p.Should the United States be the Worlds Policeman?[music]Ambassador Volker: Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. Welcome. Please keep filling in and taking seats. I want to welcome you to kickoff of the McCain Institute's Debate and Decisions Series for the fall of 2015.We've been at this for about a year and a half to two years now. We strive to bring challenging issues to the table. We present different points of view.We try to make sure it's not partisan. The whole point is to tee up the arguments and the choices that our country has to face and different issues of policy.The McCain Institute was founded to honor Senator and Mrs. McCain in their legacy of service to the country and their family's legacy going back generations. McCain Institute is part of Arizona State University, but based here, principally in Washington DC.We have programs to promote characterdriven leadership to work in the areas of humanitarian work, human rights, national security, law and governance, and we have been particularly active through the efforts of Mrs. McCain in combating human trafficking, and there's a lot to talk about there.You can find all of this information on our website, mccaininstitute.org, you can also find more information on our programs, you can find videos of our past debates, where we've debated issues such as whether the US should save Syria, whether we should withdraw from Afghanistan, on the CubaUS relationship did Cuba win? Great, rich archive of information there.Tonight, we're very fortunate to have back with us a terrific moderator for these debates, he is the radio correspondent for Fox News at the White House, and recently, elected to the White House Correspondents Governing Board, so congratulations to that. He's going to introduce the debaters tonight for the question should the United State be the world's policeman.Let me introduce to your our moderator for this evening, John Fox, for Fix News Radio. [laughs] Sorry about that, I used to work with a guy named John Fox. John Decker, Fox News, White House correspondent. Thank you.[applause]John Decker: Thank you very much, Ambassador Volker, for asking me to moderate tonight's debate.Thank you to Senator McCain who hopefully will be arriving very shortly, and thank you to all of you who are in the audience tonight. We hope that tonight's debate informs you as our panelists debate and discuss whether America should be the world's policeman.The topic of tonight's debate is particularly timely, as the US faces intense pressure both here at home and abroad, to step up its role in providing refuge to tens of thousands of refugees from wartorn Syria, and also, lead the fight against ISIS.In the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has been a deep, and I might add bipartisan reluctance to interfere in foreign conflicts.The reasons vary, but there is general consensus that US interventions will exact too high a price in blood and treasure for uncertain strategic gains. But with the postCold War global order upended, there are renewed calls by some interventionists for the US to reassert itself, and lead.Proponents of the idea that America should serve as the world's policeman, as you will hear tonight, argue that with the Arab world unraveling, China and Russia dominating its neighbors, and ISIS metastasizing, the US must step up, and in the words of "The Wall Street Journal's" Bret Stephens, "Enforce some basic global norms, deter our enemies, and reassure our friends."But opponents of this approach say that America needs to fix its own problems domestically before it can police the world. They also argue that while America should play a key role in working to resolve issues around the world, it should do so in the context of working with its international partners.The debate teams...We have an impressive panel of experts assembled tonight to discuss these issues, and let me introduce them.Our first team, which will argue that America should be the world's policemen, consists of Tom Donnelly, who is a resident fellow and codirector of the Marilyn Ware Center for Security Studies at AEI, the American Enterprise institute, and Julianne Smith, who is a senior fellow and director of the Strategy and Statecraft Program at the Center for a New American Security.Julie previously served as the deputy national security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden.And arguing that the US should be the world's policemen will be the team of Richard Burt and Elizabeth Cobbs. Richard is the chairman of the National Interest Advisory Board. He served as US ambassador to Germany during the Reagan administration, and was a chief negotiator of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Soviet Union.Joining Richard is Elizabeth Cobbs, who is the Milbern G. Glasscock Chair in American History at Texas A&M University. She is also a National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.If you have not been at one of these debates before, let me tell you the format. The format for tonight's debate is straightforward. Each team will open their argument with four minutes.Following that, each team then gets two minutes to respond to the others opening argument. I will then move things along a little further with a few questions, in which the teams will get two minutes to respond.That's when you in the audience get the chance to ask questions. Again, each side has up to two minutes to reply.Then finally, at the end of the debate, I will go to each of our panelists, and ask them, in one minute, to sum up what role he or she believes the US should take in foreign affairs around the world.Tom Donnelly and Julianne Smith, why don't get things started.Julianne Smith: Thank you very much for that introduction. Thanks to the McCain Institute for inviting us here tonight. Thanks to all of you for spending some time on a Thursday evening to listen to this debate. I'm looking forward to it.Tom and I are, as you heard, in the affirmative camp when it comes to answering the question whether or not the United States should be the world's policeman. I want to think about what being the world's policeman actually entails and what it means.I think when many of us think about policing right out of the gates, you tend to think about somebody in SWAT gear, wearing Kevlar, holding a weapon in a crisis. Images that we see on television.What I want to talk about here tonight is a wide array, the full spectrum of tasks that police officers take on. Things like walking a beat. Things like maintaining civil order.Community policing where you try and build relationships with other stakeholders so that you can serve your interests and theirs. Yes, you want to deter wouldbe criminals and occasionally you've got to, in the words of my fiveyearold son, fight the bad guys.It's more than just brandishing a weapon and walking around shooting. It requires a full spectrum of tools and abilities and skill sets. Does that mean that the United States has to be everywhere all the time? I'm not here to tell you that it should be. I'm not here to tell you that we should be sending hundreds of thousands of troops all around the world to solve every problem.I do think we have to be clear eyed about the unique attributes that the United States has. Yes, we have resource constraints. We have a public that's unsure about the future of military interventions. We have some uncertainty about whether or not we can afford to focus on foreign policy, as John mentioned, when we've got a rich domestic agenda here at home.I also think that the United States has a lot to offer in terms of its ability to secure the global environment. I think these unique attributes take many shapes. We have a strong economy.We've got a world class military. We've got a lot of diplomatic heft. We've got an array of alliances and partnerships all over the world. We've got the ability to project power. We've got a unique ability to build coalitions.For that reason, I'm here to support deep engagement by the United States. I think it's something that we can offer and other countries can't.Therefore, I guess I'll conclude by saying those that are going to try tonight, our colleagues here, to argue for more of a retrenchment position I think sometimes underestimate the benefits of deep engagement and overestimate its costs.I'll leave it at that.Tom Donnelly: Very good. I guess I've got 90 seconds or so to try to elaborate your...guild your lily. I won't take it all.I would just like to stress, in concluding our opening remarks, how successful the United States has been since the end of World War II, really, in being the world's policeman if we have to bend ourselves to the framework of this question.American policing of the world has been, by any historical measure, a remarkably successful endeavor. A remarkably peaceful endeavor. There hasn't really been a great power war since the end of