Democrat, did the same thing. So its something that came up and you will see congressional action early, in particular in the senate where theres been no action on these or really any other issues for the last two years. What about the public that will take questions in a minute but im cure use on the nsa intelligence issue some of your colleagues excuse for what voting for what they knowledge are excessive constraints or not well throughout through provisions in the programs and the public is up in arms and i need to give them something youch both had tough campaigns this year and your campaign was a central issue in the primary and came up in arkansas as well what is your sense of that . It was a central issue. We debated it. My part never had the problem he voted for it four times himself, so it was interesting. But suffice to say, ill have folks express concerns about provision inside the American Action here, domestic surveillance issues. We have to do this well. Our National Security apparatus has to do it professionally. Congress needs to have oversight. Thats an important part of these nsa programs. And if we do those well and we articulate that which is unclassified in a meaningful way, the American People will support this. Im very confident. Ive seen it in the fourth Congressional District ands atraveled around the country, they just want to understand this isnt some rogue set of actors. Theyre specially concerned with this particular president , at least in kansas, some actor behaving without oversight or boundaries to their activities. I would say the same thing. Arkansasans like most americans worry about their privacy, especially in the digitaltime. More worried about getting nuked by iran or islamic terrorists cut off the head of fellow citizen. And one other excuse of more moderate democrats or some republicans, well, on Foreign Policy issues, National Security issues, Defense Budget, intervention in syria and iraq, tough line with iran, or arming ukrainians the American Public is war weary. That would the right thing to do but the public wont tolerate that. Your have been out and about among the American Public for the last several months. What is the truth of that . I grow weary of claims of the weariness o. The American People and its no surprise the American People may be perceived as war weary since the commander in chief is the weariest one of them all. Over the last year in arkansas, certainly, i have seen arkansasans who feel embar rayed by what happened in america in the world and feel threatened bit what is happening to america in the world. They dont want to waste money on the military. They dont want to go abroad looking for monsters to slay, an John Quincy Adams said. They want to protect americas interest and america to be strong and a leader in the world, and we need elected leaderred that will explain those things. As mike pointed out on terrorist surveillance programs, theres a lot of misunderstanding, not just among the American People but even among members of congress. And something about which theyre passionate and deeply informed, havent gone into the Security Communications facility to get the briefings. They may think the nsa is taping your cell phone calls which is not the case at all. If it takes elect leaders we have a lot of new ones on the way in the senate and in the house for that matter as well, to help make the case for a strong and confident america in the world and the tools our forefighters and professionals need to accomplish that. Actually talked about this idea of war weariness. Youll hear from time to time in different places. Dont have a lot to add. Its awl about leadership. Deemly american tradition, from the very founding days, from washington and his talk about thing that arent americas problem but when american leaders talk about what it means to america and our own american interests and what it means to us to keep us secure and behave in a way that americans can be proud of, found that any weariness vanishes and a desire to do the right thing emerges very, very quickly, bit of eu9 does take a leader. Its difficult to do when theres 535 of you. It takes someone in the white house to really make the case for these important National Security things, actions, and this president is loathe to do so. We have about ten minutes here so well take questions. I dont know if we need a mic. I will just call on people. Right here in the back. Hough about repealing executive order 12333 so that we can decapitate genocidal world leaders. A 20 million bounty on bashar alassad. Let him retire to tehran and then we remove the bounty. So, i dont know if that it was a question but you can comment on it. Exactly. That was more a pastor to his flock. You guys can appear moderate. Thank you for that. I would say this. So president bush talked about in the aftermath of 9 11 he said not only are we going after the terrorists we are going after those who took those actions and who harbor them. Ill have the quote a little mangled. He probably mangled it, too. [laughter] but i do i agree with the predicate of your statement. Ites the case that if america was clearer about regimed that were behave until ways we thought inappropriate, and that the penalty was not going to fall far from the top of the leadership of those regime, a very different way than we handle our Foreign Policy today, if america made clear that was our stated policy would have been much more successful in getting the outcomes consistent with our american policy. I once heard the difference between a democratic military and a autocratic military is where the leaders stand. In the democrat military theyre in front of their troops with the rifles aimed at the bad guys and aunt tocratic one theyre behind the troop with the rifles aimed at the troops in 1991 and 2003. A bunch of poor iraqi kids had no loyalty to Saddam Hussein but knew they would by killed if they dissented and is it motorhome for us to be killing those privates as opposed to taking oned the leaders of wilked wicked regimes and can end a war with less suffering. Carl, jfk vigil. Com. As long as were putting assassination on then table maybe we should come clean with 50 records still sealed concerning kennedys assassination, sense e. Howard hunt admitted he was involved and implicated other personnel. So maybe we should do unto others as we want others to do unto us. Assassination should be off the table. Didnt the u. S. Go rogue in 71 when we a ban donned ore obligations and weight me not restore 0 pore Peaceful World if we recognized our obligation to have a stable monetary unit under the constitution and globally, and last question, World Trade Center seven, behind clean up the rubble of World Trade Center sentence. Building collapsed in seven seconds in new york city. Mainstreet media wont talk about it because it points toward the possibility of false flying terrorrity. Hr48, will you support it . How about it . Members of the house defer to the senate on these issues. Mike wasnt alive during those so might defer to him. Im sorry, im not informed about much of the matters you discussed so ill have to defer. Its not appropriate. Thank you. Back there. I wonder if you two distinguished gentlemen would describe for me how you see the role of National Security adviser should be performed . And if you think an nfc of 400 people is useful. Thank you. That is a a long time ago, before tom was born, but mike and i were around, i think the nfc was 7580 people and now its between 450 folks on any given day. How is it affecting things in reality . We talked about white house micromanagement. A number of things that follow from running your National Security and your Foreign Policy more broadly from inside the white house. Enormous accountability that is lacked. Senator here will get to confirm some folked but very few of the folks making policy decisions will have been confirmed officials. You also have processes. I will tell you that we have been pew suing documents from the white house and another committee i said the Benghazi Committee and each time one moves from the department of defense or from the inside the white house, inside the National Security council, the claims for accountability are greatly diminished. So you have three things happen. You have less accountability, you have whole lot less transparency, and i think