Ayse Kaya:	Welcome. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Ayse Kaya, Associate Professor of Political Science. It's my great pleasure and honor to welcome Professor Stephen Walt, [inaudible 00:00:11] Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, as a Phi Betta Kappa visiting scholar to Swarthmore College. In addition to being a former academic dean at Harvard, Professor Walt also taught at Princeton, as well as the University of Chicago, and has been a Resident Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. He is a contributing editor at Forum Policy Journal, and I know many of us are avid readers of his writings in that journal. Professor Walt is also the co-chair of the editorial board of International Security, a leading journal in international relations, and co-editor of the Cornell Studies and Security Affairs book series. His books include The Origins of Alliances, Taming American Power, The Global Response to U.S. Primacy, and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. He is currently writing a book on why U.S. foreign policy keeps failing, which I think could not be more timely. A fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he received the International Studies Association's Distinguished Senior Scholar Award in 2014. 
	In my opinion, however, it's not just his overwhelming set of accomplishments that set Professor Walt apart, but his ability to compellingly argue why conventional wisdoms in U.S. foreign policy may not be so wise after all, which is why we're so lucky to get to hear his views on where U.S. foreign policy is headed, this evening, in these uncertain and challenging times. Please join me extending a warm welcome to Professor Walt. 
Stephen Walt:	Thank you very much. It is a real pleasure to be here. I want to thank Aisha for that very kind introduction, and of course all of you for coming. It does make me want to observe, however, that there is clearly a problem with the social life at Swarthmore, if there are this many people on a Thursday night coming to hear a lecture on foreign policy. Given that you're here, I'm going to talk about where I think U.S. foreign policy is headed at that moment. I think it's fair to say there's more uncertainty about that topic than at just about any time in recent memory.
	As I will discuss in more detail in a second, President Trump ran for office promising a foreign policy that put America first. He restated that goal in his Inaugural Address, and he even said it when he spoke in front of the UN General Assembly. He has certainly not acted like any of his predecessors, but the question we want to consider is will he in fact deliver the radical departure in foreign policy that he promised? If he tries to, will that effort actually succeed. The answer I'm going to give you on both counts is no. In fact, he's already being co-opted, contained, captured, to some degree, by the foreign policy establishment. He is not going to give the American people the foreign policies that they actually want or that they deserve. Now, that's not to say he will have no effect at all. In some ways, he has already done considerable damage. I think he's likely to do more. We may in fact be getting the worst of both worlds. The United States will still be pursuing a flawed grand strategy, but now we also have an erratic skipper at the helm of the ship of state. 
	Let me start by just reminding everybody, I know this is painful, but we'll go through it, reminding everybody what happened in 2016. Donald Trump announced he was going to run for President and nobody took him seriously. Yet, he steamrolled his way through the primary season, won the Republican nomination, despite having defied all of the usual norms of campaigning, despite having lied repeatedly and been exposed as a liar, and despite having been exposed as a misogynist and possible sexual predator. It's a hell of a record and yet, most importantly for our purposes, he was opposed by foreign policy experts in both political parties. Now of course Democrats opposed him, but over 100 former Republican foreign policy officials, including former Cabinet Secretaries, signed open letters rejecting Trump, saying they wouldn't vote for him and declaring him in one case as, "Utterly unfit for office." To repeat, these were Republicans. This opposition, of course, was not at all surprising, because Trump had challenged a number of enduring principles of American foreign policies, such as our alliances in Europe and Asia, our basic commitment to open trade, our opposition to nuclear proliferation, and other things of that nature. Yet, he won. 
	Now this election, in my view, was not primarily about foreign policy, but foreign policy was not irrelevant either. In April 2016, several months before the election, a Pew Research Center survey reported 57% of Americans believed the United States quote, "Should deal with its own problems and let other states deal with theirs the best they can." 57%. Sounds like America first to me. 47% felt that America was doing too much in the world. Both Trump, but also Bernie Sanders found very receptive audiences when they questioned much of recent American foreign policy, leaving Hillary Clinton standing alone, defending the status quo. 
