{"id":2393,"date":"2026-06-16T23:16:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T23:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bolteuropa.com\/?p=2391"},"modified":"2026-06-17T00:24:38","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T00:24:38","slug":"adelphi-buchvorstellung-umgang-mit-amerikanischem-exzeptionalismus-von-dr-kori-schake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bolteuropa.com\/de\/2026\/06\/adelphi-buchvorstellung-umgang-mit-amerikanischem-exzeptionalismus-von-dr-kori-schake\/","title":{"rendered":"Adelphi Buchvorstellung &#8211; Umgang mit amerikanischem Exzeptionalismus von Dr. Kori Schake"},"content":{"rendered":"        \n        <div class=\"embedpress-gutenberg-wrapper source-provider-Youtube aligncenter ep-clear   ep-content-protection-disabled inline\" id=\"774b93e0-4474-439c-a402-bdf309da26f5\" data-embed-type=\"Youtube \">\n            <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper \">\n                <div id=\"ep-gutenberg-content-68a4d2206d3da4c38034544346fdf871\" class=\"ep-gutenberg-content\">\n                    <div >\n                        <div class=\"ep-embed-content-wraper preset-default insta-grid ep-google-photos-carousel\"\n                            style=\"max-width:600px;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto\"                            data-playerid=68a4d2206d3da4c38034544346fdf871                            data-options=\"{&quot;rewind&quot;:false,&quot;restart&quot;:true,&quot;pip&quot;:true,&quot;poster_thumbnail&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;player_color&quot;:&quot;#5b4e96&quot;,&quot;player_preset&quot;:&quot;preset-default&quot;,&quot;fast_forward&quot;:false,&quot;player_tooltip&quot;:true,&quot;hide_controls&quot;:false,&quot;download&quot;:true,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:true,&quot;mute&quot;:true}\"                                                        >\n\n                            <div class=\"ose-youtube ose-uid-6bcabc2005404daf2415fff0ad97de36 ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:600px; height:340px; max-height:340px; max-width:100%; display:inline-block;\" data-embed-type=\"Youtube\"><iframe title=\"NL72Om4KxQw\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" width=\"600\" height=\"340\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nL72Om4KxQw?feature=oembed&color=red&rel=0&controls=2&start=true&end=true&fs=1&iv_load_policy=1&autoplay=0&mute=1&modestbranding=0&cc_load_policy=0&playsinline=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; encrypted-media;accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;gyroscope;picture-in-picture clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen referrerpolicy=\"origin\" title=\"Adelphi Buchvorstellung &#8211; Umgang mit amerikanischem Exzeptionalismus von Dr. Kori Schake\"><\/iframe><\/div>                        <\/div>\n\n                                            <\/div>\n                <\/div>\n            <\/div>\n        <\/div>\n    \n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [00:00:00] Well, welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us at IISS Americas, the Washington DC office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. I'm Paul Fraioli. I'm senior fellow for technology and geopolitics resident in this office. And I'm very happy to be joined to launch the newest edition of in our Adelphi series. So for generations, the IISS Adelphi series has been a flagship forum for rigorous thinking on international security with a record of publishing works that shape strategic debates in academia and well beyond. So in the first instance, please join me in welcoming Dr. Corey Shockey. Corey has written the latest contribution to the series. The title is Contending with American Exceptionalism. (.) Now, Corey is a senior fellow and director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. And she's one of the sharpest, most influential voices writing and thinking about strategy, alliances, and American statecraft and American foreign policy. [00:01:08] Before joining AEI, she was actually deputy director general of the IISS based in London. I think technically she was my boss for one week. Well, I was here and she was there and we never...<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:01:19] You're no worse for wear for it.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [00:01:21] Yeah, yeah, no worse for wear. (.) And earlier, she held senior roles in the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon, and at the National Security Council. She's also a contributing writer at The Atlantic and is the author of other major works, including Safe Passage. So Corey will begin by giving us a sort of overview of her main argument. And then we have a respondent, Professor Frank Gavin, who will give us his thoughts in response to Corey's arguments. So we're delighted that Frank could join us. He's the Distinguished Professor and Inaugural Director of the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins Seiss. He's a leading historian, leading analyst of American Grand Strategy, Nuclear Policy, and International Order. And I think the last time I saw Frank was when he was here launching his own Adelphi book. That was in 2024, and that book was called The Taming of Scarcity and the Problems of Plenty, Rethinking International Relations and the American Grand Strategy in a New Era. So he'll have, I think, a great perspective on Corey's arguments. [00:02:22] So we'll go for roughly 30 minutes in terms of formal presentations, and then we'll take questions for roughly 45 minutes from both the in-person audience and the audience online. And since we're in Washington, I think the kind of topic of Corey's book really needs no introduction other than to let her jump into it.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:02:41] Well, thank you, Paul. So I am delighted that Frank Gavin is in custody because he is to blame for the fact that I wrote this. I was talking to his class at Johns Hopkins and got asked my least favorite question in American politics, which is about, is America exceptional? And the reason I hate that subject is because I worked on the McCain campaign in 2008, so I can still hear Sarah Hillett's voice in my head. (....) But Frank's smart PhD student asked the question the right way, which is, there is something different about the United States from other developed, prosperous democracies. What is it? And as I tried to thread that needle, Frank was unfortunately for me taking notes and sent them to Ben Road, who edits the Adelphi series, and who I had the good fortune to hire at a, at double I double S. [00:03:48] And so to whom I am beholden, and when he got a hook in me to write this, I tried to contend with the actuality, that is, in what ways is the United States different, and are those perpetuable in our current political environment? So let me start with the subject of exceptionalism. (.) For Americans, it has always been a central part of our discussion about our own politics, whether it's John Winthrop's City on a Hill, or John McCain, saying there is no moral equivalence between our values and the values of our enemies. And the reason that it matters is not just, it's a sort of interesting periscope to put up from the waters of American politics to try and get a vantage point. But also, how Americans think about exceptionalism is central to what drives the United States to be an international power, that is, how we care about shaping the international order. [00:04:56] And this feels like an important day, actually, to reflect on that, given President Trump's disgraceful comments about NATO allies earlier today. (.) Because what is unique about the international order that the United States and its friends created out of the ashes of World War II is that it's the first time a dominant rule-giving and enforcing power voluntarily limited its own freedom of action. That is, by establishing, publicly establishing rules that others got a say in, right? Anybody know how many troops there are in Luxembourg's military? (..)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">S02: [00:05:41] 1,700.