Transcripts For CSPAN2 Andrew Krepinevich And Barry Watts On The Last Warrior 20150516

Andrew marshall, a pentagon legend who served from president s nixon to obama. He just retired this past january at the ripe age of 93 years old. For his pioneering work foreman undersecretary of defense douglas [inaudible] called him the hidden hand behind American Foreign policy. Whats significant is that president nixon first tapped marshall to evaluate our military capabilities against that of our adversaries, at the time namely the soviet union. The concept is called net assessment. His former aides Andrew Krepinevich and barry watts are here to discuss the achievement. S of their mentor tonight and sign copies of their biography about him called the last warrior Andrew Marshall and the shaping of modern defense strategy. Mr. Krepinevich is president of the center for strategic and budgetary assessments and is the author of several books on military history and strategy including the very influential the army and vietnam. Hes a west point graduate and a retired army officer. And he also received his ph. D. From harvard university. Barry watts is a senior fellow at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments, hes there as well he also has a great body of scholarly work. Including future war. And prior to joining csva, he headed the office of analysis at the pentagon and he serve inside the u. S. Air force. He is graduate of the u. S. Air force academy and holds a masters in philosophy from the university of pittsburgh. And the program tonight will be moderated by Geoffrey Herrera Fletcher Jones professor of political studs at Pitzer College in claremont and among the courses he teaches are the war on terror, global politicsing and security and International Politics and security and International Political economy. He holds a ph. D. From princeton university. Ladies and gentlemen, Andrew Krepinevich, barry watts and Geoffrey Herrera. [applause] so first off thanks to the Nixon Library for having us here this evening for what i hope will be a very exciting and interesting conversation. First question, gentlemen. The short version is why write this book. I guess the longer version is there is a small group of washington d. C. Foreign policy types. A long time ago i was on the far fringes of this group of, i dont know, several dozen or more who know who Andrew Marshall is and who are steeped in marshall lore. But for most americans, i think, even most americans who follow Foreign Affairs closely theyve never heard of this man. So is tell us a little bit about who he is and why you decided it was important to write what you call an intellectual biography of him. Let me begin by saying this over the years i came to appreciate this concept of net assessment as an analytic framework that mr. Marshall developed starting in the early 70s. It is in one sense an archetype of the cold war or an artifact of the cold war. But its also the case, and i think andrew would agree that we both became persuaded that it had utility and value in the postcold war environment and even today. So because the office itself and ann drink i guess i would andy i guess i would have to say to be candid can tended to be secretive and the work was not the sort of thing youd like to see on the front page of the Washington Post tomorrow morning. Even many people who worked in the pentagon have very little understanding of net assessment. So in hopes that this form of analysis would continue in the future, that others would grab ahold of it and continue to use the tool and the methodology that andy developed, we decided it was important to write this book and explain his legacy to a wider audience. Would you like to yeah. Talk about who andy was . Also add to what barry said one reason for writing the book is as barry said, theres not a lot known. But theres not a lot known about a lot of things. [laughter] but we thought that the story needed to be told because in a number of instances this individual, Andrew Marshall, had a remarkably great level of influence on how Senior Defense officials and even outside the pentagon came to think about our military competition with the soviet union. And after the cold war what kind of a world we were finding ourselves in and how we needed to think about and prepare ourselves so that we would be able to anticipate problems as opposed to reacting to them. Its always better to anticipate than to react when you live in a dangerous world. The kind of person he is, so first of all, hes going to be 94 in september. So hes a child of the depression. Grew up during the depression. Remarkable that he is a selfeducated individual. He has no bachelors degree, okay . But his scores were so high, that the university of chicago took him into their Masters Program after world war ii in their economics program. So he has a masters in economics but no bachelors degree. [laughter] he is the kind of guy who attracts the attention of brilliant people. And so when he was at the university of chicago, he was during world war ii he was ruled ineligible for the draft because of a heart condition. So he went to work in a munitions factory. Actually, a weapons plant building, i think, bombers parts for bombers. But he, hes working in this metals shop at university of chicago to earn some money to pay for his education, and in walks a guy whos working on the cyclo terror, and they haul off marshall, and they get order of magnitude improvement. Thats about all i know about sigh crowtron. [laughter] he ends up playing bridge with a guy named Kenneth Arrow in expiz wife. Arrow ends up winning the nobel prize in economics. And social its sort of this one after another after another and it almost reminds you of the forest gump, you know [laughter] youve got this really smart guy not this clueless guy who keeps bumping into all these fascinating people. And the other thing i