Afghanistan. Id also like to give a special welcome to our viewers on cspan. We are delighted to be joined by such an excellent panel, whose lives the twodecade long u. S. War in afghanistan touched in different ways. Were going to be fortunate to hear their perspective, born of personal experience and broader expertise on national and Global Security issues. First, Elliot Ackerman is a decorated marine corps veteran and the author of the new book, the fifth act, americas end in afghanistan. Its a striking and must read personal history of the war in afghanistan. Elliot, im proud to have the advanced proofs, which is how i read this book. Thank you for that early view. And its really a riveting read. Elliot is a remarkable novelist as well, an original thinker, and one of the few people i know who can write both nonfiction and fiction equally brilliantly. This is the first time that elliott has been back at the Atlantic Council since the passing of his remarkable father, peter, a dear friend of mine, a member of our boards executive committee. I know how much he would have liked to be here. And i also know how proud he was of you and of your mathematician wrestler brother, nate. And so please pass our best wishes to nate as well. Admiral jim stavridis. James stavridis is a member of the Atlantic Councils board of directors, and he had a distinguished career in the navy. Distinguished is an understatement. Rising to the level of fourstar admiral and serving as the 16th supreme allied commander of nato, where he oversaw operations in afghanistan, libya, syria, the balkans, and counterpiracy off the coast of africa. He is the longest serving Combatant Commander in recent u. S. History. He writes regularly, having published 12 books and hundreds of articles. Im sure youve seen him on television as well. Hes one of the most important voices on Foreign Affairs and the future of warfare anywhere. And im going to plug another book. This was one that elliot wrote together with admiral stavridis. And its just an absolutely brilliant, brilliant piece of writing. And then finally, Lyla Kohistany and Nilofar Sakhi are two of our outstanding nonresident senior fellows affiliated with our Scowcroft Center and south asia center, respectively. Both have extensive experience in dealing with issues of afghanistan from security and peacebuilding perspectives. Our moderator for today will go into that more in a minute. Meetings such as this one are integral to the Scowcroft Centers mission of developing sustainable nonpartisan strategies to address the most important security challenges of our day. At the same time, we honor the legacy of general scowcroft. Americas final withdrawal from afghanistan around this time last year marked the end of the war that reshaped that country and many other things as well. The United States entered afghanistan after the 9 11 terrorist attacks, eventually killing osama bin laden, while temporarily removing the taliban regime. 10 tens of thousands of lives from everyday afghans to were transformed and lost along the way. Today, our panel will reflect on the past, looking forward as well. One year after us withdrawal, afghanistan faces uncertain grim future. What will the future hold . How will the withdrawal effect . Americas role in the region and the longterm . Let me pass to the acting director of the Scowcroft Center who will moderate this event. Over to you, matt. Matt . It is an honor to be here today moderating this panel. Fred did a great job setting the stage. It is the one Year Anniversary from the u. S. Withdrawal from afghanistan and in americas involvement in its longest war. And so this raises Big Questions will discuss today about america strategy, but the experiences of her service, about conditions on the ground today in afghanistan. But the second occasion is as fred mentioned, the publication of eliots book, the fifth act, which is a terrific book. The plan today is for me to moderate a discussion with our distinguished panel. I will do that for 35 minutes or so, and then i will turn to the audience for questions and answers. So be thinking of your questions now. If you want to ask a question, you can do that in the q a function. Or you can ask a question on twitter, using the the fifth act. Elliot does the author of this book so i think we will start with you. I really enjoyed it. I wish i could write the way that you do, nonfiction that reads like fiction. A really gripping narrative. Tell us about this book. Elliot first of all, thank you. Thank you for having us today to talk about the end of afghanistan and reflect on how this war finished one year ago. Why i wrote this book comes a little bit in the title of the book. I year ago, as afghanistan was falling, as the taliban were moving in, i was asked to contribute a 500 word essay amongst a series of essays about the situation in afghanistan. A friend of mine asked me to contribute. She said most people in america really have not been following the story and maybe you could just summarize what has happened in the last 20 years because everybody thinks it is just, they know that they feel it was a tragedy. The idea of trying to summarize a 20 year war in 500 