and pointless diplomacy former secretary john kerry engaged in over syria over the last year and a half would be exhibit a. Professor eliot cohen began his book, this book by the way i want to say is about than the use of military power and the importance of hard power. It is a book about the United States in the International System and why hard power and the alliances it sustains are a crucial part of that role. It is an excellent case for the importance of that role in the first instance. Makes an excellent case why the United States can afford to play that role and must play that role and the challenges we face, multiplicity of challenges in the form of a rising china and rambunctious russia and the continuing challenge of jihadis him and the danger of fragile and failing states to the International Order and how only us military power along with other instruments of National Power can address those challenges and concludes to give you a sense of what you will read if you take my advice is also some very good propositions have to think about the use of force, i dont think i or he would argue use of military power is called upon. The challenges he described i will end on this note and turn the floor to my colleague, hal brands, the challenges he describes in asia and europe and the middle east are reminiscent and i think he agrees with this and the book supports this, the challenges statesman faced in the interwar period. I wanted to conclude my remarks with a quotation from Winston Churchills book on the gathering storm which i think speaks to both what eliot cohen addressed in his book and the current moment and his purpose as someone who lived and acted during that period to show how easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented the analysis was by the weakness of the virtuous, structure of democratic states, unless they are welded into larger organisms lack those elements of persistence and conviction which can give security to humble masses. Even in matters of selfpreservation no policies pursued for 10 or 15 years at a time. We shall see how the council of prudence and restraint, prime agents of mortal danger and the course adopted from safety and a quiet life would be found to be the bullseye of disaster. We shall see how absolute is the need of a broad path of International Action pursued by many states across the years irrespective of the am and flow of national politics. A great pleasure to have the chance to offer some comments on a terrific book by someone i consider a colleague and a friend. I could go on at some length about the virtues of the book but all you need to get a sense of that is to read glowing reviews that have been written everywhere from the New York Times to the Weekly Standard to get a sense how good it is and that would not be as much fun. In the interest of providing fodder i am going to briefly mention eliot cohens book, where i violently disagree with him, that have to do with the state of us military power where i suspect we violently agree. The first one, this is in the best interest or the best tradition of academic hairsplitting i am going to take issue with three paragraphs i didnt like as opposed to the 225 pages that i did. Elliott knows where i am going. The dragon of grand strategy by pointing out that any sort of intellectual design isnt going to survive very long in the real world and someone who came from teaching class with the words grand strategy in the title let me push back because i think your critique of grand schemes is well taken. And a stepbystep plan, is truly hopeless and dangerous. Most people in favor of grand strategy think it is Something Different and more modest but a very basic set of principles and ideas of priorities that guide how you interact with the chaotic world and how you adapt in the face of unforeseen events. It is a sense of what is most important to me, what are the things that threaten that and in a very general sense how can i apply the good stuff . If you take that as the definition you can find a lot of historical examples of grand strategy from fdr to truman to reagan and beyond and furthermore, grand strategy is i can see it is essential to good Defense Strategy and decisionmaking as you call for in your outline because i think you have to have a grand strategy, some conception how the pieces of Foreign Policy fit together, to know what interests are worth fighting for and which ones arent. Difficult to apportion resources without a Global Integrated conception of what you are trying to achieve. I would say the grand strategy is not the enemy of good military policy or strategy, it is the ally. The second point gets to the area we probably agree, has to do with what you describe very nicely with the american hand. The chapter does a great job laying out the numerous strengths how rumors of our demise have been exaggerated in the past and may be so today but the Counter Point i imagine you would agree is although at a global level the United States has great advantages at a regional level, the picture is getting clear and that is important because the key challenges are not primarily global in scope but regional. China is not challenging us on a global basis yet the real challenge is in east asia. Here and elsewhere the regional balance has become problematic. It is quite doubtful whether nato defended the baltic or parts of eastern europe, a real pro question whether we can defend taiwan today or east asia 10 years from now. There is a crucial distinction we have to keep in mind, thinking of the question how strong is the american hand. We have challengers with global power capability but in the key regions where the rubber hits the road, we are headed for trouble. That brings me, the book addresses very nicely, when i look at these regional balances, that make of the equation, us allies too. Us allies add immensely to the strength the United States can wield. Most are pronounced in relative decline. The relative and absolute military capabilities of most european allies have fallen off a cliff over the past 20 years and that decline is adding tremendously to the difficulties we face in Defense Strategy, making a harder fight, we have to defend taiwan, japan, increasingly