Transcripts For CSPAN2 Robert Gates Exercise Of Power 20240712

Good morning and welcome to this Commonwealth Club online program. I am Gloria Duffey president and ceo of the Commonwealth Fund and was honored to serve as the Deputy Assistant secretary of defense in the 1990s. Peer are many issues today surrounding National Defense in our military and to the military be used to quell domestic unrest such as the recent protests and should the u. S. Be terminating many of our arms control treaties and contemplating resuming nuclear testing. Should the names of Confederate Military leaders be removed from u. S. Military bases and their statues be removed from our public places. To address these questions and many more today we will have a unique conversation between two recent secretary of defense, doctor robert gates and general james mattis. The bipartisan secretary of defense secretary robert gates served under president george w. Bush and barack obama. He is the author of a new book exercise of power american failures, successes and a new path forward in the postcold war world. Doctor gates was an officer in the u. S. Air force and spent 27 years at the cia. He served as cia director and became the first career officer in the cia history to move from entry level employee to head of the agency. Secretary gates served as the member of the National Security Council Staff in four different administrations and 48 president s of both Political Parties. For his numerous contributions secretary gates was awarded the president ial medal of freedom, the nations highest civilian award by president obama. He is also a threetime recipient of the distinguished intelligence medal on the of the cia most prestigious honors. In conversation with him today is general james mattis, general mattis served as our 26 secretary of defense from 20172019. He is now the distinguished fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution and general mattis served over 40 years in the marine corps starting as an infantry officer. He later served as commander of u. S. Joint forces command and as nato supreme allied commander for transformation. General mattis also tracked the motor operations of more than 200,000 soldiers from the airmen, coast guard men and marines and allied forces across the middle east as commander of the u. S. Central command. He commanded forces in the persian gulf war, the war in afghanistan and the iraq war. He is been outspoken recently about the president s to use of military unrest in washington. Join me in welcoming doctor robert gates and general James Madison for this very unique conversation. Thank you, doctor duffey. It is a pleasure to be here with the Commonwealth Club and it has been devoted to fighting proof and setting and loose for over 100 years. We all recognize that doctor gates flew grew into the leadership role with known what mr. Gates is my former boss, predecessor and office of an inspiring role model and was likened in one recent review is the rear foot soldier who rises high command. Secretary gates, and reading your book, one i would be reassured were required reading for president s and cabinet officers when they come into office, i was struck by you attributing a large part of americas 25 year decline in status, and prestige to the failure of postcold war president and congress is to recognize, resource and effectively use what we call our arsenal of nonmilitary instruments of power. Can you explain this fundamental failure and the significance of the title that you chose for your book . First of all, thank you jim. And i think the Commonwealth Club for inviting me. The germ of the book really began with a question in my mind of how the United States had gone from a position of supreme power, probably unrivaled since the roman empire in every dimension of power in 1993 to a country today beset by challenges everywhere. I thought about how did that happen and how did we get here and so i began looking at all of the major Foreign Policy challenges we have had since 1993 and thinking about what we had done and what we had not done that contributed to that decline in the role in world and our power in the world. What i came up with was a non military instruments of power that we had played such an Important Role in our success in the cold war against our soviet union and largely been neglected and withered after the end of the cold war. It was at a time when we continue to fund our military, we basically dismantled all that nonmilitary sources of power from diplomacy to economic leverage to Strategic Communications and more and we can go into that later. As i looked at the situation at these challenges from somalia and haiti in 1993 right up to our relationship with russia and china and north korea and it occurred to me that we had failed in many respects to figure out how to compete with these powers outside of the military realm and so, the reality is of the 15 challenges that i write about for all practical purposes i considered 13 to be failures and thats why in the title there are a couple of successes and important successes and lessons to be learned from those as well. But we had a lot of problems during that 27 year period and i would just include by saying the wars in iraq and afghanistan both began with very quick military victories and the problem that identified whether it was iraq and afghanistan or somalia or haiti or others was that once we had achieved military victory we then changed our mission we then decided to move to trying to bring democracy and reform to governments of those countries and that is where we ran into failure. Secretary gates, i would like to delve more deeply into what you just mentioned the symphony of power and i took a few notes from your book but you could give a brief overview of what youre referring to and where they might be more applicable or most likely that the use Military Form of power and if they are not played why are they not played . Historically what are these and what