Tonights discussion is about Andrew Marshall cruz served through nixon through obama he just retired the age of 94 former undersecretary of defense was called the hidden a and behind the policy. But what is significant is nixon tapped him to evaluate our military capabilities against that of our adversaries with the soviet union. But his former aides and was a was planning graduate them with strategic of budgetary assessments has a great body of scholarly work them prior with the evaluation at the pentagon he worked for Northrop Grumman it is a graduate of u. S. Air force academy said holders of masters and university of pittsburgh. The Fletcher Jones associate professor and he holds an mba and a ph. D. From princeton university. Ladies and gentlemen, Andrew Krepinevich and barry watts. [applause] thanks to the Nixon Library for having me here. But there is the small group of washington d. C. Foreign policy types along the fringes of this group with a Foreign Affairs to recall the intellectual biography. Over the years i came to appreciate that that assessment does the analytic framework is so that the archetype of the cold war we both became persuaded in the post cold war put the work in the office is not the frontpage of the Washington Post those in the pentagon have very little from that assessment. So they will continue to use the tool we thought it was important to write this book to a wider audience. There is not a lot known we got the story needed to be told rethought and the marshall had a remarkable great level of influence how defense officials came to think about of military competition have waited tears think about that to anticipate problems but the kind of person that he was as a child of the depression remarkable that he is self educated he has no bachelors degree but his scores were so high that university of chicago was given the program after world war ii into their economics he has a masters in economics but no bachelors. [laughter] is the kind your tracks the attention of people so at the university of chicago during world war ii he was ruled ineligible for the draft because of a heart condition so he went to work at the munitions factory. Working in a metal shop it in walks the guy they call off marshall with that order of magnitude of the improvement. Following university of chicago to win the nobel prize so one after another after another it almost reminds issue of forest gump he is very smart to keeps bumping into all these fascinating people. The other thing that is quite interesting he is on the ground floor of the understanding Human Behavior and organizations and in the 70s to figure on how formidable the soviet union was to pursue that debates as a horrible bureaucrat so they would say you throw words around like manhole covers. But behind that exterior is an emotional person. With the deep feeling he has about the people he has mentored over the years. Reflecting the attitude of the greatest generation. But it fitted say there are curve a parker free but maybe we should introduce our analytic stars though tell us what the assessment is but i guess im asking a the questions. What has the pentagon been doing before that . With of military capability of of balance between the United States and soviet union . What a great question. [laughter] if. Host. Guest is here tonight with the notion of that assessment, he would go back to the last of the Truman Administration recall the special evaluation the game was to assess a groupon the National Security council what damage the soviet Nuclear Attack would inflict on United States. And when that was continued by president eisenhower on the subcommittee he kept looking at the problem of the damage the soviets conflicted on the United States he continued to explore that in various ways to manage the damage in the 60s with Robert Mcnamara because he had that systems analysis but he didnt think he needed any help to decide what things to buy. From the National Security council so within one year the people involved began to raise the possibility to suggest they had to reconstitute that capability with the Defense Department. The concern there was fundamentally i think was by the early 70s the soviets worst to outspend their estates in terms of military programs. And looked like that trend was continued up through the Reagan Administration so of your in that decade of the 70s when 30,400,000,000,000. Second the other Major Development was the soviets achieving parity with the United States so on the one hand and on the ante has a Nuclear Capability that if push came to shove if deterrence failed. In the context of those developments to be outspent then youd better make a good strategic choices so that idea that popped up with Henry Kissinger with his involvement 1970 basically their diet who gave the goahead on what became the interject suggested that they needed to measure and track where they stood of various areas of military competition. Nixons panel suggested as a recommendation to establish with the Defense Department. Andy had nothing to do with that he was working with kissingers though not until they reorganize the Intelligence Committee 1971 that that assessment capability was established. Within a couple of years that was the transfer to the pentagon was schlesinger became secretary of defense can and marshall was very close as colleagues and friends. They both cared where the United States and stood compared to the soviet union then he moved to the pentagon in 1973. To remember 7273 with the opening tour china with the easter offensive from vietnam. With a treaty from moscow and of course, in 72 the election your then something funny happened to the Watergate Hotel with all kinds of consequences. To add a little bit to that there is the recognition. Bay just cannot be that way. With the Nuclear Capability estimate that a systems analysis is this playing better than that plane . With much broader issues with the soviet attack and his point is for his job the secretary of defense with these critical areas and he needs to know