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:05:42] And they get as many votes at NATO as the United States does. And it really matters that we have to actually take their concerns into account in building consensus. That feels to me like one of the fundamentals of American exceptionalism, that we built an international order in which we get more voluntary assistance in upholding our own power than any other dominant state has ever had. And it's because of the nature of the order. It's because of the values that underpin it. So, most other countries don't actually have a perpetual debate about whether they are exceptional powers, right? It's a weird fingerprint of American culture, but it is really important to what drives the United States out into the world. And in my judgment, it's under enormous domestic political pressure now because of the nature of, because of the way we are doing damage to the wellsprings, both of that exceptionalism and that have made us powerful, prosperous, and safe. [00:06:59] So, it's easy to see what the U.S. gets wrong, right? Not only is it visible, but we're always in dispute about it. (.) My favorite description of Americans, I'm sorry, Frank, you've heard me say this before, comes from the historian Bertha Ann Reuter in 1923. And she writes, Americans are a people so extreme in politics or religion or both that they could not live in peace where they came from. And I think it's really important to, so I structure the book starting with culture. What is it culturally that's different about the United States from other democratic societies? And then I move on to talk about the political structures that result from that culture, the economics that result from that culture, and the military power that results from that structure. But the secret, right, like the superpower of American society is immigration. [00:08:02] It's the fact that we are all immigrants and that gives both a diversity to the country and a risk tolerance. And that risk tolerance is the stream flowing underneath all of the streets. God, that's such a tortured metaphor. Let me strike that. (..) Risk tolerance is what's fundamental about the U.S. and what makes us different from other developed, prosperous, safe democracies. (..) It comes through in all sorts of ways. (..) So culture, I love the way Stendhal and the red and the black says, anybody talking about political culture very quickly comes to talk nonsense. And so I'm going to try not to talk nonsense about this, but it's not easy. I find it easiest to demonstrate by example what I mean by the risk tolerance of American culture. [00:09:03] And the example that strikes me most strongly is that the United States is a country so dynamic, so innovative, so market oriented that we could develop three life saving vaccines in the middle of a global pandemic. And we are prosperous enough, and we are prosperous enough that we are prosperous enough that we can make those vaccines free to every one of the 340 million Americans and a whole bunch of other people as well. But guess what? We are also a country where a full third of Americans will refuse to take a free life saving vaccine in the middle of a global pandemic. And unless you capture all three of those elements of what makes Americans Americans, I think you won't have a theory that actually captures who we are as a political culture and as a country. The other example that I like, I'm a huge fan of the rest is history podcast. [00:10:04] And they had an episode about sports and the guy that they had on just as a toss off aside, complains that Americans only want to play sports Americans make up. And that, right, baseball, basketball, football, nobody but us wants to play those sports. And we don't want to play soccer to the extent everybody else wants to play soccer. I feel like there's something it resonates to me with me about American culture. The other thing about American culture is we represent the democratization of everything, right? (.) Think about fashion, right? (...) Who but us could make hoodies, which are awful, and sneakers with suits fashionable. And yet that political, that, first of all, the democratization, right? Everybody wants to wear sneakers because they are legit more comfortable anything else. [00:11:04] And yet we could make them stylish. (.) So Gordon Wood, the great historian of early America, argues that by 1815, the United States stopped looking outward for examples. And basically we have been self-consumed since 1815. We were looking west for westward expansion. We were looking internally for signs of dynamism. And what that produces is a delight in a sense of progress, right? If you read British historians or cultural commentators or newspaper commentators in the 19th century, they are horrified by the vulgarity of American money grubbing. And yet that's what Americans love about ourselves. And we try very often in contemporary parlance to mythologize the American past, right? [00:12:06] Like all of a sudden our politicians are grubby domestic vote traders or not even vote traders, vote refusers. And that there was a day when American leaders were statesmen. And I keep looking for that time and I keep not finding it. (.) And so even, even Abraham Lincoln, right? The greatest American in our history was a prevent grubby provincial politician. Somebody during the American Civil War told him, God be with you, president. And Lincoln's response to that was, I'd like to have God on my side, but I absolutely must have Kentucky, right? (..) And so American politics are an invitation to struggle. It's the structure reflects the culture and the structure is one of constant disputation. [00:13:06] So mayors have powers that they fight with governors about. Governors have powers they fight with the federal government about. I mean, I think it's instructive that you couldn't get the Constitution of the United States ratified without 10 major objections having been brought into force. And how many amendments to the Constitution do we have now? 23, something like that. We're still objecting to one of the best political documents ever written. So it comes through in the way, so Federalist 51, right? (.) James Madison's great ambition must be set to counteract ambition is the structure of the system. The fact that we are in a permanent political campaign in this country is by design, because the political structure is tied more tightly to public opinion in the U.S. than in other free societies, right? We're not a parliamentary system. We're not a parliamentary system. So everybody scrambles. [00:14:07] The political parties, trade, right? Trade views, because everybody's always trying to figure out what Americans are actually gonna vote for. And it's never clear until they actually do. So the other thing about American politics that I think is important to remember is that we are people founded in fear of government power. And so civil society is much more vibrant here. I mean, I was shocked when I lived in London at the way people blanch at donating money to their kids' schools, right? Because the school's supposed to do that. And I mean, that's a very different frame of reference for what civil society is going to contribute. The expectation, because we always think our government's bad at its job, you have to have other ways to get stuff done. And the vibrancy of civil society that de Tocqueville talks about continues to run strong in this country, I think. [00:15:07] The economics mirror that political dispersion of power. My favorite fingerprint of American exceptionalism is Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The fact that you can run a company bankrupt and you don't lose your house, you can still get loans. In fact, I know venture capitalists who will not loan money to people who haven't run a company bankrupt because you don't know their risk tolerance. And venture capital makes its money on the margin of risk tolerance. So only 11% of the American economy is reliant on foreign trade. That, too, is different and feeds our solipsism. Most other countries are much more exposed either by natural resources or reliance on trade. But the United States is largely an internal market with deep and liquid capital. Both Wall Street and venture capital. Fed independence. And dollar centrality is actually the result of those things. [00:16:07] And so you damage those things at your peril. (.) The other thing that I think is a reflection economically of American exceptionalism is that we regulate only after proven harm, right? (..) Most responsible governments actually anticipate harm and put regulation in place. I would challenge you to suggest any other country that would let Elon Musk run wild in the way Elon Musk runs wild in the United States. And it has its obvious downsides. But it also has its obvious upside of SpaceX, of Starlink, of others. And the craziness of everything else he does gets priced in in the United States. And that, too, is a reflection of risk tolerance. I think I will skip over the military piece because it's pretty obvious what the American military is good at at the moment. It's also pretty obvious that government policy is over reliant on what the military is good at rather than, you know, strategy, political objectives, diplomacy, orchestration of international cooperation. [00:17:21] The second half of the book, I will skate over quickly, but it is my Jeremiah about the many manifold ways I think the Trump administration and the 28% of Americans who are stridently in support of President Trump are damaging the wellsprings of American exceptionalism. And I struggle to think of an imperial power in history that has done more damage quicker to the wellsprings of its own power. than we are currently doing to the wellsprings of our power. And I think there are kind of three potential futures as a result of this. One is rejuvenation. One is rejuvenation. There are folks, serious minded folks like Michael Beckley, who argue that the Trump phenomenon is scraping the barnacles off the hull of the boat of the United States. [00:18:23] And that we have been accepted. And that we have been accepted. And that we have been accepted of too much restraint from friends and allies, too much restraint from international organizations, too much restraint from regulation and domestic cohesion, and that they are scraping those barnacles off. And the result will be a stronger, more prosperous United States. I think that's a really interesting argument. I also think it's wrong. (.) And I'd love to talk about why. The second course that I think that I hope is true, but I'm unpersuaded by, is rejuvenation. That is, when confronted with what we have created and are seeing, that we will remember that, oh, we actually like having friends in the world. We actually need immigrants to fuel the dynamism of America's society and America's economy. All of those things. All of those things. And I hope very much that's true. [00:19:25] And two days out of five, I actually think that is true. That the long term result of the Trump administration will be much tighter restrictions on executive power in the American system, where we are overloaded on Article 2 now. And will be a civic and public rejuvenation as a result of a near-death experience. I think the third possibility is hegemonic suicide. And I think that's the path we are on right now, where we are genuinely doing damage to the things that make us successful. If I were betting my own mortgage, I would bet on rejuvenation, because I actually think it's hard to see why a system that has been self-writing for 250 years would fail to be self-writing at this point in time. And I'll stop there and take your challenges, starting with you, right, Gavin? (...)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [00:20:29] Thank you for the most fascinating reflections, Corey. I was speaking last week to a high-level French government official in Washington, and he remarked to me and he said, you know, I've always thought that the French and the Americans are actually more alike than the Americans and the British. And I said, yes, I know, we both hold ourselves in very high regard. And he said, yes, exactly. Although, as you say, there is a difference in risk tolerance that makes America unique in plenty of other, and there's a long list of other reasons why.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:20:58] I also think there's an important cultural difference. I agree with you. We both have, both France and the US think we are the universal standard. But the French love themselves in high culture, and Americans love themselves in the democratization of everything, right? Disneyland versus the Paris Opera is how I would phrase it.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [00:21:19] All right, so Frank, join us in the conversation.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [00:21:22] Excellent, excellent. Well, first of all, I have to say, I just love the Adelphi series. I think they do a beautiful job. I've said this many, many occasions. The best editing experience, best publication experience I ever had was with IISS, Ben Rode, and his whole amazing team. And so they've just done, they've hit another one out of the park with Corey's book, which is absolutely beautiful. So make sure you go and purchase it. Typically, when you have a commentator, the whole idea is to find somebody who disagrees. And I'm actually completely the wrong person up here, not only because, as Dr. Shack, you mentioned this book emerged from a conversation in my class. I've been dying to see this book written by someone for a very long time. And in some ways, it's very personal, because I am a dyed-in-the-wool, complete American exceptionalist, despite my own particular history. [00:22:22] And I was thinking about this earlier. I started, and if you'll indulge this biography a little bit, it'll explain why I'm so grateful for this book. I began my academic career as a research assistant for John Mearsheimer. He's why I became a professor. There's no one further removed from the idea of American exceptionalism than John Mearsheimer. who, you know, I learned an enormous amount from absolutely was, you know, before he lost his mind, was absolutely brilliant. Then went to get a PhD and studied first with Mark Trachtenberg, who's the ultimate realist material forces type of person who believes this whole idea of ideology and ideas is complete nonsense. And then even Walter McDougal, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, wrote a great two-volume history of the Americas since the 16th century, two beautiful books on American foreign policy, thinks American exceptionalism is just a bunch of tripe and actually harmful and goes to great lengths to talk about how it was Stalin as the great propagator of the phrase of American exceptionalism and how everyone misunderstands Winthrop City on the Hill speech. [00:23:37] Then I go and I work for something called the Kissinger Center and become very close with Henry Kissinger and Dr. Kissinger was lovely. He was brilliant. He was a lot of things, but I think a great advocate, although more subtly than I think people realize may have had more sympathy for Corey's arguments than someone would believe. Hey, but I have tried to find the intellectual arguments for what is, I always worried, more of a sentimental or an emotional response, and that's why I'm so, I'm a sentimental guy. I don't mind sentiment, but I also like ideas, and it's very good to see Corey in this brilliant book actually lay out the case in some very particularly strong ways. And as she highlights, this is not a great time to be defending the concept of American exceptionalism. And in fact, again, I was thinking how much I would have liked to have this book because I ended up moving to Washington, coming down from MIT in January of 2017, around the same time as somebody else came to DC. [00:24:46] And I remember soon after the election of Trump, talking to a very good French friend of mine, he was gleeful, just gleeful. He's like, now, you know, I won't have to hear about this American exceptionalism nonsense anymore, right? I didn't just stand, right? You know, I'm like, so now you get to see how the rest of the world lives. And so it, and then I remember when I was teaching a class, the first class I taught at SAIS, I had some guests come in, and I had Bob Zellick come in, and then the week after that I had Jake Sullivan come in. And they both encountered students at SAIS who didn't believe in American exceptionalism. And both of them who, whatever their disagreements and whatever you think of them, are real American exceptionalists. They both believe in the American project, they believe it's unique, they believe it is something that matters, and it's different in the world. And they were stunned. And so I put together this dinner, I won't go into the details, it was one of the most hilariously bad dinners I've ever put on. [00:25:47] I somehow mixed up, you know, I got my sort of slightly overweight, neoconservative American historians wrong and confused Walter Russell Meal with Bob Kagan, which apparently you never do. So I called one the other, McDougal came down for it. It was just, it was like, we had Jake and Bob, and no one could agree. And by the end, like, I just thought there's no sort of defending this concept, but I always believed it, right? And in fact, during that year of 2017, having daughters of a certain age, I actually ended up writing a piece based on, after watching La La Land and saying, that's American exceptionalism, writing a whole piece on my sort of belief in American exceptionalism on behalf of my daughter and her friends on July 4th, 2017. But still, I knew that this was a sentimental attachment. [00:26:47] And so what Corey has done in this book is to actually take what I sense and know to be true, but wasn't able to ever prove, and she does it in her totally brilliant way. And I mean, I think there's a few things that I want to highlight that are worth talking about. (.) First, there's the obvious fact that when the Cold War ended, and the United States was the only major power left, any reasonable international relations theory would have predicted balancing against the United States. And the absence of any balance, and in fact, even my realist friends tried to invent soft balancing, as if that was a thing. Like, we're not going to really balance, but we're going to, like, wag our finger at you. Like, they went to such efforts to explain the fact that American domination of the international system was really only bothersome to people that you really wouldn't, you'd expect it to be bothersome to. [00:27:50] You know, kind of rogue states, authoritarian states, but most of the rest of the world. And so the absence, and even those troubling actors didn't engage in any kind of sophisticated effort. In fact, I think one of the other pet peeves I have in the last couple of years is this axis of adversary stuff, which has demonstrated how competent they are in the way, you know, ask Iran how they're thinking about their good allies in Pyongyang and Moscow and Beijing. But right off the bat, there was this intellectual thought, why is there sort of, what is going on here? And I think Corey beautifully captures why it is American leadership has not generated the kind of reaction that any other state, if you kind of took all the other material capabilities, its economy, its military power, even its political system, and expect different behavior. Which is the second thing that she does really, which is just to ask the counterfactual. (..) [00:28:56] Put another country in the place of the United States in this position of international leadership and ask yourself, would the outcomes be the same? And counterfactuals are tricky and difficult, but this is one that it's pretty obvious. If the Soviet Union has the economy of the United States in 1950, if China eventually comes to dominate the international system, it's not that far-fetched to imagine a completely different international order and different reactions from other states. So this is just, these are, Corey does this brilliantly, but she also does these things with a style that only she has. For those of you who don't know, Corey's a big baseball fan, and when she talks about, and I had never thought about this before, you want to understand American exceptionalism, talk about how we deal with sports, right? And baseball in particular, you've got two different leagues who play by different rules in stadiums that are not at all alike, right? [00:30:08] Like, and then have a world series, a world series, not a national series, a world series. I thought of another thing she didn't even put in there. Americans don't deal with ties. Like, what sport in America would ever have a tie, right? You know, that's ridiculous. Like, you know, you'd end the game and shoot somebody or something, but you wouldn't have a tie. So this, this image, which highlights another thing that I think comes out really clearly in the book, and that is to understand American exceptionalism is not to say there's something that we have figured out in the way we govern. I think it's pretty, you know, we've got a particularly problematic president, but if you go through the whole list of 47 or how many there have been. (.) For every Lincoln, for every Lincoln, there's three Hardings, right? Like, it has not been a-<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:31:05] For every Lincoln, there are 43 Hardings.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [00:31:07] Yeah, no, it's, it's not a, it's not a stellar cast, right? Um, the Simpsons does this hilarious, they did the skit for like the president you've never heard of, and they have a dance thing where Fillmore comes out and Harrison comes out and you know, it's just, you know, Tyler and Taylor too. Um, and it's, it's, it's not in the focus on how we govern. And this reminds me of a conversation I, a long-time conversation I've had with my friend Ben Sass about this, where it's always, there's something about the sociocultural elements of American society that generate something that's different. And again, Corey makes it very clear by exceptional. She doesn't mean good and it doesn't mean bad. It's just different and different in a way meaningful enough to generate different outcomes in the world. [00:32:08] That's why we care about it. It's not to say, yay, USA, right? It's to say, we're trying to understand the world. We're trying to understand what the impact of the United States is. If it's just like a billiard ball in some Ken Waltz way that all we have to do is measure its material capabilities. That's one form of analysis. And what Corey is saying, and I think is absolutely correct, is that that is missing an enormous part of the story for good and for bad. I mean, I think we might be witnessing some of the less good in the last couple of weeks. And these qualities and characteristics, she calls out and identifies. Our mutual friend, John Bue, often refers to it as the animal spirits, right? It's this tolerance for risk that Corey talks about. And it manifests itself in some ugly ways, right? (..) My wife and I just saw this movie Train Tree or Tree Train. Yeah, Train Tree. Yeah, Train Tree. It was beautiful, right? But there's this horrible scene of violence against a Chinese laborer while they're sort of in the logging industry. [00:33:15] And you think about all the terrible things that go on online. Now, within historical memory, people were lynched, right? Like the level of violence in this country.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:33:30] Not just in historical memory, in our lifetime.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [00:33:32] Yeah, in our lifetime. And the resort to violence in this country is something our, you know, I lived in Texas for 13 years. Texas is one of the most innovative, exciting, grand, big places in the world. It's also one of the ugliest places in the world. And it's also one of the places where a complete disregard for the poor in terms of sort of, you know, health insurance. There's sort of a bargain there. And Corey captures this sort of dual side. I was reminded, I remember hearing a talk by a legal historian who said, do you know why, I don't know, are there any lawyers here? (..) Anyone ever have to take a torts class? No one takes a torts class in France or Brazil. Because basically what torts is, is in the United States in the late 19th century, there were a bunch of industrial accidents. Like, you know, there's a trolley car in Chicago. [00:34:36] It goes off and it kills 200 people. Most places, as Corey said, would regulate that. In the United States, they said, we're not going to regulate it. We're going to have liability and you can sue, right? And so we have a completely different way of dealing with these sort of things to her excellent example of Elon Musk. And so I think that she also captures really nicely the secret sauce of this sociocultural dynamism and difference, which is immigration. (.) And immigration requires two things that are truly unique. And this does get to governance. One is you need a mechanism to adjust disputes that don't rely just on tradition or tribe or, and this is where law becomes incredibly important. You also have to work really hard to find common purpose when it's not based on ethno-religious versions, right? [00:35:43] And so Corey does just a beautiful job of bringing out and putting these all in one package. I figured I had to disagree with her about one thing. And that is, I was surprised she was darker about its future than I expected. And we can have this conversation. I mean, she quoted Federalist 10. I always think of, or Federalist 51. I always love reading 10 and 51. (.) The founders realized we would screw up. I don't think they anticipated someone as problematic as the current president, but, you know, they had this all gamed in a lot of ways. The antibodies are in the system. We often think, because we're in a kind of a not great moment in terms of the separation of powers and Congress laying down, but got 50 states, right? We've got California almost in open revolt against what the U.S. is doing, you know, negotiating as a sovereign state often, right? And so I think that the antibodies are there and you're seeing them. [00:36:48] And I would also say one of the great secret sauces is, and this is, you, Corey is a great historian, knows this. We think of exceptionalism as optimistic. (...) Americans always think that we suck, right? If you look at the founding fathers at the end of their days, they thought they had blown it. They thought the American experiment was done, right? And this is right in the 18-teens and the 18-20s. They thought, we screwed up. It's not going to work. (..) There's not really a habit of sitting in Beijing or Moscow or even Paris and saying, we suck, right? Like, there is something about the fact that we're all constantly freaked out. It has its problems. It has its excesses. It leads to not always the best decision-making in particular circumstances. And we had a conversation in Italy about when fear is not the best driver of things. But we're constantly putting our flaws and warts out there and debating them and exposing them and saying, how can we do better? [00:37:57] We're doing so terribly. And that is, I think, a part of the American sociocultural exceptional DNA that I don't think has gone away and I think is still there and is one that I think will be guarantee us that this tradition for good, bad, and everything in between continues. So, excellent book.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:38:22] Thank you, my friend. (.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [00:38:24] Great. Well, thank you, Frank. So, we will now open to questions both in the room and online. Might take a moment. I have a tablet there and I can take questions. But if anyone has questions in the room, feel free to raise your hand. And I can ask Corey a quick question at the start to get going. But, I mean, if you think about, as both you and Frank said, if you think about exceptionalism as having primarily sociocultural origins, right? And, you know, in your kind of long tour through American history, you know, you gave examples of how the government largely stood out of the way of a lot of the sociocultural processes that allowed America to be exceptional. But now that the Trump administration and Donald Trump personally has sort of decided that, you know, the U.S. ought to no longer be an exceptional country, it should be a regular country, and it's going to behave like a regular country and a big country at that. Is there a risk that that type of behavior over the course of many years can boomerang around and influence the sociocultural roots of American exceptionalism going forward? [00:39:32] Is that a risk that we see?