Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics And Public Policy Today 20150910

And they have more or less supported each other in that discussion. We are now have a much clearer understanding what turkey can do for our internal politics, what jordan has been able to do and others as well. To that effect i think we are getting much better understanding and less involvement of our neighbors in our internal affairs and more toward the stability of the country. Thats a good sign. So we think that our neighbors have matured up to that challenge. Iraqis internal politics have also matured up. Not to overdepend on extended parties, because your neighbor, your Community Neighbor whether theyre kurdish, shia, others, regardless are there support you from the outside. So we are a project in the making. And we are developing in the right direction. But on the fight against isis i still think we need a lot of support. Are you finding that some parties think that isis can be useful pressure against iranian influence in iraq and can help sue for the kind of political deal afterward they want . John, were seeing isis very similar to the taliban situation in afghanistan. And we can see what afghanistan has led to with this lack of aggressiveness against taliban at the time and allowing it. We dont want to emulate that copy. We dont want to be a copycat to that situation. We want the fight against isis for their sake and our sake. That for the stability of the region and the globe as a result of that. So i think we are looking for a more responsive, mature reflection of what has taken place. And we dont want our neighbors hand to be burned by the lack of engagement in the fight against isis. Are you hearing when you travel in the middle east people who say, well, we dont want isis to win but we also dont want the iranians to win iraq completely . Is that something you hear . Certainly, john. I think to a certain extent isis is viewed still as a useful tool in checking iranian influence, especially in a postiranian nuclear deal environment. As in iraq is still viewed at least in saudi arabia and in re add and other capitals as an extension or an iranians fear of influence. As a matter of fact its definitely far from true, but it is still treated as that. That goes for both the iranian for the iraqi theater and the syrian one. Unfortunately, no one regionally wants iraq to emerge as a strong state. Iran still views iraq as a weak entity attached to it or aligned with it as favorable to a stronger iraq. I would say that saudi arabia definitely does not want the iraqi democratic experience to fully prosper. And in fact i dont think that the saudis have ever made a strategic decision to reach some form of a deal with a new iraqi system, to embrace iraq as an arab state with a new system. I think that hasnt been done before. And im not sure it will be done in the future. Can i add this small point here . Absolutely. Its important to look at isis as a global problem rather than just an internal domestic iraqi one. We have our faults. Nobodys denying that. We may have contributed to its strength, however when you have a problem in north africa or when you have chechnya or chinese or american joining isis, that has nothing to do with internal iraqi politics, has nothing to do with sunni, has to do with the global problem has to do with global resolution as much as Global Warming is a problem we have to work with. I think thats important for our audience to appreciate at least that iraqi politics internal you cant help regardless how much you help on the iraqi politics you have a global phenomenon which you need to grasp and get control of. Thats where i think may be missing. Aaron, one of the things that seems to me when people report on foreign fighters, we hear a lot about foreign fighters in syria, we dont hear a lot about foreign fighters in iraq. In fact, what we keep hearing about daesh in iraq is that its former regime loyalists or baptist who is are growing beards and putting on different uniforms. Not to dis your beard at all. Is there Something Different about daesh as it operates in iraq versus daesh as it operates in syria . Yeah, at least on the first part its definitely true. I would say vast majority of foreign fighters are actually based in syria. Though you do see foreign fighters in iraq as well, but theyre not really involved with the administration of the areas that theyre controlling. The foreign fighters are primarily used as suicide bombers in the iraqi context. Whereas the foreign fighters in the syrian context are more used in terms of the administration. So just yesterday there was a report of syrian as well as another involved in a suicide bombing in iraq yesterday, or at least thats when it was announced. So theres a difference in that context. Another thing to think about too is that this organization while many people began to repay attention to it in june 2014 after the fall of mosul, this is an organization that has had a presence nonstop since 2002, 2003 when zarkawi first came to iraq after the fall of tor ra bora in afghanistan. So they have a lot more history as well as connections. Theres a lot more local ties within the iraqi context whereas in syria the organization itself really didnt start to put down a foothold until april 2013 when abut bakr al baghdadi. Made a statement theyre going inside of syria on an official level. So they dont have the ties in syria as they do in iraq so i think those are some of the basic elements in terms of the differences. Thank you. You mentioned oil prices being a constraint on military operations against daesh. But they must be a constraint on everything the government of iraq is trying to do including being inclusive of groups who feel they dont have a share of the pie. But if the pie is shrinking, its harder to give out more shares of a shrinking pie. How does that affect all the things you were talking about, including the problem of National Unity as we see more and more that the kurdish region of iraq is exploring its own way . More since 2004 when the prices of oil boomed up and so on, we tried to use money as an enticement of the politics. That also increased corruption and increased other type of mismanagement or bad governance of the institutions. In the fall of mosul with a real soul searching going on, changes the political process in iraq as well, now we have said that this is nonsustainable. And we cannot proceed with such a strategy of only enticing people through financial ways. And by the way, majority of the enticement were for politicians for the communities, so that effect i think we have learned the harshness. And now the Prime Minister he has the mandate to reform and also to start new areas of looking for revenues such as government bonds, investments and others. To that effect iraq has done tremendous change, a big sea change in policies for reform in relation to funds and financial and extended support with the world bank and others as well. Thats taking place. But i take your point and i agree with it. We need to be very careful as not to really alienate people because were saying to them we havent got moneys to restructure your schools and others. To that effect the allied half are aware and are working on what they call postdestabilization projects. To that effect we have to seek support from the gulf countries when they talk about marginalization in iraq we say, okay, these areas have been liberated, tikrit, others as well. Put in your money wherever you have been talking about marginalization. How is that going . Not to the extent we wanted, to be honest. Because it goes back to the fundamental point which talked about and this is an area of frustration by the way. This is an area which says to the iraqis who is supporting you at the moment you need and the shotgun of isis next to your head . You have the neighbor next door who says im happy to help. And youve got all of the other neighbors saying, well, were conditioning our support. When your house is burned up, would you want to have a conditional support . Or would you want an open spot . Thats the problem we have. Well get to your neighbors. Addressing irbil, what is the mood there . How does the situation on the ground far away from baghdad relate to the strategy in baghdad . Well, i think one, on the isis front, things arent going well. We still have very coherent cooperations by the peshmerga, so thats a positive aspect. But i think politically were seeing clearer signs of a split about what to do with kurdish as an entity, what relationship does it have with turkey, iran and officials in baghdad . That point i think and the extension of the term for the next two years or potential extension, it really expose where the clergy is. It has disagreements. There is real political debate around how to function either within iraq or otherwise. I think that at this stage the u. S. Can actually help in creating more unity between the kurdish parties. Encouraging reform within the krg because the krg does need reform. Uniting the peshmerga, unifying those forces and encouraging kurdish parties to have a broader dialogue internally and with officials in baghdad. The solution thus far has been to just mostly blame the Central Government for the problems kurdistan faces. I think if we begin to have a broader discussion of what needs to be done, kurdistan would probably move forward even as a democratic process moves forward there. Would a more given what weve seen of opinion polls in the kurdish areas suggest overwhelming support for independence from iraq. Would this sort of reform democratic process, would that make it harder to keep iraq as a whole together . Well, i think its difficult for anyone to say that theyre against independence formally. But there are definitely different opinions of when do you get there, in what form and what sort of a relationship do you have with the rest of iraq . I think they are disagreeing when it comes to that. Some favor an incremental process that keeps baghdad closer, eventually these are kurdistans neighbors, you need to deal with them at the end of the story. What needs to be done, i think, is just encouraging that sort of debate between tehran and baghdad and kurdish officials. Certainly reforming these institutions i think in kurdistan is key. Forming the government, having a process that is much more representative, i think thats key to having a more stable kurdistan be it that an entity formerly within iraq or an independent entity. Aaron, the peshmerga have been some of the most effective fighters against daesh, but daesh seems principally focused on iranian influence. Is there a changing way that theyre talking about kurdish fighters, about battling kurds as this battle unfolds . Well, just like the iranians or any other entity, they view them as an enemy. Obviously theyre using different types of derogatory terms for kurds as they do with other groups of people, but i think they realize that theyre not going to be able to push any farther north at least in the iraqi context where the kurds have been able to hold the line since the u. S. Coalition started doing things a year ago. Therefore theyre focused more on the broader sectarian issue, i think, because it probably gets a little more played possibly. As a result, you know, you see more fighting in that regard instead of them trying to push back into northern iraq. But at the same time that doesnt mean that if there isnt an opportunity that theyd be willing to do it. As weve seen every once in a while, there will be like a suicide bombing that sneaks through into kurdistan. So