republicans, they did sturdy budget, they would not spend and they held obama back. were going to hold the republicans back because they corporate nt on more breaks, where we give corporate breaks trillions and people about welfare? that is only billions, that is anding people alive, health he fed. that is vital to this country -- att: our coverage starts 7:00 in the morning. we have a show devoted to the swearing in the congress. you will see the election of the house speaker, the speaker address the house, swearing in

of the house members. vice president joe biden swearing in members of congress will take place at 1:00. afternoon, house members will be sworn in by speaker paul wyatt. we will take a look at the activity going on under the 15th congress and the issues that will face it. that is it for the program. thank you for watching. we will be back at 7:00, tomorrow morning. ♪ >> coming up this morning on

c-span, a debate on when the u.s. should go to war, then a look at the future of the republican party with donald trump as president. former house speaker john boehner talks about his time in congress and what he expects from the incoming trump .dministration >> the new congress starts tuesday. watch all the opening events on c-span. we are live from the u.s. capitol starting at 7:00 eastern. you will meet new representatives and hear from returning members. the house gavels in at noon. business includes the election of the house speaker, his address to the house and debate on rules, one in particular getting attention, a proposal to fine members who live stream members -- livestream events from the floor. ofc-span2, our live coverage

the senate starts at noon eastern and includes the swearing-in of senators. opening-day continues on c-span three, with live coverage of the ceremonial swearing-in of members of congress. at 1:00 eastern, vice president joe biden presides over the swearing-in of individual senators. at 3:00, speaker paul ryan swears in. members of the house we will have a full replay at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span and he's been to -- and c-span2. >> a monthly debate series held in new york city. recently, the topic was when should the united states go to war? this is about 90 minutes. >> thank you. the resolution, the united states should be prepared to use force in defense of from the nations even when not subject to

the direct threat of force. please vote on your cell phone, your smartphone, undecided, yes or no. you will vote this time and after the debate is over. as part of our tradition at the soho, we are closing the vote before the debate begins, you have a little time to think about it well we have our next event, we begin with a warm-up act from a great libertarian comic. last month, we had dave smith and this month, we have andrew heaton. you can read about andrew on the soho forum website. otherwise, he needs no introduction except to say that he is the author of a terrific book called laughter is better than communism. here to defend that contentious claim, i give you andrew eaton. >> thank you.

i want to thank whoever was that preemptively clapped for me. you are my favorite. are you excited about foreign-policy debate? i think that this is particularly fun for libertarians because we don't have to study is hard on foreign-policy because we don't need to know as much geography. you don't need to know the name of countries you don't plan on invading. here is america, and then just don't bombthis part, a free trade zone and then write about here is aleppo. we had to learn that, last time, didn't we? i think we got a raw deal on the aleppo thing. i find that hillary clinton knows where aleppo is because she planned to bomb it. of course you knew where it is.

does anyone think donald trump knows where aleppo is? known think he would have ? aleppo, i will hang rosie o'donnell from a tree, that would have been the response, it would have moved on. if anyone runs for president as a libertarian, that it be known that aleppo is a city in syrian. the neocons are starting to go on the dissent. do you know what that is? is they want to go nationbuilding by bombing the nations they want to build. many of us would argue is counterintuitive. the flipside is you have the democrats who are the most stalwart opponents of war there ever were until given an

opportunity to vote for war. ii,, afghanistan, world war west euros -- westeros. are wondering how did i develop this very well educated, new once position on foreign-policy? i have a masters degree in international and european politics. did you get that, c-span? it is impressive because i am from a place in the country where there are more cows than passports. is -- ioklahoma, which am from oklahoma, the canada of texas. for those of you who have not been before, i want you to imagine 1956, and we're good. that's pretty much all you need to know.

i grew up there, but then i got educated on global affairs by going to scotland. if you are not a worldly cosmopolitan east coast elite said, it can be kind of confusing. did you know in scotland, they had different words -- they have the same word for different things. aye, also pissed. pissed means drunk which you should know in an island full of alcoholics. my first month was horrifying. i listen to a buddy say i got so out and i would say i've never been so angry in

my life that i lost consciousness. that was horrifying. but is a bit uncomfortable, from where i from, there is an inappropriate pejorative for a gay person, the word fag. in scotland, that is cigarette, which is fine. i would go ok, i'm just going to sit here and be quietly heterosexual. i don't feel compelled to announce my preferences to the bar, but good luck to you. anybody here been to ireland? it is a really friendly place. they are super friendly. scotland is sort of violent friendly. it is a very foreboding friendly. welcome to scotland we would like to buy you a pint. ireland -- i went with a friend of mine from college who is of

irish descent, and pines for everybody -- pints for everybody. parade of young maidens can harry -- you can marry. and did notgland, get a hero's reception. i visited where my town is from and i said i think we are from here and they said will you probably left because of debt. that was the extent of it. 30 seconds left. the important thing i wanted to aleppo ise to you is a town in syria. if you run for president, it is a town in syria. thank you so much. heaton. you, andrew now that we are all warmed up, the main event.

speaking for the affirmative will be richard epstein. speaking for the negative will be chris rebel. should the united states be prepared to use force in defense of from the nations, even when not subject to the direct threat of force? you can read about richard and chris on the soho forum website. i do want to say that chris of the nato incident -- of the -- is the author of a book called the power problem, how american military dominance makes us less safe, less prosperous and less free. --is is apparently such a that bret stephens, the wall street journal declined by invitation to debate chris on foreign policy. richard epstein was happily fact when youn set up a resolution between two debaters by email, it sometimes

goes on for days. in this case, richard crafted the revolution and it was written by him -- resolution, and it was written by him word for word and chris immediately accepted it. has been called, richard, the rebel without a clause and a force of nature. i called him both of those things. those phrases have stuck. he is probably willing to debate anyone in a public forum on the many subjects he feels strongly about. the list is incredibly long. chris and richard have both generously contributed reviews to my book section at barons and they never complained when i pay them a measly sum of $700 per review that my boss permits.

richard, you have 15 minutes to defend the proposition. we closed the voting. the voting is all closed. that is your timekeeper, watch him. he will hit you over the head if you go over time. >> i am happy to be the second of three debaters on this issue sandwiched between two people , who have taken the negative. let me see if i can describe why i am not quite a neocon but nonetheless would classify myself as probably somebody who is more or less in terms not particularly appetizing to many people, a modest dubious cautious libertarian hawk. the question is how does one start to get to this decision. -- position? view is to take the same attitude we heard earlier on about how is it you try to organize very strong categorical rules to dictate the way in which governments ought to behave.