<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:39:34] It's certainly a risk. It's certainly a risk. And I think we're in the midst of a major political experiment about whether, I mean, given that the president campaigned on the U.S. being less involved in the world, and yet has been conducting military operations, offensive military operations in eight countries in the last 14 months, most dramatically in Iran right now. Whether the president's political supporters will continue to support him because he's him or will desert him because he's not keeping his campaign promise is, I think, going to be an interesting test of whether the culture is influencing the politics or the politics are influencing the culture. And I think it's too soon to tell.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">S02: [00:40:22] Frank, do you have a different view on that? (...)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [00:40:28] I have concerns about the sociocultural underpinnings of American society that have nothing to do with Trump right now. I do think we are in a period, and we've had periods like this before, of anger at elites and elite institutions because of a sense for a quarter of a century, these elite institutions and people like us who are elites have failed, starting with the disastrous responses to the 9-11 attacks, the great financial crisis, the completely boneheaded response. So I have a different view on you about the response to COVID. And I think that there is this anger that is what helped Trump get elected. (.) Trump doesn't map on purpose perfectly to it. It is not going away. And it is something that worries me. [00:41:29] And I think it's hard to kind of put a finger on it. But for, I think, anyone under the age of 30, our friend Phil Zellico described it as this general desire of people to throw a rock through a window. They're so mad that institutions have failed them and haven't been held accountable. And that is different from, say, the 50s, 60s. There was a little bit of this in the 60s and 70s. But I think the consequences of that, both the fact that they have legitimate reasons to be concerned, and I don't necessarily see how that resolves itself. That worries me. (..) Caroline, I saw your hand come first. (.....)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">S02: [00:42:13] Hi, Caroline Atkinson. I was just explaining that I'm American by birthright citizenship, even though I grew up in the UK. And I also worked in the White House for four years when we were still obeying rules. And my job as a Sherpa was to try to persuade others that what we wanted to do was also in the general interests or the specific interests. If I was talking to an Indian colleague or a Chinese colleague, that they would obviously want to be persuaded for their own interests. So I, like Corey, really want to get back to your middle one. I think that there's a risk and I'm interested in your view of how much what's been happening here has already destroyed our ability to persuade and go back to rules. [00:43:19] And I note that many friends and so on would say to me, oh, you globalists. It's a bit like what Frank was saying about elitist. You globalists screwed everything up. So we can't go back to that. And I have another quick point just to Frank's thing about we're always saying we suck. Not sure how that sits with the enormous power of MAGA, you know, make America great again. So there's a sense of greatness, even if it was lost, that seems to power a lot of the anger. And I should have said this at the beginning, but great presentations from both of you. Thanks.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:43:59] So I think I can square the circle on the MAGA movement and and thinking we're bad at everything because I think the connective tissue comes the very best article I've ever read about American foreign policy is by the journalist James Fallows in about 2009. And it was called he'd just been he was just back from five years as the Atlantic correspondent in Beijing. And he uses the metaphor of the Jeremiah as the way to understand American policy. That is that we have the luxury of such ignorance and indifference to most things that most countries have to care about. And so what motivates the US to fix problems is only when we think we are failing and very often the triumphalist rhetoric as as it is, I think you saw with President Trump today, right? [00:45:01] We don't need anybody's help. Why isn't anybody helping us that that we only get motivated to fix things once we think we are failing. I want to reinforce Frank's point about the founders. There's a really wonderful history book. If you haven't read it, it's called fears of a setting sun. Yeah, and it recounts the way every one of the founding fathers thought democracy was failing in the United States at the end of their lives. (.) And I I anchor to that for reassurance a lot now to the point about you globalists ruined everything. (..) At some level, I'm sympathetic to that argument, but there to suggest that the United States of America in the 21st century with all of our safety and our prosperity and the amount of cooperation we have in upholding things we think are important. [00:46:06] If that's what failure looks like almost everybody else would take that outcome. And so I don't deny that Americans are feisty and angry, but I also think they the world the globalists conjured into being is looking pretty good right now. (...)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [00:46:27] Thanks, Corey. We have one question from a double I double S member online, but I'll just say that while your book was obviously written and published before the US Israel attacks against Iran last month, you really do it really foresees the current scenario perfectly in your book. That is, you know, the US standing looking for allied support, but allied support is not there and in many ways. So this question is from a double I double S member Jeffrey Allen and he asks Secretary of State Madeline Albright once declared we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and see further than other countries into the future. How do you see the two concepts, these two concepts, American exceptionalism and the indispensable nation? Are they connected?<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:47:14] So I think the only person who could ever carry off an I'm so exceptional argument was Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox when he said I'm the greatest hitter in the history of baseball and he is the greatest hitter. And if you're in the. If you have to say it, if you have to say it, it's probably not true unless you're Ted Williams. And so I wince. I mean, I said at the start, I hate the subject because it's mostly political post striking instead of just doing the hard work that earns it. Right. So I think Secretary Albright was correct that the U. As we see, if the U.S. doesn't get countries organized to take collective action, it rarely happens because we can walk in with the political power and the economy of resources that can create a foundation for others to cooperate on. [00:48:17] It doesn't mean nobody else can do it. It just means nobody else generally does it and they don't start in a starting place. I'll give you an example of what I wish would happen right now. Given the international isolation that President Trump's choices on Iran have created, it would be a really great thing if, for example, the prime minister of Japan would convene a peace conference to get all of the affected parties together. And because if President Trump called people to Washington, they might not come. But it's an allied government. It's a government that Trump administration has reasons to trust. Perhaps they could help us dig ourselves out of the international isolation we have navigated ourselves into. But I don't think Japan's likely to do that. The country that would be likely to do that is typically the United States. (.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">S02: [00:49:15] But Frank, maybe you have a different view.