century. them for giving us the space this morning. i want to thank all of you for being here. in particular, center dan sullivan from alaska who i will introduce in just a minute. let me tell you about our program. , we have years old this radical notion that even in washington, there can be an organization as resolutely nonpartisan. we have been resolutely nonpartisan for 35 years. -- we meets are annually and aspen, colorado to discuss big ideas about american foreign-policy and global leadership. each year, we prepare a book based on our proceedings for publication. this book is available today, the book we are discussing today. it's called the world turning upside down: america maintaining leadership in a dangerous age. we will discuss the book is morning and continuing with our friends, we will talk about major changes in how america looks at global trade position with richard danzig about the impact of technology on global leadership. we will continue with a conversation between former secretary of defense bill: and former secretary of state madeleine albright about these issues. it will culminate in a panel at 11:30 with steve hadley and susan rice, two former national security advisers. so we have a full morning. here is what at stake. our summer in the conversation. this focuses on the major question republicans and democrats have on our future. with united states maintain its leadership in the world in the decades ahead? that leadership is being assaulted by a combination of factors. first, the rise of right-wing anti-democratic populist movements, even in some allied countries. all members of nato, all now gearing in an anti-democratic direction. we see the rise of marine le pen in france, alternative for deutsche land in germany. some of these antidemocratic parties are well-financed come some financed by the kremlin, some designed to hollow out the european union and nato from the inside. that's one big factor we are contending with. second is the rise in power of the two great autocratic countries, china and russia. xi's following president speech clearly challenged the united states for leadership in the asia-pacific region in the future. by letting theut sovereignty of five other countries. sovereigntyjapanese and him assertive control over the islands in the east china sea. china running russia over international law and making extravagant legal claims to the space in the south china sea. the only combination of powers that can manage this, contain china's ambitions are the united states, japan, and india, all democratic countries increasingly allied with each other. in europe, we are facing a tough problem. vladimir putin, who has invaded georgia, crime area, pressure from baltic states in the past nine years. in the intelligence community that letter couldn't interfere in 2016 elections. russianno question the government is trying to cut the knot in states government down in size and limit our power in the world. that's a second factor. we will also examine technology because the edge we've had is being narrowed. not just by powers like china, but also by the fact that countries like north korea now have the ability through cyber technology to penetrate deep into the heart of the sony corporation, into the databases of the united states government. this challenge to global leadership is also from within. the major debate in the united states that was reflected in our conversation this summer. president trump came to office with an america first point of view. , and we had members of the trump administration with us, we were happy to have h.r. mcmaster with us and for other officials. they talked about the need for retrenchment, stronger defense, the need for more hard-nosed attitude on trade, the need to demand more of our allies. on the other side, we have critics. they say president trump is too ambivalent toward our allies, that he's a pending 60 years of american policy on trade in the immigration and refugee issues are hurting the credibility of the united states. if there is a withdrawal on american leadership on climate, the trade issue, and u.n. agencies. we look at both sides of the issue in our nonpartisan effort to be fair to both sides, but i was struck by the public session we had this summer with condoleezza rice. she felt the united states lost its self-confidence in the world as the global leader. so we should look at that again this morning. do we have strategic direction that most americans and of our local parties can agree on? those are the issues for this morning. we are looking forward to a good conversation and i want to start with our friend, senator dan sullivan. this is a rather busy week for the senate and for the house and i want to thank senator sullivan for being with us. he spent five days with us this summer in aspen. he's someone we know quite well. as you all know, he served as assistant secretary of state for economic affairs in the george w. bush administration and he was the lead person on terrorist financing. he did a great job and i have the pleasure to work with dan in those years. he was also the attorney general of the state of alaska. he's now senator of the state of alaska, a member of the armed services committee, a recognized expert on the asia-pacific region, really american global for defense policy. i did not realize until i was preparing for this session, he's also lieutenant colonel in the u.s. marine corps reserves, has spent 23 years in the marine corps reserves as he's conducted his public career at the state department, at the national security council for the state of alaska, and now for all of us in the u.s. senate. i like to invite senator sullivan to take stage and i'd ask you to join me in welcoming him. [applause] senator sullivan: thank you, neck. it's a pleasure to be back. i'd like to thank might wife julie here. -- my wife julie here. last couple weeks has been a real treat for me and my staff is also here. i want to thank them. hadn't been to aspen before in terms of this summer and both of the nsc and when she was secretary of state as one of her assistant secretaries. when you are asked by condoleezza rice to swing by a conference she is cohosting, you pretty much always say yes ma'am. she is such an incredible, incredible and important figure for our country and has done so much. you that i to tell had a wonderful event -- a wonderful time at the event. julie and i have three teenage daughters. two inngest -- we have college and one in high school. she went with us to aspen and she went with us to all of the events. we flew to denver together and then drove out to aspen. she, like millions of high school kids across the country, is a huge fan of hamilton, the musical. i had not heard much about hamilton but we listen to it out on the drive to aspen. for those of you that were at summer,n meeting this there was like come in the meetings, all of these numerous, on purpose but some were inadvertent, references to "hamilton." she and i would look at each other. so there was the theme of the worldence which was -- turned upside down. a song from hamilton. and then there was a term it past her and condoleezza rice and susan rice and's leave hadley. madeleine albright. all of these big shots. and someone said -- boy, this is really the room where it happens. and i looked at my daughter and said -- hey, another one. and for the real hamilton geek, someone mentioned about h.r. mcmaster how he was the right-hand man of somebody -- so we were having a lot of fun. you probably didn't know all of these references to "hamilton" were going on. thank you for the invite this summer and just a few words here. i wanted to address up front -- will the u.s. remained the predominant global power despite all of the challenges that everyone in the room recognizes. my answer to that is yes, probably but we need to focus on some key things. and the three keys i wanted to highlight today are -- returning to robust levels of economic growth, strengthening and deepening our network of alliances that nick talked about, and then something i have been focusing on and that i have a birdseye view on now as a u.s. senator is a stronger, executive legislature corporation in terms of foreign policy. in me hit on things each turn and then i would love to take any questions or comments. first, economic growth. my team has passed out a chart that hopefully you are taking a look at. this was the biggest surprise to me as a u.s. senator. under been in a little three years and when i came here, i thought that the idea of growth, maybe with the exception of national security, that growing our economy, strong, traditional levels with the most important thing that congress should be focused on. so many other challenges are better if we are growing. and get worse if we are not. ,ut my biggest surprise was three years ago, that no one talked about it. the obama administration did not talk about it. did nots in the senate talk about it but republicans did not talk about it either. to be perfectly honest. in my congress, i would stand up and say -- how come no one is talking about growth? i have been going to the senate with my charts, i feel like ross perot, on the senate floor and give out the same speech. look at this chart. ok? this explains a lot, from my perspective. and this is very bipartisan. democrats and republicans -- we have focused our country on strong growth. the red line is 3%. which is good if not great. tissue four.target we have not hit 3% gdp growth annually and almost 13 years. -- in almost 13 years. and no one was talking about. was a lot of discussion about what makes america great. this is what made america great. almost 4% gdp growth annually. since the founding of the republic it has been about 4% and yet we had a decade, starting at the end of the bush administration, the entire obama administration, that never hit 3% and know it was talking about it. toview is -- you want understand what happened in the 2016 election? boom. to, have have to, have to get back to strong levels of economic growth. i am a little bit biased. as nick mentioned, i was assistant secretary for the assistance -- under secretary rice but i think this is even more important than military power. this underpins military power. and yet, we have not been focused on it. so, what happened was, if you listen to the narrative, particularly in washington, people saw this and they said -- wait a minute, how do i explain that? -- in my view, started making excuses and calling it the new normal. gdp growth is america hitting on all of its economic cylinders. that is the narrative in washington. to me, that is one of the most dangerous narratives there is. if we think this is it for the country, we will have enormous challenges and we will not be positioned for global leadership. my view is different. i don't think that is the future. the newbelieve in normal. as a matter of fact, one of the privileges of being in the u.s. senate, is if you reach out to when -- many of the smart people in this room, who have time on their hands -- i have reached out to dozens of people with one question -- is this the future? do you believe in the new normal of 1.5%? and if not, how do we get back to robust levels of gdp that made our country strong? that is why the narrative is so dangerous. news on thatood front. i think we are finally beginning to focus on getting back to robust levels of growth. democrats, republicans, the white house. i think there are policies you can undertake, tax reform -- remember, a lot of the ideas in -- no onet tax reform thinks these are good ideas and trends of the competitiveness. energy, energy, energy. the u.s. is on the verge of being the energy superpower again. largest producer of oil. largest producer of natural gas. bigger than russia. largest producer of renewable, bigger than everyone. that is an and norma's opportunity. grow the economy. when people talk about instruments of foreign policy and of all -- and of american power, energy is one that we are just scratching the surface on. the last administration did not like to talk about hydrocarbons. i was in charge of producing hydrocarbons in alaska. we have the highest standards in the world. to me, this issue of strong, robust growth goes to the issue that nick mentioned in his opening remarks. this goes back to the issue of american confidence. which we need to regain. and so many smart, foreign policy practitioners recognize that we are best at developing confident, long-term foreign policy when the american people and the country feels confident. there is nothing like the confidence of a growing economy versus something that is not growing. focused on this last week at the reagan defense form when he talked. condoleezza rice talked about this after aspen. one of my mentors, someone who i think has a lot of respect, auxiliary, talked about this when he gave his well-known responsible stakeholder speech. look at the end of his speech. he talks about american confidence and having to deal with china from a position of strength. to me, it is all about the economy. that is one area where we have to do better. we are getting there. the second is with regard to strengthening our position with our allies. as all of you know here, as nick mentioned, over decades, democrats and republicans have focused on that. to me, it even stronger than our military, this is probably the most important strategic advantage we have as a nation. we are an ally rich nation and most of our adversaries are potential adversaries are ally poor. there aren't many countries looking to join the north korea , or even then team russian team. there arerience, still a lot of countries that want to be part of the u.s. alliance system. we need to deepen our current alliances and expand them. how are we doing on that? it is a mixed assessment. last year, i thought we hit a low point. to such a degree that i went on the senate floor and gave a couple of speeches on the importance of our alliances. why was it ably -- a low point? at the time, we had a presidential candidate talking about nato being obsolete, questioning korea and jeff -- and japan alliances as a candidate. the other thing going on was a very big article in the atlantic by jeffrey goldberg about the obama doctrine. if you read that, it made what donald trump was saying on the campaign trail pale in comparison to how dismissive president obama was about all of our allies. go reread that article. pretty remarkable that a sitting president was smacking pretty much everyone other than angela merkel. to me, that is what prompted a number of senators to say -- wait a minute. obama, and asident potential new president. remember, our allies are critically important to us. -- my assessment on this on how we are doing? the issue of strong economic growth and energy, that kinds of power from the u.s. binds us clovers -- closer to the alliance. economy in many ways is more important then our military presence. if we can turn that around and start to use new instruments of power like energy, that can help us with our allies. in asia, i think we are starting to do well. the president has put together a team, secretary mattis, tillerson, the vice president who has spent a lot of time in asia already. you may have seen on the last quad launching the consultations -- that was a smart and strategic move. i even think we need to look at perhaps a much stronger trilateral security arrangement between korea, japan, and the u.s. which has a lot of potential. and i alsoa -- think, despite some news last week in the middle east, we have