Good morning im the director of the middle east program and we are delighted to welcome you to what i think will be a fascinating program on us policy and strategy after the Qassem Soleimani strike. First in the unlikely event we need to evacuate the building i will tell you where to go. I dont think that will be a problem but i will direct you. Also thank you for those who have supported todays activity. They have done it in a way that is exemplary for the way a policy discussion should do so to set up a conference so there is no responsibility for what we say but but it is an issue of significant broad interest we are grateful for the support. Looking at what has happened in the gulf there is a broader National Debate if the us should be digging in or pulling out. Iran is perceived to be a threat. Even within the chump Administration Even how the us should deal with that threat the us increasingly has been facing asymmetrical threats and responding with conventional tools that has been expensive and affected limited effectiveness january 3rd gave us a punctuation mark to look at what us strategy your policy is in the gulf as a sign of increased commitment and the us trying to handle this from afar. Was this the beginning of the end of the us presence in iraq . And then great power conflict if a more energy the United States should care still importing much of its energy from the gulf but even the allies in asia but how should we think of you a strategy Going Forward . Im delighted to help kick this offer to people i have tremendous affection and respect for John Mclaughlin to your left day distinguished practitioner in residence at Johns Hopkins previously served as the acting director as the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence with the cia Deputy Director and vice chair with the National Intelligence council to help found the sherman can school he had a career at the cia lasting three decades focusing on eurasian issues. And what i value trying to figure out a way to recategorize things nobody knows more than John Mclaughlin. To your right is the director of National SecurityDefense Center she was the under secretary of defense at the Us Department of defense serving for strategy and special assistant to the president and senior director at the Security Council before entering the Obama Administration she was my colleague here. And she has the advantage of being very smart so there are two terrific people to help us think conceptually what are we trying to do . What should we be trying to do and then well have a discussion over the policy a cold if i sound a little raspy. I largely agree with johns assessment of the region and how we got here and where we are. So i will just try to add a few observations on top of first i think u. S. Influences markedly diminished to where we were five years ago, many things got us to this point but among them is kind of an erratic policy, expanding two administrations, optically in the last couple of years, also what i would kind of policy towards the gulf that we will talk about, and finally and unbalanced approach towards the issues, but if you package all these things together, but i think our influence is markedly less than it was five years ago, second u. S. Strategy towards iran in particular, which is at the heart of this debate, i think has lacked coherence, since trump came to office. Yes we know that his he aides, have deplored iranian behavior, no ambiguity about that, but its never been clear how they intend to deal with it it. What their ultimate goal is and how they intend to get there and third, compared to five years ago. Today we have to Pay Attention to, perhaps the concerned with, Great Power Competition in the gulf at a measure that is greater than five years ago. Certainly ten years ago. Those three things. Big strategic contextual issues that frame the problem. So, lets look now at how we got here. Then look second at whats our competition and third, lets think a little bit about where this could go over the next ten to 20 years. First how did we get here . Well, just about every middle east problem that you encounter always has a chicken and egg face. Meaning how did we get into this mess . Which came first, the chicken or the egg. In the case of the current problems in the gulf, im afraid that the u. S. , this is my view, is both the chicken and the egg. What do i mean by that . To be sure, we did not create the historic animosity between persians and arabs, that is clear. It is not our responsibility or our fault. But by koch pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Agreement, we added fuel to a fire that was always on simmer or approaching boil. We set off a Chain Reaction that we have not been able to really control, shape or direct. Weve been through this Iran Nuclear Agreement dozens of times, most of you have talked about it as endlessly as i have. So i dont want to flog the horse again. But let me make a basic point. It was not at all a perfect agreement, but it did too important things. It bought some precious temporal and substantive space in which to work on other aspects of irans behavior. With some assurance that the Nuclear Issue would be at least under control for a fixed predictable period of time. Second, it was a rare instance on which a coalition of allies and adversaries could agree. Everyone from our European Partners to china and russia. And, it was a platform from which the u. S. Could possibly bring multilateral leverage to bear on other golf issues. That is all gone now. In fact, i would argue that our unilateral action started a sequence of events. The reimposition of american sanctions. Irans gradual return to nuclear activity. Over the past year, its response to the u. S. Maximum Pressure Campaign and actions that led ultimately to the targeting of general soleimani. Now that iran has lifted the restrictions it had agreed to under the nuclear agreement, we could in a matter of months, certainly within a year, face the conditions in iran that last decade led the u. S. And israel to actually consider military action before