Question: You say that we have conquered--we have destroyed the state of Saddam Hussein; we have destroyed the state of the Taliban, but we have not destroyed what lies behind them. Religious fanaticism is replacing allegiance to either an empire or to a state. What can we do about this?

Answer: As many people, including the U.S. Secretary of Defense, have said, more than winning wars, we need to influence the struggle for ideas within the Islamic world, because not everyone within that world is a fanatic. We need to think about setting up networks of schools for students of Islam, in countries like Afghanistan, which emphasize traditions that are tolerant and open to discussion and debate. Creating the capacity to engage in this war of ideas, something we don't do well now, will be very hard.

Question: Will we change U.S. trade policies, including our subsidization of the agricultural sector, in order to accommodate this vision of empire?

Answer: It would be extraordinarily useful if we could change our trade policies. For example, by reducing the tariffs on imported fabrics, we would help the economies of central Asian countries by enabling them to sell textiles at market prices. One of the key components of our strategy should be getting people in these countries back on their feet, so that there's not this desperate poverty, which sometimes leads to fanatical behavior. We need to convince our powerful agricultural lobbies that giving up some money is a better way of creating a stable world than sending out our soldiers.

Question: You were notably silent about the cost of empire domestically. Also, (addressing the audience) how many people here have sons or daughters in Iraq right now? Also, name an imperial order that was a democracy.

Answer: The economic costs of empire are quite low. Empires could not be sustained over a long period of time if they broke the economy of the central power. I teach a large undergraduate course on this subject, and I ask the students the same question you just asked: "How many of you are going into the American military?" Few Harvard students will be joining the military, however, as members of the American elite, they have an obligation to understand these issues of war and peace. This is the kind of informed debate that people at Harvard must be able to conduct in this democracy. Yes, there have been imperial democracies--the Roman, the British, the Athenian. This question was central in the minds of the founding fathers when they said, we are constructing a democracy but we hope we are constructing a democracy that can deal with the world outside our borders as well. The question is not whether democracies can run empires. The challenge is to learn about the ways democracies run empires that are consistent with domestic liberties.