The center for political and military power which promotes understanding of the Defense Strategy, policy and capabilities necessary to deter and defeat threat to the freedom, security and prosperity of americans and our allies. I should mention doctor kilcullen is a member of the board of advisors chaired by National Security advisor general hr mcmaster. See mpd experts work closely with the center and our center on cybertechnology innovation. Integrating all instruments of American Power to achieve Better Outcomes for americans and our allies , we are a source of Timely Research analysis and policy options for congress. Theadministration, the media and the wider National Security community. We take no corporate funding. This is one of the many events we host throughout the year andstfor more information we encourage you to visit our website. Today we invite all of you to join the conversation. We dont have a studio audience today. We are being cautious in response to health concerns. We are live tweeting so please feel free to put the questions there andthey will get to me. Im going to start with a brief introduction of our panelists, David Kilcullen and i meant to hold up his book so you can see it and you should go out and get yourself a copy. He is an authoritative force on guerrilla and unconventional warfare, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency with extensive experience over a 25 year career with the australian and us governments as an army officer, analyst and diplomat. He serves as professor of practice at Arizona State university and is ceo and president of courier applications group. A research and operations Firm Providing geopolitical analysis, fieldwork and related to support to government, reindustry and ngos. Kori schake is the director of foreign defense policy studies at the American Enterprise institute. Doctor schake was previously at the institute for strategic studies and she is distinguished experience in government working with the department of defense, state as well as the white house is National Security council. Ntbradley bowman s senior director of our center on military and political power and serves as National Security advisor to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committee and he has more than 40 years as amilitary officer. During that time he was both a blackhawk pilot and assistant professor at west point so lets getgoing. For those who havent read your book, explain briefly who are the dragons . Who are the snakes . This is a book about military adaptation by potential adversaries the end of the cold war and the title comes from jim wolseley who is president , clintons cia director. Not a chairman. Thank you for pointing that out and an incredibly prissy and guy. If you read his testimony when he was going through his confirmation hearing in 1993 he was asked the cold war just ended. What do you think will be the threat environment that America Needs to face in the postcold war. And he said weve slain a large dragon talking about the soviet union but now we find ourselves in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous and in many ways the dragon was easier to keep track of and he goes out on the layout detailed vision week states, failing nonstate actors which im calling thesnakes. And ngsuggests that near here state adversaries are going to be a big deal for the in the future which im calling dragons and what im suggesting that we had a period of about 30 years since his money where our adversaries have adapted and evil and im trying to trace the history of how that t happened and where they are now. If you look at whats happened since then your book suggests that you have the snakes but the dragons have come back. Were not talking about dragons now, were talking about russia. Vladimir putin has, his aspiration was not to be a member in Good Standing of the international community. That was not up top of his to do list. We wanted to makerussia a normal country and russia said normal by whose definition. So i think russia has specialized inplaying a pretty weak hand extremely well. Then you have china and for years on both sides of the aisle, republicans and democrats thought as they get , as the chinese get rich they are going to get moderate. Theyre going to be a strategic partner. Its not really communism anymore. Its not okay, they havent involved in that way and we were all wrong and thats another dragon challenging us. Im suggesting the dragons are back but in the preceding 25 years theyve learned from the snakes and they operate in a different way now. Kori, the Trump Administrations National Security strategy, im sure youve read it and thought about it. It talks about thedragons and snakes, doesnt use those terms. But it refers to those revisionist powers, the snakes which we call rogue powers as well as nonstate giovanni actors so the nss, National Security strategy is recognizing thosethreats. Is it essentially saying the same thing , that dave is saying . Its definitely going in the same direction dave is going and in a much less erudite way. One thing i see, that i would love for people to take away from the conversation both about the nss and about the book which i dont think we have really centered our conversation with , i dont mean on this panel, i think generally talk about american strategy. Both against snakes and against dragons is that are the wages of oursuccess. Great powers were driven to the edges of the conflict spectrum the cause we are so dominant and on bahai wrongs of the escalation ladder. So nobody thought they could win a war against the western militaries and thats why they were driven to the edges of the conflict spectrum moreover , i think the notion that russia and china are revisionist powers, they are rejections powers. Russia has determined it etcant be successful on so they rightly point out in the book they taken on a liminal strategy. Defined liminal because its not a word everybody uses all the time. Working on the margins. Theyre trying not to cross the threshold that would provoke direct confrontation confrontation and thats a smart marginal strategy. It indicates that we are actually still in their minds dodominant in the middle of the conflict spectrum so both in terms of what they are trying to achieve politically and how they judge their military opportunities , we should acknowledge that we start from a notion of the success of what we did e. Its just not going to be good enough and dave makes an argument really nicely in the book that our adversaries have been much more adaptive than we have been and we need to limber ourselves up in order to remain the rule center of our own fortune. Brad is the military guy, theres a tendency i think david alludes to and talks about it from the military to say lets do what we do well. We would really prefer that our enemies help us by challenging us in ways we are used too. L if they begin to challenge us in other ways that screws up all the plans we have and all the things, the weapons we are going todesign. Thats of course exactly what they want to do and part of daves point is our enemies are adapting and evil thing to use darwinian terms which we do and anthropological terms and we are not because we get on a track and we like to stay on it. As our adversaries are employing methods far beyond just military power, and our war colleges and advanced courses we talk a lot about that but in and sometimes our strategies are onedimensional and part of that is because our military is so effective but if you look at the way the russians and chinese are operating its clear that military power is necessary for that position and thats why i think cutting the state departments budget by 10 percent or cutting the budget is so shortsighted because if you talk to anyone who spends far more time in these places that i ever will, if you talk to war fighters they want those development and diplomatic experts beside them because they understand its a longterm sustainable political game that requires far more military power and aptitude in areas of diplomacy. One other thing which i think is a distinction between what dave argues for in the book and what the National Security strategy argues for which is the National Security strategy makes a narrow argument about National American first nationalism and for the kinds of challenges that dave rightly identifies in the book and that the nss rightly identifies, cooperation and pulling institutions and pulling allies along with us is a much stronger front with which to confront these challenges. Thats the failing, the 2 failings of the nss our first they are not carrying out their strategy because theyre not funding the nonmilitary owners of it and secondly the house a conceptual mistake that cooperative enterprises are diminishing to American Power instead of the fact that which i believe to be true that playing team sports is actually what we do well and being the captain of teams is what we, is our comparative advantage relative to any of our adversaries, dragons or snakes. [inaudible] often our allies are he portrayed in recent years as liabilities. On the contrary i view our allies as one of our great Strategic Assets and if you look at dave was there when we had 100,000 , 100,000 troops in afghanistan, unless we have another 9 11 we are probably not going to go there again because its not politically doable but what we can do is have 1000 troops in syria averaging Defense Forces who with our logistical air support defeated the isis caliphate. The American People need to understand the isis caliphate would still exist if it werent for our partners in syria or we would have to send the hundred first or 82nd with a lot of american casualties. Allies are a great great Strategic Asset then we cannot implement the Defense Strategy without ourallies if the combined powers are two great. I want todig in on this point. I happen to agree that our allies in say syria, the kurds, the arabs are working with we are a force multiplier. I dont understand why President Trump is taking great credit for this goldilocks solution , neither 100,000 troops or zero troops and where as you say diminishing the Islamic State but also by the way secondarily tertiary only working at bay this republic of iran which has its ambitions and russia which has its ambitions, all that being done with a small footprint of highly skilled troops that are in combat and probably upstanding but i want to say our other allies, when we talk about our allies and im going to get a lot of then angry at me, the germans are not contribute to the collective security the way they might be. Theyre not spending enough money and when they dotheir spending on benefits for retired soldiers rather than making sure their tanksare capable. The turks are the second biggest military and nato and i dont see them coming in to defend estonia. I cant imagine that. Thefrench have some capabilities , its not nato but theyllhave capabilities, the british some and thats about it. The rest of the nato members, i dont see them being allies that we can count on. They expect us to protect them with very little input from us. I think its good to criticize that which i do in the book for being too unwieldy and too threatening to russia and yet at the same time being too disorganized to generate a unified effect in the places that count. Its interesting to see how the european version within nato has in fact started to spend more in the last 2 or 3 years. Trump has made the set same comments the last three or four president s have made. Its just less diplomatic. In a