words sounded like an absurd writing assignment. But her use of the word tragedy got me thinking. This is a tragedy. Why did so Many Americans feel this so viscerally when we pulled out . If you look at tragedies, from shakespeare to the ancients, tragedies typically follow a five act structure. And this a little bit of writing come i tried to write about the presidencies of george bush, barack obama, donald trump, joe biden. And the fifth act becomes the taliban. There is a framework talking about key themes in the war, administration to administration. One thing that makes the work unique as the numbers of administrations that presided over it. The book is also part memoir. I was going to write a short 30,000 word as a paperback original. It was going to be more of politics and policies. Within three weeks of signing up to do that, like many veterans, really anyone who was in invested in afghanistan as the country was falling to the taliban, my network lit up with people i knew asking for help. Like so many others, i was immersed in this crowd sourced evacuation out of bed afghanistan. I also want to tell the story of five distinct evacuation cases that i was involved in over the summer. They each had different outcomes, some happy and some not so happy. And the last through line in the book and i think this was a theme that ran across the entire effort in afghanistan last summer. What does it mean to make good on the idea that we do not leave anybody behind, which is a code that is central in the u. S. Military, but it is not unique to the u. S. Military. It is an idea that is as old as war. If you look back to the iliad, the way it ends is after achilles killed hector, he drags hectors body back to his camp. The king is pleading with the trojans to allow him to return his son home so he can have a proper burial. Living up to that ideal that we do not leave anybody behind. That is why i wrote the book. Last summer it caused me to reflect on one incident in afghanistan, an ambush i was involved in where one of my comrades was killed and we struggled to get his body out. What does it mean to me to leave nobody behind and what does it mean to our nation to leave nobody behind . The book moves around a lot in time. It kind of goes up to the 50,000 foot policy level, and also goes right down to the on the ground realities, both of last summer, but even of the war itself. That is how i came to write the book. Frederick that is terrific. Thanks, elliott. You are an accomplished writer in the new york times. You are also decorated veteran, five tours in iraq and it can stand. A purple heart. When your after the withdrawal, is the memoir aspect of it. How do you think about the war in afghanistan now, one year after the u. S. Withdrawal . Elliot when the war was ending, one of the things that was remarkable for me, is how long we were involved in the war. That begins to resonate as you are trying to wrap your head around what a postafghanistan reality looks like. What does it mean that the war is now over . In those days and weeks as it was coming to a close last year, i recognized that i have been involved in the war longer than i have been involved with my wife or children. It is a touchstone of my life. It had always been there as a unifying thread and when i look back, i look at my closest relationships that i have in my life, which are with people i served with in the wars. We all grew up there. So even though the war is over, its legacy lives on in us. There has also been a sense one year out, especially among my cohort of veterans, that america wants to turn the page on afghanistan. As much as everyone says it is unfortunate how things ended there, i do not think anyone would say that the weeks of evacuation were americas brightest hour. But there is a sense of wanting to move on and there is nothing else that can be done about afghanistan. There is a streak of fatalism and i think that is misguided because there is still a lot to be done. Not unnecessarily within afghanistan. But we did get tens of thousands of afghans into the United States. Many of them, they may not be american citizens yet, but they are certainly american heroes. These are people who bled alongside us and fought for objectives aligned with our National Interests and now they are here in the United States. There are currently here on humanitarian parole so many of them cannot work. If it is not adjusted, they will be deported. There is legislation right now called the afghan adjustment act which is very important because it will get these people who were evacuated last summer green cards. These are american heroes and if they become citizens, they will become incredible americans. It is important to recognize there is still work to be done. And much good bet cant come out of how this ended. That is an important point. I wanted to come to you admiral. You have had a distinguished career. You were a former supreme allied commander of nato. I will address that. I will begin by picking up on elliotts point as to what we still owe afghans. I know will have a lot to say on this, but i want to make a point about the immigrant experience. Here you have, i think, quite an Extraordinary