Transcripts For CSPAN3 Brookings Institution On U.S. Russia China Relations 20240714

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to brookings. Im mike ohanlon, here to welcome you about a discussion with possible wartime scenarios with russia and or china. This panel has a lot of expertise on these subjects. Im going to briefly introduce folks in a minute and hand the baton, so to speak, over to my good friend and colleague jung pak, who will be our moderator. Shell pose questions to the panelists. Were talk amongst ourselves for the first half of this 90minute event then go to you. The panelists have all been kind enough, as well as jung as moderator, to allow me to use my new book the senkaku paradox as the spring board for this discussion, but only the spring board, and the conversation will range much more widely. But let me just say a brief word of introduction to the subject before introducing them. Just so you know, at least where our starting point is in this project and this conversation today. I think back to something that my good friend Lieutenant General John Whistler said in 2014 when he was the head of the Third Marine Expeditionary force based in okinawa. So he was the senior marine and one of the most senior American Military officers based in the western pacific. By the way, general whistler, now retired, sends his regrets. He was going to be on this panel but had a conflict. Nonetheless, hes still here in spirit. He was asked by a reporter at a forum in washington where he was visiting from his normal base in okinawa, what would the United States and japan do if one day we essentially woke up and we saw Chinese Forces ashore on one of the Senkaku Islands . Which the chinese also claim. Japan and china both claim them. The u. S. Government has no position on whose islands they should be. But we respect and recognize japans Current Administration of the islands, whatever it means to administer islands where no one lives and nothing happens, and therefore, we consider the u. S. japan mutual security treaty to apply to tho those islands, which means american lives are on the line potentially in defense of those japanese claims, if and when the islands are attacked. The only plausible attacker would be china. In other words, we could imagine a path to great power war over uninhabited, worthless rocks, with all due respect to those who care about the senkaku for symbolic or spiritual reasons. Theyre not even big enough to qualify for their own Economic Zones under the law of the sea treaty. So it really is about symbolism and history, which is already enough to make the issue pretty potent in japan china relations. Then i got thinking, when general whistler said, you know what, we could take those islands back if instructed to, but i could also think of ways we might be able to deal with the problem without landing anyone ashore. And he was sufficient subtle, but he didnt get himself into any hot water. I think he gave just the right answer for an american officer in that position, but he was essentially implicitly threatening that we could bomb the chinese troop thimplacement on Senkaku Islands. This then raised the general question of how do you deal with russian or chinese attacks against small and more or less insignificant pieces of territory . Could even be a tiny farming down in eastern estonia or latvia thats majority russian speaker but still within the territory, where russia fabricates some kind of threat to its own fellow native russian speakers and goes in to protect them with little green men. Its real goal is not that town or that particular defense of those russian speakers, who probably dont even want the help because they like to live in estonia and latvia, rather than russia, thank you very much. But the real goal is to threaten or disrupt nato by making the allies debate internally how to respond to this threat, not knowing whether any kind of military response would be in order, even though it would seem the nato article five pledge would require a military response. And so if russia or china are intent on disrupting u. S. Alliance systems and global order, what better way than to do one of these small probing, provocative attacks and put us in the dilemma of having to draw first blood in great power war. So theres the question of deterrence. Theres also the question of what should we do if deterrence fails and we wind up in a war . Now let me finish this intro and segue to the talent on the panel because a lot of people here have thought and written about these kinds of questions. And we feel as a group that its time to kick start these debates into a little higher gear at a time when the u. S. National Defense Strategy says that competition with russia and china are our Top National Security concerns, and yet we havent really had a very detailed conversation about how war with russia or china could really happen. Thats plausible and that addresses, i think, the most concerning scenarios. So were going to work down the road. Junk pak will have her own order for how to perhaps ask questions. Im just going to work from my right. Tom ehrhard is one of the best thinkers in the country on where military planning and future and current concepts of war to plausibly win conflicts if you wind up in them, but ideally to deter them before they begin. Hes done a lot of his work inside the government. He was an important player in many of the debates during the obama years on the socalled third offset, which as many of you will remember was sort of the precursor to the trump Administrations National Defense Strategy. Try to put conventional and great power deterrents back on the forefront of american National Security policy after it had fallen off that forefront for the first 25 years of the postcold war era. Just to toms right is caitlin talmadge, who was sent to brookings for remedial work. Then she moved on to academia and is now at Georgetown University as a professor there. She is one of the finest defense scholars in the country. I would call her one of the finest young defense scholars because she is young, but she no longer needs that qualification in terms of where she stands in her contributions to the field. Her book the dictators army has been one of the best books written in Security Studies an most widely recognized in the last few years. And shes been focused on the question of possible escalation in wars that could begin as limited skirmishes involving the United States and china in the western pacific. So delighted to welcome her back to brookings. Rush doshi is indeed a young scholar, but one of the most talented for Understanding Chinese thinking on great power conflict in the original mandarin. He has just finished a ph. D. In recent years going back to these documents and understanding a lot of chinese thought over the years, including current thought on how they would wage war, how they see the future of Great Power Competition and the kinds of ways they might responds to anything we do or might initiate conflict themselves in a war in the western pacific. As you know, well think about both russia and china today. Then frank rose, my colleague here at brookings. What ill say about frank is he was hired into a job that many of us think of or at least historically have thought of as one of the arms control positions or the main arms control position at brookings, but thats not really how frank thinks of himself. He thinks of himself as a strategic planner. I think its fair to say where arms control is an element of american strategy, one tool in the tool kit but not the only one, and the best way to underscore that, that i can think of, is to point out that frank is one of the few people in washington whos been knighted in the country of romania. And you might ask why. And its not because he helped kill, you know, transylvanian ghosts back in some battle, unless he has more of a rich repertoire than aim ie waim aw because he was instrumental in the missile arrangements with romania. Very much a person who knows how to combine the tools of warfare with the tools of arms control and has been particularly riveted on Strategic Issues with cyber, Nuclear Weapons, fiberoptic cables on the seabed, other kinds of central elements of the u. S. Military nervous system among our most vulnerable and important in this era of Great Power Competition. Thank you for listening to my long introduction. Im now going to hand things over to jung pak, who in addition to being our korea chair here, wrote the bestselling or bestvisited essay of all 2018 at brookings, the education of kim jongun. The book on that same topic, i hope with that same title, is coming out next year. We hope with the movie not long to follow, thereafter. At least thats my goal. Jung, over to you. Thank you, mike. Frank is also called sad man in korea because he was responsible for the