toopportunity with regard our traditional arab allies and israel of working more closely together because we all see and view our common interests particularly with regard to pushing back against the .egemonic aspirations of iran in terms of allies, there are some positive things happening. the negatives. europe. there continues to be a lot of skepticism of this administration, particularly driven by what happened with regard to the paris climate accord and the enron -- and the iran nuclear deal. and also strategic communications. binding our allies means strategic discipline. by i think foreign policy tweet is, by definition, not strategic. congress can play a really important role in all of this which brings me to my third and final point. u.s. forof setting the continued global leadership, i think we have to do a better job of getting back to the difficult work of better executive -legislative cooperation in the area of foreign policy and national security. if you look at history, all of you know because you are experts on it, the u.s. is strongest in the world when the executive branch and the congress are working together. and speaking with one voice. not easy. often, it is hard. people look back at history and say it was easy to get the nato alliance through the senate. it was not. it was hard work. but what is it? durable. me, three years and the senate, i have seen what has worked and what hasn't. trade. we immediately started working with the obama administration on trade promotion. the president could not get it when his own path -- when his own party was in power. the republicans returned, that is when progress happened. i worked hard to make sure that we got tpa past. ssed. we did that and it is an opportunity now. it is in the law. but, with regard to the iranian nuclear deal, with regard to the paris climate accord, i can tell you from my experience and my class of senators, that there is zero engagement from the white house. no one ever came over and said -- senator, this is what we are trying to do. this is why this is good for america. to the contrary, they did everything they could to avoid senate ratification of these very important agreements. so, i think it is a little bit difficult to complain that a president who actually campaigned against these agreements, because they were not ratified by the senate, which would've taken a lot of hard work. and then when he came in and did it, is now being criticized. is that some of the criticism should have been on the previous administration that never came to the senate at all. ratify ity you should and here is why we are going to work hard to make sure that you understand it and can do that. when you don't do that, you get dramatic swings and foreign policy. this was predicted by our founding fathers. if you look at the federalist papers, number 63 by james madison, he lays out how critical a role the u.s. senate ,lays with regard to particularly given its long tenure, it's staggered elections , with regard to our relations in keeping a steady foreign policy. when you avoid that, and both parties of -- are guilty of doing that, you had the swings. my view is that we need to get back to doing that. there is good news on that front. the good news is that there is a lot more bipartisanship, from my perspective, that goes on in the congress and the senate then you read about. i am not one to get up and bash the media, but i would say that in this area, the media loves to have stories about conflict. partisanship in the senate -- i was reading a couple of years ago, a very smart of server of the american foreign policy seen in the financial times. he wrote a piece that said -- the partisanship in the senate has not been so high since the civil war. writer, that this that is a ridiculous statement. and there is a lot more that goes on but it doesn't get reported. let me give you some big and small examples. the national defense authorization act. a very important piece of legislation. i sit on the armed services committee. agreements dramatically pluses of the media. -- the military. it passed out of committee unanimously. did you read that in the paper? you didn't. i didn't. went to when it conference with the house, it came back to the senate for a vote, it passed by unanimous consent. voted for ittors which the president will sign this week. that is very significant. that is about as bipartisan as a guest. you didn't read about it, and it is an important bill. one that i talked about at aspen -- joe kennedy and i had the opportunity to sit on a panel when we were there to talk about or the domestic homefront. he and i have a bill, it has or a past the senate. he is working hard to get it passed in the house on a topic that is very timely. to bring much more resources to the victims of domestic assault. especially attorneys who who, ast mostly women you are seeing across different parts of american society, have been abused. bill, but ia huge think it is an important bill. is the lead guy in the house and i am the lead guy in the senate. and tomorrow night, on a more personal front, julie and i are going to have dinner with one of my colleagues, sheldon whitehouse. do you know his politics? and dan sullivan's politics? you might be surprised we are going to dinner. but that happens. as a matter of fact, sheldon whitehouse and i have a bill called -- save our seas act. there is a lot more of that that goes on. that, in terms of foreign policy and national security, to position ourselves from a strong perspective in the future, we need to have that kind of corporation in the congress. so, strong growth, imperative. strengthening and deepening our alliances, imperative. and better corporation on the foreign policy and national security issues between the congress and the executive branch, to me, do set us up for the next several decades of leading the world during challenging times. thank you very much. >> [applause] >> so, senator, he will take your questions. why don't you let me know who would like to ask the first question. i now teach college and i can call on people. ambassador, welcome, sir. good morning. i was wondering, given that has been in the news lately, if you may want to comment on your views and the work of your caucus. is an honor to be asked a question by one of the deans of the foreign service and great leaders of american diplomacy over the last generation. who i have also had an opportunity to serve with. senate, therethe are caucuses that show demonstration of support in the senate. there is a caucus on a lot of different issues. are very caucuses strong, there is an army, and caucuses.ne strong constituencies in the congress for these important aspects of american government. and for those of you that do not believe that, julie and i just spent saturday in philadelphia at the army navy game and there is a lot of support for our tong men and women who go those world-class institutions. what was interesting to me, and for those of you that have served in the foreign service, there was not any kind of caucus or as established group supporting our career foreign service officers. and as someone that actually led a group of them, you are kind of conedther of the econ foreign service officers, i got to know what a great group of professionals our foreign come inofficers are who many ways like the military, are deployed overseas, to dangerous places. some have been killed in action. families have sacrificed and risked. and to be honest, as a --ublican, i thought that there was kind of if i could use a diplomatic term here, a sense that a lot of the foreign -- but,is left-leaning my experience was very professional and they do great work. and so i went to senator chris van hollen, whose father was well known in the foreign service and i said -- we should get a foreign service officers caucus to support those men and women in the foreign service. and, either way, there is also a culture there that they hate coming up to the hill. i think. most of them. this was a little more of the -- -- towon't be tv cameras meet and let us show your support -- our support for you. that was launched. is deputy secretary of state coming to our caucus on wednesday on the senate side to meet with senators to show their support. i think making sure that our foreign service officers know that they have strong support and a constituency that supports them is very important. and it gets to an issue of executive-legislative cooperation. those are the kinds of things that breed that kind of cooperation. when we first launched the caucus six months ago, we had senators like orrin hatch, jim rich, very strong and well respected. chris murphy on the democratic side. masto, a nevada senator. we had a good group, 10 senators already. ofis an important element strengthening that executive-legislative cooperation and making sure that we in the senate understand the hard work, sacrifice that our foreign service officers do for our country every day. >> senator, if i could follow up. or budget 31 person reduction for state to take the a present.ps down by it is no secret that morale is very low and there is a dismantling of the foreign service. can the congress intervene to defend the foreign service? >> i have concerns also. some of it is what you're reading in the paper and you have to get to the truth. the me give you an example. there was an article recently that said that applications for the foreign service are down by 50%. i don't know the truth of that. it was in a newspaper. i am assuming they are correctly reporting. but to me, that should be a cause for an honest concern. think about it. if the marine corps is recruiting was down by 50%, i guarantee you that we would be having hearings on the armed services committee wondering what was happening in the marine corps. question about the budget, i don't think that dramatic of a cut on the foreign aidice or our related programs will see that kind of support in the appropriations process in the congress. but again, part of this goes to a broader issue of getting the congress to understand, to know the great work that the men and in thend their expertise foreign service have. and when you do a code l, it -- codel overseas, people see it. but do it on a regular basis is what we are trying to do in the senate. >> i think we have time for one or two more questions. congressman harman. welcome. >> thank you. delighted to be here. credit tore a great the senate. it is wonderful to hear you on many topics including the art. -- the arctic. i was there in 2001 when we passed, with all but one bow, the authorization to use military force against those that attack us on 9/11. that entire document is still the basis for most of the u.s. activity in the middle east and elsewhere. at least seven orders have been justified under that. the state and defense department have testified that they do not need more authority. they testified before john mccain's committee. do you think that is true or do you think as i do that there ought to be a robust debate in the senate and the house about the use of military force, the strategy behind it, so the american people can have a intoe to consider and buy the military activities we have underway? let me address that in two parts. ,here was a debate, recently rand paul had an amendment -- it but it a multi-day debate believe it was part of it when we were marking up the -- on the senate floor. and his amendment essentially said what you were saying -- we have authorized the 2001 authorization and it has been used in a host of other ways. we need to reauthorize it or cut it off. that is what his amendment essentially did. inave a lot of respect on -- rand paul on a host of issues. i voted against that. we did debate it. the main reason i voted against it was because -- i will give you an example. alaska has a group of incredible young men and women going over thee -- the four to five -- in anchorage and they are in afghanistan right now. the one thing i said to them before they left is -- look, i will do everything i can to make sure that you are supported back at home. as a matter of fact, this weekend i am trying to visit them in afghanistan and my wife is hosting a party in anchorage thethe spouses of a -- of officers. there are elements -- it is an important topic but there are realities on the ground. we have soldiers and marines and others on the ground now and the last thing i think we should be doing is having a debate to say -- we aren't sure we can authorize what you are doing as you risk your lives. that is why i voted no. on a related topic. north korea. i have been very involved in the senate but also with the administration, publicly and i think the president has put together a strong national security team, on korea. this is a tough issue. very tough. bedeviledoubled -- numerous administrations but this administration has really been faced with a stark challenge. that they likely leader of north korea will have the capability for intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles that could reach chicago, new york -- i think the diplomacy right now with the sanctions and the un security council resolutions have been very strong. one element i have been trying to lean on and we have made a -- we need ass more robust missile defense system. that is another good news story. that was very bipartisan, 28 senators. supporting a really strong missile-defense system for america. that has never happened before. that is aimed -- that is now a bipartisan issue. and i also support secretary mattis, h.r. mcmaster talked about this, the development of credible military options. everyone here knows that if you have serious credible military options, it makes your diplomacy more effective. what i have said publicly and privately is part of your credible military options is a preventative or preemptive ground war on the korean peninsula launched by the u.s. they need the authorization from congress to do that. matter of fact, a couple of prominent senators -- we are resolutionnot the for that but a senate resolution you says, we support what are doing but if they move ,orward, again, preemptive preventative -- that is the article one power. congress. i don't think there should be any debate about it. i have been asking during offirmation hearings members the administration going to the department of defense. i have probably asked this question a dozen times. the you believe you need to come to congress to get authorization to do this? pretty much all of them including the reconfirmation of general dunford and they have all said yes. think thet is where i aumf issue will come to a head. not all of my colleagues agree with me. iris pecked their views. i just think they haven't read the constitution or the federalist papers in a while. it is a great question. and in terms of north korea, i am looking at it from one angle versus afghanistan. >> senator, i know you are busy but i think we have to ask a follow-up question on this important issue. north korea. two. your on the merits of the issue, it seems that secretary tillerson and secretary mattis would like to move to maintain deterrence over north korea but possibly move to some kind of diplomatic negotiations that would involve north korea that would stop their progress. others in the administration think we ought to think seriously about preemptive action. on your point about congressional authorization -- where is the republican leadership in the senate on that and what kinds of signals are you getting from the white house, from present -- from president trump? >> i think