Who wanted to be involved in latin america. He wanted to be a texan even though we would not let him. He was for a short time. That is all episodic. We cannot depend on where the president was raised. Are there structural changes we need to make sure the north american agenda is at a higher level than it is currently at and is focused . Yes. Thank you for that and for your contribution to the task force. That is what theyre getting at with the idea someone would be focused on north america. The department of defense already does that because you have Northern Command which encompasses those three countries and is focused on the security aspects of those various relationships. Asuctural change would help does personality. The fact that the secretary of commerce has been as active in actions with mexico and canada has been a real plus over the year or so we have done this report. There does need to be that. The reason is you have to have champions in our government for different regions, initiatives, activities. If you dont, they never get on the table until you are a week away from the summit and somebody says what are we going to talk about next week. Is Principals Committee dominated by the crises of the day. Arguably, right now we have more crises than you can even funnel through the situation room on a daily basis. It would be a tough time to be a deputy cabinet secretary. You would live down at the white house i would imagine. How do you get north america onto an agenda that is already overcrowded. Invested in it that constantly push it back onto the table. The problem of living down the white house is part of the problem. We talk about champions. I want to draw it out because we have a lot of people in the audience who served in government. They probably have a sense of this. The problem is each agency is stuck in a rut. With north america, it is compounded because everything from Social Security to transportation becomes part of foreign policy. What we tried to capture was this notion that i think it takes a senior post. It cannot be one of these deals where that office gets 100 of these assignments because then they are all diluted. It is probably less important exact seat the person believes in. You have to push the system. You have to have a sense of how to break through some of the restrictions when bureaucratic issues come up. That is the champions idea. U. S. Lps to have what the has right now. Canada has been moved back and forth from the European Bureau to the western bureau reflecting different attitudes of security and other topics. If you create in north america bureau, you create an internal [indiscernible] we try to drive it with that point. We had a discussion that said where should Central America fit in. My own sense is it is a key part of our security as you see with children, narcotics, or other issues. It is a debatable point. I think if we are going to avoid this pendulum of ignoring regions until fires break out and burn our fingers, we need to add Central American think of north america in a more strategic way. This is a complement to mexico. Parsons,s working with who is now a central bank had, the three central bankers in north america are worldclass, he was finance minister. He was the first mexican finance minister i met who would meet regularly with the Central American finance ministers because x ago often treated Central America with some of the distance we treated mexico. That will not work if you want to deal with the underlying problems. It helps to have Latin Americans deal with Central America as well as gringos from the north. One of the examples you cite on nafta with the shes not followed through on is the issue of mexican truckers. The mexican trucks by 2000 were supposed to be able to go through the United States. Much earlier. 45 mexicant out trucks are permitted. Individual tracks. Not companies. Of the 14,000 that cross print them less and less of the 14,000 across of the 14,000 across. The rest are limited. In i. T. And Information Security professional. I noticed you had paragraphs about private security. What did you learn in terms of your work in terms of best practices that canada and mexico may be employing that we could benefit from . The joint unified cybersecurity cell on the north american continent, how do you envision that working . I think the cell will have to link to dhs, one of the fallout items from the snowden the fair was that nsa, we are going to be able to draw on them less for homeland activities. Eventually it will have to link to the growing expertise developing in dhs without question. Is aer area in which there need for legislation is cyber legislation. We were very close a couple of years ago when the chairman and vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee were moving forward the bill that would have been a good step forward. Even that could not get through unfortunately. This is an issue we need to deal with in washington even as our own domestic cybersecurity authorities are working closely with those of canada and mexico. On the infrastructure side, especially canadian but also mexican, we share infrastructure. A cyber attack on one side would entire grid. Working to establish, protocols common protocols. If there is an attack, we could share experiences with neighbors that would be in the long run quite useful for us. David is more expert in terms of the policy and security. But your question is interesting because why david, i work with a lot of financial officers. I often get asked what will be the next crisis. The first answer is it is always the one you dont foresee. If i would pick one, i would pick something in the cyber area. What created events in 2008 is markets will clear, you cant get a price wont clear, you can get a price. That can happen through the breakdown of a system. I was with mike rogers earlier this week and with a group of chief financial officers. I was saying it is not only a question of business management. In a world where we have issues with russia or iran, you