thaad deployment to south korea. In the south korean pronuns y pronunciation, hes called thaad man. Though not always in a good way. You would never know this is mike ohanlons 22nd book, and hes only 35 years old. So its an amazing faetd for somebody of his youth and vigor. And to squeeze all that accomplishment in such a short period of time. I would also say that this book, which is great, is conveniently available right around the corner, right by the front door of the lobby at our brookings bookstore. So thank you to all of our panelists, and thank you, mike, for including me in this conversation. So when this event went out, the announcement went out, it sold out very quickly. The room was filled to capacity fairly quickly. I got a frantic note from a friend of mine across town, and she said, you got to get me in. It got me thinking about what is it about conflict scenarios with russia and china that is so compelling and so alarming and so able to draw such a large crowd . This morning to brookings on a beautiful Spring Summer day. And id like to start off and ask the panelists, you know, there is a sense of urgency and alarm given what mike said about the National Security strategy and the national Defense Strategy and how American Military power is eroding while russian and chinese capabilities are improving. So id like to kick it off with and ask our panelists to unpack why this issue is so has been taking up so much space and energy and a lot of scholarship on this particular issue. Could i ask frank, sad man, first. Well, thanks very much, jung. Its great to be here and great to be with the colleagues on the panel. Fundamentally, i think we are at an ends of an era. I just read an article in the financial time, the two 1989s, looking at berlin 1989 and Tiananmen Square 1989. What this article was saying 30 years ago, we thought that berlin was the future. But 30 years on down, it looks like tiananmen was the key pivot point. I think we are in an era of Great Power Competition. I disagree with the Trump Administration on many things, but this is one where i think they get the diagnosis correct. And, you know, more importantly, and i think a lot of people in the u. S. Strategic community have not come to terms with this, the u. S. Overwhelming conventional superiority that existed in the 1990s and 2000s is eroding. Russia and china have essentially achieved conventional superiority or parody under some scenarios, and this is something i have been watching very closely. They are developing asymmetric capabilities like cyber and antisatellite weapons designed to undermine americas and its allys conventional capabilities. All you have to do is read the dni, director of national intelligence, annual threat assessment that talks about this. For example, this year, dan coats said china and russia are training and equipping their military space forces and fielding new antisatellite weapons to hold u. S. And allied Space Services at risk. With regards to cyber, he said, quote, china, russia, iran, and north korea increasingly use Cyber Operations to threaten both minds and machines in an expanding number of ways to steal information, to influence our citizens, and disrupt our critical infrastructure. So my bod some littom line is t. We need to think differently because while over the last 25 years, we have been talking about the end of history, the russians and the chinese have been watching very closely how the United States and its allies fire and have been designing specific capabilities to undermine that superiority. So this is a real present threat, and we need to take action if were going to deal with it. Thank you. Rush, what do you think . Hi, everyone. Thank again, mike, for the invitation to be on this panel. Im glad to be joined by such distinguished colleagues. I completely agree with what frank said. Ill just put a little detail in some of the china specific elements of it. So i think three things have really changed in recent years. One is u. S. Awareness that Great Power Competition is here. The second is chinas own sense of its own capabilities. Finally, chinas own sense of ambitions. All three of these changes together brought us to this specific moment. Beginning with the very first one. So yes, we have this meme or cliche now, and its in our strategy documents that Great Power Competition is back, but the irony is for china Great Power Competition never really ended. Going back to 1989, one of my favorite quotes was that, you know, the cold war had ended. He said this. But two cold wars had begun. He sort of said herbally that both were directed against china. So for china, the cold war in a sense, one kind of cold war ended and a second one began and it was going to be much more complicated, a mix of Economic Engagement but also military hedging. That brings me to the second point, which is chinas capabilities have also changed quite profoundly. This is not recent. Its only recent that its gotten the degree of attention it deserved. These trends many of us have written about for a long time, this growth in chinas asymmetric capabilities. Beginning right after Tiananmen Square and after the end of the cold war especially, china realized it had issues dealing with the u. S. It realized it needed to have capabilities that were going to be able to deter the United States from intervening in regional conflicts. And china wasnt the first to come up with these solutions. It had studied how others tried to solve this problem in the past, including the soviets. Theres a rich chinese discourse on how the soviets used some antiship missiles and other capabilities to keep u. S. Carriers at risk. That did not happen overnight. It took a long time. But today we are dealing with the full maturation and implications of those capabilities. And the final thing thats changed is chinas ambitions have also expanded. Chinas now, by some measures as of 2014, the Worlds Largest economy by purchasing power. Its almost 70 of u. S. Gdp. If you look at every single major u. S. Adversary or competitor going back almost a hundred years, no one of them and no coalition of them has ever crossed 60 of u. S. Gdp, which makes the scale of the china challenge particularly large. Thats something that chinese themselves write about, and its something that underlies their own ambitions, this larger belief that the United States is somewhat distracted and weakened, and therefore theres opportunities for it regionally and globally. So i look forward to talking more about that as the discussion continues. Thanks. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be on the panel this morning with all of you. I think for those of you who have not read the book, i really commend it because i think it highlights a great answer to the question that jung pak posed, which is what really has changed . I think mike really nails the essence of the strategic problem that the United States faces now, which is that there are Nuclear Armed great powers that are reengaging in a period of competition and could end up in a potentially highintensity crisis or even, you know, largescale conventional war that has real possibilities for escalation, including to the nuclear level, in ways that the United States really has kind of forgotten about from the end of the cold war. As a couple other panelists already highlighted, i think when the cold war ended, the United States sort of looked out at the horizon and thought were in a new permanent state of affairs where the United States has conventional military dominance and we dont really have to worry about major competitors, including Nuclear Armed competitors. From the van teenage point of today, kind of looking back at that period, the last 20 to 30 years seem less like a new normal and more like an interlude. We really are seeing, you know, i think a return, not in identical form, but a return, you know, in terms of some of the main features of a very real prospect that great powers with Nuclear Weapons could, you know, potentially get into conflict. So that raises some questions that the United States really has had the luxury of ignoring for the last 20 or 30 years. For the last couple of decades, the United States has largely conducted military operations all over the World Without really having to put much thought into the question of potential adversary nuclear responses. The United States has conducted military operations exclusively against states that have not had Nuclear Weapons. And so questions such as how might the United States calibrate its conventional military strategy to control for escalation or to play into a larger Strategic Deterrence game really have kind of been off the table. Mikes book, i think, really shows how those considerations have to come back into american grand strategy. And i would just highlight that in particular, as United States thinks about