A Word on Words; 3716; James Goldeier

fb liz from national television studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on workers with jobs fawn johnson in the low once again welcome to word on words our guest today is james bogart is professor of political science in international for the george washington university and he's a senior fellow at the council on foreign relations he's also recorded three books on foreign policy and his articles have appeared in a vacation from foreign affairs larsen boasts the weekly standard is here today to talk about his new book

america between wars jim welcome the world works and for having its great data to talk about this book and and you know you frame the title once you get inside a covered america would win was low which two wars of wealth we dont think about it that much a muslim immigrant it's the wars between eleven and an unknown phenomenon the wall comes down in berlin and nine eleven in the towers come down in new york and the book is about our foreign policy between those two bookends now you're good and talking about a goal an effort to find a slogan to reflect a period of time and you know me and it was the slogan or what's that got to do with foreign policy it's amazing to me as i read the book how

leaders of government service for slogans that help people understand is that i write with us that they're trying to do they're trying to convey to people especially in this case on foreign policy what's the role of the united states in the world and for forty years you're in a cold war we knew what that was was contained easy thing to understand that as big then the soviet union out there commonest threat purposely nine states contain communism and contain that have been developed by famous diplomat george kennan back in the late nineteen forties you talk about that are going on foreign tourism related to say have that answer then the court though the wall comes down eleven nine november ninth nineteen eighty nine containment is no longer relevant so then you have this search a search that were still going through we thought maybe with the war on terror we had figured it all out but basically since the end of the cold war we've struggled to define america's purpose in the world it was interesting to us is we did the research for the

book especially during the clinton years were frustrated bill clinton was with his advisors why haven't we come up with george bush won by searching for it for the slogan talk and you know i'm sure everybody looked back and i remember on franklin roosevelt the new deal harry truman the theory of the road john kennedy and the new frontier mean there were slogans that ryan are bells and there was a good deal for put into that and then after bush struggles we find the end of clinton's term he still regretting that he couldn't find the slogan to reflect the vision and he felt that that was that that meant that he had really been able to explain to the american public what he was trying to do and i think we what i think that we really try to do in the book is just explain the search for a bumper sticker in the complex world we live in is just it's illusory that the clinton team in nineteen ninety four they invited george and then to come meet with him he was

ninety years old and they said dont know how do we come up with a new bumper sticker and he said you don't live in that world anymore says it's too complex for that single simple phrase and my advice to you would be to try for thoughtful paragraph or two well you do if you tell art and it's amazing to me that the clintons search was as as committed as it was he said one point out or add something like pushed down fear push up for oprah's but it there was too long or way of authentic that one his own so and i think he would've taken anything at now we're in another time and the second bush is as he leaves office without a way to bumper sticker the fires on those traditions bustle back which one he comes to power and guns and a wall comes down and as you

describe it it is a it's a relatively a peaceful world he's seeking to establish he wants to reach out to united nations he talks about a neighborhood of nations on it was a philosophy and it was pretty well supported by his administration talk a little bit about the challenge for him and that and how he dressed what's interesting because george h w bush he's the only president who has served as ambassador to the united nations andy you and really meant a lot to him he believed strongly when the cold war ended that now the un could finding work as its founders had intended because you didn't have the cold war rivalry that soviet veto that was gonna block efforts to utilize the united nations'

fact he talked about his slogan was the new world order which really was about making the old order work was about trying to make the un water work with the us in the lead you know but the button bush sr wrote a conservative realist foreign policy person than he wasn't looking for new missions for the united states to pursue after the end of the cold war democracy promotion which could become such an important part of both the clinton and our current presidents administration's you know these were not things that that animated george h w bush bush forty three very different from his father willard right thank you know on the issue of admissions for example of them the un was something that put george bush sr did take seriously and it's one of the big themes in our book that that struggle to try to figure out could we really use the un could continue and act more forcefully in the world can really act as its founders had was quite clear that he

thinks that it is indeed a great potential for his administration and i'm sure there were a lot of conservatives in his party and his administration who were crawling up the wall about that in the fact you point out that right across the river in the defense department there was the secretary defense richard cheney dick cheney and wolfowitz and stephen hadley and it's almost as you described as if they didn't think they were part of the sun administration i mean they had their own memo to define administration i think brent scowcroft called a cookie called when we interviewed on the house we discuss this memo this thing called the fans play the guidance which had been leaked in nineteen ninety two the year of new york times and was just about immediately by the white house and was interesting the folks that we spoke with who worked in the pentagon that if we talked about the bush team as the administration as if they weren't barnard and there was very

interesting and that score crafted say he said when he said when i saw that memo i just i'd cheney this is just cookie and then they reunited but that on the sky as it seems to me that maybe that's the birth of the new comedy there month that fair well i think what you see you see ideas that then come back in two thousand and two and what was interesting for us a lot of people have written about how that document from nineteen eighty two reappears with george bush the current president has his national security strategy and in two thousand and two and think that that's what would've happened had george h w bush won reelection that you would have seen that that mindset and one of things we do in the book for the first time leave there are able to write about the something that hadn't been written about before that we don't cover it in the research in this was a memo from the state

