 Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Michael Collins and I'm the Director General of the IIEA. Very pleased to welcome you all to this IIEA webinar this afternoon. We're particularly delighted to welcome and to be joined by Dr. Jessica Matthews, distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who joins us from Virginia near Washington today and Dr. Matthews will speak to us for about 20 minutes. And then we'll go to the usual Q&A with you, our audience, and you'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen and please feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you, and we will come to them once Dr. Matthews has finished her presentation. A reminder that today's presentation and the Q&A are both on the record. And please feel free to join the discussion on Twitter if you'd like to do so using the handle at IIEA. So just by way of introduction, let me just say that Dr. Matthews is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She served as Carnegie's president for 18 years and before her appointment in 1997, her career included posts in both the executive and the legislative branches of government, in management and research in the nonprofit arena, and in journalism and indeed in science policy. She was director of the Council of Foreign Relations Washington Program and a senior fellow from 1994 to 1997. Here she published her seminal 1997 Foreign Affairs article, Power Shift, chosen by the editors as one of the most influential in the journal's 75-year history. Dr. Matthews has published widely in newspapers and in foreign policy and scientific journals, and has co-authored and co-edited three books. She holds a PhD in molecular biology from the California Institute of Technology and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Radtiv College. Dr. Matthews, Jessica, welcome to the IAA, the floor is yours. Thank you, Michael, and it's a pleasure to be here with you at the outset because although I'm pretty close to Washington, it's quite a rural area and our internet connections are awful, and they may in fact be unstable while we're talking but we can keep our fingers crossed. Anyway, it is, it's an honor and a pleasure to be with you all. Since we're talking about American power after Afghanistan, I'd like to just briefly start there by saying that once the focus in the United States shifts from the last few weeks of the war to the 20 years of drift and shifting missions that preceded it. I think that the shock of losing the longest war in our nation's history may paradoxically open a window for an overdue reappraisal of American foreign policy. And that's what I'd like to talk with you about today. Before we turn to the future, let me just say briefly that I think there are three important lessons from Afghanistan that I think Americans might absorb. One is that that among colonial and post-colonial interveners, the United States has a record of being particularly bad about ignoring the history and the culture and the values of countries in which it intervenes. Generally not the result of not knowing what those are, but because we do have individuals who know them very well, but generally they are not in the room when high level top level policies being made. And secondly, history and culture are treated here as background or context rather than as critical factors that will determine the outcome and success or failure, as they own mistakenly did in Afghanistan. Second, it's important to know that what happened in Afghanistan was not caused by the lack of good intelligence. Thirdly, the commonest form of intelligence failure is the failure of civilian and military leaders to listen to what they don't want to hear. And that happened here. At the outset of his presidency, President Obama commissioned an emergency high level urgent 60 day study to shape US strategy in the war. He writes that the report, and this is his words, made one thing clear, unless Pakistan stopped sheltering the Taliban, our efforts at long term stability in Afghanistan were bound to fail. So US intelligence knew the connections between Pakistan and the Taliban that knew that they were deep and long lasting, and that Pakistan was providing a safe haven for Taliban fighters and leadership. The conclusion was obvious it should have been that the US must either somehow break that bond or cut its losses in nation building in Afghanistan. Instead, policymakers noted the problem tried unsuccessfully to address it and then went ahead anyway. The third lesson is that US policymakers in particular cannot rely on our military to conclude that admission is unachievable. The military's core value is can do its spirit is can do generals can identify difficulties in advance and they but once a mission is underway. They will insist that things are getting better or that they will get better with more money or more time or more troops or more weapons. They will not question the validity of the mission. And this has bedeviled us for this whole era of interventions. It means that a president who recognizes that the country has undertaken something that it cannot achieve has to at some point reject the advice of his general something that commentators and the press will kick him for President Biden didn't have rare moral courage in recognizing that and acting out. And finally and maybe this is the most important for our discussion today. Americans do have the habit of wildly exaggerating the consequences the bad consequences of its failures. In the last few months there's been talk of the end of empire, a return to isolationism and huge gains accruing to Russia and to China, which may instead be saddled with a continuing civil war in Afghanistan, and with the impacts, excuse me of growing opium production and Islamic extremism on their own peoples. Another talk with far greater reason greeted the end of the war in Vietnam, and 15 years later, the US won the Cold War and dominated the world. So I urge you and as well as Americans to discount much of what you hear about these awful consequences. So what might a reappraisal of American foreign policy entail. The first point I think may be the most difficult. And that is the clear need for fresh thinking about our strategies. In the 30 years since the end of the Cold War. There's been an extraordinary period of global change. In the 1990s and outbursts of multilateral diplomacy, we saw the creation of the European Union of the World Trade Organization, the transformation of the non proliferation treaty into a permanent agreement from a temporary one, and many other steps. At one point in the middle of that decade there were more international peacekeeping missions underway, then there had been in the 50 previous years combined. This was a huge period of