Transcripts For CSPAN Foreign Policy And Global Threats 20180106

Transatlantic relations, he has advised the executive branch of the u. S. Government on a range of issues from the role of International Allies in postwar iraq to u. S. British leadership. His policy papers are widely read on capitol hill where he is regularly sought after for his advice. He received his doctorate degree from yale university. Let us welcome him and the rest of our panel today. [applause] good morning, everybody. Welcome to todays event. Thank you everyone for joining us in such extremely cold weather. Brutally cold weather. It is more like moscow and moscow than washington. We will be talking about the russians later. [laughter] and we have two superb washington foreignpolicy experts with us today. You will see both rebecca and michael frequently on cable news shows here in washington on a regular basis. Would like to introduce rebecca first, a National Security fellow. Rebecca specializes in nuclear deterrence, Missile Defense and counter proliferation. She has served as an advisor on to senatortters trent franks and has helped to launch the bipartisan Missile Defense caucus. Michael is a senior fellow at the brookings institution. He is also director of research for the foreignpolicy program at brookings and he specializes u. S. Defense strategy, the use of force and american National Security policy. He is also an adjunct professor columbia, princeton and the university of denver as well. He is the author of several books on Foreign Policy. He received his doctorate in foreignpolicy affairs from harvard university. I would like them to briefly say a few words to kick us off for todays discussion. Then i will follow that with a series of questions for our two panelists and then, we shall go into a q a with the audience. Rebecca, i would ask you to introduce yourself a bit more and provide any insights you would like to kick off with regarding todays discussion and debate. Sure. Good morning, everyone and thank you so much for braving the cold to come out and join us for a little conversation about american foreignpolicy. Is this on . You can hear me well . I thought for this audience i wanted to give you a little background as to how i got started in Foreign Policy , because i think that tends to be a curiosity for undergraduate students. I got my bachelors degree in history and Political Science at Ashland University as an ash brook scholar, a Political Science program. I did an internship every summer, i studied Foreign Language at the ohio state university. I am from ohio. And then, i came out to washington, d. C. As soon as i graduated and got my first job on capitol hill working for the house judiciary committee. Now, i had always wanted to focus on National Security policy, but that opportunity was not open at the time so i took a good job on the house judiciary committee. And i went to graduate school. I went to grad school at the u. S. Naval war college. I got a masters degree and National Security and strategic studies. Then i focused my studies more narrowly. And then i got a job for the congressman who is on the House Foreign Services committee and began specializing in strategic security. That is Missile Defense, nuclear deterrence, and counter proliferation. And that is a very short timeline. If you have more questions about the particulars of that afterwards, i am happy to spend some time talking with you all. I specialize in networking for the congressman and we launched the bipartisan Missile Defense caucus. It was to be a forum for republicans and democrats to discuss the challenges to the u. S. From the threat of Ballistic Missiles, and because Ballistic Missiles have become one of the i would say that we have entered a new missile era. Countries that do not have large militaries, navies and air forces that can challenge the u. S. Military, countries like north korea and iran, are investing in Ballistic Missiles because Ballistic Missiles married with Nuclear Weapons and chemical and biological weapons allow them to coerce a world power, a superpower, like the United States of america, which is why we are seeing so much focus on the iranian Ballistic Missile program as well as north Koreas Nuclear Missile Program. So, i wanted to create this forum for republicans and democrats to look at the threat and try to find areas in which we can find consensus and tackle those issues that we can agree on to better buildout our countrys missiledefense architecture. The caucus is there today and it still does that. And then i would just say that is the area of my focus although i do cover a wide spectrum of National Security issues now that my focus, because of how acute the north korean security problem has become, that has been my area of focus in addition to the iranian jcpoa, the iran deal and all of the issues that surround the problem. I will leave it there. Thank you, very much. Michael, if you could say a few words. Thank you very much. As you can see, i am a very old man compared to these two young whippersnappers up here but i will not make you hear the year by year. I love how rebecca did that. Let me do a 3060 second equivalent. I studied physics in college. Timemmer jobs during that went from dairy farm work in upstate new york to then trying to disprove einsteins general theory of relativity with a team of physicists. In case you wonder, einstein was right. [laughter] im not even kidding. It was not my idea to do that project but that was what we tried. And then i did peace corps in the former democratic republican of congo. I was Teaching College physics, but i had some other things that were more applicable to the year to zaire at the time. I came back and started doing a Public Policy graduate program, and ultimately, i wound up shifting from that to the Woodrow Wilson school of public affairs. I also spent time on capitol hill. Congress gets a bad rap. Congress as a body often deserves it but it is an equal partner in our government with the executive branch. A lot of people forget that. Even in washington. I am proud of the time that i got to spend in congress. For me, it was the congressional budget office. It is one of the three Main Research arms working for people like rebecca as they ask us to do different studies. And then, i have been at brookings, a nonpartisan Public Policy organization for 23 years. I will leave it at that. Thank you very much, michael. I would like to begin with an opening question with regard to the wider war against islamic terrorism. Of a huge priority for the u. S. Administration and has been a priority for much of the last two decades. It was recently announced isis has lost about 98 of its territory in iraq and