World War II, something worth preserving.It's also been a more markedly prosperous era in human affairs. Not just for ourselves, but we've rebuilt the continent of Europe into a still remarkably peaceful and prosperous place. We've seen the rise of East Asia as a engine of the global economy.Finally, and really important from an American point of view, it's been a moral success. People are free, more people are free, governed by free governments, by governments that they've elected, or at least, are representative governments than at any time in human history.One thing that we need to take into account is not simply, in the abstract, whether the United States should be the world's policeman or not, but if not, what are the realistic alternatives?I think over the last couple of years we've had a taste of what that might look like. It doesn't look very pleasant to me. I am reluctant to give up what American policing has done for the world.John: Rick and Elizabeth.Elizabeth Cobbs: I think I'm to begin. This is a plastic moment in history. To get through this period of history, we need to look at history.As Tom has said, the United States played a vital role in the 70 years since World War II as a kind of world policeman, though, I prefer the term umpire, and has done so very successfully and has done this essentially for two reasons. The first reason is that there was a crying need at the time.There was a new world system, democratically established, that was under pressure and that was untested. At the time, there were all the other great powers, China, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, had been devastated by six years of war.There was no other country that could stand up to assist with this system and its defense. America was not only the only country that could physically do so, but we had had 200 years of experience doing just that.The US federal government was designed by James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington to act as they said, as an umpire between sovereign states, to take down tariff walls, to enforce common rules, to prevent wars between sovereign states.It did so very successfully, when the moment came the United States really did jump in to the rescue, more or less, in 1947, so that this new structure of world order wouldn't topple before it had a chance to sink roots.Now historically, for the United States, this was a huge deviation from a pattern of 150 years of neutrality and nonintervention that defined our first 150 years, and that allowed United States to become the kind of prosperous, democratic country that over time others wanted to emulate, because they saw how well this system worked. Today, 70 years later, the picture is very different.Countries of Eurasia, Europe and Asia, which are the areas most prone to war historically, are mostly prosperous and strong, and the majority are democracy.As the US continues in an emergency role that has come to seem like our permanent role, but doesn't have to be. A role we undertook in 1947. What's the consequence? In a word, dependency. Others do not undertake the hard work that they need to do, that they know we will do or try to do for them.The time has come to think big. To think historically, to plan boldly for where we want to be in 70 years. Any system that rests on one pillar, largely, isn't stable. We need to hand back to other countries and cultivate in them the selfreliance that is the only sure road to prosperity, success, and selfrespect.John: Rick? Do you want to add anything to that?Rick: Yeah, very quickly. Let me say, really stipulate at the outset, that I don't necessarily accept the idea of a shifting roles that Lisa has outlined.I wouldn't want to see as radical a departure from where we are today than maybe she supports. But I do think that there are three reasons, though, that the United States really can't play this kind of postWorld War II to the end of the Cold War policeman position or role in the 21st century.First, if you think of yourself as an exceptional power, an indispensable power, then, it's important really everything that's happening everywhere is essentially important. It means then that you can't really prioritize, you can't distinguish as George Kennan famously said between core interests and peripheral interests.I think we've found ourselves in situations, and I would give one example, US intervention with the Europeans in Libya as a peripheral interest, which ended up creating more harm than good.Where you can maybe in police work take a Rudy Giuliani approach, no broken windows approach, you can't do that in terms of US foreign policy. You have to set priorities, you can't solve every problem, and we need to distinguish between what our vital interests are and our peripheral interests.Second, in looking at again, the idea of the US is a policeman, it tends to be tied when people make this argument, it was done here earlier, where the key goal of US foreign policy becomes democracy promotion, or national building, or spreading our values worldwide. That, in my view, is a very dangerous enterprise.We are not good at democracy promotion, we are not good at nation building, just look at the record of the last 15 years in the Middle East, and we are getting to the point where in order to make a case for doing this, we want to go after and somebody said their fiveyearold is a bad guy, American public likes the idea of a foreign policy that goes after bad guys.But when you look at a problem like ISIS, the irony of fighting ISIS is that the good guys, socalled good guys in the Middle East, are friends and allies. The Saudis, the Turks, they're not helping us out on ISIS. The people who are the logical people to support in fighting ISIS are the bad guys. The Iranians, Hezbollah, and others.What we see now emerging in an area like the Middle East is a kind of sectarian 30years war in which there are no good guys, and it's very hard then to pursue a policy based around extending your values, then, worrying about your interests.Finally, I would argue that there is always the temptation to equate American foreign policy and constraints on American foreign policy with military intervention.We have got to form, I think, a more holistic understanding of foreign policy that goes beyond just military intervention. The current debate over the Iran deal I think underscores that when many of the critics of the Iran deal basically argue that this shouldn't have been a kind of classical negotiation where both sides get something out of it.But it should have been a surrender ceremony on the Battleship Missouri that the fact that it was a balanced agreement makes it somehow dangerous and wrong.It's like when I was a negotiator with the Soviet Union, if coming back with an agreement that allowed the Russians to have any nuclear weapons would have been understandable and comprehensible to people.But for some reason now, increasingly, diplomacy and state craft are no longer seen as vital in US foreign policy, it's more a question of how to deploy and use American military power.The bottom line is, the United States needs to be more selective in how it thinks about its priorities abroad, it needs to be guided by national interests not values promotion, and it needs to have a diplomatic or state craftled doctrine rather than just simply the use or reliance on military force alone.John: Let me pick up on that first point that Rick made in his presentation, and ask this question to the team of Tom and Julie. When you take the position that America should be the world's policeman, don't you fall down a slippery slope? Where do you draw the line on which situations call for US involvement?Tom: I don't think that's a very difficult challenge whatsoever. The United States does think of itself as an exceptional nation. It is what makes us a nation.Our political principles are the glue that binds us domestically, and it should not be a surprise that there are things that matter to us when venture abroad. The argument that America should not be America is not a very convincing one, plus, you just have to look at the record of history.It doesn't absolve us from the practice of state craft and strategy. In fact, we've been rather good at it. We blunder sometimes, we make mistakes, but historically, speaking our record as a nation that employs the tools of state craft, the tools of power, be they diplomatic, military, economic, or informational, or otherwise, is pretty darned impressive.I think the burden of proof actually falls on the other side to show in the grander historical framework of things what exactly have we been doing wrong.That is always the complaint of realists regardless of which party is in power, that America is overstretched and too ideologically motivated. How do they explain our success?John: Julie care to add anything to what Tom has said?Julie: No, I think Tom did a fine