make sure i show up where i am supposed to be at any given time. for people who are watching online and have questions that they want to pose to our panelists, you can use the hashtag #catofp to ask the russian on facebook or twitter. it is no great mystery what we are here to talk about. i will set it up by saying that we have the gop in the midst of a really meaningful debate on foreign policy. as the preeminent global power, it has some luxury of choice. it can choose more, less foreign policy, it can choose more foreign policy in one place and less in another. there is a lot of room to run in terms of choice. you can index the debate by

looking at, for example, two leading presidential editor to represent two factions. one says the united states is overemphasizing europe, letting europeans live off of u.s. defense exertions when they can and should be doing more for themselves. that aside frequently gets called "isolationist," which is an ugly word. but in fact, that side of the debate argues the motto mania for focusing on europe comes at the expense of other u.s. interests that may come in fact, be more important, such as the u.s. position vis-à-vis asia. the other side of the debate says, as goes europe, so goes the world. everything is connected to everything else, so without u.s. leadership, the global order would collapse. i refer to the presidential election of 1952. there are some echoes of the debate that took place during that presidential election in the contemporary gop kid i think we will do our best to pull out

some of the similarities and distinct and's between these two moments in time. there are echoes of that past debate into today, but i think there are a number of different ways of getting at the problem. if you follow at the faction that says the united states needs to play the leading role in european security, those -- there tends to be a generational split on that question. if you look at the people calling for a fundamental reorientation in the senate, for example, you will see people like j.d. vance, josh hawley, rand paul. if you look at the people who have the more grand vision of u.s. providing order in the world, liz cheney was primary, written not -- mitt romney is retiring, and mitch mcconnell is 81. there is a generational divide there we may want to talk about. institutions are changing.

the weekly standard is no more. the american conservative has a larger role to play in the party than it has historically. we have victoria coates here from the heritage foundation. i think the heritage foundation is worth talking about. victoria: always. justin: but especially today. the president of heritage recently said "heritage is moving towards an explicit embrace of restraint." the hawkish colonist that wrote this got the vapors a bit about that quote, but it is there. in an article surrounding the ukraine debate in particular, titled republicans plot for intervention pull back, the president of air to said rank and final donors at heritage have come down firmly on the restraint side of the foreign policy fight. both as a scholar and, selfishly, this is a very interesting moment to be working on restraint in u.s. foreign policy appeared we have two very distinguished scholars to talk

about both the nuts and bolts of the debate as it is happening today and the broader context in which that debate is happening. the first presenter this morning will be victoria coates, who is the vice president of the kath ryn and shelby ullom davis institute. she has, in 2016, joined president donald trump's administration as special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic medications. in 2019, she was promoted to a pretty national security adviser or the middle east and north africa, which will be relevant to our discussion today. previously, she served as former secretary of defense donald rumsfeld's -- and she served as a senior national security adviser to ted cruz. she has a bachelors degree -- and a phd from penn.

so please do not ask me any questions about art today, because i will embarrass myself in front of dr. coates. victoria: i would be happy to talk about the william penn statues. justin: yes, that has just come out, the statues. we also have brandan buck, a phd candidate at history at george mason university. previously, he worked as an intelligence and spatial analyst at mgh -- m-ga. he also served in the virginia army national guard with multiple tours to afghanistan. his interests include u.s.-afghan relations and the managerial state, which is setting off the libertarian sirens in me and other people in the room. his current research focuses on the domestic politics of u.s. foreign policy from 1934 to

1942. and the evolution of foreign-policy attitudes within the republican party. his report -- his work appeared in several outlets. he has a master of arts in history from georgia nation in -- george mason in 2016. with that, victoria, if you wanted to set the table for us today and tell us where you see things going. victoria: sure. thank you very much for that kind introduction. good to be with both of you. i appreciate everyone coming in person and joining us online and on c-span. for this very timely discussion of this topic that has been seething about the heritage foundation, particularly in the davis institute. this is a conversation i've been having in different iterations from 2007 on. what we have seen, between the

conclusion of the second bush term and what we are going into here in 24 has been a really radical shift in the way national security policy is designed and executed. we have had a remarkable series of front almost screenshots within that period of time. we have the obama two terms and the record that came out of that, we have a trump term, we have, again, very distinct of record. and now we are getting a full picture of what the biden administration foreign policy has wrought on the world. i think brandan will go into the historical roots of all this, but there really has been a shift from that much more traditional, hawkish republican foreign policy to what i would

refer to as a conservative national security policy. the way i conceived of this in my brain, because i am visual, is we are not hawks, we are not doves, we are owls. i would reject the paradigm you have to either be an interventionist or an isolationist. i do not think that is applicable to the united states in the second quarter of the 21st century. we have to be able to do better than just default to one of those two positions. and it really clarify for me, and the 2016 republican primary, when you had candidates such as jeb bush, obviously closely associated with his brother's foreign policy, and then you could range to rand paul, who is the most formal libertarian, and then marco rubio was in that mix as well. nobody bought either of those in the primary. i think marco won the minnesota caucusers, and the two

candidates who came in first and second, trump and cruz -- obviously, i am partial -- worked for both of them, so i guess you could say i am not partial. but they had fundamentally the same approach to international affairs, which is, for trump, america first, you start with the basic interests of the united states, and you build your approach from there, and we can get into the relative successes or failures of that approach, but it is one that was persuasive to the primary voters and to the general electorate. i think that is, in many ways, where the head of the american people are. we can get into various specifics there, but that is where i see things at the moment. justin: that is great. brandan, give us the glass on history here, how you are connecting the gop to the gop of previous arrows. brandan: i think history shows the meaning of conservative foreign policy is not preordained, and it could take

many forms that may seem strange to us in the present. if you look to the old right, sometimes called the tafties, they were strident anti-communists, but there were also anti-nationalist. they rejected much of the liberal nationalism that came with the prosecution of the cold war. they advocated for a model of the cold war and -- but look more like fortress america from the antiwar period. there framework, the way they saw america and the world stemmed heavily from a revisionist view of the world wars, particularly world war ii and the manner in which the war ended. they saw the failings of american foreign policy over time as the product of american action rather than inaction. that ran counter to the emerging liberal consensus after world war ii, that it was the absence of american power that led to fascism and therefore the the

second world war. their views became verboten by the mid-1950's, but nevertheless, they carried them forward. that view of the world is largely lost to us, because first, they lost the political battle, but most important, they lost the narrative battle in the mid-1950's going through the 1960's. if you look at -- modern asia firsters or more strident noninterventionists, especially if you look at the grassroots, they use the vernacular to describe american foreign policy that looks more like the mid-1930's and early 1940's. they are using the phrase "the military-industrial complex," which while corn by eisenhower, it was kept alive by the new left in the 1960's and 1970's.

