Navigating American National Security Challenges in a Changing Global Landscape

It's very hard to imagine with all the things China is going to have to endure, in terms of damage to their environment, the aging of their population, the slowdown of continued economic advance, I think by the time you get to 2030, they have very strong expectations that political pluralism is an inevitability.

You say that America is going to need new strategic partners, to include rising powers, going forward. In what sense?

It's the Asians who are the natural integrators of the age. We're still ruled by people who can't say "China" without the modifier "Communist" in front of it. If your population is declining and aging, if your defense budget is decreasing, you're probably not an appropriate ally for what comes next. Instead, we keep convincing ourselves that with the Brits and the Dutch and a few other good friends, we can take care of everything ourselves. But when we say, "Come on guys, let's head out with a posse," they just keep sending smaller and smaller crews out of NATO. I say if you haven't seen a combat casualty in 50 years, you can't be an ally of mine. And you'd better be willing to kill somebody.

Why should Obama read your book?

An agent of mine gave it to him two nights before the inauguration, and he's had enough time to read it by now. He's a post-boomer president still dealing with an overwhelmingly boomer Congress who will fight tooth and nail over the dumbest issues known to man, arguing incessantly over several weeks of a fetus's life and the last couple of minutes of a person's death. It's a post-Caucasian world, not a post-American world. Obama is at a variety of tipping points in global economics and global security. He'll be a successful guy whether or not he reads my book—a lot of other people need to read it.