 Good morning, everyone, and welcome. My name is Bill Burns, and I'm the president of the Carnegie Endowment. We're very fortunate to host today's conversation. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a more thoughtful combination of US foreign policy analysts and protagonists. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a group with a more nuanced and granular understanding of how foreign policy has evolved under President Obama. And I'd be especially hard-pressed to come up with a group that is as insightful as this one about the Obama administration's approach to the Asia Pacific, a region that, as all of you know, is increasingly central for global politics and for American foreign policy. All of us who have tried to understand China, its rise, and its relationship with the United States have benefited from Jim Mann's seminal writings over many years. And all of us who have tried to make sense of the often opaque world of foreign policy decision-making have looked at Jim to decipher the often indecipherable. I've admired Jim's work for many years, and we're very lucky to have him here to moderate today's conversation. I've known Derek Chalet since he was an intern on Secretary Baker's policy planning staff, and it was clear then, and it's even clear now, that he's one of the most talented foreign policy analysts and practitioners of his generation. And he also happens to be one of the most decent and thoughtful people you'll ever meet in Washington, the town in which those two qualities can often seem in short supply. Derek's intimate knowledge of diplomatic history and insights from senior jobs in the Obama administration, State Department, the White House, and the Pentagon come together in his eloquent and provocative book on President Obama's foreign policy, The Long Game. Like Derek, Kurt Campbell is someone who needs very little introduction. And like Derek, Kurt is someone who's professional skills I greatly admire and whose friendship I also greatly value. More than anyone else, Kurt provided the conceptual framework, the energy, and the shoe leather diplomacy for President Obama's policy in the Asia Pacific. With his own bottomless creativity and imagination, Kurt played an indispensable role in helping define America's role as a Pacific power in this new Pacific century, all of which he demonstrates vividly in his terrific new book, The Pivot. Since Derek and Kurt would never shamelessly self promote their new books, I hope you'll allow me to do so. The Long Game and The Pivot are remarkable pieces of work. People will rely on them for many years to come to help understand America's role in the world during the Obama era. And all of you should buy copies early and often. So with that brief introduction and not so subtle sales pitch, I hope you'll join me in giving a very warm welcome to our panelists. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. And before I forget, at the end, I will say in furtherance of the book promotion that the books will be on sale immediately afterwards with the authors signing them outside. We have here two books by two people who served in the Obama administration and they dovetail very nicely with one another. One of them, by Derek, is a defense of Obama's decisions to limit essentially American involvement in the Middle East and to some extent elsewhere, like Ukraine. And the other, so a defense of limiting American involvement. And then the other, by Kurt Campbell, lays out the rationale and the underpinnings for the Obama administration's pivot to increased interest in Asia. So I think we're gonna have a conversation and then turn this over to you all for questions. But to start, I'd just like to ask each of the panelists to lay out very briefly the argument in the book and then to give it some current relevance to say where it fits in or how it responds to Republican critiques of the administration less the standard Republican critiques. I think we heard them all, we heard them last night in the form that they have come up since the 50s, the Democrats are weak on defense, a very broad critique, but much more for the Trump modifications of Republican critiques, which would be that the United States needs to ask its allies to do more, pay more, and the Trump modifications on trade. So with that, let me ask Derek to start. Well, thanks, Jim, and I hope you indulge me just for a second at the top to thank Bill Burns, as Bill noted in his very kind introduction. He's been a mentor of mine for almost a quarter century when I first worked in Washington in the summer of 1992. So it's a real honor to be here at Carnegie and to be introduced by Bill. And it's a real pleasure for me to be, share the stage with two old friends, folks who I've learned a lot from, one of whom I've worked for in several iterations, and who've both contributed enormously to this book as well as Bill. They all suffered through early drafts and helped make it better with their comments and insights. So very briefly on the book, Jim described it as a defense of the Obama administration's approach to foreign policy, and it certainly is that, but more so I try to explain it. And in doing so, not try to shirk the difficult questions that President Obama has faced as President, but go to the pain to talk about Syria and Libya and Egypt and Russia and Ukraine and Iran, to try to talk about how Obama has been challenged in the way that he has tried to implement a grand strategy. The title of my book, The Long Game, has a double meaning. I argue in the book that President Obama has tried to play a long game when it comes to America's role in the world, and his approach to the Asia-Pacific and his prioritization of the Asia-Pacific as the most important strategic arena for the United States in the 21st century is a critical part of that long game. But the other part of the title is equally important, which