the professor. i'm fascinated by his review of the u.s. arsenal and the questions that he posed and the puzzles that he talked about are spot on. the a very interesting conversations and necessary. i might yield a little bit of a bucket of cold water myself because i will speak with a little more certainty but i will say i think he raises fair points about how certain we can be about some of our tried and true assumptions related to nuclear waepaoeapons and deterrents. as you heard, i served for almost 39 years in uniform. much associated with the strategic forces so the opinions you would hear from me are mine and they will have a military flavor to them. as you heard i will take a minute and i will piggyback on what professor gavin said. i think his points bear repeating. let me do it with a little bit of my own military slant. no question about it -- nuclear weapons have occupied a unique space since august of 1945. i would assert while nuclear weapons were conceived to win a war, shortly after their use the became a critical tool to prevent a war. in my humble view, that was there great value and remains that value today. we can debate how certain we can be that is what had happened, but i think there is some evidence that would suggest that, in fact, nuclear weapons have been war preventing weapons. why? obviously, nuclear weapons are unprecedented with their potential to inflict enormous disruption over a very short time with long-term physical and psychological. they were woven into the fabric of our national security strategy and is the ultimate guarantor of our security and our allies. nuclear superiority became an affordable mean to compensate for conventional inferiority for the united states and its allies in during the cold war, if you recall. many of you don't. more on that later. but, if you ever read anything about the cold war, there was a large conventional inferiority on the part of nato visa be the worst all packed --vis-a-vis the warsaw pact. the ground forces in particular. deterrent was the objective of having nuclear weapons. the policies, strategies and employment plans were designed to convince adversaries and they would not achieve their goals by attacking us. that is the benefit of deterrence. or they would pay too high of a price. nuclear deterrence fit with the cold war strategy of containment. to be sure, nuclear weapons the not eliminate all conflicts or will they ever, but the threat of nuclear war imposed limits, compelled caution and forced leaders to stop and ponder the consequences of escalation before they acted. i think the evidence of this is clear in korea berlin, vietnam the middle east and elsewhere. the notion of war between the major powers change in august of 1945. while i do not believe we entered a long time of peace that is what we have seen certainly -- the world has not seen a hot war between the major powers since august of 1945. it would be speculation for sure just that i completely agree with professor gavin on that point. it is speculation to say because of nuclear weapons but i look prior to 1945 when conventional deterrence was attempted by the great powers, whether that was the great white fleet, battleship building, whatever the form it took never lasted. the world found itself in large global conflicts that were increasingly violent and deadly as time passed. but, i would argue from my perspective nuclear deterrence worked. but, there are some interesting questions about that and today some people would say well, ok, it worked then, that was then. the conditions no longer exist today. the weapons create more risk than benefit to our national security. i don't think that is true. let me take a couple of minutes to explain why i think that is true. for those of us that served in the cold war, it does not seem like very much time has passed. yet, an entire generation of men and women have served in the u.s. armed forces since the cold war ended. some have completed an entire 20 year career. actually, 24 years if you count 1991 as the end of the cold war. for the last 10 to 15 years or so while i was still on active duty, i would occasionally use a cold war example to describe something to the younger troops. i would get a blank stare in return. an army friend of mine is part of this recent return some u.s. ground forces the europe as a demonstration of the fact we could reinforce nato if we had to. those were famous examples of that during the cold war -- they were called reforger exercises. a colleague of mine said he was talking to his troops just like it was reforging and they looked at him like a grandma. pa. the cold war has been over for a long time. i believe we know it. today's men and women often use weapons designed and built during the cold war but their experiences shaped by iraq and afghanistan and libya and kosovo and against violent extremists, not a face-off between the iron curtain and central europe with the threat of a large-scale nuclear war. for me the war ended in september of 1991. i was in command of a unit on the day when president george h.w. bush ordered all of our nuclear bombers and their supporting tankers and half of our intercontinental ballistic missiles off of cold war alert status. in short order, he implemented other initiatives that have dramatic effects on u.s. posture and stockpile as well. yes, we still retained a nuclear