Duty. There are events we do appeal an account so that we do out of friendship and bonding. This was all three of those. I have been stealing harlans ideas for years and that is why it always upsets me when he writes about because then i cant say that was my idea. It was his ada. This is one of those harlan asked, i absolutely brilliant ideas, which is, you know, when you hear harlan talk about his most interesting ideas, it is sort of why didnt i think about . Why didnt i say about way . The first paragraph gives you a sense of how many of the engaged to munch and that doesnt happen to be one of harlans weaknesses. President politicians have failed to grasp this simple truth. For more than a half century, america has lost a reward and has started. And you find yourself saying, yeah, that is right. Likewise chimeric has fielded military inventions and undertaken for reasons that turned out to be ignorant or just wrong. Some of those words resonate. So, in the beginning and the introduction, when you find yourself just continuing to read and his vignettes and reflections on his experience and i hope hell talk about some of those have been using them and leaving untranslated onto the larger message of the book. As you can see, ive made a lot of notes and ive put a lot of pages here, but the last two chapters i found particularly powerful because he then reaches conclusions, basically how to win and the way forward in the brainsbased approach to sound strategy. I always said why would there be any other approach because well have a talk about a because they think where you go into and Start Talking about the internal cosco. Theres a lot of richness in this book. Without, good evening and welcome. I am fred kempe, president and ceo of the Atlantic Council. Im happy to see friends here and am just delighted that we can have a rich conversation. Its a really good group. The title of harlans provocative book is anatomy of failure, why america loses every worst start and it examines american wars who fought them from vietnam to the present day and addresses aware of why the worlds most nation where ron and where and how we fail to learn from our mistakes. You are not required to agree with harlan. He will make this agreement difficult and painful for you, but i want you to know to test his pieces the vcs got something wrong, questioned why he concluded in the way he did. For those who dont know harland, i have a little bit of bio here, but i like the one on the book cover better. Translate is a strategic thinker. He has two private companies and adviser to the heads of major corporations or governments. He was the principal author of shock and awe applied in a served in combat assignments in vietnam in destroyer command at sea. In the od phd from the Fletcher School of diplomacy or he now in lives in washington d. C. A joy to see you here. That is who harlan is. He is a remarkable strategic thinker and outofthebox thinker. Also joining us tonight to dig into this topic two of my other favorite people, susan eisenhower, chairman and ceo of the eisenhower group, which has advice of the fortune 502 u. S. And abroad including ibm, cocacola and i could go on about suzanne. Just wonderful to have you here. Policy analyst, number three Different Department of energy blue ribbon commissions for three different secretaries. Visiting fellow at the Harvard Institute of politics and distinguished fellow at the center for national interests. Thank you. Rounding out this group, another one of the more provocative and interesting thinkers whose writing i follow closely, at the loose, washington commentator for the Financial Times has worked since 1995 and before that, the guardian and served as philippines correspondent, Capital Markets a lift Capital Markets at her, asia bureau chief in new delhi and washington and Washington Bureau chief. With that, then we turn over to you to share the conclusions of your book after which im going to ask susan and that he makes an initial remarks and an overrated discussion of. Thank you for generous and gracious remarks. Its a pleasure to see you. Fred and i have been associated for a long time a thread took over the institution hes an intellectual entrepreneur of the first magnitude and has done wonders. Susan eisenhower as a friend coming a friend, that a friend coming like to say longstanding strategists expert on too many things and someone luce is probably as close to analyzing america than anyone i know it today is. More than 50 years ago before many of you were born, i was at warner springs, california in the mountains in the middle of winter going through Survival School preparation. Frostbite was the issue. The last time anyone suffered a case of frostbite in vietnam was during the ice age and in that stage you begin to wonder, what the am i doing and does this make any sense . Over time those experiences compounded. The title anatomy of failure, why america loses every worst starts. The subtitle is what we do to prevent that from happening. We won the ones that counted and the ones we didnt start. World war i, world war ii, the gulf war, and of course the cold war. The reasons we won were the polar opposites to why we lost. You are familiar with the litany since world war ii. Vietnam was a disaster. And probably afghanistan, but every time we used force without sufficient cause or good reason, we failed. Let me take you to some of our failures and next white wine will be due to prevent that from happening. Today it takes started happening. You have beirut in october 1983 with 241 marines are killed in the bomb blast in which we went in for the wrong reason several days later. You go through the irancontra where you jump forward to the first is that the Clinton Administration in somalia black hawk down in the t. 93. We go to kosovo in 1999 when it took 78 days and took us 100 hours 1991 and then you go to the iraq war, afghanistan, encouragement to libya, which prompted the