is even though we have six months left or so of the Obama presidency to try to take an early stock of what Obama's foreign policy legacy will be. And I contend in the book that in history's long game, Obama's legacy will be seen quite positively when it comes to positioning America in the world, to renewing American leadership, by putting America in a position to bring countries together to try to solve problems and make people's lives better. And what we're seeing on the campaign and what we saw last night, and we'll see for the rest of this week at the Republican convention, is in fact the polar opposite of almost everything that President Obama has stood for, not just in the style of leadership and how you handle problems here at home, but also how we think about American strength and leadership abroad. What Donald Trump is offering is in many ways, it's the polar difference from where President Obama is. And that's why, one of the reasons why he is going to be such a vigorous player in this campaign coming up. We saw this a few weeks ago when he first came out with Secretary Clinton at the rally in North Carolina. And I think he will be a part of this campaign in a way that we have not seen in the modern era in terms of a sitting president engaging in a presidential campaign for his successor because he understands the stakes and he understands the huge costs to our country if some of the policies, really all of the policies that Donald Trump is articulating would become US policy in terms of fritting away our leadership, putting us in a harder position around the world to bring countries together. And in many instances, going against our values. Very great. Thank you, Jim, and welcome to everyone this morning. And I want to join Derek in thanking our good friend, Bill Burns. He really is America's diplomat. Part of him is damn lucky to have him. And also thanks to Jim, I've worked with him for many years and we share a love of baseball and very much appreciate his hosting the session today. So my book is called The Pivot. Took me a lot longer to write than I anticipated. And the idea behind it originally was to try to kind of give a sense of how policy played out on Asia during the Obama administration during the first term. What often happens in Washington when you try to write a book like this is I wrote 200 pages, put it down for a couple of weeks. You write it in about four days after you leave government. And then you look at it in about a month later and you just think, this is ridiculously bad. And it's terrible and it's not interesting and you're settling weird scores and kind of reinterpreting things. So it took me a lot longer to conceptualize what I really wanted to write about. What I really wanted to write about was to tell a story about how Asia has played in the mind and imagination of the United States or basically since the founding of the Republic and to try to articulate that this is a region that we've gotten wrong much more than we've gotten right. And we have stumbled many times historically and we've always treated Asia as a secondary theater at best in every aspect of our foreign policy and national security. And so what I tried to do is sort of lay out what had animated American thinking and set the context for articulating why at least in my view, the lion's share of the history of the 21st century without question, without question, at least it's gonna be written in the Asia Pacific region. And we can be part of that or we can continue to go on what is really a national detour. The last 15 years, it is remarkable how much time and attention and it stands from our leadership. And that is something is not simply the preserve of the Bush administration. It is very hard now that we're so deeply and fundamentally engaged in the Asia Pacific to find the time and attention, the wit and wisdom to begin to shift our focus, our capabilities, our personnel more towards the 21st century. So the book is an attempt to carefully lay out strategy would look like and it also tries to be honest about the failings of the early introduction of the concept of the pivot or the rebalance, how 99 times out of 100 when you're in government and you roll out a new policy, it immediately disappears, right? And you're trying to point it out to folks and they're like, what are you talking about? I don't even know what are you referring to? On the very rare occasion, this only happened to me once where you come up with a big concept and you lay it out and then it takes on a life of its own and you're left to deal with the unintended consequences and the unanticipated questions associated with policy. For me, as one of the people involved in this, I did not anticipate how it would be interpreted in the Middle East and in Europe, right? And obviously you can't walk away from fundamental commitments and perhaps most importantly, the United States has never done anything of consequence without Europe at its side and one of the articulated things in the book is the idea that the United States has to actually work more consequentially with Europe thinking about Asia going forward. So the book took me almost four years and I decided I'd write a book that there's only one person who gets made fun of and criticized in the book and that's me. And I tried to be liberal with that and I also tried in certain circumstances to show you a lot of statesmen stuff. Everything Bill's involved with always looks terrific and statesman like, it just never worked out that way for me. And so I tried to point out the absurdity and the humor, so even in the highest, most exciting moments there are things that go on that are funny or embarrassing and I tried to sort of articulate those things. How would Mr. Trump if elected implement policies in Asia? I very much agree with my friend Derek that in many respects, this is just fundamentally uncharted