guess, thats quite interesting is hes sort of on the ground floor of some pathbreaking work on how we understand Human Behavior the behavior of organizations. And there was a huge debate in the 1970s of just how formidable the soviet union was. And it was a big battle between marshall and the cia. And he had the moral courage of his convictions to pursue that debate and in the end he was proven right. So, and the other thing i would say, another reason why you havent heard his story is he was a horrible bureaucrat. Hes terrible at selfpromotion which is why we had to do the damn book instead of him. [laughter] i used to kid and say, you know, you throw words around like manhole covers, youre tighter than a clam with lockjaw, you know, these sorts of things. But behind that sort of sold stoll lid exterior masks an emotional person. And there are some stories in the book id be glad to talk about them if youre interested, just the kind of deep feeling he has about other people, about the people hes mentored, many over the years. And also about his country. And i thought that kind of was reflective of the attitude of the greatest generation which is really passing from the scene right now. So, sorry. Barry began by mentioning this concept net assessment, which is if its a biography of a human being, its a biography of Andrew Marshall. But if its the biography of a concept its the biography of net assessment. So after introducing our human star maybe we should introduce our analytic or conceptual star. So tell us a little bit about what net assessment is, but also i think maybe well, this is most interesting to me, and im asking questions, so i guess why did it emerge when it did . In the 1970s, in the Nixon Administration . What had the pentagon been doing before that time to try and assess the military capability of its preeminent adversary and the military balance between the United States and the soviet union . That was more than one question. [laughter] well, you can pick the one you want to answer. Look, if andy was here tonight and you asked him so what were sort of the origins of this notion of net assessment, he would go back to the last day of the Truman Administration when president truman established something called the special evaluation subcommittee. And its aim at that point was to try to assess for the president this was a group on the National Security council what damage a soviet Nuclear Attack would inflict on United States. And when the when that was continued by president eisenhower, became net evaluation subcommittee, and it kept on looking at the problem of the damage that the soviets could inflict with a Nuclear Attack on the United States. He continued exploring that in various ways, you know, termination, managing the damage and so on and so forth into the mid 60s when Robert Mcnamara secretary of defense at the time, decided to cancel it because he didnt think he needed any help deciding what things to buy and what things to procure from the National Security council. So it was canceled. Within a year or two people who were involved in that began to raise the possibility, there were letters written to the president , for example suggesting they needed to reconstitute a net assessment capability on the nsc or in the Defense Department. And the concern there was fundamentally given i think, by two adopts. One, by two developmentings. By the early 70s the soviets in absolute terms were starting to outspend the United States in terms of military programs in an absolute sense. And at the same time and it looked like that trend b was going to continue and it did in fact continue up until the reagan administration. So during that decade of the 70s, they outspent us by in 88 dollars Something Like 300, 400 billion. You know a huge amountment secondly the other Major Development that andy talked about at great length during the 70s was the soviets achieving basic Strategic Nuclear parity with the United States. So on the one hand, the competitor is starting to outspend you and on the other hand or, hes got a Nuclear Capability which could, in fact, devastate the United States if push came to shove and deterrence failed. So in the context of those developments, people thought it was increasingly important. I mean, if youre being outspent, then youd better make good strategic choices. And so the idea which cropped up in a special Defense Panel that Henry Kissinger ran and that andy was involved in in 1970, basically charlie hurtsfelt who was the guy who gave the go ahead for the arpa innocent and what became the interinnocent suggested to andy internet and suggested to andy and Jim Schlesinger that they needed to measure and track where we stood in various areas of military competition relative to the soviets. Now, actually nixons blue ribbon Defense Panel suggested as one of its recommendations that they establish that kind of a capability in the Defense Department. Andy didnt have anything to do with that and he was working on intelligence issues for the president and for Henry Kissinger. And so it wasnt until they reorganized the Intelligence Community at the end of 1971 that a net assessment capability was recreated, established on the nsc. Within a couple of years that was then transferred to the pentagon when Jim Schlesinger became secretary of defense. Schlesinger and marshall were very close going back to the early 60s as both colleagues and friends. They both had worried about things like where the United States stood relative to the soviet union and whether we were tracking that so we could make more informative and useful strategic decisions. And that was really the beginning of the net assessment. Andy moved to the pentagon in a somewhat turbulent period in 1973. In fact, the move to the pentagon occurred in the middle of the yom kippur war, and for those of you familiar with the Nixon Administration, you remember 7273 were