Ambassador Robert Blackwill

And now we have no multilateral framework.

Meanwhile, Asia itself is organizing and has organized itself with such a framework.

And we have the irony now that

China's in charge of it.

China has applied to be a member of what is the essence of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

So what I'm advising is a much more.

robust engagement with the international system than recent administrations.

That's liberal internationalism strengthened in every dimension.

And an increased defense budget, which stops China from narrowing the gap and therefore produces deterrence across the Taiwan Strait.

And I know that'll be a hard sell.

And the American people, the Americans will have to be persuaded.

But that's what we used to believe presidents do, which is persuade the American people that what they want to do, what America's role in the world should be,

is part of their job.

And I think President Trump has articulated a vision very powerfully.

I think it's counterproductive in almost every way, but he's worked hard at it.

The next president, if he proceeds anywhere near along the lines I would like, he or she

will, in an equally resolute way, give the American people beginning in the campaign a different view of America's role in the world and the role in which they and their children are going to live.

And to go back to the most primary point, do the American people really want to live in Mr. Miller's world?

Do they really want to live in a world without rules in which the strong dictate to the weak without any framework of right and wrong?

Do they want to live in a world in which the American president says, I operate in no moral context?