Thank you, richard. Thanks to all of you for coming out. Thanks, richard for your nice timeses of the new york columnist. General dunford, thank you so much for taking your time to do this. Orm sure in the last month so in your long service, you have got a lot of demands on your time, so your willingness to come out and talk about the world here, we really appreciate. Gen. Dunford i questioned my judgment when i looked at the schedule this morning. [laughter] david at the end of the hour, you may question it again. But for different reasons. [laughter] dunford undoubtedly. Today, as youplan can see from the many cameras best year our plan is that the general and i will have a conversation for about 30 minutes and then open it up for questions from our audience. , general dunford, we could go back on so many places, given your service and so many different roles, but you came into this job in 2015, appointed by president obama. How would you compare the Global Security environment you have faced since day one of the job with the one that you are facing as you prepare to turn this job over . Gen. Dunford the easiest way to fiver that is to take the problem set siu have identified in the National Defense strategy and maybe just 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 also been on a ready deliberate path in military Capability Development. They have what i would describe as a Goldwater Nichols equivalent in terms of their reorganizing their military in 2017. If you look at north korea, a large amount of their icbm testing, no one nuclear test took place in 2016 and 2017. So clearly it is a different place in terms of number of tests and so forth. I think you would have to say that iran today is more aggressive in projecting malign influence than they were in the 2017. 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 iraq and syria, and the establishment of a physical caliphate. I think the fight against trans regional extremism is far from over, but we have made significant progress against isis in iraq and syria specifically. David 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 , at least the broad objectives, radically changed. We moved from a government that was really focused on counterterrorism to one that said, russia and china were revisionist powers. That was of the phraseology in the National Security assessment. And that the direction of the United States had to be to deal but morethe military, broadly, to deal with matt change. 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 still a very challenging arena. All these other areas. If we are truly going to focus 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. Although i would argue that we have significantly reoriented since 2015. As you indicated, i think it is fair to say from 2001 to 2014, we were almost singularly focused on the fight against extremism. By 2014, really the catalyst for change came when we started to look at our competitive advantage relative to china and russia in 2014 and 2015 compared to what it was in 2000. I will not go into great length about this. Happy to answer all your questions, but china and russia began to feel the wide range of capabilities designed against what they perceived to be our vulnerabilities. As we were focused on the fight against violent extremism, it began to feel these capabilities. Even as early as 2015, the first classified military strategy we wrote in 2015 was focused on a 4 1. We now call it the 2 3. China,is now focused on russia, iran, north korea, violent extremism, and then we refined that with the National Defense strategy to focus on great power competition. Number one, clearly much and i and russia are the benchmark against which we measure our Capability Development, how we think about risk, and how we prioritize and allocate resources for the force today. That is the framework within which we do that. But priorities do not mean exclusivity. The priority is to deal with the challenges we have today violent extremism and at the same time shift sufficient resources to make sure that we sustain the competitive advantage well into the future. So when it comes to giving things up, every time we develop a budget, we make choices. But the choices that we made, particularly in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 have reoriented to make sure that first and foremost, we address the cyber, the space, the electronic warfare, the maritime capabilities, the functional systems that need to change to make us more competitive. In the context of great power competition. By definition, when you make priorities, some things fall off the table, no question. David 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 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. We made a judgment well before president Obamas Administration that economic integration with china would lead to political integration. We thought we could integrate china in a way that they would comply with the world order as we know it. Have turns out, what they tried to do is leverage the rules to their advantage and ignore the rules when it is not to their advantage. We have started to see in 2015 and 2016 that the assumption that mightve been made by some very smart people trying to do the right thing back in 1999 and 2000, to integrate china, wasnt a leading in the direction that we thought it showed or that it would. David similarly with russia, obviously, we had an earlier sense as putin came back into power, what he would do. That accident earlier this summer, of what appears to have nuclear powered, not just a nuclearcapable, but a nuclearpowered one, suggests that he has been investing heavily in trying to get the kind of range around the world unionhe old soviet russia,to, and that until putin came back the second time, appeared, we thought, to have given up. Gen. Dunford it is a statement. I mean, i dont disagree with that. That all rings true. As you indicated, we had much earlier indications of russia go back to georgia in 2008, 2014 with ukraine. We knew we are russia was going to be, i think we all know that putins objective was to restore russias prominence on the world stage. In views of stronger military capability as being a vehicle to be able to do that. I would tell you this, the operational patterns that we see irussia today are ones saw them in the 1980s when i was a cap chain deployed in the mediterranean. We havent seen it in decades. But i agree with you that the operational patterns have ofnged, their path Capability Development has changed, and i think we all know the reason why. David as you said, you grew up in a military that was consumed war, and you spent the post9 11 part of your career in counterterrorism. How does this good for in both technologyics and than when you first came in . Gen. Dunford as a think about characterizing the world today compared to the 1970s, there are three things that jump out. One is the pace of change. We talk about moores law, with information technology, but it implies to pretty much every function of our profession. The second is the character war has changed profoundly. We now have sea, land, air, now we have sea, land, air, space and cyberspace. In a cold war context, the environment was relatively binary. I would argue that the strategic landscape today, with china and russia and north korea and iran, violent extremism, things that do not specifically address national strategy, but 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. David let me drill down on some of the regional issues. Lets start with afghanistan , because that has been most in thenews lately as government tries to put together this final agreement. 