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2020-Burkle_Center_J_Brodie_lecture-hh-1gr-(1)-pi-cfu.mp3


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1

good afternoon everyone welcome I'm Kal Raustiala I direct the UCLA Burkle

2

Center for international relations and

it's a great pleasure to welcome all of

3

you here today to our annual Bernard Brodie lecture on the conditions of peace

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the Brodie lecture was first given almost

40 years ago I think next year is

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actually the 40th anniversary of this

lecture since then we've had the honor

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of welcoming as Brody lecture as many

many interesting and distinguished

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foreign policy luminaries I'll just name

a few for context Secretary of Defense

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bill Perry President Jimmy Carter Prime

Minister of Japan Yasuhiro Nakasone a un

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secretary-general ban ki-moon ambassador

to Russia Mike McFaul and Los Angeles's

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own congressman Adam Schiff the Brody

lecture celebrates the memory of Bernard

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Brody as a famed teacher and scholar of

international relations and strategy and

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I've the great pleasure today of

welcoming to UCLA professor Joe Nye in a

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moment professor and I will get a proper

introduction

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but I'll just say a few words about how

we're going to conduct the lecture and

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then I'll invite Chancellor emeritus

Carnesale to introduce professor and I

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so professor now is gonna speak up here

for about 20 minutes or so then he and I

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are gonna take these two chairs if

you've been to this before you've seen

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this set up we'll talk for a little

while and then we'll open it up time

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permitting for questions from you

so they're a handheld microphones please

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raise your hands wait for me to call on

you and please keep your questions short

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and to the point so as as I mentioned

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Chancellor emeritus Carnesale will

introduce Joe Nye Chancellor Carnesale

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is a I would say a longtime friend of

the Buerkle Center but most importantly

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for today's purposes he's a long-term

friend of Joe Nye they work together

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at the Kennedy School where al was both

Dean and then Provost of Harvard they've

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done many many things together and so I

thought it was appropriate to have him

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do the welcome so please join me in

welcoming Chancellor Aparna South Thank

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You Kal it really is a pleasure to

introduce my friend longtime friend and

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colleague Joan I we were colleagues

well more than a couple of decades and

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friends for twice that long or a little

a little more I also want to welcome

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Molly Joe's wife hi Molly

Joe is a leading political scientist and

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that's understating it he's been named

the most influential scholar in

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international relations not a bad

background Princeton Rhodes Scholar

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Oxford Harvard ph.d Harvard faculty

immediately after the PhD now as you can

35

see University Distinguished Service

professor emeritus at Harvard and the

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distinguished really does apply we think

of the university what it said about

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teaching research and service

Joe is distinguished in all three let me

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say a little bit about research and

scholarship the recent count is 14 books

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and well more than hundred 50 articles

remarkable depth and breadth so his

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areas of specialty areas in which I

would consider man most people consider

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them expert moral and political

philosophy political theory history

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international relations national

security politics

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real politics in the US and elsewhere

policy analysis and that combined with

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wisdom and judgment makes him a pretty

good scholar some examples of his work

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to give you an idea of the breadth not

by picking times I forgot to figure one

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book from each decade will give you one

idea pan-africanism an East African

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integration not what you would think of

first but it gives you an idea next

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decade transnational relations in world

politics next decade nuclear ethics so

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he's thought about these morality

questions before in the same decade I

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might mention he published a much more

important book called Hawks doves in

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owls an agenda for avoiding nuclear war

of which Graham Allison hi were

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co-authors

the joke and 90's is bound to lead the

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changing nature of American power in the

2000s the power game the subtitle is a

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Washington novel just to give you an

idea of the breadth it's a novel um

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2010 presidential leadership and the

creation of the American era and now

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this his most recent book just this year

do morals matter presidents and foreign

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policy from FDR to trump teaching a

devoted teacher and mentor undergraduate

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and graduate students his undergraduate

course and international relations was

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the most popular undergraduate course at

Harvard for a good while and to

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audiences beyond academia as well

service academic service many leadership

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roles Dean of the Kennedy School in

government important positions deputy to

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the Undersecretary of State for security

assistance science and technology that

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really meant in the Carter

Administration the guy that worried

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about nuclear proliferation and tried to

do something about it chair of the

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National Intelligence Council that's the

group that produces the National

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Intelligence Estimates the most

important big-picture Intelligence

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Estimates in the US and then assistant

secretary defense for international

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security affairs so he seeks it achieves

excellence in essentially everything he

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does research teaching and service

leadership intellectual and

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organisational awards too numerous to

mention as a colleague and friend as a

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fly fisherman and as a gardener nobody's

better as a matter of fact I must end

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this with one honest thing to let you

all know of the greatest failure in

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Joanie's life was trying to instill in

me the rudimentary skills required for

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fly-fishing now I'm willing to take

responsibility for his failure but it's

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a failure nonetheless so on that note

let me

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introduce and welcome the UCLA my friend