job.Rick: I would like to jump in here, because I disagree with this idea that we've been since the end of World War II overwhelmingly successful. I think you can draw a line, this is a rough line, but between the end of World War II and the end of the Cold War, and let's go a little further, say, the end of...Tom: About 85 percent of the time.Rick: No, end of the Gulf War, we're talking about 1945 to 1991. I think US foreign policy was largely successful. It was a prudent foreign policy, it was by and large, let me finish, a realistic foreign policy. In part, the very fact that there was the Cold War, and we faced an existential threat posed by the Soviet Union was a constraining factor.I would argue that since the mid1990s, and particularly, in an era where conflict is increasingly not interstate, but intrastate, and the opportunities for intervention tend to be in civil wars or sectarian conflicts, US foreign policy has been largely unsuccessful.I don't think Iraq was a success, I don't Afghanistan was a success, I don't think Libya is a success, I think arguably, we have 15 years or more of by and large, I would suggest, failure.Tom: [mumbles] Ideological conflict.John: Elizabeth?Elizabeth: I fall a little bit in between. I think that is has been, to an important extent, extraordinarily successful.War has declined in every decade between states, between states, since 1947. Every single decade of the Truman Doctrine. Essentially, we live in the Truman Doctrine, all of us. Before the Truman Doctrine was the Washington Doctrine, Washington's great rule.Since 1947, there's been a tremendous success, but it's also true and I agree with my team member here is where we've slipped in this sense that we therefore have to be in this role forever. There comes a moment, there's a time for things, and a time to switch out and do something different.I think it's clear from the last 15 years and the difficulties we've seen that now's the time to really rethink things.Julie: I think we have to have this debate inside the United States, and debate left, right, whatever it is, think about the right role for the United States going forward. I will admit that this is a very different era, a different set of challenges than we faced even in the post9/11 couple of years, decade after that.But I think we also have to have a conversation with our partners and allies around the world, and we have to admit to ourselves right now, and we have to respond to one way or another, the demand signal that's coming from Europe, from Asia, from the Middle East, from virtually every corner of the world right now, lots of us travel on a regular basis.I think we're all hearing the same story, and that is, "Yes, we can nitpick with US policy and disagree with you here and there, and maybe we weren't all in favor of the Iraq war, but we want US engagement, we want US leadership, we want you in our neighborhood, we want to build more partnerships and relationship with you." It doesn't have to all be a miltomil relationship. Folks want diplomatic engagement.The demand signal right now, while we're having this debate, is off the charts. We need more of the United States, and it doesn't matter if you're in Jordan, or you're in Norway, or if you're in the Philippines, you're going to get more or less the same message.Whether we like it or not, and we can sit here and argue about whether or not we should be forward leaning, and for deep engagement, but there is some expectation out there that the US will and can lead unlike any other.John: Let me pick up on that point for our next question to the other team. Often, proponents might argue if not the US then who? Who should lead? The answer sometimes is the United Nations.My question is, do you believe that the United Nations has been an effective policeman of the world?Rick: I certainly don't believe it.[laughter]Rick: Not for a minute. I'm a realist. I think the United Nations embodies all the worst sort of components of not the United States as a policeman, but the United States as a social worker.The UN is not the appropriate place for leadership. But what I think we are seeing is the emergence, and that's one thing if you're going to use this policeman analogy you've got to take into account, in domestic politics the police normally have a monopoly and sanctioned use of force.But that's not true internationally. We see other countries acting as a policeman when they feel their interests are at stake. Often, they feel their interests in certain situations are greater than ours, and the best example of that is Ukraine.The fact of the matter is, if you think about it, the Russians believe they have a much stronger interest in Ukraine than the United States or the EU. That's why Vladimir Putin is prepared to take the risks he has and actually put his people into the field.As much as we want to promote independence and an open system in Ukraine, we are not going to put forces into the field in Ukraine. I don't know a single Republican candidate that's calling for the deployment of ground forces in Ukraine.We haven't even been willing to arm the Ukrainians, and despite the calls of some members of Congress, including the one who this institute is named after.But the point of the matter is, and that's true in China, too, and we're going to come up against that problem, and that in my view is going to be a much more serious problem. But there are areas near China where the Chinese are going to see their interests as larger than ours. We're going to be living in a world whether we like it or not, with other policemen.That doesn't mean we have to back off, or that we should practice "appeasement," but at times, we're going to have to rely more on diplomacy and less on power projection.Elizabeth: I would say, the United Nations has been an overwhelming success at what it is, which is to say an organization kind of akin to the Articles of Confederation of the United States.A very weak organization that brings together, however, and creates a forum which has never existed previously in human history and allows people and allows all countries to come and be represented. It's an incredibly important organization, it is also a very young organization.If you look at nation states, if you look at international organizations, it's a kid, basically. I'm not surprised that it has not lived up to all the many expectations people had for it.We live in a world where sovereign states are still the big players. International organizations are very important. I think we should treasure them, build them, support them, and also, understand that they don't simply have a structure that allows them to be the policeman.Which is why the United States became the world's policeman, lacking this structure in international life. It's a role that we've assumed, but I think we need to understand that it is a role, it's not us, who we are. In this respect, I think that my colleague, that Rick here, Ambassador Rick we're to call him [laughs] , Ambassador Rick is quite right.There are other sovereign nation states whose interests are greater than ours in certain regions, and the United States has no natural geopolitical enemies, only the ones we make. We happen to live in a great neighborhood, and we have to recognize that other people live in very different kinds of neighborhoods.John: Tom?Tom: Julie you want to go first?John: Go right ahead.Julie: I'll go after you.Tom: I listen to the other side, and I just don't see the America that I see. These arguments were made a century ago, before the United States got involved in European balance of power politics, or East Asian balance of power politics.The idea that our past behavior is not somehow a consistent emanation of who we are, and who we aspire to be as a nation, strikes me as very odd.Yes, it's a choice, of course, it's a choice, but it's a choice that we made the consequence is you have mostly agreed with the possible exception of the last 15 years have been relatively successful.You just offer a, "Well, we have to change." It's not clear that we have to change. We have the means to sustain the system that exists now, everybody admits that all the allies worth having are already on our side, all of the wealthy industrial nations.We have pacified people like the Japanese and the Germans, we wouldn't want to turn that back over. In a world where the Chinese, where the local policeman in East Asia, or the Russians were the local policeman in East Europe would be a really different world.I think that there's a political science argument about whether a single power system is more stable or a balance of power system is more stable.Where there are many policemen who then end up often in competition with one another. That's the history of modern Europe for the last 500 years. Again, you have to offer me a reason why I want to give up a system that seems to be on balance working rather well.Rick: Let me ask you a question. You seem to be making the case here, you seem to be talking about a world that nobody, or that I don't recognize. It seems to be like 1945 in your view.Do you honestly think the United States can function today, and I'm not talking just militarily, but politically, economically, whatever, culturally, as a global hegemon? Is that a realistic goal?Tom: As the principal power in the international system, absolutely. I think we still function that way even if we are trying to get out of it.Rick: You think we can dictate solutions to...Tom: We don't dictate.Rick: ...to the Chinese?Tom: No, but...Rick: To the Russians, to the EU?Julie: No.Tom: Help me, Julie.