Transcripts For CSPAN Ret. Gen. Joseph Votel Others On Middle East Strategy 20240713

Good afternoon and welcome to is newly renovated headquarters. I am the Senior Vice President at the middle east institute. I am pleased to welcome you to todays important and timely commsby examining cent approach to the middle east. We will explore prospects for an effective u. S. Military role in the region, especially given current news from northeast syria. Great panel of experts to discuss this with you today. Ken pollock, we are also pleased to welcome back senior fellow and director of the defense and Security Program after a oneyear fellowship at the department of defense. We are happy to have him back and look forward to hearing his insights from his upcoming article in the 2019 fall issue quarterlyhington entitled broken partnerships can washington get security . Eric schmidtht is a writer for the new york times. Since 2007, he has reported on terrorism issues with assignments to pakistan, afghanistan, Southeast Asia among others. Is a coauthor of counterstrike the untold story of americas secret campaign against al qaeda, published in 2011. He was an education reporter at tricity herald in kennewick, washington. Hes come a long way, from september 1982 to september 1983. Eric will introduce the other distinguished members of todays panel but before he begins, i would like to remind you to silence your mobile devices. The Panel Discussion today is being covered by cspan two, fox, and cnn but we do welcome you to join the conversation on twitter using the hashtag, meisecurity. Eric thank you all for coming today. I wanted to briefly introduce our panelists before we get into our discussion, starting on the far left, a senior fellow at the washington institute. A seniord as professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where she covered the middle east. On her right, the distinguished fellow of mei. Most of you know him as the former central command. The American Enterprise institute, he served at the cia and had stints at the Security Council under bill clinton. He covered the middle east and iran and iraq. A senior fellow and director of the Security Program here at mei and served as a Senior Advisor for Security Cooperation to the pentagons office of defense for policy, responsibilities for centcom. We will have a discussion, starting with each of the speakers. We will talk for about 10 minutes. Ill ask them a question or two and we will open it up for discussion at the end. For now, we will start with ken to kick us off. Thank you, eric. It is wonderful to be with my. Istinguished colleagues here guess there are a lot of different dimensions to this problem. My job is to start out by talking about i think the substantive issue the truth at the root of everything, and its an issue that is well known to everyone in this room, but its when we dont like to talk about a whole lot. I do, but most people dont. And that is the fundamental problem that our allies do not have the capacity to defend themselves against their primary threats. Thats where it all starts for us. Thats in driven home in recent weeks and in recent months and in recent years by any number of developments across the middle east. I think the vast majority of americans would love it if our arab allies were better able to defend themselves either so we could leave the region altogether or for those who recognize at there may be reasons we would need to stay that at the very least, they could do more for themselves and we didnt have to do so much for them. There are a lot of Different Reasons why this is a problem. I could talk about them in a new book, armies of sand, something i discussed figuratively in this space a number of months ago. Im not going to go into the full description here. Thats not the point here. Simply to say, the reasons arab militaries have had such difficulty with conventional military operations over the last 70 years, why they continue to have such difficulty today and why theyre likely to in the near future is rooted in some very large problems that are not going to be easily or quickly fixed. They are rooted in the politics, the economics, the culture, the educational practices of the arab world. None of that is going to be changed very quickly. But that doesnt mean that the arab militaries are hopeless. And i think one of the important things to think about when we think about this new concept of by, with, and through is that it is both a virtue and a necessity. The truth is, we might not have wanted to fight this way. I know when our military commanders were first confronted with the problem of daish, isis coming back into iraq and taking over so much territory in syria, it isnt necessarily the way they wouldve liked to have fought that war if they couldve had their druthers. But they didnt have a choice. That was what was available to them, and they made a virtue out of necessity and i think there are some important things to take away from it and things are valuable to think about in their own rights. Because the truth of the matter while arab militaries do have a tremendous difficulty with modern conventional warfare, they are not hapless. There are things that can be done. There are workarounds, ways to tailor their forces, ways to approach military operations that have allowed them greater success in the past. And what the by, with, and through approach did was forced our commanders, particularly my friend sean macfarland, really who was wrestling with this in 2015 in iraq and a thick was and was really the guy who kind of figured out how to do this and set the stage, created a model that were using elsewhere and he realized some things that are true or arab militaries across the board and have been for the last 70 years. When they form small elite forces, they tend to do better. When you can create kind of a military subculture the way the jordanians did back in the threats of force, the way i would argue a uae is doing today, that also stands them in good stead. When they can rely on someone elses firepower and act as an adjunct to it, they could do better when they can do static operations set piece operations, they can do better. There are ways to do this that can take advantage of some of the skills that are there in arab militaries. As i said, i think by necessity having to do by, with, and through, the fact we had a Leadership Back here that did not want to simply put an american heavy division down in the middle of the desert and wipe out daesh by itself, which was something that plenty of people were talking about at the time. I think many in the military would have loved to been able to do that because at the substantive level, it would be the easy answer. That wouldve been a way to defeat isis, destroy it really quickly and easily but it wasnt politically possible. So instead they had to adopt by, with, and through method. They had to go to the iraqis and secondarily to the syrians and say okay, we cant do it for you. You guys are quite the going to have to do it yourself. We are come going to provide you a great deal of assistance but at the end of the day, it is andg to have to be iraqi syrian combat troops who are going to need to take the fight. Weve got to figure out ways to train up more effective iraq and syrian forces, and provide them with combat enablers that will make them successful put them in situations where they can be successful. Thats the heart of by, with, and through. As i said, that was a necessity for the political restrictions placed on those people trying to implement the mission. But i think it does speak to deeper truths that there are better ways to do this. That there are ways to think about how we train, how we help train our arab allies that will allow them to do br than theyve done in the past. It starts with the recognition those armies are not like our own. Again, this is something i talk about at great length in my book and when i say it will sound really obvious but the truth is we havent really respected the last 70 years, which is that the average arab 18yearold boy really isnt like the average american 18yearold boy or girl. And trying to train an arab boy the way you would train an american boy or girl, its not going to work, right . It just isnt. They arent the same. They dont come from the same society. They dont think about things the same way that we do. They have different strengths and weaknesses. And, of course, ours the russians did the same thing, the british did the same thing, the french did the same thing. We all assumed our system is simply right and its right for everyone. When you go in there and tried to train someone on a system that isnt properly devised, properly adapted for their society, it doesnt work well. We find all around the world militaries that do best are the ones who take someone elses system or build your own come build their own when they take someones system, they adapt it to their own society, to their own circumstances. And again, by, with, and through forced us to do the same exact thing for the iraqis and to lesser extent for the syrian opposition. Now, moving forward, that does set up at least a temporary model for how we move forward until you could have deeper, societal change. Societal change, which i think everybody in this room knows, all of the arab leader would like to see happen although they are very nervous about actually trying to implement. But until we get to that longerterm, there are absolutely