Group of people who have managed to get out of afghanistan. Like elliott and many other veterans, i was involved in this and have seen many different stories about it. Here is the point, how much courage and true grit does it take to grab your fouryearolds hand, put your daughter on your back, clog your way into an airport, get across the border and somehow find your way to the United States . That firstgeneration will start out doing fairly pedestrian things. The Second Generation will be starting companies. The Third Generation will be starting the new ford motor company. This will be good for our country. Do not take my theory as the case, this is a sky plate what happened this is exactly what happened with our withdraw from the. It is making to get to the strategic [no audio] Many Americans had sort of mentally sat out of afghanistan for a variety of reasons. Lets stipulate that not a lot of people were seriously paying attention to what was going on. And then you have this extremely chaotic withdrawal, which does us no credit whatsoever, obviously. In the course of watching that unfold, i think Many Americans kind of shook their head and said, boy, thats what happens. When you get involved in these overseas wars. Inside the United States i think, unfortunately, this will have the Chilling Effect on other scenarios globally with the United States. The real question is, what is the degree. We have had successful engagement in columbia. We had extraordinary success in the balkans. We have iraq, kind of a middle case. We will see where iraq and. Afghanistan has been a hard passage for the nation, but the point is the afghan fifth act that elliott illuminated in this brilliant book has a Chilling Effect and others inside the body politic of america will point to it and say, thats why we dont want to get involved in these scenarios. Going from the inside out, our allies, partners, friends. They look at this, the ending, the fifth act and they say, the u. S. Is not reliable. The u. S. Does not stand with allies. The u. S. Cant get organized. The u. S. Cant work with partners. The disconnect between nato partners who, ironically, had fought together for 20 years in the chaos of the withdrawal was notable and it was noted by our allies that the United States, in that instance, in those months, was not stepping up to organize this in a more coherent way. We can argue about the selection and the tactical things that occurred, but broadly speaking, our allies were discouraged watching this. Third and finally, our opponents. Again, inside out. America, our allies, our opponents were emboldened, no question. Personally, you could drop a plumb line from the events in august to the following february when putin decided to invade ukraine. I think he took the wrong lesson from that and i think he has paid for it mightily. I think our opponents watched us stumble out of afghanistan and felt that america cant get organized. America cant get out of its own way. Americas internal discord prevents it from acting bravely and truly. I think that is being put to light by what is happening in crane. That has strict i think that has hurt us strategically. The key thing is to learn, to deshler in the right lessons from this, not the wrong lessons. Thanks. That was great, thank you admiral butler admiral. What was mostly negative and had some understandable, you also see positive accomplishments in the 20 year war . Are there ways we can maybe mitigate some of those downside consequences you talked about . I think there is positive effect inside afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of afghans have learned to read as a result of our intervention. We have exposed a generation of afghans, many of whom are going to be frustrated and bitter, but we exposed them to broader ideas. We talked a moment ago about the diaspora, which will come from this end has already occurred. These are brilliant, motivated people. They are going to succeed here, all of that counts on the Positive Side of the ledger. Finally i would say the fact that we went to afghanistan took apart al qaeda, seems to be researching of course, but we did serious damage to it. As a veteran, i get this question a lot from veterans, what does it mean . Why did we go . The answer is we went because we were attacked from afghanistan, and further 20 years following 9 11 we were not attacked in any significant way by any global terrorist network. That is partly a result of the work of those in afghanistan, not just military, but our diplomats and peace corps volunteers. Our a id workers. All of us, i think, can take pride in that accomplishment. At the most vengeful level, you could say we found and killed in lot in. That is a good thing, in my view. There are a handful of net positives that come out. I think the key is where we made mistakes, as we articulated. We have to learn from those and calibrate our further engagements in two ways that would look more like columbia or the balkans, and less like what we saw in the fifth act in afghanistan. Thank you, admiral. You talked about the efforts to resettle afghanistan afghans who worked with us. You are a veteran, former navy surface officer. Afghan