Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is eli cohen, im the dean. Its my pleasure to welcome you to the rosof lecture on International Affairs with general David Petraeus. Before i introduce general petraeus, i would like to talk a series. Re about the charles rostof was a hopkins alumnus an was a dedicated supporter of the universitys efforts to improve our understanding of the world. And that, of course, is the mission. And were particularly glad today that we have with us charles daughter terry and his son gene and his wife heath tore be with us for this event. I want to express my gratitude to you and to your family for making it possible. So David Petraeus is one of those people who literally doesnt need a whole lot of introduction. Its not going to be that long. Hes currently been affiliated ith the k. K. R. Institute which supports k. K. R. s investment company. Portfolio hes known for his 37 years in this country in the United States army to include command of the surge in iraq command, the Central Command and capping central rvice at the Intelligence Agency director. He has had Successful Service to the United States. What were going to be doing tonight sense general petraeus, he was a major and i was an assistant professor is no do this as a lecture but rather to do it as conversation. So i have a number of questions that i would like to put to him. Well have a conversation back and forth and then were going to open it up to you all. Im going to say from the outset that when the time comes for a, i will be selecting people who either students that i cant tell them apart. Theyre going to get preference. With no further ado its great to have you here. Please join me. [applause] thanks very much. I want to add my thanks to the rostof family as whelm i think ive done this before. But its a real pleasure to do it with elliott this time being dean Elliott Cohen and i congratulate you on that well talk about strategic leader later on. I think youve been an extraordinary leader. You are the strategic leader precise. And i think the school is in extraordinarily good hands. It is a pleasure to be back here as well. We go way, way back, back to the days of the other heroes who were here over the years. To those who are fortunate enough to be where you are in a seat as a student or a former student, i congratulate you in particular. Great. Well, thank you thank you for your friendship and your mentorship turnover years. And also for your engagement with this institution. You repeatedly visit us. You came and spoke to us very shortly after you returned from command from your first command in iraq with 101st. You went on a staff ride with us to gettysburg. That was before then. That was when i was doing a fellowship in lieu of the war college then i did a deployment to haiti in lieu of the fellowship. Ill be a recurring theme for the military students here, which is the enormous importance of what be turned out off orintellectual graduate experiences. Graduate school was that kind of experience for me. I treasure it to this day. Those who are in uniform or actually from other institutions where this might not be the norm, where someone may have told you as they told me that i was committing professional suicide by going to graduate school instead of the ranger redgement. Obviously, i seemed to have avoid that and its really wonderful and i encourage you to make the most of it. Of course, we always think just how much more successful you would have been if you got our degree here rather than at princeton. I wont make any jokes about we wont go there. All series of princeton jokes they cant tell. Thank god for harvard and everybody cant get in princeton and that kind of stuff. Work with me here. Oh, boy. So youre the chairman of the k. K. R. Global institute. And, you know, i was thinking about your career i mean, there there were director of the central intelligent agencies. And you worked on the join staff. And youve been a theater combat and commander and so many other things. It always struck me when i dib into government how different the information flows are and how differently one sees the world from that perspective than from the outside. So what are the kinds of things that you think you will understand better now as a result of being where you are . Maybe you should explain what the Global Institute does than u when when you were there with things at your disposal. First of all, it does the geo Political Risk of krment k. K. R. We look at that whener in countries where we never invested before. We integrate the may crow economic analysis. And then the environmental government issues an liss which is also any one of these actually can be a deal breaker. And we use what we catter in that to supplement what the other team is doing and theyre doing the Financial Analysis of it. We have an Innovation Team that looks at how many it might be interrupted down the road. All of that comes together ssential i have three complete groups. One is american, ashe sha. Agent. Next generation kecknology. Keep in mind weve got somewhere somewhere between 205 billion. We own about 100 companies. Maybe more significant, i was made a partner also about five years ago which is wonderful. If youre ever wondered a partnership in k. K. R. , take it. Its really quite at wonderful thing. And then second group of clients, if you will, or Portfolio Companies we own about 100 degrees outright. And then ill have minor stakes in another 50 to 70Something Like that. They often are grappling with issues. You know, we did a 2 billion in telecommunications. Every single country was problem make it. And every one of our case he would pull me in as needed. Multiple trips to these countries. And we would go in with a u. S. Ambassador. And its all around the world and the European Bank reconstruction and we go in and sit down with government officials and plain to them that heir Competition Council was antiCompetition Council. Now allowing to improve Internet Access and a variety of other telecom for them. This is not unique. Weve done this all around the world. And that has been very important companys that want to go global, we can help them in many cases. So in a number of case where is weve not invested before, then key examples would be mexico. The ball cons. Ethiopia. Philippines and a handful of others. So the team andly go in and evaluate it and come back and we have to give a thumbs up before were trying to do an investment in those case. Ive actually vet od here. Who was really attractive. Back in the middle either part of the and there were some reputation that is just too much despite how attractive it was financially. So that has been great fun. Our investor groups particularly or strategic investors, these are the ones that arely substantial. They want to understand the world in which were investing together. We do a lot of activity almost but say theyre bored or their steak holders or whatever it may be. You know, it is wonderful to get fide do what you love to. Do look, i love government. What i wanted with international stimulation. Atravel a great deal. Usually about 25 country a year many more than one time. So does the world look different from this fran taj point than it did within government. Were still concerned about security issues. Were concerned about National Security issues, geo Political Risk. All of which you did. But with less of the National Security and more of a Financial Investment do you ever run across things i wir