things that can be done. The big issues there bring us back to politics. Both here and in the arab world. It requires going to the arab leaders and saying, we are not going to give you the same training that we give to american troops because honestly, its not right for your forces. Instead, we are going to tailor Something Else that is right for your forces. Thats very hard for leaders who want the best and believe whatever the americans give their own troops has got to be the best, so i want the best so i want that. It is also hard back here in washington, because when they pay us to give them the best training, by god, were going to give them the best training, and thats how we train our own troops. So the political battles, they are a big part of getting us to the point where we can deal with these other set of issues. With that, let me turn it over to general votel. Maybe he can straighten out the 30,000foot level for all of us. Before we do that, let me ask you about iraq. Weve had an uptick in violence the last week or so. What are the two or three takeaways that have been learned successfully and maybe havent been for successfully given the amount of time used military has the u. S. Military has spent in iraq over the last two decades . In terms of the Key Takeaways thats a great question, mark. In terms of the takeaways that i think weve learned or at least parts of the United States have learned, its not clear if the whole u. S. Government has learned it. Again, i think there are things we hit upon during the course of by, with, and through. So recognizing the iraqi cts, a small elite force of soldiers really could, given some degree capability these are guys with a certain amount of unit cohesion with advance against fire, to do some very, very basic fire and maneuver but enough so they could clear a foe that was tough not superhuman. Under circumstances with a lot of american support. That was very important, recognizing cts was critical. Recognizing we had to rebuild the iraqi command structure. During the surge, we had to built more or less a new iraq you military command. Nuri balaji had destroyed after we pulled out in 2011. We had to go back and rebuild it to create a politically command control circumstances to do what we needed to do. Giving the iraqis ownership of it, letting them feel like they were the ones responsible, given them the sense of pride, building up a sense of national selfesteem was also very important. And then theres also this issue of kind of picking out the right missions. Not putting these guys in positions where they have to do kind of big freeflowing unscripted maneuver battles. Thats not what even the iraqi c. T. S. Is capable of doing, but you put in in the right circumstances, set operations, limited offensives, lots of american enablers, they really could do fine. Those of the things we want to take away that again i think u. S. Military certainly recognizes that is the way forward. Thats the model for other militaries and we need to figure out how we help of the militaries get to that. The thing we didnt learn, thats obvious, right . The military peace of any of these wars is about 10 of actually solving them. The other 90 is political and diplomatic, economic, which we once again blithely ignored and once again, iraq is teetering on the brink of yet another conflict as a result. I wanted to use that to give it to general votel. A crash has gotten by, with, and through in northEastern Syria and airy you know quite well and obviously the turkish offensive is carried out started yesterday after President Trump seemingly green lit this operation after phone call and send with president erdogan. You are quite critical in an oped you wrote yesterday in the atlantic. Tell us more about your experience, what you draw from this. Its great to be here. Thanks for that great set up. Let me start big and then we will get to the area that eric just talked about. In the Current National Defense Strategy released back in 2018, it articulated our principal priority was maintaining competitive events against great advantage against great powers. Also, a key precept within that, however, was the importance of partnership, especially in those areas where we will have to exercise and economy of u. S. Monetary resources and present presence on the ground. There is a very strong belief, i currently subscribe to this, ive always subscribe to this, the Strong Partnership can act as a mitigate or in these areas buth we accept some risk, we also retain Important National security interests. What im trying to convey here is partnership is a part of our overall approach, and we have and we have had a lot of tools in the past to deal with this. We have things like Security Force assistance. This is unified action across our government to help a country develop their own security the answer to their people and to their government. You can think of this as any one of our very wellestablished Security Cooperation offices out there that work in conjunction with combatant commands to kind of address the security requirements of our partners out there. In the special operations world, particularly in the sf world, special forces, weve had things like internal defense for and these are our specific military activities to support a friendly government against an internal threat. Theres a variety of different examples around here. In my experience, i would think we we actually tried to do this in yemen in 20112013, when we were assisting the government of yemen deal with alqaeda who was actually trying to control ground in the southern part of the country and we worked with them to address the specific threat. Still, there are other things like conventional warfare. Again, a bit of a confusing term but an important concept and its the opposite approach. That is ere we support a Resistance Movement or an insurgency against an occupying power, adversary government, you know, theres a number of examples of this and i think perhaps one of the best ones is our support for the mujahedin in afghanistan during the soviet invasion. And i would say that our operations in afghanistan right after 2001 had this flavor, especially in the north, where we had special forces teams working very closely with the Northern Alliance to accomplish military objectives against the seemingly taliban government that was in place. But complementing this approach, as we talk about, is this idea by, with, and through, and think what by, with, and through represents is kind of where the rubber meets the road. Its how we implement some of these ideas on the ground. And i think its important, and we talked a lot about this in my time at centcom to try to define what by, with, and through actually means. Each of those words kind of sounds the same but the they really in my might mean something different. By implies these are activities conducted by largely by our partners on the ground, whether they are state forces of whether their indigenous partners. With means with our enabling capabilities and vice that we and our advice. We are bringing something to them to help them, help them moving forward. And then through, i think through refers to the idea of authorities, approvals, agreements, expectations that are established. One of the things we were able to do with the Syrian Democratic forces as we worked with them over a number of months and, in fact, years, was really establish red lines, things that we were not going to support. We were not going to support any efforts to unite the kurdish cantons. We were not going to go to africa after the kurdish incursion. These are the types of expectations that im kind of talking about, that form the background about this approach actual plays out on the ground. There are some disadvantages to this approach. I think its important to recognize what that is. Set the pace in this. That could be an advantage but in most cases, we are going to be beholden to the things, a pace at which they are doing things and they may not be moving as fast or as directly as we want to, and so they will set the pace. They may not do things the same way that we would do, and i dont mean ethically or legally. That is an imperative upfront, operating in accordance with the rule of law and the law of our armed conflict, thats very clear upfront and thats one of those expectations through which we are providing the support. But you know, the deeper we got into the euphrates valley over the last five or six months of the campaign, the more we saw the Syrian Democratic forces, particularly the arab elements, stopping operations, trying to negotiate, so to speak, with isis to minimize impact on the villages, minimize impact on civilians. I dont think anybody cant can argue with that, but we were very, very concerned about how we maintain the momentum against this force. We didnt want to let them get away to fight another day in terms of this. They will not do the things the way we always do. And i think we own the Strategic Risk with this, certainly as registering this week. As weve seen this week. Weve always known that there was a risk with our approach with turkey, and that is a risk that weve owned with this approach. But there are some advantages and ken touched on a couple. It minimizes our footprint and minimizes our operational risk, our tactical risk. Youve seen the number of things this week about the number of casualties the Syrian Democratic forces absorbed versus what the coalition did. Again, all