civil war. Why . I argued there were three overarching reasons. The first president elected jack kennedy was careful to say theres no school for president s. President s are not ready for prime time. Bill clinton, george w. Bush, barack obama and now donald trump is the least qualified experienced person. They are not ready and usually they will lie and advisers lie and advisor is good at getting him elected but not good at governing. Second, they exercised poor strategic judgment and ill come back to that. And their knowledge and understanding of the situation was that after alike. Before september 11th, who knew the difference probably more difficult than during the cold war in the 20th century. The 20th century no matter how dangerous was really a bipolar situation. World war i was the central powers. The east versus west. Now the situation is far more complicated. Second, we have a broken government. Look at this tax reform bill the senate passed. It is a disaster and im not saying that because i am neither. The government has broken and one of the aspects of a ride in my book, the u. S. Military is going to pay the price because its headed for a hollow force. We cannot pay what needs to be paid and maintain the military. Thats excessive and because we have a situation in terms of management oversight invented by the kgb. No one can operate rationally. The president said objectives that are unobtainable and reflect Campaign Promises. We will pay any price, bear any burden. Lyndon johnson will fight commies so we dont fight them on the mississippi. Fastforward to george w. Bush. As enriching as the geostrategic landscape of the middle east any dead and believe me, not for the better. Knowledge and understanding i will go back to granada. 1983, a covert beirut close up. A small revolution, the Prime Minister is filled and all of a sudden the administration has to do something. 233 students at the medical school and theres a big runway being built clearly weve got to save the students in moral jeopardy in cuba is not big enough of an aircraft carrier. Its a military disaster because we didnt have operations. The really tough terrific vice admiral named matt cobb getting pounded by the white house. See the students in that couple years back, the students are not in danger. What . Weve Just Launched an invasion in the night before the invasion, Maggie Thatcher called separate and then says youre not going to invade and he says no, im not going to invade, but she says that no other choice for the students were not in jeopardy and guess who is building the airbase . The british government. In the 1950s, britain had decided grenada is going to be the centerpiece for tourism and the contract was held by the plessy Company British corporation. The clark family owned it to the right of genghis khan and what being good capitalists did they do . Cheap labor . The cubans and i will send you my boys with one caveat that we have to have armed guards and knowledge and understanding was really, really deficient. My point here is that president s find themselves often too isolated. What we do about all this . How can we fix it . I argue for a range of solutions. I begin to approach the strategic speaking. But yet we dont do it. But entails a brainbased approach . First, the 21st century. We are acting as if its the 21st century. The attainment. Deterrence bipolarity east versus west. How do you deter a situation in which we have the best army and navy and the enemy doesnt have one. How do you deter an idea and Vladimir Putin from the fact that members of intimidation, propaganda and interference to do all sorts of things. The notion of using 20th century thinking in the 21st century is just not. We have to realize also the world is entirely interconnect the an interrelated. What happens here affects they are one big example, jerusalem. 1. 5 billion muslims. By the way, one 10th of 1 decide to become radicalized, bigger than the u. S. Military. The second part is we have to focus understanding, and knowledge and understanding we dont do a very good job. I argue in the book for a lovely park kind of approach, for those of you who dont recall broke the code during world war ii. We need to get into the social media and one of the areas where the Atlantic Council has been brilliant was using social media to track a Russian Paratrooper on the way to ukraine. We can do that and we need to establish the equivalent of a wikipedia for the government so you can interchange with the information which are not going to get from the 16 to 17 stovepipe defense organizations. We need to be able to do that is finally have to focus on growing perception. You dont need to send ebola, the cheating to get peoples attention. That was the basis of shock cannot, which was not used in iraqi freedom. It was just not done. You need to focus and get people to do what she wanted to do and stop doing things you dont. Military force may be necessary. Never sufficient and one of the problems are done today sees the military to find places where it does not work and quite frankly having been an occasional critic of the pentagon, im astounded that pentagon functions as well today as it does. I do know how these guys and gals put up with this stuff. Its nonsensical in the extreme. You dont get a budget. You have the oversight. Ive invited people to come here tonight. They said wed love to. I have to contact my lawyer to see whether we can. This is madness. They consist of these three parts. What else do we need to do . In the nsc, we need to have a red team that challenges all the policy assumptions that are made. We just recognize jerusalem. What was the strategy . What were you hoping to achieve . And the pentagon, we have to separate the joint chiefs of staff and their job is to provide as joint chiefs strategic advice and guidance. The military doesnt always get it correct, but they are nonpartisan, extremely welleducated, terribly experienced