Columnist for the washington post. Also the cohost of the post global. That is an online discussion of Foreign Policy. You, if youend to want a good understanding of the middle east, read davids novels. You can read about the subtle and byzantine trends going on in the middle east. David will introduce the other panelists, thank you. David thank you to all of you for coming back from the coffee break. We are glad to see you. Ofs is a kind of conspiracy old friends. Todd and i go back to college. Evan and i do as well. We were part of the harvard crimson. In addition to being an outstanding journalist for time and newsweek. His most recent book called being that send. Being nix on. Is absolutely extraordinary. Discuss a historian of the cold war. Thinking about the issues that underlie the reading list would begin with the book that evan and water isaacs wrote called Walter Isaacs wrote called discussion more about those issues for our interaction. I have known each other since 2003. We met in the most unlikely place. It was iraq. Representative of the u. S. Led Coalition Provisional administration. Whatever it was called. I never forget aemmas clarity. She explained just how complicated and messy edgar cook was in terms of the ethnic divisions. Isple have said that emma the modern bell. I think it is apt. She wrote a brilliant book about unraveling. The one of the things that s work isshes emma that she is fair to what the idea and ambition was. Talkingmerciless in about the failures. I commend that book. Just a word of introduction about our subject. This has been a day in which we have had a beautiful commemoration of how america got into world war i. Magnificent and rousing and that many moments patriotic. From theave the music if he canang akim fight, he can love. Good night germany. And the Beautiful Museum that is the host of our event. Curated a museum as i have seen in a long time. Thanks to the people who did that. And for all of us, thinking about world war i is also hunting. Hunting in the question of how it started. A chain of accidents, uncertainties, promises. Ambitions that led to the beginning of the war in 1914. The subject of our panel which a the inability to build stable, new order. A stable peace after the end of world war i after all of that suffering. You can walk into any church, and the village and go into any town square and you see the list of names. It goes on forever. You realize how that water just slashed a wound across europe. It is still visible. The inability after all of that suffering to create a stable stableecades later decades later, europe was at war again. We should think about the world that beside the side treatey created. It was a peace to end all peace. Constructed in a way that turmoil and conflict was almost inevitable. Sawe was a week where we the nightmare of the syrian war. It takes us back to images of world war i and world war ii. A country where half the population is displaced. Chemical weapons featured in world war i were being used. We look at what happens in iscle and think how on earth this war against iraq and isis going to create some sort of stability. We think about the meeting today, where the new rising power the country that seeks president xiworld, jinping those issues form the context in which we will talk with a Reference Point to the end of world war i about this issue of how you create a stable order. A stable structure in which nations and ethnic groups can emma to start off. About theiscussion agreement between britain and france to carve up the ottoman world, anticipating its collapse after the end of the war. Emma, it has become a truism to the sykespicot agreement world is over. Something toll be do like to talk about the cluster of issues. It is hugely complex and always difficult to know where to start. Are they new problems that materialized . When the First World War was going on, they made a series of contradictory promises. Richard wanted the support of the arabs to fight against the ottomans. They had this correspondence going on. Britain basically said that the need to fight against the ottomans and keep the ottomans and the turks down in the middle east. If they do that, the brits will give them a arab kingdom afterwards. That was the first pledge. Committed to a jewish homeland in the holy land. Part of this was to get jewish support and also as a buffer. Then there was the sykespicot agreement. Britain and france agreed to split the region. They were interested in the coastal areas. Britain through to india. Happening before the versailles treaty. When versailles happened, britain and france were there. The empires were there. Delegations they were at the disadvantage because there was no agreement about what sort of future they wanted. Some delegations wanted their own nationstates. Like the ones from egypt for instance. They wanted egypt as a nationstate. There were others up. Turned they demanded that there should be a broad arab world as promised by the brits. They had a different different objectives. Said thatal powers they were not ready for independence. They needed tutoring and britain and france would have tutoring in this process. Espicot, is used to embody colonial deception. If you look at the border today, between these countries, it is not that line. The borders