 Good afternoon. I'm Carol Christ. I'm the Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, and I'm delighted to welcome you to this special conversation between General HR McMaster and Lowell Bergman. This event is a collaboration between UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, the Institute for International Studies, and the College of Letters and Science. I can't imagine a more timely moment to have this conversation where we're all thinking about the challenges facing the free world, the case for responsible U.S. leadership in world affairs, and how that's all shaped by the media. I'm now going to introduce our two discussants. General HR McMaster is currently the Fuo and Michelle Ajame Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Bernard and Susan Lietow Fellow at the Freeman Spoli Institution, and a lecturer at the Stanford University School of Business. He was the 26th Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs during the Trump administration. After graduation from the United States Military Academy, General McMaster served as an active duty Army officer for 34 years. He holds a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He's the author of Battle Grounds, The Fight to Defend the Free World, and the award-winning book Der Election of Duty, Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the lies that led to Vietnam. General McMaster is a highly decorated general who's been awarded among many other honors, a silver star, a purple heart, and an Army Distinguished Service Medal. In 2017, General McMaster succeeded Michael Flynn as the President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor. He resigned from the position in March of 2018 and retired from the military in May. Loa Bergman is the Emeritus Riva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Reporting at the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley, where he founded the Investigative Reporting Program in 2006. Loa was a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series Frontline, a producer, reporter and director of investigative reporting at ABC News, and a producer for CBS's 60 Minutes. He's received many awards for his journalism, including a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, three Peabodies, and numerous Emmys. His reporting has investigated the tobacco industry, worker safety violations, the systematic violation of environmental laws, and al-Qaeda. Dean Henry Brady will close this program. He's the Dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy and the class of 1941 Monroe-Deutsch Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Berkeley. So I'm so much looking forward to this conversation. Hi, thank you, Carol. Carol Christ, the Chancellor. By the way, this event has been planned by the two of us for almost two years now, so it's a great pleasure to welcome General McMaster finally to Berkeley. I wanted to just mention quickly that the Goldman School of Public Policy has done a lot of work on this and made this possible, and thank Morris Smith, Professor Daniel Sargent, Professor Robert Powell, and Hannah Young of the school. Now, I want to reassure all of you out there that we're going to have time for questions at the end. We're going to try to make sure that we block that out, but we have a lot of time, a lot to talk about with General McMaster and welcome General McMaster to Berkeley. Finally, it's virtually this time, but hopefully in person pretty soon. And I want to start out and begin by talking with you about something that makes you really unique. You're the first National Security Advisor to be a real historian with that PhD in history from North Carolina. How did that prepare you, that background in studying history to become the National Security Advisor? What kind of perspective did that give you when you took on that job? Hey, thanks a lot for this opportunity. It's great to be with you. Thanks to Chancellor Chris for the warm welcome and for the opportunity and Dean Brady and all of you who signed in. I wish I could be there in person with you and it's a real privilege to talk with you. Hey, thanks for that question. So you actually asked a historian about is it important to study history? Well, I know, but from a practical perspective, working for a president who doesn't. It's a great question. Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I was walking down Walnut Street in Philadelphia, my hometown, and got a phone call on President's Day weekend, Friday at President's Day weekend. And it was Washington DC number asking me to go to Mar-a-Lago the next day to interview for the National Security Advisor job. It came quite out of the blue. I wound up going there on Sunday. Interview with the president on Sunday. He hired me on Monday. I flew back when Air Force One didn't live in Washington, was never stationed in Washington, was blown back to my house, came back Tuesday afternoon and started work. So there wasn't a heck of a lot of time to prepare. But what I was grateful for was the opportunity to have studied and researched and written about national security and foreign policy decision making into decisions and in the period that led to an American war in Vietnam. And so it was quite surreal to walk into the West Wing of the White House and into really what I thought was McGeorge Bundy's office, right? The National Security Advisor, who was a principal character in dereliction of duty. And of course, I resolved, as you might expect, I would to try to at least avoid making the same mistakes that I wrote about during that period of time. And foremost among those mistakes was the tendency in the run up to the Vietnam war to not really think holistically about the situation in Vietnam and the challenges that that pose and the nature of the conflict. We didn't, we didn't spend enough time, those leaders at the time didn't spend enough time applying design thinking and understanding the nature of the problem. So you are put into place in the National Security Council staff, what we call it a principal small group framing session where before we talked about, hey, what are we going to do about tax challenge to national security, right? Chinese economic aggression and Chinese efforts to establish exclusionary areas of primacy across the Indo Pacific and challenge us globally. We first said, okay, what is the nature of this challenge? What are our vital interests that are at stake? The second big lesson was that we went to war in Vietnam without a clearly understood and clearly articulated objective. And in fact, George Bundy had argued, hey, it's an advantage not to have an objective because then if we lose in Vietnam itself, hey, we never wanted a free and independent South Vietnam anyway, and it would give in George Bundy's words, Lyndon Johnson flexibility in the domestic political realm and this