Big Think Interview With Leslie Gelb New videos DAILY: https://bigth.ink/youtube Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: https://bigth.ink/Edge ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A conversation with author and former Pentagon official Leslie Gelb. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Leslie H. Gelb: Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of "Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy" (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT: uestion: What is power? Leslie Gelb: Power, to me, and I think power historically, has been the ability to get others to do something they don’t want to do. It’s a political and psychological relationship. It’s using carrots and sticks to create an impression in someone’s mind of what you can do to help them or to harm them. It’s about pressure and coercion. Question: What is effective foreign policy? Leslie Gelb: Effective foreign policy really comes down to common sense. It’s understanding what’s attainable, which power can produce, and what’s not attainable. It’s understanding how to use your power because you understand just what power you do have and how it’s going to affect other societies and other political leaders, some things that Americans rarely understand. So it comes down to common sense judgments. In international relations, it puts you on the mountain and if you have the most power at the top of the mountain. But it also should give you responsibility if you have power because you have the power to get things done, solve problems. That’s an awesome responsibility. Question: How did the Left and the Right misunderstand power? Leslie Gelb: At the end of the Cold War, there we were, United States, alone on top of the mountain and we thought we could do anything. There wasn’t another power in effect to balance this. Cold War was over. The other superpower was gone. And the left thought that meant, finally, we could deal with the world the way they also wanted to, through love. And so, you had this idea of soft power being conceived. And soft power was understanding and leadership and morals and the like, all good things. But these are, to me, foreplay and not the real thing. But frankly, as I’ve ask all the soft power advocates over the years, show me one example where leaders of a country change their position on a major interest to them because we persuaded them that we understood their interest better than they did. It just doesn’t happen. That’s what happened on the liberal side, or the left side. On the other side, on the right side, were the neoconservatives who said, hey, we’re on the top of the mountain, we’re now the sole superpower. We can threaten military force to get our way. Or if they don’t observe our threats, we can actually use military force. They thought that this would solve all the problems. But what they failed to understand was that in the modern age, in the 21st century, in fact for a good deal of the end of the 20th century, our superior military force would be sufficient to conquer capitals, to get rid of dictators, but not to conquer countries. So here was the situation. On the left, they confused power with a rational act, with reason, with persuasion. And on the right, they confused it with force, which is the kind of thing you do when your power fails. And I wanted to restore the meaning of power because, as I said, that’s the key way to get things done in the world. Question: What is mutual indispensability? Leslie Gelb: Mutual indispensability is the central operating principle of power in the 21st century. What it means is this. United States is the indispensable leader but we don’t have the power to dictate solutions. We need to get things done to solve problems, exercise our leadership effectively. We need equally indispensable partners. And those are the other key nations of the world. I say in the book that there are eight of them, Germany, Britain, France, Japan, China, Russia, India, and Brazil. If you can put together some coalition of those countries, those become the equally indispensable partners. So we’re the indispensable leader, they’re the indispensable partners. Together we can succeed. Alone we fail, time and again. Question: What is the most serious threat to the United States? Leslie Gelb: The global economic meltdown is the most serious threat to American national security and to our democracy. Read the full transcript at https://bigthink.com/videos/big-think-interview-with-leslie-gelb/

• published: 24 Apr 2012
• views: 407