overmatched by russia or china. It is undercutting the ability of the allies to contribute meaningfully to expeditionary information in places like the middle east at a time the instability traditionally evokes those as pronounced as ever. We saw in the last 20 years the allies bled and sacrificed from bosnia to kosovo to libya to counter i still but they brought less intervention and it is a coalition strategy, that is a significant problem. It brings me to the fourth point, the book fleshes out nicely the issue of strategic policy. If you put the last issues together what emerges is we are rapidly approaching the point of strategic we and our allies simply cannot do the things we have traditionally done that we pledged to do that we ought to be able to do and the United States does not have an authentic regional war capacity to give one example and this is problematic because we now face another problem, pronounced his ability in all the eurasian letters we care about and if one believes as i do that military backbone, military power is the backbone of the national order, brings up troubling questions where we are headed. We are approaching a very stark choice, something eric and i are working on, we have to pay significantly more to maintain the Defense Strategy and International Orders we have enjoyed or we will become accustomed to doing less and guaranteeing less, we should take the first choice and you could do that without breaking the bank if youre willing to makes it difficult common sense adjustments with respect to entitlement spending and revenue but the gap between commitment and capabilities is too big and that is a fundamental question going forward. This brings me to the final point the book flagged for me and another you agree with which is military power is crucial to american Foreign Policy and the International Order but it isnt enough. Reminded of this every day, you can imagine a scenario in which the United States opens the floodgates on military spending in which we really reinvest but in which we still come out on the other time, less effective than before. In this scenario we have undercut our alliances, pursue trade policies but worked against the international and National Prosperity we enjoyed for 70 years, stopped reassuring countries around the world and started bullying and coercing them, decimated our reputation for steadfastness and reliability. That is not a crazy scenario these days. By all means the imports of carrying a big stick but also the other aspects of american statecraft policy that has traditionally made the nation great. First i want to thank my friends and colleagues, and all of you for being here, this is a book i could only have written with the colleagues i have and students i had and the environment of this remarkable institution which brings together this i think quite unique mix of history, policy and practice. I look at my colleagues up here, distinguished scholars with government experience and i hope that makes the book distinctive, you then do it in a way that is out in the public square. I wrote this book with the intention that it will be read by people who are not students of military affairs and dont normally think about it and very pleased with the New York Times review. Which was by somebody who is an expert on family issues. May be the nicest complement i have ever gotten which is it is organized like a pinto box. I will take that. Finally, part of this tradition is a tradition of civil and spirited disagreement so i will do that too. Before i address the previous remarks i will say one or two things about the writing of the book, for me the most challenging part of this was the chapter called 15 years of war. That in part because i felt obliged to tackle the question of iraq, and policies i myself have been engaged in advocating and in some cases implementing once i went into the government and i have to say that was very tough to do. I am still not sure how well i did it because really looking hard at the things i thought which i no longer think, that is never easy. On the other hand i would also say there is a certain language having been in the thick of it it does make it harder to be a dispassionate server and critic and analysts. One of the great this is it enables you to do that. We have a seat for you over here. Sorry. Let me move from that to talk a bit about how it gets to the core of the book. To some extent our disagreement may be semantic. What you call grand strategy i call policy. My general editorial principle is one word is always better than two. If you werent like graham, problematic. I prefer the word policy but there is a disagreement about how effective policymaking gets done and it is partly because at any time there is enormous uncertainty and you are reacting to eventss and it is a mixture of people and so forth but that is a bigger problem now so that although i quite agree with you you have to have some general principles and general ideas those will only give you limited guide, very limited guidance. The more important thing is how you go about the midst of the fog and struggling with the three of us would agree that one of the difficulties we have is although the american hand is basically very strong, we can really screw it up. As some of you know we have already gotten off to a good start. In a couple weeks, doing that. Particularly in the way you described, that is blowing up our Alliance Relationships. I would have been more optimistic about our Alliance Relationships because as you say and i point out in the book, europeans for example have fallen off a cliff but you have india coming up giving away, japan giving up, smaller kind of partners like vietnam, but all that takes effort. Eric eric edelman is my Master Instructor in diplomacy. I learned from him how it was actually done. Im not joking about that. One of the things i learned is the wisdom of what George Shultz said. This is like gardening. Constantly have to be tending to your allies. This is not natural, not something given in the world. Each of those regional balances is more difficult. I argue in the book the strategic challenges we face are very disparate, very different, different ways of thinking so i think i would