for the Islamic State its an expansionist imperialistic type of entity. And as a result nothing is out of bounds for them. Mr. Ambassador, you mentioned the reliable neighbor next door. And the reliable neighbor next door, iran, is also thought to have a whole series of ties to the Popular Mobilization forces that is accused of being a sectarian militia attacking sunnis. What is the strategy for creating a genuine, capable Iraqi National army that doesnt rely on foreign trading, foreign funding, sectarian implications, those kinds of things . How do we get from where we are today to where youd like to be . We talked about the construction, that includes the military, after the fall of mosul there has been and will continue a significant restructure. At this moment the end game of the setup of the army is still not complete. We need to understand what do we need to protect and therefore how should our army structuring be mirroring that whether its a border, internal, so on. We also note that important projects such as National Guard legislation requires very careful handling politically and very careful handling structurally as to who do they report to. We dont want to create and fund local politicians to have their own forces under the title of National Guard. So we are still careful to that effect. At the same time we know that the majority of those people who have joined the Popular Mobilization cause are doing it lifting arms based on the call, for the protection of their country. And they are less ideological and more nationalistic. And theyre also not looking forward for being permanent members of these military setups, but want to do it just for the sake of liberating the towns and then going back to their jobs for us to create opportunities for them at least. In that context i think there is here in washington an overselling of this issue of ideology attached people to iran. In that context, i think there if you look at the numbers, they dont represent less than 30 of the per use, who are the three main blocks to represent the political attachment. But at the same time these are iraqis, who want to defend their country. They may have some ideological differences, belonging to iran, but that doesnt take away from them the iraqi and protection and they have blocks in parliament that represent them as well. So we are talking about a National Political process, democratic process taking shape in effect. When we talked about the project in the making, i dont think anybody has a clarity as to what the end game should be like, as much as destabilization and federalism. To that effect, the Prime Ministers Main Objective is making sure that hes commanderinchief and everybody adheres to his command. In tikrit when the enhanced military setup didnt want to participate, the Prime Minister said you are okay and free not to participate but you dont have the veto. I have the veto as to when you can participate and the extent of your participation. The same goes in anbar and so on. So to that effect the conditions we want to confirm and cement at this moment, is that the Prime Minister can manage the components to whatever the political end the process leads us to. So that is the long answer because i dont think there is say short answer. But it is interesting, because it is in part about centralizing and regularizing and institutionalizing and decentralizing, giving more local control. It seems to be pursuing two goals simultaneously. But lets also be honest among friends. A lot of americans, when they talk to us about National Guard, they have the current concept of National Guard in the current u. S. Setup but you have a revolution of the National Guard from the revolution to this stage. We went could cant go through a crash course of this. We need time. We need time and dialogue and to do it free from the shotgun to our head. Whether it is isis or militia or anybody else. That is what were trying to work on. I am when the Prime Minister was here in april, in this room, i asked him if there are any limits or red lines tor for decentralization in iraq and he said there are no red lyons. How do you see that process unfolding as the bast talked about, of spinning and devolving more control to different places . Well, i think that there are definitely constraints on where iraq could head. But the conversation is at the very beginning. It is very difficult to ask iraqis to do reform on every level and figure out their end state of their political system while they are fighting isis. Especially for supporters of the government at this stage. This is not the sort of discussion that is either popular or they even want to have. I think in many respects, effort to push the iraqis closer to our concept of decentralization could backfire. This actually needs fire. You also need part of the current areas held by isis to be liberated and gather more traction behind the government. One point i would mention here though is the discussion over the National Guards law, that is a key part of an equation that unites iraq. Not necessarily divides iraq. For a body to move forward with a series of reforms on different fronts, scrapping the Vice President ial roles, the deputy Prime Minister rolls, to do that and leave a key component of the reform process to the end i think is part of what builds some form of a confidence crisis between iraqs community. That is one area that we can actually move forward with. Aaron, do you see sort of a nascent sunni leadership fights against isis fighting against isis or isis is fighting against in its country. I havent seen anything similar to what weve seen in terms of 2005 and 2006 as part of a tribal awaking. Part of this is learning the lessons from the mid to late 2,000s when they started to go back in and start the military campaigns in 2012 and 2013, they started to reach out to smaller clans within tribes to try and cooperate, whether it was with money or weapons and dividing and conquering the tribes and it has been effective in many respects. And on the other hand, if there has been a group of people that tried to go against them, they would go against them. Weve seen them with the tribes and in different regions in syria. And a couple of weeks ago, in libya when they were trying to do something in cert. So part of the issue is that the Islamic State has a monopoly and violence in their area and it is difficult to go against them unless there is outside assistance at this juncture because they have been able to institutionalize them locally in some respects. So what you are saying is it is extraordinarily hard to see any bottomup politics. I do think in in juncture, in the areas they control firmly. There are areas that are in between which could be peeled off. But in terms of the core areas that they are in, especially in the western part of iraq, where they are the strongest, i would argue in part because they are able to have a corridor into syria and back which allows them to strengthen that control, it is very difficult. The way they rule is very totalitarian. Do you see bottomup politics as you look at Different Things and areas in iraq. Not in the sunni areas, not yet for sure. But that is why you need to move forward with a part military solution to allow a political process to reemerge. You cannot have that process while isis controls these territories. So i think that is a key part of the issue. Within the rest of iraq, absolutely. The protests are one example of that, that the ambassador mentioned. This is very much a vibrant society, and political system that is even pushing back against entrenched politicians of the same sectarian affiliation. So actually we need to give the iraqis some credit they trying to form something new even at the grass root. By this response, i think in that respect, i think has been very positive. That is the way forward to embrace the protesters rather than clamp down and that will push for things in a more positive direction. So you would see the protests as a positive sign and not as a warning sign of iraq unraveling. I think structurally iraq has had those issues for a number of years, ryan. The fact that there is organized opposition that is peaceful and constructive and there is mow coherence is more coherent is part of building up iraqs democracy. I dont necessarily see it as something dangerous. Now, the response, i think, is part of what builds up something more positive. If the Political Class sees this as a signal, that their legitimacy is at stake then Reform Efforts become more serious and real and that is what weve seen in the last few weeks. We dont have what we might call then the east europe situation where you have local specific entities fighting against the Central Government. You have across the whole country people who are from Civil Society Movements Society movements, protesting against the political leaders saying we want to stop corruption and we want Job Opportunities and others. And this is in a way what we want to focus on. It is in the sense of what you talked about, destabilizing, if we dont react to it, certainly it will be destabilizing. If we do not appreciate it and embrace and work with it, then certainly it is destabilizing. We still dont have what you might call a strong state. We realize that. And the pace and depth of the reform by the Prime Minister is the reflection of that aspect. I will go to the audience in just a second. But in terms of what you just said, what are the warning signs or what would be the warning signs that the protest movement is no longer constructive and is actually become threatening . Well we have, at this moment, if you ask me what is your Risk Management issues of those, well one of them is i see the i. T. Consultant coming out. And one is the request they are making. And it is too diverse. And the others is they dont have local leaders of a type and therefore who do you talk to and who is the representative of that. That is another. Third, in the scale of demand for change requires decades. I mean that. It is not because youre talking about for example bureaucratic system which is based on the Ottoman Empire and then on the british and then on the republican systems of iraq. So it took 100 years to get to bureaucratic systems that you have to reform. And then a police state history you have to reform and then destabilizing region who doesnt promote democracy and then isis next to you. So it is multi layer. And there are people who talk about the iranian influence as well. Of course. Of course. And by the way, we are as much worries ed as anybody else about any extent of influence who doesnt help to stabilize our country and to that effect we need to keep an alert and be on our toes as to who is getting involved and what is the end game. Communication dialogue is important there. Thank you. I would like to turn to you. I would ask three things. One, that you identify yourself. Second, that you only ask one question because ive already seen five hands. And third is that given the experience and wisdom of our guests, i ask that you ask your genuine question and not make a statement and then end with what do you think of my statement. [ laughter ] so the first person i see is over here. Please wait for the microphone if you would. It is right behind you. Im dr. Mar oegy, command for the civil affair out of here in maryland. I served as a command sergeant for the office of Security Cooperation and my question is giving the extent of all of the demonstrations and you are a friend of mine and ive known you and ive worked tirelessly to restore iraq and american relationship but there is a