waters. And I would say that and this is hard for Americans to recognize is that there are many questions in Asia, North Korea provocations, what's going on with the rise of China, how they're gonna respond in the South China Sea. Will India's promise finally be realized? What about big transitions in countries like Thailand? There are a huge number of questions that animate Asia, a region of remarkable progress and prosperity over the last 40 years. The biggest question today is not any of those issues. The biggest question is the world of the United States. The behind the scenes, most people are deeply concerned about the conduct of this campaign and what it says about the United States. So I think it's possible that if the campaign goes at least from my perspective the right way, that's a good sign. But at the same time, I think we all have to understand that the fundamental questions that have been raised are still going to be there. And they have to do with the foundational aspects of American power. Are Americans still committed to playing this role that's for deployed, that's engaged, that's open, that's optimistic, that's committed to our security partners, that's committed to our alliances, to non-proliferation, just go across the board. And I think most serious scholars in states of Indonesia have larger questions today than they've had probably at any time since the end of the Vietnam War. So it's that substantial and it's that concerning. And I find myself in conversations with friends. We've just had a very prominent group of Australians in Washington last week. The irony is that this dynamic that we're experiencing in the United States is not unique to the United States. It's well understood. We're seeing it in places in Europe, but it's also playing out in areas in Asia. And I think one of the big concerns is not just what it means if the United States went in this direction for the U.S. role, but how does the echo effect influence domestic politics in many of these countries in Asia? So I really do think this is one of those tipping point periods in history. I do think sustaining American purpose and engagement in Asia will be critical. And I believe that deeper engagement of the United States in Asia will be a critical dimension of American prosperity and for progress. Thanks, Jim. Thanks, Kurt. Let me, this follows directly from that. I'm gonna ask some more, some specific questions now. When you start writing a book, if it's about a modern subject, events keep on unfolding. It's fair to say that when you started this book, you didn't imagine that the Republicans would come up with a candidate who attacks trade as one of his main issues, and also that the Democratic nominee would not endorse the Trans-Pacific Partnership. So since you've written about the pivot, the question jumps out, how much, what would remain of the pivot if there is no TPP? What would be left besides the military dimension and how can TPP get enacted if it's gotten such little support in the presidential campaign? I try in the book, as I lay out kind of a game plan about what a future president would do or presidents over a sistine period in Asia. But also in the following chapter, describe the risks to the pivot, whether it's in attention or preoccupation or a declining base of domestic support. Number of these issues are gone through in great detail. I would say, I believe that the critique leveled against TPP in trade from Mr. Trump and Senator Clinton is really quite substantially different. I think what Trump is arguing is that all trade and really the manner in which we've engaged is antithetical to American interests. Very little about technological progress, nothing really about worker retraining, nothing that would suggest that he has any interest in sustaining the kind of global interdependence that we've seen over the course of decades. I think Secretary Clinton's critique is more about certain specific aspects of TPP which she believes can be improved over time. Now my position's a little bit different, but she's the one that's running for president. I'm the run who's an out of work guy sitting before you, not out of work so much, but who's written a book. But I do believe some form of commercial engagement that's embodied in the TPP is going to be central for American engagement going forward. And I think most countries in Asia believe that to be true as well. So it's a very difficult, we're in a very difficult period right now in which I think the biggest anxiety is the trade pattern that we have known for decades has been internationalist Democrats have basically sided with the entirety of the Republican Party to go through with trade agreements. I think that alliance is now fundamentally broken. And I think it's gonna be difficult to put back together again. And I wouldn't be surprised in four or five years that one of the base elements within the Republican Party has reformed to question trade in all its forms more generally. And so that leads us with a situation where it is sort of the internationalist dimensions of the Republican and the Democratic Party go over time. And I think, frankly, how this election plays out will say a lot about how those formations that are bipartisan and across the political aisle that have been sustaining over decades can or will be enacted going forward. Derek, another recent development, almost a black swan. We tend to think of black swans as some tidal wave or some natural event, but the British elections, the British vote for Brexit. I mean, your book argues so well for continuation of America's continuing existing alliances. And yet our closest ally of the past half century or more is now was fluctuating in its support of American policies during the Obama administration and now threatens to be even less supportive and more incoherent, I guess, than it was. Can we continue with the same policies