i wrote a book some years ago called "simple rules for a complex world," which set out six basic rules which if understood, would in effect a , a sane and civilized society to get rid of most of the ailments that have befallen modern america. the question you have to ask yourself is, why do i take that kind of a categorical position on these issues that i don't take it with respect to foreign affairs? i think it's the right question to ask. let me see if i can give a couple of parts of the right answer. the first thing to understand is that simple rules for a complex world deals with the way in which the government tries to regulate an economy. under these particular circumstances, it's not that there is a discretion and confusion in the way in which various things ought to be done, but the basic intuition is if you have a relatively fixed set of legal rules, the discretion will be lost in private parties and they will try to figure out how it is they are going to be best able to deal with various

kinds of uncertainty. if you look at the private organizations that have to make these kinds of choices, they do have a fairly complicated governance structure, but one of the features apart from separation of powers, is there is something known as the business judgment rule. what that means, when you are faced with uncertainty and two kinds of errors and you're not conflicted out of the situation, no matter which particular choice you make, you will be insulated from liability with respect to your shareholders or other constituents. the reason this particular role has such incredibly powerful roots is you can imagine if you try to do it the other way around. if you got it right, heads you win, tails you lose, you will be exposed to some kinds of serious sanctions, including financial ones. at the front-end expected value , of positions of power will be negative, and so the organization shut down because they will not be able to get anybody in order to operate. with the business judgment rule,

it is designed to say we don't look at these things one tick at a time, we look at a market basket of ideas. you get the right people in the right is that you choose overtime to do better in a rule of outlines than you are going to do and a world in which it turns out, you have it. why don't you apply this with respect to foreign affairs? the answer is unfortunately the definition of the state is that it has some monopoly of power within the jurisdiction in question and there are no private parties to which you can delegate the question of what kinds of judgments you want to make when you start to deal with foreign affairs. and so, at this particular point, the question of when and how you use force as to be a -- has to be a public function. if it has to be a public function, the same kinds of rules have to give you discretion on which particular way you are going to go, whether you will stay in or out. then people are going to start to say, why do you really need that kind of discretion? let me see if i can give an explanation.

if you start talking about most situations, essentially the world is a relatively simple place if everybody starts to play by the rules. if you don't cross the middle of the road to hit somebody else, they don't have to run and hide to get out of the way. but anybody who spends any time worrying about the rules associated with self sense an -- self-defense and individual and private cases will quickly realize it is that shrouds with -- that it is shrouded with a kind of irreducible uncertainty that no amount of clever analysis can reduce. if somebody can call it somebody comes at you one of the things , you can do is sit there and take it and after you are dead, bring a cause of action, which is nuts. now you are entitled to use force, but the question is how much force are you entitled to use. now we have elaborate rules about excessive force. proportionate force and all the rest of that. and it turns out that the moment somebody deviates from the rules, you have to give a degree of discretion to everybody else. one of the other great problems in the area in which you are

talking about is as follows. what are we supposed to do with respect to the use of force in those circumstances where we see a is attacking b, and we as an individual have to decide whether or not we are going to intervene. one of the things you can say is, it's not my business if they want us to kill b. b better defend themselves, but i not going to risk anything. most people say a categorical rule of that sort would not only be hardhearted, but positively dangerous, if you thought the repetition of those kinds of events would continue to take place. what happens is now we say, you are allowed but not required to intervene. how do you decide the way in which the particular intervention is going to take place? this is not a particularly easy question to answer. you certainly don't want to say you always have to go in. it may be there is a serious conflict that exists. you start to go into the situation, not only does b get

slaughtered, but you get messed up as well. you have to ask what the possibility of success is, how confident you are in who is in the right and the wrong, whether or not there is time to get other allies before you start to intervene. you are right back to the kinds of serious problems about the use of judgment and the way in which you have to handle these cases. the question comes, how does this particular work when you translated from the individual cases into the cases having to deal with public affairs? it's interesting, those who study the classic sources, when you read only in translation, we will in effect discovered that -- discover that they always try to figure out how you dealt with the international relations question by figuring out the way in which you dealt with the question as it arose in ordinary disputes between private individuals, recognizing the stakes would be vastly higher when you're talking about nations, but understanding it is more difficult to figure out exactly what the right answer

is. what you have to do is approach the problem with the appropriate sense of humility, knowing that both kinds of errors you have in these kinds of issues are going to be extraordinarily harsh. there will be some cases in which you don't intervene and you will regret it to your last day, and there are other days in which you will start to intervene and think it was premature, foolish, and unwise. it cannot be done on either side of this debate to simply announce this, that, or the other, success or failure. one of the reasons why this debate is so difficult to undertake and how it is supposed to work is that it turns out that you have to look at a huge number of cases before you can decide whether a rule was some kind of muddy, uncertain position of the short i'm defending, is in fact the appropriate way in which to look at it. i think when you start to do that, the strength of the middle position starts to become a little bit more clear than it

would otherwise be. let's start to figure out what it is that we mean when we start to talk about this particular resolution and the way in which it's going to start to work with respect to the use of force. the operative word we use is prepared. how do you prepare? let's suppose we have decided as an abstract matter that we are not going to intervene unless there is a direct threat against the united states. can we enter into any treaties or alliances with other nations and commit us to use force in exchange of a commitment by them to use force to defend us? this is not a simple abstract proposition. if one were to try to explain what the success of nato was in years, the centerpiece was article five, and which every nation agreed

that they would respond to a threat upon one other allies as if it were a threat upon themselves. this was a great success because before the treaty was entered into, there was a genuine question as to whether or not the russians would continue to march westward and impose their free society upon helpless nations, and once it was clear the united states put themselves into the game in this particular fashion, that is a very effective counterweight to the way in which things went. it was also clear it was not just an idle treaty arrangement. you have to put troops in harm's way in order to be able to stall the situation. about the same time we had , another difficulty, and here dois what we are going to with respect to the korea situation. there was a famous resolution which put south korea outside the protective zone of american interests, and one of the short-term consequences of that

was the korean war which turned , out to be bloody and rather difficult to deal with. if we had taken a firmer line going into that, it seems to me we would have had very much greater results. if you want other kinds of situations which are generally ambiguous, one has to think of 1973, when there is a sneak attack on the israelis, and the question is whether or not if you are prepared to go to war, are you prepared to rearm your friends if it turns out they are running out of munitions, which was the case of israel for about a week or 10 days into the particular operation. henry kissinger and put -- richard nixon decided to rearm the israelis, the israelis managed to survive, the soviets were driven out of the middle east. if you then look at the situations later with the famous red line in aleppo, the unwillingness of the american position to enforce anything with respect to that is resulted -- has resulted in hundreds of thousands of people died, millions of people displaced, immigration pressures moving you into europe, the breakup of the

british situation of being attributed to the migration question, you have paid a very high price under the situations. people can start to say, there is some notable fiascos. you can look at vietnam and argue that was one. there could be a huge dispute about what is going to happen in a place like iraq. it seems to me the lessons you want to learn from this is not that you always stay out, but the lesson is quite different. if you are going to get in, you do not get in with just enough force to make it a fair fight. you think about this in the same way you think about predator and prey when you are talking about a state of nature. if you're going to be aligned, you're willing to take on a hyena. you're not willing to take on a pack of five. that is the only fight you enter into, those you can win with overwhelming force and given the position of the united states and its productive mind, we can bring about the circumstances.

