Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright took part in this conversation. This is just over an hour. Its great to be here. Thanks to the institute of peace. I think everybody here probably knows these panelists so im going to be very brief and you have them in your program as well. Well start with secretary Madeleine Albright who served under president bill clinton as secretary of state from 1997 to 2001 following four years as u. S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Shes the founder and chair of Albright Stonebridge group, a global strategy firm, and a professor of diplomacy at georgetown university. Admiral james staveredes, dean of the school of law and diplomacy at tufts university. He served as commander of southern and european commands and as nato Supreme Commander europe. Admiral staveredes is the chair of the board of directors of u. S. Naval institute. Frederick kemp, my fellow ute. Frederick kemp has served since 2007 as president and chief executive of the Atlantic Council overseeing the expansion of its scope of work. He was an awardwinning journalist at the wall street journal, covered the collapse of communism in europe and served as editor of the wall street journal europe, based in brussels. And senator tom cotton. He has served as a republican senator from arkansas since 2015. His Committee Assignments include the select committee on intelligence and the Armed Services committee. After graduating from harvard law school, senator cotton left a legal career following the september 11th, 2001, attacks to serve as an Army Infantry officer including service in afghanistan and iraq. Welcome to you all. Our topic this morning is very simple. I have a very easy job because i have four very smart people here. And they have a lot to say. I have a feeling. And this is quite simple, and im going to start with you, admiral staveredes and go down the line. Tell me through your three National Security priorities for the next administration. Im going to start with one that may or may not surprise you. I think cyber is extremely important. And the reason i put it at the top of my list is because i think in cyber we have the greatest mismatch between the level of threat which is quite high and our level of preparation which frankly is quite low. In other words, we worry about north korea, but we have options. Were kind of prepared. We worry about what russias doing. Were kind of prepared. We worry about violent extremism. We have programs. In cyber were really not there. So cyber. Number two, id say broadly would be the return of great power politics. Its do going to return to the world stage of germany and japan. And above all in this century the rise of india. How we move those pieces around. Will be challenging. This gets into South China Sea and crimea. And Everything Else we face. Great power politics underlying disorder. And the third for me would be the continuing stresses and strains from violent ext which we tend to identify as radical islam and that certainly is a significant part but we also have racial challenges. Dylann roof is a violent extremist. We have political challenges, brevic who killed many people in norway. Under the surface of the great power politics and looming out there like a tower i think is cyber. Secretary albright. Well, i would certainly agree with all of those. And have my own kind of list. And a little bit different organization. I do think we have living in a completely changed world in terms of the International System and how we operate in governance questions. And the discussion as to whether its all state actors, i would argue that the presence of nonstate actors has added an awful lot of challenges especially since our National Security toolbox is set up to deal with states and not with nonstate actors. So the governance. The second i think is the challenge of how the great power rivalries go on. There i really do think that we have to be concerned about what china and russia are doing and then also as secretary kerry said, what is going on in europe. Those aspects and looking at regional problems that come up and bite you that youve not really been ready for. And then the third aspect has also to do with more process. There is no faith in institutions. And this goes a little bit not just to cyber but to information. I stole this line from silicon valley, but it works so well to explain it, is that people are talking to their governments on 21st century technology. The government hears them on 20th Century Technologies and are providing 19th century responses. And therefore there is no faith in institutions in trying to figure out how to deal with all of this. I have a very elegant term for this. The world is a mess. And that will let ordinary people understand what were saying. And i think that there has to be some way that we look at the institutional structure, and i think we need to be able to understand the following thing and i hope we have a chance to talk about this more, is Foreign Policy, National Security policy does not come in fouryear or eightyear segments. And no president comes in with a clean slate, and so there has to be a look at what is out there that has to be dealt with. And then the things that will bite you that you dont know are coming. Which leads us to senator cotton. Senator cotton and i have been talking. Very interesting the way you look at this. That we talk about three National Security priorities. Were not talking about necessarily threats. And you view those quite differently. Thanks. And thanks to the institute of peace. I cant disagree with the admiral or the secretary. But as martha said as i was thinking about the title of this panel, three