The World Order

Welcome to Shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by Boulart and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and dedicated to the proposition articulated during World War two by Walter Lippmann that a strong and balanced foreign policy is the shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments and Boulder contributor and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center, and I’m joined as always by my partner in all thanks for teach me Elliot Cohen, the Robert E Ozgood Professor of Strategy at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and the Arleigh Burke Chair and Strategy at the center for strategic and international studies here in

Washington Elliott. How are you? I’m doing just fine. Let’s see. The biggest news I just publish another piece in the Atlantic about why it’s time to stop talking about talking.

And then there’s a a riff on baloney realism, but we can talk about that some other time because more important things are our guests. Bob Lieber.

A perfect segue into introducing our guest. Our guest today is Robert Lieber faster emeritus of government and international affairs at Georgetown University since nineteen eighty two previously taught and was chair of the department at University of California. Davis, he’s a prolific author and editor of distinguished volumes on international affairs and US foreign policy. There are too many for me to enumerate in the podcast. But most recently, a trilogy of books, which I now guess is a quartet, the American era, followed by power and willpower, retreat and its consequences.

And now this fall, the indispensable nation published by Yale University press, And my favorite factoid about Professor Lieber is that he had a small extra role In Alfred Hitchcock’s classic nineteen fifty nine suspense thriller North by Northwest, Bob Bieber welcomed his shield of the Republic.

Thank you, Eric, and it’s a pleasure to be in this conversation with Elliot and you. So thank you for the invitation.

Well, let’s start with indispensable nation. You describe the kind of contested, what I’ve called in the past, the contested primacy that the US now enjoys. It’s no longer the sole superpower the way it was at the end of the cold war. But it’s still essential to what we call the rules based international order. But there are a lot of people who question whether there even is such a thing as the rule based international So can you level set the field for us by explaining it to our listeners?

What is the rule? What do what do we mean when we say the rules based international order? And how does the US play a role there.

Sure. I like a lot of terms in the world of first and subject to different meanings. But in in in my in my mind, it has to do with the interaction among countries in the world to maintain some sort of civilized viable set of relationships for the conduct of diplomacy economic exchange, cultural exchange, exchange tourism, traffic on the high seas, air traffic, and everything else. The normal interactions of daily life. Right now, there are three major countries in a number of smaller ones who are revisionist powers.

Most importantly, China growing superpower in its own right, which really seeks to change that if you want to call it world order or set of arrangements to shift it in its own direction, which reflects a desire for tribute states around it all of the old Chinese empires of of the distant past, but also its predatory role not only in economic and trade matters, but in its relationships with other countries. Russia too, as you see, in its invasion of Ukraine and its efforts to enlarge its influence or either indirect or direct control of so many of its neighbors is seeking not only to restore the territories controlled by Stalin’s Soviet Union and his successors, but those of Imperial Russia. The US for seven decades was critical in creating and sustaining the kinds of institutions we take for granted, the United Nations, for instance, the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization world health organization and too many others to name. But it’s also a mistake by some people who are big on world order to assume that world order has truly constitutional characteristics. The best rejoinder to that is an a film that came out about twenty years ago, replaced with black humor called Team America World Police.

In which there was an incredible scene. It’s all done by by Marianas in which a a character represented by Hans Blichs who was then ahead of the UN agency had required to inspect for nuclear weapons in violation of all kinds of international treaties agreement agreements goes to see the dictator of North Korea, and he comes in to see the dictator and he he wants to inspect the dictator’s palace and the reply is no.

And

So, Han’s and and the North Korean leader says, in effect, what will you do if we don’t do this? He says, well, if if you don’t comply, we will write you an angry letter. So the North Korean backends hinds blakes to step forward. A few steps pulls a lever and drops hinds blakes, the marinette that is, into a pool filled with sharks. Who go about tearing him apart.

