Transcripts For CSPAN Foreign Policy And Global Threats 20180109

Foundations Margaret Thatcher center for freedom. His key areas of specialization include the United Nations and the role of Great Britain and europe in the u. S. Led alliance against international terrorism. He was recently named one of the 50 most influential britons in the u. S. By the london daily telegraph. And a leading authority on transatlantic relationships, he has advised the executive branch of the u. S. Government on a range of issues from the role of International Allies in postwar iraq to u. S. British leadership. His policy papers are widely read on capitol hill where he is regularly soughtafter. He received his doctorate degree from yale university. Let us welcome him and the rest of our panel today. [applause] good morning, everybody. Welcome to todays event. Thank you everyone for joining us in such extremely cold weather. Really cold weather. It is more like moscow and washington. We will be talking about the russians later. And we have two superb washington foreignpolicy experts with us today. And you will see both rebecca and michael on cable shows here in washington on a regular basis. Rebecca specializes in nuclear deterrence, Missile Defense and counter proliferation. She has served as a military advisor to trent franks and has helped to launch the bipartisan Missile Defense caucus. Michael is a senior fellow at the brookings institution. He is also rector or research with a foreignpolicy program at brookings and he specializes in u. S. Defense strategy and American National security policy. He is also an adjunct professor in columbia and princeton. And the university of denver as well. He is the author of several books on Foreign Policy. He received his doctorate in foreignpolicy affairs from harvard university. I would like them to briefly say a few words to kick us off for todays discussion. And then i will follow that with a series of questions for our two panelists and then, we shall go into a q a with the audience. Rebecca, i would ask you to introduce yourself a bit more and provide any insights you would like to kick off with regarding todays discussion and debate. Rebecca good morning, everyone and thank you so much for braving the cold to come out and join us for a little conversation about american foreignpolicy. Is this on . You can hear me well . Ok. I thought for this audience i wanted to give you a little background as to how i got started in Foreign Policy because i think that tends to be a curiosity for undergraduate students. I got my bachelors degree in history and Political Science at Ashland University as an ash brook scholar, a Political Science program. I did an internship every summer, i studied Foreign Language at the ohio state university. I am from ohio. And then, i came out to washington, d. C. As soon as i graduated and got my first job on capitol hill working for the house judiciary committee. Now, i had always wanted to focus on National Security policy but that opportunity was not open at the time so i took a good job on the house judiciary committee. And i went to graduate school. I went to grad school at the u. S. Naval war college. And got a masters degree and National Security and strategic studies. And then focused my studies more narrowly. And then i got a job for the congressman who is on the House Foreign Services committee and began specializing in strategic security. That is Missile Defense, nuclear deterrence, and counter proliferation. And that is a very short timeline. If you have more questions about the particulars of that afterwards, i am happy to spend some time talking with you all. I specialize in networking for the congressman and we launched the bipartisan Missile Defense caucus. It was to be a forum for republicans and democrats to discuss the challenges to the u. S. From the threat of Ballistic Missiles and because Ballistic Missiles have become one of the i would say that we have entered a new missile era. Countries that do not have large militaries, navies and air forces that can challenge the u. S. Military are investing in Ballistic Missiles because they marry with Nuclear Weapons and chemical and biological weapons. It allows them to coerce a world power, a superpower, like the United States of america, which is why we are seeing so much focus on the iranian Ballistic Missile program as well as north Koreas Nuclear Missile Program. So, i wanted to create this forum for republicans and democrats to look at the threat and try to find areas in which we can find consensus and tackle those issues that we can agree on to better buildout our countrys missiledefense architecture. The caucus is there today and it still does that. And then i would just say that is the area of my focus although i do cover a wide spectrum of National Security issues now that my focus, because of how acute the north korean security problem has become, that has been my area of focus in addition to the iranian jcpoa, the iran deal and all of the issues that surround the problem. I will leave that there. Michael, if i could ask you to say a few words. Michael, as you can see i am a very old man compared to these two young whippersnappers up here but i will not make you hear the year by year. I love how rebecca did that. Let me do an equivalent. I studied physics in college. My summer jobs during then went from dairy firm work in upstate new york to then trying to disprove einsteins general theory of relativity with a team of physicists. In case you wonder who one that, einstein was right. And i am not even kidding. It was not my idea to do that project but that was what we tried. And then i did peace corps in the former democratic republican of congo. I had some other things that were more applicable to zaire at the time. Ultimately, i wound up shifting from that to the Woodrow Wilson school. I also spent time on capitol hill. Congress gets a bad rap. Congress as a body often deserves it but it is an equal partner in our government with the executive branch. A lot of people forget that. I am proud of the time that i got to spend in congress. For me, it was the congressional budget office. A research arm working for people like rebecca. And then, i have been at brookings, a nonpartisan Public Policy organization for 23 years. I will leave it at that. Thank you very much, michael. I would like to begin with an opening question with regard to the wide war against islamic terrorism. A huge priority issue for the u. S. Administration. Today and it has been a priority for much of the last two decades. The state department recently announced that isis has lost about 90 of its territory in iraq and syria. Is this basically, in your view, game over for isis in iraq and syria or is there a danger that isis could reemerge in either of those two countries . And what explains the very rapid defeat of isis . 