caps royalties are horrific, no doubt, but i think you get my point here. When you can minimize your footprint, minimize your operational risk, there is a certain political advantage to that. Another advantage is the partners own the outcome in this thing. One of the most prolific pictures, and i use and a lot of the presentations and discussions i do us a picture of the iraqi leadership in mosul after the completion operations out there. Poignquite appointment ant. Its all iraqis from all the different flavors of the forces surrounding the Prime Minister and other members of the government raising their own flag and praising their own people for this. This is a really important aspect, then only does afterwards. Them owning this afterwards. As we completed operations in syria, what we often saw was our local partners beginning to set up local security and local governance. This is an incredibly important aspect. We can advise on that, but when they are doing this, they actually own it. And this can be effective without this Institution Building aspect of partnership. We did not try to reorganize the syrian, the ypg or the arab militias that ultimately made up the Syrian Democratic forces. We took them as they were. Not in iraq, we had to do a little bit of rebuilding of the army, and back in the beginning sean macfarland, when his predecessors were key to this, but that was an important aspect. Are not really focused on the institution of it, but really focused on helping them be successful. Let me just talk just a little bit more about the Syrian Democratic forces. I think thats a pertinent and relevant example, to talk a bit about it in some detail. It started with ypg, literally pushed up against the border because of isis, and trying to fight literally to save their lives. We came aware of this through some of our contacts in the region and the authorities and discussion that took place and the significant discussion International Security process throughout all of this. We made the determination we would provide some level of our fire support to help them, help protect them, help them break out of this. What we saw was there were very successful at this. They made very good use of this. A really drew on the innovativeness of our people to the ways to communicate with them, nontraditional ways, not highlytechnical from our standpoint, but leveraging the internet, leveraging application and leveraging cell phones, all those type of things to do that. Success with that and we saw them begin to break out. We had discussions about maybe we should be people on the ground to see if we can enhance their successes and move through and we did. We began to expand our touch even more with them in terms of, again, the whole time this is taking place, there are discussions at the national Security Council level and authorities and approvals being passed down to us to do these things. Along the way, we added a train the trainer capacity so as they brought forces, they recruited, brought people in, they had a mechanism to bring them up to a level. We added equipment provision in here. Again, significant policy discussions associated with it. We started with the air component and eventually came to realize we also had to get some limited equipping to the kurdish portions of this, of the organization because they essentially were the backbone and did a lot of the difficult fighting and it became very important in places like raqqa and the other places where we were fighting. Along the way, we expanded our neighbors we started out with just isr in drones, but eventually we had artillery. We had attack helicopters, other and it was brought on the ground to do this and were able to expand it out. Then, of course, we started integrating other elements of our power. The very small u. S. Aid start teams on the ground. I refer to this as the magnificent seven. Seven people, thats all it was, and they were great and the moved in conjunction with us and they did a lot of great work committing to the things we were doing. This is an example of how starting with this by, with, and through concept, we were actually able to move forward to accomplish the significant military of liberating the caliphate. Really through using this by, with, and through approach, and thats why its been my opinion and it does remain my pains opinion today, that this is a good model that we ought to look at. Every situation is different. If youve seen one situation, youve seen one situation, so you have to look at we cant blindly apply this in other places. We have to be smart. Our people are smart and they can help us with that. But i would just close by telling you that from my perspective, the success of this approach really came down to three things that were really important. First and foremost was building on the external, or building on the strength and the capabilities of the organization that we had and not try to recreate them in our own image. We did not try to reach into the spf and reorganize accardi the kurdish portion of it, and the arab militias were of completely different design. Different level of leadership, different level of capability but we didnt what we try to tried to do was leverage what we had and try to optimize that. I think that was a good approach in this situation. Second of all, we built very strong multiechelon relationships at all levels. My level several of us talking to the general throughout this, but we also had this about the formation. It wasnt just military. It was ambassador jeffrey, ambassador roebuck, others, were key to this, helping develop the relationship. That was important because that built trust, and that allowed us to overcome a number of very difficult periods that we had and to move forward to those, whether that was hey, were not we know there has been an incursion, and we are not going to go there, and working to that. Or the decision made in december as we kind of work do that. Then i think the final thing was the constant communication aspect of this. We talked with them all the time and we often talk about expectations and we try to make it very, very clear the things we would do and as importantly, the things we would not do for them. And this was i think very, very important to them and i think we had a partner who understood that and was able to work within those constraints we had. I think ill close there and in i know we will have more discussion about this. Thank you once again. General, i wanted to follow up because when you talk allies we talked about these different programs by, with, and through whether afghans are yemenis for iraqis, but there seems to be almost much more emotional attachment here with the kurds. Youve seen this even among Congressional Republicans who criticize the president s decision, the sense of betrayal you hear from the kurds. Talk about you talked about this multiechelon effect. From the top down, the green berets who were working, there seems to be a real chemistry there. You can talk about what it is like, since youve been there, what is it like on the ground . What are they doing day today that they are forming these bonds that are apparently so hard to break and it must be difficult for many of your former colleagues on the ground to step back and watch this happen. Mr. Votel that is an aspect of it. We really do try to buy into our partners. We try to share in the danger of what is going on. As these operations are taking place, we have advisors in locations where they are sharing danger. They are helping them work through this. They share meals with them, they live with them. We help them with the evacuation of casualties. We mourn with them. , human a very natural interaction taking place at this level. There does become a level of closeness to these partners. I think what was unique in this case as i mentioned, if youve seen one partnership, youve seen one partnership. In this case, it was our experience, certainly was my experience that the Syrian Democratic forces represented i think a very high end partner here. In terms of their ability to work with us, to accept the expectations and redlines we had and basically to put their trust in us, as we pursued this campaign. I think you are seeing some of that play out right now in some of the emotion that unfortunately does come through in this. I think this is very natural human interaction. They areers, whether special operations or conventional, i think field is for their partners. You come from the perspective of a researcher but recently spent time inside the beast of the pentagon. What lessons did you come away with . What surprised you . Talk about your experience Going Forward with this larger issue. Thank you. There are open seats in the front if youd like to take them. You got a sense from ken and some of thel on problems we encounter in the region with our partners but there are also a lot of challenges we face here in eashington, as far as tha bureaucracy of Security Cooperation and how that functions or malfunctions. The major ailment of a Security Cooperation is really internal to us. Despite all of the problems you have heard about the partners themselves, there is a lot of issues we have to face right here in washington to get this right. And exponentially growing enterprise is malfunctioning because our house is in great disorder. Homereign policy starts at , so does Security Cooperation. You can have the most proficient american trainers on the ground. They can educate our partners