Transcripts For CSPAN2 Atlantic Council Discussion On Nation

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Atlantic Council Discussion On National Security 20240712

And served under president barack obama as the 22nd National Security advisor beginning in january 2009 previously he served as the allied commander in europe and as the 32nd commandant of the marine corps. Great to have you, general jones bid honorable bob bud mcfarland is a Nuclear Technology Company Founder and served as the 13th National Security advisor under president Ronald Reagan and retired marine corps officer. Great to have you here too. Of course, ambassador john bolton shares the foundation for American Security and freedom serving most recently as the 27th National Security adviser under president donald trump. He previously served as the u. S. A matter to the United Nations under president george w. Bush and other government posts as well. Great to have the three of you here today. A few bits of housekeeping notes. It is not ideal that we are doing this on zoom and we wish we could be together but in the meantime we do want to keep this as interactive as possible but you will see the q a tab at the bottom of your screen and click on it and send your questions we deftly want to hear from you and dont forget to put your name and affiliation so we know who we are talking to them we want to make this a conversation with definitely get your questions in early. Also, we encourage them to join the discussion on twitter using ac elections 2020 and forward defense against a sea elections 2020 and forward defense. Lets get cracking. Lots to talk about with these gentlemen. Since we are being closely by the strategy of security i thought we would talk about the model that was developed by he inspired a model for staffing and process and efficiency at the National Security council and one in which many of his successors have referred to as the ultimate goal for running the nfc. It would be of what the current National Security structure and or the role of the National Security council and already see ambassador bolton laughing a little bit and how can processing and procedures improve policymaking approach to National Security issues. Maybe general jones we could start with you. General, i believe you are on mute, sir. Okay. Thank you very much. Probably should start out by saying quoting Daniel Webster who president eisenhower used to like to quote in one of these favorite quotes was americas great because it is good and america never ceases to be good and america will cease to be great. I think that is something we should keep in mind as we lurch fast and forward into this 21st century which is incredibly complex and very different on the 20th century and the former concept of Financial Security and not everything that it entails is much broader but its all happening at a much more rapid pace than ever before and i think i left the white house in 2010 and im sure john would agree that every single day is almost doubled if not tripled and so we are living in a very difficult time where our ability to deal with the 24 hour news cycle and the advances in technology and the never ending demand for rapid answers to complex questions never seems to go away. I think that characteristic has a great deal to do with the effectiveness of the National Security council which, in my view, should be strategic as possible and should serve as coordinating mechanism across the interagency to highlight the president those things that he or she absolutely hast to know in real time so this is a complex time demands just an awful lot of work of great people at every station and ability to deal with the everincreasing speed around the world. The world was a different place when they had this vision for the nfc and having served around the same time why do you think he kind of nfc is needing to be under a certain model and you think it was the right mod model. I spent a lot of time with general schoolcraft before i accepted the job and even during the job i consulted with him on a regular basis and one of the big differences between the Bush Administration and with steve hadley and the Obama Administration was we decided immediately to combine both the homeland Security Council and the National Security council into one organization. I became a little heavy in terms of people but at least for the way president obama like to make decisions work better for him. I am not saying its the only way but one of the things that general schoolcraft said on the outset is that every president gets to shake the National Security council the way he or she wants to and is probably the one institution in our government that has to be ready to go as soon as the inauguration ceremony is over with and so that commendation of Homeland Security and National Security goes back and forth depending on the administration and i think john and i were in agreement with combining votes is a good idea and that as i said its not the only way but has to be shaped for how the president likes to make decisions and how he wants to see the National Security council in the context of the government. Ambassador bolton, you had a strong response when i asked the questions why dont you share your thoughts . I agree with a lot of what jim has said and that i have in my book i quote a paragraph from dons memoir of his days as chief and staff in the bush 41 white house where he says when the president was in town at 8 00 a. M. Every morning there would be the intelligence briefing followed by for about 15 minutes followed by about half an hour with schoolcraft talk about National Security and sometimes that went on for a while and then bret would stay on when governor sununu would discuss with president bush the press and domestic and political issues and as i said in the book if that were the way things went in the Trump White House i wouldve felt like i had died and gone to heaven. It is absolutely correct that every National Security Council Structure has to adopt to the president who is leading the country and that is the councils purpose of the reasoning behind the creation and functioning is to advise the president that it has no independent purpose other than that. In a time when many, many issues come before the president that involve National Security when the interagency processes become cumbersome and bureaucratic and the effectiveness of the nse to advise the president i think is critical and there are many different theories as to how it can work but i think if you abandon it it would be a huge mistake and i think part of the problem, no we are not supposed to be too topical a part of the problem we face today is that it just doesnt suit the current incumbent and we will see what happens in the next administration, whoever it might be. What was the vision originally . When you serve now youre getting 35 years ago or so what would, do you think the world was demanding this kind of model or was it something that would enhance our ability to tackle National Security threat in the future . I think jim jones is right that each president will design, manage and oversee the council the way he or she wants it. The model really stems back to Henry Kissinger in the mid 70s and as his deputies adopted it i was working with bret at the time and the chief of staff but i think that i would only add to what john and jim have said that the council is to enable formation of policies designed to accomplish the goal of the president has set and so if we are looking to build u. S. Foreign policy toward the middle east the National Security advisor publishes a directive saying the president wants to know how to see accomplish the following goal in the middle east if the political, economic and military dimensions of how he or she ought to do that and they are about six weeks later a paper comes back. Since kissingers, schoolcraft and the three of us that is broadly speaking the way it has run