we reached the agreement that we just referred to. But think about it now. Here is where i was leading us. Trump does not want a mid east war, that is pretty clear. And if it is regime change that he wants in iran, there is no clear path to that either. So i see u. S. Strategy on this issue stuck in a culdesac, which i think is evident to everyone in the gulf. That intern affects how they think about us. This came through for me pretty vividly by comments by the omani foreign minister at the Munich Security Conference where i was a week ago. You know what that is. Its this gathering of people from all around the world to debate every issue imaginable. There was a segment on gulf security which i attended. Myself and four ministers from kuwait, qatar, and the uae. About efforts to bridge the gulf between saudi arabia and iran, the omanis said that any progress will have to await the u. S. President ial election in november. This does not mean that the omanis are not quietly building bridges that they are not telling us about between iran and saudi arabia. But they seem to say there is no crossing them for a northern nine months. By the way the optics of that session that i referred to in munich. Sometimes optics tell you everything. Both the iran foreign minister and the Saudi Foreign minister. Were both scheduled to speak. But they would not appear together. They insisted that their appearances separately be bridged, be separated by this panel of other foreign ministers. Also included u. S. Senator chris murphy. With rogue delegations marching in and out it all seemed kind of absurd. Proving the old adagey that two points in the middle east are seldom a straight line. The root. I think our time is slipping so i will try to zip through this pretty quickly. In the gulf, our competition comes from many countries but europeans, the russians, the chinese. Primarily we need to think about china. The best way to describe chinas expansion and strategy is that it is driven by three things. Its need for energy, its growing belt and road initiative. This plan to connect china with basically the middle east and europe, literally from saint john province right up to the english channel. Certainly deeply into the gulf. With infrastructure and so forth. And finally a determination so, energy, belt and road and the final thing, a determination not to get caught up in any of these golf disputes. At this point, they are primarily a commercial economic financial activity. Over the last dozen years, Chinese Investment in all of the gulf countries has grown to 83 billion dollars. I think it started if you go back five years at 25 billion. The bulk of that, 63 billion is in saudi arabia and the uae. It is focused primarily on Energy Related issues. Every gulf country. Has signed a partnership now of some sort with china. He and china has not neglected iran. Iran is part of this even though it is not gcc. 11 of chinas oil imports come from iran. In a recent fiveyear period. Ive mentioned the belt and road initiative. I will not go into that in more detail but that includes iran as well. Russia is not operating at the scale, but its dependent on the oil, means it works on diplomacy in the region. To summarize russia quickly. One anecdote that is revealing. I went to a meeting of golf Oil Officials at Columbia University about a year ago. In talking to them, they mentioned that russian now, not a member of opec, dusted in on opaque meetings as an observer and has tended to start sharing the meetings. I just came back from russia in january and i can tell you russians know how to run a meeting. Maybe better than some of the gulf states do. That is an interesting window. The record will reflect the u. S. Ambassador to the gulf laughter that. Okay he did. Not the first time ive made someone laugh like that. Russias focus has been mostly on saudi and the uae where it has signed agreements in the range of one to two billion dollars in Energy Advanced Technology and health sectors. Its always trolling for arms markets. The saudis are apparently interested in the s400 system. I will wrap up now by saying, you wanted us to talk about soleimani. You post the question of whether we, this panel, would have made the same decision about soleimani. Maybe. If there was unassailable evidence of an imminent attack on americans, that case though has not been made no publicly in my judgment. We have not persuasively. Even in that case, it would have been important to consider whether the same result could have been obtained by attacking his operatives or hardening vulnerable targets. So, i wouldve started skeptical but im not sure where i would have come out. Let me say a word about imminence. In talking about an imminent attack, we tend to think as you know, time target and place. Sometimes an attack can be judged rightly to be imminent even though you dont know those things. In a sense, that is what 9 11. Was if you went back to that period, the cia was saying, we are going to have an imminent attack, but we did not know time target in place, and weve been able to find bin laden at that point might have made a difference. It was a hard call. Fundamentally i wouldve started off skeptical about this. Now i have talked to my israeli friends, some of them, in the corridors at munich, and they all think this is an important thing to do, and it has had a deterrent effect on the iranians, and to be fair, the irgc, republican guard, seem to be off balance and losing some public support. We have to watch this one. Final comment, im going to stop because ive gone on too long, but john thats where were going to be in 20 years, just get to this point if you believe our former treasury secretary in 20 years, i guess he would say 30 years, but in that time range chinas economy will be twice the size of ours, unless there are some major discontinuity in china that we are not anticipating but project forward in a linear way, thats what you have. I think in 20 years expect beijing to have gone beyond, the economic investments to weigh much more heavily in eastern calculations. One way for the