you also run the enormous risk of drinking your own bath water. You just have a bunch of folks around you that are your guys or your gals and youre novelty getting the breadth of opinion that comes from running National Security policy in a much more diffuse way. I would say with one major caveat, the National Security couple has become too big and too much of a policymaking organization of its own. I was reading a book with an account of the early day odd of the Ford Administration and the steps he took to ensure continuity. And i guess under nixon, Henry Kissinger had been both secretary of state and National Security adviser and ford was insistent on maintaining con minute when it came to National Security policy because it was treacherous time in the world then as well, but and not too long a time kissinger shed the role of National Security advicer and remained secretary of state and then it was Brent Scowcroft that came on as the National Security adviser. The point being the National Security adviser, like the chief of staff, which was ultimately dick cheny, was viewed as a role to collect the views of cabinet heads and agency heads and be an honest broker to ensure that the president got the right kind of advice. And theyre not i dont think playing that role right now. The major caveat is in the end, any organization, whether its the National Security council or the depth of defense or department of state, reflects the leader at the head and the problem goes back to our president , his world view. More so than any kind of prophecy he has put in place. I saw recently that bob gates told the story in a speech or to a reporter, about going to afghanistan, his first jew toll it. Its in the back . Maybe not. A direct line to the white house, and he ordered them to tear down immediately. The reason an accountability issue when you have confirmed officials that are Actual Department with a line of the chain of command you have accountability you cant have when a bunch of white house aides who dont testify, arent confirm, you can the president can vote executive privilege for white house music. It does shuts off accountability. Shows how little the president and his senior advisers understand basic principles like the chain of command. Theres a reason that Congress Passed the goldwater nickels act and established the structure to report to the secretary of defense, important to president. If the president wants to give orders to the special Operations Sergeant or major on the battlefield, thats her prerogative as the commander in chief but needs to go through the established chain of command. Not going to go to a Junior Officers in the National Security council who was the kiefer of a van in iowa seven years ago. Just offended someone. I think for what its worth. Over here. Theres such a compelling argument against fighting isis, without also forming strong strategy to the wart and contain terror sponsoring, wmd, proliferating states syria and iran and putting to end the brutal assad regime. Its so compelling i wonder if now that the public is engaged in looking at the fight against isis, and sensing all these bigger forces at play, and if theres enough thought to putting together a document that would outline grand strategy in the middle east, not just for government but for the public. Just to get the discussion on to a much more intelligent level than it seems to be right now. Thats white we have important organizations like fti. Obviously run for congress. Really is a problem that you all face over the next two years. Waugh constant to be responsible and serious live affect policy and you can in the way we discussed but theres only one president , and the congressional commitee can produce a document, we can produce documents. Not quite the same. I think the function may be performed in the coming, say, 18 months in the republican president ial primary as well. One thing struck reading about the transition to the Ford White House and then the 76 he weather was the challenge from Ronald Reagan against gerry ford. A conservative challenge from the right to saying United States president. Thats division. But a lot of the divisions were about National Security. And Foreign Policy. And i think were going to have a real serious debate within the Republican Party and the ultimate republican president ial nominee may produce exactly that signed of thing youre talking about. Either of you want to announce the force for either your own candidacy or support for someone else . Tom pompeo launches a Foreign Policy initiative conference. Okay. Quote misch for knoy, not me. I want to thank anything we havent covered that you want to say to people to think about . Theres some parts of the world, issues on your mind . No. Thanks for having us here. Thanks for your serious work helping us do our job better. We appreciate it. Thank you both for being such serious and responsible members of congress. [applause] the Foreign Policy initiative heard from former defense undersecretary eric edelman who worked for the george w. Bush administration. He what joined by former democratic congressman jim marshal. They discussed military readiness and defense spending. This is an hour. [inaudible] ladies and gentlemen, as we move into our next panel, one of the highlights of the last discussion brought up was that no matter what, the president and congress are going to have a deep agenda on National Security defense, intelligence policymaking as we look forward to the next congress and one of the items we hope will shape that debate are the recommendations of the National Defense panel on which both emboars eric adeleman is a member of the board of directors and jim marshall served before issuing their report. Its a pleasure to welcome our moderator. Vargo is the editor of defense news and especially wants to highlight sunday morning on abc at 11 00 a. M. Is the host of inside defense news. This week. We dropped the this week. When he shifted from cbs to abc, you cant have this week and this week. So instead of stephanopoulos klaining why we we changed it. So its defense news. Even better. Defense news, 11 00 a. M. On abc. Thank you so much, and thank you so much ambassador and congressman for joining us. Thanks very much, chris. I appreciate it. Chris was one of our first guests, so i owe chris a lot. Thank you very much. Im honored to be here. Im particularly honored to be on a panel with both ambassador adeleman and congressman marshall because common difference one of those of fundamental things the government is supposed to provide for under the constitution, unsurprisingly, and it is can be harold its having an exceptionally difficult time doing that at a very complicated time in National Security. The defense game is fundamentally changing. Technology is leveling the can improve our camables and also advantage or adversaries, including nonstate actors, as you saw the head of gchq said that twitter and facebookbeing used by isis as not only command and control but recruitment and propaganda tools. So thats a different universe in which youre living living ad thats one of he reasons why the work of secretary hagel theyre working on the strategy, but the fundamental reality of National Security decisionmaking is the necessity to make choices and america has always faced crises, always been you look at the history, you see how many have dealt with the cavalcade of problems while struggling with resources, and the in this effort to try to make better choices we have adopted, if its the cold war, the defense review as a way to help us do this, a bottomup review, and then there were criticismed that it wasnt good enough and so bill cohen convened the National Defense panel in 1997 to review the qdr and then a dozen years later was mandated there be an official relook at american strategy on a regular basis and hence the panel to achieve this goal of an actual bipartisan independent review of the u. S. Strategy. The most recent report issued in july of which fortunately our panelists have copies here. I have a printedout copy in any bag. And after the pentagon its qdr and some of the fundmentams was to end budget cuts in return to sort of normal financial order and secretary gates under the 2012 budget that secretary gates originally proposed, retain a construct that ambassador describes as the ability to walk and