if we juxtapose the history of the old right with the present, it suggests conservative opinions on foreign policy are more elastic than is commonly understood. it also shows conservative foreign policy emerge from domestic political process. it was not strictly informed by a reaction to events overseas nor, inherently, global in its ambitions. going through some of the history of the old right was first constrained by the primary defeat of robert taft. then the remnants of the old right were eventually ground down via attrition throughout the 1960's. it shows the prominence of intervention of conservatism, be it the old guard or reaganism or neoconservative are more apparent than normative. again, there is generational

turnover we are seeing. it is not at all uncommon. that being said, history shows the modern republican party is probably going to remain chaotic without a unifying figure -- i am a historian, so i do not want to appear over the horizon too much kid without a unifying figure like a dwight d. eisenhower or of a unifying policy like world war ii served. and also without a foreign threat -- and i use these" -- that can get the party elite and the base together, like communism was during the cold war or terrorism was during the war on terror. i do not think the autocracies versus democracies for more coming out of the white house is going to work, especially after 20 years of war and $30 trillion of debt. those are some similarities, but the differences are important to highlight, lest we try to make a model of the past to predict the future.

the old right had a regional basis of support at a time in which american politics was highly sectional. even though they had ideas targeting back to the founding of the country, they had institutions that were built up to oppose american imperialism that started first with the spanish-american war and reached its height during the wake of the great war. so they had a breadth of broad support but more important we a depth of institutional support in business in media but, more important, in congress. they had a confluence of interests that saw american foreign-policy as detrimental to their business. about the president, for me, the patterns are more decentralized than once were. there are even more rules than the old right, and they all are aligned against social class. there is not an elite that could lead these ideas into politics.

similarly, the institutions are not quite there. i know that has been a lot of change since 2015, but they certainly not as robust as they were during the first half of the 20th century. also, they have much heavier lift. they are trying to either eradicate or redirect a massive foreign policy apparatus whereas the old right was simply trying to slow it down. there are social issues that are tangential to foreign-policy that serve as an impediment to either their success or to forming coalitions with their counterpart on the left, particularly with immigration and trade, and there's also the difference in how they view sovereignty versus libertarians or others on the left and whatever comes next will have echoes of the past that will be a product of its own time. justin: that is very helpful. one of the things -- before we went live, i let you know we wanted to talk about, partly

officially but also from the point of view from the scholar, but it is the old aphorism of personnel is policy for for my more trumpy friends and colleagues who say trump was in the right place on foreign-policy but, at crucial junctures, was undermined by people who worked in the administration. we had, for example, james jeffrey say it was a shell game with the president, that we were always hiding the number of troops we had in syria, so that he did not know how many troops we had in syria, and we prevented the president from following through on his pledge to with draw troops from syria, but there are many, many of these instances. my trumpier colleagues would say a second trump term would be staffed by people who shared the president's vision, so you would see more follow-through and more results. of course, the elephant in the room, there is an incipient

effort to do that, to connect notional staffers to a notional administration. is that -- maybe, victoria, do you think there is a point of the personnel impacting policy, and were we to get a second trump administration, that things would go differently in some way or other? victoria: taking the second question first, absolutely. no matter what happens, it would be different. i think this is a critical question, particularly for any incoming republican administration, because the fundamental bias of the career bureaucracy in the federal government is liberal. that is just a fact. amongst that group, there are many patriots who actually do want to do what is best for the country. i was actually surprised by how many lasting friendships i forged with these people.

for any incoming administration, it would be a great bonus, because when we came in with president trump, we had the eight years of obama, which had diluted some of those relationships, and then the fact that that had been such an unusual election in terms of everyone assuming that hillary clinton was going to win and so many of the former bush administration folks having taken themselves off the table by the various letters and statements they had made regarding the president, so, in a way, we came in blind. also, the president had not been president of war, had not served in government before, so it was not clear to him -- he did not have a list in his head, this is my secretary of state, my secretary of defense. i think both of those initial pix were hugely problematic, both the tillerson and the mattis pic. i understand the logic behind

them, but they did not work out, either in terms of personality or policy implementation, and i would say this, from my personal observation, the greatest challenge the president had in this space was actually the national security advisor position, because general flynn, the one who hired me, was the one the president was deeply comfortable with, in a way parallel taking kirkpatrick and reagan. she was the one he was comfortable with. she did not become national security advisor, and he wound up with a rotating door of folks, because he couldn't get suited. it was such a personal relationship. the president did not know general mcmaster before. he did no john bolton a little bit, but neither of them were close to him. dramatically different. i think, after impeachment, when robert o'brien came in, there was very much a feeling of entity between the president and the nsc, so that relationship

never quite worked. what i would advocate for, for whoever it becomes, if we do have a republican become president next november, that the full role of the nsc, as the president's mechanism to implement his or her will on this gigantic bureaucracy, as you said, this big apparatus, that has to be reconceived from a conservative viewpoint. the kind of automatic responses to say, make it smaller -- and i had this conversation repeatedly with rest, not someone who wants to make things larger, but that is the budget you want to expand, because that is your tool. the rest of it you can slack. it is relatively small dollars, not a lot of money. that is the change i would advocate for between a first and second term or between whomever it may be. justin: brandan, any thoughts on

the notion of a different republican or a different trump administration having different connection between the principal and the implementation of the policy? brandan: i mean, it is a little out of my wheelhouse. as far as the menu of options, some sort of retrenchment from europe is the most plausible and has the most buy-in among the various fashions of dissent amongst republicans. obviously, that will run into a buzz saw people who want to maintain the status quo. there are how many active wars are we tangentially involved in, and what will happen after that be dictated by how the war in ukraine either grinds to a halt or end up in victory. europe is probably the thing that has the most likelihood of having some sort of change. a pivot to asia is probably in the cards.

