U. S. Troops. This comes to us from the Hudson Institute in washington d. C. Live coverage this is about 90 minutes. [inaudible conversations] good morning. Can everybody hear me . Ok. My name is ali rogin im with the pbs news hour covering Foreign Affairs and as a journalist, i want to say im grateful to the Hudson Institute for convening this panel to discuss what is a rapidly developing, as we all know, situation on the syrianTurkish Border. Without further ado im going to introduce thfoo yo all probably already know. To my left is the founder of mb long and associate an International Legal and Advisory Firm from 20072009 she served as the first woman confirmed by the senate as assistant secretary of defense for International Affairs and the chair of nate es high level groups. She has previously served as the Principal Deputy secretary of defense, and she was the deputy secretary of defense for counter narco. Next we have michael durand, a senior fellow here at Hudson Institute. He specializes in middle east Security Issues and during the administration of president george w. Bush he served as senior director in the National Security council. To the left is retired Brigadier General mark kimmet of the u. S. Army, served as secretary of state for political military 2009, and 2008 to prior that, the deputy secretary of defense 20062008 and last but not least, a fellow here at Hudson Institute as well. His Research Program focuses on the middle east, europe and trategic commission. And blaze was in a congressionally mandated project for u. S. Institute of peace. How this is going to work, we are going to be having a conversation for the bulk of this session and then we are going to open it up to a q a. So, please start thinking of your questions now. I know that on the program you all received there was presented very much a binary choice between people on this panel who are here to argue in favor of the policies that the United States is implementing on the syrianTurkish Border and against. In the brief moments we have before the panel began, i think its fair to that body size this as a binary choice between either being in favor or eing against so were going to get into a little of the gray area here today as well as talk about what the recommendations of these esteemed panelists believe Going Forward. So if i could just maybe go down the line and start with just getting your general thoughts about what you think of the u. S. Withdrawal from northeastern steeryria and the precipitating events. Mary beth. [laughter] how much time do i have . Right, lets try to keep it for a few minutes and then get into the meat of all of that after that. I think the situation in 2019 has evolved over the last decade is fairly predictable that the president made the decision, as any president would probably who was sitting in that white house chair would make, that eventually the u. S. Had to withdraw out of northeast syria. It was not sustainable position. It certainly wasnt sustainable with the numbers and assets that ere applied. I believe it unfortunate and a mistake that make the decision and implement it the way it was made in part because, number one, were allowing the slaughter of not only kurds, but the Syrian Defense forces actually majority arab these ays and the kurd membership is almost equaled by the christian and membership and those have over timed joined, and we lost an lost an ined, and we opportunity there, i think, to stabilize northeast syria and to allow those people to sort themselves out from an association of more stability and perhaps empowerment. Turkey pulled that trigger, i hink, prematurely. We positioned ourselves, unfortunately, in a weakened position by acquiescing to erdogans threats and withdrawing the way that we did which i think is a mistake, however, i think were going to end up there eventually. I do think that the president has the position he is not ithdrawing out of syria. Not only in northeast syria, but along the border and still understand in reticent positions backed off up in the northeast where we still may be providing some assistance and i think thats the right thing. I think it will be controversial Going Forward and there are a lot of implications outside of the tactical maneuvering on northeast syria that i think are more important and those are our relationships with turkey. We can talk about that in detail, our positioning in the middle east and in the world in a larger sense. Our relationships and perceived relationships with the iranians and russians in particular and the stability or perception of lack thereof u. S. Credibility in Foreign Policy rit large. I think those are the really mportant issues that are front who is rather than those kind of things. We can get to that later. Thanks. I think its important that we focus on where we would like all of this to end. How we want to bring this to a solution. And i think its important to recognize that we were postured for catastrophic failure in northeastern syria because we entered into an alliance with the pkk and that the ypg, the Kurdish Force we worked wi on the ground is the pkk. This is a terrorist organization on the state departments terrorism list that seeks to partition turkey between kurds and turks by aligning with the pkk or aligning with the pkk we set ourselves on a collision course with turkey. And that was unwise from a humanitarian point of view and the Strategic Point of view. The strategic prize in this ituation is the orientation, the International Orientation of turkey. The turks have been telling us for years now that they dont like the fact that we are providing a power umbrella under which the pkk can build an autonomous kurdish statement in northeastern syria and we have effectively time