when our alliances are less strong than they used to be? Well, first of all, I guess I take issue with the assertion that our alliances are less strong. I think there's certainly huge challenges within those alliances, but if I look at US posture in Europe and what we're doing to reassure European partners, if I look at our position in the Asia Pacific and not just our involvement in regional institutions that we were part of eight years ago, but the new ones that we joined as part of this administration and even our posture in the Middle East, I would argue we are more engaged in more ways in those parts of the world than ever before. The challenge we have, and this broadens it out from just specifically Brexit, because it's a very important point, and this gets to what Kurt was saying, one of the challenges that President Obama has faced and his successor will face, is I think of it as the challenge of reassurance. And what I'm trying to do in my book is put these various issues that we've been struggling with here in Washington about the Asia Pacific, about what's going on in the Middle East, about things like Brexit within a larger context of American leadership and our strategy in the world. And we've had a challenge of reassurance in the three most important strategic arenas for the United States. Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific, we're seeing dramatic change that is fundamentally not about the United States. And all of our allies and partners in those regions are anxious for good reason. If you're looking at Europe, it's worse than Brexit, because if you look at three of the most important countries in Europe, the UK, France, and Turkey, right now they are all in the midst of tremendous challenges domestically in the form of Brexit and the whole question of UK identity and UK role in Europe, to of course France and terrorism and challenges of migration to Turkey with democratic black backsliding and where this post coup era goes, it's kind of anyone's guess at the moment. And of course they're all looking at Russia and its behavior in that part of the world and incredibly anxious about their own future. You look at the Middle East and it is undergoing a once in a century convulsion socially, economically in terms of security. We're watching the rewriting of the regional order and a country like Iran is on the move and very concerning to many of our friends and partners. And we look at the Asia Pacific where our friends and allies in Asia Pacific are looking at a rising China, China's behavior in the South China Sea and elsewhere in the region and they're concerned about their own futures. The challenge for the president is that the answer in all three parts of the world is more of the United States. They all want more of our time, our energy, our attention, our resources, our military posture, our diplomatic energy. And unfortunately more of everything is not a strategy. You have to make choices, you have to manage trade-offs. And that's something that Obama has struggled to do because it's hard and in many ways you can never get it perfectly right because you're always going to leave partners wanting more. But I think I contend that he's put us in a good position in managing those challenges and then putting us in position to manage them moving forward. But it's extremely difficult to get right. I look at it from a DOD perspective when I'm serving at the Pentagon. I can tell you a lot of things we could do differently militarily related to Syria. But doing those would make it much harder for us to have a robust force posture in Central and Eastern Europe to reassure our allies there or to sustain and support the rebalanced Asia. So I think that the grappling we all have to deal with is this idea, and this gets to the limits argument you said at the beginning, that even though we are less limited than any other country on the planet, we can do more militarily, diplomatically in terms of our economic instruments of power. There are still limits on the United States. And one of the controversies that President Obama has openly talked about is this idea that American power is limited, that we have to make choices. That's what the rebalance was about. I mean, the idea was we were fundamentally imbalanced as a country, as Kurt noted, when President Obama took office, that we were over-invested in a certain part of the world at the expense of our interests in other parts of the world. So it's not about American withdrawal, but it's about the management of our instruments, our power and our energies as we look across the entire landscape of our strategic interests globally. Kurt, I wanted to ask you about China. You wrote so well in the book about the different kinds of Asia policy and where China fits in. To quote one phrase, intensified diplomacy with China had the unintended consequence of creating concern in the surrounding regions, spiking fears that the United States might, in a weakened position, sacrifice critical interests in the hopes of preventing preserving smooth ties with China. Well said, and yet you describe in your book times when the National Security Council almost instinctively gives priority to China and sees China as the real foreign policy. So the question is, how do you prevent that? You have a new administration coming in and there's some problem, whether it's Korea or some bilateral problem with China and the Chinese say, we really need to establish a high level dialogue. It's just us and the allies we're looking on very carefully. Tell us about it. Can I just quickly, I loved your use of the black swan. I just quick little story. So I was riding in Ireland two weeks to bike riding. This is what you do when you're not in government. So I was riding through the rain and I was riding with a friend and we're both Irish and superstitious. And we were approaching this lake and there