limit to what you can probably say in public, but given the degree and level of the demonstrations, does the Prime Minister understand the need for reform and, if so, what does he have to in his administration to rely on to execute some of the reforms . My experience is my iraqi officials are if not incompetent so who will he rely on to address the reform issues, especially in the service sector. Thank you, colonel. What the p. M. Has discovered over the last year that the change of reform requires a substantial amount of change of culture, change of strategic shift in government direction. And most importantly, the ability of the people to cooperate with him on the issues. Certainly he has the Political Capital to best utilize that at this moment. And to that effect he has made it clear and he will continue to do that. Hes got extent of support in stream lining. Hes reached out to [ inaudible ] and others. Workshops are taking place. He has highlighted the key areas who would be initiating reform on, such as i. T. Systems and paperless systems so it can become more transparent and streamlined in those institutions. At this moment, as i said, because it is a scale of the reform itself, it can only be managed based on people understanding of the challenge ahead. For example, when you are talking about taxation system, people have to pay taxes. They have to pay the electricity bill for the infrastructure of anything to be resolved. That is still not grasped yet. Demonstrators need to understand they have an active role to play in the reform movement. It is not just a demand and obligation on them as well. That is one of the other challenges we have, colonel. However, as to who can help us, we have reached out and are continuing to reach out to others, our american president inclusive and we still dont have all of the capabilities for the reform and nobody is saying we do and we are continuing to work on that and when we dont know, well say we dont know. We are under no illusion as to the scale of the challenge. So i dont think you can reform iraq in one year or two years. This is a massive project. The politicians are not up to the task. But at least you begin to restart it, right. From now on, whereas given the current revenue, were going to do x y and z and begin a process. There is no other alternative. You cannot destroy the entire system and build something new. We already have something and it is difficult enough to manage the iraqi political process. So i think it is a big challenge as the ambassador said. But we should encourage that reform drive. We dont necessarily need to move through a cycle where even and every official is put in jail. I think the signal has been sent that enough is enough. There needs to be some accountability for sure. But the importance of starting this process, i think, is key and that is why iraq has taken at least a body that has initiated. All the way in the back. Yes, sir, all the way in the back. Thank you. Rabbin pasha, founder of social development horrize johns from middle east bureau c. A. D. My question is to mr. Ambassador. [ inaudible ]. I am Iraqi Kurdish and came to the states as a refugee in 1996 and one thing that has been bothering me over the past year or so is now weve neglected the real aspects and issues going into preventing the violent extremism and investing in the Human Development in iraq which is something i found in the organization to address. And any question is in regard to specifically the challenges facing eugene gagement in iraq. And i mean that in the state perspective. Your excellency mentioned how the youth is a foundation for security but another cornerstone is the Economic Growth of iraq which has taken a huge hit because of the instability and the lack of opportunities, especially for youth becomes a driver of despair, of migration and of unrest and further instability and joining propaganda and violent extremism. So i know there are two other big elephants in the room in terms of the threat to stability of iraq and the humanitarian situation, that iraq definitely needs support with. One being the displaced populations, absolutely. And certainly. And the other one being the democratic process and making sure people have the social services so they feel the state is doing something for them and this becomes a specific engagement in responsibility other than just a question of taxation. But i would love to hear your thoughts what could be done perhaps to target and what the Iraqi Government is planning to do in creating and bunch on ing the private sector, targeting Youth Opportunities and showcasing the stable areas as your excellency also mentioned, areas being liberated but are already stable like the Kurdish North and the south of iraq for creating greater economic investment, bringing in Multinational Companies again or creating a burgeoning entrepreneurship and private sector from the Iraqi Community that could lead to further stability. Thank you. We talk about what you just highlighted, we need to substantially reform our banking, insurance, makeup for regulation and regulation of investments and these are all steps that are supposed to be in the pipeline. And here we need a Strong Political will by parliament to stream line and to focus on a throughput for updating our legislations accordingly. Another aspect is we need to change the culture of overdependency on the state as a main and only breadwinner and focus on entrepreneurship and others. And that is initially taking place. I dont think it is at an acceptable level. And a third point is we talked about the elephants. We have a third elephant, which has to do with idp that are young and by the nature iraqis are one of the least sort of something about 60 of the population are under 35. Median age of just about 19. Population growth of about 3 . That in itself cant be stop any development and could you say more about the idp, the internally displaced persons. There were neighborhoods that were mixed neighborhoods and now belong to one sector or another. We still have a lot of idps in the kurdish region from an ban or salah addine and others and turks from the north and [ inaudible ] for example. We still have a lot of sunnis in karbala who are being supported by the region setup as well. So at this moment, the demography is mixed. It has its own nature. Idp, by the nature, if you dont address it in a year or two, then they feel they have more demand and they say now i need to afford health care and education and stability and so on. So they dont think of themselves as in transit any longer. That is a threat we have as well. And the people who moved into their houses have decided that is really their house. To that effect, i think majority of people, for example, in diana and tikrit, the government worked with local authorities to help that out. And we have also seeked the religious decrees so it becomes shameful to occupy someone elses house and religiously not allowed. And seeking Government Support of rule of law in that aspect of it as well. It is still in the making, to that effect. However going back to the youth aspect of it, it is one of those challenges which the arab spring has manifested to the whole region and im told that without youth managing, the youth throughput, Growth Without Job Opportunities, then all they have is awareness, because of globalization and they have very good awareness taking place in the rest of the other countries and they have frustration. How do you sort of use that frustration . Membership of isis and others becomes a channel, which we want to keep away from as much as we can. Second row. Thank you, john. Mr. Ambassador. Identify yourself. Fatty mon sour, im a correspondent and a student of professor john. Back in july of this year, 13 july, jamal muhammed, known as abu muhammed and deputy chief of the dish abby gave a lengthy interview to the newspaper in lebanon and he made two controversial statements. The first one asserting that hezbollah trainers are acting in iraq to provide training and within an advisory capacity to the Popular Mobilization forces but working under the what he called the command of the armed forces [ inaudible ] which is under the command of Prime Minister al baghdadi. That was the first statement. The second one was he stressed that the popular motivation forces will move into syria after finishing the battle against isis in iraq and it will support the Syrian Regime in fighting isis. So first could you maybe address these two issues first as Hezbollah Operating under the command of Prime Minister ab al baghdadi and second, will the Government Support oro pose any such move into syria by the Popular Mobilization, noting that i think mr. Muhammed endes was accused of taking part in orchestrating the attacks against the American Embassy and French Embassy in kuwait in 1983. Thank you very much. I dont know about the french and i have no understanding or awareness of even that allegation. As to hezbollah, do they operate in iraq . No. As to who is in control . The Prime Minister is commanderinchief. We certainly have no aspiration or desire or will to be involved in the syrian theater in any way, shape or form. Weve kept it away from it in 2011 when everybody else asked us to get engaged and nofly zone and we said we dont want to get involved in neighbor issues. Let alone a volatile area such as syria. To that effect, i can assure you whatever reports you are talking about, i have not read it so i cannot talk about specific, but as government of iraq, we have no intention to be involved in any military side on the syrian side whatsoever. Maybe some isis aspects specifically command operations, whatever, clandestine, but im not aware of that even. But i say we certainly has no aspiration or desire or will to be engaged in that theater. You need to go back to whoever said those statements and challenge them. Right here. Thank you. Nabam ralla with the news network. I have two short questions. You are only allowed one. Okay, the second one. My question is for the two distinguish scholars. You talked about the role that iran and other neighboring countries play in iraq and specifically in the fight against isis. But i havent heard anything the kurds in both iraq and syria. And saudi arabia has preferred to keep the isis problem in iraq and syria and not confront it. Obviously that comes with the risk that terrorism at some point comes back home. Weve seen a few bombing in saudi arabia. But no, neither states have actually helped confront the isis problem effectively and even after weve seen i think a turkish uturn, their folk he is focus remains on containing kurdish aspirations along the southern borders, not necessarily and fully confronting the isis problem. I fully agree. Saudi arabia seems to be primarily focused with what is going on in the Southern Front of the syrian conflict, working with jordan and amaq making sure they do not become radicalize and become as theater as the northern parts of syria but beyond that they havent done too much. And the turks are problematic in so far as theyve allowed so many of the foreign fighters getting through the border without doing much of the Border Control in the beginning. And while they talk about the socalled antiisis zone in northern syria, the reality is they dont want the kobani camp to be linked up with the free camp in my mind and if you look at what happened since the turks got involved in this antiisis zone, the Islamic State has taken over parts of that state rather than ejected them. So im unsure that it is a competition of who did worse but neither of them have necessarily done that great thus far. Thank you. Right here in the front row. Good afternoon. Im Bayan Sammy Hamman the kurdish government representative to the United States. Ambassador, thank you very much for a very interesting and optimistic outlook on iraq, which we all need. I want to go back to the humanitarian situation. Because this really effects where iraq is heading. I know it has been touched on very briefly, but we really need to understand the depths of the problem and the problem that will face us for generations unless we iraqis and our friends in the International Community do much, much more to help. I think all of us today are haunted by the picture of alan kurd eva, a little boy from kobani who washed up on the shore in turkey. He symbolized every displaced person in iraq and syria and the horror that we face with europe acting like a fortress. It is shameful. Kurdistan region has taken in 1. 