the trend better off for worse off . Where is the most important areas to invest . Looking at that assessment is diagnostic. To get the secretary of defense a good diagnosis what the diseases were for security so if you have a good diagnosis then you can write a good description. So there is that aspect it was multi disciplinary so marshall looked at the soviet military how many tanks to they have said to find the Health Care System was lousy. With the percentage of nonspeaking russians increase sphere if they have some severe weaknesses there is an effort and if they went to attack western europe so there was of broad diagnostic look the was defying conventional wisdom. That is interesting to be as Marshall Wood said watch out for military services they did say this is what the soviets are doing and how he responds the military never does say with the disproportionate cost to make their life miserable we pull that competitive strategy not just to the soviets trying so it is of broad eclectic approach for the challenge with the prerogatives Defense Department one of the reasons why that it is classified and his own disposition was ever for the secretary of defense. A little more history as we leave up to another set of questions. So with this conflict reactivate to hear you tell it on the part of the soviet union to increase spending in a way that was unexpected. And then lots of things start changing. They go to the second cold war for afghanistan in then spiral out of control. The 1980s is the different environment. What role did that investment play to evaluate the slow moving changes both up to and after the cold war . Permit i will touch for a second looking forward into the 90s with the military technical revolution was the net assessment that andrew did route he was in office. Because the basic output of the assessment to be as comprehensive as possible was to flag the strategic problems so they could still have time so you have a lookout far enough in advance to identify emerging problems or in a competitive strategy to focus on the emerging opportunities where the secretary of defense specific decisions to exploit that opportunity to work on soviet weaknesses to put our strengths against those weaknesses to make those decisions. As standard talkedabout military technical revolution basically the emergence of a strike capabilities with sensors and computerized command and control with something late in the cold war marshall was starting to advertise to people to say it is a big emerging issue can and watery going to do about it . To touch briefly on diagnosis commit andy is adamant it is not his business to job military services how they would respond. He thought those decisions were fundamentally the responsibility of the military. In a lot of ways though work that was done the early 90s was really trying to raise issues to define the lexicon for the pentagon that oversees then was discussed with military around the globe. From the mid70s through the end of the cold war i heard that when rumsfeld was in his first term he would have these meetings on saturday mornings to bring people in as a systems analysis to talk about martial. There were briefing we have so many ships of that type for that type thank carriers and rumsfeld says lets look at the big picture and marshall who is sending secretary of airforce starts talking about where we have major advantages with respect to the soviets with Maritime Operations that turns out to be with acoustics. So basically he says we can hear theres but they cannot hear ours ready to emphasize our forces in addition to the fleet that is the reformation and the secretary of defense could act upon in their way to have been entering the fact on military balance. In the 80s marshall started to talk about Competitive Strategies and the arch type of that was president carter canceled the b1 bomber would he check office it was a good argument that it would Carry Nuclear Weapons but if we have missiles on land and in the submarine they can not intercept them if they have Nuclear Warheads why to read data bomber . The remote just keep them for the cruise missiles and it is a perfectly logical argument spread marshall said that is persuasive. But look a little deeper. Who the soviets are and how they compete. Certain things they do will be difficult for them not to do. They have the worlds longest border there will not give away its territory to shorten the border. It is a totalitarian regime so they are fanatical about protecting your space. Airspace so has to stretch 11,000 miles. Third, they have a military organization that is constantly lobbying for a leadership because that is what they do. So marshall said look at that and with the Stealth Bomber we also know we dont want to let them build air defense the cost at 11,000 miles and then to upgrade with a Stealth Bomber because it shrinks the signature of an aircraft they spend this much so whether renewed bombers to attack the soviet union but to oppose disproportionate number one and in the area that of the consider much more benign with more provocative capability is what was entirely due for a way of looking at the problem with a system analysis or that Carter Administration so marshall started to educate them on this. Moving on to the post cold war era. To evaluate the conventional balance to the interNational Security situation is radically different. With the rise of a competitor in china with regional powers who will challenge iran or russia or except iraq, the threats to close terrorism terrorism, humanitarian initiatives. They could say i could see that assessment working reasonably well. So with the case in 2015. It is certainly the case to become much more difficult after the soviet union in disappeared purpose of that is the issue that andy has had people go back to look bad again through the mid 90s. I think in terms of a precision strike regime it is much more difficult to get to the end of this story than we thought it would be. We assume to longrange precision strike capabilities that might be