syria. Is this basically in your view game over for isis in iraq and syria, or is there a danger that isis could reemerge in either of those countries . And, also, what explains the very, very rapid defeat of isis, Something Like 50 i ink of isis territory in syria and iraq taken away just in the last 12 months alone and the total of course 98 . If you could address those questions, ill start with you, rebeccah first, actually, then michael. Ms. Heinrichs sure. Ill take a piece of that. The answer tour first question is i think that we can take a we can be happy with the gains that weve made. I think that it is remarkable how quickly the u. S. Military has been able to actually defeat the socalled caliphate that had existed there. That is the organization that isis had in both of those two places. But isis is very good at reinventing itself and popping up in other areas in which there is a power vacuum so thats why when the tragedy of u. S. Forces killed popped up in the news and people are wondering why we had forces there it is because isis is trying to gain a foothold there. Well see that isis as an islamist, militant group is not going to be utterly defeated, i think, any time soon. But so why . Why the success . Why has the u. S. Military been able to i think over 5 Million People freed previously under isis control. So remarkable. Remarkable progress. Even during the obama years when it was the war and 3 Million People freed it was a slower campaign but also seeing some success as well. According to the pentagon some of the things that are different about the way were prosecuting this war is the tempo. The tempo of the military strikes. So how rapid we are going after these targets. It is not allowing, not allowing them to regain territory quickly. So it is just how rapid were actually prosecuting the war. And secretary mattis will say we have not changed the rules of engagement. You ove here people say the rules of engagement have changed. Hell say the rules of engagement havent changed changed but he has del kated down authority. We cut out the bureaucracy for approving various military strikes before we go ahead and do them. And that goes to the how rapid weve been able to prosecute the war and that is really what is owed to the success that weve had so far. Thank you very much, rebeccah. Michael . Mr. Ohanlon i agree with virtually all of that. President obama clearly struggled with syria policy but through the last one or two years began to get a better concept of what he thought he was going to do and set a lot of conditions. It took a while and things were only beginning to gel as rebeccah said by the end of his presidency and then President Trump was able to build on that, amplified that in some ways. Then you also saw to some extent the enemy, whether it was a big strategic high level decision or more of a sort of path they found as a natural way to proceed, they sort of partly dissolved. There were a couple places where they fought to the death, fought very hard. In other cases the enemy decided lets just shave our beards and revert back to being regular citizens of iraq or syria and sneak away. Hopefully nobody figures out who we were. Especially for a lot of the foot soldiers. And perhaps stay around to fight another day under different auspices in the future. For those of you who have forgotten a little bit of what happened at the end of the iraq war we really felt we had defeated clade there with the reece in the al qaeda there lo and behold a lot of the extremist fighters and others who became radicalized as time went on were sort of biding their time to see what would happen under the new iraq of Prime Minister malaki. When they didnt like it they joined up with isis and of course isis took a lot of iraq, too. As rebeccah said. Those were the two countries, iraq and syria, where it had the strongest foothold. We have to be very careful about declaring victory. President trumps path forward in iraq is difficult but easier to imagine because we have a government there we can work with and should be trying to help reform, help further improve the conditions in its own country to patch up the sunnishiakurdish divisions, to moderate or minimize the role of iran. There are some things we can do, staying engaged with iraq with relatively modest numbers of forces and maybe turning more of our Security Assistance into economic aid because iraq is still struggling economically. If theyre going to repair those sectarian divisions theyll need a stronger economy. I think the path forward is going to take some continued american attention and resources but is relatively easier to sketch out as to what it should be. Syria is still a huge hornets nest. We are nowhere near finishing a solution to the civil war unless youre like russia and youre happy to see president assad just win the conflict. Even if you have that view which i dont think most americans do it is not clear to me assad can really stay in power and stabilize the country because he has so much blood on his hands at this point, so many sunnies, the majority of the country so angry with him because he killed their brotion and cousins and friends and sisters and, so, that country is a long way from anything we should call victory or stability. On that one ill just give President Trump a very interim hopeful grade but nowhere near a success. Ms. Heinrichs if i may tack on there, the other challenge with iraq were seeing is iran is before o make sure that the United States tries to pull back again that it has a greater influence in iraq and over the iraqi government. That is something the United States government is acutely aware of and trying to make sure that part of the final solution, whatever that might be, in iraq, a stable government, protected zone before it t up can do that on its own the United States wants to make sure iraq is an allie of the United States not another proxy state of iran. That fits into the overall strategy for what the United States is trying to do in terms of pushing back iranian influence at large sort of in the region. Mr. Gardiner thank you for those excellent answers. It is very striking that 7. 