a very busy period for the white house. There was the opening to china, there was the renewal of the easter offensive in vietnam despite the efforts of kissinger and nixon to get us out of vietnam. There was the abm treaty signed in moscow as well as the strategic arms limitation treaty. And, of course, 72 we all remember was what, a president ial election year. And in june something funny happened in the Watergate Hotel which had all kinds of consequences in that period. Decisionmakers, for his job as secretary of defense, and he needs to know what the trends are, of Getting Better off or worse off. Where is the most important area to invest our funds. Those of the broad issues, if you are looking at that assessment, it is diagnostic. So if you want to use the medical analogy marshall was trying to give the secretary of defense a good diagnosis of what the real dangers were, what the diseases word that would threaten our security because if you have a good diagnosis you have a much better chance of writing a good description. Bad diagnosis, not so good. There is that aspect. It was multidisciplinary. Marshall looked at the soviet military, he wouldnt just look at how many tanks they have or how many planes, he would look at things like demographics and find the Health Care System in the soviet union was lousy. There were alcoholism problems. Life expectancy is were not good. The percentage of nonspeaking russians in the soviet military was increasing so these guys were not 10 feet tall. A lot of ways they had severe weaknesses if you get beyond the hardware and look at some of these, there was an effort to look at fault lines. Would the eastern europeans fight when the soviets went to war to tackle western europe. So there was a broad look that was diagnostic and eclectic. To question the conventional wisdom also was interesting to me, watch out for the military services when they testify on the hill they tended to say this is what the soviets are doing this is how you need to respond to them and deflect the threat. The military never goes up there to say here is away where we can pose disproportionate cost on the soviets and if we do these things we can make their life miserable and he called that a competitive strategy. That was part of a way of not just responding to soviet strength but to identify our own strengths and explore soviet weaknesses to make life rough on them. It is a broad eclectic approach challenging conventional wisdom challenged institutional and organizational prerogatives in the Defense Department. One of the reasons, a lot was classified and his predisposition was i work for the secretary of defense, he was my customer and it is not any broader than that. Brushing my microphone. A little more history in the lead up to another question or set of questions to find out. The assessment in this office emerges somewhat reactive lead to hear the two of utah. And a strategic parity on the part of the soviet union and increase their defense spending in a way that is unexpected, lots of things changing. Soviet Union Invaded afghanistan, the soviet economy begins to spiral out of control. The 1980s are a very different strategic environment than the 1970s. What role did that assessment play in evaluating dramatic slowmoving changes in the soviet economy and soviet society both up to and leading pass the end of the cold war. Look forward into the 90s. The military position, when he was in the office, i raised that because the basic output of net assessment says, comprehensive as possible work to flag a few emerging strategic problems, would still make time to make decisions about it so it has to be far enough in advance what the identify emerging problems on the popular side. Focusing on emerging opportunities when the secretary of defense wanted to make specific decisions to exploit the opportunity to work on soviet weaknesses and couldnt make those decisions. And the technical revolution which was basically the emergence of precision strike capabilities based on precision, white area at sensors like joint stars and computerized command and control became something late in the cold war in that 80s, marshall was starting to advertise to people as this is a big emerging issue. It will change the way wars are fought in the future and what are we going to do about it . To touch on diagnosis, andy is adamant that it was not his business to tell the military services how they might respond or ought to respond to the emerging precision strike revolution. He thought those choices, those decisions were fundamentally the responsibility of the military. In a lot of waste work done on the technical revolution, in early to mid 90s was trying to to raise the issues dividing the lexicon or the first debate in the pentagon. Spent overseas and was discussed in military is a around the globe. In terms of the period from the 70s to the end of the cold war there are a couple things. One is we recounted in the book when rumsfeld was on his first tour as secretary he would have meetings on saturday mornings when he would bring people in and brought this systems analysis people in one saturday and the assessment to talk about marshall, the debate, the systems analysis folks, they have so many ships of this type for that type we have this many carriers or that many carriers and rumsfeld cuts them off and says lets stop looking at our shoe laces and raise our heads and look at the big picture and marshall and his Naval Military aid jim roach his ends up being secretary of the air force 25 years later Start Talking about where we have major advantages with respect to the soviets in Maritime Operations which turns out to be in sensors and acoustics. Thurgood marshall says we could hear their submarine they cant hear hours. They need to emphasize this area of competition and emphasize our submarine forces in addition to surface league and that is the sort of