Joseph Nye thank you very much I'll for

77

that excessively generous introduction I

should say that when I tried to take out

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fly-fishing and I was showing them how

to cast and it was a very windy day and

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my line kept getting caught on branches

at you know the wind would take it up

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and instead of landing on the water it

caught owl looks at me he says oh I get

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it

fish live in trees and more to the point

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is that generous introduction is often

countered by the fact that when our sons

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were younger and people would call the

house and say his doctor neither they

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would answer yes but he's not the useful

kind which is particularly relevant now

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with the problems of covent so forth but

it's a real honor for me to be here at

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UCLA and to deliver the Brody lecture

when I as a graduate student I read

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Bernhard Brody's books and we are trying

to make sense at that time what

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difference nuclear weapons were making

to the world we knew they were big we

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knew they made a huge difference but

thinking through what deterrence meant

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how you could have a safe system and so

forth Bernhard Brody was a real pioneer

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on that and his early work really has

stood this test of time

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many people who followed him who did

much more elaborate calculations really

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didn't go beyond some of the original

insights that that Brody had so it's an

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honor for me to be able to to give the

Brody lecture but and I'll come back to

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that in in a minute or two about when

you talk about nuclear weapons but I

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people ask me why which

at this stage write a book about morals

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and do morals matter and put a question

mark in the title and the answer is to a

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large extent because I don't think we do

a very good job of thinking about morals

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and foreign policy we we talk about it

but but don't do a very good job

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thinking about it and when I was

studying international politics or

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international relations the conventional

wisdom is Montano there was a danger at

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being moralistic you know Woodrow Wilson

was a negative effect in this view Hans

103

Morgenthau George Kennan and others

argued that basically the danger for

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Americans was a moralistic tradition and

we were taught to just being realistic

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Ahsan the hard reality of things and not

to get not to get too concerned about

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morals and that was part of the way

people were trained and if you look at

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the literature Huw Google books on

morality and American foreign policy

108

it's surprising there's very little work

that's done to actually think hard about

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it there's there ought there are lots of

criticisms there are a few books on it

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but it's as I mentioned the preface of

my new book it's not a career enhancing

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move for a young scholar but fortunately

I'm an old scholar so I can can't get

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away with it but the conventional wisdom

is that basically morality doesn't

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matter that interests bake the cake it's

all national interests that matters in

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fact I remember when I was in the State

Department talking to a French diplomat

115

we were at some diplomatic event

relating to nuclear weapons and I said

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you know there's some really hard moral

issues here that we're wrestling with he

117

said I don't worry about

morality at all he said the only thing I

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think is matters is the interests of

France and it I don't think it never

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occurred of what a profound moral

judgment he had just made but there is a

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great tendency of this so the

conventional wisdom has been interest

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baked the cake and then politicians come

around and they sprinkle a little moral

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icing on it to make it look pretty but

basically you know the icing is just for

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glorification it's really the interests

that bake the cake trouble with that is

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it seems to me it misses error

misrepresent what's actually happening

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in history so in this book what I've

tried to do is two things one I've tried

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to look at the 14 presidents since 1945

and look carefully at how they made

127

certain decisions and ask the question

if you took the cynical view that morals

128

don't matter

would you get history wrong and I think

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I've shown that indeed if you have that

cynical view you're gonna get history

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wrong you're not going to understand

what really happened and I'll give you

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example of that in a second the other

purpose of the book is okay if morals do

132

matter how should we think about it and

in that part of the book I try to say

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here here's the criteria for a good

moral reasoning about foreign policy as

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opposed to cheap shots or easy ways out

of cop-outs if you want now on on the

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first issue or the first question did

morals matter in history were they

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actually an important ingredient of the

cake I suppose - icing sprinkled on it

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and this brings me back to Bernhard

Brody the best example of this I could I

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have in the book but there I think there

are many others but just the one I find

139

most appropriate for a Brody lecture is

Harry Truman

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Harry Truman dropped atomic bombs on

Hiroshima and Nagasaki many people have

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condemned him for that and there was a

philosopher at Oxford who refused to go

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to the honorary degrees ceremony for

Harry Truman in 1948 and she said she

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would never attend the ceremony or

honors being given to a mass murderer

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and that when Truman dropped the atomic

bomb he was a mass murderer and so there

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is a tradition of saying you know Truman

is a villain because of this but it's

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also worth remembering that at that time

we didn't know much about atomic bombs

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we didn't know they're full of facts

they were very new and Truman came into

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this game kind of late all the major

decisions have been made by not only

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Franklin Roosevelt who kept who didn't

inform Truman on much of anything as

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vice president but also buying this vast

machinery of the Manhattan Project which

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was secret properly and making a set of

decisions that led to the preparation of

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the atomic weapon and it was a war in

which there'd been a breach of the

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traditional views that you didn't bomb

cities and kill civilians morality he

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had deteriorated badly in World War two

and so Truman gets into office and the

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question put to him is will we go ahead

with this and his answer is yes and he

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says in his memoirs I didn't lose much

sleep over it you know I think of the

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number of American lives that would be

lost if I didn't go ahead with these

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bombs he said no I you know this this

was not a hard decision and Truman it

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was described by general groves who was

the head of the Atomic Energy Commission

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or discern sorry yet that before the

atomic entry head of the Manhattan

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Project which later evolved and the

