Thank you, richard. Thanks to all of you for coming out. Thanks, richard for your nice timeses of the new york columnist. General dunford, thank you so much for taking your time to do this. Orm sure in the last month so in your long service, you have got a lot of demands on your time, so your willingness to come out and talk about the world here, we really appreciate. Gen. Dunford i questioned my judgment when i looked at the schedule this morning. [laughter] david at the end of the hour, you may question it again. But for different reasons. [laughter] dunford undoubtedly. Today, as youplan can see from the many cameras best year our plan is that the general and i will have a conversation for about 30 minutes and then open it up for questions from our audience. , general dunford, we could go back on so many places, given your service and so many different roles, but you came into this job in 2015, appointed by president obama. How would you compare the Global Security environment you have faced since day one of the job with the one that you are facing as you prepare to turn this job over . Gen. Dunford the easiest way to fiver that is to take the problem set siu have identified in the National Defense strategy and maybe just talk about those individually. If you take a look at russia , since 2015, they have gone into syria, they have conducted an operation in salisbury, they have attempted to interfere with democracy in europe and the United States. They are not compliant with the inf treaty. With china, despite the fact in 2016, president xi jinping promised president obama he would not militarize the South China Sea, they have done that. They have also been on a ready deliberate path in military Capability Development. They have what i would describe as a Goldwater Nichols equivalent in terms of their reorganizing their military in 2017. If you look at north korea, a large amount of their icbm testing, no one nuclear test took place in 2016 and 2017. So clearly it is a different place in terms of number of tests and so forth. I think you would have to say that iran today is more aggressive in projecting malign influence than they were in the 2017. One area i would highlight a significant change in a positive sense is that in 2015, if you go back and read your newspaper and the headlines, they would have talked about isis and the domination of isis. In iraq and syria, and the establishment of a physical caliphate. I think the fight against trans regional extremism is far from over, but we have made significant progress against isis in iraq and syria specifically. David we will drill down on each of those. Let me start with the same military strategy you described. During your tenure, the military strategy of the United States , at least the broad objectives, radically changed. We moved from a government that was really focused on counterterrorism to one that said, russia and china were revisionist powers. That was of the phraseology in the National Security assessment. And that the direction of the United States had to be to deal but morethe military, broadly, to deal with matt change. Yet when you talk to people within the pentagon, it is hard to change mindsets. We still have active conflicts underway in afghanistan and , obviously, iraq is still a very challenging arena. All these other areas. If we are truly going to focus on russia and china, do we have to give something up . Can we continue at the pace at which we have been dealing with all of these hotspots you just described, while we are trying to refocus gen. Dunford it is a fair question. Although i would argue that we have significantly reoriented since 2015. As you indicated, i think it is fair to say from 2001 to 2014, we were almost singularly focused on the fight against extremism. By 2014, really the catalyst for change came when we started to look at our competitive advantage relative to china and russia in 2014 and 2015 compared to what it was in 2000. I will not go into great length about this. Happy to answer all your questions, but china and russia began to feel the wide range of capabilities designed against what they perceived to be our vulnerabilities. As we were focused on the fight against violent extremism, it began to feel these capabilities. Even as early as 2015, the first classified military strategy we wrote in 2015 was focused on a 4 1. We now call it the 2 3. China,is now focused on russia, iran, north korea, violent extremism, and then we refined that with the National Defense strategy to focus on great power competition. Number one, clearly much and i and russia are the benchmark against which we measure our Capability Development, how we think about risk, and how we prioritize and allocate resources for the force today. That is the framework within which we do that. But priorities do not mean exclusivity. The priority is to deal with the challenges we have today violent extremism and at the same time shift sufficient resources to make sure that we sustain the competitive advantage well into the future. So when it comes to giving things up, every time we develop a budget, we make choices. But the choices that we made, particularly in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 have reoriented to make sure that first and foremost, we address the cyber, the space, the electronic warfare, the maritime capabilities, the functional systems that need to change