The Strategy Sessions is a limited-run podcast hosted by Emma Ashford, a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center. Today, Emma talks with Christopher Preble, the director of the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program. Emma and Chris talk about Emma’s book, First Among Equals. They also discuss wider themes in the New Visions for Grand Strategy series, and answer some of the questions Emma has posed to other guests on the podcast. Emma and Chris’s discussion is part of the New Visions for Grand Strategy Project, a collection of essays, videos, and podcasts in which out-of-the box thinkers discuss the future of U.S. foreign policy. *The Strategy Sessions Podcast is hosted by the Stimson Center and produced by University FM.
The Strategy Sessions is a limited-run podcast hosted by Emma Ashford, a senior fellow with the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program at the Stimson Center. Today, Emma talks with Christopher Preble, the director of the Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program. Emma and Chris talk about Emma’s book, First Among Equals. They also discuss wider themes in the New Visions for Grand Strategy series, and answer some of the questions Emma has posed to other guests on the podcast.
Emma and Chris’s discussion is part of the New Visions for Grand Strategy Project, a collection of essays, videos, and podcasts in which out-of-the box thinkers discuss the future of U.S. foreign policy.
*The Strategy Sessions Podcast is hosted by the Stimson Center and produced by University FM.
(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:00:00] Emma Ashford: The 2020s are likely to be a pivotal decade in determining the future of America's role in the world. Global dynamics are changing. The era of unchallenged U.S. global dominance is ending. And China and other states are rising. At home, the United States is also going through a period of transition and change in foreign policy, from bipartisan consensus to debate and division. The only thing certain is that change in U.S. foreign policy is inevitable.
In these discussions, our guests engage with some of the most challenging questions facing U.S. policymakers, bring distinct perspectives to bear on these questions, and offer their own vision for the future of U.S. grand strategy. These are The Strategy Sessions.
Hello, I'm Emma Ashford, a senior fellow in the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center. Welcome to The Strategy Sessions, a series of discussions with forward-looking, out-of-the-box thinkers on the future of U.S. foreign policy.
Joining me today is Stimson's own Chris Preble, director of the Reimagining Grand Strategy Program and host of the Net Assessment podcast.
Today will be a little different. Rather than talking with one of our authors about their paper for this series, we wanted to do two things. First, discuss my book, which is another entry in the grand strategy series, and then discuss some big themes from the essay series. But first, I thought it might be fun if we both answered some of the questions that we put to all our authors. So, Chris, welcome.
[00:01:40] Chris Preble: Hey, thanks for having me.
[00:01:41] Emma Ashford: Let me ask you the first big question, which is to say, how do you see the emerging world? We've talked a lot with our authors about multipolarity, bipolarity, U.S. decline, all kinds of different things. How do you see the world that we are entering during this period of transition?
[00:02:01] Chris Preble: Well, I certainly think that the United States' relative power is in decline and that has been, in some instances, a long process. But of course, there have been some key moments along the way from the unipolar moment to now that have sort of accelerated or accentuated that decline. Things like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the global financial crisis, which hit the United States hard... Not harder than everyone, but it hit the U.S. hard.
So, there have definitely been some moments like that along the way, and then now I think are domestic... I think dysfunction is not too strong a word. I think our domestic dysfunction is also contributing to our declining influence globally. Having said all that, the United States is still going to be a very important player in the international system. Probably the most important player in the international system in most respects. So, the question really is, if we are moving into multipolarity, how many poles will there be besides the United States?
[00:03:01] Emma Ashford: That I think is a really interesting way to put it. And somewhat prefigures my next question, which is going to be, what role should the U.S. play in this world? I think we have a lot of debates about U.S. leadership or retrenchment. And both of those are kind of straw men, right? It's about the role the U.S. is going to play. What role would you see for us?
[00:03:19] Chris Preble: Well, I'm fairly old-fashioned this way. I think that the purpose of U.S. foreign policy is to advance the security and prosperity, and independence of the American people. First and foremost, that's the core object. And so, in some instances in the past, people claim that the United States had to play a more active role in order to do those three things, to secure those three things. I don't think that was necessarily true 30 years ago, but I especially don't think it's true now.
And I think attempting to do too much risks exacerbating our own decline, including our dysfunction at home, but also our relative decline because attempting to do things that we are incapable of is going to lead to more failures and sort of a cascade of failures that ultimately will re down not merely to our declining influence. We've already documented that, but we'll re down to our insecurity and our declining prosperity over time.