i s where went would have known that c. I. A. . Again. You have to do with a particular even industry or development. Obviously the world has turned over considerable amount in seven years since i was in government as well. Well talk about some of the most significant developments. But i think get oh politics hack become more important than it was when i left government. Dont get me wrong, there were plenty of charges. In particular well come back to this team again and again and again. And georgia is not just our big es competitor. Well come back more on more and this. Thats the most werent in the world by far, bar none. And it is as i think a previous secretary of defense says all china all the time in a lot of different prpts. In chinese and in se sha. Well get to choifpblet first break President Trump has announced that were withdrawing American Forces from syria the cularly from along syrian Turkish Border has already been evacuated. So this is a part of the world e know very well indeed. Its quite a long time. What am i supposed to think. The press still has my email and phone number. And my reaction frankly was to share the concerns that have leader ced by senator mcconnell in a variety of different ways. Nikki haley among a bunch of others. I say that because its for in caveat and what it is to correct the politic objectives are. In other words, how deep is turkey going to be allowed to go . How big a buffer is this . What do they intend to do with that buffer. If theyre going to move millions of refugees. Certainly one of their objectives appears in addition to just having some kind of zone and separation between the syrian codes and the turkish curts. That could be and im not away of those being reported at this time. I have significant ress vacation about reservation about that. The d. O. D. Did not offer further clarification actually. Seemed to be warning the turks as the president did in one of those tweets along the way as well. Again, without some real specificity on that particular policy initiative, its very hard to evaluate what the implications are. But among the implications in addition to again displaying some people and replacing them with others, could be that our partners the syrian kurds who have fought and died in many in large numbers could be that our partners, the syrian kurds, who have fought and died in large numbers to defeat their Islamic State and eliminate the caliphate, knowing there are probably 30,000 of Islamic State forces, they are still around the iraq and syria area, but those kurds may take their eyes off the remnants of isis, which are trying to establish an insurgency and carry out terrorist activities. It also may take their ire for have to take their eye off these very large camps of family members of the Islamic State fighters. The one most significant is up to 70,000 family members. Mostly wives and then their children of Islamic State fighters. And that is a huge challenge. This is a big conundrum because countries most of these came to syria from another country, and understandably, the countries are reluctant to take them back, if they will at all. There is a lot of Unfinished Business here. One of the lessons i think we have learned i will go into the five big lessons we shouldve learned from the last 18 years of war but one of them is you do not take your eye off this ball. If you do that, defeat implies they cannot accomplish their mission without being reconstituted. As we saw iraq, if you take your eyes off al qaeda and iraq, they reconstitute themselves as isis and gained a lot of power. Mr. Cohen there are two different kinds of arguments, even injustice past afternoon, as people have argued about why this is a bad idea. One is the one you laid out, which is you take your eye off the ball, isis comes back, it is destabilized in a variety of ways. Mr. Petraeus there is also something about the commitment from the United States. That is another factor. Mr. Cohen i want to draw you out on that. You mentioned earlier, talking about kkr facing Reputational Risk. Mr. Petraeus yep. Mr. Cohen how important is consideration should be americas Reputational Risk . The reason i ask that is i think it is fair to say the president of the things that makes this , one president unusual is he does not really think that Reputational Risk, in the sense we have been using it, matters a heck of a lot. Reputations or fidelity for a certain kind of commitment to allies, to following through, for staying the course, all of those things. If we were to make the case for reputation, how would you make it . Mr. Petraeus well, it is by no means unique to this administration. We can go to the previous administration. We had a redline that turned out not to be a redline. That is serious. The Prime Minister of singapore told me that have ramifications in the middle east and europe , that has significant ramifications out here. We have more than occasionally had more expansive rhetoric than it turned out we were willing to see through to conclusion. That is a pretty substantial statement made by the superpower of the world, and, again, we did not make him go. We did not even have a safe zone, much less other initiatives. We perhaps could have been firmer with russia at various times. Perhaps so with china on some issues, as well, while seeking to coordinate with them, collaborate, and have a mutually beneficial relationship. By the way, i would go back with respect to the administration that you and i served in together, where there were opportunities, now there is a lot of revisionist history about the relationship and those early postwto days for china. And opportunities that might have sent messages very early on about subsidies not being allowed and emotional property transfer, and all these other issues. Again, there was a shrinking from that. Mr. Cohen but this is a narrow Reputational Risk that i would like to hear you say a few more words about. That is the risk you incur when you walk away from an ally like the kurds. The argument would be, well, they are pretty perfect and their connections with the pkk and so on, but if i understood you correctly, you talk about the moral commitment we have to them, is that correct . Mr. Petraeus i dont think it is just to them. I think we have that to some other partners we have been working with. This is the home of realist thinking, after all. This is paul nitzes he was your first dean, wasnt he . Mr. Cohen he was one of the founders. He was a somewhat different character. Mr. Petraeus he was, but we all know about paul nitze known for this and that. Again, i think known for a realistic appraisal of International Relations and security situations. So i think you have got to be eyed about that. And you have to be clear with your rhetoric. If you do make a public commitment, and you are the superpower, you need to follow through with that commitment, unless there is some explanation about why the context has changed. So it is measured in what you do. We have repeatedly, in the post9 11 period, i would argue with everyone that the three post9 11 administrations, had considerably more expansive rhetoric than it turned out we were willing to actually put up. Mr. Cohen let me use that transition to the question of lessons, if you think there are any that we should take away from what some people call the forever wars, iraq, afghanistan, and the broader and more diffuse conflict against al qaeda and analogous movements. You indicated you thought there are five big