>> good afternoon, everyone. i'm melissa dalton, a senior fellow in the deputy director of the national security program here at csis. thank you so much for joining us today for the second portion of our rollout event for the oversight and accountability and security secretary assistant seeking return on investment report. following the terrific remarks from representative smith this morning, we have gathered an interagency panel from several important notes of the vast security sector assistance community to enlighten us on some of the great work that they are doing behind the scenes on this -- on this enterprise. i did want to spend a few minutes at the outset noting the co-authors and great work and contributions of csis staff that worked on this project over the last nine months. my co-authors hijab shaw, rebecca hughes and shannon green contributed mightily to the successful outcome of this project. and none of this would have been possible without the tremendous engagement and support of key stakeholders throughout the ssa community, several of which are in the audience today. so thank you so much for all of your contributions and insights as we brought this together. our goal in the study was to take stock of this moment in time in u.s. national security and defense strategy where clearly in the 21st century the united states cannot meet really any security challenge comprehensively without working by, with and through allies and partners and with the overlay of the recent national security strategy and defense strategy i think that it's clear despite some of the potential tensions within america first policy agenda, that the united states still is relying quite heavily on allies and partners to meet common security goals. but at the same time there are political realities, budgetary realities, many of which representative smith spoke to in the first part of this event. that put some constraints around the ability of the united states to leverage its ssa relationships, and given the budgetary realities under which we're operating. and so in the course of our study we wanted to evaluate some of the key mechanisms that the united states uses to provide oversight and accountability for its ssa programming to include the lehi laws, monitoring and evaluation and some of the conditionality arrangements, but also to look at defense institution building as a way that the united states seeks to inculcate good practices in its security partner relationships around the globe. we evaluated is it strengths and weaknesses of each of these mechanisms, but then also tried to take a step back and look more holistically to examine in the executive and legislative branch wanted to take a more holistic approach to oversight and accountability given the important of ssa as a tool of u.s. craft and strategy going forward. what might such a framework look like, and what are some of the key recommendations that both the executive and the legislative branches need to undertake in order to implement such a holistic approach? we hope that some of those findings and religiouscommendate useful to practitioners and policy-makers. you'll find them out on the tables and online. without further ado, i want to turn to some of our key colleagues here who have joined us from the state department and the department of defense. starting with mr. rafael carland, the managing director for policy. rafael, you know, the united states state department is undertaking a review of its role and some of the efficiencies that might be gained in term of its resourcing, and in the context of that, i understand, has been undertaking reviews particularly of ssa tools as well as stabilization tools. in that process, i'd be curious to hear your thoughts on what sort of innovations and best practices the state department has identified for ssa in that context. please. >> sure, thank you very much. and thank you so much for organizing this, and i appreciate the report as well. and then, of course, just by way of introduction, the office of foreign assistance that we do overseas and coordinates the 30 billion or so in foreign assistance at the state department and usa manage every year, and we look across all these accounts of which it's object 30 billion a year, a quarter to a third of any given year is secretary assistance. it plays a really important role, security sector assistance in how the state department looks at all of its other assistants in the foreign policy it's trying to get done. that is the most exciting thing we're having an opportunity to do is looking back over the last 20 years or so. we've had a lot of experience at using tools that were propped and designed for a different generation, and now getting a chance to really think and look across the tools. it used to be we would go to partners and it was a very steady state peace-time driven peace, whereas we're more often than not in terms of conflict. that drives some interesting conversations. there's a good question, i think discussion for the state department which is particularly important, is the primacy of the political in a lot of these dynamics, that sometimes the security sector assistance and with the dynamics of accountability we need to follow here in washington for very good reasons, they can run up against what are some of the dynamics in the country of what these -- our partners, the dynamics going on, we can't allow our systems to be too -- the provision of how many people you train, how many pieces of equipment you pass out. i think all three of our agencies have experienced that very keenly in a couple countries, but globally as well over the last decade or so. that's finally bubbling up from people's field experience to where greg and i are working a lot on some of the 333 authorities. there's a lot of exciting opportunities going on there. it's linked by -- congress has given us this authority, they've linked it with formal concurrence processes between the department of defense and the department of state. rather than focusing on this sign off process, our two agencies engaged in a longer process, backing this up in years, planning ahead of time, trying to think about what we're doing in these countries. that's an exciting place to be, and we'll see where we can take it. >> great. and turning next to mr. greg pollock, who's the acting deputy assistant secretary for security cooperation and has a storied career as a civil servant, both in the department of defense, and also some time in the department of