Truman who was described by groves as

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being like a boy who was put on the back

of a toboggan which is already heading

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downhill in principle he could have

fallen off or he could have stopped he

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could have tried to stop it legally he

had the authority to stop it but you

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know in reality there wasn't very much

that he could do and this is why he said

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he didn't lose any sleep over it but

let's take the story a few steps further

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the United States had three bombs and a

third bomb had been forward base to

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Tinian to be dropped a week later after

Nagasaki and Truman said no you may not

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drop a third bomb and he said I'm not

going to kill any more women and

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children which is a very interesting

quick moral response to what we learned

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about the evidence of atomic weapons on

civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and

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even more important is to fast forward

five years to 1950 when the Americans

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were losing the Korean War China had

crossed the Yalu River was pushing

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American forces down to the tail or

bottom of the peninsula and it looked

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very much as though we were going to

lose Truman was advised that if we lost

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or stalemated the war it would destroy

his presidency his chances of running

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for election again re-election in 1952

would be destroyed and Truman said no

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I'm not going to do it General MacArthur

came to him who was then the commander

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the Far Eastern theater MacArthur said

if you allow me to drop 25 to 40 atomic

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bombs on Chinese cities Oh

win this war for you and Truman again

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said no I'm not gonna kill that many

women and children that was quite an

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extraordinary moral decision notice

something which Thomas Schelling the

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Nobel laureate who in his Nobel laureate

lecture said the nuclear taboo was one

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of the most important decisions that was

taken in the last 75 years and if Truman

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had decided that differently if he had

treated nuclear weapons as normal war

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fighting weapons as opposed to weapons

which were used for deterrence only the

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world that we live in today would look

very very different and in that sense if

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you treat morality justice icing

sprinkled on the cake you got history

189

wrong

Truman's moral views that he was not

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going to save his political skin or

interpret the American national interest

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as involving this destruction of women

and children that was a profound

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importance in terms of the way history

evolved it wasn't just icing it won as

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the was one of the key ingredients in

the cake and I think it's appropriate to

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recall that in a Bernhard Brody lecture

because this was what Brody wrestled

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with so I would submit that in the title

of my book do morals matter with a

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question mark perhaps it's not

surprising that I conclude the answer is

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yes morals do matter but the more

important question is okay the matter

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how you think about them and as you try

to deal with this you realize that very

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often we talk in about moral issues in

foreign policy but we do in a very

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shallow way for example there is the

tradition of American accept

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we Americans think ourselves as a moral

people therefore we do it it's good well

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you know that's quite a non sequitur or

we'll say if it turned out all right

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it's good that's also a non sequitur or

people will say if our intentions are

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good then it's good which is also a non

sequitur let me give you a concrete

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example of that and the invasion of Iraq

in 2003 if you look at George W Bush

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Bush 43 as he sometimes called people

ask you know where his intentions good

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some people doubt it they say Bush lied

and boys died I don't that's true the

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general consensus in intelligence

communities not just in the US but

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around the world was that Saddam Hussein

had weapons of mass destruction

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I think Bush believed that and I also

believe that if you could convert Iraq

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into a democracy you could maybe get at

the roots of terrorism so in that sense

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some of his defenders have said he was

moral innovating Iraq ari fleischer his

213

press secretary said you have to admire

Bush's moral clarity he had a freedom

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agenda and whether it worked or not

doesn't matter

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he had this freedom agenda and it

therefore he was moral and what he did

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I find that extraordinarily shallow

moral thinking to just judge by

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attentions and I've argued that you

really need to think in three dimensions

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to have good moral appraisal or moral

reasoning you have to think of

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intentions and motives you have to think

of the beans and you have to think of

220

the consequences so I call that 3d

and something like Fleischer's Comet

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that it was good intentions is just not

that's one third of the 3d if you want

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it's not adequate moral reasoning I

sometimes use is homely example which is

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in the book which is imagine that your

child is out at a high school dance but

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she has SATs tomorrow morning and

Frances I'll bring her home but get her

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home early

don't worry and picks her up the dance

226

doesn't notice that it's rain the road

is slick and wet drives 80 miles an hour

227

skids off the road hits a tree and your

child is killed would you say oh that's

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okay you had good intentions of course

not you would have said inappropriate

229

means and failure to think through

unintended consequences which could be

230

highly immoral and that I think is

pretty much what happened in Iraq even

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if you grant Bush the benefit of the

doubt on his intentions in terms of the

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means he did not have the means to

accomplish them there were many studies

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done in the State Department and in the

intelligence agencies that showed that

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you couldn't really we didn't have the

means to reconstruct Iraq properly we

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couldn't bring democracy to Iraq and

what Bush and the White House did was

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shut that all aside it didn't pay any

attention to it it went ahead anyway and

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then if you ask about the consequences

the consequences of Bush's actions were

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that you stimulated a civil war between