It’s a sad reflection of the fact that international order is not self sustaining and that without the indispensable US role, there really is no institution or other country that can do what the US does. World affairs would still continue without the US by definition, but it would be far more of a doggy dog world than it already is. With predatory economic behavior, terrible reductions in human rights, and democracy, reduce prosperity, more likelihood of pandemics, wars, and so forth, or at best breaking up into regional powerblocks of the kind of thing we

saw before world war one, making war even more likely. Bob, could I just follow-up on that for a moment? You know, you’re somebody who’s written for a long time about American foreign policy. Who knows its history, particularly its its modern history. Well, isn’t it the case that there have always been people who have been pushing back at the notion that the United States should play this kind of role in the world.

And I I was wondering if you could give us something about historic perspective on that. Do do you think the kinds of people and the kind and the kinds of arguments they make have really changed since you know, the days of the first America firsters back in back in the early forties. Oh,

we’re gonna Elliot, I wanna make sure I know what what I do or talking about. You mean my remarks about those who advocate a continuing indispensable or leadership role for the United States, or those who argue against it?

I’m I’m actually interested in those who are against it because it seems to me, you know, the argument that you make was indeed the dominant argument for quite a few decades. But there’s always been pushback against it. There has always been pushback against

it.

Woodrow Wilson was elected in reelected in two in nineteen sixteen with the argument. He kept us out of war. I you were war one. A year later, Wilson summer con summer congress in April nineteen seventeen to declare war on in Imperial Germany. In the nineteen twenties and thirties, a vigorous dogmatic and conspiracy oriented anti engagement, pro isolationist movement, emerged with very ativistic elements and intense anti Semitism as part of it.

The myth in the US was that It was the arms merchants who had lured us into war and so on and so forth. In the nineteen thirties that took the form of the kind of movement that Lindbergh, the great flyer, was in that called for the US to stay out of World War two. And Lindbergh himself was contaminated by his association with Adolph Hitler who gave him various awards and things. The Congress of the United States had to renew draft legislation. They passed the House of Representatives in the autumn of nineteen forty by one vote, thanks to the role of the speaker of the House who sort of put his thumb on the scale, even though most of Continental Europe was already occupied by the Nazis and the Japanese were running wild in East Asia.

So there have been those pressures all along. And after World War two, there was a strong element in the Republican Party led by Robert Taft The nineteen fifty two Republican presidential nomination was really a a fight between Taft and Republican isolationists. And tapped at oppose the creation of NATO in nineteen forty nine versus Eisenhower and the re and Republican internationalists. Eisenhower prevailed. Among the Democrats, the progressive left at various points and its various in incarnations is often call for America to come home in, as you say, in various forums.

But there has been a strong isolationist element on the left and right of American politics. And I’m unpopularists. And in the last general two decades, a kind of an academic current of that, the so called academic realists and their policy friends and some think tanks. Who make the argument that America should follow a policy of restraint that we can pull back even withdraw from our commitments in Europe, Asia and the Middle East that those regions will be just fine without us because local countries there can always get together to balance against a great power threat. And if things really get badly out of hand, against our interests, we can always intervene.

That makes no sense in their world as it is, and above all, it deprives those accuracy of agency. To assume that if we withdraw and were nice to the Iranians of Putin and the Chinese things will change is nonsense. It reflects what Hobbs Morgoth always referred to as strategic narcissism. And it deprives those leaders of agency. They have their own ideologies, sense of history, sense of national interest, crude motives and so forth.

And this comes back to why it is essential that the US remain actively engaged. Not necessarily in the same way we did a generation ago because we don’t have the same relative advantage versus our competitors. But there still is no country with the combination of the assets that the US brings to the table geopolitically, economically, and even in terms of a much beleaguered values. Bob,

I wanna come back to the question of of so called realism, not least because You studied with Hans Morgan saw one of the founders of the realist school of international relations as classic textbook still actually bears reading in my view. Today.

You got something on the shelf behind me.

You studied with Henry Kissinger at Harvard when you did your PhD. So you you you said, oh, realism. So I wanna come back to that, but I want if you could get you to address two questions that you do talk about in the book. One is One of the arguments advanced both on the right and left by critics of this more forward leaning role that you have described is that, actually, it’s the United States. That’s the big disruptor of the international order.

