bush.tamu.edubush.tamu.edu/podcast/Grand Strategy_Episode 4_Publish.docx · Web viewAmerican foreign policy, which kind of carries through what the Center does. Speaker 1: Excellent

Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of ... what was our show again?

Speaker 2: The School of the Courts

Speaker 1: It's been so long I couldn't remember, Greg. And today Greg and I are here recording with an audience for the first time, so thank you for being here. We are hoping to get some questions from the audience at the tail end of the podcast. We have a guest with us today, Professor John Schuessler, whom I am going to be chatting with, and then we have another guest whose going to join us for the panel conversation, Dr. Andrew Ross. Andy Ross will be with us as well. All right. Oh, a couple of announcements too, this is our first episode back from the spring. We have an episode planned for next week, actually with some former Busch School students. We're going to check in with them and see the ways they are out in the world practicing public service. So look out for that as well. All right. All right.

Speaker 1: Hi John, how are you sir?

John Schuessler: Hey, good. Glad to be here.

Speaker 1: This is actually the second time I got to chat with you. We covered one of your books not too long ago, one of the early seasons of my podcast. So thanks, thanks for taking the time again.

John Schuessler: It's going to be fun

Speaker 1: So I would like to start with, if you don't mind, just telling the audience who you are, what your role is and then sort of how you view yourself as a researcher, and some of the things you have going on now. I know that part of what we're going to talk about is a new administrative position you have, but let's work up to that.

John Schuessler: Okay, so I came to the Bush School in the fall of 2016, to oversee the department. I was happy to apply to get the position. I came here from the Air War College, which is a kind of a graduate school for military officers. I taught strategy there and I got to the Air War College by way of the University of Chicago, where I got my PhD in Political Science. Chicago is known for kind of three part focus on theory, history and security and that kind of is the approach I tend to take to things. My first book, which we've talked about, was called Deceit on the Road to War. It's about basically why presidents can't be candid with the public about war when it's on the horizon. And then I have also written a bit on Realism, which is a body of international relations theory and [inaudible 00:02:37] events for American foreign policy, which kind of carries through what the Center does.

Speaker 1: Excellent. So let's talk a little bit about the Center. A word that we haven't used yet is grand strategy and the Bush School recently named the Allbritton Center

Grand Strategy_Episode 4_Publish (Completed 01/17/19)Transcript by Rev.com

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for Grand Strategy of which you are co-director. So, tell us a little about what your plans for the Center, what types of things you are hoping to do. And then after that I want to talk about Grand Strategy, because I want to learn about it.

John Schuessler: And Greg, so there are some things that we know the Center is going to do, and there are other things that are yet to be determined. So what are we now? The Center was set up through generous contributions from two major donors. So, the first is the family of a Regent of the University named Robert Allbritton and that's who the Center is named after. I didn't know this, I found out at our kick-off event, that he had a big hand in starting Callaway golf clubs, if any of you are golfers.

Speaker 1: That's a little factoid.

John Schuessler: He actually does a lot of stuff. Anyway.

Speaker 2: It's important to the Air Force.

John Schuessler: Yes. Courses on Air Force bases as any marine or army officer can tell you. And the other major donor is the Charles Koch Foundation and you know, I can say more on why they support enterprises like this. But basically the point of the Center is to broaden the debate around American Grand Strategy at kind of moment of flux in our domestic politics and in our international politics. So the kind of thinking is the time is right to question long standing assumptions about the United States role in the world, about its commitments abroad, about how it uses its power and open up the debate as we kind of figure out where to go from here.

Speaker 4: Moment of flux might be the nicest way to describe what is going on right now.

John Schuessler: I have other terms for it.

Speaker 1: Other terms for it.

John Schuessler: Terms of endearment, yes.

Speaker 1: Terms of endearment. So, let's talk a little bit about Grand Strategy because this was not a term I was familiar with until joining the International Affairs department and getting to know you gentlemen. And so my just broad understanding is that it is trying to think of like an overall, overarching kind of big picture strategy that should inform the different moves that the US in particular, but you know whatever country is performing them now, what they should be doing. So it's having kind of a systematic approach rather than random intervention here, random-not intervention there. Is that a very 10,000 foot view or in what ways is that wrong?


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John Schuessler: No, that's not far off. After I say something about this, by the way, I should say something about what the Center is actually going to do, because I didn't get to that. But in terms of what Grand Strategy is, no, I don't think you are far off. The term comes in for a bit of skepticism and even ridicule at times because it's a bit high highfalutin. Ironically at the Bush School, we are training a lot of future diplomats and operators, and operators don't like the term Grand Strategy because they are out in the field; and there is something strange about this notion that there's this high level strategy kind of, you know, channeling the various organs of government in the same direction. But I guess the point I would make is that you have to attempt it, so, you know, brave powers and countries in general, need some kind of framework or set of principles for thinking through kind of what your core interests are, and how those relate to your policies in the world, or else it's all aimless.

