And scholars at the World National institute of politics and served as Deputy Assistant to President Donald Trump and Vice President for National Security support under regular warfare at the institute for World Politics and has served as the chairman of the let the Knowledge Group as a special warfare guest instructor at the United States special Operations Command at fort brag and associate fellow at the joint and distinguished of ministry three trait marine corp. University. University of budapest and New York Times bestseller defeating jihad the winnable war. Please join me in welcoming him. Thank you so much and thank you to the heritage its wonderful to be here to talk about the difference between the obama era and policies of the United States and what changed on january 20th. Jim and john thank you. Jim was key to this speech and ed fulln er for making the speeches for heritage possible and for giving me my official heritage tie. I do like my salmon hi tie thai . Its rasp be rhode island ill talk for 25 minutes and well have q a and ill be very brief and try to set the stage for what has changed because the change has been absolutely monumental when it comes to Counter Terrorism policy out of the United States and the effect that policy had on the ground. Lets go back two years and lets go back to the Obama Administration and look at the reality of the terrorist let the globally and to the United States. Two years ago, a group that the Obama Administration called the jv team isis the Islamic State of iraq had grown out of being small affiliate. A small subgroup of al qaeda in iraq to being the first Jihadi Movement since the disillusion of the original caliphate in 1924 to reestablish a bloody theocratic caliphate a theocracy in the middle east. According to the financial times, this threat group was able to raise at least 2,000,000 per day as its budget from elicit oil sales. Local taxing and hostage taking and controlled territory in multiple countries in the middle east. Iraq and syria being the foremost but having territory holding affiliates in places as far apart as nigeria and according this is unclassified on the front page of the Washington Post to the nctc isis alone had operational affiliates in 18 nations around the globe. That was the retail of the let the we faced an organization that held ground in the middle east. Wasnt running, wasnt hiding in and the middle east alone had 6,000,000 human beings that it controlled on the territory of its new caliphate. Thats just two years ago. We have been told by the last administration that isis is generational threat. Remember that phrase . Our children, our grandchildren would be fighting isis. A dis decades from now. Well i guess the Trump Administration has redefined generation for us few months because where are we today . Less than one year . Into the Trump Administration and the most important thing for steve bannon and myself. I was strategist to the president was to target one specific aspect of the Islamic State and we called it the physical caliphate. We wanted to make sure that within weeks or maximum months of coming into office with the unleashing of our military to do the job their trained to do the physical caliphate would be no more. Theres no isis caliphate with our iraq partners we have liberated mosul and taking back the headquarters of isis and just three weeks tag last isis stronghold in syria has fallen as well so not quite a generation maybe 8 months. How is this possible . How have we gone from this massive rebuilding organization caliphate to it being in death throws currently. Very simply because of two things. Number one, a correct determination of what the let the is and after the correct determination the application of a strategic response. Why was the Obama Administrations diagnosis so inaccurate. What was the problem . Well, we could have you know several days to impose on that but let me give you just the bare bones. The Obama Administration came into office with a strategic intent to put america back in its box. You remember this phrase from the president. We believe in american exceptional ism the same way the greeks believe in greek exceptional ism. If thats the case you dont believe in it. The National Security administration of Obama Administration talked about strategic patience. Leading from behind. What happens when you are patient and by the way, what is leading from behind . Logically what is it . Its an oxymoron you cannot lead from behind. You can follow but you cannot lead. So when you renege your responsibility and allow others to fill the vacuum you have things like isis becoming as powerful as they did. There was a flawed understanding of americas role in the world but threat assessment there was even more of salacious understanding of terrorism. The last administration did not take it seriously personally in many cases. They could not understand how religion could be a driver for violence. Instead of looking at the religious ideology of groups like isis and al qaeda the last administration was driven by very flawed concepts from social science specific social Movement Theory if youre not familiar with it you can google it. It would have you believe that all violence of an organized nature is a result of physical and economic issues. That people only become revolutionaries or terrorists because they lost their job this is how you get to maria have, the Deputy State Department spokesperson for the Obama White House actually saying on National Television we will be safe and there will be no more 9 11 if we have jobs for jihadis. Its a bad snl skit right . Maybe both. Have you ever lost a summer job. Lost a job. Been fireed . Im sure the next today you wanted to go out and behead somebody, yes . So this flawed understanding