DB4016

Watch: 'War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft'

Good evening, everyone. Welcome to tonight's Council on Foreign Relations meeting. I am Jim Lindsay, senior vice president, director studies here at the Council on Foreign Relations. I also want to welcome everyone who is joining us via the wonders of the internet as we live stream tonight. Lively in timely discussion. It is my great pleasure and honor to introduce tonight's guess. I think you're going to learn they are both terrific towns. And I'm very proud to be their colleague. First to my immediate right is Ambassador Robert Blackwell. He is the Henry a Kissinger Senior Fellow for US foreign policy. Now Bob has had an illustrious career in public service, having held numerous, and I will say distinguished foreign policy posts over the years. I am they buy part. Bob, not going to go through all of the purse you had. Let me just hit a couple of the highlights. Bob is served four, are under five presidents. He was US Ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003. He did multiple stints on the staff of the National Security Council, including as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Planning under George W Bush. Between his garments dense. Bob was on the faculty at Harvard Kennedy School of Government for a dozen years. He wrote a lot by my county is written, co-written, coedited 10 books. One of them being the best-selling book with Graham Allison, Lee Kuan Yew, the grandmasters insights on China, the United States in the world. And just this year, the Indian government honored Bob with the 2016 Padma Bhushan Award for distinguished service of a high-order. So congratulations Bob. Our other guest is Jennifer Harris, Genesis senior fellow here at the Council. Before joining the David Rockefeller studies program, Jen served on the staff of the National Intelligence Council in on the policy planning staff of the US State Department, where she was he lead architect of Secretary Clinton's economic statecraft agenda. Jen is both a Truman and a Rhodes Scholar, quite an accomplishment. In tonight. However, we're not here to sing their past praises. We're here to talk about the publication of their terrific new book, war by other means, geo-economics and statecraft. Please join me welcoming Bob and Jack. Rachel, I should Bob, congratulations Jenn on the publication of the book you, I will note that the weekly standard called it readable and loose it better than the alternative. I take it that's pretty good. And reviewer in the Indian Express was so taken with the book that he urged Indian diplomats and strategists to read it because it was relevant to what they do. Let's begin with the basics. Look at the subtitle of the book. It contains a word that many people either may not be familiar with or have heard and a variety of different contexts. And that's the word geo-economics. So it should you first, Bob, what do you mean by geo-economics? Well, that turned out to be a question that Jen and I worked hard on in the early stages of our research. If you to our surprise, look in the literature exhaustively. You find constant use of the term without any definition. And people, scholars and public policy practitioners using the term without ever defining what they think it is. So we thought hard about it and came up with the definition which we think distinguishes this particular discipline from others, which is that geo-economics is using economic tools for geopolitical purposes. So it's not using economic tools for economic purposes, although those are fine, notable objectives. It's using these economic tools to advance a government, a nation's geopolitical interests. And the book is organized around that definition. And we look at which countries are skillful at using those instruments for geopolitical objectives and which ones are less apt. So geo-economics is a subset of geopolitics rather than something different from July, I would say it's parallel to geopolitics. Most Jen would chime in, we'll see if we even agree. But if you look at geopolitics and you go back to the 19th century and Mackinder and all of that, you discover that it has a very strong geographic orientation and a geographic orientation based on security K. And this is a different motion, both because technology of course is erased many of those boundaries. But also the great strategists from Sue and Sue forward don't usually talk about economics as a means to geopolitical objectives. And without giving you the punchline, the United States, for most of its history, understood the utility of these economic instruments for geopolitical purposes from the Louisiana Purchase to the Marshall Plan. Both of which of course, were dominated by geopolitical considerations. But in more recent decades, have forgotten that historical legacy. Did you want to jump in here, Jimmy Stewart? In practice, a lot of people know what geopolitics looks like when they see it. It's more or less the way in which states are struggling for control over territory. Often by reference to a set of geographic factors, right? Population, military, including a certain economic factors. But where what we're really trying to describe is how states are pursuing those same