do you look to to bring on into the forefront here . The two primarily course of instruments of power are obviously the military, but i would also say cyber. In my opinion cyber has actually become the most effective weapon that a nation can have because it can accomplish military, political and economic harm to ones adversary. It is difficult to identify who perpetrated the attack as Cyber Attacks and it takes time to figure out attribution and the more damage that was done the more important it is stored in a fight i exactly where the ones and zeros came from and so cyber is a huge player now in a way that it has never been before and it can dismantle or disarm weapons and it can redirect weapons and they can shut down infrastructure in concrete so its a very versatile weapon and it doesnt take the kind of enormous expenditure of dollars or a money that a Nuclear Enterprise or even a chemical or biological threat would represent so i think cyber is a very important one and weve been pretty good about developing this for our military purposes that i think we have not taken advantage of in an offense of way with respect to either political or economic targets. Another important instrument is clearly economic measures and these can be both carrots and sticks. The truth is as i make the point in the book that we develop the stick part of the economic instrument pretty well and we levied sanctions on any country that looks at us cross eyed and it is become very, gated for a lot of companies because we got so many sanctions against so many countries the green out how to do business internationally stay within u. S. Laws to become a fulltime enterprise for accountants in these companies. So weve got the stick part of it down pretty well. Embargoes, tariffs, sanctions and so on. Where we have fallen down and where we once had real capability is how do we use economic assistance or our economy as an asset and as a caret to encourage them to induce other countries to do what we would like them to do or follow policy and what we would like for them to follow, whether its loans at discounts or whether economic concessions, trade concessions and so on and we are very good, as i said at sanctions, but not so hot it figured out how we might advantage someone in dealing with us. President clinton and president bush both were pretty good with africa when they arranged debt relief are a number of african countries back in the 1990s and early to thousands and that really helped a lot of african countries but that is a rare example of us using economic measures as an instrument of power. Strategic communications or as we used to call it the cold war propaganda and how to get our message around the world and the chinese have developed this to an extraordinary degree. Several years ago power devoted allocated 7 million for the chinese to build a Strategic Communication network around the world and we, on the other hand, in 1998 dismantled the United States Information Agency and talked what we call Public Diplomacy into a corner of the state department and very elements of our government do strategic medications but there is no coherent strategy and each goes its own way and we also lack capability and rage that the chinese half. There are a variety of other instruments jim that i was just briefly mention things like intelligence and how we use it in other countries, science and technology, higher education, our culture and the use of nationalism as we watch russia and china interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and we have failed to use their own national nationalistic feeling to help build resistance what the chinese and russians and others are doing and religion is an important instrument. We have not thought about it in that way but religion has played a big part in international affairs, particularly since the end of the cold war and all you have to do is look at the role of religion in motivating terrorists to see that it has real power. There are a dozen or more of these instruments and the problem is we have neither resourced them nor have we figured out a Cohesive Strategy or coherent strategy on how to bring them together as i call it in the book in a symphony where they played together and each strengthens the other and overall strengthens the hand of the United States in dealing with the rest of the world. Why havent we enlisted these other instruments and symphony of power in america has the power of intimidation if we are threatened. Obviously, we are in an imperfect world and we need the military and cia but why have we summoned the instruments of inspiration that are so strong in america and what is the reluctance for us to use nonmilitary strategy . It is a tough question to answer. I think part of it is that the congress has been reluctant to fund these nonmilitary instruments really going back to the end of the cold war and it was congress that disestablished usia and it was congress that wanted the disestablish the agency for International Development and president clinton stop that but brought diminished usaid by bringing it under the state Department Rather than as an independent agency in the congress has not funded the state department properly and the state department has been starved of resources except for a couple of brief times during the george w. Bush administration when there was an increase in the number of Foreign Service officers though there has been a reluctance on the part of congress to fund but congress is developing of systems and they have considered a waste of time. If we will spend money why are we spending it here at home rather than in other countries and they dont see how that can benefit the United States. I think partly it has been a big part of the reason is the reluctance for the congress to fund it and in all honesty the reluctance for the most part on the part of all four administrations to push for such funding. The irony for me is that at a time when the congress has become more and more