You hear this from, you know, the Ron and Rand Pauls of the world. As well as the Bernie Sanders of this world. So could you address that? And then second and related question is you make some very interesting observations about the policies of retrenchment under both the eight years of the Obama term and then the one term of President Trump. And I think, you know, obviously, there are enormous differences between Obama and Trump But there’s some continuities there as well.

And I I’d love to hear you talk about that.

Right. What’s that? You’re me the first question again. I’m just writing it down in the second one.

The first question was whether the United States is as big a disruptor of the world order as anybody else because of our unilateral intervention in Iraq and enhanced, you know, enhanced interrogation policy and any number of a refusal to sign on to the ICC etcetera.

Let me begin by saying, the US is very imperfect. The US has made American leaders have have made major mistakes in foreign policy. But you have to ask the big question. Compared to what? The the fact is that without the United States, the world would be far nasty or far more dangerous, far poorer, and far more ugly in many respects.

No other country can do what we do. Part of this is explained by a collective action problem. Now as a thought experiment, imagine on February twenty fourth of this year, if the Biden administration had did what the Obama administration did in twenty fourteen when Russia basically to be blood invaded Crimea took over Crimea through covert and overt means in combination hybrid warfare. And sponsored and behind the scenes led and in outright invasion of the Dunbar’s region of eastern Ukraine. At that time, Obama called for the world to stand up, the international community to stand up.

He did the same thing when a side of Syria crossed his red line in two thousand thirteen about the use of chemical weapons. In both cases, the international community should step up. Well, the international community doesn’t step up of its own volition. If you are Denmark, or or the Czech Republic or France or Britain. Do you wanna be out there all by yourself?

Against a Russia that has nuclear weapons, a proclivity to undertake the most brutal actions both overt and covert without the backing of the United States with its unique capabilities. Now, Imagine then if with the invasion of Ukraine on February twenty fourth, the US had sat back Not for a moment, do I think that the European in the form of the EU or Britain or some of the others who have helped out from part of the region’s brother, the field, would have taken the risk of publicly and conspicuously aiding the Ukrainian. There might have been some COVID-nineteen measures. No doubt, but nothing like what we saw. And Russia today would be have have succeeded, I think, despite the incredibly courageous actions of the Ukrainians themselves in turning seizing big chunks of Ukraine physically and turning the rest of it into a rump state that was basically powerless and subject to Russia’s sick time while it continued to put pressure on its periphery.

One might also ask why it is that you create that a a lot of Lithuania, Estonia, the Czech Republic and others were eager to get into NATO. We didn’t twist their arms. They twisted ours. Precisely because they knew what it meant to live next door to the Russian bear or for that matter, Germany and its other flank based on historical experience. Again, the US rules indispensable.

In that sense, we are not the disruptor. Was the Iraq War a mistake? I’m talking about the two thousand and three war, but we can re litigate that, reflight it, things looked a lot different than when decisions were being made on a sixtyforty, fifty oneforty nine set of choices with the future uncertain and based on what was thought to be valid information in case of coal and power, but turned out to be inaccurate. But policymakers have to make those choices amidst uncertainty.

You know, I Bob, I very much agree with that assessment of Iraq. Eric and I have gone back and forth about it. I think he takes a somewhat harder line than I do. But I guess, the angle that I’d like to just draw you out a little bit more on that one is, some people have suggested that the experience of Iraq and then later Afghanistan, which culminates in a, you know, extremely disorderly and I would argue, disgraceful, unilateral fleeing from the the country really kind of fatally undermined America’s self confidence and also its standing in the world and thus its ability to act as the indispensable They could do you would you agree with that? Or to the extent you agree with it, how would you qualify that?

I agree with it up to a point. I would qualify it. Let me say there were some analogies between the shocking abandonment of his own red line in Syria. By Obama in two thousand thirteen. A year after Obama had warned if the Syrian regime used poison gas, they would be crossing a red line.

And the implication in World of Thursday, you say something like that, it means there will be consequences. Instead, he fudged where the line was not crossed. The same thing in a way happened, but much worse, with the chaotic August fifteenth withdrawal from Afghanistan. It just awful circumstances. And without even the agreement of America’s key military leaders who are almost all opposed to it.