5 Million People i think were liberated in total actually. And over the last couple of years. Thats a huge achievement. Moving over to iran, now, over the past few days weve seen a wave of street protests, not just in tehran but practically every major city in the country. An astonishing level of public protests in an extremely authoritarian, dictatorial country. What should the u. S. Response be to the protests . Has the Trump Administration handled the iran protest issue well, considering president obamas handling of the 2009 protests in iran . What are the implications as well for the Iran Nuclear Deal . Could we be potentially seeing even possibly the downfall of the islamist regime in iran . Ill kick off with michael first. Mr. Ohanlon thanks, nile. Well, to answer the question, first, how to handle demonstrations like this i do think so far President Trump is doing fine. And, you know, factoring in and adjusting for his particular approach to how he addresses diplomacy in general, which is not always my preference. But now that we know how he operates, i think the basic approach of supporting the protesters and condemning the government is generally fine. But i do think when you look more broadly at how we handle these kinds of situations lets imagine 2009 with president obama in iran or the arab spring and then how we try to help gently push and then more firmly push president mubarak out in egypt or try to encourage protests in syria and look what happened. We have to be a little bit aware of the down sides of luring people into thinking well come help them in a way that we wont. That would be my main caveat or caution would be, not that iran today is equivalent to syria, 2011, but sometimes these things take on lives of their own. You cant really read them that well even if you are a specialist in the country. To know when things get to a Tipping Point and you have sort of an emerge ent phenomenon of mass protests and knowing where that goes. Very hard to foresee. People didnt necessarily foresee tiananmen in 1989 or the, you know, wave of liberation movements in eastern europe. About that same time period. These things tend to be unpredictable. What you want to do is be true to your own principles. Be clear about where you stand. You also want to be aware of the limits of your influence. And so not that i believe it to be likely, i would not suggest President Trump give iranian protesters the sense that were somehow going to intervene on their behalf. It would be pretty unlikely we woe do so in iran given its size and capacities. That would be my one caution. Otherwise i do think that the initial response is basically fine. One more quick word on the nuclear deal. Maybe stop there. On the broader question of how we deal with iran Going Forward. The nuclear deal that president obama negotiated, joint comprehensive plan of action in 2015 is going to be very hard for the United States to overturn now because it is an International Agreement and the monitoring bodies in charge of it basically say that iran is doing most of whats asked under that particular deal. On the Nuclear Portfolio at least. Otherwise iran is still behaving horribley. Probably worse even than in 2015. But we need to use other mechanisms and means i believe to address that. The nuclear deal i dont believe was as good as it could have been but it is going to be very hard at this point to undo it. So we can try to improve it. But thats got to be done through negotiations which means we need new leverage. That is going to be tough to get. If we just rip it up i think well be in a worse place. What i hope is that President Trump stays very tough on iran in regard to the demonstrations, in regard to its regional activities, you know, its covert actions in iraq and syria and elsewhere. Figure out better strategies to push back against iran in those domains but leave the nuclear deal essentially intact even if he doesnt like it because again, it is going to be hard to replace it with anything better at this point given that the whole International Community is essentially behind it. Even if we stop dealing with iran economically because weve decided we dont like the deal anymore the rest of the world will probably continue to do its trade and investment with iran and will also be giving iran a potential pretext to withdraw from its obligations under the deal. I would say be tough against irans regional activities. Be vigilant on the nuclear deal. Be supportive of the demonstrators rhetorically and i think that may add up to the best policy we can do at this point. Ms. Heinrichs i could go 75 different angles on this and we could spend the rest of the time just kind of unpacking. I agree with a lot the of what was just said. Well start with the protesters. I do agree that President Trump has done very, very well on this. The promptness of his response of showing solidarity with the and that goes for everybody else in the administration who would have a role. Youll hear a lot of pushback from former Obama Administration officials, sort of the other side to this, the other position on this is that we should actually be quiet. That this is sort of an iranian affair and the u. S. Government should stay out of it. That is not what many of the demonstrators say. The demonstrators in iran are not all demonstrating for the same reason. Some of them it is generally dissatisfaction with the regime in general. And then for a variety of reasons why theyre dissatisfied with the regime. What the iranian people were promised is that the iran deal would bring in this new wave of Economic Prosperity for the country and they havent seen it. It just they havent seen it. The iranian government used much of the funds for its missiles nd for the program and this is why i oppose the iran deal with everything i had leading up until the deal. I testified before congress that if you do not include irans Missile Program, it is a just a horribley flawed deal, because the iranians will not continue to spend all of their resources on these intercontinental Ballistic Missiles any time the iranians or North Koreans test a satellite, ok, that is an intercontinental Ballistic Missile test. It is different in terms that there are some other technological challenges for getting the launch on the right trajectory to get it on to its target but theyre not just trying to inspire the next generation of nasa kids. This is not what theyre doing. They are trying to figure out how to get that missile up. And so both the North Koreans and the iranians have cooperated in the past on their Missile Programs. And so the iran deal had all kinds of problems i saw. One of the major problems was if you dont include its Missile Program, longrange Missile Program you are essentially punting. Even if the deal works as the president , himself, president obama even said that even if the deal works perfectly, were not eliminating the program entirely. What were doing is buying ourselves time for the breakout time. By months. Now itll take rather than a year for the iranians to break out and have a full fledged Nuclear Program or i guess it was four months to nine months or Something Like that. I forget the timeline. It was only a matter of months if they decided to break out. So what they could do is just bide