resistant to the use of military force overseas in the aftermath of iraq and afghanistan but at the same time they refused to fund or make more robust the nonmilitary instruments that could take the place of some of that military activity. In that regard, doctor gates, you brought up the war in iraq and you brought up what we call oftentimes in the affirmative defense known what so we go into iraq and you write in the book that it has happened so often after the cold war there was a lack of imagination in the white house in con how to access non civilian government expertise to strengthen nonmilitary capabilities. They seemingly had no appreciation to go on to say of the importance of the private sector apart from contractors as an instrument of power and it just begs the question how can we leverage that private sector and obviously we keep the government out of some market things and we dont want our government running economy and how do we enlist the private sector in enhancing our ability to basically exercise power and to again go to the nonmilitary aspect so how do we do that . The first thing is to recognize that it actually has something to contribute and then you can figure out how to make it work. One of the things that frustrated all of us in the apartment of defense is that through all of the afghan war experience was the relatively few number of civilian experts and here we were engaged in nationbuilding and yet we have very few, relatively speaking, very few civilian experts who were in country and helping make that happen. One of the instruments that has some effectiveness in both iraq and afghanistan with something called provincial reconstruction but at times when we had at the peak of our president s in iraq we had 170,000 troops in the country and we had 360 civilians in all of those prts in the entire country of iraq. One of the things i proposed the secretary of defense that got no traction was to go to a particularly, one of the things we could provide help with was helping both the afghans and the iraqis improving the terms of their farming and how they took care of their herds and that kind of thing and because theyre both basically rural countries and i suggested to the state department why dont you go to her countries land universities and i had been the president of texas a m so i knew what these universities were doing around the world in terms of their faculties working in very inhospitable and insecure situations and why dont you go to these universities and ask them to help and to partner with us and augment what we are trying to do in these countries and many other factors were in those countries so how could we help them and how could we help provide some funding and so on. We also had the advantage at the head of the National Association of landgrant universities with a man name Peter Mcpherson had been the president of Michigan State university but also the head of usaid under president reagan so here was a guy who knew what we needed to do and could have galvanized this universities to be a powerful partner and nothing ever happened. Similarly, i think where we could use the private sector or where we could partner with the private sector is in figuring out how we are going to counter trying to develop the belton Road Initiative this trillion Dollar Program of infrastructure building ports and airports and highways and sports arenas and so on throughout and in most places around the world. A lot of these things are White Elephant projects and they involve a lot of debt for the country and the chinese make these countries signed contracts with Chinese Construction Companies to do these things and they dont pay much attention to doing things honestly or in ways that actually benefit the people of the countries that are receiving but if we could somehow, we cant compete with that and the chinese through the state owned enterprises and banks and so on can find the cash to fund these projects and we cant do that, our economy and government just does not have that, they are not structured it that way. What we have is private sector that invests all over the world and how can the United States partner with revit companies in the United States and incentivize them to invest in some of these developing countries and bring jobs, bring Environmental Concerns and bring sustainability and in a way that doesnt settle these countries with projects that ends up being useless or settled the countries with huge amounts of debt. We dont really do much in the way of trying to incentivize companies to move down that path. It is a resource that i think we could make better use of an finally, i would say we have all these enormous numbers of churches and charities and others that do projects around the world, whether in terms of health and alleviating or getting read of diseases and the work of the Gates Foundation and a number of others, they often dont want much to do with the government but if there was a way we can augment their activities when we work in partnership with them and how can we Work Together and frankly, there is just not much done to try and move down that road. There are three examples of where i think we just havent been very imaginative in terms of how we can leverage our great strength and translate that into efforts to what i would call is shaping the International Environment in a way that serves our National Interests. We dont need to be altogether altruistic in these efforts. After all, the responsibly of the president and the government to advance american interests and protect american interests around the world but if that means you have to shake the International Environment and these are the tools that you can use to shake the International Environment. We have tried on many occasions to shake the environment and as you point out, not very frankly successfully, but we have tried to help multiple countries gain peace and stability in one of the successes though was the columbia plan and that one worked. Why