information rumsfeld, the secretary of defense that act upon in a way that could have an enduring affect on the military balance. In the 1980s marshall started to talk about Competitive Strategies and the archetype example of that would be president carter canceled the be 1 bomber after taking office in 1977 and the argument was it was a good argument. It will Carry Nuclear Weapons but we have icbms, missiles on land and on our submarines, they cant interested these missiles, they have nuclear warheads. Why do we need a bomber that does this . If we need obama we will keep the old ones and let them launched cruise missiles and again that is a perfectly logical argument. The argument marshall made was that is a persuasive argument but lets look a little deeper at this issue. He said lets look at who the soviets are and how they think and how they compete and there are certain things that are going to be difficult for them not to do. First of all they have the worlds longest border a 11,000 miles long and they wont give away their territory to shorten their border. In the totalitarian regime, they are fanatical about protecting their air space. They shot down a korean airliner in year 1980s. They have this enormous air Defense System that has to stretch 11,000 miles. The third thing is they have this military organization because they are paranoid about their airspace. Constantly lobbying the leadership for more air defenses, that is what they do like any Bureaucratic Organization need more of whatever we have got. Marshall said look at that. We know with the Stealth Bomber with a building we can penetrate these air defenses. We also know from marshalls perspective we dont want to give these guys and excuse not to build air defenses. The cost of them to build a defenses for 11000 miles a border and have to upgrade from once we have Stealth Bombers, basically shrinks the radar signature of an aircraft, they are spending this much to build air defenses, were spending this much to build bombers. It is not so much whether we need bombers to attack the soviet union but a matter of imposing enormously disproportionate costs on them then number1. Number 2 they are investing in an area of military competition a defense we consider much more benign. Rather have them invest in that than nuclearweapons or taint armies or more provocative offensive capabilities so it is a different way of looking at the problem. One that neither system analysis nor the Carter Administration was comfortable with and quite frankly but administrations were not comfortable until marshall started to educate them on this. Moving on to the post cold war era. That assessment has its origins during the cold war to evaluate the u. S. strategic balance. The interNational Security situation in United States faces now is radically different. I dont think many would disagree with that. There is the rise of a potential competitor in china and a series of regional powers who are a challenge. Iran russia, etc. Throughout global terrorism, counterinsurgency, humanitarian humanitarian initiatives the aseptic might say i can see that assessment working reasonably well for a future u. S. china security competition should one be merged but maybe not so much. Let the case for an affirmative roll for net assessment in 2015. It is certainly the case that what net assessments more difficult after the soviet union disappeared as was generally referred to as a competitor. That has been an issue they have gone back, and he had people go back and look time and again since the mid 90s. In terms, Something Like this precisions strikers union, it has been much more difficult to get to the end of that story than we thought was going to be nearly 90s. We assumed basically there would be longrange precision strike capabilities on the part of adversaries. And longrange specific Strike Forces over long distances. Happily that didnt happen because for most of the last two decades we have been the only people on the planet who could on a global basis the precision strike together and utilize it and it became very useful for example with special forces in iraq and afghanistan. To be used in that context to the present day. By alerting senior people in the pentagon cost of the potential of precision strike, andy pointed out an area we could exert leverage Going Forward. That is part of the answer. There are two kinds of net assessments. One is regional assessment, some cold war was a central front military balance of when the warsaw pact and nato as a regional balance, functional balance with Strategic Nuclear balance. I think those balances and analytic tools that underwrite some still apply today because they are using them. Let me give you a couple of examples. Certainly with respect to china, there is already effort underway. Some people call it the pivot to the asia pacific rebalance. I was asked to run the Defense Department under study for mr. Marshall looking at the first island chain and there is a lot of tools that are different, the environment is different than the lot of factors are different but the fundamentals similar in this sense we are trying to preserve stability in the western pacific, and the question is do we have an acceptable military balance and what are the key trends in military competition and how do we preserve stability over time and deter the chinese from thinking they can achieve their territorial aims through aggression or coercion . In the Nuclear Dimension it is not just the soviets any more. As we draw our numbers down the president proposed about a year or so ago going from 1550 down to 1,000, the lower we go you got countries like pakistan for example to our building nuclearweapons faster than any country in the world. To go to 1,000, china may or may not go to a thousand, russians will certainly stayed there. What used to be a bipolar Nuclear Competition in the cold war can become