part of the problem you have with respect to vietnam is we have all sorts of constraints on what we were prepared to bomb and how we were prepared to behave. if you go in half way, you get yourself chomped to bits. the mistake wasn't the war, it was a dance. i can remember the new york times saying when they get to iraq, there's going to be mayhem and so forth. it turned out saddam and nothing left and it was a victory party marching there. if you win the war, you have to win the peace. you put somebody like petraeus in charge, and he was not just a military man. he understood the social commitments it requires to maintain a difficult kind of occupation, under circumstances where you hope the steady amelioration by not only having force, but making deals with people you don't like and defending against force by people you do like. the situation in iraq as of the

end of 2008 and beginning of 2009 was one of uneasy stability. by the time the president comes in, he doesn't want to commit ground troops, which is a version of the stay out. the day after we pull out, the prime minister decides to arrest the deputy prime minister and the whole place falls to pieces. when you have to understand when you're dealing with these military type situations is if you take half measures, you can be worse off than if you stay in. so now, the last question i want to mention, how do we know what is or is not a direct force. sometimes it directs, sometimes they are slow. we don't want to limit our defense to direct forces only because sometimes if you wait a , little bit for an indirect force to manifest itself in a more serious fashion, the

situation has gone out of control and you will be in a much worse position than you were than if you decided to intervene early on. you could've asked the israelis after7, -- they attacked the egyptians decided to blockade the gulf, and that saved everything enormously. you have to put everything together, understand there are two kinds in all of these cases understand further that using , forces always a difficult -- force is always a difficult question, that judgment becomes an essential portion of the way in which we have to start to deal with these things, if you start with the frame and make it very funny. when you don't use force, that is when the real calamities will happen. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, richard. chris 15 minutes to speak for , the negative. >> is it ok for me to sit? >> absolutely.

>> i have notes. this man is a force of nature. not only does he have no notes, i was searching for him taking a breath. i'm not sure that he did that. it's a great honor to be here. i thank jean, don and julie. i think richard epstein, who -- i thank richard epstein, who i've known by reputation for many years. three years earlier than that, richard had co-authored scalia versus epstein. this is how i knew, richard, and we agree on many things. we also disagree on one big thing and that is when should the united states go to war. there is this long-standing liberal versions of the use of axiom,the nonaggression john stuart mill explained there is no difference of opinion among honest people on the wickedness of commencing an

aggressive war for any interests of our own, except when necessary to avert from ourselves an obvious impending wrong. as a practical matter, the nonaggression principle is a presumption against the use of force, not a prohibition against the use of force. i'm not a pacifist. i served in the united states navy. nor is richard and advocate for -- richard an advocate for the use of force in any and all cases. we are trying to clarify this elusive middle ground between the two extremes of never and always. that is a useful discussion. there are several different legitimate justifications or rationales for the use of force. this debate is not concerned about self-defense and i merrily -- and not primarily about self-defense. the resolution focuses on those instances when the united states is not directly threatened.

i imagine in the q&a and back and forth we might parse that direct threat. we could say that this particular debate is focused exclusively on the altruistic use of force on behalf of friendly nations, not in the expectation that they will reciprocate that effort. it turns in large measure on the word friendly. what does that mean? i was in new york today, i love new york. i see people on the streets, not all of them glare at me, they are friendly. that's not good enough. i'll concede that's not what we are really talking about. we are talking about an actual friend, someone you have reason to believe wishes you well, and may even help you in your time of need through thick and thin, is it that, or merely of convenience. i have not memorized washington's farewell address, so that's why i have notes. our founders were concerned about the issue of unnatural attachments to foreign nations,

that is friendship as a guiding , principle of u.s. foreign policy from the farewell address. the nation which indulges towards another in habitual hatred or fondness is in some degrees a slave to its animosity or affection. either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and interest. history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. this was an idea that the founders thought about long and hard, whether or not this country should be guided by interest or bonds of friendship. was washington right? maybe he was right back in 1791. maybe it's not true any longer. when i googled this, i said, america's friends -- who are america's friends? the first country that pops of that pops up is canada.

-- that pops up is canada. canadians are our friends. you have to recognize that we don't agree all the time, our interest do not always align. another example which we have seen play out recently is the canadians did not agree with us on our policy towards cuba, for example. in another case, the united kingdom went to war against argentina over the falkland islands. ronald reagan, 1982, refused to help our great friend, the u.k., much to the chagrin of maggie thatcher. what other kinds of friends? richard mentioned the korean war. for many years the united states continue to help and assist south korea, even when it wasn't a democracy. does that matter? turkey, which did fight with us in korea, and is a nato ally, but does the

character of that country affect -- does that matter? arabia they saudi , helped us fight the soviet union in afghanistan, and right now we are helping the saudi's in yemen. another case that is interesting is, what about friendly nations that are threatened from within? i'm thinking of egypt at the time of the arab spring. the united states had good relations with hosni mubarak and the egyptian government, which was not a democracy in any sense of the term. i've been reading or rereading john stuart mill's essay on nonintervention. i commend it to all of you. here is what mills said on this -- i recommend it to all of you. here is what mills said on this question of helping a friendly government threatened from within. a government which needs foreign

support to enforce obedience from its own citizens is one which ought not to exist, and the assistance given to it by foreigners is hardly ever any but the sympathy of one despotism with another. fair enough. is mill arguing the united states should have intervened more decisively on behalf of the protesters against mubarak? no, he doesn't. this is what mill says about that, would it be right for a government to intervene, to help people overthrow a despoted government? as a general rule mills said no. -- they are willing to brave labor and danger for their liberation. if they have not sufficient love of liberty, be able to arrest it from merely domestic oppressors, the liberty which is bestowed on them by other hansd -- hands other than their own will have nothing real, nothing permanent. a people that does not value freedom sufficiently to fight for it and maintain it is only a

question of how few years or months people will be enslaved. i think mill was onto something. then the question becomes, at what cost? richard referred to this a little bit. i think especially in the case of taiwan, which has been in the news lately. is the united states obliged, under what circumstances is the united states obliged to come to taiwan's defense? what should the american people be asked to pay? that question can apply across a broad range of contingency. what is the limiting factor to the affirmative's position? richard implied in the case of iraq that we should have been prepared to stay there longer with much greater numbers of forces. then the question is, what role, the u.s. or are the american people paying for

these wars, what role should they have? is it sufficient if merely a majority of americans are supportive of it, or should we concern ourselves only with the elites and what they think? if they are convinced of the war,m of following a should we simply trust in their judgment? if the elite's friends appeal to them for help, should they be allowed to come to this whole nation for war? polls taken earlier this year found that 57% of americans agreed with the statement that the united states should not think so much in international terms that concentrate more on -- but concentrate more on our own problems. another question earlier asked a very pointed question. would they be willing to use military force in the hypothetical case of a russian attack on one of its neighbors? this poll was taken in march 2014. 40% of adult americans would favor using force to defend poland. 29% would favor using force to defend turkey, and 21% would use force to defend latvia.