did that one stand out . Why did that one work when it did such a number over a dozen what i think could objectively be called failures . Columbia was a success and it was a success under multiple president s so by that the late 1990s columbia was on the verge of becoming a narco state, a criminal date and the leftist insurgency and the farc was on a verge of taking control of the country and the government. What made our efforts in working with the colombian successful in controlling and then defeating the fark was first of all we had a very Strong Partner in columbia and the president of columbia, president was a very strong person and an honest person and he was determined to defeat the fark. So we started with a president who was committed, democratic principles of the rule of law and who was determined to lead this fight at considerable risk to himself. He survived a number of assassination attempts. The second thing that helped us was there were already some basic institutions, via that were weak but they have been established and we could help strengthen those institutions inside columbia and helped carry the fight. That included both the police and the military but also the judicial system and over the course of the colombian partnership and the plan columbia efforts the Justice Department trained some 40000 judges in columbia and a third area or third reason for success i give credit to the congress. The congress limited the number of americans who could be in columbia at any given time to help the colombian government. When the plants started they limited us to 400 military people and 400 contractors. That eventually rose to 800 military and 800 contractors but that was it. That meant the colombians had to fight to fight themselves and our role had to be limited to supporting them, treating them and helping them become better at carrying the fight to the farc. So, we cannot take over this enterprise because of the limits that Congress Puts on us so we were there in support of the colombian government and i think that is another reason for the success was if it was up to the colombians to solve the problem we could help them but we werent going to run the show and do it for them. Another factor was that this plan really had support, bipartisan support in congress and was funded over a period of about ten years or more by three successive president s so we had the time to make things work and had the bipartisan support to get the funding so for the cost of about 10 million over a ten12 your time. We help the colombians put down the fark and regain control of their own country. The program originally was sold as being counter narcotics and trying to limit the amount of car cane coming into the United States back in the 80s and 90s. We tried to bring cultural and political change to the country to make the country more like us and to bring democratic principle and honest government and so on and without realizing it we were trying to change the case of iraq and afghanistan thousands of years of history and the fact that our own democracy evolved over time and we are still facing problems created at the beginning of the United States with the race issues that we are dealing with in the United States today and we still have an imperfect democracy and weve been working at it for over two centuries. Thinking that we can bring this or force this at the point of a bayonet to other countries, i think, is one reason why, first of all, weve been involved in these longlasting wars in both iraq and afghanistan after the initial military victories but its also why we failed. One of my favorite quotes is from Winston Churchill in late 1944 he was approached about overthrowing the dictatorship that was running greece at the time and a dictatorship, by the way, that was supportive of what the allies were trying to commish and beating the germans. Or being the germans. They wanted to install a democratic government and churchills response was democracy is not a harlot to be picked up on the street at the point of a tommy gun. I think the principal still exists that you cant force a country to build a democracy. Now, iraq is a very rudimentary democracy today and they are probably the only democratic Arab Government in the entire middle east but the cost has been extraordinarily high and a lot of the iraqis, as you know better than i do still do not believe the shiite dominated government serves their interests, particularly the kurds and the sunnis. There is a long very tough road ahead for iraq but i think a big part of the failures in these countries was trying to bring social, cultural and political change basically using the United States military and i think, i think our roles should be to encourage democracy and should be to provide people the tools as we did the colombians in the training and encourage them to move toward democracy but the notion that we can force it and bringing it about overnight controverted to several of the failures during this time and the other failure in many instances were a lack of imagination in terms of using these nonmilitary instruments and frankly, just being too ambitious. I argued against our intervention in libya because i did not see where we had any National Interests that were at stake. You have two quotes that highlight this challenge about americans role in the world. One is should Americas Mission to be make the world safe for democracy and this is of course, brought through resident wilsons approach or in the words of John Quincy Adams, should america be the well wisher to the freedom and independence but the vindicators and champions only of her own democracy so how do you parse this when you are confronting events in the world that may not be vital interests but what is americas role as we watch the young people in the streets of hong kong or watch other places where people, some are trying to bring about democracy and of course, there is autocrats around the world in these date they say not on my watch so