what the political scientists call a end state multi polar competition. Barry mentioned parity. We have the same number of Nuclear Weapons with the soviet union. How do you have parity when we have a thousand, the chinese have a thousand, pakistani 7,000 and the russians have a thousand . Is it 3,000 to 1,000 . How do you gauge with their you can be turned psychological aspects . There have been a lot of advances in the cognitive science marshall has looked at for 30 years that showed human beings are not necessarily rational in the way they calculate cost, benefit and risk is not the same as we do. He looks at demographics, looking at the social sciences, Cognitive Sciences and trying to figure out what will enable us to preserve stability. Even if you look at global war on terrorism one of the questions i had with our military folks is how do we propose costs on these people . It didnt cost al qaeda or the taliban 1 trillion to fight as in afghanistan and iraq. We spent roughly how do we begin how do we get out from underneath that cost strategy . One way where we have been successful for example is to impose a cost on time on our terrorist enemies because of things like signals intelligence, eavesdropping, going on the internet, eavesdropping on cybersites, drones take pictures of people moving and moving that information, they cant plan terrorist activities anywhere near the level of efficiency they did before 9 11. It is huge costs, in dollars or equipment but a cost in size but it is a huge cost. In applying to assessment, there are plenty of opportunities to apply what marshall developed there is a long future for that assessment looking at the threat environment we face today. Next to address marshalls errors that have been claimed, others claimed he made. I am thinking of three issues during the cold war, underestimation of the unions fear of nuclear warfare, or overestimation of their acceptors of acceptable risk of nuclear warfare. Second, underestimation of the influence of what we would call the militaryindustrial complex in the United States at the time. End the third failure to properly anticipating and see at the time and scale of the collapse of the economy. Let me address the cold war briefly at first. In 76, asked mr. Marshall to put together a thought on the future of strategic balance and that document has been declassified all flow the later assessments of Strategic Nuclear analysis between the United States and the soviet union, is fairly highly classified but in that 76 peace, basically judged the balance to be adequate in the sense that the question was forces and Strategic Policies are they adequate to jeter the soviets from launching an allout Nuclear Attack on the United States . He thought things were adequate. There were Disturbing Trends or worrisome trends at that point but i dont think even Going Forward into the mid 80s, he changed his mind about the adequacy of strategic balance. I dont think that was exaggerated whenever people outside the office fought at that particular point in time. I dont know. Other questions relate to the economic burden this soviets were encouraging to engage in longterm military competition, this is a sort of hidden story and fundamental issue that popped up in the 1970s and 80s. It was fundamentally terms of how the chances prevail with a long twilight struggle. The genesis in the early 70s, spending 6 of their gdp on defense. You get the situation where schlesinger at the cia, and marshall at staff at the time and slush and joy calling them over, folks at the cia says soviets a spending 6 of their gdp on defense and how could this be . A couple thousand tanks a year, producing a few hundred planes a year or a couple thousand planes a year, and artillery pieces and so on. Are these guys superman . Marshall and ginger working on saturdays the conclusion this cant be right. They start to work the numerator problem and denominator problem how much are they spending on defense . Marshall by the mid 70s comes to the conclusion they are spending a lot more on defense than the cia thinks they are. Their economy is not that he efficient, they cant produce things as cheaply or efficiently as we can. Then starts going after the denominator, how big is the economy . Is it half the size of our economy . Starts talking to economic emigration and sullen. All these issues, productivity and production and by the middle 70s marshall has the cia saying it is 6 or 12 . By the time i was working with secretary weinberger the cia was up 16 and marshall keeps pounding away, it is not 6 , it is not 12 or 16 . It is more like 25 for 30 . They are spending more on their economy, looking at demographic trends, productivity trends, and going to the soviet union. The fundamental point from a Strategic Perspective the cia was right, only spending 6 , they would keep widening the gap between themselves, but they were right and time was on our side and we didnt have to take risks. If you play smart we could win the long term competition. It is a fundamental strategic question. It is worth adding if you look at a lot of discussions that were going on in the mid to late 80s, soviet defense, marshall was talking in terms of the soviet economy going into chapter 11 and that is one aspect that anybody could have predicted the downfall of the soviet union the way it unfolded particularly the timing. That was well beyond what you could expect. What you could reasonably expect in that assessment but he was certainly right, andrew mentioned the late 80s, theyre getting the to 40 . That was more than we spend on defense at the height of world war ii in 42 and 45. Maintaining that burden over the decades was not going to do good things to your competitive position. The strategic defense initiative, star wars, i was teaching in west point when president reagan made a speech. You cant intercept the technology. We still dont have