Parlor Chats: What Is America's Role in the World?

Michèle Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2009 to 2012 and advisor to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on national security and defense policy, and Bret Stephens, foreign affairs columnist and deputy editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, dive into the 250 year-old debate about how America should influence the lives and politics of people around the globe—a substantive preview of the discussion to come in the general election this fall.

Michèle Flournoy served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from 2009 to 2012, advising Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on national security and defense policy. She is also the co-founder of the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan think tank dedicated to developing national security policies, and serves as a foreign policy adviser for Hillary Clinton.

Bret Stephens (@StephensWSJ) is the foreign affairs columnist and deputy editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal. He is the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and the author of America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder.