I wanted to say a few words about wesley gelb. He was most recently president emeritus here at the council and served as our president from 19932003. Over the last five decades, he was a distinguished academic, a senior official at the departments of state and defense and a pulitzer prizewinning journalist at the new york times. He worked on the editorial side as well as a journalist. , he led the institution into the postcold war era. He was there for the founding or f the Maurice Greenberg center, the launch of the independent Task Force Program amongnvigoration many other initiatives. He was generous with his time and wisdom, particularly with a great many young people in the field, including myself. He was one of the countries true wiseman one of this countrys true wisemen. I wanted to be sure to take a moment at the beginning of this evening. Annuals meeting is our series on military strategy and leadership. Features top military leaders and was made possible by a generous gift from a good personal friend and a friend of the council bob mckeon, who is also the founder of veritas capital. He passed away way too young in 2012. Most notably, there is our military Fellowship Program which each year brings five military officers from each of the Service Branches to the headquarters in new york for a year of study and professional development. Established nearly 50 years ago, we have now hosted well above 150 fellows and more than half of them have gone on to be promoted to admiral or general. It shows that we have not gotten despite, atf talent times, our best efforts. Tonight, we are truly honored to welcome general joseph dunford, the 19th and current chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He has been chairman since 2015 and will complete his four years in the position this october. Before becoming chairman, he was commandant of the marine corps and commander of the International Security systems force in afghanistan, among other important assignments. Over two administrations now, the term of the chairman is not coterminous with the terms of the president , he has been a studied, experienced voice to two president s and the many around him. Joining the conversation tonight author david sanger, the of a new book, cyber conflict the perfect weapon. He has written extensively on north korea and Irans Nuclear program, russia, and the rise of china. Hands. In good please join me in welcoming general dunford and david sanger. [applause] thank you, richard. Thanks to all of you for coming out. Thank you for your nice memories of west gelb. He was a great colleague. General dunford, thank you so much for taking your time to do this. I am sure in the last month or so of your service, you have a lot of demands on your time. Gen. Dunford i question my judgment when i looked at the schedule this morning. [laughter] at the end of the hour, you may question it again. For different reasons. Gen. Dunford undoubtedly. We are on the record today, unlike many cancel events. Council events. Is then for today general and i will have a conversation for about 30 minutes and then we will open it up for questions from our audience. We could go back to many places giving your service in so many different roles, you came into this job in 2015, appointed by president obama. How would you compare the Global Security environment you faced on day one of the job with the one you are facing as you prepare to turn this job over . Gen. Dunford the easiest way to answer this is to take the five problem sets we have identified in the National Defense strategy and talk about those individually. If you take a look at russia since 2015, they have gone into syria, they have conducted an operation in salisbury, they have attempted to interfere with democracy in europe and the United States. They are not compliant with the inf treaty. With china, despite the fact in 2016, president xi jinping promised president obama he would not militarize the South China Sea, they have done that. They have been on a deliberate path in military Capability Development. Reorganizing their military in 2017. Amount ofa, a large their testing and Nuclear Tests took place in 2016. I think you would have to say. Hat iran is more aggressive the one area i would highlight a significant change in a positive sense is that in 2015, if you go back and read your newspaper and the headlines, they would have talked about isis and the domination of isis in the establishment devices. Extremism isinst far from over. We have made significant progress against isis. We will drill down on each of those. Let me start with the same military strategy you described. During your tenure, the military strategy of the United States radically changed. We moved from government that was focused on counterterrorism to one that said, russia and china were revisionist powers. That the correction the direction of the United States had to be to deal with that change. And yet, when you talk to people within the pentagon, it is hard to change mindsets. We still have active conflicts underway in afghanistan and obviously iraq is a challenging arena. To focus truly going on russia and china, do we have to give something up . Can we continue at the pace at which we have been dealing with all of these hotspots you just described while we are trying to refocus gen. Dunford it is a fair question i would argue that we have it is a fair question. As you indicated, it is fair to to 2014, we were singly focused on the fight against extremism. The catalyst for change came when we started to look at our competitive advantage relative andhina and russia in 2014 2015 compared to what it was in 2000. I will not go into great length about this. Began to feelia the wide range of capabilities against what they perceived to be our vulnerabilities. Even as early as 2015, the first classified military strategy we onte in 2015 was focused four plus one. We now call it 2 3. We refined that with the