u. S. To prepare for this is to use, what i think is are superior soft power, to help the region with educational and social policies, to prepare for that day we will definitely not be able to spend our way to the front of the pack, but lets see what the next panel says but i think diplomacy and soft power and alliances, it is our first multiplying formula for decades ahead, i will stop there thank you very much. Okay, good morning everybody i apologize in advance i have a cold if i am a little bit raspy that is the reason why, i largely agree with johns assessment of the region and how we got here where we are so i will just try to add a few observations on top of that. I spent most of my time in the Defense Department and i am firmly in the camp that those who believe that we need to be at the grand strategy level focusing on the competition with china and to do that effectively we have to make adjustments in terms of that level of emphasis we are placing on the middle east as a region. I believe our interest in the region are changing. Among other things as john mentioned, we dont have the same Energy Dependence we did 20 or 30 years ago. We certainly still have interest there but for 20 years the region has been our focal point and we really need to take some clear steps to change that if we want to compete successfully with china and that will have a military dimension but the soft power dimension that is much more important. So i dont want to suggest the competition is all military that we need to deinvest in the middle east to invest in asia im not suggesting that. But certainly there will be a military dimension of the competition that we have been so heavily invested in the middle east for so many years that i think if we are going to be successful in the next 20 years at the grand strategy level we have to make more changes. The thing i really worry about right now with the strategic culdesac it is hard to make those shifts. To be able to rebalance the portfolio across the globe, we have to be able to find places to have economies in the middle east. We cant do that safely in terms of our own National Security if we dont figure out a more strategic approach to the region. It feels like maximum pressure strategy to have a misalignment under the Current Administration and the ways and means which dont seem to me to be in alignment with what the administration is trying to do. So my sense is we as a country we need to escalate those tensions in the region and the next panel will be much better position to have good ideas about this but it seems to me we have to find a way to articulate what do we think a reasonable deal would be quirks one coming of different voices of the administration saying slightly Different Things but secretary pompeo has let out a set of conditions to my ears requires iran to fundamentally change as a regime and i dont see that happening. The conditions we have laid out dont seem realistic. What do we really want is a country can we rebuild a coalition as the Previous Administration did with friends of the region and countries in europe quirks so whether that tries to reenter the deal and broaden that or craft the outline of a brandnew deal, we really have to be successful and revisit the current policy and revisit that in a structured and deliberate discussion to review the policy and think about the third order effects. I dont see that deliberate discussion taking place right now. So a core piece would be revisiting the iran policy to figure out what we can realistically do to bring greater security to get iran back into a position where they are not restarting their nuclear program. Also to deescalate tensions in the region, it was an important step in the uae to relook at its approach in yemen. We would be wise to encourage the saudis to bring the conflict to an end. We need to be working carefully with the government of iraq there is a lot of diplomacy and then to be stable and secure. I worry about the Qassem Soleimani strike where we are with the government of iraq. I am hopeful that there are conversations going on right now with the government of iraq to keep the us presence in the Coalition Presence in iraq so we can continue to work with the Security Forces but the Qassem Soleimani threat may have complicated that. So continuing to put the government of iraq in a position where they have to choose between iran and the United States and to manage it, that puts them in a very difficult position. We need to find ways to rebuild our relationship with the government of iraq with some confidence Building Measures to deescalate the complex whether or yemen or qatar and that would help the United States to be in a better position to allocate the military presence in the region. Secretary esper has called for all of the regional combatant command to have a review of our military presence of the major theaters. That was one of the goals to identify these places we can make changes to enable the military to put more emphasis on the indo Pacific Theater to look back at what kinds of adjustments could we wisely making our posture of Central Command and there are some changes we could make here at csi and those that have done some good thinking about how we might be able to change our posture. I remember when i was in the department in 2014 with the defense review we were looking at what about the headquarter structure. What kinds of capabilities did we need in the region ten or 20 years out. We need missile defense, Global Maritime capabilities, special operations command, if you believe those that we need to deal with the security challenges, looking that what we currently have and then we could transition to that approach it feels like a smart said steps to be taken and that is an opportunity but the concern that i have there is so much instability of strategic incoherence even if you can identify in a blue sky kind of way with that reallocation that strategic incoherence not allowing us to move forward on those kinds of changes at this time. I think the first step we need to do is really look carefully at the