their time and not work on the nuclear piece, work on the missile piece which by the way is much harder. The North Koreans have had the nuclear piece done for a long time. It is the Missile Program theyve been working on. E North Koreans and iranians can continue, once the deal is done, sunset, then they can go forward with their Nuclear Program and now have the Delivery System completed. I always believed that they should be connected. Wendy sherman the chief negotiator for the United States at the time said that the missiles would be addressed early on in the negotiations but as the iranians just said, no deal, the missiles will never be constrained, that sort of fell off the table. For the United States. So may overall view of the iran deal was if you go back and you look at what Obama Administration officials said that was necessary for a good deal, and compare it to the deal we have now, it doesnt come anywhere near what the officials, themselves, said was necessary for a good deal. If you dont believe me, you can go look at senator schumers press release when the deal was completed. He opposed the deal. He is a democrat. He laid out all of the reasons he thought the deal was bad and i agree with every single one of his complaints. Ok. We have the deal now. I am actually supportive of the administrations, the u. S. Administrations approach now which is to say you dont certify the deal if we dont know for sure they are complying. There are reasons we believe they arent complying including the fact that we dont have access to some of the military installations, the iranians complain the deal didnt include the military installations. My reading of the iran deal was it was purpose liam big use to get the deal done but then the United States position was we did have access to them if we wanted them and the iranians said we simply dont have access to them. So there are some things im already suspicious of that the iranians could be cheating on the margin as we speak. Anyway, i believe the approach is good not to certify but continue to stay in the deal and put pressure. For all of the reasons. It took years of bipartisan work to get the sanctions on the Iranian Regime, to get the International Isolation on the Iranian Regime. It took an enormous amount of diplomatic heavy lifting. And so because weve released those sanctions, its just very, very difficult to get that isolation back on the regime. But i believe the u. S. Approach has been good. You dont certify if you cant certify the iran deal you can continue to levy sanctions on the Missile Program. You support the protesters. I really like the point, you dont want to give the protesters false hope that the United States is going to do more. I would actually even say that i would caution our own government that we dont become overly optimistic about what we can actually accomplish here. Because that is that has been a bipartisan american tendency to have an overly optimistic view of what we can actually do. And i think that is actually to President Trumps credit, his instincts on this are right, which is that we are trying to dial back and lower the expectations about what the United States can actually do in some of these countries. And this needs to be understood as an iranian development. This is the iranian people that the United States can provide moral support certainly. If there is anything else we can do to help the protesters by bringing attention to the crackdown that the Iranian Regime has done, eliminating, trying to eliminate social media and the ability for the iranian protesters to get information in and information out, we should do it. And then, also, differentiate between the iranian people, who want reform, and the iranian government, which there is nothing moderate about the iranian government. When you hear people talking about the moderate president rue wanny that is a lie. He is not a moderate. Some former Obama Administration officials will agree that was simply a myth in order to get the iran deal done. Tried to frame him as a moderate but in fact since the ran deal occurred theres been violations of u. N. Security council on missile tests, their support for terrorism abroad has continued, support for hezbollah. Again, so that is under the supposed moderate. I could keep going. Ill be quiet there. Mr. Gardiner thank you very much. Some tremendous answers to that question. The demonstration just, you know, just how important the iran issue is at the moment for the United States. The fact weve devoted a good 10 minutes of our discussion today to iran alone. Time is always against us. Ill move shortly to audience questions. A lot of you have a wide range of Foreign Policy and national ecurity questions. If i could ask the panelists very briefly give a big picture overall assessment of the Trump Administrations Foreign Policy at the end of the first year. How is the administration doing . Is the administration doing better in your view than the Obama Administration . Have we seen, you know, a fundamental change in u. S. Foreign policy over the last year . Is there more continuation than radical reform going on . Ill ask michael to answer that question, first. Mr. Ohanlon thank you, nile. Het me paut couple propositions on the table. Ill be intrigued to see how rebeccah responds as well. I am completing an oped with david gordon in usa today soon on exactly this question. Were both sort of moderates. He has worked in both democratic and republican in congress. I am sort of a moderate to hawkish democrat. I am personally wary of President Trump. Make me , his approach nervous and i did not support him two years ago in the campaign. All that said i am surprised in many ways at how much continuity there has been in american policy in 2017. I dont think trupp has been better than president obama. I think president obama was at an individual level a better kind of leader, better diplomatic style, but President Trump has assembled such a strong National Security and Foreign Policy team and when push comes to shove, usually listens to their advice on the biggest decisions that i think weve wound up with an ok first year. Im still very nervous because some aspects to what hell do on north korea for example i find unpredictable. I do worry about a temperamental kind of reaction leading to places that we shouldnt be. Especially given that north korea is run by a person who troubles me far more than donald trump does and who doesnt have great advisers around him. Anybody who was going to give their good advice to kim jong un has probably been assassinated by now as weve seen because he has controlled his own internal inner circle to the point where he just has a lot of fans giving him advice he