what that actually looks like is off the ground. justin: and that is a good segue to this notion that has become maybe the -- or, if not the, a centerpoint -- centerpiece of conservativism, new conservativism, whatever we want to call it. the idea of trade-offs. my understanding of the conservative critique is there is a deal and important challenge to the u.s. position in the world that comes from the people's republic of china. other foreign policy interests should sorta be subordinated to that. and there is a trade-off among regions, functions, maybe even services of the u.s. military to say we cannot just have more guns and more butter always and forever, in every context. what is your sense of the extent to which that if you of trade-offs, of a hierarchy of goals, a hierarchy -- brandan talked a bit about the

unifying theme that personified the cold war, which was the struggle between more or less liberal capitalism and and more or less liberal communism. is the sort of china focus a real driving force, and can it conceivably unify a consensus around a different foreign policy? victoria: i would say yes. that is a developing theme. i was first introduced to this during the 2012 primary when i was working for the governor's primary and learned to spell the word quality -- huawei. bush learned from his father and felt getting china into the

world trade organization, engaging china economically, was the way to go. then-president bush suggested to. he reach out to chinese industry, invite them to texas, and huawei made a massive investment in texas. by the 2012 primary, that was a massive problem. people were already saying hey, wait, there is something awry here. it became much more powerful in 2016 when we got in and learned the extent of the problem, if you look at what president trump said in the primary, he was actually more hostile towards japan then china. this is a little bit product of the 1980's. but i think, once we grasp the scope of what was going on, largely around the 5g issue, it became clear. what is interesting to me and what we will be doing a lot of work on this year is the next generation of 5g is actually energy, and the so-called green

energy that is being promoted by our current leadership, which forces a reliance on china. there is no way to do that mystically on the timeline they have set, so that is going to have to be the trade-off as we decide that is what we want to do. these are issues of communication and energy that touch every american, and when they see a china lens to that, it does become a defining issue. justin: great. brandan, anything there? brandan: the issue trade-offs is important, because that is something that -- that is the essence of conservativism, right? but this has not been on the menu or in the forefront of conservative foreign poly really since taft. it was not just trading off europe for china, it was also about trading off american liberties at home for a truly global project. there was also a concern by

trying to make the world america, america was going to cease to be itself. whatever comes next vis-à-vis china, we would obviously be interested to see how is the hawkish -- how is it being framed, as a means of containment for our own national interest, or will it be a trade as a means to make a china like america, to continue this universal project abroad? i think that project in the middle east failed, so -- to put it mildly -- so if we learned anything from the past 20 years, it would be to have a more realpolitik way of conducting american policy. justin: let's get back to europe, not in a metaphorical sense but literally. there was an article in the new york times in 2018 or 2019 the alleged pre--- president trump was intent on trying or wanted some meaningful way to get the united states out of nato.

this set my literal -- liberal international friends in a tizzy. they are still kind of in a tizzy. but i think brandan pointed out ukraine and maybe europe more generally is the lowest hanging fruit or consensus among both conservative grassroots and, i think, conservative foreign policy elites or people aspiring to the foreign policy elite, where there is some consensus on china, that china is a problem. do you see europe as sort of a place where there is a -- that the united states has been taken for a ride by europe for several decades, that presidents since eisenhower had been complaining about. do you see energy behind a fundamentally different approach in europe and maybe nato as an is a duchenne, in a notional second trump term? victoria: actually, -- putting

on my art historian cap, but going back to rumsfeld, he was ambassador to nato in 1974. i've gone through all of his papers, so if anybody has any questions about the archival issues that have been cropping up with classified documents, i am your girl. i know a ridiculous amount about this. but he was writing back in 1974 to then secretary kissinger this is ridiculous, the europeans are not paying their bills, they depend on us for everything, and by the way, we are at war in vietnam, among other issues. so this is not, in any way, new. i do think this culture of dependence has gone on for far too long. i understand why there is some nervousness in europe about having a strongly armed germany. obviously, one has historical memory and that has not gone terribly well. i see that, but at the same time, you now have european

collective economy they decided to form that is roughly the size of the united states, and so, when you have a war in europe, the last time i looked, why should the united states be the lead donor to that war? if we decide we contribute to ukraine, and i am not a big fan of vladimir putin, so i do not want him to win. i am ready to stop talking about ukraine. it has been a decade now. i am not in favor of just letting it go, but i think the president, through his repeated statements, as much as it takes, as long as it takes, is building up that assumption. when the president of the united states says that to you, you are forgiven for believing it. the problem is that is not within his authority. he can give as much as congress appropriates for as long as they decide to do it. as presidents before him -- he is coming up against that reality, that he did not build a case for this war with the american people, and they are

concerned about how it is being prosecuted. in terms of trump and nato, one of the reasons i was telling you a bit about that liberty fund event i was at last year, we actually went through all of the documents and speeches around the original decision to join nato, which was a contentious decision. this was not an automatic thing. it was not strewing flowers and throwing candy. it was a big bait, for this reason. my feeling is the last time i supported trump on a nato summit was the summer of 2019, and at the end of that, he and full bird came out, informed berg said we got more done in this summit than we have in 20 years, because you are putting our feet to the fire. one can debate the open-door naito policy, do we want to bring more people in, has that been successful. but an american president who very strongly encourages the

europeans to pay their bills actually can have a positive effect on naito. justin: brandan, did you want to -- you mentioned that history and that long history has been memory hold, because it is not convenient to present -- what i will be interested to see is if what forces this issue is the crisis. will there not be enough to stand the line in europe, as i think both the army and the navy are about 25% short, something like that. eventually, will there be a material problem that forces some sort of realignment there is what will be interesting to see. just that crisis alone shows there is a flagging faith amongst the generation of people who had traditionally signed up to go do duty in europe and

elsewhere. justin: i have to harken back to the 1949 senate hearing, where dean atchison was asked whether the united states role in naito and europe would involve "substantial numbers of troops over there at a more or less permanent contribution to the develop of these countries -- europe -- capacities to resist?" i just sent responded indignantly, "the answer to that is a clear no." and the answer to that -- nothing more permanent than a temporary government program. before we throw it open to questions from the audience, because i think this is an event that is inclined to be interactive, is a little bit about institutions. brandan and i were riffing on the app formally known as twitter on michael glennon's book. we talked about institutions that, were a president tried to

reorient policy to europe, the art 70 years of institutions that would, not necessarily for nefarious reasons but for institutional reasons, be opposed to that, or would make that more difficult, to take agency out of it. and in the context of president trump, there has been a discussion about this question, schedule f employees. you mentioned the nac as a place the president can employ the people the president want -- the nsc as a place a president can employ the people the president wants to employ. but glennon says we will have a congress and judiciary and a president, and the congress and the president will get elected and campaign on the policies they want to pursue, than the government will follow the policies of the laws enacted by congress, especially in the national security realm, and the prerogatives of the president. in response to this suggestion