and consistent. They are there for a long time until the separation is important to bring much better advice to the president and his team. Thirdly, if congress is part of the landing, you better be part of the takeoff. We need to have the equivalent of the National Security council for congress. Interestingly, the one person who has joined duty is the Vice President to buy the latest president of the senate. Why dont we then take the president of the senate, put together the key members of the house and the senate to take 10, 12, 14 members who coordinate with the white house and make him a part of the takeoff as well as the landing. I will stop here because i know susan and someone have a lot of things to say. The secret weapon we have certainly in the department of defenses education. We take the National Defense university and turn it into a National Security university in which members said the entire government can go they are no longer state defends. Commerce, treasury, interior, these Homeland Security are far more important and if we have them along the line, well be way behind the power curve. They give you a final example. One of the things we dont do is to train and prepare officers when they are fighting general officers. Ive been on the board for a dozen years and have gone with four commanders. Jim jones, John Craddick mentioned cerritos and bill breedlove. How much time do you think any of them had to prepare for that job . Anyone want to gas . Zero. To vice admiral sitting in the audience up to you the same thing. Generals or admirals got a new job. You dont have time to prepare for this. The british give them two or three months so theres a whole panoply of things that can be done in the second part of the book if you read you understand. If we do some of the things we wont be engaged in wars where we lack understanding, lack of judgment and we lose and i will tell you theres nothing worse than losing. I spent a lot of time in vietnam and believe me, i bear some of those scars. [applause] harlingen, that was a great opening. I am looking around the room. Theres just a lot of talent and expertise in this room. And so it gets to you as quickly as we can. Get on to cancel loves the book, but we love even more to reach conclusions, so we always try to marry a book event with people who have expertise where they can comment on it, ask questions and reflect. I am going to pass this season and added, be before you do, so you start thinking about it, i have two reflections myself. One of them is 9 11. That was in a war we started. Or was that . Shock and awe and afghanistan. Keep this in mind. The other thing is to one extent, everything starts going more seriously awry at the end of the cold war. These are my first kind of questions. Let me turn to susan and then to add for your comments and reflections. Thank you very much for the invitation to be here at the Atlantic Council and harlingen, i got an enormous amount out of your book. A very elegant way to bring everyone up to speed. Its a little overwhelming to start first because i have so many things i want to say that only about your boat, but the great introductions. Youve done a brilliant job of describing the failure to think strategically and so im always searching, having been in the Foreign Policy area for more than 30 years now, ive always been searching for the higher idea. At one point in our history, im sure many others in this room house, too. That is world war ii. We did strategies with our allies, that it was complicated and strong leadership was defined as being flexible and bringing with it a capacity and skills to compromise. After world war ii as it emerged as a great superpower, i like to think that kind of agility existed throughout the 1950s, strong leadership is increasingly defined as someone who digs his heels and. Ive heard Winston Churchill quoted in response to u. S. Domestic policy. But that okay, some of these go back and read them out with given. In any case, the failure to be flexible justifies taking juxtapositions and uncompromising situation. I would also say i had the great honor of coming and speaking up for one of my mentors and i was so fortunate they took me under when i first came to washington. One i didnt leave because he really goes back in the midtime is a very famous general named fox conner. John pershings righthand person during world war i. He went on to read Dwight Eisenhowers mentor, but always right on target according to george might go and as always dwight eisenhower. Never fight alone, never fight for long. What happens in this country because we are in flexible, we dig our heels and get into longer and longer engagements in the longer they get to the more we have to justify this to the public that we do this by continuing to ramp up the notion of the threat itself. There are boogie man ive never seen such a group of terrified people of the things that harlan points out so well in the book that could be employed and prioritize the threats to the country. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. Likewise, thank you very much in thank you, harlan. Its a general honor for you to invite me. Actually, i would say [inaudible] ill get into the book of the moment. Its provocative, clear and pretty much correct. The Second World War when you are saying Winston Churchill [inaudible] not just because your grandfather played such a central role of the Second World War, but the last war america got into for noble reasons and its not just noble reasons. In terms of black and white, this is the just reward of human history. Didnt have an entrenched bureaucracy. They didnt have any of these things. You had to improvise and use brains. It had to innovate on the spot. And that is an extraordinary fight now or terms of American History in many countries history. I think of that because thats the real war in which any of us have any doubt. And casting doubt on them. Also, another great