grand strategy level of our approach to the middle east. Ideally make some adjustments but again, that may not happen certainly until i think we are on the other side of this election. Perhaps d. O. D. Would be able to come to, if there is a change of administrations which i think is a question now, d. O. D. Might be able to bring some ideas to the table about what an adjusted posture might look like. I think i will stop there. Thank you. But theres a lot of richness there. Before we Start Talking about the 20 year perspective, which i do want to get to. You both identified iran as a place where the u. S. Has pretty Ambitious Goals and pretty limited tools that it has been willing to deploy. To me, the difficult moment was the aftermath of the strike on the saudi oil facilities, september 14th, which presumably were executed by some combination of iranian forces. To which there was a quite limited response, which reportedly prompted the saudis to send signals to the iranians that they wanted to reduce tensions which followed an effort by the emiratis in june after some attacks on ships in the gulf, that they wanted to reduce tensions. How should the u. S. Have thought about the response to iran . Was that an opportunity to say in the longer term were going toward trying to have something that is more sustainable. We understand that irans ability for mischief is persistent. We have to lower the temperature. Was it an opportunity for the u. S. To reassert its deterrence against iran . Was this a time when the u. S. Had to move closer to the gulf states to get them to support the maximum Pressure Campaign and reassure them the u. S. Was there . That was clearly an opportunity for something. That was clearly a timely focused golf governance thinking about what the future would look like. Given where you think we are going, what should we have done at that moment to try to move things in a constructive direction . That is a tough question. I think the problem is in that moment, a bit of what christine alluded to, the absence of tools. In other words, i dont think we had a mechanism or a form for reaching to both the iranians and saudis simultaneously at that time. Because of the situation that we had gotten ourselves into with iran after withdrawing from the agreement and beginning the maximum Pressure Campaign. So, for us to perform. This is a major problem. Typically in this part of the world the middle east more broadly. If you went back, 20 years . We could function as sort of an honest broker in parts of this region. We could come into a room and say everyone in the room sit down and lets have a top. Not so easily with the iranians, publicly and so forth, but we could reach out to everyone. We were not perceived as in quite the way we are now. I dont think we had that capacity at the time of the strike. Remember if you went back to may 2018 or 2017, secretary pompeo had made a speech in which he laid out 12th demands of what we wanted from iran. I think as christine was suggesting, if he looked at those demands, it meant fundamentally regime change. It meant change everything about the way you operate in the world. Instantly it was apparent that none of that was going to happen. That it was an unrealistic set of demands. And so in that atmosphere, i think the administration is left, in the case, other than the military option. There you run up against president trumps understandable desire not to get sucked in to a military confrontation in the middle east. I think reading his mind a little bit, i think thats why he held back. If you go back and look at that period, one day it was were going to do something, the next day not so sure, the day after were going to do something. There was a sort of wobbly approach to it. I guess what ive said is there are things that we should ideally do and that were not equipped to do in that instance. Again, i saw a bit of this, the separation that has grown up between the saudis and the iranians in munich. Not just optically but, at one point the iranian minister said after the Soleimani Killing, the saudis had sent a message to iran. He did not say what it said but presumably, if not sympathy at least acknowledgment of how painful it was for them. He said we immediately responded to saudi arabia but we never heard back. He said i think we didnt hear back because the u. S. Probably persuaded the saudis not to respond. I do not know whether that is true but that is the way they think about the two of us now. I would stop there. I think we just didnt know what to do, we didnt have the tools. Let me ask christine the hard question which is if you want to reassert the honest broker role, reassert the influence, but in the intermediate and longer term you say were going to have a lighter footprint, were not going to sustain the dominant role. How do you build credibility and confidence with partners in the gulf if its part of a longer term effort that youve described of we cannot remain preoccupied with the middle east. We actually have to lower the temperature so in fact we are trying to negotiate from a position of strength while we are, in the minds of many, out the door. How do we handle that . I think thats a good question. I think its certainly something the Previous Administration struggled with quite a bit. Obviously the Obama Administration was trying to pivot, rebalance, whatever you want to call it, to asia and was viewed by many as disengaging from the region. Hence, having difficult relations with some of the countries in the region. In my mind theres a difference between being an honest broker and being kind of the power player in the region if you will. I think we are the United States needs to go states needs to go for its own interest and maybe is going to go anyway because of some of the things john plaintiff to that the influence in the region as declining over time, i think were at a moment in time where the International Order developed in the wake of world war ii with faulty institutions and norms and the United States playing an Important Role we are in the position of flux and change and that