takeaways. Would you tell us what they are . And i would sure, be happy to go into some specifics with iraq and the catastrophically bad decisions we made in the first few months of iraq if we want to get into that later. But i think what strategically the one onyou are the stage at this point, not me you have to get the big ideas right. Strategically, there is a fourth task, and the first task is unique to a strategic leader. There is usually only one unless organization unless you have coheads or cofounders as kkr does. That task is to get the big ideas right. If you dont get the big ideas right, Everything Else is felt built on a shaky foundation. The fact is, and i have noted, the surge of iraq was not what mattered most, it was the surge of ideas, which the big ideas were 180 degrees front from what we were doing prior to the surge. This is a fairly transformative moment of change leadership, as they say, to go from consolidating on a big basis to living with the people because that is the only way you can secure them, to hand off to the iraqis, to taking it back, to releasing detainees, to stopping releasing them, until you have a Rehabilitation Program and a variety of other initiatives, sort of tolerating reconciliation to embracing wholeheartedly, and then more determinedly, just very, very huge increase in the intensity of the operations to get irreconcilables. These are the big ideas, so you have to get the big ideas right. By the way, you have to communicate them, oversee the implementation, and have a formal mechanism where you sit down to determine how to refine them and do it again, and again, and again. I can give you lots of examples. Mr. Cohen im going to come back at the end but to talk about, i think, the big ideas that have emerged from the past 18 years of the war, continuous war, as as follows. Number one, islamist extremists spaces in the world. Number two, you have to do something about it. This is not a problem you can study until it goes away. You can engage in paralysis by analysis. It does not go away. Moreover, rules do not apply in these areas. What happens there does not stay there. They tend to spew violence, instability, extremism, and a tsunami of refugees. Not just in neighboring countries, but as in the case of syria, libya, and some of the others, all the way to western europe, causing the most populist challenges since the end of the cold war, so you have to do something. Number three is the u. S. Generally has to lead, but we want a bigger coalition and that coalition should include muslim countries for whom this is an existential struggle, not something less than that. But the u. S. Generally has to lead. If you look at the extraordinary predominance that we have in the systems that have become the coin of the realm in these fights, in particular the drones now it is exclusively the reaper. It used to be predators and reapers. To think about it, it used to take 150 people in total to keep one eye in the sky 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the blinking eye in the sky, then to analyze the intelligence and make sense of it, and so forth. We have probably six or seven times as many of those lines as this is an orbit as all of our partners put together. Dont get me wrong, dont confuse these with the thousands or tens of thousands of drones that are out there, everything s you launch like this to bigger ones. These are the ones that really, really matter. These are the ones that personally allocates to subordinate units, and the same is done in the pentagon for the whole world. Those, then the industrialstrength ability for intelligence, the enormous precision munitions, the aircraft, and so forth. Keep in mind, our drones are willing to launch stuff from them in addition to her, since that, assets that we can hang off of them, and few of our allies are willing to do that or can do that with the ability we have. Number four is you have to acknowledge a real paradox, and that is you cannot Counter Terrorist like al qaeda and the Islamic State with just counterterrorist force operations. You cannot just drone strike or your way out of the problem. If that is all you can do, that is what you do. You have to realize all you can do is disrupt with that. If you want to truly deal with the problem, you have to have a comprehensible approach, a comprehensive Civil Military campaign, such as the one i was privileged to oversee during the surge in iraq, and this is a massive but, but without us doing all of the fighting on the front lines, the restoration of basic services, the political reconciliation, the reestablishment of rule of law, local institutions, markets, schools, and health clinics, and repair damage and Everything Else. And it is crucial that we not do that because of lesson number five, and that is that this fight is not the fight of a decade, much less a few years, it is the fight of a generation or more. And therefore, you have to have a sustained commitment. But we know in a democracy can you can only sustain a commitment if it is sustainable in terms of blood and treasure, the expenditure of those. There is no way we could sustain what we did in iraq, one junta americans and tens and thousands of coalition, plus 200,000 or so contractors, probably, or 150,000 u. S. And coalition in afghanistan. Those were not sustainable. Those were necessary at the time because we did not have a lot of the assets we were able to bring to bear now, but we figured out how to do this. I think this is a hugely significant breakthrough that we are now able to carry out these kind of campaigns. I mean in syria, we only have about 2000 or 2500 troops on the ground. Yes, there is support from various other locations. Below 5000. Ainly it may be below 5000 at this point. Afghanistan is 13,000, 14,000 americans, several thousand more coalition, totally maybe 20,000 overall. That is a hugely reduced number, therefore, hugely reduced expenditure in blood and in treasure. That is, i think, absolutely crucial, in particular, because we do have to acknowledge the single Biggest Development thestrategically is, again, rise of china, and we do need to do the rebalance to asia, like that the previous ministrations initiated and this administration has continued. I want to get to china. I want to come in on one point that you and i discussed earlier. For those of you who do not know me, it would be surprising that i would stand up for the president , but what i was going to say to you is doesnt the president have, in his unique way, a kind of common sense point . We have been fighting these stupid wars for 18 years, they are far away, we smashed isis on the ground, the war in afghanistan looks like it is going on forever, other people have a much bigger stake in this than we do, not only the locals, but the europeans, why should we waste our blood and treasure . In the point i would make is that when you strip aside the rhetoric which doesnt appeal to some people, it is a kind of man in the street, person in the street judgment about the conduct of war. In one of the things i have been hoping to draw you out on his what is the difference between that kind of judgment . There are elements of common sense to it, i think you would agree, and what you have to offer, and indeed what this school has to offer, which is a kind of educated judgment, which can take you to a different place. I was wondering if you could ruminate on that, the difference between that . Mr. Petraeus sure. First of all, i have sort of offer the five lessons. If you sort of except those, the policy follows it. As Brian Crocker used to say, you can leave the movie theater, but the movie continues to roll. We found that out the hard way, of course, after we pulled all our combat forces out of iraq, only to find out several years later we had 5500 troops on the ground. I mean there was an irony that we had removed them because we cannot get a parliamentary approved status of forces agreement, and yet at the end of the administration, we had 5500 troops on the ground without a parliamentaryapproved status of forces agreement. I am not one who argues, had we left 5500 troops, it would have prevented the Prime Minister of iraq from doing what he did, which is basically to undo all that we had achieved during the surge together and then sustain for a good 3. 