were set later on. People like to say that they were drawn by colonial powers, just straight lines. These borders were based on ottoman administered lines. They didnt come out of nowhere. They have proved remarkably resilient. Tore has never been a move unite syria and iraq. On the whole, the borders have proved resilient, right up until the emergence of isis when we saw a couple of years ago, isis announced that it had erased the border between iraq and syria. We will come back to these issues. Especially to the stability of the borders and the future of the nationalities. I want to ask evan to offer some starting comments. Book, the wise men is the Foundation Stone for a lot of people as they look at how the postworld war ii order was created. If you can talk about that order or the post world war i order. What was right in one and not so right in the other. Evan it is wonderful to be here. After world war ii, americans wanted to go home. That was a terrible war, they wanted to go home. Most americans wanted to go to the movies and drink coke, that is what they wanted to do. A small group realized that was not possible. Britain, the pots for konica falling andca was the United States could not go home again. In a crisis in 1947, inherited the british mental. In a small group, we called them wisemen, they had done business over there and encouraged the United States to become involved in the war. Through some striking recruitments achievements in retrospect. The United States helped to rebuild europe. An extraordinary, generous, actually self interested act to rebuild europe with american dollars to create a strong, democratic europe and to create a system of alliances. The western alliance to contain the spread of soviet coming as a. Communism. Open borders, trading with each other, global ande and military alliances military dependency to check our enemies. T system which these men their names were obscure than, dean at to send, dean atchison. Not so obscure. Not exactly household names in their time. They helped to imbue president truman and the secretary of state marshall to take this role. This role has been pretty hardy. This system of alliances, this world order of free trade and the spread of democracy has worked pretty well since 1945 to keep the larger piece. There have been big mistakes. Vietnam, a tragic mistake. Lots of falling outs. We forget that france dropped out of nato or tried to in the 1960s. Lots of turmoil, little mistakes, but the larger order persisted for the past halfcentury and more. Risk. Rder is now at we have a president of the United States who pretty openly said that it was too expensive, i dont like this freetrade. Our allies are not spending enough on their own defense. In some of his tweets and s tatemetnnts, sounds like an isolationist. The orders that these men created is not in question now in question. One of the things that the 1918 peacemaking wilsonian vision that should come after that they focused on was the for of selfdetermination peoples who had self suffered through the war. That was the great, unredeemed promise of that. Period. I am always reminded of that time when i visit my friends in kurdistan. The kurds feel that they have been principal victims during the 20th century and promises that were made and not kept. If they heard you say that these lines that were drawn, these borders that were remarkably durable the kurds would say that they have kurdished our nationality. Im sure you have read the articles by various members of the barzani family. Or all of those years what do you think of the idea of , even kurdish ambitions more now in 2017 as a test case, what you think about that . Should the kurds have their own selfdetermined, and homeland . David emma the middle east has always been multiroom multiethnic, multilingual. Versaille believed they were promised a homeland. They feel a grievance. For almost a hundred years, they have been the devils by not having agreement on where their borders should be. There are different kurdish movements. The kurds that you are talking about, they are the ones of northern iraq. Is Kurdish National movement in opposition to turkish nationalism. They triggered each other. The Kurdish National movement nationalist movement, has grown in strength. Particularly after the implication of the nofly zone in 1991 after saddam had invaded kuwait. To protectose up that area. In that area, the kurds have developed they are autonomous. They have their they developed the institution of statehood up there. Almost pursued their own Foreign Policy. They have their own flag. They have all the symbols of independence. They also have their own problems, when they have that safe haven given to them, within two or three years, they were having their own internal civil war. Those power struggles have gotten more complex. The taliban is versus the p u. K. Now we have the pkk also in that area. We have a lot of internal kurdish competition that spills over. They would say that whatever the internal problems of iraqi kurdistan, they want their own country. The conglomeration that i rock that uses iraq that uses kur sh pieces together has outlived its viability. We should accept that we are in sites picot world today today. Spico world emma it is difficult because where would the border between