order is evolving into something that is not quite as u. S. Centric as it has been for the last two decades and i could argue the United States can still be an important player in the middle east but doesnt have to be kind of the soul security guarantor named player that they have been over the last two decades and again theres a difference there is a difference between being an honest broker which is more about trying to look more dispassionately at the set of challenges we have in the region. To me it feels right now the United States has shifted to a place where we are all in with saudi arabia and israel in a way we havent been for the last ten years and that i think is one of the reasons we are not seeing as much of an honest broker as we used to be. I think we are also not seeing as much as an honest broker because we are quite unpredictable and going through the cycle weve been in part of a discontinuity the discontinuity and being consistent and its harder to avoid miscalculation at this communication when you are not being consistent in what is important to you and what your interests are and thats something weve been quite inconsistent about. We are not going to be able to shift our Strategic Center of gravity and footprint in the region. We are not going to be able to shift and be the center in the middle east. You cant necessarily have your cake and eat it, too. They wouldve nothing to would have nothing to say and no useful role to play in the region. Its embarking on a gradual shift, but the Current Administration has come and taken a different think thats to me its orchestrating the power simultaneously not just thinking of the military instrument which isnt all that useful in some of these situations. It is practiced as enormously powerful for a country like the United States and we are orchestrating that arm of the government with force standing behind it. If you have to boil it down to its essence, the reason we didnt respond more strongly, is that you have to go back to the moment, we didnt know what we know now, and i think we are still confused about this, but at that moment, i think we were concerned about, the escalatory cycle that could follow. In other words, had we done something militarily, to punish abroad, world we have gone. In that moment i wouldve said you are on and escalatory cycle here, that could get very rough week. The capabilities of the Iranian Military in the gulf, and there ability to deploy elsewhere like hezbollah, i think that wouldve been the discussion, had one have taken place at that time. Jump ahead to the Soleimani Killing, most of us thought that would have a more immediate retaliatory response, and we may not be seeing it yet, because iran may respond quietly, covertly, gradually, overtime we do not know where that is going yet, but the instant analysis from a lot of people is, not much happened. So i think we are left, uncertain about how the escalatory cycle really works with iran, in the circumstances that have emerged over the last two years. And i think that will continue to make it hard for us to make decisions about how to interact with iran when they do something that is dramatically offensive to us. We still have a few minutes left, i want to give the audience for a few questions, with Something Like hes bothering me, and i hope that one or both of you will put my mind at rest, we keep responding, and fundamentally conventional ways to asymmetrical threats. We keep fighting forces that are infinitely weaker than we are, and the perception is that we are not winning, what do we need to think about differently, so we get out of the trap. The trap of flailing, with overwhelming conventional force, and showing that we still remain vulnerable, to unconventional force, in part because we are afraid of escalatory things like youve talked about. He really asked tough questions, but i think to me the answer to that is, orchestrating all of the instruments of u. S. Power simultaneously, not just thinking of the military instrument which is not all that useful to you in some of the situations. Our diplomacy is not particularly vigorous at the moment, im so diplomatic. Diplomacy, fact this heroically how i always say it, can be enormously powerful for a country like the United States, and we are orchestrating the arm of our u. S. Government, with force standing behind it. In the way that we normally do. Thats one way to think about it and dealing with asymmetric threats. We dont know what we might be doing against the threats. Im no longer in government, but there is we engage in hybrid warfare of a sort seeking to influence countries overseas through means that are not always visible to the u. S. Has capabilities but i think the fundamental problem is we are not orchestrating all of the aspects of the power. To dampen or deter them i would completely agree and double down and say what has historically been our strengths its been our soft power and diplomacy. Just at the moment we should be leaning into that, we are decreasing the funds for the reconstruction in places like syria and backing away from Security Cooperation assistance and also another huge strength for the United States across the board globally is our relationship with allies and partners and network appliances. At the time when you are punching the europeans in the face, and i do very much frankly think we need to be concerned about this from a security perspective, that it is not a surprise to me that we are having a hard time finding places of agreements with our european allies and friends to deal with these problems when we have so much friction so thats something also we should be handling in a very different way that we shouldnt kid ourselves. The middle east is a complex region. There are many of you in the audience to know more about the complexities than i do but we are leaving some of our tools off the table right now. In that situation if you could have orchestrated a combined response that might not have happened if we were still in that agreement but if we were in the something comparable happened and you have