multilateral action. At the same time globalization rapid change in technology, growing economic interdependence made board borders more porous and security harder to achieve and to maintain. Digital and nuclear technologies gave weak and failing states an unprecedented ability to threaten strong states. The facts of 911 brought the specter of terrorism, certainly to the US, the threat to the homeland for the first time since 1812. Far less of a change for Europe and most of the rest of the world but transformative for us. China in this period grew its GDP by an almost inconceivable 40 fold. It broke out of its posture as a passive recipient of rules and norms made in the West. Russia contending with the after effects of the sudden loss of empire became host to an aggrieved nationalism. At the end of the Cold War fewer than 2% of Russians saw the US as hostile. Today, that figure is about 60%. We saw the need for action to stem rapidly growing threats from a number of transnational issues, climate change, cyber warfare, pandemics, as well as conventional terrorism. This was a period of really unusual change and also of three enormous American missteps. The US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent the consequent destabilization of the Middle East. The global financial crisis hatched in the United States and of course the Afghan war. And I think I would add to that list. Trump's America first populism populist nationalism, which called into question long standing alliances embraced authoritarian rulers denigrated allies and withdrew the United States from an enormous range of international agreements and organizations, many of which it had founded. In the headlines, I should note that there were many moves that made it impossible for organizations such organizations to operate. For example, during the Trump administration the United States vetoed every nominee to the world trade organizations appellate body it's it's body of judges, keeping the number below the required quorum. And thereby depriving all 164 WTO member countries of the means to resolve disputes. Thinking dispassionately, one would expect that from a time of so much change, and several huge mistakes that it would be natural to call for a rethinking of assumptions and an effort to find new strategies. But all there has been so far has been a circular domestic debate among those who believe the US should exercise global leadership, generally unilaterally everywhere and on every issue. And those who favor a more restrained definition of interests, and a more multilateral method of execution. This debate has gone around and around and around basically depending on who's in the White House, without reaching any real conclusions. So, what might a new kind of foreign policy look like. And what might it's what might reasonable hopes for change entail. The first, I think, that is probably likely is that we have seen the end of the era of interventions that began in Bosnia, and has included Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and others. I think it will be a while before the US undertakes another such intervention. Secondly, on, I do think it is time and there is perhaps a window for a hard look at the notion of American exceptionalism that has underlay underlayed our foreign policy, certainly for the last three decades. It's, it's no news to you that our domestic situation now is very parlous, really quite ugly. And statistically, we have high income inequality, flat or declining intergenerational mobility. That is whether children can be expected to lead a better life than their parents, which has always been the core of the American dream and which no longer holds. We have deeply polarized politics, racial division, a population that is given to embracing wild conspiracy theories, a diminished sense of civic duty, and even a question mark beside the Senate quantum of democracy, namely the peaceful transition of power through elections. That's the power of our example, which President Biden is fond of mentioning dubious at best. It also means that thinking about policy reaching any kind of agreement on change in a country that seems now to be divided right down the middle, or perhaps 6040 is, is going to be very, very hard. But the, the facts are so hard to blink at that one can in a, in a some paradox of the way be helpful that Americans can reconsider our record of international leadership that also underlays this concept of American exceptionalism is is very questionable and open to rethinking as well. It is at least arguable that since the middle of the 1990s, when the US began to withhold its legally obligated dues first to the United Nations and then to a number of other international agencies. Its foreign policies have unbalanced weakened the world's capacity to, but I'm thinking that a discussion about this is beginning and has already begun. Among the agreements that the United States has rejected since the end of the Cold War. It's an extraordinary list indeed in the in 25 years United States Senate has only ratified one multilateral treaty and treaty which was hugely important. We are certainly aligned with our values. The Kyoto rejected. Yeah, you're just freezing there you just freezing there intermittently. So, please go ahead. So, I was just listing all the international treaties and agreements that the Senate has rejected in the period since the end of the Cold War. And then the organizations that the US has left, including during the just the last four years of the Trump presidency, the Trans Pacific partnership on trade. The INF treaty on intermediate range missiles. The UN Human Rights Council UNESCO and more and of course the Paris Accord on climate. We're glad to say we are now back and the Iran nuclear deal where I am hopeful that. Can you hear me now. Yes, we can. You're just again is breaking up every now then maybe you just go to audio Jessica from the time being. Okay, let me. Okay. All right. So, my point in listing all of these is that I said I think very few people recognize the degree to which the United States has in the last two to three decades, withdrawn itself from so many of these international agreements, and that in this case, its history and its culture has evolved so differently from the European Union, which has been involved, which in a unprecedented degree of sharing sovereignty while the US has been walking away from shared sovereignty. I am hopeful that if we can begin a rethink of foreign policy that this is this recognition will be on the table. So, to be more specific. Let me talk about some of these changes that we might that might we might see more quickly. linked to a rethinking of our self self portrayal of exceptionalism would are two long standing practices of which are