those are both good questions that i think they are interrelated. ishink that your diplomacy much more effective if your adversaries believe that it is a continuum and that credible military options are part of that continue on. in, -- i believe that by the end of the obama --inistration, that no one none of our potential adversaries in the world felt that administration had the will or desire to use military force and i think it made their diplomacy a lot more ineffective. having credible military options on the table i think is important. particularly given this regime and how unstable and unpredictable they are. the focus of our diplomacy is not necessarily negotiations with north korea. provescade after decade to be a very unreliable partner to negotiate with. i don't think they have ever cap one and of any bargain they have agreed to with the u.s., ever. i don't think that will change. .ou can't trust them you can't trust the iranians, similarly. the key should be china. that is our focus. on how to solve this problem. making it all about north korea-u.s. negotiations -- it isn't a waste of time but it is a sideshow because they can't be trusted. but china has converging interests with us on resolving this and they have the power and the ability to do it. and so, that is where i think our focus with regard to diplomacy -- with regard to the uf -- most of the senior administration officials i have asked the question of believe and have stated that they believe a preventive or on theive ground war peninsula needs the authorization of congress. is the republican senate completely unified on that view? no. there are some prominent senators who actually do not believe that article one requires the administration to come get the authority from us. i just happen to think they are wrong. that you will see, hopefully soon, we will have a resolution out with some well-known senators that say -- we are being supportive. we are trying to do this aggressively. there are some on the democratic side that are saying this is a disaster. we are trying to be supportive. that would be a very serious debate in congress. it comes to that and we aren't calling for it now , but if it comes to that, we should have it. >> please join me in thanking senator dan sullivan. >> [applause] senator sullivan: thank you. my pleasure. sullivan:ou, senator we will take a moment to remove the podium from the stage. jonathan, are we ready to go on to the next session? we are. let me call up to the podium my friend steve and richard. we looked at two issues the summer that are both important factors in whether or not the u.s. is going to maintain its global leadership role. where i thinkrade we have seen the most significant departure from republican and democratic policy over the last half-century in the trump administration. that is the rejection of the trans--- transpacific partnership and also perhaps some fundamental changes to nafta. the second is technology where the u.s. as i said at the beginning, needs to maintain its qualitative military, scientific, and our indie edge. we had two people here to talk about those issues. steve begin is a veteran of several administrations. the george w. bush administration where he was senior official and chief of staff of the national security council. he is now vice president of the ford motor company. in trade withad mike. steve, the podium is yours. and thankd morning you all for coming out today. as nick mentioned, we manufacture in 25 countries around the world. and we trade in enormous volumes of commodities of parts, automobiles. when i look at the trade issue, i approach it from the viewpoint of a practitioner then and ideologue or a philosopher. ourink that too much of trade debate here in washington is about philosophy and ideology. quite honestly, not enough of it is about the practice of trade. if you reduce it to the simplest form, trade is the movement of goods and services across borders. if you want free trade, you are achieving a less constrained movement of goods and services across borders. it is relatively simple. in yet, we find ourselves compounding and poisonous debates in washington that we see manifesting themselves even today across our institutions of government. was stunned you, i in watching one of the candidates from a major political party running for the presidency of the united states, not only did announce the north american free trade agreement, but actually threaten to withdraw from it outright. like many of you, i was surprised when then senator wasa said that and i equally surprised when then senator clinton endorsed it. campaigng in the 2008 in the primaries in the debate timleveland monitored by russert. it was that presidential candidate that proposed to withdraw from nafta within six minutes at them -- within six months. many thought that was empty rhetoric and in fact it was although, to his credit, president obama in office su ought to make some improvements in nafta. it underlines the fact that the political expedience of attacking agreement predates the crop administration. -- the trump administration. foundw charitable trust some interesting results. 67% of self identified democratic voters believe the free trade agreements make america stronger. voters endorsean free trade agreements as making the u.s. stronger. the politics are confounding. it is an article of faith in washington that free trade agreements will not pass the u.s. congress unless they gain the support of every single republican member and a small of democrats. and yet each of those parties is out of step with their own political base. of democrats. the only major political figure who is in step with their political base is president trump. among self identified trump voters, -- believes they are good for america. president trump is not only speaking with and for his political base but he has greater harmony with the american public as well. of all of the issues that have generated controversy among the trade mayent -- free be one of the biggest. i was asked in the course of this aspen project that we did to try to do a bit of a diagnostic and analyze why this is an forecast some steps forward. let me quickly say on the transpacific partnership -- i understand the distress it has caused many and the confusion about america's role in the world. that agreement did not die january 23 when president trump signed an executive order to withdraw the u.s. from that agreement. a yearreement died earlier when it was signed. it did not have the support of congress, the american public, or the support of the unified business community. it was too big, too ambitious and the return was too small to justify locking into place the status quo. which is largely what it did. it fell victim to a geopolitical aim. one of the things i have learned since leaving government and came into the private sector 15 years ago is that geopolitics makes for lousy free trade agreements but good free trade agreements make for great geopolitics. you have to get the economics right first. if you paper over competing views on trade, to get a yes on an agreement, you are embedding relations tensions that will culminate in a matter of -- in a manner that we are seeing today. nafta is a different thing. the challenge is the economics do not work for the u.s. in terms of producing a trade balance that would excite political support in the u.s. i would argue that nafta makes the u.s. more competitive in building economic unity but it is indisputable that we have a trade death of -- deficit with mexico and this is what the president is focused on. the problem with fixing nafta is you cannot fix a 60 plus billion-dollar trade deficit by growing u.s. exports to mexico. as beneficial as i think nafta is, the reality is that the economics will prevent us from balancing trade with mexico on the revenue side. fixonly total available to the perceived problems of nafta isl be trade limiting which antithetical to a free trade agreement. i have a gloomy expectation of the ability of the u.s. trade representative to achieve the goal they want in nafta which is to balance out your history. -- e are many economists say that large trade deficit may indicate problems. i think that is what we also see with many of our asia pacific trade partners. finish by highlighting the 10 steps i think we should consider as we look forward in how to take the trade agenda forward in a constructive way. i completely agree with senator sullivan's point of view that this is a holistic picture. it is not just about trade but about regulation, tax reform, and growth. fact, as i posit in my paper, i have to believe that a couple growthters, 4% economic will go a long way towards ameliorating the tensions in the trade debate. thatcally, incidentally, kind of growth will balloon our trade deficit but will at the same time treat the dissatisfaction in the public that has produced this poisonous political environment. very quickly, my 10 priorities for the trade debate. first, the two. we have to pick the right -- the who. we have to pick the right partners. to tie together a handful of countries. but in the course of that, we brought parties in that don't support free trade. second, we should pursue trade mercantilistth partners but it should be on a -- we can craft the necessary tools in order to force open those economies. multilateral's are for free trade partners. bilateral's are for mercantilists. we should also be addressing currency manipulation. competition. antitrust policy. corruption. a big issue that undermines comparable advantage and free trade. tools for use anticorruption. regulation. regulation.global and enforcement, enforcement, enforcement. and the how. generate negotiations a lot of skepticism among the public and the critics. while there are some consultative tools, we need to do better. there are some ideas on capitol hill such as requiring each session to be shared in details with congress. one that is a bit of a stretch but i like it which is doing negotiations in public. it would dismiss the notion that anything is being hidden. i think the reason they meet in private is they are taking positions that are indefensible to the public. put it out in the open. easiest way to get support. i think we have to trust the market. where we have a trade partner that is not willing to embrace the model of free trade, we can wait them out. give them some time. i wish i had a dollar for every that it willeard be a competitive disadvantage for them. let us play for the long run. and finally, geopolitics have to be subordinate to the economics. free trade has to be driven by the economics first and the geopolitics have to follow. >> [applause] >> steve, thank you very much. trade is obviously an issue where the two parties are divided and the public is divided. , iore we hear from richard think it is only fair, because i saw our friend mike froman walk in. there he is. when we had our meeting in aspen this summer, steve and mike, made the major presentations on trade. i thought it was one of the most interesting and vital discussion. i'm going to put you on the spot. we will get the microphone to you. you heard the tail end of steve's presentation. you have both written papers on this. can i give you a two-minute right of reply? >> it is unfair to steve. i assume he has completely changed his views since reading the chapter of the book. with steve on a lot of things but we do disagree on certain things. if you take the transpacific partnership as an example, it was an example -- an effort to bring countries into a free trade area under a high set of standards. it was not about geopolitics versus economics. it is about who gets to write the economic rules of the road. what we are seeing right now is what we warned. other parties would move forward. and they would carve up market access in a way that develop -- that benefited their producers. that is what we have seen in the last nine months. even since aspen, just last week, china hosted a conference on internet governance. moving ahead with its view of governance.ernet we know what that means. and the question is -- would you rather have had the digital or do youapter of tpp want to let the chinese right the rules of the road. and retreat from asia has allowed others to put forward their positions. a strategic blunder. and from a market access seen asive, as we have recently as last week, the rest of the world is not standing still. eu, finalizinghe its agreement with japan so the get theucers in denmark access that our pork producers had fought so hard for. we are losing market share and jobs because people prefer to sit on the sideline rather than move ahead with a deal that would raise standards, open markets, and eliminate 90% of all tariffs. mike, could you stay with the microphone? i will give steve a chance to reply. look at the resumption of the nafta talks. speculation that the trump administration might even be considering ending nafta and then building up a bilateral relationship with mexico in canada. this would be a significant point of departure from the last 23 years. what is your view on that? clearly, i am not a spokesman for the administration, so i don't pretend to have any great insight into what is in their hearts. i think -- i think we should step back. 95% of what has been put on the table in the renegotiation is tpp. for all of the criticism of the administration, 95% of the strategy is tpp. the last 5% matters most. including changing the role of arjun which would have a significant impact on the auto sector among others. best option is to reach a renegotiated agreement along the lines that they have tabled without much room for compromise. i think they are prepared to trigger the withdrawal notice and withdrawal from the agreement with all of the disruptive effects that would half. -- that would have. new in my arguments that you missed. mike and i do agree on quite a bit and let me of the size to issues in particular. first, it is critical that the u.s. play a strong leadership in the asia-pacific whether it is through trade negotiations or other means, it is critical to the interests of the u.s. in the next century. the second thing that might surprise mike to hear me say, but i think if he listened carefully, he would have heard me say this -- i personally and my company did not want the u.s. to withdraw from tp. -- from tpp. from the perspective of many of us in the private sector, is that as good as the details were, it still fundamentally failed to change the economic model that does not work for the u.s. in the asia-pacific region. and you don't have to take my point of view for this. the international trade commission did an exhaustive analysis of the free trade agreements to understand the consequences and produce effort congress. the consequences of tpp in terms of impacting the flow of american goods in the asia-pacific region was negligible. in fact, in the manufacturing sector, the international trade commission, and independent body -- found there would be a net loss in manufacturing exports and in manufacturing employment in the u.s. as a consequence of tpp. it is not that the agreement was bad in and of itself, it just did not do enough. note were some key issues addressed. including currency manipulation. this is one of the most pernicious trade barriers used by all -- our partners around the world today. it is a simple supply and demand manipulation. if you have a lot of your currency, you poor that into the global marketplace and you buy up someone else's and you put it in your reserves. supply and