and dent immigration of the role of ideology. I took, spent six years in the Defense Department and took 60 officers in the state department from the obama regime and half my office were muslims. People who were fighting jihad back home and we took them with allies and partners after spending a year in d. C. Around the inter agency and one of the places we went was to the Obama State Department to the cutting edge of counter messaging. The counter messaging department and we had half a dozen leading government officials that the are supposed to be undermining the jihadi narrative and i had a muslim officer ask that panel what do you think the role of ideology is in this war. Great question . Superb question. In unison, consensus from the panel, ideology has no role to play in this war . Stunning. I ask them to repeat the answer just so everybody in the room could believe what they were hearing. Ideology has no role to play its all about ill use the catchy phrases root causes and upstream factors. Thats john brennan. You brought it down to what . Physical things. It cannot be spirit call it must be physical and that tells you how the last administration saw the world but it was a flawed diagnosis and as such as you miss diagnose a patient you give them the wrong treatment if they have third stage cancer and you say well you have the flu go home and hydrate whats going to happen to your patient . Theyll die and thats the problem. Miss diagnosis but that all changed when a certain Real Estate Developer from queens decided to run for the highest office in the land. I first met donald trump in summer of 2015. I was invited to talk to him prior to a republican president debate and help him prepare and it with us highest honor of my life to work with him as Deputy Assistant eventually but i realized i could work for this man within the first 30 seconds of meeting him because he is of course what . He is kryptonite to political correctness. He looked at the threat we face clearly as aware. Not as some problem to be managed but war. Not only that he wants to win that war. And thats what we have been doing as a nation. The physical caliphate no longer exists. Our troops have been unleashed. I had a tier one operator. Top special operations guy without apropos come up to me in week five and say, sir, you have no idea how the moral amongst our forces have skyrocketing because were no longer micromanaged and were allowed to do our job which is clear to President Trump. Much easy to win aware when thats the attitude to your forces. We have gone under secretary mattis from a strategy of attrition and he said this openly. To a strategy of annihilation. Think about recent unclassified reports. One day recently u. S. Troops and their partners had over a thousand jihadis surrender to them in a day. Put that into perspective in the last 16 years when did we ever have jihadis surrender . The whole point of jihadis is you die trying to kill the infidel because then you get youre an assured salvation. If surrendering to an infidel, you go straight to hell for that one. That tells you how much it really has moved from attrition to a my elation. What else do we have to appreciate . We have to appreciate what the president has done in terms of leadership not only amongst his own allies and government but amongst our muslim partners. If you want to understand who the president is and where this nation is going in terms of National Security you dont have to wait until monday for the release of the National Security strategy which i can tell you because i was in most of the meetings will be a sound document. Its shepherded by a leader and it will be a not a Shopping List of nss that throws everything in and has no priority. It will be a rational document that prioritizing and will have the president s voice in it. It wont be a, you know, designed by committee atrocity, it will be a president ial document. And until we get to the nss i can strongly recommend do two things if you want to understand where were going as a nation. Read, go back and read the president s war source speech and the president s speech. Absolutely essential. I know who wrote those great members of the white house team. They fulfill the first lore of war. The first was a master and the other is complicated and everybody when you have a fancy Cocktail Party can quote him to you but almost every single time they get it wrong. When they say yes the guy who said know your enemy. Wrong. Read the book. Get it for free online it takes 90 minutes to read. Read the book the art of war. What he said was if you know your enemy, you will win half of your battles. Victory only obtains when . If you know your enemy, yes. Absolutely sir and if you know yourself and why you are fighting. If you know who you are and who your enemy is and why you are fighting you will win every battle and the war according to him. Hes absolutely right. Youre fighting the nazis or whether youre fighting al qaeda or isis. And we werent allowed to know the enemy for the last eight years. Dont take my word for it google it. In 2011. The white house instructed unclassified memo and the chairman and the then attorney general in all counterterrorism training military and Law Enforcement there should be not mention of islam and the word jihad is abscribed. Youre not allowed to discuss jihad when trying to defeat jihad. Thats like saying during world war ii dont mention nazi because you could offend germans. Why look at the real speech. Whats the president done. He could have gone and gave a nice protocol speech but no, he went to the hub of the muslim world the area islam was founded and through 50 plus arab heads of state he didnt say hey we like you. He said gentlemen, sort out your societies. He actually said rid your places of worship of the extremist and societys of the terrorists. As an arab woman told me two weeks later thats the speech weve been waiting for, for 16 years not 8 years. 