the treasury. greg, has rafael mentioned, d.o.d. and the fy-17 got handed the gift that keeps on giving of security collaboration reform, and would love to hear from you in terms of how implementation is going on section 3333, the joint planning that rafael mentioned between state and duty and in that first year of execution, and looking ahead, what are some of the key areas of focus for fy-19? >> sure, thank you very much, melissa, both for having me here today and for including me and my team in your research process that culminates in the reported to. thanks for all of csis's work on that, and thanks to my colleagues up there for the day-to-day team work that's achieving some real results pursuant to the fy-17 ndaa reforms. i often joke with colleagues in the security operation enterprise, we're like the dog that caught the car. we knew there was a need for reform. over 120 different authorities related to security cooperation going into '17. those have been largely consolidated down on the defense department side. it's only a handful of authorities now, preeminent among them the section 333 global training and equip authority that rafael mentioned. this is a sizable pot of money that we're trying to achieve real strategic effects with, consistent with the national defense strategy. in terms of ways we're changes, we're having to adopt our culture internal to the department of defense. it's a wide reaching effort that touches really every combat and command, all of the services. so maintaining that network, and creating a partnership across those echelons is really central to my day-to-day work. i think we've had some real success in setting up those mechanisms and some transparency, some real trust across the entire enterprise. but we have to be honest that there are winners and losers here. and this is a real global competition now for priorities. and the national defense strategy ascribes specific priorities that will inform the way we invest in security cooperation partnerships. and i should say that you mentioned that i had previously worked at the treasury department. i did a brief stint once upon a time at the state department. so i deeply value what they bring to the conversation, a role they play out on the front lines. i was just in southeast asia last week, and spending a lot of time with our country teams there, getting their perspectives to inform our investments in security cooperation, and that region specifically. so we have a few different mechanisms, both kind of informal conversations between rafael and i. we also have now an assistant secretary level, security sector assistance steering board. we also have an emerging effort related to the quah drainial assistance review that was legislatively mandated. these forces are driving state and d.o.d. in closer and closer collaboration. we still have a little bit of ways to go, i think. the state department is still operating off foreign assistance act of 1961. there's probably room to modernize their authorities to create greater complimentary between the works our departments are doing. there's still an exciting moment here where we can be sure to situate security cooperation in the wider framework of our foreign policy and defense strategy. that's a fun place to be. >> great. general fletcher, i want to bring you into the conversation, brigadier general antonio fletcher is the director of j 5 strategy policy and plans at u.s. southern command, and has a storied 30-year career in the u.s. army. general fletcher, from a combat and command perspective, you know, from an operational perspective, please speak about the value of ssa activities, and also how you see that evolving as the combat and commanders provide recommendations to the section 333 process. >> well, first to csis and the entire team, thanks for the opportunity to come and kind of speak to you guys today, secondly i was promised there would be no hard questions. hopefully they're all very easy and something i'm able to respond coherently back to your question. on the question of from the perspective of how we see this, there's three pillars our strategy tries to build itself around. with the understanding that first it is a long-term investment that we're making. i think too often, where there's forced risk to smubmission, thee may be short-term decisions -- we take a long look, long-term approach to engages in. aor. we built our theater engagement strategy around something that we think resonates with the entire aor that we operate in. it's built around counter and threat networks, that resonates with every country we ingauge with, primarily because it's not just around a list of commodity, where there's drugs, gangs, whether it's any elicit pastway, they're all connected, that resonates with the countries we work with day in and day out. additionally we're working to make it more resilient when it comes to rapidly responding to hum humanitarian assistance. and lastly, because of a shared values, shared culture in the western hemisphere, we think that continuing to be the partner of choice within aor is something that resonates. we build upon, based on a long history, and we build our strategy around those core fundamentals going forward. and then we take a look at the successes and the failures we've had and try to, you know, obviously work to improve going forward. the best vignette that i personally have been a part of within our aor is when it comes to our dealings and relationship with the country of colombia. i initially started out as a young captain. i was assigned or tasked to run a selection in course for special forces. for about two years coming off that assignment, i was given an opportunity to work with the colombian military. we started that program in 2002. i was happy to say that, you know, it had a rough start. but really trained some phenomenal operators within colombia. less than five years later that same unit was fundamental to actually addressing many of the concerns they had with the -- reducing several members of key leadership, and part of the effort of repatriating three americans. to where i am now, two of the general officers that are part of the colombian military, once again, a long-term approach, things that resonate, a shared culture, shared value systems when it comes to building a professional force. and every engagement we have down there, we use those kind of four fundamentals to teach them about what a professional military looks like. we build it around human rights, shared