on the best doctrine, they can hand out the best manuals, they can form the closest bonds, kurds or otherwise. All of that really would matter little if the bureaucracy here that is supposed to create, supervise, sustain all this is malfunctioning. You can expect poor results basically if it is malfunctioning. Thats exactly what has been going on for quite some time. Now, of course, there are always exceptions. We can get lucky with a few partnerships. Im sure you have in mind maybe one or two that have worked relatively well but these are not the norm. These are exceptions. I can think of the Lebanese Armed forces as an example, that im sure general votel is familiar with. That is a success story, relatively speaking, but there are not many like that. My bottom line is this. A reliableave yet and sustainable system for Security Cooperation here in washington and in the u. S. Government. I can say that differently, but its the same thing. We do not have the proper organizations and effective leadership to actually conduct this successfully. It comes down really sure, my apologies. Really comes down to basics here, which is leadership and organization, two fundamental variables that seem to be lacking in the u. S. Government with regard to Security Cooperation. Let me say a couple of words about each and what i really mean by each. By leadership, i specifically endorsementa robust of the Security Cooperation reforms that congress came up with in december of 2016, which ended up getting published in the 2017 National Defense authorization act. In large part, thinks to john mccain and his staff. Alsoust endorsements, but serious, consistent supervision, oversight over the execution of those reforms. Its one thing to come up with reforms. Its another altogether to actually oversee the execution of those reforms. Thats what i mean by leadership and its been certainly lacking in that regard. Organization. If leadership is lacking, then you can expect logically that organization will also fall short. Congresshe reforms of of 2016, which included many things. Is to actually create an office in the pentagon that is dedicated 24 7 to Security Cooperation. Its called the office of Security Cooperation. It assigned a single official to oversee this enterprise under the working o direction of the undersecretary. That is certainly not enough. We have a tendency in this country to try to solve problems, we over litigate and tize. Bureaucrac weve done it throughout as ify, patriot act, that were enough to combat terrorism. We created a new office for. It. Or you a football analogy because thats my favorite sport. Its like a losing Football Team and that just fired its head coach and hired a new coach when all along, the problem has been general management, ownership, and culture. Yes, im looking at you, washington redskins. A new coach is not going to cut it, ok. There is going to be massive structural changes to get this right. Where are the reforms . Because those are really important. I believe that they are game changers. The most important aspect of the reforms is that we would no workr throw money and hard atour partners hardware our partners and expect them all of become better and more accountable warriors. That is at least what it says on paper. We are now required by law to help them do some of the things that the general just mentioned. Institutional capacity building, fancy word for the institutions for defense, as in the software of defense, not just in the hardware. We dont do that consistently. May be with one or two other partners, because the conditions somehow permitted us to do that. Overall, we just dont have a record of doing that successfully for all sorts of reasons. Now, we are required by law. Congress has had enough of us not doing that and having all of those poor results and all those weapons ending up in the wrong hands and all that. That is as a result at least partly of our failure to invest in Institutional Capacity building. Let me sum up the organizational problems in an a couple of words. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Much worse, those cooks are actually not talking to each other. Fferentve di recipes. They fight over money, jurisdiction, authorities. Thats a recipe for disaster. The biggest schism is between the department of defense and department of state. That internal battle of who owns what, who has the authority to do what, who has a bigger budget, who has jurisdiction over what is an ongoing problem. I realize its a pipe dream to get those departments to Work Together. It did work much better during the cold war, but that was a long time ago. To get them to work much more closely and do joint planning on Security Cooperation and assistance will require leadership about secretaries. Depending on the administration, sometimes it worked better than other places. If the chemistry between the secretaries, the working relationship between the two secretaries is not optimal, none of this is going to happen. Another organizational handicap is between this office of Security Cooperation that i just mentioned and this fourth state, which is the Defense Security cooperation agency, which is actually housed outside the pentagon, by the way. This is a big organization. They do tremendous work. They have now perfected the art of processing equipment releases and arms sales. Guess what . Security cooperation is not just about arms sales. This is what we have been talking about. Security cooperation is much more than arms sales. It has to do with Institutional Capacity building as well. That responsibility rests in the dsca,of staffers at which they have never done before. This is not going to happen overnight. I am of the view it will not be popular with my friends, this is not the place to do it. Dsca is not the place to take on the mantle of Institutional Capacity building, despite all the staff they brought over. Now they have brought some people to d. C. This is not the place for it. Certainly, another civilian office, whether it is independent or joined with the state department. In closing, i cannot leave without a brief comment about congress. They played such a leadership role in at least coming up with the reforms. That is step one, right . What i want to say about congress is that just like other Senior Leadership in the executive branch, you have to insist on accountability. It is one thing to issue the guidance, another altogether to really supervise and make sure all the stakeholders that are part of this enterprise are actually doing their job and what u. S. Taxpayers expect them to do. Hold more hearings, closed and open. Ask the tough questions. State ofhe desired end this program . How much more can this partner absorb . How does this program affect the National Interest . Does it serve the u. S. National interest . All of these questions have been asked somewhat in some ways but certainly not consistently and without accountability. I am not just talking about cutting budgets are making deeper budget cuts when it comes to Security Cooperation. It is really consistent oversight of this issue, because the American Public is expecting it. This is a new environment in washington. I will stop here. In the interest of getting to your questions more quickly, lets talk about what congress particularly role is, and particularly the absence of real leaders in this oversight. Dana, lets get your take on this. Dana thank you so much. I am going to take a step even further back than the other speakers and talk about the general reasons one the executive ranches is making the when theongress executive branch is making the case to congress on why we have Security Cooperation. That explanations and justifications for doing Security Cooperation and all of the activities and programs and others of money that come under the umbrella. Here are three that i would like to propose. The first one is to build institutional ties and gain access. So reinforce government to government, military to military , relationships that can be used in peace time and leveraged in wartime. Constantly when youre on the hill and talking about why a program, maybe it was working before but is not working now, why should we continue this program . A lot of the times the response is, who else are we going to call in a crisis . A good example is egypt in 2011 and 2012 because of the extensive history of Foreign Military funding to the egyptian military. Those were the most developed relationships the u. S. Government had and they were the ones the u. S. Government fell back upon when we needed to talk to people in cairo and talk about what was going on. Touch points, connective tissue, part of all of these Security Cooperations. You have heard all of these acronyms and different programs we have. Those are just a fraction of the number of authorities and programs that we have to help us develop these institutional ties. Number two, to improve the capability of our partners, so this notion of interoperability in wartime so our militaries nowhere in the hierarchy to coordinate within a system of alliances and partnerships. The idea is to extend and protect u. S. Influence through this network. It cant just be about us. There has to be capabilities on the other side, people, military professionals, and civilians hopefully in the defense context who can talk to us, understand the language we are talking, and coordinate to respond to shared crisis. Three, counterterrorism and this notion of building