these are all nato allies. we are actually treaty bound to defend them. that might strike you as odd, but the same poll found a mere 56% of americans would favor using force to the end britain. -- to defend britain. if you can barely get a majority of americans to support a defense of britain it's clear , the american people want no more wars of choice. that is what we are debating. not wars forced upon us by the subsidy, survival not wars, , even, to protect the american people or secure vital u.s. national interest, including our rights and liberty. we are debating whether the united states should be willing to use force more often that it has been, and use whatever it takes on behalf of others. so, i ask you, is the central flaw of u.s. foreign policy over

the last 1/4 century that we have waged war too often, or not often enough? the affirmative position believes the latter, we should be seeking more opportunities to wage war. i think is a dangerous proposition, one that ignores this nation's founding principles and ignores the wishes of the american people. i urge you to vote no. >> 4 1/2 minutes left. more comments? >> you're welcome. [applause] >> i yield the balance of my time. >> richard, you can't take -- the war of aggression. easure of time. don't let that affect the voting, that chris gave up on 4 1/2 minutes of time. richard you have 5 minutes to

, rebut what chris has said. >> five minutes, and -- never mind. i will not engage in aggressive activity against a friendly nation, even if i might engage in aggressive activity in order to help a friendly nation. let me see if i can unpack what i think are some of the difficulties. first of all, i think everybody agrees with the proposition that ordinarily, it is simply under the circumstances inappropriate to use aggression against other individuals. but there are some kinds of exceptions. and then the question is just how broad do the exceptions start to run? i think everybody agrees if there is an attack upon you, you are entitled to use self-defense. it becomes rather tricky if the self-defense you used to defend yourself against an actual aggressor has collateral effects against some kind of third-party or the kinds of complications we always have to fix. it also says to me that in fact, if you're going to say there are

some exceptions, may be coming -- maybe coming to the assistance of friendly nations, by which i mean more than cocktail friends, people who have been with you through thick and thin, different degrees of friendship, the proposition i'm not making is that we do it all the time, and it's the only -- if the only debate you have is whether we have done it too much or too little, then you have accepted the proposition that you ought to do it sometimes and then you are just disagreeing on whether or not you have done this too much. for this proposition to be defeated, you would have to say there were no circumstances under which this particular activity would be undertaken, and that would be the mistake. if you start looking at this, you have to be careful about relying on early authorities to understand the application of the modern debates. there was a very famous washington farewell speech. this was the guy who had been very active in the french and indian wars, but that was maybe a war of self-defense, may one

-- maybe one of aggression who , is not sure. he didn't have any immediate enemy sitting around his border, and it would take weeks and days to get involved, and the thought that somehow or other the united states could influence things going on in europe under those circumstances, it would have been the folly. what happened is the world's gotten a lot smaller, the connections have gotten a lot deeper. you are always worried about the fact that the attack you see upon one of your allies may give your enemies sufficient willingness to engage in an attack upon you. you start looking at the use of bombings that we see most recently in afghanistan, in iraq, and you can treat these as trial runs against the united states. it's hard to know whether or not things are in direct or direct threats -- indirect or direct threats but it seems to me to be , appropriate to say that if we can have some intervention which would start to stop this stuff from taking place, that is something we really ought to do. what we have done is we talked about john stuart mill.

john stuart mill was something of a -- he was a great idealist but not a particularly good realist in the way in which he ran his behavior. i certainly agree with him that there will be corrupt nations who you cannot root out from the outside. the key mistake in the argument he made was he used the word people as if this was a homogenous whole, when in fact many times the threats you have in dealing with other kinds of nations is that a tiny fraction is willing to take over, staging -- stage a coup, and the rest of the world is disorganized and helpless unless somebody from the outside comes in. to say these people could not move quickly enough to deal with that sort of threat means they somehow forfeited their rights to liberty is an extraordinarily harsh and misguided judgment. to put it to you this way, if somebody put a stop to this 's coups that took place in 1933, that would have been

wonderful if in fact when he decided to occupy -- people certain to call his bluff. if it turns out the united states had decided to intervene -- wasd war i when the sunk, i think thousands of lives might have been saved. under these kinds of circumstances with all these areas, it seems that the categorical position is what is defensible. what is defensible is the proposition that the united states make some harebrained judgments. consistent with the proposition we use that sometimes, but not this time. the turkish that have become thoroughly authoritarian, maybe that is not the place to go in, but it seems probably sensible to send some tank divisions into eastern baltics in order to stop the russians. i don't think there was anything we could do in crimea.

i'm willing to argue about individual cases. announce wepared to have a categorical rule that says we keep our hands clean until the directory comes. there is simply too much interdependence in the world to adopt that position. >> thank you, richard. notes.i don't have my now i can stand. one thing richard said that i've heard before that i find hard to believe. i want to remind you. why don't you have wireless mics? just kidding. at the time ofat washington's farewell address, the time of drafting the constitution, the threats that were confronting the young nation paled in comparison to the threats that we are confronting today in 2016. semi-accurately paraphrasing

istomer -- accurate -- am accurately paraphrasing? >> i will give my response later. >> what is striking to me about the founder views on foreign relevant they are, today is that they were confronted with quite urgent threats to their security and liberty every single day. at the time they were drafting the constitution, they were british and french warships who would routinely round of american sailors and say you look like a deserter from the british navy and it turns out some of them might have been, that this sort of impressment of american citizens rub just the wrong way, we still have the british in canada, the spanish alllorida and on top of that, we did have a native american tribes and nations that