aims. But rather than reaching for traditional diplomatic or military tools, they are reaching powerful host of economic tools can take the form of everything from trade and investment policies that are wielded. More, again, in pursuit of certain JPL claims or certain aspects of a cyber domain. The way in which countries to fight cyber is part of geo-economics. Some of it, some of it's certainly some, some cyber attacks that have been spate, state-sponsored and the goings on in various nuclear facilities. We don't consider that within the realm of what we're talking about, but where we see states taking to cyber attacks against the banking sectors of other countries to vent a geopolitical greed. And like we saw in the early days, Russia, Georgia conflict in 2008, where that's an impressive opening shots where cyber attacks aimed at the joint and banking sector. That is very much within the realm of what we're looking at it. I take it from your opening remarks, Bob, that you came to the conclusion that some states are good at geo-economics in some states aren't. Who's really good at China? You'd have to start with China. And as we discussed in the book at some length, this isn't a perfect score card. China doesn't always do it well. But for two decades or so, as China became more powerful, they had began, began quite systematically to use incentives, interest-free loans, and disincentives, coercive measures to affect the, the geopolitical positions of other nations. Lee Kuan Yew put it like this, which is vivid. He said, The Chinese say, publicly, all states are equal. But when we do something that they don't, like, they say, Have you notice the size of our market? And know your place. Don't offend 1.2 billion Chinese. So they calibrate this. If Jeff Japan does something geopolitically, they don't like Japanese imports of automobiles to China diminish. If the Philippines don't act in ways in the South China Sea, that Beijing doesn't like. Philippine fruits and vegetables rod on the, on the docks of Chinese ports and so forth. So I think they, with this enormous wealth they now have to use, have been the most skillful, not perfect, but skillful in reminding other countries that there's an economic price to pay for geopolitical behavior that China doesn't like. So Jen, who else makes the list of countries that are good at geo-economics? Certainly, as Bob mentioned, tank tops that list advertise, I look at Russia as pipeline politics, I'm sure as well-known to all of you, but we also see Russia slapping vary. Questionable sanctions on Ukrainian chocolates that happened to be owned by Petro for Chienco months. In fact, before we saw protesters really filled and the mite on square. And we also see this, you know, the Gulf countries in 2015 alone spend some $12 billion in the contest for favor with the new Egypt. Just sweat last week we saw the Saudis threatened to dump US Treasury bills if in fact Congress goes through with pinning liability for 9, 11 on the Saudis. So certainly, you know, China's leading practitioner, but by no means all there is, there's, there's ample examples from, from India. There's a line through as well Towards I haven't heard United States. So is that because United States is just mediocre at the practice of geo-economics? Or is it bad at it? Well, I think it's brilliant of forgotten or a lost art in American statecraft. In digging back through the history. What actually with some of my favorite research for the book as someone who ran from history and in grad school and college, that sort of cosmic irony that this would prove to be some of the most interesting anecdote filled pieces of the project. But you really see for about the first 200 years of American history, US leaders quite comfortable flexing SS Economic muscle in pursuit of explicitly geopolitical aims. There, there certainly were about the high watermarks are pretty well known to all of us, the Marshall Plan. But even things like the Louisiana Purchase at as much as Jefferson liked a good deal, his main motivation was keeping the French from gaining a foothold in on the American continent and potentially setting a pretty young and exhausted US Army up for a confrontation with Napoleon scripts it'll probably wouldn't win. Even in some of the pieces that are, in some ways familiar but yet not of us geo-economic say craft, when we comes to mind, Churchill once called this said, declaration of economic war. Except it was when he felt was aimed as much in Britain as Berlin. And he wasn't founded in this in terms of what was really about $660 billion worth of american a that we were lending to our allies in World War II came that sometimes we were unilaterally controlling the level of British gold and controlling first exports and seeking to rewrite the terms of the post-war order with US interests at the center. And none of this was lost on the finished. I think a lot of people that I just chime in one more sense, the British are up, are at issue here. Two more. One, during the American Civil War, when the British were attempted to be sympathetic to the Confederacy because of their upended dependence on Southern cotton. The government, the US government, the Lincoln government, told them that if they wish to have all