Speaker 1: It sounds a little bit like bothering to have strategic development for like, the Bush School, we have strategic planning, so it's sort of like trying to think about a wholistic, strategic international plan.

John Schuessler: And what makes it grand is that it's, you know statecraft at or thinking strategically at the highest level nationally.

Speaker 1: Got it.

John Schuessler: So, you know, what is our policy toward El Salvador but you know, what regions of the world does the US care about and why. What does that mean for the investments it makes in terms of alliances and aid.

Speaker 1: So people might remember from their history classes, the Marshall Plan, or some like overarching plan that would have been the grand strategy at that point in time.

John Schuessler: So that's a good example, you're talking about the Marshall Plan, a key initiative in the early cold war. You know, if you look at the historical literature containing that, is the grand strategy that is kind of orienting those key initiatives in the early cold war. The idea of being, to quote, contain Soviet influence, and then eventually if the Soviet Union is contained, it will kind of break up and whether and why; which many said it did.

John Schuessler: Now the Marshall plan is key to that, because in order to contain the Soviets, you need to rebuild Western Europe in the late 40's, which has been heavily damaged by World War II. There's this fear that a vacuum of power has been created there, there's a lot of disorder and turmoil; how can Europe get back on its feet. The Marshall Plan is meant to help with that; you help rebuild Western Europe, that in turn helps contain the Soviets. So, that's a good example of a grand strategy kind of relating to a concrete policy on the ground, but as anybody who does policy will tell you, the reality is very messy. Policies like the Marshall Plan are responses to real crises in the moment, and then in a kind of


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inverted process, people like George Cannon and others in the government thinking about these things, or trying to relate, okay, let's do this in Europe because it's going to further containment, but it doesn't mean they just developed containment on day one and had a detailed plan of action for how it was going to work out.

Speaker 1: Got it, got it. It was nice of you to say the Marshall Plan was right and then explain to me how it wasn't right. It's actually containment.

John Schuessler: No, it was, well yeah, but it was a key part of it.

Speaker 1: Part of it, yeah.

John Schuessler: Key part in it, I think the key in this should have, yeah ...

Speaker 1: Let's come back to the Center, because I wanted to kind of put in frame for people what grand strategy is, so they have a way of thinking about the activities that you intend to do. But tell me a little bit about what your hopes and dreams are for the Center, what you will be able to do.

John Schuessler: Well, I mean we have a mission, which as I broadened the conversation around, you know, this topic of what American grand strategy should be, now how to achieve that mission. A lot of just comes down to human capital, and so that's where all the investments are here in the early going. So, we are going to hire two tenure track faculty into the Department of International Affairs; we have a search ongoing for a historian and Andy is actually leading that search for our department and then we'll search again next year and that position is yet to be defined. We need to think a bit about what would be best for the Center, the department and the school and stuff. Beginning next year we will also be hosting a predoctoral fellow, so a PhD student writing a dissertation; as well as a postdoctoral fellow, a recent PhD, a recent graduate who is kind of writing their first book.

John Schuessler: We've already been doing a bit of this, we're going to host programs, speakers, conferences, workshops and the like. And the final key piece, we're going to bring in a professor practice, a retired policy maker, to be the Executive Director of the Program. And so myself and Jason Castillo, the other academic director, we're going to work hand in glove with the Executive Director to kind of set the year to year agenda of the Center. I think that captures the best thing about the Bush School, which is the marriage of academia and policy. And so we are going to try to realize that in terms of the mission we set.

Speaker 1: So the big piece is just wrapping up your intellectual capital, find some experts, or some more experts, I know we have some like...

John Schuessler: We do, we do.


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Speaker 1: The gentlemen

John Schuessler: And build on the existing strengths which is why we got the Center to begin with because we have good people, by the way, not just in the department but throughout the University. We're working quite heavily with folks in the History department, for example, to sponsor programming, support the research that they do and their students. If this works, it's going to draw in a wider community than even just the very talented roup of people we have in the department of International Affairs.

Speaker 1: What are the different backgrounds for people who are looking into grand strategy. I mean is it usually a political science background, is it international affairs background, is historian pretty common?