demand. there is a lot more of your currency out there so it is worth less. there is a lot less of our currency out there so it is worth more. probably in oversimplistic explanation but it's usually impacts trade flows. like a -- for a product like an automobile -- a 25% manipulation is probably 400% of the profit margin on that product. you cannot produce in the u.s. and export markets like japan when the japanese government is actively intervening in the value of the yen relative to the dollar which they have done one at december the times in the last 15 years. they haven't done it in the last three or four years, since 2011 or 2012. that is because they are using other instruments currently to produce domestic consumption. with the effect of weakening their currency with a massive quantitative easing program that to worse quantitative easing that was done in the u.s. during the great recession. that tpp would argue was a good start and i complement the administration for taking the good pieces of that and making that part of their trade agenda but tpp fell short of addressing some of the biggest challenges we have in our asia-pacific trade relationships. as a consequence, i think it would have been just as possible that it became a source of irritation and friction in our trading relationships. i think it would be better to separate the sheep and the wolves in the tpp group. those that support free trade, let us move forward. bringthat do not, let us them on one at a time and deal with the issues that they are using to subvert global trade. it is indisputable that global trade has been subverted by tactics like this in a manner that makes participants in the american economy ask the obvious question -- i am doing everything right. i'm working hard. we are working great products but we are falling behind and losing. you will never forget those people to support free trade if they are doing everything right and still the wind is blowing in their face. this is going to be one of the most important issues for 2018 and 2020 and we think about the future of our country. for those of you watching on c-span, this is a book called -- and mike froman and steve have complementary chapters with different points of view on this important issue. here is the order of battle. at 11:00, we will turn to our conversation with madeleine operate, bill cohen. until then, i'm going to give my friend richard danzig eight minutes to tell us why the technology tsunami in a liberal world order ought to be something on our radar screens. richard. danzig: wednesday said we were falling behind and losing in trade, i had a feeling we were falling behind in the agenda but the winner in terms of what is being described. i want to hit on a big topic that i think stands alongside some of the classical analyses of international relations that are naturally triggered by our topic on the liberal world order. thealongside this also is economic analysis you have just been treated to. thingst fundamental underlying all of this is the technologies -- technology tsunami. you see this reflected when mike immediately talks about china and the internet and internet governance. we are aware of the i.t. revolution. i would underscore to you that as theld not treat i.t. end of technological history. we are seeing dramatic innovations in biology, robotics, new materials, space, additive manufacturing, data analysis, artificial intelligence. i could go on with the list but i would record -- i would require more than the eight minutes given to me. these are fundamentally affecting our notions of a liberal world order. it should not surprise us that they do. if you look back to the great changes in history, you see technology -- the printing press, galileo, the telescope, overs -- overturning the world order. century, you see the effects of the industrial revolution on our notions of state power and control. more recently, i believe that the invention of birth control is one of the most fundamental changes technologically and undergirds much of the dramatic revolution that we call feminism occurring in our time. we should recognize the technological change, this tsunami, is not something that simply exists in its own realm. it fundamentally affects all rounds. to switch metaphors from tsunami do something else, it is an underlying change in the tectonic plate that produces all kinds of what appears to be , whether earthquakes you look at this morning's newspaper, the proliferation of biology, to north korea to the carpenter case in the supreme court. book, ir in the sketched three things which i want talk about now. i just will briefly mention the fourth. the way in which this proliferation and powers groups and nonstate entities. it is a familiar song but there are some interesting new things that can be said. as technology competes with the state by setting up nonstate enterprises and empowering them. not just in weapons. in the equivalent of an intelligence agency. and the way this proliferation balances out u.s. power. technology that we used to be predominant in, spreads to other countries and enables them to compete with us. and this changes the world order in important ways. and a third, much less recognized, is the risk of accidents and emergent defects as these novel systems are developed and interact with one particularly in the military context, in ways that we cannot fully anticipate. there are grave risks in that arena that are worthy of discussion. the point i want to focus on in onelusion is a more radical which is the way in which these technologies challenge our notion of the liberal order. we see how authoritarian states can use technology to restrict privacy. leavetriking how we all will havedna -- you left your dna in this room when you depart. we also leave trails of digital dust. everyone will know you were here. these things in power authoritarian states and our own state. they will also pose fundamental challenges to us as different states developed different norms for dealing with these technologies. i can anticipate in the u.s. dramatic issues associated with, for example, how we manipulate our bodies, embryos and the like. we are used to the abortion debate and how deeply it has affected us here. what happens when people try to choose amongst embryos to , notize their intelligence simply to avoid diseases and the like. what happens when china begins to make a different choice in that regard? decide intelligence is something to be optimized in the embryos of their population and americans make different decisions. 200 babies are born every day in america that were conceived in test tubes. where are we going from here? finally,amentally and i would put you the idea that the liberal notions of what it means to be an individual and have individual choice, of how in a democracy we have put together majorities. we tend to ascribe this to things like the russian interference with facebook and the like and we marvel at the technological attributes of that. facebook takes 3 million ads every day. let us not the simplistic about how they might screen these things. think about how data analysis combines with the earlier observation about digital in terms of political persuasion. it has been demonstrated that with 10 facebook likes, a machine summit using artificial intelligence, can predict your preferences more accurately than your colleagues. with 150 facebook likes, they can predict more accurately than your family members cam. more accurately than your spouse. about what this means in terms of political action. when you link this analytic capability with our ability to , as aindividual targets politician, i can select your political preference in some sub area and target you individually in that area. that may seem to you to be ok but what i can do is create highly differentiated messages. i don't have to put together majorities. i can put together a dominant group of people, spliced together from a lot of individual things instead of speaking broadside to the group. this changes the fundamental premises of democracy associated with what political speech is with what electoral processes look like and with what it means to be an individual in which we are subject to manipulation when we are well understood. much more could be said about this but the one thing i understand is that my time is up. i will stop and get the floor. thank you. and give thep floor. thank you. >> [applause] >> i want to thank steve and mike about his thoughts on trade and richard for his thoughts on technology. we began 35 years ago as a nonpartisan national security group focused on the big arms race with the soviets in the 1980's. where we are trending is that all of us come in and out of government, have to have a much more acute understanding of artificial intelligence and the emerging digital age. changingt that technologies will have on the balance of power between the u.s. and china, between the u.s. and terrorist groups that will have access to these, and that we as a group, mainly of people that come out of government from both parties, that we will need a lot of help from people in the biotechnical group and the information technology group in silicon valley. that we have to have a public-private fusion to get our hands around this challenge to the u.s. and i want to thank richard for giving us a snapshot. i was like this podium to disappear. and i would kindly ask secretary --right and secretary: secretary cohen to join me. >> [inaudible conversations] while we >> we are waiting for secretary filibusterwill because the c-span cameras are rolling. let me just first introduce secretary albright and then secretary cohen. i have had the great pleasure of working for both of these individuals. everyone knows secretary madeleine albright and her extraordinary career as a professor at georgetown university and also as a public servant. she served as our secretary of state in the second term of president clinton. one of the great pleasures of my is working with secretary albright as her spokesperson in the first year and then as ambassador degrees. she has stood up for our values including democracy and human rights. her whole life story is a commitment to the u.s. and i want to ask you all to welcome secretary albright here. >> [applause] >> i also want to ask you to welcome former secretary of defense, former senator william cowan. he should be welcoming us because the group of which he is chair is right upstairs. i had the pleasure of being a senior counselor for the cohen group. n, representative cohen came to washington. he served in the impeachment hearings against president nixon. he moved to the senate in 1978 and was one of those people that became one of the experts in the senate on american defense policy and foreign policy. inserved for several decades the senate and became secretary of defense for president clinton and served with secretary albright as part of the cabinet. we could not have two better people to discuss this. the conference this summer and our book is about whether or not republicans and democrats can work together to preserve the leadership role that we have had. turf, iis is your home want to start with you and i will ask the first question. are you worried that we are positionr leadership to the challenge from russia and china to the changes in the global economy and to the big debate inside -- are we still willing to be a leader? >> short answer is of course i am worried. i think everyone in the country should be worried. because, we have not decided what our role in this new world of disorder is going to be. and i think starting at the presidential level, there is no coherent philosophy that is guiding us in terms of who are we, who do we want to be in this be, and howcan we do we go about bringing that to pass? i think it should be of concern because we are not living in a unipolar, bipolar world. we may be living in a nonpolar world which may be the most dangerous of all. for me, the concern is that we ceding international leadership at many different levels. while the president has promoted -- make america great again, he is doing it on a basis of transactional activities without a comprehensive plan of how the individual components fit into andpattern that is cohesive continuous. it depends on where one goes in terms of the impression that other countries have of us. if you good in japan, i think the japanese prime minister say that he is very fond of president trump and what he has been same. if you go to saudi arabia, the same thing would be set. if you go to our european friends, less so. if you were to talk to the prime minister of australia, he is worried that the u.s. can no longer be counted on to carry the leadership role for freedom to for democracy and we need continue to fill that role. it depends on where you go. my own fear is that we are seeing a wrecking ball being taken to the institutions which we have worked very hard to construct. not unusual. most presidents come into washington and they look at the white house or the institutions and say -- the carpet needs to be repaired, the walls are thin, let us have some remodeling done to upgrade our capability. i don't see that yet. i am hoping that will be the case. but, if you are going to tear down institutions which you think no longer work, then tell me who the architects are, what their plans are, who the masons are, who the carpenters are, and tell me what kind of institution or building you are trying to construct. and i have not seen that take place. and so, i worry about it. i worry that other countries are turning away from us. the chancellor of germany saying that germany will have to go forward into the future without the assurance that the united states can be counted upon. that is a very big change in our relationship with germany. we have a similar type of friction with our partners in the british. if you go around to our allied partners and they worry that there is no consistency, no predictability. the president likes to say that he likes to be unpredictable. oft is what i have done all my life. i like to keep people on their toes. geopolitics, it does not quite work that way. andpeople that i talked to, i just returned from india and morehere, they want predictability and continuity. they want to be able to gauge the reliability of the policies and identifylating who is speaking for the president other than the president. and so, i worry about this. i look at china. i have been going there since 1978. i look at what has happened in 35-40 years and i say it is dramatic, remarkable, transformational, admirable, and somewhat intimidating. they are a country with a strategic vision. they know where they want to get to. they have few innovations about how they are going to get to. there is no congress to contend with or supreme court. you can see what their goal is and they have a capacity to carry that out. that is not necessarily true on the part of the u.s. because we are a democracy. we take time. we debate. the biggest criticism that i hear is that there is no plan, and identifiable plan about what our role will be in the future other than let us make a bilateral deal. i think that does not work in the geopolitical world. i will stop here because secretary albright will need to comment. >> i was remiss in one fashion. sharesry albright albright stonebridge. we have to give equal time to our sister consulting firm in washington. i just returned from a trip last week to germany, the czech republic, and slovakia. better thans space anyone. in poland, hungary, and now the czech