8 million displaced people. Europe has accepted about 600,000 Asylum Seekers, 28 countries, 600,000 Asylum Seekers versus one part of iraq taking in 1. 8 million people. 60 of the displaced in kurdistan region, im afraid, i dont know about the rest of iraq, 60 of the children in the kurdistan region among the displaced region havent been to school, that is despite all of l our efforts, the u. N. , us aid, and others trying to help, that is a ticking time bomb for all of us in iraq. The u. N. Is saying they cant raise enough money to help the displaced in iraq. The u. N. Launched an appeal for 500 million in june to see the displaced and the refugees through the six months from june to december. They have raised less than half of that amount. This is a ticking time bomb. I know you said you didnt want us to make statement and invite the panel to give their view, but i am going to do that because this is a disaster. I think everybody thinks that the disaster happened in june 2014. No the disaster awaits us. There is going to be zestusion and disease among the humanitarian crisis and how it effects radicalization and how does that affect another lost generation. How can we ask people to pay taxes when today we cant even offer their children education. Thank you. I totally agree with her and also say that the challenges we face in iraq and syria is in the idp is destabilize oub neighbors, destabilized jordan, turkey, part of turkey and certainly destabilizing lebanon. It should be a crisis bells ringing across the whole globe. Because it is an area where it is not next door to europe and also people who have no alternatives but to go through as always the illegal racketeering and other methods of earning for their income and paying for their clothes and food and so on. So to that effect, i think i agree with you that the humanitarian issue alone in iraq and in the region and the aftermath of syria and the isis destruction, it is an urgent focus. And we have areas that are the enslavements and theize edies the issues and the heritage and that is a distinction excuse me, a world issue. Because it has to do with irreversible destruction of human him or history, and i think that itself requires more. And if you look at this through sectarianism, people will be switched off. But if you look at it from this prism, they can do a lot and not a lot is being done at this point. Mbm cities in iraq and syria, theyre also having these local kiosks called media points where they provide pamphlets, usbs and sim cards and giving it to people and the community of individuals that they focus on most are children and youth because they know that theyre the future. They dont care about anybody over the age of 35 and thats one of the biggest dangers about the Islamic State is that theyre a socially Engineering Society right now and the longer they stay in control of areas, the worst it will likely get and because of that, you know, its a major problem and its not just arabic language, but even theyre putting out content and kurdi isish language as well as others and its definitely an issue for broadly speaking, iraq and syria and everybody else in the region. On the humanitarian issue, and i think this is textbook example of politics trumping and humanitarian concerns. It happens, but there has to be also local ownership of the conflict, that the region and the participants and the parties of the conflict have contributed towards that form of destabilization. Yes, europe hasnt done enough and yes, the europeans havent done much and also the arabs, they mentioned some numbers on that. We have fled the conflicts in iraq and syria and done very little to relief the humanitarian pain. We have time for one more question. This gentleman has been very patient right here. Khalif from the voice of america. My question to mr. Thaley. You were mentioned many times to the recancellation. Sir, can you raise your voice . What do you mean about recancellation . To cut their budget for more than a year or the recancellation with the sunnis and which part of the sunnis . The sunnis sitting in baghdad sitting in the process or the sunnis in jordan or sunni tribes leader from anbar . Reconciliation in iraq, and im using a generic term as much as possible because it is generic and i dont think it is one Community Feeling like they have been singled out. I think there is i can assure you that if you go it a person in basra and you talk to him, and you say im paying 90 of the oil to the whole country, and i am getting less than 1 of the income, so i think there is a significant social contract that has to be redrawn in iraq, among all of the components as to the roles and responsibilities of the state and each other. When theyre talking about the decentralization and they talk about Good Governance and you cannot decentralize and allocate power without having the structure for that and otherwise youre creating chaos and saying in relation to political flexibility of the governments and so on. You also have the issue of at what staple of your people do you want the authority to be disseminated to, and the provisional level and the government levels and so on, and also talking about the election systems and how to reflect the people . These are all areas where you talk about reconciliation and lets agree on how to manage this country moving forward and in a civil way and i civilized way and away from the gun and away from repression and respecting human right and respect the role of law and respecting the constitution which we all voted for. This is the key issue and this is what i talk about project in the making, and i do mean that, and i can assure you no Single Person can tell you, this is the picture we want to be in and we will be in in five years. Thats not the case because we cannot control these parameters which is surrounding us which is talking about the idp as one example. The problems within the sunni communities add to the leaderships and how effective are the leaderships and how local are their leaderships and the shia parliamentarians and how reflective are they to the southern provinces where they say we have lack of services and the kurdish questions as to how much decent ralization, and these are all areas we are still i said, the project making and we need to progress in making [ indiscernible ] we are still not clear what the endgame unless we have substantial amount of dialogue. As far as i can see, that real dialogue still hasnt taken shape. People demonstrating is a sign that a dialogue with the reform has to take shape, political reform and social reform. Mr. Ambassador, you have to agree youll come back and update us on this. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you for joining us. [ applause ] Senate Democrats this afternoon blocked a resolution against the iran nuclear agreement. The vote of the 58 to 42 in favor of proceeding, but 60 votes were needed for the resolution to advance to a final vote. This means the disapproval resolution will likely not reach fridays desk and the nuclear deal should move forward. President obama issued a statement saying in part, quote, i am heartened that so many senators judge this deal on the merits and am gratified by the strong support of lawmakers and citizens alike. The house meanwhile, continues work on their resolutions concerning the iran agreement. You can watch the house live on cspan. The senate live on cspan2. Middle school and High School Students and your teachers, were happy to, announce the launch of cspans 2016 student cam video documentary competition and with 2016 being a president ial election year, were really excited about this years theme the road to the white house. Whats the issue you most want candidates to discuss during the 2016 president ial campaign . Our competition is open to all middle or High School Students grade 6 through 12 and cspan is awarding 100,000 in cash prizes. And students, you can work alone or you can join a group of up to three. Your goal will be to produce a five to sevenminute documentary on the issue youve selected and youll need to include some cspan programming and also to explore opinions other than your own. The 100,000 cash prizes will be shared between 150 students and 53 teachers, and the grand prize of 5,000 goes to the student or team with the best overall entry. This years deadline is january 20, 2016, and our winners will be announced on march 9th. So join thus this year. Be a student document aryan and youll find more information on our website, studentcam. Org. Next, a discussion on limiting Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons and ways to open a dialogue on the issue between the u. S. And russia. From the center for strategic and International Studies, this is almost two hours. Good morning, everyone. Im sharon, and i direct the Proliferation Prevention Program here at the center for strategic and International Studies and its my pleasure to welcome you this morning. I know this is the friday before labor day, so i really appreciate your time and attention, just a few administrative remarks. We do have a system of plan of action, whatever you might call it in case there is an emergency. So ukari in the being bah, if there is a problem, turn around and shes raising her hand. Well follow her. Please turn your cell phones off. It creates a problem with our sound system and it can also be distracting to our speakers. I am going to introduce our panelists first before we launch into the substance of our discussion today. Everybody knows were not talking about iran, right . Its not iran this morning. Its kind of a throwback to the past, here to talk about Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons and the u. S. Russian relationship. I am joined today by three experts who all participated in both of the dialogues that we conducted with the russians first in october and then more recently in june. On my immediate right is andy companiens who is director and senior fellow of the russia and you Eurasia Program and we didnt overlap in the Carnegie Endowment and you were there before me and in moscow. Next to andy is ambassador steve pifer who directs the arms control and steve is former ambassador to ukraine. So all of his experiences both in the ukraine and elsewhere during his Foreign Service career have been invaluable to our discussions and then next to steve is guy roberts who is a former Deputy Assistant secretarygeneral for weapons of mass destruction policy at nato and guy and i go back a long time in the arms control. Not that long . Okay. In the arms proliferation and arms control scene. I am going to try to limit my remarks. Im just going to sets up, you know, how we did this