the technology to do it extremely well. And what was really, their economy was training. And dragging the cia to think about. It was about Information Technology. Sensors, Battle Management so you could guide interceptors toward targets and differentiate between the warheads and real warheads and all this stuff. It is information intensive. In the recall buying the soviet laptop computer, or television set. These guys couldnt do i t. We could. We are pushing the competition in an area where they couldnt compete but felt they had to compete and this is how you get people like gorbachev, we need to restructure our economy, the industrial era economy and these guys are making us compete in the new age Information Technology economy so it is imposing costs and moving competition in to areas they are not comfortable. It is less about can you intercept missiles that can we put them in an area they are uncomfortable or perform well for spending more than we are and by the idea is that these guys in the long run their economy cant stand the strain so you get perestroika and it doesnt make it in the country collapses before it can succeed. That is a good description of Competitive Strategies which became dod policy after the second reagan administration. Weinberger signed up for fat and pushed hard in the late 80s. That should be the last question for me and it is time to get to questions for the audience. Thank you very much gentlemen. [applause] class will be on sale outside at both gentlemen will be available sign copies. Can you comment on one of Andrew Marshalls first passes within the white house and evaluating of the cia Intelligence Reports for president nixon . President nixon and Henry Kissinger were very unhappy with the kind of foreign intelligence coming into the white house when they started working in the white house. Eddie marshall had a long history dealing with intelligence agencies and in the air force and later as a consultant to the cia trying to improve the quality analysis and comprehensiveness of it so it was natural for Henry Kissinger to look at the quality and intelligence coming into the white house as i said earlier, that initially led to a reorganization of the Intelligence Community but has andrew recalls one of the things eddie started doing was reading the president s daily brief from the Agency Looking at copies of those and one of the things that soon emerged is nixon would tend to write notes and comments on those and as marshall worked at them over time when he was doing this initial study for Henry Kissinger it became apparent that there were fewer and fewer comments from the president and what it led to was the implication that nixon was unhappy that he stopped reading the things which made a strong case for trying to reshaped the community to provide intelligence that really was a student or dealt with the interests of the president and his National Security advisers. It is almost hysterical. Marshall goes to the cia and the daily Intelligence Report premier document. The president is going to read this said marshall says you need to do Something Different here. She answers this is our premier document, the president is not reading it. It is our pride and joy and marshall says why dont you find out what hes interested in and give intelligence on that . Henry kissinger was intensely interested in personality profiles of the people he was going to negotiate with, their hobbies, likes, risktakers, what can you tell me about this person i will be negotiating with . The cias attitude was takeitorleaveit, the cia, we know more about this thing you do and what you ought to be worried about. The other thing is in crises the cia would often emphasize intelligence could push you toward a quick safer solution to the crisis whereas nixon and Henry Kissinger look all options because they talk about the deal with the iranians today, they were looking at a shortterm game here by resolving it the way you are providing me with information and analysis but is there a lot of longterm pain that is going to be involved . We push the problem down the road and cover it today but the worst problem five years from now. So nixon had the nsa staff providing him with stuff he was reading by that time so doing work around intelligence reform. They i a actually tried to make an effort on what the president was interested in or intelligence on that. It is the testimony in a sense on belligerence but the certain bureaucracy is what theyre asking for. Some of the things associated with these issues were almost comical in retrospect, they started the First National next assessments under 80s organization. One of the findings that came for that would have no weaknesses. And a cohort of concepts, it was basically didnt affect readiness. These conscripts dont speak russian. It doesnt affect readiness . It. Your mind. They would serve three years in the military. This is simplified. I had a tank battalion end people who have been here three years and been in training three years and all of a sudden they rotate out and i get new conscripts starting from scratch or simplification. This unit of conscripts the showbiz as effected as these people with three years of experience and it could be a break but this was the stuff later on when i was working for the secretary of defense much to marshalls displeasure, was so fed up, the intense community the better results by going to that assessment. The office of 15 people as opposed to the cia, to their opinion. And to the cia, that he was right. We have a question over here. During the 1960s secretary of defense ron mcnamara emphasized sheer destruction as a major means of deterring nuclear war, that we would target the soviet unions cities and its economy as a means of frightening them but on january 10th, 1974 secretary of defense James Schlesinger announced we would be moving away from this, our targeting would