department of george bush sr to the incoming state department warned christopher twenty two page secret memo outlining the world as they saw it very different from the cheney wolfowitz pentagon something much more in line with really what we would see now in the courtney years but then in the colon powell state department and so you see that other way of thinking within that group and i wonder does so often one which won most of sort of the neo con influence in the administration wished to but julianne although he can define a bumper sticker slogan george bush george herbert walker bush says that global policy on that is still reaching out and still you ask him i'm sure you're so dependent on the united nations to help i mean the courts beyond the soviet monolith has been destroyed in the warm fall in berlin

with a solo and his administration gave the fun age of anxiety is a job and he says all those slogans were tried none really work and clinton comes in and is again you point out clinton is you know it's the economy stupid and then he begins the fight as you also a gay rights and they get bogged down in that i'm sure the health care debacle as it turned out didn't know much and it's not until it's not until he's confronted with haiti and kosovo and i need to get involved in foreign affairs what we talk about that could be withdrawn into a brilliant and very it was

this episode was the economy stupid of nineteen ninety two the american people cold war's over we don't need to worry about what's going on the rest of the world and clinton himself really believed when he came in and he wasn't that have to do with foreign policy we spoke with lee hamilton former congressman people known from his times co chaired the nine eleven commission right and hamilton told us that he met with clinton in december of nineteen ninety two and said to the incoming president where you know that every president as a foreign policy president you're going to be dealing with foreign policy and clinton said that look i got one question from a journalist on the campaign about foreign policy on the aca to be delightful but you know this is what presidents do and that it was a problem for clunkers he started off as you say with the gays in the military issue start off on the wrong foot with the military didn't pay enough attention to foreign policy issues and he really doesn't emerge he was at like a lot of confidence on national security issues and he doesn't really emerged as a confident person on foreign

policy until probably the end of nineteen ninety five the dayton accords that ended the war in bosnia that's really when you start to emerge as a foreign policy president actually got pretty good at a politically in the second term you point out that during the during the transition in haiti jimmy carter with whom he had a rather prickly time and i guess cycle of paul and sam nunn wrote were down there in haiti drawn a negotiated rather loud and he's got tear glands raided they got lured with bones in and andrews and m but finally airplanes take off but they don't have to drop the bombs of the throat is enough and at that point he thinks he's quite successful and foreign policy are iran is an idiom is a very nerve racking time greats it would talk to separate former secretary of defense bill carrick and he said you know they were given us planes were going there were carter powell and nine still in haiti trying to

negotiate a withdrawal of the of the military leaders there say dress in there and parry says it was pretty nerve wracking to try to explain the card to get the guys got to get out of their times not yet explained it's a dress time is up and you know they were able to resolve it before for said the use of those of you just tuning in i'm talking with jill james <unk> about his new book america and the twin wars in the war's forgotten about the war that ended with the fall of berlin wall in and the one that started with the four thousand new york or lemon nine nine eleven interesting to me that colin powell service i had more time with bill clinton and i had with either going on which will now granted he had not come to the pinnacle of his own public career in the reagan administration but he was a dynamic force

than and certainly was a major potential force for the first president bush was also though clinton won in sudbury policy began to be a friend to a lot of his advisers well i think i think there was a mixture of admiration and concern in an intimidation all the fear you know that was amended in those areas were intimidated how intimidated clinton at the beginning because you know there was this guy so distinguished you know major military figure and then clinton very nervous at the beginning about his relationship with the military and i think he also he looked at powell as somebody who would win win you had black hawk down in october nineteen ninety three in the debacle in somalia and go out the secretary of defense would end up resigning shortly thereafter it was also looked for a while like secretary state

christopher might resign as well and clinton thought about making palace secretary of state one of the reasons i mean whether to raise one he valued what pell head off or the other was that he was nervous the power would be a formidable opponent in the nineteen eighty six presidential election that helped chose to run think you want to make sure he can preclude that puzzling week we talk about somalia and we drop that name most people didn't know where it was alone in africa one point president bush as he was going out sent twenty thousand troops or most of us forget today that they went and uncertain because vocal daily ministration i guess you don't remember we're going right and we weren't this was after the election and i don't mean as as lane or in this transition has only one president george h to be richer still president he sent troops

to somalia in early december so solar clintons and he did we're out of there in the sixties and it is and the lives lost and kosovo and i suppose both on the museum pretty about itself in terms of his own foreign policy and then he turns it over to an incoming president to use and automatically goes to his father and i have i suppose we've all wanted from time to time and you must've wondered as you wrote this book you must have wondered what can possibly be on conan the mind of his father as he totally rejects the un's initiative in iraq when you look back you compare the gulf war with the warner i look back at the goal for the effort that was taken to build a un

coalition secretary state baker met with every member of the security council clothing at the time cuba was on the security council when baker left no stone unturned and so to have an administration this time really treat the un the way it did was what was it was it was harmful to the way things played out because we didn't have the support of the international community the way we had in nineteen ninety nineteen ninety one and that made a difference when things start to go badly with the reconstruction efforts after the after the fall of baghdad was what he what you think drove i mean clearly you can from the outset that in the administration you do have the laws were to injury the notion of the new bush administration coming in your allies that when cheney and secretary defense rumsfeld and clearly there is tension to amazing that the