that president trump used schedule f to reorient bureaucratic agencies, there is a sense that the bureaucracies do not work for the executive branch, that they are their own from institutions that exist on the basis of what authority is sort of unclear, but come at a superficial level, if you work for the executive branch of the government, the person at the top of that is the president of the united states, so the policies of the president of the united states ought to be deferred to. but in this glennon institutions against the truman night network, the -- which tickles my libertarian nerve, but assuming ite networking the bad guy here, you are saying the nsc is a place for my authority. they work geographically near me, i see them all the time. there was a fairly attention in the first trump administration -- you mentioned the nsc as one

way to build that up. anyway from detaching that from the schedule f controversy? victoria: i am a fan of schedule f. it is a reform long in the making. a lot of my friends, many of them liberal democrats, in career bureaucracies, like it. they think it is a good idea. and that it would give them more latitude. we had a couple folks in the trump administration get detailed over for a period of time to the nsc who want upcoming political appointees, the giving up their career status, because they wanted to stay longer. i think that reform is deeply necessary. in terms of what the nsc does, that needs a total overhaul. we still have an entire directorate that spent most of its time on hurricanes because of katrina. now that was a catastrophic

failure, and needed to be gotten after, but you do not need a directorate at the nsc to do hurricanes now. we are good at it. a lot of the stuff that accrued, like barnacles during the global war on terror, that is all still there. does it need to be there? there are things the entity does not do, like energy. the decision was made to disband in 2020 the group that did energy policy for the nsc. that is deeply necessary. and also in terms of international economics, so i would say more broadly about the government, the two agencies i would most like to get after would be d.o.e. and commerce, both of whom have massive capabilities and authorities that are not currently being deployed, both of whom would be frontline agencies against china. so figuring out how we do that -- and i've had a lot of interesting discussions with

senator cruz, who is now the ranking number on the commerce committee, about what that would look like, being both my full of our free-market principles and our desire to preserve those, but the economic might of the united states is may be our most powerful weapon at this point, so if china is weaponizing it, do we have to? that will be the question. justin: you juxtapose trying -- versus trying to unravel and relieve parts of their bureaucracy -- re-weave parts of the bureaucracy. takes on contrasting the two? brandan: that is tough. when i worked in the intelligence community, you always are people who presumed there would always be a next mission for these resources. even while we were fighting in afghanistan, of course he had

libya and syria and west africa was a thing -- there was always the assumption that there was a next mission, that there was never an end. i would hope if there were a different mindset as to the purpose of what and i can policy is, that it would have some sort of impact on this almost inevitable since that there will be mission creep somewhere. it will be interesting, in the years ahead, if it changes at all due to weather personnel or changes that forces the government to make hard changes. justin: let me throw it open to the audience to throw some hopefully metaphorical grenades up here. there aren't microphones somewhere floating around back there, and i will call on you, and if you could wait for the mic -- sorry, i buffalo the tech folks with this. ok, we will go right down there and then down to the front, a 1-2 punch. >> i am old enough to have been

a student at the foreign service school at georgetown university in 1971, when the senate, for an entire week, was wrapped up in the debate you just have been reviewing. at that time, the mansfield amendment proposed u.s. troop commitments to europe be cut in half. it was overwhelmingly defeated. but i was wondering if my interpretation of the dominant argument against it still applies today? i had not heard it, but having listened to that debate for a week, senator fulbright, senator nelson, all those people whose names are lost to history, is if the united states reduced its troop commitment to europe, europe would turn neutral. it would become a giant neutral zone, because europeans, if faced with a choice of cutting back social benefits and six weeks of vacation and free

health care and free education, or increasing their defense spending would say we will go neutral and keep the fence spending low in keep those benefits. that was my interpretation of the dominant theme, that europe would become neutral, because they need the united states military to protect them, and if we do not, we will have a big neutral zone. i do not know if that argument applies today or not, but i would be interested to see if it survived. it was dominant in 1971. justin: thank you for that question. let's also take the one from the gentleman in the front. we will take the mansfield mmn and if it is alive today. >> i am peter humphrey, an intelligence analyst and former diplomat. so putin finally gets his act together, breaks out of his corner, moves along the coast, succeeds in taking odessa after a horrible battle. and then there is 100,000 troops

-- and by the end of the year, moldova is toast. people believe, as you do, allow for that policy -- possibility, and it sickens me that i have to vote democrat to make absolute lease or in that scenario never happens. what in gods's name has happened to the domino theory in the republican party? justin: reality has happened to the domino theory, i would say. as goes moldova so goes europe i think is not an argument many people are making. the pmr has been a festering wound there for a long time. but i think it is important to start with the u.s. national interest in europe and then build out from there. we entered world war i, we entered world war ii, and we fought the cold war, to some of our tastes a little too aggressively for little too long, to prevent a country from dominating europe, from becoming a regional hegemon in europe.

the problem many of us have with the administration's policy in ukraine and beyond is it fails to start from that premise. if russia were to dominate europe, it would need to take a shot at poland, take a shot at germany. has always had a residual left over soviet army in the pmr and moto vat. if we are clear about what the u.s. interest in europe is and then build the policy out from there, stopping russia from becoming a regional hegemon in europe is not difficult. when i talk to polish military officers, they are anxious about what is going on in ukraine on the one hand, and on the other hand, they would love for these russian soldiers to try to stretch their supply lines 300 or 400 miles longer so they could get a shot at them. this is not the soviet army. so that is my response to this idea that, as goes moldova, so

goes europe. victoria: piggybacking on that, i am not in disagreement with you. i do not, as i said, i thought pretty clearly, i am not in favor of a putin victory for it i would like to counter it. what i cannot do is, from a think tank, i do not have a magic ball, a magic wand, cristobal, anything like that, and i can only make the policy recommendations i think are practical, and i cannot force this president to do what i might have chosen to do in the summer of 2021 -- 2022, rather. and said, ok, this is not a three-day war, there is an opportunity here to beat him back, ok, get the major nato i lies in a room and -- allies in a room and say who gets what and wrap this up? this never happened. there was no case made. with the president still looking

for additional money for ukraine, the amount that is for military assistance is not persuasive to me. you add onto that $9 billion in humanitarian assistance, which is additional in that supplemental, what is that? why are we doing that? i do not know voting democrat will get you where you want to go on this particular issue, because i do not think this administration has any intention of winning this war. brandan: i am not willing to die former model that. i risk my life once for a mission that was ill-defined and poorly executed, and i am not willing to do it again, nor am i willing to risk the lives of american soldiers to do it again. we need to be far more realistic as to what our goals and we need to be more clear minded of what putin is giving up right now in ukraine. on the one hand, we are told constantly he is one second away from getting his act together and marching to the sea, and the other he is just drowning in the

blood of ukrainians, so which is it? so, no. victoria: to the mansfield point, the fact that europe is no longer a single monolithic object -- not that it necessarily was -- but if you look at the political changes that happened in italy, for example, you mentioned poland, a very strong, estonia hating whatever they did, 3.5%, of gdp for defense, there are points of light of country that are recognizing the scale of the threat and their responsibility to counter a threat that is in europe. the problem is your two biggest e.u. economies at this point, germany and france, are not there. the germans have now had, going on 10 years -- over nine years

since wales, since they pledged to get 2%, and they made some noises last year that were semi-encouraging, and then they were next -- they reneged on it and said we can't. no, you can. and who knows where the french are on all this. we should not see it as a monolith. there are countries that would belie that argument about europe , and that is where i would put my focus. justin: and we had the french ambassador here at the end of 2021, so i have to speak up for the french. the french have been trying to lead this debate in their own idiosyncratic way since the goal -- since de gaulle. you had the president of france saying nato was brain-dead, talking strategic autonomy,

which my understanding is he got swatted down, because if you are autonomous, it means you are independent of the united states, we did not like that. but this idea of incipient european leadership on european security is -- has more currency in france than any of the other american economies. the brits have been slowly, grudgingly moving in that direction. but the franchisve been at least flitting with this idea of leadership. on the mansfield amendment point and the enduring debate that if -- there is a real trade-off. americans like reassuring our allies. we like telling our allies that we will be there, come what may. but the downside of reassuring your allies is they may be reassured. if you reassure your allies you will do what is required for their security, what incentive

is left for them to take a lead on their own security? not much, many of us are due. too much reassurance can be a bad thing of what you are trying to do is redistribute the burdens of defense. if we want the europeans to lead on defense, to do more, spend more on defense, a bit of anxiety, a bit of uncertainty, not being reassured might be a good thing. brandan: one more thing on this point. this history of appeasement and the domino theory, it only holds if you start the story in 1939. but american got involved in european security before that, during world war i. american power has historically tipped the scales of european security arrangements. the longer we stay there, the longer the western european powers will have incentive to not do it. how long must this go on? this is a question that must be broached. the answer cannot be forever, because math is a problem,

economics exist, and at some point, we will spend ourselves into oblivion and will ask another generation of americans to go there and fight, and i am not doing it. justin: i am obliged to take a question from online from my former professor from texas a&m, who asks where is the overlap between nationalism and restraint? are nationalists reliable restrainers? so now we have the funny problem of defining nationalism and restraint. it is certainly true that there has been a growth of nationalism, of explicit, expressed nationalism. you could make the case that george w. bush, talking about making the will not just safer but better, there was a nationalist element there, that the united states, as principal actor, would remake the world in our image. but the diverge of nationalism

today, we may not make the world in our image, but the world might remake america in its image. do you have a sense on where, and with the problem of defining nationalism and restraint, nationalism plays in the current conservative foreign policy debate? i think the immigration story is quite clear, but may be on the security policy aspect? victoria: what was in my mind was immigration, for that reason , and the way that issue, little bit like energy, is now becoming central to any national security policy. you have to deal with it. it is now sort of routine to say we are all the children of immigrants. and also, to get to the china issue, they have got a demographic problem they cannot solve. they will lose half their population by the end of the

century because they did it to themselves. sorry. justin: truth hurts. victoria: yeah. and there is not a population that is clamoring to get in and live there. that is, in a way, we have a waiting game on our hands here, which is interesting for the restraint crowd. what you really want to do is avoid a conflict over the course of the next decade. then you will have massive advantages, if you can do it in a way that we have not spent ourselves into oblivion in the meantime. but for immigration to be effective, it has to be orderly and legal. the approach has been taken for the last three years has been anything but. the fact you now have polling at 75% of americans are very or at least somewhat concerned about what is happening in terms of immigration, i think that is where the nationalism is going to come into play, that if this

would like to happen, we would like it to happen in a certain process. justin: take on nationalism, identity politics? brandan: looking to the past, it is interesting to see that. the meaning of conservatism and for national policy -- the old guard of the republican party were unilateralist in foreign policy. they wanted to spread american economics through parts of the pacific, but that was muted quickly by the great war. and then there was this consensus of economic and arms-control in the pacific and we would stay away from europe. but looking at world war ii, once the old right takes shape, there was this more restrained form of nationalism that american identity, while it was universalist and people could

assimilate to it, it is rooted in institutions, rooted in history. even that very idea has become controversial. how do you have restraint in a world in which foreign policy on both sides of the aisle is increasingly defined by their free flow of labor and capital? that is the question. justin: let's go to another question from the audience. is that kelly? good to see you. >> thanks. i am the editor of responsible statecraft at the quincy institute. i will throw this out there. i would like to know what the future of a foreign policy looks like and respect to israel-gaza and the land war erupting there, which obviously is threatening to become a broader middle east conflict. i understand the restraint

impulses of conservatives vis-à-vis trump since 2016, but the america first overlay, what does that look like in a republican congress, a possible republican administration? we do have some conservatives out there talking about american interests, saying that biden's strategy, as it assists now, does not benefit american policy. we have colonel mcgregor, conservative, saying that, realists like john mayor steinberg. do you see that having any purchase with republicans moving forward? justin: maybe a couple of things with that. escalatory potential u.s.-israel relations generally? those of the best two i think. i think kelly up weekly point this out.

i am unfortunately online enough to know there is a tucker carlson-ben schapiro thing happening about u.s.-israel relations. and again, for a nerd like me who likes debate, even where i have a dog in the fight -- i like bates. i think they reveal, illuminate the various things we are having, but is there any chance of sort of policy implications from these debates? and i think the escalatory potential here is not for nothing, but then to step on kelly's question a third time, the iran issue is looming out there as well. so that u.s.-israel relations, escalation, and u.s.-iran, by my regulation -- recollection, there seems to be consensus about a discrete iran generally. those may be three health always

of pushing that. victoria: thanks for the question. as i tingle with this space a fair amount, historically, the united states has been engaged in the middle east for one reason. energy. we have come over the years, needed that energy. that relationship is now radically different. you look at the carter doctrine from 1980 and this kind of declaration that the united states would guarantee the free flow of energy out of the gulf. when we came in in 2016, preserving that remained a pillar of our middle east policy. that was an imperative. i came along and said, well, i may not want to close it down, but is it really an imperative, at this point, for the united states in the 2017-2018 timeframe to keep that open?