[00:04:16] Emma Ashford: Well, that is, that is pretty bleak. So, if you were tasked with designing U.S. foreign policy from scratch, which obviously is impossible, but where would you start? What principles do you think are most important to keep in mind?
[00:04:30] Chris Preble: Well, I do think that defining U.S. interests carefully and narrowly is critical. And I think it's understandable why at certain critical junctures in U.S. history, people imagined a larger, more expansive role or set of objectives. I think now is a particularly important time for us to prioritize.
I think that the regional focus of the United States is too expansive. I think, as you document in your book, and we'll get into a little bit, I think here in a bit, you know, the Middle East is probably the region that we should be leased involved in, and then, less so in Europe, and then in Asia, Indo-Pacific is a separate issue. So, I think prioritization flows from the realization that we have critical constraints that we have to account for.
[00:05:19] Emma Ashford: So, now I am going to turn this interview over to you. I'm going to give you the keys to the car. Please try not to total it .
[00:05:26] Chris Preble: I will do my best. I do want us to get into some of the details of your book. And I guess we start with the question of why do you think that America's current grand strategy is not working?
[00:05:37] Emma Ashford: Well, in part because I think the world is changing, right? And if I were to go back and answer that initial question that I asked you, I could make a very specific case that we're entering a period of unbalanced multipolarity, but even if you don't buy that, even if you don't buy exactly what shape the world is taking, I think we can all acknowledge that the world is in transition from this post-Cold War period, this unipolar moment, and it is turning into something different. And I think America's Grand Strategy is just spectacularly ill-suited to the world that is emerging.
And again, the reason for that I think, is if I go back and I look at the Cold War and I look at the structure of the world, then, and I look at, you know, its bipolarity, it's the U.S. versus the USSR, we took a lot of steps, you know, building up institutions and alliances, but being relatively pragmatic in other places, engaging in some proxy conflicts like Vietnam, there were terrible ideas. But others where, you know, these things panned out pretty well for us. The Cold War, I think, for the most part, we had this balancing of means and ends. It worked for us foreign policy in the post-Cold War period, where we have unipolarity, where the U.S. is really unchallenged. Things just ran away from us.
We tried to basically change the world, transform it into something that would be better for the United States. And I think that's a laudable ambition. But it's probably not possible. Our experiences during the unipolar moment to me suggest that we're never going to be able to lock in international law institutions that have governing power. We're not going to be able to make the UN guide to human rights, the actual law of the world. And so, you know, if we're entering this world in which the U.S. is facing challenges, we have to start thinking about how we're going to adapt our overreach strategy to this new world.
[00:07:34] Chris Preble: Right. So, there's a lot of new and flashy-sounding strategy books out there. You chose to write, instead, about an existing school of thought, like realism. You call it realist internationalism. I'm curious why you chose realism, and especially how you differentiate your brand of realism from the other strands that are out there today?
[00:07:58] Emma Ashford: Yeah, I mean, realism is hardly a new idea. And theorizing about it is certainly not an underdone thing in the academy and elsewhere. But I guess in some respects, I wanted to push back a little on some of the grand strategies that have come out in recent years, that all have very different distinct approaches. You know, a grand strategy of allied scale, a grand strategy of openness, a grand strategy of networked competition. All of which are actually variants of liberal internationalism with a fancy new title.
And so, rather than giving my book, my strategy, a fancy new title that sounds like it's very innovative and brand new, I wanted to make the point that, actually, this is in some ways about returning to a set of principles that has served the U.S. well in the past. And you could go back to any number of points in U.S. history and find policymakers in this tug between idealism and realism, choosing the realist pragmatic route because it was the one that actually served U.S. interests the best. And so, while again I acknowledge the world is changing, we're not living in the past, I think the set of principles really does stand the test of time. You also asked, "How does this differ from other versions of realism?" And I think to some extent, you know, this is not a book about realism. This is a book about foreign policy and how realism applies to it.
This is not a book about structural realism that Ken Waltz talked about. This isn't even necessarily a classical realist book. This is a book, and I think I put it in the book itself. I take a very ecumenical view of realism. That is to say, you know, there are some core principles here. States are the primary actors in the world. It's about the national interest. States are serving their own interests, not those are the worlds. So, these are very basic principles, but they're not present in all or even many of the grand strategies that are out there today. And so, I thought it was important to just bring this back into the conversation without getting tied down or bogged down in, sort of, intra-realist, theoretical debate.