and time again told them to sit down and shut up. That we rebranded the pkk as the sds, we brought in arabs and yazidis and others as mary beth was saying, but the power center f that organization was always the pkk and we should recognize that we lied to ourselves. The Obama Administration packaged this as something other than pkk. It successfully propgannized the American People in that regard, but it didnt the turks. They are enraged by it. They have said time and time again tt this is destroying a relationship with them and were ignoring it. Its not a question of erdogan, by the way. The vast majority of turks support this operation. If we look at the mess we have there now, we have to recognize we played a major role in creating that, in creating that mess. Getting out of it means we need to reestablish good ties with ankara, stabilizing that part of the world. If we dont have productive ties with the turks, which means largely working on their terms, not on ours because we had 1,000 troops there and there we are leaving. Everyone knows were leaving sooner or later. Turkey is going to be there forever, and the turks know this as well. So we have to work through them largely on their terms. We can have our humanitarian concerns and we can push them aggressively. We can have differences of opinion. They have to be within a turkish frame work rather than some framework that we have made up as a result of where all the different little positions we ended up with as a result of a lot of temporary tactical decisions we made without strategic understanding. We started to talk about the middle east and our policy in the middle east without reference to states. We have to go back to a traditional understanding of how the world works. States are the main actors and we need to position ourselves accordingly. The strategic prize is turkey and the strategic goal when all of this settles is that we can contain iran. If we drive we are in a position, which makes no strategic sense whatsoever of ditching a major ally, a nato ally, that sits aboard europe and asia and which we have bases, intelligence, platforms and ability to stop the russia through the black sea strategic, strategic posture, an ally that worked with us in bosnia, in afghanistan, not to mention the korean war and others. Were going to ditch that state for a Splinter Group extremist terrorist organization that doesnt even represent the kurds. The pkk is not the kurds. This makes no sense. We now have a bipartisan we now have a bipartisan concensus in congress to put massive sanctions on turkey in order to save our relationship with the pkk. How did we get to this position . It makes no sense. All right. Well, maybe it would be worthwhile to talk about how we got to this position. Ive written extensively on this ever since december 19th, but lets go back to the beginning. I think president obama was right when isis attacked into iraq in 2014, there was a recognition that you couldnt just go against the nose, you had to go against the tail of isis. Nd that meant get in there and defeat the caliphate. Until as any military person will tell you if you dont get to the root of the power youre never going to be successful. So at that time the mission was go in under a very, very limited scope, the authority for the military force. That allowed us to go in to kill isis with American Forces and american proxies. You all remember at that time lieutenant general, general lloyd austin was in charge of centcom and i sadly remember him in front of congress saying we spent 500 million to field four oldiers. Trying to set up a force with the arabs there, we couldnt vet them properly, they werent reliable, they were more concerned about fighting assad than they were against fighting isis. We needed to find an alternative fighting force. An alternative fighting force as this scrappy group called the wpg operating outside of kabani. We dropped air supplies in and they proved to be good fighters. We decided to work with them, we understood there was going to be a problem and the problem was going to be turkey because this is a pkk affiliated group according to secretary of defense ash carter. So we had to figure out how to finesse this. We told the turks and our policy was that this relationship with the pkk with the w ypg was temporary, transactional and tactical. That was the american policy at that time expressed numerous times. It didnt mean that we were longterm allies of the ypg, it meant that we had a specific purpose for a specific time and at the end of that we were going to break apart. There was mutual benefit, the ypg had many, many kurdish towns they were trying to defend against isis. E wanted to kill isis. What happened, isis is defeated boo i a brilliant job by ypg on the ground and the american support provided there. At that point the mission was over, but all of a sudden, our nd srted thinking we need to what we would simply call engage in Mission Creep of a massive amount that ive never seen before. We were in there under the authority for the use of military force. Counter isis and counter isis alone. All of a sudden we started nation building. We started humanitarian operations. We were going to build a 40,000 man police force so they could be the local police. And theres no doubt in my mind that that would have been a multiyear operation and then on top of that, a syria resolution. What would america do at that point . Well take sector northeast in this operation. Our policymakers on the ground, goodhearted as they may have been were setting the United States up for a multiyear, if not decade long operation in complete violation of their authority for the use of military force. Its that simple. They got ahead of their headlights. They were