Is what just annoys me so much about the i can bury peace politics. I'm getting the pronunciation that naming correct but it's just like so focused on where the empire was good. I have to say if you're in france if you're in the uk if you're in the f. r. g. west germany. It's a pretty good thing be under you know in the us. imperial sphere. And i think you know if you're looking back on this history and fifteen hundred years you might even effectively say from germany to the west. There's a north atlantic polity that is developing over time. And you can view the world wars as a type of civil war in but that's for another time but it totally rights out. The the other things that are happening particularly in the philippines for the united states fought a brutal counterinsurgency campaign that was defined by horrible racism. You know the water cure. I e waterboarding and things that would become foundational. The american experience but stephen shaqs. How dare you. Don't you know that trump has destroyed the liberal international order and that everything that we have done for for the world has been taken apart So what do you think. How do you think trump fits into this larger story that you're telling because would he was elected. This was the big fear right. The united the abandonment of the liberal international order of foreign affairs foreign policy. All of these places were publishing these pieces about how trump was his big shifts. So what do you think. I wanna ask i. What do you think that reaction which two i know that both of To all three of us seemed overblown at the time. What do you think that was a reflection of fear. So i still don't know what the liberal international order is the fact that phrase rules-based international order now so it's even see even more rules based us lead rules based liberal international artists. Keep on adding adjectives to distress postwar rules-based liberal international order. That's all the adjectives. Yeah that's all you can pick and choose from those very few people. Were actually talking about that thing. Before trump right so this tradition is brought into being at least in those terms right suddenly in reaction to trump. My reading of it is that well i in the campaign. A lot of people wanted to exclude trump Just knock them out by saying he's an isolationist and then when he used the phrase america first and he made noises about wars in the middle east and he questioned alliances all seemed to be falling into place. Can't questioned alliances. That's number one rule to question alliance is to be beyond the pale. It is the most knowing even question it is and then we can talk about your nato peace but it's so ridiculous. Sorry stephen their sacred. No i mean i just needs a rebrand nato and if you just call it by oton like that will get people off attachment she nato they love it they love it folks so so i there is this attempt to just say look. Trump is beyond the pale but didn't work if anything. It seemed to confirm to certain voters that trump was indeed as different from the status quo as he claimed to be which he wasn't and then it became a line of attack us to basically equate. us lead multi-lateralism with us military primacy as if those things go together naturally. Could you expand on that a bit. What do you what. What's us lead multi-lateralism. What are you referring to. So you know when trump does Things like pull out of the w. h. o. One of his earlier ones was to pull out at unesco et cetera. Which the has done before. I i might add the. Us has pulled out of the unesco before yeah same reason correct Many of the things trump did our foreign policy have precedents that are not even far in the past Even his rhetoric about alliances like obama was saying similar things much more politely to ask europeans to spend more on their defense so was His secretary of defense robert gates and then it was. How dare trump say these things in a nasty wet and then wind up in exactly the same place on policy right The nato alliance continues and expands under his watch alliances. Us alliances expanded under the trump administration. And not a single war was ended. Let's just be clear about that fact. But the argument was made Specifically he's out to destroy this. Us led rules-based postwar liberal international order and therefore is the antithesis of everything. America's been trying to do since well the date kind of varied but nineteen forty five or nineteen forty eight. Or whenever you said. This order came into being. And you know. I i see this as another attempt to try to rehabilitate. Us military dominance and make. It seem like it's one of the same Essential to Other forms of international cooperation. And that's what the concept of isolationism. That's what it's usage does because against isolationism you can seem to want to dominate the world and cooperate with everyone else at the same time so a question that i have and both of you guys is what is sort of the the I'm trying to think of the right word like there's almost it's like with the dowager countess is offended when you eve. It's like how dare you. There's sort of a cultural elements to To people's responses. Would you make this arguing about us foreign policy which is almost very fragile and very unbelieving. And i was wondering as you too much more than me have been in sort of the blob world is what is the relationship between these people's identities and us foreign policy that they get so offended. How dare you you know how dare you suggest that france pay for it security. It's such a strange cultural elements me. I was wondering what you guys thought about that. Either you and they didn't. They didn't complain about asking france to pay for it security when the obama administration asked you know. It's really about. I think this investment and america's image american prestige as the leader of this rules based international whatever international order And trump Was was too much of a buffoon to kind of Play the role that the image of an an american president is kind of You know grandee of this system And you know he was just a lot schreuder about it. And that's i think embarrassing on some level to people in the the foreign policy that because these aren't necessarily things that they don't believe themselves a lot of the things that trump would talk about. These aren't things that you know. Are things You know you talk about sort of in over a glass of whiskey or something at the bar. But they're not things that you're supposed to say in public out loud And it just like you know. Get that back behind the curtain here. Yeah i think that's right. And i think there's a lot of american foreign policy to bait is really about american identity. America's leadership role in the world is Part of how the country understands what it is. So when hillary clinton could talk about america's already great in the twenty sixteen campaign that goes together with the idea idea that we stand tall in the world. We're the indispensable farther yes. This is the madeleine albright quote. It's really wacky. She said she basically says in one thousand nine hundred eight interview with. I believe matt lauer that america stands taller and sees farther so of people die. It was worth it. Essentially those factor reagan's china's sitting on the hill rhetoric. I mean it's the same. It's just different versions of the same thing. America is the example par..