priorities, not threats, threats are in some degree already expressed here. The great powers, russia and china, rogue nations like north korea and iran, transnational actors like islamic terrorist groups. Theres no telling what any of those are going to do over the next ten days, what theyre going to do in the first ten days of the trump administration. All those whove been in government know you often have to react to contact. But where could the new administration go out and make contact, take the initiative, set priorities that would fundamentally advantage the United States and strategic competition. I would say theres three areas in that and this is a good time to pursue them because a new administration is a time when people expect a new path and its a time when you have the most domestic Political Capital in working with congress. So first would be substantial increases in our defense budget. Maybe going back to the National Defense panel from 2014 which itself is based on bob gates budget 2012, the last time the department of defense budgeted for the budget control act went into effect and the sequester spending cuts took effect. Second would be a review of our strategic posture. Both the bush and Obama Administrations in their first year in office undertook a Nuclear Posture review. The world has changed radically since then. Both russia and china are accelerating their nuclear efforts. Chinas developing hypersonic glide vehicles. Russia is flagrantly violating the imf treaty. If Russian Media reports are to be believed, theyre developing an underwater drone that can deliver Nuclear Weapons into our coastal cities. So i think we need to fundamentally reconsider our nuclear and our Missile Defense posture. And then third, a domestic issue that has farreaching International Consequences is to accelerate the shale revolution in American Energy production. We are blessed to have a country of great innovators, of risk takers, of investors, of fantastic scientists, geology that permits shale production in a way that really almost no other country in the world has that combination. Thats helped us become a Global Energy superpower. Thats something that will give us more freedom of action throughout the world. In particular, though, it will put more strategic pressure on russia. So, when you think about priorities, those three, if the administration would pursue them. Whatever happens in the world, whatever our adversaries do, will give us greater strategic flexibility to pursue specific policies about particular countries and regions. Thank you. And fred. For decades already ive been stealing secretary albrights ideas. So let me first say i want to grab on to the world is a mess as a fact. And then the other fact, and it wont become more orderly unless the u. S. Gets more deeply engaged. There is no one to substitute for us. I want you all to remember where you were on this day because were at a defining moment in history. You can pick your date, 1919, 1945, you can go back to 1815 or 1789, but thats where we are. Couple that with one of the most fraught moments of history, which is a transition to a new president , new party with an untested president. We had that in 1961 with the youngest president of all time, john f. Kennedy, and we ended up with the bay of pigs disaster in april, with the failed vienna summit where the soviets decided the president was weak, with the berlin wall. And then a year later you had the cuban missile crisis. So that set the parameters for the rest of the cold war, but we almost had a nuclear war. Im not saying anything like that will happen this time. The cold war was at stake then. I think the global system is at stake now. So my big overarching roof is can we save, readjust, reinvigorate the global system of practices, values that weve always had. And then there are three pillars and these are my three issues. Europe and russia. I think it was terrific that secretary kerry pointed to the European Union because if the European Union becomes unraveled or becomes more dysfunctional you cannot have a Strong America in the world with a weak europe. It just doesnt happen. Theyre a cornerstone of engagement. And russia is pushing on that. Both of those things. We need reassurance for europe and we need russia to know there are certain lines that cant be crossed, redrawing borders, testing nato allies at the very top of the list. The second is then the middle east. Here i want to embrace a report that the Atlantic Council, Hariri Center has done, secretary albright and steve hadley, where they outline its not a crisis of the middle east but a crisis from the middle east where you have extremism and migrants being exported, again undermining europe. We cant deal with that in the short term. Thats to be dealt with in the long term with our allies. So redoubling and deepening our relationships with allies in the region. That means our traditional sunni allies. And then working over the long term to tap what secretary albright and steve hadley rightly saw as some very promising tendencies in the middle east as well. Entrepreneurship, something that can point to prosperity. And finally china. If russia is the biggest threat short term to the global system, china could be a threat over time to the global system. But its also a stakeholder now, and it has a huge amount at stake right now. We cant put ourselves into conflict with china if we want the global system to be reinvigorated, to be readjusted and survive. We have to do it together with china, along those lines, i really think we then have to double down our relationships with our allies in the far east. Because if were strong with our allies, with japan, with south korea, with