And is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. Federal reserve chair janet yellen heads to capitol hill to testify before the joint economic committee. Economists are looking for an indication of whether the central bank is likely to raise Interest Rates at its december 13th and 14th meeting. Our live coverage at 10 00 a. M. Eastern here on cspan3. Now a discussion on new Foreign Policy challenges faces president elects trumps administration. The Cleveland Council on world affairs, city club of cleveland and International Partners in mission hosted this event at the happy dog bar in cleveland. Its an hour. Good evening. Im steveny jansky, director of programming for the city club of cleveland. Its my pleasure to welcome you to the happy dog takes on the World SpecialEdition Event where were discussing the Foreign Policy issues facing our 45th president. These events are presented in collaboration with cleveland counsel and world affairs, International Partners in mission, the northeast Ohio Consortium of middle Eastern Studies and our primary media partner, wcp and 90. 3 and pbs idea stream. Id like to introduce our moderator, wcpn hoster tony ganzer who will introduce our panelists this evening. Thank you. I am tony ganzer from 90. 3. The most exciting part of evenings like this are when you get up and get to ask questions or share comments or what have you after a discussion. So well talk for a while and try to cover as much ground on the Foreign Policy challenges facing our next president. But then if we miss something or you want to focus in, feel free to coming up and well try to address that. Ooud like to start by letting our panelists say a few words about themselves. Im katie lavell, a professor at Case Western Reserve University here in cleveland, ohio. I always like to point out that i grew up in cleveland on the west side, so i was very happy to get a job here and come back home. I teach u. S. Foreign policy, and, of course, as an International Relations and political economy at case, so a lot of my expertise comes in that particular area. But its also kind of derived from experience because i worked in the u. S. Embassy in tanzania for a summer and did some other jobs that i really try to bring a focus on the practice of politics as well as the study of it academically. Thanks. Im an author and journalist. I cover the middle east. These days mostly iraq and syria. I wrote a book about afghanistan where i lived for four years. Its called no good men among the living. And it follows the lives of three afghans. One is a taliban fighter. One is a u. S. Backed warlord and one say housewife. And describes their experiences over the last 15 years and how their lives intersect. In addition to that, im also finishing my ph. D. And defending my dissertation in a few days. Hi. Good evening. My name is forest khan. Im professor of Political Science at Cleveland State university. Cleveland has been my second hometown, and being here probably the second longest. The longest, of course, i grew up in china and turned 27 before i left it for the United States. So as you can see that my teaching and Research Areas will be in asian and Political Economic development of developing countries. And my research mostly focus on east asian politics, crossstrait relations. U. S. china relations and the chinese political development. So i look forward to tonights discussions. Thank you. So as you see, we have a broad range of expertise here and well need every souounce ot to coverage this. My graduate degree was in International Relations in world order. And if i all of the things that i have read in the last two days tell me that my education may not apply anymore because the global system will collapse with the results of the election. Katie, do you think that is true . Do i think the Global Citizen will no, i dont think the global system will collapse but the pressures on the global system come both from whats hand here in the United States with the election of president elect trump, but also from whats going on in other parts of the world. Not just the conflict regions in some parts of the world, but also with respect to democratic movements and the frustration that a lot of democratic constituencies feel with the old postwar order. The united nations, the world bank, the International Monetary fund and the democratic pressures bubbling up from below and the International Tension up above on top. Any thoughts on it . Is the world as we know it, do you think, has it fundamentally changed just because of the election result tuesday . Youre still asking me . No. The world has fundamentally changed. I dont think the world is going to end, probably. But i think its important to look at what the ruling elite in this country actually is, which its not just one person. Theres actually a set of institutions that run this country and any president has to answer to those institutions. And theres a give and take in that process. And so if you look over the last 50 or 60 years of American Power overseas, theres been a set of imperatives that have underguarded American Power, which is that the United States will act in a way that it deems in its interest and reorder societies and countries in what it perceives to be its interest. Thats a basic uniting factor between the democrats and republicans. Will the new president up end that . Probably not. So the real question is strategic and tactical. Is he going to change the way in which america pursues its power overseas. And we can talk about whether that will be the case, but ultimately at the end of the day, going to what youre saying if you look at the point of view from syrians and iraqis they see American Power as something that is ultimately there to effect american interests and lead american interests. Forrest, how do you read the results tuesday . Well, i think whether the world is going to really be different or remain the same, it really depends, of course. But one thing i think is that the world is entering a very uncertain period. In fact, froiends from asia sen me all kinds of texts and emails asking whether the United States is going to relinquish its leadership in the world. And by going back to america, to the socalled isolation phase that america has experienced, of course, in the two centuries ago. But i think china has a tremendous interest in this. And, in fact, some people even speculated if the United States withdraws from the rest of the world, probably china is going to take it over. I dont really think that is the case, but certain ly there are lot of actions waiting to be taken by the president elect, and well wait and see what will happen. There was a lot of talk from president