	Now, those public doubts, those questioning of the enduring principles are not at all surprising. When you think about it, American foreign policy over the previous couple of decades had been in fact a costly failure. In Asia, China's power has steadily increased. It is challenging the status quo in a number of ways. India, Pakistan, and North Korea have all tested nuclear weapons and expanded their nuclear arsenals, despite consistent American opposition. In Europe, Russia had annexed Crimea, and interfered in American politics. Our relationship with Russia now worse than at any time since the Cold War. The United States is still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan with no end in sight. The rest of the Middle East is in turmoil, in good part due to American efforts at regime change in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and Syria. Meanwhile, democracy is in retreat worldwide. According to Larry Diamond of Stanford University, "Over the past 15 years, democracy broke down in 27 countries, and existing dictatorships have become less open, transparent, or responsive to their citizens." Repeated American efforts to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace have all failed. America's use of torture and targeted killings has tarnished its image as a defender of human rights and international law. 
	When Trump ran for President and said American foreign policy is quote, "A complete and total disaster," and when he accused the foreign policy establishment of being out of touch and unaccountable, a lot of Americans nodded their heads and agreed. Even if they weren't always watching Breitbart. Now, American foreign policy is not solely responsible for that list of failures that I just mentioned, but it had a big hand in most of them. In particular, I would argue these setbacks are the result of the basic grand strategy we have followed since the end of the Cold War. A strategy that some of us call liberal hegemony. By liberal, I don't mean left wing, I mean a foreign policy that tries to promote the basic principles and ideals of liberal democracy. Liberal hegemony sees the United States as the indispensable nation that should use its power to lead and promote a world order based on democratic governments, globalized markets, multilateral institutions, and human rights. 
	When you think about it, that strategy is a highly revisionist grand strategy. Instead of defending our own territory and upholding the balance of power in a few key regions, liberal hegemony seeks to spread democracy in markets around the world, peacefully if possible, but if necessary, by force. It assumes the United States has the right, the responsibility, and the wisdom to manage local politics in almost every part of the world. Since the end of the Cold War, that basic approach has commanded a consensus in both political parties, inside the Defense Department, inside the State Department, inside the intelligence community, and in most of the think tanks and foreign policy organizations in Washington. Why? Partly because people in those institutions share these ideals, believe in them, think they're good things, but also of course, because a very ambitious foreign policy agenda enhances their own power and status, and gives them plenty to do.
	Unfortunately, this basic strategy is fundamentally flawed. For starters, it expanded the number of places the United States was committed to defend, but it didn't increase the resources available to defend all of those places. Whenever a weak or vulnerable state joined an American led alliance system, the United States was now obligated to protect that state, even if it didn't contribute very much to the alliance overall. In fact by 2016, the United States was formally committed to defending more states around the world than at any time in our national history, including many states of relatively little strategic value. Moreover, expanding some of these relationships and especially expanding NATO into Eastern Europe, poisoned our relationship with Russia over time, which was pretty good in the beginning of the 1990s and of course is in terrible shape today. 
	Furthermore, spreading democracy by definition means regime change. You're getting rid of a non-democracy to turn it into a democracy, which of course alarms other governments who think they might be on our hit list, and encourages them to do whatever they can to thwart this particular objective. In some cases, by pursuing weapons of mass destruction. When we do succeed, regime change leads to fail states and costly occupations, triggering local resistance, sometimes terrorism. Again, the strategy of liberal hegemony, assumed we knew how to create stable and legitimate democracies in places very different than the United States. I think it is now clear, from the last 25 years, that we don't. Lastly, opening and expanding global markets did produce some real benefits, both in other countries, but also here in the United States, but on balance, Wall Street did better than Main Street did. Inequality rose dramatically for a variety of different reasons, and the global financial system became more tightly integrated and therefore more fragile, as we saw in 2008. It's that track record of failure that helped open the door for Donald Trump. 
	The question now is what did Trump say he was gong to do in foreign policy and what has he actually done? Here's what he promised. He said America first would be the guiding principle of his foreign policy. He said NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and a lot of other trade deals were all very bad deals, very bad for America. He accused China of manipulating its currency to steal U.S. jobs. He said NATO was obsolete and quote, "The countries we're defending must pay for the cost of this defense. If not, we must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves." He was deeply critical of the European Union, praised the British decision to leave the EU, and embraced right wing nationalists like Marine Le Pen in France. 
	He promised repeatedly the United States would get out of the nation building business. He also said that our rivalry with Russia and China was not inevitable, and he would find out if he could work with the leaders of these countries. In fact, during the campaign, Vladimir Putin was one of the only foreign leaders he didn't criticize ever. He called the nuclear deal with Iran the worst deal ever and said the United States had to do more to confront the threat from radical Islam. He expressed no interest in promoting democracy or in defending human rights. It was just not something he cared about. Bottom line is, as expressed during the campaign, up until the moment he became President, Trump's overall approach was as clear a repudiation of liberal hegemony as one might have asked for, which of course is why both Democrats and Republicans in the foreign policy establishment opposed him and opposed him vehemently. 
	Once he became President, what did he do? Well, to be fair, he began with some quite radical steps. He appointed a controversial National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn. He put White House strategist Steve Bannon on the National Security Council's Principles Committee, but he didn't put the head of the intelligence agencies and he didn't put the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the NSC Principles Committee, even though all previous Presidents had done that. He put a former general atop the Pentagon, something that hadn't happened since Truman. He put the former CEO of Exxon, Rex Tillerson, as Secretary of State, even though Tillerson, whatever his business credentials are, had no background in foreign policy and diplomacy. He appointed some, I will politely call marginal oddballs, to the NSC, and put his 36 year old son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of the Middle East peace process. On his fourth day in office, he announced that the United States would abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade deal that was critical to the Obama Administration's pivot to Asia. In his first two weeks, he had confrontational phone calls with the President of Mexico, and the Prime Minister of Australia. Mostly arguing about immigration and that wall he claims Mexico is going to pay for.
	He then proposes a 30% cut in the State Department budget. Tells an interviewer, quote, "In many cases, I don't want to fill those posts," posts at the State Department, "They're unnecessary." He accuses the intelligence community of leaking information about possible Russian tampering in the election, and at one point says the intelligence agencies are acting like Nazi Germany, which doesn't exactly endear him to the intelligence community. He says, "China has to solve the problem of North Korea's nuclear program, or we will," that's a quote, and then tells South Korea it has to pay for a missile defense system that we had insisted they deploy. At the same time says he also wants to negotiate the U.S.-South Korean Free Trade Treaty, therefore endearing himself to South Korea at a moment when he's beginning to confront North Korea. Finally, he continues to denounce NAFTA and the Iran Nuclear Agreement, showing again, no interest in promoting democracy or human rights either. This, again, all looks like a rather sharp departure from previous practice. He's going to do things differently. 
	But now, watch what starts to happen over time. General Flynn sets a record that I believe will never be broken, by resigning as National Security Advisor after 28 days in office. He is replaced by HR McMaster, another general, but very much part of the mainstream establishment consensus. Bannon is removed from the National Security Council. The intelligence community had, the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are now put back on. Trump then appoints Fiona Hill of the Brookings Institution, who is a mainstream expert on Russian affairs and among other things, the author of a very critical biography of Vladimir Putin, to run Russian affairs at the National Security Council. He meets with Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago, says China is no longer manipulating its currency, and says he explained to him that the North Korea situation was actually a little bit more complicated than he thought. Thus far, there is no sign that he's simply going to tear up the NAFTA Treaty. We are now attempting to renegotiate it, which is a perfectly appropriate thing to do. It needs to be updated anyway. It's not clear whether or not we'll be able to do that or not, but it's still in force so far. 
	He admits, at one point, that Mexico hasn't agreed to pay for the wall, and now says they'll pay for it eventually. Not clear what he means by that. He then makes his first foreign trip, beginning in Saudi Arabia and tours the Middle East, where he basically reaffirms relations with all of our existing allies in the Middle East. In April, he says NATO is no longer obsolete because it's changed. It hasn't. He does lecture all the other NATO leaders about their need to pay more, and he doesn't endorse Article Five of the NATO Treaty at the NATO Summit. This is the mutual defense clause that commits all the members to help defend each other. Then he returns home and gives a couple of interviews telling reporters he is quote, "Absolutely committed to NATO, including Article Five." He's on board there now. 
	After the Assad regime uses chemical weapons, Trump orders a cruise missile strike against a Syrian airfield. Democrats and Republicans alike rush to praise him for this Presidential act, along with numerous top media commentators. CNN's Fareed Zakaria says, "Today is the day Donald Trump became President." He blew something up, he must be President. Trump continues to show enormous deference to the military. Again, appointing top generals to key positions. Proposes a major increase in defense spending, and gives local commanders in the field in the Middle East and Afghanistan, greater authority to launch attacks on their own. The U.S. military conducts six times more airstrikes in Trump's first 142 days in office, six times more in his first 142 days, than they had in Obama's last 142 days in office. Obama was not particularly restrained about using drone strikes and airstrikes and things like that. Finally, if you remember last summer, there's a big shakeup of the White House staff. This reinforces all of these moves. Press Secretary Sean Spicer is out, hedge fund banker Anthony Scaramucci, the Mooch, is in. The Mooch lasts 10 days. He gets fired, along with the Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who's replaced by another general, John Kelly. Another mainstream figure, who then cleans house at the NSC, and starts removing all of those oddballs. Then Steve Bannon leaves, removing the most obvious advocate of a radically different foreign policy. 