where does america go forward and when do we go forward using the symphony of powers and how do we do this . What does it look like in your vision . John quincy adams had another quote came out of the same document and said we ought not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. In other words, we ought not go looking for trouble. As i write in the book i think wilson and John Quincy Adams have to coexist. I think that it is from the beginning of our republic we had seen ourselves as the city on the hill, as an example for the rest of the world to follow and as part of our Foreign Policy to do all he could to advance the interests of democracy and reform abroad in human and Political Rights. Where i draw the line isnt using the military to make that happen. I think that as we have been discussing you cant force a country into democracy and these institutions have to be developed and one of the lines we all use was having one election is not synonymous with bringing democracy to a country. Democracy is based on the rule of law, based on institutions and the role we can play is helping countries develop those institutions. This is where the civilian part of these instruments of power that i talk about is so important because it is our people helping them develop their own institutions and encouraging the development of those institutions. Usaid and a number of private foundations of the United States funded a huge number of nongovernmental organizations. For russia in the 1990s to try to encourage the development of Democratic Institutions and the rule of law and so on and as evidence that those were working that in the 2000s Vladimir Putin essentially eliminated the ability of all those ngos to work in russia and at some points there were thousands of these and now they are just a handful and same thing in china. I think we can use a variety of tools including, i would say, our intelligence capabilities and covert action. Cia covert action played a big role in the success of solidarity in poland and in taking on the communist regime there that were free institutions that supported solidarity all of working independent and the Catholic Church was cia in American Labor union through the aflcio. We have these instruments that we can use to encourage those to bring democracy to their country and to help them strengthen those institutions but it is us helping them, not us trying to force it on them. Doctor gates, when you look at chinas advantages you notice some of what their state run economy and what they can do with money going into certain places and perhaps just loading up debt on countries that will never be able to repay it and developing some degree of control over some sovereign decisions. Do you think the u. S. Adherence to stricter, moral standards actually weakens us in this competition that is going on between the china model, clearly an authoritarian model and it is hard to believe that they would practice a kinder, gentler model externally than they practice on their own people but are we actually weakened by taking a more moral stance as we look at our role in the world up against a chinese model which is basically by your allies, shoulder your way in, dismiss other nations sovereignty, whether it means to poetic or economic or even moral sovereignty so where do we stand in this competition . Well, i think we all know that america as much as we love it and as much as we admire it and is much as we believe it is unique in the history of the world and a unique force for good it is still flawed. We are seeing the results of that in the streets of most of our cities in the last few weeks. But we do stand for something and it is not by accident that on Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 that the Chinese Students erected a statute that they called the goddess of liberty that looks an awful like like the statue of liberty in new york harbor. It is not an accident that the hong kong protesters are waving American Flags and it is not an accident that during the push back the Iranian Regime just a few months ago after they shot down the airliner that they had painted an American Flag, the students had painted an American Flag on the steps of one of their schools and people were Walking Around that flag so as not to step on it. I think the rest of the world knows you are flawed but they also know we are about the only country in the world to consistently try to get better. We consistently, we know what we believe in and we work every day trying to make our actions coincide with our beliefs and with what we profess to admire the most in democratic countries. I think we have to address our problems here at home and we do need to be a model and frankly, we are not a very good model right now. Our politics are paralyzed and we cant tackle any of the big problems that our country faces, whether immigration or education or infrastructure or other things and we still have to battle Racial Injustice but we are trying to fix these things and i think other countries are recognizing that and as long as we continue to profess our ideal and as long as we try to help them create democracy i think our ideology, if you will, is still to be admired around the world. Now, the truth is i think it is tarnished now as a result of several things over the last dozen years or so and the 2008, 2009 economic crisis in this country undermined the sentiment around the world that the American Economic model was one they wanted to emulate. I think economic inequality in this country is a problem that other countries see and makes them wonder whether the American Economic model is one they want to follow. Our paralysis or polarization has been with us since the very beginning of the republic. The names jefferson and adams called each other would fit right into todays campaigns. [laughter] of what is new since the end of the cold war really is a paralysis and our inability to get really big things done in the country because of the two Political