chew gum at the same time, which i think is an important thing for us to be able to do. Immediately reversed readiness cuts that are gravely damaging warfighting capabilitiesespecially once you get through all the tricks that have been used before and try to minimize impacts and that the 2014 forces were too small. Im not going to get into everybody i think already has our biographies here of our distinguished panelists. But what i wanted to do is just start off the discussion were going to have a half hour discussion and then ill open it up to the floor for questions. But ambassador adeleman, you and michelle flour testified yesterday. What are the biggest problems you guys saw and see continued with the qdr . I think our concern as a panel with the qdr this years panel under the legislation and the ndaa that chartered us was able to begin its work i was on the panel four years ago, by the way, as well. Four years ago we got the qdr, considered it as panel, issued our report. This time around the Congress Actually chartered us to begin our work in parallel with the development of the qdr. So we actually convened in the summer of 2013, as a panel, and began our work then. We were briefed during the process of the qdr. Went through the terms of reference, met with secretary hagel at the outset. Met with him again when the kdr was about to be released. So we did that in part because i think the congress wanted us to be able to should we have chosen to do it to play a role, have something input into the qdr, and i think our decision as a panel was not to try to normally provide input because it seemed a little awkward to us to then be criticizing something that we had had hand in drafting, but rather i think through our process of asking questions of the briefers, may have had some influence on the qdr. That being said, i think all of us had the same reaction, i believe, which was that under the budget circumstances of the time, which was with sequester being implemented as a possibility that it was going to be implemented again in 2014, before the deal that halted sequester, that the uncertainties the department faced were so great, not knowing what theyre top line was going to be, whether it would be the bca number with sequester or the president s budget or something in between, that it was impossible for them to do a document that would be as secretary panetta said two weeks ago, a strategy driven budget rather than a budget driven strategy. So i think our sense was that the folk inside dod were working very hard to try and do the right thing for the nation, but that the constraints they operated under made it impossible to produce a strategic document. So i think what we decided to do as a panel jim will correct me if i have it wrong is basically put the qdr to one side. Its not that we werent informed by it. But we didnt think that the congress would be we have wellr the public by grading the pentagons homework but rather tried to set out what we thought were the major issues confronting the nation with regard to defense, and really it boils down to i think, a question of whether or not the United States is going to continue to play the role weve played since 1945, of providing Global Public goods and a framework for International Order and a rulebased International System. The backbone for the world roz security architecture. Exactly. And essentially were at a counties here, turning point, if we dont get rid of the sequester, and the bca cast on the Defense Budget, it seemed clear us to the United States will not be able in the future to continue to play that role. Thats why we as a panel, think, suggested as you noted, varying go, that we get rid of the bca cast, that success teryl be repealed, we return to the fy 12 proposed gates Defense Budget, which was the last Defense Budget that was based on any kind of serious analysis of the threats and problems facing the nation, that we embrace some of the reforms suggested, and some other things im sure congressman marshall will want to talk about as well. I agree with everything that eric just said. And would add that the rope we picked the gates fy12 proposed budget was in part because secretary gates quite clearly was very Cost Containment conscious help had already directed massive cuts to the budget for the Defense Department. So we thought that the gates budget would have a lot of credibility. It was the last time that the department was tree to plan based was free to plan based on strategy, rather than planning based 0 are on budget availablity with thought you could hardly argue that budget was too generous because gates was very aggressive about costcustodying within the department. So we picked that also the top line that realistically we ought to have as a minimum. I would add to that top line, what we need in order to deal with modernization of our strategic forces, and i think we all agreed that needed to be done as well. There have been estimates that thats going to cost as much as 35 bill 35 billion a year over 30 years, others say it wont cost that butch but it if costs 35 billion a year and we cannot afford that as a nation we have huge problems. That is no money given the size of our economy, and both the economic and security interests that are at stake. When you think about modernizing that. So i would say gates top line, plus what is required to modernize our strategic forces. Thats one observation. We thought that in addition to the qdr being more budgetdriven than strategydriven, that the qdr selected the wrong size and construct since the bottomup review the size and construct has been this were going to fight two major wars on two fronts. We need to be prepared to do that. We dont want to do that but we need to be prepared to do that so we need to sites the force in order to have that capability. A number of us observed that thats a nice objective but we have never been able to size the force to have that capability. In the way that we had in mind, which is basically were going to fight major wars that lead to regime change, occupation, that sort of thing. And we thought, given the way the globe is right now and as we think the globe is going to evolve, better force size and construct would be to be able to fight one major war that doesnt necessarily hope hopefully doesnt lead to occupation, and regime change, but a major war. At the same time that were in a position to deter aggressive behavior in a number of different areas. So, what you see in the world today is you look at different pockets across the globe. Different countries are developing significant Strategic Military capabilities, and that are interested in actually being pretty aggressive, and theyre discouraged from being pretty aggressive in part because of the aligns and assurances the ute has given to a whole host of allies across the globe. If the United States is bogged down in one major conflict, you can see opportunists opportunistic behavior around the globe by people who like to be aggressive with their neighbors and as a result we thought a more really isic force size and construct would be one in which we could, matter of fact i wont name names here but somebody came up with the idea, beat the hell out of. So, if somebody is going to act inappropriately aggressively, we need to have the capability of beating the hell out of them so they know they shouldnt act like that. If theyre going to act like that well deal with the situation we have here, and once we finished with this situation were going to come deal with you in the meantime if youre going to act like that were really going to punish you. Its the force size and construct. Isnt that roughly what the administration concluded, which was, fight one, hold another one off, while being able to do a couple of other smaller thing inside. We think its hold more than one. Win, hold, win, which we thought that force size and construct is more realistic given the world environment were in right now. I think part of the difference, what we were talking about, is the able to do one highend conflict with a near peer competitor, which would be quite intense and have heavy draw on the force, while at the same time retaining the capability to deal with, as congressman marshall was just saying, multiple potential on opportunistic aggressors in overlapping time frames, and i think that made it a little