a longrange over very long distances. Were delighted to people on the planet to be very useful social forces right down to the present day in santa in andy to hire of leveraged during for word spread there are two types of the assessments one is a regional one is called for in functional balance getting those kinds of balances because we are using them but certainly with respect to return the there is an effort underway to rebalance i was asked to run as a Defense Program last year for mr. Marshall to the first island chain so if the environment is different is the of fundamentals that our similar we try to achieve stability and the question is to have been acceptable military balance were the key trend for competition and hardware preserve stability over time letting the chinese think that they have their territorial aims . Hedges and just us and the soviets anymore as we draw down the numbers we were down at 1,000 but then you have countries like pakistan growing faster than any other in the world. Russia will stay there but what used to be a bipolar cold war can become the end state and we have roughly the same number of Nuclear Weapons as the soviet union is a hard year have parity if everybody has 1,000 . Have oh do you gauge if you can deter the psychological aspect . That is commercial has behalf looked at the human beings are not rational or their bit version is of the same as we do. He looks at demographics and the social sciences and he tries to figure out what will enable us to research. Even at the global war on terrorism in one discussion i had with military is with the costa did not cost a al qaeda or the taliban millions to fight us but we spent roughly that sum of money so how do we get underneath that strategy . One way we have been successful is to put a cost on time to the terrorist enemies because of the eavesdropping and drone second take pictures of people but they cannot play of the terrorist activities nowhere near the level of efficiency be hung up before 9 11 is a you. 0 lot of sand in their peers across them tying so would is a huge cost so to apply that methodology unfortunately there are plenty of opportunities to subscribe to the methodology that marshall developed. So that was a long future for that assessment. Next the be addressed some of his errors that others claimed that he made one is the underestimation of the soviet union of the acceptable risk. Second the underestimation of the influence of the military Industrial Complex and the soviet version of zaph and to properly anticipates the scale of the economy of the 1980s. Let me address a Strategic Nuclear balance first. Is 76 rumsfeld asked mr. Marshall who put together some thoughts that document has ben declassified says the assessments that still remained fairly high but classified but he basically judged the of balance to be adequate in the sense that the question of what is the forces of Strategic Policies are they adequate to launch the allout Nuclear Attack on the interstates . There were some Disturbing Trends but i dont think even into the middle 80s a viewer changes might about the adequacy. I dont think that was exaggerated the matter what the others thought at that point in time. The other questions relate to to how the soviets were incurring in the military a competition. This is a hit in the story of fundamental issues of how you viewed our chances to prevail in the Twilight Struggle and the genesis was the soviets were spending 6 of gdp on defense then you have a situation where marshall all at the time. The hope that anybody could have predicted the downfall the soviet union the timing was beyond what you can reasonably expect. He was certainly right in the fact that andrew mentioned in the late 80s the defense, getting up to 30 percent comp are we closer to 40 percent and was more than we spent on defense at the height of world war ii. So maintaining that load over a couple of decades was not going to do good things to your organization economically. And think differently about the strategic defense mission, star wars and i was teaching at west point when pres. Reagan made his speech. Speech. Look at that and said we dont have the technology. And we still dont have the technology to do extremely well the. Of the matter was that if you thought that this was a rival who was really their economy was strained in a different perspective than by getting the fbi, the fbi fbi the fbi as much as anything was about Information Technology sensors, Battle Management and are sectors of targets like differentiate between decoy warheads in real warheads. Very information intensive. Many will recall many will recall buying a soviet laptop computer or a soviet television set. Number these guys did not do ip and we could. He was in the competition an area where they could not compete the felt that they had to compete in this is really get people like gorbachev starting to say we need perestroika, to restructure our economy, the industrial era economy and these guys are making is compete in new age Information Technology economy. Opposing economy. Opposing cost, quebec competition into an area where they are not comfortable, less about did we enter step but can we put them in an area where there are comfortable and spending more than we are and the idea that in the long run the economy cannot stand the strain. You get perestroika. Perestroika does not make it because the country collapses before it can succeed. Again, that is a good description of competitive strategy which became Department Department of defense policy and the second Reagan Administration weinberger signed up and pushed it hard in the late 80s. I think that should be the last question for me, it me it is time to get some questions from the audience. Thank you very much gentlemen. [applauding] the last or will be on sale right outside them both gentlemen will be available to have to talk to sign copies. I can comment on one of Andrew Marshalls first renditions. Of course first times in the white house evaluating the cia intelligence reports for