wants to hear. In that kind of a situation i do get nervous sometimes by President Trump. Nor do i agree with some of his rhetoric or decisions on issues like Climate Change and immigration policy. When we get down to the core National Security issues of how to handle iraq, syria, afghanistan, chinas rise, russias in general theres been more continuity than i expected. A couple improvements on a couple issues. A couple of regrettable developments on a couple others. But on balance, compared to what i expected, having hisened to canada trum candidate having listened to candidate Trump Campaign for two years there has been more of a main stream approach and better approach to Foreign Policy than i expected. Most of the credit i give to secretary mattis, secretary tillerson, ambassador haley, National Security adviser mcmaster. Some extent Vice President pence. But ill give trupp credit for one thing. Hes ill give donald trump credit for one thing. He is the guy who hired all those people. On balance this is not meant as endorsement of donald trump and he does make me nervous. But things have been a little better in 2017 than i would have expected and a little more continuity than i expected on a number of issues as well. Mr. Gardiner over you to, rebeccah. Ms. Heinrichs i could spend 30 minutes on this. I appreciate the honesty. I come from the republican end of the spectrum. I have advised i was part of an organization that in my free time i also have four kids. I want to put that out there too because you have to have that picture in terms of what i am doing with my life. In my free time, if im working at a think tank at the Hudson Institute in my free time leading up to the campaign i was part of a republican Advisory Group to the various republican president ial candidates. I spent the bulk of my time advising senator rubio. I was doing backgrounders, doing sort of rapid helping with press releases and statements and that sort of thing during the campaign. I did the same thing for governor walker. I did briefings for governor christie. I never talked to mr. Trump. He didnt ask and i didnt offer. So that didnt happen. I was sort of advising what most of the republicans out here in washington, d. C. , who they were working with and advising and we never crossed paths. I sort of was coming from the more sort of conventional republican style of rhetoric and the Ronald Reagan style of speaking. I even opposed mr. Trump during the primary. So as we sort of started winding down and the field started getting smaller his style concerned me. The fact that all the people that i knew who knew a lot about these subjects werent talking to him concerned me. And so i voiced my concerns. I wasnt shy about that. And then i will say this, too. This will be another piece of advice i would give working in this town. Just being an american in general and the way politics works. You want to stay sort of really get serious, deep down convictions about what your principles are and not to confuse your principles with policy and not to confuse principles with sort of style and approach. This has been one of the big, i think, gifts that donald trump and his administration has gifted to this country. This is a very interesting take i realize. But it has sort of revitalized politics in a way so were reassessing and trying to figure out what our principles are, what our policy is, and if style preferences can sometimes be confused for policy and principle. Ok . You want to be able to be willing to admit where you were wrong, not to be dogmatic. Not to get into group think. And to reevaluate where your positions are as youre given more information. I believe some of my early instincts and opinions about donald trump were wrong. Flat out wrong. He has surprised me in a lot of ways on his instincts in terms of what he thinks is right. His understanding of America First i have grown to appreciate. You know, he has assembled this team. And it cant be an accident. Its not an accident that he has some of the absolute best people he could have possibly found in his cabinet. And he deserves great credit for that. I simply refuse to believe that this is all in spite of donald trump. That american Foreign Policy has been doing so well in my view. So just a couple minutes in terms of what i think he is doing. What we have sort of gotten lulled into, and this is bipartisan, this has been the bush administrations over optimistic view of what the United States can accomplish in terms of nation building. Ok . Even if me as an analyst believes we should be doing x, y, or z in Foreign Policy it doesnt mat fer you dont have the buyin and support of the American People. Ok . And so where weve over extended you have to adjust that. Yes you have to lead the American People in terms of what you think is right but you also have to listen to them and adjust and accommodate for what the American People want. I believe donald trump as a pop list, american civic nationalist, has a better handle on that actually than i think we have done on either party in the past. In the recent past. And our Foreign Policy is sort of calibrating for that. Ok . We still care about human rights. As a country, as a government, and the administration has received a lot of criticism for sort of down grading. If you studied any of the National Security strategy that was just released, the administration got a lot of criticism from the sort of ill call them establishment because i dont know what else to call them but Establishment Republicans and democrats criticized for the sort of downgrading of human rights as a priority. I take issue with that. This i take issue with that, and this is why killing isis is good for human rights, and we are doing that very well. Rolling back kim jonguns nuclear Missile Program and denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula is good for human rights. So what this administration is doing is recalibrating to make sure we are pursuing American Security interests, not abandoning our principles for what we believe is right, but looking to see where we pursue looking to see where we pursue those American Security interests and where they meet and intersect with human rights. Then we really talk about. The perfect example is the iranian protests now, where we are talking about human rights left and right now. We do not talk about human rights so much publicly when it comes to saudi arabia, because they are helping us fight isis. People see that as inconsistent. It is perfectly consistent when you try to understand what the administration is trying to do. The other big plug for what we are trying to do, which i hope the administration will do better over the next couple years, is its unapologetic