National Defense strategy. Clearly, china and russia are the benchmark by which we measure our Capability Development and how we prioritize and allocate resources for the force today. Do not mean exclusivity. Deal lenges for us to shift sufficient resources to make sure we sustain competitive advantage well into the future. When it comes to giving things up, every time we develop a budget, we make choices. The choices we make, 2017,ularly in 2016, 2018, 2019 have reoriented to make sure that first and foremost, we address the cyber, space, electronic warfare, the maritime capabilities, the functional systems that need to change to make us more competitive. Definition, when you make priorities, some things fall off the table, no question. China, in particular, is a fascinating subject for so many in the pentagon and beyond. Did we fundamentally misjudge the speed at which xi jinping would begin to project power around the world . I recall when he came to visit here in washington as Vice President before he took over, the thinking in the Obama White House was that he is going to bide his time. He is going to focus on domestic restructuring and the domestic economy. There was not much of an expect tatian that he would expectation that he would take the kind of aggressive turn we have seen in the South China Sea and in cyber and space and so forth. Was this an intelligence failure . A judgment failure . Gen. Dunford it was an assumption. Before a judgment well president Obamas Administration that economic integration to china would lead to political integration. We thought we could integrate china in a way they could comply they would comply with the world order as we know it. When it is the rules not to their advantage. See in 2015ted to and 2016 that the assumption that mightve been made by some very smart people trying to do andright thing back in 1999 2000 was not leading in the direction that we thought it should. Similarly with russia, obviously, we had an earlier sense as putin came back into power of what he would do. What appears to have been a nuclear power, not just capable. Suggests that he has been investing heavily in trying to get the kind of range around the unionthat the old soviet inspired aspire to and russia, until putin came back the second time, appeared to have given up. Gen. Dunford it is a statement. I do not disagree with that. That all rings true. As you indicated, we had much earlier indications of russia. 2008, 2014 with ukraine. We all know that putins objective was to restore russias prominence on the world stage. Strong military capability as a vehicle to do that. The operational patterns we see thatrussia today are ones i saw them in the 1980s when i was a captain deployed in the mediterranean. We have not seen it in decades. I agree with you that there operational patterns have changed. Capabilityto development has changed and we all know the reason why. As you grew up in the military, consumed by the cold. Ar how does this differ in both technology from the confrontations with the soviet union . Gen. Dunford as i think about characterizing the world today compared to the 1970s, there are three things that jump out at me. One is the pace of change. Function ino every our profession. The second is the character war has changed. Sea, land, air, space, space, and cyberspace. In the cold war context, it was relatively binary. I would argue the strategic landscape today with china and russia and north korea and iran, violent extremism, things that consume resources and our attention on a daytoday basis, the security environment is far more complex than it was in the 1970s during the cold war. Let me drill down on some of the regional issues. Lets start with afghanistan because that has been most in the news lately. When you think about the objectives in afghanistan right after 9 11, which was to make sure al qaeda did not have a safe haven but then became the transformation of afghanistan away from a place that was controlled by the taliban. Look at where we are today, which seems to be heading toward envision at that may kind of stalemate that we have been in for some time. Accomplish . T did we gen. Dunford when you talk about 9 11, and i believe this, i am happy to take this on in questions. Afghanistan in the wake of 9 11 to protect the American People and the homeland from what was a sanctuary for al qaeda and violent extremism. In addition to al qaeda, there are 18 or 19 groups in south asia that have expressed the intent, if not the capability, to attack the homeland. First and foremost, we have prevented another 9 11. We have disrupted plots against the United States and we have degraded al qaeda. As you suggested, you can take issue with various efforts we have had along the way to build the afghan society, to build the afghan National Defense forces. What ourar to me today National Interests are in south asia and against which we should level the measure the level of commitment we have from afghanistan and the region. Hethe president has said wants to go down to 8600 troops. That is the level president obama wanted to go down to when he did the withdrawal. What can we imagine that we could accomplish at that level . Gen. Dunford i think it is important for everyone to understand that the level of resourcing has to be understood in the context of the operational environment. Lets speak about the operational environment. The number 8600 that the president referred to was a number that was generated by military leadership when we looked at the Current Mission that we have, the operating environment we are in and the capabilities we would need. It was not driven by a number, 8600. It was driven by a conversation between general miller, general mackenzie and myself to say, what are the right capabilities . When we look at afghanistan, we have a challenge. We have to look at our level of effort in dealing with extremism in south asia relative to the challenges we have