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [00:49:16] No, I just want to double down on something Corey said about why I like this book so much is that the key is to use American exceptionalism as an analytical tool to understand outcomes in the world, regardless of how you feel about it. And Secretary Albright's statements, in addition to you really shouldn't be patting yourself on the back, is part of what that's the kind of statement, the kind of cloying self-indulgent statement that both is historically not is historically problematic. Right? You don't have to tell people around the world of times the U.S. has not seen further and has not stood taller. It's more that I think what Corey has done so well is that to treat the United States again like that billiard ball that you're only measuring these material capabilities, its geography, without recognizing these unique characteristics that shape its behavior for good and bad. [00:50:26] You're actually missing an important part of how the world works. And then part of our job is to understand the way the world works. And capturing those characteristics are important. And it's not the same thing as the thing Secretary Albright was doing. So I think I think it's an important distinction. (.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [00:50:46] All right, let's collect two questions from the audience. I saw Stanley and then right here. (.....)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">S06: [00:50:56] When Donald Trump mocked Senator McCain, with whom you were close, you worked for him. (.) I don't like people who were captured. (.) I thought his campaign was finished. (.) I thought back to Joseph Welch challenging Senator McCarthy. Have you no sense of decency at long last? (..) And it had no effect on the campaign. (.) Trump won. (.) Something changed among the American people. (..) It's not just the leadership. It's the people. Trump was elected. They knew this. (.) And this is what has puzzled me over the years. What has changed? Back then, that simple question totally deflated McCarthy. (..) Now, our politics, no decency. (..) [00:51:58] What has changed? (.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:52:00] So I think it's a really good question. (.) And I think I would draw a distinction between Trump's election in 2016 and Trump's election in 2020. Because I have the sense that the 2016 election was much more throw a rock through a window than the 2020 election, which I think is a more contingent outcome. Although I grant you that, you know, I had a friend remind me that we don't make a distinction between Vladimir Putin and Russians, and people aren't making a distinction between Donald Trump and Americans. So your point is a good one. So your point is a good one. We elected him, and we have to take accountability for that. I do think, though, that the 2020 election is an election Democrats lost as much as an election Donald Trump won. And I think that wasn't the case in 2016. (..) [00:53:05] So I'm not quite as prepared as you are to give up on Americans, although I take your point that I stopped counting at 16 in the year 2016 of things that should have destroyed President candidate Trump's candidacy. And I think people were just exasperated at that moment for reasons, again, let me put it a different way. So a lot of people enjoy dancing on the grave of Frank Fukuyama's book, The End of History and The Last Man. And the cheap rebuttal is history hasn't ended. But what Frank gets right in that book is the point about the last man, which is that what will have the potential to destroy the prosperity, peace and freedom of the post Cold War era, is the restlessness of people living in freedom. [00:54:08] That's the last man part, right? People angry at living in American society in 2016 or 2020. That's really something, especially since, as Frank says, if you don't like where you are, go someplace where people are different because you have lots of options in this country. So I think elections, I quote in the book, one of my favorite comments about American elections, which is the public are a sovereign whose response is limited to yes or no.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">S06: [00:54:41] Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:54:41] And so figuring out what it means that we elected Trump, I think it's a genuine challenge. But I think the 2020 election is less, oh my God, Americans really want this, than concern about the Democratic side of the House. (.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">S02: [00:55:00] 2024.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:55:01] 2024. Thank you. I'm sorry. (.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [00:55:04] There was a question right on the aisle here. (...)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Lowell Schwartz: [00:55:09] Thank you, Lowell Schwartz. I don't know if this is quite a rejection of your thesis, but just a question about how it's now being perceived. And that I don't think on the right or the left, people believe America is exceptional. Like there's a, especially among younger people, they don't think, I don't know if exceptional means good, but they certainly kind of don't have a positive view of the things that you were talking about, about the role of America. And I don't quite know whether that means American exceptionalism is dead because a next generation doesn't believe in it. Maybe it'll come back. But it's just so notable. And I, we've talked a lot about the right, but I think you also need to, you know, wrestle with this on the left, that they, you know, there's a whole movement which really peaked under Trump's first term and then during Biden of kind of rejecting so many of the values that the founders have as [00:56:11] as negative, right? You don't believe in equality anymore. We believe in equity because equality doesn't mean anything. Like you have to have enforced outcomes by the government, right? That the whole history of the United States comes out of slavery, right? Like there's a whole rejection of the American story that has happened on the left as well. And so I'm just, I'm very struck by the fact that we have the 250th anniversary coming up and there's no excitement. There's no positivity around celebrating the 250th birth of our country.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [00:56:48] Talk to a Philadelphian who remembers the 200th, Frank Rizzo, and see if this is worse than that. It's not. It's not close.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [00:56:57] So you raise an interesting challenge. I think I would make a distinction, though, between whether people feel triumphalist about exceptionalism. That is, it's a good thing. And as Frank pointed out, we're trying to have an analytic argument about what is it that makes the American economy roughly two percentage points of GDP increase a year more dynamic than other free, prosperous societies similarly constituted. And so I, I think you're quite right, young American, many young Americans don't feel proud to be an American at the moment. But I also think the analytics of what makes the United States different are actually not beholden to that, that attitude. Moreover, the point about, you know, equity, equality is not good enough equity. We're adjudicating that right now, right? [00:57:57] Like, the backlash against those attitudes is going on right now in full force in political contention in our country, which is how we typically find a new water table on those issues. So I'm not actually worried about that. I think we're disputatious people and we're disputing it right now. (...) Do you have anything besides Frank Rizzo you'd like to?<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [00:58:26] No, I was just thinking about that 10 year old Frank going around making his dad go on the Liberty Trail during because they put up all these signs in the Philadelphia area because I loved going to Valley Forge and all that stuff. And, uh, it is hard to capture how depressed people were about the 200th anniversary of the United States and Bicentennial and how Frank Rizzo and Phil, you know, as a Philadelphia kid thinking like, oh, everyone's gonna come here. Um, and I do think that, uh, you're right. (.) Um, but I think that it's less cynicism and more, I don't think as much as I worry about young people being worried. I was just thinking about my 17 year old who created an amnesty international chapter and then goes out with her friends to anti ice protests. And they're the most cynical. I mean, they will argue with me. I think everything I believe is completely nonsensical, but there's still this belief that you still need to fight for these things. [00:59:30] And so, again, I, this, none of this is very analytical. I'd be, you know, we'd be interested to see polling comparing young people in 1976 to today because I'm not a total cyclical person, but I do believe there's something about, you know, we're a very Hegelian country, right? We, we very much veer back and forth and the antibodies that are built into the system. Um, and I, you know, I, I think I'm kind of like one of these weirdly optimistic people about if the Democrats have a full on fight to 2028, kind of like the 1976 election that in a time of cynicism elected Jimmy Carter, um, where people just fight over ideas and beliefs and what it means to be an American and what it means to let it all out there. I think it could turn out to be very interesting and perhaps revive some of that. I don't know. That's the optimistic part of me.