16. No brushing the issues under the carpet. Calling out our muslim friends to start by cleaning out their own front doors. Their own backyards. What happens 8, 9 days later they got serious with regard to qatar. Last month saudi arabia got even more serious so these things can be done. Leadership matters. On top of that you have to know who you are and why you are fighting and that the warsaw speech. Its probably the most important speech the president has given so far and will go down as a historic speech. Close to the brandon berg gate speech why . Because of what i says about us and the return of america. Its is not an accident that we chose the location of that speech to be where it was. It wasnt easy but we wanted president to give that speech at the site of the warsaw uprising and in that speech what did he say . He said, we are a judea christian nation. Undeniably it is who we are and we will stand shoulder to shoulder with any nation that stands for those values whether its israel or poland. We are back and we were not ashamed of who we are. Thats the second part. Who you are and why you are fighting if you dont know why youre fighting you will never ever win. More technically what should we expect in the future. I have constantly talked about this is ideological war. My book defeated jihad focuses on the fact that killing terrorists is great. I love killing terrorist its great but its not a metric of victory. You can kill a jihadi with a drone strike and 20 guys will volunteer to replace him. The last years as exquiz it is whack a mole. You win when people no longer want to become jihadists. Thats victory not measuring body bags that was a bad metric in vietnam and not much better today. Like during the cold war we must defeat the ideology. St. John paul the great Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan the idea of communism and we must do the same with global jihadism. I looking forward to the nss talking about the need to focus our efforts. With our muslim allies on undermining that ideology because that will be the ultimate victory. Churchill was right when he said you do not go to war. You do not go to war unless you define your victory conditions. If you dont define your victory conditions youll never know if youve won. What are our victory conditions today . As far as im concerned its very easy. In my book defeating jihad i call the let the we face today a new form of hybrid totalitarianism. Its linked and has connective tissues to the fascism of the 30s and 40s and commune is tournament of cold war. They may have been secular antichristian but this religious totalitarianism is linked why . Because it is totalitarianism. If you disagree with the jihadis or the nazis theres one option left for you. Surrender because if you dont surrender the only other option is to destroy them. What we face today is a new totalitarian threat. Religiously informed one. Not islam everyone that says islam has no idea of muslim world unless you travel from indonesia to saudi arabia. Travel to i jordan. We have to make sure the muslim friends can defeat this version of islam that guides groups like isis and al qaeda and we will won when the black flag of jihad is as universally rejected as the swahili swastika. Then they will no longer be able to recruit. Thank you. Thank you very much for those tremendous, very, very strong and robust remarks just now and id like to follow up on your speech with a series of questions on a wide range of foreign and National Security policy issues. You referenced the new strategy to be released next week the first since 2015. In your view, what will be the fundamental difference between the new strategy and the National Security strategy . First thing is first. The style of the document will be very different. It was in part a product of an inter agency process. Ran meetings in the nfc to get up put but this document will be the president s document. This wont be a sausage produced by an awful sausage machine. This will be a president ial document that reflects the president s views and it should be understand. Fake news is still doing its thing so the president is neither an interventionist nor an isolationist. This may be little complicated for the chris cuomos of the world but hes neither isolationist in the libertarian model that says ignore everybody else and well be fine. He realizes thats absurd and nor interventionist. The president thinks its fundamentally unamerican to invade other peoples countries and occupy them if 1776 means something its about antiimperialism. This nation was born in a response against imperialism so it will be a wise middle path and secondly, as all National Security strategies should do and havent done for about 25 years, it will prioritize as my old professor at harvard has a great video line. The art of strategy begins with saying, somethings are more important than other things. Not everything is equal and in fact some nations are more important to america than others and its not politically correct but its a fact of life as in some people are more important to you than other people and as such this document will prioritize issues and relationships and you can expect three things to be prioritized. Russia, china and the ideological nature of the threat we face from terrorism. Thank you very much. Want to follow up with a question on iran which i expect will feature heavily in the new strategy. The president recently decertified the Iran Nuclear Deal. Congress has been slow to act in terms of reimposing u. S. Sanctions. Then goes back to the white house for further movement on this. In