Sunni and Shia in Iraq and you laid the

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basis for a strengthening of al Qaeda in

Iraq which later became Isis the Islamic

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state was who had horrible Khan

sequences so you could argue that

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there's quite similarity between my

little road accident and this complex

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international relations but in analyzing

each of them we want to think in three

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dimensions we one don't want to settle

just for good intentions therefore

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that's a moral act so I think the the

key in terms of thinking about morality

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and foreign policy is to make sure that

we don't take the easy way out we don't

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do just one dimension but think of all

three and I'm not the first to think

247

about this this actually has a long

tradition which goes back to just war

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theory remember st. Augustine in the

fourth century it was wrestling with the

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dilemma that as the Roman Empire decayed

and there was increasing disorder and

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increasing violence what should he do

about thou shalt not kill and his

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dilemma was if the good didn't kill in

self-defense then evil would prevail and

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the good would vanish from the earth so

he developed the view that killing in

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self-defense was morally acceptable but

if the self-defense wasn't there then

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there was no justification so that if

somebody was about to attack you you

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could use your force to kill them but if

they drop their sword or their gun or

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whatever and stop threatening your life

and put their hands up

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you no longer could kill them there was

no longer imminent self-defense and that

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developed over the centuries to be a

doctrine which is enshrined in

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international humanitarian law the

Geneva Conventions and in the US Code

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Uniform Code of Military Justice

so it's been secularized and adopted and

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in the basic premises of Just War theory

you have you have to have all three

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dimensions as I mentioned you have to

have just cause you have to have means

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which make distinctions between

combatants and non-combatants you have

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to have proportionality in the means you

can't just kill wanton way for it self

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defense and you also in terms of

consequences you have to have a

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reasonable prospect of success those

three dimensions which really come down

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to us over the centuries are pretty good

initial framework for how we should be

268

thinking about morality in international

politics now life is always more complex

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than in any formula but I would argue

that it's a good framework to start with

270

now it becomes more complex for example

when we talk about good intentions you

271

have to realize that the stated

intention is that most political leaders

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are going to tell you are going to be

good that's how they get elected they're

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not going to say I'm about to go and do

evil the interesting question is do they

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have the emotional stability emotional

IQ to prevent their emotional needs from

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distorting their attentions so that

their motives are in line with the

276

intent stated intentions an example of

this would be in Vietnam both Jack

277

Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson their stated

intention was to save South Vietnamese

278

from totalitarian communism imposed by

the north but their motives turned out

279

to be slightly different because of

their different emotional needs McGeorge

280

Bundy who was a hawk on Vietnam and who

advised both

281

Kennedy and Johnson said later in life

after he'd retired he's asked what would

282

Kennedy have done if he had not been

assassinated Bundy said Kennedy probably

283

would have been reelected and would have

got out and he said the reason is that

284

Kennedy wanted to be seen as smart

Johnson of course did something very

285

different

he sent five hundred sixty-five thousand

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American combat troops into Vietnam

which ultimately led to 58,000 American

287

deaths even though he knew that the war

was not going well and as he put it it

288

was interfering with what he really

loved which was the Great Society and

289

his one point he says that bitch of a

war is interfering with the woman I

290

loved the Great Society and yet he went

ahead anyway and the reason according to

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Bundy in tarns and others who study this

is Johnson emotionally having grown up

292

in Texas and being worried about being

seen as botch oh and his father's image

293

Johnson was most afraid of being seen as

a coward and he felt that if he was the

294

man who lost Vietnam he would be seen as

a coward so even though the stated

295

intentions of Kennedy and Johnson were

the same they're different emotional

296

needs twisted their motives into

something which was quite different in

297

terms of its consequences so we have a

we have to realize that there are many

298

nuances as we think about votives means

and consequences on consequences there's

299

also some very important differences

which you get into in terms of the the

300

context of the decision and how much you

can know with any complex social

301

phenomena and particularly foreign

policy which deals with the events

302

international nature there are many all

sorts of unintended consequences and so

303

how should we judge somebody if there

are unintended consequences should we

304

say well nice try but you didn't get it

but that's okay you get a bye on this

305

round

probably not I think what we would say

306

is how good was your contextual IQ how

good was your ability to think through

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and make major efforts to assess on