50 of isis territory in syria and iraq was taken away in just the last 12 months alone. And the total 98 . If you could address those questions. I will start with you, rebecca and then michael. Rebecca i will take just a piece of that. The answer to the first question is that i think that we can be happy with the gains we have made. I think that it is remarkable how quickly u. S. Military has been able to actually defeat the socalled caliphate that had existed there. The organization that isis had in both of those places. But, isis is very good at reinventing itself and popping up in other areas in which there is a power vacuum. That is why when there was the tragedy of u. S. Forces killed in niger and people wondered why we had forces there, it was because isis is trying to gain a foothold there. We will see that isis as an Islamist Militant Group is not going to be utterly defeated anytime soon. Why . Why the success . Why has the u. S. Military been able to over 5 Million People freed that were previously under isis control. Remarkable. Remarkable progress. And even during the obama years, when the Obama Administration was prosecuting the war, over 3 Million People free. A slower campaign but it was also seeing some success. And according to the pentagon, some of the things that are different about the way we are prosecuting the war is the tempo. The tempo of the military strikes. How rapid we are going after these targets. It is not allowing them to regain territory quickly. It is just how rapid we are prosecuting the war. And equity are you mad us will say that we have not changed the rules of engagement. You will often hear people say that they have changed. But he would say they have not changed but he has been delegated down authority so we have cut out the bureaucracy for approving various military strikes before we go ahead and do them and that goes to how rapid we have been able to prosecute the war. That is what is owed to the success of the work. I would agree with virtually all of that. I think president obama clearly struggled with syria policy throughout his presidency but by the last one or two years, again to get a better concept of what he thought he was trying to do and he said a lot of the conditions. It took a while. Things were just beginning to gel by the end of his presidency. And then President Trump was able to build on that, amplify it in some ways, and to some extent the enemies, whether it was a big strategic decision or more of a pass they found to naturally proceed, they partly dissolved. There were a couple places where they fought to the death, fought very hard. In other cases the enemy decided lets just shave our beards and revert back to being regular citizens of iraq or syria and sneak away. Hopefully nobody figures out who we were. Especially for a lot of the foot soldiers. And perhaps stay around to fight another day under different auspices in the future. For those of you who have forgotten a little bit of what happened at the end of the iraq war we really felt we had defeated alqaeda there with the iraqis, but lo and behold a lot of the extremist fighters and others who became radicalized as time went on were sort of biding their time to see what would happen under the new iraq of Prime Minister malaki. When they didnt like it, they joined up with isis and of course isis took a lot of iraq, too, as rebeccah said. Those were the two countries, iraq and syria, where it had the strongest foothold. We have to be very careful about declaring victory. President trumps path forward in iraq is difficult but easier to imagine because we have a government there we can work with and should be trying to help reform, help further improve the conditions in its own country to patch up the sunnishiakurdish divisions, to moderate or minimize the role of iran. There are some things we can do, staying engaged with iraq with relatively modest numbers of forces and maybe turning more of our Security Assistance into economic aid because iraq is still struggling economically. If theyre going to repair those sectarian divisions theyll need a stronger economy. I think the path forward is going to take some continued american attention and resources but is relatively easier to sketch out as to what it should be. Syria is still a huge hornets nest. We are nowhere near finishing a solution to the civil war unless youre like russia and youre happy to see president assad just win the conflict. Even if you have that view which i dont think most americans do it is not clear to me assad can really stay in power and stabilize the country because he has so much blood on his hands at this point, so many sunnies, the majority of the country so angry with him because he killed their brothers and cousins and friends and sisters and, so, that country is a long way from anything we should call victory or stability. On that one ill just give President Trump a very interim hopeful grade but nowhere near a success. Ms. Heinrichs if i may tack on there, the other challenge with iraq were seeing is iran is trying to make sure that before the United States tries to pull back again that it has a greater influence in iraq and over the iraqi government. That is something the United States government is acutely aware of and trying to make sure that part of the final solution, whatever that might be, in iraq, a stable government, protected zone borders and set up before it can do that on its own the United States wants to make sure iraq is an allie of the United States not another proxy state of iran. That fits into the overall strategy for what the United States is trying to do in terms of pushing back iranian influence at large sort of in the region. Mr. Gardiner thank you for those excellent answers. It is very striking that 7. 