deterrent force, ballistic missiles and intercontinental missiles on alert. for those of us in the field, the cold war was over. while we had hoped for long periods of peace dividend the 21st century has brought new challenges. today's threats are more complex than the existential threat posed by the soviet union in the 20th century. today's threat include hybrid combinations of strategy tactics and capabilities. they included nuclear weapons cyber weapons, long-range ballistic missiles, traditional conventional and nonconventional weapons that can be wielded by state and nonstate actors alike. uncertainty and complexity dominate the global security landscape today. violent extremism is the most likely threat the u.s. faces. the most dire threat is an extremist with a nuclear weapon. but, that is not the only threat we face. adversaries and potential adversaries continue to pursue capabilities conduct strategic attacks against the u.s. and the allies as a main component of their security strategies. such attacks are defined by their affect and not the weapon used. it could involve nuclear or conventional kinetic or non-kinetic weapons. such attacks could arrive at our doorsteps through space or cyberspace or even in a non-traditional way. i would argue the attacks of 9/11 were strategic attacks on the united states. while the likelihood of a massive nuclear attack on the u.s. has receded thankfully, russia, china and north korea all have the capability to inflict terrible casualties and damage on the u.s. and our allies over the course of several hours with nuclear weapons. russia and china are pursuing a group that's aggressive modern it -- pursuing aggressive modernization. senior russian leaders have recently restated their commitment to their own nuclear deterrence. i have been a bit surprised by the amount of nuclear saber rattling the russians have been doing. nuclear weapons formed the basis of deterrence in india and pakistan. north korea openly advertises its possession of nuclear weapons and works on ballistic missiles that will deliver them against the regional allies and the united states itself and overtly threatened to use them as a most famously did back in 2013. as you see in the press, negotiations continue with iran and the outcome remains to be seen. others to include some of our allies can acquire nuclear weapons depending on the behavior of their neighbors. there is a simple reason why many of our adversaries and potential adversaries see nuclear weapons as essential to their security. after watching the u.s. project power along the globe for the last 20 years, these and other potential adversaries are looking to compel the u.s. to restrain its action or in a crisis or conflict, to restrict our options and intimidate our allies and partners through the threat of escalation, possibly to nuclear use. it is the cold war in reverse. other threatening nuclear use for u.s. superiority. i don't see a world without nuclear weapons on the horizon anytime soon, something president obama technology -- acknowledged. while strategic attack the 21st century could take many forms, a nuclear attack on the u.s. or our allies remains absolutely the worst case scenario. therefore, deterring strategic attack, including nuclear attack must remain the number one priority for the department of defense. 21st century deterrence concepts still sound familiar. deny benefits and impose costs and a range of options for the president to use as needed in a conflict. the commitment to insure our allies and partners by extending our umbrella to them. how they apply those concerts in the 21st century is very different. 21st century deterrence must be tailored to a wide variety of actors and scenarios. one size can no longer fit all. 21st century determines demands the flexible application of the full range of complementary military capability. strong conventional forces, missile defenses, brazilian space and cyberspace capabilities, effective command and control and the ultimate possibility of a u.s. nuclear response in extreme circumstances for vital national interests. we no longer have to threaten nuclear used to compensate for conventional inferiority, but no combination of conventional, kinetic or cyber capabilities can hold of that risk. no combination with the same risks of long-term and short-term effects of nuclear weapons. in a future conflict, nuclear options will provide the president with the ability to hold the enemy's most critical assets at risk, compel the enemy to consider the consequences of his actions in ways no conventional weapon can do and prevent the enemy from escalating by threatening us with nuclear attack. our allies and partners will rely on the security guarantee our nuclear forces provide as well. from my point of view, absent some unforeseen change or until a suitable replacement comes along, nuclear weapons will contribute to our national security and the security of our allies for quite some time and they will do that by providing the president with options. underwriting our freedom of actions and compelling the adversary. they may be fewer in numbers they certainly need to be focused on her highest strategic deterrence needs. they need to be woven into a doctrine that contemplates their use in extreme circumstances where our vital national security interests are at stake. it must be seen as a tool