Domestic unrest such as recent protests . Should the u. S. Be terminating many of our armscontrol creeks . Even contemplating nuclear testing. Should the names of confederate leaders be removed from u. S. Military bases and the doctors be removed from our Public Places . To address these questions and many more, today we will have a unique conversation between two recent secretaries of defense, doctor robert gates and general james madison. As a bipartisan secretary of defense, secretary robert gates served under president george w. Bush and barack obama. He is the author of a new book, exercise of power, american failure, successes and a new path forward in the postcold war. Doctor cates was an officer in the u. S. Air force and spent 27 years in the cia. He served cia director and became the first career officer in cia history to move from entrylevel employee to head of the agency. Secretary gates served as a member of the National SecurityCouncil Staff in four different administrations and 48 president s of both political parties. For his numerous professional contribution, secretary gates was ordered the president ial medal of freedom, nations highest civilian award by president obama. Hes also a threetime recipient of the distinguished intelligence medal, one of the cias most prestigious honors. In conversation with him today, general james mattis, general mattis served as our 26 secretary of defense from 2017 to 2019 and is now the Davies Family english to fellow at Stanford University who heard institution. Over 40 years in the marine corps, starting as an infantry officer. He later served as commander of the u. S. Joint forces command and native supreme allied commander for transformation. General mattis also directed the military operations of more than 200,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, coast guard and marines and our armed forces across the middle east as commander of the u. S. Central command. He commanded forces in the persian gulf war, the war in afghanistan iraq war. Recently about the president s use of military troops in washington. Please join me now in welcoming doctor robert gates and james mattis for this unique conversation. Thank you, it is a pleasure to be here with the Commonwealth Club, the club thats finding truth for over 100 years. Well recognize doctor cates grew into his leadership role with a background earned. Hes my former boss, predecessor in office and an inspiring role model. He was likened in one recent review is the soldier who rises. In reading your book, one that would be reassured and required reading for president s coming into office, i was struck by you achieving a large part of americas 25 year decline in status and prestige, postcold war president congress to recognize resource and effectively use you call nonmilitary instruments of power. Can you explain this mental barrier and the significance of the title you chose for your book . Thank you for participating in this and thanks for Commonwealth Club for inviting me. The book began with a question in my mind of how the u. S. Had gone from a position supreme power, probably since the roman empire in every dimension of power in 1993 to a country today that had challenges everywhere. I thought about how did that happen . How did we get here . So i began looking at all of the major Foreign Policy challenges weve had since 1993 and thinking about what we had done and what we have not done that contributed to the decline in our role in the world and what i came up with was a set nonmilitary instruments of power that played such an Important Role in our success in the cold war against the soviet union had largely been neglected and withered after the end of the cold war the time when we continued to fund our military, who basically dismantled all of power leverage to strategic medications and more. We can go into that later. As i looked at the situations and challenges from somalia, haiti in 1993 and others, right up to our relationship, it occurred to me we failed, to figure out how to compete with these powers outside of the military realm so the reality is, of the 15 challenges to write about for all purposes, consider 13 to be failures. Next line, in the clutter, the word failures first. There are a couple of successes and they are important and theres to be on those as well but we had a lot of problems during that 27 year period and i would conclude by saying the wars in iraq and afghanistan both began with very quick military victories and the problem that identified whether it was iraq and afghanistan or somalia or haiti or others was that once we achieved military victory, we then changed our mission. We decided to move to trying to bring democracy and reform the government of those countries and thats where we ran into failure. Id like to go more deeply into what you just mentioned, this symphony of power and i took a few notes from your book but could you give a brief overview of the type of instruments you are referring to . Where they might be more applicable perhaps for most likely used in the Military Form of power . They are not played, point out like . What are these instruments . What do you look to to bring into the forefront here . The two primarily course of instruments of power, obviously the military but i would say also cyber. In my opinion, fiber is become the most effective weapon a nation can have because it can accomplish military political and economic harm to ones adversary. Its difficult to identify who perpetrated the attack, a cyber attack, it takes time to figure out attribution and more damage that was done, the more important it was to identify exactly where zeros came from so cyber is a huge player now in a way it has never been before. It can the same mantle or disarm weapons, it can redirect weapons, it can shut them infrastructure in countries so its a very versatile weapon and it doesnt take the kind of enormous expenditure of dollars more money that a Nuclear Enterprise or even a chemical or biological