Over the next 60 minutes we are going to be traveling around the globe visiting some of todays most fragile states and hotspot regions as we discuss americans ary agencies to tackle these challenges. Luckily we are joined by an allstar lineup of experts who will serve as our tour guides. Stephen hadley serves as the National Security advisor to george bush and assistant secretary of defense for global strategic affairs. Today is the principal at one of the countrys leading consulting firms. Democratic former congresswoman from california and president of the Wilson Center which supports Research Driving the conversations on Foreign Policy and National Security. Is the president of the u. S. Institute of peace, a leading institute for solutions for preventing, mitigating, and resolving violent conflict around the world and previously served as the assistant administrator or democracy conflict and humanitarian affairs at usaid. Michaelnt general recently served as the director of the directorate of Strategic Operational planning at the National ChapterTerrorism Center after a career in the u. S. Army. Note is he is a brandnew grandfather. We should congratulate him for that. Moderating the conversation correspondent lela several who has earned reports for her reporting including coverage of the migrant crisis in Central America. Please join me in welcoming our panel list for a conversation on global hotspots and the state of fragility. [applause] thank you so much. Good afternoon. All right. Seated . Is can everyone hear me ok . Good afternoon and thank you for that introduction. If you are like me, you are fascinated by all of the panelists here today that have such incredible perspective on the world and where their jobs have taken them. My goal today and hope for you is that we are able to take a trip around the world through their experiences and able to understand the world, which may be complicated, and americas role in that. Where do we go from here . Lets sort of do an overview of where we are today. I work in the news world. If you think you are bombarded by headlines, welcome. We have a lot going on. I was in venezuela where i covered the conflict there. Or understand, much less explain. We have conflicts in syria, we have nearly 70 million displaced people in the world today. Perspective . The most since world war ii. Think about that. Displaced. People there are ups and downs. That is the way of the world. We also have a dramatic Economic Growth in progress in the world of health today. 17 million lives have been saved the aids program. Theres a lot going on. We can all agree on that. Theres a lot going on today in the world. I want to make sure we take a moment to talk to her office to make sense of this talk to our panelists to make sense of this. We will have questions from the audience. I will start with the congresswoman. [laughter] lets go to china for a minute. It is something that, when we talk about influence in the world, you will hear china. When i was living in mexico city i felt like we had a lot of diplomats in mexico constantly trying to fill a void. My question is, china has pledged a trillion dollars on its Road Initiative. That is going to be massive. It outdoes the marshall plan. What does that mean . What do you make of that . Let me say hello to everybody. I think the state and local level is where real things happen. Good for you. Keep doing real things. I also was thinking about the fact when i served in congress for nine terms, that is 100 years [laughter] when i served in congress for 100 years, global issues were very low on the radar screen when you asked people what they care about. It was the economy, stupid. Matter andat doesnt is affected by global issues. The oneught foreignpolicy issue that aerospacefolks in my center of Southern California was, foreign aid is too big. It is 50 of the budget. Guess what . It is less than 1 . They were energized about that. I am am happy you are here. The other issue that motivated people was china. It was universal misunderstanding of china, i would say, back in the day. Political parties in congress have demonized china for years. Policyw i would say the of the administration is more negative than it needs to be. Let me explain what i see. You asked about china and the Road Initiative. I think we spent almost all of our time since 9 11, which was a catastrophic event, focused on counterterrorism and we missed a couple of movies. One was chinas rise and the scholars of the Wilson Center say china has risen. I think, i am looking at steve nodding. He is so smart, i must be close. China has risen. Say, it is things to a strategic competitor, which is what our doctor now says, we care about strategic competitors. Russia and china. They are not the same thing. We care about each of them. It has a different economic model. We somehow thought it would adopt our model. It did not. This Road Initiative toward which they are devoting huge resources is part of their economic and security strategy. They are Building Infrastructure around the world, in europe, africa, latin america, everywhere. I was in a small caribbean infrastructure, the grocery stores, are being built by china. We studied the arctic act the Wilson Center. Part of the initiative is this new c channel in the arctic, part of their initiative, building icebreakers and so on. This is, i dont now how they certainlyne it, it is the defining aspect of their security policy, security and economic policy. We dont understand it. We dont have the focus and tools to respond to it. If we dont understand it and have the tools, how do we compete . We had better understand it and get the tools. We compete with china. Dont think we are a third world nation. We are not. We have done well. The new trade war we are engaged in with china maybe