John Schuessler: All

Speaker 1: All

John Schuessler: In fact, if you look at our faculty affiliate page, Greg is one, Andy is another, so folks that focus on, or have an area of specialty like Greg; folks like Andy who specialize in international security issues, military technology and in grand strategy I am a generalist; I do theory and history. We have historians who specialize on the American Army and the American Army in Germany. We have policy makers, Larry Knapper is one of our affiliates, a retired ambassador, and so it is truly interdisciplinary, and not just across academics, but across academia and policy. I think the unifying element is do you care about these broad issues of what is the national interest, what are the threats to those interests, how should the US respond.

Speaker 1: I want to touch one more piece which you mentioned, so I want to give you an opportunity to say something about it, which is the funding structure. So you mentioned part of it is the Allbritton and part of it is from the Koch Foundation. And I know the Koch brothers can be kind of politically charged, so that might create some concerns among some people. So tell me a little bit ...

Speaker 2: Really? They might be politically charged? I had no idea.

Speaker 1: There I go, understating things. Thank you Greg. So, what does that structure look like, how much influence do they have, and what types of questions people are being able to address, what your Center gets to do; how does that play out?

John Schuessler: Well, you know academic centers are supposed to work a certain way, and ours works that way. At the Bush School level, we develop a vision and a plan for what we want to do, and then the donors tell us if they want to support it, and then they more or less get out of the way. There's some accountability in that this a 5 year grant start, and donors have every right to say we're not satisfied with what you did after the 5 years, but in the meantime, as is appropriate, you


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know, we're entrusted with major decisions about the program so it's been good partnership so far and I have had no issues.

Speaker 4: And the product is going to be not just the development of human capital, but the production of books and articles, academic articles, policy articles, that we are going to try to brand, right, with the Center's ...

John Schuessler: That's where the success is going to be, due to people affiliated with the Center actually write and say things that people in this grand strategy conversation hear about and respond to. And I think secondarily we have a policy engagement mission which is really important, which is do people in the Washington conversation care about what we have to say. So, those were the two missions, an academic one and a policy. And we'll be judged by that.

Speaker 1: Good. Well, I'm excited to see what the Center does; I'm glad, we've been working together for a few years, I'm glad you're in charge of it. That Jasen Castillo character, not so sure about, you know, but no ...

Speaker 4: It's no accident that John is the first.

Speaker 1: ... person that's here, but I'm excited to see the things that it publishes and the types of ways in which it influences the conversation. Which now might be a good time to go ahead and transition a little bit to talking about grand strategy and what is the conversation, I guess. And so, we have talked a little bit about what the Center is going to do, and what grand strategy is, but what is the conversation? I mean, it strikes to me that the US is in the middle of shifting how it thinks about its role in international affairs and it looked something different under President Obama than it did under President Bush, and then looks like something else under President Trump. So what do these conversations look like?

John Schuessler: Well, we alluded earlier to President Trump. He is many things, but first of all he is a disrupter and I know disruption is not often desirable in government, but in this case, I have to say that kind of the point of the Center is not to destroy or disrupt for disruption's sake, but to open big questions. And Trump does that, maybe not with as much foresight as we'd like, or follow through, but he does open the questions.

Speaker 4: Does he know he's doing that?

John Schuessler: Probably not. But again, you can't pick your agents, right? [crosstalk 00:17:13] No, but you know that some of the questions frankly the debates he provoked, why is the United States still kind of the prime mover in NATO? What are the roles of our alliances in the middle East? What are the threats that are worth having four deployed forces and risking war? What is the point of all this? Those are the kind of the broadest questions, but there are also more applied questions. Let's state you are concerned about Russia and its near abroad in the


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Baltics, well, how do you deter Russia without necessarily increasing the risk of nuclear war? That's something Jasen Castillo works out. Or there's new domains of competition and conflict like cyber, you know, is great power politics the same in this domain as it's been in other more conventional domains or different, that's something Andy is thinking about and what not.

John Schuessler: So, in the best tradition of the Bush School, we are asking some of the big fear related questions; one is the definition of the national interest; do you define it territorially, do you define it ideologically, and then more applied policy questions, what's going on in Saudi Arabia, for example, and what does that mean for American interest.

Speaker 1: Well this is, I think, an excellent place, I think to end this segment. I think we've done a nice job of setting up questions, and Greg and Andy have been patiently quiet. So, we'll bring them into the conversation. I really appreciate you coming and spending the time tonight, and talking about what's going on in the Center and we didn't get to talk enough about presidential deceit, which we should have. But there's a whole episode on that. And I'm really looking forward to...

Speaker 2: He could do a new book now

Speaker 1: Yeah, he could do a whole new book, but I'm really looking forward to...