designing its response, you know, to crisis situations or even to conventional wars, it really has to think about the prospect that in a largescale crisis or convention until war, adversaries might be tempted to turn to their Nuclear Weapons. That could occur in some different ways. Im sure well probably talk about some of those today. But just to give two quick examples, one that ive highlighted in my own work is that largescale u. S. Conventional military operations do have the potential to threaten the security and survivability of adversary Nuclear Forces. And this is because u. S. Conventional capabilities can undermine the command and control of adversary Nuclear Forces and can also undermine the conventional forces that support or enable and protect adversary Nuclear Forces. And this is made all the more difficult by the fact that adversaries such as russia and china actually intermingle components of their conventional and Nuclear Forces, which make it difficult for the United States not to, you know, pose some infringement on those forces in the course of a conventional war. Would that lead to else can lar story pressure on those states . I think thats an important question. I would also just note that if were going through our cold war playbook and thinking about, you know, what might be relevant from that era, we obviously dont want to overstate that, but we should remember that, you know, in the cold war, the United States itself in nato when it faced unfavorable conventional circumstances in europe, adopted, through nato, a strategy of explicitly threatening, coercive first use of Nuclear Weapons in the event of a warsaw pack, red Army Offensive into europe. Although china has a new first use policy today, russia does not. You know, i think its quite plausible just in terms of Strategic Logic that an adversary facing largescale u. S. Conventional military operations might see Nuclear Weapons as a way out of that problem. And we need look no further, i think, than natos own history to see why that may be the case. Im sure well get into that more today, but those are the things i think mikes book really highlights in terms of jung paks question. Thank you. And again, thank you very much for inviting know this group. Michaels book really is what brought us all together because i think were unanimously grateful that he did his usual comprehensive synoptic job of giving us all a primmer on where the strategic situation has evolved. I just would like to, as caitlin did, urge you to seriously think about reading through this book. Michael i call it ohanlon encryption, which is he writes a book that in d. C. Is as good as encrypted because not many people will read it. But the people who would come to this and listen to a presentation like this, i would consider you different, and you should be different. That means read it. Ill also ask you to read not just the introduction and the conclusion and all of that, but he has some very interesting appendices, can we may get to that talk specifically about the military, technical, and strategic technical elements of this world, which well get to, i think, in the discussion, that make this very different. So we have geopolitical differences, which weve talked about. Im going to inject a little bit about russia here. The geopolitical situation is different. The military technical situation is different and very ominous, in my view, from an escalatory point of view, a crisis stability point of view. And theres just a few things that i want to give as food for thought in our discussion that have to do with why were here and why a book like this is needed and why you need to read it. What i call the pathologies of victory. So on the blue side, on the u. S. Side, were suffering from some pathologies that come directly from the fact we won the cold war and won it rather decisively and rather in a benign way, in a way that just defies logic in many ways about why it didnt go more kinetic. So it was a beautiful thing, but now were suffering from some of these pathologies. Let me just list four for you and number two, distraction. Distracted by 9 11 in many ways, from with reconnaissance insurgency and counterterrorism and all that kind of caused a major distraction in the organization. Im mostly with the department of defense and this was highlighted by the national Defense Strategy. Number three, a general lack of analytic depth and sophistication when it comes to our major power adversaries russia and china. So china, we tried to ignore that for the longest period of time. Russia we just dropped the ball. We had a massive, massive analytical underpinning to our approach to trying to understand russia, and it basically hit the floor. Most of the russian analysts in the ic went to something, and the Intelligence Committee went to counterinsurgency or counterterrorism and they retired. I was given the job back in 2015 by deputy secretary worth to fix russia. That is to say, fixed longitudinal depth in the learning and studying them all the way along, we had about a 15year gap we had to fill in. So i set up a duty of doing that. So ignoring that was a big, big problem, and we have people up here who have not been doing that, so maybe you can avail yourself of that. Number four. Number four and the biggest problem, the biggest pathology of victory is Wishful Thinking. When you think youre the victor and when you have triumphalism, you just try to explain it away in Wishful Thinking. Wishful thinking just infuses our talk when were dealing with the rise of these major power competitors. So let me just give you the other side of those four things when it comes to china and russia. Instead of a triumphalism, theyre both operating under a very powerful humiliation narrative that they were h humiliated by the west and specifically the United States. They deserve to be on top and theyre coming back. Its a very powerful motivation factor. Number two, as opposed to distraction, they have laserlike concentration on the u. S. And everything weve been doing. Weve been mirauding around showing them all our stuff, and theyve been watching that like a hawk. So this asymmetry of focus is a bad strategic, competitive environment for the United States. Instead of ignoring red like weve been doing, theyve deeply looked into what the United States is doing, their nature, the way it competes and ways to try to untrack our strategy. And finally, instead of Wishful Thinking, i generally find them to be extremely pragmatic. As a strategist, many times i find myself wishing i could write strategy for the prc or russia because i would be allowed to say things that you have to say, the hard things, pragmatic things, things that really typify what the strategic environment entails. They write like that. They write very clearly and they talk about the enemy, the head mound, which is us. And we are left with all kinds of weasel words and kinds of distractions, really, that play into our Wishful Thinking that cause us to not be as sharp of a competitor as we need to be. So with that, thats just some of how we got to where we are today and why this book is so important, and i hope we can get to that in this discussion. Something that i think the other side of the question, and thank you to the panel, is what is why hasnt anything happened yet, right . Why hasnt Something Big that mike has talked well, there have been some encouragement here and there and some aggressive, but it seems to me russia and china do value some regional stability or some strategic stability with the United States to help them push their objectives forward. And id like to ask the panelists that theyve really clarified and highlighted some of the things that the u. S. Hasnt been doing and should be focused on and how china and russia have been focused and have been working toward this grand strategy. But what are their constraints . Whats holding them back from doing more aggressive, or taking more aggressive actions . And im thinking, kaitlyn, of your book about how these are regimes and they value royalty over conflicts. Are there things other than the number of tanks and number of satellites and technical and cyber capabilities, are there fundamental, inherent qualities about these regimes that provide a constraint on a blowing up of aggressive actions in the region and elsewhere . Ill ask anybody who feels comfortable talking on this. Kaitlyn. I dont mind jumping in. So i think this is a really good question. We do often paint these nightmare scenarios and think, nothing bad has happened yet and why is that . Maybe things are working in the status quo. I think your point about some of the internal constraints on u. S. Competitors is a really important one. Going back to the example of the cold war, yeah, we dont want to be too triumphantless, but one of the things that did account for the issues in the cold war