5 years afterward, the most significant of which was most significant which was not driving the violence down by 90 and keeping it down, it was actually bringing the fabric of society back together, which he ripped apart by going after the senior sunni leaders, he being the leader of the shiite majority government and country. And i should also add, nobody understands the warsrations of forever more than the individual that commanded both of them at their peak and spend nearly seven of my last 10 years in uniform deployed, and who wrote more letters of condolence to americas mothers and fathers than anybody else, at least anybody else in theater. So understandably, we would all love to do nation building at home, as the previous administrations president argued. The problem is there are five lessons that i think are the result i would like to think of considered judgment, and analysis, and have become the big ideas was you approach this particular situation and this particular threat. And i tend to think they are somewhat undeniable in that every time we have denied them, actually, we have found out, to our disappointment or horror, that we have to go back in and keep our eye on these guys. Mr. Cohen do you worry about the ability of people like you, or me, to persuade our fellow citizens of that kind of thing . Mr. Petraeus sure, yeah. Mr. Cohen at the moment, it looks as though the other kind of argument is much more successful and persuasive. How should we, particularly those of us in science, and i want talking about the argument of iraq and afghanistan, but more broadly, what are the one of the things we take away from this era of populism is David Petraeus and others have not been particularly effective at persuading fellow citizens to think in more or less the ways that we would like them to. Mr. Petraeus again, i think for understandable reasons, it is very easy to argue for something that the people would like to see. Again, this is also not akin to that is why we cut taxes. Well, what a wonderful idea. There is the matter of a fiscal deficit, as a result of recent tax cuts and budget caps, it has of trillion of deficit spending over a tenyear period, and that is over what we were already planning to run. Again, that is a very appealing idea, so how do you do it . Well, you have to try to be as persuasive as you can. I certainly tried to do that. I mean, i think, one of my pluses and certainly one of my minuses in the the eyes of the city was thatfair i was the most accessible general officer, certainly during the post9 11 period. You know, it was then you get labeled a celebrity general later on, and that has its downsides on people tell you there is room inside the beltway for only one superstar, and it is not going to be you, but you , you know, you live with that. Again, i think the onus is on us to try to persuade people. Again, i have often said if the big ideas actually are not applauded by whom you applaud unveil the big ideas or whom you share them, it is just the big ideas. In this case, i like to think the big ideas are reasonably persuasive. I have actually written these. I have gone public with these in the Washington Post two years ago or Something Like that. This is one of the challenges. In an age of populism, in an age of how many characters are in a tweet im not on twitter, i must confess. I have people who send me stuff on twitter you have to be able to compete with those who are really good at that, but how do you counter some of the challenges of the social media age . Which are only beginning to be seen now when it comes to the fake videos that are going to be produced that are getting ever more believable, and they are ever more refined and, again, realistic. It is going to take a huge effort. I will tell you that when we wee doing the surge in iraq, put enormous effort into our communication strategy. The big idea and we had a whole series of big ideas. We had three pages of counterinsurgency guidance, which i wrote and personally edited every month or two. I just hit that send key during that 9. 5 month period. The first is the truth. It is pretty profound. You want to beat the bad guys with the headline and be first. Keep in mind, the bad guys have cnn bureaus dialed in their cell phone, and as you are fighting your way out of a city, they are already dialing in and saying the americans have just committed an atrocity. We are fighting to get the full motion video to pull down to race it over to them and show these guys shot first. Let us explain it to you. So dont do the headline until we at least had a chance to talk to you because you want that headline. You dont want to be the one underneath it that says americans commit an atrocity. You want it to be americans conduct operations to seize shiaa militia leader. Ilitia leader the press will come back and bite you in the backside. We found individuals found it difficult to come up to the podium and explain right after took place that day. Instead, we would start off with appy talk. Heavy they would say 360 people were killed in these baghdad, in their version of a Shopping Mall or center, it was just a mile long, as you recall, just the back streets, and there were three suicide bombers one day, and, again, our spokesman who wore stars, went out and started talking about the resumption of the Soccer League and that the Amusement Park was coming back, and i said, no, you say we had a horrible day today in baghdad. 160 innocent civilians were killed in horrendous, horrific suicide bombings. Here is what we understand to have taken place. Here is what we have sat down with our iraqi counterparts to initiate to try to mitigate the risks of that in the future, and this is in more details to follow. So again, you have to really get serious about that. We had people watching the televisions there fulltime. We had people watching print media in that days version of social media, which was still every of them,7, one so you could immediately push back. We also had a very substantial u. K. Public relations firm working for us. We made our own videos and so forth. These were realistic. These were not happiness in the midst of what was going on. Mr. Cohen so let me i am going to ask you two more questions because i know lots of people want to ask you things. The first question is about china. You mentioned china, china, china. Obviously, china is both a competitor to the United States and a critical partner, but also a global force. I have begun talking about the arrival of china rather than the rise of china because it is already here. What i want to ask you is to put on your analytic hat rather than your policy hat, so dont talk about what you