are two black swans. We got to go around there. We can't go by there. And it turns out every lake, there are black swans everywhere in Ireland. So anyway, I just thought that was interesting. Something was unanticipated. It's like American foreign policy. Yeah, that's what it's like. So look, I try to argue in the book are a couple of central themes. One is we not fully understood our history and some of the mistakes that we have tended to make to save a million souls or to sell a billion shirts or whatever. A second is just a general argument about over investment in other regions and areas and about why the 21st century demands more focus on part of the United States and that what passed for effective sustaining leadership 10 or 15 years ago will not cut it right now. We just have to step up our game very substantially to just stay in the game. And then the third argument is really about strategy and how to think about strategy in Asian. I tried to articulate what I thought were schools of thought, sort of strategic schools within the Asian community. And it's a pretty small group of people and it's generally collegial. And oftentimes people don't openly articulate these divisions but they're nevertheless observable, right? The proudest tradition or the longest in American foreign policymaking in Asia at least over the last 40 years is really at the core of it is the idea of China at the center, right? And you see this in almost all the most important foreign policy players and thinkers, Kissinger, Scowcroft, virtually every national security advisor, right? And the idea is that that's the big leagues and you've got to get that relationship right. I think sometimes that when that approach has been practiced with zeal, other regional partners and friends tend to be shunted aside, not given the necessary attention, not treated as seriously as they might be. And that is a problem. And I think I tried to articulate it's becoming a more serious problem over time. Largely because, look, the most important thing is to understand clearly, China plays a tough game. They very much use the meetings between the United States and China to articulate anxiety often in the region as a whole. And at the same time, I think US strategy is better served from a different approach in which China is embedded, Jim, in a larger framework, right? And I think what I tried to articulate in the book is that even though the Obama administration, I think at a general level was about a greater focus in Asia and generally speaking, there was a agreement about the parameters of what would be involved. But on some issues, there were subtle differences. I think the White House was much more focused on US-China policy. And I think Clinton was much more about a regional focus, which includes China, but also understands and appreciates the deeper strategic engagement with our allies, with rising states, bringing in partners like India is important to American strategic purpose. So what I tried to articulate, Jim, is why an embedding strategy in an environment where we are seeking to sustain what might be described as the operating system of Asia, its mechanisms, freedom of navigation, the shared prosperity, peaceful resolution of disputes, and the easiest way to do that, the best way to do that is in a larger framework of countries, including China. This is not containment. It is a region-wide diplomacy. And so I would, Jim, I would say that there was a time and place and a very important time and place for a highly China-centric diplomacy. But I think we have inadvertently imbued it with a degree of mystery and romance and excitement, kind of sitting in the chairs and that really has shifted substantially and that a much broader engagement is going to be in the best strategic interest. I'll ask one more to Derek. I'll put you on the spot for a second. I don't want to switch to the audience. In my book on the early Obama years, I described a shading of difference between Obama and Clinton that where Obama is off talking about the nation we care most about rebuilding as ourselves, is our own. Clinton is responding by talking about the United States as the indispensable nation. And in fact, in later years, you have one journalist and author, Mark Landler, doing a whole book on the differences between Obama and Clinton. So the question is, where are we now in the next administration? Are we, do we get a return to an emphasis on the indispensable nation and a de-emphasis on the limits of American power? Well, first, just very quickly on China, just one comment I'd like to make, because I think this helps, my view, reinforce the argument that I'm making in the book, which is we think back to eight years ago and the discussion we would be having in a room like this about U.S.-China relations, it would be about China's eating our lunch, right? It would be about China's surging in the world. Arguably, my view, no country benefited more from the policies in the 2000s than China. We had to push back within the Obama administration about the argument that we desired to have a G2 in the world. That's less of the conversation now. And in part, it's because of what's happened within China and part it's because of what Kurt and Secretary Clinton and President Obama did in terms of strengthening a relationship with our key partners in the region and engaging in regional institutions. Partly it's about American renewal at home and getting our economy back in order and getting American strength back. But I think that's an important sort of frame we all have to use. There's no question there's still challenges of China going forward and this is gonna be a tough relationship to manage. But I feel we're in a better position today to manage it than we were eight years ago. That's on China. On Obama and Clinton and I talk in my book about an episode you write about as well that was back in 