the kurds and the rest of iraq . They have other territories that are disputed. Baghdad is not willing to say take them and go. There. E a border issue iran doesnt want to see the independent of iraqi kurdistan. Turkey has enough struggles with its kurds. The kurds inside turkey have been calling for equal rights, not for independence. And you have the kurds inside syria. How do you negotiate with where that border will be . Negotiate the effect inside turkey and syria. You start to see the breakdown of those states. David we will take that as a caution. Be careful about premature declaration that iraq should or has come undone. The structure is in the interest of countries in the region and also in the u. S. Interest. I want to come back to your point about stability and farsightedness of the post order. What was missing in 1918 and after . Was the problem that america came home after that war and didnt stay engaged . But the problem that wilson wasnt tough enough to force the kind of changes he wanted . I think they were looking back at what went wrong in 1918. What went wrong in versailles. In the what they saw Foreign Policy was this. They look back at wilson as being too idealistic, too dreamy about what you can achieve. Why cant we all agree and do the right thing . Too idealistic. The european powers were being too cynical, interest driven, looking after their own economic interests and not idealistic enough. Sincean foreignpolicy 1945 has been an attempt at balancing idealism and realism and i think they were informed xcess ofccess an e it fizzling and networking. It not working. Too much dreaminess. We give up,icism, lets go home. What they do instead is lets try to balance these two. Lets try to be idealistic and spread democracy and individual freedom and western values and ideas that are good for the world. They are economically useful for trade. Boats will rise if we have this. That is idealistic but also practical. They were trying to be realistic about what worked and what didnt. Always making fun he didnt believe in the u. N. At all. Security inlieve in that sense. He didnt think the human beings who run these countries were able of maintaining their ideals. He thought they were more cynical and hardheaded and that than that. When we think of Henry Kissinger and the balance of power they tried to have a balance of realism and idealism and it worked for the well. Pretty well. Not perfectly but pretty well for a long time. One other element i would add to this is humility. Cropper iscame a where we were arrogant. When this balance got out of whack was when we thought we knew best because from a realist point of view, like nixon or kissinger, we could a dreamyur way or like aspect, will just go in there and they will want to be like us. In the realism or idealism camp, that didnt work. When we were more realistic and humble, things went better for us. I think that is a lesson going forward. I think for people in our , this vision of fusion and idealism, the truman a strong, benign america creating the liberal International Order, the air that we breathe was hardwired for our generation. Clearly not for people throughout our country. In light of how the questions i would ask you both to take a more skeptical look at this. The, you lived through q,tempt to create a modern ira coming on the heels of a regime that i felt was governed by torture. Saddam husseins iraq was governed by raw, physical intimidation. It is important to remember how horrible it was. Experiment as that unraveled. Theitle of your book is unraveling. Could you give us some snapshots that check or inform this marvelous vision of what our post1945 ideas of Coalition Power how that came undone as you watched it in 2003. Go into iraq out of idealism, we went out of fear, anger, revenge. We went on intelligence that saddam had wmd. It is important to put that in. That is not how it started. In 2003, there is no agreement on what should be done after saddam had been gotten rid of. We could have handed it to the United Nations but they were not in support of this war. We could have handed over to iraqis. The direct decision was in japan and germany. Taken verysions early on in the occupation were devastating. Basically, the decisions to dissolve the civil service, to dismiss even the security institutions led to the collapse of the state. I dont think any countries could have survived those policies being implemented. The nature of the peace settlement we put in place wasnt inclusive. That is a big learning from that side. The lack of an inclusive peace agreement. He million should, what that leads to. Humiliation, what that leads to. It really privileged those who privileged exile and the infamous. Hade who had been in exile been on the wrong side of the iraq war. Those who remained in iraq all along really felt excluded. ,ith the collapse of the state these put new people put in charge, it led to chaos and people forming gangs. The borders were open and jihadis could come through. Then you look at the. Period two 2009 the to 2009. You could tell by the way they had been killed, iraqis had stopped eating fish because they said it had changed flavor because of all the corpses. Americanou see idealism at its best because everybody thought the country was lost. There was a surge to send extra