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [01:00:32] All right, Frank, that dovetails with the next question I have lined up from an, uh, an online audience member. So, uh, from Christopher Dallas Feeney, uh, he asks, what would be the first thing that you counsel the next president to reconstitute our global alliances to do to reconstitute the alliances and how long realistically would it take to rebuild trust? And this brings to mind, uh, one of the memorable phrases from your book, uh, stuck in my mind. So how much American nonsense are the allies willing to put up with? And then how, how might the US go about rebuilding connections in 2029 or afterward?<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [01:01:08] So I think the way to be trusted is to be trustworthy, right? (..) Um, and so to, uh, help people solve their problems. (.) I think the transatlantic relationship in particular is incredibly robust. (.) I mean, Stan Sloan, uh, historian of NATO is fond of saying that the, the oldest refrains in the Western world are NATO's in crisis deterrence is breaking down and we need new thinking. Um, and it's so true, um, and it's so true, but it is also the case that I spent my entire professional life when I was in government working on building coalitions for wars, the United States fighting. And I'm super sympathetic to people who get exasperated with American allies, and I would be happy to trade our allies in for better partners as soon as anybody can find me better partners. But in my time in government, I haven't found them. [01:02:11] Um, and so we can, we are doing genuine damage to our trustworthiness and frankly, our likability, which is non-trivial, right? People go to Disneyland cause it's a nice place. Um, and, and we're doing genuine damage. And I think it's going to take a generation of being trustworthy and not being jerks, um, before we are reliable. But it's also true that this is not the first time we have been jerks and unreliable. There are others and the relationship is quite robust because neither the Europeans nor we have better alternatives than each other. (...) Want in on this dogfight, Frank?<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [01:02:56] I mean, I would just say that I was thinking the origins of these alliances were a concern with freedom, right? And if you connect, I mean, there is, if you go to the American people and say, if you directly connect these relationships and these alliances with preserving and protecting something they consider sacred to them, then it sells itself. And I think for a variety of reasons, that case is not been made and that case is not always apparent. And I think a person who's able to articulate that vision in the way that some of our great presidents have the way a Lincoln, a Reagan, an FDR, you know, JFK, that could connect that sense of purpose and meaning to people's individual lives in the United States to these outcomes in the world. [01:03:57] And the need for friends, as opposed to it to be the argument, oh, we have always done it this way, or it helped us in the past. I think an organic connection to their own lives is absolutely essential. I think there is a great opportunity for a political leader to make that case. (...)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [01:04:18] There's a question there, and then we'll go across the room.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Scott Cooper: [01:04:21] Good afternoon, Scott Cooper. I'm a retired Marine and a mentee of Corey Shockey for almost 30 years. (..) I want to talk a bit about your exceptional idea, exceptionalism idea, which is really, in part, self-image. I look in the mirror every morning, and I'm good looking. I'm young. I'm in shape. I lie to myself all the time. (..) But if you think about it, it's partly America. It's the dream team. It's all of those things, like we talked about, that is an enormous amount of self-pride. And I don't say that in a critical way of how we view ourselves. (.) That was conflicted after Vietnam because we didn't win there. And right now what we have, and again, my experience in the Marine Corps is that I'm somehow much braver and better looking in people's eyes because of the time that I spent doing that. I worry a little bit right now what we have is that people have opinions and they're allowed to be apathetic. [01:05:23] And with the doing away of the draft in 1973, I mean, we're now 53 years into this, people were forced to have opinions about Vietnam. Ask anyone where they were on December 1st of 1969 and they will be able to tell you if they were born after 1945 in that year because that was when their draft number came up. Do you think that's one of the risks we have? The thing I'm really concerned about is that we've created a class, and I mean my class of military veterans, that are a bit self-regarding. And that could be quite dangerous to us. (...)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [01:05:59] So the saving grace of the American military is earnestness. (.) And what you just said, Scott, is a perfect example of it. I'm fearful we're a threat to the Republic because we feel isolated and we think we're better than others. A military that's actually a threat to the Republic doesn't have that attitude. So no, I'm not concerned. In fact, I am much more concerned on the other side of the civil military equation, namely the relentlessness with which politicians are pulling our military into politicized arguments. (.) And the only thing preventing that politicization is the actual professionalism of our military itself. I mean, I'd be interested in your reaction. I thought the Quantico meeting was a perfect example, right? The performative political nonsense of the president and the secretary, but 400 military leaders showed up because they were directed to be there. [01:07:03] And they sat there in stony stoic silence because they know they're not supposed to participate in that kind of nonsense. And 400 some of them passed that test. And my mom saw it on TV. And so that's why she's not worried about your generation of military veterans being so self-regarding. So I'm less worried about it than you are, but I love that you're worried about it. That's what makes our military great. (..)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [01:07:35] There are two questions on this side of the room. There, there's one before just in the further back to next. (.) All right. Thanks so much.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">S00: [01:07:45] I'm talking civic. I'm a similar way. First of all, thanks for a really insightful discussion. It's really, really rewarding to listen to. I love Americans. You're fantastic people. And that sets me apart from Americans. Americans do not love Americans at all. (..) And that's just a sad fact. There was this Pew Research survey that came out a few days ago that shows that 53% of Americans find their fellow citizens to be morally, I can't remember the exact wording, but morally bad. And my question is, how can you believe in American exceptionalism if you think that most of your fellow citizens are bad people? That's hard to conceive of. (.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [01:08:35] So, first of all, thank you for being a friend of my country at a time it's not easy to be a friend of my country. Appreciate that. I'd be interested in the, in whether that's news. Yeah. That is mostly American history is a struggle of extending rights we claim are universal to disenfranchised groups in our midst. And that extension being hotly contested by the people who already have those rights, right? (.) So, I mean, during the civil rights movement, something we now all claim as the great, you know, the second American revolution, the majority of Americans did not favor that succeeding. (.) Right? Like Americans did not favor the expansion of the franchise to Native Americans until 1927. [01:09:36] And even then it was unpopular. So, I think we do too much polling because mostly people are being asked to respond to things where there are no consequences for anything that they say. It's sort of like on social media, right? People propagate an enormous amount of nonsense on social media because they're not going to get punched in the face for saying it because they're at a distance from the people they're insulting. So, I'm not that worried about it, to be honest. But Frank, how about you?<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [01:10:08] I agree completely with everything you said. (.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [01:10:12] Wow. I want this clip of the tape, please. And I'm going to use it as my phone. (.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [01:10:18] We have a question from Mathieu in the front. Yeah, there's a degree to which, you know, the further away things are for people, the more polarizing it can be. But, you know, the most, the least polarization is like, who's going to be the dog catcher? Who's going to be the mayor? Most polarization, who's going to be president in that sense?