John Schuessler: Trump ain't no FDR, that's all I'm saying. [crosstalk 00:19:13]I'm not writing that book.

Speaker 2: The question is, what is he?

Speaker 1: All right, thanks John.

Speaker 2: Welcome back. This is the time, John, where we try to kick some of these general ideas around in terms of current policy issues, but I want to start out by asking you, you studied containment, right? And most people would say that was the grand strategy that drove the United States of America's foreign policy from the late 1940's in through the 70's. Can you give us some other examples of when you think of grand strategy of what that looked like in the real world?

John Schuessler: Sure, the other clear example I'd say was the one that the Center was set up to not undermine, but to debate, which is primacy. So, our colleague Chris Lane has an excellent book, Piece of Illusions, where he basically argues this has been the policy from the 1940's on. I think, more broadly, folks agree at the very least, from the end of the Cold War on, the basic point is once the Soviet Union goes away, the United States is the only remaining great power, super power and really the point of American grand strategy since has been to keep things that way. The United States doesn't want any competition in the international system and one thing that I think's quite striking is the role of alliances in all this. So how does primacy work? The key thing is, if you protect other powerful


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wealthy countries like Germany and Japan, it reduces their incentive to become powerful and militarily like you.

Speaker 2: And that was one of the points of containment, right?

John Schuessler: It was.

Speaker 2: The first secretary general of NATO famously said that the purpose of NATO was to keep the Americans in and, the Russians out, and the Germans down.

John Schuessler: Right, and ...

Speaker 2: Succeeded in all three.

John Schuessler: And again, I think there's a legitimate debate to be had about the cross benefit on this. It's not clear that this wasn't a fairly smart thing to do if you could afford it for a time. I think the sense is now and I think Trump captures this as symptom; have we reached the point where this is not sustainable and the costs are starting to outstrip the benefits, It's expensive to keep other potential great powers down indefinitely, because the international system is a fairly rough and tumble place and so normally states have some incentive to protect themselves and not be protected by an extra patron, which is what the US has been doing for awhile. That's other, I'd say, clear example of a grand strategy and you can find language consistent with this in government documents from 41 through even through Trump's.

Speaker 2: Andy, are there some other grand strategies out there?

Speaker 5: Let's go back to the Cold War and really the end of World War II and the origins of our Cold War strategy. Arguably, it's over simplifying a bit simply to say our Cold War strategy was containment. Yes, that was one component of it. But for the US and Britain, even during World War II, the plan was after World War II, and this was set in motion during World War II, the plan was to set in motion the construction of an open, liberal international economic border that would prevent the resurgence of economic nationalism, beggar thy neighbor policies, and mercantilism that we saw during the 1930's that many viewed as contributing to the onset of World War II.

Speaker 5: During the first half of the 20th Century, we went through two growths, and the law policy makers were determined to do whatever they could to prevent debt from happening. So we had this vision of what an open world border would look like; there's an economic component to it that over the decades evolved into what we now call globalization. To support this economic opening, a number of multi-lateral agreements and institutions were created. Originally there were things like Bretton Woods and GATT that evolved into the World Trade Organization; all put into place to manage what became globalization, we need to still be able to do that. So arguably during the Cold War, there were two


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components to our grand strategy: the opening of a liberal international economic border, which was the original vision, an open border that was derailed to some extent by the need to confront the Soviet Union. The strategy component there was containment; and that's what gets the most attention when we look back at the Cold War grand strategy. John's right to focus on containment, the Marshall Plan was a component to that. But we were also working with our allies, especially our European allies and eventually also Japan, to build an open international economic border.

Speaker 5: Arguably since the Cold War ended, and I think this started with our H.W. Bush, we returned to that vision. A new world order? But was it really that new? It was the original vision for world order that came out of World War II and the Soviet Union and the Cold War were no longer in the way. Yes, the US came out of this number one, as the dominant power in a unipolar system. And yes, it's very nice to be number one. Is that sustainable? It seems to me that during the post Cold War period, we've seen the discussion of what US grand strategy should look like, evolve. Because initially it was oh my god the Cold War is over now what do we do, right? John Lewis Gaddis, a historian, wrote really, a short piece, in the Atlantic, not long after the Cold War ended, talking about how dogs chased cars and do dogs know what to do when they catch car? We caught the car, right? So, what's the dog do now? Wander around the car a couple of times and really does a number on the tires. Nothing happens, he jumps up and looks inside the windows, there's nobody there, no passengers, no driver. What's the car do now? Chase bicycles. Well, arguably, you know, we're doing that I don't like that good of a cyclist. But ...

Speaker 4: So Saddam Hussein was a bicycle that we chased?