more stressful would make it more stressful on the force than the force size and construct actually in the qdr. One thing we suggested in the panel report was that the department actually go back and look at what it would take to actually execute this more stressful force plan and construct because it gets to the question of what should the size of the army, the navy, the marine corps, air force, et cetera, be. We also referred to the budget control act sequestration agreement entered into in 2011 as selfdefeating. A huge strategic misstep on the part of the United States. Of course, in defense of those who entered into that agreement, it was they expected that they would never have permitted that to continue because they recognized that this was really a big problem if in fact it continued. And so they thought this would be a forcing mechanism to get them to come to the table and deal with other issues. And it just havent been able to do that. Wasnt they were ignorant at the time this was a big deal but with hindsight, its serious strategic error by the United States. We did that because we got to the debt precipice and wanted to avoid a default for the first time in our history. It was to prevent and neither caucus went for us. The republicans thought it was reduce government spending, the democratic side, it was trying to avoid entitlement reform. So we have had yeared of pressing this case. You were on the hill. Do you see any motion for members to come to the table and actually resolve this . So one way of putting it, rather than use the sword of damocles analogy, one said the problem here is that both the executive and legislative branches have taken the Defense Budget hostage, with slightly different theories of the case. The executive branch case was if we hold the Defense Budget hostage well get republicans to agree to raise taxes, and in the legislative branch the theory was that if we hold the Defense Budget hostage, we can get the president to reduce discretionary domestic spending. Both propositions have been definitively exposed as wrong, but when two side are at an impeace and taken the same hostage it doesnt work out well for the hostage. And they dont care about the wellbeing of the hostage. So, ultimately, then, what is the resolution here . You sat there. You were a member of congress. There is a political solution here . I think congress will sort of congress and the president will sort of muddle along and come up with appropriate solution because i think theres a growing recognition that this is pretty disastrous from the perspective of the United States and not just securitywise. Also economically and few people understand that. The world economically is so intertwined and we have largely midwifed that. We have been very responsible for not only architecture of security you see globally but an awful 0 lot of the economic progress thats been made globally and as a result the United States economy is inextrek blue enter twined with the Global Economy and you here these voices we always had folks who were isolationists, and we werent exactly isolationists but we as da country we were sort of that it way for most of our history, and then we made a sharp right turn after world war ii, fating the threat of communism, nuclear war, after two global wars in the first half of the 20th 20th century, we made a decision that we were going to aggressively attempt to shape the world, and the result of that is the united nations, worm bank, imf, all kinds of pacts and treaties we have globally that create this architecture is one that guarantees some modicum of stability and all these agreements globally that enfrance global trade. To the extent there have been lots of studies to back this up, and theyre more modern because the information is the ability to crank it out with computers and have information that is reasonably accurate is only been available to us in the last sort of 40 or 50 years, but lot offed recent studies show that as instability rises, Global Wealth decreases. Global wealth decreases and the United States our wealth disease creases, which means tax returns decrease, and they decrease more than what you have saved as a result of cutting the Defense Budget. So, its as we describe its selfdefeating for two reasons. One, it increases the likelihood we will experience defeat on the battlefields. Lives, limbs lost unnecessarily, and also increases the likelihood that well be poorer and less able to meet other federal priorities. How do you respond to the criticism by people within the department that if you can look at the Fourth Estate alone you look at the number of civilian gains since 9 11, those increased military are expected to be reduced and yet the civil understructure of the department is contractor based. I know that secretary gates declared war on contractors to a degree but theres still this enormous overhead structure that goes with the department, and there are those of who say that is actually what is sapping the life blood out of the department for each duel dollar that goes into it. Isnt it equally important for people like gordon adamles and others argue that the only way youre going to force the reform of that organization is to actually cut it funding and then what will actually drive at the end of the day the reforms that i think are necessary. We have had. One thing we argue for is that the they need the authorities that bill perry had and bill felt strongly about this, the authority he had, for instance, to riff civilian employees in order to be able to cut back administrative overhead and plot youre talking about. So its not something we ignored in the report. On the contrary we want to arm the department to be able to go forth and do battle with the Fourth Estate. I dont know whether in our final document we went as far as a number of us wanted to go on this particular point, but inefficiency and waste within the Defense Department becomes a strategic problem for the Defense Department to the extent that inefficiency and waste can be cited as a reason for not increasing the top line. We know that increasing the top line is critically important to getting to where we need to be in order to have the appropriate Global Presence to meet our commit immigrants to assure our allies, et cetera to discourage potential agreesors to maintain the stability i was describing previously, and thats a strategic goal that is critically important and we are at great risk of not being able to accomplish that goal if the top line is not increased. And then you look at the ineefficiencies in the department and if we dont clean this up, how is the American Public, how are politics going to be able to support increasing the top line . And so within the department its critically important that you address issues like this, and Michael Berry has been on a teryl about thats as you know, former head of the defense business board and his presentation is compelling. Its extraordinary. And but one of the other challenges is every year the Department Things it can hold its breath, survive the wave because theres going to be money at the other end of it. You finish and then ill launch off on congress. Please in that case, yes. One of to the reasons why everybody is tuned in. Its like a reform smokerred that their ones who are really going to take off on it. But theres a sense that the department can always hold its breath. This wave will pass. We can then get back to normal. Republicans get elected and theyll give us more money, and at the end strategy is always about balancing ends and means, and so ultimately do we need to have a fundamental live different approach to the way were doing this, moving away from a qdr treasure stalk because some other way of devising more lasting security architecture, wes clark argued that our strategy ought to be something that lasts across administrations is aimed at the strategic best interests of the country and puts the political minutiae of this, which is i will not allow a squadron to leave my state, because that means ive just that base. Add this. One of our hopes we intentionally kept the National Defense panels report fairly short, very top line, and we put a lot of emphasis on the introduction and the interests and objectives sections, which explain why we need to be doing this. Doesnt have to be done exactly as either eric or i or