5 Million People i think were liberated in total actually. And over the last couple of years. Thats a huge achievement. Moving over to iran, now, over the past few days weve seen a wave of street protests, not just in tehran but practically every major city in the country. An astonishing level of public protests in an extremely authoritarian, dictatorial country. What should the u. S. Response be to the protests . Has the Trump Administration handled the iran protest issue well, considering president obamas handling of the 2009 protests in iran . What are the implications as well for the Iran Nuclear Deal . Could we be potentially seeing even possibly the downfall of the islamist regime in iran . Ill kick off with michael first. Mr. Ohanlon thanks, nile. Well, to answer the question, first, how to handle demonstrations like this i do think so far President Trump is doing fine. And, you know, factoring in and adjusting for his particular approach to how he addresses diplomacy in general, which is not always my preference. But now that we know how he operates, i think the basic approach of supporting the protesters and condemning the government is generally fine. But i do think when you look more broadly at how we handle these kinds of situations lets imagine 2009 with president imagine 2009 with president obama in iran or the arab spring and then how we try to help gently push and then more firmly push president mubarak out in egypt or try to encourage protests in syria and look what happened. We have to be a little bit aware of the down sides of luring people into thinking well come help them in a way that we wont. That would be my main caveat or caution would be, not that iran today is equivalent to syria, 2011, but sometimes these things take on lives of their own. You cant really read them that well even if you are a specialist in the country. To know when things get to a Tipping Point and you have sort of an emergent phenomenon of mass protests and knowing where that goes. Very hard to foresee. People didnt necessarily foresee tiananmen in 1989 or the, you know, wave of liberation movements in eastern europe. About that same time period. These things tend to be unpredictable. What you want to do is be true to your own principles. Be clear about where you stand. You also want to be aware of the limits of your influence. And so not that i believe it to be likely, i would not suggest President Trump give iranian protesters the sense that were somehow going to intervene on their behalf. It would be pretty unlikely we would do so in iran given its size and capacities. That would be my one caution. Otherwise i do think that the initial response is basically fine. One more quick word on the nuclear deal. Maybe stop there. On the broader question of how we deal with iran going forward. The nuclear deal that president the nuclear deal that president obama negotiated, joint comprehensive plan of action in 2015 is going to be very hard for the United States to overturn now because it is an International Agreement and the monitoring bodies in charge of it basically say that iran is doing most of whats asked under that particular deal. On the Nuclear Portfolio at least. Otherwise iran is still behaving horribly. Probably worse even than in 2015. But we need to use other mechanisms and means i believe to address that. The nuclear deal i dont believe was as good as it could have been but it is going to be very hard at this point to undo it. So we can try to improve it. But thats got to be done through negotiations which means we need new leverage. That is going to be tough to get. If we just rip it up i think well be in a worse place. What i hope is that President Trump stays very tough on iran in regard to the demonstrations, in regard to its regional activities, you know, its covert actions in iraq and syria and elsewhere. Figure out better strategies to push back against iran in those domains but leave the nuclear deal essentially intact even if he doesnt like it because again, it is going to be hard to replace it with anything better at this point given that the whole International Community is essentially behind it. Even if we stop dealing with iran economically because weve decided we dont like the deal anymore the rest of the world will probably continue to do its trade and investment with iran and will also be giving iran a potential pretext to withdraw from its obligations under the deal. I would say be tough against irans regional activities. Be vigilant on the nuclear deal. Be supportive of the demonstrators rhetorically and i think that may add up to the best policy we can do at this point. Ms. Heinrichs i could go 75 different angles on this and we could spend the rest of the time just kind of unpacking. I agree with a lot the of what was just said. Well start with the protesters. I do agree that President Trump has done very, very well on this. The promptness of his response of showing solidarity with the protesters and that goes for everybody else in the administration who would have a role. That goes for nikki haley and everybody else in the administration. Youll hear a lot of pushback from former Obama Administration officials, sort of the other side to this, the other position on this is that we should actually be quiet. That this is sort of an iranian affair and the u. S. Government should stay out of it. That is not what many of the demonstrators say. The demonstrators in iran are not all demonstrating for the same reason. Some of them it is generally dissatisfaction with the regime in general. And then for a variety of reasons why theyre dissatisfied with the regime. What the iranian people were promised is that the iran deal would bring in this new wave of Economic Prosperity for the country and they havent seen it. It just they havent seen it. The iranian government used much of the funds for its military and for the Missiles Program and this is why i oppose the iran deal with everything i had leading up until the deal. I testified before congress that if you do not include irans Missile Program, it is a just a horribly flawed deal, because the iranians will not continue to spend all of their resources on these intercontinental anyistic missiles, which time the iranians or North Koreans test a satellite, ok, that is an intercontinental Ballistic Missile test. It is different in terms that there are some other technological challenges for getting the launch on the right trajectory to get it on to its target but theyre not just trying to inspire the next generation of nasa kids. This is not what theyre doing. They are trying to figure out how to get that missile up. And so both the North Koreans and the iranians have cooperated in the past on their Missile Programs. And so the iran deal had all kinds of problems i saw. One of the major problems was if you dont include its Missile Program, longrange Missile Program you are essentially punting. Even if the deal works as the president , himself, president obama even said that even if the deal works