of their assets in the United States expropriated. This would be a good way to do it. And then of course, Suez comes to mind in which the United States, the Eisenhower administration, so appalled by the British French invasion of Suez, threatened basically to destroy the British pound if they proceeded. And that was the end of the intervention that the British were. It wasn't Eisenhower and Dulles as general opposition to this. It was that Harold Macmillan, who was at number 11, he was the finance minister to Anthony, said they can do it and they'll do it. And Eisenhower would have done it because Ben-Gurion lied to him and writing about the Israeli involvement in this. So we used to know how to do it and then it, these are things that we can imagine. Our, our friends in the administration iv on either side of the aisle, Republican or Democrat, really contemplating with any seriousness today. But I would imagine a lot of people hearing the story would say, well, wait a second, the United States resorts to financial sanctions, trade sanctions quite regularly. They were used to try to bring the Iranians negotiating table. We applied them against Russia in the wake of the Russian seizure of Crimea. Show you those not count is geo-economics or is a geo-economics done badly? So we try to be pretty upfront in the bucket. We see sanctions as kind of the exception that proves the rule. Right now, the Obama administration has 30 sanctions programs in place, which is more than any other president in history. I think more than several combined. And it's not just a story about innovation and quantity. This, and these are really functions that are different in kind. But even as you have seen, a real Progress made and the sanctions realm. You don't see it encased within a broader diplomatic strategy that, for instance, managed to get the French to turn off military shipments to Russia sooner than the seven months of long hard conversations that it, that it took or conversations within nato about what are the proper responsibilities and shared understandings are around what is owed to military allies and when it comes to economic coercion, What about something like the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been a lot of talk about TPP not being solely about trade, but about trying to set the geopolitical order in East Asia. Is this an indication of geo-economics getting back on the US agenda? Or you think it's more symbolism then? Well, it isn't symbolism, but it's a matter of sequence. And we go into the book in some detail, our analysis. And there's lots of documentation available which supports this is that we do not negotiate trade agreements with geopolitical objectives in mind. We simply don't. These are trade agreements negotiated by our experts on trade, which of course are seeking to reinforce US national interests and make america wealthier and open up the global economy and so forth. But they are negotiated solely on trade criteria after they are agreed. And when administrations have to sell these agreements to the US Congress, they suddenly recognize and assert their geopolitical importance. Ash Carter says that the TPP is worth one aircraft carrier, okay? Colin Powell made similar comments about nafta. These are all made after the fact. When we're trying to persuade the congress administrations are trying to persuade the congress to, to approve them. To put it differently. If you did. Imagine that there should be GIL, political objectives in the TPP, in the agreement. Of course, you would address Chinese coercive pressure on the nations of Asia. Of course, you would have that in the agreement because it's persistent and it's banned relatively effective in many cases. There's not a word about that in, and what it demonstrates, at least in our view, is that these Abel, dedicated trained people don't consider that as an important element in their negotiation. And there's no one there who makes that case. And then we do, just to finish, we look at the history of the bureaucratic politics of this and the story which Jan who was in our chairman said the Clinton administration. The Obama administration for Hillary Clinton working at the State Department. The bureaucratic politics over these decades has reduced the role of the State Department in these trade negotiations. Partly on, at the insistence of the Congress. So there are basically four at the margin of this today. So SAP negotiate them with no geo-economic content and sell them with a geo, economic geopolitical argument is the history of these agreements. So John, I take it that clock is running down on the administration you worked. Next January, we're going to get a new president, leaving aside whoever who's going to win the race from your vantage point. What should the next administration do if it were serious about geo-economics, what would that look like? So Bob and I sketch out a 20 point prescription agenda and then the final chapters of the book, which I will not recount right now. In part because I would hope that all of you agree with us, but reasonable minds can and should and will differ on, on that particular tax to take. And a lot of this is going to be fact found. Our project is really less too. You a case for what to