others, we will be able to have a much more positive relationship with china. So those would be my three. U. S. europe, middle east, china, asia. Thanks very much. And senator cotton, i want to go to you on this. What do you sense Donald Trumps priorities will be . Weve all seen tweets, weve all seen things he said during the campaign. And since he has become president elect. But whats your sense of what his priorities might be in terms of Foreign Policy . He is going to make America Great again. And how will he do that . Well, some of the issues that i touched on are things in which the president elect campaigned as well. Substantial increases in military spending. Fundamental reconsideration of our nuclear and strategic posture. Oil and gas production. These are things, whatever the president elect says on twitter, whatever he says in media interviews, are not good things for countries like russia. Theyre not good things for iran or some of our other adversaries in the middle east. If you look at some of his appointees to the cabinet, whether its jim mattis or mike pompeo or mike flynn, these are not shy and retiring violets who have a constrained role of americas view in the world. I suspect that president elect trump as he said on the campaign trail and based on some of his nominations will take a firmer line around the world with a lot of our adversaries and try to project greater strength and demand more respect for the United States. Hell be less willing to make concessions without receiving concessions in return. And i think those are all good things. I think those are a good change after eight years of the Obama Administration in which the president said famously early on that he wanted to extend an open hand rather than a clenched fist. But sometimes the clenched fist has to precede the open hand. You know, i want to talk about the tweets for a second. Its obviously something weve never seen before, this number of tweets like this. Its usually a statement and very formal. But those tweets have moved markets. Theyve moved ford. Theyve moved carrier. How will that work in Foreign Policy . Can it move foreign leaders, secretary albright . Im going to try to be polite. Let me just say that i am very concerned about the tweets and generally about the messages that are going out. And if i could say, secretary kerry said id invented the term indispensable nation. Actually president clinton did. I just said it so often it became identified with me. But there is nothing about that term that says alone. It means that the United States needs to be engaged and i think that that is a message we need to get out there. Not as America First but as america as a partner. There is nothing wrong with partnerships. I knricaow ame dont like the word multilateralism. It has too many syllables and ends in an ism. But the bottom line is all it means is partnership and understanding that the world as we see it in terms of the what you call the global issues that are out there, whether its terrorism or a disease or nuclear proliferation, those issues require partnerships. And so i do think there has been a system in place in the world for a very long time of how governments communicate with each other. How president s communicate with each other. How those documents are developed. Are they a part of some kind of decisionmaking process that does in fact reflect what the government thinks and that the congress thinks and what the American People think, and the tweets dont deal with that. In fact but if you want to shake things up, if you want a reset, if you really want to get someones attention, get taiwans attention, want to get chinas attention, why not . Let me just say, i think its fine. Disruption is a very interesting theory, actually. And i think it doesnt hurt. Destroying is not a good thing. And i think that part of the issue is, i think it is absolutely essential i said this. That Foreign Policy doesnt come in four or eightyear segments. Every administration, especially if its of a different party, tries to do things differently. But it has created great concerns. And let me just say one example is the transfer from clinton to bush. I was in the middle of negotiations with the north koreans. Bill perry just wrote about this. The decision was made by the Bush Administration not to continue those talks. I know would put north korea into one of the more dangerous aspects of what is going on out there. So i only use it as an example of the fact you may disagree with what president obama did. I may disagree with what president bush did. Actually, steven and i took a pledge not to talk about the past. But i think that it is what it is and it is essential that there be some understanding of what the track is, what the role of the United States is, how we became as a responsible power in cooperation with others. And tweets doesnt do it for me. Anybody else want to jump in on that . I will. I agree with secretary albright that if think of it as a diet. If your diet is exclusively shots of espresso, thats probably not a good thing. But as part of a fulsome diet where you are conducting normal diplomacy, you are executing agreements, you are negotiating treaties, you are moving military forces, i think an occasional shot of espresso can jazz you and actually energize things. Where i worry about it is i think of young officers, ill do a military kind of context to it. Which lets say a tweet appears that says hey, the next iranian gunboat that crosses the bow of a u. S. Navy ship is going to get blown out of the water. Which i dont think it was a tweet. I think it was at a rally. But youre very close. Because i did the story yesterday. Right. So what we need to recogni