not necessarily be aimed at cities and the soviet economy where as marshall did he have an input in this decision . To my knowledge marshall did not have an input into the decision. The story goes back really to the beginning of the kennedy administration. Theres something called the Operations Plan which is the Nuclear Attack plan for execution against the soviet union and other communist countries and kennedy comes in, his advisers, mcnamara and so on and basically a spasm attack, throw everything out but the kitchen sink. Kennedy was promoting the concept of flexible response as opposed to massive retaliation. I wanted an option others and do nothing or armageddon. So kennedy and germac america began to press the military to come up with flexible Nuclear Options. The problem is by the time nixon is in his second term we dont have flexible Nuclear Options and schlesingers attempted begin to realistically provide such options one rationale for that was, and again this is a deep complicated arcane topic but they began to realize, this goes almost like dr. Strangelove, it is a mineshaft gap, deep underground bunkers to protect the leadership. We want to have an option to make sure the leadership knows that no matter what happens we will take out the leadership. There is no fighting a nuclear war because you are only going to survive. Dont know if you remember the end of that movie but it gets really weird the way the soviets are at this time. We may be dodo we want to wipe out side because we are at war with the soviet union . These sorts of considerations. What they are trying to do is this latter of escalation and make sure no way the soviets can use Nuclear Weapons either spasmodic lee or beneath that threshold that allows them to get an advantage that encourages them to think they can somehow use these weapons and use them effectively to have some kind of political gain so that is the effort i think. Is also the case that if you go through a detailed history of the single integrated Operational Plan which was our nuclear war plan, it never was pure the citys war soviet forces. If you think about it, a lot of soviet Strategic Forces that for damage limitation purposes, you might want to i attack were located in Populated Areas so you are kind of getting two if you will endand both target categories persisted overtime independent of decisions he made over the standpoint. That is the reality of the system and also illustrates the difficulties of sitting in the white house or the National Security council and making sure the system down below you really does what you directed it to do. That is a major issue and strategy within any government. A question from carter johnson. No extra credit. I think we can agree ss and plays a crucial part understanding defense and security under which president do you think that assessment was most beneficial utilize . Throughout his many years . Aside from jim injured who was joined at the hip with and the marshall on these issues, probably harold brown was the secretary of defense who understood what in that assessment is about as long as its all term value and perhaps the secretaries of defense. That was part of the Carter Administration so initially there was a hopeful we could do something even similar to what occurred under the present administration in terms of unclenching fists and extending our hands to adversaries. If you talk to harold brown about this what he would emphasize was andy always raised questions that pointed to broad strategic issues, did get mired down in small stuffed in that sense provide a perspective that was virtually nonexistent from all other parts of the pentagon and military bureaucracy. So you have a different perspective in talking to him than you got from the joint staff and service staff. This notion of trying to put our strength against adversary weaknesses and exploit them over time was really essentials to that enterprise and as andrew already suggested if you are a military service, you want to save the least you can. Underplay them as much as you can and blow up the threat when you start going to congress to get larger defense budgets. It is just human nature. That is continuing today. Defense secretarys that marshall had an impact on. And worked for secretary weinberger when i left that office i went to work for mr. Marshall. So he left the pentagon, the pentagon there is portraits of all the former defense secretaries and the day came when there was a ceremony that would unveil the portrait, they didnt have a lot of good relationships. It will be 10 00 in the morning, pick up the flag and shares, in the outer office and marshall is fair and one of my colleagues said to him are you going to the weinberger ceremony, weinberger instead of his picture. And no matter what happened in terms of the ups and down this of the defense secretarys. One is is mentoring of people in the impact it has. So in 1957, looking for a topic to write about and marshall suggests a topic to her and ends up being pearl harbor which ends up winning all kinds of book awards and a medal of freedom from president bush in the 1990 and fundamentally, intelligence and Early Warning and circumstances under which we will be attacked. A few years later a book comes out called the essence of decision which fundamentally leads to rethinking about thinking rationally or other factors at work, and and the marshall was the guy who gave the insight to think about this structure. There are professors at Ivy League Schools and people in the business community. One of the deans of the Business Strategy at ucla, this strategy, it talks about marshland how marshall, if you see the commercial and business, and there is this in a sense mentoring he has done and one of the leading folks, once asked marshall about the greatest contribution the people who helped along the way to help them understand how to do analysis, defense