partner capacity, which obviously extend very much after 9 11. The idea of improving the capabilities of partners to help conduct Counterterrorism Missions with us and on their own, assuming we share the same goes. Goals. Previous obama and the administration gave an entire speech about this at National Defense university. He talked about Security Cooperation now provides more options in the future for partner military, Partner Forces so we dont have to use our own military tools first. And the notion that building partner capacity so we have capable and effective partners abroad is costeffective for the american taxpayer. These are some of the debates and discussions that take place on capitol hill. Over the past several years specifically, this system of authorities and programs and Funding Sources has exponentially expanded. This is what was talked about. Coret to talk about two tensions in how congress conducts oversight or attempts to conduct oversight of our Security Cooperation and Building Partnership. The first is state department versus Defense Department. Congress is interested in authorities and money, right . And both authorizes programs and activities and it provides the appropriations for those programs and activities. State department over time, its tools and funding for these programs and activities has remained rather static. The pool of money, the number of programs is not expanding. Those tools are rather inflexible because of the twoyear fiscal planning cycle. State department is talking about how it will fund things two or three years in advance. Does anybody know what the world will look like two or three years from now and what contingencies we might need to respond to . Examples of the state Department Funding, Foreign Military funding. 4st of fmf goes to recipients, israel, egypt, jordan, and iraq. That leaves a very small slice of the pie for the rest of the world. Is not that pool expanding, usually returned to to dod. Sually we turn dod has much more flexible authorities to respond to these crises, especially because the pool of state Department Funding is not expanding. Commercial sales and Foreign Military sales come under the state department. The authority and legislation litigating these sorts of programs has not been updated in years. Finally, another one that i want to touch upon is International Military education and training. Tos is where we actually pay bring foreign officers into American Military colleges, which is a great program. The pool of money for these kinds of programs is not expanding on the state department side. Budget has, dods grown, especially for contingencies. There was an expanding patchwork of new authorities, a special Program Every time there was a new crisis somewhere in the world. 17 reforms. The fy it was an attempt to take based on what your definition of a 100gram is, 80 different Security Cooperation , standardize metrics for effectiveness and evaluation, transparency, and oversight, and bring some harmony to the kinds of funding fiscal yeareasure two fiscal year which countries in which programs are receiving what funding to accomplish what. An i want to give you example of how this works in real life. And you are on the hill either the state department or the Defense Department wants to secure funding or approval for a specific program, they sent up a proposal to the hill called a congressional notification. Committee that has oversight over the state department, you may have some questions about. Yout is something that think is state Department Funding or a Foreign Military sale, that goes either to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or House Foreign Affairs committee. That means it does not go to the Armed Services committee on the senate or house side, who as i said, have a much larger budget and much bigger programs and are more flexible in how they can spend the money. If it is funding under the ndaa e otherof thes programs, those congressional notifications go to the senate Armed Committee. If you are a staffer looking at what the state department is doing, you dont see it all whats happening on the Armed Services side. If you are on the Armed Services aside, you have no idea whats happening in terms of Foreign Military sales. Not only that, money. So for reports about how specific money is sent, that is sent to appropriations committees, which is not the Armed Committee or Foreign Relations committee. If you are a staffer who wants to decide whether to approve or recommend my boss approve this congressional notification, i would like a birdseye view of exactly how this program fits into everything we are doing. There is no answer. Dod is not required to track these programs or how it spends its money or how it evaluates its programs the same way the state department is doing. Different committees on any given day are getting different reports. Finally, whats the point of all this . Isnt it to tie what we are doing at the military Security Cooperation or defense bubble to a broader strategic affect or policy outcome . Who has responsibility over that . Got this athat dod reorganization of how it does things under the National Defense reauthorization act authorization act. Passvery year is a must piece of legislation. Congress will pass that National Defense authorization act. Ans anybody know there was authorization act passed for the state department . There was a little one in 1993, 1994. The point is 1993, 1994. What were you doing then . This is a challenge. If we want to force the state department and Defense Department to do joint planning, we will have to Work Together as congressional committees and members of congress to come together with an authorization that actually directs the state department to do this and directs the Defense Department to Pay Attention to the state department. Right now, it is highly personality and program dependent. May be you get that joint planning. Again, personality dependent and program dependent, not because there is legislation or because it is institutionalized that this joint planning has to take place. Im just going to spend the rest of my comments talking about executive versus legislative tensions, which affects how congress conducts oversight. View, core, in my Congress Sees a Security Cooperation and Building Partnership capacity as an area of leverage. That should be leveraged to affect behavioral change. Often on the executive branch side when advocating for a specific program under the Security Cooperation or building partner capacity umbrella, the sense is that those relationships gained or specific on the ground near term objectives are ends into themselves and not tied into a broader strategic objective or something that can be leveraged, i. E. , taken away if you dont see the desired behavioral change. Two issues here. H, and through model i would argue is working in many contexts in the sense that we have plenty of partners in the middle east who by u. S. Equipment, use u. S. Equipment, and apply u. S. Security training to address their own challenges. Capitol hill does not like the way in which our partners are addressing their own security challenges. A good example is saudi arabia and yemen in a coalition that they formed with the military plan to execute in yemen. Regardless of views on what is taking place in yemen, at its core, this is actual Security Cooperation working. We have partners using our equipment and training with very minimal help from us. Another example is uae and egypt and libya, same thing. Security challenges that they perceive in libya that we are not addressing, they are taking our equipment and training and attempting to train others in libya to address the challenges. They dont have to be there in large forces themselves. Hillthe debate on capitol to my view has migrated to, should we be doing Security Cooperation . How do we do Security Cooperation . U. S. Origin equipment and training is being used in ways that are more destabilizing to the region. That is the core of the debate that we have to move forward. Some of it can be addressed if we were to institutionalize this broader notion of tying what we are doing and Security Cooperation to a strategic affect. Secondly, how does Building Partnership capacity in the shortterm tied to this longterm strategic goals of the United States . This is where issues come up every single day in how congress is conducting oversight of these programs. Training,e, is our the people that weve trained, or the equipment weve sold and transferred being used to violate human rights . To suppress internal repression or civiliety society . Is it skewing the balance of power away from civilians and civilian led institutions in certain countries . How do you evaluate the effectiveness of these issues . A great example is in use monitoring. We are not in yemen so we dont know how our equipment is being used. Its hard to have frank conversations with our partners about exactly how they are using our equipment. Transparency. You want to know where our equipment is being stored. Is our sensitive Defense Technology being protected, and what depot, where, how many, who has access to it . These are challenges that we are still working through today and often when the executive branch is coming to talk to Congressional Staff or members of congress, they dont have good answers to these issues, which slows down the process. Are so these programs large compared to what we are doing on the civilian side, you constantly