stylistically unusual way and that had an effect. Have the effect was russias invasion of crimea. [inaudible] actually you do. Despite crimea the germans are or going out more extreme to which i believe, this administration believes and maybe you dont will make germany and america more dependent on russia than ever but he said his freedom gas Program People are paying attention to which is about weaning some parts of europe off russian natural gas and i think thats a critical. And i thought allies more broadly people would say your a Great Coalition partner and id say were not a Great Coalition partner, where a treaty ally. Theres a difference between allies by treaty who are committed to certain requirements and then theres people that you aggregates on the ground and one of the points i make in the book is that us dominance poses an adaptation challenge not just for our adversaries but also for our allies so o theyve chosen to focus on certain capabilities and want to keep up with the United States but they have sort of let other capabilities slide by the wayside. Kori can tell you better than i the british had tried to cover a wider band of things that keep up but theyve got less resources for each individual category so part of this, thats why i say how the rest learned to fight the west. We have to start thinking is a collection of western powers, as a joint set of capabilities rather than individually competing. One more point i want you to talk about is your not talking only about our military allies, youre talking about when we have a battlefield success, we need to have a way to translate that into a political success afterwardswe have not been very successful at that. The question is who does that . If its left to the military will try whatever their mission is. I remember being in afghanistan and have generals talk about the crops they should be planting and i said why is an infantry officer telling me that and he said because i want to win and thats my mission but what do we have at the state department, us aig, the National Endowment for democracy . Do we have people who know not so much a nation build in the ends were creating a jeffersonian Democratic Society at least inputting the institutions ofgovernment so that its not , so that its not a total failure, corrupt and a failed state the minute we leave. Is a good challenge and my having worked in both the state department and pentagon i was shocked at how little advantage the state personnel system makes of the amendments. If you think about the american army, no offense bradley, mostly what they are brilliant at is taking talent at the middle of the bell curve andshifting the bell curve upwards. So they look for young women who have the skills that would make her a good soldier. A recruiter. They train her. They spent about a third of their Career Training her and promote her not just on what she has done well to contribute broader challenges going forward. The state department does none of those things. You have brilliant american diplomats. Bill burns for example. They are people you can throw into the deep p end of the pool and they wont drown but nobody ever teaches themto swim. So the institution doesnt array itself to set diplomats up to be successful. I cringe every time he argues for a whole of government anything in the United States because we are politically incapableof that. We have a government designed not to do that. What we are brilliant at is swarms of independent action that add up to stuff. And instead of trying to make us culturally different than we are and we are successful for a reason and the reason isnt the ability to create wholeof government operations. Its to build a better mousetrap entrepreneurialism and we should have strategies as they learn that build on that. Want you to answer me quickly thbut im serious, if president obama had not pulled all our troops out of iraq in 2011, if we had stayed there building the largest embassy in the world and we had worked harder with the iraqis on, im not going to say nationbuilding. Im going to call it building institutions. They were proud, would we be in a different place in iraq today with the state to broker among the various factions and we had put more effort into trying to create institutions of government and bureaucracy . Yes. Do you agree with that . I was there supporting in the center and the Service Committee when people like john mccain were warning the Obama Administration not to do it and its exactly what ended up happening red after 9 11 you think are country wouldnt need a reminder. It happened again when we left early in iraq and its going to happen again in afghanistan if we dont learn the lesson. I was not a fan of going into iraq in the first place. I was not a fan of leaving as we did in 2011. If we hadnt done thatthere probably would not have been assets in the form we have found, we wouldnt have had to go back in. This is part of that statement, the Trump Administration maybe about to make the identical mistake in afghanistan and syria. I want to come back to that but i dont want to miss what were going through. Dont let me forget to come back to that. I want to start with, im going to name them because i like the names and i like to be able to say themon the air so were going to r. Start. Start with just explain your option, embracing the sox. Embracing the sox is military slang but accepting the fact that something unpleasant is going to happen and trying to make the most of it soso in embracing the sox strategy would be to say eto the extent that the us global fantasy over the past seven years as an example of a historical phenomenon of an going to decline. Ther empire we just have to deal with that and go for a soft landing but keep up success that can take the reins from us and i suggest in the book thatsnot going to work. You also suggest that president obama favored such managed decline and paradoxically you writeit may take trump to execute the obama strategy. Despite all the partisan rhetoric in their strategic positioning President Trump and president obama are a lot more similar to each other than either would like to hear but i do think the problem is for a strategy of handing over to a successor to work, that successor has to be interested in doing that. Be, capable of doing that and friendly enough to ask that it wouldnt suck for that to happen. The chinese dont want to do it, the russians cant do it, neither of them are friendly enough to trust them and its not a good solution. Ill comment but i think some basic ambiguity if not contradiction in President Trumps thinking because on the one hand he wants america to be great. On the other hand any president whose job is managed decline is not making america greatagain. Youre trying to make america denmark at best. I think what the president wants is the United States to get credit without doing the work. And thats the key to a failing strategy. My whole career i have looked for better allies and nato allies. I would love to trade the nato allies or a better set of American Allies. Unfortunately i cannot find a better set of American Allies and that leaves you the choice as did the United States organize everybody . Line everybody up, challenge everybody to do better than they do. Le shame everybody into doing more than they do or do we step back in the hopes that others will step forward and i think thats rightly outlined the problem. The people who step forward t are not going to do it on the terms we are going to want them to do it on and it is so much less expensive to stay in a largely beneficial environment than to have to reestablish it. We havent said anything about the timeline but its worth noting one reason why you are stepping up more effectively in response to President Trump. Previous president s is that previous president s have given mixed messages. Have said you guys need to do more. We will always bethere for you and we will always do whatever it takes. President trump has said you guys need to do more and if you dont for i will not be there and everyone has said thats a good point. So theres maybe a conflicting note but theres a nuance and the subtlety to the way this president pursues Foreign Policy which i think he always doesnt get credit for. A quick comment in nato, the fundamental purpose of nato is to deter russian it invasion of our allies. As codified in article 5 of thetreaty. I understand the desire to try to get our nato allies to do more, particularly germany but the big mistake of a president was to tie the effort to article 5 because by suggesting america wont be there to honor our collective defense responsibilities your inviting the very thing nato is designed to prevent reedit urine courage in russia to do in the baltics thing that will be more costly than maintaining brigades in europe. Ash carter, go back three or four or five you said you need to pay more. I agreed maybe harder state was necessary but implying we wouldnt honor our deal was shortsighted andcontrary to the congressionally mandated friday. Commissioner mcmaster expressed theseconcerns. I agree with that but i understand why President Trump did what he did and i think i liken this to i dont know how their history knowledge is but in 2014 Kaiser Wilhelm gave a blank check to the austrohungarian dragged the world into world war i and i think its worth taking about how do we not make it a blank check but on the other hand dont do what brett suggesting and encourage what we are trying to prevent my making it a dead letter. Something in between is some more of acomplex strategy. Its a fundamentally defensive, if germany invades russia, i dont think anybody believes nato allies would back germany up on that. So its a fundamentally defensive commitment each makes to each other and so you dont have to worry about it developing off in the way the blank check. As ive heard President Trump say some variant of this , estonia was 23 percent russia or the area in the balkans. 100 percent estonian and also 100 percent of estonians many of them areethnic russians. But his point i think is why would portugal, france and germany go to war to say this tiny little area in estonia . Im not defending hispoint of view, im saying its got to be somewhere between blank check and dead letter. And i also want to make the point that notion of the russians doing a tank on tank invasion of eastern europe, as i lay out stin the book is highly unlikely. Whats much more likely is whats happening right now which is a liminal warfare strategy where military activity is specifically being targeted to undermine the political unity of nato and thats the real issue. Your advancing that cause by suggesting that portugal shouldnt come. Im just quoting President Trumps point of view, im not saying thats necessarily the right attitude. Im trying to interpret what it is that striving himto talk to the way hes talking. I dont think hes putins puppet, thats a stupid idea but i think that he is trying to achieve some kind of a double messaging strategy. One other point to make is that as we think about russias relationship with nato and think about it as a political competition underpinned by military and economic means, its worth pointing out russia as the economy of greece. Its almost entirely oil and gas area and their economy has serious problems. European groups within nato dramatically outstrips russia on defense as a collective, they just dont act in an organized fashion. Thats one of the critical differences. So again, as these guys are saying its about organizing and aggregating artifact rather than operating a