think american policy should be, but how do you see this pattern of relationships playing out over the next decade or so . What do you think the relationship is likely to look like, rather than what you think the United States should be doing about it . Mr. Petraeus well, as a former economics professor, obviously i should begin by saying, it depends. Mr. Cohen on the one hand. Mr. Petraeus on the one hand, no, it does depend. It depends on what chinese leaders are willing to do. It depends on what american leaders are going to be willing to do. It depends on the strategic relationship between our two countries. I mean, i think we desperately need strategic dialogue, the kind that Henry Kissinger would be carrying out, but it is difficult if people are changing jobs fairly frequently. So, it does depend very much on all of these different dynamics. Should note i have to Say Something about what i think our Foreign Policy should be because i have written about this, as well as at the center for harvard, it is titled coherence and americansiveness Foreign Policy imperatives, and it argues what we should have for china is a very coherent approach. It is very clear that is the number one priority. Everything else is not the main effort. They are all supporting efforts. It should be comprehensive, not just all of our possible tools, not just military, trade economic, diplomatic, social, you name it, all of that, but all of that from all of our possible partners and allies, as well. It would contend, i think, you would conclude that you would not pull out of the Transpacific Partnership as an example. Some shortcomings, sure, and i got it, but the other candidate ran against it, as well, and the secretary of state promoted it, but im fairly confident there would be fns to get to it because that was more important strategically than economically. You would certainly point out to your nato partners that they are not spending 1. 5 in one case, much less 2 of gdp on defense, even though that one of them is running a fiscal surplus. But, you know, you have to limit that because you need all of these nato allies with you. You need all of your asia pacific allies even more so. If you truly want to make the indo pacific a reality, and not just the new name for old headquarters, you have to take steps to truly operationalize that. You want all the g7 countries with you, so be careful how you , again, interact within the g7 meetings. Mr. Cohen do you think this will be a more conflictual relationship in the future . Mr. Petraeus that truly does depend on both sides. Again, there are legitimate issues on the the u. S. Side, and they have accumulated over time. Let me say up front, i very much want to see this be a beneficial mutual relationship. But, in recent years in particular, there have been more concerns here. My hope is there can be some reestablishment of some degree of trust and confidence so that at least it does not turn into an allout cold war. We are already, i would contend, in the early stages of a tech cold war. I think that is actually happening, and i think that probably is going to follow through. I think are too many realities there. Look, there is not a World Wide Web anymore. There are 1. 3 billion people who are behind the great firewall of china. There will be more of these. Russia will adopt Chinese Technology and so forth, so there will be countries that will not take it or take ours, weston, there will be countries that will take it, and there will be probably a fracturing of the worldwide web further and of the i. T. Space, if you will, as well. And then there will be something in between somehow that will try to again, the challenges their biggest trading partner in many cases china and in some cases their biggest Security Partners the United States. So they are in a difficult situation. It does depend on decisions made and on relationships that are pursued at what is quite a fragile time for the relationship. Im not certain we will resolve all the issues listed in the u. S. Trade representatives list , which is quite comprehensive. There is a bigger issue here as and maybe one of the biggest of the big ideas about the world today is that we have the return of history. With theidnt end brilliant essay in 1989 in a little journal called the National Interest which had only 10,000 subscribers of the time, two of them on the stage with you. Essay,a brilliant wonderfully argued you recall his argument history of the betweencompetition contending systems and you have this u. S. Led western democratically elected government liberal democracy if you will, capitalist economics and competing with the soviet union and its system and partners in the warsaw pact. But in particular the soviet communist party and the command economy of the soviet union at the time. He predicted rightly this would collapse of its own weight and it did much sooner than most people assessed would be the case. Think has confessed more recently that history is back and its back with a vengeance and this one over here, this is a one party system that is allowed china to receive results economically the no country has ever remotely approached, lease any large economy in a fouryear period. That is their system of governance and they have a hypercompetitive freemarket economy with an ecosystem that includes substantial stateowned investment isere being placed but thats up against the u. S. Led liberal democracies of the world, many of which are experiencing a variety of populism, all the major democracies that we contend with the exception perhaps of japan and you can argue india, but certainly the u. S. , u. K. , germany, france, spain, italy and on, all of these experiencing very considerable elements of populism. Will ask one last question and then opened up. I want to get back to the idea of strategic leadership. Your point about the kind of leadership as opposed to many other kinds of leadership out there is that it begins with the big ideas. Retrospectively the big ideas look Pretty Simple and pretty straightforward. Once somebody had them bring exactly. This is exactly on top, but this was not universally loved. And when it came to some of the more controversial. I think everyone realizes certain point certainly on the ground we have to improve security. You cant have 53 dead civilian bodies due to violence every 24 hours in the capital of iraq and expect anything useful is going to be conducted in the parliament in schools and the rest of it so you had to do that. We werent doing it. Here is my question. Ways historyf the got distorted. Are in ones which youimple this isnt can articulate these in a way that a 19yearold can understand. Why is it so hard in prospect, why does it take somebody like you or pick some other successful strategic leader to come up with ideas that in retrospect thats pretty straightforward. Why is it so hard . Because there is bureaucratic inertia, momentum, people leading are invested in what they are doing. Thousands ofch had patents whyography they did not change the big ideas when they did. They didnt and they are out of business. By the way it is not enough just to get the big ideas right, you have to i think formally sit down and force yourself to ask how do we refine the big ideas. At least one hour every month, theof the teams will of army, marines, special ops, counterinsurgency center. All these teams on the battlefield and they would report in and that was one source of intellectual challenge for me than sitting down