american who served as a cultural advisor to u. S. Forces there. Since then, you have been working as ceo of honor the promise, a nationwide nonprofit focused on the resiliency of our partners. You have been involved in resettling afghans in the United States. I was hoping you could talk about your efforts doing that. How are we doing . Are we living up to the promises we made to those who helped us during the war in afghanistan . When people why when people ask me why i named the organization honor the progress, i still like at the United States as a Promised Land for afghans. As much as it was for me and my family. The idea that someone can travel from across the world to the United States to make something of themselves, deeply resonates. When you ask how we are doing, unfortunately, it is not well. Our afghan partners are oftentimes feeling a sense of languishing. Many of them, unfortunately, do not speak english fluently. Apart from our interpreters, the majority of afghans are here through humanitarian parole. While that does allow them to work with an employment authorization document, this uncertainty of what will happen when that humanitarian parole runs out is potentially impacting the way lawyers feel about having afghans work in their companies. First and foremost, top of mind is helping housing. There is a housing crisis in the u. S. That is absolutely impacting our afghan partners ability to find places where they can actually live. Next of course is the asylum. It is a complicated, arduous, expensive process. Lawyers are asking upwards of 10,000 per afghan head of household to file an asylum application. Which if you are not working, how can you afford 10,000 to pay for that asylum application . Absolutely finding meaningful employment to be able to take care of yourself and your family members and family who have been left behind in afghanistan. Those issues are top of mind. I am very proud of the veteran and military affiliated communities that have come out to all of the various events across the u. S. , focusing a light on our afghan partners and what communities can do at the local level has been uplifting to see that support. We need National Policy that will address these shortcomings. If we are going to make these afghan partners actually feel included, like they have a life in the u. S. Clearly we are not doing all that we can. If you could wave a magic wand, what are two things you would change . What should the government be doing . What can people watching online ba. 2 be doing . What can the community be doing . First and foremost, the afghan act. You talk to any veteran, anybody who served in any capacity in afghanistan, all of us are saying please, pasty afghan act. The sense of worry that afghans and all of us that are supporting them, that sense of worry would be alleviated tremendously to know that they are not going to potentially be kicked out of the United States, deported. It also backs a lot of them, their legal status of having a permanent pathway to citizenship will allow them to reunify with their family. Thats our unpredictability, not knowing what will happen to them, is having an impact on their mental health, their resiliency and ability to go to work every day, to learn english. It is a barrier to progress for our afghan partners. If i were queen for a day, that would be the first thing i would focus on. At the Community Level, i would ask anybody, does it does not matter what race, gender, what languages you speak, open up your community. Help open your community to afghans. They are not going to learn to integrate at the society level, the Community Level if they are only spending time with community members. They need the opportunity to actually learn about american culture, to understand Community Benefits that exist. Interact with Community Level organizations. While i see this as a nationwide problem, the solution anyway, at the local level, you as a u. S. Citizen, you may have never spent any time in afghanistan, it is ok. If you see an afghan, work with a resettlement agency, just reach out and invite them to come shopping. Invite their children to go on play dates with you. These seem like small asks, but they have a tremendous impact on the mental wellbeing. Very powerful, thanks. There is something we can all do to contribute, if we would like. I would like to come to you. You are a senior fellow at the council, a lecturer at George Washington university, an author of reframing productive power in afghanistan. You have been involved in the afghan Peace Process for over a decade and your recent research has focused on conditions on the ground in afghanistan. Admiral strid vetoes was talking about one of the areas where the u. S. Made a difference while it was there. And now the taliban has taken back over, it is not living up to the promises it made to uphold women pots rights and other things. But you are tracking this closely. How do uss what is going on the ground . Thank you for having me. Thank you for organizing this event. The book i have not read but i certainly want to buy it. I have what the taliban to government for the region. I have done my research and there is a lot on