have thought this is more precarious situation than in the past. If you asked me a year ago i would say the reason i am writing the book is it will be precarious but if we play the right way and think of it the right way with care we will be able to make it. In the world we are in. We have enjoyed by president ron daniel to recognize them and give him the opportunity to make any remarks. Either from the podium. [inaudible] wonderful to have you. You dont usually get the president of the university at a book launch. I will say something. The model of this university is the truth will make you free. I never thought it was more important than now. The change i will abuse privilege of the chair to make a comment and the first question, we will open it up to questions was the comments pertains to the first full paragraph on page 21 and the comments is interesting. Read the book and see if you agree or disagree. The question is very particular question for an author. You have had the last word. Courtesy of a commercial publisher you have been able to put the book to bed fairly close to the time it appeared. It went through multiple revisions, you must be reasonably satisfied in these pages but there has got to be something, there has to be something that now, on groundhog day, you wish you said or about a wish you had added, didnt meet the word limit. What is it . What is it that if you could do the directors cut, what would you have . What i would have emphasized a lot more, something that increasingly hits me when i talk about the book we are now having the great debate about american Foreign Policy that in some ways was triggered by the end of the cold war or should have been triggered by the end of the cold war. The cold war consensus was a consensus that grew out of world war ii but doesnt solidify until the early cold war that the United States will be a global power, that it will help create global institutions, set of the road, we will be globally deployed with military power to back up our diplomacy, and those burdens have been considerable in terms of loss of life, treasure and so on. The national consensus, on that, throughout the cold war, when the cold war ends, the end of the soviet union, communism, should have been some general reassessment, that did not happen. Why didnt it happen . There are two fundamental reasons. One is you had anomalous periods, the first period, you may call the great picnic, predominance it is amazing to think we did not pay for the first gulf war. Other people paid for it. We ended up with a surplus. That is unheard of. Thank goodness we are very low. And the yugoslav wars, over a decade where predominance was cheap and so why do you discuss it . You had the crisis of 9 11 and everything that follows and the debate that turns in that direction. That is the delayed version of that, even absent trump, you conceded Bernie Sanderss camp, it will come sooner or later, why should that happen . The Second Thought i had about that, i will be writing about this, has to do with the nature of policy, intellectual Community Concerned with foreignpolicy. I will go back to the early days, arnold walters, people really thinking about firstorder questions about International Policy and the role in the world. That is not what most people do. And argues with each other about all kinds of thing and the vast majority of americans couldnt care less about and when you think about it are matters of technique or media immediate, narrow technical concerns as opposed to firstorder questions and it is a problem because you have an elite that is disabled itself from being able to talk in an effective way. By that, business people, journalists, we are not used to doing that. Hands that is what we should be doing. That is the issue to tackle. And to be clear about my views on the ground. You have the opportunity to clarify. Open for questions and i do mean questions. The more concise the better. There is a microphone on its way. Thank you. Regarding speaking of recently elected president , he had apparently a contentious, maybe even illadvised discussion with the Prime Minister of australia. What impact might donald trump have on close and longlasting life over the next four years . A lot of expertise around here. My take would be Something Like this. In the worst case this does serious maybe not irreparable but really serious damage to Alliance Relationships that matter. The australia thing drives you crazy, those who come to australia, come and go an awful lot. These are the closest allies. We fought alongside the more than we fought with the brits. They are culturally just like us. If you got to go to war these are the ones to go to war with an to gratuitously installed the Prime Minister, it is crazy. Now, the question is how australians will react they are different than we think. I dont think that will happen. It is just this particular guy so you move on and say matus will sue them down or Something Like that but in the back of their minds the American People elected this and that is a large part of what i worry about. I echo what you said. Most of our alliances particularly the important ones are deeply institutionalized and very robust, european leaders have dealt with interesting american president s before, there is a degree of resilience, to conduct we have seen over the past week 2 weeks seems to be taking dead aim as was i would consider two fundamental features, not american alliances but American Relations of the world more broadly in the first is the idea the United States is a steady as she goes, reliable, dependable country. We will see a greater degree of volatility in coming years than before. Count on america being utterly predictable. And the second thing, the United States is an exceptional power in the sense that it tends to place a great amount of importance on the good opinion of its allies that it tends to exercise power in a generally benign way. Not necessarily going to have the switch turned overnight but if you have a scenario in which American Allies feel cajoled and bleed and be rated and you start to tear that fabric. I agree with what eliot cohen and hal brands said that a few additional observations, one is in certain quarters there is