in an expanded kit of options that include conventional and non-kinetic weapons. they must be under the strictest possible control of the president of the united states. they must be modern and sustainable. this is the dilemma -- i used to get asked this question while testifying on the hill and i would say we happened to be in the worst place added thatt a bad time. we find ourselves in need of modernization of our nuclear arsenal at the very time budgets are declining. we have weapons of that still play a vital role in our national security. others are modernizing their arsenals. our deterrent to include the stockpile of delivery systems and communication systems has reached a critical point in sustainment and modernization. many of the weapons and other industrial-based things that we have today were really acquired during the reagan defense buildup and are over 30 years old. the newest b-52's were built in the 1960's. i flew in a tanker some years ago. two youngsters, two captains in the front. they were youngsters compared to everybody else on the airplane. i said to them -- we were doing that thing that generals do. we were flying somewhere over the world in the middle of the night and it was quiet and cold. i went forward into the cockpit and chatted. i was chatting them up and they were doing what young crew members do -- pretending like they were interested. [laughter] gen. kehler: i asked one of them -- when did you come to active duty -- to make a long story short, the airplane we were flying in was made long before he was born. i didn't feel -- it didn't bother me a whole lot. you get the some point where the system has to be modernized and upgraded and we are there. i think it was really well outlined in 2010 where it was clear about our need to sustain and modernize our deterrent systems, including the weapons and delivery platforms and command and control support. we ought to retain the triad of nuclear forces. i'm happy to talk about that in the questions and answers. we should maintain a modern infrastructure and maintain a highly capable workforce. some of you need to be become a part of that workforce whether you are working on policies or associated with it or the engineering -- we need you. we need to pursue a viable hedge strategy that reduces the overall number of weapons while assuring the reliability of the individual weapons are high. clarity, consensus and visual commitment are needed from the top down and need to be aligned with the relevance and assurance of 21st century concepts. so, let me say in conclusion, i think our nuclear deterrent has served us very well since august of 1945 and i think it will continue to play a vital role in our national security for a long time. thank you again for inviting me and a look forward to your questions. thank you. [applause] mr. avey: we will do the q&a. i will do the privilege of asking the first question. i think we have a microphone going around. if you have a question. i would like to ask a question to both of you. first, professor gavin -- you make a clean for humility. a hard question to answer. we have a room full of people want to know so how do you approach this subject? you do this for a living. you studied this issue deeply. how did you start to answer what is essentially an unanswerable question? for general kehler, i was taken with your description of the changes from the cold war and the present security environment. the world has seemed to become more complex a greater variety of threats and instruments. you also said nuclear weapons would only be used in extreme circumstances against military style targets when they are a vital national security interest. that suggests to me that nuclear weapons are still reserved for great powers who can do the united states grave danger. if i am right and the conditions for use are that narrowly constrained then why don't we look for the cold war for lessons rather than trying to craft new strategies of deterrence? mr. gavin: that is a terrific question. i certainly -- humility should not necessarily discourage somebody from curiosity. that is the first thing i say to all my students. my attitude towards this developed because as i started learning about these questions when i was their age -- i was an undergraduate at the university of chicago taking classes called things like strategies and armed control. the sort of very learned materials we read were from great scholars and thinkers that come from places like rand and important universities. used incredibly sophisticated methods like game. to sort of explained what they thought should have happened given the consequences of the nuclear revolution. as i became a historian and look at records, i was surprised and stunned and humbled to find the gap between what the theorists thought should have happened and what policymakers actually did and how they wrestled with these questions. you take an extreme example -- someone like thomas schellings perhaps one of the most brilliant strategists of the nuclear age, the father of nuclear strategy. someone whose writings were at the core of our understanding of deterrence the manipulation of risk. the way he described how policymakers should think about it in terms of how they should assess risks seemed completely different than the way policymakers thought about it. there was an example of a paper he wrote