linked to Americans belief in that exceptionalism which should be in my view, abandoned. One is the belief that shunning other countries that is refusing to formally recognize it, or to talk to its representatives is a useful exercise of American leadership, a gift that is something the US can bestow. To the contrary, there is a pretty clear record from Cuba, from Iran from Afghanistan and elsewhere that this American habit mostly hurts itself, and has crippled diplomacy where it is most needed, draining the modicum of trust that is necessary for successful negotiations, and requiring that the most difficult and important and delicate interactions be turned over to middleman, as the Iran negotiations currently are, where every interaction has to go through European representatives, meaning that so much less can possibly get done and no understanding builds between where it needs to come between the United States and Iran. A related practice is a heavy, I recall this almost a cousin of this practice of non recognition is a heavy over reliance on sanctions, especially unilateral sanctions. Which is equally unhelpful and should be drastically cut back. I don't mean to say that sanctions are not a useful tool foreign policy only that we have gotten into the habit of over using them. Here comes more difficult reconsiderations or rethinking. And that has to do with the reconsideration of the degree to which US foreign policy has come to rely almost entirely on military strikes. In the last 25 years, there have been only a few months when the US military has not been actively engaged somewhere in the world. That has created a world that expects us interventions, and that measures us seriousness by it, and encourages friends and allies to underspend on their own defense. Members, both Democratic and Republican leaders, members of Congress have lavished funding on the Pentagon, tolerating enormous waste in the interest of dollars spent in their own states and districts. At the same time, our foreign operations through the State Department and our embassies, other non defense operations have been chronically underfunded. As the defense budget has swelled, the gap has become truly grotesque. To give you a sense of that, President Trump's budgets proposed budgets for fiscal 1919, sorry, 2019 and 2020 proposed increases for the defense budget that were larger than the entire foreign operations budget and State Department budget. They are proposing massive cuts in the foreign operations budget. Congress rejected those proposals what is extraordinary is that they should even have been made. This disparity in funding translates into huge differences in operational strength. But generally the Pentagon is put in charge of missions for which it really is not suited, generally because it alone has the money and the resources that other agencies don't have to undertake them. And it's including humanitarian and governance duties for which it really is poorly suited. So, whether the US can begin to address that, and in our maybe in our discussion period we could talk about how there has been such enormous focus on the cost of President Biden's economic and social program build back better, where there is no public discussion of the continuing growth in the defense budget which is shortly going to approach $800 billion a year. Finally, we need a thorough reappraisal of Washington's policies on democracy promotion. And particularly in the last 15 years, Washington has acted as though democracy is the default political system. To the contrary, it is the most demanding of political systems that requires a literate relatively cohesive population and a bedrock of institutions that can take a century or more to build. Laying such a foundation can require commitment of many decades, as the British made in India, or the US and South Korea, but countries that would welcome a lengthy foreign occupation are extremely rare these days, if they exist at all. And domestic US support for such a commitment will only be sustained where its core strategic interest is unmistakably obvious to people. Major figures in the US have criticized the end of the war in Afghanistan for a disastrous lack of what they have called strategic patience. But I think that misses the point that the American public had grasped, which is that there was no strategic interest in the war as Washington was was prosecuting it. Finally, of course, it should not need to be said but it does because the US keeps trying that democracy cannot be delivered by force. So those. Well, let me let me just add one, one last thought. The belief that is evidently held by the Biden administration. That democracy is under a generalized attack from authoritarianism also needs to be rethought. Because dividing the world along this line democracies on one side authoritarian on the other greatly reduces the chance that the five major global problems. Such as proliferation, climate change, global health, cyber crime and financial stability that any of these can be successfully tackled, because there are simply too many authoritarian states whose active participation would be necessary. I want to be clear and in closing that the changes that I have advocated do not add up to a new foreign policy doctrine. Given the pace and the scope of recent global change and the depth of American political polarization. It's doubtful whether such an advance is currently possible. Moreover, some of the needed shifts are not within our own power to achieve because it will be some time before others see an American choice, not to intervene in some situation, or to remove a troop presence, or US base as something other than disengagement or retreat. The shifts that I have just sketched would amount, however, they would amount to a dramatic alteration in US practice since the end of the Cold War. And such an America would no longer see itself as as a cop walking the global beat as neoconservatives used to argue for in the 1990s. Or as realists now call for shrinking its interests, simply to threats from China and Russia. They would lead to a policy that is somewhat rebalanced between military and non military instruments. Far more restrained in the launching of military interventions. And why is there and more disciplined in their execution. More cognizant of the need for and the potential of multilateral institutions and agreements to solve problems. Less prone to unilateral and often self defeating behavior and more sensible in its attitudes towards promoting democracy elsewhere. They would mean in effect, an end to the tatters of hegemony to which the US has been clinging, and which a reconsideration of which is, I believe, overdue. Please stop there and I hope we can help I have provoked maybe an interesting discussion.