Communication. Very, very happy on behalf of Hudson Institute to welcome senator chris murphy from connecticut to join us in a series of dial ocean that we have been having here at hudson with a range of policy makers and important contributors to the American Foreign policy debate from both parties from many different points of view. This is partly out of hudsons commitment to ser yous intellectual engagement over serious questions and reflects my own view as an analyst of American Foreign policy that if you look at the history of American Foreign policy, often our policy works best when you have many voices with different points of view and out of that are contentious series of exchanges emerges ideas, compromises, directions that no American School of thought would have come up on its own. That is the way our constitution worked. Hamilton thought there were terrible compromises and franklin wasnt pleased with it. The constitution was maybe a bit better than it would have been if the Founding Fathers were able to write what was in their own head. In that spirit, i hope we are going to have an interesting conversation today. What i plan to do is to begin by exploring with senator murphy ar series of ideas, a lot of them are related to an article he published in the atlantic magazine and areas of his thoughts and people of those of hudson might overlap and where there are tension over the ideas he was expressing and things you might hear around him and i want to find out more clearly what he really thinks. Beyond that, we will he is very graciously agreed to accept questions from the audience. We will do that in the form of you asking to write a question down. Our staff will collect them and try to put them together. Our goal is to make sure that the audience time is used in the most efficient way possible reflecting the questions that seem to have the widest interest among you. With no further ado, well get started and wonderful to be here and to be with you, senator. As i read your article and looked at other things over the ears, one thing that struck me was that you share a sense of concern both about a new authoritarianism and china and russias role in promoting this parties egun in both to have more sailens in policy conversations. How do you see this new authoritarianism as a challenges to the United States and our values and security. Senator murphy i look forward to the conversation and maybe refer back to your opening remarks in which you reference the founding of our nation. I still believe this is an experiment. I think the whole concept of democracy is a means by which to run a country is unnatural in the accepts that we dont run anything else that is important in our lives through democratic vote whether our family or workplace. We think of other governing structures that are critical to us and i think we have to have a sense of that and understand where the threats to our come. Ents and so far as Vladimir Putin has made his model of governance more attractive to those around him and made people from erdogan to think about so, sly ways to transition democracies to mething that looks more like autocracy or china exporting the tools, many of them to technological tools to others who want to pick them up. We have to see these threats as real. We have to accept the more democracies there are around the world, the safer american interests probably are. Probably harder for democracies to go into war. Harder for terrorists to organize in a democracy. We should be in the business of protecting ourselves from tools and models that may ultimately find receive fuming on american soil but recognize that the advancement of democratic interests also tends to avoid the United States having to be embroiled in covers and conflicts overseas. So my point in the atlantic piece, you are going to get a democratic president who is going to be skeptical about large scale military operations overseas. I dont want my party and i dont want my partys Foreign Policy platform in 2020 to be about retreat from the global stage. I want to be engaged in a conversation about how to see the threats, see how different they are than 50 years ago but confront ategy to them. The difference in american politics as a whole and similarity that is a bit more bipartisan as people understand, in the public at large, there is a certain sense maybe there is less reason for the United States to be globally engaged, but on the other hand, many people in the world, people are looking at china and russia worry that there may be in fact more dangers to american dangers and insecurity than in the recent past. So you are getting this debate in both parties to some agree and very strong and lively debate over whether america is safer by pulling back or by staying engaged and maybe in me cases even deepening that engagement . How do you think about this . Senator murphy we have no choice. To say it today, the world doesnt stop at our borders any longer. Our economic interests clearly are now global. The ability for information to flow across borders and for other nations to use lowcost mechanisms to mess with us in the United States outside the projection of military forces is more menacing than ever before. We are serious about protecting america, we have to be globally engaged. That doesnt mean that you your d game is to defeat your adversaries or your projections abroad. I think if we can project and portray strength to both russia and china, then it may be there is a better chance they will decide to amend their either political or economic behaviors to a standard that is much more in line with american interests. But we dont have the capacities to meet them where they are today and this is what i write about. China is midwifing technologies and delivering them to the world or the way russia is using corruption and bribery and information propaganda to try to influence its neighborhood. Today, we simply arent having