is why one of the chapters in that book is entitled war without direction, right? And then the third, the third lesson that I brought in with me that I tried to administer a corrective to do not make the same mistakes was that there was a tendency for President's advisors to try to decide, hey, what is Lyndon Johnson, why? What advice does he want to hear? And then they gave him what he wanted. And they gave him the single course of action, the course of action based on this flawed strategy of graduated pressure. But it was a strategy designed, designed really to allay the President's concerns that Vietnam would undo his domestic political agenda. And that was the fourth lesson is to try to create a process that was relatively insulated from partisan political considerations and to develop and assess courses of action for the President, options for the President based on what it was in our long-term interest. Knowing, well, hey, there are going to be people who are going to have their say, right, on the domestic political side as part of it. But I didn't want that to be infected in the process. And this is one of the reasons why I rewrote the National Security Policy Memorandum and changed the composition of the National Security Council staff. Now, in retrospect, in your book, in battlegrounds, you go through all the disappointments and disasters, the wars that we've been in from Iraq to Afghanistan, you go through the situation with Iran, even climate change. And you say that our missteps are due to something called strategic narcissism. I thought at first maybe you were reflecting on this psychiatric profile of the President, but you had something else in mind. Could you explain why you think there's a thread that goes through all of these major missteps and catastrophes in some cases? Well, this is, I think, the principal cause of our loss of strategic competence. The loss of our strategic competence, especially after the end of the Cold War. Strategic narcissism is meant to describe this phenomenon of which we tend, Americans tend to define the world only in relation to us. The problem with that is it's self-referential, and it doesn't acknowledge the degree that the other or others have agency and influence and authorship over the future. And therefore, we tend to create an understanding of the situation that comports with really what we would prefer to do rather than what the situation demands. We select limitations on the degree of influence and agency that we have over complex challenges and problems. And I think this tendency grew out of optimism, optimism that grew at the end of the Cold War. You know, we had reason to be optimistic, right? We witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War without firing a shot. We had the lopsided military victory in the Gulf War in 1991. And I think we bought in low to these three assumptions that I write about in Battlegrounds about the post-Cold War world, assumptions that turned out to be false and fundamentally flawed. And the first among these is that there was this arc of history that had guaranteed the primacy of our free and open societies over closed and authoritarian systems. Ideological competition was a relic of the past, was passe. Related to that was this notion that a great power competition. It was also a relic of the past. It was over, right? So even collapse China had not really yet grown in power significantly. And then the third assumption was that our technological military prowess would ensure our security far into the future. If O had the temerity of challenging the United States, that war would be waged quickly, cheaply and efficiently. But what I write about in Battlegrounds most, this was a setup. It was a setup for strategic shocks and disappointments in the 2000s, foremost among them, the 9 11 mass murder attacks, the most devastating terrorist attacks in history. And then, of course, the unanticipated length and difficulty of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we often want to debate, hey, should we have done it? Meaning, should we have invaded Iraq in 2003? I think we ought to debate more often who the heck thought it would be easy? And why did they think it would be easy? And then, of course, we have the financial crisis 2008 2009. And I think it was at that moment, at that moment when the Obama administration came into power, that that pendulum swung from over optimism, maybe some complacency associated with over optimism, and and a tendency to undervalue the costs and the risks of action, pessimism, and resignation, and a tendency to underestimate the costs and risks of inaction or disengagement. And I think we saw examples of that in the complete disengagement from Iraq in 2011, December 2011, and declaring that we're over when in fact our departure helped set the conditions for the rise of ISIS al Qaeda in Iraq 2.0 really, and left ISIS ultimately in control of territory the size of Britain. I think also you could see it in the, in the decision against enforcing the red line in Syria after Syria committed mass murder of innocent civilians with the most heinous weapons on earth. You could see it maybe in Libya where the Obama administration, in an effort to avoid what it perceived as the flaws in the Bush administration's approach to the Middle East actually exceeded those flaws. I'm not helping to speak Gaddafi by not, but by not doing anything to shape the political outcome. So, so, so low the argument in the book is hey, instead of strategic narcissism, replace it with strategic empathy, and in particular pay attention to the agency that others, including our adversaries, maybe especially rivals and enemies have over the future course of events. But, but you were, you were in the national security advisor for 1516 months right. And did you 1313 months okay 13 months. Don't you see what you were, what you were trying to do unravel and since then, how do you feel now that you look at the negotiations in Doha with the Taliban. You know, of course, you know, the president can do what the president wants to do in the area of foreign policy largely of course under the oversight and with, you know, with some checks on in connection with Congress. But I saw it as my job will is to is to give the president access to the best analysis and advice across the departments and agencies and to give him multiple options. And it was in the discussion of those multiple options and the comparison of them that the president oftentimes went against his predilections went went against what he instinctively had thought that he would do as president I think the most dramatic example of that is what we already alluded, which was the approval of this, the South Asia strategy in in August of 2017. I think that was the first time really low that we have had a sustainable reason sound policy strategy in place for Afghanistan I