possibility of unintended consequences

308

to assess risk so and that is where the

hardest kinds of calls are made for

309

example if you look at unintended

consequences I and go back to my example

310

of Bush 43 in Iraq the fault I think for

Bush was he didn't understand much about

311

International Affairs unlike his father

who I great very highly in my book

312

because he had extraordinary knowledge

of internationally or as the younger

313

Bush didn't understand a lot about

international affairs and he didn't make

314

the effort that he needed to learn well

or see he didn't you should not have

315

discarded all those State Department

studies which was done partly out of

316

bureaucratic politics his intentions

let's assume they were moral the moral

317

intentions led him to inappropriate

means and a failure to think carefully

318

and clearly about the prospect of

319

highly immoral and when we look at that

we can say yes everybody is likely to

320

suffer unintended consequences at some

point but did they make a major good

321

faith effort to anticipate that and to

assess the risks of it and in law we

322

call that due diligence

others if you have done due diligence

323

you get a bye for having at least made

that every day and if you haven't done

324

due diligence then we call that in law

culpable negligence and I think the same

325

goes for the issues of moral judgments

about consequences which is did the

326

decision-maker do due diligence and if

not was it culpable negligence now there

327

are some cases that always turn out more

difficult than that Henry Kissinger once

328

said that the interesting thing is that

most issues of international morality

329

wind up in the sort of the range between

51 and 49 percent when you balance and

330

wait the motives means and consequences

you have to make adjustments and you

331

often get a lot of things that come out

to narrow margins but at least if you

332

have a framework you're not going to

have the sort of cheap and easy cop-out

333

because we did it it's good or because

it turned out right it's okay or because

334

we had good stated intentions everything

is moral and what I've tried to do in

335

the book is demonstrate not only that

morals matter and if you deny that

336

you're gonna get history wrong but if

they matter we've got to do a better job

337

of thinking of them in all three

dimensions and realizing that these easy

338

cop-outs are not sufficient one final

word I'll say before ending and having

339

our conversation cow is when you assess

consequences you don't just take the

340

consequences of the particular action

you have to think of the consequences

341

for the system as a whole and future

actions philosophers sometimes call is

342

the difference between act utilitarian

and rule utilitarian if I'm an act

343

utilitarian I look at

particular action and I say was this the

344

greatest good for the greatest number in

this act and you know that's one way to

345

do it but suppose if I do a decision

this way in this particular act I break

346

a set of rules or institutions that will

affect all future actions don't I have

347

to calculate the consequences of that as

I make my decision that's a rule

348

utilitarian as opposed to an act

utilitarian a lot of what we're seeing

349

today is to discount the effect of

breaking rules and destroying

350

institutions a lot of what we're seeing

is essentially very short run Act

351

utilitarian transactional approaches and

I think that's a mistake I think there

352

is a conventional wisdom that

international politics because there's

353

no higher law or higher government to

enforce the law is like the game of

354

prisoner's dilemma which there's a great

incentive for prisoners who are caught

355

by the police to squeal on each other

essentially to cheat on each other to

356

defect and that's often the model is in

Chapter one of the textbooks but there's

357

a political scientist at University of

Michigan Robert Axelrod who did a

358

computer tournament and he said to a

group all right we're gonna play this

359

game not once but many many times

together and whereas if you play this

360

game once there's a strong incentive to

cheat but if you play it again and again

361

and again you find that the optimal

strategy is to have reciprocity what he

362

called tit-for-tat you cheat on round

one I'll cheat on you round two you can

363

cooperate I'll cooperate and so forth

and what Axelrod found was that this

364

expectation that the game was going to

go on created what he called a long

365

shadow

of the future and institutions and rules

366

and norms create a long shadow of the

future and that's what bothers me about

367

some of the ways in which we're

approaching foreign policy today we're

368

discounting institutions and discounting

that long shadow of the future and the

369

net result of that is I think we're

selling our own future short the I think

370

the better better for for how to think

about morality and foreign policy is

371

that used by George Shultz who was

Reagan's Secretary of State

372

we should had better to think of foreign

policy is like gardening you cultivate

373

you trim you we you you proceed but

you're playing this for a long range and

374

that's very different from a

transactional approach which says each

375

of these operations like a real estate

deal I win you lose this zero-sum and

376

then we go on to the next deal in the

next deal the next deal I think that

377

this whole question of thinking of

morals has to think not just of act

378

utilitarian each transaction but a rule

utilitarian which includes the long

379

shadow of future and these international

institutions do create that long shadow

380

of the future and that essentially

allows for greater range for morality in

381

foreign policy so I would submit that

yes morals matter in foreign policy if

382

you don't believe that you're going to

get history wrong and that if you accept

383

it you have to accept it in terms of

thinking of all three dimensions of

384

morality motives means and consequences

and include in the consequences

385

institutions and oral frameworks as well

as the particular actions so let me end

386

there and turn to our conversation all

right well thank you so much for for

387

coming out and for that lecture

so I thought what we could start with a

388

couple of questions were based on your

your book and your your remarks tonight

389