threat would represent. So i think cyber is a very important one and weve been good about developing for our military purposes and i think we have not taken advantage of an in an offensive way with respect to other political or economic targets. Another important instrument is clearly economic measures and these can be both carrots and sticks and the truth is, weve developed the sticks part of the economic instrument he well. Have sanctions on any country that looks at us cross eyed. Its complicated for a lot of companies because we have so many sanctions against so many countries, figuring out how you can do business internationally and they with the u. S. Law and become fulltime enterprise for warriors and accountants in these companies so we got the sticks part of it down pretty well. Tariffs, sanctions and so on. Weve fallen down and where we want had real capability is how do we use economic distances for our economy as an asset . As a carrot to encourage, induce other countries to do what we would like for them to do . Loans and discounts, whether its economic concessions, trade concessions and someone. Theyre very good at, were not so hot at figuring out how we might advantage someone in dealing with us. President clinton president bush were both pretty good africa when they arranged debt relief for a number of African Companies in the early 2000s and that helped african countries but thats a rare example of us using economic measures as an instrument of power. The cold war propaganda, how do we get our message around the world . The chinese developed this to an extraordinary degree. Several years ago, he devoted kid, allocated 7 million for strategic medications network around the world. We did dismantled the United StatesInformation Agency and what we call Public Diplomacy into a corner of the states department. Various elements of our government to strategic medications but theres no coherent strategy, each goes its own way and we also lack the capabilities the chinese have. There are a variety of other instruments that i briefly mentioned, things like intelligence and how we use it with other countries science and technology, our higher education, our culture, use of nationalism, as we watch russia and china interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, we have failed to use their own nationalistic feelings to help build their resistance to what the chinese and russians and others are doing. Religion is an important instrument, we havent thought about it in that way but religion has played a big part in international affairs, particularly since the end of the cold war. All you have to do is look at the role of religion in motivating terrorists to see that it has real power so there are a dozen or more of these instruments and the problem is, we have neither resourced them nor have we figured out a cohesive strategy, a coherent strategy on how to bring them together, as i call it in the book, a symphony where they played together and each strengthens the other and overall, strengthens the hand of the United States in dealing with the rest of the world. Why did they list these other instruments in the company of power if america has the power of intimidation if we are threatened, we need the military and it imperfect world, we need the cia but why havent we summoned the instruments of inspiration that are so strong in america . Whats the reluctance for us with known militaries . Its a tough question to answer. I think part of it is congress has been reluctant to fund these nonmilitary instruments back to the end of the cold war. It was congress that disestablished usia, congress wanted the disestablished national development. President clinton stopped that but still brought diminished by bringing under the state Department Rather than an independent agency. Congress has not followed the state apartment properly, the state department has been starved of resources except for a couple of brief periods during the george w. Bush administration when there was an increase in the number of Foreign Service officers so theres a reluctance on the part of the congress, congress haze development assistance, they consider it a waste of time. I are we spending it here at home rather than other countries . They dont see how that can benefit the u. S. So i think partly, it is a reluctance of congress to fund it and the reluctance, for the most part, on the part of all four administrations to push for such funding, the irony for me is in a time when congress has become more and more resistant to the use of military force overseas and the aftermath in iraq and afghanistan, at the same time, they refused to fund or make more robust nonmilitary assistance to take the place of some of the military activity. Brought up the war in iraq, mentioned earlier the change in what we call oftentimes the department of defense so we go into iraq and you write the book that this happened so often after the cold war, there was a lack of imagination, in the white house and safety, access nongovernment expertise to strengthen nonmilitary capabilities, they seemingly have no appreciation and you go on to say the importance of the private sector and contractors instrument of power, it begs the question, how can we leverage the private sector, obviously we keep the government out of some market things, we dont want our government running but how do we enlist the private sector in enhancing our ability, basically exercised power and go to the nonmilitary aspects, how do we do that . The first thing is to recognize that it actually has something to contribute and then you can figure out how to make it work. One of the things that frustrated all of us in the department of defense, i think all of the iraq and afghan war experience was the relatively few number of civilian experts, here we were engaged in nationbuilding and yet, we had very few civilian experts who were in country and helping make that happen. One of the instruments had some effectiveness in both iraq and afghanistan