partially a response to that. To ank it is a response way to see trade deficits. I would dispute the way we see trade deficits. It misses the surplus we have and services. I think we should respond to it in a much more nuanced way. As china expands influence, it is not the right time for the u. S. To retreat. Ics doing that and i think we ,an lead in a variety of ways and we have, to establish the liberal world order. We are not leading now in protecting that order. Nancy, you spearheaded a report about fragile states where it says by 2030 2 billion people will live. You focused on the threats. Im going to take the same question, help us understand that and what are the tools needed to deal with that . Thank you. I will join jane in welcoming everybody and congratulating you as a Global Leadership coalition for having this extraordinary event. Fragility, let me start with the definition. People have and its a broken relationship. Basically the state is unwilling or unable to take care of its citizens. What you get our communities or that are fragmented. A lot of grievances and a sense of injustice. The common denominator that runs through some of the gravest threats we face, whether it is countries consumed by civil war, countries that are the largest sources of refugees or migrants. Countries that are susceptible to pandemics like ebola as well as countries that have the largest number of violent extremist incidents. Theu. S. Congress asked institute of peace, a national nonpartisan independent howitute to take a look at the u. S. Can address the conditions of fragility that have enabled violent extremism to spread since 9 11. Trillion1 we spent 6 and the number of incidents have exponentially increased around the world. We need a different strategy. The idea is to have a preventive approach that looks at the conditions that enable extremist to take root. One of our Task Force Members briefed the group. The recommendations are that the on theeds to focus more upstream. More on the prevention. Not only waiting until extremism has broken out. That is true whether you are looking at conflict or pandemics or violent extremism. How do we prevent these kinds of occurrences more effectively . Severalody who spent decades working in the humanitarian world, i can tell increased the amount of humanitarian assistance that goes to victims of conflict. 20 years ago 20 of our assistance went to victims of natural disaster. Now that is flipped. 80 goes to victims of conflict. It used to be 80 two natural disaster. The task force recommended three big things that enable us to be more effective. The first is to have a Clear Strategy across the u. S. Strategy across the u. S. Government that enables people to share objectives and timelines, to work on a more preventive approach to fragility, understanding that it takes generations. We need to understand that and we need to partner with local leaders, change happens locally. And we need to do so in concert with our International Partners. Second is all the ways we can unleash our development and our diplomacy actors to be able to work more flexibly, to be able to work over longer time horizons. Us toird is enabling partner with our International Partners and create a compact model where we have an agreement with the fragile state on how to proceed forward with their context. Is a bill that just passed in the house that takes those recommendations forward, called the global fragility act, and a bill that is now moving through the senate. It is difficult to sell prevention. We know, whether it is our own personal health care, or looking at the worlds stage that prevention is essential and we need to get better at it, and we need to enable our Development Actors and diplomats to be more agile as they pursue a vegan strategy. A prevention strategy. Over to you. As i have been on the border myself, i have traveled with these caravans through mexico, and you see women and children and men, families making their way through mexico to get to our border, you understand they are coming through the northern triangle, guatemala, el salvador , honduras. How do you get to the root cause , the prevention method she is speaking of in the northern triangle of the u. S. . Think we have to stage it in some sense, that is to say i think we have to find a way to, mexicoshort term, help and those countries harden their border and help mexico hard and help mexico hardened their southern border. So you dont have these undisciplined caravans coming up and knocking on the door in large numbers, creating what has now become a crisis on the border. A way thatdo it in leaves some space for the longer run solution. Tocut off aid and assistance Central America, to free up money to harden the border is a classic case of letting the short run solution defeat the longer run solution. It is the fragile state problem, it is a crisis in governance, it is governments that have lost confidence in their people, cannot offer their people a prospect for a secure and prosperous future, to give them an incentive to stay home. They are desperate and they are leaving. We have to deal with the problem of the migration in the short run, but we need to invest in working with those governments, those that are willing, those , so thesea plan governments can begin to offer hope to their people, so they will stay at home and build their own future in their own home. Its one of these cases where you have to have a short run strategy and a long run strategy, and make sure your short run strategy doesnt feed your long run strategy and actually perpetuate the problem. With theactually october, the caravan that was moving north in october when the administration announced it was cutting foreign aid. I asked the migrants, what does this mean to you . Saying,them responded, it doesnt