think about these tools and more to lay out a framework for how to think about them. And so to me, any prescriptive agenda would have whatever the the the particulars of it would have four basic ingredients. One, I think you do need a common reference point, a common conceptual framework, with a clear definition that allows us to be clear with ourselves bureaucratically and clear with our allies. In order to call out Jew economic coercion. When it's happening to our allies in Asia, we need to know what it looks like. And so I think that's, that's 0.1. At 0.2, it would be to really begin to work this into the bloodstream of some of our alliances are our relationship with Europe is a great example. Nato is the closest military alliance, probably in the modern world has ever known. And yet we remain one of four or five countries that has not moved beyond very basic Most Favored Nation status with the EU. And in trade terms, we lack any economic counterpart for what nato represents on the security side, even as it's very clear that when Russia wants to flex geopolitical muscle is reaching for his economic tools as we've been put on pretty clear display in Ukraine. So I wouldn't want to see us begin to prioritize certain geo-economic responses within some of our closest to him, sort of security relationships. Third, resources. This is in part a and part of dollars and cents issue at 713 million dollars. One of my favorite numbers that I've, I've been quoting a lot these days, Monday through Wednesday in Afghanistan. And so when it comes to arguing for what we could do for Ukraine, hundreds of getting that country a viable economic foundation, or how we might begin to steal our allies in Asia against the kind of geo-economic coercion that Bob was talking about. Our entire eight envelope for Ukraine last year, I believe was about $340 million, less than half of Monday through Wednesday in Afghanistan. So it is, it is in part a $0.$1. It's you, but it's also about how this money has authorized. When I was in the State Department, we actually put out a pretty good Jew economic theory of the case in the President's. Firstly, we've only response to the Arab Spring, his May 2011 address, which really took full on the, the revolutions across the Middle East For did a pretty economic through the case. It was loan guarantees. It was a $1 billion debt swap for Egypt. It was instead of enterprise fund for Tunisia, Egypt that were modeled after what we've done pretty successfully after the Soviet Union. Three years later, when I left the State Department, those enterprise funds had yet to cut their first check. We were still arguing with ourselves as an administration about how to spend this $1 billion debt swap. And even as our adjust your counterparts in terms of who we're negotiating with had since become the roles revolve and events basically just outpaced us. So we, you know, we need the ability that were thought from Congress to be able to move a little bit more quickly in how we spend this money, separate, apart from how much money we have spent. Well, have anything you wanna add to that in terms of guidance to the next? I guess. They're not they're not calling me all that often to ask, but I just make 1, which Jen and I emphasize in the book, which is that beginning to use these economic tools for geopolitical purposes is not a replacement for American military might, which has to remain the most stabilizing force in world order. In my opinion. However, what we do argue is that we've become too instinctively dependent on that instrument. And one example of that, and I don't know if there's anybody here who works on the Hill or watching it works on the hill. But have a look at what the hearings are on the hill and try to find a hearing that looks at economic issues in the Foreign Relations Committee. They look at millet almost solely security questions. This is not to argue, of course they shouldn't be looking at security questions, but they don't think of economic means worth exploring and public hearings to accomplish some of our strategic objectives in the Middle East. Other than, as you said, German sanctions. We understand what sanctions do. We're very good at it in many ways. But beyond sanctions, they simply don't think in that way. And what you mentioned the next administration. What we would like the next administration to do is address this american at asset, where you have the biggest economy in the world, but there's enormous economic power. Address this asset systematically and think internally. How did they organize themselves? That in NSC meetings, which we've all been in up here, that it actually comes up because usually the people who might address that aren't in the room, aren't in the room. So that's our dream, I guess is the word. Okay. Well, fair enough. I want I want to do now is bring our members into the conversation. Let me remind everybody that this meeting is on the record. I lost ask you to wait for the microphone and speak directly into it. I would also ask that you please stand, state your name and affiliation. And if people would keep their questions concise, we need everybody a chance to talk on this provocative topic. We'll do that. Let's start over here. And Sam is going to