2010 when President Obama was giving a speech that was mainly about the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and laying out that timeline. And Secretary Clinton then sort of responded to that speech, concerned that it was too negative. It was too kind of woe is us, kind of not the fetus that's a little too strong but there was a sense that America couldn't go do great things, right? And so she 10 days later gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations that articulated the indispensable nation idea. She called it a new American moment and it was kind of a call to arms to say, this is our time. If you look at the way the world's changing with the right kind of leadership we can actually take advantage of those changes better than anyone else and we're in a better position to lead than anyone else. And I think that was a subtle contrast to the time. I'm struck that as Obama's presidency's moved on or carried forward, he's articulating a very similar vision now. If you go back and read his State of the Union address from last January, it was all about America's indispensability, American strength and that this is our moment that in fact because of a lot of difficult decisions made over the last eight years and renewing American power here at home and also repositioning us in the world that we are better able to deal with the challenges of the 21st century than ever before and actually what's standing in the way is ourselves. It's our own politics and we're seeing that play out going back to your first question about Trump. We're seeing that play out right now within the Republican Party which is basically become a party of nullification and a party that has a casual relationship with the truth. Right, we're seeing that play out right in front of our eyes. So I look, Mark's a good friend. He talked to him a lot for his book and often when he's reported on the administration the subtitle of his book is the Twilight Struggle over American Power and I said this to Mark and says this is not speaking out of school but to me the Twilight Struggle over American Power is not between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The story there is how well they worked together as a team. When everyone in Washington was predicting it was going to be this Titanic struggle relitigating the 2008 primary campaign inside the government, it never happened. My experience was how well it worked together and what a strong partnership they had. And sure there are differences. We've talked about some of them already today. She's articulated some differences in terms of her approach to certain problems in the world but what they share in terms of their belief in the United States, their belief in our position around the world and the importance of our values and our leadership. It's 99.9% overlap. There are differences but they are infinitesimal compared to the differences of the two of them versus their Republican opponent. Okay, time for questions from the audience. Do we have a roving microphone or? Yes, okay. Right back here. Yes, you. Thank you very much. Dong Hui Yu with China Review, new agency of Hong Kong. The Republican platform that was announced yesterday did not attach importance on the Asia Pacific Alliance. Including like Japan or South Korea and did not talk about the engagement with China. So how do you respond to that? Secondly, are you concerned that the new arbitration of the South China Sea has negative implications for the US and Japan's crime in some features in the Pacific Ocean because according to the definition of the island and rock of this arbitration, maybe the US and Japan cannot have the easy crime of some features, thank you. Yeah, as I've traveled around Asia and talked to most interlocutors, what's interesting is that the only country that I've traveled to, that I found people that were at least expressing a degree of comfort with Mr. Trump is actually in China. And I'm not really sure why that is actually. It could be that there are certain parts of his style, stylistic approach that are not dissimilar from certain wealthy property developers in China who also play important roles. I mean, it is a personality type that you can find in certain places. But at the same time, it's possible that I think Chinese interlocutors believe that they could cut a deal with him, so we'd have sort of Trump casinos all over the South China Sea or something. But I think more than anything else, my sense is that the platform reveals that at a fundamental level, at a strategic level, the Republican elite is still deeply and fundamentally focused on the Middle East and South Asia. And the challenge is associated with ISIS and the link between the policies there and terrorism at home. And I don't think they're contemplating as much as in other places where the future lies. But beyond that, I mean, it's hard to really offer any kind of as an outsider, a commentary about what's going on in Cleveland. It really requires not so much political skills as sort of anthropological skills, right? And I mean, that's seriously actually, that's not a... And I would also say that to those who believe that this finding of the court is somehow just aimed at China. In truth, there are numerous circumstances in which the court has had rulings historically that have gone against U.S. allies or even in some circumstances, U.S. interests. And the key here is that one of the elements of this operating system is adherence to international law. I do think it's an irony, however, that we find ourselves in a situation that the United States who has not ratified the law of the sea is insisting that other countries follow it while China, who is a proud signer, is saying, well, no, no, but we can't abide by this element. I'll just say one further point about this if I can as well. One of our last attempts to get the lawsuit over the