that. [indiscernible] it was an unexpected initially. It was shocking for the population at large. The taliban takeover is a tragedy, for particularly educated classes. And the people who were the products of the last 20 years of that while the replacement of a republic system by authoritarian systems like the taliban who have a track record of Human Rights Violations in the past, while both sides good news for afghanistan. It was of course a bad one. Especially for a particular segment of society who believed them, and a democracy and educated class of society. What was happening . There was a high level of misinformation. A researcher who will not be able to track the exact data from the ground. Those are the reasons for of course there were a ban on certain segments of society. There were restrictions on freedom of expression. There was a detention of journalists, especially journalists who belonged to the last 20 years of media importing. There was a ban on the intellectuals to speak up. They were detained and jailed. There were certain atrocities for the first few months of the taliban takeover that made for a complex situation. But overall, this situation is still very grim. There is reporting about the security and there is reporting about the reduced corruption. Two aspects of reporting, but again, the facts are not there to have this data. As for security, yes there has been direct attacks. Of course, the Armed Conflict of the last 20 years. Certainly it is demonstrative that there should be some level of reduction in the attacks like bombings, public attached attacks and many more. This nation that has used the last 20 years of tactics from the taliban, that has been reduced. But, the nature of insecurities have changed. As a person who follows security and studies security, i would argue differently. I would say the security crisis hasnt been reduced, based on the fact that there have been changes in the nature of that security. That change means what . It should play into some of the tactics that used to be from the last 20 years. There is killings. Of minorities. Groups who are against the and there are other kinds of levels of insurgency across the country who are against the regime, against the taliban regime. That creates a different level of insecurity. We have seen organized and instead in the presence of ttp cover the taliban of pakistan that have been across the country seen [indiscernible] there are this kind of emergence of new insurgencies and reorganizations of new terrorist groups. Al qaeda also, which was demonstrating bad law. This fact can give us hints that security crises are still there, it is still urgent. Of course you get threats to the region if it is not that is not the security. The safety has been another issue that we have seen. A high level of data shows a lack of people. The particular segment of society, the educated, they are being tortured and suppressed. Women come a 50 of the population, demonstrate that. They have been deprived of their basic rights. On the other hand, the refugee crisis in the nation because of the humanitarian and economic crisis which has taken shape. The suppression of their rights and lack of access to basic resources and basic rights undermines the dignity of a pianist and. There are all kinds of other crises which have emerged from the last 20 years since the taliban takeover and the country is struggling. They are framing a new narrative of security and safety in the country and what it means for afghanistan and what it means for the west and the longterm if they do not take us seriously. On the other hand, the regional aspect is also the mentioned here. We have seen changes in the region, the u. S. Troops withdrawn, they have been perceived to be a vacuum of power. [indiscernible] and what it means for other countries and how they align their relationship of these emerged powers which credit iran , china and russia and taliban takeover means for the country and for the region at large and how their relationship with the taliban shapes the region. There are all kinds of pieces that some of us are struggling with, but overall, my argument would be the crisis is still severe and there are reshaping different formats of securities which does not mean at all that they have been a redaction of insecurities and security crisis. Thanks very much. As you were talking, there were a bunch of related questions that we will come back to you and that portion of the discussion. It looks like elliott was ready to jump in on this subject. If i could build on that, reading the book, there is the narrative part which is compelling, the memoir part is compelling. But you get into policy discussions and you have some very trenchant analysis and recommendations. In particular, you raised the issues of deficits. The boer war. The military force and some of the implications that has. I am wondering if you could share some insights with the audience. Sure. To go from an afghan specific discussion to an american warmaking discussion, every war the United States has fought since the revolution has had to have a construct to sustain it. By that i mean in general, blood and treasure. Who is going to