dialogue and what were some of the conclusions and then were going to give each of our panelists a couple of minutes to give their impressions or, you know, i asked them, tell me what you thought about this dialogue, what was different, how it changed from october to june and also what they thought were some of the most interesting outcomes from it, but i think i need to set up this whole thing for you. So i didnt printout reports in deference to the environment, but those are the links and theyre all on our website. There is a long report from the first work shop in october and an even longer report from the second work shop in june. This project was sponsored by technically by the navy and it was the project on advanced system concepts for combatting wmd and they sponsored a lot of strategic dialogues and heres the important part. It was the grant was awarded for fiscal year 2014, right . In about october 2013, things were a lot different than they are today in terms of the u. S. Russian relationship. The objectives initially were to explore really verification modalities. If you were actually able to sit down officially with the russians and negotiate an arms control agreement to limit Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons, how would you think about it . What verification would you think about . Of course, this changed over time and initially the First Agreement was to sort of set the groundwork and the second meeting was supposed to look at very hard core issues of the agreement and instead we had russias annexation of crimea. The u. S. State departments verification and departments report, where the First Official allegations of russian violations of the imf treaty. We had sanctions, as you well know and all the while, new start implementation was, you know, moving along, maybe a little bit more slowly. And so because of this, because of these increased tensions, what we decided to do in october was, okay, lets focus confidence Building Measures. What can we do in terms of political and technical confidence Building Measures and so in october we met in vienna, we had seven russians, ten americans and one european. We quickly realized that, you know, we do need some vital european voices in this dialogue. We didnt do much better. We had two europeans in june, but i think if we move forward in this process well include several more, and so in the october work shop we had three different sections sessions, we looked at political factors and technical, confidenceBuilding Measures and political confidenceBuilding Measures and we spent an afternoon where we broke up into working groups to come up with specific recommendations. I dont want to overwhelm you with the details and they are there in the report and ill give you some examples, but in october the themes were we sort of rallied around a few themes. One is that, you know, arms control is never easy and in times of crisis its want easy, but it is still an important venue if you can use it to build transparency and trust. In october, all of them said, obviously, official limits on Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons are off the table. Interestingly enough, in october our russian counterparts were quite clear. They said, you know, crimea is about European Security and its not about Global Security and this is not a new cold war. Definitely not a new cold war. In june, that tone had changed quite considerably and that really affected the kinds of things that we talked about. We spent a good deal of time. We had some representation from u. S. National labs and so we talked very specifically about Verification Technology and that was one of the areas that we believe could be fruitful even if were looking at longer Term Technology developments, and we also talked about confidence Building Measures in terms of lab to lab cooperation and limited data exchanges and then, of course, the kind of existing venues of cooperation like the Proliferation Security Initiative and u. N. Security Council Resolution 1540. So we really kind of cast our net widely. The next few slides are a long list that we talked about and i welcome in the q and a session if you want to ask specific questions about them. Obviously, the russians are really big on Historical Data exchanges on the president ial Nuclear Initiatives and these go back to the 1990s. So the idea is if you have a good baseline of what of what Nuclear Weapons and Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons are out there and then you can move forward from that baseline. They were little, as were we, i guess, more squeamish on some were more current data exchanges. In october, we said we really cannot reaffirm what we call the nato 3 nose which is that we have the Member States of nato, and we could not commit to no modernization. And so these were topics that we discussed at length both in october and a little bit in june. On the technical confidence Building Measure area, we had the basic assumption that multilateral confidence Building Measures were the hardest and bilateral at the moment that were desirable and not so easy to accomplish and the unilateral measures might be okay. All right. So thats a very narrow avenue for doing things. But we still talked about possibly having expert visits to former storage sites in europe and thinking about some of the things that wed done in the past with the russians. For example, the Trilateral Initiative between russia, u. S. And iaea on fiscal material. In the longer term the idea was to focus on crosscutting technologies, things like information, transmission security, data storage and information barriers and kind of softened the focus away from verification and more on sort of monitoring. There are a lot of things that we have done in the fiscal material area that we might think about in the future and we had a third working group, and it was funny and we talked about political and technical confidence Building Measures and lets talk about tangential opportunities and that group kind of just brainstormed and came to the conclusion that, wow we really need a broader dialogue about European Security, but its probably not possible right now, but i think everybody agreed that we really need to create some stability and transparency, and in our june work shop, that was a heavy focus, i would say. All right, so i really am going to try and breeze through the next few slides. In our second work shop, what we tried to do is say, okay, we had a list, a menu of ideas. Lets drill down on that and so i asked each participant to come up with two specific ideas. I said put some meat on those bones. Well circulate it and we came up with what i call an ideas paper, and that is on our website and its in this package for the second work shop and in those ideas i asked folks to focus military doctrine, transparency, Technology Development and safety and security of Nuclear Weapons and this was kind of the surprise topic, i think, for our second work shop. Its kind of counterintuitive, right . If youre having a if your relations are not the best at the moment, can you talk about sensitive topics like the safety and security of Nuclear Weapons and what we decided to do, what we decided was, you know, its worth a shot, right . We have a lot of focus on Nuclear Security these days and there have been exercises and cooperation with the russians in the past in some limited ways and so we have a menu of potential cooperative actions we could take there. All right. So this ideas paper, and you can see we had a lot of ideas on the transparency end of it and it was pretty evenly divided, i would say, and i cant go through all of this here, a, because i think it would bore you, and b, was there a lot of language on those slides, but i think suffice it to say, and i know steve is going to talk specifically about military doctrine. There are a lot of topics we need to talk with the russians about and specifically given some of the statements by putin and other, you know, lower officials, we need to clarify some topics with them and they feel the same way. For example, on Ballistic Missile defenses, so transparency, we had a lot of, and i apologize that this is so dark, and it didnt look this way on my computer, a lot of different ideas for the kinds of information we might exchange with the russians, and one particular topic that we talked about at length in june was the alleged imf violations, and i think well discuss a few ideas that we had for being a little more transparent about those alleged violations on both sides. Technology development, lots of stuff emanating from our labs, i think in the future if we did this again i would get some Russian Laboratory experts as well. Theres a lot of work to be done on authentication ever information. There was a lot of interest in Remote Monitoring techniques and fundamentally for Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons you have a lot of definitional issues which have an impact on the kinds of verification that you can explore. Going through this on safety and security of Nuclear Weapons and a few of the ideas that came out were to do a joint threat assessment of the risks of terrorists penetrating a storage site. You can also flip that around and do a joint assessment of site security improvements. You could do some exercises that build on things that were done with the natorussia council on recovery. How would you recover a Nuclear Weapon that was stolen, and those kinds of things. Okay. So thats the sort of setup for the work shop and now im just going to highlight a few of the themes that we explored. Two more slides. Fundamentally, the u. S. And russia needed new basis for transparency. The old bases dont work and that is in the 1990s, russia was looking forward to somewhat integration into western institutions and transparency was seen as the price for that. That is no longer viewed in that way. We talked a lot about nuclear messaging and how we have new generations of officials and how we might need to tweak that. We dont know how well that works anymore. On the uses of transparency, we suggested that the russians need to clarify the status and the relevance of deescalation concepts. In other words, you know, are they really contemplating the use of Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons to avoid a bigger war or conventional incursion and we talked specifically about some Russian Military exercises that would give the appearance of that kind of alarming doctrine and on the russian side they said the u. S. Needs to clarify what did ash carter actually mean in terms of carter i think it was ash carter, right . In terms of countervailing measures in response to imf and there were some surprising misunderstandings given sort of the level and expertise in the room. At least surprising to me. I think we agreed we need a new political umbrella and that we need some shortterm actions urgently. Fundamentally we agreed that u. S. And nato Russian Military officers and policymakers need to meet to review implementation of current agreements designed to avoid misunderstandings and so one of these is the incidents at sea agreement. In the last few years there have been, i think, over 40 incidents between military forces and i think right after our meeting the american im trying to remember, admiral and the russian admiral met in naples to actually discuss some of that, but we believe that it needs to be even broader. We suggested that we should expand the vienna documents confidenceBuilding Measures to include exchanges of information regarding Nonstrategic Nuclear weapon in air and Missile Defenses. In the short term we have a list of actions that we thought were urgently needed. So we need more information. We were told while it exists on a classified basis, but we said, you know, russian experts you need to publish articles on this concept of deescalation, and whether its we were told that its not part of an official russian doctrine. Well, you know, wed like a more confirmation of that. One of our participants recommended that the u. S. Government should consider some transparency measures to demonstrate that the mk41 missile launcher cannot contain or launch offensive surface to surface missiles and this is one of the allegations that the russians have made. We recommended that nato and russian govern ams should reconvene joint activities regarding the safety and security of Nuclear Weapons or exchange such collaboration to include an exchange of best practices and sorry, that wording is a little off and then finally, we said, well, maybe the special Verification Committee should be reconvened to talk about the allegations of violations on both sides. In the longer term we think it would be useful to reconvene activities previously conducted by the natorussia council including military to military on avoiding misunderstandings and we think we should reassume better technologies forrer have if i kagsz and finally we think there needs to be a new review of classification issues regarding nuclear warheads. So those are the big sort of items from these two dialogues, and im going to stop there and welcome my colleagues. I think were all just going to sit at this table. You can do it however youd like to provide their insights on these two rounds of talks. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you, sharon for inviting me to speak today and also to participate in the two meetings that were held over the past year in october in vienna and in june in washington. Ill make brief comments about why i think this exercise was so important and important that we continue and then some remarks about the domestic political context in russia which sharon asked me to speak about. So there is a feeling for me, and i think for all of us of sort of deja vu all over again in having these discussions. As a young, aspiring, sovietologist in the 1980s, i cut my teeth on meetings and discussions like this and through the 1990s, dealing with the Nuclear Legacy of the cold war was a very relevant and even urgent topic, i think for a lot of us, and then something seemed to happen. The topics of Nuclear Security and nonproliferation and arms control, et cetera, seemed to some extent to lose their urgency, i think. At least from my perspective and their relevance, and i was thinking about this in talking about it yesterday at lunch with sharon and what happened. Well, okay, i would i think the bush administration, the george w. Bush administration had something to do with this as they came to power in 2001 with a very different perspective on the value of, i think what we referred to as traditional arms control agreements, negotiations, et cetera, whether one agrees or does not agree, was there the withdrawal from the abm treaty. There was the socalled moscow treaty which was basically a bone thrown to the russians because the russians wanted a piece of paper in may of 2002 and so they got about three and a half pages of paper in the moscow treaty. Two. Two. Thank you for the correction, steve. Russian is a complicated language, so it might be three, and the message was the cold war is over. We are no longer enemies. Despite the fact that most of the weapons from the cold war remained where they were, remained on hairtrigger alert in many of the same places as to where they were, and then what happened . Well, 9 11, i think, this had something to do with how Nuclear Security to some extent went out of vogue, although personally, my First Impression my first thought in watching the secondary plane go into a World Trade Center building was as horrific as this is, imagine what a disaster this would be if this involved a weapon of mass destruction, a Nuclear Weapon. I think something deeper was at work. It seems to me like we kind of and i think to some extent the policy community in the United States that we went on a strategic holiday, and we seem to forget, to some extent, the nature of the existential threat that these weapons present to ourselves and to our planet. Yeah, we had the unipolar moment. Yeah. We had the eurasian land wars in iraq and afghanistan. Yes, much more discussion about Global Warming and Global Climate change, global jihad, the Global Financial crisis and mr. Obama did become infatuated with the idea of global zero momentarily until he and his administration realized presumable they virtually all of the other Nuclear States existing and aspiring had no interest in global zero because Nuclear Weapons were their asymmetric, strategic equalizer and trying to prevent, making the world safe for conventional weapons dominance, but thanks to Vladimir Putin, to some extent, it looks like the strategic holiday is over. The ongoing war in ukraine as sharon alluded to reminds us that we never did successfully resolve the challenge of building a new, European Security system in the quarter century since the end of the cold war. In thousands of the strategic and Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons that we used to agonize over, theyre still around, and putin loves to remind us that theyre still around. And that, yes, russia could incinerate europe and the United States on a moments notice if they so chose. Now, mr. Yeltsin used to make bombastic, punintended, remarks like that, but we would kind of toss it off and say thats old boris. Hes had a few vodkas and you know, hes not really serious, but when vladimir says this, you know, we kind of look at each other and this dude, hes not really serious, is he . You know, i remember when mr. Obama said in march of 2014 in brussels just after the annexation of crimea, and he was making a cutting remark about russia, really and said russia is just a regional power. What keeps me up at night is the thought of a Nuclear Weapon going off in new york and honestly the first thought that came to my mind was dont give him any ideas. Come on. Now, seriously, here we find ourselves in a situation today where Russian Military forces are violating airspace, sea space of nato countries at record rates. Nato is preparing to move more forces closer to the russian border. Military exercises on both sides are beefed up and we are coming into much closer proximity to each other as we often did during the cold war and termed the new cold war is already a cliche whether you agree or not. What happened . Thats not the topic for today. I will explain that in my next book, but the point i want to emphasize is that the strategic holiday is over. The column of Nuclear Weapons of strategic and nonstrategic and im tired about the relative issues involved it is urge ebts. These two meetings that sharon organized were so important. Conversations that used to happen so frequently with russians 20 to 30 years ago, maybe even more, more years ago, we have, to some extent, forgotten how to have and warringly to me, the cadres train to have useful conversations on this topic have diminished. 20 or 30 years ago i was one of the youngest guys in the room in sch a conversatisearch a conver today i still remain one of the youngest people in the room in a conversation about this and guess what . Im not so young. So i think this issue of training a next generation of experts to understand the technical and the political, the historical details and facts about these weapons which still exist and present tremendous dangers is very important, i suspect, and in fact, i know that the generational dilemma is quite a bit worse on the russian side. Let me conclude about making comments about the russianpolitical context that sharon asked you about. I can provide two words, not good. All right. Ill provide a little bit more than that. Recall in the spring and summer of 2013 when newly reelected president obama, he wanted to pursue the reset two, if you will, with the russians and the focus of that was on arms control, hopefully another round of Strategic Offensive reduct n reductions and yes, possibly a broader discussion of strategic stability including the roles of Missile Defense and precisi precisionguided munitions and spacebased weapon, et cetera. Yes, mr. Snowden, remember him . He did complicate things in the summer of 2013 and basically the reason why that discussion ended in my view was that the russians were not interested at the time in pursuing the discussion or at least not in the terms in which the Obama Administration wanted to, and as you recall, the summit meeting that mr. Putin and mr. Obama were to have on the sidelines of the g20 meeting, or actually in moscow right after the g20 meeting in moscow, that was canceled and over the course of the last 20 years, Nuclear Weapons have come to assume a much larger role in the overall strategic posture for moscow, and i think the reverse is true for us, and so one problem i think we face in a larger general way is there is kind of a strategic mismatch. Its a greater extent today than that which existed during the cold war period especially the cold war period, but secondly, and over the last 15 years, whatever trust Vladimir Putin had towards the United States, particularly the United States has evaporated. And even worse. His whole domestic, political consolidation is much more dependent among antiamericanism and it is the principal prop, i think, in his political legitimacy, authoritybuilding strategy with the russian public and so weve heard this over the past several years, this growing chorus of, you know, we are the enemy. We seek to weaken russia. Come on, lets be serious. The cia, the nsa, the state department and all of the ngos that we support, we cant hold a candle to the russians themselves when it comes to the tack of weakening russia. Sorry, but i just had to say that, but i think the point for mr. Putin is for most of the time that he has been the leader, de facto and or the jury of russia, it has been Economic Growth and prosperity which has been the principal backbone of his political popularity. That has ebbed away over the last few years and it is now this antiamericanism, antiwesternism which is so much more important for the domestic political consolidation. Now, thats an obstacle, its not a super bowl obstacle. We have had important instances of cooperation with russia over very important security issues, but point to first of all, the removal and the disposal of the entire declared chemical weapons arsenal of syria which took place in 2014 and, of course, weve had the important agreement on iran which for the first time mr. Obama in his term of presidency has something nice to say about mr. Putin. So it is possible, bii think, in conclusion, i am concerned that to me, russia is more unpredictable and potentially more dangerous today than i think at any time in the last 30 years, a colleague over at the American Enterprise institute leon aaron wrote a good article or a provocative article in the Los Angeles Times about a year ago, arguing that Vladimir Putin is the most unconstrained and heavily armed leader in world history. Its an interesting thought, you know . Stalin didnt have stalin was pretty unconstrained and didnt have the weapons available now and kruschev were more politically constrained in their context, et cetera, but i think i would say the domestic Political Climate today in