matter to me, we are not getting it anyway. So you hear them say that. Yet i make a phone call to a bunch of the ngos, and they are telling you, we are seeing the difference, we are making a difference in these communities. How do you bridge that gap . Exactly what is nancy had talked about, which is people have lost confidence in their government. And if money goes to the government, they have no confidence, it ends up helping them. Between social contract government and the population that is broken. That is what has got to be restored. It is hard work, it takes a long time. We are learning in the process, we have been at this kind of thing for 17 years. There are some things that work, there are some things that dont work. What we know you have to start with is local governments that are committed to provide uncorrupted governance to their people that meets their need and need, some hope deliver services, and offer some hope. Andou can develop a plan support and enable that plan, you can lay the foundation for givel give people hope, them some incentive to stay home and build their own societies. When you say some things dont work, what doesnt work . We knowf the things that doesnt work is if you give money to deal with other interests we have, which might be proliferation, which might be theorism, without regard to government tothe these things on the longer term, you are building in a longterm problem. If you talk to paris, one of the number one motivation for people to go over to extremism is local Security Forces that abused their own people. With the cooperating government and providing assistance to their Security Forces, and also not working with those Security Forces about how to do community policing, how they are dealing with communities in a way to build support for the security services, rather than turn the Security Forces into an adversary, we are building on sand. We are in the short run thinking we are providing security, and in the long run we are laying the foundation for extremism. And that goes into what is in the fragility bill, just having a shared understanding among our defense, our diplomacy and our Development Actors, so you cant harmonize that agenda. If i could add one more thing on this subject, or two things, one is the business community, there was a conference in miami a couple of years ago sponsored by Vice President pence and john kelly, who became chief of staff but at the time was the secretary for homeland security. It was about not just strengthening the governments in the northern triangle, but improving a climates there would be climate so there would be business investment. Its true if there is a Strong Economy and people are working, that reduces the push factor. That is one point. The other point, that i think is way long overdue, way need to do comprehensive Immigration Reform in this country so we have a revised modernized asylum system and we also keep the doors open on a realistic basis to those who want to lawfully come here, not just seeking asylum. Roll up the barricades and close off this country, i think we lose the creativity and diversity that made this great country. [applause] lets go to the middle east. Lieutenant general, thanks for being with us. Secretary of defense bob gates once said, we cannot kill or capture our way to victory. We dont see isis right now on the battlefield the way we once did. Haveet 9 Million People yet to return to their home. The group recently claimed response ability for the Violent Attacks in sri lanka in april. Responsibility for the Violent Attacks in tree longer in april. In sri lankatacks in april. What are the tools we need to keep this country safe . Hosts ofyou to the this Coalition Conference for inviting me to be here, i am particularly glad to be talking to a bunch of people who do not live in washington, d. C. You are probably more reasonable than the people i talked to talk to. [laughter] hes right. The tools that im going to elaborate on, and i will try to do this briefly, i doubt will surprise anyone. Let me stipulate up front that tended, since 9 11, as a government, to rely on one set of tools and not on another set. The one we have focused on, for very good reasons im not try to suggest the focus we have put on these tools was misplaced but it was the use of Law Enforcement intelligence and military power to deal with the fact that we were attacked so horrifically on 9 11. And then of course when isis arose in 2014, we had another very significant terrorist threat that we and the rest of the world had to deal with. We have developed extraordinary abilities to use our intelligence, our Law Enforcement, and our military instruments to use physical force against terrorists. It has saved thousands of lives, it has presented prevented another 9 11 attack on our own soil. It has done a great deal of good. It has not reduced the scale or scope of terrorism around the world. In fact, those of you who may have possibly noted in october, a new National Counterterrorism strategy was approved by the Administration Last october. And in the opening sentences of the new strategy, it makes it a very important acknowledgment that despite all of our efforts as americans im not talking about the rest of the world as much as im talking about americans here despite our best efforts, the problem of terrorism is more widespread and complex than when we began. If we have proved anything in the last 18 years, these military Law Enforcement iselligence instruments necessary but is strategic really strategically insufficient if i tell you we have more terrorists today than when we began 18 years ago. The things that prevent the creation of new terrorists. Judgment unless, in my and for the last three years i have been the street been the senior strategist at the national counte