see congress attempting to condition these, to mitigate or moderate, maybe we will sell defensive weapons to a certain country but we are not going to sell offensive weapons. We will give you this amount of money as a grantor but we are going to put conditions on it. All of these things at the end just undermined the original intent of these programs. We have not found better ways of engaging with our partners. I am going to leave it there for now and turn it back over to eric. We have just got a few minutes left for questions from the audience. If you would identify yourself and make sure there is a question mark at the end of your question. Michael . We have until 2 00 . Ok, im sorry. Weve got lots of time. Sorry. Michael from the wall street votel. For general requires trust between the two partners. Maybe there is not a specific political commitment about what might occur at the end of the rainbow, some sense that the United States is a reliable partner. There have now been two occasions in which the u. S. Has decemberd the sds, 2018 one President Trump said we are getting out and recently when he said we are pulling forces back from the safe zone without any warning, anything of the kind. My question is, can the sdf, canship with the it be sustained . What would it take at this juncture, given everything thats transpired, to make this an effective by, with, and through relationship Going Forward . Excellent question. It would seem that this particular point, weve made it very hard for them to have a Partnership Relationship with us, you know, because of this recent policy decision. I think this has certainly put a lot of tension into this. Whether it is irretrievably broken are not, i dont know. The Syrian Democratic forces in my view have demonstrated themselves to be very resilient in this. We thought in december, i thought in december that this was a breaking point for us. It wasnt. We managed to get through this. I thought when there was posturing and rhetoric related to earlier turkish intentions coming across the border, i thought this would be a breaking point. I thought when there was an incursion into africa, i thought this would be a breaking point and they werent. One of the things we learned is that our partners are very resilient. They dont have many options. Options. May be makes them more resilient , that they continue to do this. I do know that from my own experience there, that they felt very strongly. They had options. It was very Common Knowledge Syrian Democratic forces leadership talked to everybody in the country, whether it was the regime, russians, iranians, or us. They had options. Despite all of that, they kept coming back to us. I dont know if it is irretrievably broken or not. It does not look like it is moving in the right direction at this point from my perspective. I think where that leads them is with some very difficult choices moving forward here in terms of how they try to resolve this situation. The question was is there anything you think the u. S. Should do . I think the president was very clear in terms of that we did not support this Turkish Operation in here so perhaps the United States and other countries of the world should be very directly about this and about their concern with this. As we tried to cut john in our article, the Syrian Democratic forces provided to service the many countries in the world. Either sacrifice on the battlefield, by the fact that they have secured fighters and they have safeguarded their family members for a long time. And while there may be some assistance to be gained with this, they are bearing the responsibility for the world. So i am well aware of the interest here and turkey turkeys legitimate concerns about their own security but i think perhaps what could be done is that international communities, speaking more directly about their concerns on this and trying to limit what is being done and try to get another level where this could actually be discussed or addressed in another way out in military operation. Just so theres no confusion over what we all mean capability and capacity, i think the distinction is quite important and lies at the heart of this whole discussion. Capability is the ability to shoot straight and we had some successes as has mentioned with the cps. Whether its with the kurds, Lebanese Armed forces. The ability to do that on a consistent basis, so the way you test that is if you pull the plug on support, us support, whether they can do this on their own and the answer to that unfortunately is that most of them if not all of them cannot do this on their own area thats the challenge we all face here. Hey have to graduate at some point from u. S. Support, and this is what i think weve all been trying to discuss here in the senate. Questions over here. Yes, sir, right here. I represent the People Democratic party in the u. S. My question is for general votel. The study just issued a report in which one of the many recommendations was that in order to continue working with the stf and also sustain the Strategic Alliance with turkey, the us needed to invest more in trying to bring the pkk and the turkish Government Back to the negotiating table because we know that when this is happening between 2013 and 2015, the turkish government was meeting yrian kurdish officials in on, adjoining waikiki operations moved the shop from one place to another and so my question is, could and should the u. S. Work harder to bring the pkk, turkish Government Back to the negotiating table with a focus on we just had an opinion piece by one of the leaders of the pkk in the Washington Post in which he said that his movement is eady for this. Thanks. I think the answer is yes and it shouldnt just be the United States, should the other countries. That should be trying to help with this as well. Its not just in our interests but its in the interest of many countries here to try to resolve some of these longstanding tensions and trying to bring some level of stability so i think there are mechanisms out there that could be used whether its going through some of the iraqi groups that share a Good Relationship with turkey. And using that as a mechanism. I think its always better if we are talking and were getting to that. So i think yes, the United States, but i think others should be part of this as well. This is in the interest of more than just the United States for this issue to be resolved. In the back. Please. Thank you, joyce better with the national. My question is about the operation and how long you see t growing . Hy is it a bad idea . These casualties, do you see any lines fortification . So i dont know. I dont have any other independent source of information telling me how the campaign is going and how its proceeding. I think time will tell with this. I dont have any unique insights on this. Im seeing a lot of the same reporting that were all seeing and probably the same reporting that everybody is and its coming through the various Media Channels and other things. Though i dont know if we know exactly how this can play out. But to your other question, i think my response is this. That this area was relatively stable. And so interjecting now this level of conflict into it risks that stability. And again, i dont know that that contributes to the overall objective that is going on. There are a variety of things we ave attempted to do in working with our turkish allies here to try to resolve them. Many of you are familiar with this discussion of the socalled safe zone or security mechanisms as i refer to them which are designed to try to address the different interests in the area. This is a pretty complex problem. Turkey has very legitimate interests here about securing their own border and keeping their people safe. At the same time, the people of northeast syria have legitimate interests in terms of being stable and safe in their homes and being able to move forward with their lives and the us and u. S. Led coalition have valid interests in making sure that an organization like isis cant research. All were trying to do is with the security mechanism looking at how we can best address all those interests and create the very best situation we can and likely that is going to require compromise. No one is going to be completely 100 satisfied with the answer, but when you have these into different interests, i dont want to say theyre competing but there are different interests that are represented, it makes it very difficult to do that so i think what you have to do is you have to try to pursue things like security mechanisms. Maybe thats a joint Operations Center or patrol of surveillance. Getting some of the kurdish fighters and positions off the border. Eliminating some of that. That was all designed to do and in the end, that was not enough for the government of turkey. This is a very, very difficult ituation here. I think ken and dana both wanted to comment on the questions. I think the bigger question here is whether or not Turkish Operations actually set the conditions for the next cycle of conflict so theres a lot of questions here no entity, turkey nor the United States nor the stf can answer at this point in time. I think it was not just about whether isis gained a base to research in Northern Syria, its what happens to all the popup detention centers. All across area or Eastern Syria that are not right in the area that turkey has identified as its nearterm security objective but the stf will not have the