any meaningful conversation in congress about how to create capacities in our policy tool kit that would counter what they are doing actually invest them. They are operating without much significant pushback from the United States. In some ways, it gets to something a lot of observers talk about which is Congress Seems to have of the three branches of government, congress is the one that seems to have the hardest time shaping policy and thats regardless of party, i think. But with the relative weakness of congress and this is by default, both the executive and judicial branches have become much more important in the country so that for many, you have a lot of people in this country now who think that a Congressional Election is important because it might affect the supreme court. And how does congress recapture its momentum in Foreign Policy . Is it the Senate ForeignRelations Committee that needs to step up . A rethink . What can be done . Senator murphy the first thing that congress can do is get serious about our most sacred responsibility within the Foreign Policy realm and thats the declaration of war that we dont do anymore. And it is understandable. Its not the same it was 75 years ago. There arent armies marching against each other or peace treaties. R is messy and your enemy is shadowy and undweend. But congress can still set the parameters of war making. The first thing that congress can do is get back in that game. It means we need to think more creatively how we write these authorization and probably have to sunset every few years. But the biggest grant to the executive is in our inability to authorize war. But the point i make back to this piece, so much of i think what ails Foreign Policy is the lack of capabilities. We say russia acts assem hit trickically because we dont have anything to meet to use their Energy Resources to bully neighbors or run r. T. 24 hours in countries around the world. Congress could decide to create new capacity. If we gave them to the executive, it would be better than what we have today. We did this a few years ago when senator portman and i established a new propaganda operation at the state department. It is meager in scope and size. 60 million. First time the state department had to think about what they would do if they wanted to be present in fighting the information wars in and around russia and still have the capacity to do that. Congress could do that. We have legislation now to stand up a 1 billion Energy Independence fund, which could actually get our government in the business of suspending money to become Energy Independent in places like russia rather than giving advice. Congress could create that new tool kit that i have been talking about for years. How much money are we talking . Senator murphy we dont bat an eyelash when we plus up the department of defense by 50 billion to 70 billion a year. Hat represents the nondefense. I put a plan on the table, which sounds revolutionary until you realize that thats what we give d. O. D. On a oneyear basis in increased funding. They are having a hard time figuring out how to spend all the money we are giving them effectively today. And i put it on the table. I have another document called rethinking the battlefield which is a detailed plan by which you would over the course of five years double the size of the state department and usaid and create these kinds of capacities that would meet these new threats. I think this issue will be Institutional Reforms needed to adapt American Foreign capabilities is a solid concept. Senator murphy and it is about adapting to these new realities and really answering what the department of defense is great is adaptable. If you want to give advice to farmers in iraq and afghanistan, they will find away to tell you, it will say yes. The state department is not in in the business of say yes but says no and has money that cant be moved from place to place. You have to create not just additional money acknowledge authorities but additional flexibilities outside the department of defense. 2,000 marines or soldiers werent going to do the trick in a place that needed diplomats and political help to figure out how to have a governing structure that they could all live with. You have to create the ability for diplomats. So it is about flexibility and new capabilities and new funding. One thing on the state Department Capability that i have noticed over the years, i have done a lot of visits and ectures and visit a lot of embassies and concxds con sulls. I notice where we need the diplomats most, they only stay for a year in the dangerous hot spots, american diplomats are stationed for one year rather than the threeyear tour and people are getting on leave. There is such turn, its very hard to function. Is there away to fix that . Can congress do something . Senator murphy its not an easy assignment to go to a place that is incredibly difficult. No one signs up understanding that it is going to be easy. The structure to the state department has not changed in decades. When it was a bipolar world and you had to understand the basics of how you argued against soviet expansion and for american expansion and contestants werent vying for space, maybe shortterm deployments made more sense. Today when you learn about afghanistan, you are 10 months boo a oneyear turnaround time. Again, the department of defense has started to think about how to deal with that. So, yes, the young soldiers go into these places and come back out in a year. But special operators dont. Special operators have expertise in parts of the world and they ick around below the radar screen and develop contacts and ability to understand the places. The state Department Needs to catch up. I think youre right. Every u. S. President since bill clinton has tried to build a constructive relationship with Vladimir Putin. We have had resets and we have looked into his eyes and his soul and done all