Senate line. A few years ago, I was asked to go up and testify. And most of the critics made arguments from the right that were precisely the arguments that Chinese interlocutors are making. That there would be agreements that would potentially infringe on American sovereignty and we would wanna be able to pick and choose where in fact rulings should be followed or not. I would simply say I think the ruling speaks for itself and it will be up to other countries whether or if to take cases specifically to the Hague for determination. Thanks, Kurt. See one here. I'm Andre Silverzo and I'm a partner for the Interstate Traveler Company and their Director for Vietnam in Southeast Asia. But just returned from Vietnam and the person in the street from the leadership to the street is in total agreement with Derek's observation about the degree of cooperation between Obama and Hillary Clinton and Hillary would have no problem if they could vote here. Now, my question is this. Question is on the Transpacific Partnership. Would it be, I mean, the people who are opposing it, the strongest, never even mention how a Chinese mercantilist system in Asia would be better for the American worker than the TPP. So my question is would it be feasible at this late date for the United States to ratify the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and then would that if we could do that would it give us a more muscular posture in trying to deal with China's use of violence to infringe on the exclusive economic zones of smaller countries. Derek, you wanna, I don't want all the Asia questions to go to Kurt. No, no, no, I mean, look, as Kurt said, I mean, this administration tried to get law of the sea ratified, it failed, it's been an enduring effort for many decades to try to get it ratified. So there's no question, I think, Secretary Clinton, President Obama would argue we'd be better off if we were part of that. And I think on TPP, clearly this administration's gonna try to get it done by the time President Obama leaves office. My sense is it will be one of his top, his two priorities of the lame duck Congress, that and getting the Supreme Court Justice confirmed. It'll probably be, now as Kurt said though, the political alignments here are even harder than they were 24 years ago when Ross Perot ran a campaign largely against free trade, right? And but there was enough internationalist Democrats in the Republican Party was in a very different place than it is today. So one hopes for those of us who support TPP, that a post-election Republican Party would, particularly if they get shellacked in the election, that there's enough support there to with some Democrats get TPP across the line. But I think it's gonna be really tough. Yeah, can I first, I'll start, I like your hat. I think that's cool. I kind of wonder where that, I thought it was sort of an inverted Cowboys hat, but it's not. To Vietnam hat, same colors, the same Cowboy colors. Look, it's been 35 years since the Wild Sea was signed. It's been attempted about 17 times. The closest we've gotten in any kind of shadow vote is about 60 votes, right? And the opposition historically has been about just any number of things. At one point in the 1980s, it was there was vast amount of wealth in these things called manganese nodules. And that if we signed the agreement that we were somehow cutting off this vast source of wealth. The more recent issues have to do as we've discussed with sovereignty. I would simply say that to get 67 votes right now on any issue is just extraordinarily difficult. I can imagine a situation where we went up to Capitol Hill and said, well, look, let's try to have a vote on the fact that we love our mothers. You'd have people going, I have real concerns with that. So I'm not, I'd love to see it happen. I'm just not optimistic. There's one here, is that, yeah. My name is Jim Keith. I'm a retired diplomat and consultant for the Clarty Associates, a business consulting firm. For anyone who wants to answer, there is dynamic tension between the two titles of what your book is about, Kurt, the pivot and the rebalance. And in part that goes to Derek, your comments on having to make choices, that it's not about doing everything for everyone, it's actually having to use finite resources. Looking ahead to the next administration, no one, it seems, is talking about asking American citizens to sacrifice in such a way as to create more resources. How do you have a new policy or how do you implement a policy that has new implications with no new resources? Well, let me, I'll take the first crack and then first just a comment on the kind of reassurance challenge and the pivot rebalance. And I talk a little bit about in the book what Kurt also has talked about, which is the struggle we had in the wake of the success of the rebalance strategy as a strategic idea that got a lot of traction, how that made unintended troubles in Europe and the Middle East, the two folks who felt as though that meant less for them, that the United States was somehow turning away and that's why there is important nuance between pivot and rebalance. But it's interesting also, I mean Kurt knows this better than I, but if you go back and look at what President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Kurt, others were saying to our Asian friends during these years, it was, hey, don't worry, we really believe in the rebalance, we're not going to get tied up in the Middle East again. Like, they were all suspicious that we really didn't mean it. So in Europe and the Middle East, it was, they were too worried we didn't mean it and that we were gonna be leaving them behind somehow. And in Asia it was, we actually didn't mean it. And so that's something I still think at given all the global challenges we have, that's something we struggle with today. Look, I think there's no question in my mind that we are