In if you have something to add or disagree with someone. I will tell you when we need to move on. Also, a programming note, you may have seen matt spence was listed as a potential participant from the Kamala Harris campaign. Because of some scheduling issues he was not able to make it. They really wanted to. We have four wonderful panelists instead of five wonderful panelists this morning. At the end of my series of questions we will open it up to the room. I think you have no cards to write your questions down. I will let you know when there is a last call so someone can collect those. Lets jump in. I am a journalist so i like the news. Sasha, im going to start with you. This morning, we know the u. S. Says iran is to blame for the attack on two oil tankers in the gulf of oman. Knowing what we know now, what would a president warren be saying to the American People about what we know . Sasha i would say, obviously, the news is concerning an d it is something we need to take seriously, but i think we need to know more. I think that we need a full, and thorough and transparent investigation of what happened. An unbiased investigation of what happened, because at this point, we dont know enough to really say. Of course the United States should defend its interest and freedom of navigation, but it is important not to rush to conclusions and important to not take steps that would otherwise escalate what is already an inflammatory situation. Amna does everyone else feel the same way, patience is the best guide right now . Exactly right. There are a couple of things going on here we have to be concerned about. First is this iran, unfortunately, has a track record of reckless, provocative actions that can make things worse. But, we are now operating in the context where we have a crisis created by the Trump Administration. The nuclear deal that we was working, it was torn up, now we are in an environment heading towards some kind of escalation, where even if things are unintended, we may have consequences we regret. In dealing with this situation, i would hope the administration would do exactly what sasha said, lets get the facts. Find out what happened. Lets make sure we preserve freedom of navigation in a Vital International Waterway that is vital for commerce, but lets do it with others. If this turns into a confrontation between the u. S. And iran, it will get worse, not better. Last thing i want to put on the table. We also have a crisis with credibility. The fact that we have to debate whether what administration is saying about who is responsible is the truth or not tells you a lot about the credibility of this administration. When youre in a crisis, you credibility is your most important currency. They have lost it. We need to move into situations like this with strong relationships with our partners, particularly in europe. I would point to the statement the eu made where they said that we need maximum restraint. That was a specific reference to the Trump Administrations policy of maximum pressure. In a situation like this we dont want our european allies to have to hold the United States back. You want to be moving with them. We are simply not in that situation right now. What is critical for americans is that there is an alternative to war here. I fundamentally agree with everyone on the panel. We need to recommit. The only other point i would make is to go back to the dod statement yesterday and i wrote it down so would not misquote it. They were very clear, and this was as of yesterday, we have no interest in engaging in a new conflict in the middle east. We will defend our interests, but a war with iran is not in our Strategic Interests were in nor in the best interests of the International Community. That is coming from our own defense department. If we cant listen to them, what is going on . Amna i wanted to broaden a little bit to set the table for how we are going to frame this discussion, the idea of a progressive Foreign Policy, what that looks like today. Some recent surveys have shown there is a lot of uncertainty from the American Public about what exactly our foreignpolicy goal is as a nation. Decades after the cold war, 18 we aredecades after the cold war, 18 years after 9 11. The top two values when it comes to Foreign Policy shows that terrorism and a Strong Economy ranked at the top of that list. Tony as the singly as you can, what would be a President Bidens Foreign Policy goal . Tony im going to let him speak for himself and he will be addressing these issues. Never get ahead of your boss. I suspect we all agree about the basic principles that we need to be looking to. At a very fundamental level, it is pretty simple. We need to defend our country if it is under threat. We need to create conditions for rising and shared prosperity within the United States. And we need to do what we can to defend and appropriately advance our values. Those of the foundational building blocks. From there, where you go . A few things. Important basic objectives moving forward. First, defend the country. Protect our security. Do it in a way that does not get us embroiled in endless wars with expensive deployment of forces. Second, mobilize others to deal with a whole set of common challenges. Whether it is threats in the cyber domain. Whether it is terrorism. To your point, whether it is aggression from russia or others. Third, make sure that we win the competition for the 21st century. That means investing in our own people in meaningful ways so they can compete in a globalized world. We all have different views and different takes on globalization. I think we probably all agree you cant stop it, you may be able to shape it and move it. But its not going to stop. We need to invest in our people. Amna there is