mean sadly, the Afghan Wars not a 20 year long war it's a one year war fought 20 times over. We already alluded and I'm sure that everyone who's here tonight knows, President backed away from that plan and prioritized as the Obama administration had disengagement from Afghanistan over what I believe is our enduring interest there which is to ensure that large portions of population centers strategic locations don't again come under the control of the Taliban and thereby also jihadist terrorist organizations aligned with them such as al-Qaeda, but also other groups, prevent another attack on scale of 911. I believe that our level of commitment there had gotten down to a sustainable level over time that was enabling the Afghans to take the brunt of the fight against the Taliban and to preserve the freedoms that the Afghan people have enjoyed since 2001. So I, of course, I regret, you know, back in back and off of the strategy that President approved and it was a good decision in 2017 and 2017 and a bad decision, you know, in 2018 2019 and into this year. Other policies and strategies though low I think stuck right I think the approach to China is shifting approach to China was long overdue and I think that that's a strategy and a policy that will largely be an element of continuity between Trump administration and the Biden administration. Well, let me go back to the Afghanistan question because it looks from the outside, like we now believe apropos of your strategic narcissism that somehow the Taliban isn't going to go back and do exactly what they say they're going to do and what they did last time. Aren't the women of Afghanistan at risk. Is it a tragedy like Vietnam. It's why I think it could be worse even low. I mean, you know, I think that what you will see in Afghanistan will be disastrous for the Afghan people. But it also will be a boon to jihadist terrorist organizations. They're already over 20 US designated terrorist organizations that exist in this terrorist ecosystem along the Afghanistan Pakistan border. And these are groups that in some ways are stronger today than al-Qaeda was on September 10, 2001. One of the reasons they're stronger is because they are orders of magnitude larger than the Mujahideen era, you know, alumni the alumni of the resistance to Soviet occupation and of course it was elements of that of that alumni who joined al-Qaeda and who committed the 11 tax members of it. So I think that that we have a problem that is large in scale and I'm talking about really the al-Qaeda alumni, the ISIS alumni, the masjid al-Tayiba alumni. These are some of the most deadly and brutal, you know, inhumane terrorist organizations in the world. But they of course are in pursuit as well of some of the most destructive weapons on earth. We are experiencing and seeing I think kind of the democratization of destruction in which many of these non-state actors now have capabilities or are pursuing them. So we are in a period I think of increasing danger and our disengagement, our disengagement from this complex problem alongside partners right across allies and coalitions and especially with our indigenous partners in Afghanistan. I think also increases the risk to us and to all humanity. And yet we don't see very much about those consequences in the media and in the news, while we talk about ongoing negotiations. Hey, well, where's the humanitarian outrage, right? I mean, you know, we have conjured up the enemy we would prefer in Afghanistan rather than the real enemy in connection with the Taliban. And you already alluded to, you know, we've tried too hard to disconnect the dots, right? We've described the Taliban as having a bold line right between their organization and groups like al-Qaeda and the Heqani network and so forth that there is no bold line. And also we've assumed, you know, hey, the Taliban will be better, they'll be more benevolent, right? They'll implement a more benign version of Sharia. What does that mean? I mean, is that mass executions in the soccer stadium every other Saturday? Is that every other girl's school bulldozed? In some of the areas where the Taliban have taken control during the offenses that they conducted during the peace talks, they've gone into communities and destroyed the schools in these communities already. So, you know, I think that this is an element of self-delusion, self-delusion based on this tendency towards strategic narcissism. Now, I have one thing about your book that you go through, whether it's the Paris Accords, the Iran deal, Iraq, Iran, and how we look at them and using strategic narcissism as the sort of your Occam's razor for trying to understand what's going on and what's real and what's not. And yet you yourself oppose getting out of the Paris Accords, oppose getting out of the Iran deal, and want to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan. So it seems like- Well, yeah, I mean, well, that's because I was viewing these challenges through the lens of our vital interests. So to take those just quickly one by one, I argued to stay in the Paris Accord because I thought we needed to work within the Paris Accord over time to get to real solutions on climate change. But as I write in the final chapter of Battlegrounds, now as I've done more research and I've learned more about the interconnected problems of climate and environment and energy security and food security and water security, the Paris Climate Accord is a danger, right? It's a danger because it gives us a false sense of security. It actually has done nothing to address the problem of global warming and the principal cause which is man-made carbon emissions. And so I think it's time for us really to seek what Professor Richard Müller, who's a great physicist there at Cal Berkeley says, hey, we need real solutions, no more non-solutions to the problem of climate change. And that's what I advocate for in Battlegrounds. And on the Iran nuclear deal, you know, the title of that chapter is a bad deal. I thought it was a bad deal. Maybe it wasn't the worst deal ever, as President Trump has said, as historian, we tend to shy away from making those kind of hyperbolic claims. But it was a bad deal and it was a bad deal because we made too many concessions, right? It was a weak agreement, the sunset clause, inadequate verification regime. I mean, do you really trust the Iranians? I don't think we should, you know? And then it didn't address the missile program. And then of course the biggest problem is it divorced really that agreement, that weak agreement in which we made so many concessions that it really became a political disaster masquerading as a diplomatic triumph. We gave a big payoff to the Iranians in terms of really cash up front, but then in the form of the relaxation of sanctions. Hey, what did they do with that money? I mean, I covered this in the book. They applied