about during the berlin crisis where he essentially suggested the problem with nuclear weapons, you need to credibly show you can use them so one thing a president can do in a crisis was the fire one shot somewhere in the middle of the ukraine or russia to show the soviets we meant business. you get the impression this document was circulated around. no person in the right mind would ever think this way. the logic of nuclear weapons the level of response onsibility of using them -- you will not do a demonstration shot. what struck me was there is this gap between the way strategists and intellectuals thought about this question and the way many day-to-day diplomacy and crises and management of international relations intersected. they were much different. in fact, --a few things became clear -- there was not one president with the possible exception of the who nixonof nixon. they found the burden of responseability terrible. they understood the deterrence. this palpable sense of responsibility but that it didwas beyond the thinking. that is not the way we learn about this. there were a series of things like that that may be realize it was one thing to talk about these things theoretically. it is quite another to talk about them as the president is thinking about using them. one of the best places you can get is listening to the presidential tapes, the kennedy tapes during the cuban missile crisis and afterwards. one gets the sense of the loneliness of president kennedy having to make this decision and how underhelpful much of the information he was getting. that is not the same they are not smart things that cannot be helpful. i think many people that write on the subject bomb iran, don't bomb iran, speak with a certainty that has no justification in historical record. that is not mean they were necessarily right but i think more humility would lead to a little more new wants to thinking -- nuanced thinking on questions of extraordinary importance. gen. kehler: before i answer the question, let me piggyback with professor gavin here. military people do not like them either. i think this is not about liking the weapons. this is about, at least, it has always been for me -- it is not about liking them, it is about understanding the world we live in has them and they have national security implications for us. therefore, we've learned how to do with them which does lead to the question so what does that mean now? i think it is a bit of the chicken and the egg discussion to say the cold war shaped nuclear weapons and vice versa. that is the old -- somebody used as a good hitting defeats good pitching and vice versa. there is something to that here as well. i do believe that the way we talk about them, the way our employment policies were written and disclosed i think the evolution of massive retaliation to flexible response. all of those things happened were uniquely suited to the cold war. and, as i tried to make the point, this is no longer a cold war world. so, i'm always a little bit leery when we tried to make it like the cold war. so, i think and understanding -- an understanding of what deterrence means in the 21st century is how we should use nuclear weapons -- a friend of mine says that i have read military friends that say we have never used them and in others you say we use it everyday. i come down on that side of the fence. i believe we use our weapons every single day. but, when we had the cold war with the soviet union, we viewed that as a monolith. we believe we understood how they made decisions. we believe we understood who made those decisions. therefore, when we were trying to construct deterrence strategies, we thought we knew who we were trying to influence and what mattered to them. we need that kind of understanding for a far broader range of adversaries now or potential adversaries who. who makes decisions in some of the places with the greatest unrest is? how do you deter them? what combination of things would deter them and how would nuclear weapons play in that combination? i think that is a different way of approaching our nuclear deterrent in the 21st century. it plays great difficulty with the intelligence community because if you go to the intelligence community and say i need to know who makes decisions in this place over here and how they make them and what they value the most, that is a tough problem. entegris a long time to figure that out with the soviet union -- it took us a long time to figure that out with the soviet union. be careful about talking with any certainty on any of these subjects. i believe that we have got to understand the world we are in now. this is a very different international security environment that we have faced in the last century. in fact, the compelling security problems of the last century -- imperialism, fascism communism -- have largely been relegated to the history books. some of it echoes a little bit but largely that is relegated to the history books. we have a different world today. to assume that we would be structuring our nuclear deterrent the same way we did during the cold war, i think it is a big mistake. understanding this notion of tailored deterrence, what combination of factors will be the most effective in deterring any given country and then understanding that yes, u.s. policy is that we will only consider using nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances when vital national security interests are a stake. does that limit the other nuclear powers provided in the nuclear posture review of 2010? but, by the way, i think that is a worthy goal -- deterring nuclear use by those who have them. i think that is a worthy goal because we are sometimes -- sometimes we talk about the an enormous destructive potential in any individual -- one of our individual listed summaries -- ballistic missile submarines, unleashing the equivalent of world war ii out of one platform. that is only half of the description. the other half is you can do it in 30 minutes. these weapons are unlike any other weapons we have. as long as we have them, my view is we better understand how they fit in a grand strategy of deterrence that has to be tailored to individual actors in today's world. mr. avey: we have time for q&a. we have the microphone going out. you -- guest: thank you, i really enjoyed the presentation, and general kehler, would you accept pretty much the same thing for a rock's national interest of standpoint and how would you evaluate the nuclear posturing of the potential usage of the weapons, assuming that they would want to launch a strike against israel and the fallout that would inevitably follow? gen. kehler: well, that is a complicated question, mr. ambassador, i demand easier questions. [laughter] first of all, i don't know if i can speculate on what the iranians would say, but i think i read in the press that they basically said that they have considered acquiring them for their own national security interests. and i don't know if they have made that decision, whether or not to acquire them. when i left the insight conversations a little over a year ago, i thought that they hadn't made their decision at the time. i can tell you what others would say, the russians have been pretty clear recently, and they see their nuclear deterrence as offsetting, not only our nuclear arsenal, but our conventional capabilities as well. they have been very concerned they have written about it since desert storm, as to what you can do conventionally, and they have got a name for it, and it is a marriage of satellite and aircraft which results in these strikes. so, i think these countries will pursue these weapons for their own national security interests. and i think that is part of our deterrence, as being able to understand what those reasons are, and i not sure it is all very clear as to what those reasons are. >> thank you, thank you very much for coming, this is a very stimulating panel. i am very interested in what you are saying, and one thing that is really concerning to me as a person who was born at the beginning of world war ii, is the terrorism content now that we have. we have had ask of terror all throughout civilization, but the kinds of terror that we see and the question that we always thought that no one would get on a plane and blow it up now is a that that -- blow it up, but now we see that that is not alwa ys true. gen. kehler: i think that is a great question and it gets to the credibility of your deterrent. and one of the reasons that we have taken the position that says nuclear weapons need to be only one tool in a deterrent toolkit is because in some cases, i would argue our nuclear deterrent would not be a credible deterrent to deter certain acts. so how does our nuclear deterrent work today in the context of those kinds of threats, and the emergence, if you will of a very sophisticated and cultivated capabilities, how do we put all of those pieces together to put together an effective strategy? once again, i would cite professor gavin's point, there is not certainty, there is uncertainty. i will say that the threat of violence and violent extremists with nuclear weapons has been taken very seriously, and we can look at other policy documents not only from this administration, but from several administrations, that move that to the top of the agenda. that drives the non-proliferation efforts, which i think are worthy efforts. i think arms control is at least attached to that in some way, in terms of securing nuclear material, and we take that challenge seriously. how do we get the right mixture of deterrence factors together and capabilities and that is a very good question, and it is one has caused a lot of my colleagues a lot of grief. >> i would like to piggyback off of that question and ask you both to comment on the likelihood of a nonstate actor or terrorists actually getting a hold of nuclear material and how they might do that and if that is likely, i guess my question would be, can you talk about some of the regime's -- regimes and how they would act with that kind of material? where might we be worried that nonstate actors and terrorists could obtain this? prof. gavin: it strikes me, and what general kehler says is absolutely right, and is is from the outside as an absolute success, and it is a great concern, particularly after the september 11 attacks, and it is striking, at least to an outsider, how many in national security initiatives, how much cooperation there has been on the international front to deal with this absolutely critical issue. i do think there was a. of time -- i do think there was a period of time after 9/11 when perhaps the threat was overstated, and i think partially the threat was overstated, and partially there