kind of liminal fashion. In daves book he has a section where he talks about Traditional Russian frontier craft and i like that because he talks about how its the longstanding policy of russia and the soviet union to stoke separatism and create pretext for interference, do destabilize and subvert neighbors sovereignty as a means of subverting control and sometimes people like to blame nato expansion open door policy for putin, as you say on page 133 goal in 1999 was to reassert russian dominance and the whole idea of the opendoor policy is if the Democratic People they had the right to choose with whom they want to associate, who did once a sphere of influence that we respect the right of countries who may associate but nato by no reasonable definition can we say there a threat to russia and anyone who wants to put russia to blame for putins policies i just dont think it withstand the test. This is about understanding russian motivation and im putting that point, hes a russian expert in london and he makes the point that in russian history, they russia is safe if it has a soldier standing on bothsides. And while were talking nato i wanted independence of nato dimension that nato organization has been really focusing on another article of the north atlantic 38 of that people dont spend much time on which is article 3 that requires self help, nations to be more resilient, focused on natos identified seven baseline requirements that everyone Work Together on to defend against. I think thats an important element of what nato is trying to do to internal resilience against this sort of disruption that brad encourages. Another view on embrace the sox. Option 2 is doubling down. Inviting to win we do what it takes s and we defeat them, theres nothing we cant defeat so thats what we do, go ahead. The argument in doubling down is sort of that but its narrower. Keep on doing what were doing now, just do it harder so we spend moremoney, get more aircraft carriers and fifthgeneration fighters. Existing dominance in a narrowly defined form of conventional warfare and i argue probably not going to work while i agree with kori about the asymmetry and liminal strategy the point i make in particular with respect to china is that these guys are pursuing a combination strategy, not a purely asymmetric strategy so china has built an entire new class of antishipping Ballistic Missiles that can knock out a carrier and see up to 2500 miles awayon the move so why are they still building carriers . Its cheaper and quicker to build antiship Ballistic Missiles or submarines and to build carriers. I suggest in the book their building carriers to keep us focused on carriers in order to keep us soaking up a lot of expense in our traditional areas of dominance while simultaneously building ways to strike from the side and thats laid out in the chinese strategic documents so its worth remembering that doubling down means doing more of what we are doing now. Im suggesting we cant get out of the business of doing conventional warfare enemies would move into that space. Weve got to do more thats different as opposed to more thats the same. I agree with that. Charles oreilly, the chair of Institutional Innovation at the Stanford Business school as a good book called winning through innovation where he talks about why is that successful businesses cant innovate . It seems to me extremely applicable to the challenges that western militaries are facing now which is that when you are successful, its sort of doles the hunger for disruption. Because its hard to let go of 11 aircraft carriers if thats the way you have imagined. Exactly right. Us and gunfire aboard ships, that the example charles uses. My favorite military strategy is 19th century american soldier by the name of mackenzie was successful on the indian frontier and again and again on the innovation with what our adversaries doing right . And then how do we blunts the effect of their success i doing Different Things gright . And i think dave makes a very powerful case in the book that weve gotten done and lazy because we are so successful and we are simply being out ainnovative. In basic ways that we need to up our game and we are actually culturally advantaged in this regard as a society. I make a similar argument to what corey is making through deductive biology, that we are the apex predator and we become fat, lazy and slow and at the riskof starting another fire , on the one hand russes book thats out now about stagnation is good in terms of talking about how we may be impacting the very victims of our success and the army guy who nailed this in his book is widely misinterpreted was Francis Fukuyama when he wrote about what happens now . A lot of people have chosen to critique him forsomething he didnt actually say. His point was we are the apex predator now in my words. Where do we go from here which is what you are saying. The other thing i think frank gets right in the end of history that people dont properly credit him for is that the challenge will be boredom, dissipation and as sort of lazy satisfaction. Brave new world. And that is what we in free societies have indulged ourselves in. The one place im more optimistic i think then you are in the book is that free societies also have a regenerative capacity that i dont think you give us quite enough credit for and that too is an enormous advantage compared to the adversaries we are facing. If the government posits an authoritarian position where it needs to control anything that anything that goes wrong is the governments fault and were seeing this with the coronavirus. When you have a more open laissezfaire society yourea lot more resilient in many ways. A quick comment they talks about how some of the great military reforms come after defeats or when theyre under pressure