come up with a microphone right behind you, but you're here. Okay. Look up Monday. By John Solomon with George Mason University, formally with the Center for International private enterprise. Do you include US foreign assistance in your range of instruments that you look at? It would seem to be logical to do it. Not that US foreign assistance is often used strategically, but it could be sort of head, yes, we do both economic and military militaries. Among the least interesting of the bunch, only there because money is fungible. So military assistance that we are giving is freeing up budget space for the Egyptians are others that they put two other ends. And I think we do need to have a real conversation about the use of economic assistance as a foreign policy tool and what constitutes an acceptable versus unacceptable use of usaid. We also need to have a conversation about how the world is changed and what new tools and the assistant space we should be considering. I for one would like to see the US began to look at instruments that would allow for things like opec to take equity positions in addition to debt. That is it seen as pretty routine and it happened There's a regular course across our European counterparts, not to mention the likes of what the Chinese state, when policy banks are, are throwing out at, you know, they're going out strategies across Latin America and Africa. Something can I just chime in and say, as I mentioned Egypt earlier? I like this question because allows me to give you this, this one which is not rhetorical. So what would you think will have the biggest influence on the future of the Middle East, the war in Yemen, or the future of the Egyptian economy. And I think most of us would know the answer to that. And yet we do pitifully little on the future of the Egyptian economy. Now this isn't to suggest that economies are responsibility or that week we can fix it. But imagine a NSC meeting in which the subject was, how can we use American economic tools comprehensively to bolster the economic future of Egypt? And I posit that that economic future will be more decisive regarding American vital national interests than most of what preoccupies the administration and its predecessors and the media covering. It refers to Hopfield. Jim hollow filled this year at the Wilson Center, normally in the tower center and SMU Dallas. How do you take into account sort of conventional macroeconomic policy, exchange rate policy, interest rate policy. I mean, the US does control the world's reserve currency. So how do you think about Bretton Woods? And secondly, if we have stopped doing this, I think we, we did it certainly in the fifties and sixties. Adopt doing this. Why did we stop doing it? I think the question I'm going to turn this over to Jan. about because it's I think it's a terrific question. The back half, we really have struggled a lot with about what we think we know what happened. Why did it happen? And we got into this a little bit on the trade side saying that the Congress and successive administrations a basically took any strategic perspective out of the trade negotiations through bureaucratic politics by having a trade representative taking it out of the State Department and so forth. But over to jam. And it's almost ever determinants. So we trace this story about when the US band and geo-economics as a first resort and why to about the end of the Cold War around Vietnam, couple of things were going on at that time, right at one, there are, there are some very proud of politics as Bob mentioned, USTR being pulled out of the State Department and given its own independent mandate. It's also the first generation of economic insecurity the country had experienced since the Great Depression. No longer clear that we had economic carrots to be spending about on our geopolitical agenda, as it was also, the rise of the multinational corporation could equate with the lobbying friends here in Washington that began to change some of the discourse in Congress. And you see that line up very well in terms of the congressional record. But to be a little provocative, I think 11 theory about a lesser appreciated factor has more to do actually with what's going on in the discipline of economics then foreign policy. Namely, it was the need to sort of write the moment where Keynes was going out of fashion and Milton Friedman was coming into fashion. And that we happen to be up against an adversary in the Soviet Union. He made no particular love of markets and had no particular use it for trade until every win for the United States in terms of freeing trade and liberalizing markets was also a win for us in geopolitical terms. And so perhaps it was no accident actually that you saw this happy convergence between the US's geopolitical interests and they had the neoliberal economic orthodoxy that we began seeing and of rising toward its own. But that worked really well for awhile. I think IBM in the early years after the Cold War, we face no great adversary that required us to rethink whether this happy alignment still exists. But now we're up against that. Countries like China and Russia that once again appear to have no particular distinctions between state and market and are pretty comfortable