has been a policy in the intelligence international cooperation that clearly has to be the most important thing that you have to worry about. the obvious places and problems that you would worry about would be korea selling things, pakistan collapsing, and it is scary the kind of things we think about, and none of the initiatives seem to have done a very good job at making this far less than problem, but certainly i imagine this would be a priority of any administration. gen. kehler: and i agree with that completely. this is probably a double negative. this will never not be a concern. [laughter] >> [indiscernible] gen. kehler: this is one of the things that the academic policy divide is at its greatest because -- moderator: -- prof. gavin: this is one of the things of the things that the academic policy divide is at its greatest. if you talk to any policymaker there are few that you run into that don't say this is on the top of their list of things to worry about. if you go to an academic conference, most of my colleagues and josh bosch colleagues says this is not a likely event, and certainly the risks are lower than they were during the cold war, but i have come to the conclusion that that is not really helping very much if you are a policymaker, even if it is a low probability, the catastrophic consequences still mean you have to spend and a normal amount -- an abnormal amount of time thinking about it. gen. kehler: the risk is so great that we cannot ever take that from its right place, and that is from the top of the agenda. a lot of work has been done and a lot of work is going on now there are a lot of people who get up every day and get up every night and worry about this problem, and rightfully so. it is one that i don't believe we can ever take our focus off of for a minute. audience member: it seems like in the conversation, there seems to be discussion of russia's threats, and how likely is it that they would use nuclear weapons, and [indiscernible] weapons of mass destruction. [indiscernible] gen. kehler: it definitely factors in, it definitely factors in. if you go back to, 2002, i think i might have the date wrong, every president has talked about deploying nuclear weapons for our safety's's sake. -- safety's sake. there was this one gift to congress as a result of president obama's nuclear deployment plans and it specifically, in the unclassified realm it specifically mentions this possibility and potential for a small and limited use of part of a regional conflict, and so it is a planning problem that the military has to deal with, it is one that also occupies a lot of deterrence thinking, certainly in my former command and strategic command and certainly in the regional combatant commands as well, there is a lot of thought that goes into how we would make sure that we would never get to that point, how would we make sure that we could manage a crisis so that eventuality does not come attractive, and at the end of the day this is really about deterring a kind of use and making sure, as i said earlier understanding what would compel an adversary to do that, who would make these decisions, how would we use the right competition of deterrence tools to make sure that that could not happen, but yes it is a planning problem for us, something again, that the report from congress said that the possibility that the likelihood of a massive exchange had preceded, so we still have to be prepared for that as well because the deterrence aspects of that, but i think there is a recognition that we have listened to the russians to talk about their new doctrine and part of their doctrine is that perhaps we should use of nuclear weapons early instead of rather than late. >> [indiscernible] gen. kehler: no i would not want to go speculate on that. other than i would say, i think my job certainly as a head of a strategic command is to make should the president has all the options. >> i was wondering if [indiscernible] you could mention [indiscernible] and you said so much on the war on terror, and [indiscernible] how close we are to terrorist attacks, we are spending more on the war on terror than anything else? gen. kehler: you have asked in another -- asked another very difficult question, and it is about priorities. you know again the statistics of whether or not he will be the subject of a terrorist attack is only part of the story. the issue is that when it occurs we have people who are killed or injured and we look at the boston marathon as an example. as a terrible event in a terrible tragedy. and so doing everything that we can possibly do to make sure that that does not happen, i think belongs in the top priority where it is. i do think, though, and as i said in my talk, it is not the only priority that we have to worry about, and it is not the only national security priority that we have to be can earn about. that balance is going on every day in the pentagon and certainly we have seen in the press room over the last couple of days were congress is debating this very issue in the budget debate that they are having about the budget of defense and whether to exceed the budget cap amounts, that is the ongoing question right now the need to do many things at once and the question is, how do we pay for that? why do we still maintain our economic strength, which is part of national security as well? audience member: i would like to pose a question to [indiscernible] , and it seems that we should just worry about the position of nuclear weapons, and how do we respond to the argument of the use of nuclear weapons when we don't have to worry about [indiscernible] ? prof. gavin: that is a very interesting question, because most of our academic studies focus on proliferation once these weapons are out, and who wants them and very rarely, it is the question of what people will do when they have them. as you know, there is a lot of argument about this, and how you as a that question depends very much on how you think about nuclear weapons. there is a large body of thought that things that nuclear weapons are not very good at getting defense. you can't take territory with them. they are very bad offensive weapons. they are good defensive weapons. when a state wants them, so the argument goes, it would be to prevent others from interfering in their lives. if that were the argument, then one might say, well i don't really have to worry about them all that much. some states might want them to prevent the united states from interfering in their business, and i inc. that some -- i think that some analysts say that that is one way of looking at this and others say no, nuclear weapons might embolden leaders they might encourage them to engage in blackmail, to manipulate the inherent uncertainty of the situation. one of the things as i look act to khrushchev of the late 50's, he had far less nuclear weapons than the united states, yet he was willing to engage in a incredibly risky behavior, and if one looks closely, you can see one making the calculation that the united states would be responsible and back down, because it using nuclear weapons is so terrifying. leaving nuclear weapons in certain hands, you can exploit people's responsibility to get what you want. this is something that congress shelley did -- congressman shelley did point out. he thought that they would get the united states to back down and get berlin, and then his advisor said, what if they don't? that is absolutely terrifying. there is to completely different arguments are. and how you -- arguments here. and how you answer that seems fairly clear, that if you are a state like france with a status quo power, you got your weapons, and you probably want them for your own deterrent purposes, that is why sweden wanted them, that is why australia wanted them, and there are other countries like north korea where it is not clear if they just want them for these deterrent purposes. now this debate centers around iran. if you think iran just want them for deterrent purposes, well we would prefer them not to have it but it is not the end of the world. if they have them, with a behavior like wish you have -- would they behave more like khrushchev or like north korea? i am of the belief that they would have the more for deterrent purposes, again, one can't know. but that is how the argument divides. you are absolutely right though i take these things are used even when they are not used, and how they are used and how they are threatened, whether used for blackmail, coercion, is what makes them so terrifying. >> high, i have a couple of questions, -- hi, i have a couple of questions, in regards to the boston bombing. how would nuclear weapons deter acts such as the boston marathon bombing, that would be my first question, and the second question is you are speaking about the importance of holding up our nuclear arsenal and are we modernizing its, and how can we compete and arms race? gen. kehler: i will take a stab at both of those. there is a question whether nuclear weapons would deter someone from doing the boston marathon bombing, and i think that gets to my point, and my point is in the 21st century with a variety of security situations that we are a's, i think understanding how nuclear weapons play in our overall deterrence calculation is very important, and there is a lot of work that still needs to be done in that regard, i think because we find ourselves in this very interesting and very challenging and very unique time in world history regarding national security. i think it is hard to know, though sometimes, who is deterred from doing what by what? i think that it's hard to know, perhaps, let's put it that way taking a play from professor gavin from earlier, it is hard to know where they're these nuclear weapons do play a factor. there are some places where they probably do, in this new security environment beyond just the traditional sense that we have had. i think that requires a lot of academic work, to tell you the truth. i have made that appeal before at academic institutions like this, and i think that is one of the reasons that i have wanted to come, is to stimulate conversation in places like this and you will take this and have these conversations and look at this with an academic sense and it is very valuable and i think very necessary. in the second question regarding the arms race, i did we are in a different position. it does not mean you cannot have another nuclear arms race somehow, and i am disturbed when parties say they are going to walk away from treaties. i think the inf treaty, in my view, this is my personal view i think the arms control treaties because they have been done in a mutual way and they have been largely verifiable, i think they have enhanced our