anybody else wants it done, but as a country we need to be doing this, and one thing we observed in the report is that it has not mattered until recently whether its a republican administration, democratic administration, or republican controlled house, senate, democratic controlled house, senate, we have been very consistent as a country on the policies that have led to this global architecture that is very good for everybody secureswise and economically. Very consistent. We worry that could ebb. We hear voices on both side that seem to be attack that. Isolationist visits that irimmature and inappropriate weapon hope the panels report can maybe serve as a touchstone for all the president ial candidates in the next campaign so that it doesnt matter to us whether its a democratic or a republican controlled white house, theyre headed in the direction we suggest we need to be headed in, in this report, and then back to congress. I was a member of the Armed Services committee when i became a member of congress. It would have been more natural for me to be on Financial Services because throughout my professional career i thats what id done, basically. And its what i knew most of. The main economic driver in my district was robbins air base. Supported the country but also critically important to the new of that area. So, im the economy of that area. So im a representative. Im going to represent the folks that put me in there they put in there was not to have some esoteric aremented before the moriality, et cetera, et cetera. They wanted that base protected and grown, and so you think about how the Armed Services gets populated. Its populated by people like me and were trying to argue for keeping our bases, our troops, et cetera, and it means the Armed Services committee, while its excellent, its really knows its stuff, and from a sort of more global perspective can carry the message the tom line needs to be increased but the Armed Services itself cannot give appropriate Management Discretion to the department to deal with snowfall inefficiency of that are strategic threat at this point. Let me just add two things. Your question had to unpack it a little bit had a couple of different pieces. So on the reform which is beyond kind of cutting the headquarters bloat and encapsulates things like retirement, health care, et cetera, the problem of the entitlements inside the Defense Budget that are a microcosm of the National Entitlements problems but which because of cost growth, threaten to at some point eat the whole budget, and my colleague, Todd Harrison has a chart that shows current growth rate, its gone down a little bit. A some point 30 years from now the whole Defense Budget goes to this. So we have to get handle on that. We addressed nat the report but the reality is that i think everyone on the panel agrees with this if you got the wildest success and gordon brief us us as panel and you were on more than one occasion, if you were able to get catastrophic success and get all of this stuff done youd get 150 bill over ten years. Over ten years. And that is just not enough to fill the gap that we saw thats been created by most of the initial budget cuts and now on top of that the bca capped and sequestration. Thats point one. Point two, on the question of strategy and strategy surviving different president ial administrations, at one level i absolutely agree with that, and in reality, i think we would argue the panel really implicit si argues that has been the case since 1945. That we have had a National Strategy and that you can see it sometimes its not articulated but you can see it at work in how successive administrations have dealt with certain problems. So, for instance, president carter announced the carter doctrine, saying that the United States would not allow an outside power to dominate the persian gulf. The reality is that after the collapse of the soviet union that was directed at them, but even before the soviet union collapsed the United States made it clear that it wasnt going to tolerate an internal power in the persian gulf dominating the persian gulf either. So you can see this continuity through time. I myself am not having presided over a qdr and it should be said that a qdr is not actually a national not a grand strategy, its actually not a National Strategy. And the document itself and the way wed do it i think is in dire need of reform. This is something that our panel didnt take on this time, although the Previous Panel did suggest that maybe we should think about whether the qdr has had its time and day. A process which basically allows the military departments of the department of defense to spend one year preparing for and throwing thousands of body at, and then produces and i presided over one of these so this is in the category of criticism selfcriticism produces a document that says the program of record looks pretty good but we need to make a few tweaks here and there, and if you look bat at every qdr thats the conclusion that it comes to. But the result is almost guaranteed by the process that creates the document. Problem, i think, that exists we were asked about this yesterday by several members of the is how has to be some kind of National Strategy that gets articulated. I think the qdr in fact came about because of the bottomup review as you suggested. Congress thought that was actually a pretty good exercise, therefore lets institutionalize it. Its time to kind of sunset that exercise, but you have to have some kind of forcing function that creates a strategy. My argument would be if you think back at some of the great strategic documents that guided the evolution of u. S. Strategy after 1945, those were not created by a committee of thousands of people working on studies. They were very small groups that were purposedriven, and free from a lot of the normal boy,ic constrainted. We need to look back to that kind of model to get at this rather than what we have adopted with the qdr. With that i want to open the floor to questions. Yes, sir. George mikelson, a policy consultant for special operations and counterterrorism. You talk about a strategy. Remember after world war ii, president eisenhower was concerned about a future strategy and he commissioned what was called the solarium concept, three separate panel inside the white house. George ten net orchestrated that. Out of that came a strategy of containment. Is it time to have another solarium group . You know, ive actually looked at the solarium project and i actually teach a course on american grand start where we spend time on that and we have asked the students to create their own little solarium. We have teams going off to figure out a grand strategy. Theres a lot that is attractive about that process and the process itself i think actually stands as one of the great exemplars how to do this right as opposed to the way we have done the qdrs. I would have to say i think its a little harder to imagine that kind of exercise going on today. First of all, the principles of government were involved in that. In other words, president eisenhower devoted several full days sessions to all that. In fact cannon record inside his memoirs that eisenhower was the towering intellect among all these people who had been gathered to do this but also had the secretary of the tressy, secretary dulles there, a lot of high level government time devoted to that. You hat load of people across party lines. George was doing the exercise but a he had not been renewed as an ambassador by secretary dullless and forced into retirement but he was still able to play a big role in this process and its also very hard for me to imagine thats going on none of that leaked. People didnt know about solarium until 40 or 50 years after it happened in any detail. People knew the outlines of it but no one talked in those days. No one had bob woodward no one was telling bob woodward what they thought during the solarium process when president highs hour is recap pit few lating the tree strategies. Its a potential model but i worry how we could execute it in todays environment. I would just add that congress wouldnt go along with it so thats pretty much it. Well, there you have it. Over there in the second row. Then well take you and then well take member of the george mason chapter of the Alexander Hamilton society. Theres definitely been a lot