a disposition to believe what we have seen in terms of relations with mexico. The phone call with Prime Minister turnbull with an edge to it, with angela merkel, that this is a bumpy beginning of the administration in its early days but most president ial transitions are a bit rocky and one might not put much stock in it. In brookings across the street, if you look at what donald trump has been writing and saying about International Affairs since he became a public figure the 80s this is very consistent. He has always been complaining about trade, only the names of the guilty parties have changed. It was japan in the 1980s, mexico in the 90s, now it is china. As far as our allies go they have always been a bunch of freeloading exploiters along the lines he outlined in his inaugural address. What you see is what you get and it wont change. A fundamental view. Second, it is also the case that this view that allies are hearing is not just attributed to the views of this president , it is also a view they heard from this president s predecessor who in his interviews the last several years of his presidency made very clear, that American Airlines are freeloading and getting a free ride from the United States and in many quarters, you will see foreign leaders and foreign governments to wrestle with the notion, is this a passing phenomenon or something more deeply rooted in the United States. The American Public elects these residents. The third observation i would make which goes back to elliotts comment about secretary shorts, when i was George Shultz at special assistant from 1982 through 84, living proof the adage no man is a hero to his valet is wrong. Academic International Relations tends, when it was that alliances, fall generally to the proposition that there is a natural, certainly realist International Relations, a natural propensity in the system for states to balance rather than bandwagon with other states. In my experience in government that is not the case. Most practitioners spend a lot of time worrying about alliances, tender shoots taken care of in the garden all the time and the impact this is going to have notwithstanding how correctly said that these alliances are institutionalized and have deep roots, we might be surprised at how quickly some of these relationships could come unglued. On the isle. On the third row. Coming your way. Thank you. I havent read the book obviously but there is an old saying that to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail. To a man with a powerful military things look different. Looking even at this century, with better decisions have been made perhaps if decisionmakers hadnt thought they had such a big hammer . An interesting question. You could look at some particular decisions, might have different views, might be better if they didnt have the option but the problem is it is never about a single option. If you didnt have a really big military you might not have had piece in the cold war. And one of the points is the troubles you had. The problems you warded off and in East China Sea and the United States military, and we see what it looks like. With Predominant Military power. From my observation of political leaders they were pretty careful, when the time comes to commit substantial American Forces to conflict. There is something in that respect sobering, the office of the president. What advice to manage what china is doing, Land Reclamation, militarization, i case that it is closer to them, something they care about more than we care about, in what ways should we use our military force to affect the outcomes . We have large interests. It goes back to the subject of the book, with International Order we help create in the aftermath of world war ii ii. Whatever we may be about it the order it created. The chinese territorial waters, that order has an important respect on point a. Point be, if they get away with the power they would like to, endangering American Allies, a huge piece of territory, that line, and the world rests on the Alliance System. If they look after their interests, the Alliance System left. One of the things, what we look at in the book is a much more explicit argument how bad things can get if we dont have the International Order which i believe requires american military. It could get very bad. And a bearing on the other, and i dont think that is the case. They are all interconnected. The consequences, they were global. Whether you look at the world through the lens elliott described of the normative order we created after 1945 with the help of other countries and International Institutions or even if you are looking at it from the deck of America First more jobs for americans, our prosperity has rested historically on freedom of access and particularly freedom of the seas which we advocated. What china is doing is chipping away at that principle and it goes to the strength of our allies but something even more fundamental is the underpinning of the system on which the free flow of Global Commerce and International Trade and the prosperity of much of the world depends and it is for that reason that is why we care about this South China Sea or the East China Sea and the challenge you face, with regional balances, some of the rising declining regional powers exerting themselves to more completely dominate their own region have found if they can take certain actions that fall below the threshold that normally elicit a response, through a series of salami slices begin to chip away at the foundations of this order. We are faced with a challenging question. Militarizing Land Reclamation projects start to put airstrips on them. With antiaircraft missiles on the first time do we take them out then . Maybe not. That would seem like a small step the military response put is in a conflict with china. We wait until later on two islands. Is that enough . What about three. With an air defense information zone and you can fly over it, this is the challenge. And what pulling back actually means with the western pacific where the United States has territories, american citizens are represented in the western pacific. It seems that has not been a very realistic geopolitical option, we go to one. Two brief points, we