security. and so i am in favor of enhancing our security in whatever way we can do and i think arms control has a piece of that, and so i think it is a little bit of a different environment today than we were in the cold war, but modernization, in and of itself, does not, in my view, stimulate a new arms race. we are doing that modernization within a box these days. we have a policy box that we are operating in that needs to be self-imposed, and that policy box describes how we will go about doing life extensions on our existing weapons, not build new weapons, but rely on existing weapons, and i think because we are in the new start era, we have a box in which we have limits and numbers that we can't exceed, and i think that puts a number -- puts another layer of control, if you will, in the arms race. i have inc. the economic limiters -- i think the economic limiters could factor into what we do, but in the three points of the strategic triad, we can see that a nuclear submarine would not be saved to put in the ocean. submarine tubes can only go up so many times and then you have to build a new tube. that is the way it works. i am not a navy guy and i am not a tech guy, but i believe that when they say that. when we look for a replacement bomber, it is actually more of a dual capable platform. so the kind of platform that we would use in the conventional sense, like we would use the be-52 -- b-52's, we used them as a conventional bomber, and that is how we see the conventional world out there, and that just a need for a long range, penetrating platform. we would need that bomber even if for some reason we said it was not going to be nuclear we would need that bomber because the range, the payload the distance, we would be concerned about these things. i think we still get great benefit out of the icbm force and doing the appropriate and modern upgrades their is important, and we find ourselves needing to invest while you have a chance of declining budgets. honestly, i am glad i am not in a decision-making process anymore. [laughter] even though i was there, i am no longer a part of it. audience member: i wanted to know, keeping in mind that, can you see me? gen. kehler: i can see you now. [laughter] audience member: in terms of modern terrorism, and recruiting a lot of the guys that want to attack and some were thinking about the u.s. as being one of the largest arms transporters and where these stockpiles are taken, and then, i start thinking about, you know, how much does corporatism influence policy? to an increasing amount, i would say? i would like to know either or both of your reactions, and if it is feasible to limit our exporting as far as getting these corporations to get these out here, and as far as the frustration and experience of the members of a critically larger construct, what is your response to that, and we can take it which other -- whichever way. prof. gavin: that is such a great question -- gen. kehler: that is such a great question for a professor. [laughter] prof. gavin: and i would say that is a great question for a general. [laughter] there is the first part, and that is the discussion of corporate interest in u.s. national policy, and this is one of the subjects that i think i find almost no evidence that any major national security decision was influenced by the desire to make money or to satisfy a corporation, and i think this is one of the great mythologies of foreign policy, so i would be open to it if i saw one of the documents, but i think i have been struck, and i does not -- it does not mean that mistakes can't be made or even things that get downright morally problematic, but i have had very little example of national security leaders of saying well, in an ideal world we would not do this, that lockheed martin wants us to do this, so we had better. i have never seen documents about this, so it is kind of you know, a pleasant trotsky -esque trope, but i don't think it exists. i think that one of the many tools regarding national security decision-makers is to have and provide arms and weapons and support to their allies and at times, those arms have gotten and been used, perhaps not for the test purposes or have fallen into the bad hands of others. this is a completely rigid the -- this is a completely legitimate critique as to whether these export policies have been ineffective and wise. there have been cases where it has been, and there have been cases where it has not been, and sometimes it might have appeared very very wise and it might have been an important policy encountering the soviet union whirlwind and afghanistan, and there were unintended consequences and so you can assess that waste on, well, i would separate those two issues out. announcer 1: you can watch this entire program at smu and nuclear weapons a national security later on tonight and president obama spoke at the ted kennedy honoring ceremony. he said "it is not because they shared ted's ideologies and positions, but because they would discuss differences again and again and again." then a trance -- a conversation with transportation secretary foxx. now today's dedication of the kennedy institute. we will also hear from senator kennedy part wife and senator kennedy's sons. he died in 2012 of brain cancer and served for 45 years in the united states senate. 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