Good morning, everyone and welcome to the Atlantic Council and to this event on implications for nato and the United States. I know its already getting muggy out there and were happy to share our ac with you in here. Im magnus nordegren and im the director of Transatlantic Initiative at the Atlantic Council and it is so great to see a big crowd for this event and i want to add a special welcome to our guests who have traveled far to be here today. Michael mickelson who is with the Foreign Relations committee and christian prick who is the undersecretary for defense policy at estonias ministry of defense. As some of you may know we served previously at the embassy in washington and its great to see him back in town. So im just going to say a few words before before we let our experts and leave the representatives loose, and i want to say a couple of things and why theyre important in the Atlantic Council. This is a big summer of exercises in europe. Two major nato exercises just wrapped
Earlier this week, you wrote the president can restructure the war, similar to a bankruptcy reorganization, by aligning u. S. Efforts under a president ial envoy, that will Institute Decisions about military aid, support and intelligence, and become laser focused on creating a table and selfsupporting afghanistan. It would give our troops and exit ramp. We have been there for the last 16 years, so outlined specifically what you want to do . The president temple everything out completely, which i think would be a bad idea. I think taliban and isis would end up taking over the country, and they would say that they have beat the United States. Wewe could keep the way that have been, we have now spent almost 1 trillion, and we are now spending more than the entire Defense Budget of the united kingdom, just in afghanistan. More than 2000 american soldiers dead, 20,000 plus wounded. Healthcare costs from that war will be 1 trillion on top of that. Secretary mattis said that we are not winnin
16 years, so outline specifically what you want to to do. Erik prince the president can pull out completely, which i think would be a bad idea. I think taliban and isis would end up taking over the country, and it would be a rallying cry for terrorists around the world that they have beat the United States. Or we could keep the way that we have been, we have now spent almost 1 trillion, now more than the entire Defense Budget the of the u. K. , just in afghanistan. More than 2000 american soldiers wounded dead, 20,000 plus wounded. Healthcare costs from that war will be 1 trillion on top of it. At secretary mattis said that we are not winning. The terrorist forces control almost half the country as it is now, so clearly this current strategy is not working. I tried to take a step back, and the reason i wrote restructuring, is to say, lets pare away the incremental decisions that we had. We have had 17 different commanders in 16 years. There has not been a unity of command. When i say y
Thank you very much for joining us, i am paul saunders, executive director, pleased to see such a big group in the middle of august in washington. The traffic led me to think the city was depopulated that it clearly demonstrates otherwise and we appreciate you taking the time to be with us. We have interesting conversation about the new us sanctions on russia, and highly experienced speakers will give us some perspective and quite grateful to them for taking their time to be with us. Tomy right, dan russell, the president and ceo of the us russia business council. Dan is a former career diplomat, Deputy Assistant secretary of state responsible for russia, ukraine, belarus, arms control and other matters. During the previous administration, the Obama Administration, deputy chief at the us embassy in moscow in dan. To the left is george beebe, senior director for director for intelligence programs at the center of the nassau interest, george was career Us Intelligence professional, the r
Panelists in the most difficult position of any panel in any event which is standing between resistance and the bar. But there is extraordinary substance on this panel, and the intent is to turn us forwardlooking. I would like to turn over to ambassador john ordway, our partner in kazakhstan. John, it is an honor and a pleasure to have you here as our moderator. Amb. Ordway thank you very much. We are facing the future with an urgent set of problems and to prove they are urgent we are going to have a little time to deal with them. Let me just say i really liked from the beginning what bill perry said about the challenge of this separation of the variables and what we are going to do with this panel is separate those variables and address them separately. I would like to recall what the general said that he is optimistic, and the time to renew the work we have been talking about is not somewhere over the hills. There is it is not over the hills, but i expect there is still a lot of terr