Include the Anglo American special relationship, United Nations and the role of Great Britain and europe in the u. S. Led alliance against international terrorism. He was recently named one of the 50 most influential britons in the u. S. By the london daily telegraph. And a leading authority on 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 NuclearMissile 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