trying to do right now the largest restructuring in 40 years but yet we have prepared for an adversary we who has not yet defeated us so that helps politically to sell that on capitol hill. If we have to help the American People and our leaders in congress understand that it would be better to reform now and wait until the defeat happens. Rlooks like your third option which i at least for. Youretrying to start a conversation. Youve cited the least of the options you call going into business. I still make the point in the book that it still might not work. So i do my analogy on the history of the byzantium empire and we regard them as different from the romans they refer to themselves as romans and the roman empire collapsed in fourth century a. D. But that sustained itself for another 1100 years until the 29th when the ottoman caliphate conquered and occupied constantinople and i askedthe question how did they do that . Theres a number of one, they selectively learned from their enemies, figuring out what our adversaries ardoing that is right all what is doing we would never in 1 million years to for extraordinarylegal reasons that they shortlist. Secondly they really focused on not going into large wars of occupation outside their core territory alike the romans did instead of trying to occupy and govern forces that could move from threatened frontier to friends frontier as required. They had large groups of local allies, so local allies, military forces that are agile. They had certain core niche advanced technologies that they were able to acquire that were more capable than their adversaries. They had a very strong focus on domestic resiliency and having an efficient and effective governance, educational system at home as a way of creating the resiliency from which to power project and then they were not shy about stepping back, letting things fall over and acting later to reestablish so it made a much more flexible strategy that was optimized for longevity. The russian empire in central asia at various times was optimized for expansion. That was true of the roman empire, the byzantiums were going for longevity and they achieved it so its worth thinking about that. I say it will might t not work but what it might do is buy time for the Global Environment to shift so i think its not a solution but its almost a holding strategy. Brad, do you want tostart off and then kori . I was going to say if the time horizon is centuries and millennia empires will fade or die but if you take a slightly shorter time horizon , its an interesting thought experiment to put ourselves in constantinople in 500 80. They didnt know they were going to last for another millennia. They might have worried they would fall in 50 years but they put together a set of strategies and procedures, Office Strategies that allow them to last a long time so i studied under paul kennedy in grad school and i am reminded of the rise and fall of great powers and im old enough to remember all the consternation about japan and how america was done though i would respectfully challenge the premise of inevitable decline. Over millennia, yes but im not convinced we dont have several more centuries here but it depends on the decisions we make and i think those decisions have to be informed by a couple of things read lets remember we cant trade who we are for security because once we do that we will have neither our freedom or principles or security and we need fiscal sustainability. Going to be spending more on National Defense and we have to understand that you are more than department of defense and we need to remember the value of allies area and not convinced going g to see an american decline. I proselytized that question so its a stark contrast for a read zakarias view. He says look, decline is inevitable, everyone declines, were going to decline so that the environment. With Jonah Goldberg version in suicide of the west where he says decline is a choice. And i think i dont know the answer to which of those two things is the case. I do think itdepends on timeline as brett says but certainly even if decline might eventually come about , theres ways to extend that period of primacy without sort of ferreting the dominance away. You dont have to agree that for read zakarias view of the rise of the west which he says is thrilling because theyre going to be for all kinds of, he was wrong in that. Hes seeing in the rise of the west wonderful examples that wouldnt we like to be like that . It isnthappening that way. Its worth happening he said that in 2008. I made a mistake when i said the rise of the west is thrilling. An element that for me which is all of these together is that type of governance really matters. And you allude to this, you say it in the book. I would just bang a hammer down on that again and again. Because while it is certainly true that democratic states fight more wars than other types of countries, they fight wars about expanding the base of freedomand that sdoes in fact make the International Order more stable , safer for free people and the way to choose when and how you two leasing frontier or going out when the opportunity presented to help people and secure their own freedom. And that is the thrilling rise of the rest of it because theyre not freedom. China getting stronger while its this regressive is an actual danger to us but a china where moms can have a baby not and achieve something besides prison sentences, thats a strong powerful china week and deal with. But we dont have it evolving. Its actually becoming more Likehong Kong rather than hong kong being digested. Let me just argue on his behalf. Or you could just not defend him. I think you mentioned india, its a different continent but i fthink one of the key players is charisma was india. The Worlds Largest