with another source or variety of other activities we call action enforcement mechanisms. You dont get hit on the head by the newton apple fully formed as you find the right tree to sit under. More likely you get hit on the head by the colonel of the big of the big idea and that shaping process is best done in an inclusive way, it welcoming way. You want people inside the tent. Iterative andy should be something that continues. This was dynamic. T wasnt revolutionary change one of the big ideas was walk. Get out of your vehicle and walk. Another was take off your sunglasses. Said promote that initiative and explained we want leaders who feel that in the absence of guidance or orders, they figure out what they should have done and execute aggressively. This is what you want, so how do you create again that kind of culture, that organization. The counterinsurgent field preface wrote in the the side that learns the fastest typically prevails so you have to promote that. You have to drive it. Appear, ilike this to worked really hard to the cia for it to appear its very easy and i have a light hand on the reins and if i fell asleep no one would even notice. The truth is you are still driving the campaign. In the surge when we were under such a pressure of time what we had that results in six months or there was a possibility there would be and the center would circumscribe some of our authorities. So you have to just drive this personally very much. But big ideas in hindsight always appear terrific. They dont when youre going through them. I love the example of Reed Hastings and netflix. I think is one of the great strategic leaders of the world. Jeff bezos would be another. These are really Extraordinary People who have an almost unerring. Netflix sat down in the beginning and after blockbuster foolishly didnt purchase them. Then exit went and offered blockbuster you can bias for 50 million or something and they turned it down. So the first big idea was we are going to put movies in the hands of customers without brickandmortar like blockbuster and we will put blockbuster out of business. The big idea that communicated, figure out how to do it, oversee the execution. Mechanisms similar to this, not precisely. Two years later, how are we doing, its going great, blockbuster is going out of business. Where was the last blockbuster . There are two actually. Ag bend, oregon which is famous contrary in place and then there is one up in alaska as well as i learned when i was in juneau the other day. So he gets down here and says its going great, but now others are doing this so that what we do and so the new big idea was broadband speeds are faster, we can have them download content so its a new big idea. They communicate it, they foresee it, get down here. Everyone else is doing that, what do we do now. Lets develop our own content. All these great series that everybody has binged watch except for elliott. [laughter] he only read nonfiction. Down here,d ok get how is that going. Its going fantastically well. What do we do now because amazon hbos producing content. So they decided lets go buy some movie studios. We will produce blockbuster movies, so they do that. The first one was horrible for a whole variety of reasons. It has to be the most forgettable role he ever had. He marched around like this and they were doing these crazy things that people imagine military do. That rate they really dont. I was devastated brad pitt didnt hold out to play may. I have the greatest trillion you get theladiator idea on strategic leadership. These all appear obvious in hindsight, but they werent until they arrived at. In the field manual ever said this common sense. Then why are we doing what we are doing. Of did we miss the impact this escalation of violence in the wake of the bombing and it just goes like this and we continue to withdraw from the communities and continue to hand off to the iraqis, continue to postured to go home. That the process with big ideas. Ive been going on way too long, heres the thing. To waitg to ask people for the microphone, stand up, say who you are, what your affiliation is and actually ask a question. [laughter] im a secondyear associative studies concentrator, thanks for being with us. I wanted to ask about africa. East africa has become an arena of extremism and competition between great powers. I feel a lot of parallels to competition taking place in the middle east over the past few decades. I wanted you to ask i want to ask how should the u. S. Respond or engage and how can we do better than weve done in the middle east in recent years . I think we should engage more. I am heartened to see the in ational development and more importantly see the amount of resources doubled from heartening,that is but they should also coordinate with the other major donors, japan, the eu and others so that you increase the effect. Once again its a place to have a comprehensive approach, noting this will not be the main effort which is going to be with respect to china. But this is actually a competition by the way with china there as well and it is an area of Great Power Competition once again. Ares an area where there muslim extremists, its an area where theres a variety of other challenges, whether it is inadequate governance, corruption, lack of rule of law or what have you. Thinkin all of that i covers for the kind of approach weve used in the past but it doesnt mean you have to be in conflict with china all the time. That i think is the big take away, to realize we are in the nuclear age as well. Book,ove graham allisons he is a good mentor of mine that the kennedy school. Destined for war without a . Without a question mark. But all of those cases actually are prenuclear age and i think the stakes are quite a bit different to put it mildly. 90 of success is just showing up and we really havent been showing up in all of these different locations. It is very frustrating i will acknowledge and there were moments where as the cia director we had to shut down a programmer to because the lack of integrity on the part of the host nation and the risk to our operators was so significant. But you have to work through that. We did do the biggest investment in africa for five years ago, we bought the biggest cut rose grower in the entire in ethiopia. All of my west point classmates thought id lost my mind when i was excited about growing roses in africa and at the end of it it went from 8000 ethiopians to think 12,000 or 13,000. You can do some very substantial investments and other activities there. Have ain you have to little bit of a strong stomach for some of the challenges if youre going to encounter. Over there, blue tie. Come up. Blue shirt and blue tie. Ive read a lot of work of you. I was thinking of this relationship between china and the u. S. For a long time. My question today about the basic science competition between china and the u. S. And from what i saw i found American Students looking youll find many are not from of basicis kind science is extremely important in having innovation in terms of technology in the future so my ideason is what is your on how the u. S. Can cultivate the smartest scientists on basic science and how to attract the smartest minds. A populist professor just won the nobel prize so we are still generating a few. [applause] go blue jays. Its a good question. Fairly serious about stem topics and all the rest of this. We do have quite a bit of investing in a variety of different technical areas, im a