had better be prepared for them going after your systems. Example ofd stretching peoples thinking. This will go to the heart of the utility gricd. This is an area where we have much tighter relations in one bilateral relationship because of the intelligence sharing agreement than with our southern neighbor with whom we dont have that same level of relationship. It gives you an idea of what we though there is quite a bit of cooperation there as well. To pick up on a strategic david talked about the depth of the relationship with canada as opposed to mexico. When i first started to work with mexico on foreignpolicy issues in the 1980s, if i needed to know mexicos foreignpolicy i could find from sign in and put a minus front of it. When i came back in the government and at the world bank, that transformed an economic area. My closest partners on International Trade issues were my mexican and canadian counterparts. We were hand in glove not only on north american issues but basically going back and trying to play a role globally. My hope is a group like this 25 years from now might be able to talk about deeper cooperation with all three countries on other security issues. That is a bit of the vision we are pushing for. Thank you. My question is for general petraeus. You have had great experience and expertise in iraq. I would be remiss if i did not ask if there is some doubt in washington about whether or not the strategy against isis will be successful. What are your views about whether the strategy will work . End . T will what are your views on that . I dont want to turn this into an isil q and a. Has ak the strategy reasonable chance of success. It comes down to the Prime Minister body performing tasks and the Iraqi Security forces performing tasks we had to do in 2007 because the place was literally on fire and about to burst into civil flames had we not done that. Thehould not underestimate ability of this new government to reach out to the sunniera community and make them part of the fabric of society and demandsate legitimate from the Regional Government as well. I think that is doable. Those are critical political components to what will go forward. If that becomes the foundation for iraq, i think you can reconstitute Iraqi Security forces. With help from us in terms of the intelligence picture, planning, and air support, i ,hink those forces can and must if this is to be sustainable, this must be a result of actions by Iraqi Security forces, noting that term is inclusive of what will stand back up that will now be part of the Iraqi National guard and initiative. Certainly encompassing the actions of the kurdish, peshmerga, and other militias as well. On the ground, do you need some special forces . These are north american boots on the ground. [laughter] as we look to the north american decade of the future, i think general dempsey has been appropriate and forthright in noting if it comes to it, he would ask for certain capabilities as required to assist Iraqi Security forces on the ground. Must be done by Iraqi Security forces. That includes not just there are me but also Police Elements and even the air components they are gradually developing as well. Yes . I would like to ask the the currentarding trade negotiation between the United States and europe and how those would affect the north american partnership. Those trade negotiations are in trouble. They have been drinking. They have been drifting. Until you get trade promotion authority, the ability for the executive to bring an agreement for congress for an up or down vote without amendment, it will be hard to make people face up to the toughest decisions. The Transpacific Partnership is ahead in the negotiations. Youre seeing that with japan. The japanese will not take sensitive decisions on agriculture unless they know the executive is willing to carry push it withand congress. I am hopeful, but i am an optimistic person, from talking with members of congress there is strong interest on the republican side on moving this. As there was with the democratic chairman of the finance committee and the republican chairman of the ways and Means Committee until senator reid said he did not want the issue and the administration backed off. If they are going to have prospects, they have to move that forward. Speaker boehner said he would do that if he got 50 democratic votes. Even the tough deals i did with only 30 democratic votes, i think that is a doable number if you get a republican senate, you will be in a stronger position to move this forward. Toave urged senator wyden start the mark up earlier because i think it is good to have democratic interest in this. There is a lot of talk in washington. You have to decide whether you will push this or close a deal. It comes back on the transatlantic side. The reason i feel so strongly about this is in trade if the bicycle is not moving forward, it falls down. In europe, there has been an increasing crescendo of this or that element and there is not forward momentum. I see that agreement and difficulty. The facterrible given the most important partner in europe Going Forward is germany. Chancellor merkel has a strong interest in this. Coming back to the north american point, i would say we and we also say we should look at this in the north american context. Europe has done a Free Trade Agreement with canada. They were back and forth about the closing aspects. I congratulate the canadians and europeans. I think the United States needs to get its act to gather. We actually have the canadian ambassador here. We are grateful to them for what he did. Yesterday, we had the mexican ambassador for the segment out council. Il at the there has been good involvement in this. To cast the answer bob was just giving, the task force strongly looks forward to confirming the excellence of our legislative and executive branches in the wake of the Upcoming Elections tppassing tpa, getting done and then the next one. I can assure you our asian partners are keen to get this done as well. It will