to make us more competitive. In the context of great power competition. By definition, when you make priorities, some things fall off the table, no question. David china, in particular, is a fascinating subject for so many in the pentagon and beyond. Did we fundamentally misjudge the speed at which xi jinping would begin to project power around the world . I recall when he came to visit here in washington as Vice President before he took over, the thinking in the Obama White House was that he is going to bide his time. He is going to focus on domestic restructuring and the domestic economy. There was not much of an expectation that he would take the kind of aggressive turn we have seen in the South China Sea and in cyber and space and so forth. Was this an intelligence failure . A judgment failure . Gen. Dunford it was an assumption. We made a judgment well before president Obamas Administration that economic integration with china would lead to political integration. We thought we could integrate china in a way that they would comply with the world order as we know it. Have turns out, what they tried to do is leverage the rules to their advantage and ignore the rules when it is not to their advantage. We have started to see in 2015 and 2016 that the assumption that mightve been made by some very smart people trying to do the right thing back in 1999 and 2000, to integrate china, wasnt a leading in the direction that we thought it showed or that it would. David similarly with russia, obviously, we had an earlier sense as putin came back into power, what he would do. That accident earlier this summer, of what appears to have nuclear powered, not just a nuclearcapable, but a nuclearpowered one, suggests that he has been investing heavily in trying to get the kind of range around the world unionhe old soviet russia,to, and that until putin came back the second time, appeared, we thought, to have given up. Gen. Dunford it is a statement. I mean, i dont disagree with that. That all rings true. As you indicated, we had much earlier indications of russia go back to georgia in 2008, 2014 with ukraine. We knew we are russia was going to be, i think we all know that putins objective was to restore russias prominence on the world stage. In views of stronger military capability as being a vehicle to be able to do that. I would tell you this, the operational patterns that we see irussia today are ones saw them in the 1980s when i was a cap chain deployed in the mediterranean. We havent seen it in decades. But i agree with you that the operational patterns have ofnged, their path Capability Development has changed, and i think we all know the reason why. David as you said, you grew up in a military that was consumed war, and you spent the post9 11 part of your career in counterterrorism. How does this good for in both technologyics and than when you first came in . Gen. Dunford as a think about characterizing the world today compared to the 1970s, there are three things that jump out. One is the pace of change. We talk about moores law, with information technology, but it implies to pretty much every function of our profession. The second is the character war has changed profoundly. We now have sea, land, air, now we have sea, land, air, space and cyberspace. In a cold war context, the environment was relatively binary. I would argue that the strategic landscape today, with china and russia and north korea and iran, violent extremism, things that do not specifically address national strategy, but things that consume resources and our attention on a daytoday basis, the security environment is far more complex than it was in the 1970s during the cold war. David let me drill down on some of the regional issues. Lets start with afghanistan , because that has been most in thenews lately as government tries to put together this final agreement. When you think about the objectives in afghanistan right after 9 11, which was to make sure al qaeda did not have a safe haven, but then became the transformation of afghanistan away from a place that was controlled by the taliban, and then you look at where we are today, which seems to be heading toward an agreement that may envision a kind of stil stalemate that we have been in continually for some time, tell us, what did we accomplish . Gen. Dunford the first thing, when you talk about 9 11, and i am happy to take this on in questions, because i have told many men and women who were deployed to afghanistan this we didnt go to afghanistan in the wake of 9 11 to protect the American People and the homeland from what was his century for al qaeda and violent extremism. In addition to al qaeda, there is another 18 or 19 groups in south asia right now that have expressed the intent is not the capability to attack the homeland. So first and foremost, i think we have prevented another 9 11. We have disrupted plots against the United States and we have significantly degraded al qaeda in south asia. So as you suggested, you can take issue with various efforts that we had along the way to build the afghan society, to build the afghan National Defense forces, but it is very , as i amme today providing military advice to the president , it is very clear to me what our National Interests are in south asia and against which we should measure the level of commitment we have from afghanistan and the region. David the president has said he wants