were still rather anxious about the fact that they were being driven off their lands by the european. attacking the frontier on a regular basis, that was the state of play in 1791, 1787. the united states military is the most capable military on the planet by a wide margin. our ability to project great power over great distances is that and in fact, much of that power is not actually necessary to defend this country from harm, which is what tempts us to of what isdefinition required in order to keep us safe and secure. we are debating whether or not we should be using that power, because it is not really needed all that much for ourselves, a rather simple thing to defend this country from foreign threats. when was the last time foreign troops tramped on american soil? we don't need to have that country to defend this

from harm, we have expanded our defensive perimeter all the way out to about as far away as you afghanistan. rationale,se that and the rationale guiding u.s. foreign-policy? i think richard has not yet clarified the circumstances of friendly, under what circumstances is friendly. he allowed by stipulation that sometimes her from a nation -- if they change the character, then maybe they are not a friend, anymore. are you still obligated to defend them? article five says yes, as long as turkey is a member of nato, it is not matter what the government is doing to its own people, we are obligated to defend it. i find that problematic. we should at least have some

exit clauses. we should not skip to lightly passed the sort of prudential question of whether or not our intervention is actually going to work. i think there are reasons to andtion whether prevention when b isbehalf attacked by a, we should not assume that it will make a situation better. i could point to examples in the recent past where our intervention has made the situation worse. richard interprets that our failures -- our successes outweigh our failures and that is ultimately what we are debating, but it seems to me that the presumption against the use of oral is very high, and we should not expand it to include cases that do not involve our own self-defense. >> thank you, chris.

we now go to the question and answer. i believe there is a microphone were people can line up. go up to the mic, i'm going to take moderators prerogative to ask a question of each of the debaters. first question for you, richard, -- are you daunted at all by what libertarians would be concerned about with respect to the moral hazard problem? one problem is that government tends to screw things up policy in iraq, one million people killed, will they only have the right guy in, we could have done this right. is in that sort of business as usual? are you concerned at all about the dangers of the standing army of the founding fathers spoke of? government screws things up in

that way. problemhe moral hazard that we tell various countries we will defend you, you've got the power of you -- the u.s. behind you, those countries might be tempted to misbehave as they've got the u.s. defending them? do you see those downsides and as a libertarian, they concern you that do they concern you in anyway? whyhey concern me which is i say it is categorically -- the question about leadership is a fair one and it varies enormously. enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm, so you have to have institutions that will check them. that works a little bit with domestic legislation. useless with respect to foreign policy, given the dominant role of the president. if you have somebody in that office that is a turkey, you cannot diversify the situation.

you have to make sure you have better people and in fact, this problem exists when there is a case of justice -- direct attack -- it turns out that there is them.g you can do to stop to give you one illustration of this, who is responsible for deciding to disarm -- at the end of 2003 when the war was over? you cannot get a straight answer from anybody. it was not congress or george bush, but who did all of this stuff and it was a terrible lack of presidential leadership, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. is there a kind of -- in you have to basically try and figure out how you improve governments rather than pulling us out and assuming you don't. you could also have problems

with your allies and here is the question that we have in europe, exactly the one that you mentioned. the united states has a pretty strong shield and the useless allies of hours cut military defense down to 1%, but we 62%, and whatrom we have to do is try to get them to live up to their treaty commitments and bring themselves to double the current expenditures, and that might in fact do this and that is why diplomacy is required, there is nothing which says we're going to give them a check, will really need to do is figure out exactly what combination of carrots and sticks we use with people, but the things that libertarians hate are the things that are essential in foreign affairs libertarians don't like discretion, uncertainty, but if you run a business, that is all you face. the question is how to make sure you do it well. the last thing you mention is, do a sort of keep to all of our allies, including the turks?

principle, of first you may want to renegotiate something like article five of the nato treaty. this is not a debate about whether that is the perfect agreement. the more important question to realize is if you take the categorical position we don't get ourselves involved in overseas defense, you can't enter into any sort of advanced treaty that might bind you, later on and that seems to me, unacceptable. >> you might want to comment on richard's answer, but my question to you is you made a distinction between wars of choice and wars of necessity. could you tell us which is the last war the u.s. fought that you would have supported? >> that is easy. 2001,ghan intervention in after the 9/11 attacks, especially the manner in which that operation was executed a very -- against a very specific objective, a very clear military

objective. that war was justifiable as a matter of self-defense or retaliation for the attacks and to punish the taliban. the great error we made was in redefining remission, five or six months after it started. we are now 15 years in america's youngest war with no end in sight -- longest war with no end in sight. suggests and i would reject the concept of alliances under any circumstance and that is not true. alliances put together to advance a common interest make absolute sense. what the founders warned against was permanent alliances, alliances that were not specifically directed against dealing with a particular threat. even the nato alliance was developed to deal with a very particular threat and that threat has gone away and changed dramatically. >> thank you.

give the floor. and yousk your question will get a chance to schmooze it up with these guys afterwards. >> for richard and chris both. at the end of world war ii, were you had a meeting of churchill and stalin and truman, -- >> roosevelt. >> someone harry truman became president, should harry truman have demanded that the russians and stalin remove their troops from eastern europe and we go to the aid of these innocent people after world war ii? >> the answer is no. i think truman did the right thing. this was the man who intervened in korea.

there is something of a prudential judgment. move yourself very powerfully. the right thing to do is what they did do. west, you have the marshall plan and you put the pressure in places where you can make a difference like austria. increase -- also in greece. the difference between permanent and temporary sounds great except nodine knows exactly what this particular line is and if you are going to concede the one, it seems to me you have to recognize the other and the principle is the longer the alliance, the more cautious you should be about making it. >> next question. i am very humbled with your rhetorical ability.

c sees a attacking b and feel some sense of morality to step in and now it is clear -- ofant to go into the issue it is not always for the clear-cut now we go and help with selfless ideals about helping somebody. going back the last 40 years, i would say the actions of military actions have been with not really alter is the reasons and america has something behind it, whether it is strategic reasons or empire building. it was obviously not because we felt a sense of duty to help our friends.