was the difference of organization between the United States and the soviet union. We have competitors today that i think do face some really significant internal constraints in terms of their Civil Military relations, in terms of their economies, in terms of domestic unrest that may, in fact, be a break on their ambitions or their ability to project power. Russia, i think, is a reflection on china so i would defer to him on that. But i think even while we dont want to paint potential adversaries as being invincible and 10 feet tall, mikes book does point out, and we can see this in the world around us, that both russia and china, i think, are doing things, some that we havent even noticed kind of along the way to probe what the resistance might be. There have been instances of limited aggression, and thats actually, again, what i think this book so usefully illuminates, is that you could get into a great power of conflict not with the giant bolt from the blue. Its not going to be the warsaw pact coming across with hundreds of divisions. It could be something much smaller, and this is why its important to actually deter those kinds of lowerlevel instances of aggression, but because they do have this potential to escalate. And you can do that, you know, not just through your military strategy, but also through economic tools which the book highlights, but it really speaks to having a deterrent posture and a defense posture that makes that sort of aggression costly. And that speaks not only to changes in the u. S. Defense policy, and also, and this is another theme that the book really touches on, change in the defense posture of allies, so that allies are more resilient and have the resolve to kind of push back against some of these, you know, instances of testing, right . And not let them turn into larger conflicts. Let me just build on a couple of points that kaitlyn made. I fully agree that the russians and the chinese are not 10 feet tall. They have vulnerabilities in their society as well. But picking up on a point that tom said, i think the current regimes are very pragmatic. In particular, the chinese have a longterm view of this challenge. I mean, we think in the future Years Defense Program or the next election. The chinese think long term. They have a longterm vision. So what i think we will see is kind of like kaitlyn said, not a bolt out of the blue, but small salami slices. Crimea, eastern ukraine. Fundamentally what i would argue that the russians and the chinese understand one of america americas regime has challenges. I think if you look at the foreign policy, the objective over the long term is to create doubt whether they will meet with their allies. Pushing the United States out of the western pacific, and from the russia point of view, developing a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and central asia. And jung, just a couple points. Where havent they done more . Because theyre really scared of the United States. Theyre really, really scared of the United States. We are scary to our allies, we are scary to our adversaries. We just keep whipping out modern technology stuff all the time that just comes out of nowhere. The russians and the chinese think everything thats been in Popular Mechanics is actually fielded and out there in some secret base out in the desert someplace, and that were just waiting to pounce on them. When you read the writings, its difficult to contextualize it for texans because theyre so fearful of surprise attack. When you look at their history and you look at their system, their ah authoriuthoritarian sys all makes sense, but theyre very, very scared of us. I think two things. Thats an advantage for us on one hand, but on the other hand, its a very bad escalatory environment. So from a crisis stability point of view, the sphere that they have drives them and drives them to overcome, i must say, the one thing that overcomes bureaucratic inertia is fear. Theyve reconfigured their National Security organizations from the bottom to the top. Like, its really amazing if you look at either russia or china, and we could go through like a long list of the things that theyve done that for this country would just be impossible. Because they are very, very scared of us. So weve given them reason to be scared, but it also impels them and it also creates environments where its very risky because of that fear and because of their feeling of inferiority that crises could really bounce out of control quickly. I agree with everything thats been said. One of the bonuses mike spoke of is the economic question. I think there may be two or three reasons why we havent seen things go completely off the rails yet. One is luck. Number two is, of course, if we ask ourselves, what does china want, and a better question is what does the communist party of china want . One of the things is party stability. He wants to make sure the Party Remains in control. So economiz ing them is dangerous. It depends on the economic dependence of the United States, on the trade, and on the increasing flow of waters across china. They realize if they rock that boat, the party could lose power. Thats one leverage the United States uniquely has. There is often the cliche that maybe western countries cant wre wreak the kind of pain like american countries. China is very concerned that if it has economic disruption, it will suffer. The second reason why there hasnt been an issue is china is doing pretty well. From a certain perspective, they believe time is on their side. There is a lot of discourse when time will decisively be on their side, but in general, the trends are moving the right way. There is a discourse also on this strategic period of opportunity that you see the chinese write about, and that means they believe the United States is fundamentally distracted by challenges in other parts of the world, and that there was a unique moment for about 20 years where china could keep developing Development Without these issues. That period is coming to an end, and therefore, we might see more turbulence going forward. The last thing is capabilities. China didnt have capabilities, to toms point. They were nervous, they were scared, they didnt know when we were going to pull out out of the blue. They have information were not aware of and its different. So there is a fear there. And this is the final thing i will say on this, while youre thinking about these eras, china didnt do a lot outside its periphery until about 10 years ago. Those are now coming to fruition. So in some ways capability is the third reason why weve been lucky. I just want to come back to a point that tom made, that the russians and the chinese fear u. S. Technology. I think there is a lot of truth to that. Let me just illustrate that with an example. As mike mentioned, i was very involved in the Obama Administration on Missile Defense. We did a lot of discussions with the russians to try to convince the russians that u. S. Missile defenses were not directed at russia. It seemed like a good idea at the time, i guess. And i remember back in 2012 a senior russian delegation was in town, and a very, very, very senior russian general made a presentation during that meeting. And it showed u. S. Egypt ships in the ball pit shooting down russian ballistic missiles. In response to the presentation, i said, general, that is a fascinating presentation. Can you tell me, though, how fast youre attributing the interceptor on each of those ships . And he looked at me with a straight face, and he said, 10 kilometers per second. For those of you who arent Missile Defense gurus, nobody has ever created a rocket with a velocity burnout of 10 kilometres per second. So i looked at the general and i said, general, if you can find me a company that can develop a seabased interceptor with a loss of 10 miles a second, let me know, because i want to buy that. He looked at me and said, youll get there. That may seem irrational to us, but i think the russians really do believe that point. They look at us, they look at the innovations in silicon valley, and they dont have that it is a concern and it does drive a lot of their defense plan. So 10 years ago when you talked about when china made that change, right, 10 years ago was a financial crisis. And other panelists have talked about how our adversaries think that the u. S. Is fundamentally distracted by the middle east, but it was also economic, and this is something that the panel brings up as well. You talked about some of the three changes that happened and why were talking about this and why this matters. Two of those points was how china viewed itself, right, its view of ifltself and its view o the capabilities and ambitions. The flip side of that is how do our adversaries see the u. S. . I wonder if i could glean some insight from the panel. You dont all have to address this, but