that money to their four decade long proxy war against the great Satan, us, the little Satan, Israel, the Arab monarchies. And so my recommendation on Iran is, hey, force that regime to make a choice, right? You can either be welcomed into the international community and enjoy the benefits of it, or you can be essentially a terrorist state. You can't have it both ways. And I think one of the greatest flaws of the JCPOA is it did in effect empower Iran across the greater Middle East and did so in a way that accelerated and intensified the sectarian civil war in the region that has caused so much human suffering and caused really a humanitarian and a political catastrophe in the region. So before I want to make sure we get we bring this this in a sense this story back home. Are we guilty of strategic narcissism by avoiding listening carefully to what President Trump or watching what President Trump is doing now undermining the election that's an election that resulted in him losing. Are we avoiding what we're actually hearing from the tens of millions of people apparently who follow President Trump that for example, Michael Flynn former Lieutenant General. I'm sure you know General Flynn now advocating that the president suspend the Constitution and do another election. Is there a possibility really of and this seemed to come out while your book was coming out of the worry about real civil strife maybe civil war here at home. Yeah, I would say well, we shouldn't worry about it. I'm telling you it can't happen here. It can't happen here. I'm just saying hey you know let's let's look at the facts right let's look at what our what our what our founders set up our founders set up a system of government based on a bunch of worst case scenarios right these were people who had in their historical memory. The bloody wars of England in the 17th century and and so they designed the whole thing for a worst case scenario. They designed it for like an Oliver Cromwell right who is worse than Donald Trump right and and so what they did is they put into place a system in which the executive branch has no role in the transition. If the American people do the voters do you know and if there are challenges to the to the to the to the sanctity of our electoral system and charges of fraud those are adjudicated and they have been adjudicated, which shows the strength of our judicial system and the strength of due process and rule of law in our country. You know there's a lot of lamentation about you know hey gosh is he going to leave like you know he doesn't have a say if he's going to leave or not. You know if there weren't enough electoral votes to deliver decisive outcome which is obviously not the case, then it would go to the House of Representatives again, executive would have no role in this. And so low I just think that there's been a lot of hyperbole hyperbole about it, you know predictions of the demise of our democracy. Many of those predictions have been based on gosh look how divided we are. Hey, you know records numbers of Americans voted right and and of course if we weren't divided we'd be a one party system that looks that looks like China to me, not a good place spot to be in. So you know I'll tell you I just I reject this idea that, you know that we're living in Weimar Germany that some as some people have alluded. And we don't want to be complacent about the strength of our democratic institutions and processes, but but we also ought to not be, you know, unrealistically, you know pessimistic about it. President should be, you know, he should be criticized condemned for, you know, for this demagoguery, you know, for making false claims, you know, about about corruption and, and raising doubts about about the security of our electoral system. You know, what's what's what's sad about it is that is that the Trump administration vastly improved our deal with the security of our elections with cyber infrastructure security agency and what Sean and his team did there of course that you got fired. Right. Yeah. So, so, but you know, I'll tell you a little, we're going to survive this right we've been through worse, we've been through worse. And we're coming out of of course a quadruple crisis right it's a, it's a crisis as you as you mentioned of confidence, I think in who we are as a people in our democratic principles and institutions and processes and it's a crisis of the pandemic it's a crisis of the recession associated with the pandemic it's a, it's a crisis associated with the social divisions and racial divisions laid bare by George Floyd's murder and the, and the protests and the violence that followed and the, and the grave and legitimate concerns about inequality of the community in our country and unequal treatment under the wall, and this crisis of this, because this vitriolic partisan presidential election that we that we're still in the midst of okay but, but hey you know we're going to get through it well. And I think it's incumbent on all of us to bring our fellow Americans together, you know to have respectful, meaningful discussions right about the challenges that we face as a way to work together. And in the light in the book, I think in these challenges to national security, and these interconnected problems that we're facing. If we just began our discussions to try to have a better understanding of the problems, and then started really a conversation with a what do we agree on, and we can get a heck of a lot done. Well, you know, and, and, and what I'm concerned about is the centripetal forces you know that are pulling us apart from each other in many ways in the pandemic hasn't helped you know but in many ways this is already a trend. We are better connected to one another electronically, but we're distant from one another psychologically and emotionally and I think all of us have a role in bringing our fellow Americans together in a respectful environment in which we empathize with one another. You work together for a better future. You, you allude towards the end of your book that and a little bit in the beginning about the fact that and the fact that most Americans to get their information over and through the internet. And it's what it's the Wild West anything goes and we know that tens of millions of people believe things that are demonstrably false, like the election was rigged. That it wasn't the safest election in history. And there's a lot of anger out there. How are you going to change that reality. Well, I think it's what you're doing at Berkeley. It's what you're doing there. It's what Chancellor Christ is doing. It's what Dean Brady, and all the students especially and faculty which is to educate one another to educate ourselves. And I write in battlegrounds this was essentially a continuation of my own self education. And I think the greatest strength of our nation is an educated