president nixon. Nixon and Henry Kissinger counterintelligence that was coming out of the white house, they were house, they were unhappy with it. It became to father started working the white house. Andrew marshall had a long history of dealing with intelligence agencies, intelligence folks in the air force and later at the cia trying to improve the quality of the analysis and the comprehensiveness of it. So it was natural for kissinger to bring him in to try to look at the quality of the intelligence coming in to the white house. As i house. As i said earlier that was the realization of the Intelligence Community that as andrew recalls one of the things that andy started doing was reading the president s daily brief from the Agency Looking at copies. One of copies. One of the things we saw emerged was nixon had attempted write notes and comments on those. And as marshall looked at them over time he was able to study and there were fewer and fewer comments the present and what led to the application that nixon was officially unhappy and just stopped reading the things that made a strong case for trying to reshape the community to provide intelligence that was attuned or dealt with the interests of president and his National Security force. It is almost historical. The cia. The daily intelligence report, i mean that was the premier. The president is going to read this. You know, so you need to do Something Different here. This premier document. The present is not reading it. Its our pride and joy. Well, why dont you find out what he is interested in is targeting intelligence on that. That. For example, kissinger was eternally interested in personality profiles of the people he would have to negotiate with. There habits, likes, risktakers, what can you tell me about this person that i will need to negotiate with . And the cia you know we know what you want to be worried about. The other thing is in crises the cia would often emphasize intelligence that kind of pushed you toward a quick sort of safe resolution of the crisis whereas nixon and kissinger wanted to look at all options because they talk about the whole deal today, they today, they were looking at a shortterm gain by resolving it the way you are providing me with information analysis on but a lot of longterm pain will be involved. So we sort of verse the problem down the road. Over today but is its a worse problem five years from now. And and so nixon actually had the nsa staffers providing him with stuff that he was reading by that time. There were doing the work around. Dia tried to make an effort to find out what the president was interested in and provide them with intelligence on that but it is a testimony to in the sense the top belligerence but just the off students of certain bureaucracies to actually give the president what he is simply asking for while some of the things associated with these kinds of issues were just almost comical in retrospect. Seventythree the start of the First National under andys organization. And it was to compare the us and one of the findings that came out of that was the soviets had no weaknesses. In particular every six months they would bring in a new cohort a new cohort of conscripts. The official dia position was basically did not account for any of us. Come this. Come on. You bring recruits and, conscripts half of them dont speak russian are interested in the soviet army and are telling you italian it doesnt affect readiness and it is blue your mind. Served three years in the military. This is simplified. I have a tank battalion and people who have been here for three years and ive been in training for three years, you know each other for three years. All of a sudden i get a new conscripts starting from scratch are sufficient. So this unit of conscripts raw conscripts of just about is as effective as these people who have had three years of experience. This was the stuff. And later on when i was working for the secretary of defense much to marshalls displeasure, we got so fed up with the stuff we were getting from the Intelligence Community that i actually told i actually told the secretary of defense he we get a better result by doing an assessment. Asking for their opinion. And marshall got all ticked off of me because he thought he have more important things to do at the time then strive to compete with the cia over things like that. He was right. Anyway that is emphatic. A question right over here clicks during the 1960s secretary of defense Robert Mcnamara emphasized assured destruction as a major means of deterring nuclear war one of the target the soviet union cities and its economy as a means of having them. But on january 10 1934 the four the secretary of defense, james sleeker stored when he announced that we will be moving away from this emphasis that are targeting would not necessarily be aimed at cities in the soviet economy. Was marshall, economy. Was marshall did he have an input in this decision . Clicks do you want to take that . Please. To my knowledge marshall did not have a decision. The story goes back really to the kennedy administration. There is something called acai up which is the Nuclear Attack for execution against the soviet union and other communist countries, and basically candy comes in his advisers and mcnamara and so on and find out his is through everything at them but the kitchen sink. You know, kennedy was promoting his concept of flexible response as opposed to massive retaliation. I want an option other than do nothing or armageddon. And the so kennedy and mcnamara begin to press the military to come up with flexible Nuclear Options so that they have the problem is by the time nixon is in his second term he sold on have flexible Nuclear Options. Solicitor his attempts to begin to realistically provide some options, one rationale for that was one and a deep, complicated, arcane topic, but one point they began to realize almost like the doctor strangelove movie the soviets are building a mine shaft a mineshaft cap digging deep underground bunkers to protect. We want