[laughter]Julie: No, obviously, we can't dictate political outcomes in lots of places around the world. Look, I agree there are lots of countries out there that want to be the world's policeman. China and Russia are two good examples, but I think it's our interests and many others' interests not to have them be the chief in the precinct.We want to have the United States in a leadership role, we want to be able to be driving a lot of these international institutions, and providing that leadership role and ensuring that the liberal order that we spent 60, 70 years creating is maintained, and that we don't go for plan B.There's a lot of things happening in this world for which we are completely unprepared. Proliferation of UAVs, cyber, energy security, all sorts of areas where we're going to encounter new challenges.We already are. I would argue that it's in our interest to have the United States sit in that leadership role as we again think through the global norms, the laws, the rules of the road, international law, we can work with our partners and allies.But we provide a very unique role in these institutions, and if we don't we see things like the development of AIIB, we see new institutions being developed, and I don't want to say new institutions are forbidden, but certainly, it's in our interests to rely on the system we've already invested in, and ensure that that system can respond to today's challenges instead of letting somebody else like the Chinese or the Russians develop their own system.John: Let me move on to our next question if I could. Let me stick with this team right here. If you police other countries, doesn't that force America's ideology upon them, and is that a good thing?I recall several Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, saying in 2003 that the US would be greeted as liberators when the Iraq invasion began.Tom: Anglo Americans have been saying that ever since they left England 400 years ago. We've believed that we would liberate the runaway slaves and the indigenous tribes of Latin America from their Spanish oppressors.But that's really, we are seeking to create not just a balance of power that favors America, but we think of ourselves as moral agents in the world. Again, that is what our founding document said, that is what the Truman Doctrine enunciated.Deep, the NSC68 is a deeply moral argument and it begins there. It's not simply an argument about power per se, but it's about justice. It's very difficult to set that aside.The character of international life would change with the ebbing of American power, it would be different qualitatively, as well as quantitatively. Yes, but again, were the Germans naturally democratic people prior to 1945, or the Japanese? No, they were not.If you read the propaganda about prior to World War I or World War II, it was pretty vicious. However, I think they've got it. They seem, the Germans seem quite different to me, they seem genuinely committed to their democratic forms of government and likewise the Japanese.How do we account for the spread of democratic governments across the planet? That correlates very strongly to the exercise of American power.John: Rick, Elizabeth?Rick: I just a brief word here, and then Elizabeth. I had an Indian scholar make the case to me, and he's a realist by the way, "You know the only difference between the British and the Americans, and the rest of the world, every country goes and serves its own interests. The only difference with you and the British is you have to convince yourself you're doing it for a moral cause."[laughter]Rick: "But the result is the same." The problem with that is, and I agree with that argument, by the way, it ends up in many cases making us looking like terrible hypocrites.The remark was made just a moment ago about all of us travel abroad, et cetera, and that is probably the principal argument you here about American foreign policy. You talk the talk but you don't walk the walk.You talk about how there's a desperation for US leadership, but we have a serious problem, and it's a serious, deep problem with what is becoming the major power in Europe in so many different dimensions, whether it's on migration, whether it's in the economy, you name it, and that's Germany, and we are in danger of having lost our credibility in Germany, especially with the young generation, because they've seen the gap between what we advocate as our great moral goals and our actual behavior.Elizabeth: George Washington's perhaps most shining moment was the time when he resigned his military commission at the end of the American Revolutionary War, and did not establish essentially a military ascendancy.People around the world were shocked that this military man should say, "Now the civilians take over." OK, he got elected president, but they didn't know that. I think that we tend to think it's us, or it's the Chinese and the Russians.That's really not, that's not really what's on the table. Yes, those are big countries, those are important countries, although Russia's economy is smaller than Italy's, just to put that out there.The United States today spends more on defense, world defense, than all other countries combined and 85 percent of what we spend on the defense of shores other than our own, and I agree that that has had very profoundly good effects. But that doesn't mean that must go on.As you said, by Jove, the Germans have got it now. What has really happened over the last 400 years has been a gradual movement across the globe towards more open economic systems, more open political systems, freedom of information, transparency, not because the United States has stood there with a gun to everybody's head, making this happen or sustaining it. Because it actually turns out to have been a better way for people to survive and prosper.Japan and Germany don't act as democracies today only because the US will come back in, not at all. If the US, I'm from California, we really could fall off the edge of the country. The United States could become like Atlantis and sink, this does not mean that capitalist systems, and democratic systems would suddenly disappear.Good leaders develop new leaders, and they acknowledge other people's roles, and they also cultivate their friends, and insist that no, we are not going to be providing four and a half percent of our gross domestic product towards defense, when all our partners in NATO do two percent or less, or one percent.That's not the deal, and we allow people to continue year after year, decade after decade, to allow you to do more, while they do less, that's call codependency, and that's not a good prospect for this system that we all love.Julie: But we're tried, just take the example of Europe and defense spending. We've tried for decades to get these guys to spend more.We have reduced our force posture in Europe, most notably, or most recently in 2012, we took the two BCTs out of Europe, and there was some hope that that would send shivers down the spines of military leaders across Europe, particularly, in Germany and Italy, where those forces were based, and they would make more investments, better investments, any investments at all, and we're finding that nothing's working. I frequently tell the...Rick: I'll tell you what's working, Putin is working. Putin is working. They may not listen to us badger them about spending more for defense, but when they look around at what's happening in their neighborhood, they're doing the rational thing.Julie: Some of them are making pledges that will in theory result in a higher defense spending three, four, five years from now. Let's wait and see. Some of them are not, we just had a huge debate with our friends, hold on, in London...Rick: But we know what their interests are better than they do?Julie: We had a huge debate with our friends in London about after the oil summit, whether or not they would invest two percent of their GDP in defense. We barely dodged a bullet on that one.I think there's this mythology that the US pulls everybody back and that A, that's in our interests which I don't think it is, and B, it automatically then spurs others to spend and take care of their own security.Rick: I don't support