help not just the United States. Ttp will help all of north america because they are all three involved. People often look at these as new trade agreement. This is bigtime strategy. Dave spent a lot of time in asia. I was there last week. If you are not moving forward with your economic relationships, they wonder what the pivot is. Very serious questions. On the transatlantic side, it fits in with the challenges you see marion drug it mario draghi talking about. The french just came out with their budget. None of this is going to work unless europe takes structural reforms. If you want to create Global Economic strength and want the united state to play a leadership role, get ttp done and do deals. Ask howted to the task force considered creating new multinational organizations, things that would provide , courts,t funds education, all those types of things. I know you started by saying we are thinking about this in a sovereignty context is opposed itthe way the europeans did with crossinvestment funds. We started with what exists. One of the items we looked at was the north American Development bank which was part of the nafta process. It also had an interesting mission. We talked about whether that could have the mandate expanded and be used more effectively. These are some things david and i work on frequently. The question is how you connect the private and Public Sector on infrastructure. We talk about the role of the interamerican world bank, possibly the world bank. I think we are biased more towards you can upgrade and use existing structures as opposed to create new ones. To give you a sense of the when i was in singapore about a week ago, i was talking to some of my former colleagues from isc, the private sector arm of the world bank. We created the nafta Management Company which allows sovereign funds and Pension Funds to join with our Equity Investments which have over a 20 rate of return. We started this with africa and latin america. Gone tod me china had the asset Management Company of isc and said we would like to do more investment in mexico. Rather than bilaterally, maybe we could do it with the mexicans through isc so it has a different shape. That is a creative use of multilateral institutions. It does not require a new one. The Management Company is interesting. It is the first subsidiary of a multinational that has ever been created. No one paid attention to it, but it is working well. We are looking toward evolutionary models in a provide a way pragmatic way. In the back. Thank you. I want to get to something not directly addressed in the report that that we have touched on a little bit. Cnn. With as far as Common Security threats, he talked about the threat posed by foreign fighters going to and returning from syria. Aboutestimated there are 100 foreign fighters from the United States in the region, about the same from canada. What can be done between north American Allies to keep people from going there, monitor them as they return, and before that prevent the kind of replicas nation radicalization that can happen on a computer that could lead to an attack in any of those three countries . This comes down to intelligence sharing. We have had a close relationship with canada. There is in an extraordinary amount that already goes on. More than good deal people realize that goes on with our mexican colleagues as well. Accessll about creating to common databases, sharing threat streams, sharing information, and also sharing tactics and techniques of a variety of different methods of correcting collecting information that becomes intelligence on the flow to and from these areas of conflict. One other point david mentioned yesterday in new york that i want americans and is when davidnow was with central command, he had canadian soldiers fighting for the United States in afghanistan when we were attacked on 9 11 and lost about 150 lives or more. It is a good example of the Canadian Partnership people often do not recognize. We actually added canadians to the staff in the headquarters, as we did with other members of the five is. In iraq, we had a multinational with severalters dozen countries. In afghanistan, we had 50 countries in the headquarters. Ien i was at central command, said this worked well in iraq. Why cant we replicate that in tampa with our headquarters . And we did. We had other countries that had robust liaison elements as well, several dozen. The canadians were making the ultimate to mimic to come down from canada to tampa ultimate commitment to come down from canada to tamp. [laughter] to come back on a serious note, canadians had the highest loss rate per capita of any of the coalition contingents in afghanistan. They did very heavy fighting. During the surge in afghanistan, the canadian contingent in kandahar was part of important offensive gains that helped hold the taliban where they were and even pushed them back in key districts to enable the time and space for accelerated development of Afghan Security forces, certain institutions of governance, and even to start the Transition Partnership to our afghan partners. On the 200th anniversary of 1812. D of the war of i remember seeing the signs of thank you, canada after the iranian hostage situation. Thank you very much. We are out of time. Thank you very much for joining us. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] very shortly we will expect to take you to atlanta where we will hear from the cdc director about the ebola outbreak. According to reuters, a patients conditions has gone from serious to critical. He is currently being isolated at the dallas hospital. An american, american doctor who contracted ebola while working in west africa was admitted to a u. S. To a Massachusetts Office of massachusetts hospital yesterday. He is currently in isolation for signs of a potential relapse. That is another case that could potentially come up in this briefing we expect to start shortly. A we wait what bring you conversation we had with an Associated Press reporter talking about the e