populace. I think it's a lack of education that leads people to seize on orthodoxies to seize on on conspiracy theories. And it's really ignorant what I've seen in places low where the situation's really bad. Where these there is tribalism and tribal identity and disunity and conflict and struggles for our and resources right what what what the problem is there oftentimes is ignorance. And that ignorance is used to foment hatred, and then hatred is then used to justify violence right. That's a cycle we don't want to see in our country. I think education education education are the top three answers to that to that question. But then also it's we need reforms right we need reforms in government. Hey you know I think we should be proud of, we should be proud of the great achievement of our revolution and the radical idea that sovereignty lies neither with King or Parliament but what the people right and celebrate the fact we have a saying how we're at the same time we can be disappointed that the unalienable rights in our constant in our in our Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights in our Constitution went unrealized and realized in part because it took us a hundred years to remove the greatest blame on our history, which is the institution of slavery, but we should be able to take pride in the fact that we emancipated 4 million of our fellow Americans in our most destructive war in history. And of course again we can be disappointed, recognizing that a republic requires that continuous nurturing like our founders said it would with the failure of reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow and the Ku Klux Klan and separate but equal, but then again celebrate the triumph of the civil rights movement and the dismantlement of this De Jorah segregation and De Jorah inequality of opportunity, recognizing we still have de facto segregation and inequality of opportunity that's something to work on, that's something we can work on together. You know, and so I think that that we need a better and a better informed view of history, I think well, and you've seen this in your generation, I think especially since the Vietnam War, in the academy of the academy in the humanities has been dominated in large measure by the orthodoxy of the new left interpretation of history, and and it has the cutting through it, a mild form of self loathing. And hey man we want to remain critical, we don't want you know a contrived happy view of our history. At the same time, oh wait, wait, wait, wait a second here. Richard Wurte said, well, as Richard Wurte said, you know, the national pride is to nations with self respect is to individuals, you know, a necessary ingredient for self improvement. And so, you know, we all have work to do, I would say your profession has some work to do. I think the fourth estate is in bad shape. And I think I think it's in bad shape because it's been caught up in this vitriolic partisan polarization that we've seen. It's exacerbated by the pseudo media, and the, and the, you know, the conspiracy theories that sometimes our leaders aid and event, including the like this crazy Q and A stuff. And then you have, you know, the social media which uses algorithms based on the adversities country companies to make more and more advertising dollars to show us more and more extreme content and pull us further and further apart from each other. Okay, yeah, this is a big problem. Okay, but it's a problem that we can work on together. I believe we can come together as Americans and work on it, work on it together. So, some people I know are out there, want to know, you know, want to know things that are in your next book. So let's try a question from Douglas Goldman, General McMaster. Why do you think is just the book is just the my, my, my, my, the cookbook I'm working on low. Yeah, the cookbook, right. That'll tell us how you how you cook the books with Donald Trump. This is the question. Why do you think Donald Trump cow towels to Vladimir Putin, Mr. Goldman wants to know. Well, you know, I write about this, I write about this in in battlegrounds, you know, and, and what I try to do is I try to place this, what I see is irrational behavior on the part of the president that gives Putin, you know, too much of the benefit of doubt and it doesn't call them out for even the most egregious, the most egregious aggression against us, right. This is enabling Putin's implausible deniability, right. But I put it in the context of strategic narcissism. These are the Russia across three administrations. George HW Bush looking into Putin's soul remember that and and then you had Secretary Clinton, bringing the reset button to Donald Trump and Geneva, President Obama leading over to Medvedev who was keeping the seat warm, you know, for Putin saying hey well more flexibility after the election, and trading off of missile defenses and Poland in the hope of a better relationship with Vladimir Putin. And then you have of course have President Trump's inexplicable behavior, you know, Helsinki, you know, was, I thought I was gone. And, and, and the reluctance. Well, why do you think he does. Let me let me bring you back to the question. What you hear him say, what you hear him say right. I write about this extensively in battleground so I think ignorance of history contributes to it right. I mean there is this narrative. That hey, it rushes just you know they're a natural ally because they were allies during World War two. Well you know this the show is really the danger of knowing just a little bit of history, or abusing it right. And people forget about the Molotov-Ribbentrop Act and the fact that that the Soviet Union was complicit with with Nazi Germany, and that we were an ally that was not of by design. It was by necessity after after the Nazis invaded them in June of 1941 so I mean I just think, you know I think that you know there are, you know, there are there are explanations involved in lack of understanding of history, and seeing seeing Putin as as the bull work right the bull work against jihadist terrorists right and, and this affinity with him for that reason. And, and, and you know this is self delusional right Vladimir Putin as I write in the book is driven by a sense of honor lost and an obsession with restoring Russia to national greatness okay well a Russia can't compete with on our on our own terms right the economy is the size of Italy economy. So what Putin's theory of the game you know his strategy is to drag us all down. You need the last man state in Europe and, and these be Europe in the United States and, and to do so mainly through a sustained campaign of political subversion, a component of which is cyber enabled information warfare against us. And I think that you know the President has aided and abetted Putin by not calling out this behavior, not pulling the curtain back on it which