defense of not american parity with other countries, but of American Leadership and superiority, unapologetic American Military strength, which is one you are seeing this emphasis on recapitalizing the American Military, expanding the missiledefense, finishing the modernization of the Obama Administration promised on the nuclear triad, but making sure says we want to have the best Nuclear Weapons the world has ever seen, and that makes everybody nervous. I say do it, because Nuclear Weapons are there to preserve the peace and deter conflict. His approach is different, but this is the way i have heard general mcmaster, his national it,rity adviser talk about and the president is not great at explaining a lot of this, the peace and which is why it lends to confusion and misunderstanding. Mcmaster is very good at understanding what the president wants and explaining it. Same with nikki haley, general mattis is one of few words, but he is one to watch and Pay Attention to what he says. What we are trying to do now is regain the strategic advantage. We not withdrawing from the world. The rumors of a isolation was absolutely not part of what President Trump wanted to do. He wanted american strength to be such that we could intervene when it was in our interests and not when it was in our interests and just sort of regain the american strategic footing. So i think they are doing well. I think the administration is doing well. I think the president s rhetoric gets in the way of himself sometimes, but that is a matter of politics because he has his own base. I am not in his audience when he tweets. He is not tweeting to please rebeccah heinrichs. It does not bother me as much as some because you dont get to pick and choose which traits you like about the president. He is who he is, and that same personality that gives us the uncomfortable tweets is the same one that has empowered general mattis to take out isis. You take both for what it is. I am very optimistic about the direction of the United States and our Foreign Policy. Mr. Gardiner thank you very much. Terrific insights. Would add actually that the most impressive so far, the real star has been ambassador nikki haley, who has done an would addabsolutely outstandins u. S. Ambassador to the united nations. I think she is somebody who reminds me quite a bit of my old boss Margaret Thatcher in many respects. I expect she will continue to project very strong u. S. Leadership in the coming years. I now would like to invite questions from the audience. And no shortage ms. Heinrichs wow. I thought you were leaving at first. Mr. Gardiner it would be help ful if you could identify, just mr. Gardiner it would be helpge studying as well, would be very helpful. It is very good to see an orderly britishstyle queueing. That is very impressive. Mr. Ohanlon do you want a bunch of them to ask questions . There are so many. We are so short on time. Gardiner that is an extremely good point. I am going to i think perhaps if we could have the first three students in this line here ask their questions. We will take those, and then we will take two or three on that side, and we will see how we are doing from there. If i could have the first three students in line here on this side ask their questions, and in the panelists will respond. Hello. I am studying at Northern Arizona university. Recently the u. N. High commissioner of human rights has stated the events happening in myanmar are textbook examples of ethnic cleansing. I am wondering if i was wondering how the lack of response from the International Community has influenced the plight of those of the rohynga. Mr. Gardiner thank you very much. I will take the next question as well. I am from Suffolk University in boston. Do you think we should create stricter guidelines in the iaea for countries to follow when it comes to Nuclear Technology and the dismantling of Nuclear Power plants, specifically those that pose a threat to interNational Society, National Society . Mr. Gardiner thank you very much, and the third question. I am from Suffolk University in boston. What do you believe will be the United States strategy Going Forward in syria with the Trump Administration increasing the tempo and increasing the bureaucracy from our military . Mr. Gardiner thanks. Questions on rohingya, the iaea, and syria. Rebeccah, would you like to start. Ms. Heinrichs i will take the ones closely in my area. Ff, counter nuclear proliferation. The armscontrol regime that aboutt of regime we Talk Committee arms regional thatrmscontrol regime controls the development and the spread of Nuclear Weapons and the associated technology. I would say it has generally failed. There is an optimistic note for you there. It does not mean i dont think we should not try, but i think some of it is our own doing. I think the iran deal in particular was a major blow to the nonproliferation regime. I am going to get to your question more specifically in just a second. And the reason for that is what i believe it communicated to folks like those in north korea and elsewhere is if you persist long enough in your violations , you will essentially be able to keep a latent program in is what basically happened but the iranians. In terms of what the iaea needs to do, im not very optimistic. I am not very optimistic with how well that will work, simply just giving the iaea more authority and power to go in and control. I think it is generally worth a shot, but in terms of what we contribute to that effort and our resources, i would say minimal. It works better if you are trying to actually prevent this is my tiny 101 on what i think the United States is doing in nuclear in nuclear deterrence. If your main goal is to prevent the spread and deployment of Nuclear Weapons anywhere in the world, the best thing the United States can do is remain a very robust, serious, credible Nuclear Deterrent. There are many countries that have foregone Nuclear Weapons , and have chosen not to have them because they rely on the American Nuclear umbrella. As the United States becomes weaker, we do not modernize, it was george h. W. Bush that ended the American Nuclear Testing Program, a republican. He ended that Testing Program unilaterally. We can start it up again if we need to do that. We have chosen not to do that unilaterally. The best thing we can do is have a robust Nuclear Deterrent threat, so other countries who do not have them continue to believe they do not need them , because they rely on the United States. It worries me when people start saying we can perhaps just deal with north korea having a Nuclear Program. As soon as you get comfortable and you move to a containment strategy, who is going to want Nuclear Weapons in that