your view, can this Iran Nuclear Deal be salvaged . Is it in americas interest to keep this deal in place . As the United States far better off simply walking away from the agreement . As i counsel the president and he knows this. Hes on the campaign trail since he came into office and he knows this is a bad deal. My advice to the president was not simply to decertify and im very glad he did but it toss scrap the whole deal. Have you ever heard of a deal where you give everything to the other party before they comply . Have you ever said dealing with your kids, right . You can have the candy before dinner before you eat your broccoli . Doesnt work. So number one the deal in its essence is flawed. Secondly, we participate or the nation the Obama Administration participate with a country deemed by the state department to be the largest state sponsored terrorism at a time when the secretary of state said yep, yep some of this money will go to terrorist attacks. Two years ago a Metro Police Officer in d. C. Who had jihadi sympathies believed he was cent sending a 500 money graham to isis. He was prosecuted and convicted for Material Support of terrorist tomorrow the extent of 500. The last administration released more than 150 billion dollars to iran but Material Support to terrorism wasnt an issue. And lastly the biggest problem of all, the deal doesnt stop Nuclear Acquisition by iran. This is the dirty little secret. It doesnt stop it it mildly delays the acquisition of Nuclear Capabilities if they stick to it and as we learned from cold war your former employer knew all too well dealing with dictators, theres a funny thing about dictatorships, they usually dont abide by the agreements you sign with them and thats something the president understands. On the subject of israel. President recently declared the United States will recognize jerusalem as capital of israel. Outrage especially in europe and parts of middle east, but what do you think is the real message of this that the president is sending through this decision . And what do you see as a longer impact of this decision . I think theres only three correct responses to that question. Theres domestic. International and spiritual or you know natural law response. The domestic is one that is really quite revolutionary. We have a newly minted politician that keeps his promises. Shock. A man that makes promises on the campaign trail and then actually delivers on those promises. Its a great new yardstick for politics in america and the west atlarge. Secondly i think that theres an aspect to his decision thats about truth. Its the right thing to do. I know this. Right . This is how he operates. And i can tell you im not going to give you any names theres only three members of the cabinet that supported president on that decision. Three people. Everybody else even some people who you may think have a very tough reputation said no, this is a disaster you cant do that and the president bucked them all and said no. This is the right thing to do. We promise the electorate and our friends. After the longterm consequences the last question, my hope is that it injects a sense of reality into that situation because we need it desperately. The idea this will create violence. What have we had for the last 40 years in the middle east. A specific wonderful state of affairs . No this is a reality check and it will be ultimately the test of good faith for the palestinians are. You going to negotiate in good faith or not because well demonstrate we standby the israelis and now the test is yours. Are you prepared to negotiate in good faith. We shall see. Switching cues a bit now to the issue of brexit, of course, for the heritage foundation. I put on my union cuff links for you. Extremely sound and you were born there in the United Kingdom and spent time in britain. Whats your view for brexit longterm impact on the uk and United States relationship. What do you think of the prospects of the free trade agreement. Weve seen discussions started on that on front and so id like to get your overview of the big picture with brexit and its impact especially for the United States. Direction it is a monumentally important event in history. Lets begin with that. However it develops. Whichever final version is implemented it will not negatively effect our relationship. Id like to point out to people we have these things called jumbos. These massive photographs of the president and the Vice President traveling the world or having meetings and theyre rotated out every two weeks. One of the jumbos in the most prominent stayed there for at least two months and what was it . It was the photograph of the president sitting down with the Prime Minister in the oval office. Theres a reason. The relationship will always be strong. Its not up to us. This is not the Obama Administration and were going to tell you that youll get the back of the cue if you dont vote the right way. We dont do that. This is not thaw president thinks so the relationship will be sound. Nevertheless brexit must be understood for what it represents more broadly speaking in the western world. Brexit is kissing cousins to the trump phenomena and its not populism. I reject outright this label that these are populist movements. Brexit at heart is about two things. Common sense and representative and Accountable Government being demanded by the electorate. Thats what its about. Think about how that compares with the make America Great again agenda. Im now a proud american and one of the key characteristics of my fellow americans that i adore is that common sense. One of the reasons this pragmatic realtor won the election last year despite never having held office before is he is a man of common sense and the American People have had enough of absurd