[00:10:05] Chris Preble: Right. I thought in the book, you say that realism has served the United States well, and you point to from George Washington and Alexander Hamilton to George Kennan and Brent Scowcroft, there is a long tradition of realism embedded within U.S. foreign policy, but it's also true that realism has served other great powers well. And so, again, to your point, this is not a new idea. Those great powers that have succeeded have adhered or at least recognized these principles and operated within these principles. And you mentioned that part of what defines realism is the attention to structure in the international system. What would a more realist strategy look like in a multipolar world?
[00:10:51] Emma Ashford: I think you can take this a couple of ways, right? You could assume that a realist world is extremely antagonistic, that the U.S. should try to control as much as it possibly can, even if it risks overreach. There are some offensive realists out there who I think make this argument. My sense is that grand strategy is always about matching ends to means, and that that version of realism is unattainable in this world. And so, instead, it is as you said at the start, it is about prioritization. It is about thinking how we go from this period of overstretching to a place where America is still achieving its goals, but with the more limited resources that we now have on hand.
In a practical sense in a nutshell, right? This means doing less in some regions where we have previously done a lot, particularly Europe and the Middle East, this means doing more in Asia. And I would add Latin America, not necessarily militarily, but I think there's a strong economic and political role for the U.S. and Latin America that we very much neglected, but prioritizing the regions that are of most importance to us, and not letting the past be a shackle, right?
Policymakers, I think, really do need to understand that they are not necessarily bound by every obligation that the United States has made for the last 100 years if those obligations don't continue to serve the U.S. interests, and that there are ways that those can be wound down, particularly in alliances, that can serve the interests of the U.S. and make us more secure, but without, again, without overstretching us too much.
[00:12:28] Chris Preble: Mm-hmm. You argue that realists should think more about questions of political economy and economic statecraft. You and I have talked about this, of course, many times. And in fact, you, as much as anybody is, are the one who's convinced me to pay closer attention to this. What in particular is wrong with our current approach? How are we as realists not taking full account of economic statecraft and the way we approach global problems?
[00:12:54] Emma Ashford: I mean, it's a really interesting question, and I think one problematic part of it is that the early realists were mercantilists, were shutting off trade and you know, all about building up domestic industry, and that's certainly one version of a realist trade strategy, right? You decide that what you have at home is going to make you as secure as you possibly can. But at the same time, I think in our interconnected world, globalized world, what we see is that Adam Smith was right, that trade has made us, in many ways, wealthier and more prosperous.
There are certainly some downsides to this, but simply throwing out the baby with the bathwater and going back to autarky is probably not the way to pursue it. So, that's one problem. A second problem is that for most scholars of foreign policy grand strategy, people in DC talking about policy, we've actually spent the last two to three decades just ignoring economic statecraft and trade in particular as something that carries on regardless of grand strategy. There's no connection to grand strategy because globalization would continue regardless. So, debates about foreign policy could happen independently of economic questions.
And so, the resurgence that we've really seen in folks talking about economics in grand strategy, in foreign policy, in the last 5 to 10 years, I think has come from understanding and realizing that that's not the case anymore. We really do have to take this into account because we have to learn how we marry the economic dimension of our statecraft to the grand strategic version. And there are some versions of this out there. I already mentioned Allied Scale, right? There's versions of this that see the U.S. retreating from some places like China economically and building up with allies that are versions that see the U.S. becoming more autarkic in general.
My approach would be to diversify our trade, right? So, to identify problem areas, to build on some of the successes of globalization by making our supply chains more resilient, more robust, you have more of them, you have more partners, things are safer. And I think again, there's a path for the U.S. there that both helps to bolster security but also can actually help the U.S. in a world in which the U.S. is, you know, retrenching in security terms. Economic outreach is actually another way to work with other states.
[00:15:17] Chris Preble: Right. You're certainly right that the economic tools have been used, but mostly sanctions and mostly in a very particular way, which is sort of a reflection of frustration with the limited utility of force, I think, and just a desire to do something. But just because we've used economic sanctions doesn't mean we've used them correctly or wisely. And there's so much more to economic statecraft than sanctions, obviously. And again, you've done a lot of work in that area, so you've taught me a lot on that issue.