would we be having the same conversation three years ago, given the Trump Administrations views or the president himself, his views about alliances, about the transactional nature of it, a decreasing focus on human rights and valuesbased diplomacy and engagement. So do the panels have thoughts on how russia and china perceive u. S. Ambitions and u. S. Capabilities . Sure, i can start off on that question. So, yeah, the 2008 financial crisis, this is a controversial argument in some academic circles, but i think there is increasingly more evidence of this. This is something im writing about as well in a book im putting together. But i think the 2008 financial crisis was pretty important for chinas perception of the United States and for its own selfassessment. When china assesses itself, that assessment isnt purely absolute. Its an assessment of its capabilities relative to the United States, its economic power relative to the United States, its comprehensive power, which is a term china uses, throughout. So when its thinking about itself, its not just thinking about itself. When it thinks about us, its not just thinking about us. It creates a discord, think tank, et cetera, places like this, except, of course, in china theyre all within the communist partys orbit. Basically the conclusion was that the United States this was the beginning of the end that sort of gave american hugemity. China had the opportunity to be a bit more assertive. Some of the discourse in china that changes is respect to the term multiplarity. We think of it as being an International Context where there is lots of countries all competing. Think of europe 200 years ago. From their perspective, that term is really much more focused on the United States. So when they say multiplarity, they dont mean a stronger india or a stronger china, it means that trend is accelerating and that there were less concerns about the endurance of longevity which was something really far away. Thats a turning point that i think is in asia. The Trump Administration has taken a tougher line on china than a lot of other administrations have taken, and in chinas view, thats collapsed this idea that the strategic opportunity still exists. Increasingly, chinese writers, not official ones, semiofficial ones, say, really, this thing might be coming to an end. The americans have really opened up to the fact that were here. The next ten years will be very stormy, but after ten years, sometime after 2040, it will be less stormy. So that is an increasingly important discourse were seeing in china reflected with pretty well connected think tank folks and others, and i think some are trickling into the political discourse. Ill leave it at that for now but im happy to talk more about that. I can talk just a little bit about russia. You know, you talk about would this be the same really, your question is whats been the impact of the Trump Administration on russian views of this competition . There is a couple things, i think, that impact that. Number one, russia, there is an inference, there is a statement that russians make to each other quite often. They say, its no accident that, and then theyll say its no accident there is good weather today when we were just about to have x, y or z. The point about that is they believe things are directed. There is an inference, just a basic inference that things are directed. So the United States goes through a major financial downturn and then magically discovers petroleum and vaults to the top of the World Petroleum production. They dont see this for what it actually was, which was an entirely low emergent behavior on the part of not even big oil or anything else in fracking in the United States, but they see it as a Strategic Initiative by the United States to dominate the oil market because thats where they get the majority of their money. So point is that the russians believe there is a deep state. And the deep state in the United States hates them and wants them to go away. And so for them, its hard for them to see a difference between the Obama Administration and the Trump Administration when it comes to this inex orable set o measures that the United States seems to continue to take when it comes to dealing with russia, number one. Number two, they are more fearful of our military than our political leadership. So when they look at nato or they look at u. S. Political leadership, they think to themselves, well, you know, it looks like things ebb and flow, but these American Military Senior Officers are implacable, theyve wanted the same things since they were young and they still want those same things. So theyre very fearful of the u. S. Military and what it does, and what happens, the way we label that or sort of accentuate that in their mind is that the u. S. Military is all over the world doing lots of things. I remember one time on my russia tour, you know, general bohama said to me, tom, were so weak now that i dont think anything we do makes a difference with russia. And i said to him, on the contrary. Everything we do down to the smallest detail, they look at it and they see that intent. Everything we do every time we fly a bomber someplace, one time we flew bombers on putins birthday and he was mad for five years. I cant tell you what he did, but it wasnt good, and he did it for five years in a row, but he was mad and thought it was a personal thing we did to him. We do it and things get canceled and canceled and then it just happened on that day. It was very innocent in that regard. I would call it ignorant strategically. So the American Military is, all over the world, doing a lot of these things, and this gets to what michael talks about in the book, is there are these escalatory lets call it culture, lets call it inf inferential understanding thats handed down that gets to an he is escalatory environment that gets dangerous. We have to look not just at our Senior Leadership which we obsess about a lot, but look at how red, in this case, russia sees it and how they see evidence everywhere of this implacable sort of desire to do russia in. And they tend to see everything we do in that light. Thank you. Yeah, kaitlyn. So i think this is a really important question. You know, i think in a lot of respects it is tempting to sort of look out at everything thats going wrong and say it just started going wrong three years ago and kind of infer backwards from that. I think its so important, and your question raises this, to recognize that a lot of issues were talking about today have structural pauses. Theyre much bigger than this administration. There are recurring tendencies, i would argue, over hundreds and hundreds of years in their National Relations for conversations of power to revoke assistance. I think thats what the students of military politics would have predicted the longterm result would have been. Eventually when one state has such a convention of loss of power, other states will try to counter that. One thing the United States did, supported and was fed into a narrative that the United States was losing its own power to the United States. If you think about naval extinction, and you think about alliances in asia and allow answers, well have some of the consequences mike is talking about in his book. Where i do think 2015 forward has been significant in how those structural challenges are managed by our government. One of the takeaways from this book, i think two big ones one is that clear signalling is very important in trying to have a defective deter rant. You have a good start, and i think thats the aspect that maybe our politics are a bit wanting. There is confusion. There is confusion, and i think predictability and ambiguity. I think the other takeaway from this book, and again, i think it just lays this out nicely, is that we dont want to be in a situation where a crisis arises and were in a physical complete completely. What are the full set of tools that we really want to have in our back pocket, and to develop those tools and think strategically, you cant just. If we look at tissues where wee really distracted by other things. Thank you. I want to leave plenty of time for questions and answers, but lets do 30 seconds down the line, what do we need to do . Think about it in terms of what needs to change in u. S. Policy, what needs to be critiqued and what needs to be created anew. Two things. One, we need to reestablish the centrality of u. S. Alliances. We are in a great power competiti competition, and the u. S. System of our alliances is our asymmetric advantages. We need to improve interopera bi interoperability with our allies. I remember when i was in the pentagon during the bush administration, i had to get a british Liaison Officer on one of our computer systems. We had a directive from the president of the United States to make this happen. And i was fighting with the bureaucracy