Speaker 5: Yeah, essentially; or a smaller car. We're chasing Volkswagens instead of big limos, or something like that. So initially the question was, what do we do now? Then there's the realization that the Cold War didn't produce multi-polarity; you had some prominent purists thought that's what we ended up with, or would end up with when the Cold War ended and we're going to be in a multi-polar world. People like John Mearsheimer and Ken Waltz made exactly that argument. The logic always escaped me; how do you get two minus one equals three or more? But that's what the argument was. Maybe we're there now.

Speaker 4: Was it a quantitative argument?

Speaker 5: Well, given they're not quantitative stock, you are absolutely right. But it quickly turned into a discussion of, but we're number one, what do we do with that? What do we do with the unipolar moment. For some it became well, let's extend the unipolar moment.

Speaker 4: This is primus. [crosstalk 00:27:57]


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John Schuessler: There is a proliferation of terms, all meaning the same thing. Primacy, and gemini, preponderance ...

Speaker 5: Exactly, and primacy is taking different forms; under some administrations, it has been more liberal than others. Mearsheimer argues it's been consistently liberal; I don't see George W. Bush having been that liberal.

Speaker 4: Well, supportive of a pretty open trade system, right; which is part of the liberal ...

Speaker 5: In other areas, not so much, especially during the run up to the Iraq War. I don't see liberalism, though, at work there; there is a lot of liberal rhetoric ...

John Schuessler: And I do, in a big way, but we could ...

Speaker 5: There was a lot of liberal rhetoric that was appropriated by the Bush administration, but I don't see it as being liberal. The Clinton administration was more liberal. Their catchphrase ...

Speaker 4: So by liberal here, you mean spreading democracy.

Speaker 5: Yeah, yes.

John Schuessler: And openness ...[crosstalk 00:28:55]

Speaker 4: An economic openness, so Washington can say ...[crosstalk 00:28:58]

Speaker 5: There's some political dimension, democracy and an economic dimension, which is basically free market capitalism, right? The catchphrase for the Clinton administration was engagement and enlargement. Essentially that meant engagement for the purpose of enlarging the democratic community, or free market economies. They didn't quite put it that way, but that's what Tony Lake's argument and Bill Clinton's argument was all about, that's what the US role should be.

Speaker 4: But it failed, right? Because, if the text cases of that strategy that Clinton Paris strategy were Russia and China; we were going to bring post-Soviet Russia in, encourage them to open up their economy and become a democracy; and we were going to bring China into this globalized open world economy; and through that they were going to become richer, their middle class was going to become bigger and eventually they'd become democratic, so that's failed, right?

Speaker 5: It was easy to be relatively optimistic about the prospects for Russia, in part because of the economic problems that the Russians were facing; no, democracy didn't take root and develop in the way it was expected. Remember also, that at the time, there was tremendous economic opening in China that didn't lead to political opening, And now, even the economic opening is being


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constrained. So, arguably, more people were optimistic back then in the 1990's, that thought the prospects for these two major powers ,,,

Speaker 4: And primacy failed too, right? If primacy is George W. Bush after 911, that failed, right? It got us bogged down in wars in the middle East, that the subsequent presidents all thought were a bad idea, although they have had trouble getting away from them. Certainly didn't spread democracy ...

John Schuessler: Well, I think the common element with what Andy was talking about with the liberal dimension when I was talking about the power dimension primacy is, I think for some time now the prime American goal has been to basically snuff out balance of power politics abroad and replace it with something better, which has been some combination of American lead hierarchy and the spread of liberalism. And the wager was the hierarchy creates space for liberalism to spread, and once it's locked in, it won't matter as America declines, because liberalism is so wonderful that nobody's going to kind of go back from it.

Speaker 4: How's that working out?

John Schuessler: This is where things have gotten ... and again, I like to think of Trump as a symptom; he's a symptom of all sorts of things. He thinks very crassly about the national interest, which maybe you have to do when this wager has not paid off and great power politics is back with us and liberalism has not clearly swayed the masses in the way I think a lot of folks anticipated.

Speaker 4: So let's, for both of you guys, let's set aside possible objections one might have to President Trump's domestic politics, to the chaotic way that he runs the government, and all of these things; and does he have a grand strategy that kinds of fits, John, into your preferred restrainer, let other people ... right? The New York Times today says that the President talks all the time ...

Speaker 2: Who needs NATO?

Speaker 4: Getting out of NATO, right; get the troops out of Syria; what are these troops doing in Syria? Well, they are fighting ISIS. Well let somebody else fight ISIS. That's not an irrational ... in fact it seems to me kind of implementing a restrained strategy. And then taking on China, you know, China is our competitor and maybe our enemy, why are we trading with them in a way that makes them strong?