that at all.Julie: Which is not the case.Rick: I don't support that at all. I fully support our presence in Europe, I'd like to increase it. But I don't that we can define how they define their own security needs. We can tell them what we think they should do, but they're going to end up doing what they want to do.Tom: But it's in our interests. There's been nothing more essential to the creation of the United States of America than the balance of power in Europe.Rick: I agree with that.Tom: You're putting back another 10,000 or 20,000 soldiers in an attempt to restore the peace of Europe, which everybody thought was eternal until five minutes ago, is not a big ask.It's in our interest, secondly, they're providing the battlefield. That's a burden that goes way beyond dollars and cents. I hate to say nice things about the weasely Europeans, but the fact that the...Rick: You think the threat...Tom: ...the contest exists over there is a big contribution to...Rick: But you think the threat in Europe are Russian tanks in the central plains of Germany again? We've got to put an armored division in there?Tom: No, it's little green men in Crimea, I understand that the nature of the conflict is different.Rick: Another division isn't going to help that problem.Elizabeth: But the nature of the conflict is really critical, for the reason that we overlook these long historical processes.When after Spain, et cetera, withdrew from the new world, there was something like I think 23 battles and wars between the American states. When nation states are first formed, there is a lot of elbowing and jostling about where exactly that border is going to lay.For us to worry each time that we've got to make sure that our definition is going to pertain I think is problematic, and that's why I do think that you have to allow some degree of regional responsibility. Not to say we're not involved, of course, we're deeply engaged in the world. But I feel your pain [laughs] , this woman has been with NATO, I feel her pain.But on the other hand, I honestly think that there is no other solution other than saying, "I guess you're going to live with the consequences of that. I guess you're going to live with the fact that you want only to spend one percent."Julie: Can I just say one last thing on this?John: Sure, one last thing.Julie: It is in our interest to see them build capacity. If there's a doctrine for this administration, that could be one of them. Heavy focus on BPCs.We're building all this partnership capacity, oftentimes, the best way to build partnership capacity is by being present, and having the forces there, developing the joint training, exercising together, those things matter and can spur capabilities at the end of the day. I think pulling up stakes and saying, "Good luck to all of you."First of all, is not in our interests. But to the extent that you want to see them actually develop something, you've got to be there, often being present. When we invested the $1 billion after Ukraine in European security, we were then able to go around and shake the trees and get the Europeans to contribute and follow suite, to reassure our allies in Central and Eastern Europe.I think we have to be aware of the value that we bring by being there on the ground with them, and it serves our interests because later if a crisis does hit, we've got all that experience on the interoperability side.John: Elizabeth and Rick, how do you respond to proponents who argue that where there is hunger, we must provide food. Where there is poverty, we must provide financial assistance, and where there are political struggles, we must choose the winners. We being the United States.Rick: How do I respond to that? What was your first one, where there's hunger, we must provide? Look, we all should be good humanitarians, I don't want to take food out of the mouths of starving children. Let me stipulate that point.[laughter]Rick: I do think that we probably, generally speaking, we probably do spend I would guess, in my view, because I support a fuller, more robust, more diverse toolbox for American foreign policy, I would like to see more aid, not just military aid, but aid to less developed countries.I'm all fully support that. But your main point is, is that we have to...my main point is, your question, we have to be pretty thoughtful about intervention. In contrast to Lisa, I don't want to change the balance of power.If anything, I want to strengthen it in areas over time that we're going to need to do that, and by the way, I don't think it's Europe, I think it's Asia, this is a preeminent challenge of the 21st century is when the only other super power that's emerging is China, we're going to have to address that. It's not going to be a purely military solution, but military power is going to be a part.I don't think we're going to be able to meet that challenge if we find ourselves bogged down in a bunch of stupid interventions in unwinnable conflicts in places we don't understand, there's still, I would bet, a majority of members of Congress that still can't tell you the difference between as Shiite and a Sunni, and can't tell you that the Houthis are Shiites, and that they're fighting essentially in Yemen now, Al Qaeda who are Sunni.Most people won't actually remove the NATO blinders to recognize that it's a much more important priority for our NATO ally Turkey to fight the Kurds, because they're worried about the dismemberment of their own country than to go after ISIS, in part, because Erdogan sees himself as some kind of leader of the Sunni world.I'm saying that stupid interventions and trying to tell people, particularly, sectarian conflicts like in the Middle East where we have nothing to add or offer, are going to make it impossible for us to deal with the more important strategic challenges of the 21st century. I think the principal one in my definition is managing the rise of a Chinese super power.John: Tom, you want to jump in here?Tom: If he can be against taking away lollipops from kids, can I be against stupid interventions and dumb wars?I think we should have a moratorium on straw men, maybe. Look, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree that certainly in the great power sense, the rise of China is the greatest challenge for the foreseeable future.That does not mean that we can't walk and chew gum at the same time. I don't have a particular solution in the back of my pocket for the balance of power in the Middle East. If I did, I'd be someplace else.[laughter]Tom: But I do know that the balance of power in the Middle East is fundamentally important to the international system, and to the United States, and to the international economy, and to any hopes for having a decent international system.Rick: You believe we should be direct participants in that balance?Tom: Absolutely. We should indirect participants, we should be offshore balancers.Rick: Wait. Offshore balancer, that's different, and I can support an offshore balancing strategy.[laughter]Tom: Yeah, but that doesn't answer the mail. The problem is that offshore balancing short of is what got us in this mess in the first place, looking for longterm local partners in the Middle East has been unrewarding. The Shah fell, Saddam was a pretty big bum, Nouri alMaliki was a bigger bum.Rick: I'm going to use your argument, that that policy was pretty successful for a pretty long time.Tom: Which policy?Rick: Being an offshore balancer. Working with the Iranians, working with the Saudis.Tom: The Iranians got rid of the Shah, we couldn't offshore balance our way into keeping the Shah in power. He was a bad guy, too, that's the kind of leader that realists tend to go for, and it always ends up in tears.Rick: You've got a choice usually in the Middle East between an unattractive leader like the Shah, and total anarchy and chaos.Tom: We seem to have the latter now.Rick: I haven't seen this sort of flower of democracy grow in any of these countries.John: Let's take it beyond this idea of offshore...Julie: Can I add?John: ...in just a moment, taking it offshore that we've been talking about for the last five minutes, and talk about violent interference, or violent intervention.Opponents often argue, Tom and Julie, that only gives way to more violence, they point to the aftermath, for instance, of the war in Iraq, in which global terrorism shot up higher than ever before. What's your response to that?Julie: We could take Libya and talk about the actual military operation itself, which I think if you just take in a vacuum, you can say was a success.Do I think that was wise, knowing we had no after action plan, no postconflict reconstruction, nobody to come in after NATO decided to call it a day? No, that was absolutely unwise, and a huge mistake, and we're suffering the consequences right now, because of that.To agree with our other colleagues over here, you absolutely do need the full spectrum of instruments and tools. I'm not here to tell you that we should be intervening around the world and putting our ideology at the tip of a spear, and going in, no. It's to the extent that we're going to get engaged militarily, we do have to make the investments in other parts of our toolkit.What we're particularly bad at right now, is figuring out what you do when the smoke clears. We're living that, literally right now, in Libya, case in point.John: Rick?Elizabeth: Can I ask if I...I think it's my turn here, Rick.Rick: It's her turn.