the tools to orchestrate the response that would have involved russia, china and all of our European Partners. Given the eu is involved with the british, french and germans. The chinese, in their dealings with iran, at one point even conditioned what they were preparing to do with iran on its compliance with Iran Nuclear Agreement. Even though in current circumstances we can probably worry that the chinese and russians are helping iran circumvent sanctions. Prior to that, by and large, they were assisting in pressuring iran in line with that agreement. I really think, and this is enormously controversial, anytime you talk about it in an audience someone will stand up and make the case that it was a terrible agreementy. But it is my view that it was a realistic, pragmatic approach to a difficult problem that gave us leverage that we threw away. This place in every one of these things that we are now talking about. We might take two very quick questions from the audience and well ask them together. Barbara has a question about iran i know that. Is their second question as well . Yes. Wait for the microphone if you would. If you identify yourself. We could ask barber questions about iran. Yes we could. Barbara sign from the atlantic council. I hardly agree with your analysis. Im wondering if the accidental shootdown of the iranian airliner, of the ukrainian airliner sorry, was not what basically put a stop to the escalatory cycle at that point. Because iran had to deal with the shock of that and the protests that emerged in society after that. I mean it is one of those what ifs but im just curious about that. First question. Second question right here. Andrew gilmore, catholic university. As my old boss, im going to ask you this question. Looking at the architecture, this is timing architecture of the region, loss of regional powers asserting themselves in ways we are not used to. Is it possible that the way for the u. S. To conceive of its strategy before any great power strategy is necessary is to start working in that multi polar environment with these different regional powers and starting to leverage the effect that we can do things within a system that is characterized by lots of opposing regional powers. Then on the outside we can balance some of that and assert our interests by managing a multi polar environment of competing regional powers . Im happy to take a quick take on both of these. Barbaras question is interesting because ive had the same feeling that when the iranian government shut down the cranium airliner. I think was on the 8th of january. Im losing track, thats what i remember. What it was the same day, or within a 24 hour cycle, that they had rocketed the american base in iraq. My suspicion is, this was a fog of war issue. In other words, they were expecting retaliation. They stupidly made a mistake and hit this plane. That by all accounts has really diminished their prestige in iran. I think the iranian public is torn between objecting to the Soleimani Killing and being appalled at the incompetence of the irgc. Thats the first time i can remember anything like that with regards to that institution in iran. I think you are right. I believe it did interrupt the escalatory cycle. The question is for how long . Will they will all of this sort itself out . I followed as you have iranian protests over many years. They are always put down. And i have wondered, because of the willingness of the regime to be brutal, ive wondered if this is a different cycle . I do not know the answer to that. It is different in some way because of that factor and because, strikingly to me, members of the iranian broadcast network did preside. Ive never seen that before. The state network. Because they did not want to put out false information. That is a big deal. So i dont think its going to turn out to be different. Most of reigning experts who follow this even more closely say, it will normalize again and we will be right back to where we were. Put a 10 doubt in that. Lets just see. On andrews point. I think its kind of what i was driving at and well see what the next panel says on that because, when we have historic relationships with these other countries. Youre talking about other major powers in the region. Egypt. When you talk to gulfies, they dont just talk but excuse me for people in the gulf from the gulf but referring to you as gulfies. But. They think outside of their gulf region. We have historic relationships with all of these countries. But this is our power in that region. None of these countries are seeking to be allies of china. They are quite willing to negotiate with china over economic and energy issues. 20 years from now, china may be a softer power than it is today. Right now its soft power is not great. That is a whole other issue, whether it could develop an alternative model for appealing to people. Yes. But if we could probably staff our embassies with the very best professionals. If we could my friend ryan caulker, you know, one of the great ambassadors, always uses the word engagement. It seems like a simple idea but engagement means being in their face all of the time. With relationship building. We are good at that. I think we can checkmate chinas influence in that way. Whiley backed by the kind of military deployments christine has talked about. We currently have 13,000 troops and kuwait and qatar. Three to 5000 scattered elsewhere. We do not need a lot of troops in that area, we just need a presence. It is hard to underestimate the effect of american presence. Just presence. When i was in latvia, before we sent italians there, there was one company of american infantry there in camouflage uniforms. As i was coming out of the defense ministry, one of the there officials looked over and said tripwire. In other words, just the presence of american forces, they do not have to be enormous, just their presence and engagement with the country makes a big difference. Thank you to both john and christine for i think a a thought provoking start. We have some coffee and refreshments in the back. If we could take ten minutes