press didn't focus more in those days on the tension between cheney and also one hand and powell on on the other but it's quite clear who won and that castro even though even though soccer ball seemed at times to be satisfied with his role on my guess is that the scowcroft and and which one to many nervous nights with upset stomach sign but mild compared to the injunction that colin powell well it must have been incredibly difficult we talked when we talk with the secretary palin with his deputy rich armitage and ann arbor mich said to us you know we said we came in you know he felt like there was a lot of continuity from cleaning the station into the new bush administration's pursued state department but and he said there were people more ideological and we were but in his words they were in their box until after september eleventh and then they can either boxing

and really drove the policy and a very different direction on you you wrote this book with derek shot and gassed there and earn your call those two academics two foreign policy remains in effect you probably don't like tickled a group of those of us you spent their lives in the mirror likely that the only one uae like that but it's but it's a it's almost seamless to read this book and i wondered as i went through how the two of you work together to create this seamless narrative very exciting story and take that from one book eleven ninety of them well you're kind of saying that again that his lab work it helps to be good friends derek and i've been great friends for a long time and you know each of us would take to go chapter and started drafting but what you really have to do is just pass a back and forth so many

times that you could no longer tell who wrote which thing to begin with the who whose had the initial draft so that you can really try to make it read as one in one voice that's that's the thing with a coffee want the book to read as if it's one voice people with asthma which parts to do right then you can't tell hollywood in all of its most interesting because it's clear that the two of you at least at some point came to a consensus view on three separate presidents who had three separate policies of the last one clearly in conflict with the other two right and then the other thing that was hard because because both of us are new much more going into this about the democrats then we did the republicans are we really wanna be with talk about both show how both were evolving after the cold war and do do both size and as evenhanded away as possible and i certainly felt

personally that and i learned a great deal about the republican party doing this in and republican thinking on foreign policy and to try to make sure that we dealt with both sides and has even handed a way as possible with something that was very important to us and we felt that there would be things that both sides would like about the book and things that both sides would be quite unhappy about one tribe of mine guess is that if the current president bush reads that book there are moments to be satisfied that he was treated fairly toward his own image of himself as an illustration is we probably for his book to find out it i'm fascinated as we think about where in the second bush administration levy says and what your view is about his transition and i was not only

somebody comment on the telephone saying we're safe we're going back to somalia are part two in some obscure third world country it's clear that there is some interaction the clinton administration's but so what's your sense of how this transition is going to take place well you see a transition which i mean because of the financial crisis and because in that state's was involved in two wars and in this is the first president to come in in a wartime situation since richard nixon came in during vietnam and so we see much greater collaboration and we saw with the transitions between bush won in clinton and clinton and george w bush but i think it's also you know we're more people innocent people voted for change and they're looking for big change and also see someone on a continuity in certain areas in large part because where the court would

tell the bush administration then did up there was in many and a number of big issues that not that far from what barack obama have been talking about on the campaign i mean george w bush toward the end we started engaging with the run which is what brought obama had been talking about in the last year plus of the administration had started really focusing on engagement with the north koreans to try to solve that problem circulating clearly and leonard is that afghanistan early and obama said in the campaign we were like a commitment and this that's taking place along with as we speak very controversial campaign when brock obama talked about talk about what we had intelligence and pakistan and that government couldn't do something we would act and interest of the bush administration has been doing this already so that new york you already see some things that brock obama had been talking about this i think in some areas will see continuity there are other areas for example climate change where

the new team coming in sync the very different focus on that issue than that the outgoing administration issues like torture in guantanamo i wish voice some amount of change but there's always a lot of continuity from administration ministration that's what we wrote about from bush to clinton the bush and i think that's just the nature of it the united states' foreign policy as just not they could just doesn't change overnight but the biggest thing that that obama has going for him coming in it's just a tremendous excitement around the world about his presidency and you know there's really a chance to restore america's standing in the world and to do that you have to go back to george herbert war group bush's attitude toward a global they weren't torn the commitment of the united nations have you see that unfolded well i think it's even more significant today when george h w bush talked about the next this was clearly the dominant power in the world and i am

really could easily lead now today denied states is still the leading power in the world but there are other countries out there that have a lot of powers well certainly china has tremendous amount of economic power and that's been shaped the world we live in we have to look for ways to work with china as well of course as with the european union as we as we think about how to move forward on and many of the global issues on the un certainly president elect obama has been talking about with his incoming un ambassador susan rice talk about strengthening the role of the united nations but the question is is the united nations' up for it though clinton also talked about this when he came and he can begin very frustrated with the united nations it is it is often a body that's not able to act and the question will be if the night state says ok we want the un to do more is the eu and capable of that that is a question is the question

for the administration is the question for the next book the progress in combat when you do it we've been talking to james delgado about his new book american wars that people watching on johnson in the forward on words keep reading visa