was something called prevention infrastructure but in the time when we had at the peak, we had 170s thousand troops and 360 civilians and all of those in the entire country of iraq. One of the things i proposed, that got no traction was to go to a particularly one of the things we could provide help with was both the afghan and iraq hes in terms of improving the farming techniques, how they took care of their herds and that kind of thing and because theyre both basically rural companies so i suggested to the state department, why dont you go to our countries land universities . I knew what these universities were doing around the world in terms of their faculties working and they were in insecure situations. When you go to the universities and asked them to help, to partner with us and augment what we are trying to do in these countries . Many of the faculty members were already in those countries so how could we help them and how could we help provide funding and so on . We also had the advantage that the head of the National Association of land grant universities, a man named peter webb and the president of Michigan State university but also the head of usa be under president reagan. Theres a guy who knew what we needed to do and could have galvanized the university to be a powerful partner for us. Nothing ever happened. Similarly, i think where we can use the private sector or where we can partner with the private sector is in figuring out how we are going to counter chinas initiative. This trillion Dollar Program of infrastructure, building ports and airports and highways sports arenas and so on in most places around the world. If we could somehow, we cant compete with the chinese and the banks and so on can find the cash to fund these projects our economy and our government just doesnt have that. They invested all over the world. How can they partner with private companies and incentivize them to invest in some of these developing countries and bring jobs, and Environmental Concerns in a way that they will settle these countries with projects the end up being use less. We dont really do much in the way of trying to incentivize companies it is a resource that we could make better use of. We have all of these enormous numbers of churches and charities and others that do projects around the world whether it is in turn stops of health and getting rid of diseases in the work of the Gates Foundation and a number of others they often dont want much to do with the government but if we could augment their activities and work in partnership with them how can we Work Together and frankly there just isnt much done to try to move down that road. These are just three examples of where i think we havent been very imaginative in terms of how we can leverage our great strengths and translate that into efforts. What i would say is shaping the International Environment in a way that serves our national interest. We dont need to be altogether in these efforts. Its the responsibility of the president and the government to advance american interests and protect american interests around the world. That means you have to shake the International Environment and these are the tools that you can use to shape the International Environment. We had tried on many occasions not very imaginatively or successfully. We had tried to help them gain peace and stability. One of the successes that one worked. Why did that one work over a dozen failures. It was a success. It was a success under multiple president s. By the late 1990s columbia was on the verge of becoming a narco state a criminal state the insurgency was on the verge of being able to take control of the country in controlling and then defeating the fark was first of all we have very strong partners in columbia. A very strong person. He was an honest person. And he was determined to defeat them. We started with a president who was committed to democratic principle and the rule of law and who was determined to lead this fight at considerable risk to himself. A number of assassination attempts. The second thing that helped us it was was already some basic institutions. We could help strengthen those institutions inside columbia that included both the police and the military but also the judicial system and over the course of the colombian partnership the Justice Department trained some 40,000 judges in columbia. I actually give credit to them it has limited the number of americans in columbia at any given time to help the government. They limited us to 400 military people and 400 contractors. It rose to 800 military and 800 contractors but that was it. That meant the colombians have a fight the fight themselves and our role had to be limited to supporting them and training them and helping them become better at curing the fight. We could not take over at the enterprise because of the limits that the congress put on them we were there in support of the colombian government and that was another reason for success. It was up to the colombians to solve the problems. We were not cannot roll it. Another factor was that this plan support bipartisan support in congress and was funded over a. Of about ten years or more by three successive president s. With the time to make things work. The cost for about 10 billion over a ten to 12 your time we helped the colombians put down what was needed. It was sold as being counter narcotics. They were trying to limit the amount of cocaine back in the 80s and 90s. We try to bring cultural and political change to the country to make it more like us to bring democratic principles and so on. And without realizing that we were trying to change in the case of iraq and afghanistan for example thousands of years of history and our own democracy revolved over time. We are still facing problems created at the beginning of the United States with the race issues that we are dealing with in the United States today. We still have it in perfect democracy. Thinking that we can bring this two other countries i