saying, quote, we have this directive from the president of the United States, and the response from this gs13 was, i dont care. So were going to need to do that, number one, but number two, we need to enhance the resiliency of our critical infrastructure. What keeps us glued tower allies at the technical level are a number of key systems. Space, undersea communications cables, cyber. So we have to ensure that we have Resilient Networks that can withstand cyberattack as well as antisatellite attacks. So the allies are the key, both from a political perspective but also from an operational perspective. I know the question was for two, but ill just take one of franks. We need to sharpen our minds both politically and monetarily. When were awaiting trade wars with some of our allies, its very difficult to coordinate on other issues. The second point, though, and this goes to mikes book which discusses this in detail, is we need to shorten leverage when it comes to war. We need to shorten our tool kit. What that means is avoiding sanctions to basically provide everything at all times when they dont need to be. When we apply them significantly, we ask for the rest of the world to Work Together to bypass the system. Europe has gotten together to trade with iran with a special vehicle for this very purpose. China and russia were he can static when that vehicle was performed. If we want to have a tool that doesnt involve war, the best piece of leverage we have is the dollar and the kind of networks that emerge around it that we can sort of cut people off from. I say maybe the most important thing, besides what frank discussed, is maintaining the economic advantage with respect to finance. Thanks. I would echo the point about alliances, and in particular, emphasize that i think its not just that we need to have stronger alliances, but i think we need to encourage changes in allied defense postures that make them more resilient, that strengthen their resolve so that accomplices cant come in and think theyll conduct a lowcost operation that will cause an ally to terrorist become a. We have often heard about chinas access area deniable capabilities, but we should remember that in a lot of scenarios were worried about, including the ones talked about in mikes book, it would be china, so i think its possible to make china less costly, and i think there are specific ways we can do that. The other thing i would just highlight is maybe we continue to integrate our thinking about Strategic Deterrence. Both the conventional and subconventional aspects of our military forces all the way up to strategic and Nuclear Forces, and how all these different elements of military power can contribute to the deterrence of a bunch of different type potential adversary actions. I think there are smart people who are thinking this way, but were still kind of rusty. This is still a type of thinking thats very old to the point where its almost new again. So breaking down some of the siloes where the people who make weapons are over here, and the cybersecurity people are over here, and never shall we meet. Ly. Okay. This is fantastic because its a long list. Weve and ivve just reinforced everything that was said before, so to try to add a bit of flavor, two things. Number one, we need to dramatically increase the depth and sophistication of our understanding of china and russia as strategic competitors. This goes across the board. We are adding a fantastic deficit when it comes to that. We have to increase it this time. Unlike the cold war, there is two, not one, and this is more than twice as hard. So i can comment at length about some of the lack of depth and sophistication that we have now, but we just have to start clawing ourselves back. Number two, and this is more along the lines of getting to operational concepts and actual war fighting and deterrence and striking possibility with the military, but we need to have command and control. Command and control is a bit of a neglected part of our military capabiliti capabilities, and weve been lady with commandant control because of the last 20 years of distraction. Both of these adversaries in their strategic, very clear, pointed, strategic writing say that our command and control is their number one the number one object of their military strategy. That is to say, not only the retention of their own sc2, bu the attack of our c2 is their primary focus. If thats theyre primary focus, im going to try to win there. As a strategist, i see your primary focus and i need to try to address your primary focus. Its very hard for americans to address c2. Our c2 isnt integrated like it needs to be at the national combatant command control level. Weve had stovepipe combatants and commands. Ai its a very big issue. Michael talks about it in the book to some degree. At every level all the way down to the tactical communications, the technologies of communication and the concepts for globally integrated communication need to come back in the department of defense in the National Security community. We have people with microphones, right . Well take three questions at a time. I would just ask that you keep the questions brief and make sure they are questions and not comments. Purple over here, yellow tie over there. And anybody in the back for number three . Anybody . Im carl olan with the atlantic council. I am going to make a comment. Mike, im glad youre at 35. I hope you put that money into the primary and ill give you some money if you do. I have two observations that are very brief. First, i would argue that the United States has not faced a competent enemy on the battlefield for 55 years, so this notion of military superiority is nice, but i think we have to look at it much more carefully in terms of opposition. Second, if you compare how long russia, the u. S. S. R. , the United States or china have been involved in military operations the last 69 years, since 1950, the United States has been engaged for 33 years. The other countries five or six at most. Its something to think about. As you know, and my question really gets back to the national Defense Strategy. He was concerned about the two fleets and taiwan. But the strategy talks about global competition, detering and defeating to find many the military could deter. Mobilizing the south china see are belt and robe. If youre talking about defeating an enemy of war, equivalent megaphones. So what i ask is how do we determine a win, and if war comes, how do we guarantee a win . Carl, anidealliveson. Net. As a deep scenario, what is the potential for russia, china and others to meet in a geopolitically neutral place and discuss a new brett woods agreement which would diffuse the potential threat of dollar longevity . A specific question as to russia. The book the controversy of sdp zion by douglas reed delved into the intertwined roots of bolsterism and zionism. One of his last books was 200 years together. That book, is it not an accident, shall i say, because its never been translated into english, only german and french. A very important book to understand russia and its perception of external threats. We have one more, i think. Hi. Id love to hear what you think c2 looks like inside cyberspace because thats one area where china is ahead of us. Commandant control. So i have how do we win on the battlefield . How do we define global competition . Is there any possibility for deconfliction such as having some trilateral conversation, and how do we really understand russia and its perception over the threat, and how do we deal with c2 in cyberspace . None fortunaof the panel have t address all these things, but if you have a particular insight, please. Ill just start with the first question. Its true china is aware it hasnt fought a conflict in a long time, so as a result, they say that is a weakness that they have. There is a focus in china on key peace operations and others to get some degree of operational experience. That kind of addresses the question to some degree. Ares they a competent adversary without experience . They seem to think they need more experience and theyre going to get it. I agree with you and the major theater competition remains in faith fait accompli positions. There is a longstanding discourse trying to go back 20 years about having access. There is an a authoritative discourse saying when we think about having global competition, sometimes its about access. Finally, another larger global question, increasingly its hard to say because competition is not just about an actual state of affairs, but tensioned. In other words, there are certain behaviors taken and we increasingly seem to have a conversation thats more global. On brett woods, i dont know if its a good idea to have a second brett woods with china, because longevity is how we might actually be able to prevent conflict. Harlan, to your question, when