courses in. Made his decision against the advice of his advisers. It had a huge psychological affect. It was really hard, not hopeless, we can come back. This new energy and believe, this extraordinary leadership, the right resources have been applied and the strategy. In those two years, the violence went way down. Extraordinary,s no other country could have pulled that off. The brakes had analyzed the situation and they said iraq lost. Had analyzed the situation and said iraq lost. America said we can turn this around. In this extraordinary. , we lost a thousand soldiers in this extraordinary period, we lost a thousand soldiers. I dig it shows what america can do, it shows the potential. David m a was one of the people emma was one of the people, the architect that became the commander of all u. S. Forces. Quickly, the question that i am left with when you say this one of the pieces of conventional wisdom that is shared by everybody from donald trump the whole political spectrum is that iraq was a catastrophic mistake. I want to ask the what if. What if better decisions had been made right at the outset in not irans best friends, but the country. What if we pulled back and began to get out in 2011 . What if we build on the surge . And alternative history where this doesnt look like the biggest mistake of modern times what a Successful Use of American Power . Emma i think we came close to it at the end of the surge. Believed that the country was headed in the right direction. They had a great election in 2010. The turnout was high. People boycotted elections before and they turned out to vote. There was this new block that came together that campaigned on iraq the sense that that was the National State of iraq, not a terror country but a country of all its people. It was a very closely contended election. To cut a very long story short, the party that won the most votes the most seats in the election was not given time to have control in the government. It led them to a breakdown in the politics. American lost america lost its influence. Iran stepped in, brokered the government. The Prime Minister who had lost the election was kept in power and swung over to the iranian side and took revenge on his rivals. He accused them of terrorism, they had to flee the country. He went after the leaders of the awakening. , jailed them,em force them out of the country. Forced them out of the country. After this, you see the protests that were violently crushed. Roderoad out of this willf this and said we protect we were looking at isis and they looked at maliki and they decided that isis was the lesser of two evils and explained how isis managed to sweep across a third of iraq. The government of iraq had been formed would have been in a better way. Iraq would have set a model for other countries in the region and you wouldnt have isis rising up so the situation of. Yria could be very different what we are seeing in the middle east, it is not an issue of borders. It is an issue of contested politics, failed politics and broken government. The crisis of political authority, crisis of government. Argues this systematically in her book. I urge anybody watching to read unraveling. You to be a little contrarian. I was talking about your book the wisemen. I was talking about it with a mutual friend of ours, bob. Skeptical about the intervention of American Power. Conservative, a limited government. I said you should write a book about the world we were living unwisemen. It the let me ask you to look at the subject you introduce which is hubris. The hubristic side of our policy. You know more about the cia generation of covert action practitioners. Anyone you want. What about unwise men and women . Evan we will speak to the larger group. Why . If ever there was an evil seed and policy, it is pride. The human error of pride there is a reason why it is one of the greatest sins and the bible. It is the reason that the greeks wrote about hubris. It is the reason why the romans cautioned their leaders against pride. We make mistake after mistake after mistake and it leads to us being prideful. Obviously, it is not that simple. Of course, leaders have to be proud. It is how they become leaders. Need ad ego and you certain arrogance and a sense of grandiosity to be able to run things. As emmaso an example. We thought we were done in 2006. I would argue that george w. Bushs pride led him to do that search. Them . Er they were saying we are done, we are finished here, lets get out. To be colloquial at this, it takes off it just off it pissed off president bush to have his advisers tell his father that he lost. He said im going to double down here and surge. It worked for a couple of years until they screwed it up. To argue against myself, that is the moment where pride was useful. It is obviously a complicated equation. More often than not, pride gets you into trouble. You need to have selfconfidence. The person became closest was dwight eisenhower. He was enormously egotistical. He was a very proud guy. He learned how to control it and discuss it. His cultural norms were do not boast, do not show off. He let other people take the credit in world war ii. Dealing with stalin, churchill, they are pretty prideful people. He had a way of laying low. He did this again and again and again. As