to we want to have an option to make sure that the knows that no matter what happens we are going to take out the so that there is no fighting a nuclear war because youre going to survive. It gets really real. I dont know if you know about how we of the soviets are at this particular time. The idea was we may be do we want to wipe out china just because we are war with the soviet union . There are these sorts of considerations. What theyre trying to do is a matter of escalation. You want to make sure there is no way the soviets can use Nuclear Weapons spasmodically or beneath that threshold that allows them to get an advantage that encourages them to think that they could somehow use these weapons and use them effectively to have some kind of political gain out of it. So that is the weapon i think. It is also the case that if you go back through a detailed history single integrated operational fire of our Nuclear War Plan it never was purely cities are soviet forces. If you think if you think about it a lot of soviet Strategic Forces for damage limitation purposes my want to attack were located in populated areas. So so you were kind of getting a twofer if you will. And both target categories persisted over time. Kind of independent of the the decisions people likes messenger made a secretary of defense from a strategic standpoint. That is that is not widely understood, but it is the reality of the system. It also illustrates the difficulty of sitting in the white house the National Security council and making sure that the system down below you does what you directed to do. Thats a major issue strategy and any government. Clicks a question from one of the students. Extra credit. No extra credit, sorry. I think we can agree that net assessment plays a crucial part of understanding defense and security. Under which pres. Do you think that net assessment was most beneficial or utilized . You want to talk about harold . Well, aside from solicitor who were sort of joined at the have with marshall on these issues for probably harold brown was the secretary of defense who both understood what net assessment was as well as his longterm value as perhaps any of the secretaries of defense. I mean it was quite the Carter Administration. Initially was the hope that we could do something even somewhat similar to what occurred in terms of clenching fists and extending hands to adversaries. But you know, if you talked to harold brown about this what he would emphasize was that andy always raised questions that pointed to a a broad Strategic Issues did not get mired down the small stuff, and in that sense he acquired a perspective that was just virtually nonexistent from the parts of the pentagon and military bureaucracy. You got a different perspective and talking to andy then you got from the staff for the service staff. His margin of trying to put our strengths and weaknesses and export them over time was really essential to the net assist enterprise. And as andy was already suggesting camino, military service, you want to say the least that you can about your home strengths underplays much as you can and blow the threat resort going to congress trying to get larger defense budgets. I mean, it is just human nature. That is what this is continuing even today unfortunately. There were also defense secretaries that marshall actually did not have much of an impact on. I was i remember i worked for secretary weinberger llf that office i went to work for mr. Marshall. And so weinberger have left the pentagon and if you go to the pentagon there is this always. They have portraits of all the former defense secretarys. The day came when they were going to unveil weinbergers portrait. And the marshall have been invited. They did invited. They did not have a good relationship. And so is going to be about 5 00 in the morning. So finally were at the office. Marshalls there my colleague said them are you going to the weinberger ceremony. He he said very uncharacteristically, like up go up there and hang weinberger instead of his picture. [laughter] but it was not always everyone appreciating what he had to offer. The other thing i would say is the matter what happened in terms of the ups and downs in the relationship with the defense secretaries two other things really stand out. One is his mentoring of people and the impact it has. And so in 1957 looking for a topic to write about and marshall suggests a topic commanded ends of being pearl harbor which ends up winning are all kinds of book awards the medal of freedom president bush i think, 1990, handed fundamentally causes us to rethink intelligence and Early Warning and the circumstances under which we will be attacked. A few years later there is a book that comes out called essence of decision which fundamentally leads to a rethinking about rational thinking, other other factors at work and he goes out of his way to say Andy Marshall really was the guy who gave me the insight to think about this new structure. There are there are professors at ivy league schools, people in the business community. One of the deans and Business Strategy who teaches i believe at ucla, richard renaud, this strategy that strategy from a talks about marshall and how if you like me and strategy and the commercial and Business World marshall is the richard were melt of the defense world. And so People Library and myself, there is this mentoring, one of the deleted posts for the final chapter is somebody once asked marshall what he thought his greatest contribution was to reduce sids people who i think of help along the way to have an understanding of how to do analysis better. So the other thing i will say is what i was defense secretary inserted a rumble about the sky marshall you know, some secretaries of defense what the political the correct answer. Whenever answer. Whenever that issue has been raised for ways once in the late 90s raised again some years later when it was remarkable. The last time it was raised six former defense secretaries, through republican every democrat wrote to the city