growing support for this idea of that you have to be strong at home to be strong abroad. How would president sanders view that . Is the priority take care of things at home before you take care of anything else . I dont think it has to be sequential. I would say both of these things have to go together. Economically, we want to make sure prosperity is shared, that we have a system that spreads the benefits around more equally. Economic inequality is something my boss focuses on a lot. I think that is something shared among a lot of candidates. I think a deeper part of that is not just economically, but politically, democratically, the Democratic Health of our institutions. That is something that matters for our Foreign Policy. It matters for what we model to the rest of the world. When we talk about human rights and democracy and equality abroad, how much weight that has when people see how it is and is not practiced here in the United States. I think this gets to a more difficult problem and i think a president ial campaign is a uniquely valuable time to suss some of this out. Coming out of 2016, one of the things we saw on a range of policy issues, things that were seen as consensus turned out to not to have a very strong consensus, at least it was weaker than many of us believed it to be. While coming up with better Foreign Policy ideas and initiatives and reversing some of the damage trump has done, it is important for just as important in terms of americas role in the world is to try to develop and forge a new and durable consensus around those policy ideas. That is the only way we are going to start to rebuild trust in americas word around the world. Amna there is an issue of priorities, of what a potential president would put first. In those studies and numbers it reveals there is a generational divide when it comes to priorities. Younger americans want the focus to be on domestic issues. Im curious how is the youngest candidate, how a president buttigieg what approach that here at home . One thing that is important if the size this week is that pete gave a major foreignpolicy address. He gave that in bloomington, indiana. I think this comes back to the question of how we get conversations in the beltway into the heart of the country so we can engage with voters where they are instead of separating them out and having more dialogue. In that address, he was clear on two big points, one is that given the moment we are in historically and how much transformative change is taking place in the world, we need to go back to first principles. Building up for tony said it , comes down to American Values, american interests, americas relationships in the world. He laid that out in greater detail than i have time to go into here. When it comes to priorities, we cant afford to choose one or the other. We have to do both. I reject the premise that we can only decide to be strong domestically or to represent our values abroad. What it comes down to, we can only be successful abroad if we are revitalizing ourselves at home. I think that is the essence of what he is arguing. Amna one writer called senator warren a leftwing America Firster. Is that fair . Sasha i dont think i would put it that way. [laughter] but just to agree with what you are hearing from the panel, i do think it is important for us to rethink how we talk about this divide between foreign and domestic policy. To talk to voters and to talk to americans about why these things are so intertwined and to do it in a way that is meaningful in their lives. Lots of polling shows Climate Change is an important issue , particularly amongst younger voters. We know if we are going to achieve the climate goals to bend the curve on the temperature, even if we did everything in our power here domestically, we also need countries around the world to get in the game and reduce their emissions. That is a domestic challenge and a foreignpolicy challenge. You think about Something Like 5g, huawei has been in the news recently. If we want to have an alternative to something we fear might have either espionage implications or the chinese could have leverage over our telecommunication system we have , to offer an alternative. That takes investments in research and infrastructure. Those are domestic investments. But they have huge foreignpolicy applications. We have to shift how we talk about these things. The hope is that americans around the country will see that these things are intertwined. Amna when it comes to priorities, there is a rubber meets the road in spending, the budget. Senator sanders has been an outspoken critic of the Defense Budget. Last years Defense Budget was a record and passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. He did not vote for it. As president , would he veto a budget like that . Matt im not prepared to say that right now, but on the issue of ballooning Defense Budgets and how these are always passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, yet, when someone comes out with a green new or some domestic benefit they always ask you about how do you pay for it . I think what he is hoping to do is try to cultivate a new conversation to say helping our Health Whether it is care, college or these other domestic issues these things , need to be seen as part of National Strength and National Security in the same way we talk about Defense Budgets. There are certainly things he will cut. He is looking at that right now, going to have a plan putting out we we are actually looking to cut. Just as important is to elevate some of these things. These things matter just as much. Amna you would not say whether you would veto would or not . Matt not right now. Amna any candidate veto the Defense Budget . I think the question is that almost