to go down to 8600 troops. Was in a radio interview a week or so ago. That is roughly the level that president obama wanted to go down to when he did that withdrawal. What can we imagine that we actually accomplish up a level . Is it really intelligence gathering . Gen. Dunford i think it is important for everyone to understand that the level of resourcing has to be understood in the context of the operational environment and objectives. We have spoken about the objectives, now that us speak about the operational environment. The number 8600 that the president referred to was a number that was generated by military leadership when we looked at the Current Mission that we have, the operating environment we are in and the capabilities we would need. Number,snt driven by a 8600, it was driven by a conversation between general , general mackenzie and myself to say, what are the right hip abilities . When we look at afghanistan, we have a challenge. The right capabilities . When we look at afghanistan, we have a challenge. We have to look at our level of effort in dealing with extremism in south asia relative to the challenges we have from west africa to Southeast Asia and we have to approach afghanistan in the context of a National Defense strategy. Which we spoke about a minute. Go so the direction that we embarked on a few years ago was to say, look, we need a politically, fiscally and militarily Sustainable Solutions to violent extremism in the context of the National Defense strategy. So we have relooked at our posture in africa, in the middle east, and in south asia. In that context, general miller was asked to describe what would be an appropriate counterterrorism platform in afghanistan that would allow us to maintain a partnership with the Afghan Forces in pursuit of our mutual objectives to disrupt region . Extremism in the he described as capabilities, the infrastructure necessary to support those capabilities, and the number of troops is related to the size of our footprint in afghanistan, in particular, the infrastructure capabilities that we would need to operate. So i just want people to know where that number came from, a came from us. David let us assume general miller what to complete their negotiations, i understand that they are back in qatar now trying to work this out, what is the best we could hope for in the way afghanistan is operating and the way that the taliban behaves, if they are successful . Gen. Dunford sure. The theory behind the negotiations, no one worked harder than peter in the last few years, at this year has always been to initiate intraAfghan Dialogue hoping that political accommodation could be made. We have always known that an afghanled Peace Process would be a success reaching that. Intermencement of Afghan Dialogue is probably relatively modest and yet an achievable objective. We will see. David you consider this to be afghanowned, since you have been driving the negotiations . Gen. Dunford the negotiations are designed to deliver interAfghan Dialogue, different from the negotiation now, which is afghanowned. David them asking about interafghan terrorism gen. Dunford before we leave that. I want to make this point. If you listen carefully, you mentioned what the president said last week, if you listen carefully to what the president said last week about 8600, he also spoke about conditions on the ground and making sure we had a sufficient posture to deal with the terrorists in the region. Again, the level of effort specifically associated with the operational environment. If the operational environment changes, then our level of effort significantly can change. But we have been clear on and made this point to our afghan partners, is that any negotiation will be conditionsbased. There will be specific conditions that have to be met. If they are not met, my assumption is the negotiation will unravel. David you have spent a lot of time in afghanistan. Gen. Dunford not as much as Jim Cunningham. He is here somewhere. David when you think about what our hopes were going into afghanistan and what we are facing today in this negotiation, is there a lesson for your successors about what americans think as they had into wars, particularly those fought in anger, as this one was after 9 11 . Gen. Dunford in terms of whether you should have gone into afghanistan, i was afford myself the luxury of reflecting on that some months from now. Right now, trying to provide recommendations on how to deal with the situation as it exists. Y but i can tell you from a military perspective that i think we have learned quite a bit in afghanistan. And i would offer to you that i think we applied the lessons of afghanistan particularly as it pertains to working with local partners, we have led them to iraq and syria in 2015, 2016, and 2017. If you look at the footprint the United States sustained in iraq and syria, the method developing partners could deal with a challenge in their own country, in my view, much of the work we did in syria and iraq, it was informed by Lessons Learned in afghanistan. So i think it is fair to say that there would be something that we would do differently along the way. Are aea is that we learning organization and we institute those lessons in our future endeavors. David lets take a look at isis. The president said isis was defeated. But it doesnt mean that they are company gone. There are now male isis fighters 2000 from 40 countries sitting in makeshift detention camps run by the syrian relations with our backing desk syrian miller run by the syrian militias with our backing. Very few have been repatriated. Their own countries do not want them back. There are 70,000 civilian women and children who are also in at least one camp in syria. In which many people are concerned has become a major isis breeding ground. So, how worried are you as you leave this job about creating that this generation of islamic extremists and foot soldiers . Gen. Dunford i think you have highlighted for me the major strategic concern in addition to, as you mentioned, there are 2. 