is really the first step in encountering it. And, and so I you know I think that, you know across the political spectrum, what we what we need to do, I think is demand better of our political leaders. You've seen the tendency, I think on the part of the present certainly and most dramatically in recent days and weeks, but also in among other political leaders as well. It's a tendency to compromise our principles to score partisan political points. You know, I think the American people have to expect better of their of their leaders and, and ensure that they act in our interest. You don't get, you don't get nervous. When you see the President remove the Secretary of Defense and put someone with literally no background in administering a major department. And putting in the undersecretary role of someone who you dismissed from the National Security Council, a young man, a low low low low. When are we going to stop talking about Donald Trump. I hope so man. I mean I think you know a low, you know, I mean of course this is cause for concern. I mean a period of transition is already a turbulent period and what you want is you want your leaders to ensure a degree of stability and to ensure a smooth transition. Well I think the question then but that's not Donald Trump's DNA but but also I'll tell you well. Let's stop talking about Donald Trump. Is he just really a passing phenomenon but there still are tens of millions of people who believe and want change in a direction that he represents. Is he just the first part of a way. It's a democracy right. I mean, there are, there are, I think there are very encouraging results from this election. There are people who didn't want to sign up for the Democratic agenda. So, but they didn't like Trump so what did they do they voted against Trump and they voted down ticket for the Republican Party hey that's a good thing right that shows that our politics have become personalized and the people are voting on issues as they see them and what's in the best interest of of them and their families right you know what about this idea that that there was a hard block of minorities that was going to vote one way or the other. Well large numbers of minorities voted for the Republican Party as well as we ought to celebrate that we don't want people to define what political party they vote for based on the color of their skin. That's crazy right so you know I think there's some encouraging results low I've you know I'm not I'm not ready like you apparently are to announce the demise of our republic. No so so you know of course these are causes for concern but but we ought to also have confidence in the strength of our institutions right we're not a monarchy I mean heck we fought a revolution over there. So, one of one of the people Phil Strauss writes, and wants to know before we run out of time, what is Trump like to work on a day to day basis. What is he like to be well it's kind of you know, a well oil machine it's harmonious. I'm joking okay but he's a unique guy right he's a unique person and and and you know he was elected president and my job was to to you know to ensure that he got access to the best advice and analysis across the departments and agencies that I gave him multiple options. When we did that it was effective. Now, you know I left you know after 13 months I can't really speak to what happened after I left. But but while I was there. I saw it as my duty right I mean I served in the army for 34 years this is my fifth commander in chief. And to provide the elected president with with options. I think there are those who took a different approach to their duties and responsibilities and I think this is really kind of the case and every white in us right there are those who are there to do as I was doing is as a career military officer who by the way I'd. I've never voted and I know that sounds strange I vote now and I encourage all Americans to vote. But I wanted to keep you know obviously a bold line between the military profession and partisan politics and I felt that it was important for me to take that the extreme position that George Marshall had done and taken and to not to not vote so I sworn into West Point when I was 17 years old and I just the last the first time I voted was in this last presidential election. So so you know I, I was biased already in favor of doing my best to provide the elected president options. There are many civil servants were also in that category I think Fiona Hill provided a great example of the civil servant who served with with great distinction and there are many many others with whom I interacted across the department today and season on the but there's a second group of people. They come into an administration, because they don't want to give the present options they want to manipulate decisions, consistent with their own agenda right on, you know, immigration or on, you know, power up and great important whatever it is right and, and, and what they try to do is, is to undermine a process that gives options and instead doing and runs and then there's a third group of people who kind of define themselves in the role of saving the country maybe the world from the present. Right this is the, you know the anonymous author and so forth. The problem with that second and third group of people is they're undermining the Constitution of the United States, because sovereignty lies with the people, and only the elected leaders are directly responsible to the people and, and that's the president and the vice president, of course it's elected members of Congress, and, and these long term civil servants and others. Hey, nobody elected me, nobody elected them to make policy. And so I think it's really important when you serve in the government to understand what your role is. Maybe time, when you feel as if you continuing your duties and responsibilities will enable illegal action, or maybe enable unethical action, and hey that's time for you to go, right, but, but if you're there to serve the elected president, you're not there to make your own policies, or to obstruct that president's legal decisions to do so undermines our democracy. So, I got a Berkeley question for you, which has to do with dereliction of duty comes both from a Frank new house, new house or and of course you know the name. Anyway, it comes from Frank new house or and, and, and it's about dereliction of duty. Do you think the military would have won the Vietnam War, if a civilian government had led to the military operate freely. That would have been a good idea was the Vietnam War a good idea. What I write what I write about in dereliction do is very consistent with the greatest story of the Vietnam War George herrings interpretation is that, if that's really the right question is whether or not the war could have been one that we could have guaranteed really the freedom