russia may not be so conducive to progress on the issues that we have been talking about, but it is essential that we continue to talk about them. I also think it is essential that we dont take the approach of cutting off our nose despite our face. You know, to discontinue a lot of the activities that were done in the context of the natorussia council. I believe that smacks of cutting off your nose despite your face because we dont do this as a favor to the russians. We do many of these cooperative things because we think that they help to alleviate the security dilemma and the security challenges that we face. So ive gone on too long. Let me thank you and turn it over to the next speaker. Steve. First, let me thank sharon both for inviting me to participate today and also for including me in the work shops that took place in october and june because i would very much agree with what he says, these sorts of channels are very important during difficult relations between the west and russia. Ill talk about the june work shop and the need to take steps to avoid accident miscalculation and the utility of a discussion about Nuclear Doctrine, but at first ill make a comment on something that sharon alluded to which is there were a lot of steps and a lot of things that you can do with regard to Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons that in the second session we would talk about and it wasnt that we were unaware of those and it wasnt that they didnt seem to be issues that had much prospect and just to briefly go through them sft most direct way to deal with them would be to negotiate numerical limits on them and you would have to resolve a series of verification issues and stuff like that. One idea that did come up in june was the difference does it make sense to str the distinction between strategic and nonstrategic. Whether you ought to move where you have no Nuclear Weapon, period. Beyond limits there were confidence and security Building Measures again, one that we did not get into much detail on. Transparency one that the you said, nato and russia would Exchange Date on on numbers and r tagzs in weapons and maybe you can talk with the things that washed up on to moscow and announced in 1991 and 1992 because exchanging data on historical things might be easier than exchanging data on current numbers. Other ideas out there that the United States and russia might announce, a noincrease commitment and both countries are modernizing the nonstrategic arsenals and it doesnt seem like either side sees a need to increase them. In the case of the u. S. Nonstrategic arsenal where youre only talking about one weapon, the b61 bomb. Those are not mounted on aircraft, and as we understand in most, perhaps all cases on the russian side, the nonstrategic warheads are separate from the delivery system. Could they agree that as a practice they would basically commit to continue that, and keep the warheads and the Delivery Systems separate. Another idea out there that has been discussed in the past and relocation, consolidation of weapons so there is a fairly rich menu of ideas on confidenceBuilding Measures in addition to numerical limits and there was a good reason we did not spend a lot of time in october and particularly in june on these questions because the russian government has made clear since the new start treaty entered into force in 2011 that it has little interest in talking about limits or confidence Building Measures in nonstrategic weapons and the official russian government position now is that it would be prepared to have a conversation about these systemses only once the United States had withdrawn all of its Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons and thats believed to be 200 Nuclear Bombs in europe and had withdrawn those weapons from europe and the United States and destroyed the infrastructure for them in europe, and a position that i dont think is acceptable to nato. This also turns out to be more reluctance on the nato side when you talk about these questions. There has been a conversation ongoing for a couple of years within nato on the types of confidence and security Building Measures that nato might be prepared to talk about. Thats been a closed conversation, but when we on the outside get a glimpse of it it looks like the list of measures seems to be shrinking and ill throw out one example how difficult this can be. I took part about two and a half years ago in a track one and a half conversation where we had nongovernment experts on the countries and they were nongovernment experts and one of the ideas that came out of this work shop is perhaps an easy confidenceBuilding Measure on nonstrategic weapon would be okay, you can go to places where we used to store nonstrategic weapons and verify that theyre not there because youre not giving away much information on current stockpiles. And this seemed to be an idea that this group felt actually had some interest and some of the german participants said lets do the next conference in germany and germany, of course, during the cold war when it was divided had been hosting both american Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons in eastern germany and the idea was we can have this work shop take place in germany and have a field trip and go and visit a former american site and a former soviet site. And that idea had a lot of interest until it ran into the wallop posed by american, nato and German Security procedures and weve yet to have thosed have s. So i think the work shop particularly in june said lets focus more modest and achievable steps with regard to Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons and in the current circumstances with the relations thats taken place largely since the russian seizure of crimea and Russian Military action in Eastern Ukraine and what can we do and what is necessary. One area that we focused on and this moved beyond nonstrategic weapons was an urgent need to avoid accidents and miscalculations and since early 2014 and since the time of russias illegal seizure of dri crimea, youve had a significant increase where we have nato and Russian Military forces and aircraft ships operating in close proximity to one another. For example, nato now reports that in 2014 in the first part of this year, theyre intercepting Russian Military air draft at a rate of three to four times of the rate of 2014. The European Leadership Network came out with a report last year where it talked about 40 potentially dangerous interactions between nato and Russian Military units. I think there were two cases in that report that were particularly alarming where it was reported that russian intelligence aircraft operating in international airspace, but operating in or near civilian laps were operating with their trance ponders off and the potentially most disturbing case were last year where an sas airliner in sweden had to take evasive action to avoid a midair collision. I would argue that neither side wants these accidents and miscalculations and there, in fact, is a significant body that they can build on to try to avoid this. You have the 1972 incident at sea agreement and you have the 1989 dangerous military activities agreement, and a number of nato countries have parallel agreements with the russians, but not all, and theres no blanket agreement that covers all nato forces and russian forces, but agreements like incidents at sea and dangerous military activities were designed to set rules for how military forces would operate. For example, the incident at sea agreement once that was internalized American Navy pilots, were told, that if youre intercepting a russian aircraft near the american aircraft carrier, this is the specific angle that you approach at so you do not seem hostile. The agreement would set things like say aircraft cannot overfly ships to the other side at an altitude lower than such and such. The agreement which primarily focused on interactions between american and soviet forces look the german border, units at the tactical level said if something is going on on the other side and its of concern and ambiguous, heres a radio channel that you can call and say whats going on . The whole point of these agreements were to reduce risky situations and reduce ambiguous situations and provide immediate means for the forces involved to clarify it so you would not have an accident and we came out of the discussion in june with the idea that it wouldic ma sense despite the ratcheting down in nato russian contacts to have a natorussia discussion that would look at these agreements, and update them and try to negotiate an agreement that would cover all nato and Russian Military forces and presumably since they dont want it in moscow and the one question we came up with, is would the russians really want this . If one of the things that the russians are trying to do with this uptick in Russian Military activity over the last year is to intimidate great concern in the west, do they want to take the edge off these sorts of activities, but i think its important to ask, you know, go back to that case with the sas airliner last year. What would have happened had the pilot not taken evasive action and there had been a midair collision between the airliner and the aircraft with the transponder off. Think about the impact on russias image and also think about the pressure that then publics would be applying on nato military forces to be much more aggressive in terms of intersenting and escorting Russian Military air draft and this is something near side should want. Another idea that came up is although you have lots of tensions and you have documents in europe that have worked. The vienna document on confidence and security Building Measures and the open skies treaty and so the question is can you take those documents and improve them . The vienna document on confidence and security Building Measures requires that you notify exercises over a certain level. Could you lower that level so in fact, nato and russia are notifying to each other, were there exercises so you would avoid an exercise or it runs the risk of being interpreted by the other side. Likewise, could you negotiate flights because this could contribute to confidence. Could you begin to expand coverage of some of those data exchanges to include things like Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons. I think the group recognizes that would be difficult and there might be interest on the other side if the United States was interested in providing data on Missile Defense systems which are now being deployed to europe p e. So those are some of the ideas that we were talking about to reduce the accident and miscalculation. We ought thought there was quite a bit of material to discuss Nuclear Doctrine. Nato has made clear that it remains a nuclear alliance, but if you look at the role of what they play in Alliance Defense policy, its significantly less and reduced from the time of the cold war and you see this in the fact that the number of american Nuclear Weapons in europe over the last 25 years has been reduced significantly, we used to have a number of different types of Nuclear Weapons and now its only the b61 gravity bomb and nato cold war practices and a Quick Reaction alert. Were at times during the cold war, you had nato aircraft with Nuclear Weapons on them prepared to launch very, very quickly, and i think i saw a nato document that said we would take a number of weeks to recover that status and there has been a rancheting down on the side. When nato thinks of Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons and its primary in terms of deterrence and assurance. They are a symbol of american commitment to defend europe, and i think a symbol that has become more important in the last couple of years in places like the baltic region and poland and Central Europe because of concerns about russia, and if used i think nato doctrine says if a Nuclear Weapon would be used, it would be used less than a political effect. It is signal that the Nuclear Weapon by being used is that this conflict has reached a point where it can escalate out of control to strategic Nuclear Weapons and its time to stop. If you look at the russian doctrine, our the unclassified russian doctrine it doesnt seem to be so problematic. Russia has now said both in its 2010 and its 2015 doctrines that it would use Nuclear Weapons in two cases. One, if Nuclear Weapons or other weapons of mass destruction were used against russia or russian ally or two, if there was a conventional military assault on russia where the existence of the russian state was at stake, and i look at those and say that doesnt sound that much different from natos policy of flexible response in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, but there are some questions. First of all, we dont know what classified russian doctrine says. There is this notion that russians talk about deescalation and the idea of escalating the use of Nuclear Weapons to stop the conflict which again sounds like it might be similar to flexible response except theres not a lot of clarity about the doctrine. For example, what is the threshold for nuclear use that the doctrine sees. How low is that . Some description seems to suggest that deescalation envisages the use of Nuclear Weapons as much as the Nuclear Impact for the political signal and there was a bit of general confusion and it was interesting to the american participants in the june discussion that virtually all of the russian participants said deescalation is not a part of russian doctrine, which seems to contradict what weve been reading a lot about what russians have been writing about Nuclear Doctrine for the last 15 years. So i think one thing we came out of this was this discussion, was that it would be useful to begin to talk about doctors to have a better understanding of how the sides view these. It was also really very clear in the discussion that when russia looks at Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons it is looking at the weapons as an offset for what it regards as nato and american advantages in precisionguided weapons than in conventional or general purpose forces. Left unsaid and my own belief is that they when they look at nonstrategic Nonstrategic Nuclear weapons and it may be politically incorrect to say this after putins visit to beijing yesterday, but the biggest factor is the chinese factor. Where i believe the russians do not understand or see how they could cope with a conflict with china, certainly nonstrategic weapons play a role in that. But again, what came out of this discussion is it would be very helpful to have a better understanding of Nuclear Doctrine on both sides and maybe some sense of having that conversation would be easier than talking about specific confidenceBuilding Measures or limits on nonstrategic weapons. And finally we chatted a little bit about the question of the role of nuclear vestige which andy has already referred to. Nuclear issues have become more prominent publicly in the last year because Vladimir Putin talks about Nuclear Weapons so much. In march there was a documentary put out on Russian State Television about the crimea crisis in february, march of 2014. And at one point mr. Putin said i was prepared to put our forces on nuclear alert. And i think the reaction to this was, what . If you look at that crisis, how it played out, there was no evidence that nato was prepared to take military action, no nato nuclear alerts. Nato begin to take steps really only at the end of march a little after the crisis had reached its key point and russia had already annexed crimea. There are a lot of questions where we dont have good answers. Why does mr. Putin talk about Nuclear Weapons so much . Ive come up with three or four ideas. A couple are benign and a couple less so. One reason may be that he likes to think of russia as a superpower. And if you look at the measures of superpower status today, really the only area that russia competes is Nuclear Weapons. Another area is that the russians and i think still believe that they have some areas where they lag behind the west and china in terms of conventional forces so, part of the reason to talk about Nuclear Weapons is to remind the world, look, if we get beat conventionally, we can escalate to nuclear. A third reason may be that hes read his thomas shelling and that he sees some value to appearing a little bit crazy, a little bit unpredictable particularly if its part of an effort that we see to some ways intimidate the west. But the most worrisome suggestion is that some of his language suggests that he may see them not as instrument of deterrence but as coercion and that would be worrisome. Some kind of discussion that would allow us to understand this would be very useful. So what came out of the june workshop is there are some very important areas of conversation where discussions between nato and Russian Military officials would make a lot of sense even at a time when nato russia relation are at a fairly low point. But the question is can nato and russia have a Productive Exchange on these kind of issues in the current political environment . Thank you very much. Its really a pleasure to be here and a pleasure for me to participate in these workshops. The problem with being last speaker is everyone has said what i want to see. So i really have very little to add. But the one thing i do want to emphasize right up front is i think of all of the things that we did during these workshops, the most important aspect of these workshops was the fact that we held them. And the fact that we engage in a dialogue that, at present, we dont really have with nato. The Nato Russia Council process has been suspended until further notice. There is no dialogue going on between nato and russia and i regret that. Certainly, at the height of the cold war, we continued to have a dialogue and not to discuss these things, i think, is a dangerous opportunity for miscalculation. Let me its interesting to reflect back over the last decade and see how much things have changed. First of all, in 2003, i was working in the department of defense and i was actually one of the people that were negotiating the moscow treaty. And as part of after we finished signing that treaty, i was tasked to go to geneva for the First Consultative Group Meeting or, as we called it, to have a dialogue with the russians. And i had bought into the fact that the cold war was over and that we no longer had an adversary and we were Strategic Partners or competitors at worst. So i dutifully, in arranging the room for our meeting, set the two heads of delegation at the heads of the table and the delegations down the sides. The russians went crazy. Absolutely said no, no way. Its got to be across the table. And we wouldnt do it like that, as a collegial kind of relationship. Then when the when our delegate head of delegations started talking about the fact that you are no longer an adversary, i still remember the heads starting to turn red from that kind of attitude which clearly indicated the United States was going to treat russia just like it treated any other country and there was no longer this same status, so to speak. So then a couple years later, in 2005 and i assumed my post at nato, its hard to believe now, but in actual fact we were seriously talking about russia becoming a member of nato. And being a part of a membership action plan and thought wed actually circulated a few drafts and had some discussions. Then in 2006, we had something called the 12city tour of russia in which senior nato officials were tasked to go out to 12 major cities in russia and talk about how wonderful nato is and how were no longer in opposition. I got the short stick and i got murmansk. I dutifully trotted off to murmansk biggest city above the arkt irk circle shedding people left and right. Lo and behold when i showed up at the university there were 250 people there protesting my presence. I couldnt figure this out. Why. So i walked up to this elderly gentleman who had some ribbons on his blouse and with my interpreter i asked why are you protesting my presence here as a nato official to talk about the great relationship we have with russia . And his answer was because my pension is too low. And that took me a while to figure that one out. But what he was essentially saying was echoed by steve earlier today and that all the problems internal within russia is not our fault. Its because of you guys. Its because of what you did to us. And so that, you know, and that kind of continue d to resonate and has resonated and is part of what we see now and what putin plays up to with his audience. I guess he still has an 80 or better Approval Rating by people in russia. As i said, most of so i just wanted to put that as kind of some interesting anecdotes. I was also acting assistant secretary in august when russia invaded georgia, and i just say it was really, really hard to get all the ambassadors back from their vacation even with an invasion. And its one of the most sacrosanct things you dont want to touch is an august holiday by european colleagues. I wanted to speak a little bit about nato. I mean, one of the things that i would ask you to keep in mind is that the nato alliance, the nato allies are continually concerned about and interested in the russia u. S. Bilateral dye log. Weve made it very clear and even though im no longer a member of the nato staff, i still sometimes say we because i still think of myself as trying to reflect that alliances views on many things. As steve indicated, it is true that weve endorsed and again in both our Strategic Concepts of 2010 and other documents and statements during our summits that we remain in the foreseeable future a nuclear alliance. But more importantly that political dimension that steve alluded to, and that is the real desire to burden share, to be a part of that Nuclear Deterrence posture and, even more important, is the consultative aspects of that. That is, that the United States will consult if it ever contemplates using Nuclear Weapons under any situation. And this goes way back to the early 60s. Participation this political linkage is incredibly important. I cant emphasize that enough. And the physical presence of a u. S. Nuclear deterrent assuages any fears that the United States may eventually abandon those that are members of the alliance. Participation and this reflects in the arms control process as well. The alliance looks to actively participate. In fact, we set up a committee that would provide a forum for the u. S. To keep the alliance informed about about bilateral u. S. russian relations and particularly in the arms control round. And their concern is that whatever dialogue goes on between the United States and russia, it should not lead to the weakening of the transatlantic link in nato. And instead should be based on the assumption of reciprocity between the allies, not just the United States, the allies and russia. This inclusion of what i call the european footprint in any of these arms control processes needs to be subject to this consultative process in the alliance. And its also firmly based on the principle of the indiv