3 million refugees inside of turkey right now, literally millions of displaced persons inside of syria today. You mentioned the cap that has 70,000, there are many other camps with perhaps not 70,000, but thousands of people, in conditions you would not want to see human beings in. 2000e mentioned that , and itt fighters doesnt even count the number of forces being held by regimebacked forces. In my view, if we dont get this right, if we dont address the refugee problem, the internet the displaced persons problem, the people in these camps, as you described it, it is a teacher do show for future extremism in these camps and detention facilities, addressing these people to include the detainees is in my view a critical strategic issue. Are we doing enough . Gen. Dunford i am personally satisfied when you actually get it done. I am under no illusion that there is a great deal of effort being expended right now to return people from where they came. The issue in many cases is that these countries dont have the framework to bring these people back home, successfully detain them and prosecute them. This has taken a lot longer than folks like me would want it to take. David in the beginning, i asked ,ou if we could keep doing this looking back, where are our cial troops are right now iraq, somalia, syria, afghanistan, all in some kind of fight to contain terror groups or stop an ideology from spreading. How long do you expect in the u. S. Military will continue to do this while keeping the central focus in the places we just mentioned . Gen. Dunford where we are in terms of numbers isnt the complete story. We are deploying our special Operations Forces much closer to what i would describe as a sustained rate today than we were two or three years ago. We are maintaining. One or two deployments, that means our special operators and this is true in any sectors by and large, our special Operations Forces deployed at a task a oneto deployment ratio. Our special operations commanders are focused on reorienting our special operations capability to make sure it can meet the imperatives of the National Defense strategy. About 18 months ago, our special Operations Committee has began to reorient. And again, the missions you talked about, david, aggressively talk about, priorities dont mean exclusivity. If we are going to be a global power, we will be in many places. The question is do you have the right and what of effort against the right problem set . And i would argue that we have reoriented special ops to the point that we are now sufficiently focused on great our competition. Always, not complacent, always looking back to make sure we get the balance right. When i came into this job i said my most significant challenge is being able to provide good advice and recommendations to meet todays challenges and at the same t set the tamarass to makes challenges. Secretary has perks at the same thing to me 10 days ago. Challenge toered the department. I would argue that compared to four or five years ago, the balance we have today to deal with today, and when i say today, it could be seen as a euphemism for violent extremism in the current operational balance webut the have a between a deploying forces and meeting those commitments today, and orienting ourselves to be on the right path of his ability development, that we have sufficient forces to deal with tomorrow. The nds has provided us with the framework on which to prioritize and allocate resources and develop capabilities. Threw ane president extra loop into that Balance Sheet in recent months. Fort campbell in kentucky is home to some of the most deployed troops in the country over the last 18 years. And yet, this week, the pentagon has decided not to fund a middle school there in order to send money meant for the school to help build president trumps border wall. How do you tell the troops that this is taking care of them . Gen. Dunford first of all, i am not prepared to talk about the implications of any of those projects. I saw the list about 48 hours ago, so i cant speak to the details of that elementary school. I dont know if it means we will slide construction six months, 18 months, i dont know the condition of the school today. I think it will be on a casebycase basis. I also know the secretary well enough to know that if there are projects on that list and the implications were not a fully appreciated, the secretary will review that. David lets turn to iran and north korea before we go to questions from the audience. The iranians are going to announce this saturday, or so they have said, what the next step will be. And what we fully expected to be we dont know the details is them further stepping away from the commitments they made under the 2015 agreement. We