democracy anda potential longterm strategic ally of the west. I think if you add india into the next picture is a little more positive. India is trending authoritarian right now in dangerous way because they are allowing the corrosion of the things that make free societies resilient societies. Although its a parliamentary system so they will have a peaceful change of power at some point and they will have a new president and new prime minister. Thats the point of democracy. It has the ability to generate pics andstones problems. I can delay this, we agree in syria the us military is doing good work keeping down bad guys and should continue to do that at coleast while President Trump wants to cut and run, at least for now its a good thing. We all agreed. Now lets get to afghanistan and talk about that because there are a couple of things. There is a peace plan, i put that in quotes and i want n to get your thoughts on that. Theres some disagreement, i dont think the peace plan is a good plan. I dont think its a good idea what were doing but on the other hand there are worse ideas going from 13,000 troops to 600 troops for the next year. The question is there are those on the right and the left, they can call themselvesnot isolationists but restrainers say we should give up on afghanistan. If they cant defend themselves after all this time then let the taliban and take over. Its no skin off our nose. On the other hand we should say you let the taliban after 18 years defeat the us military watch how supercharged the hotties and other enemies are now that they know america is that willing to go. Once they know how to drive us out of one battlefield they will use the same methods and learn and drive us out of anyplace else and there are those who would say thats fine but weve got to oceans, lets get between them, put up some walls and borders and let the rest of the world go to hell discuss. Let me start. I have my applause very firmly in check for this particular piece deal. On the one hand you knew 2 rival afghangovernments. The Afghan Government was not involved in the discussions. It it didnt sign up for the things we are trying to get the afghans to do. More importantly, more than a decade ago when i worked for stanley crystal in kabul part of my job was talking to people that were protaliban and the negotiating position element having to identical to the position weagreed to 11 years later. They havent shifted. Theyve been saying no longer h have a relationship with al qaeda so im skeptical about that. They said they will not allow their territory to be used to carry out attacks on anyone else. They want us toleave and deal with the government after we are gone. I think that we could and should push for a better deal. Obviously there will eventually need to be a political deal but i think were dealing from a position of weakness rather than a position of strength and the other point id say and i dont want this to come off as harsh but from a financial and military standpoint we the United States can keep doing what were doing in afghanistan literally forever. We lose a couple of dozen people every year which is horrible and its bad for their families and for their communities but it doesnt destroy our ability to continue the operation. We lose that many people in car accidents. Whats problematic in afghanistan is not our losses for the money we spend, its the Afghan Governments losses. Theyve lost 45,000 people in the last five years. Got to figure out how to give them the support that they need and i would argue its aviation, intelligence, ethical support, maintenance, things that are relatively noncombat focused and ironically having a slightly Smaller Special forces and a larger conventional force and i think we need to focus on making them sustainable so that they can negotiate from a position of strength with o the taliban. This is a hard call for me. I am sympathetic for the argument, to the arguments that 18 years of time and effort producing this little change maybe our effort would be betterspent in other places. Both at home and abroad where we can foster the kind of resilience that daves strategy argues for area what , and i also agree with all of the analysis dave just outlined. What puts me on the margin in favor of remaining in afghanistan is the moral argument. That is that we created this circumstance that exists now in afghanistan. Both the hope for a better kind of afghanistan and afghanistan where individuals have rights and their own in limited ways to governments. I also think that we are responsible for encouraging wave after wave of afghans to come into the Security Forces, to try and createthat. We bear culpability for those 45,000 dead afghan National Security forces because we helpedpersuade them this could be a different kind of place. And it grieves me to think that we will hand afghanistan back over to the harsh reality of the caliban control. And so on the margin, i am in favor of continuing in strategy that i do believe will eventually be successful and that we havent prosecuted with anywhere near the kind of creativity or attention that we ought to reprosecuting. Goahead. Its deeply frustrating that after so much time we have not seen better results. After so many afghans and americans have given their lives and so many of our allies read more than 1000 area europe was it not attacked on 9 11 we were and they invoked article 5. They stood with us at our side shoulder to shoulder fought more than 1000 nato servicemembers did not go home, those would have been americans so talk about a tangible value of reliance but its frustrating we have not seen more progress over this time but in strategy i think you begin with the end, you begin with the objective and the objective is to prevent another 9 11 from being launched on our