exercising power in economic terms. And I think maybe it's time to ask whether this happy alignment of our, of our security and our economic orthodoxies still exists. It is. There will be a micro Avis Bolen, retired Foreign Service Officer, former sometime colleague, Robert. I just I had a few skeptical thoughts and good reaction to what you said and also question. The first I think Jen, you you already answered. I was going to say that it's, it's so much in our ideology about free markets and on interference. And I would also add another point that the US government has a lot less control over the US economy than a country like China does over its economy. So it just wasn't then our thinking and not just since Milton Friedman them and you know, we've been pushing free trade since the Marshall Plan. Those you, as you mentioned. So I really question whether we're, you know, what's the word ideologically set-up, set-up to, to, to do this or, or materially set up to do it. Second is the valence of our interests. You mentioned the example of the French not being willing to give up selling the boats to Russia. Well, I mean, come on, that was terrorism. The French are always tire surface, we know, but they are very important ally, we're going to unleash the full power of the United States economy to achieve this. I mean, I think there is always a balance of interests and we have a lot of interests around the world which are going to really preclude this. Third is I saying, Why don't I miss I told you there's like let them are a chance to answer me of a lot of questions on the line, so I want to get it. Yeah. Okay. I just mentioned that I think US AID has always been a political instrument and I saw it and Eastern Europe And then I, I got you. Nice to see you. For those of you who don't know. Avis is one of the premier experts on how tiresome the French. Day by day by day, normal patients. So on her part, we don't suggest in the book that these instruments be used crudely in every case. But what we do say is that administrations and the kinds of meetings that you used to routinely go to when you were here and policy positions is that they be at least raise to see if they have potential. So we don't want to hit an ant with a sledgehammer. But we want to use these economic instruments the way we routinely, routinely use security coercion or at least in preparation. So that's that. But the second is more broadly. We use to have a chapter in the book on the history of American use of this. We used to do this with the people in the room. The counterparts of the current cabinet members who just as a matter of course, thought this way. And among, and I won't mention names, names here. But among those who resist our policy prescriptions are former Secretaries of the Treasury. Because as those of us who've worked in government, No, they tend to think of their business as two important for foreign policy considerations. Or the trade rap. I'm not speaking now about any particular one of them who tend to think. And the Congress in particular tends to 0. I know what these people at the State Department or thinking they want to trade away American jobs for geopolitical purposes. And so we used to know how to do this. It wasn't question that this was these were effective tools. Sometimes I could use be used badly, but that they were available. And that's at least in our experience, which covers certainly the period since the end of the Cold War. Not the case. I'll give you one other example which you'll be very familiar with. What's a primary geopolitical action, successful action. In the 990s. It's Helmut Kohl going to Russia and writing a check for German unification. That what better example of the use of an economic instrument to pay for the departure of the Red Army from East Germany and for the apartments that were built for them and they're beautiful, beautiful example. Meanwhile, we were doing, trying to do enterprise funds for I was in the administration and the White House for Eastern European transformation. And we had no money. It's basically as we had no money. So we used to know how to do it and we hope we'll learn how to do it again. Mr. pairs, like former military, his fellow, and currently a London-based analysts. Just quickly on Egypt, of course, the Egyptian economy is important, but be nice if we could help them keep their planes from falling out of the sky. Gods that really impacts on their tourism. But my question is on China. China seems to have a good, a good deal going in Africa, for instance, they get a military base in Djibouti when they put in $12 billion of infrastructure in Ethiopia in Djibouti. And where do we get stuck? Where we get stuck with doing all of this counter terrorism against Boko Haram and Molly. So maybe the problem is they're getting a free ride on the counter terrorism. And they get to get these chits building ports, and then they get a whole bunch of security. Bennett benefits from mother infrastructure. Thank Jan leaves for China tonight. So maybe speak to that. I think you're absolutely right. And I think we're beginning to see strains of this up in the context of the US or in an election. It's not too dissimilar from some of the noises that add on Trump's certainly