would not be surprised if they upped the level of enrichment of uranium, which uptake them closer to their production rates. Is this a negotiation in order to get more of the french and the europeans, or is this an Actual Movement back to what the pentagon was convinced a number of years ago was a desire to have a weapon . Gen. Dunford i dont claim to have a unique insight into what is behind irans recent decisions. I can describe what the administrations policy is very clearly, which is American Economic pressure to negotiate the 12 policy objectives outlined by secretary pompeo. I can talk to you about the strategy, which is sufficient foster in the region sufficient posture in the region to ensure adequate protection for our forces in the region, and to give the president a full range of options in the event a deterrence fails. That is the framework from my perspective. David do think we have sufficient forces in the gulf to bring about the security objectives we have for the tankers, after all the events of the past few months, the seizure of tankers . Gen. Dunford a look at that almost every day, and i certainly talk to the commander of centcom. If i dont talk to him every day, i talked to him twice a day. We are constantly reviewing and youre never complacent about your posture. What i would say today is that we have sufficient forces in the region to deter an iranian attack against a United States or American People. We have sufficient forces to deter a proxy attack attributable to iran. We clearly dont have deterrence against attacks on our partners in the region. , the kingdom of saudi arabia and uae have routinely been recently attacked. Have a Maritime Security initiative now in conjunction with australia, the united kingdom, the rain and other nations in the region bahrain and other nations in the region which is separate from the campaign in iran, but designed to ensure freedom of navigation in the region. We are operational in doing that, and we believe we have sufficient resources to provide the warning, the intelligence and capability to ensure freedom of navigation, but we look at that every day. Operating environment changes, we will make adjustments. As of 1700, we were comfortable with where we were. [laughter] david we will see again tomorrow. In north korea, the president has engaged in some truly creative diplomacy. [laughter] we have never seen the president before meet eight north korean leader, he has now met him three times. As we reported in the times just this week, the estimates you are receiving, and others, is that fuel production has continued as it was since before. Before singapore. If you believe that accounting, for six or 12 additional weapons, it doesnt mean they make the weapons each year. And as you pointed out at the beginning, you are not seeing intercontinental tests, but we are seeing increasingly creative short range tests that appear to be designed to evade missile defenses and so forth. So what has changed on the ground versus what has changed obviously, our priority has been to support the diplomatic path that began in having said that, from a 2017. Military perspective, we have been anchored from the beginning on north koreas its abilities not their intent, and not the progress of diplomacy. Our posture in the region is designed to deter north korean aggression. Our level of readiness and the forces we have in the region, the planning that we havent lace, the forces that would subsequently flow into the region are designed to make sure we can adequately respond to an event. With regard to north korea, i havent seen a material change. In the capabilities of north korea in the past couple of years, and therefore, our that thein the event deterrence fails hasnt changed significantly, even as our posture daytoday changes to make sure that we accommodate a diplomatic path. Clear, you arebe saying that they continue to produce fuel at a rate that they are testing missiles, not longrange missiles. Gen. Dunford i dont have information to share in terms of whether they are increasing their capability. But three or four years ago, we looked at Intercontinental Ballistic Missile capability, the potential to mary that Intercontinental Ballistic Missile capability with Nuclear Capabilities, we looked at a full range of other Ballistic Missiles that threaten our allies in the region, and our military posture is designed to address that. Those factors on the ground have to exist. Gen. Dunford i was just talking with a number of your Cyber Command folks today at a different conference. How us a little bit about the rise of this new command has changed the way to think about what future conflicts with look like. Are we in a world in which this constant short of war, consistent backandforth will be the new norm, or are we in a world in which if there is another fullscale conflict, it first, in the first 2448 hours . Gen. Dunford you have answered the question, david. We used to think about warfare as you are either at peace or war. Our planning construct used to be phases. Phase one or two would be short of war and then face three would be conflict of currents. More than two and half years ago , we put out a memo saying that the strategic level is more than just phases, we look at the capabilities and activities they are conducting and we do with those capabilities and activities as they are. Ciber is just one of the tools