republic, we see ante democratic, nationalists politics taking over the government's. i came away listening to the europeans. i don't think they believe that we are any longer the leader in the west. the way that every american president, republican and democrat, has been deemed to be. secretary albright: it was terrific all waste work with secretary cohen. we proved bipartisanship. and we spent a lot of time together. let me just say that i think there are a lot of contradictions out there at the moment. and they need to be put within some kind of historical context. person,re-world war ii but mostly my life as a functional human being happened after world war ii. thatd a saying afterwards when the united states was the winner of world war ii and in the position of creating the institutions that really govern everything we have been involved in. and that period saw us in a mortal fight with the soviet union. and every policy that the united states undertook, whether it was assistance, a defense policy or financial, was done in the context of the world being divided between the red, and the red, white, and blue. that ended with the fall of the berlin wall. we are in a second phase. a part ofileged to be looking at what our policy within this new aspect of things where the soviet union no longer existed in the countries you mentioned became independent. i think we are in a third phase. and one -- and richard you pointed this out, that technology plays a large part in affecting us. what is the role of the u.s. within an entirely new construct? president clinton was the first one to use the term indispensable. the term became identified with me. there is nothing about the definition of indispensable that says "alone" -- i think for the world to function, the u.s. needs to be engaged. i am concerned that we are becoming the dispensable nation. if i were president or others were in office -- by the way, the sit room looks quite different now than when we were there. is that there is a question about how one presents america. i find it appalling that our president at the moment is talking about being victims of everything and that no one wants to do anything with us and all of a sudden everyone is taking advantage of us. iat is not the america that think is necessary at this point. i do think that we need to figure out what our role is in this third phase. specifically to the question that you asked. i think that most of the things that have happened are a double-edged sword. what happened with the fall of it wall and globalization -- has created an interaction among all of us. in this of the people room have been beneficiaries of globalization. but it is faceless and people want and identity. the countries of central and eastern europe -- next year we will be celebrating the creation of those countries after world war i. the bottom line is that they were created on the basis of national identity after the end of the austro-hungarian empire. with the faithlessness of globalization, those countries and others in the middle east are now into identity politics in so many ways whether it is linguistic, ethnic, or religious. that is fine. i believe in patriotism but i don't believe in nationalism or hyper nationalism that creates -- my group does not like your group. i think that is dangerous. there is also a double-edged sword to technology. which is we all like to talk about the woman farmer in kenya who no longer has to walk millions of miles to pay her bills because she can do it on the mobile phone. disaggregated has us to a point that it is difficult to have political parties and try to figure out how we belong and we all listen to echo chambers of what we already believe in. i tried desperately to listen to things i don't believe in which would make it stay out of my you way when i'm driving as i listen to right wing radio. the bottom line is that i think we do need to do that. some of you heard me say this. and that is the following. and i apologize for plagiarizing because i tell my students not to do that but i stole this line from silicon valley. people are talking to their governments on 21st century technology. the government's listen to them on 20th century technology and provide 19th-century responses. there is no faith in institutions. there are issues about where the u.s. stands internationally. what is happening nationally with institutional structure. and i think we are at sea and i fully agree with bill in terms -- personally, i am waiting for the national security strategy to come out since i have them from all of the previous administrations and i.t. job of them because we know how they are made. it is complicated. bureaucracies at their best. and you actually have some clue about where the administration is going. and we have absolutely no clue at a time that the world is at one of our more dangerous moments. >> thank you very much. i think that national security policy will be out shortly. i want to talk about the autocratic partners to we have to talk about. russia and china. starting with russia. a country that has annexed crimea. onethat has divided ukraine part from another. has kept mold over and georgia off-balance. and our intelligence community theyited in saying that intervened in the dutch, french, and german elections this year. if you were both in office now, working with president trump, what would you advise that he do to contain the more pernicious aspects of russian power in europe and in our own country? necessity, on iran and north korea, find a channel. cohen: first, we have to remove the cloud over russia. as long as the cloud continues to hang over the white house with these unresolved issues, it will be very difficult for the , orident to take a positive make a positive approach to the russians. everyone in this room with a we need to have a better relationship with russia. it is a big country. 11 time zones. they have nuclear weapons. they can cause instability. it would be important for us to have a positive relationship with russia. that cannot take place as long isthis cloud of doubt hanging over the white house in terms of what is the nature of this relationship between the putin.nt and as long as there is suspicion aboutid -- and cynicism or someoneken place wants to take place, it will be hard for us to formulate a policy that can do both things. namely, continue to punish the russians for their past behavior. georgia, and certainly their attack upon the united states -- the digital attack launched against us at the heart of our democracy. we are not going to be able to do that unless that cloud is removed. and so, i have from the very beginning tried to talk about this publicly that i thought the president has to take action to remove that by number one saying -- what do you own, mr. president? we and to home whom do-- and to you owe it? i believe there is russian money in real estate. why have any inhibition about disclosing it? that is where i think the doubt and the cynicism calms because there is something that doesn't quite fit in this picture. you can criticize the british prime minister, the australian prime minister, the german -- and not once say a word of negative crimmins -- criticism to the russian leader. that is appalling. i would intensify the sanctions against russia. i would go after more of their individuals. i would deny them the one thing they want most witches respect. nhat is what president puti wants. for russia to be respected. which he should. he wants his country to be respected. if you want respect, you have to not.espectfully and he has i think he has been engaged in activities that have been contrary to the established norms that we expect of a great country. i would not allow him to have that status until such time that there has been some modification of his behavior. secretary albright: it would be nice if the cloud was lifted but i think it will just go deeper because the cloud is more than a cloud. i think we have to be concerned about what has gone on. has believe that putin hand brilliantly. he is a cagey b officer and he has played us in an unbelievable way. we always talk about containing russia. they are trying to contain democracy are the kinds of things they are doing and they had done in the u.s. and evidently are doing throughout europe. they have made a very strong play for at least equal assessments of what is going on in the middle east. was secretary, i primakov was the foreign would know about asserting russian power in the middle east and he would be very proud of what is going on now because the russians have become equal powers on syria and they have helped support assad there. he has also played the game generally with israel on a number of different issues. i think they have played a weak hand well. we have to be concerned because they are systematically making it more difficult for us to carry out what we need to carry out and have weakened us. has already made clear that he will run forever. -- in has been brilliant the 1990's i did a survey across europe ended questionnaires and focus groups. i will never forget the focus group outside of moscow. a man stands up and says -- i am so embarrassed. we used to be a superpower and now we are bangladesh with missiles. managed to keep the russian people in a weakened economy. i want to ask both of you a follow-up question. how we conduct american leadership and diplomacy in the world. it is a surreal environment when two weeks ago, on one day, the british prime minister and the archbishop of canterbury felt compelled to criticize publicly the president of the u.s. i am quite confident that has not happened since 1783 and the treaty of paris. weekend, we had a situation where the president and his rally in pensacola went after angela merkel and the nato allies, publicly. and having just returned from europe and seeing the sensitivity of the european allies to this persistent public criticism juxtaposed to the andic's praise of putin, duterte. what has produced this and what are the consequences to our inability as a result? cohen: what has produced this? you have a president that has been elected that has very little experience in the political world. he came with no serious level of, in my judgment, curiosity about the geopolitical situation. i was listening to steve earlier andhe said -- trade first geopolitics should follow. i am not quite sure that is right. i think they are almost inseparable. when we talk about tpp to give you another example. i was in beijing the day after election last year. i was meeting with a high level chinese official. we were having dinner at his office. and he asked me -- now that president trump has been elected, does that mean that tpp is dead? and i said -- regrettably, yes. and he reached over and touched me and he said good. good. it was good from the chinese perspective. but not from our allies' perspective. to a person, they came here in the spring, and gave a presentation. numbery indicated that one, we wasted seven years with you. seven years we wasted negotiating this deal. and number two, you undermined our credibility with our own constituents. that was a sentiment deeply felt. beyond the trade issue, it was one where we were going to be the leaders for the architecture -- that means they will take the leadership role. interconnection with politics and they can't be separated. the president has yet to decide what our role is going to be. you have mr. bannon, an advisor of his, so would like to see a less engaged role on the part of the u.s. let the europeans take care of europe. nato has been -- not been doing as much as they should. which he is right. i am not suggesting that the nato countries have paid up in terms of the contribution they should have made. we have made that argument. bob gates has made that argument. every secretary of defense including tim matus. he is not wrong in saying they have to do more. but the way in which you do it, sometimes matters more than what you're asking. if you insult people, if you criticize them publicly as opposed to dealing with them privately, that tends to create friction. you can see this playing out. we havepeans feel disengaged from their affairs. it started during the obama administration when we were going to "pivot" from our focus on europe to the pacific. the signal that was sent was not a positive one. the europeans started to feel that we were distancing ourselves and looking east and not looking west towards them. i think we have got to decide -- we are suffering from war 50. the american people said -- we have been at this for a long time. it is time for us to take care of nationbuilding at home. that sentiment is what the president has tapped into and there is justification for that. do that at the expense of disengaging from global affairs. because, when you do come other countries fill the gap. gap ins filling the asia. russia is filling the gap in syria and they are moving into egypt. they are establishing influence in the middle east and they are also working on north korea as well. back, they move in and that does not work to our advantage. think iy albright: i do know this president wants to be remembered for being the greatest whatever. he will in fact have been the one that diminished american power more than any single president. and i think that is not a record that any of us should be proud of. i do not believe the world works if the u.s. is not engaged. and we are seeing that. the chinese are talking about one broke. they must -- the chinese are talking about one else, one , one world. belt i have just been to argentina. and we talked about the chinese investing in latin america. they are everywhere that we are not. this is a time to be concerned about this. the i don't understand is contradiction among the american people. events, the olympics, we always have to be number one. and all of a sudden, we don't want to be a part of anything. and "america first" is not number one. it is isolationist. it is a country that does not know how to operate internationally. i am stunned by a lot of contradictions. the overturning of the liberal order. i believe we are in danger. that is why a book that i am writing coming out in april is called "fascism: a warning." there are working-class people that feel left out of things, who are angry, who do not want regulation from washington but who do want a strong leader. i think we need to look at history. tried in the last year to a.polite but i have had i think we have to ask what is going on here. there are some very dangerous aspects in terms of -- some of us thought this would go away. but there are many things being put in place. -- and the of tpp chinese running what is left over. that is of grave concern. what is happening with our budget. the fact that they are dismantling the diplomatic service is stunning to me. what has happened, in terms of respect, secretary tillerson and those abroad having been deemed by what is -- having been gamed. he does not have the respect. we have to say -- enough is enough. people describe me as a grateful american. it --g was more of them was more important to me than becoming an american citizen. and the respect that people had for america. i do not wish to end my life i seeing that we are not as strong as we need to be to make the world of better place. : i don't know if we could claim victory in kosovo without secretary albright pushing for our active intervention in that conflict. i want to come back to a second on the issue of having a philosophy or a geo-strategy. secretary tillerson gave a speech about a month ago. i was quite impressed. indianitting next to the ambassador. secretary tillerson laid out a vision that he saw for our relationship. ear isught my year -- my that he went out of his way to say that china is an important country but it is india that the u.s. looks to for the future as our strategic partner. and he went on several times to make that a definitive point. i thought it was interesting that he would be that forward leaning toward india as the president is getting ready to go to china. i thought he beat it was a good cop bad cop situation where he is laying a foundation. the point was that tillerson's speech to me laid out a blueprint for u.s.