Parties are frozen at the federal level in their war on each other for all practical purposes. Everybody seeming to forget that the only thing that makes the record system work is compromise. I think right now that president xi and china is pointing to all these problems that we have here at home economic and political and in particular and he is arguing to the rest of the world look at the chinese model and we brought hundreds of Chinese People out of poverty we were able to have this incredible 21st century infrastructure and we are willing to help you build a modern infrastructure in your country and we get things done. Our model is the one that you should look to and frankly, there are a lot of countries that look at the chinese and say well, maybe their approach, the chinese approach is better than the american approach. If we want to have our our ideology and belief in liberal democracy and capitalism the a model for the rest of the world weve got a lot of repair work to do here at home but i still believe that most of the people in the world believe america stands for freedom and for human and Political Rights and that is our ace in the whole, if you will. We just have to work and making it even more credible the problem is this right now, we have a competition in the world that is going to go on for quite a while in this is as old as democracy itself. That is the conflict in the competition and authoritarianism in my view is communism is dead as a door no and the only mouse left in the world is a handful of summer in china may be a few in america and i think that communist is dead. Authoritarianism has very deep historical roots and that is the real thing and we have defeated authoritarianism twice in the 20th century and if we dont get our or address our problems and figure out how to move forward as a country our ability to defend authoritarianism and the 21st century i think will be at risk but that is a very long answer to your question but i believe our ideology of freedom and our propounded that ideology is an asset for us in the world, not a liability. I have learned most about our country about what we represent to others is through foreign eyes. I have talked to villages villagers and dirt poor villages and ministers and kings question me on how does america do it and no matter how bad something gets you learn something from it and we acknowledge that weve got to improve and roll up our sleeves and do it. The pool political paralysis is preventing that from happening. Weve got some young people on and we will switch to our audience here weekly but we got some young people watching and as they watch what is going on in washington dc some of approached me and im sure youve heard it so why should they go into government . Yet you went and not for one tour in the air force and not for one tour in the cia but stuck with it through good times and bad and what can you say to the young people watching today about Government Service what i consider to be the very hard work but also the noble work of building a country because it is not built yet and we are still building it. What do you see two young people who say why should i followed doctor gates and put my life into the country or even five years worth or two years worth. How to respond to that . First of all, i would say at the end of your life you dont want to look back and realize that you only lived for yourself. George hw bush, the first president bush, one said the only way to have a full life or any for life must have some measure of Public Service and Public Service has never been easy and we get focused on our own time and believe me, i joined cia in 1966 and we were just heading into the heart of the vietnam war and i lived through watergate and joined the National Security Council Staff for the first time a few months before nixon resigned and i used to tell people i joined the National Security council at the time was like signing up as a deckhand on the titanic after it hit the iceberg. It went through watergate and i went through vietnam and all the challenges of the 70s and more and i thank you would have to believe in what we stand for as a country and no that you can lay a part in trying to make us better. I have written about Public Service that no matter how jaded or tough someone may seem on the outside that at root most Public Servants are in their heart of hearts idealists and romantics and optimists and that we actually believe we can make the country in the world a better place to live and i think it is a mistake to think the only place to conserve is at the federal level and i think what we have seen during the coronavirus is an extraordinary emergence of recognition of local leadership and state leadership so you dont have to go to work for cia report on the countries uniform although i hope you do but you can work in your local community and work at the state level and there are many ways in which you can provide Public Service and help your fellow citizens. You know jim, i hear all the time people talking about their rights as citizens. You never hear anybody talk about our peoples obligations as citizens. Everybody who puts on that uniform puts his or her life at the risk for this country and it seems to me not too much to ask of others regardless of age to find a way they can help serve the country at some level and so i hope that young people in one of the things i have seen and im sure youve seen it, there is an extraordinary degree of volunteerism and even in our high schools but especially in our colleges today and i feel like i have a better insight into young people today than most people my age and i lead a university and it is not one of the largest universities in the country and i have led the military with millions of young people who have been willing to put on the uniform and the country and ive been president of the National Boy Scouts and i see the idealism of the young people and the willingness to step up and serve but the challenges how many