our adversaries use in that competitive space. See electronic warfare, conventional warfare, information operations, we have seen that in our adversaries. I think ciber is but one of the functional areas that has caused us to think about peace in war. Atont think about being peace and at war, i think about activitieslities and our adversaries have today and we deal with those as they are. And it is in your time that this concept has become a part of the doctrine. Intodunford without going specifics, there are three things you need to think about with ciber, one is the structure you have developed, two is a capabilities the general and his team have every day, and the capabilities consistent with those authorities can get in all three areas, that force structure, the forces we have every day and the activities the conduct are profoundly different. To give you an example, a rear irritation of departments. In 2015 or 2016 if he had talked to leaders about cyber, they would have said that the departments job is to play the away game. We worry about the away game and our interagency partners will defend the homeland. We recognize in 2018 that the most important thing in the United States was protecting our democracy and our elections. And we believed at that time that all the capabilities we could bring to bear to protect democracy should be brought to bear. As priorityented one for the United States Cyber Command to do that. And we not only learned a lot, 2018. Made success in so there is an area that is an example of a change in mindset as our saber capabilities have matured our Cyber Capabilities have much short in our thinking about cyber has matured. David so i will go to all of you. When you get a microphone, please tell us we are, and we barber rt with barbara thank you very much, david. I direct the program on the iranian atlantic council. General dunford, i would be interested to get from you your evaluation of the iranian capability. Over the summer, they shot down a very sophisticated and expensive american drone with their own technology. Were you surprised by that . How would you rate that in terms of an adversary in the region . Gen. Dunford first of all, that particular capability was not designed to be deployed in a highend fight. The capability that they shot down did not have its own self protection, and it was really designed to provide maritime awareness in a relatively benign environment. That is an important point for people to understand in terms of capability. I would argue that iran has made great efforts to develop their Ballistic Missiles and Cruise Missile capability their cyber capability, their electronic. Arfare capability, i respect those capabilities, but it wouldnt put them anywhere near the capabilities of russia or china at this time in any one of those functional areas. David and its cyber as well. Gen. Dunford but i wouldnt put them in the same category as russia or china in its cyber capability. We respect any potential iversarys capabilities, but was not surprised at irans ability to shoot down that particular system, nor did that reflect a high degree of maturity in terms of capability. David sir . Good evening. I served from 20002004. It is a pleasure to see you in person, actually. Gen. Dunford i have received a few emails from you. [laughter] that is correct. Gen. Dunford good to see you. Miller and i i saw him speak in quantico. My question is related to the things taking place here in the homeland. Current the administrations attitude and the rhetoric that is coming out these days, has maybe had made the military operations challenging for you . Has there been a backlash . The allies that are muslim majority gen. Dunford i will be disappointing for perhaps the first time and not the last time to get not address or make a judgment about the administrations policies. It is not my lane, i will stick to the military lane. He wants to remain apolitical in that regard. Iat i can tell you is that havent seen any change in the difficulty of us conducting operations around the road in the last few years. I think the challenges we have experienced in the middle east and south asia, i wouldnt argue that they are materially different than they might have been two or three years ago. From Georgetown University area i was wondering if i could take it back to afghanistan and the idea that they deal with the telethon, was to try to get them to prevent attacks against the United States, or not allow them. I was wondering if you have concerns that you can really trust the taliban when it comes to fighting isis, and if you us out of people are concerned that this is a kind of outsourcing especially 8600 is that going to be enough to stop isis from planning attacks against the u. S. On afghan soil if the taliban are not able to counter the growth of isis just like the . Yrians in iraq gen. Dunford am glad you asked that question. The first thing i would tell you is that no advice i have provided is founded on trust of the taliban. I want you to understand that upfront. Nor is any advice i provide based on the assumption that the taliban can protect us from over 20 extremist groups in south asia. Here is what is important. You recall earlier, i spoke about the sustainable level of effort against ballot extremism not just in afghanistan, but globally. The level of effort we have to deal with the terrorist threat in south asia is