you could argue it would be good for business. that relationship ranges fundamentally when the united states is one of the big three energy producers, with the russians and the saudis. if i am asked who i want to partner within that group, that is a pretty easy answer to give. there are reasons to be engaged. if you want these huge producers to be talking to each other -- we have radically different systems, obviously, but you can coordinate. we did it on the iran sanctions. so the reasons we would be engaged in the middle east are now different, but as we look at what is happening now, by far and away, the most dangerous part of it is the hootie activity -- the houthi activity out of yemen to the red sea. i do not know when this starts to manifest itself, these ships having to take the long route around africa. if you remember, back to the ever given, that container ship

that went sideways in the suez by accident, that snarled things for months. this will be a problem for us here at home, and it will be even more immediate a problem for our european friends. for these reasons, we need to be engaged in it. my concern is the approach we are taking now, which is completely defensive, by not using a baseball -- by not throwing a brush back pitch, this will keep happening. fortunately, the houthis are not terribly good shots, but eventually, they will get lucky. justin: no one over there seems to be a good shot, think god. and of note here may be general mckenzie -- he is a very, as you would expect, does not have a real great affinity for iran. kind of goes with the territory

there. but he had a paragraph that basically said, if you do not want to have a very forward leaning anti-iran policy in the middle east, just leave. i think that was a weird thing. how that piece run 15 years ago in the wall street journal, it would just run full steam ahead. if you do not want to do this, then don't dot are people throughout the region to be shot at. i am looking for small victories for myself, and that paragraph was a small victory for myself. brandan, thoughts on u.s. and middle east? brandan: do i want to scuttle my carrier? [laughter] conservative attitudes on israel are not set in tone. there was an evolution here. taft was an early supporter of the state of israel. but there have been long strains of anti-zionism or criticisms of

u.s.-israel relations throughout the right. -- there is -- it is possible to have more nuanced critiques, conservative standpoint. but that is going to be the toughest thing to crack. but the troops out would be a way to retract. justin: do we have a consensus on the panel that if we are talking about europe and asia which are easier in the middle east in this narrow sense is quite a thorny problem? victoria: the problem comes the fact that you can pivot away

from it but it won't it away from you. we do keep seeing pullbacks into that, israel will probably be the ongoing gateway for that. it's a subliminal space between east and west and china is very active there. that then becomes your problem is if you decide you will back off of this entirely and not influence the energy producers there or not engage with israel, how long will that last practically? brandan: someone say if someone is going to run the middle east us or china, better on china. justin: let's go back to someone with a peaky liners hat on.

>> thank you so much for doing this. i'm a national security correspondent. if we go back to ukraine for a minute, we've heard a lot of the contentious history and the domino theory and the desire among many to not allow russia victory but encourage more defense in europe to allow europe to defend itself. those debates have largely been absent from the gop primaries. it's a debate that's more frequently come up is whether or not a gop president should actively encourage ukraine to seek negotiated settlement with russia. three of the current contenders have suggested they would do just that. forgetting all of this, from a strategic standpoint of the united states, how do you -- how would you like to see the next republican president approaching the issues of natural resources,

strategic resources in eastern europe such as deepwater ports, increased week production, nuclear facilities. if the u.s. is not engaging in these wars or promoting them, how can they contend with the shifting resources there and russia's ability to currently acquire them through aggression? brandan: the idea that's implicit is were russia to finlandize or get outsized influence over ukraine, -- are you saying now? maybe i misconstrued it? >> [indiscernible] brandan: right, a big amount of the war that doesn't result from russian or ukrainian victory but some model they're in and what would be the implications for u.s. interest from that.

is that fair? justin: i can take it but maybe you can go. let me start with the denunciation of the administrations entire historical approach to the problem. they said early on that all of the decisions about military issues, military initiatives on the ukrainian part, whether or how to engage in diplomacy were up to ukraine. that's entirely ukraine's situation and there national security put it that way. our job is to support them and that. that was a way the administration framed the problem publicly. at the same time, early in the war, kyev asked for a no-fly zone which would have amounted to the united states shooting down russian airplanes over ukraine and thereby entering the war. the administration wisely in my view declined to do that out of risk of escalation etc. they've been saying all of the

initiatives on these problems is forkyev to decide but in practice, they've been making decisions that suggest that ukraine's interest is larger in ukraine then is the u.s. interest in ukraine which sound so banal and insulting to suggested, the idea that the u.s. interest in ukraine is more limited then ukrainians interest in ukraine is not something anyone ever would've said five years ago. we find ourselves having to express this view in contradiction to the view of the united states government which seems to imply that it's right for the united states to outsource its policy on ukraine to ukraine. if it is the case, which it clearly is, that u.s. assistance to ukraine has purchased ukraine's survival, not to make light of the appalling and heroic sacrifices ukrainian

soldiers fighting for their country have made, but if u.s. aid has kept ukraine in the fight, then that purchases the u.s. not to tell what ukraine to do but to promote our interest in ukraine which are more limited than ukraine's interest in ukraine. ukraine can take that information and make decisions where the united states would say we are in for a penny but not a pound. if you want to take that penny and try to apply it to a very ambitious strategy of regaining crimea and throwing putin into the hague, so be it but i think the math may not work out there. i favor the united states not telling kyev what to do but enunciating our interest in the conflict which is limited so they can take that information and decide how to use our assistance which is limited in keeping with their interests in the conflict. i think the administration has

really made a hash out that with this rhetoric that is world historical. we said the future of world order will be decided in ukraine , the future of democracy in the world will be decided in ukraine. it's fair for the ukrainians to say the future of world order is at stake in the future of democracy in the world is at stake. maybe you should give even more. maybe should enter the war. i think the administration has had thisjanus facebook overselling rhetorically and under providing when juxtaposed against the rhetoric they have enunciated. that has made me squeamish for going on two years now with respect to this policy. resources are limited, we are in for a penny but not a pound but we will help you make judgments that are more aligned and teetering on the brink of no support which is not a model of

super coherent policy. victoria: i think that summed up nicely and that's been my issue for almost two years now. it's how you reconcile the rhetoric with what is actually going on. if the interests and wrapping this up is to do so on terms that are favorable to kyev 10 to washington -- and to washington, that has never been articulated clearly. that's where i think you're starting to see the fishers crack in the congress. it is hard to make a compelling case to a resident on the border of why we can spend all this money defending ukraine's borders but we cannot get our own border under control. we then get lectured that these are two distinct issues and we have to see them separately but the voters don't.