	Trump then announces he won't certify the Iran deal, is in the U.S. interest, which he's required to do every 60 days, but he doesn't aggregate the deal either. Even though he's repeatedly said it's the worst deal in history, but he won't break it. Instead, he kicks the problem over to Congress, and says, "If Congress wants to modify it, that's up to them. I'm not going to take a position right now." Finally, after repeatedly saying the United States should get out of the nation building business, he agrees to send 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan, to conduct counterterror operations, because we're not doing nation building, we're doing counterterrorism. This is exactly the same reason Barack Obama gave in 2009, when he announced his own surge into Afghanistan, that we were going there to deal with terrorism, not to do nation building. 
	Before his first year is over, Trump is starting to revert back to many of the familiar pathways we've followed ever since the end of the Cold War. Relations with Russia are now back in the deep freeze. The existing trade order is still mostly intact. The United States is again trying to manage events in many parts of the world, mostly with its vast military machine. Here's the thing to consider, it's pretty easy to imagine Hillary Clinton having done many of the same things. Holding uncritical meetings with our key Middle East allies. Using cruise missiles against the Assad regime in Syria, absolutely, she was in favor of that earlier. Supporting the Iran Nuclear Deal, while offering stern warnings about Iran's other activities. Criticizing Putin, endorsing NATO. Her diplomatic style would have been vastly different than his. She would never have given the speech that he gave at the UN General Assembly, which is quite confrontational. She would not be busy calling the leader of North Korea little rocket man, but much of the content might well have been rather similar. The big exception, it seems to me, would have been about democracy and human rights, where she would have, I think, remained a vocal advocate of that, at least rhetorically, and he has not been. 
	What I'm suggesting here is in the competition between the Donald and the foreign policy establishment, the establishment, which some have called the foreign policy blob, is winning. Before describing what I think he should have done, let me explain why he has been unable to make a clean break with the past or do what he said he was going to do in the campaign. As I said, he faced a genuine dilemma the day he became President. He was opposed by most of the foreign policy establishment, including Republicans, and by important parts of the permanent National Security bureaucracy. If he appointed people who shared his views on foreign policy, they were going to be inexperienced, unreliable. Some of his views are wrong. They're going to make a lot of rookie mistakes. It's going to be a completely untried, unfamiliar team. If he appoints people with lots of experience, who know what they're doing and actually know something about how the world works, they're going to want to keep running the foreign policy we've had. He's torn there. If he appoints a mix, "I'll appoint some radicals who agree with me, some other people who are more reliable," then you have endless infighting, which is a lot of what we've seen coming out of the Trump Administration. There will still be lots of mistakes being made. He faced a basic structural problem. 
	Secondly, there's then the question of his character and personality. His entire business career is one riddled with failures, lawsuits, unhappy former partners, a strong propensity for payback, for vengeance, and the campaign showed him to be quite thin-skinned and easy to provoke. Trump also has no deep grasp of international affairs, few firm convictions. His principle priorities, as near as I can tell, appear to be himself, his family, and his fortune. He also appears to be a chaotic manager with little interest in details or in assembling a smooth operation. This again, is not a recipe for successful policymaking. 
	What is in fact most striking about the Trump Administration in foreign policy so far is its sheer incompetence. If you wanted to counter China, if you thought that China was a potential problem, and Trump I think acknowledges that, then it was an incompetent decision to leave the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was a very important ingredient in retaining American influence in Asia. A good case can be made for fixing certain aspects of both our bilateral relationship with China and the multilateral trade regime, but thus far, Trump has given no indication he knows how to do it or even what needs to be fixed. 
	Moreover, we've seen an embarrassing series of gaffes and errors coming out of the White House. In the first press release, when he met with the Prime Minister of England, Theresa May, they misspelled her name. A White House press release referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as President of Taiwan. That's a big mistake by the way. They also called Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the President of Japan. Trump himself told Fox News at one point, that the United States was sending a quote, "Very powerful armada toward Korea," when it was actually steaming in the opposite direction. It wouldn't be there until the following week. No other President has had to fire his National Security Advisor after four weeks, or his own handpicked White House Communications Director after 10. This may sound like a lot of trivial cheap shots, but these things do matter. All of this conveys the impression that the United States and its leaders do not know what they're doing.