[00:15:44] Emma Ashford: I mean, look, I think if I were to frame this in another way, the U.S. has a negative or coercive economic statecraft strategy we have for a while. It's using sanctions and export controls, and tariffs to try and force other countries to do what we want. What we lack is positive economic statecraft vision. We don't have a way to engage the world with these tools, rather than try to coerce them. And that worries me because again, if we're entering a more multipolar world where there are lots of options for states, and I think we already see this in the economic space, this is a very multipolar world, the economic space. If states have other options and working with the U.S. and the economic space just makes you vulnerable to coercion, you're not going to do that.
[00:16:26] Chris Preble: Right. Even we use access to the U.S. market as a coercive instrument and denying access as a coercive instrument. All right, so switching gears a little bit, this is something that I've done a lot of work on over the years– this issue of temptation. How can policymakers manage a more modest approach without full retrenchment? As we've discussed, the United States is going to still be an extraordinarily powerful country, militarily, economically, et cetera. But how can we manage? How can we resist the temptation to use this power as often as we have in the past?
[00:17:01] Emma Ashford: So, this is the feedback that I got on the early drafts of the book from a number of people. And I think it's pretty much inevitable when you're arguing for a middle course, right? If you're arguing that the U.S. should do everything everywhere, all at once, that's very clear. You just use U.S. power all the time. If you argue that the U.S. should basically get out and stay out of the world, and hide behind our oceans, then that's pretty clear too. You just don't use force. In the middle is where it requires judgment by policymakers. And as you have written, there is a temptation to having power and wanting to use it. You can see us policymakers over the last 30 years looking at problems in the world and thinking, "Hey, I can probably solve those. Let me try doing that."
And so, for this strategy... I mean, again, it relies a lot on policymaker judgment and a willingness to restrain themselves in the face of temptation. Now, I think it is possible. I think, again, during this unipolar moment, we saw that without constraints, policymakers were inclined to push too far to give into that temptation all the time. They've done a very poor job resisting it. I do think if you look at previous periods of U.S. history, whether it's back during the Quasi-War or whether it's the Cold War, you see debates over foreign policy, and you know, what the U.S. should do, what the U.S. should risk. Should the U.S. enter conflict? Those debates look a lot more balanced, right?
The judgments that policymakers made were not always correct at the end of the day, but realism has a really important place in those debates as one side of it. That's been absent for 30 years, and I think that with constraints coming back, with the reintroduction of that into the discourse, it will probably help policymakers to resist that temptation.
[00:18:55] Chris Preble: So, we want to turn our attention to the essay series, which you commissioned and supervised, and we're very excited to have this come out and as part of these podcasts as well. One of the chapters in your book deals with this current moment in the policy debate, and the different viewpoints are emerging. Can you talk a little bit about how the essay series fits within that framework? How are the various authors or the various themes that they discuss... How does that tie into your framework that you lay out in the book?
[00:19:27] Emma Ashford: So, one of the reasons that we decided to actually do this project here at Stimson was in the course of writing the book, I tried to survey the U.S. foreign policy landscape and say, you know, what are people actually advocating? What are they debating? It's not the same things we were debating two decades ago. It's different variants on these ideas, and in the political space, in the sort of public intellectual space. There are a lot of new ideas for foreign policy floating around out there. So, in the book, I try to categorize those, and I look at sort of the America First movement. I look at progressives, I look at how the Biden administration's trying to reinvent liberal internationalism as sort of liberal order, it's support. This series, I think we invited a variety of authors to represent some of those different viewpoints.
The places where we think there are the most interesting ideas in the debate in Washington today. And I think you can see that across the scope of the essays, right? You can see, you know... So, I'm obviously coming from the realist perspective. We have some pretty hard-nosed unilateral realism with Mike Beckley. We've got several essays on progressivism and how progressives are starting to build out a grand strategy. We have a prioritizer, Jenny Lind, who talked a little bit about her own views. And then we have folks advocating for a return to liberal order. So, it was really important to me that in this volume we tried to represent the variety of debate and where people are, I think we've been pretty successful.
[00:21:02] Chris Preble: Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, I've had a chance to read through them, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to get that flavor of the range of views. What surprised you? What jumped out as most surprising, either as a theme that runs throughout them or things that jump out from the various individual essays that surprise you?
[00:21:20] Emma Ashford: I think I was surprised and, perhaps this was endogenous to the selection process, but I was actually surprised how few of these essays rehashed old debates. Almost nobody advocated simply returning to a status quo or persisting with a status quo. And even the one essay – Mike Posnansky's excellent essay – even he advocates returning to a liberal order, but a liberal order that is conceived and construed in the early to mid-Cold War. Right? Not the version that emerged after the Cold War. And so, I think, it was to me an indication that the debate really has moved past, "Should we change American strategy and move much more into the realm of what should our new strategy be?" And that's very promising to me.
[00:22:03] Chris Preble: I agree. I'll say just for my part, I was struck how few reference public sentiment and public will here in the United States. You referenced that a bit in your book, and I didn't pick up on that a lot. And even though some of these authors they discuss it in their other work, but I didn't see a lot of that. And again, I'm biased because that's sort of where my frame of reference is, for a lot of the ways that I approach these problems. But that was the one thing that I was surprised that people didn't engage with that more directly.
[00:22:30] Emma Ashford: Yeah, we actually only have the one essay from Jeremy Shapiro that is in many ways, explicitly partisan. And he's focused on the, I mean, the very interesting question of where the Democratic party goes in foreign policy. And I think, I mean, if you care about where American foreign policy is going, that is a major question. Because the Republicans are kind of coalescing around some new consensus, I think at this point. Democrats are all over the place. But it was surprising to me again that a lot of people wrote from this, traditional grand strategic perspective of it's not partisan. It's about role in the world instead. Any other themes that you picked up on that you want to talk about?
[00:23:08] Chris Preble: Well, I think I agree with you that encouraging that people weren't, as we say, fighting the scenario, right? They were acknowledging the need for something different, even as they disagree on what that different thing is. And so, you don't have in this series the sort of nostalgia for going back to the way things were. And I think that was really encouraging.
[00:23:28] Emma Ashford: So, I mean, a couple of other themes that I picked out that might be worth discussing here. So, one is I think the question of America's relationship to its traditional allies. Again, we've got the gamut from sort of... I've started to think of it as, you know, honey, vinegar or, just disinterest, right? We have folks in the volume saying, "You know, the U.S. needs to keep allies sweet. We need to keep assisting them." And then we have folks arguing the U.S. should just cut them loose or pull back. And so, the complete spectrum of opinion.
[00:23:57] Chris Preble: Yeah, I mean, we've been working, as you know, obviously, on this project, on Alliances here at Stimson, and I think there's so much wisdom in your book about treating alliances as means, not ends. That will require a sort of reorientation of the way that Washington thinks about alliance commitments. And I think, again, we've seen some elements that is happening, but we still have a long way to go. It seems to me.
[00:24:21] Emma Ashford: Yeah, I think the other question, the, you know, the question of how we get from here to there, that came up a lot in the editing of these essays because it's one thing to say, "Well, the U.S. should dial back to a Cold War liberal order, or the U.S. should move to create new coalitions in Asia." But what we've seen is administrations having real problems. You know, you can't get rid of the old stuff. You have to add new stuff that doesn't actually help anything.
So, the other theme that I wanted to get into is tangential to grand strategy or a side thing, but we have several really interesting essays that I think center around the question of whether America is ready for this new world in terms of technology, defense, industrial base, domestic governance, a little bit. But about American competitiveness, our ability to present new technologies to compete with China, to trade, to fight. And I thought it was... Again, the responses were very widely varied.
[00:25:15] Chris Preble: Mm-hmm. Yeah. For me, I think of this in terms of domestic politics, and because many people will say that the American people just won't be satisfied with a grand strategy or foreign policies that do not aspire to greatness, right? That will sit very poorly with them. And I think that that's not necessarily true, so long as they feel a certain confidence here at home. And if they believe that the confidence at home is connected to remaining active of a different sort globally, then great.
But I think one of the things that we've seen occur in our politics over the last 20 years or so is this disconnect with a very active U.S. globally at a time when people at home are feeling left behind. And so, if there is any way to sort of emphasize the connection between prosperity and wellbeing and a sense of purpose at home, to connecting that to foreign policy, that may be the trick to, sort of, moving into this next era.