>> going back to the individual case, and it turns out it is easy if you know that a is the good guy and b is the bad guy. and a third-party situation, you may not know who started it, but you may still intervene to prevent bloodshed. thing you do is understand that nobody in the history of western civilization has been able to come up with -- this is not completely useless because you can find clear cases on opposite sides. when you mentioned the international arena and you gave away the game. is only do i agree there uncertainty, but you said there are mixed motives in a sense that we are not sure if we are doing it just to help these other guys out of the benevolence of our hearts or for we have a strong strategic interest to keep military base open.

to get those mixed situations and you have -- you cannot go in defend you can, to yourself against things that may be somewhat indirect, but you don't want the line between the two of them to be divisive. you take the facts and circumstances on both halves of the problem and see how you put it together. >> richard raised the issue of interests. when the u.s. intervenes to advance its interests, maybe it gets it wrong, but at least with the intervention be justified on the grounds that the u.s. government is attempting to advance american strategic interests and safety. the question that you asked invokes a metaphor i use in my book. if we come upon a person drowning in the water, are we obligated to throw them a life ring? if it is just standing right there, are we obligated as

individuals to throw the ring in the water? we are not obligated, that we feel a strong presumption to do so. then the question is, what if the person is drowning because someone else's drowning him? throwing the life ring will not be enough. in fact, the person attempting it might want to come after you for trying to save the person in the first place and low and behold we have become involved in the middle of the dispute that we perhaps don't understand very well. it's never as simple as it appears. i'm not accusing richard of claiming it simple except to say that there were a number of instances in retrospect -- had we known about the coup in nazi germany or the re-militarization of the rhineland, we would have done something differently. but that's hindsight is 2020. just a question of how you under these circumstances try to deal with uncertainty. the moment is as soon as you

have high levels of uncertainty in both directions that's when those rules become more dangerous. in fact in the good samaritan case there is in fact good empirical work and that my friend david did, wonderful study where cases of people in ,n easy rescue don't interview a number of people mind of drowning themselves trying to rescue them people when they don't know how to do it, 1000 fold is lost. under these circumstances, given this bias, the thought that you will compel people to rescue is you are solving a nonproblem. anon't want to compel international arrangement. you have to look long and hard before you get in there and it turns out i don't think there's any way that you can get rid of discretion. it's an inescapable portion of human life and this is something that cannot be discretion delegated to the private sector. >> i would say that we don't really disagree except -- and richard emphasized this -- there are two types of errors.

intervening too often or not often enough. we disagree with one another pretty strongly, i want to emphasize, on where we draw the line. >> question for chris? special case of the good samaritan. i'm walking down the street and a little old woman is getting beat up by a thug. she's my friend. i'm pretty sure i know which way the aggression started. i know for certain i can take the thug and i know for certain that she will lose if i don't. should i intervene as a matter of principle and if i should, how is that different, categorically, because the stage is different between nations and individuals. >> your obligations as your conscience on you whereas the actions of the u.s. government is on behalf of all of us collectively. the costs are borne by everyone and the risks in the case that you just cited are borne solely by yourself. in every casee where the united states intervenes, whether it is in defense of itself or not.

if the united states gets involved in a case of direct force and it turns out that there are huge numbers at the centers that will be bound, to go back to the question of representative government is a copout in this circumstance. we picked them, they bind us all. it's always more difficult in the international arena because you have to figure out how you organize herself but it's the same problem, you are the representative of a corporation and your shareholders may disagree but you are on the scene and you start to do it. your call in a case of easy rescue is always done. think rightly so. the position even in the case of easy rescue, we don't compel you in the best reason for that is not only the highest aspirations of individual mortality, but it's not a problem to be solved. internationally the stakes are higher, the error rate will be greater. >> next question. >> principally for chris, because i think we can deduce

richard's, but if you think i'm wrong, you'll tell me. should britain and france have declared war on nazi germany after czechoslovakia in 1930 eight? should they have waited until poland as they did? or should they have waited even longer until they were directly attacked? >> by the time of 1938 the consideration was prudential. the british at that moment did not think themselves ready to wage war with not to germany. especially not by themselves. theyat particular moment recognized the nature of the danger but hoped, hoped, and they guessed wrong, they hoped they would have additional time to deal with that problem, to rearm, particularly, as you remember, the french rearmament was foolish. they invested in the wrong defenses. the impulse at that particular moment was correct, trying to buy themselves time.

it didn't work. that does not mean that every subsequent decision along this cases are -- no two identical, but it doesn't mean that it's always wise to wage war before you are ready to do so. >> this is obviously a discretion question. in the rhineland they were prepared to go in after hitler's in the british were not. churchill thought that they were crazy. but this talk about britain and neville chamberlain as though they were identical, they hadn't the most incompetent, shortsighted prime minister in the world. everyone who look at what happened in the hands of germany understood the motives. there is this wonderful thing this man who was the american ambassador in his instructions were to be nice to the germans on anti-semitism so that maybe they will repay their war debt. that's the way that you run foreign policy, lord protect us

all. if all. poland is attacked by russia or germany, it's not a direct effect on england or france. >> next question, please? >> hello. i've got this question for both of you guys. his cohorts deliberately mitigated japan to attack america so that america would declare war and germany would follow suit with a treaty. is glaring defect with this that the nonaggression treaty between japan and germany said that they would defend each other if one was attacked. japan was clearly not attacked. google this, why did germany enter the war? you can't find it. there were no diaries kept in germany, none. exactly,'t know why, he came to bat for japan? question i cannot

answer. i find the historical scholarship on the back door to war unconvincing. neverer words, i've believed that fdr did this to draw the united states into a war. i will also point out, however, by the summer of 1941 don't forget, the united states was already coble ledger and against germany in 1941. before that time we were already providing arms and assistance. >> do you think it was right or wrong? like setting was correct. >> no direct threat. >> no. that's not true. you have framed -- we have framed this question around the question of whether or not there is a threat. that the justification, the legitimate justification for the united states to become involved in these disputes is the nature of the threat presented. the question is about if we are eating friendly nations that we

the united states are not under threat from. >> the direct threat of force, i think, means an attack on the united states or its citizens at home or abroad and to the extent it this way, the germans are willing to enter into a nonaggression treaty with the united states at the same time to the british are asking assistance in august with respect to the lend lease program. in your view, either is fine and the german is better, because they look you out and they said they are not coming across. let's go back to the washington thing. washington was right. we have one billion direct threats and no ability to help anybody at home. at that time were you want to do is to make sure you defend yourself because you cannot be assistance anywhere else. interestingly enough, domestically, there's this republican form of gaza -- government clause with huge amounts of stuff in the original constitution not only about foreign threats but about the ways that one state could attack another.

the view was that if you were attacked by another state you could go to the u.s. government and get them to defend you under these circumstances. if you have that much internal and external threats to thought that you have free energy to go so far away? he was right. i don't think he was right in world war i and think of the roosevelt did not follow. roosevelt was an excellent war president, i don't want to talk about the new deal. [laughter] >> again, we agree. >> next question? >> question for both speakers. years we have200 gone from a population of one billion people to 7.5 billion people in the last 200 years. excuse me. is that weggests have plenty of resources, actually, and the technological capacity to meet our human needs . so, rather than limiting ourselves to game theory, which

is what we are dealing with here , why don't we go beyond game theory and think about how we can cut everybody in and include everyone and cover everyone instead of going to war over resources. that's what we really go to war over, 99% of the time. >> any comments? >> yeah, it takes to not to play when you are talking about war. the reason you get an arms race is non-cooperative leads to the prisoner's dilemma game. at this particular point in time if you look around the globe it seems to me that russia and china are vastly more dangerous than they were 10 years ago. waslly agree that malthus wrong. one of the things that chris and i agree about is that global warming has been rather good, to the extent's that it has -- extent that it has increased the amount of arable land.