In both cases, all these were very different cases. In both instances, the rest of the world drew the conclusion that the US was pulling

back.

And I think what that did was encourage revisionist powers to believe they could become a great deal, more less risk averse and more risk acceptance. I think you can look at the actions of Russia in seizing Crimea a year later of the Chinese in beginning to militarize Islands and Inlets in the east and south China seas, in the Iranians, in their policies with their proxies, in their neighbors. Were all, I think, encouraged to do that on the grounds they thought the US would be less inclined to push back, which was an accurate reading. Same thing that happened perhaps unintentionally on Biden’s part. Biden came to office, writing before there were in foreign affairs, and then speaking immediately as, like, before as inaugurate, before as election in twenty twenty.

And afterward, initially, about the need and importance of the US resuming a position of global leadership. But the implementation of it has been very iffy So then in the case of Afghanistan in August of last year, it again had sent a message throughout not just the Middle East but elsewhere was put in the Kremlin saying to himself what if the US did this in Afghanistan. And before they years earlier, Obama did that in in in the case of Syria I think I can push into Ukraine. I can push the envelope in ways that might not have been possible before but the US is clearly pulling back reducing its world role and, of course, encouraged perhaps also by those within the US who called for m the end of endless wars, the end of the expenditure of blood and treasure and and the rest of it. Now again, this is a simplification, but I think the overall the overall argument has a lot of merit and helps to explain behavior by the countries that are to be blunt, our adversaries.

Bob, let me draw you out a a little more on this because there is a kind of bipartisan element to this as well. Again, this goes back to the Obama Trump comparison. So Obama, you know, withdraws from Iraq at the end of two thousand eleven only to be forced to go back in both to Iraq and Syria in in twenty fourteen because of the rise of ISIS. The

Let let me interrupt there just because sometimes to go from generalizations go down into the weeds a little bit helps to illustrate that point. And why you sometimes need to unpack these things. In the case of Iraq, Obama was unwilling to push hard for the US to leave at least a token force of American troops and advisers there in a non combat but advisory role —

Correct. — as

like as military leaders had wanted fifteen or ten or even five thousand troops. The then Iraqi government did not want to agree to a status of forces agreement. But ironically in two thousand fourteen, when Obama was forced to return, I think, the fourth or fifth American president in a row, was forced to re intervene. The he did so without his status, forced to intervene.

Exactly.

Picking that that their presence of even a modest amount of troops there for air power and advice and intelligence was a symbol of America having the back of a weak Iraqi representative government. That was lifted. And the moment we withdrew in December of that year, the then Iraqi president who we had a a role in helping get an office, but was corrupted as they come, immediately purged his own government and created the circumstances that so weakened the country, that ISIS could make the running in two thousand fourteen.

Right. Exactly right. I mean, I the point I wanted to get at though was this notion that the United States was over invested in the Middle East. That Obama had was shared by Trump, who also was the one who said in motion. I mean, Biden, of course, was there at the end for the collapse.

But the whole process was set in motion by the Doha negotiating process with the Taliban that began under Trump and the agreement that was signed was signed under Trump. So could you compare Obama and Trump a little bit on on this dimension? I mean, obviously, they’re very different people. I don’t mean, morally, they’re not equivalent at all. But there there is, I think, a policy continuity that’s important, I think.

And

just to pile on that, you know, what what’s the significant to the extent that Eric is right. And I think by and large, he is, although I think I would disagree, and then I think we were over invested in the Middle East. Supposed to the Indo Pacific and as it turns out Europe. But, you know, to the extent that you agree with the this argument that in some ways they are regrettably similar, where does that come from? It’s

a great question. I have an entire chapter on the book. So I say to your audience, read the book. Yale University press published in September this year. They these are totally different people in every respect with very different values, but they both view the US as seriously over committed.