and then maybe open it up a little bit

MMN to the audience so so maybe first

390

thing on the case for morals mattering I

had understood Morgenthau and others as

391

making a normative critique that

Americans traditionally focused too much

392

on morals or at least at that time did

in our foreign policy and that that led

393

to mistakes and I think you made a

pretty convincing case that it also

394

leads to a miss read of history but it

doesn't necessarily answer the question

395

of whether we ought to be focusing on

morals so can you speak to that a little

396

bit is that something that we should be

doing why I think the the conventional

397

wisdom in the period after World War two

that Morgenthau ave georgetown and made

398

the same points was that we had gone

through a very moralistic period under

399

Woodrow Wilson Wilson wanted to create a

League of Nations didn't have the

400

capacity or the means to do it

and in the process of trying had

401

terrible consequences because it failed

and they led to an isolationist reaction

402

against it

so I think with what Morgenthau and

403

Kenan and their generation of post-war

intellectuals were trying to do was

404

protect us against the mistakes of World

War one and it's aftermath and

405

particularly the isolationism of the 30s

and I think I grew that I think they're

406

right I mean they if you are too

moralistic and don't have the means to

407

carry it out you can have terrible

consequences which is my little example

408

the road accidental Iraq but it is

interesting to me that and essentially

409

they overdid it George Kennan who wrote

a classic work called American diplomacy

410

in 1950 which was highly critical

Woodrow Wilson by the late 1980s Kenan

411

said you know I've revised my opinion of

Wilson maybe he wasn't quite so bad

412

for all so I I think I agree with their

premise but I think they overdid it so

413

let me ask you about those specifics of

the president so you talk about 14

414

presidents in the book maybe give us a

sense of one or two surprises that you

415

found things you didn't expect you sort

of alluded to one which is the Bush 41

416

that you've you've evaluate him quite

highly in the book and you didn't

417

necessarily expect that but are there

others that you want to point out well

418

it's interesting that Bush 41 I had

spent a good part of 1988 trying to

419

prevent it being president obviously not

very effectively and I had to in as a

420

story in there analysts say you know I

was wrong and so I think Bush 41 was

421

extraordinary in the sense that he had a

great emotional intelligence remember

422

when people said to him celebrate these

fall of the wall he said I'm not going

423

to dance on the wall I've got to deal

with Gorbachev so he resisted the the

424

braggadocio temptation and he also had

great contextual intelligence the

425

questions of how do you end a cold war

with Germany inside NATO and not a shot

426

being far fired required extraordinary

understanding of the nuances of

427

international politics so that's that's

why I revised my opinion on but there

428

there are others that I also revised my

opinion on I was much more critical

429

Truman frankly before I started doing

the more detailed research on his

430

positions on nuclear weapons and the

more I read more I uncovered the more I

431

said gee this guy it was a lot better I

used to think that Hiroshima Nagasaki

432

was a tough call on utilitarian grounds

and you know that was it it was actually

433

a much more

interesting and nuanced evolution that

434

Truman had and it's also interesting

there it the role of emotional

435

intelligence Harry Truman never went to

university he was a very simple man who

436

spent a lot of his life as a farmer

before World War one and I but he knew

437

who he was he had he had emotional

intelligence he wasn't going to be you

438

know stampeded and in that sense

Truman turned out to be another who rose

439

up even higher in my estimation than

they expected a third would be Jimmy

440

Carter I had worked for Jimmy Carter I'm

high then criticized and still

441

criticized his tendency to get absorbed

in details as people said you know they

442

said Jimmy Carter couldn't tell the

forest from the trees but some people

443

said no he couldn't tell the trees from

the leaves but but I think that kind of

444

character of Carter turns out to be

wrong he took some really tough

445

principled decisions which were costly

to him politically but because he had a

446

larger vision that one was decision to

give back the Panama Canal right away

447

when his staff told him there's no waste

a lot of political Apple don't do it if

448

he hadn't you could have imagined

guerrilla movements in many Latin

449

American countries which would have been

you know a nasty legacy or a nasty

450

spread if you want and also his general

raising of the profile of human rights

451

in American foreign policy I think

deserves more credit I think the time

452

Carter is going to look better than we

assessed in

453

at the time so yeah but this is always

true with history anytime you look at

454

something and you you you look at in

history you have new information and new

455

perspectives from the from the current

time and that leads you or it should

456

lead you to make some reassures so those

are all examples of upgrade upgrade

457

downgrades well downgrades are I mean

that's less yeah exciting i well richard

458

nixon is generally celebrated as a on

foreign policy only now I'm not talking

459

about Watergate and so forth who

generally celebrated as a foreign policy

460

genius and that you know he his opening

to China was great it redeemed all his

461

other problems when you look more

carefully at Nixon's foreign policy he

462

did a lousy job on foreign economic

policy he basically didn't care about it

463

and what it led to was an unleashing of

a rampant inflation which led to major

464

problems in the international system as

well as the American economy in addition

465

to that there's a whole question of how

he left Vietnam in when Nixon came into

466

office in 69 he and Kissinger did an

assessment of what were the prospects

467

for winning the Vietnam War and decided

it was unwinnable and the question is

468

what do you do there were people like

Senator Aiken of Vermont who were saying

469

declare victory and get out and centered

Russell of Georgia that a similar view

470

Nixon and Kissinger said no we have to