the cato people have done some good work on that. >> forget what you guys agree about. >> god for bid. [laughter] >> next question? >> this event is rather interesting. my question is aimed directly at mr. trouble. do not think that with the current law, with most countries being attacked under authority, some sort of repercussion will be forced by the allies? do you not think it is more sensible policy, a position to take that if your sovereignty is there will berly, repercussions? whether it is from the united or others? rather than saying -- you know what, if you get attacked, we are not going to do anything. what kind of president does that set for russia to test its boundaries with lithuania and estonia shaking its boots with trump saying we are no longer going to do anything. >> and glad you brought up mr.

trump. he did, for the record, you are hurting. the the united states has created for the world , and that richard has been a great defender of, has written quite extensively about this, pax americana. the united states will be the de facto parent to her of security for states that are not capable or willing, critical distinction, to defend themselves. i think that is a fundamental vulnerability in the current international system, which has grown too dependent on the power of a single state. a single state that i would point out is 5% of the population of the planet and 23% of its economic output and both of those things are shrinking. so, her ability to sustain this over the long-term is diminishing. it is getting harder for us to do this. meanwhile, the message we have sent to our allies is -- don't

defend yourselves or don't feel a primary obligation to defend yourself because at the end of the day the united states will do it for you. now, an interesting thing has occurred in europe over the last six to eight months when the mere suggestion on the part of mr. trump that he would revisit some of our obligations under article five -- he didn't say it quite this cleverly, but it only applies if you spend the minimum of a 2% of gdp, for example. the mere suggestion or that donald trump might become the president of the united states has invoked a certain measure of, shall we say, caution and hedging on the part of other countries. meaning they are thinking seriously about defending themselves. now, again, i would never have recommended this process to arrive at that and state. but if four years from now the average military spending is closer to 2% of gdp, i ask you, is that a bad thing?

americana model, let's recall, the purpose of that was precisely to discourage that sort of self-help behavior. pax americanawhat is, as i understand it. it's a situation where you take a leadership role and in taking it you use your power not only to give force to other people but to encourage them to do it them selves through a constant carrot and stick negotiation. to give you the other hand from mr. trump that i actually kind of welcome, his statement that the one china policy is at issue is a welcome development because those guys have been to thuggish making islands in the middle of the sea and then claiming sovereignty. he's a very odd man to deal with and i think what is true about donald trump, unlike hillary clinton is that he's a high risk high return man and we will be on a roller coaster for the next year, but there's nothing whatsoever about pax americana that says don't do anything so

that what we did the first invasion with respect to a rack, it was a coalition of 15 or 16 other nations, was it a good or bad thing? it was good because you had it but it was bad in another way. you could only liberate kuwait in the new fought another war and that when the united states essentially did alone. all i'm saying is that these things are permissible but if you have a rule that you can't use force unless you are directly attacked, they are all off the table. >> the use of force is always justified by any country in some defense. why with the united states even implied that it was better for , tond them, other countries rely on the united states primarily for the defense? want to emphasize that the way that this was conducted and negotiated in the wake of world war ii in europe and asia, it made perfect sense. these countries were broken and broke and in no position to defend themselves and we didn't even really want them to.

the question was, when were we going to revisit this? when were we going to say to these other countries that your primary obligation and duty, any country, your primary duty is to self-defense. that's what this debate is about. the primary obligation of a country is to self-defense. that is a core principle of international relations. togood question, let's get the next question. you can save your observation. go ahead, question. >> for both of you. do you think our policy towards allowing or not allowing war refugees to immigrate to the u.s., how, if at all, for that affect future military intervention? >> i will give the answer. to the extent that this problem results from passive it he on intervention, what happens is it creates an impossible human situation. i understand the concern of

trying to absorb huge numbers of individuals but i think it's also a huge concern, frankly, when people are in refugee camps about any visible economy of support. one of the reasons i think that having gone in and wiped out isis without treating them like a jv, as the current president has done, this is a situation in which you would have averted these tragedies. you are talking 10 million refugees and maybe a million people dead because somebody says red lines in the sand don't matter. >> i struggle to determine a policy that would have resolved the syrian civil war in a way that would not have driven millions of people from their home. that's what i'm struggling with. i am looking -- trying to discern -- you have conflated two related but not identical issues here, richard. there is a civil war being waged in syria since the arab spring. the assad government is not strong enough to win decisively

in that we can have to be defeated. another faction is fighting against him, and a third, which happens to be isis and other extremist groups. i struggle to identify the military mission that the united states could have undertaken in syria that would have brought this conflict to a swift end. tragedy, we have to recognize that, but i don't see it. >> one minutes ago, just the final question. >> i have a quick question to mr. richard. you are talking about necessity versus choice. i want to ask you about the practical application of that. when it becomes a superpower. what mr. richard just said regarding a leadership role, being a leader indicates that you have to take a step when you don't -- when we are not attacked. wantse either you don't anymore bloodshed or you want to preserve your image as a

superpower. practically speaking when we talk about the middle east, what are the consequences of staying passive and taking no role, which is the obama administration and what they did for syria, which is more bloodshed. what happened after the arab spring? that's one of casualty and mortality. >> the passive role to which you refer is the obama harmingration individuals, groups, and organizations that they somehow determined were the good guys in syria. the moderate opposition, so to speak. that's the passively. and i think that didn't work. meanwhile, our allies in the region, our so-called friends are fueling the civil war. i don't see evidence of passivity and a part of outside actors. i see various actors fueling the conflict in that's a great tragedy. have five minutes. think about how you're going to vote. christian is now want to

summarize for five minutes in the chris will summarize for five minutes and then we will go to final vote. >> the real question is -- what is exactly the proposition on the table about what america can do and what pax americana believes. when i say that i think you don't take a passive strategy of only intervening, those circumstances where does direct sayingto you -- i not that you go in in all cases. i'm not saying that most of these things will be right. i'm saying that there is a panoply of strategies that you have to adopt in that one of the things you do when you play pax americana is you start thinking about strategical alliances the you can make and these are necessarily going to have carrots and sticks in which you try to give some assistance on the one hand and try to control people to move it. it's not just a military way in which this will be done if you are engaged in a serious international organism -- negotiation that will be all sorts of issues dealing with cooperation that will matter and that when it comes to running