[laughter]Rick: No, I wasn't asking for the floor, I'm giving it to you.Elizabeth: Thank you, perfect gentleman. I was going to say, you can't really have a for and con debate here, because it's so complex. You can care about the rest of the world and care very, very deeply.The question, as we all do, everyone in this room. The question becomes how do you do it effectively. In the case of humanitarian aid, caring about people are hungry, it turns out that if you just grow food in Iowa and give it to them, their own farmers can't compete with that, and they stop growing food.You don't want to do that, you want to care, but you want to have a Peace Corps, or something which is not trying to supplant individual and local initiatives. You can care, but you have to care in the right way.Military intervention is an especially dicey way of caring. As it turns out, I love this historical analogy of the civil war, the American Civil War, and the Syrian Civil War, which happened the same year, in 1860, 1861, where there was a civil war in both places.The European powers decided, "Horrors! We must intervene in Syria." 10,000 people have died, and they stopped the war.They decided, in the case of the American Civil War, that it was just way too dangerous. They did not intervene, and 700,000 people died. But we haven't had a civil war since, and Syria remains in civil war.I think there's this great problem that Rick has suggested, which is that when wars are intrastate, not interstate, it's a different ball game. I don't think we've fought carefully enough.Rick: Especially religious.Elizabeth: Especially religious. There's the wars of the reformation were horrible. For 150 years, there were the wars of the Reformation.The Middle East has never had that process of creating a Peace of Westphalia that was the parallel to ending the wars of the Reformation. History takes a long time, and it is dirty, and it is bloody.You just can't control all of this. You have to be very careful about the kind of intervention, the kind of leadership you assert and that you cultivate in others, so they can take some of the heat that will come.John: Real quickly...Tom: You have to ask yourself why was the American Civil War any different outcome than the Syrian Civil War of the 1860s. It was in part, because what emerged from that, and it took another 100plus years for Reconstruction of the South to fully take root.It was because of the nature of the government that succeeded the Confederacy was qualitatively different. It provided a framework for people to learn how to resolve their differences without going to war, and it gave more people a chance to participate in governing themselves.Sure, it takes a long time. It's bloody. It's also, if you're going to say mankind is a fallen creature, you have to accept that there's a reason that military power is the ultimate tool of kings and statecraft, because it is something to be handled with extreme care and prudence, unquestionably. But it is the tool that makes the greatest difference.John: I want to give an opportunity for our audience to ask questions of our panelists. If you have a question, please raise your hand. I believe there are microphones on both sides of this auditorium.When you are called upon, please identify yourself, and address your question to one of the teams that is up here debating these points.This gentleman right here, in the back.Alex Tiersky: Thank you. My name is Alex Tiersky and I think rather than challenging the panelists on something specific, I'd like to offer them some red meat to toss around a little more.[laughter]Alex: I think folks here would agree with me that energy is an interest that has led to some of what has been called policing in US foreign policy, traditionally. Of course, in recent years, we've seen the shale energy revolution that has dramatically changed the scales of that particular equation.I imagine that one side of this debate might say, "This is a new tool in out toolkit to influence and protect our interests abroad, perhaps towards the policing argument."The other side might say, "In fact, this diminishes the interest that we have on energy questions in parts of the world and we can more safely disengage." Am I right in potentially characterizing the two sides of that question? Thanks.John: Rick, Elizabeth. Why don't you take that first?Rick: I'm going to make the maybe controversial argument as, for me at least, it doesn't make a big difference. I know the arguments, "Gee, you know, we're now the world's largest oil producer, we'll soon be the biggest gas producer." We're still dependent on foreign energy and hydrocarbons.It doesn't to me suggest that, "Gee, this is a powerful reason for us to reconfigure our military posture abroad and necessarily withdraw those forces."The global energy market is global and if we need those resources less, other countries will need them. Many of those other countries are important allies and oil is fungible, it will end up losing an important source of energy.Saudi Arabia, for instance, would drive up energy prices and that would have a deleterious impact on our economy probably, I don't think it results in the major new policy opportunities that some people suggest. I could be wrong, I'm not an energy specialist, but I don't see it as a game changer.Elizabeth: I would have to say, I agree with that. The United States in the early 20th century was a major oil exporter. I don't think that really changed our foreign policy or changed our position in the world. It's important, obviously, it's a good thing.On the other hand, it's a terrible thing because of our dependence on hydrocarbons and global warming. That's probably a more important international issue, how do we as a planet more carefully use our resources? That's the big issue, I think.John: Julie.Julie: Yeah, I think it's good news/bad news. Obviously, it's going to give us leverage in a number of relationships we have with suppliers. But it's bad news in the sense that the whole geopolitics of energy, it's creating a whole array of new relationships that could pose to be challenging for us down the road. It's interesting.I don't think there's much right now to the Russia/China relationship that Putin is trying to drive, but what will that look like in 15 or 20 years? We don't know.I think tracking that will be one of the key challenges for not only the next administration, but probably the next three or four after it. Then in terms of global posture, I know there are some saying, "Well, we don't have to worry about the Persian Gulf anymore and bring the troops home."Again, I guess the one word we haven't really injected into this so far is the word "deterrence." I think, yes, America's relationships with many of these countries in the Persian Gulf are changing because of our independence. But at the same time, we have to think about the wider value of having troops in these multiple places around the world.I think not getting to the point where we're forced to intervene, but using some of this posture as deterrence is absolutely critical in sending the right signals to our would be adversaries.Tom: Real quickly, I'd say, the biggest effect is likely to be the one that Julie just described. It will reinforce the frustration that the American political class and our politicians feel about the Middle East and figuring out which ones are the Kurds, which one is the Quds force, and things like that.But it's also the case securing the international energy lifeline, to use a bad phrase, is an important element in American global power. It buys us credibility with the Japanese and the Koreans. It's something the Chinese fear. They behave differently because they are worried that their energy supplies might be held at risk by us.John: Another question from our audience. That's this woman right in the middle wearing a green type of sweater.[laughter]Eleanor Roberts Lewis: I have a pretty loud voice so maybe I'll just speak.John: The microphone's coming your way.[background conversation]Eleanor: My name is Eleanor Roberts Lewis. I'm a retired international lawyer. It may be because of the generation of which I'm a part, but I've been surprised that none of you mentioned the Vietnam War. In fact, for all four of you, that war seems to fall into a time period you regard as highly successful...