i think about competition, i think our colleague here at brookings, tom wright, really hit the nail on its head in his recent book all measures short of war. And he says, the United States is in competition with russia and china for the future of the international border. What he means by that is that there is a struggle berth between the authoritarian versus the democratic model. I tend to agree with him on that. At the same time, i also believe we need to maintain channels of communication with russia. As we talked about this morning, both all three nations are armed with Nuclear Weapons and the possibility for miscalculations is high depending on the scenario. Thats why i have been one of the few people, and i would say i proposed this before donald trump did in a february article is the need for a trilateral dialogue. Because when you look at the key Strategic Nuclear questions, whether its the inf treaty or the future of arms control, it is a trilateral discussion. And while i dont think that this administration had done a good job laying the groundwork for a trilateral discussion, i fundamentally believe that over the long term, we need to have an arms control or strategic stability system that brings china into the discussion. Because fundamentally, i dont think its either politically or strategically viable to have china, the United States major strategic competitor, sitting outside a future strategic regime. Furthermore, i think arms control can play a role in managing this competition, but it needs to be a different type of arms control than we practice in the postcold war period. During that period, it was fundamentally about reducing the role in numbers of Nuclear Weapons. I think we need to have a new paradigm for arms control focused on maintaining stable deterrents in reducing the risk of newman leer u nuclear use. Part of the purpose of this panel, we were going to talk a little bit about warfighting scenarios or the deterrent, so harlan, im glad you answered that question, and the c2, i want to bring those two questions together. Again, interesting appendix, especially appendix two in mikes book, talks about modern tendencies and how they might contribute. He leaves open the question of how a political nation might take those tools and apply them in some kind of operational concept. I do a lot of work in that area in trying to figure out how to anticipate new and disruptive operational concepts that might stem from, first of all, the problems that each one of these countries are trying to solve, which, remember, russia and china are very steeped in u. S. Motivations for their operational concepts and all that. We tend to be ignorant of theirs. So they, for instance, focus a lot on peripheral wars. For instance, yes, the United States is very intimidating to them, but they only chinese talk about it in terms of how do we keep those out so we can conduct a local war . The local war is the thing that theyre focused on. The same thing goes with russia. And when it comes to c2, when it comes to command and control of those things, the technology, your question about cyberspace, the answer gets to sort of three big changes that have occurred over the last few years that matter a lot. Number one, Electronic Warfare has changed dramatically. This is normally off the persons radar screen, no pun intended, but the Electronic Warfare changes, when it changes in stump fashion, there are special access areas for the United States and its hard to understand if you can keep your command and control secure and if there is a limited environment. If it can be located, it can be struck. So there is a bitter discussion going on to try to secure your ability to do command and control. Were going to see it coming a mile away. Thats u. S. China and russia think its right around the corner waiting to pounce on them any second. So theyre motivated by time. They want to be able to assess the environment and make rapid decisions. And what does that drive them to . Automated methods of doing command and control, which exist in cyberspace, which are driven by algorithms, not humans. There is no time in there for humans to think about what it is they need to do when it comes to command and control. At the highest level all the way down to the tactical level. They can automate command and control because it takes human judgments they dont necessarily trust out of the intermediate levels. Im worried about that because of the systems that led to world war i. The capacity for the c2 system structure itself to be a catalytic environment in escalation dynamics in the 21st century is very high, and when you inject cyberspace into that, the chances for it to be manipulat manipulated. We saw that in moments when a human stopped a real sdadisaste from happening in russia, im thinking about, in the early 80s. So im concerned about the degree to which c2 has become a request for speed. I will just tell you from the dod point of view, what i hear all the time is because of the adversarys quest for speed, we want more speed. So everybody is just going for rapidity, and rapidity means taking humans out of the loop and that is all very problematic from my point of view. Ill take two more questions. Are there any questions in the back . We hit the front quite a bit. I see a gentleman in the back, in the blue. Pam perlman at george mason. You mentioned a lot about fear and objectivity to fear, so wouldnt it be more helpful at reducing fear, reducing diplomacy reassurance and also analyzing what is the underlying conflict about and trying to address some of the underlying causes and including a track to diplomacy and possibly having some intention to work toward reconciliation . Thank you. Second question back there . Dan roper from the association of the United States army. I would be interested in your views of the current posture of the u. S. Military and the balance of employed forces versus reliance of rotations and the duel iing sword. Is that deterrence or lack of deterrence . Ill take one more. In front here. My name is elliott herwitz, and i want to thank the panel for an interesting discussion. Mr. Rhodes, i have a question for you, please. Without getting too much into the current political situation, you mentioned a trilateral discussion between our president and between president z axi and putin. From my point of view, that would never work out very well. Thank you. Really good questions. I think the last question and the first question could be together. Let me ask one final question, and that is, xi jinping is going to russia to attend a major russian Investor Forum in st. Petersburg, and she had said that last year no matter how International Situations change, china and russia always firmly supported each other in defending their core interests. And he added, putin is my best, most intimate friend. So in addition to the questions about how to reduce the fear, including reassurance and dialogue, what is the forced posture . But whats your sense of how worried are you about a chinarussia partnership . You want to just work down the aisle . These are our last comments . Ill make one quick one. Frank, do you want to address the trilateral discussion issue . I agree with you that a trilateral discussion amongst leaders is probably not all that helpful. But if you go down a couple levels, a trilateral discussion on Strategic Issues, i think, makes a lot of sense. You cant think about strategic ability in purely a bilateral setting. China is impacting that a lot. Even if the United States had been able to bring russia back into compliance, you still have this problem that china had over a thousand medium range and intermediate range missiles. So what i was saying in the context of these strategic arms control issues, you cant treat it as a bilateral issue, you need to find a way to bring china into that discussion. With regards to the question on diplomacy, i think the member of the audience is absolutely right, whereas the administration got the Great Power Competition correct, they dont have a diplomatic strategy for Great Power Competition. And i would make if i were to make one recommendation, the state Department Needs to work on that. They need to develop the resources. I dont know if there will be a reconciliation between the United States, russia and china because i fundamentally believe we are in a competition for the future of the world order. For me the objective is managing that competition in a way that reduces the risk of conflict. Thanks. So on the first question basically about whether or not there could be some degree of reassurance and reconciliation, i think those things are certainly good to attempt and i think there could probably be more robust crisis mechanisms when you think about crisis escalation. We need to think about ways to build an institutional structure with china and russia