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, and then you look at where we are today, which seems to be heading toward an agreement that may envision a kind of stil stalemate that we have been in continually for some time, tell us, what did we accomplish . Gen. Dunford the first thing, when you talk about 9 11, and i am happy to take this on in questions, because i have told many men and women who were deployed to afghanistan this we didnt go to afghanistan in the wake of 9 11 to protect the American People and the homeland from what was his century for al qaeda and violent extremism. In addition to al qaeda, there is another 18 or 19 groups in south asia right now that have expressed the intent is not the capability to attack the homeland. So first and foremost, i think we have prevented another 9 11. We have disrupted plots against the United States and we have significantly degraded al qaeda in south asia. So as you suggested, you can take issue with various efforts that we had along the way to build the afghan society, to build the afghan National Defense forces, but it is very , as i amme today providing military advice to the president , it is very clear to me what our National Interests are in south asia and against which we should measure the level of commitment we have from afghanistan and the region. David the president has said he wants to go down to 8600 troops. Was in a radio interview a week or so ago. That is roughly the level that president obama wanted to go down to when he did that withdrawal. What can we imagine that we actually accomplish up a level . Is it really intelligence gathering . 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 and objectives. We have spoken about the objectives, now that us 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. Number,snt driven by a 8600, it was driven by a conversation between general , general mackenzie and myself to say, what are the right hip abilities . When we look at afghanistan, we have a challenge. 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. Which we spoke about a minute. Go so the direction that we embarked on a few years ago was to say, look, we need a politically, fiscally and militarily Sustainable Solutions to violent extremism in the context of the National Defense strategy. So we have relooked at our posture in africa, in the middle east, and in south asia. In that context, general miller was asked to describe what would be an appropriate counterterrorism platform in afghanistan that would allow us to maintain a partnership with the Afghan Forces in pursuit of our mutual objectives to disrupt region . Extremism in the he described as capabilities, the infrastructure necessary to support those capabilities, and the number of troops is related to the size of our footprint in afghanistan, in particular, the infrastructure capabilities that we would need to operate. So i just want people to know where that number came from, a came from us. David let us assume general miller what to complete their negotiations, i understand that they are back in qatar now trying to work this out, what is the best we could hope for in the way afghanistan is operating and the way that the taliban behaves, if they are successful . Gen. Dunford sure. The theory behind the negotiations, no one worked harder than peter in the last few years, at this year has always been to initiate intraAfghan Dialogue hoping that political accommodation could be made. We have always known that an afghanled Peace Process would be a success reaching that. Intermencement of Afghan Dialogue is probably relatively modest and yet an achievable objective. We will see. David you consider this to be afghanowned, since you have been driving the negotiations . Gen. Dunford the negotiations are designed to deliver interAfghan Dialogue, different from the negotiation now, which is afghanowned. David them asking about interafghan terrorism 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. Again, the level of effort specifically associated with the operational environment. If the operational environment changes, then our level of effort significantly can change. But we have been clear on and made this point to our afghan partners, is that any negotiation will be conditionsbased. There will be specific conditions that have to be met. If they are not met, my assumption is the negotiation will unravel. David you have spent a lot of time in afghanistan. Gen. Dunford not as much as Jim Cunningham. He is here somewhere. David 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 in anger, as this one was after 9 11 . Gen. Dunford in terms of whether you should have gone into afghanistan, i was afford myself the luxury of reflecting on that some months from now. Right now, trying to provide recommendations on how to deal with the situation as it exists. Y but i can tell you from a military perspective that i think we have learned quite a bit in afghanistan. And i would offer to you that i think we applied the lessons of afghanistan particularly as it pertains to working with local partners, we have led them to iraq and syria in 2015, 2016, and 2017. If you look at the footprint the United States sustained in iraq and syria, the method developing partners could deal with a challenge in their own country, in my view, much of the work we did in syria and iraq, it was informed by Lessons Learned in afghanistan. So i think it is fair to say that there would be something that we would do differently along the way. Are aea is that we learning organization and we institute those lessons in our future endeavors. David lets take a look at isis. The president said isis was defeated. But it doesnt mean that they are company gone. There are now male isis fighters 2000 from 40 countries sitting in makeshift detention camps run by the syrian relations with our backing desk syrian miller run by the syrian militias with our backing. 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 at least one camp in syria. In which many people are concerned has become a major isis breeding ground. So, how worried are you as you leave this job about creating that this generation of islamic extremists and foot soldiers . Gen. Dunford i think you have highlighted for me the major strategic concern in addition to, as you mentioned, there are 2. 3 million refugees inside of turkey right now, literally millions of displaced persons inside of syria today. You mentioned the cap that has 70,000, there are many other camps with perhaps not 70,000, but thousands of people, in conditions you would not want to see human beings in. 2000e mentioned that , and itt fighters doesnt even count the number of forces being held by regimebacked forces. In my view, if we dont get this right, if we dont address the refugee problem, the internet the displaced persons problem, the people in these camps, as you described it, it is a teacher do show for future extremism in these camps and detention facilities, addressing these people to include the detainees is in my view a critical strategic issue. Are we doing enough . Gen. Dunford i am personally satisfied when you actually get it done. I am under no illusion that there is a great deal of effort being expended right now to return people from where they came. The issue in many cases is that these countries dont have the framework t