inextricably linked to the level of Violence Associated with the insurgency in afghanistan. So if the level of violence and insurgency can be reduced, the Security Forces, and those Coalition Allied u. S. Forces in afghanistan can be more focused on the terrorist threat than the insurgency. In my view, without introducing the element of trust to the negotiation, two things could happen that i think a relatively modest, possible, i would not suggest improbable. One would be an agreement that doesnt suck reduce the level of Violence Associated with the insurgency. It would adjust the resourcing we have to deal with the terrorist threat in the region. The other is that negotiation could result in intraAfghan Dialogue, and potentially some good could come out of that in the future. What i would tell you is that absent something to disrupt the status quo, we will see the status quo for some period of time to come. So if you ask me what i view as successful negotiation right now, it would be a negotiation that does two things, the two things i just mentioned, it reduces the level of Violence Associated with the insurgency, and it sets up the afghans to have intraAfghan Dialogue. If just those two things happen, even if it lasted for years, a path where the afghans themselves the middle of in which the future body politic in afghanistan could be established, that, to me, would be successful negotiations, and it would make a difference to me looking at the problem through a military dimension. David would you have defined that as successful in 2005 . Gen. Dunford its hard for me to say what i would have said in 2005. I dont know that we were as clear eyed about knowing that this could only end in a negotiation, in an afghanowned reconciliation process. There might have been conventional wisdom at the time that there was a military solution to afghanistan. I have been under no illusion for a long road of time, certainly in all my time in afghanistan when Jim Cunningham and i were there, we never thought there was a purely military solution in afghanistan, going back as recently as 2013 or as far back as 2013. David michael . Journal. L, wall street you talk about the Russian Military Nuclear Capabilities , there are a number of ways to do with that. Using american capabilities, or agreements. Expires in accord 2021, not a long time from now, provisions for onsite inspection, telemetry sharing for notifications. From a military perspective, what would be the implications for your force planning, force strategic capability if that allowed without having to do the and would you favor retaining or extending untilrmscontrol regime some successor agreement can be negotiated, instead of having a lapse and having no accord or verification . Gen. Dunford semi as of the second question first. I would be in favor of extended Lease Agreement thus extending the agreement i would be in favor of extending the agreement, provided all the parties comply with the agreement. Its difficult for me in the wake of the violation of the inf treaty to say automatically i support extending start. We have to address the violations of the inf treaty and revisit compliance issues. With regard to start, before we move forward. With is there any problem compliance with start right now, is that what you are saying . Gen. Dunford no. International agreements are based on compliance. I am suggesting that the russians havent complied with one to 80, we would have to be satisfied that we addressed that issue and also compliance with an extension of any other treaty. What are the implications of not having verification . Is dunford our designed to establish deterrence in the framework of an adversary skipper abilities. So we would obviously have to our force is designed to establish deterrence in the framework of an adversarys capabilities. We would have to look to the extent that if russias take give abilities change, we will have to establish the framework for deterrence. That would include Capability Development as well. David are you concerned that we are heading back to a period in which start does lapse . Gen. Dunford we are not there yet. I wont speculate on that. That is the driving revision behind trying to figure out a way to move forward, which at the end of the day would be fundamentally a policy choice. General, he agreed with mr. Angers this question of isis. Does it mean you expect u. S. Involvement in syria will continue for an extended period of time, since isis is still doing quite well, and to what extent are you worried about [inaudible] gen. Dunford i will address syria. Let me come back to you on that a bit. I didnt say that isis was doing quite well. I dont think that is true. I think it is fair to say that they still have a significant syria. E in iraq and they are certainly nowhere as near as strong as they were in 2017 and in 2018. They have been significantly degraded. Again, they still maintain the ability to conduct is sergeant guerrilla style operations, that is what we do today to conduct iinsurgent, guerillastyle operations that we see today. I do also share the concern about the refugees. When you talk about u. S. Presence, there are many ways to deal with those. The larger problem of detainees and internally displaced persons, and the people in refugee camps, is being led by the state department and not the department of defense. Those are the tools we are using. I do