that would find a way to do that. There is room below the level of competition for some good to be done. That being said, though, i kind of agree with frank that the competition is becoming viewed in both countries as zero, and that means its getting difficult for each side to trust the other, and i think intentions are seen in the most possible light. China as an authoritarianism. Just by being who we are, we pose a risk to the holding power. Its hard to risk who we are, and because who we are is driving the threat, its going to be difficult to stop. On the other point about china and russia, its something i worry i lot about. Chinarussia cooperation really picked up in ernest in the early days after the end of the cold war, so were talking really about the yugoslav invasions. You see china and russia together jointly calling for an order. They meet with putin. You can kraread the transcripts saying we need to stop the americans in central asia. So we see as a increasing intimacy of the two for a time, and now i think theres more military dimensions in e. W. , right . And in addition, of course, you know, the unusual arms sales. What im most concerned about is coordinated strategic action. If we see china do something in the East China Sea and russia do something simultaneously in the baltics, we fay a twofront problem. I think a lot of the themes go back to harlans question about what do we meanly strategic competition, an aspect i would throw in, i think competent addition is different from outright conflict its also a kay where you may have very few mutual interests. Competition can be a situation where you have a tense and suspicious relationship with a potential adremember sear or competitor, but also areas of mutual overlapping interests. We do have those. For instance, with china, we have dprk management, climate, economic interests that are in common and mutual interests in preventing escalation, and weve talked a by i about that today. It does raise questions about should we have dialogue, even try to pursue things like arms control, even acknowledging that we are in a competition. Looking back to the cold war, we actually did some of those things during the cold war even though we were definitely locked into a longterm strategic rivalry. I think its conclusive to go back to the oldest definition of arms control. Their point was arms control isnt something you do with your friends because you agree on everything. Its something you do with a country that maybe youre an adversa adversary, but you have a mutual interest in the likelihood and costs of war. If we look at it from that perspective there are contributions tore made, not reassurance, but deterrence. These forums can be places to Exchange Information about what strategic intentions are on the part of the United States. I think this does go back to the c2 question that was asked earlier. One of the challenges that we face and one that mikes book highlights nicely and your question also raised is there are these new technology that is we dont fully know their effects. With Nuclear Weapons and the cold war, once you had a Nuclear Arsenals and had tests, everybody kind of knew the effects. The issue was would you use them. With cyberand some of the advances in electronic war fare there are capabilities where if you reveal them, theyre no longer useful. So its hard to deter, because your adversary may not believe what you have. And so, you know, we know actually in the late cold war, one of the things the soviet you were talking about automation, one of the things they were most afraid of was advances in that they thought threatened their command and control, and it did lead them to develop in the event they lost c2. Even when youre in a competition, can you have some dialogue that reveals some of your intentions and sets parameterses in way that might give you an offramp. I think thats harder today in a multipolar context than it was in the cold war, but probably worth pursuing. Thanks. Tom, very briefly, and then the last word to mike. Just on arms control, we also need to look back at the cold war and understand arms control happened after a lot of really scary things happened. Theres no guarantee that those scary things could have actually ended in so hoping for scary stuff is not a strategy. Ill give you my simple calculation on that is that everybody talks about we need to eye void russia and china getting together. I want the opposite. I want us to come so strategically pragmatic and carey that it drives them together. They are really bad friends theyre not good at being friends with each other thousands of years of animosity that they remember about each other. Theyre never going to get themselves together. I want to be bad enough that i drive them to that place. Lets see how they do. On the army question back there, actually theres a tremendous point to be made here, and ill make it right now. That is, hi question had to do with specifics about army rotation versus permanent basing overseas. The problem is, our overseas basing has atrophied dramatically as a result of the end of the cold war. This is part of the strategy vacation that we took. That and the navy, which relies on overseas basing. Its shrunk dramatically, we have way too much konus military basing thats a drag on our program, thats too costly. Weve atrophied our overseas bases in a world with major competition with alliances that matter more and more and more all the time. We need to be aggressively expanding a 21st century concept of overseas basing, and understanding how the rotation of key kinds of u. S. Military forces into those places overseas matters a lot to our adversary. Myolast points is if we tay attention to what theyre sea and china and russia are trying to communicate with us, and were not listening. If we would listen a bit, we would understand what types of rotations, what types of basing, what types of activities by those forces in those forward bases matters the most to our adversary. They tell us. They tell us what theyre most he scared of. We can dial it down or dial it up. If and only if were listening very carefully to what they say. Thank you from the panel and all of you. I just want to add a couple quick thoughts. Qualify my conaccepts is to avoid overreacting. You dont want to go to escalation, but also because you dont want all of your commitments in the western pacific and then give Vladimir Putin what he perceives as a invitation to muck around in the baltics. Firm and resolution doesnt gift china Carte Blanche to expand its appetite, because you somehow tolerated of an invasion of a senkaku island. It may not push china off that island for 10 or 15 years, but still preferable to the idea of open conflict, preferable to the idea of having to swing most of our military forces to the pacific leaving our selves exposed in the atlantic. Its that twotheater focus thats behind my logic. On the issue of diplomacy, it just has to be both. Theyre not alternate activities. So, for example, my previous book at brook us was trying to argue we need a new Security Architecture for Eastern Europe. I dont think bring ukraine into nato is an optimistic approach, but the reaction that nato expansion has caused so far in russia are not fundamentally our fault. Whats done is done. We have to protect existing allies, we cant create a sense theres a twotier alliance. We can work hard on thinking of new security regimes for ukraine and georgia, providing putin will do his share, but i dont think we should expand nato. However, thats not going to take away the existing threats to nato cunning already in the alliance. We have to do both. Thats why i was pleased to have this panel on this topic today. Over to you. We went a few minutes over time, so thank you for all of your questions, and thanks to our panelists. Later today, here on cspan3, secretary of state mike pompeo it was the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics control. That hearing starts at 2 30 p. M. Eastern. You can see it live on cspan3. The house will be in order. For no are 40 years cspan has provided america unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and Public Policy events from washington, d. C. And around the country, so you can make up your own mind. Created by cable in 1979, cspan is brought to you about i your local capable or satellite provider. Cspan, your unfiltered view of government. Former Vice President joe biden campaigns for president today in davenport, iowa, live at 6 30 p. M. Eastern here on cspan3. As we come to the end of Mental Health awareness were joined by angela kimble, the acting ceo of the National Alliance on mental illness. Remind viewers of the allyian and your mission . Thanks for having me on the shoismt its the nations largest Grassroots Organization dedicated to improving the lives of people who live with Mental Health condis