need to rediscover our imagination of the tragic in terms of thinking what a real breakdown of International Order can look like because we are blessed to have this order for the past 70 years. Hard for people today to understand what can happen when does go wrong. The second point, i echo everything about the importance of the South China Sea but i on i add for the Obama Administration the trump administration, it is important to really have a firm idea what you are trying to accomplish the South China Sea and whether you are willing to use the level of coercion necessary to bring that about. I am all for taking a harder line with china. If you take the comments Rex Tillerson made the denying china access the unofficial island it builds, what is the level of coercion necessary to bring that about and are you willing to sign off that . If the answer is yes okay, as long as you understand the consequences of that, if the answer is no that is a dumb thing to say because it makes you look weak and foolish. One last question. I agree with the panels consensus about trumps danger to alliances. But to play devils advocate and apologies to satan for the comparison, trumps bluster, ameliorative shot short of military capacity, attribute more to and power and resources to collective defense. No argument you can make to that effect. And i suppose if i thought this was part of a shrewd, subtle strategy as opposed to poor impulse control, i could understand it is pretty risky. That is not what is going on. There is poor impulse control. You are dealing with someone taking everything very personally, who doesnt moderate or modulate his language, so youre doing something a little risky to begin with and doing it with outofcontrol kind of guy. We have not been able, we tried. Secretary gates would be out there slogging the europeans, it really didnt work. What scares me is if people begin to think it is not reliable and theres a serious chance americans would not be reliable, and the good old days, lets cut another deal. You are likely to get the second rather than the former and the number of allies are doing things, the australians, japanese, even in europe Defense Budgets are gradually going up, this is the way to get it, i dont think. There is an argument to be made that trump put his finger on real problems with respect to sharing and things like that but to assault them in the way you propose trump not to be trump, that is not a reason. I also say when the United States has had success getting allies to do more to spend more on defense in the past, it is the context in which we are doing more as well providing reassurance if you stick your neck out, visavis the soviets or another challenger we have your back. If you look at nato spending in the 50s and 80s this is the context in which it happens. The that trump seems to be making is if the United States does less, allies would have to do more and that one may not pay off. I would argue historically it almost never worked as a strategy. If you have allies, it means one of the tasks you set for yourself is alliance management. As we said earlier it requires a lot of time and attention of senior officials particularly the secretary of state and defense and there is no doubt we can get more out of our allies for all the reasons eliot cohen was talking about earlier. They have gotten the message. Reagan National Defense for in early december for the first time, that event invited a couple of foreign dignitaries to join. Michael fallon, secretary of state, and the defense mister of norway and both of them basically said okay, we heard president obama and president elect trump loud and clear and we have to step up our game and we will do that but please, we can only do that if we have american leadership. There is no substitute in the alliance, that is an important part of the equation. We get more out of our allies. We have two caveats to this is not everything we get out of our allies is necessarily a literary contribution, and giving us access, with positional advantage and could not operate in asia without allies in japan. And with legitimacy around the world we operate together with european allies. Those are not necessarily tangible with allies, added to the United States nonetheless and we have to recall what hal brands talked about that it is universally true, there might be one or two cases, there might be an exception to this but most traditional allies are facing a less good hand then the one elliott describes for the United States with economics etc. We can ask them to do more but we have to have more realistic expectations what they can to and understand limits part of what is the art is Better Division of labor, who contributes to the common defense and in the United States including my former colleagues have to get a lot more directive with allies about spending their pound and euros and yen on then we have traditionally been passed but i dont think you can be directive in a way that says do what i tell you or you are fired as an ally. It has got to be done in a way more the coops are allies into common agreement on the way forward. There are more questions and the answers to some of them in these pages is what we are going to do in a minute is proceed elliott will be sticking around to find them but before we do that, there is the important matter of thinking our panel, eliot cohen, hal brands and eric edelman. [applause] [inaudible conversations] you are watching booktv on cspan2. Top Nonfiction Book started every weekend. Booktv, television for serious readers. This weekend on booktv on cspan2, 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books for you. On afterwards the parents of Trayvon Martin remember their sons life. This weekend marks the fifth anniversary of his death. Also this weekend David Horowitz ways on on what should be president trumps top priorities. Harvard history professor David Armitage provides a history of civil wars around the world plus university of delaware history professor Erica Armstrong dunbar on the life of an escaped slave once owned by george and martha washington. Historians Luca Mayville and Richard Allen myers and recall john adamss fears of the political influence of the wealthy