[laughter]Eleanor: ...for US policy. I'd like to ask each team to address, first of all, do you think the Vietnam War was a matter of success for us? If so, why? If you think, perhaps, it wasn't, are there lessons we could learn from its failure to be a success?John: Why don't we start with Tom and Julie first?Tom: It was a big deal for me when I was 18yearsold, that's for sure. But I think, in the benefit of hindsight, it turns out to be strategically much less important in its greater lasting effect.It was a catastrophe for the people of Southeast Asia. There's no question about that. It had a durable effect on our domestic politics, the way we thought about going to war, and behaving in the world. There's no doubt about that.But it didn't have the domino effect or anything like that. It didn't really alter the arc of the Cold War, if you will, in ways that some people might have, advocates of the war, thought that it would or people who opposed the war may have thought.With the benefit of a couple of generations of distance and as a matter of international power and strategy, I think it is less important than certainly other contemporaneous events.John: Rick, do you want to jump in here?Rick: Yeah, I have a couple of random observations. First of all, of course, he didn't say this, but it was a clear military defeat for the United States. We lost that war. It was an example of this not having a clearminded, selective approach where we understood the consequences of where this was going and what we were trying to do there.I was interested during the whole Iraq war, Afghan scenario where we reinvented counterinsurgency. We really did reinvent it, because it was first developed for Vietnam. It failed there and then failed again in the Middle East. I could talk for some time about why it failed.It's funny. We didn't learn, at least, the US military didn't learn the lessons from Vietnam. The more interesting thing, and it shows you a little bit about the unintended consequences. You're going to think this is a strange argument coming from me given the side I'm debating tonight.Vietnam did have one, I think, arguably positive impact. That was during the course of the war, I think we forget that there was a great concern in all of Southeast Asia about communist subversion. It wasn't just North Vietnam. There were concerns in the Philippines, in Thailand, in Malaysia.The impact of Vietnam was to provide a kind of American security umbrella over that region. What was interesting, when you talk about no impact for the long term...it's interesting.The great surge in Southeast Asian economies, and entrepreneurialism, and the creation of ASEAN, and the success of all of that may, in some part, be due to the fact that there was this American presence in the region.It gave some people some breathing space and some opportunities to build those. Clearly, Walt Ross down there never put that in a memo to President Johnson.It, again, shows you how there are always these unintended consequences and they're not always necessarily bad. I would argue they're largely bad, but it comes to using...While I don't disagree with you on the point about use of military power, the instrument of its centrality, we have to understand that it's also probably the most uncertain tool. It's going to have consequences that are highly unpredictable in different ways.I don't think we, in the last 15 years or so...I think we understood that after Vietnam and we were...even in my years in the Reagan administration and into the Bush administration, there was certainly a greater prudence in American policy making and decisions about using military power than there have been in the last 15 years.I think, whether people admit it or not, it was because of the Vietnam shadow.John: Let's go back out to out...Elizabeth: Can I just say, I think, on Vietnam, it's important to say that when you have policing you have police brutality, because it's a very difficult job, being the police officer. We all know in this audience that police brutality is a part of policing.It's a part we try very hard to root out. We try to own up to but the fact is in the case of Vietnam the United States made a big mistake.John: Let's go back out to our audience. This gentleman right here in the red shirt in the middle.[pause]Isaac Makos: My name is Isaac Makos. I have a question for the affirmative team.With the increasing cost of modern warfare, the amount of money that even one missile costs to be fired, can the US afford to maintain the sort of military involvement and additionally the cost of, in terms of treasure and in terms of public support...?Can the US continue to pay the bills that world policing racks up? Thank you.Julie: I guess it depends on what type of definition you want to rely on for policing. If you are going to be proposing that the US, for example right now, should be sending 200,000 troops into Iraq and Syria to fight ISIS, as Lindsey Graham would argue, there are real cost implications of that.Obviously, we have to be clear eyed and realistic about, first and foremost, the resource constraints that you highlighted, but also, the limits of US power. We have learned a lot of lessons.That said, I think we do have the luxury of having a large defense budget. I think it is supportable. It's not necessarily needs to be on a scale of what we've witnessed over the better part of the last two or three decades, or just the last couple of years, for that matter, in the shadow of the war on terror.I think we do have the ability to sustain a military that can continue to project power. Again, with a heavier emphasis on using the military and the posture we have as a deterrent and the ability to use it to build relationships and build that partnership capacity.I think there are wise ways and smart ways to invest. There are ways to abuse the military and the spending that we invest.I certainly think that the state of the economy right now, given our place in the world...I think we're not in a position where we have to match our European allies and bring it down to one percent of GDP. We do have that luxury.Tom: As a matter of economic reality, we could spend twice or three times and have, for a long time...that historical average through the Cold War is about six or seven percent of GDP spent on defense. We're now down to four and falling. We're not quite at European levels of defense spending.But as a burden on our economy, as an opportunity cost to American society, one percent of Americans who have ever served are now serving in uniform or fought in post 9/11 wars. As a society, as an economy, we can sustain this level of military effort indefinitely.The cost of each round may have increased but the effectiveness also did. In World War II, it took hundreds of sorties and thousands of bombs to try to destroy a bridge. Now, we can shoot one Tomahawk or satellite guided bomb at any target that we select.It's a more effective use of resources. We get more bang for the buck, if you will. We can continue to do this as long as we felt like.John: Would the other team care to weigh in on that particular question?Rick: I have to just say, "Bang for the buck?" I can't think of any large scale organization in the United States that spends money less effectively than the Department of Defense. It is the most wasteful bureaucratic, inefficient organization that God has ever conceived. I know I'm beginning to sound like Donald Trump, but it's...[laughter]Rick: ...it's true. We've become, the Department of Defense, as many people have noted is becoming a healthcare program with guns. The amount of money that is taken up with all these...Tom: The United States is becoming a hospital, and the amount of healthcare.Rick: Yes, and the most inefficient hospital...Tom: And the amount of healthcare. But come on, Rick.Rick: ...is the Department of Defense. No what I'm saying is that...Tom: The Department of Education, if the Department of Education that taught my kids...Rick: If the Department of Education the size of the Pentagon.Tom: ...as well as the military. It's twice...Rick: The people would be rioting in the streets.Tom: How much does the United States spend on education, as a slice of its GDP?Rick: But that money isn't spent by the Department of Education.Tom: Public schools and private...Rick: But that's local, I'm talking about...Tom: We allocate a much larger slice of our dollars to educating our children than we do to...Rick: You've got one bureaucracy, it's the Department of Defense, and I'm just suggesting if we're going to spend four percent of our GDP on it, we should spend it more wisely.It could better managed, and Dwight Eisenhower, when he was president, hired Tom Gates, the CEO of General Motors to come in because he was cost conscious. I think maybe Dwight Eisenhower was the last president of the United States who cared about a Pentagon that was run efficiently.Julie: No, that's not.