perfectly, were not eliminating the program entirely. What were doing is buying ourselves time for the breakout time. By months. Now itll take rather than a year for the iranians to break out and have a full fledged Nuclear Program or i guess it was four months to nine months or Something Like that. I forget the timeline. It was only a matter of months if they decided to break out. So what they could do is just bide their time and not work on the nuclear piece, work on the missile piece which by the way is much harder. The North Koreans have had the nuclear piece done for a long time. It is the Missile Program theyve been working on. The North Koreans and iranians can continue, once the deal is done, sunset, then they can go forward with their Nuclear Program and now have the Delivery System completed. I always believed that they should be connected. Wendy sherman the chief negotiator for the United States at the time said that the missiles would be addressed early on in the negotiations but as the iranians just said, no deal, the missiles will never be constrained, that sort of fell off the table for the United States. So my overall view of the iran deal was if you go back and you look at what Obama Administration officials said that was necessary for a good deal, and compare it to the deal we have now, it doesnt come anywhere near what the officials, themselves, said was necessary for a good deal. If you dont believe me, you can go look at senator schumers press release when the deal was completed. He opposed the deal. He is a democrat. He laid out all of the reasons he thought the deal was bad and i agree with every single one of his complaints. Ok. We have the deal now. I am actually supportive of the administrations, the u. S. Administrations approach now which is to say you dont certify the deal if we dont know for sure they are complying. There are reasons we believe they arent complying including the fact that we dont have access to some of the military installations, the iranians claim that the deal didnt include the military installations. My reading of the iran deal was p was loosely ambiguous urposefully ambiguous. To get the deal done but then the United States position was we did have access to them if we wanted them and the iranians said we simply dont have access to them. So there are some things im already suspicious of that the iranians could be cheating on the margin as we speak. Anyway, i believe the approach is good not to certify but continue to stay in the deal and put pressure. For all of the reasons. It took years of bipartisan work to get the sanctions on the Iranian Regime, to get the International Isolation on the Iranian Regime. It took an enormous amount of diplomatic heavy lifting. And so because weve released those sanctions, its just very, very difficult to get that isolation back on the regime. But i believe the u. S. Approach has been good. You dont certify if you cant certify the iran deal you can continue to levy sanctions on the Missile Program. You support the protesters. I really like the point, you dont want to give the protesters false hope that the United States is going to do more. I would actually even say that i would caution our own government that we dont become overly optimistic about what we can actually accomplish here. Because that is that has been a bipartisan american tendency to have an overly optimistic view of what we can actually do. And i think that is actually to President Trumps credit, his instincts on this are right, which is that we are trying to dial back and lower the expectations about what the United States can actually do in some of these countries. And this needs to be understood as an iranian development. This is the iranian people that the United States can provide moral support certainly. If there is anything else we can do to help the protesters by bringing attention to the crackdown that the Iranian Regime has done, eliminating, trying to eliminate social media and the ability for the iranian protesters to get information in and information out, we should do it. And then, also, differentiate between the iranian people, who want reform, and the iranian government, which there is nothing moderate about the iranian government. When you hear people talking about the moderate president rouhani that is a lie. He is not a moderate. Some former Obama Administration officials will agree that was simply a myth in order to get the iran deal done. Tried to frame him as a moderate but in fact since the iran deal occurred theres been violations of u. N. Security council on missile tests, their support for terrorism abroad has continued, support for hezbollah. Again, so that is under the supposed moderate. I could keep going. Ill be quiet there. Mr. Gardiner thank you very much. Some tremendous answers to that question. The demonstration just, you know, just how important the iran issue is at the moment for the United States. The fact weve devoted a good 10 minutes of our discussion today to iran alone. I am conscious of the fact that time is always against us. Ill move shortly to audience questions. A lot of you have a wide range of Foreign Policy and National Security questions. Before i do that though, if i could ask the panelists very briefly give a big picture overall assessment of the Trump Administrations Foreign Policy at the end of the first year. How is the administration doing . Is the administration doing better in your view than the Obama Administration . Have we seen, you know, a fundamental change in u. S. Foreign policy over the last year . Is there more continuation than radical reform going on . Ill ask michael to answer that question, first. Mr. Ohanlon thank you, nile. Let me put a couple propositions on the table. Ill be intrigued to see how rebeccah responds as well. I am completing an oped with david gordon in usa today soon on exactly this question. Were both sort of moderates. He has worked in both democratic and republican offices in congress. I am sort of a moderate to hawkish democrat. I am personally wary of President Trump. His style, his approach make me nervous and i did not support him two years ago in the campaign. All that said i am surprised in many ways at how much continuity there has been in american policy in 2017. I dont think donald trump has been better than president obama. I think president obama was at an individual level a better kind of leader, better diplomatic style, but President Trump has assembled such a strong National Security and Foreign Policy team and when push comes to