John Schuessler: There's a lot to say here, and I can't get to all of it.

Speaker 1: You have about 5 minutes left.

John Schuessler: For those that are interested I would encourage you to read Stephen Walt, who is probably the most eloquent, realist commentator in the public media. He writes a regular column for foreign policy and if you follow his columns on


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Trump, they all kind of say the same thing, which is, his instincts aren't bad, but he's a disaster, right? This is the problem with realism, having come from that tradition, the actual political agents that embrace any of our ideas don't tend to be the best at politics or policy, so I don't really want to think about what the implications of that are, but ...

Speaker 4: FDR and Truman were pretty good.

John Schuessler: Yeah, but they actually were liberals at their very core but because they understood the way the world worked, they operated in a realist fashion, despite their identities and beliefs. That said, I think Trump has many realist instincts; the trouble is there is no "there" there. He's never thought deeply about any of it and let's say you are a good realist and you want to slowly retrench the United States from the exposed positions it took on as the preponderant power, you want to do it carefully. You want to say, all right, we've taken on too much in Europe, let's slowly start preparing the ground, make sure the Europeans have a credible plan for their own defense as the United States slowly draws down. Or in the middle East ...

Speaker 4: But this is all implementation; the thrust is okay.

John Schuessler: Yes, I mean I actually think in his basic instincts he does capture many of the ideas that have been percolating in the realist community about grand strategy. The problem is ...

Speaker 1: You heard it here first, folks.

John Schuessler: Well, this is the problem. People of bad faith have used that as the usual gamesmanship; op-eds have been written basically saying these people are Trump apologists, and that's just ridiculous, but too tempting of a rhetorical to have to pass up for the usual suspects.

Speaker 4: Andy, do you think that there is a Trump grand strategy, and be that it is the Barry (Pozinsky) [00:35:48] John Mearsheimer restrainer strategy, except implemented in a ham fisted way.

Speaker 5: I do think if there is a grand strategy of sorts, the most clear thing we know about Trump is that he is a mercantilist, he's an economic nationalist. He's a nationalist, right?

Speaker 4: Trade is not win-win, trade is win-lose.

Speaker 5: He's a populist nationalist, right? That goes back to his domestic support, or his core support. I think in a lot of ways, he is pursuing a realist strategy of restraint. He's doing it in a ham fisted way; he's doing it in a crude, lewd, way and you expect that from a Trump. But I think that a lot of what realism holds near and dear you can see in the Trump administration, and I'm not saying realists aught


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to be apologists, but it's curious that people like Steve Walt are quite as hostile to Trump as they are. Realists tell us, Mearsheimer, focus on the great powers. Well when you look at the strategy documents coming out of this administration, the national security strategy, the national defense strategy, it's all about major powers and nuclear posture review. It's not about proliferation and terrorists getting nuclear weapons or other WMD. It's about the major powers; well, that's what realists tell us to be focused on, the major powers, so Trump and the White House is focused on Russia and China.

Speaker 4: Yeah, focused on Russia, that's for sure.

Speaker 5: Well, yeah, focused in the pocket of, whatever. [crosstalk 00:37:36] But in other ways, too, realists aren't terribly enamored of multilateral institutions; neither is this President. Realists have been raising questions about our commitments to NATO and Europe for decades. This guy's doing it too, again, in a ham-fisted, crude and lewd way. Part of it is about implementation. If you are going to exit Europe, you do it gracefully, letting your allies know ahead of time what your plans will look like; you don't take a wrecking ball. That's disruption on steroids.

John Schuessler: You want the EU to work as a realist. Anyway ...

Speaker 5: Most realists, I think, are probably indifferent and they're skeptical that the EU will work

John Schuessler: Then they're out of balance as ...

Speaker 5: You at least want the major powers in Europe, Britain, France, Germany, to step up, to balance against Russia, that's what needs to be done. In East Asia folks have long raised questions about US posture. Although even Mearsheimer says there major problems arise from China. I'm not thrilled about China becoming a regional hegemon even in East Asia much less more prominently. You're probably going to hedge there. China is what this administration is focusing on, now there's talk about a rebalanced Asia Pacific. Well, that was always about China. This administration is doing even more than past administrations have done.

John Schuessler: I would say one exception is in the Middle East; you know realists have been fairly critical of being the hired muscle for problematic allies in the region. I think the Trump administration has doubled on that.[crosstalk 00:39:45] Otherwise, I agree with Andy.