have a decent interval between when we

471

leave and when the North takes over and

that term decent interval led us to

472

continue fighting and it cost twenty two

thousand American lives and in the end

473

the time between when we signed a peace

accord with the North Vietnamese and

474

when the north of these took over Saigon

turned out to be two two years and that

475

is about 10,000 American lives a year is

that the right trade-off I mean he did

476

it for credibility in our overall

foreign policy it's not clear that that

477

was necessary I mean there may have been

alternatives so I the idea that Nixon

478

was a foreign policy genius I give him

full credit for the opening to China but

479

as the more I looked at this a more I

said that the foreign economic policy

480

was a mess and that the policy on

Vietnam was marginal the framework that

481

you laid out in your remarks would you

apply that generally to questions of

482

morality I guess another way to put the

question is what's distinctive about

483

foreign policy when we're thinking in

Walter well I think you can I mean this

484

is why I use this simplistic example of

the road accident you you can apply to

485

anything and morality I think what's

different in foreign policy is the

486

complexity of the situation if you if

you think about foreign policy the it

487

with so many different countries

different cultures different power

488

structures changing context the prospect

of unintended consequences going to be

489

much higher and it's harder than to

think through the risks so the due

490

diligence is a tougher job and I think

in that sense a foreign policy is the

491

framework can be applied to anything but

I think it's tougher in foreign policy

492

because of the difficulty of doing the

due diligence about unintended

493

consequences does that suggest greater

caution because we have adversaries in

494

the foreign policy and texts and those

adversaries are going to react maybe

495

well it does

does suggest that caution and prudence

496

are more than instrumental virtue in

foreign policy it means that the

497

prudence is you know it's there's

something like a Hippocratic oath and

498

foreign policy first do no harm

doesn't mean do nothing but it does mean

499

that err on the side of being awfully

cautious you know be careful before you

500

unleash the dogs of war and so it does

lead to a greater emphasis on prudence

501

and now you could argue that our time

when prudence is inappropriate

502

you know Chamberlain and after Munich

should vote her not as prudent so if

503

you're faced with a Hitler and you know

it's a Hitler and you can you can

504

understand some of the likely

consequences of not standing up to

505

Hitler then prudence is not a virtue but

on the other hand if you're dealing with

506

a very complex situation such as Libya

in 2011 maybe you ought to be more

507

prudent than we were I mean what we did

was use military force to prevent

508

Qadhafi from destroying or killing

civilians in Benghazi but we hadn't

509

thought through the fact whether the

Europeans were up to their part of it

510

what did you do if after you've

protected the civilians in Benghazi what

511

did you do about Qaddafi and if you

allow the mission to morph into regime

512

change and you left chaos did you have a

plan for let's say a massive UN

513

peacekeeping operation or something to

stabilize situation none of that

514

occurred and the net effect of that was

in an unintended consequences was that

515

when we tried to do something about

Syria the Russians and the Chinese would

516

veto every UN resolution we

tried to pass to get some action on

517

Syria and they said it's because look at

what you the mess you made in Libya so

518

in addition to the mess that's in Libya

today there's the contribution to the

519

mess in in Syria so I think in that

sense you know the prudence it's hard I

520

mean Obama in in his various interviews

and retrospective has said that said I

521

intervened in Libya

I didn't intervene in Syria and I'm

522

criticized for both but there may be

more of a connection between the two it

523

does seem like the the last 20 years

it's hard to assess the mood of a nation

524

like ours but the last 20 years have led

to a time in which is increasing concern

525

about the day after problem and a lot of

questioning of things that I think were

526

viewed as at the time maybe reasonable

choices now seem imprudent because we

527

couldn't deal with the aftermath of

racism but well it's a good example this

528

is the current situation in Afghanistan

after the Taliban hosted al Qaeda and al

529

Qaeda then planned and bounded attacks

on us from their bases in Afghanistan

530

the question of should we have gone in

as we did had defeated al Qaeda and

531

basically driven them out of or some

people would say not driven out loud

532

that escape from Afghanistan but

essentially in early 2002

533

should we have said you've done what you

needed to do is a basic minimum now

534

withdraw or should we have stayed and

tried to construct an effective Afghan

535

state and we have not done that

effectively and it's lasted there what

536

is the saying that there young men

fighting in Afghanistan today who

537

weren't even born when we started this

and there's an interesting article in

538

the LA Times day by Andy bass of itch

saying that this was not a success so

539

the question is are there some

situations in which you know you're

540

better off making a statement going in

and getting out than trying to cure the

541

whole situation because you're not

capable of hearing the whole situation

542

it's ok let's pivot to a couple of

broader bright issues as al said you've

543

covered so many different things and so

I just want to ask you a few I guess a

544

few questions about fly-fishing so I

didn't notice your tie how's that that's

545

right I wore that for Al so maybe we

could start with coronavirus so you've

546

thought about the effect of

globalization and transnational

547

relations for decades and now we're

facing potentially a major pandemic it's

548

hard to say at this point but it's

expanding still what do you see is the

549

kind of geopolitical implications of

that what is that well it's interesting

550

because if you look at our national

security strategy which was issued in

551

December of 2017 it said we were

reorienting our budgets in our strategy

552