value, shared culture. we're slowly developing a core. if you look at the military and d.o.d., really it's our core that sets us apart from most militaries around the world. going forward, the human rights and the nco, obviously gender integration, all of our counterparts understanding that if you want to leverage and maximize the full breadth of the talent that's out there, you have to have that as a key component of how you address and how you go forward as a military. lastly, after we get through talking human rights, nco development. integration, we know if you mirror what the u.s. army does well, we're joint in our approach to everything, air force, marines, navy, coast card. we work with our interagency partners, it takes a complete team to be effective. we built our strategy around that. we think it will -- going forward. >> that's great. a lot of innovations and best practices, i think, exemplified by the south com example. to tease out this longer term perspective that you take to your ssa relationships, you know, back to the policy level in looking globally in other aors where there's that short-term/long-term tension that plays out operationally, and how you conceive of a longer-term ssa approach when there are those imperatives, particularly from a counterterrorism perspective, but now with the overlay also of competitiveness with china and russia, and how ssa is going to be a tool in those types of settings. greg and rafael, could you speak to how state and d.o.d. are planning to approach navigating those short-term/long-term tradeoffs in this joint planning process that you're developing? >> sure, yeah, i'll take a first crack at it, and rafael will correct the record as appropriate. yeah, so that's really the beauty of these new authorities is it allows us to have flexibility, to fund priorities both short-term and long-term across geography and do main. we' -- domain. we're out there looking at the big picture, trying to make national security interests, that's an important point to emphasize. the security environment will evolve. but our interests won't evolve, and we hope that we can depend upon the partnership of both our current allies, and more and more sort of partners that we're investing in out there, whether it's in eastern europe, on the margins of russia, or in southeast asia, in east asia, these are our allies and partners that we've been there with, we want to have there with us, should there be a contingency. and we want to ensure that we're interoperable. and that we have the understanding of how our respective military cultures intersect. at the same time, we've got some near term threats. as you mentioned, as much as maybe the phrase gwot is a thing of the past now, the concerns around terrorism are still very real. thankfully less so in the south comaor in the most part. we need to work with our partners to ensure they have the resources they need to work by, with and through partners to deal with instability and terrorism as well. this is the challenge year in year out, how do we ensure that we're thoughtful about our investments, both flowing resources to partners in the fight today, but also investing in partners that we want to count on for the long haul, particularly with respect to some of the near peer competitors out there. >> i would just add on to the group, i think one fundamental difference that the policy change has driven in the way in which we approach the sector assistance, is that it has increased time horizons for planning. a lot of our guys used get hyperfocused on year to year engagement. the changes now have forced us to take a multi-year approach to engagement and activities that we want to do with the intent of building that capability. there's no longer just a engagement, hoping to get degree of influence out of that, but building toward a capability of tieing lack into a line of effort that builds upon the strategy you're trying to accomplish in the aor. the policy changes, we understand them, but it has forced us to build into security corporations, reformat, change timeline in order to meet needs, and it's forced us to think more broadly how we approach it, and i think for the better. >> yeah, i would echo all of the other comments i've heard. the one thing we always have to do is be realistic between the long term and the short term. we will continue to do reports like this and discussions, we will oscillate through administration rs and secretary secretary. the idea we will find balance is unlikely. in the meantime, we can continue to coordinate and understand what we're all trying to do. that is one of the interesting things. to echo what greg is talks about, is taking a broader view of security sector assistance. that's what the state department is particularly interested in is looking across when you talk about stabilization, fragility, these matter in security sector assistance, who you're giving weapons and training to, and how it impacts the rest of society, the longer term things that go on in this country. all of these partners, will not always be primarily security sector assistance. hopefully now it isn't. it's just a function of our broader relationship. we have to have that balance. i think that's one of the things, as you look across, if we're doing this with this account, if we're working with this group of people, who -- what are the other driving forces in that society? i thought particularly interesting is you talk about -- general fletcher was talking about developing nco cores, building capabilities and discussing who traditionally fulfilled those roles in society, and why other groups don't fulfill roles in that society. that takes a lot of analysis and a lot of understanding of the place that is you're working. and it requires relationships. and i think colombia, we hold up colombia as that great example, it is, a huge interagency hole of government bilateral partnership of success, but it was built on decades of hard work, and a lot of trial and error. in the end it was held together by a lot of deep, political military personal relationships between our two governments. that i think, is really important, and a significant part of security sector assistance. it goes back to the balance of these relationships are in the service of what? they are not a thing in and of themselves. >> an additional point if you don't mind. it's important too that we're honest about security cooperation can and cannot do. the flash to bang is long. we have other tools in the tool kit on