-india, india-japan, it u.s.-japan, india-australia, u.s.-australia. speak, itquad so to relationship between the u.s., japan, india, and australia. morehave been a little reluctant on the australian component. sharecause they don't similar ideals with australia but because when you start looking at the quad come it looks like a containment strategy of china. the indians do not want to have the u.s. think that we are playing an indian card against china. we have to be careful in that respect, but to me it gets back to the fundamental notion of what is in our interest. our interest is to establish relationships with democratic countries that share our interests and our ideals. and to the extent that we can do that, we are not trying to contain china but send a signal to the chinese. we know you are a growing economic power. you will be a big military power. but, we want you to use that power in a way that is integrative into the international system and not for aggressive or destabilizing purposes. we are going to build these relationships with all of the countries that share our interests and ideals and we are going to hold those relationships close to us. the danger i see from what has been happening is that we are pushing away some of those allies. we insult them. we do not pay the respect that they deserve and we have felt they are pulling away from us. that is the danger that i see. we are not cultivating and nurturing the countries that share our ideals. and that to me is one of the great problems we will face in the future. >> thank you. at the aspen strategy group, we are focused on nonpartisanship. i went to ask you about china and north korea. there has been a consensus in the george w. bush, barack obama, and at the cabinet level in the trump administration, that the developed ship with the partnership between the u.s. and india joined by our alliance with japan, sometimes joint by will manage that we and limit the ambitions of the chinese running roughshod over the neighbors. i think there is a consensus on that. the problem is that we have not heard that from the president. is thiss back to what should teach it plan? should we give the president some credit on china and india? one can argue that the president has gotten more out of the chinese with some of their sanctions against north korea than previous presidents have. that the chinese now are engaged perhaps because they fear that president trump might initiate military action against north korea. are we close to war? is there a high possibility of a preemptive strike? is this more kabuki? secretary albright: i am not sure that i agree that we have developed, or the president has gotten something out of the chinese. doingot sure they are everything they could as far as north korea is concerned. their concern is more that the place will fall apart. some ofe not cut off the major aspects of the chinese economy. and they are mucking around in the south china sea and taking over climate change and a variety of other things. i do think that the celebration -- is putting him in a greater role. het worries me is that thinks he has gotten something out of the chinese. that is worrisome. i am worried about what is happening in north korea. not, i am still the highest level sitting official to have gone to pyongyang with this guy's father. i am glad the united nations has sent over an envoy and i am glad that dennis rodman is going over it because that will be useful. is a smart person and the fact that the u.n. is more interested in it. but i think what makes me nervous is an accident. i think part of the problem is you need to have hotlines and some kind of connection. i think it is unclear where the chinese are. what surprises me is that the chinese and the russians, if there is some hydrogen test, or if already there is some radioactive fallout from the tests they have are ready taking, is that they don't see that affects their people and they will have to be more helpful. the votes in the u.n. are nice. -- in terms oft the sanctions aspect. agree thatohen: i the chinese could be doing more. , and thiskoreans have goes back to the lbj days, they have had a guns and butter policy. they have been able to develop their guns and the russians and the chinese have been giving them the butter. if you look at the economic situation, the economy of north korea has been improving. it is growing. there are some signs that there is some entrepreneurial -- entrepreneurial ship going on. i think the chinese are in a position to do much more. they are reluctant to do much more. they constantly say that they fear that if there is a collapse of the north korean regime, that there will be millions of people flooding into china. i have always asked the question where i thought there would be millions of people heading into south korea. nonetheless, and you can see that from the defector that took a number of shot to get over the wall. that he was heading south and not north towards china. i think they are playing the long game. ,hey feel that the long game they benefit by having a divided with the u.s. still in a state of contention without military action at this point. that, as the north gets stronger, the south will get weaker because they will have less confidence in the u.s. by virtue of the perception that we are pulling back. and eventually, the north koreans will be able to unify the peninsula under north korean power. i don't know what changes that calculus for them. i think the president deserves credit for ratcheting up the pressure. but i think there is always a danger. a danger when you start using , we areke fire and fury to eliminate you from the map. i think henry kissinger in his white house years said something that i have never quite forgotten. he said -- and idle threat is taken seriously and it can be helpful. but a serious threat that is treated as idle can be catastrophic. issue becomes, if the president is making idle threats which get the attention and a positive response from the north koreans or from the chinese, that is good. but if we continue to make threats which are idle, and are in fact serious, we could find ourselves in a situation that madeleine just described. wear something takes place very weakly and escalates almost immediately. -- what itmmendation is is we need to go back to the south koreans and say -- you have been slow in putting in a missile system. the chinese have come down hard on you, impeded your economy, and try to slow this process down. that did not build confidence in terms of what the south korean president was going to do. in, maybe one or two batteries. thad in japan as well. japanese would have it. and i would increase their missile capability in japan and south korea. i would say you are going to be put at risk. to the extent that causes any from the partess of the chinese, that is not a bad thing in my judgment. it will do more to bring a solution about, rather than kicking the can forever. sec. albright: i think one of the things, having described that we are in a third new era, no matter who had gotten elected, this would be an incredibly complicated period. the bottom line is that there were many issues that needed to be worked on, that require a oftlety and an understanding the international situation that seems to be missing. the is what worries me most. no matter what, things would be hard. you mentioned are very complex and there were higher and understanding of some very basic issues, not just reactions. , i hope veryhink much that the team becomes increasingly stronger and works with members of congress to try to figure how we live in this third era of the post-world war ii. nicholas: there are reports that victor shaw is going to be nominated to be the american ambassador to south korea, and i think that is a fine choice. he's knowledgeable. he knows the region. we haven't had an ambassador throughout the crisis. we are just about out of time, but i have to ask you this. it is such a hard question to answer. how close are we to war? i've been assuming, watching secretary mattis, watching secretary tillerson, that a combination of sanctions, extended deterrence, the valve that we will protect ourselves and our allies, might be enough with china to maneuver the north koreans at least towards some kind of diplomatic conversation. we haven't talked to this government. as you pointed out, matalin, you are the only senior administration official that has been to pyongyang. it would seem that would be a necessary event before you thought about a preemptive american attack. thate are consistently there are some who think we ought to consider a preemptive attack. the question for both of you is, how close are we to war in 2018? well, i'm often asked if i'm an optimist or a pessimist. i'm an optimist who worries a lot. i think there's no reason to go to war. the course i teach at georgetown is, foreign policy is trying to get some country to do what you want. so what are the tools? my course is the national security toolbox. there are a lot of tools besides the actual use of force. the threat of the use of force is something else. i think we also need to figure out how to use the other tools together and try to figure out how to restore our credibility. going,y glad victor is but it is not going to be an easy story there. i think it is a matter of how to work with congress to begin to restore our credibility so that we don't have war. if it is, it is going to be a disastrous one. sec. cohen: i think we should really activate and information warfare campaign. i think we should try and have a free -- a radio free korea , and really saturate the airwaves as best we can to say, president putin has said the north koreans will eat grass if you put more sanctions on. and my answer was, let them eat grass, but also offer them some texas beef that we now export to south korea, so they can see life is good in south korea. i would create as much instability as i could on the part of the people of north korea through information campaigns. war, is of going to don't think anyone who's been in a position at the pentagon or state department would advocate that we take preemptive action. the reason this can has been kicked down the road since richard nixon is because the consequences of going to war are so horrific. if we are talking about tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who might die, that is the reason the can has been kicked down the road. the president is right in saying, i have a mess that i've inherited. yes, but as you once said to the widow of an officer we lost in niger, you knew what you were getting into. you were running for the highest office in the world, and problems come with this job. now the issue is, what are you going to do with it? for me is that we combine our show of military force with not so vague ,llegations or tweets statements coming out of the white house, that we are preparing for a fire and fury storm, coupled with general mcmaster, who said we are closer to war than ever before. ,hen it gets into the realm could we start something by accident, misinterpretation, that he really feels we are sa-88 class submarines in the region, etc., coupled with the language we are using. if we are going to continue to use the language and yet not do anything, that he roads the credibility of what the president might have in mind. he might be serious. than some are closer of the experts who have said we are 20%. i would put it higher, closer to 35% or 40%, just because i think we have ratcheted up the language, we are putting more troops and resources into the i think it accentuates the possibility that there could be action taken by miscalculation that i don't think any military leader is going to recommend that we fire against them on a preemptive basis. nicholas: i wish we had another hour to talk about this, but i want to thank secretary colin, secretary albright, for being with us, and thank you for your service to the united states. [applause] nicholas: without further ado, we are to go to our last panel. we have former members of the cabinet, former national security advisers, and journalists. david sanger and nick kristof and did it ignatius are with us. i'm going to turn this over to our moderator, david. welcome to steve. welcome to susan. .avid: thank you, nick the reason that the aspen strategy group is unusual is that it does bring together an unusually high level of discipline, and it is genuinely nonpartisan. the discussions for someone like me, a journalist, i get an extraordinary chance to listen to what really happens, the questions that are going to drive our world going forward, and to hear the smartest people in our country in foreign policy talk about them. special pleasure to be here with susan rice and steve hadley, both former national security advisers, both part of what i ,all the great chain of being from thoughtful leader to thoughtful leader through the years. i thought we might begin by asking if each of you were to this a memo at the end of year turned upside down, to take the title of our session this summer, write a memo to your successor, h.r. mcmaster, looking at where we are. we've come through this first year of the trump presidency. what would be the bullet points in that memo to h.r. mcmaster, susan? susan: thank you, david. i would begin with a little bit of humility, recognizing that it is a tough job that h.r. mcmaster has. and arguably more difficult in the current context than even i faced. i would say several things. first of all, i would encourage him to do his utmost, as i imagine he's trying to do, to affect a higher degree of message discipline within the administration. one of the challenges we have seen is we have different members of the senior leadership team at different times saying quite divergent things on very important and sensitive issues. that is not only a function of the president and his tweeting that sometimes seems divorced from what i believe has been considered policy, but also even within the cabinet, at times we hear different things for example from the u.n. ambassador then we hear from the secretary of state or the secretary of defense, and in a time when our leadership is being questioned, and when our stability and consistency is being questioned, having greater message discipline would be very helpful. secondly, i would encourage general mcmaster to work with secretary tillerson and others in the administration to staff the state department with urgency. and to cease efforts to reduce the budget by 30%. and to reassure our career diplomats that the work they do is valued and necessary. i think we have a huge crisis of confidence within the state department, which is not a short-term problem. but with the exodus at the senior ranks and the lack of recruits at the junior ranks, i fear we are facing a generational deficit. it is one that undermines our efficacy across every region of the world. i would also