of talk of in the coming century of what the military will look like, especially with the type of conflicts well be facing and theres a lot of time between a smaller, lighter force depending on the naval power, air power, and special operations, or continue having a large force to face larger aggressors like china. What is the in your opinion what do you think would be the best solution especially since in my mind, like, we have so many different commitments internationally. We have bases all over the world. That causes us to be spread too thin and then if theres another powerful country they could easily take advantage of the fact we are spread too thin. Well, ill take a whack at that and then jim may want to chime in. Secretary gates used to say all the time, and i think he is right, that when we try and predict the future of conflict we have a perfect record in the United States government. We have always gotten it wrong. And so the problem i think we face at bit is because we have this unique role and its not even really the role of being the sole super power. Even before we emerged the as she toll super power after the collapse of the soviet union its complicate. We, in the cold war we provided the framework for the free world of the rulebased International System of free trade, free passage of the maritime domain, we guaranteed International Civil aviation, we set up all these institutions and created this entire apparatus that has led to the largest period of globe prosperity in history. As congressman marshall was saying. And theres nobody else in the late 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, britain had been playing that role, and also it entered its period of decline, as it became the weary titan, as Aaron Freedberg reside book title refer toilets, they had someone to pass off that responsibility to. The United States of america. And the problem we have is theres nobody for us to pass this off to. And so we kind of are trapped in that regard. We have got to these commitments we have to maintain. One this will was that most challenging was to hear the cno tell us and previous penals that at the current rate of build for shipbuilding in the u. S. Navy were not going to have a large enough nave you to maintain our basic presence mission in the western pacific, which is now coming under pretty serious challenge because of the rise of Chinese Military power and double digit Defense Budget increases every year. I commend to everybody the most recent report of the Congressional China Commission that has enormous amount of detail about this buildup and why everyone should really be concern about it. It does explain a little bit about chinas more aggressive posture towards its neighbors over the last three or four years. We have no choice but to both maintain the squall, the qualitative edge that secretary hagel talked about as being so important. But we also have to recognize that the qualitative edge is not sufficient. Its also quantity. Quantity has a quality all of it on. If you dont have enough ships, you cant be meant. You cant maintain your alliances. You cant get your allies to contribute what anyway need to contribute. So we have to have both, i think. So we have sort of the hobsons choice here. I was giving a talk about the National Defense panel report, and put some slides together, and so i said, came up with this slide. U. S. Global leadership. Certainly not a blessing. Perhaps a curse. But also a fact. Kind of where we are right now. And if we fail to continue to provide the Global Leadership we have been providing no question, global instability rises, we get poorer, Tax Collections are a lot lower, and so in a sense, we ought to be funding appropriately defense. Now, how do you do it . What do you anticipate . Well, as gates said were pretty bad at predicting exactly what threat will evolve in the future, and this world right now, pretty clear people dont want to go up against the United States where the United States is strong. Nobody wants to do that you. Always pick your enemys weakest spot. So its very clear that our military, our Security Forces generally, need to be agile and they need to be as current as possible. We need to be ahead of the curve as far at technology is concerned. So that somebody doesnt develop the capability that we cant defeat. We want to be we want to have capabilities they cant defeat, and always have the ability to defeat their capabilities, which requires a great deal of investment inre d that were going doing but a were worried about readiness and carrying personnel because were forced to carry personnel, not knowing exactly what the budget is going to look like in the future. And thats unfortunate. Are we able to could the Defense Panel predict what the future is going look like and how we ought to structure our force . We concluded, no, we didnt have the analytic ability, didnt have the staff so a better planning process than the qdr perhaps, not necessarily solarium, that you suggest, we revert to because i dont think you can get there but some planning process that tend that guides news the organization of our force. At the hearing yesterday by the house we had a few members ask us why we didnt talk about Garden Reserve in part it was because early on we talked about guard and reserve in the appropriate mix and concluded we werent going to be able to come together as a panel with a recommendation about that subject. So we decided, okay, we wont touch that subject but we could agree on a few things, and in the document as i said before, we said, we think if wowent through another qdr that was not budget informed but strapping informed, youd conclude that as far as capacity is concerned, you need more ships, mow people, et cetera. So its cant and capability and being ahead of the curve and being very agile. Isnt there if you look at china, during the cold war, investment oregon part worked because receive it union was isolated. The Chinese Students the top engineering professors will tell you that the best american is number 25 in his program so theyre not his immediate tas or not the people who are benefiting from the wisdomment at that time they then return to china and work for airbus or boeing facility or Something Else and then ultimately get good enough where the Chinese Technology now is maturing and accelerating in so, were still spending more in r d than anybody else is, including the pentagon, but do we need to sort of fumedmentally rethink this model . The globe flow of technology is a leveler and chinese president. S nor longer seen as the well, i play with that train once in and wheels are going to fall off. This our phone in my pocket is made in china and its pretty good and doesnt explode into flames. It is collecting on me but thats another issue. Did you hear that . Thats why i turned if a my iphone. I would just we talk about this actually in the panel report because the qdr itself puts a lot of emphasis on innovation, and that we have to be more innovative, and now, of course, secretary hagel at the Reagan Defense forum announced the socalled third offense strategy. The defense initiative. Yes, and youre absolutely right, of course. This is not the cold war, not the u. S. Soviet confrontation, something much more complex and much more difficult to manage in part because the speed of technological innovation is so rapid now that the effort to keep pace and keep ahead of the competition is very is a great concern, should be a great concern for everybody. Secretary hagel racessed that concern with us early in the panel. He open live said, im not 100 convinced were investing in all the right things. I hope youd look another what you think we ought to be investing for to have cape end 20 years out that we need. I think he was very mindful of the fact we have been consuming the seed corn of the Reagan Defense buildup in the 80s. So, he raised that with us. We trade to address that in the panel. In part because i think we were concerned that theres a danger that innovation becomes a buzz word. We dont have enough money. We cant do everything. We need to do. Dont worry. Well innovate our way out of this problem. This talent and hard work will somehow solve a budget issue. Talent and hard working people never existed in the Defense Department before the current crowd. So we wanted to make sure that that didnt