of them, once they get out of college, stop there volunteerism and stop being engaged as they have been as students and get on with their life. You dont have to be fulltime in Public Service in order to make a contribution. Ive noticed in my hometown on the Food Bank Board and both of our food banks are run by volunteers who are retired because they have the time and with covid keeping many of them home because they are vulnerable we have High School Kids who have now when they were out of school volunteered to come in so we see that in the young people and i think to a comment by a world war ii marine about a country that does not have to be perfect to be worth fighting for just always has to be improving but we need people to come in and fight for it and fight for it may be working with the local School District or the City Council Like you say, it doesnt have to be on a higher level but were getting questions and in one of them has to do with the u. S. Military and as it is not surprising, are we in danger of the military being used as a tool of intimidation against the American People by the executive branch and of course, this goes back to some of the recent events in Lafayette Square. What are your thoughts on this concern that is not unique to this one question or at all . I dont think we are risk of that. Part of the reason that i say that with some confidence was the strength of the reaction particularly among retired senior military, including yourself in the lead, to the events on Lafayette Square in the appearance of chairman of the joint chief of staff and secretary of defense in Lafayette Square a bit of work for eight president s in every single one of them loves to use the military as a prop. Theres about the only institution that still has broad bipartisan respect and support so president s want the military to be the backdrop and i warned a couple of the president s that i work for about that and what happened at Lafayette Square will have a longterm benefit because first of all, [inaudible] but also an acknowledgment that it was not the right thing to do and in all fairness i think he and secretary of defense a spur did not know what they were getting into and were used by the white house and chairman millie was at least smart enough to evade the photo op in front of the church but the pushback of the politicalization of the military and the reassertion of the importance of the military remaining apolitical has been very important and been a reminder to everyone on uniform about that bright red line of not getting involved in partisan politics and i would say another thing in one of the reasons i have opposed the president s use of the insurrection act which allows the president to use regular or military troops domestically is that i thank you have to, people have to recognize that there is a difference between the regular army and the National Guard. The regular army is taught basically to do one thing and that is to kill our enemies for the National Guard has many purposes. You are as likely to see a National Guard handing out food at a food bank or a sandbagging a river or providing other help and a National Debt faster. We can have seen them fight in both afghanistan and iraq but they are trained in crowd control and have good relationships with Law Enforcement and they are from the town or city of where the they are deployed and have to take off that uniform and go back to work the next day dealing with the people that they may have been facing in a demonstration. They have a different approach in a really citizen soldiers and i didnt see anything in Lafayette Square or any of the other things that have taken place that i didnt inc. Couldve been handled respectively by local or federal Law Enforcement augmented by the National Guard. There was no need for the regular troops and people need to understand that testing should between the guard and the regular army. It is heartening because once in a while you get into a situation like this and it reminds you of some First Principles and everyone should take a deep breath and step back and maybe cooler heads will prevail but we have another question coming in so some of the themes in your book, how should the u. S. Reestablish itself visavis our allies . I always used to think that is much as i would [inaudible] and i knew we were a threat to authoritarian and any objective review would say the bigger threat was Americas Network of allies. That scared and that was both from the United Nations and nations willing to put troops in the field alongside it and how would we reestablish with our allies and degree of reliability as someone they can count on because when we talk about things being tarnished its pretty clear that right now a lot of allies were traditional allies and partners dont have that same degree of confidence so what do we do here as we look toward the future . It is amusing and seems like Winston Churchill has a cute quote for every single possible situation but one of his lines was the only thing worse than having allies is not having allies. Our allies and this is one thing that disturbs me about our current Foreign Policy, our allies are a unique american instrument of power. They are a unique American Asset and one i discuss in the book. Russia and china have no allies. They have clients but they have no allies. People with shared values and people who have a history of working together. No one pushed our allies harder than i did to increase their defense spending. We need to keep that pressure on and they arent doing it as much as they should. But, that does not mean we walk away from them if they are unsuccessful at doing gnats. They are critically important asset for the United States and let me give you an example on the economic arena and just take it out of the military so we think the chinese really have to be for the plainfield to be leavened the chinese have to make some structural changes in the way they operate their economy and in the way they