region . South korea is going to want at the very least the United States to deploy tactical Nuclear Weapons, which we withdrew. If there are Nuclear Weapons in south korea, who else is going to want Nuclear Weapons . Someone is whispering it. Japan. Whos going to be really upset japan has Nuclear Weapons . China. Ms. Heinrichs do you see japan . The problem we are running into . That is a powder keg. It is a very precarious situation. The best thing the United States can do, realistically. I am not a proponent of global zero that we have this wonderful idea of going down the path getting rid of the Nuclear Weapons. The problem we are running into . We have seen what the world is like without Nuclear Weapons, and more people died before the usage of the terrible United States was the only country who employed Nuclear Weapons. I only say employed, not used. Were using them right now. We are deterring mass war with them right now. And so they have been a great force for global peace, and weve seen much fewer deaths globally since they were employed at hiroshima and nagasaki. If you are curious more about what i think about this and i have written lots about this. It is long winded, but you touch on my favorite subject. On my favorite subject. I will leave the other i talked too long. Mr. Ohanlon on myanmar, i think the world has responded well in two ways, first, getting on the ground with enough people and enough monitoring capability to challenge the government narrative in burma in myanmar on the ground with enough people that this was a justifiable response to the actions of some of the activists with the rohingya community. There were such extremists, but i think the response was excessive. Then you can ask and we have put a lot of diplomatic pressure on as well, where i think it is difficult for me and more to maintain difficult for myanmar to maintain diplomatic standing. Maybe a much more extensive sanctions regimen would have been appropriate, but i acknowledge those first two things were done pretty well. Sometimes in these kinds of situations, that is the best you can do. I am glad more people were not killed because ethnic cleansing can sometimes be reversed. Ethnic killing cannot be, of course. On syria, where there has been a huge amount of killing and of killing and huge amount of displacement, i think we are in a conundrum. We still have an Al Qaedalinked pocket in the northwest of the country that has not been defeated. Above and beyond all that, we df not have a stable solution to the civil war that has been envision easily envisioned easily envisioned right now. I think some combination of temporary autonomous zones in the east, north, and south with then over time trying to create various incentives for russia and others to push assad out of power or persuade him to go is the only viable strategy. Persuading assad to go is going to be very hard. Realistically we are not going to do it within the geneva because forprocess, assad who comes from a Minority Group called the alilance, that would be tantamount to essentially running his own people at risk, because they are going to be dominated in any future such government, so he will not agree to that. Were going to have to get more realistic about what a successor government to assad might be, and in the meantime help certain parts of the country begin to partially govern themselves and rebuild themselves, try to work towards a system by which that can be done without reigniting the worst of the civil war or creating a huge russian or syrian counter reaction. That is the best i can do in 60 seconds on syria. I will leave it at that. Mr. Gardiner thanks very much. We only have about eight or nine minutes left. I just want to take everyones question, and then the panelists will give their rapidfire responses to those. Siteree students on this here, if you could very briefly give your questions, and then we will move over to that side. I go to Northern Arizona university. Trump tweets a lot, but how does his tweeting, especially when it comes to north korea and korean tournaments, how does that undermine diplomatic efforts or affect the peninsula with when it comes to nuclear proliferation, or the Nuclear Program in north korea . I attend Suffolk University in boston. My question is, due to the importance and relevance of social media, how has groups like isis and other terrorist organizations utilize that, and how do they recruit with it, and what does the u. S. , as an administration, doing to combat that . Thank you. Thank you very much. Hi. I am from the university of arizona. Rebeccah, you were saying a lot how we cannot abandon human rights conflicts and we have to preserve human rights. I was wondering if you think the United States, since trump has said he does not want as many refugees coming into the country as there were during the Obama Administration, do you think the United States should take a bigger role in accepting refugees, since it is only 1 of people in humanitarian crises actually gain asylum . Mr. Gardiner thank you, and now we will switch over to this side. I am with the harvard extension school. I was thinking Bigger Picture with the concerning feature of trumps tweets, and was wondering what your opinions would be on the political chess board Going Forward, as far as International Relations and allies go. Mr. Gardiner thank you. I am from miamidade college. You said about strategic advances in our military system and other things like that. How can we show this administration we need to do more strategic advances at home with our Education System so that we can have the resources advances integic our military system and Foreign Policy . Hello. I am from Guilford College in greensboro, north carolina. I was wondering what your take was on our administrations recent antiislamic, antiminority, antiimmigrant rhetoric, and if that in your opinion is increasing the radicalization of americanborn americanbased muslim youth, and if it is providing propaganda for groups like isis to further entice them, and whether that is compromising our National Security at home. Good morning. University of massachusetts lowell. This question is for michael ohanlon. You spoke briefly about trumps firstyear year regarding Foreign Policy and you already spoke about the improvements. Could you go into more detail about the steps he took and explain what you meant about continuity and what we can see the next year . Mr. Gardiner thank you. One final question. Thank you. With conceptual models of analysis, can you compare trump and kim jongun as rational decisionmakers . Will the bureaucratic and conceptual models balance kim jongun handwrote if they are not rational decisionmakers . Mr. Gardiner