from west africa to Southeast Asia and we have to approach afghanistan in the context of a National Defense strategy. We embarked on a few years ago was to say look, we need a politically, fiscally, militarily sustainable solution to violent extremism in the context of the National Defense strategy. Posturerelooked at our in africa and the middle east and south asia. In that context, general miller was asked to describe what would be an appropriate counterterrorism platform in afghanistan that would allow us a partnership with the Afghan Forces and pursue our mutual objectives . He described the capabilities and the infrastructure that would be necessary and the number of troops is actually related to the size of our footprint in afghanistan and the infrastructure and capabilities we would need to operate. I want people to know where that 8600 came from. Miller, assume general able to complete negotiations. I understand they are back in qatar now. What is the best we can hope for in the way that afghanistan is operating . Gen. Dunford the theory indicates that behind in negotiations no one worked harder than he did. The theory has always been to initiate intraafghan dialogue hoping that political accommodation could be made. I think in this negotiation, the commencement of intraafghan dialogue is a relatively modest and yet achievable objective. We will see. The negotiation is designed to deliver enter afghan dialogue. Intraafghan dialogue. Let me ask you gen. Dunford before we leave that. I want to make this point. If you listen carefully, you mentioned what the president said last week, if you listen carefully to what the president said last week about 8600, he also spoke about conditions on the ground and making sure we had a sufficient posture to deal with the terrorists in the region. The level of effort associated with the operational environment. If the environment changes, our level of effort significantly can change. Be negotiation will conditionsbased. There will be specific conditions that have to be met. If they are not met, my assumption is the negotiation will unravel. You have spent a lot of time in afghanistan. Gen. Dunford not as much as jim cunningham. He is here somewhere. When you think about what our hopes were going into afghanistan and what we are facing today in this negotiation, is there a lesson for your successors about what americans think as they had into wars, particularly those fought out of anger . Gen. Dunford in terms of whether we should have gone to afghanistan, when we went to afghanistan, i will afford myself the luxury of reflecting on that months from now. I can tell you from a military perspective, i think we have learned quite a bit from afghanistan. We applied the lessons of afghanistan, as it pertains to working with local partners, we applied those lessons to iraq and syria in 2015 and 2016 and 2017. If you look at the method of developing partners that could deal with the challenge in their own country, in my view, much of the work we did in syria and iraq, that piece of it i am proud of, was informed by Lessons Learned in afghanistan. There would be some things we would do differently along the way. The idea is that we are a learning organization and we institute those lessons in future endeavors. The president said isis was defeated. That does not mean they are completely gone. Male isis2000 sitting in 40 countries in detention camps. Very few have been repatriated. Their own countries do not want them back. There are 70,000 civilian women and children who are also in these and at least one camp in syria. In which many people are concerned has become a major isis breeding ground. How worried are you as you leave the nextabout extremistsof islamic foot soldiers . Gen. Dunford in addition to what you mentioned, there are 2. 3 million refugees inside of turkey and millions of displaced persons inside of syria today. You mention the camp that has 70,000. Many other camps with thousands of other people. They are not the kind of conditions you would want to see human beings in. There are 10,000 individuals in detention just by the Syrian Democratic forces. View, the international community, if we do not get this right, if we do not address the refugee problem, if we do not address the internally displaced it as a i describe petri dish for future extremism. Addressing these people will to include the detainees is a critical strategic issue. Are we doing enough in that regard . Gen. Dunford im only satisfied when you actually get it done. I am under no illusion there is a great deal of effort being expended to return people from where they came. The issue is countries do not have the framework. Longer thanng a lot folks like me would wanted to at the beginning, i asked you, if we can minister keep doing this, where will it take us . I was looking back on where our special operations groups are right now. Iraq, somalia, syria, afghanistan. All containing terror groups or stopping ideologies from spreading. How long do you expect the u. S. Military will be able to continue to do this, while taking keeping the central focus. First of all, where we are in terms of numbers is not the complete story. We are deployed much closer to what i would describe as a sustained great today that we were two or three years ago. We are at or about one or two deployments as well. This is not true in all cases. For those of you who have sons and daughters, and special operations, who say thats not large, that it is a oneto employee ratio. We are personally focused on renewing our special operations abilities to make sure we meet the imperatives of the National Defense strategy. 18 months ago, our special Operations Community has begun to reorient. About,sions you talked we are trying read reorienting special operations nothere we are focused on being complacent and looking back to make sure we get the balance right. Ien i came into this job, said my most significant challenge woul