fight the war . How are we going to pay for it . As we look at our history, one of the constructs of the u. S. Civil war was blood. The first ever draft in this countrys nation was a result of the civil war, as was our income tax. The Second World War was characterized by a National Mobilization of war bond tribes. The vietnam war we remember because it was an unpopular draft that ultimately ended the war. When 9 11 happened and america once again has to mobilize to go to war, there needs to be this construct to sustain it. The construct we settle on is one on which the war will be fought by an all volunteer military and the funding will come out of our deficit. In fact in the last year the u. S. Had a balanced budget, that was 2001. The result of that construct is that the American People are a nest of sized to the cost of war. If you were to ask me why the war in afghanistan goes on for 20 years, why do we have these forever wars, it is less due to battlefield conditions and more due to the constructs of the war that allow them to proceed through four different administrations because politically it becomes easy to begin prosecuting these lowgrade wars. Another thing it does to us societally is more used to be something that were experienced generationally, generation defining events. The vietnam war, the Second World War, the greatest generation, even the first world war, the lost generation. When i look at my generation and how we experienced the 9 11 wars , i never felt i was part of a lost generation. I felt like i was the lost part of a generation. As we look at American Society writ large where we see these trends, all of us descending into our various subgroups, it is a very unhealthy thing for our democracy when the military follows that trend. Where wars are fought by a subsection of our society. As we hit the end of 20 years of work, as much as we are talking about the geopolitics of afghanistan and how it relates to the ukraine and authoritarianism around the globe, it is equally important, if not more important, to reflect on how these wars were waged inside of america. How we are waging war. I will finish by saying it is particularly essential to do that. As the admiral noted, our adversaries look at us and correctly say, our own internal dysfunction stands in our way of holding up a real shield for liberal, western values around the world. The greatest Security Threat to the u. S. Is our own domestic dysfunction. It is important as we come out of the wars in afghanistan to ask if we are waging our wars the right way in the future. I will show my hand, waging war where Society Writ Large does not have skin in the game leads to these 10 to 20 year conflicts. Important insight. Thank you. I want to go to a q and a. We have a number of questions in chat, some from twitter. If you would like to join the conversation, please do. Use the and we will go first to jim gilmore, former governor of virginia. This question is for the admiral, can essentially what is the alternative to the total withdrawal with some kind of u. S. Presence that could have remained in afghanistan and prevented this outcome . Thank you for attending the webinar and thanks for a great question. The shortest answer, yes. There was an alternative. The Biden Administration disagrees with that view. To do the numbers for people, when i commanded this mission for water years, we had 150,000 troops there. By the time we get close to the withdrawal, we are down to 15,000 coalition troops. We had already withdrawn 90 of the troops before we then started to chip away, both the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration who pulls out the very last tranche. My view, and this is my own view is we should have maintained ballpark 10,000 troops. I think the euros would have gladly put up 57 or 7000 and we could have provided the bulk of that. Intelligence, ongoing engagement. The counter to this, which the biden team will tell you, and it is a good counter, that the taliban were just waiting. They were poised, ready to strike at a moments notice. Who knows what would have happened if we had maintained a mission there . President biden has to make hard decisions and i respect him for doing that. His call was no, we are going to cut the cord. I think we could have maintained 15,000. Frankly, that is the level of deployment for the United States and europe. We have 40,000 troops in korea. 60,000 in europe. Those are good numbers. Personally, i would have kept 10,000 troops there and seen what the next turn of the wheel. I look at the evidence of how we did during this withdrawal period as a possibility, a good one, that we could have continued the march. The president made a different decision. Thank you. I am seeing here there is a function where the speakers can indicate they would like to respond to questions. You would like to respond to this question from warren coates. How is it possible that after 20 years our military never prepared the afghans to fight on their own . It is a question i hear often. I will say that the afghans do not have a problem fighting. Anyone who has spent time in afghanistan can attest to this. Elliot can attest to this as a marine. There