shove, usually listens to their advice on the biggest decisions that i think weve wound up with an ok first year. Im still very nervous because some aspects to what hell do on north korea for example i find unpredictable. I do worry about a temperamental kind of reaction leading to places that we shouldnt be. Especially given that north korea is run by a person who troubles me far more than donald trump does and who doesnt have great advisers around him. Anybody who was going to give their good advice to kim jong un has probably been assassinated by now as weve seen because he has controlled his own internal inner circle to the point where he just has a lot of fans giving him advice he wants to hear. In that kind of a situation i do get nervous sometimes by President Trump. Nor do i agree with some of his rhetoric or decisions on issues like Climate Change and immigration policy. When we get down to the core National Security issues of how to handle iraq, syria, afghanistan, chinas rise, russias in general theres been more continuity than i expected. A couple improvements on a couple issues. There have been a couple of regrettable developments on a couple others. But on balance, compared to what i expected, having listened to candidate Trump Campaign for two years there has been more of a main stream approach and better approach to Foreign Policy than i expected. Most of the credit i give to secretary mattis, secretary tillerson, ambassador haley, National Security adviser mcmaster some extent Vice President pence. But ill give donald trump credit for one thing. He is the guy who hired all those people. On balance, this is not meant as endorsement of donald trump, and he does make me nervous. But things have been a little better in 2017 than i would have expected and a little more continuity than i expected on a number of issues as well. Mr. Gardiner over you to, rebeccah. Ms. Heinrichs i could spend 30 minutes on this. I appreciate the honesty. I come from the republican end of the spectrum. I have advised i was part of an organization that in my free time i also have four kids. I want to put that out there too because you have to have that picture in terms of what i am doing with my life. In my free time, if im working at a think tank at the Hudson Institute in my free time leading up to the campaign i was part of a republican Advisory Group to the various republican president ial candidates. I spent the bulk of my time advising senator rubio. I was doing backgrounders, doing sort of rapid helping with press releases and statements and that sort of thing during the campaign. I did the same thing for governor walker. I did briefings for governor christie. I never talked to mr. Trump. He didnt ask and i didnt offer. So that didnt happen. I was sort of advising what most of the republicans out here in washington, d. C. , who they were working with and advising and we never crossed paths. I sort of was coming from the more sort of conventional republican style of rhetoric and the Ronald Reagan style of speaking. I even opposed mr. Trump during the primary. So as we sort of started winding down and the field started getting smaller his style concerned me. The fact that all the people that i knew who knew a lot about these subjects werent talking to him concerned me. And so i voiced my concerns. I wasnt shy about that. And then i will say this, too. This will be another piece of advice i would give working in this town. Just being an american in general and the way politics works. You want to stay sort of really get serious, deep down convictions about what your principles are and not to confuse your principles with policy and not to confuse principles with sort of style and approach. This has been one of the big, i think, gifts that donald trump and his administration has gifted to this country. This is a very interesting take i realize. But it has sort of revitalized politics in a way so were reassessing and trying to figure out what our principles are, what our policy is, and if style preferences can sometimes be confused for policy and principle. Ok . You want to be able to be willing to admit where you were wrong, not to be dogmatic. Not to get into group think and to reevaluate where your positions are as youre given more information. I believe some of my early instincts and opinions about donald trump were wrong flat out wrong. He has surprised me in a lot of ways on his instincts in terms of what he thinks is right. His understanding of America First i have grown to appreciate. You know, he has assembled this team. And it cant be an accident. Its not an accident that he has some of the absolute best people he could have possibly found in his cabinet. And he deserves great credit for that. I simply refuse to believe that this is all in spite of donald trump. That american Foreign Policy has been doing so well in my view. So just a couple minutes in terms of what i think he is doing. What we have sort of gotten lulled into, and this is bipartisan, this has been the bush administrations over optimistic view of what the United States can accomplish in terms of nation building. Ok . Even if me as an analyst believes we should be doing x, y, or z in Foreign Policy it doesnt matter if you dont have the buyin and support of the American People. Ok . And so where weve over extended you have to adjust that. Yes you have to lead the American People in terms of what you think is right but you also have to listen to them and adjust and accommodate for what the American People want. I believe donald trump as a populist, american civic nationalist, has a better handle on that actually than i think we have done on either party in the past in the recent past. And our Foreign Policy is sort of calibrating for that. Ok . We still care about human rights. As a country, as a government, and the administration has received a lot of criticism for sort of down grading. If you studied any of the National Security strategy that was just released, the administration got a lot of criticism from the sort of ill call them establishment because i dont know what else to call them but Establishment Republicans and democrats criticized for the sort of downgrading of human rights as a priority. I take issue with that. This is why. Killing isis is good for human rights. We are doing that very well. Rolling back kim jonguns nuclear Missile Program and denuclearizing the peninsula is good for human rights. So what this administration is doing is recalibrating to make sure we are pursuing American Security interests, not abandoning our