better framed not how much we spend, but how we spend it . Amna you are ok with an increasing budget as long as it goes to the priorities . It all depends. If we can agree on what we need to be doing and how we need to be doing it, then resources need to be applied. We may be spending less, the same, who knows . It may be spending more. I think it is really putting the cart before the horse to have a topline number and not addressing how we are spending the money. The second thing, i think we need a much broader definition of National Security. For example when you have an , imbalance, and the pentagon is getting 20 to everyone dollar every the state Department One dollar and you are evaluating diplomacy, that is a problem. That is Something Else we need to be rebalancing. Matt i agree with everything tony just said. I think to put a sharper point on it if you are thinking about , the wars of the future, they are not the ones we have been fighting. Ending talk about endless wars we recognize that , the type of threats we face into cyber conflicts. Differentre a much composition of our defense spending budget. That is tied concretely to the point sasha was making. Fundamentally our domestic economic competitiveness, can we think about ai, machine learning, quantum computing, the money we are putting in right now is a tiny fraction of what some of our competitors around the globe like china are putting in. We are thinking about this in one or twoyear budget cycles and they are thinking about this in 15 to 20 year Strategic Planning cycles. The investment in the domestic economy fundamentally prepares us to secure a National Security. We are not having the right conversations. Amna you mentioned the wars we have been fighting. I want to talk a little bit about those. Sasha senator warren has called , for an immediate withdrawal of troops from afghanistan. The most recent assessment shows the control upwards of 63 or 60 64 of the population in afghanistan, they have gotten stronger. Is that an acceptable number for the u. S. To be withdrawing troops . Sasha we have to think about the question differently. Which is how is the continuation of troops in afghanistan benefiting the situation. It is clear that after nearly two decades in this country we have tried counternarcotics. We tried 10,000 troops. We have tried 100,000 troops. There is not a military solution to the problems that afghanistan faces because they are not all military in nature. When you have a population that has a deep mistrust of its own government, where there is corruption, where poppy production is rising across the country, it is not fair to ask our Service Members to solve problems that are fundamentally not military in nature. I think what senator warren would say if she was here is we need a responsible withdrawal, not precipitous but we do need to bring troops home because it is not clear they are the solution. It is not fair to continue to put them into that situation. Amna what would a time i look like . Sasha that is the kind of thing you would determine as you go. It starts right away. That is where she is. Sasha is right to put her finger on responsible withdrawal. We all agree that this has gone on way too long. Responsible is critical. At the same time the administration is appropriately negotiating with the taliban, President Trump without , consulting anyone says we are going to pull all of our forces out. Pull half of them out. He wants to get down to 7000. That may be the right objective, and he may be correct intuitively that this has gone on too long and needs to end, but to do that at the very time you are negotiating with the taliban, and your number one objective is to get American Forces out, use that as leverage. You might get a better deal. Amna matt, i want to ask you about something in 2009. This is when a different president was in office. You said that patients is a virtue. Back then you said we should wait before the Election Results for determining a path forward. There is another election. How would you argue now that a withdrawal is definitely the way to go when we do not know how that election is going to turn out. Matt 10 years after that, there was still a new president , new policy. They were putting more troops in afghanistan to see if they could reproduce some security gains. 10 years later, i think we have the answer. Yeah, i think the verdict is kind of in of what we are able to do with our military. That is not to say we have other tools and we should use those tools but i would also zoom out , a little bit. When we talk about afghanistan, lets remember why we got into afghanistan, under what authority. I think we need to look at the broader way we have approached and prioritized and emphasized terrorism as this dominant lens through which we see our security, not only in that region, but around the world. In this country the way we have securitized immigration as a possible source of terrorist threats has really corroded the way we talk about National Security. As we talk about afghanistan, we need to talk about repealing the 2001 authorizations to deal with the problems. Afghanistan is important having been the longest american war, that we need a more robust conversation about the way we have wrongly elevated terrorism to this dominant theme of our approach to the world. Amna mayor pete mentioned he wants to repeal the aumf. There is Something Else he mentioned about this doctrine of the responsibility to protect. This is not something ive heard anyone address appear. Yes, it is the longest war and billions of dollars have gone into an effort that most agree would have been largely failed but is there no responsibility , to the population that we went in with the intent to try to help . Tarek you are referr