Speaker 5: Any realist all along has been critical of our involvement, deep engagement with the Middle East, especially Iraq and the continued engagement, presence and involvement, whatever you want to call it, in Afghanistan.

Speaker 4: I think maybe it's time to, since we have such a nice crowd, our podcast audience can obviously see the crowds that have gathered around us, but


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maybe we can take a couple questions and I think maybe the way we do this is we should repeat them so our audience, or podcast audience, can hear.

Speaker 6: So I am wondering which flavor of grand strategy do each of you subscribe to? Do you all agree on the same one?

Speaker 1: So the question in case you couldn't hear it was which flavor of grand strategy does the panel prefer. We'll start with Andy and work our way over to me, maybe.

Speaker 5: There are too many presents that usually don't come out this early in class, but they do come out. I'm a liberal internationalist. I like division and immersion, World War II, and we were more free to pursue, after the end of the Cold War. I don't think George W. Bush was a very good example of how to do it. Basically, went to the United Nations and said we're going to Iraq. Either you are with us or against us, but we're going and you're welcome to come along, but you're either with us or against us. That's not liberal internationalism, I take international institutions seriously for political military and economic. It hasn't succeeded across the border, but I still think it's our best shot. I agree with realists that the US isn't be number one indefinitely. I think we should be investing our resources in building the kind of world order we're going to be comfortable in when we are not number one.

Speaker 4: I prefer the vanilla flavored grand strategy. Literally and figuratively. I'm not convinced of the concept yet, I'm going to let John and the Center convince me that the concept is useful. I'm still a skeptic that ...

Speaker 2: It's useful, it's brought in several million dollars, come on!

Speaker 4: Please don't air the family laundry. I am kind of for a mongrel brand strategy. I mean, I do think I like international institutions, particularly ones that America built, which are most of them now. I think that globalization, while it's gotten a raw deal recently, in the United States and in parts of Europe, for good reasons, has successfully brought more people out of poverty than any other global approach to economics than we have seen in world history, and has brought untold prosperity in a historical sense, to all sorts of people. I think that the United States has an interest in preventing countries that don't share our fundamental values, and here I'm a little bit liberal, with becoming hegemonic in important world areas. I don't think the area that I studied, the Middle East, is necessarily a centrally important area. So like Andy, and like John, I was very much opposed to the focus of our policy in the Middle East in the last 15 years, and I think we should be concentrating more on Europe, and particularly East Asia, which are the motors of the world's economy, besides us, besides North America.

Speaker 4: I have kind of a mix, I like some liberalist institutions, I like realist balance of power politics, I'm a restrainer on the idea that you can go in and make people


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have systems of government that you like and I think that we ought to pick our spots, in that way I would argue with primacists. I'm a mongrel.

John Schuessler: I should just say I kind of alluded to this; I'm going to pigeonhole you, but areas studies folks, diplomats, grand strategy doesn't rub well. I said this in class the other day, my grand strategy class: If you are the Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, you were chosen basically to manage that relationship on the ground, and you have a wealth of contacts and experience to do so and now you are told hey we have a grand strategy we are sending down to you ...

Speaker 4: I should just note we don't have an Ambassador in Saudi Arabia right now, the Trump administration left that position vacant. They've nominated someone, recently, but I don't think he's been confirmed yet and he's certainly not in place.

John Schuessler: This is the challenge grand strategy and enterprise faces, right, between concept and practice on the ground, which is messier. In terms of my preferences, I just point to an article I wrote with Sebastian Rosato, [inaudible 00:45:34] A Realist Foreign Policy for the United States. I think I would just encourage two key moves that come from that article: One is actually thinking about what core interests and what are peripheral interests. I think one of the problems in American grand strategic discourse is everything is important, and that just can't be true. The other thing is balance of power politics can be your friend. If realists are right about anything in a descriptive sense, you know we shouldn't have to help others so much to take care of themselves. That's the really strange thing about primacy and American strategic thinking, the utter lack of confidence that any other country, unless properly led and provided for, will take care of itself. I would like to give balance of power politics a little bit more of a try, others might point out that whole first half of the 20th century problem where we did give it a try, but ...

Speaker 4: That's right, we talked to Germans the last time in 1914 and they hardly bothered us afterward.

John Schuessler: This could go down a dark road. It's good to be the United States when those fights break out, I'll just say that, and they're fighting over there and not over here.

Speaker 1: Ocean helps in that case.

John Schuessler: It does, but that's a whole other tool. So basically core versus periphery and then in terms of the core, maybe give balance of power politics just a bit more of a chance than we have and you might be pleasantly surprised that the Japanese, the Germans, and others still have a little fight left in them.