operate and work with foreign businesses and investors and so on. Just think how much more powerful our bargaining position would be if on our side of the table right now we had the europeans and the japanese and the australians and the indians . All of them sing together to the chinese, you must make these changes in the way you do business to level the Playing Field or you will pay an economic price for it. The chinese love dealing bilaterally with countries because, in most cases, they can intimidate but as you suggested they hate a multilateral situation where they face eight, ten countries all arguing with them about their policies. I attended the defense ministries meeting in asia and with eight countries telling the chinese minister of defense how offensive their aggressive actions in the South China Sea were. This is a big asset for the United States and i dont understand the unwillingness in washington right now to understand that and make use of it but how do we fix it . I think actually a change in rhetoric and i think being willing to reach out and consult with our allies before we make decisions and presenting a strategic case, listening to them and maybe adjusting our positions somewhat that they can account to their concerns. Just to take one example, there is nothing sacrosanct about any 5000 or 35000 troops in germany and maybe there is a reason to move some of those troops to poland or someplace else. But that is a discussion that ought to flow from or that ought to flow from a discussion with our allies and a discussion of strategy and what is behind it and not leave the impression with them that we have made the decision to take 9500 troops out of germany because the president is annoyed with Angela Merkel for not being willing to come to the g70. Sir, i still recall one of your colleagues, condoleezza rice, telling a bunch of young generals and admirals that she waived her finger at us and i did not realize it was 18 inches long which he wanted to make a point and she said, remember gentlemen, we will do things with our allies, not to our allies. Echoing your point exactly and ive got to ask you one question that came in and forgive my smile as i ask but secretary gates, this person wants to thank you for your leadership, your service and i think both of us can respond to that part by telling everyone listening that we dont care if you are male or female, republican or democrat or who you voted for were not interested in who you went to fed with and we will work with every bit of the service and its a privilege to serve but this person goes on to say is there anything you miss about working in washington dc . The one thing i miss is the opportunity to interact with the young people in uniform. I was joking with you before we went on the air that i was probably the only person in washington that went to iraq and afghanistan for rest and recreation. Get out of the applicable battles of washington and go out on those front lines and see those 20, 21 yearolds, 22 yearolds, 25 yearolds, men and women, who are out there doing their part for the country with courage and honor and their service and desire to help them, it would reenergize me to go back and fight the political fight in washington. I spent a long time in washington and i kind of went through everything. As a special treat, but i miss the interaction with the troops. But i would have to say mattis and i would say with the colleagues that i had at the senior levels that they are amazing men and women and dedicated. I do miss that interaction, but believe me that is the only thing that i miss about washington, d. C. Doctor gates, this has been a pleasure and its a reminder, too, the country goes through raucous periods. We study our history we would say that there is one lesson. The time for one more. What would be the lesson looking at our history in the midst of a pretty raucous period in our democracy, but its a lesson that you would leave with us here to pick up your book and hopefully we are all going to be reading it again. What would you leave us with . Guest two things i would like to say. First of all, those who wish us ill would be making a historically bad decision to underestimate american resilience and our ability to solve our problems to fix what is wrong order to at least make progress towards a more Perfect Union that we have. The other lesson is that goes back to the constitution and that is to remember the constitution itself is a bundle of significant compromise. The American Government only works in American Society only works with compromised with understanding that everybody has to come out ahead and that we are all in this together. If you cant sit down, nobody gets their way over time in every way, so figuring out how to compromise and move the ball forward, Ronald Reagan who was one of my favorite president s, Ronald Reagan was preferred by a lot of people to be an ideologue. But he was actually pretty pragmatic and Ronald Reagans attitude in dealing with the congress was if he could get 60 of what they wan the people and, he would take it and then go back again to try to get the other 40 . So he was always trying to get everything he wanted, but he also understood he couldnt, and he was willing to settle for half because it was better than none. I wish our leaders across the political spectrum would remember that lesson from american history. It is a lesson that will stand the test of time. We are not going to turn over a country so it is critical that we do so. Our thanks to you, mr. Secretary. Its good to see you even add social distance, author, americas powers, successes and failures the path forward. We encourage you to buy a copy and send to your elected leade leaders. Also express our appreciation to all joining us online. We have a wide range of virtual programs please visit the website for more information. I am general jim mattis, and the commonwealth is adjourned. And at the upcoming president ial election. Enjoy th a book tv on cspan2