personal venture capitalist as well invested 15 startups. Already over a billion dollars which is really exciting and happens to be in ai. Im pretty keenly focused on this. As always you have a comprehensible approach. We have to do a better job with the u. S. Making stem cool and making people believe this is something they should want to do , obviously there are issues with some Public Schools that we need to address, i think its not wrong to argue we are leaving 40 of america students behind to some degree with some of the challenges we have in some of the Public School areas. I think we need to continue to provide student visas to attract the worlds best and brightest and then work hard to keep them here. And there have been steps we have taken to make both of those difficult and we should lift the limit of the smart people visas. Im a huge believer in copperheads of immigration reform. That means a legal pathway for unskilled workers vital to construction and hospitality sectors among others. Oneb h1b visas. These all depend on those. Making it easy to keep the people here. I would argue if somebodys coming for a Stem Technology program and get a phd there should be a green card staple to the acceptance letter. Certainly should be the case if they are accepted at hopkins and m. I. T. , perhaps even harvard. I think you have to have a very comprehensive approach to this and i think there is a lot of areas which we have not taken some of the steps ive just outlined, weve taken the other approach to that. Over here. Thanks for limiting it to one person at a time. We will try to take two more questions. Classes and are being dutiful. I wanted to learn about your read on what is happening in the short and mediumterm in venezuela and about investment prospects and risks because i talked to a lot of americans who want to start investing right now. After this we will take one more. It would be wise to pair for the moment when investment is possible again in venezuela. Right now for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are sanctions, a colossally bad investment environment to put it mildly and a variety of other challenges. Illegal activity by the rulers of the country. That what is going to have to happen venezuela is the country is the countrys going to have to collapse, i do not see a path to a negotiated outcome when you have a regime, this is a kleptocratic regime. This is not just Saddam Hussein and his sons and a handful of other one and two members. This is an entire regime, the entire military superstructure. Every element in that society as you know far better than i unfortunately is tied into this and much of it is highly illegal. There are serious issues with illegal narcotics trafficking and every other possible activity that can generate hard currency for a regime that is being slowly strangled by sanctions. Again i think its highly unlikely they will give up power , this is not a situation where you can fly into haiti until the strong man to leave and go to panama where you get rid of the leader and everybody else is sort of ok you can keep them around. There thanstly more all of these put together. My fear is again it has to collapse and then we need to be to provide aickly lot of different personal humanitarian assistance and that may require a lot of assistance as well beyond economic. Last question over here. Any person was the guts to wear a red pocket square my question is recently Business Roundtable put out a statement for the purpose of the theoration that says purpose of the corporation is more maximizing profits. He dedicated her life to public good and now youre Ready Corporation in my question is especially now that there are some grievances with corporations such as google which are doing business with the chinese comets party, if you agree with that statement, how do you in the private sector navigate between what is public good and maximization of profits for the shareholders . That is a fairly complex issue and we had some good debates about that, we have long believed i should note upfront in doing well while doing good. In other words obviously you have to get good returns or people will not give you their money to manage. A lot of these pension funds, millions of people money from all around the world entrusted to us and we see this is a very sacred obligation, so this is not just High Net Worth individuals by any means. This is retirement services, probably the endowments are another big source. So this is a serious responsibility, you have to get great returns but we are quite committed to doing that while doing good and good means you dont break the law, dont violate some social norm, what have you. And we believe this for two reasons. We think its the right thing to do, we also think its the wise thing to do from a business perspective. I make the same case with enhanced interrogation techniques. I truly believe they were wrong. I understand why the took place, i was inside that special ops munications network at the time. I was employed in bosnia on 9 11. But again i really think they are wrong. I also think they dont work that well. , i even if you dismiss those would argue the price you are going to pay for whatever it is you might get by using those will vastly outweigh the value of what you have. Good, eventually you wont do well. We are running an impact fund well over a billion dollars and still climbing. Where the intent is to do good will still do well still doing well. Keep in mind there are responsibilities to a variety of different stakeholders. We have had lots of when you get into each of these. They start to get quite serious. Should sportinggoods stores sell assault weapons . Should it sell highcapacity magazines . There are lots and lots of these Different Things and they have to be weighed against the various stakeholders who are all affected by this. Maybe if you make less profit or more people would they might be seen as doing the right thing and then they do better. I think this is going to play out. There is still a lot of debate about what does this actually mean, how do you operationalize this and i can tell you that is already ongoing, and a firm that owns 100 Large Companies around the world. And as we gain use of those you know and on a very regular basis. I actually believe in what we do. I like the concept of investing not just money but also expertise and assistance and insight and all the rest of that. To help something grow and build value ultimately then to return more to our investors than they provided to us. But there is a lot of debate about how do you operationalize that big idea which i think has a lot of merit, but youve got to be careful because there are a variety of different responsibilities you have not just to shareholders, to investors, but to a number of other stakeholders as well and so once again you have to have a comprehensive approach. Let me end by saying thanks so and to my favorite dean someone of long hope would be a dean at the school at some point in time and it is wonderful to see him in that capacity. To know that you lured dan marsden away to join and he is leading a great Strategic Studies Program as well and i look forward to a lot of other initiatives that i know you will pursue and to these strategic of the strategic leader of this institution. Thanks very much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019] washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Morning, hiss daughter meadow died in the parkland