Episode #77: The Allure of Normalcy
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 31 May 2014
⏱️ 87 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Many within the United States and others abroad continue to question the United States’ role in the world. Understandably, Americans have grown wary of the country’s role in the world, some asking whether the U.S. still has the power and influence to lead the international community, while others question why the United States must still take on this seemingly singular responsibility. On the eve of a major speech by President Obama addressing these questions, Senior Fellow Robert Kagan released a new essay entitled, "Superpowers Don't Get to Retire: What Our Tired Country Still Owes the World," which was published in the latest edition of The New Republic. Kagan argued that the United States has no choice but to be “exceptional.” On May 27, the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and The New Republic hosted an event to mark the release of the Kagan essay and in advance of President Obama’s address to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Kagan, a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at Brookings, was joined by The New Republic's Leon Wieseltier and The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt. After the program, the panelists took audience questions.
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Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.1 | This is not just war-wearingness. |
| 0:35.6 | Iraq and Afghanistan may have been the catalyst, but what it is mostly exposed, I believe, is |
| 0:41.9 | that Americans no longer, at least many Americans no longer, remember or understand what in |
| 0:48.8 | the world we're doing out there. |
| 0:50.2 | I'd be worried about asking the American people if they remember that we have an article |
| 0:54.6 | of five commitment to defend Estonia, much less Japan in the conflict over the Senkaku |
| 1:00.5 | islands. |
| 1:01.5 | There was a time when they could have understood it if it had something to do with the Soviets |
| 1:05.1 | and the commas. |
| 1:07.1 | But now I wonder, and therefore what we are facing perhaps, is not so much again war-wearingness |
| 1:13.6 | but world-wearingness, in a sense that why have we taken on these vast responsibilities? |
| 1:20.3 | Can't somebody else do it? |
| 1:22.6 | Or why does it need to be done at all? |
| 1:25.3 | I'm Benjamin Wittes and this is the LawFair Podcast May 31, 2014. |
| 1:32.3 | That's the voice of Robert Kagan, Brookings Senior Fellow and the author of a recent essay |
| 1:37.4 | in the New Republic entitled, Superpowers Don't Get to Retire, What Our Tired Country Still |
| 1:44.1 | Oars the World. |
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