urge general mcmaster to give very careful thought apropos of the conversation we were just having on north korea to the public assertion that there is a viable koreary solution in north , for all the reasons that were discussed previously. administrationno should take any option off the table, we are boxing ourselves into a narrower set of options on a very complex problem that could leave us in a corner where we don't want to be, and where the outcomes can only be counterproductive. finally, and i think the list could go on, i would also encourage a renewed effort in 2018 to reinforce and reinvigorate our alliances. our traditional alliances in europe, our relationships in asia, we are in different places with different allies, but each of them at different times has ambiguity, ifby not downright confusion as to the constancy of our commitment. in this very difficult and uncertain time, that is not helpful to any number of our larger objectives. let me stop there and let steve answer this question. david: steve, bullet points for hr. steve: i would start by telling them that he's doing some things right. it is nice to sort of start out by saying -- i would probably phrase it, you've set the table pretty well on some policies. i've spent a lot of time in the middle east, in asia. people are feeling pretty good. they feel he's connected pretty well with our traditional allies in the middle east. he has a good relationship with japan. a lot of the concerns people had from the rhetoric in the election have been mitigated because the policies have strayed considerably from some of that. i would start by saying, you've set the table pretty well for a set of policies and strategies. now you've got to put the food on it and eat the meal. they will start doing that with their national security strategy. i would probably say the perception from the outside is that the process is not working as smoothly as it needs to at any level. it doesn't seem to have gotten into a battle rhythm. for is of course an issue the national security adviser's and the president. they don't seem to be working together as a team in coordinated way at the senior level yet. that is worrisome. one of the things they need to figure out is roles and responsibilities. i was not part of the trump campaign or the transition or the administration. i've never met president trump. you can decide how much weight to give what i'm about to say. but this is a man who is now president who has never been in government at any level for a single day. he doesn't know how it works. i think there's a problem of figuring out helping the president understand what his ,ole is, what he needs to do and what he needs other people to do, and getting some kind of roles and responsibilities clarified. trumping aeems to be little bit over each other. another thing i would say is cast tore is a military their policies. some of the people who are former military who were in cabinet level positions know very well from their own experience that the problems we have with terrorism, the problems we have in the middle east, cannot be solved by military means alone. my worry is that i have not seen them rolling out the kind of integrated strategies that you need that capitalize on the progress we've made in iraq and syria against isis, to break basically the caliphate and exclude those forces. you need to come in behind with a set of policies that help those victimized communities reestablish good governance, economic prosperity, and security. people say there shouldn't be any nationbuilding. we are not nationbuilding. but they need help. it is in our interest to give them that help. if we don't, there will not be long-term stability. think they are not giving evidence to develop the kind of full set of strategies to achieve stability in some of these areas. that is an important thing that needs to be done. this: one big theme of world turned upside down in my rise,nt has been the really the validation of the rise of china as a global power. that was symbolized in xi jinping's extraordinary performance at the party and him , which was probably followed by president trump'sjinping's extry visit to beijing, which seemed to me to be an american validation of this new chinese role. i want to ask each of you to reflect on china and the united states. susan, let me ask you to begin that. president trump's disruptive edge, putting people on was on display during the transition when he mentioned a phone call with the leader of taiwan, but that has been followed by an extraordinary embrace -- if i strung together all the nice things donald trump has said about xi jinping, it would go on for pages. in particular, the administration seems to have decided that china is the key to successful outcomes with north korea. i would ask you to assess that , that a good relationship with china is essential, that it is best to get that by disrupting them, threatening them with trade sanctions, etc., but then this extraordinary embrace in the last few months. susan: well, david, the challenge follows, first of all that bilateral relations with china is the most consequential that we have in the world. it is also one of the most complex and difficult. we have a mix of competition and the potential and in some instances the reality of cooperation. what we've seen from the trump administration is a sort of pivoting to extremes. on the one hand, he came in during the transition putting not just china, but many on edge with his statements on taiwan that suggested a radical recalibration of our historic ,alancing of taiwan and china and also some very hot rhetoric about the potential for a trade war. now, particularly culminating in his visit, we've seen a pivot to extraordinarily warm embrace of xi jinping, with more accolades for xi than almost any other leader, with the possible exception of vladimir putin. and yet xi is governing in a very iron handed way. we have said nothing at all publicly about human rights or the rule of law. we said very little about our very real economic and sirens and the necessity of protecting our intellectual property, and our industries that are under threat. i think what we need to do is strike a balance. not one extreme, not the other. china is a country with which we must find avenues for cooperation where our interests overlap, and we have done so in the past on everything from nuclear security to pandemic disease, not to mention climate change. we also have to recognize that china's interest and hours are statistically diverged. and ours are substantially diverged. can't fall on over china. rug its brush under the nefarious practices. on the other hand, we can't create a mortal enemy where we needn't have one. that balance is one we have to strike and we haven't found our footing. north korea is a very important issue with which we have to work with china, but i think we have to be realistic. yes, china has the capacity to north korea is a very important tighten the economic screws on north korea, and we have seen it incrementally do so over the years, including in recent months. we want to encourage that. we want to work with china to ratchet up the pressure in the united nations. that remains a necessity. but also to have a productive dialogue with china about future scenarios that might unfold on the korean peninsula so that we are not surprising one another. but to expect china to go as far as we might like it to go, to put the threat of regime threatening pressure on north korea that american administrations have sought for many years, has been and is increasingly unrealistic to expect will be manifest by china. you can't expect it to solve this problem for us. it is a country with which we must work on the problem of north korea, but with realism and a recognition that china's ours do notd converge on the means of achieving it in every instance. david: steve, what is your judgment? is the trump administration being too accommodating an optimistic about what this china do to help the united states to frame an order in the world that is congenial for us? steve: i think we are all not really appreciating the magnitude of what china represents. said -- there are people that emphasized the competitive aspects who say, we have another like the soviet union. the soviet union had great military power, but was fairly weak in economic and in terms of influence. china is a formidable competitor. when we talk about the change and the disruption of the international order we've had since world war ii, one of the factors is the reemergence of competition, and china is at the forefront of that. also seeing two major world powers, china and india. it becomes a very complicated geometry. i think china's significance is enormous. the one built one road initiative is probably in my view the most remarkable strategic initiative so far in this century. basically saying to the united states and others, you think you can box me in on my pacific coast? andl i've got an inl land-based access route that is going to take me to europe, and i'm going to build infrastructure and get support from those countries. if you look at the impact the chinese economy has had in southeast asia, the extent to which countries are dependent on china, and they begin to influence the politics of these countries, that is what is potentially ahead when you look as china builds out its infrastructure. this is an anonymous challenge for the united states, and i think to manage it is going to take us all working together. i was very troubled by the withdrawal from the transpacific partnership, not just because of the economic significance, but the strategic significance. it looks like we are not playing in the region, when we have to do just the opposite. we need to be active in the world in every dimension, diplomatic, economic, military, you name it. we need to look at it not as northeast asia, southeast asia -- it is all asia. we have to work with japan, south korea, australia, india, all these countries, not to draw new lines, not to engage china, but to engage china and try to shape its policies. it is going to have a decisive influence on the region and the world, and it is our job to try to shape it in productive ways, and engage them to revise an international order that is stable, that serves our interest, and preserves as much as we can of the democratic foundations of the existing order. we have to deal with north korea and all the rest, but i don't think we appreciate and have taken into account the magnitude of the challenge we face. note thatant to just we are going to be turning to the audience in about 10 minutes for your questions. please do be thinking of what you would like to ask steve hadley and susan rice. want to turn now to discussion of a subject that dominates our headlines, our cable news coverage, and that is russia. thist to ask you to focus susan toorward and ask begin. presidenti remember obama's policies toward russia after the crimea invasion, after ukraine, after syria, and i would say to some extent after russian meddling in our election , i remember the phrase "exit ramp." it kept being repeated. we want to leave vladimir putin an exit ramp. we want him to stop this apology -- this policy that is damaging and destructive. there did seem to be some optimism that at some point this would just become too costly for putin and he would take one of these exit ramps. i haven't seen that. i want to ask you, as you look 2018, whether you think it is still time to keep those exit ramps open, or whether as you look at policy you would think maybe it is time for a different strategic view toward russia. susan: let me just clarify how i understood the term, exit ramp. it was initially applied with respect to ukraine. we had organized the european union and ourselves, and our g7 implementto increasingly stringent sanctions on russia with the aim of trying to get them to roll back and we were also engaged with our partners in europe on an effort to negotiate the minsk agreements which france and germany played a leading role in and we were in gauged in which if implemented, whatever it -- what have resolved the issue of eastern ukraine. as we did all of that were also substantially increasing our support, financial, economic, political, and military to the government of ukraine. and the notion was that the pressure and the sanctions were not meant purely to punish or as an end to themselves, but were to create an opportunity for a diplomatic solution to be found. and the offramp idea was -- you don't close off the opportunity for your policy to succeed if, in the event, that the pressure you have applied is having the desired impact, you want to be able to capitalize on that with a diplomatic opening. applies ine theory the context of syria. that was not the theory of or russiantice of the interference in the elections. those were different circumstances. in the case of ukraine and itsa, russia -- and on policies and, i think, in recent months, we have seen, not an opportunity for them to take an offramp but a superhighway where there is no constraint to what they might do because not only have we not increased sanctions, mandatedgh congress that we must come at the sanctions have not been forthcoming from the administration. not only that, but we have talked about rolling back existing sanctions. and, we have essentially left the diplomacy, both in ukraine and to a lesser extent ukraine but particularly in syria, to others. and so, i think we are in a place now where the question is addressare our tools to both the ukrainian challenge and the syrian challenge? and you asked the broader question of it is time for a radical readjustment to our policy to russia? clarityit is time for and understanding across party lines that we face a russia that is pursuing policies that are antithetical to our interest. russia is not our friend. putin is not worthy of the nobel prize as has been suggested by some. you know, he is acting and a way that is in violation of international law, in violation of the norms of humanity, particularly in syria. and we need to be united and clear in pushing back on that. i think we need to implement the sanctions that congress ample -- that congress mandated and consider additional ones. there are steps we could take that would be more complex than the sanctions we have imposed today because they would -- to date because they would implicate european interests and hours but russian more. we should consider that balance. we need to continue to build up our support for the eastern flank of nato and not open the door to russian meddling in nato through our rhetoric or through any ambiguity about the constancy of our commitment to our nato allies. and in places like syria and elsewhere in the middle east where russia is running around arguably eating our lunch in places like egypt, we need to be very clear about where we are with our partners in different regions and make clear that we are not leaving open doors for russia, who is as i said, whose interests are in opposition to ours, to gain advantage at the expense of hours. the president has been remarkably consistent through the campaign, through the turmoil does rounds the question of russia in saying that he believes the interests of the united states are served by a better relationship with russia and putin. is he wrong? assess theuld you question that i put two susan? to susan?t i put y a comic.g on a friend of mine recently said we need to give russia a punch in the nose. what do you think about punching in the nose? but more generally about this