these things, there is no automatic rule that i or anyone else can think of that will tell you when you do it and when you don't. can do, however, is to be aware of the following proposition and i think the syrian situation illustrates that. right now the options are vastly superior to what they were four or five years ago when this all started. the russians having moved in out that thens syrian government has retaken a number of towns. isis has started to move in there. this has become a complete and total disaster and we are still sitting on the sidelines doing nothing. if you ask me if there is anything we can do now directly in syria to deal with this, i'm very pessimistic because i think the previous era has created it, but what about the situation in iraq? where you have god knows how many who have been killed taking over most oh and other cities? it's very clear that the united states is already in this, but

it's the same mistake that i mentioned before, you don't go in by half measures and that's exactly what the president has done, deciding that ultimately we will win and in the short term there will be endless confusion, uncertainty and expense. if he had sent in a defensible force, he could have wiped out isis and i think it would have been the better thing under these circumstances to do. right now it's just endless census -- senselessness taking place and that financial sanctions can't win because oil can always get through and money can always get in, what happens is you have to look at these things. if you can show me that we are making a mistake in a particular case, that's perfectly consistent with what i said. the question is whether or not there are any per se rules to be done. between them on the chris has taken and the one that obama has taken, never commit yourself to where inferior you

have created the situation. i can't see the bottom of the well today, but that's a function of the fact that we have a president that doesn't want to take this particular kind of position so what he does under the circumstances as he essentially decides to temporize in ways that are designed to compromise. what does this tell us? one of the reasons that we fail in international affairs has to do with questions that were raised previously about the differences between individual interventions on the one hand and collective interventions on the other. individuals don't have to make majority decisions. the great problem you have an american foreign-policy today is that we have some hawks in minority and doves and majority but the doves and majority but that does are wonky about this and would like to do something. when you have these extremes, you compromise. some halfhearted intervention that doesn't work. the sensible thing in this business is that if you are going to go in, do it right, otherwise you stay out. that was the position that powell took after the

difficulties with respect to vietnam. it worked after the first and second iraqi invasions. but pax americana, the use of force, does not simply mean force. it means all come from injury resources. someone who think you can go in and only these kinds of things and not worry about the social structures on the ground and the various systems you have to put in place, they don't understand. for those of you who would like to see a model account of how iraq was one between 2007 and 2008, read the story that the tray is wrote about what he did in 2013. this was not some kind of mindless situation. you had a man of extraordinary competence, as i said before, in international affairs there is no way to dilute the authority. you get good people or you pay a high price. [laughter] [applause] >> five minutes left. think about how you are going to

vote. >> thank you, jeanne. thanks especially to richard for doing this. let me close with a little story. i knew this guy in college. we will call him -- that's not his real name -- bob was one of college.t friends in great guy. told stories, had fun, carousing , doing college things. everybody knew him. he was gregarious, outgoing, everyone knew him. he also had his moments of embarrassment. he would drink too much, be found something around, but i never stopped thinking of him as my friend. he -- youraduated know, we stayed in touch and occasionally i would see him. i bailed him out of jail one time after a night of barhopping go -- gone wrong. another time he asked me for a loan. i remember -- i don't remember

how much it was. several hundred dollars. seemed like a lot to me at the time. i handed it over without hesitation. he was my friend. it was up to me and i could do whatever i wanted with the money i had. he was my friend. good deeds for friends all the time. all the time. i found this and i have to look at it, i didn't memorize it. ,here was a case back in 1367 edward of woodstock, also known as the black prince, he went to war in castile for his friend, pedro, also known as pedro the cruel. pedro had been engaged in a long-running feud with his brother, henry. heard of him? no. they was befriended by italian] of[speaking

>> anyway, these black dogs, cruel princes, they waged war on each other and the result was nasty for the people who had the misfortune of following them in to battle. the black dog was captured and eventually ransomed by charles the fifth, who taught him a great military commander and he 60d a ripe old age at age heroes death. not so lucky those who followed him into battle. 300 years later? the guy that you probably have heard of, louis the 14th, began his personal reign as king of france. he also waged wars on behalf of his friends. he didn't really much care about the people who suffered on account of his foreign -- because heome said, as we remember, in the immortal words of mel brooks,

it's good to be the king. way, betweenng the the time of the black dog in the sun king and today, somewhere along the way we adopted a different approach. our rulers aren't expected to wage wars on behalf of their friends or distant relatives with their subjects serving them. our rulers are expected to serve us, our interests. we elevate them to high office. tempted byt they be ties of friendship or kinship, we have created institutions that constrain their powers. richard epstein has written eloquently on the fact that this , of course, 7 million copies or something like tt.

theseocument includes enumerated powers. i can point to them. i know what they are. i find no enumerated power in this document that argues for the united states waging war on the behalf of our friends. that we can choose and should choose more wisely. guided by our interests. that is consistent with the wishes of the american people. that is consistent with our founding principles. vote no on the resolution, thank you. [applause] out your cell phones, your smart phones. the united states should be defense to use force in of friendly nations even when not subject to the direct threat of force? naomi brockwell is in charge of

electronics and is looking at the screen, even as you vote. vote yes, no, or if you are still undecided, vote undecided. whoever moves the needle wins the tootsie roll. should have jeopardy music or something playing. >> yes. [laughter] richard is going to sing a medley of songs after the debate ends. he's been eager to do so. we want everyone to stick around for that, we will also be serving wine and cheese. you can enjoy richards singing. as you vote, as you consider, naomi, please come up to the stage if you would, because i think the voting is coming in. where are you? there she is. when do you want to declare that the vote is in?

>> wait a second? [laughter] >> yeah, your vote will only be counted if you vote of times. times. this program was, by the way, developed by our friend, you are he -- yuri. if you didn't vote the first the second time, it will not be counted. it's only for people who vote both times. usually, do you have a west in there? a problem? >> vote early and often? >> no, this program is so brilliant, you can only vote once each time. yes, i'm sorry? we're in? the results are in. we will announce this.

now, no, ok. those who voted yes on the were initially a little less, almost 38%. those who voted yes on the proposition after the debate were up to 45%. the figure to beat. in other words, richard picked up about 7%. those who voted no on the proposition were 33%. those who voted no after which were 37%. it was very close, richard takes the tootsie roll. by 5%. [applause] >> what is interesting is the high number of undecideds. >> yes, a lot of undecided. those numbers will be posted on the website for you to check out

more precisely. as i said, it was about one third on each case. richard picked up a couple of more points. they moved up both, but richard picked up a couple of more points, then did chris. richard wins the debate, although indeed there were still considerable number of undecideds who were not the least bit influenced by either guy, so thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. 1970 nine, c-span was created as a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or satellite provider. >> this past september the national highway traffic safety administration announced guidelines for autonomous vehicles. tonight we hear from