things such as identity politics being rammed down their throat and then they wanted an Accountable Government back in washington and they wanted brussels and london and i think that brexit is a very positive thing and it will be the first of many, many similar events. What do you think is the future of the European Union . It has been tremendous resistance to brexit and the European Commission and were now seeing some extreme intensive heated arguments between the European Commission and the British Government at this time about the eu and possibility of a trade deal. Do you think that were going to see fundamental change sweeping across europe in the coming years and what about u. S. Policy towards the eu. If your experience in the white house did you sense any real change in thinking on the part of the u. S. Administration with regard to the future of the european project. After all the previous years u. S. Administrations have backed the european President Trump himself comes across as far more skeptic. Can you talk about the direction of u. S. Policy on europe especially thee usa moving . This is when its nice to no longer be in government service. The future of the eu . Doesnt have one as far as im concerned. If it continues like this it will collapse or it will further devolve into what is it today which is a club in which different membership categories exist and which really isnt a club but a group of micro clubs that are held together under one faux umbrella. High . Because it lost sight of why its created. I lived in budapest and i taught undergraduate student as whole semester on european integration and we have to go back to the basics. Theres a reason its verse version was coal and steesteel. Why . Because those were the two things you needed to go to war in the 1950s you needed it and europe project originally was about one thing. Making sure france and germany would not go to war with each other again. At the cost of 60 million lives so weve lost sight of that and its this self perpetuating. First time ive been able to use the phrase self licking ice cone and its deeper integration for the sake of integration with faceless people in brussels. The idea that only bureaucrats can initiate legislation is absurd. The idea that you pull sovereignty to the point legislation this supercedes your constitution. Who would agree to that . So either they wake up and revert to what they should have been all along this focus on National Security, or they will continue to devolve and break up into various different clubs. What the future i cant give you great granularty on this but as long as donald trump is president it will remain healthly skeptical. Thats encouraging to hear. We didnt res her any of this. Honest. You mentioned in your remarks the president s powerful a dress in warsaw. And he also spoke to the Islam Islamist threat and this is a huge issue across the atlantic. At a time when theres intense debate in europe over how to deal with that islamist issue in light of Angela Merkels decision to allow in about two million migrants and refugees into germany for the middle east and north africa and whole range of countries and what do you see actually as the longterm impact of miracles open door decision. Weve seen fundamental rejection of thats an in countries such as poland for example and do you think the refugee crisis in europe is going to have a major impact on the United States as well as National Security . I think it already has because the president wants to make sure we dont see here what happened europe. Were not waffling after the attacks in new york. Whats the president said . There will be no more diversity lottery or chain migration. This is a danger to us and we will not fall victim to what were seeing in europe. Compare this to chancellor merkels new years eve speech last year after the Christmas Market attack. And i lift just two sentences out and they were next to each other not taken from different part. She said in one sentence. The jihadi or the terrorist let the to germany is the primary National Security concern. Its threat number one and in the next sentence she said despite that being the case we will maintain our open door policy to refugees. Thats the textbook when you go to a psychiatry and look up cognitive dissidents that is the definition and well not allow that to happen here. The idea that i just came from a week in australia and new zealand. Is anybody familiar with the immigration policies of those two countries . Probably the tough nest the world if you cannot demonstrate merit based relevance as to why you should live in australia and why theres nobody in australia that cant do the job you want to do, you will not become australian. Nobody calls them bigots or racist or islam phobes. The president takes this seriously. He wants allamericans to prosper and much more important for us to be safe. He takes his role as commander in chief very seriously and theres one person in our great nation who decides who comes to this country and under what conditions theyre measured and its not some judge in hawaii, its the president of the United States so yes, the events. Look the facts are out. This not hyperbolic hypotheses we no one of the attackers had refugee status. Before i came into government we wrote a report at my company called, isis the threat to the United States. Well we just looked at isis recruitment in america. In the last two years. And weve seen a six fold increase in comparison of recruitment and weve seen two years more than 130 people linked to isis involved in terror plots in the United States. The president is stopping that so its going to be much, much safer. Question. Question now on u. S. Policy towards russia and i think its significant in the last 12 months or so