homeland and i think the burden of proof is on anyone who says we can withdraw and not see that happen and the response is we have safe havens around the world, yes but theres something unique about the afghanistan pakistan region thats not a theoretical argument and its not easily accessed, its landlocked. Theres a lot of bad, a large number of the worlds terrorist organizations find their homes right there so i think we have 486,000 active orders in the us army and if im maintaining 5 to 8000 out of 486,000 active duty in afghanistan for the foreseeable future if we need to do to prevent another 911 on new york, washington with weapons of mass destruction thats a reasonable investment. What servicemembers everyone knows we should leap over but also leap over people who died on 9 11 and making sure that doesnt happen either. Two reasons why strategically you might want to leave an occupation force and occupation or a lengthy period of time. When youre talking13,000, 8000, this is an occupation. We are fighting this war for 18 years, 13,000, thats not fighting a war. This is a force that advises and assists. Its been counterterrorism and Security Force assistance. But i was going to say, leaving aside the occupation force, however you want to define it that gets a visceral reaction with the audience. 2 reasons why you something and the other is to prevent something and the critique about afghanistan is what are we achieving . Brads argument is what are we preventing. If you want an example of f something thats worked to do that the example is correia. When he thousand 500 troops in south korea for going on 50 years not the nation build north korea but to prevent a war in the Korean Peninsula and its worked and the nation hasnt built in south korea. Even if it hadnt been it still would have been a valid use of that force and were talking about a dramatically smaller force. We are better for the circumstances that we saw in 2001 and we need to preserve that. Another example, i realized nationbuilding is r out of fashion but there is the example of Northern Iraq after the 1991 war where the United States is created a safe zone that we invited reconstruction for providing longterm security there and grow a generation of political leaders among iraqis in northern, in the northern parts. Curtis stands specifically. When i worked on the middle east in 1990 wordswere killing each other at wedding parties and now it is the safest , most stable part of the country most aligned to the values we want for the entirety of the region. So if you actually pay attention, care about it and do it in a sustained way and thatsthe problem with President Trump. Continued melodrama about immediate withdrawal from syria or iraq or afghanistan. It drives the cost up of achieving the stability that its in our interests to achieve. This probably will be the last question but a big part of this it seems to me as we have this view that war is something that should be declared and there should be an ending and a victory parade and maybe a sword and im not sure that ever existed but if it did its nostalgic and wonderful but thats notthe real world we live in. Is being put so beautifully in the way. Ii make 2 points. One is when youre dealing with snakes, youdont get a victory parade. This takes a long time. The classic counterinsurgency example is the malaysia emergency which came to an end in 1960. Outcomes. Its that the nation hasnt figured out how to translate mmilitary power into a set of economic and political outcomes and thats where we are. Its a broad and national public. We would hope the u. N. Would be helpful in a about to say its not. On that. To be clear i suspect in the coming months we will here live of the term endless wars and dave and i were talking yesterday and you quoted leon and said you may not be interested in war but war is interested in you and you write in your book we confuse sometimes leading to conflict as the same thing. Its like in a boxing ring you can put on your hands and you might get clocked or the fighter might follow you home and we have seen that before in 9 11. To my friends on the centerright who say you have to withdraw from the middle east to focus o on china by counter inse the number one way china strategy will faill is if you have another 9 11 in a major ground war in the middle east. The focus finite resources on china is to be smarterna than te middle east in syria that the president tried to end. You are talking no permanent victories and only permit battles. We are talking worse like the cold war which was a forever war untilol it ended than thats the reality that a lot of people felt. Longterm commercial into depth ability and evolve when thee atmosphere evolves thats the sort of stuff we need to be focusing on that this is fairly how do i get to the ticker tape parade. A great place to end. This book is to get a better debate going on how free societies remain free and i think we have done that. You have done a wonderful job on that for one hour. The conversation will go on. Please to be with you and thanks to our panel. Im cliff may. Good day. Thank you. Thank you. You are watching a special edition of booktv airing during the weeklong members of congress are in their homes due to the coronavirus. ss. Host congratulations Peggy Orenstein on the release of your book boys and sex. I want to begin a conversation with an adjusting things that i kept coming back around to that in your book which i think makes a lot of this historical moment and a lot of can contradictions we have. And your research it seems that the young men you talk to has at least the beginnings of an understanding of the changing Politics Around sex and gender and a lot of them even go so far as to offer their pronouns and they talk about feminist concepts as consend