[00:26:19] Emma Ashford: Yeah. Another interesting schism across these essays, and I think in the foreign policy debate, is nationalism versus internationalism. Are you doing this because it improves American prosperity and lives at home? Or are you doing it because you're trying to improve the whole world? And we have several essays on progressive foreign policy, and I struggle... You know, personally, again, just as a realist, I struggle with this idea that the American people are going to want to engage with a strategy that is largely about improving the lives of others overseas. As horrible as that sounds to say, I find that quite tricky.
[00:26:56] Chris Preble: Yes, we do have needs here at home. Barack Obama talked about nation-building at home, and even Donald Trump did as well, right? There was a connective theme there. To me, it is not surprising that that sort of message resonated, even if their foreign policies didn't always line up with our rhetoric.
[00:27:13] Emma Ashford: Yeah, one of the themes that is in my book that I've already had a few questions about, you know, I refer to my strategy as realist internationalism, but it's a nationalist strategy. And I think there is a difference between being internationalist and being engaged, being active in the world, being outward-looking, and deciding that all the world's problems are yours to solve. And I think that's a very important distinction.
[00:27:36] Chris Preble: Well, I mean, one of the answers, and this relates to Multipolarity, is that we will be an important actor, but there are other important actors out there. And so, we do not have to solve every problem if we are confident that others are part of the solution, right? That they are also helping to solve problems, too, because they also... They have a common interest in their own prosperity and security.
[00:27:59] Emma Ashford: Yeah. And both Ali Wyne and Mike Brenes’s articles focus in on China and the question of "Where can we work together?" Which I think, again, is a productive line of inquiry.
[00:28:09] Chris Preble: I agree.
[00:28:10] Emma Ashford: So, I think we're running a little out of time here, but before we wrap up, I do want to ask you the same question that we ask everybody, which is at the ground strategy program here, we're all about questioning assumptions. And so, I know you've written about a lot of assumptions you would test, but what are you thinking about right now in terms of assumptions?
[00:28:27] Chris Preble: Well, this might be changing a little bit, but there are really two assumptions that I believe to be true, but I am prepared to be convinced otherwise. And if those assumptions prove to be false, then I would have to rethink my approach. The first does have to do with the rest of the world and how the rest of the world will react to dangers or threats or things that they once counted on the United States to protect them from. I believe that balancing that resisting threats is a sort of natural human instinct. I don't believe that it needs to be taught by the United States to others. I think that people resist the imposition of the power of others.
If I saw other states inclined to bandwagon more than balance, then I would revisit my approach to international order and the way the United States deals with it. But I also think the other key assumption that guides my work pertains to our domestic fiscal constraints. Fiscal constraints being a political reality because we have an enormous economy, but we are only allocating a certain share of that economy to the federal budget. And of that federal budget, what share is going to go to the military? I am of the opinion that there is not a wellspring of support for an enormous increase in military spending, which I think is what would be necessary for primacy.
If I saw evidence that Americans were content with accepting less domestically in the service of a larger military budget, then I might revisit that. But I think we're operating in reality of fiscal constraints, the political order will not support an enormous increase in military spending, which is why, among other things, we really do have to prioritize.
[00:30:12] Emma Ashford: Well, I expect that we will see those challenged in the next few years, and you'll be able to figure out if you're right or not. Before we do wrap up, I'm going to give my assumption because I haven't given one yet on this series. I think mine is perhaps a little more domestically focused than some folks might think. Which is, I think, I'm becoming a devotee of Francis Fukuyama. I worry that perhaps liberalism is not the end state of the human experiment. And by that I mean that we are seeing backlash against liberal democracy, all across the world, but even here at home in the United States.
And one of my biggest fears, and again this plays to the discussion of overstretch, is that the liberal international order, such as it was, as this overreaching, ambitious project of global transformation might end up taking down liberalism with it domestically in some countries. And so, that's something I would very much like to avoid. But again, I think the next few years we'll see that assumption tested. Well, I think that's all we have time for today. So, thanks so much, Chris. I really appreciate you joining me to discuss some of these essays. And thanks to our audience for joining us through this whole series of conversations. I hope that you found it enlightening and useful. And a reminder that you can find the whole series online.
That's all for this episode of The Strategy Sessions. You can find the full set of episodes, along with the accompanying essays at stimson.org, or by searching for us on your favorite podcast app.
A big thanks to Stimson's communications team for their assistance with the taping, and to University FM for providing audio editing services. I'm Emma Ashford. Thanks for listening!