interesting paradox of his russian policy. steve: i think we can all agree that an improved relationship with russia would be a good thing. russia is active in a lot of theaters. my worry is that putin in some sense has decided that his role is to be the spoiler in some sense. if the u.s. is for it, it he is against it. -- the ambassadors said that you americans has decided that russia is the embassy and putin will start to show you what it is like to have russia as an enemy. can we changes -- russian behavior in a way that is consistent with our terms so that it can be a partner? we have a long way to go to do that. how do you get there? you see a lot of it in terms of ukraine. thatew is that russia -- putin is not a great strategist and he is not particularly reckless but he is a brilliant opportunist. opportunity and he steps in and takes advantage of it. you saw it in syria and you see it in other instances. he will make a move and then he will see if his intervention succeeds and if he is resisted. and hetarts to flounder is resisted, he pulls back. up hiss not, he will objective. we saw that in georgia. one, you need to take things off the table. denied him opportunities. that is what we are trying to do in the baltic states and in central and eastern europe. we are trying to strengthen nato's presence, put troops on the ground to make it clear that the baltic states are off the table. the balkans are off the table. they will not be an opportunity for him to do what he did in ukraine. second of all, where he does act, i don't know if it is punch him in the nose but you need to act in such way that he pays tactically and cannot achieve his tactical objectives. his aspirations in ukraine were much more ambitious in terms of taking a large swath of that country on the eastern side and have it very much pro-russian. paying a price and terms of sanctions and isolation. at some point, it will come time to test and see if he is willingness to have a settlement anukraine to reduce investment and do it on terms that are acceptable to the ukrainians and the rest of us. i don't know. we ought to test that proposition. if it is not an option, we need to increase the sanctions and arm the ukrainians with lethal weapons. this guy is going to be a problem and he needs to be engaged on each of these scenarios. it is a car -- it is a combination of hardening opportunities and confronting him when he does act. and finally, the think we have not figured out is the campaign he is using to sow division in our societies. we see that here and in europe. we have not figured out how to counter that in any way. this is part of the ideological structure. we have the chinese leader saying his authoritarian state capitalism is an alternative to the free market model and putin certainly seems to think the same way and they are actively trying to convince the world a superior is model and we are on the back foot. >> before i turn this to the audience for questions, i have one more of my own. i want to pull the camera back if you will to the basic question that we were struggling with last august. in aspen. i think it is fair to say that every member of the group grew up in the shadow of the world that was created after world war ii. and the idea of american power that was embodied in the work of president truman, george marshall, of the liberal american order. liberal international order as we describe it. and so, i want to ask as a final question, how lasting each of you think the damage to that order is? ways tot are the best defend that broad idea? susan, let us start. is the damage going to be the world revert to its previous shape after this period of to multiply the presidency of donald trump? susan: we have to distinguish between the various sources pulling at the liberal world order. some of them might be considered predominately egg zogenix, come ous, coming from the outside including the direction of europe, the rise of china, the new economy, russia's role. originh of those has an and momentum of its own which i think we need to be very realistic about. i think steve's point about how isnificant this reason china is a valid one but i do not think it represents a mortal threat to the u.s. if we manage it carefully. and then, there are the end. nous affects.andoge these things are relatively new. that have beens enous factors.xog and i think we can work to limit and temper and these aspects but we have the greatest control theoretically over the andogenous factors. i don't know if we have fully grasp the significance of what i would term the abdication of american leadership internationally which we have seen take on new forms. as we walk out of agreements that we ourselves committed to whether it be paris or tpp or put in jeopardy the iran deal or now the decision on jerusalem which has left a substantially isolated internationally. there are many different ways in stagewe have ceded this and left a vacuum of american leadership which only accelerates the opportunity of china and others to fill the void. own to also have our mystic, internal divisions which are so debilitating and facilitate the kind of disruptive efforts that the russians have engaged in during and since the election. when we ourselves are so polarized and unable to agree even on the facts that we are debating, much less on where we are going, we are threatening our own ability to come back to the answer to your question i playing withe were all of our cards on the table, with a degree of national unity, strength, and clarity of our role as leader in the world, factors can bes managed. and the liberal world order, it won't be identical to 1945 or 1990, but it can be a 21st century version that upholds our values. but, if we do not get our domestic house in order and decide what kind of leader we want to be and do it from a position of national unity, then i think a lot of bets may be off. to meve, you always say and our conversations that we need to remember that this president is an insurgent. grown to think about that point. with that in mind, let me ask you directly, is the old order finished? is it over? and if it is possible that is so, what might be coming to replace it? steve: well, you know, there will always be an order of some sort. there will be relationships among states. likeuestion is, will it be the order we have had since the end of world war ii which is basically the creation of the united states and our allies based on democratic principles and open economies. it has been very successful, not just for the u.s., but for the world in terms of providing an unprecedented period of prosperity and society. the alternative to that is a different kind of order. and it is one of the answers to the question that you put to susan. ordernot fated that that will fade away but it depends on our policies. note try to exclude and the changesrder to we have seen, it is more likely to fade away. if we do not embrace china and try to incorporate china in an effort to adapt that by, forional order, example, not standing aside when they create the asia infrastructure bank. it.hould have embraced and tried to use our influence to make sure that it meant -- that it met standards of transparency and integrated it into the international order. we should be doing that with world.e belt, one if, on the other hand, we do not, and we try to step on china, the risk is that china, ansia, and others will form alternative international order based on up the worry terry and -- based on authoritarian principles. and that potentially becomes a safe haven for all of the bad actors in the world that want to get out from under the international order that make them subject to things like sanctions. it is a space for the north koreans and the iranians and the money launderers and the it is ans and alternative structure, if you would, which would be a place where none of us would want to live and would be competitive with the international order that we have seen. it depends on our policies. and the one thing i would add to the memo to mcmaster is that everyone thinks that because you have withdrawn from certain agreements that you are withdrawing from the world. i don't think that is their intention. and they have to come up with an explanation of a theory of engagement that they can sell to the american people. last point. one of the things that we made in the strategy group is that we can say all we want about reconstituting and at adapting the international order but there is also the loss of the american people's support. and they expressed that. ande that felt abandoned betrayed. and those people are the ones who really say the international order should go away. we have to address their grievances. and their ways to do that. i wish we had a tax cut that really helped the middle class and an infrastructure program that would give people in their 50's and 60's who only have 20th century skills jobs and real job training to adapt to the new economy. put a ribbon around that and i think you could have gotten bipartisan support for that. we have to address those grievances to make people comfortable and to continue to be a platform and supportive of american engagement in the world and then we need to adapt to the international order. but as susan said, we have to address the exotic us -- the factors and those that involve domestic factors. >> let us turn to members of the audience for their questions. please identify yourself. from the capital press group. would you give president trump on the middle east and on jerusalem? >> [laughter] >> i think it is a little late on jerusalem. >> [laughter] think they are off to a pretty good start. they have embraced our traditional allies, both in europe and israel and made it clear that we are on their side and we had their back. i think that is a good thing. and have focused effort builds on what was done in the obama administration to go after isis. success in great iraq and syria. a lot of rhetoric about checking iran. that is a relatively unaddressed problem that we have to have a strategy for. so, i think they are off to a fairly good start. and i think the other thing we really need to do is -- madeline and i did a study and talked about the activity of young people and women who are forming businesses and social organizations. we need to be supporting them. and we need to support those governments that view them as allies for building a better future for their people. you see that in tunisia. uae and what the crown prince in saudi arabia is trying to do in his vision 2030. matalin and i and the study that we did for the atlantic council -- we came away optimistic because there are things to work in the middle east that offer the prospect of a more peaceful and prosperous middle east. we have to help them wind down these civil wars and support those governments that are making positive steps to reform their economies and engage their people in developing a common future. if we do those things and have a little luck, the middle east over time can turn in a positive direction. >> susan, any thoughts about jerusalem or the larger question about the middle east policy? susan. susan: it would be folly to which is iran deal working and created a degree of stability. notught to sustain it and threaten its viability because we will be the ones isolated and the iranians will be the ones free to pursue a program unfettered and we will be isolated from our european allies. secondly, we need to continue and not take our eye off the wel of sustaining the gains have made against isis. i think we are much better generally speaking at executing military campaigns then we are with dealing with the and-conflict, political economic and social reconstruction. i think steve's point to earlier about staying engaged in iraq behindia and building the military victory so that we isnot see isis 2.0 absolutely vital. and it is not clear to me that we have a theory of what the post-conflict outcome will be in syria. suggest that with process, orhe peace the potential peace process, that the move in jerusalem, while it may be done, was not helpful, obviously. if the aim was in fact to put on the table a peace plan that results in the potential for a two-state outcome, i think what it has done is to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the palestinians to approach the proposal with anything like a positive attitude. and maybe that was the point. but if it was not, i think it has had the inadvertent and the consequence of making that effort more remote. and then finally, and hear steve and i may take a different point of view, i think we definitely need to continue and sustain our efforts, if not intensify them, to counter iran's if activities in the region. but not with absolute blind carte blanche support for the saudi's and their partners in the region. havese, i think, we underestimated the ability of the young saudi crown prince to engage in behavior outside of his borders that is detrimental to our interests but also in the saudi interest. --hink we are risk king risking exacerbating the fish .ears -- the fissures re-odds -- rihad's destructive behavior in yemen. i think we need to make clear that we share their concerns about security and the threat that iran poses in the region, but there is a smart way and a dangerous way to deal with that. that may make ultimately the iranian problem or dangerous over time, even if it gives us some short-term sense of gratification. and we need to be a little smarter about how we calibrate our support. overnk it is over tort -- torqued at the moment. >> let me turn this back to our director. nick burns. this conversation makes me look -- this summer in aspen and reporting back to you after that. nick: let me think david cohen,s, steve, bill dave -- those are the people left from this morning for a really good conversation. i hope you will consult our book, "the world turned upside down." it is nonpartisan. thanks to all of you for being here and thanks to our panelists. [applause] [inaudible] >> c-span's "washington journal" live everyday with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up this morning, we will talk about the week ahead in washington with bloomberg congressional reporter anna and washington examiner white house reporter sarah westwood. then, the state of race in america and its implications for minority education with robert woodson of the woods center and shall be steel, senior fellow at the hoover institution. c-span's "washington journal" live beginning at 7:00 eastern on c-span. join the discussion. >> tonight, on the communicators, brian of the washington post and margaret harding mcgill talks about the fcc's vote overturning net neutrality. if the ruleson is put in place in 2015 are appropriate for this new era and in some ways, by rolling them back, if we are going to see whether or not the new rules we will be living under are appropriate for the moment we are living in. >> tech companies are concerned about having to pay to reach consumers. that is a pretty big fear. not so much of the bigger guys who have the money but some of the smaller websites as well. thishave been active in space. if we have to pay a toll to reach consumers, that will hurt us. >> watch the communicators tonight at 8:00 eastern on c-span two. he --pan, where husker where history unfolds daily. in 1970 nine, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. announcer: this week on "q&a," professor and historian gordon wood. he talks about his book, "friends divided," about thomas

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