of independence of South Vietnam at a cost acceptable to the American public. I think that the answer to that is no what I write about in in dereliction of duty though, is how the way in which the war in Vietnam, the way the decisions were made, prevented any consideration of the long term costs and consequences, and therefore, in retrospect kind of it looks like Linda Johnson wanted to go and work. The war in Vietnam but he wanted to do nothing, nothing of the sort. So it didn't the word didn't come with the decision for war. I mean the war in Vietnam slunky and on cat's feet, right and, and that's what the story of the book is about is how the President's advisors compromise principle for expediency and hoped over time to get adopted. The strategy that they wanted, and they were complicit therefore and foreclosing on the kind of discussion that was necessary. If not discussion is particularly important in matters of war, which are really matters of life and death. It was the name Daniel Ellsberg that was flew out of my mind because I spoke spoke with him the other day and, and he his question is, if the military had gotten its way over Johnson, they wanted to bomb all the way to the Chinese border. We would have had a world war or a nuclear war as a result. No. Well, the question is, do you do worry. Do you think that the military strategy that that Johnson was against was something that should have should have gone into effect. I'm going to read the book man you read it at the time and you sent me a nice note on it so I mean, of course I don't. I don't cover that in the book and I don't argue that that I don't argue that the joint sheets and staff's proposals should have been should have been approved right in fact what what is important I think about the book and if the story of derelicts and beauty is really the joint sheets and staff proposed nothing of the sort. Instead what they decided to do is to mask those long term costs and consequences and the degree of military action resolute action, as well as the numbers of troops that they thought were necessary, just to get the next step up the ladder, just get the first bombing runs off. Well going back to January of 64 just get the first covert raids going under op plan 34 alpha, then just get the first bombing runs off, then just get the first troops deployed. And so it was this gradual approach to the to the to these to these decisions that mass the long term costs and consequences. If Lyndon Johnson had been confronted with the results of two war games in 1964, both of which concluded with in 1968 right was a projection for over four years from 64 to 68. The war game ended in 1968 with 500,000 troops in South Vietnam, with no prospect for success and the American people losing faith with the effort. Hey, sound familiar. And but but of course these, you know that these repeat these results were disregarded. And, and, and so what I argue in the book is hey these were people who not only should have known better, but who did know better and who did it anyway. Okay, we have we have a question about China and because we've passed over it. I want to ask you this question from Chris who've made it. Could you talk more about the tussles with China, especially the technology struck the struggle about Huawei. What's your long, our long game, if there's a risk of becoming less competitive by being more belligerent with China. Well, I would say we're not being belligerent with China. Hey, let me just tell you what I think are the three misunderstandings to be a little bit Chinese here. These are the three misunderstandings about the competition with China. The first of these is hey, this is a US China problem. And I think because of our new or statistic view and because a lot of people don't like Donald Trump, I know that might come as a surprise. The interpretation is well, Donald Trump is just so mean and belligerent, darn it, that Xi Jinping is acting out against that meanness of belligerence. Let's just take a look at the record just this year alone right. How about wasting COVID-19 on the world. How about how about going after and punishing the doctors that were trying to raise the alarm bells. How about subverting the World Health Organization against its very purpose. How about adding insult to injury with wolf warrior diplomacy across the globe, especially in Europe but across the globe. How about bludgeoning Indian soldiers to death on the Himalayan frontier. How about boasting that you're going to put additions on the on the concentration camps in which you've been turned 1.5 million Uighurs because because they really like being reeducated as Xi Jinping said in the last month. How about extending the party's repressive arm into Hong Kong. How about aggressive actions and sinking Malaysian and Vietnamese vessels in the South China Sea just in recent months. What would be the largest land grab in history in in in this if they succeed. The threats toward Taiwan. Look at the economic coercion at Australia. Hey, how about cyber attacks on our medical research facilities in the middle of trying to develop a vaccine to get us out of the darn pandemic. Hey, OK, explain to me again. How about taking your Canadian hostages right for now going on two years in captivity and Xi Jinping saying hey what do you mean you know I was just taking as part of our farm policy right. How is this a US China problem. This is a free world China problem. Yet the second misunderstanding is that there hasn't been international cooperation that there really has been international cooperation. And then the final was that the final one is that hey we face a stark choice right between either accommodation of the party or disastrous war. Okay, there's a lot of middle ground there, in which we can compete in a transparent way, and with partners to over time hopefully convince the Chinese Communist Party, they can have enough of a stream of national adjuvation without doing so at the expense of its own people and stifling human freedom inside of China, or at accomplishing its objectives at our expense the rest of the world's expense. And so that's the approach I think we really have to take is one of transparent competition and it's long it was long overdue I believe it when I came into the job as national security advisor. I think it's the most significant shift in us part foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, and it was long overdue and it was necessary. It's been imperfectly implemented. You know I don't know what what what what steel and aluminum turrets on our allies, you know how that helps us get to China's problem for example. There are some own goals in this but hey, I think this will be an element of continuity with the Biden administration. I worked very hard to make this a bipartisan policy at the outset. And I believe that the view that we have to compete