	When that's the case, other states are no longer going to be willing to follow America's lead, accept America's advice, take our views on key international issues seriously. They will start hedging their bets, they will start doing business with others. As Angela Merkel of Germany said back in May, "Europe can no longer rely upon the United States. Europe has to take responsibility for its own fate." The Foreign Minister of Canada, "Canada must chart its own course." Perhaps most telling of all, at the end of Barack Obama's second term, a survey of 37 countries around the world, found that nearly two thirds, the average over these 37 countries, nearly two thirds of those surveyed had quote, "Confidence in American leadership." 64% is the actual number. After six months of Donald Trump, the same survey found that number had dropped to 22%, which is really quite remarkable in such a short period of time. 
	Finally, his complete neglect of values, the fact that there's no interest in ideals being expressed by this administration, I think is also a mistake. I say that as a card carrying realist. It's one thing to recognize there are trade offs between say strategic interests and moral preferences, strategic interests and ideals and values, and to recognize sometimes you have to go with one or the other. It's one thing to recognize that trade off, it's another thing to ignore them entirely, to pretend as if they don't matter at all. Standing up for American values in fact amplifies American influence in the world. It puts many of our adversaries at a disadvantage rhetorically and diplomatically. Ignoring them completely therefore squanders and important asset that the United States has profited from in the past. It is, of course, also the wrong thing to do on moral grounds, to be completely indifferent to human rights concerns, I think it's just epically irresponsible. 
	Where is American foreign policy headed? In fact, as I've tried to suggest, we are reverting back to a number of familiar principles in American foreign policy. One where the United States is actively trying to shape events in Europe, and the Middle East, and Asia. We're still at war in several places. In fact, we seem to be actually more energetic with our military than we were, but we're doing it with an unqualified, inattentive, and incompetent leader. The ship of state doesn't have much of a crew. Its captain does not know how to chart a course or steer. This is not a good situation. 
	What should he have done? Well, instead of hyping threats from ISIS, from immigrants, from bad trade deals, he should have started by reminding the American people that the United States is in fact the luckiest and most secure great power in modern history. We have a large population, a sophisticated economy, and that allows us to field very capable military forces when we need to. We are separated from other major powers and many danger zones in the world, by these two enormous oceans, and those oceans still matter. We also, by the way, have thousands of nuclear weapons, making a direct attack on American soil even less likely as well. We are, in fact, in a very, very secure position with few if any existential threats from other countries. 
	Given that good fortune, one central goal of American foreign policy should be to prevent other great powers, another rival, a peer competitor, from dominating its own neighborhood, its own region, the same way the United States largely dominates the Western hemisphere. If you think about it, a state like that would have an economy say as big as ours, the ability to project power around the world the way the United States does, possibly including into the Western hemisphere itself. Finally, I would add one final point. As long as oil and gas remain central to the world economy, the United States has long wanted to make sure that no hostile power controls all the oil and gas in the Persian Gulf. Gains control there as well. We want him to maintain a balance of power in that region as well. That's been the overarching goal of American foreign policy. Prevent a peer competitor from being, what some would call a regional hegemon in its neighborhood, like we are here in the Western hemisphere. 
	Here's some more good news. There are no potential hegemons in Europe today. Russia and Germany are not going to dominate. Both have declining populations. No one else could possibly dominate Europe the way we worried about say Nazi Germany, or before that Wilheiman Germany. The United States can therefore reduce, if not eliminate it's military role there, turn security of Europe back over to the Europeans. Some would say, "What about Russia? What about Putin?" It's worth remembering that Europe, the European Union for example, has about 500 million people in it and a combined economy of 17 trillion dollars. Russia has less than a 140 million people, population's rapidly aging as well. It's Gross National Product is less than two trillion. NATO's European members, not counting the United States, NATO's European members spend four times more each year on defense than Russia does. They don't spend it very efficiently. They don't spend it very well, but the idea that Europe lacks the wherewithal to deal with an alleged threat from Russia, is I think mythical. To be fair, here Trump's instincts were partly correct. The United States did not need to be defending Europe anymore. That's the good news. 
	Bad news is that China is a potential hegemon in Asia. Ideally, the United States would rely upon local powers, other states in Asia, to limit or contain Chinese influence, but they may not be able to do that without a considerable amount of American help. The United States there has to take the lead in forging a countervailing coalition, and that's going to be a complicated, diplomatic, economic, and military effort. That's why I think the TDP decision was a bad idea. By the way, it's also a task that's going to require some really skillful, knowledgeable, and adroit diplomacy, which is why Trump's decision to gut the State Department strikes me as completely inexplicable. At the same time, the United States should be trying to work out its differences with Russia, and maybe even drive a bit of a wedge between Russia and China.