secretarys crumble with that, this guy marshall, secretary of defense they want the politically correct answer and whenever that issue raised in the late 90s and raised again some years later, it was remarkable, the last time it was raised six former defense secretaries, republican and democrat, saying you are crazy if you question what this guy is trying to do to help you. Republicans and democrats both sides of the aisle and things are so politicized, you have this individual who is respected enormously respected by the academic community, strategic studies community, the defense secretary, and that is a remarkable accomplishment in itself. A question for the back row. Just briefly in the comical way why would anyone, has anyone ever bought a russian computer what i am wondering about it is during this period of time, i dont think you could put a percentage on it, how much Russian Research and technology would be called industrial espionage, stealing u. S. Technology . I am not sure i could give a percentage. It is certainly the case if you read the cia assessments, in the agency, where the soviets were in highspeed Computing Technology in 70s and 80s assessments would suggest they are eight years behind us for ten years behind us and technology has devolved even just being four or five years behind this. Theyre stealing as much as they could from us. There was a huge scandal in l. A. 80s in toshiba and a Norwegian Firm that was involved. And this technology a lot to do with submarine quieting and at the end of the cold war we were running into a problem because soviet submarines were getting very much quieter event the begin age we had was being lost in part because of industrial espionage. What they couldnt do on their own, they were fantastic in terms of basic science and mathematical theory but they couldnt get once you went beyond pherae to how to apply and manufacture it, these guys couldnt compete these guys are really trying to adapt to that. They were trying to steal what they could. We have time for one more question. One of dr. Geoffrey herreras students. Yes. The basis of this question comes from taking a Global Security in the beginning, focus on more traditional Global Security threats particularly in regards to powers of china and whether the system will increase instability throughout the term, we have transitioned it to more nontraditional security threats. In the conclusion of your book particularly on page 250 to 251. What did you say . According to this edition you list a lot of questions that security has been applicable to addressing and trying to comprehend in effective ways. A lot of these are regard to the soviet union and china. My question from that long introduction is particularly in regards to cybersecurity and less traditional more abstract threats do you think met security will have a place in addressing and quote if quantifying the more will adapt to deal with less concrete friends . What do you think . All right. When the revolution in military affairs got started in nearly 90s there was an interesting memo in 93, he talked about longrange precision strength being one of the things that might emerge over time. The other was what he called Information Technology. I will just tell you the office of net assessment has tried three times i can think of to try to do an assessment of the Information Operations area. The assessments frankly failed. They failed for a very specific reason. Ultimately created an impossible to properly constrain the analysis because if you Start Talking about information stuff, you go down bus cyber route and look at processing speeds, it goes in so many different directions. Actually the study anticipated for this coming july is about the role of information and precision, the hope is that will constrain the topic enough to make a little progress on the long term implications and assessments you reach through that particular area. This was squirrely from start to finish and very hard to contain in a manageable way. Along those lines there was a paper at yale in the 90s added just the question how much damage can determine people caused . There is a graph that starts out in roman times, ten people and cause a lot of damage. Through the middle ages and so on but the curve starts to sweep up over the last 20 years worse o n things like cyber, things like robotics and may and aerial systems and systems and sullen access to by technology. You can have a lot of competitors. You can have hundreds of them. You can have competitors you dont know. There are three to put your arms around this thing but it has proven to be very difficult and also a huge attribution problem associated with cyberwarfare with high degree of confidence, who attacked you. There is that aspect of it. There is concern about catalytic, you have a crisis between two countries and all of a sudden, one is being hit hard by a cyberattack. That other country could be a third party. So you have that kind of issue and another issue of the iranians get a nuclear weapon, and over time they built up an arsenal like the North Koreans are doing. Missile flight times between israel and iran, earlywarning, the problem is what happens, if youre the israelis or iranians. And you got to launch a a counter attack when in fact it is a cyberwar when in fact you are not. So in fact, how do you segment this problem. Is a bunch of problems and it is challenged, the interesting marshall has retired, and interesting to see to address this problem and it will be done well on a strategic level in ways of the secretary of defense of net assessment. Even when these earlier assessments failed to come back to these issues and try different approach. With assessing how this was going to go. And a real strength of the organization, something hopefully that will be preserved. Thank you for a great book. 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