Speaker 4: So Justin, who convinced you? Which flavor are you going to order?


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Speaker 1: Oof, that's tough. Well, free and open markets to your point. I mean there's no other way I think to look at this than they have generated untold wealth and prosperity and lifted billions of people out of poverty and so systems that keep open economic free financial systems, that's their track record. Right now it's not a popular time to be saying that, and they do have their disruptions, but all you have to do is look around the world to see the evidence for that. So whatever helps protect that, and then whatever helps protect open societies in general, I am liberal when it comes to open societies and open markets and things like that.

Speaker 5: Sounds like a liberal internationalist. He doesn't want to fight stupid wars, though.

Speaker 1: We have time for another [crosstalk 00:48:11]

Speaker 5: Somebody famous said that [crosstalk 00:48:16]

Speaker 7: In the new age of political polarization, is grand strategy even possible? If so, who sets that strategy, and if not, how do we find the middle.

Speaker 1: So the question from the audience is, in the age of politicization, is grand strategy even a choice, and if so, who sets those priorities and if not, then what?

Speaker 5: That's a great question. One of the things about containment is that Democrats and Republicans basically followed it, one can argue at the margins whether they implemented it in different ways, but there was a consistency across partisan lines during the Cold War.

Speaker 2: And the same was true for support for an open international economic border; that was bipartisan as well.

John Schuessler: Well, in fact one of the impetuses for setting up the Center was there had been too much agreement across party lines for too long on key assumptions. Now that seems strange, but I think it's true. One thing that I point out about the Bush School, the Bush School is great because you have debates about these issues and they are not partisan. So just as a matter of how these debates are going to unfold inside the confines of the Bush School, I think all of our preference would be to have a debate like we're having. Liberal internationalism versus realism, as opposed to Republican versus Democrat. 'Cause you can find some strange bedfellows; there's an evolving debate on the progressive side about grand strategy that's really gotten kick-started recently, and there's a surprising amount of overlap with ...

Speaker 4: Liberal restraint


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John Schuessler: Friends of the Charlton Foundation if you will. This happens throughout time and this is when things get interesting, when it's not easily partisan and you take ideas seriously as opposed to just partisanship, that tends to happen.

Speaker 4: But the question remains on the table, right? In a polarized political atmosphere, can partisan shifts, and you know we have a two party system, no party is going to be in power for 50 years to implement a policy, where everything is politicized, Republicans were very critical of President Obama's foreign policy, even though they probably couldn't identify the grand strategic impetus behind it. Democrats were very critical of George W. Bush's foreign policy, mostly because they didn't like the Iraq war. The old adage that foreign policy stops at the water's edge was basically never true, but it's definitely not true now. And so it seems to me, that developing a grand strategy that is something more than four years long is very, very difficult thing in a polarized partisan political atmosphere.

John Schuessler: I think this is going to be a test of whether structure matters, and what I mean by structure is, does the external environment whip your country into shape a bit when it has to? So, we can afford all this ridiculousness now, but when things get serious, let's say if China does rise to become something close to a peer competitor, or the Middle East becomes literally uninhabitable for American forces or whatnot, this is when people have to step up and stop the games. I don't think partisanship is all games, by the way, I think there are actually ... have debates

Speaker 4: No, there are serious differences.

John Schuessler: I don't think we've really had the test of people's willingness to work together when they have to because right now there's just not enough external impetus to do so.

Speaker 2: I think that we have arrived at a stopping point here, and this is a discussion that could go on for hours. [crosstalk 00:52:18] It's not something that we want our podcast listeners to have to wait for us saying, well in the third hour, we will discuss the issues of South America. I think that we should wrap here and thank our hosts at Downtown Uncorked in Bryan, Texas for providing us with a lovely space for folks to listen in and ...

Speaker 1: And to our panelists tonight for coming out and keeping us company.

Speaker 2: And our panelists for coming out.

Speaker 1: And an audience; thank you so much for coming out.

Speaker 2: And our audience; thank you audience. Justin, do you want to take us out?


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Speaker 1: Yeah! So, thanks again and we will be doing a recording with some former Bush students next week and we're looking to do another live recording in another couple of weeks. You can follow us at our Facebook page, which is just At Bush School Uncorked, you can follow us on SoundCloud or iTunes podcast also At Bush School Uncorked. Thank you so much and thank you for listening. Thanks again gentlemen and looking forward to doing again soon.


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Documents

bush.tamu.edubush.tamu.edu/podcast/Grand Strategy_Episode 4_Publish.docx · Web viewAmerican foreign policy, which kind of carries through what the Center does. Speaker 1: Excellent