kinds of things, but we seem to end up with the same respect, hostile relationship. Is that just it . Hes not going to say yes and we have to take no for an answer here or is there away to rethink u. S. Russian relations . Senator murphy you have to learn the lessons that are in front of you. There is a psychology to russia that does not lend itself to cooperation with the major power that helps to organize the rest of the world and i think you have to understand that about he very foundations of russian psyche and putin has done nothing to suggest that he is interesting other than using the United States as a political he to control his own population. I dont mean to keep beating a dead horse here. We put him in a position to win when we continue to drive our spending towards aircraft car years and drones instead of figuring out that really would make him most nervous is have countries around his edges who dont need his gas and oil. Today, all we need to bully of not building of russian pipeline instead of going with hard dollars to help them build any Domestic Energy sources whether it be nuclear, solar or wind connections to other places. We spent 4 billion on the European Reassurance Initiative and i dont think that is money badly swept but questionery whether putin would worry more if we spent 4 billion trying to wean countries around him off of on evenuemaking products countries he is not likely to invade with his conventional army. You are saying if poland had gone into fracking, it might be better off and russian money went in to try to prevent that. Senator murphy fracking is not a popular topic in europe these days. If you really think about how 600 uld spend anew billion, 700 billion to make our countries safer and those who wish us ill a harder time, you dont want to spend zero on making other countries independent. Another point where there seems to be leftright consensus is on the question of Money Laundering dark money. And we have an initiative here at hudson and how much mportance you give that issue. Ell oldfashioned means of trying to project your influence to buy it and use oldfashioned intimidation and gravet to bring people to your side. In a world in which it is very easy to cloud the truth that creates a narrative in which no one believes any narratives, that provides cover for this kind of oldfashioned corruption. And yet again, we are badly resourced to meet that threat. If you go into any of these embassies today, you will find a handful of political officers who are charged with doing a whole ton of things and one of which is running anticorruption programming. Why not recognize this is a real life daily tool of all sorts of countries, not just the russians and create officers dedicated only to corruption. Why not spend more money on funding anticorruption projects. Some of the stuff we have done in ukraine and spent dollars on our effort to professionalize the Municipal Police forces have been successful. But we spend that money in dribs and drabs. If you spent money on building anticorruption initiatives and putting officers across the world to highlight and fight corruption, you would do a much better job than what we are doing today, which is largely complaining about it. The other side is how easy how corrupt dictators can move money into the west, including into the United States. How do we limit . Corruption is bad but i worry about the russian and chinese case where it isnt just rich people trying to get their money safe as it is often connected to state power and moved around for political purposes. How do we address this problem . Senator murphy we have tracked terrorist financing and finding it where it exists and closing down the shelters that harbor it. You can certainly choose to use those same tools to track the illicit gains of oligarches and government officials. Admittedly it is harder, right rgs because these are countries in which we still need to maintain a relationship with that executive who is either putting the money into his own accounts or handing it out to others or putting it in their accounts. In terrorist financing, you dont have legitimate interests with those organizations that you are trying to protect. But again, i dont think we have begun the work of even trying to find a middle ground in which to use those same tools to go after some of these corrupt folks that vuned these auto cats or developing auto cats. I would like to turn some areas where some folks at hudson have questions about some of the points you raised. Here, one of them would be the question of the relationship of geo politics and i dont know, values. Where you say in the article we shouldnt extend security guarantees to countries that dismember journalists. Peaking as a journalist, im entirely in the agreement to discourage this heinous behavior. I do note that the u. S. Saudi relationship began in the 1940s where slavery was still legal and wasnt a pretty play. And roosevelt who might have been the most progressive president in the United States in terms of real plibments made an alliance with the worst mass murderer of the 20th century, stalin, because he felt he had no choice. Clearly at one end of this geo political necessity can overcome even the horror of stalins camps. On the other, you dont want to raise the white flag and say morals are for other people. How do we balance this . Senator murphy i try to answer that very simply in that i dont necessarily buy that we should create two different categories, one in which there are u. S. Interests and the other in which there are u. S. I think we should think values like democracy, and human rights as interests. And it is easy to sort them in different buckets when you believe the world was on this march towards everyone having access to democracy or civil liberties. 1990s, everything is good. Senator murphy i think we are seeing things swing back the other way and see democracy promotion or advance