To thank you for joining us this afternoon. I will introduce david and he will introduce the other panelists. Im not afraid to say i consider columnistseminent affairs in the country. Also, i commend if you want to get a understanding of the middle east, read the novels. They are very understanding of the subtle and byzantine trends. Oing on in the middle east david will go ahead and. Ntroduce the other panelists thank you all for coming back after your coffee break. This is kind of the conspiracy of old friends. College orgo back to we begin as journalists together at the hartford crimson in addition to being outstanding journalists with time and newsweek. It is annow inside theort to get extraordinary difficult personality and evan is going to the coldn historian of issuesnking about the the book being nix on. Is absolutely extraordinary. Evan will discuss a historian of the cold war. Thinking about the issues that underlie the reading list would begin i will save more discussion about those issues for our interaction. Emma and i have known each other since 2003. We met in the most unlikely place. It was iraq. Emma was the representative of the u. S. Led Coalition Provisional administration. Whatever it was called. I never forget emmas clarity. As we arrived, i was traveling and senior officials explaining just how complicated and messy edgar cook was in terms of the ethnic divisions. People have said that emma is the modern bell. I think it is apt. She wrote a brilliant book about iraq called the unraveling. One of the things that distinguishes emmas work is that she is fair to what the idea and ambition was. She was merciless in talking 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. It was magnificent and rousing and that many moments patriotic. I still have the music from the woman who sang if he can fight, he can love. Good night germany. And the Beautiful Museum that is the host of our event. It is as nicely curated a museum as i have seen in a long time. Thanks to the people who did that. I think for me 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. Hopes and ambitions that led to the beginning of the war in 1914. The subject of our panel which is the inability to build a 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 order to decades later stable order two decades later, europe was at war again. We should think about the world created. Illes treaty it was a peace to end all peace. Constructed in a way that turmoil and conflict was almost inevitable. There was a week where we saw 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 muscle and think how on earth is 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 to order the world, president xi jinping meeting with President Trump. 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 live. We will ask emma to start off. Before aboutlked the 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 say that the sykespicot world is over. Maybe this will be something to do like to talk about the cluster of issues. Emma it is hugely complex and always difficult to know where to start. We look at the problems today and think to date back a century, or 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 arabs 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. Then the brits 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. All of this was happening before the versailles treaty. When versailles happened, britain and france were there. The empires were there. The allegation 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 some turned up. They demanded that there should be a broad arab world as promised by the brits. They had a different different objectives. The colonial powers had their own interests. The colonial powers said that they were not ready for independence. They needed tutoring and britain and france would have tutoring in this process. The term sykespicot, 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. These borders people like to say that they were drawn by colonial powers, just straight lines. These borders, for the most part, were based on ottoman administered lines. They didnt come out of nowhere. They have proved remarkably resilient. There has never been a movement to unite syria and iraq. There has been a movement to get lebanon back together because the same. Hought as 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. I said, your 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. Maybe you could talk about that 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 pox brittanica was falling and the United States could not go home again. We, in a crisis in 1947, inherited the british mental. In a small group, we called them the wiseman, 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 communism. This formally formula of free trade, open borders, trading with each other, global trade and military alliances and military dependency to check our enemies. That system which these men their names were obscure than, dean atchison, it bob lovett. Not so obscure. Itevan 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. That order is now at risk. 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 statements, sounds like an isolationist. The orders that these men created is now in question. One of the things that the 1918 peacemaking wilsonian about the world that should come after focused on was the idea of selfdetermination for peoples who had suffered through the war. That was ardently 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. They would say if they heard you say that these lines that were drawn, these borders that were remarkably durable the kurds would say that they have suppressed our kurdish nationality. Is time for that to and. Im sure you have read the articles by various members of the barzani family. That you had to negotiate with for all of those years. What do you think of the idea of taking kurdish ambitions, even more now in 2017 as a test case, what do you think about that . Should the kurds have their own selfdetermined homeland . Is that too dangerous for the region . Is that your answer . Emma the middle east has always multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual. The kurds of versaille believed they were promised a homeland. Implemented. R they feel a grievance. Kurds has years, the also been have also been be devil be doubled by not having agreement on where their borders should be. Has grown in strength, particularly after the imposition of the no fly zone. The kurds rose up and the u. S. Moved to protect that area. Area, the kurds developed autonomous, the institutions of state, they have their own security forces, the almostga, and they assume their own Foreign Policy. They have their own flag and symbols of independence. But, they also have their own problems. Within two or three years, they were having a kurdish civil war, so they have power struggles going on in their region which got more and more complex. Pkk playing out from that area and a lot of internal kurdish competition which spills over. They would say whatever the internal problems of Iraqi Kurdistan, they want their own a conglomeration that is iraq infuses sunni, shia and kurdish thesis together. It has outlived its viability. The world should accept that it is over. Is good policy . Whats the right ring for people to think in policy terms . Wheres difficult because would the border be between the kurds and the rest of iraq . Since isis appeared on the scene, they have extended their border and annexed cure cook and other territories that were disputed. Baghdad is not willing to say take them and go. See thes not want to independence of Iraqi Kurdistan because its worried that its own kurds will want independence. Turkey has enough struggles with its kurds and they have been calling for equal rights for democratic turkey, not for independence. Then, you have the kurds inside syria. If iraqienge is kurdistan gets independence, how do you negative where that border will be an negotiate the knock on effects inside syria so you start to see the breakdown of those states. Im going to take that as a caution and not a premature declaration. Maintaining structure is any. Nterest i want to come back to the stability, the far sidedness of the post1945 order and ask what was missing in 1918 and after . Was the problem that america came home after that war and did not stay engaged . Was the problem that wilson was not tough enough to force the kinds of changes he wanted . What was missing . Looking at this through the eyes of the people who oppose the first the postworld war ii order, they were looking at what went wrong in 1918 and what went wrong in versailles. Wilson asback at being too idealistic, too dreamy about what he could achieve. Too much why couldnt we just all agree and do the right thing and make the world safe for democracy . On the other hand, they are being too interest driven, looking at their own economic interest and not idealistic enough. American foreignpolicy since 1945 has in an attempt at balancing idealism and realism. I think they were informed very d an excess of realism notism working and combined with america throwing up its hands and going home, too much dreaming this, too much cynicism, we give up, lets go home. That doesnt work. In stead of lets try to balance these things, lets try to be idealistic and lets try to spread democracy and individual freedom and western values and ideas that we care about. Its good for the world, but all boats will rise, not just the american boat, but all boats will rise if we have this global world order. Its idealistic, but its also practical to try to be realistic about what works and what doesnt. Alwayschez and was making fun of us. He did not believe in the u. N. At all. He didnt believe you can have a global government. He didnt think human beings who run these companies were capable of that. He was willing to be somewhat realistic. Kissinger and balanced power politics. Have, this group, tried to have a balance of realism and idealism and it worked pretty well, not perfectly, but pretty well for a long time. The other element i would add to this is humility. It became proper is where we were arrogant and when this balance got out of whack. We thought we knew best either because from a realist point of view, like nixon and kissinger manipulating the world, we could manipulate it our way or the dreamy aspect of we will just go in there and they want to be like americans because we are great and of course they will want to be like us. Either in thes, realism camp were idealism camp, that did not work. We were more realistic and humble, it seems to me things went better for us and thats a lesson going forward. I think the people in our vision of theis fusion of idealism and realism embodied in the Marshall Plan and truman doctrine, the idea of a strong benign america creating liberal, International Order, that was the air that we breathe. It was just hardwired for our generation. Not for people throughout our country who are now pretty skeptical about. Of the questions i think a lot of people have, i take a moreyou to skeptical look at this. Live through the attempt to iraq coming on the heels of a regime that literally i felt was governed by torture. Saddam husseins iraq was governed by raw physical intimidation. Its hard to remember just how horrible it was. That experiment unravel. The title of your book is the unraveling. Maybe you could give a huge snapshot and maybe check or inform this marvelous addition interventionalists idea of an American Coalition of power, how that came undone as you watched it in 2003 and after. Into iraq outgo of idealism. We went out of anger, fear, revenge, we went on false intelligence that saddam had of you m. D. So it is important to put that in mind that this is not a humanitarian intervention. Thats not how it started. In 2003, there was no agreement on what should be done after saddam had been gotten rid of. The United Nations was not in support of this war. Which iraqis could have ruled . The decision was to do direct rule in japan and germany, but policy decisions taken very early on in the occupation were devastating. Toically, the decisions dissolve the civil service, to dismiss the security institutions led