They both wanted to reduce America’s engagement in the world. They both I think embrace the slogan about ending endless wars. Obama, though,

with

a a genuine reflecting to wars of necessity versus wars of choice, trying to separate Iraq from Afghanistan. But it’s worth remembering that Afghanistan began, thanks to the nine eleven attack on the US, a war that for the first time ever was supported by NATO and invoking Article five because it was an attack on the United States homeland. And

endorsed

by the United Nations initially. You get them into these prolonged discussions of whether the problem in, excuse me, Afghanistan was that was the American engagement there, misconceived or misconducted. And we could have spent this entire program and then some on it. And it’s it’s hard to summarize that in a in a nutshell, would it have been possible? And these are major ifs.

After the US in the case of Afghanistan knocked over the Taliban in a remarkable and economical use of American power. And after the initial US invasion knocked off the Saddam and his army in a matter of a few weeks, again, in both cases, contrary to pessimistic expectations, whether we could have to change the nature of our engagement with much more emphasis and handing over to the locals themselves letting them run things with our support and backing in encouragement, rather having US troops and US civilians on the ground in the substantial ways they were. That’s it’s a case to make whether it ever would have worked or the nature of both societies was so dysfunctional that nothing would have worked is a subject will be debated forever, I guess. But in both cases, first Obama and then Trump one of the US ultimately to get the hell out. And the even though by the time, especially Trump came to power, US casualties there were absolutely minimal.

Just a second.

Yeah. That mean, and the reputational consequences that you described, Bob, that came with both of those decisions. Elliot?

Yeah. So, I guess, the the question I’d ask, though, Bob is I mean, as you say, Obama and Trump radically different kinds of people, but they both came to the same conclusion and they both acted on it or very deliberately failed to act, which is a form of action. Does that tell us was that just a blip? Or does that really signal that in some ways American political leaders are just not going to be willing to play the role in the world that, you know, you advocate, that I think it’s fair to say Eric and I would support.

When we go through cycles, there’s been a lot of historical and diplomatic history of writing about American sales cycles of engagement and withdrawal. You can certainly see it in the twentieth century as well as the nineteenth. That’s in the latter part of it. It’s it’s hard to say though I think that in Trump’s case, that populism and jacksonism tend to have a a very nationalist don’t tread on me sensibility, but also a I think a reluctance to get engaged if somebody attacks us. In the case of Obama as well as Trump, I think it was a complete failure to appreciate the logic of collective action.

Coming back to that problem, that the US has capabilities, that none of our other allies in France have. And if you wanna pull together sufficient backing alliances and so forth to create deterrence. I mean, the point of all this and the point of having a military is to deter others from attacking you or your friends. And deterrence requires the capacity for defense, and it includes the capacity to reassure your allies. And I don’t think that either president understood that.

And both of them overestimated either, in Obama’s case, what the European Union or NATO could do or the UN for that matter. And in Trump’s case, not really caring that much about what the consequences elsewhere would be. And having a very narcissistic sense of America’s role in the world, complaining America with himself and being very transactional in its relations with foreign countries. The thing that was was unfortunate was that he went about alienating most of the allied leaders attacking them often personally with his quips and observations deriving them individually, whereas he sought to engage in friendship. People like Kim Jong il and Putin and she and and so on, which was very unfortunate.

Even while he did some things in foreign policy, that were useful, beefing up America’s defenses somewhat and putting intense pressure on our allies to pay more of their own fair share of shared collective defense costs. Those weren’t the only factors, but they mattered. So let me

if I could shift the ground a little bit. You know, Eric, you said you noted in your introduction that Bob had studied with Hans Morgan Thau with Henry Kissinger, and I have to say you’ve always struck me as an extremely realistic kind of guy. So so what happened to realism when it’s represented by John Mersheimer?

It went

off the deep head. I mean, Mersheimer more I I guess there’s an interview in the latest issue of the New Yorker with him. In which he says the most outrageous things, he’s a very bright guy but he he has a worldview, which reminds me of the French thing about It may work in theory, but it doesn’t work in practice. In this case, blaming the two thousand fourteen invasion by putting and the seizure of Ukraine on America. That’s to be blunt, crazy.