healthier here at home and this is where there's a direct link between our domestic health and what we're able to do in the world. There's no question about that. Oftentimes in the foreign policy debate, it's treated as, if you care about stuff at home when President Obama talks about nation building at home, it sends friends of ours like Bob Kagan in the orbit because he thinks that that's sort of somehow isolation. Of course, being strong at home is inextricably tied to strength abroad and the problem that we faced eight years ago was that we were a declining power by owners almost every measure. I mean, domestically here at home, we were in a free fall, 800,000 jobs lost a month. Entire sectors of the U.S. economy hanging in the balance, the auto industry, the banking industry, that was a huge problem for the United States and there was no way we would be able to project power abroad if our economy tanks here at home. But this gets to the question of sacrifice. Look, famously we fought wars in the 2000s without asking American people to do much of anything. I mean, taxes weren't raised, we paid for those wars on a credit card. I think what President Obama's tried to do and Secretary Clinton supporting that effort is to get that balance sheet right in terms of how we're spending our resources, particularly our military resources, to ensure that we can sustain these deployments that we have pursued in the last eight years. But it seems to me that the key thing is beyond sacrifice. It's this question of our domestic health and there's no question in my mind that the arguments that Secretary Clinton is articulating is one about sustaining America's economy, sustaining what makes our economy better than anyone else's in the world right now. And that could all change very quickly with a different set of policies with a different president. Thanks, and Jim, can I just also acknowledge Jim's service, a very distinguished diplomat with years of wonderful service in the Asia Pacific region, a terrific colleague. So I hear the resources discussion a lot, but I think sometimes people tend to look at this challenge or problem through the wrong lens. And so the primary lens is the military lens, like yes, will we have the capabilities and the money spent to be able to apply ourselves effectively in the Asia Pacific region. The argument I try to make in the book is the real challenge is not in my view the magnitude of the money, but the direction in which it is focused. And so I would argue that we've spent the last 15 years investing dramatically in ground forces and that the next 15 or 20 years is gonna be much more about expeditionary capabilities, the Navy and the Air Force. So the real challenge is how resources are essentially appropriated inside that process. No group is better at fighting for resources than the Army. And so that struggle is going to be a challenge and that will take substantial and strong American leadership. Now there were periods in the 2000s where those in the Navy that were thinking about Asia when instructed by their leadership to only think about the Middle East would meet secretly to think about the future and kind of under cabin light like John Paul Jones. But I think that issue over time can be resolved. My particular focus and the one that I get frustrated about is I would say that the leading element of the Pivot or Rebalance is really about diplomacy and about money's on the margin, right? And Jim I don't think I need to tell you this but we spend more in a week in Afghanistan than we do in the totality of the Asia Pacific region in terms of assistance and diplomatic support. And so very small changes will have just enormous consequences I would argue and the fight for resources in the Asia Pacific I found the most difficult aspect of my job. And I remember trying to find two people to go to establish a USAID mission in the South Pacific. You would think we were splitting the atom. It was that hard, it was that difficult, it was that challenging, right? And I would say just simply, for those who are in government, Bill understands this. So most political pointings you come in and you're there for a couple of years and then you got so many other things to focus on but in fact some of the most important challenges and things that you face are in your own organizations and one of the things at least I tried to do in effectively no doubt was if you landed from space at the State Department you would think that Europe by orders of magnitude is the most important region and that Florence and beautiful cities where their consulates in Italy and Switzerland are really at the center of global power because Europe is by orders of magnitude gets more money and then followed by the Middle East and then basically Asia and Africa are essentially tied for resources. The key is in my view is that really capable folks like you Jim in the State Department you have to find those people and you've got to promote them and take care of them and make sure that in 20 years that they're the next Bill Burns but from the Asia perspective, right? And so finding those people and trying to help them and I would often go to other bureaus spread horrible lies about those bureaus and try to recruit some of their really best people over to the Asia, speak to every entering class because ultimately the only way this is gonna shift is if there is a cadre of people in the next 20 years that animate the thinking in the State Department in the way that the Europeanists and the Middle East folks that the State Department for basically the last four years. Thank you, thank you both. There are lots more questions but we are out of time. So I will remind you again the books are for sale. Thank you all for coming. Maybe you can ask some of the other questions as the authors are signing the books but thanks again. Have a good day. Thank you. Thank you.