[crosstalk]Tom: LBJ hired Robert McNamara...John: Listen, why don't you wrap up this particular question with the point that you'd like to make, and then, we can go to one last question.Elizabeth: When the Truman Doctrine started, the US was the highest per capita income in the world. Today, we are 17th. Yes, we can continue to do this as long as you like.We are so big, we can just do this forever. But it's a question of opportunity cost. If you spend a fifth of the federal budget on the military, that means you have a fifth of the money more that you could be doing something else with.You could give it back to taxpayers, you can spend it on education. I imagine there's a number of students in this room, and if you were European, you would not be walking out of college with a debt. Those are important question, and it's a balancing act. We can afford it, is that how we want to spend our money?John: We have time for one more question. This woman on the near end of this particular row, in the tan top?Jennifer Brown: Hi my name is Jennifer Brown, I'm a teacher at Roosevelt State High School, here with some of my students and colleague. My question is specifically for Elizabeth Cobbs, you said that acting as the current world's policeman is a role that America is currently fulfilling, not one that is mandated.Do you think that this is a role that will always exist, and if so, who do you think should replace the US in the role should we revert to isolationism?Elizabeth: I don't think we should revert to isolationism, and I don't think that's really the question. But I think what we have to do is we have to establish some goals and some targets, and say, "Other allies? You need to stand up. You need to start doing these things."I don't know, the UN does not yet have a structure where there is one country doing it. When a role is not carefully developed, something will fill the vacuum.Obviously, we don't have a world umpire, we don't have a world police, and the United States can and has fulfilled this function. But you have to establish a goal, how exactly we will get there, I don't know.I'm like Tom here, I wish I could invent the solution. But unless you know that's where you want to go, you will just stay in inertia, in the rut you've been in for a really long time. We know there's some powerful downsides to this particular rut.John: Rick, would you care to weigh in on that particular question that was posed essentially to your team?Rick: I just very briefly, I'm certainly not an isolationist, and I think it's not just a question of stepping back from a role, and as I pointed out earlier, I think I differ with Lisa on this question. I don't want to reshape our commitments or necessarily even our presence worldwide.But I think we should become much more selective and thoughtful about how we intervene, and when we intervene, and better at understanding that beyond military intervention there are diplomatic and other instruments available to address the problems that we face in Europe, in the Middle East, and in East Asia.John: At this point, I'd like to go back to our panelists, and if you may recall the team of Julie and Tom started off this debate, and I want to go back to Elizabeth and Rick Burke to conclude the debate.I would like you in one minute, and the clock's right there up on the left, to sum up what role each of you believes the US should take in foreign affairs around the world. Elizabeth, why don't you start us off?Elizabeth: I think that the United States, needs to, as I just said, set a goal, working towards a world system in which it is not the primary guarantor of world security. That makes us the essentially sole pillar of the system. Any system that rests on one pillar is not very strong.I'm not exactly sure how we're going to get there, but I think we need to stop saying that to ourselves, that we are the sole guarantor, we're the primary guarantor of world security. The world has to guarantee its security, and we need to help the world figure that out.John: Rick?Rick: I don't want to just be guilty of repeating myself, but I don't think we're going to in this transition from the United States as some says it's a central pillar of the existing system to the world, somehow, doing this is going to take a long time, be very bumpy, and I hope someday we get there, but I doubt it's going to happen in anybody's lifetime or beyond.I do think we have to be prepared to work with other countries, but it's not the UN in my judgment, I think the P5 plus one model is interesting. The success with Iran, it could be potentially applied to some other issues. Working with just the core three Europeans and the United States.I'm also prepared in certain occasions to step back and let others do it. The Normandy process, which is now under way with Ukraine and the Russians is something that is an interesting model.I do believe that in the end it's probably going to take Putin and a US president to resolve that issue, and I think it is resolvable. But I think the United States doesn't always have to have a seat at the table. My main point is, we will need to use military power in the future, we will have to intervene in certain situations,I'm just arguing tonight that we need to make sure that they are in support of our most important national interests, that they are taken in terms of our national interests, and not in some kind of romantic desire to spread our values to promote democracy, or to build nations abroad, that's a very tough job and we're not very good at doing it.Finally, it has to be military force, it has to be seen, the policeman's role has to be seen in conjunction with the businessman's role in that in terms of the United States as an economic power, as an investment power, as an energy power, as well as the social worker's role in terms of being able to work with countries on other kinds of problems, and finally, to use a word you used in some of your writing, as an umpire.As somebody who in some cases can act as on honest broker. But to believe that the United States, that we are indispensable, that we have to be part of every solution, means that we're also going to be part of every problem.John: Tom Donnelly?Tom: I'd like to start by apologizing to Julie for losing my cool there, in extenuation, I'll say I only did it once, when I could have done it much more. But I think it's important to focus not so much on the process, but on the result that we want.I want the world that America has made, one that's again, remarkably peaceful in historic terms. Incredibly prosperous, again, compared against the experience of humanity up until this point, and remarkably free.I don't want to give up any one of those things, and before I buy a new world order, and a new set of policing functions that include people that I don't immediately trust, I want somebody to explain to me why we should easily...it's a head scratcher, that's why I get frustrated. This is working again, by any reasonable historical standard, very well. I'm reluctant to give it up.John: Julie?Julie: We can't do it all, and we do have to prioritize and be smart about how we intervene in the world, but we have to also recognize that we play a unique leadership role, and whether it's combating Ebola in Liberia, or forming a coalition to go after ISIS, or responding to the tsunami in the Philippines, the United States brings a lot.We bring innovation, we bring capacity, we bring drive, we're risk taking, we can build coalitions, we have an unbelievable array of partnerships and alliances unlike any other, and that puts us in a unique position.Whether we like it or not, we can try and brush it away, and we go through these cyclical periods after Vietnam, after the Iraq War where we try to push away some of these responsibilities and deny that we've got this unique role to play.But we often come back to the position that we do have to have deep engagement in the world, and that when we show up, others follow.I'm not here to say we have to intervene everywhere, that military force is the answer to every problem. But I do believe that the United States has a certain set of characteristics and attributes that sere us and serve the world more broadly.John: Thank you. Rick, Elizabeth, Julie, Tom, thank you so much. It's been a great debate.[applause]John: Thank you, to each of you who showed up tonight. Let me turn the lectern over to Ambassador Kurt Volker, thank you so much.Ambassador Volker: Thank you very much for coming. Let me ask all of you to give a round of applause to our terrific moderator, John Decker, thank you. Very well prepared.[applause]Ambassador Volker: Thank you very, very much, and we're going to be convening our next debate at Harvard University October 28th, we'll have one in Phoenix in November, and then, we'll be back here in December.I'm looking forward to seeing you. Thank you.[music]

Transcription by CastingWords