It reflects a lack of willingness to come to grips with the reality. It so assumes that we heard his feelings that the enlargement of NATO was so provocative and so aggressive by America. That it forced Putin to do this. It forced his hand. It ignores the agency of the Ukrainians or desperate to lean to the west to engage with the European Union.

In fact, it was the EU thing. It was the provocation that led put in two thousand fourteen to go into Ukraine, not the US. And It also misses a point that Bill Wallforth and a Russian co author made in an article a year or so ago. I I cited in the book where they in their interviews in in Russia and looking at other data about messages and so on find that It wasn’t so much the enlargement of NATO, but the existence of NATO, which is a source of underlying resentments. Moreover, you have a whiff of Lima or Russia about all this.

The the fear was after the end of the Cold War, as Russia fell fell apart and fell into chaos for a decade, economically, politically, militarily, and so forth before under Putin, who was appointed in effect by Jeltsin, began to reconsolidate Russian power with a simmering source of resentment against the West. In a sense, the Nazis played to that theme, including with the myth of the stab in the back, In this case, it’s the myth of the west oppressing them. And Putin has played that thing to his own public and so forth. But for Russia and we were engaged as, it’s just fatuous. It’s

how many The idea, Bob, that NATO represented a threat to Russia in a military threat to Russia in twenty fourteen at the time of the seizure of Crimea. Is blinded by the fact that there was not a single US tank in Europe at that point in time. And that in fact, NATO defenses were, you know, notoriously down. Defense spending among the allies was down. The alliance for most of the previous decade had been, you know, pretty much involved in Afghanistan rather than contemplating, you know, Russian military action in Europe.

So, I mean, it’s

a completely crazy crazy notion, honestly. But but but let me press you both on that then a little bit. So, I mean, realism used to have a good name. And yet somehow, it’s the guy who is most associated with that view of the world is and I I think, you know, you just scratched the surface of it, is saying things that are nutty, that are not true, that are really pernicious in a number of ways. So what what happened?

Yeah. To be absolutely blunt, I also think and this is a lot more controversial, but his the work he and Steve Walt did first on the Israeli lobby was I think bluntly anti Semitic. You Elliott wrote a piece in the op ed page of the Washington Post that included that in my title. Yes, it’s anti Semitic. The there’s a three d test about Israel.

If you the three d’s are when you know that criticism is real, which is perfectly legitimate, it’s anti Semitism. When it is as double standards, delegitimizes and demonizes. And, you know, you have to apply those standards in the work of Walt and Mirchheimer besides being factually incorrect, Israel. I’ll give you one more example because it reflects under Jeremy’s judgment. And I must say I’m looking at some old things in my study, I wrote a review of Mersheimer’s big book

on

on International Affairs about twenty years ago. And I called it a masterpiece, but he wasn’t he this is long before I got into this other stuff. And Steve Walt was in a debate with Dennis Ross and others at Cooper Union in New York sometime after the original lobby piece came out. And Walt made was either Walt or Mishama, but I’m pretty sure it was Walt made the statement and the debate. And I have this from Dennis Ross, that the US government had never gone against the Israeli lobby on matters involving Israeli foreign policy.

And Ross replied, that’s wrong. It’s Audi AWAC’s decision, just for one example, not to mention Ice and Tower in Israel in the fifties and Suez and all kinds of other things. And so, Dennis was pointing to actual facts or putting some while he was in government. Walt’s reply was again, I I don’t remember now if Dennis said Walt remission, but the reply was, quote, I disagree. While these were factual matters, they’ve been caught out in a statement that was completely

false and yet the the comment which I disagree. That reflects something about a mindset. There were also the housing guarantees in the in the Bush forty one administration in which Dennis actually served and was involved. So you know, I you, Bob, I think represent and we’re unfortunately running out of time. We’ve got really about five minutes left, but you represent having studied with Morgenthor, Kissinger, Stanley Hoffman, other sort of giants of the field.

You represent really a throwback to an older tradition. And I know this is an issue that Elliott wanted to get into. So I’ll ask the question and Elliott can, you know, expand on it if he chooses to do so. But how how does someone with your views and with your methodological approach, which is a really very old fashioned approach to the study of international relations that’s grounded in history, not informal modeling or co quadratic equations or large end studies and the analysis of the statistical correlations derived from those kinds of studies. How does someone like you survive in the academy?

LA, do you wanna add on I

you you put it very well, Eric. I guess I would only add to that since that, you know, I’m very much at the same approach and the same mindset. Okay. We’ve done okay, but what of the future? What of the next generations of academics?

Because I mean, I’ll tell you, I’ll be very frank that one of the things that I’m concerned about is I do think academics have a contribution to make to the discussion of foreign policy. Than sort of the shaping of some of the underlying arguments. And I one of the things I worry about is not just that a lot of these other or wrong. Sometimes they are sometimes they’re not. But the most likely, they’re just not particularly relevant to the make no foreign policy.

So if you could answer that, but also talk a little bit about what the future is in the academic world. I’d I’d appreciate it.

That’s worth an entire separate program. I’d be delighted to talk about it. I’ll try to do it concisely in just a couple of minutes. I think what’s happened is you have what Steve Walt, once referred to as the search, the sort of the impulse for the jugular. The the impulse toward the capillary, that is to say many of the academic disciplines, but it’s especially true of political science and international relations.

Are doing more and more intense studies of less and less. Much of the same has happened in history, and it eviscerates them. I think the more interest, I guess, one, I came to Georgetown at a two, and the there’s there’s a creative synthesis between the government department and the school for in service. And with more and more joint appointments in ways I think they were very constructive because policy schools have tended to be much too oriented toward the hyperfactualism in the day’s headlines. And departments of government and political science often off to deep end into the touch of things Eric referred to quite accurately.

So that the existence of the two has tended to make the academics more relevant to the policy, more attentive to the policy consequences and relationship. And the policy people are writing more practical things asking themselves, what are the what’s the broader long term meaning or even theoretical influence of that. So it helps that I was at Georgetown. That’s one. Number two, even there the current is shifting.

I don’t wanna go I mean, I’ve been involved over the years in a couple of tenure cases where I’ve intervened in what I felt were decisions that were not made on academic quality. I think it’s also the case that people like Kissingeraging, Kirkpatrick, Marilyn Albright, Joe Nye, and others would have great difficulty replicating their careers in today’s academy. But it’s also the case that political correctness and wonkness is is pivotal. So many universities are now imposing requirement even for the hiring of physicists that they began their application from outside to this professors should advertise with a page statement about what they will do to facilitate or have done or are doing equity inclusion and diversity in their teaching. Well, that’s great if you want somebody as a brain surgeon or a physicist.

But it doesn’t speak to their their quality and their thinking. So that’s very problematic. I retired two years ago, but one advantage I have was that I was already a department sure in California. And I think for me and for others which who are still present here and there, but no longer so significant in their own departments and programs, it’s necessary to have a foot in both camps. Both two have passed the strictly academic rigor tests in terms of how academies are supposed to measure things like quality publication, journal publications, teaching research, colleagueship and so forth, as well as engagement in these broader issues.

I mean, I had the advantage of being part of the post immediate post World War two generation in terms of my upbringing. And having mentors at the University of Wisconsin at Chicago for a year and then Harvard who often bridge those differences. And that’s much less common now than it was then. So that’s a major factor too.

I wish I could disagree with you, but I can’t.

Our guest today has been Professor Robert Lieber of Georgetown University. He’s the author of indispensable nation and several other works already mentioned in this podcast, you will be able to find links to the books at Amazon or that we’ve mentioned. Along with Elliott’s article about why it’s important to stop talking about talking in the Atlantic and a similar piece by your humble and obedient servant and my colleague David Kramer that appeared an American purpose called don’t go wobbly on Ukraine. So with that, conclude another episode of Shield of the Republic. I’m sure we’ll try and have Bob Lieber back to deal with other issues in the future.

We got plenty of them on our plate. Please keep sending us your emails at shield of the Republic at gmail dot com. We do read them. We’ve got some homework assignments from some of our listeners, which will endeavor to carry out. And please go on to Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast from and leave us a review and like us.