weve seen a real strengthening of the military presence in eastern europe. Especially the Baltic States and poland and we now have an active discussion with administration over sending weapons to ukraine. Weve seen the United States challenging the russians in syria quite aggressively there. Something the Obama Administration did not actually do. What do you see are the next steps the administration can and should take with regard to the russian menace especially in europes. Nato at the moment in your view up to the task and the challenge and we have seen some increase in nato defense spending this year after tremendous pressure from the United States . These are the same russians were supposed to be colluding with right . Isnt it so interesting . Look at every russian policy weve had in the last ten months. Practically everyone has been bad and these are the people were supposed to be colluding with. So yes. In recent months and years weve been some leadership come out of nato. Especially the military side. For a man that hated nato allegedly we managed to get nato to commit to something weve been trying for 30years to get them to do. To spend the requisite amount on defense. They agreed and this is the art of the deal. If you want to understand the president , read his book it tells you how he operates and its very successful. The president again let me be very clear here how he thinks about russia. I think it was the last press conference he gave in trump tower before he moved into the white house. It was the press conference when he handed over his empire to his children. As he left one of the reporters said what about moscow and putin . And he stopped and gave a response thats the best description of how he looks at russia for the next four to eight years. He said in theory id like to have better relations with russia. Why is that controversial . This is a nuclear nation. The size of it makes it important despite the fact of what kind of kleptocracy it is and it has a veto vote on the Security Council so its important nation. My father was arrested by communists and tortured and given a life sentence so theres no love lost between me and colonels like vlad. So the president says i would like to have better relationships with them but right now it doesnt look very likely. And then he closeed by saying, if that is the case, so be it. Thus spoke the pragmatics. Thats the president. He is a melding of patriotism and pragmaticism and well continue to deal with that nation as a problem nation not a strategic threat because theyre losing 600,000 people per year more are dying per year in russia than are being born. They have severe internal problems and it has one basic resource. Natural energy. Its not a strategic player in terms of other countries but its a spoiler and in the last eight years it has exploited the lack of leadership shown by president obama and the regime of Vladimir Putin must be understood as antistatus quo actor. Most nations in the world we like to think are status quo. They want to cooperate and want all boat tos float at the same rate. Some nations dont. This is one of the biggest problems that we deposit good faith in everybody. Some countries there is no good faith even when they smile and say i want to be your friend they dont mean it and russia is one of them. They are antistatus quo actor and the president fully understands that and will deal with it in practical terms but i will add one thing. I am not looking for new enemies. Just not smart. Im not going to kick a horse nets nest because its cool to kick the hornets next. We are pragmatics. Last question, sort of big picture question on American Leadership at a critically important time on the world stage. In your mind whats the fundamental difference between the trump and Obama Administrations in terms of Foreign Policy . What are the defining principals of u. S. Foreign policy right now and are we looking at you know, a new era of far more forceful and robust u. S. Leaderships today . The biggest difference between a trump Foreign Policy and obama Foreign Policy is very simple. Very easy. President donald trump thinks america is a good country. The biggest difference. That doesnt mean we necessarily have a to play in every part of the world but were special. We are a special country and our Leadership Matters and very simply put, the world with American Leadership, not intervention. A world with American Leadership is a much safer world for all good people. Whatever their skin color, whatever their religion it as much better world for everyone. Great question. Thank you. On that note id like to draw our event to a close and big thank you to you for your tremendous remarks here at heritage. Very grateful for you to join us and everyone joining us today for todays event so thank you very much. Thank you. [applause] cspan cities tour takes you to springfield, missouri. Were working with media kom to explore history of the birthplace of route 66 in southwestern missouri. On saturday january sixth thats at noon eastern on book t. V. The conflict occurring along the kansas, missouri border in his book the border between them. In 1858 john brown having left kansas comes back to the territory and begins a series of raids into western missouri during which his men will liberate people from missouri and help them escape to freedom and in the course of this theyll kill a number of slave holders and the legend of john brown really grows as part of this struggle that people locally understand is really the beginning of the civil war. Then sunday january 7th at 2 p. M. On American History t. V. We visit it nra Sporting Arms museum. Theodore roosevelt was probably our shootingist president. A video hunter. First
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