	Of course, Trump is the last person on the planet who can do that now, because he and his associates may have gotten rather tangled up with Moscow and its efforts to shape the election, and nobody trusts him on this issue. Now, I should be clear, I have no idea if the accusations about Russian activity are completely true, or if there was any connection between the Trump campaign, Trump himself, Trump's businesses, Trump's son, and what Russia was doing. I don't know what the truth there was. I will point out however, that Trump and company are acting a lot as though they have something to hide, which is interesting in its own right. My only point is that whole tangled and murky situation makes it very difficult, even if he wanted to try and reach out to Russia. If he did any nice thing for Vladimir Putin, most of us would assume it's because he was in Putin's pocket. He's therefore in a position where he can't take intelligent steps to try and deal with an otherwise poisonous relationship. 
	The Middle East and Persian Gulf are deeply divided and the United States does not know how to fix this problem. The good news there is we don't need to control that region. We're not very good at trying. We should let local powers deal with threats such as ISIS, which basically I think is successfully on the road to defeat. If Russia wants to take the lead in Syria, we should let it. A Syria stabilized, I am sorry to say, partly under Assad or divided into quarreling mini-states, is not in fact an existential threat to the United States. It is a problem, nothing more. The point is the only long-term solution to this problem and the other problems around the Middle East, are the creation of more effective local political institutions, and that is not something the United States can provide to any of these countries. Nor should the United States be taking sides in the struggle between Sunnis and Shia there, or between Saudi Arabia and Iran, unless one of those states seems likely to dominate the region and possible shape access to oil. I think there, the good news is that day is a long way off, if it ever arrives.
	In fact, one more point on the Middle East, I would argue the United States should stop having special relationships with anyone in the Middle East, and have normal relations with everyone. None of our current allies deserve unconditional American support. Not Egypt, not Saudi Arabia, not Israel, not Turkey. The United States should support those countries when our interests overlap. We should distance ourselves when they don't. We should keep working on building a better relationship with Iran, if possible, because that would increase our leverage over all of them, if we're talking to everyone. It would facilitate cooperating with Iran on the places where our interests are parallel, most notably Afghanistan. To repeat, our goal in the Middle East is a balance of power, not American control. 
	Now, some of you may have just noticed that gee, the way I'm talking sounds a little bit like the way Trump talked back in the campaign. Implementing the approach I just sketched for you, would require overcoming opposition from the foreign policy establishment, and that would require someone with discipline, adroit political skills, and a very sophisticated knowledge of the world. Unfortunately, Trump lacks all three of those, and as I said earlier, the result is going to end up being the worst of both worlds. We will keep trying to run the world, but we're likely to do so even less effectively than we have in the past. 
	One last point here before I wrap up. Instead of ignoring democracy and human rights as issues, we should in fact promote them. We should promote them in the one way we might do so effectively, by setting a good example here in the United States. Spreading democracy by forceful regime change doesn't work. Creating a society others would want to emulate, because it looks so attractive to them, would be good for us here at home, obviously, but also I think ultimately good for others. Again, there is no sign that President Trump is doing anything that will make the United States look more appealing in the eyes of other countries. 
	The tragedy and the irony as well, is that the American people would almost certainly support a more realistic and a more prudent approach to the rest of the world. Getting out of the national building business, reducing our military footprint in Europe and the Middle East, seeking a realistic accommodation with Russia, restructuring our trade arrangements with China, focusing more attention on our partners in Asia, would all make sense. Doing this would free up some additional resources that could be used to improve the lives of Americans here at home. If Trump had implemented a policy like that, in a disciplined, gradual, careful way, I think his foreign policy would work. I think it would bolster support among his base, and it might even win him some new fans. The sad news is that he did not appear to have the temperament to pursue that sensible course. Instead he will pick fights to no good purpose, encourage instabilities in places we would rather were tranquil, continue to fuel anti-Americanism in various parts of the world, and act so erratically and unpredictably that even our friends begin to lose confidence in our reliability. Needless to say, none of that is in our interest. 
	When I contemplate the next three years or so, I am reminded of the statement that is usually attributed, perhaps incorrectly, but it's usually attributed to Count Otto Von Bismarck of Germany, is the statement being, "There appears to be a special providence that looks after drunkards, fools, and the United States of America." More than at any other time in my life, I hope Bismarck was right. Thank you. I will be happy to take questions.