shooting discusses School Safety and his new book why meadow died. Campaign 2020out and the candidates vying for the democratic nomination. Washington journal live at 7 00 eastern this morning. Watched washington Journal Wednesday as the cspan bus continues the 2020 battleground states tour. On wednesday we will be in the battleground state of pennsylvania. Next, Canadian Party leaders, including Prime Minister justin trudeau, take part in a two hour debate in quebec ahead of the october 21 october election. This is two hours. Canadians will decide who to invite or invite back to this place, Parliament Hill the house of commons. hill of commons. The six main Party Leaders have been traveling the country. Promises tures an president tonight they will their and de construct ideas live. Leader justin trudeau, more. He goal is to give them your vote. The setting is one of canadas most remarkable institutions, in gatineau, quebec. Debate. The here are your leaders. [cheers and applause] welcome to the 2019 de bay. Im one of the moderators tonight. Made up mostly of undecided voters gathered here in the round so they are the heart of this important night. One note, however, we have asked hold back their applause throughout the debate so we can eep things moving, and just a couple more things to note before we get started, were tackle five major themes tonight, based on the question canadian voters want debated. There were more than 8,000, so the themes tonight reflect those questions. The leaders will answer them ased on an order selected in a random draw. We all want a meaningful debate tonight. Answers so the leaders have all agreed to respect the time they are tonight and believe me, well you a make sure they do. In first theme is leadership canada, and the world, and our first question is from reagan in the audience. Reagan . Good evening, leaders. Sorry. The canadiens have felt implication of a divided world 2015, from u. S. Protectionism to brexit, to our tensions with china. As Prime Minister, how would you effectively defend both the interests and values of world stage . The thank you. Reagan, thank you for that. First to u, youre respond tonight. You have 45 seconds. Thank you, reagan for being thank you all d for joining us in this important moment to talk about the future and compare and contrast the various plans we have. We know we live in a very time right now from protectionism to fearbased olitics to the transformative technological change people are facing. We need to make sure canadiens to equipped to be able succeed in an uncertain world and thats why over the past our years weve invested directly in canadiens. Optimistic le be about their future and give them the tools to succeed. The environment is a massive and pressing challenge and building a stronger economy for the future means protecting the environment for the future as well. Are the things well be talking about tonight. For. Trudeau, thank you that. Mr. Bernier, your opportunity to respond. Thank you. Were the Peoples Party and we put canada first. He other leaders on the stage are globalists. They send your money to buy a u. N. Security council, and also, they are giving your money to other fight Climate Change in asia, and in africa. U. N. Is a dysfunctional be nization, and we must able to fight for our country. Only party re the that will have foreign policies thats based on our security and prosperity for our country. Mr. Bernier, thank you. He next opportunity for mr. Singh to respond. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your question, reagan. I know its tough to ask questions in front of a big crowd. Thanks for doing that and thanks and taking oining part in this discussion. To me leadership is about who fighting for, the choices you make and whether youre doing whats right for the people. To her it comes International Affairs, standing p to trump, making sure we fight to build a better trade agreement that puts canadiens first. For me the question comes down the courage to stand up to the powerful and wealthy interests, corporations having too much influence over canada, and ive seen so far in ottawa, whether conservative r governments, they havent had the courage to stand up and fight for people. Were different. For the rich and powerful. I work for people. Mr. Singh, thank you, mr. Cheer, your opportunity to respond. Thank you very much. Of course, ill always stand up canadiens nd interest and promote free trade nd defend our interests all around the world. Trudeau only pretends to stand up for canada. Pretending. Ood at he cant even remember how many times he put a black face on because the fact is, hes always wearing a mask. He puts on a reconciliation mask and then fires the attorney general, the first one of indigenous background. And ts on a feminist mask then fires too Strong Female m. P. s for not going along with his corruption. On a middle class mask raises taxes on middle class canadiens. Mr. Trudeau, youre a phony, raud and you do not deserve to govern this country. There will be an opportunity in the opening debate to defend each other. First, if you would like to answer reagans question. Answer but i e to want to start by acknowledging traditional the territory canadas role in the world is an amiable one. Historic reputation for being an honest broker, for being a country that stands up litcismultilateralism. Future in the world is built on ending poverty and of uraging the education women and girls. A cornerstone. On top of that we need to world trade he organization and make it an organization that promotes climate action. Trade and orld climate organization. We need to support the rule of law and human rights around the because we are world leaders. Thank you, again, question, how would you as Prime Minister canada yen interests and this changing world stage. Blanchet. First, good evening, everybody, thank you for having me. Ship or showing not rship sometimes means making mistakes. Chief Financial Officer may have been a big mistake for farmers [inaudible] beef, might have paid the price. Facing a powerful foe like china, you dont try to only iceps if you have tiny biceps, and this is something that has to be learned. We would support somebody with real leadership, not making mistakes. Mr. Blanchet, thank you for that, continuing with our theme and the p in canada world its now my opportunity to ask a question on behalf of canadiens. A leader chosen by a random draw, so this question is party leader maxine bernier. Every other leader will then debate opportunity to him, but mr. Bernier, you like to tweet. Some of your tweets back to you. Diversity in canada a cult and extreme municipalities culturallism. Used the words ghetto and tribes to describe newcomers you say bring distrust and violence. On greta this unberg, the 16yearold climate activist, clearly, mentally unstable. Are these the words of someone character and integrity o lead all canadiens and represent us on the world stage . The question, you must tell canadiens if you want to be the leader of this what im saying about extreme its not the way to build this country. A diverse ountry is country and we must be proud of hat but we dont need legislation like the multiculturalism act to tell us who we are. E are a diverse country and were proud of that. What im saying, because its in ine with the immigration, im saying that we must have fewer immigrants in this country, to sure, for these people it time to t country but have a discussion about the immigration