principles for what we believe is right, but looking to see where we pursue those American Security interest and where they meet to intersect with human rights. Then we really talk about. The perfect example is the iranian protests now, where we are talking about human rights left and right now. We do not talk about human rights publicly and comes to people see that is inconsistent. It is perfectly consistent when you try to understand what the administration is trying to do. The other big plug for what we can do, which i hope the administration will do better, is its unapologetic defense of not american parity with other countries, but of American Leadership and superiority, unapologetic American Military strength, which is why you see the emphasis on recapitalizing the military, expanding the missile selfdefense, finishing the modernization of the obama promise on the nuclear triad, but making sure we have the best Nuclear Weapons the world has ever seen, and that makes everybody nervous. I say do it, because Nuclear Weapons are there to preserve peace and avoid conflict. His approach is different, but this is the way i have heard general mcmaster talk about the way he had talked about it, and the president is not great at explaining a lot of this, which is why it lends to confusion and misunderstanding. Mcmaster is very good at understanding what the president wants, explaining it, nikki haley, general mattis is one of few words, but he is one to watch and Pay Attention to what he says. What we are trying to do is regain the strategic advantage. We are not withdrawing from the world. The rumors of a isolation was not part of what President Trump wanted to do. He wanted american strength to be such that we could intervene when it was in our interests and not when it was in our interests and just sort of regain the american strategic footing. So i think they are doing well. I think the administration is doing well. I think the president s rhetoric gets in the way of itself. But that is a matter of politics because he has his own base. I am not in his audience when he tweets. He has different audiences. The way i look at it is it does not bother me because i understand you do not get to pick and choose which traits you like about the president. He is who he is, and that same personality that gives us the uncomfortable tweets is the same one that has empowered general mattis to take out isis. You take both for what it is. I am very optimistic about the direction of the United States Foreign Policy. Mr. Gardiner thank you very much. They have been terrific insights. I would say that the most impressive figure so far the first year of the Trump Administration, the real star, is ambassador nikki haley, who has done an absolutely outstanding job as ambassador of the United Nations. She is somebody who reminds me quite a bit of my old boss Margaret Thatcher in many respects. I expect she will continue to project very strong u. S. Leadership in the coming years. I now would like to invite questions from the audience. Shortage ms. Heinrichs i thought you were leading at first. Mr. Gardiner it would be help you if you identify yourself and where you are studying, will be very helpful. If i could identify your name it would be very helpful. Impressive. Very ask questions. Then well just were so short on time. Thats an extremely good point. I think if we free have the first this line here ask their quest a theres. It on that side. Well see how were doing from there. If i could have the first three students in line here on this side ask their questions and then the panelist will respond. Hello. Nashay ron. The eventsey stated happening in myanmar are example s of ethnic clipping. Was just wondering i was wondering how the lack of the National Community has affected it . Thank you. Well take the next questions. Im angela. Im from boston. You think wes do should create stricter guideline the i. E. For countries to follow when it come s to newer technology, specifically power plants that pose a threat to international society, national society. Thank you. Next question. My question is jordan. My question would be the united moving forward in syria. Thanks very much. Area. S is right in my Nuclear Proliferation. So the arms control regime. Regimethe sort of the where we talk a lot about the regime of the various international treaties, thatultilateral treaties control the development of and the threat of Nuclear Weapons and the associated technology. I would say it has generally failed. Optimistic note for you there. And it doesnt mean i dont shouldnt try. But i think some of it is our own doing. Iran deal in particular was a major blow to nonproliferation regime. Im going to get to your question more specifically here in just a second. For that is what i believe it communicated to folks like those in north korea is if you just persist long enough in the violations that you will be able to keep a place. Program in which is what basically happened with the iranians. The i. A. E. A. F what needs to do . I amvery optimistic not very optimistic with how well that will work. Simply just giving the i. A. E. A. Power to goty and into and control. I certainly think it is general ly worth a shot. Our resources and what we contribute for the effort, i would just say minimum it works better let me tell you. Works better if you are try ing to actually prevent little tiny bit 101 on what i think the United Nuclear deteranca. If the main goal is to stop the spread, the best thing the do is remain aan robust, serious, credible nuclear deterrent. Countries that have fore gone and chose not to rely on do is remain them. As the United States becomes weaker, we have chosen it with h. W. Bush that ended the American Nuclear Testing Program who didhe republicans that. Unilaterally ended the Testing Program. We can start it up. Chosen not to do that uni literally. The best thing we can do is have robust, credible, nuclear threat. Whohat other countries dont have them continue to belief they dont need them because they rely on the United States. Me when people start saying that we can perhaps just having a north korea Nuclear Program. As soon as you get comfortable and you move to a containment strategy, who is going to want Nuclear Weapons in this region. Is going to want at at the least the United States to deploy tactical Nuclear Weapons which we withdrew. If theres Nuclear Weapons in south korea, who else is going to want Nuclear Weapons . Who is saying it . Who is whispering it . Who is going to be really upset when japan has