and the point i would stress and that approach is this, that today it has become the fashion to publish one paper which is a National Strategy and in the holders who was probably a dozen favors to start with on a more differentiated set of policy issues, u. S. Policy toward allies my u. S. Policy toward the middle east, toward china, toward russia and that way by speeches targeted on each one of these you got a public elaboration from the president or the security advisor or secretary of state about the nittygritty of what our policy is in each of these domains well, i thought that had a certain order to the Relationship Building around the world and writing and in oral discourse and the staff is always been too big and was about mid 50s under kissinger and i think i had about 58 but you dont need 400 word i think john would agree and the beginning of wisdom is to have a staff that doesnt portray itself in numbers or hubris that it is running things. It is to manage a system that can enable the president to make sensible decisions and a staff of 400 is far too many to do that. Wait, i agree with what you just said in one of the things i found upon my arrival as a National Security advisor was that the National Security council was severely underfunded and severely overpopulated but one of the problems that manifested itself was that fully two thirds or three force of the staff on the National Security council were from the interagency, from the Defense Department and state department and from all over government on loan for the nationals agree to counsel and therefore paid for by their parent organizations and what happened was that this loan was temporary and either one or two years and not much more than that and what we found is after one year about half the National Security council staff, professional staff rotated and new people came in and i thought that was wholly unsatisfactory and argued for more funding and basically an ability to make financial Security Council with a mini agency with the budgets for the type of work that the National Security council needed to do which we did not have and so yes, i think 400 is way too many but i think more importantly it would be great to have a National Security council that would have a smaller staff that are dedicated professional staff that would be there for the long haul instead of losing 50 every year. Let me throw out another question i will start with you, ambassador bolton. I think probably have two brush up on this. I have discovered that the transnational scrutiny advisors have different views on where the role is for foreign and international versus domestic and what the portfolio should be for the National Security advisor and particularly ive spoken with president trumps Current National secured advisor Robert Obrien about this very issue where in cases like the pandemic that were currently dealing with, where is the response abilities of the National Security advisor when you have a very large domestic component in addition to the international and i think apart it depends on how effective the coordination mechanisms are on the domestic policy side and again each president has his or her own vision of that in my own view is that not enough decisionmaking on the domestic side takes into account the International Aspects and there are some questions that obviously affect both like trade, for example or like the handling of the pandemic. I think just as it is about to start as a bud said going back to Henry Kissinger, i think we owe them the original effort to Dwight Eisenhower who was one of the worlds great planners and who understood the benefit and planning even if youre not following the plan too long after you get it done because there is a lot to learn in planning but those mechanisms simply do not exist on the domestic side but its ultimately up to the president whether he wants to work through the nmc structure, whether he wants to work through the Coronavirus Task force which was on your way for a time earlier this year or whether he wants to work through anything at all. I think there are clear benefits to interagency coordination regardless some president s, including the current one dont necessarily agree with them. Where is the fine line between Homeland Security and what the National Distributor he buys or does and what how much of a role do they play in Homeland Security . Well, and the Obama Administration we had tom donald and john brennan was the Homeland Security advisor and we are all located in the white house obviously and at the president s Daily Briefing all of those interests were present and everybody had a role to play in it was my job to coordinate how that meeting went to make best use of the president s time but that same to as a structure, and confidence with how president obama like to make decisions which are very much from the bottom up instead of from the top down. It was part of the National Security Council Structure, was it not until the Trump Administration came around and i believe you, ambassador bolton, modify that structure. Let me say a quick word there. The National Security and Homeland Security are fundamentally the same thing. I think were talking about the same homeland so the notion of these being separate functions, i understand it was part of the bush 43 administration when the separate Homeland Security department was set up and so on but i think ultimately you need to bring it back into more coherent approach which is what i try to do. I would make other structural changes in the government beyond the nsc in that regard but that is beyond the scope of our discussion here, i think. Well, i want to switch to a broader topic and get into some of the larger threats facing the United States right now as a way with the structure of the nsc. Lets talk about metrics rather than in mr. Mcfarlane i will start with you but were talking a lot about a number of dots these days like fiber and disinformation and biological weapons and redefining National Security and in the wake of covid and with the elections past and present so if the homeland is no longer a sanctuary how do you Security Professionals explore Security Issues at the nexus of foreign defense and Homeland Security. If you could talk about these asymmetric and how to process them. Vivian, today has become apparent to all of us but the foremost family of threats to the United States stem from china and the challenges it is offering in every domain to cyber to military to a novel approach to chinas influence to penetrating country after country by apparently benign offers to build things for the host country whether condo or the United Kingdom and that is we will come china and we will build in london or the congo or a highway or a port and in short, the appearance of innocent offerings before how long however it quickly turns into an issue of indebtedness are those countries where they borrow from china money to build the port, lets say in sri lanka, and before long if they cannot service the debt china generously offers to turn into equity or ownership so you can see how it doesnt take very long before gradually china becomes the owner of the port or the highway so or the power plant or impede soon you have penetrated the government china house and began to have in normas influences over that governments policies. It is happening more than 60 countries and that is global in all of this is to, of course, expanded in court presents and indeed virtually to coopt the sovereignty of country after country for three reasons, to gain resources like cobalt and congo or lithium in chile and secondly it says the suez canal, djibouti, the mandeb straits, gibraltar in strategic locations that enable them to function in the event of conflict and to protect their forces with confidence on see, on land throughout the world as a crisis may require. That is a gradual but very effective way t

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