if they are voting politicians into office, we will make these decisions, those views will be reflected and i don't think they are irrational. brandan: general milley in the fall a year ago said the ukrainians have some wind in their sales. they've chewed back much more territory than anyone had reason to expect and you want to enter into negotiations when you appear to have the momentum going. it's almost a kind of banal observation. he was roundly hooted down by his boss who said essentially shut up. justin: and he did shut up but i think there is now a growing sense that maybe general milley was right when he said take these gains, take this momentum

and say we will keep going otherwise. instead, the administration continued to permit maximalist goals and we saw the last year where a tremendous amount of blood was shed for a trivial amount of territory. i think that's a real tragedy here is a failure of the united states to make clear its own perceptions of what's going on and has allowed understandable impulses to take root in kyev. let's go to more questions in the audience. there is a gentleman right here. >> i am a retired army doctor. i'm curious about parallels between world war ii and what's going on ukraine now. there were isolationist before world war ii and i'm wondering if pearl harbor had not happened, how world war ii might have turned out.

we might not have been engaged. how much of all the money we spent on all our foreign adventures leaves the united states? certainly military and government salaries leave the united states and our hardware money doesn't leave the united states mostly but does anyone have an idea of what percentage these congressional donations the rest of the world actually leaves the united states? victoria: i think that's a very valid question of what might've happened had pearl harbor not occurred. i think we should be mindful of that as we approach the ukraine problem. it did happen of course. we can't go back and trace an alternative history at this point. we don't know what it would've happened and we don't know what roosevelt would have done. i think it's something certainly

to take into consideration. i don't know we can then extrapolate that absence -- that absent the equivalent of pearl harbor, and hitler's triumph, that's not a straight line. to your second question, those numbers exist. if you go on the congressional research service, c hasrs one issue i have with the notion that ukraine is this wonderful opportunity for us to modernize all of our stocks while no americans die but a whole lot of ukrainians are dying to do what we should do if we were reefs responsible country and that's an unpersuasive argument. justin: to pull from that

question, there was a real debate on the old write about whether over committing -- we defeated nazi germany to an extent we relatively built up the soviet union. this was at the center of the old write. brandan: particularly in east asia. the argument was that by march or may of 1945, it was effectively cordoned off by the navy and they ceased to be a threat to the united states and we had a massive army in china and this was the time to negotiate. that seems appalling to us because we constantly think about american war in the context of unconditional surrender. world war ii is abnormal in that sense. we must stop constantly thinking in the frame of world war ii. counterfactual's are difficult and we don't know what would happen but had the united states

negotiated a punitive piece of some kind, how many japanese lives wouldn't have been burnt to a crisp either by firebombing or starts to death? we would've had to make a deal with the devil but it's always a trade-off. think of world war i. had the united states tried to a broker a peace rather than entry war, it might've dipped -- it might've been a different scenario thereafter. we shackled ourselves to the hackneyed paradigms and constantly marching ourselves further into escalation. justin: i think it's important -- to extend the question a little bit. is defense spending good for the economy? i've had the grave misfortune of having to look into this literature at length. the literature is a model. there are some suggestions that in certain countries, there is a

kind of multiplier effect that has the government spending a dollar on defense and it gets $1.06 of economic benefit from it. there is literature that says in most cases that doesn't happen. as we have these discussions, it shouldn't be relative to economic growth. it should be relative in the end to the welfare of americans. the well-being of americans or with that money better be left in the private sector and be spent on something else. part of the problem there is that the literature misconstrues the nature of the problem. it is not about economic growth, it's about welfare. i wanted to not miss the opportunity to complain about the model on the literature of effective defense spending on economic growth. i see someone behind the

light. it's ray smith. all my cronies are showing up today. victoria: how can you see? >> reed smith with the stand together. a lot of today's conservatives fashion themselves constitutional literalists except when it comes to executive warmaking really favor a very broad power for the commander-in-chief. i think that's out of whack with historical examples. witness senators taft or bora. can we talk about that evolution and get your thoughts on the capacious commander-in-chief? justin: i remember when barack obama on the campaign trail answers to the war powers the president held and after having

taken office, it works a number on you. your opinion change. i wonder if that may be a general problem between candidates and incumbents. do you have a sense of the conservative -- victoria: it's a very active discussion particularly on the house side. it focuses on the issue. how many years will we have this strict contingency there without an aumf that actually applies to it? the 2001 aumf voted after 9/11 that -- but we can't be too harsh on them. that was a difficult time and they needed to do something and something was done. the problem is both flawed vehicle is now become the foundation for an entire architecture of authorities that

some are legitimate and some you might question but it has all kind of grown on this foundation that is in and of itself problematic for now. it doesn't do us authority to take action against the iranians for example. is that something we want? i am in the repeal and replace camp on the aumf but more broadly, this is not well understood and my personal experience with it was this syrian chemical attack under obama, the infamous redline which i think was the summer of 2013 or 2014. this happens. the president has declared the redline and the red line is crossed and then we have a furious debate about what the congress is going to do. the line that obama continues to use specifically about senator cruz is he stopped us, he

wouldn't give us any authority. what the point was that this bad thing has happened, the line is crossed and you made the line, i don't want to do a pinpoint strike. or something incredibly small. if you are going to restore the credibility of the president of the united states, do not use that as a messaging device. use them but apply with an aumf and tell us what you want to do. they actually sent over saying tell us what you will authorize. i can't do that. you need to tell us what you want to do. then we will tell you if we will authorize it or not. that's the kind of loop you can get into in this situation and subsequently, it has been easier to say i have brought article to authority so i will not mess with that pesky congress.

that's a really interesting issue that we need to work on. that way we can take action when we had to but there is congressional engagement on it. brandan: i am most pessimistic on this because the new right is embracing a kind of caesarism the old write was about legislation. they had a speedbump in congress . as a liberal republican and conservative about body gave away its authority time and time again and they disappeared from congress in the mid-70's at the moment in which americans started to talk about presidential power. that's the hardest thing to unspool because americans want action so i think it will take a fundamental shift of what we expect of government and it will take a congress that wants to do congressional things.