making promises on the ground to the ypg that they were writing checks they couldnt back up. So where do we find ourselves . We find ourselves enthralled and in love with an organization that every time they have a press conference has a map has a picture behind it and the map along side of it. And so, this was an untenable, it was unsustainable and i think regardless of how this policy fiasco works out, i have no doubt explain who they are. I have no doubt there are people out there who dont ok. Ochlon was head of the pkk responsible of organizing killing 40,000 turks inside of urkey. Rocava three inside northeast syria are with the ypg aspiration is to set up an independent country and independent nation which is effectively syria kurdistan. So im not going to give you my personal views on the current administration, but i would simply say that if anybody was surprised by the decision 19th announcement by President Trump, they havent been watching President Trump. They may have been surprised, they shouldnt have been shocked. The fact is, President Trump, since the day he was on the campaign trail says were going to get out of stupid wars in the middle east. And if you take a look at whats happening here, each individual component may have merit, but when you put that whole thing together, you end up with a disjointed policy that when our disjointed policymakers on the ground are trying to justify this, you can just imagine whats said inside the oval office. Why are we here . Whats in the benefit of the United States . Where is the United States interest here . The United States doesnt have friend, it has interests. How are the interests of the United States being served here . There would be some saying, were going to keep an eye on iran. Were going to thwart russia, hold off turkey. I mean, these are all outside of the mandate and the only authority which is the authority for the use of military force. And when you see people in congress that are now saying, were abandoning our allies, who hree years ago were on the record saying, working with the ypg is the dumbest policy ive ever seen, i criticize the United States congress for not being educated on the situation and not invoking their legislation which was the authority for the use of military force as a constraining mechanism under which the United States was allowed to put forces inside of syria for no other purpose than the defeat of the isis caliphate. The isis caliphate is done, this president made the decision made the decision to pull out now that the isis caliphate is defeated. How thats being done is the biggest fiasco that i suspect everybody up here has seen in their government and military career in the past 50 years, but there we are. Ont confuse the policy fiasco that were seeing happen on the ground with mismatched policies and ways and means that got us here. I feel so much better. [laughter] very wellstated. Good morning, all of you, thanks for joining us for this important discuss. Ali, thanks for moderating. Its my privilege to be on a panel with three such distinguished individual ive learned so much about the middle east from and its my unfortunate play to have to go after all three of them so ill try to find some areas of nuance to shed light on issues that havent been discussed yet. Overall id like to make the point the situation is not as binary as a lot of the debate would suggest it is and even though, as said, and mary beth said, its predictable that we got to this place especially between the calls between president s erdogan and trump last december where the original decision to pull out was made, and the resolution, that finally came to its end. The first point id make, it didnt have to be this way and by that i mean that even though this was set up as general kimmitt said, the decision to work with the ypg and syria, the outcome didnt have to be a howdown. Between turkey and the syrian kurds. And who to side with. And the clearest example, to demonstrate that is looking at the u. S. Relationship and the turkish relationship with iraqi kurds over a long period of time turkey has voiced the same concerns as now voicing with syrian kurds about Northern Iraq. It was one of the reasons why the turks were fearful of the outcome of the gulf war in 1991, why they were concerned about operation provide comfort, where the u. S. Provided air cover for Northern Iraq that allowed the establishment of the autonomous kurdish regions and one of the reasons why turkey decided not to allow the United States to use turkish territory and turkish basis for the 2003 invasion of iraq because of their concerns that it would empower iraqi kurds, which were actually at that point, Iraqi Kurdistan was the center of gravity for pkk operations. Turkey launched into northern raq for the pkk. D by 20122013, one of the closest partners was the krg and the iraqi kurds. Because the u. S. Facilitated the Political Institution that moved away from the pkk, that embraced responsible governance and made clear to turkey there was an economic benefit here and not a military or terrorist threat. Theres precedence for the United States working with the groups and brokering a peace and understanding between turkey and those kurdish groups. Unfortunately thats not what weve done the last five years or the time that we worked with the ypg and that has been an unfortunate waste for those five years that we could have led urselves to a situation that was not this drastic. I want today make a point to the generals point, it was to work with the ypg in 2014. First of all, we have to remember that in 2014, president erdogan was having regular talks and turkey was in the middle of a Peace Process with pkk. And erdogan was working with pkk hoping to bring that conflict