is no issue of fighting, they want to fight. Its just numbers. Numbers do not lie. Hundreds of thousands of afghans have taken up arms in afghanistan over the last several decades, fought and died. Fighting is not the issue. The greater issue for all of us create a system that is so incredibly complex and then we centralize it and then we say to a Different Company best of luck to you as we leave, we can expect a positive outcome. We taught the Afghan Military to be subservient to a civilian authority which we should. But that government misused the Afghan Security forces. I have been saying that for years. Many other analysts would tell you that for years. While we were there, we could mentor and train and advise those with wealth. Because we were there to support from the logistical side. But the Afghan Government is highly centralized in the way they did logistics. I have heard numerous Afghan Security forces say they have been times when i felt like i was fighting the taliban and my own government at the exact same time. The issue is not fighting. Afghans have far, they will no doubt continue to fight. That is not the issue. Our military did fight alongside those afghans and they fought alongside us but but we did not do is actually help them learn the phd level of military operations. There was one really simple analogy to that. If you look at the protagonist in that, we trained an army of redcoats. We trained the way we fight. I think all of us there were all sorts of political dynamics. I think those political events are undermining the confidence and courage of our national Security Forces to step down. I think the process was that kind of political event that undermined the conference in addition to many other impact it had on the overall political scenarios. I think that had its influence and impact. I think it is irresistible and unfortunate. Leadership matters, how leaders comport themselves under fire matters. In this case, the political will that you see in ukraine simply was lacking. Thank you all. Good insight. I think we have time for maybe just one more question. How can the u. S. Rehabilitate . What should the u. S. Do to mitigate the effect of its failures on the Afghan People . Particularly women. If you could respond to that end with any time running down, any final thoughts you would like to leave the audience with. I think there was a great deal the United States could do to rehabilitate its megabit his reputation abroad. The only time nato had article five, i would call it one of natos darkest hours. This evacuation at the airport. And then within six months of that, we see one of natos brightest hours. That is the way that the alliance stands firm. Afghanistan has a tendency to stovepipe afghanistan. It is a single country in a vacuum. We just tied a thread between afghanistan and ukraine and had nato not stood firm with ukraine, had ukraine not mounted a historic and heroic defense and had russia rolled through ukraine, we would probably be talking about what the future of taiwan was going to be because we would then be watching a rise in excess to authoritarian nations just sweeping across the globe. Afghanistan matters in the global balance of power as it exists with all these other issues. Wouldnt it be nice right now if we still had access as the United States and nato to these airbases that share a border with china. Just a little snippet of china. Going forward, i think United States might be done. We have only begun to scratch the service on some of the answers but i think we need to leave it there because we are out of time. I would love to have gone more on the United Nations situation. Im sorry we did not have time to get to you. Let me just wrap it up here. Thank our terrific panelists for joining us today. Thank you so much. Thank you to all of you for attending todays event. And if you have not read it yet, i would highly recommend the fifth act by elliott ackerman. A terrific book. It really does present nonfiction like fiction. It is a compelling read. Thank you all very much. Please come back from china, russia, iran and north korea . We will have a look back into our archives, tonight on q a. She is the other of spies, flies and algorithms. I think we are living in a moment of reckoning where the Intelligence Community has to understand this reimagining to deal with the threats of new technology. I think about these threats more speed, threats are moving at much faster basis. More data that Intelligence Analyst have to confront, more customers that dont have security clearances that need intelligence. People like voters need to understand for election interference. And more competitors. I think that is the most challenging. U. S. Intelligence agencies dont dominate the collection of analysis information like they did in the cold war. Quick tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. You have been listening to q a and all of our podcast on the free cspan now at. The journalists covering the upcoming midterm elections analyze former president trumps influence on the Republican Party and how it might impact results on election day. The German Marshall Fund hosts this 45 minute discussion