the defense side and elsewhere to deal with some of those shorter term types of threats. but, you know, moving equipment, material, training through the pipeline, that's not something that just happens overnight. we don't transform other countries, defense institutions, in weeks or even months or years in many cases. it's like investing in blue chip stocks. we've got to be in that market for the long haul. i want to also note that, you know, frankly, if we're providing differing guidance year in and year out to the combat and commands about what's important to us, we're doing it wrong. that's why at the policy level we're trying to ensure that we move forwards multi-year all security cooperation guidance to the combat and commands. so they have a sense of what's important today and what's going to be important on an enduring basis moving forward, and they can plan against that on a five-year defense plan. >> i'd like to add one thing. a couple points. first, at least in south com, everything we do is in support of a different agency, and in support of the country team. our four most forward assets are security cooperation officers, trained, foreign officers who work within the embassy, working trying to niche together all the different agencies there, and provide the best d.o.d. advice to the ambassador. at the end of the day we're doing everything through and with the approval of the ambassador of that country. secondly, as resources get tight, there's a global competition given the threats are out there within south com, we know we may not get more troops, more planes, more boats, but security assistance and security cooperation has been the means by which we've been able to engange. you have to be on the field to compete. so security cooperation, security assistance gives us the means by which we can be on the field and compete. that's why this is hugely important, and hugely important we get it right going forward. >> great. at this point i'd like to turn to the audience for some q&a, i'm going to bundle those questions in the interest of time. please wait for a microphone, stand, state your name and affiliation and state your question in the form of a question. start with the lady with the scarf, and then marks, i can probably take one more. >> hi, renee duvall, state department asia bureau. we've done a good job with 3r33. we think take a step further. there's a step further in joint and program development, transfer authorities, things like the global security contingency fund. so as you think about the future of 333, what are you thoughts about moving it more in that direction, realizing that state always has the bandwidth issues of how much we can actually do the development. thanks. >> take one from max, and there's this gentleman at the front also. >> thank you for another articulate discussion of this issue. i had a question about how duty, in particular, balances or should balance priorities. you know, you talked about obviously the prominence of global competition as a theme and a guiding theme for the department and its investments. there is evident tension between holding forces in readiness for a big war against a global competitor and near peer competitor versus providing the very same forces, or forces from the same pool to do the preventative work that may ensure we never have to fight that war. so i'm just curious about how you see that balance of demands playing out. >> s fabs. there was a question down here. >> thank you. building on my question to you, general fletcher, at the break, in 2004 when the 101st airborne division landed in mosul, iraq, then it was agreed that a program where platoon leaders and integrated officers could become quasi-soldier diplomats through funding and through the assistance of foreign area officers who were not only middle eastern specialists, linguists and had the experience, and i saw firsthand, and through my daughter who was a platoon leader there, a couple years ago, general patreas recounting the effect of that approach strategy by working together with the foreign area officers trained in diplomacy, and the soldiers on the ground rebuilding schools, running health care programs, so on. so the question is, with that precedent, the foreign area officer school, and others that the state department may have, if those successful models are expended, wouldn't most, if not all of the challenges that congressman smith presented be met, new authorities, yes, but building on the strengths of the institution that already exist, adding new authorities, and not reinventing the wheel. >> great. lightning round, whoever would like to go first. >> all right. on the joint planning from my colleague from the ap, i think there's a lot of interest in that. i think what we're trying to do is find better process ways to be able to take advantage of what's going on. i think one of the things that all of us, and you'll see in all of these, is a better management of data. there is a lot going on out there. we have not always -- and a lot of very good things have been going on in the field. we have not always kept good track of them. i think we need to get in a better space, interagency, greg would agree with this too, easier to access what are good programs, good templates, we would be in a good place. it sounds simple. you are the federal state department colleague, you would agree that i.t. is difficult when it's not resourced. if we can get so some of those spaces, we'll be able to do a lot. in terms of the soldier diplomat, as a former army officer, i like to hear that. but i think the state department did a stabilization assistance review, one of the initial observations is that the frustrating piece of a lot of this work is it's a pickup became every time. it's great when we have young officers who understand diplomacy, when they have development officers who understand -- we have state department people that understand security and understand some of these project management and dynamics. that's not why we were originally hired or originally trained. given the amount of time and space you have to train people to do their function, it's hard to help people do everything. we're always in a dynamic where certain agencies are good at certain things, and this is the way we have to work. one of the things a stabilization assistance review we worked on came to a conclusion if we can better define some of the rules and tailor our training and workforce management and hiring, recruiting, this is one of the