victoria: legislate? brandan: or not legislate, take its power back. it's really unfortunate because the foreign policy question has become so partisan. a century ago, it wasn't. you have democrats opposing wilson and republicans opposing tr and mckinley so trying to get congressional oversight, to me that's a tall order. justin: you can put me down is a repeal and don't replace on the 2001. i don't worry much about the alacrity absent those authorities. i see dan mccarthy down there. i know everybody in the audience apparently today. victoria: we must be in your house. >> i am from modern age. since my name is mccarthy, i will name names. the name i want to bring up his

victoria nuland. we talked about personnel being policy and it seems like there is mrs. newland who crops up whenever we have a foreign policy crisis, under the george w. bush administration, under the obama administration. she has a way of hanging around despite changes in republican or democratic administrations. it will be interesting hearing about the kind of power and influence someone like that wields how that person is able to maintain influence in government. there are other folks who might be in similar positions as well. you can comment on her or on other figures you might be seen as being important within the deep state. justin: anybody want to --? victoria: it is a problem.

particular for republicans coming in the way trump did without a terribly orderly transition and without a deep stable or bench of folks cleared and ready to go in. for somebody like newland, she has a very broad bipartisan base in washington. that is very powerful. she has folks from both sides calling in successive administrations that she should be retained. there is an argument that people who been working on these problems know them intimately and therefore will add value. we found largely that was not the case. that's not a value-added on a number of different topics. she is far from the only one. it would be wrong to single her out if we just eradicated her that would eradicate the problem. i'm not calling for her eradication anyway.

that is the challenge to the next conservative president is identifying the folks who actually will help you in removing the ones that will not. it doesn't necessarily mean firing them. it means they go back to their home agency or don't get a cushy promotion. that's something schedule f will help you with is making that less of a perpetual problem. brandan: i probably disagree with victoria nuland whether this is monday. where is accountability and u.s. foreign policy? that's a good one. victoria: secretary of defense? brandan: we can't ask him now. how badly do you have to screw

up to be ridden out of town on a rail? it's in part a function of the extent to which the united states secures. if someone screwed up justin: badly and we lost a trunk of arizona, i think there would be consequences for that. we've screwed up pretty badly over my professional career. i started in 2003 and most of the people who had their fingerprints all over those disasters left the republican and became democrats. i don't know if that's enough of a purge to meet the bill but if you look at somebody -- i don't want to name names but you know i'm talking about -- i think it's real problem for us. all of this stuff goes on and we can go down the laundry list of who paid for the libya escapade?

the libyans first and foremost, people who were sold in open-air slave markets before we got rid of qaddafi and replaced him with 10 governments in libya now. i think we americans get hopped up on something and it's easy to get is energized and then we lose attention. not only is there a lament about the lack of accountability in foreign policy but also it's a warning to aspiring foreign governments or the next chlabee, it's easy to get our attention but it's hard to keep it. if you get it and we go in there and break china, we leave. you might be sweeping up after china when we do that in the same people who broke china will do the same in 10 years. i think you can keep score until you're blue in the face and the players stay on the ice and keep playing. it's also a warning to the world

that getting americans attention can be easy but keeping it will be hard and if you can't keep it, a lot of ruin can happen. we have time for one more from the audience. i wanted to be somebody awesome. i feel like the next person who raises their hand will be awesome. there he is, right down there in the front. >> with regards to foreign policy, i think your unintentionally not paying attention to this world war ii involved eisenhower and nixon.

the rest of foreign policy of this country has been in control of the israeli lobby very openly. even up to now. the cabinet, seven of 14 justin: i think we've got the gist of the question, u.s.-israel relationship and how that has shaped u.s. policy? >> that's exactly -- it has not been u.s. policy. it's been in the interest of israel but not the united states. not the interest of the american people. justin: i think we've got the question. let me take it and broaden it. i've raised a similar scenario in the context of ukraine. i don't want to say that israel has no influence in the united states, he clearly does, but we've done something weird and

similar with ukraine. we failed to say we are this country in the western hemisphere, the northern part of the western hemisphere. we are more or less an insular maritime power. we don't have to conquer canada or mexico but we have an interest in ukraine and israel and china and interests in nigeria or wherever. but we failed to start with the clear elimination of those interests. it's like starting a movie in the middle and you been involved in the ukraine war and therefore how do we advance and better our position? there is a u.s.-israel relationship that is extremely close. in many cases, i think we do things that are foolhardy from an american point of view out of a failure to separate the u.s. interests from the interests of kyev or tel aviv or wherever.

to be a generalization from the question about the israel lobby which could have its own policy forum or book, what about this? get back to the nationalist point. we are from a certain place, we are proud americans and have a certain interest in those overlap or not in ways with saudi arabia. we had to debate about brokering the normalization of relations between israel and saudi arabia. saudi arabia is not a great government. not nice guys. to put modest claims in. what about that? a nationalist ought to be able to say -- i remember when america first launched -- i have strength foreign-policy views and almost thinks it's kind of banal to say america first when we make trade policy or nominate a supreme court justice or do this or that on immigration,

every legislator in their own mind is putting america first. ilhan omar and paul gosar in their inscrutable ways believe that what they are doing is in the interest of their own country. the perplexing thing about nationalism and u.s. foreign policy has been the failure to start with a kind of aggressive substance of we are our own thing or whether it's kyev or whatever, fuse ourselves with the iraqi national congress or whomever. that's the perplexing thing that i think is more generalizable. victoria: i think we probably would disagree strongly on the

value of the u.s.-israel alliance which i think is extremely valuable for he has of reasons. i agree that's is not being clearly articulated. in a dispassionate, non-moralizing way. it's making that case for why this partnership is important and what we've invested in and what we've gotten out of it, where our interests align would be helpful and healthy for both the united states and israel. if we decide we want to do another memorandum of understanding for another 10 years, we need to go into those negotiations with that context that this is what this arrangement if we decide to do it will achieve. it's also critical this year for dealing with taiwan. that will be the potentially next flashpoint of some brilliance.

if we back into it the way we backed into ukraine, the same thing could happen. making clear that we can't want it more than taiwan does, what we are willing to do what we expect of them in terms of inch marks for them to meet and what we expect partners and allies to do. i think working on that now is critical. brandan: america first obviously has a lot of baggage. it's a phrase that has been used by people who have more odious views. part of this is because the reactors in this town want that to be the only narrative of that phrase. they don't want you to know that the oswald garrison filardi was an active member of america first. they don't want you to know there are america first members that had a progressive view on a litany of topics.

the whole notion of particulars and is loaded. we think of ourselves as universalists to the max. we've hit a brick wall with it. we try to make the middle east are issue and we failed catastrophically so there is this tension. we want to think of our values is being universally adaptable but we also want to realize is, it is significant cost. justin: we want to thank the panel is for joining us here today and thank the audience were attending or watching online or on he spent and join us upstairs for sandwiches and cokes. thank you all very much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024]