much more effectively, you know, is a strongly held among among you know House members like Nancy Pelosi and senators like Chuck Schumer, as it is among the Republican counterparts for example. Well it's a natural point to ask, what do you think of the Biden administration to be the people he's appointing the policies he's talking about for instance reopening negotiations with Iran. How does that hit you. Well I mean you know hey listen these are these are these are great American citizens and certain public servants right I think we have to get out of this personalization of politics right we have to have respect for one another. We can we can disagree with each other. You know there's probably not a whole heck of a lot that certain members of the administration I agree on it from a foreign policy perspective hey but it's okay that's all right. You know and, and, and I wish them all the best I want him to succeed, I think the, that President like Biden's message to the American people about being a president for all Americans has been immensely positive and, and, and, and, and welcome. I think that some of the approaches to foreign policy are certainly nascent as you would expect because they're not even present not sworn in yet. But, but I you know I think there's a lot of talk about strengthening our alliances and that's good. Okay, but I think I would just say hey, your alliances are a lot more than you know a positive atmosphere in cocktail cocktail parties you know with our European allies right the alliances have to be for a purpose and I think there's an opportunity to galvanize more international cooperation on the threat from the Chinese Communist Party for example strengthening NATO against Russia's political subversion and acts of aggression that fall below the threshold that might elicit the military response. There is a way I think to galvanize multinational support for I think what is necessary a slight reversal, a reversal to the approach to Afghanistan, whether they'll do that or not I'm not sure. I think in many ways low, the greatest deficiencies in Trump administration policy has been where the Trump administration doubled down on the deficiencies of the Obama administration policy right but, but of course you know people learn from the past and I hope that they'll resist the impulse to do two things right once one is to hey try to turn the clock back to 2016, because I think that we were in a really difficult and disadvantageous position in 2016. And the second thing that I hope they resist doing is defining your foreign policy mainly as in opposition to the previous administration's foreign policy, and they look at these challenges on their own terms and recognize that there will be elements of continuity as I think on the on the China policy for example, and I think that they're there by necessity there'll be some elements of discontinuity. But I think the mistake you know turn the clock back. Turn the clock back on China. There would be a mistake huge mistake. Yeah, a huge mistake. And they won't do it I don't think they'll do it. I mean I really I think that you know I think that there's there's a great deals I mentioned a bipartisan support for the competitive approach to China. And if I could give you any advice would be hey don't fall for it. And it is Chinese Communist Party false promises for cooperation, like on climate change for example, in exchange, right for going back to a policy of cooperation engagement with China. I think we just made this speech right we said hey we're going to be carbon neutral by 2060. Watch what he is doing. They're building 70 coal fired plants a year, right, each one of those plants is probably many of you know, burns, you know a ton of coal every 10 seconds right and so these are plants that they're building not only in China, but across Africa. Right the largest carbon emitter in Kenya has just been constructed by China thank you, you know right next to a UNESCO World Heritage site right so hey I think we can't buy what Xi Jinping says, he quotes, you know, in the in the language of cooperation, an extremely aggressive policy in the language of a, you know, a community of common destiny. Hey, what does that look like, you know, look at some Bob way. That's the China model perfected at a micro scale. How's that working out for some Bob wheels. So I think, you know, we have to be clear right about the threat, and we have to watch what China does. Don't listen to what they say, because they're these are false promises. Okay, well we're, we're getting close to the end and I got a, I got a question from the East Coast. Are you, are you still a Phillies fan. For sure, and you know I'm an Eagles fan too which is very sad at the moment, you know, but, but, you know, we'll get through it, you know, fill it up he's been through our time she's like our democracy right we got our ups and downs you know but we remain strong and, and I think the Phillies with some relief pitching. You know, could do it could do it next year. I think with that, and with time getting close. I want to introduce Dean Brady, the head of the public policy school, and thank him actually for hosting all of this and being supportive of bringing you to campus and Dean Brady take it away and thank you. General McMaster. So what was fun. Thanks. Well, thanks to Carol Chris for the introduction, thank you to Lowell Bergman and General McMaster for a spirited and fascinating discussion of where we are in foreign policy in America right now. Thanks to Daniel Sargent for the cosponsoring this through the Institute of International Studies, the College of Letters and Sciences for cosponsoring it with us. Also, I want to tell you a little bit about a new center we're starting with Goldman school that's being started by Janet Napolitano, former president of the University of California, former Secretary of Homeland Security and former Governor of Arizona. Her new center is going to be on politics and security, and it's going to try to look at things like election security, climate change security, tech sector security, pandemic security, the kinds of issues the long term issues that I think we face. I think we face as a crucial part of our future security in America and around the world so we're really excited about the center. Stay tuned you'll hear a big announcement we hope in January of exactly where the center is going and what it's going to be doing. I want to thank the audience for being here. And thanks for your great questions. And then finally I want to note that there will be a recording of this on you see TV that will be available to people, and that should occur in the next week or two. Thank you for being here. Thanks again to General McMaster. You can tell that he's a historian, and we really enjoyed the historical perspective on so many important issues. Thank you so very much.