president of the United States, he posed as a genial, goofy, adamant president. That is not what he was at all. Behind the scenes, he was pulling all the strings but letting other people play the heavy, be the hawk. Eisenhower had this ability, he did not have to be the smartest guy in the room. He was so confident that he could be humble. That made him a very effective leader. Again, to give a plug, to amazon sales, we are close to our endpoint. I would love to go on for another hour or so. One more question for both of you. Event ofwn from the importance today taking place at a certain palm beach resort. That is the meeting of President Trump and xi jinping. What i would ask you to do is talk about what you think, each of you, a wise policy would be for the United States toward china. A very aggressive, increasingly belligerent china in the South China Sea and elsewhere. What wisecy policy in light of what we have been discussing . If you could slip a memo to jared kushner, what would it say . It would say that despite the arrogance and hubris and worldes, the u. S. Led order has maintained stability in the world for 70 years. That is a long time. It is a really long time. Yes, we seem to be at a crossroads. It seems to be the end of the postcold war era. We have to think very carefully about what this means. It is easy to criticize the mistakes made. A World Without america positive engagement is a more dangerous world. Engagement is a dangerous world. The vacuum gets filled with powers that are not the same as our own. With interests that are not the same as our own. Look what russia is doing, look at what iran is doing. America doesnt need to go to war with china. Uphold an how to International Order based on laws, how to help balance, how to help show allies who are scared of the rise of china that america is still a player in the world and still prepared to help the balance of the powers. David what is in your memo to gary Kushner Jared kushner, evan . Evan let me put more of an edge on it. Are a lot of people who think what is really happening is the beginning of a chinese order. Trumpst because of donald but because of the national exhaustion, skepticism, put in your word for that. The. Of american retreat is much more in thel and profound past election. Do you think that is true . You think it could be averted russian mark d think the future space chinese to matter what we do . Do you think it could be averted . Do you think the future of the chinese . China, south korea, these ancient rivals, all facing each other with Nuclear Weapons and aggressive tendencies would be horrific for the world. Our great trading partners, europe and japan, that is a lot of our economy. It is to be practical about it. If they go to war with each other, that is not good for the world and that is not good for us. Trump needs to say that we are not going home. Said, ignore what i said during the election, ignore all of that, the chinese will appreciate that, they are pragmatists, they will have a laugh over that. He should say to president xi i just did that to get elected. I dont want to get into a trade war with you but we are going to do a few things that get your attention. We need you on north korea, we really need you there. We will give up a little bit to get you to do something about north korea. To be nixonian if you will. Pragmatic, not for training, not disengaging, we are here to stay. We are working out the modalities of how we stay. The reason that journalists love anniversaries us a is because it gives peg as we say. Want onang whatever we it. It offers an occasion to really think. We can look at contemporary problems in light of what happened in the past. Both of my panelists and i are really happy to be here with todd. Worked soo hard hard to organize this event. The 100 anniversary of our involvement in world war i. We can learn from it. Thank you also very much. Thank you all very much. [applause] you are watching American History tv. To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history. Chairman proposed reversing the obama administrations actions on the internet. I shared with my fellow commissioners a proposal to reverse the mistake of title ii and return to the light touch Regulatory Framework that served our nation so well during the clinton administration, Bush Administration and the first six years of the obama administration. Eisenbachsk jeffrey at the American Enterprise titute and chris lois ut their thoughts about the proposal. We thought the rules we got in 2015 are widely popular. Weaving Net Neutrality rules are working. We are concerned he is going to have to review and repeal some of those rules. From the internets infection to the data rules were passed, there was not a problem. As the chairman said, there was no dystopian controlled internet with isps or anybody else interfering with peoples ability to post content or use applications or look at content of their choice. Watch monday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan2. Restoration at Thomas Jeffersons monticello is uncovering the story of Sally Hemings and other slaves who lived, worked, and died at the third president s plantation. Next on American History tvs american artifacts, a behindthescenes look at the restoration work. And we hear some of the stories