to the collapse of the state. I dont think any country in the world could have survived those policies being implemented. The peace settlement we put in place was not inclusive and that is one of the big learnings from both sides. The lack of an inclusive peace agreement, that humiliation and what it leads to. A peace settlement we put in place in 2003 which was in the form of a governing council that we established really privileged those who had been in exile. Those who have been in exile and those who have then islamists have been on both sides of the iraniraq war. The city the sunni mainstream felt exclusion us. It very quickly created chaos. Borders were open and the jihadis could come through. At the end of 2006, iraq looked at the edge of the precipice. Tell they were sunni or shia just by the way they had been killed. Iraqi stopped eating fish in the river because it had changed labor from living off so many of the corpses. You really see american idealism at its best because everyone thought the country was lost and the decision president bush took against the advice of his advisers had a huge psychological effect because the sense of we are not lost, it may be hard but it is not hopeless. We can come back and this new of extraordinary leadership, the right sources being applied and the strategy, in those two years, the violence would way, way down and for me, that was extraordinary because no other country could have pulled that off. The brits analyze a situation and said iraq is lost, lets that our resource in afghanistan because theres more hope there. The americans had a sense of we cant leave it like this. We have to turn it around. We lost a thousand soldiers during that year, a great sacrifice, but what they achieved was extraordinary and anyone who lived through that, it shows what america can do and shows the potential. I should note for those in the audience, was one of the people who was an architect of this and advise the Corps Commander who later became the andander of all u. S. Forces speaks about this with authority. Question i amthe , onewith when you say this of the pieces of conventional wisdom shared by everyone from donald trump to the whole political spectrum is that iraq was a catastrophic mistake. So i want to ask you the what if. What if better decisions had been made at the outset about drawing in not a rons best friends but the people of the country. Backif rather than pull and begin to get out in 2010 and 2011, we built on the surgeon had been persistent. There an alternative history in which this doesnt look like the biggest mistake weve made in modern times but looks like the Successful Use of American Power . Close tok we came very it by the end of the surge. We had actually got there because iraqis believe the country was now be on the civil war and headed the right direction and in 2010, the turnout for the election was really high. Andle turned out to vote there was a new block that came together that campaigned on iraq for all iraqis, so the sense that thats the natural state, not a sectarian country, but a country that is a country of all its people and it was a closely contended election and to cut a very long story short, the party that won the most votes, the most seats in the election was not given the opportunity to try on the government and this led to a real breakdown in politics. America was seen to have lost its influence. Durand sensed a big opportunity in step in, brokered the government. The Prime Minister who had actually lost the election was kept in power, swung over to the iranian side and then took revenge on his rivals. The sunni politicians had to flee the country. He went after the leaders of the Sunni Awakening who had fought against al qaeda. He arrested them, jailed them and force them out of the country and arrested sunnis en masse. Out of this, you saw these protests which were violently crushed and the Islamic State of iraq rose up out of the ashes at of al qaeda in iraq and basically said we will protect the sunnis from the sectarian regime of nuri almaliki. Sunnis weres looking at isis and looking at malady and decided isis was the lesser of two evils and explains how isis managed to sweep in across a third iraq. If the government in iraq had been formed in a better way and if america had actually brokered the formation of the government, for would have set a model other countries in their region and you would not have isis rising up and the situation in syria could have been very different than it is today because what we see in the middle east is not really an issue of borders. Its much more an issue of contested politics, failed a la tics and broken governance. A crisis of local authority and crisis of governance. , argues this systematically in her book and i urge people to read the book, the people who are watching this because she makes the case that she just made orally, systematically in the book. Asking you to be a little contrary and, i was talking legacyour book and this of American Leadership in Foreign Policy with a mutual friend of ours who has written wonderful histories and wrote a history of james k polk and who is deeply skeptical about the intervention of the ethos of American Power. Conservative and very much a limited government. I said you ought to write a book about this world we have then living in and you ought to call it the unwise men. You to lookme ask at the subject you introduce, which is hubris and that side of our policy, you know more about covert generation of action practitioners from that perspective. What about the unwise men . An evil seehere was , theres and life reason why it is the greatest of sins in the bible. The romans who are the most prideful of all cautioned against right. We make mistake after mistake when we are too prideful. Its obviously not that simple because leaders have to be proud. It is how they get to become leaders. You need ego and a certain sense of grandiosity to be a leader and to run things. Easy to go back to,s example. We thought we were done and the country was finished, but really, i would argue george w. Bushs pride led him to do the surge. All