<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [01:10:31] Americans like their local government. They like their state government. They hate the federal government because they feel like they have the ability to control their local and state government. But the federal government feels too distant and too powerful.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [01:10:43] Mathieu.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mathieu Le Bouton: [01:10:43] Hello. I'm Mathieu Le Bouton. I'm a Claudia Associates. (.) I'll echo my Norwegian friend's comments that, you know, I also have always sort of believed in the U.S. as a force for good. I'm European. I'm French originally, but grew up in London. And yeah, I think just generally it's a nice sentiment that more or less has, I would say, since World War II and predating that always existed. But my question is more related to, I think, bringing it back to an internal view of the United States. You mentioned in your book that we really look at sort of the underpinnings of American exceptionalism are things like immigration, sociocultural dynamics, the political system. I think today we're seeing that a lot of those elements that you've mentioned and that I've just brought up are also partly what's eating at the system, maybe from inside or creating an internal division. Immigration was one of the main platforms on which Trump has been running his campaign. And while I completely agree with you, it is probably one of the main strengths of this country. It's also instigated a lot of the backlash that we're seeing today, combined with the political system. [01:11:47] I think things like the Electoral College are viewed by these people of my generation as being very outdated and overdue for change. Things like a lack of limits on political donations, all of these sorts of elements, a constitution that hasn't changed in 250 years. And not to bring up France again, but we've had 13 different constitutions since the French Revolution. And so there is maybe partly a contradiction between sort of the underpinnings that make this country exceptional in a good or in a bad way. And I think I really appreciate that you're not using exceptionalism as a good thing. It can be exceptionally bad or exceptionally good in many ways. And that's the way we usually use that word. And so if there is this ability for the U.S. to course correct, as you've also been talking about throughout the decades and the centuries that it has existed and it has course corrected, how do you see any of these? Do you see any course corrections on these fundamental underpinnings? And do you see new underpinnings coming out?<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [01:12:45] Good challenge. Great, sorry. Just to note, in responding to Mathieu, if both you and Frank could work in a sort of a final thought, because that'll take us perfectly to our time marker, but go ahead and respond. Sure.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Corey Shockey: [01:12:56] So I think it's a great challenge whether the wellsprings of what make the United States successful retain their ability to self-correct. And I think they do, or at least most days I think they do. And for a couple of reasons. First, I love the description in Herman Wook's novel, The Cain Mutiny, where he describes the United States Navy in a way I think you can also describe the United States government. Namely, it was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots. And we have a temptation whenever we are run by idiots to think that the system is collapsing. But in fact, the system is extraordinarily tightly tied to public attitudes. And so what we are seeing is a constant public test of those attitudes. And what I noticed in Trump's first term was that the three fundamental propositions on which he campaigned, that allies were a burden, that immigration took American jobs, and that trade exported American jobs. [01:14:09] There was public sentiment in support. The majority of Americans agreed with those three propositions in 2016. Two years later, the majority of Americans disapproved of that because they saw the policies put in place and they decided they didn't like them. And to the extent I can accurately read American public attitudes right now, people are pretty unhappy with what they are seeing in the president's policies. That's why we have, why most political commentators think there's going to be a blue wave in the election. So that is the system self-correcting. And people may dislike immigration or illegal immigration in the abstract, but they also want the benefits that Americans accrue from that. So we are the people who want to drive SUVs that are battery powered and good for the environment. And you know what, we actually most of the time get there. That's my closing comment. Last word to you, Frank.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [01:15:10] So this has just been a ton of fun. Was it in here that you talked about Eisenhower and his deportation? \/\/S06: Yeah. Yeah.\/\/ And a horribly named Operation Wetback, which was just like embarrassing beyond belief. I think the immigration thing highlights, you know, you think about this country always goes through the 1840s, 1880s, and 1890s, between the Immigration Act of the 1920s to 1965, when LBJ passed the great Immigration Act that a food critic once called the Declaration of Independence for Foodies, because food finally became good in the United States after 1965, because they started letting people from non-European countries in. And this is, you know, in the 80s, it comes up again. And Corey beautifully captured that dynamic in that you have this society, for any number of reasons, that generates extraordinary benefits that are in the hands of people who don't want to give that up, right? And then there are people clamoring to participate in that great bounty, and that makes it ugly. [01:16:13] But then ultimately, people realize that what produces that very bounty are those people who are on the outside. It's not the ones on the inside. It's the people coming from other parts of the world with their ideas and their energy and their risk tolerance. So something breaks. So it's always, it's got this inherently explosive, it's been there from the beginning. There will be a pro-immigration wave that will come before we know it, because for economic reasons, for any number of reasons, people will get it, right? And then you'll go for a certain period, you'll have a, someone will figure out that this is a political winner. And then it's all, this is one of these things that's cyclical, because it's in the very nature of what Corey so beautifully describes as this inherent tension between the desire when you create these wonderful bounties and material benefits to control them for yourself, to think that other people are taking it from it, and those people want to participate in it. And there's always those political struggles, but it's actually bringing those new participants in that actually drive that prosperity in the first place. [01:17:21] It's not like you can get an economy, every economist knows that immigration is net wildly beneficial, and it describes the 2% benefit over everybody else. No one's going to buy those arguments politically, but over time, people understand, wait a minute, like, this is what actually drives innovation. It might come from corporate America, it might come from Silicon Valley, it might come from Wall Street. You have to spend any time in Silicon Valley to realize that no one looks like me or you, right? In Silicon Valley, they'll get it, right? (.) So, and that allows me to tie to the final thing. That's what's so great, I think, about Corey's book, is that it provides sort of an analytical lens or a tool to get to the bottom of a question that's both very, very important, but also hard to discuss, because it does tie up with so many emotional reasons, emotional reactions. So I think Corey is really to be applauded for what she's pulled off here, which I think is really remarkable.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul Fraioli: [01:18:19] Great. Thank you, Frank, for your incisive comments. Thank you, Corey, for the fantastic presentation of your arguments. Thank you to series editor Ben Rode in London for separating the book to publication, and thank you to those of you who joined us in person and those of you who joined online. The book is available for purchase. There is a QR code both on the table there and on your screen if you'd like a 20% discount from the publisher. But again, let's thank you to say thank you to Corey and to Frank for joining us. (.)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Frank Gavin: [01:18:47] Great job. Thank you.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Fraioli: [00:00:00] Well, welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us at IISS Americas, the Washington DC office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. I&#8217;m Paul Fraioli. I&#8217;m senior fellow for technology and geopolitics resident in this office. 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