thank you, and we have literally five minutes left. Ms. Heinrichs this is like a very hard game show. Mr. Gardiner we will start with rebeccah. Ms. Heinrichs ive got them. Mr. Gardiner two or threeminute responses, and then to mike. Ms. Heinrichs several questions about the president s twitter usage. There are a lot of people that say his rhetoric is undermining diplomatic efforts especially regarding the Korean Peninsula, to which i respond, give me the evidence. Right now you have the first time in two years the north has opened its communication channel with south korea. I am not optimistic about how that is going to go. If they want to chat about the olympics, that is fine with me. I do not think it will change the u. S. Position, which is the ultimate denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. There has been no evidence that the president s harsh rhetoric on twitter has negativelyon twiy impacted what we are seeing. In fact, all the evidence points the other way, like it or not. On twitter has negatively impacted what we are seeing. In fact, all the evidence points the other way, like it or not. Sometimes facts do not go with peoples narrow views, but facts do not care about your feelings. What we are seeing is enormous International Support for what the United States is doing, the harshest sanctions we ever seen. During the Obama Administration, i kept hearing theres nothing left to sanction. That was not true. We have been crushing north korea in terms of sanctions. The chinese have been on board. Yes, the chinese are now violating some of these sanctions in terms of selling oil, but we got to work on that. A great International Isolation situation with the United States, and that is because the reason that makes everybody comfortable about the president s tweets about north korea, it is injecting some credibility in terms of our threats and willingness to use military force if this doesnt get solved peacefully. I think that makes some folks uncomfortable. You see the philippines and others wanting to cut off trade with north korea, when before that they increase trade by over 100 during the Obama Administration. Human rights and refugees. I would challenge your underlying assumptions on whether or not bringing refugees here is even what the refugees want. If you look at some of these u. N. Refugee camps, there has some polling done in terms of where these folks want to settle again. These are not midwestern, prodemocracy, givemetheamericandream folks who are in these camps in syria. Many want their country back, givemetheamericandream folks but they want to stay in the region. They do not want to be massacred. They are still islamists. When i say islamist, i mean a political ideology as part of their system of government. So they are not in my view great candidates for assimilating well in the United States in terms of bringing in enormous flows of refugees. I can go on and on. And then i want to talk about real quick mr. Gardiner i think that is tremendously well done. You got to have to answers already. We just have a couple minutes left for michael to respond, and then we will have to bring the event to a close. Mr. Ohanlon let me do a bit of what rebeccah did in terms of trying to group, there were questions about allies, in terms of trump as a divisive leader, his tweeting and style of rhetoric and so forth. I would parse it like this. Im not quite as favorable toward president ial as some, maybe not as favorable as rebeccah, although she had a lot of specific caveats as well. I would say in terms of management of allies, most of our allies are nervous about donald trump. Many of their publics are not that happy about donald trump if you look at Pew Foundation , however the alliances themselves have been reinvigorated, not in the sense of stronger than they were, but compared to what people feared a year ago, when they saw donald trump the populist come into the white house having said a lot of our alliances might not be important. And ultimately largely because of the team he hired and therefore deserves credit for hiring, i think people persuaded him that we need to be on ambiguous in our commitment to our various allies. So after the first year, i am pleased by that. I try to talkn about how i see President Trump, part of how he is compared to my expectations having listened to his campaign. So when i say things are surprisingly continuous in some realms, this is not meant to imply that i am easy about all of this and calm and relaxed and necessarily confident about the future. I share rebeccahs view on north korea that there is some hope that the sum total of all the things that have happened could put us in a reasonable place, but i also have the fear that trump will box himself in because he has said some very strong things about eliminating Nuclear Programs, which even though i agree with rebeccah, it has to be our goal over time. We cannot give the North Koreans too much until we get to that point. That is not a realistic interim goal. Where we get to a point where we insist on the complete denuclearization, and the president has this style of thinking and speaking, we could wind up persuading ourselves where we get to a point where we insist on the complete denuclearization, and the president has this style of thinking and speaking, we could wind up persuading ourselves that we have to force things to a crisis Decision Point and wind i think we are squeezing investments, whether it is the budget or education. We do not know what the budget will be for this year because it has not been worked out. What we do see is the white house pushing very hard for increases in military spending, cuts in diplomacy, cuts in foreign aid, cuts in environmental protection, more modest but real cuts in other domestic programs, and the tax cut plan, while appealing politics, it is in the context of a country that already has a deficit and a debt that are too big. If i was going to give an overall bottomline onesentence summary, Foreign Policy has been a little more stable and a little better than i expected, but domestic policy has i think done the country some damage, which is perhaps no surprise given that i am a democrat, and most democrats feel we need domestic investment at a comparable level. That is where i would come with my bottom line. I am nervous with where we could go with north korea and iran, although i am hopeful the better angels of this administration will continue to steer us through these choppy waters. Mr. Gardiner michael, rebeccah, thank you for a terrific talk. [applause] at campresident is david this weekend meeting with republicans and cabinet members. As he was leaving, the president spoke briefly to reporters