elect trump about how hard he would deal with china, that he would just get better deals, and he would, you know, strong arm china into doing what he wanted. What was the reaction from china to his actually winning the election . I assume its not worry. Actually, you can see from president xi jinpings congratulations to donald trump. Usually china does two things when theres a new president elect. First, theyll send a telegraph congratulating the election. Then theyll follow with a call. And that happened when george w. Bush got elected. And president obama got elected. Both times the chinese president picked up the phone and, you know, and talk ed awhile. But this time, theres no call. Just a telegram. Now that reflects the cautious, the attitude that china is having towards donald trump because, you know, obviously, he said a lot of things about china. And the Chinese Government doesnt really know how to communicate with him yet. But i think they will eventually extend the invitation to him to talk it over. Katie, i want to talk about nato for a second because something donald trump has said is that he would want the members of nato to pay up before we would abide by our responsibilities as allies of these countries. How plausible do you think it is that we would renege on our nato commitment . I think if we stop and think about this in realistic terms, we wont really know whether or not were reneging until something happens. We can tell people they have to pay up, but its not until an army crosses a border and we see whether or not nato reacts or doesnt react and were actually in the moment going to say oh, you didnt pay up which seems to me pretty unlikely. One of the rules we say in Foreign Policy or Political Studies is just that you dont leave american troops out there in the heat of the battle or the heat of the moment. It seems President Trump is or president elect trump would be someone who would tend to overreact than pull back and underreact by what we know about him now. I think hell probably modify what he says because its another pattern he seems to have with respect to nato that he will want to renegotiate the alliance and the Financial System associated with it. But its really unclear how far we will actually take that statement once hes actually in office. I think the only time article five, collective security of nato, was used was for the benefit of the United States on the war on terror. Thats absolutely correct, in afghanistan. So we used to say nato was to keep the americans in, the russians out and the germans down. No one ever said that publicly, but behind the scenes, thats what people always said about nato. The thing no one expected was that would be the one time it would be enacted. So spending time in afghanistan, what do you think . Is there any reaction that you can tell yet to trump winning or his rhetoric that weve heard . Absolutely none. I have no idea actually. To be honest, i dont think even he does. You know, i heard recently that during the campaign, he his people reached out to a number of gulf states and said, listen, whatever you hear right now, thats just for the campaign. Dont worry. And, you know, trump is an operator. And hes been in this business his whole life and i would not be surprised. In fact, i expect him to sort of be a lot more practical from his elite point of view in dealing with a lot of these relationships once he comes into power. For example, he criticized a number of times the obama administrations dealing with the war against isis, even though the United States and its allies are defeating isis. Its lost a number of cities. Its being defeated in mosul right now in iraq. Theres plans under way for a major operation in raqqah, which is in syria, which is the isis capital. And isis is losing. So the strategy of defeating isis, at least militarily is working just fine. And he was saying all sorts of things in the campaign. I would do things differently. Whats happening in mosul is a disaster. But i would be shocked if anything changed in iraq in terms of american policy. Id be shocked if anything changed in afghanistan. The obama administrations policy is war in perpetuity. Theyve rejected peace talks, avoided peace talks, they are propping up the afghan state and afghan army. And the afghan state and army are not Strong Enough to defeat the taliban. Taliban arent Strong Enough to defeat the afghan government. Were just having a war in perpetuity. And thats fine for the u. S. Because thats ace war not taking up a lot of american resources. There arent a lot of people on the streets protesting against that war. As long as the government stays in place and doesnt collapse and become a new safe haven for al qaeda. I see no reason why trump would change that policy. Well, because he said that he would. He said a lot of things. Thats the point. He said all sorts ever things on the campaign trail. Now hes in the oval office and its a different story. Thats why i wasnt surprised although its interesting to hear when a number of embassies from the gulf states were saying they heard from the Campaign People in the campaign saying hes saying all sorts of things in the campaign, but dont take it seriously, or literally. I think one challenge facing the president elect is in syria. You know, is he going to further extend u. S. Involvement or be more friendly towards asaud. Assad is a friend of russia, and so whether the United States is going to, you know, withdraw from that part or whether it will continue to get involved, or find a middle way to move the opposition and the assad more closer to reconcile with each other. So i think thats a challenge hes facing. There have been a number of contradictory statements from the president elect. But you can add a few of them up when it comes to the middle east, if you choose to. And i wonder if we choose to. You say that were going to selectively deal with our nato allies. Were only going to do things which directly influence our interests very selfishly focused on america, and some analysts have said this opens the door for russia, particularly in syria. Maybe we just step away and say, well, our partners russia, theyre going to help deal with this mess now. Do you not think that thats plausible . Absolutely. Let me talk about syria because its a good example. On the surface, american policy has been to overthrow the assad regime but in practice it actually hasnt been that at all. The United States blocked antiaircraft weaponry and antitank weaponry until 2013 to the rebels. I was in syria talking to people resisting against the assad regime at the time, and theyre desperate for weapons to defend themselves against the genocidal onslaught from bashar al