has made and questioning whether our allies are free writing. And China has been masterful and its ability to parlay either the present reality of its economic power or the projections of future growth, which probably matter just as much into its geopolitical throw away and we cannot agree more. I think this is that Britain as a project to try to force Washington to begin to wake up and confront what are not easy questions. Absolutely. Tools are, again, not to me is lightly, nor are they without controversy or costs. And we tried to quite clear about that problem as well, but they cost something, of course the cost will be, but so too, do every other formats, especially arbitrary. And I'd say I just think it's a good guy by the Chinese in Africa. They use the construction of soccer stadiums as a geopolitical instrument. And if you I think are now, they built over 30 of them. And they are coincidentally in proximity to the home villages of the president of the country. So this is pretty micro, but exactly what you say. Now they can make mistakes, they can overdo it or so forth. But look, look at the at which we do in the book, the connection between Chinese economic assistance to Africa and African votes at the UN on issues we care about. And I'm actually isn't a Taiwan Thorpe. Yes. So so or recognition of Taiwan where there's a direct correlation so that using assistance for their geopolitical goals is is routine for them. Go back of the room. Yes. I think you get the name is mercedes fidget with the Department of Defense. Back in 2003 after the Iraq invasion, where we were building the whole coalition effort. We actually use the over $18 billion in US reconstruction projects as, as a stick and the carrot for increasing the number of countries. And, and I recall there was a huge battle with France in terms of them being able to bid on contracts that they weren't part of the coalition. But did you all happened to take a look at what we did with that with that tool in terms of growing the coalition. In your book as a case study that I was the presidential envoy to Iraq when you were you're working those which Doesn't entirely explain our failure they are, but it's a major part of it. Let me make this distinction. And you were involved in it. So you'll have much more details and maybe a definitive thought different from mine. When we were and I was the White House. We're working our way through this. We didn't think of those reconstruction efforts. First of all, it's course total chaos as you know, and and very little systematic thinking of any kind in any case. But insofar as we did think about it, we did not think about the long-term future of rock and how we might spend this money. Most of the recommendations that came in that we spent money in Iraq were from our military commanders who were trying. And of course it was important that they try to stabilize wherever they were in the Western desert, up north and in the south near Basra. So we didn't think about it in the kind of geo-economic terms that Jan and I discussed in the book. Secondly, now, I will display a prejudice. Our geo-economic thinking was infected by the virus of one man and woman, one vote. And quote, election objectives in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And we became mesmerized by these election processes at the expense of geo-economic thinking. So summing up, we spent our money, that money very badly in obviously impulse those countries very badly. And I think one of the reasons was that we didn't, as Jan was urging and as we urge in the book, we didn't think of these as tools beyond the, either pure development in micro area or tools beyond bringing these people to democracy, which as we've seen, would have meant, since it failed, of course completely, would have meant changing their entire culture and political sociology. So we didn't just, just one post script of optimism. Have afternoon. This is that it's also true though that we find that a lot of US military leaders are some of the most powerful surrogates and champions for exactly the argument that we're pushing. As we described in the book. When I was in the early tough stages of thinking through Secretary Clinton's economic statecraft agenda. I sat down with Admiral Mike Mullen and heard him riff on, on some of this and that he gave more powerful expression to some of these realities than anybody I had met before. A sense. He said, you know, compare the man hours, woman hours. We, the US military, I've spent thinking through the size and composition of the Afghan national security forces to the man, woman hours we have spent thinking through a viable economic blueprint for that country's future. In the end, until we get that balance closer to where it should be. I think we should expect to continue paying for it and influence fungi. And Bob Gates, as you know, in his book and in his public speeches, urges much more funds for the State Department for essentially geo-economic objectives. And certainly on Pineda did the same, and Ash Carter does the same. So far, essentially to deaf ears and the Congress. Okay, We have time for one more question. Before I take it, I want to remind everybody in the room. This conversation has been on the record. A