dynamics. we have to decide what do we want our junior field people to be -- to be doing in every case? i don't think they can do every job. so we'll have to keep working on that. >> greg? >> thank you. so associate myself with a lot of what rafael just said. going through the questions in turn here, so i would wholeheartedly embrace the idea of moving toward more joint development. part of the challenge is state's internal organization, there are bits and pieces of the security assistance mission still scattered across different bureaus. i work most closely, i would say, with pm and f, but my section 333 authority is also -- there's overlap with what inl does. we need to build a bigger tent in terms of what we're having this conversation with on an interagency basis. on its face, i wholeheartedly agree the idea of more joint interagency planning. there are a few little practical concerns related to where we are in terms of fiscal planning, how we do that differently. but i think those are surmountable, particularly so long as the wheel is there. for the most part it is. we're trying to work through that week in and week out. on the question of use of forces, absolutely, there's a very trareal tradeoff, one that we're focused on, think about the prospect of responding to contingency, that said for the most part security cooperation is not a force intensive kind of undertaking, particularly in places where we're doing more like train the trainer sorts of engagements. i think the return on investment per soldier deployed is extremely high. that's where we haven't had a chance to talk about as much about assessment monitoring and evaluation. we need to get to the point where we can really show our senior leaders in the department and across the interagency what that return on investment is. finally to the question about the use of foreign area officers and how our evolving force kind of relates to this mission, i totally agree with your point. i think, frankly, since the global war on terrorism, we've seen more of that special forces kind of mind-set flow into the general purpose forces. and the general here will be well positioned to speak to that. but, you know, that idea of being more culturally attuned, having language skills, thinking in terms of whole of government and the host nation context, i think we're seeing more and more of that amongst our broad security cooperation workforce inside of the department of defense. frankly, when it comes to foreign area officers, i would like to have more of them. they are a key enabler of this mission. finally, we've got to look hard in the mirror at the department of defense about the degree to which we are trained and equipped to do this mission properly. the fy-17 ndaa, calls upon us to look inside and do evaluation of our security cooperation workforce, my colleagues at the defense security cooperation agency have been in the thick of that. we're working closely with them. this is a massive undertaking. it's extremely central. when you think about security cooperation officers out there, they get a few weeks of training in this stuff and they're the face of our department. many times, our government to the host nation. we need to get serious. we wouldn't approach any other mission area with that sort of limited training. so we need to up our game in that space. >> great, general fletcher? >> real quickly to try to respond to the three different questions. the first one on working more closely with partners. we fully embrace that. if you talk to anyone in south com, we've reached out and exchanged with partners in the region and different agencies. we would welcome that. there are success stories we can lean upon. if you look at how we implement i-met, the international military education training we do around -- at any one time we have 600 or so from the western hemisphere that are part of that program that go on to be ministers. to not only share our american values, but give them insight, and hopefully build friendships and partnerships going forward. g ploy, title 22 programs executed by d.o.d. so that coordination, i think, already exists, we've got to build upon that. on the second question of prioritization, and the structure, where we apply limited resources, i'm glad i don't have to make those decisions. if you look at the national security strategies, the national military strategy lays it out. we know that in south com we have to make a tough argument to rise above. what we've done in the interim is it's made us more creative. our partners in the region, we have an expectation that we're going to come train you, but you're going to export security to help within the aor. part of the burden share to put on, if we want the hemisphere to stay stable and secure, help under the circumstancus in the effort. colombia exports security. they've received training from us over the last 20 years. now they're providing like training to partners in our region. once again, we get them all binding, the return on thfsment is not back to the u.s. the return on investment is back to your community, back to the entire region that you're working in. that's what we're trying to leverage. as we export something from the u.s., we have an expect thags that that country is going to turn and help partners in the region respond to disaster and respond to counterthreat networks that exist that are out there. last question, sir, i think we're continuing to learn, continuing to develop when it comes to how to build that soldier diplomat. we've tried the afghan hands. we've -- trying s fabs, the soft regional approach. we can never tell when the next crisis is going to exist. we have a bit of a challenge having the right expertise when the next crisis emerges. i think you make a valid point and we're working forward that. i'm fortunate at south com that i have officers that not only work in 23 different corrupts, but i have a whole cell within my plan shot to provide us that kind of advice to help us commanders in all of its engagements. it needs tweaking, but we're on the right path. we have a good team out there. we're looking how to make it better. >> great. i want to thank all of you for your thoughtful remarks today and for your contributions you're making at each of your posts working together to move this enterprise forward. join me in thanking our panel. [ applause ] >> ladies and gentlemen, we're going to take a short break before reconvening our next panel and be

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