become just like transformation. Everything is an offset now. The toilet is an offset. We suggested some vector ford future investment. Places where we think the department has not been placing enough eminem emphasis. It includes undersea warfare where we have advantage against the chinese. More unmanned autonomous undersea capable, smart mines, et cetera. Longreact strike. We said was something we should look at. A more armed, unmanned aviation, a whole series of places where we said this is where we ought to be concentrating our future investments to deal with that capability. I think we still have a comparative strategic advantage over china for the moment, which is that china really does have a problem with innovation. They can do a great job of buying Russian Military czech nothing, reverse engineering and it then reproducing it on their hone. Hey have the shown some ability to do things that we didnt think they could do or didnt they do it as fast as theyve done them. But they still have some barriers and we still are a country that remains open to innovation. Its a little bit beyond the scope of the report or this panel, but i think one of the thing wed ought to be thinking about in terms of National Grand strategy is thinking about issues like energy and immigration as part of our National Grand strategy. Immigration policy, when considered not in the domestic political context that we normally consider it in, ought to be seen as part of the comparative strategic advantage but the current immigration policies are crazy. If we have a kid from bang good lower comes to theout, goetz to m. I. T. , develops some really gee whiz bros in met allergy we can apply, we say thank you for spend anytime our country, please go back and theres not really good path for you to become a citizen but if you have no skilled and want to come here and do gardening or child care for us, yall come. So, weve got to change that. And weve got to think about it as a strategic Natural Advantage of the United States. One opportunity nor United States globally is to sort of theres no real reason why we cant do that but we have to change our immigration policies and be more open to the possible you just described. We spent lot of time talking about russia, china, other places, and conclude it that it was a mistake for us to lyonize or demonize any of those places or countries. And thats certainly applies to china. There is a terrific opportunity for us to work in partnership with china that would advantage china tremendously and the United States as well. And so we yes, do need to be prepared in the event theres conflict but if history is demonstrates anything its that countries that are so lie lyon lionizing each other and its like ferguson and at the press coverage might be a problem when the grand jury report comes out. Think theres probably going to be a problem. Oh, no, i think theres certainly going be a problem. It was selffulfilling proficiency so you wore by demonizing and preparing for conflict, on beaching sides you eventually get to the point where somebody pulls a button and theres a conflict. China is in a real difficult part of the world. Its got huge problems that face it. Structurally. Across a broad number of issues. Its going to have great needs and its going to fare much better in a Good Partnership with the United States than if it is at odds with the United States. Its benefited from america from the very beginning. Absolutely. My name is [inaudible question] im from the george mason chapter of Alexander Hamilton society. You guys are all sitting together. Two of you. Yes. Just seeing whether or not we should keep moving the mick mic down the roo. Theres a whole handful of people from the Hamilton Society here actually. I had a question about back on the defense spending issues with european and nato dependence on the United States. Whats your opinion on whether or not europe should become more military independent or whether or not we should continue providing threequarters of their military capabilities . We i at one point, talking to much of a bunch of european commissioners, suggested that the this is early on in the iraq conflict and i suggested that the United States has the military capabilities to do this sort of thing in spades, at least the conventional part of it. Your guys can get shot on street corners just like our guys can so the nonconventional part we need as much help. But on the conventional side, dont worry about doling those capabilities in a sense unless were coordinated very well. I if we do joint operations its very difficult for us to do it. Were worried the coordination is difficult because we dont have the same capabilities and communication protocol. So i suggested well do the hard stuff and you think about the soft stuff, coming in and rebuilding and one guy says into youre glowing to be perpetually the bad guyed and were the good guys. I thought, thats a good point. Maybe that wasnt such a good suggestion by me. We have had a partnership for a long time. We always want them to contribute more than they have. Theyre cutting back. Left and right. And one big mistake by us would be to think that somehow theyre going to reverse course and somehow theyre going to step forward and fill some of the gaps that were creating because were not funding our military appropriately. Be nice it that happened but it should be supplementing what we do, and we should not expect its going to happen because if anything the trends there are in the opposite direction. So this falls unfortunately into the general category of be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. After the end of world war ii, when we created nato, famously in the formulation we did it to keep the russians out, the u. S. In and the germans down, and it worked. And so we created essentially what was a defense protectorat. It was an alliance and wasnt like the war warsaw pack but was a protectorat where we provided the overwhelming security prepares and guarantee for europe, and it allowed europe to rebuild. After a devastating war april. Loued europe to become prosperous, and it allowed europe to become relatively irresponsible with a few exceptions when it comes to security. And all those trends since the end of the cold war have gotten worse. In the cold war we used to have the three percent solution. Wanted all allies to spend three percent of gdp on defense while we were spend six and seven. Now after the cold war we wanted them to spend two america now. We got a lot of nato members, including founding members of the alliance, who are sliding below one percent of gdp. And i said for a lot of demographic reasons as well as cultural ropes, i dont think its like live these likely these trends are going to reverse anytime soon. I dont think that means that we withdraw from nato or we say the hell with nato or any of that. I think what it means is we have to think about how we operate in nato differently. I think the good news is that there are a couple of countries that remain serious about defense, and who are investing in defense. Poland, for instance, month the new nato members comes to mind. Never thought i would say this on a public stage gut but the french have been incredible, valuable ally over the last six or seven years. The french are very serious about defense and we should welcome that. I worry, frankly, about our colleagues in the United Kingdom and i dont know what will happen after the next election there. But i think that the special relationship between the United States and the u. K. Is at best on life support and may already be clinically dead. We just dont know it yet. That to me remains to be determined. That would be in my view a development to be mourned, not celebrated, but i think we have to also maybe face the facts about it. Secretary gates used to say during when i was his undersecretary we had to try to figure out whether nato would be a two tier alliance in which in members fought and others didnt. Unfortunately we know what the answer is now. Now we have to live with reality and work our way through it. The only thing worse than not fighting with your allies, fighting with your allies is fighting without them. Yes, sir. Always happy to quote churchill. Exactly. I am with the National Council for iran. I guess we cant talk about defense without talking about stopping iran