Nuclear Weapons . See the problems were running into . Thats a powder keg almost literally and figuratively. It is a very scary situation. What the best thing that the states can do real realistically, im not one of the proponents of global zero to have the wonderful idea that we should move down at the path of getting nuclearhe worlds weapons. Weve seen what it likes. More people died before the the terrible, you know, United States is the only country thats employed Nuclear Weapons. Say employed. Were using them right now. Were deterring mass war with right now. And so they have been a great global peace. Weve seen much fewer deaths globally since they were employ ed in hiroshima and nagasaki. That, are curious about ive written lots about this. So im sorry. It is long winded. My favoriteon subject. Im going to leave the other questions. Talked too long. Myanmar, a tough situation i think the world has responded well. First of all, getting on the with enough people and monitoring capability to challenge the government myanmar that it was a justifiable reaction from the extremist. Extremist. Such i think the response was obsessive. Then you can ask weve put a of diplomatic pressure on as well. I think its been hard for maintain the Good Standing while conducting this kind of activity. Farcould ask have we gone enough . Should we have done more . Extensive more sanctions. A regiment would have been appropriate. Would acknowledge the first two things were done pretty well sometimes in the kinds of youations, thats the best can do. Im just glad more people werent killed. Because ethnic cleansing can sometimes be reversed. Be, ofkilling cannot course. On syria where theres been a huge amount of killing and a displacement, i think were in a conone drum as earlier. Ed we still have a Al Qaedalinked theet in the north part of country that has not been defeat ed. Above that, we dont have a warle solution to the civil thats been easily envisioned right now. I think some combination of awe thon mouse zones in the east, north and south trying toover time create various incentives for russia and others to push aside power or persuade him to go is the only viable strategy. Go is goingside to to be very hard, realist click were not going to do it with geneva negotiating process aling to create some alternative government National Community. Assad, that would be tantamount to putting his own people at risk. Dominatedoing to be in many future such governments. Hes not going to agree to that. To have to get more realistic about a government assad might be. In the meantime, we need to help country rebuild themselves and try to work toward a system by which that done without reigniting the worst of the civil war or orating a huge russian syrian counterreaction. Thats the best i can do in 60 seconds on syria. Ill leave it at that. Thanks, michael. We only have i think about minutes left. I just want to take everyones question. Then the panelist will give their rapid fire response to those. So the three students on this side here, you could just very questions. E your then were going to move over to that side. My name is connor swedeman. I go to Northern Arizona university. Trump tweets a lot. It is no secret. How does his tweeting, especially when it comes to north korea and the korean peninsula, how does it undermine diplomatic efforts or affect the Nuclear Proliferation or just the Nuclear Program in north korea . Thank you. Im brooke. Suffolk university in boston. My question is due to the relevance ofd social media, how has groups and other terrorists organizations utilized that in whathey recruited it and is the u. S. As an administration doing to combat that . Thank you. Thank you very much. Hi. My name is nora browning. The university of arizona. Lotccah, you were saying a how we cant abandon human right s conflicts. We have to preserve human rights i was wondering if you think the since states, especially trump has said he doesnt want as many refugees coming into the during thethere were Obama Administration, do you think the United States should take a bigger role in accepting refugees, especially only about 1 of people in the huge gain asylum crisis status. Thank you very much. Then were going to switch over here. Side im with the harvard ex tension school. I was thinking Bigger Picture the concerning feature of trumps tweets. I was wondering what either of on theinions would be political chess board moving forward as far as International Allies go. Nd thank you. Hello. Im from miami dade college. You said about strategic events advances in our military system and other things like that. Thisan we show administration that we need to homere strategic events at than our Education System so resourcesn have the to do the resources to make strategic advances in our foreign system and policies . Thank you very much. Hello. Im solasas. Im from north carolina. I was wondering on your take antiislamic,t rhetoricantiimmigrant theour policy increasing american born muslim use and what about groups like isis to further entice them and if thats compromising our National Security here at home . Thank you. Good morning. Matthew. So this question is for michael hanlan. You spoke about the first year in regards to the policy and spoke about the improvements. Go a little bit more in details about the steps back you meant byhat continuity and what we could see the next year. Thank you. Im sorry. One final question. Joe, harvard you meant by ex. Thank you. Trump andease compare kim jongun as rational Decision Makers . Will they balance if they are indeed, rational Decision Makers . Thanks very much. We literally have five minutes left. Good. Of those are very wide range. This is a very hard game show [laughter] so yeah. Well i think well start with rebeccah. If you could just ive got them. Three minutes of response. Okay. Ill go quickly. Theres several questions about president s twitter usage. Ill just say here there are a who say hise rhetoric is undermining diplomatic efforts, especially korean peninsula. To which i would respond give me the evidence . Okay. Now you have the first time in two years that the north communicationits channel with south korea. I am not optimistic about how thats going to go. Chat about the olympics coming up, thats fine with me. I dont think it is going to change the u. S. Position which denuclearization of the korean peninsula. No evidence that the president s rhetoric on twit ter has negatively impacted. In fact, all of the evidence points the other way. Like it or not, sometimes the as