the, James A Baker and foreignpolicy establishment wes were basically saying are done, we are finished, lets get out. To be colloquial about it, it pissed off it president bushs advisors to say they lost and he said im going to double down and surge and he was going against the wisemen foreignthe council on relations view and it worked for a couple of years until they screwed it up later. Thatse against myself, moment of pride where it is useful. Say pride than not, i gets you into trouble. Though one person who i thought balance this perfectly or came as close as possible is dwight eisenhower. To conquer europe without being proud. Andearned how to control it his cultural norms were do not boast, do not show off. He let other people take the credit. And churchh stalin hill, some pretty prideful people and he had a clever way of laying low and letting himself he underestimated and did this again and again as president of the United States. He opposed as this genial, do president. Laying we learned from the historical record he was behind the scenes pull the record but he was letting people behind the scenes play the heavy and be the hock. Eisenhower had this ability he did not have to be the smartest guy in the room. Hewas so confident that could be humble and that made him a very effective leader. To give a plug and push amazon sales, the name of the we are close to our endpoint and i want to ask one more question. I would love to go on for another hour or so but one more question to both of you that is drawn from the event of importance today taking place at a certain palm beach resort and thats the meeting of President Trump and the chinese president. What i would ask you to do is ,alk about what each of you what your policy would be toward china, toward a very aggressive, increasingly belligerent china and South China Sea and elsewhere. Would be inlicy light of what we have been discussion what we have been discussing . The success of the post 1945 order and the bumps in the road we have discussed. Memo at the slip a 11th hour to Jared Kushner who is really running everything, what it say . Despiteuld say that everything, despite the hubris, arrogance and mistakes, u. S. Led world order has maintain stability in the world for 70 years. Really a long time, a long time and yes, we seem to be at a crossroads now. It seems to be the end of the post cold war europe and we have to think carefully about what this means because it is easy to criticize the mistakes made but a World Without america upon engagement is a more dangerous world. A much more dangerous world because who fills the back him who fills the vacuum . It gets filled by powers whose interests are not our own. You have seen from the withdrawal in the middle east, that has led to other powers playing a role. Look what russia is doing, look with these nonstate actors are doing. America does not need to go to war with china. Look at how to uphold an International Order based on laws, how to help balance, how to show allies who are scared that america is still a player in the world and appeared to help balance all the powers. To jareds in your memo kushner . What, just wrote. [laughter] me put a little more edge on it. There are a lot of people who happening is really is the beginning of a chineseled order. Not just because of donald trump, but because of the national exhaustion, skepticism put in your word for that, that time of american retreat is much more powerful and profound than this past election. Do you think that is true . Do you think it can be averted . Do you think the future speaks chinese . I think it can be averted. Power does a bora vacuum in the chinese will fill it. The idea of a nuclear, theserized china, all of ancient rivalries all facing each other with Nuclear Weapons and aggressive tendencies would be horrific for the world. Partners,trading china and japan, thats a lot of our economy would just be practical about it. If they go to war with each other, thats not good for the world and its not good for us. Say we are not going home. Forget what i said through the election, ignore all that. I said that to get elected. The chinese will appreciate that. They are pragmatists and will have a good laugh over that. He should say with a wink, i just said that to get elected. E are here to stay the seventh fleet is right there. Id do not want to get into a trade war but we are going to do your things to get attention. We really need you on north korea and we might give up a little bit to get you to do something about north korea, to be very pragmatic, but definitely not retreating, not disengaging, not going home, we are here to stay. We are just working out the modalities of how we stay. The reason journalists love anniversaries is because it gives us a peg. We get to hang whatever we want to talk about on it but it offers an occasion to really think and look at contemporary problems in light of what thinked in the past and i by panelists and i are happy to tod and celebrate the 100th anniversary of our involvement in world war i and learn from it. Thank you all very much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. To join the conversation, like us on facebook at cspan history. Join us Tuesday Morning as we head to the heart of appalachia as coal country for a spotlight on the coal industry. We will be live at a cold transfer center to talk about coal mining regulation. Our guests are robert murray, owner of murray energy. The via stockman, the vice director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and nick mullins, author of the thoughtful coal miner blog. Like that life Tuesday Morning on cspan. I think it is really important for us to remember that agriculture is one of the backbones of california. Even here where it is mountainous and where the terrain does not lend itself to a lot of big agriculture, it does lend itself to big pockets of agriculture and a community that is close to the land. Starting with growing up in a small middle side of town, its a good middle ground for someone who is going to be a journalist. As he got older, he received many accolades and the presiden m