reside Nuclear Weapons program, and i know theres been a lot of talk about the number of centrifuges, and how many they should be allowed and the administration has been boasting that they have degraded some of the 20 enriched uranium and other steps but i want you to talk about the things that hasnt been really addressed, and both the weaponization and the verification. The longlasting outstanding questions like the possible military dimensions, dating back to 2003, theyre still hanging there for 11 years, ten years, how ills that going to be resolved in seven months or even afterwards if they didnt comply before with all the sanctions and away. Second in terms of verification, access to military sites, to experts to documents, if that has not been accomplished in the past 11, 12 years, how is that going to be accomplished . You take the example hoff of where the on signature said they have two high explosive chambers built for that. None of that has been hack sed i by the iaea of what happened to those sites and access to experts and others and sites and parts so id be interested to hear you thoughts on that. If could i go first and simply say that you obviously have expertise far beyond mine on this particular question, and i hope that the talks that are going on will be productive and my general hoch is that iran winds up being an al rye, not an enemy of the United States. Its a narl partner for the United States. In. You did mention one other issue which would obviously be delivering. To me it is incomprehensible how any successful agreement could be reached without dealing with past military dimensions at the Ballistic Missile program. In the first instance you asked about verification without getting into the details of the weeds on this. In my view view as someone who formerly had to worry about this as the statutorily designated chief advisor, civilian advisor on work plans, how do you have a verification regime for such an agreement if you have not understood exactly what they were doing on the military side in the past . How would you even no where to look . If you have not got resolution on all of those questions. Your question answers itself the most recent reports suggest it has been totally cleansed at this. Given total access, there would be nothing left to find. This is an area where the Congress Needs to be very vigilant and active. I have no doubt that senators kirk and menendez and many others who have devoted a lot of time and attention to this issue, congressman, congressman engel, congressman deutsch, i have no doubt that they we will try. And sen. Corker, if he becomes chairman of the Foreign Relations committee, all of them are committed to congress having some ability to review. I think they have an enormous role to play here with regard to review and sanctions. Unfortunately that is is all the time we have. Thank you very much. Thanks to rachel and caitlin and everybody. Friends and colleagues of former dc mayor Marion Bailey will attend the Memorial Service tomorrow. Several government officials and civil rights leaders are expected to attend including reverend jesse jackson. We will have that event live tomorrow at 11 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. And compton who recently retired as abc News White House correspondent on her over 40 years covering the white house and the administrations of gerald ford through barack obama. We watched and listened to a group of second graders go through. Came and came and interrupted the president , whispered to him. I was stunned. Nobody interrupts nobody interrupts a president , even in front of second graders. The president stood and said he had to go. Then we heard that it was two planes down. Stay right here. The here. The president will come talk. No. The president has to speak. He did not want to scare the children. I must return to washington. We raced to the plane, poster board quickly, the door slammed the land and the pentagon was hit. Sunday night at 8 00 oclock eastern and pacific on cspan q a. Coming up next, a a recent address by pope francis to members of the European Parliament. Then some of this years ceo council meeting. Christine lingard and former Florida Governor jeb bush. Later, a discussion on how to make released medical data more accessible to consumers. During a recent visit to the European Parliament pope francis called on the European Union to promote democracy and transparency among its citizens. Combating extremism. This 45 minute address begins with European Parliament president who offered welcoming remarks. [applauding] [applauding] [inaudible conversations] [speaking in native tongue] translator your holiness , esteemed colleagues, dear guests, ladies and gentlemen, 26 years ago Pope John Paul ii addressed the European Parliament. His speech was a milestone. The beginning of the process of reunification. Pope francis addressing the European Parliaments members represent more than 500 Million People from 28 countries and the members represent the diversity and variety of europe. Over the past six years, a dramatic and unparalleled crisis which has had serious aftereffects, particularly dramatic, the confidence of people, both at the national and european level. Tremendous. However, with that confidence and trust no institutions can resist and therefore the cooperation is required in order to regain the trust and confidence. Concerns of the European Union and its institutions and those of the Catholic Church to a large extent go handinhand with the values of tolerance, respect, equality part and parcel, a common task. The European Union stands for standing together, being together, and not excluding young people, difficulty in finding a job and finding their place in society. People are looking for a Better Future for themselves and for their children. People are fleeing disaster, looking to the institutions the distribution of wealth and opportunities, the old people and societies. Peace and war, the European Union as well. We are facing challenges, shared challenges. Your words have tremendous significance that just because your the leader of more than 1 billion catholics, tremendous significance and meaning because they address all of us, speak us, speak to all of us, directed and addressed to all of us, and they are valid for all of us , the topics which you address are of concern to all of us, in that sense universal. Providing a guide at the time of a lack of guidance, dialogue, integrity and shared responsibility for fellow man and woman. These things remind us forcibly that we have a common task and we must find Common Solutions to them. Stronger united than we are taken separately. Your message is a very european message, and the very idea which informs unification and your back story is europes back story , the story of a family which left europe and sought a new holy land. Came from the other side of the atlantic. To make it safe. It can serve as an example to all of us and can help europe to renew itself and to reform itself. Can i say that welcome here and thank you for taking up our invitation offered by the European Parliament. It is an honor and, indeed, and, indeed, a privilege to be able to listen to your words today. Your holiness, you have the floor. [applauding] [inaudible conversations] [speaking in native tongue] translator mr. President , Vice President , members of the European Parliament, all of you working in various capacities, friends, i am grateful to you for advising me, fundamental to the life of the European Union. And i thank you for giving me this opportunity 500 citizens. Especially to you, mr. President , your warm words and welcome in the name of the holy ghost. More than a quarter of a century after that Pope John Paul ii. A great deal has changed since then. No longer the opposing blocs which then divided the continent into and gradually the hope is being realized that europe will one day reach the full dimensions that geography and even more history has given. Increasingly interconnected and global, less and less eurocentric despite a larger and stronger union, europe gives the impression of being aged and weary, feeling less and less a protagonist in a world which frequently looks on it with a aloofness, mistrust, and even at times suspicion. I would like to offer a message of hope and encouragement to all the citizens of europe