capacity to continue to maintain custody as they shift north. Another one his refugees. If turkey as president erdogan has discussed moves refugees into this area that are not ethnically respect to their homes, what happens to all that property and those implications there . I highly doubt that assad and ran are going to sit on the sidelines while this goes on. So what happens there and what are the implications of that and i would say looking at assad, russia and iran, we know what it looks like and its pretty ugly. And at least to many more civilian casualties which then creates the next cycle of violence and we know isis is driving that violence. Point pick up on danas because she is absolutely right. When you look at these, its wars historically, these limited interventions dont work. They very, very rarely produce a positive outcome for the country trying it. The israelis magnificent military, how many times did intervene in lebanon to try to accomplish objectives . It doesnt work. What you find it over and over gain is it sucks them into the conflict and turkey has far greater political and Economic Issues israel. Israel is a very strong state thats able to withstand the negative externalities side of nterventions of lebanon. Its not at all clear that turkey under erdogan at this moment has anything like the same resilience so whatever the rationale in the short term, i gree with general votel. I can understand why from their perspective they feel the need to do this. When you take a Historical Perspective on civil war, weve seen this movie so many different times. The actors change, the ending doesnt. Yes. How does this turkish peration change and what would you recommend should be the priority of the United States government Going Forward in terms of conflict management . So unfortunately it looks like whats happening now means the recommendations were quickly hrown in the trash but what we consistently said is working bilaterally with turkey and then the us acting as a mediator and confidence builder to work with the sdf, to take steps that would address Turkish Security concerns was working at this point in time and forestalling the risk of a turkish incursion which a consensus as a group was as turkish incursion into Northern Syria at this point would give isis the opportunity to completely reconstitute. We already know even though its been out from a territorial perspective, its transitioned to an insurgency continuing to threaten local communities and those communities needed time to rebuild and with this operation the sdf would be focused on protecting their families and communities means we dont have are capable local partner on the ground giving up pressure on isis and at the same time the group argues the us military through the sdf in one third of syria was tremendous us leverage to affect the ultimate outcome of the underlying causes of conflict through a political process because there is no military solution here just a few weeks ago at the Un General Assembly there was an announcement of a breakthrough, to tune soon to tell whether its going to work but the formation of a Constitutional Committee under the un Security Council resolution 2254 talking about what the end of the syrian conflict would look like and it was diplomacy and mediation and if you have all the stakeholders in the conflict arguing at the table rather than battling out on the ground i would argue that is a good thing both for syrian civilians for the region and for u. S. National security interests. That 1 3 of syria the u. S. Controlled was tremendous leverage and now we dont have it. And we have most likely undermined whatever credibility we had left which the group found as we travel the region was severely damaged from the december 2018 announcement about the u. S. Drawing down its forces. Yes. I wanted to thank the panel for very somber and accurate assessment and its become even more somber. Our strategy calls for a global competition with russia and china and i like you to evaluate what were doing in terms of that global competition in the region. Putin seems to be everywhere, hes in saudi arabia now, 400 churches while the chinese do not have a military component, the chinese are also breaking deals in the uae, etc. But how would you grade americas strategic competition with russia and china in the region right now . You want to start off . Go ahead, ken. Give us like an f. Is there an fplus . Were not. And to me its striking. At one level i think back to thousand 10. And in the middle east nobody talks about russia in 2010. Russia wasnt a player in the middle east. We let them back in. There are now a major player in the middle east all over the place. And lets think a little bit about whats been going on right now in the gulf. Were the United States is as fast as we can backtracking from our commitments to allies that go back 45, 40 years, 75 years depending on when you want to date things. President trump has announced that the iranians can attack the gcc states all they like all iranians like as long as they dont attack us. Thats a fundamental betrayal of our Informal Alliance with the gc states in a fundamental the trail of the Carter Doctrine and what i would call the reagan corollary to the Carter Doctrine. They completely upended things. Its terrifying them. They are going to be looking for alternatives and i think they now the russians and chinese arent perfect alternatives to us. But they need somebody. And if were not going to get, they need to look for help wherever they can. Im old enough, i know youre old enough to remember in 1987 when the kuwaitis came to us and asked us if we like to escort heir ships and the initial response was no, we dont want to fight the iranians so what do the kuwaitis do . They asked the russians and the russians said yes before the kuwaitis could finish the sentence. Going to put our fleet into the persian gulf, the beating heart of the economy. Sign us up, how do we get there to mark and all of a sudden the Reagan Administration realized that wasnt such a great idea and ok, maybe we do need to take on the iranians. Were throwing that right out he window. Somebody else. Es, sir. You very much for your time. I dont know how would you describe u. S. Policy about the kurds and in your opinion, in your view, which kind of benefit could the president who made the decision to give the green light to this very safe area in syria, thank you. I think its fair to say that we got an issue without consistency here in terms of how were pproaching that, the kurds and particularly our partners in syria. And we certainly have been trying to approach this in a very direct manner. And have been citing partnerships with tactical and operational level. But i think the key piece here is perhaps we didnt have full alignment all the way up and down the chain and i think thats very critical to this. And you know, to put the decisions that the president has made, the policy shifts hes put in play, thats come front and center here. So i dont think theres any ther way of describing whether its inconsistent or incomplete. Its conflicted here in terms of that. So i think certainly in there are challenges with that. Yes, sir. What lessons should we draw about the protection of saudi rabia and us ability to even protect its own ships and assets in the gulf . Given irans Proven Ability to carry out an incredible stealth attack . I think there are several lessons here. [inaudible] first and foremost is the Technology Learning curve is turning much faster now. When you look at, in my life i wont take you through a lengthy discussion on this but i look at my own, our own development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and how that developed over the last 18 years essentially from 2001 to the urrent time. What we see is weve seen the iranians with their proxies, the houthis, or whoever that happens to be, taking advantage of the pace of technology thats out there and the learning its done and turning that much quicker. That i think is a very key thing for us to understand. That changes the dynamic in the region in terms of ability to protect ourselves or our partners, to protect themselves or the critical infrastructure. Certainly weve seen not just in increase in quantity but certainly quality of Iranian Missile systems over the last number of years and this has changed some of the fundamental assumptions about how we would operate in this area. Our ability to steam into the arabian gulf and conduct operations, that would be a false assumption at this point. Technology and these capabilities that iran has developed i think has changed the equation for us and they become again, i dont know. There hasnt been a Public Accounting for exactly what happened in terms of that and i dont have any particularly unique insights into that. It certainly highlights the level of savviness here in terms of how they are employing this and their studying and taking their time and looking for ways to do this. So i think it raises the stakes in the region. Highlights the role that technology is having in this and i think it also highlights that iran continues to push for redlines and trying to push up against us to find out what they can get away with trying to understand where it is and it brings us to the next level here. I think theres a variety of lessons that we can take out of that there are two issues id like to add on to what general votel said. The first one is these technologies are very difficult to protect against. My guess is that we would have a hard time coping with them. Theres the issue of a lot of the saudi assets were focused to the south but the truth is as general votel has said where drones are going, its very difficult for contemporary current day air defenses to deal with. These things are very small. They fly slow. They fly very low to the ground. They can follow terrain. Theyre very precise. Its why i think on a related point, four years ago i was saying to people we were having debate over the joint comprehensive plan of action and saying we were making you many Ballistic Missiles because they are surpassing the Ballistic Missile in terms of dangers there creating and we shouldnt get obsessed with the fact he Ballistic Missiles are not in the jcpoa. These things are difficult to deal with. Second belated point that pivots off something general votel aid, our defense of the goal gulf was never predicated on pure defense. It never has been. With the possible exception of the six months between august 1990 and february 1991, did i say weve never had the military forces in the gulf to stop any iranian attack. You know this well from your own work. The truth of the matter is that the saudi, the gulf infrastructure is so enormous, the gulf is so big iranians that always stopped past us. The real deterrent came from the expectations of american retaliation. Of an american response. And what really happened and the key thing to take away was the iranians did the attack because they saw the nonresponses in june and july. And they came away and clearly calculated that they maintain plausible deniability, that there was little likelihood that the u. S. Would respond this time, so they did an even bigger attack. They escalated it and weve done the exact same thing and my guess is the hardliners who are running the government in tehran on looking at saying were telling you these guys are a paper tiger. Theyre not going to respond and f youre not going to respond, were not defending the gulf. Thats my point which is, the opportunity to now rethink the deterrence architecture in the middle east. This is the Strategic Plan now. This entire episode. The reason why we have such a firepower is precisely to deter the fact that we went a couple of weeks ago and since we failed, clearly this is now ample time to rethink that. And its not just about how many forces you have or how much equipment you have, its also about intention and policy. All that is related. Come over here for this one. Hi. I am from the party foundation. I want to ask you a question and first of all, russia and iran and their former apprentices, when they were asked the question advise over to go ahead, be my guest. [inaudible] how do you assess that with ussia and china . And do they have the kind of systems that are more adapted to the needs . I guess my comment to the first part here of your question is where we pull back, where we choose not to partner with somebody, where we choose not to provide capabilities we should expect they will seek that from other people and thats the world, if were willing to except that was, were willing to accept that risk but i think thats the case. I dont think my experience, my observation in the region is this is where we pull back from people in terms of this. Where we have made it difficult to get system to them. And they have tried to fill those voids. Security cooperation, i know centcom is predisposed to using tools to gain access but Security Cooperation is about a lot of those things is not just about the equipment that they would get from the russians and chinese. Its about beating all those things to the russians and chinese and then it becomes a question of can we afford doing that in places like the eastern med or the lavage or in the gulf. If you are to effectively prosecute the global power competition which is the new marching orders in the pentagon is not just about equipment, its also the relationship, the access and overflight because exactly what the general said, step out, they will do the exact same thing. There is a perception issue and theres the actual implementation of the systems. For cooperation and to be clear, im not advocating that we change all these things vernight but our system is complicated. So ken first talked about we have to recognize what our partners want from us and not just superimpose our system on them. Part of it is that a china or russia doesnt try to change the hierarchy of military, etc. Human rights, conditionality. First of all, russia and china dont have parliaments, they dont have anything like our congress who exerts oversight. Theres no conditionality, no congressional requirement for a quality of military edge to make sure that whatever youre selling or training to others in the region is balanced against israel and israels security. Theres no concern from russia and china like we have about oversight to avoid corruption, who is staying off whom, etc. How you use the systems, russia and china also dont care so when we think about our competitive advantage, theres a whole system we created that sometimes makes us less competitive and that is something we have to balance but i will say for the study group, having traveled throughout the region, what is fascinating is how so many in the region believe the path to peace or what they want goes through moscow and then you have a conversation about what has moscow committed to you that they have delivered on and its always a blank stare. Theres nothing there, but the perception being even if us military equipment is the best, even if our military colleges, war colleges are the best and people still want to come here, even if our training is the best, even if our access to International Financial institutions and organizations is the best, the perception game right now is that youre better off looking to moscow or beijing. Let me add one more point to hat. Ive made friends in the persian gulf. Like going there. If someone else could be in the persian gulf and be ensuring a stable oil market, that would be fine. E dont have to do it. The problem is this. The russians want a high price of oil. We have fallen in love with shale. We think shale is the solution to everything. It is a ort term, fifthgrade understanding. Yes we dont import our oil from the gulf. Even though we never really did it was much less it was the entire international reliance n to that. 25 of the oil consumed in the world comes from the gulf. If you want to look look at the u. S. Energy administration forecast. Their expectation is by 2050 the. Ulf will go from 25 to 31 they expect our production to peak in the next decade or so and decline after that. We are not getting less dependent on gulf oil, we are getting more. The total consumption of oil is expected to go from 100 Million Barrels per day to 127 Million Barrels per day. The idea that we dont need to worry that the world will be less dependent on the persian gulf is absolutely wrong. The russians, they are not interested in having a stable oil market. They want the price to go up. Less aboutt care the internal affairs of these countries. They are perfectly glad to help their allies kill each other, kill their own people, etc. The chinese, theoretically, could take on our role. I hope someday they will, because they have the same interests we have in the gulf. The problem is, they dont act again. They dont understand what i just said to you. The way they interact with the middle east is often very pernicious in ways that dana described. They dont yet understand the importance how to do it. We remain irreplaceable, at least for now. What if we just walk away . Somebody is going to fill the vacuum. The russians isnt or chinese it will be the iranians. When we pull back it terrifies our allies. The argument around for at least a decade has been disproven again and again in the middle east. Our allies do not look into the abyss and say now we have to come back to the table and be peaceful. They attack each other. We see it over and over and over again. We are seeing it happen now. Has beenin the region to introduce stability by making it difficult for our adversaries to attack our allies, and reassuring our allies that they dont have to then for themselves, because when they do they lash out. That is our role to play and we have to play it for some time. We have come to the end of this session. Join me in thanking the panelists or their presentation. [applause] [indiscernible conversations] live friday on the cspan network at 10 00 a. M. Eastern arne duncan and john king discuss education policy in the 2020 election. 8 00 p. M. President trump is holding a Campaign Rally in lake charles, louisiana. Cspan2 at age 50 am the Family Research Council Holds its annual values voters summit in washington, d. C. Are mark speakers meadows. Am, 2020t eight 30 democratic president ial candidate Steve Bullock of montana speaks with the New Hampshire institute of politics and the politics and eggs breakfast. The house will be in order. For 40 years cspan has been providing america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the world. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you by your local cable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Justice Department Officials delivered a statement on the arrest and indictment of two men widely reported to be associated with rudy giuliani. The two sovietborn defendants were charged with funneling foreign money into u. S