toward great power competition China and

Russia and some of that's okay but it

553

doesn't deal with coronavirus doesn't

deal with climate change so we're we're

554

spending what seven hundred billion

dollars plus on the defense budget and

555

yet we're facing a threat today which is

not addressed by any of that seminar

556

virtually any of that seven or $50 would

mean you'd wanted to be unlike what the

557

administration did which was to cut

resources for the CDC and to abolish the

558

part of the National Security Council

which which was

559

oriented toward dealing with pandemics

you would say no we're you know we're

560

looking at the wrong things we have to

deal with other dimensions as well so it

561

doesn't mean you say I'm not gonna worry

about Chinese encroachments in the South

562

China Sea but it means you don't spend

all your time and attention on that

563

there are other things to think about as

well so I think the covin 19 may prove

564

something of a wake up call on this you

would have thought the way it got called

565

already occurred with Ebola

remember Obama's first reaction of Ebola

566

is what's the last thing I want to get

involved in this is this is a no-win for

567

me back here in the US and then he cited

you know I'm not going to be able to

568

isolate us from this I'm not being able

to keep away from this and it's also a

569

humanitarian issue and so we used our

the American military to build emergency

570

hospitals in Liberia and other places

and we were able to stamp out a major

571

part of that virus before it became a

pandemic and then in this administration

572

we've cut back on that that to me is

there's a lesson there do you think if

573

we'll hope this doesn't happen but if it

became something worse something that

574

really was truly global would there be

implications for for example the

575

importance of you mentioned

international institutions in your

576

discussion so that we would look more

towards the World Health Organization

577

other organs that would it strengthen

multilateralism because we would see the

578

need or would it in fact have the

opposite effect where countries would

579

want a wall themselves off more and in

fact disengage politically and

580

economically well the initial reactions

that we've seen have been stop

581

international travel no travel from

certain countries so forth that may be a

582

temporary measure of that is useful it

doesn't deal with the basic problem

583

and for example the virus apparently was

more widespread and realized earlier and

584

many people had already traveled from

China or elsewhere well before we closed

585

the border so you know closing the

border is not the sufficient answer if

586

on the other hand we had strengthened

the World Health Organization and more

587

cooperation with China on pandemics and

had a better early warning system of

588

what was going on we might have had a

better capacity to limit it so I think

589

the the dangers we think that that were

safe behind borders unfortunately we're

590

not and if you go from Co food to

climate change of the idea that you're

591

safe beyond borders is nonsense we in

China 40% of the the greenhouse gases

592

that are produced in the world the idea

that we can solve this without China is

593

a mistake the idea that China can solve

it without us mistake and these are

594

challenges which don't respect borders

the only way you can deal with them is

595

essentially by working with others so

what I argue in the last chapter of the

596

book where I try to look ahead of what

are the moral challenges for the future

597

is we've got to get away from focusing

just on power over others we've got to

598

think also of power with others certain

things you can do with power over others

599

there are other things and climate

changes is a good example you can only

600

do with power with others final question

then we'll open it up so this is the

601

lecture on the conditions of peace what

do you see as the primary threat today

602

to peace the leading threat it's most

urgent threat

603

well the short-run media threats are in

my mind of miscalculation which would

604

destabilize the nuclear deterrent

relationship I don't think there's a

605

high probability of that but that would

be a truly catastrophic event it's worth

606

remembering that in 1914 August 1914

nobody expected World War 1 they

607

expected the third Balkan war in which

Serbia would be taught a lesson and the

608

troops would be home by Christmas what

they wound up with was four years of

609

horror which Europe tour itself apart

he destroyed three empires and Europe

610

ceased to be centered the world in terms

of the global palace of power so today

611

when we look at the rivalry with China

for example many people say this is the

612

greatest threat an even greater threat

is not to underestimate China its

613

overestimate China but it's getting the

right balance to realize that if we

614

played chicken with China and somebody

miscalculates

615

and it does escalate that could be truly

catastrophic so if you say what is my

616

what worries me most it's Americans

working himself up into a fervor of

617

anti-chinese sentiment so that we create

the fear that can be devastating one of

618

my colleagues at Harvard talks about a

Thucydides trap and with China in which

619

through cities famously attributed the

Peloponnesian War to the rise of the

620

power of Athens that fear created in

Sparta and everybody focuses on the

621

first half of that equation the rise of

the power of China they don't pay enough

622

attention to the fear it creates in

Washington

623

and to overstimulate that fear is a

great danger this doesn't mean we

624

shouldn't stand up to China I'm all in

favor of freedom of navigation

625

operations in the South China Sea and so

forth but to overstimulate fear and to

626

create a climate in which there's a

miscalculation I think is something that

627

worries me that's my that's my short-run

fee with fear of the threat to peace my

628

long-run fear is failure to master new

technologies and their application

629

particularly cyber and artificial

intelligence and what that means for the

630

ability to continue to maintain control

not over not only over nuclear systems

631

that Bernhard Brody was so prescient

about but over many more systems and

632

that is not is imminent but it's

something that we should be worrying

633

very much about the longer term