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There’s plenty of pontificating, platitudes, and, occasionally, passion at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. But there typically isn’t much humor.

Thanks to the comedy stylings of David Rubenstein, co-founder of global private equity firm The Carlyle Group and a panel of able participants, a session on the future of foreign policy had the audience belly-laughing along with jokes about Henry Kissinger, Israeli intelligence, and the problems with Congress.

Some edited excerpts follow.

David Rubenstein: President Trump was here earlier today, and I don’t know if you had a chance to meet with him … no? Well, let’s say he actually reads Foreign Affairs, and would like to meet the editor of Foreign Affairs. And he asks you to tell him, in one minute, what he should do for foreign policy in the next year. What would you tell him?

Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs and former member of the National Security Council: Try to close out the deals you have started by playing good cop to your own bad cop. Learn from Ronald Reagan, who didn’t just annoy the Soviet Union and pressure it, but then converted it—against the will of his advisors—into real deals.

Jane Harman, CEO of The Wilson Center and a California Democrat who spent 17 years in Congress: I would say reestablish process. We have a process-free foreign policy, and that’s truly dangerous. I would tell him to focus on a few things that unite the world, like defeating ISIS and providing jobs.

Rubenstein: Jane, a lot of people make fun of Congress from time to time; you may have heard that. Tell us why members of Congress are not properly valued by the public, and are doing a better job, or do you think they’re really not that great, and maybe overrated?

Harman: There are good members of Congress serving right now, in both parties, and certainly when I was serving, there were great members. There are people who have run for the right reasons: to add value to our conversation and the public good. The problem is the business model is broken. The business model is to blame the other side for not solving the problem. Because if you work with the other side to solve the problem, then you are bipartisan. And if you are bipartisan, you are dog meat in your primary. And Congress is more of a reelection machine than a thought and policy machine.

Rubenstein: So when you were a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, what was the biggest secret that you got?

Harman: I’d have to kill you!

Rubenstein: Israel has an incredible reputation in the intelligence community. Do you really think your intelligence people have a better sense of what’s going on in the world than the United States’ CIA or British intelligence?

Amos Yadlin, executive director, Institute for National Security Studies, who served for more than 40 years in Israel Defense Force: Our reputation is so good because Israel is under siege, in a bad neighborhood surrounded by countries that want to destroy it. Our defense doctrine is having an early warning; we cannot have a huge military all the time.

Rubenstein: Let’s say you want to do something bad. What’s the best way to avoid being caught by intelligence agents?

Yadlin: Take your phone and throw it away, as far as you can.

Rubenstein: Did you think there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before we invaded?

Yadlin: I was a happy fighter pilot at the time.

Rubenstein: So you didn’t know. Well, it turns out we didn’t know either. We’ve restructured our intelligence community after some of our failures, with 9/11 and Iraq. Do you think the reorganization has worked?

Harman: Pretty well. I was there—that was when I was the ranking member of the intelligence committee. We blew 9/11; the clues were all over the place. And then on the national intelligence estimate on the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, we got it wrong. I read everything, and voted for the military action in Iraq. And it was wrong and I was wrong.

Rubenstein: What percentage of intelligence today is human intelligence—spies—and what percent is electronic?

Yadlin: [Electronic collection of information] is around 90%. People cannot live without their electronics.

Rubenstein: Let’s assume you’ll say that Israeli intelligence is the best in the world. Who’s second-best and third?

Yadlin: There are two levels of intelligence. One is collection, and the Americans are the best. And second is analysis. That is much more difficult. Let me give you an example: When my prime minister asked me something you can discover—how many missiles are there? What is the weight of the warhead? How many centrifuges are spinning? If you have the right sources, the right collection, you can give a 100% right, reliable answer. But when the prime minister asks what [Bashar] al-Assad, president of Syria, will do if Israel attacks the nuclear reactor that Israel found in the Syrian desert that was supplied by North Korea? That’s a problem. [I told the prime minister:] Sometimes I sit with you and I don’t know what decision you’ll make by the end of the conversation.

Rubenstein: Gideon, if you were named national security adviser, what are the two or three issues you would try to work on right away in order to change the foreign policy you’ve inherited?

Rose: The simplest way to understand how American allies feel right now is that their spouse has gone through some bizarre midlife crisis and is having affairs with their nanny and everybody else. And after the fever passes they want to come back and say, ‘Let’s try to make it work for the kids, and peace and prosperity.’ I don’t want to hear the words ‘I’ve changed.’ I want to see the change. So we need to show the members of our team—of which we’ve been team captain for 75 years—that we still believe in the team and are prepared to sacrifice some short-term interest of ours for the broader long-term interests of the group. The specifics matter much less than people think. It’s about the spirit [of negotiations].

No one has a good policy for North Korea, for instance. My first effort would be to talk to the [South] Koreans and the Japanese and say what is our policy towards the North that we can all agree on.

Rubenstein: Suppose you were in a college debate and you were given the topic that President Trump has done a wonderful job with foreign policy. What would be your strongest argument?

Rose: The United States has always gotten what it wanted because of the iron fist under the velvet glove. In the last generation or two, that might not have been deployed well because leaders have started to believe their own liberal B.S. What Trump has done is remind everybody that the nice, friendly eagle has claws and teeth and will use them. And we can screw the world if we want to. And now that that’s been done, people might go back to the good cop and say ‘OK, we’re more prepared to not just be a free rider on you but cooperate ourselves.’ And now that that’s been done, [other countries] might go back to the [U.S.] and say, ‘OK, we’re more prepared to not just be a free rider but cooperate ourselves.’

This article is part of our ongoing coverage of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Write to Beverly Goodman at beverly.goodman@barrons.com