loss. Let people know that copies of lobbying against book are available for sale at the back of the room, those joining us an Internet. So a lot of doors. I always go on Amazon.com and other retailers. With that said, Sir, you have the last question. Thanks very much. Karen Bahia with General Electric. I was wondering if you could comment on a thesis that I think maybe a corollary to what you're talking about, which is that the intentions, the ultimate objectives of a number of these other countries you referred to are in fact more economic in their course. So you look at One Belt, One Road, for instance, in China, or you look at the position that a number of European countries have taken on sanctions. At the end of the day. You sort of look at those and you say, yeah, there's a core, strong economic element to it advancing their economic interests. Whereas in the United States, we tend not to think about foreign policy and those kinds of terms. Would you agree with that? Is that is that a notion that's sort of Sits well alongside the thesis of your book. How do you see that, that idea? Well, I think that I'm sorry. I got to hold that for another meeting. I'm going to get Bob and Jan an opportunity to wrap up and why One Belt One Road? Well, we don't know for sure since the Chinese government systematically lies about its strategic objectives as we know. So we don't know for sure. But I do think it has a strong economic core, but I think at its base, its geopolitical. That is to say, if you look at the behavior in the last 20 years, they systematically build up in dependencies which they use for their geopolitical purposes. And they do it again and again and again. And they remind people of these dependencies, nations when it matters. So, so it's both. So it's both. But I think if you believe it's only, which is what the Chinese of course say, Which is One Belt, One Road is only for the benefit of the people of Asia, period. What are the hands that dimension if it produces wealth and jobs and so forth. But I can tell you I spent quite a bit of time in Central Asia. And they, the people in Central Asia Do not take at face value that there are no geopolitical Chinese objectives in this, in this policy. Any final words yet? So I think you're kind of you're getting to when and what was the hardest questions for us? Which is, how do you know when you see it? Countries rarely, sometimes they do helpfully signposts pretty explicitly like the Saudis did last week or as the Chinese have done in explicitly conditioning certain investments by southern wealth funds on Costa Rica as disavowal of Taiwan are pretty smoking gun cases, but more often and usually in the cases where it's most effective, It's much more of the stuff of correlation than direct causation. And so, but it's also the case that just because there is some economic presence of economic rationale doesn't negate. Also the presence of geopolitical rationale. You know, all the better if there are two version, three for, as I think for the Chinese. But there are certain cases where ad deals just don't make economic sense and yet they happen anyway. And even in some of the IPOs that Chinese state-owned enterprises have, have come into New York and enlisted on our cyclic changes when you actually go through and read the securities. Finally, if I've done that, I'm not the most fun weekend I've ever spent, but they're very up front about the fact that, that these are companies that are owned by the Chinese government, that there are certain objectives that are political, that will occasionally Trump and it's all kind of they're black and white when you sort of know what you're looking for. So I think that there there are certain cases where you are going to just have to initiate some kind of a smell test. But just the sheer presence of economic motivation doesn't negate the co-presence of geopolitical rationale. I just wanted to also add, I will, I will give the added acid or the other one lies on which we can. Another good example from China, which is in category agenda, was mentioning notice the IRI coincidence that in the in the preliminaries to the visit of a Chinese president to the United States. For a summit with our President. Notice the IRI coincidence of major Chinese purchases a Boeing aircraft. They just do this routinely and it's not just boring, It's Brazilian aircraft. We go into lots of examples. And I can assure you that in our, in the deliberations of our highest councils of government, these sorts of notions and of course, the private sector for us. So it's not completely analogous. But just thinking through, what do we, what economic instruments do we have in order to deal with the rise of Chinese power or to deal with China, sorry, Russia and their use of coercive pipeline politics, or to help foster our national interests in the Middle East. What are they? And they just don't come up in the conversation. That is going to have to be the final word on a very complex, timely in deep subject. However, the good news for everybody in the room is that you can talk to Jen and Bob as we wrap up. And of course, all of you are more than welcome and encouraged to buy a copy of war by other means. So please join me in thanking Bob magenta.