believe that in the current environment, the Syrian Democratic force is now in northeast syria, they continue to need the support of the coalition to be effective in dealing with the residual isis presence, training local forces to secure the territory that has been declared by isis. Previously. So there is still work to be done. Some 50,000 or 60,000 local Security Forces would need to be trained to hold that ground, and we are probably some 50 of the way through, we, collectively, the coalition. Has legitimate security concerns on the border between syria and turkey, and we have been in constant negotiation and dialogue with the turks for years. I have visited turkey as chairman of no less than four times. We worked very hard in recent weeks to come up with a framework where we could continue to prosecute the campaign against isis and at the same time address the concern the turks have along their border. Reestablished 10 days ago a center to coordinate operations with the turkish general staff. Chief of defense of turkey about 10 days ago, i will talk to him again this friday, at the threestar level, we are communicating with him every day. I think we have in place measures to address turkeys concerns. Is there a possibility that you have heard the political rhetoric that turkey could move into northeast syria there is a possibility, but i dont believe that to be helpful to our mutual interests, which is why we are focused on finding a way to address turkeys insurance and other sometime maintained Campaign Continuity against isis in northeast syria. David a few days ago, you had one of your periodic calls with the russian general. I assume that this topic is a frequent subject of conversation with the russians. Dunford we established first of all i have really tried to keep the specific substance of conversation with the general out of the public space. We made an agreement in 2015 when he opened a line of communication that we would never publicly share the details of our conversations. That has kept our relationship from being politicized, and it has put us in a position to and manage thesk crisis. I also think the byproduct of that professional relationship has been the deconfliction channel that we have in place. We speak aboutdeconfliction, but we speak daily on the threestar level and below about that, and we also have a direct link to the staff. So we have three levels of very robust communications. One of the primary focused ion in syria,nflict and also safety of flight and safety of sea around the middle east. Havent to make sure we protocols in place to mitigate miscalculation. We are in close proximity to Russian Forces in many places around the world, and having those frameworks in place is really important. David we have time for a few more. Thank you. From Georgetown University. A quick question, at the beginning, you mentioned space. Could you give us a premise in how militarized it is at this point . And what the significance is going forward. Gen. Dunford the one thing ive learned as a Senior Leader more than anything else is the importance of assumptions. We fieldeds, when capabilities in space, we assumed that space would be uncontested. Space today is contested. Adversaries to include north korea, russia, china, iran, they have all developed capabilities our spacereaten capabilities. Everything we do everyday is somehow affected by space, both in the commercial and military sector. In the military sector, our command and control systems, our ability to deliver precision systems, ability to navigate, all are dependent on space. In recognition of the fact that space is no longer uncontested, number one, that will inform the capabilities in the future to ensure they are fielded in the way that will allow them to survive in a contested area. And now we are trying to mature we have the redundancy in place and the production in place to be a would to sustain the capabilities we have in space in the near term against the threats that exist. The short answer to your question is, there is a very real threat to the capabilities that we have fielded in space and therefore, a very real threat to our commercial and military interests that are industry could be linked to space. Very general dunford, little on the council of Foreign Relations is run with military precision but the one thing is when the hour strikes we let our guests go, and we know that you have much to do today. We want to thank you for extending the time and for going into such death into such. Breadth of areas thank you for your service and your continued willingness to talk to all of us journalists, the policy Community Come along the way. We appreciate it. Gen. Dunford thanks. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] [caption [chatter] live friday a discussion about updating the 1996 Communications Decency act which gives websites immunity from liability. We will be live on cspan. , thet noon eastern Heritage Foundation jose forum on rebuilding the America Military project. On cspan2 at 730 at 7 30, jim mattis talks about his new book callsign chaos. Looking at his life in the military. Federal a forum on. Ecurity priorities this portion features officials from the justice department, citizenship and immigration services, the Export Import Bank and the defense department. Afterwards, a panel of experts look
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