peoplesgo narratives. Facts dont care about your feel ings. Is enormousseeing International Support for what the United States is doing. Wevershest sanctions ever seen. During the Obama Administration i kept hearing theres nothing left to sanction. Weve sanctioned everything. Thats not true. Weve been crushing north korea in terms of sanctions. The china have been on board. The chinese are violating some of them in terms of selling oil. Thats a problem. We got to continue to work on that. Great International Isolation and cooperation with the United States. The veryt is because reason that makes everybody un comfortable, its injecting some credibility in terms of the threats and willingness to use gettary force if it doesnt solved peacefully. Its made some folks un comfortable. Seeing the philippines and a variety of countries cut off trade with north korea. That, they increased trade by over 100 during the Obama Administration. Refugees. Ts and i would challenge your under lying assumptions on refugeesr not bringing here is even what the refugees want. Into if you look at some of the u. N. Refugee camps, some polling done in terms of where the folks want to settle again. Are not midwestern pro democracy give me the american the campks who were in s in syria. Many of them want their country back or want to stay in the region. They just dont want to be massacred. They are still islamic. Mean the political ideology as part of their system of government. Are not, in my view, great candidates for assimilat ing well in the united terms of bringing in enormous flows of refugees. So that could go on and on. Anti i want to talk about l quick i think is that it . Yeah. I think thats that. Well done there. Youve gone through about half of the answers already. Couple of minutes left for michael to respond. Then well have to bring the event to a close unfortunately. Let me do a little bit of what rebeccah did and try to group some themes or questions about ally about trump as a de leader, about this all factored into his style of rhetoric and tweeting and so forth. I would parch things like that. Favorableite as toward President Trump as some. Maybe not quite as favorable as had a lot of specific caveats and conditions as well. I would say that in terms of management of allies, most of our allies are nervous about donald trump. Publics are not that happy about donald trump. Polling. He foundation the alliances themselves have reinvigorated. Maybe not in the sense of strong er than they were. Feared ato what people year ago when they saw donald trump the populous come into the house having said a lot of our alliances might not be important. Ultimately largely because of the team that he hired and therefore deserves credit for hiring. Persuaded him we needed to be unambiguous in the commitment to the various allies year, im pleas ed by that. Again part of my when i try seealk about how i President Trump, part of it is compared to my expectations having listened to him campaign. So when i say things are surprising continuous in some realms, this is not meant to im all of this about and calm and relaxed and necessarily confident about the future. Rebeccahs view on north korea thats theres some hope. All of theal of things that have happened could put us in a reasonable place. I have a fear that President Trump will box himself in. He said some strong things about eliminating Nuclear Programs even though i agree with rebeccah, that has to be our goal over time. Koreast give the north too much. Thats not a realistic interim goal in my judgment. Point where we insist on completing the denuk we have ad president with the style of thinking and speaking, we could wind up persuading ourselves we to force things to a crisis Decision Point and bind up with risk of war that i would otherwise think is necessary. These are the pros and cons of first year. E ill finish by saying im more unhappy about some of the domestic policy decisions. This gets to one of the question s about education. Are squeezing domestic investments, whether in the environment or education. We dont quite know what the budget is going to be for this year yet. Worked out. En what we see is the white house pushing very hard for increasing inmilitary spending, cuts diplomacy, cuts in foreign aid, cuts in Environmental Protection , more modest cuts, and still real cuts. Frankly the tax cut plan while is appealing to politics, it is until the context of a country that already has a definition and a debt that are too big. If i was going to give an over line, one sentence summary, foreign has been more stable and better. Domestic policy has done the some damage. It is no surprise given that im a democrat and most democrats domestic investment s at a comparable level to any increase in Foreign Policy spending. Thats where i would sort of come with my bottom line. Im nervous about where we could korea and iran. Thehopeful that, you know, better angels of the administration will continue to up through the choppy waters. Michael and rebeccah, thank you very much for a terrific panel. [applause] journals washington live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. This morning, well discuss u. S. Immigration policy, budgetenforcement, priorities, and a possible Government Shutdown with capitol with democratic and republican congressional members be sure to watch it live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Join the discussion. Morning alex salazar, the seat in front of the Senate Finance committee. Later today washington governor delivers the state of the address. Ine coverage from the speech olimp ya. You can also follow on cspan. Org and the free cspan radio app. Was poverty an issue in terms of the war or drugs or the drugs . Of the war on sure. How did poverty play into that . No men around. Families . Ns to what happens to the men that have been locked up . All of the consequences. They cant get jobs. They are not allowed to live in housing. 45,000 laws across the country. It destroyed somebodys life. If they werent poor when they went in, they are poverty stricken for the rest of their lives. Totally connected to poverty. Watch afterwards sunday night 9 00 p. M. Eastern on book tv on cspan2. Now a look at National Debt u. S. Economy. Mark goldwein, senior vice the committee for the responsible federal punishment, spoke at the national economickists club. An hour. Ust under welcome to the National Economist club. This is the first event of the year. First of all, im pete paves. Pastr Vice President and president of the club. The national