There, there are events at the atlantic counsel we do have duty. Theres events we do out of fascination, interest. And there are events at the lank counsel we do out of friendship and long years of bonding. This is all three of those and thats where duty also grows as well. Ive been stealing the ideas for years. And thats why it always kind of upsets when he writes a book because then i cant say that was my my idea or his idea. But this is one of those absolutely brilliant ideas. Which is when you hear about interesting ideas look why didnt i hear or say it that way. So just or the first paragraph gives you a sense of how well many of us sometimes engage a little bit too much in mush. But that does not happen to be one of harlem weaknesses. President s this is a start presence, politician and failed to embrace this simple truth for more than half a Century America has lost every war it has started. And you find yourself saying yeah thats right and failed in military interventions contrived ignorant or just wrong. Some of those words couple of them resonate so so just in the beginning in the introduction, with you find yourself just continuing to read, and his vignette and reflection on his experience and i hope youll talk about some of those but then using them and weeding them through larger message of the of the book. So i as you can see ive made a lot of notes and i put a lot of pages here. But the last two chapters i found particularly powerful because reaches conclusion basically how to win, and the way forward. And the brains based approach to sound stretchy and so when i first saw brain first approach i always said well, why would there be any approach but were going to have you talk about that because i think where you go into here, and Start Talking about the the threat of the internal cost so theres a lot of richness. A lot of richness in this bock. So with what, good evening. [laughter] and welcome im fred kemp president ceo of the atlantic counsel and im happy to see friends, friends here, and im just delighted that we can have a rich conversation. So really good tbrowp. Up group. The title of the provocative book is anatomy of failure why america loses every war it starts. And it examine war and president who is fought them from vietnam to the present day and addresses questions of where and why the world most powerful nation went wrong. And then where and how we failed to learn from our mistake. You are not required to agree with him. He will make graiment disagreement difficult and painful for you but i do want you to know that thesis if you see that hes got something a little bit wrong, question him why he concluded in the way he did. For those who who dont know hair i have bio here but i like the one on the book cover better. Hes a strategic thinker who creator spans business and government. Chairman of two private companies and advisor to the heads of major corporations and governments be with the principle author of the shock of shock and law as you know applied in iraq. And originator of a brain based approach Strategic Thinking and served in combat assignments in vietnam and in destroyer command at sea. Mald ph. D. From Fletcher School of law and readers now resides and lives in washington, d. C. And just a joy to see you here. So that is who he is, and he is an out of the box thinker and also joining us tonight dig into two of my other two favorite people suzanne eisenhower chairman of the group fortuned countries in abroad including cocacola and i could go on about u suzanne but wonderful to have you here. Policy scientist member of three Different Department of energy blue ribbon commissions for three dirchts secretaries. Visiting fellow at the Harvard Institute of plux and distinguished fellow at the center for national interest. So thank you. And then rounding out a group a provocative writer and for the financial times, work since 1995, and before that, the guardian. And the f2 served and top chief and new delhi in washington and Washington Bureau chief. So with that, let me turn over to you to share with us the conclusion of your book. After which im going to ask suzanne and add to make some initial remarks and then move right into a discussion from there. Thank you for your generous remarks it is a pleasure to see you fred and i have been associated since fred took over his institution hes intellectual entrepreneur first magnitude and done wonders suzanne is a long standing vat gist expert on too many things. And ed lewis i dont to make eds head too big but hes close to lexus to poke swirl and idolizing american and anybody that i know today is more than 50 years ago before many of you were born, i was in wariner springs, california as a young lieutenant jg in mngts in middle of winter going through preparation for vietnam. Frostbite was the issue. But last time anybody suffered a case of frostbite in vietnam was during ice age at what stage i began to wonder what the hell am i doing and does this make any sense sh and over time those experiences compounded. The title why does america lose every war it starts is but prevent it from happen hadding but let me say we won ones that counted and with ones we didnt start world world war i world wi the first dwufl war of course most porpghtly the cold war. And ironically the reasons that we won were the polar opposite to why question lost. Youre familiar with lithny but not so much a second iraq war and sadly afghanistan. But every time we used force without sufficient cause of good reason, we failed. And let me take you quick will you through a litany of only some of our failure an explain why and then what do we do to prevent that from happening. The bay of pigs started things. If you jump to Reagan Administration, you have beirut in october 241 marine and Service Personnel kill masters degree arm blast and went many for wrong reasons several days later you go through iran where we illegally harm and jump forward to furs u day of the Clinton Administration in somalia black hawk down in 1993, we go to 199 9 when it took 78 days to get this bombing took us 100 hours to across saddam many 1991 and big areas iraq war, afghanistan, the encourage into libya in 2011 which prompted the civil war. Now why . I argue there are three overarching reasons first president we elect and jack kennedy was very careful to say theres no school for president. President s we elect are not ready for prime time. Take the last four. Bill clinton, george w. Bush, barack obama, and now donald trump who was probably least qualified experienced person. They are not ready and usually they rely on advisors who are good at getting them elected but not good at govern second they exercise poor strategic judgment and ill come back to that poor strategic judgment and third their knowledge and unctioning of the situation was best elect before september 11th, who knew. The difference between sunni and shia with but you go back to vietnam mob thawnd there were four different warses beginning on we didnt understand the politics. Theres some other about ares first a lot of these problems are simply difficult. And probably more difficult than during the cold war and the 20th century but 20th century no matter how dangerous was a bipolar situation by their world war i it was a Central Power against the allies world war ii allies versus access cold war east versus west now the situation is far nor complicated. Second, we have a broken government. Look at this tax reform bill that the senate passed. It is a disaster and im not saying that as a republican or in the because im neither. Government is broken and one of the sad aspects of this as i write in any book u. S. Military is going to pay price because it is headed it for a hallow force. Simply because we cannot pay what needs to be paid to maintain a military because of internal cost growth thats excessive and because we have a situation many terms of management oversight that had to be invented by kgb nobody can operate unders whats happening. Thirdly, president said objectives and aims that are unobtainable or o reflect practices. Jack kennedy pay any price bear any burden, Lyndon Johnson going to find on the conso we dont fight them on the mississippi. Fast forward to george w. Bush, im going to change the g orbs strategic landscape of the great or middle east and he did and not for the better. Knowledge and understanding im going to go back to granada remember in 1982, october, beirut blows up a and theres a small revolution to ship Prime Minister is killed and all of a sudden Reagan Administration said we have to do thing. We have 233 students at the medical school at st. George and theres be a big runway being built so we have to save students because theyre no jeopardy and fun way is used built soviets because cuba is not big muff of an Aircraft Carrier for them so we send many a force of about 8,000 people its a military disaster because we didnt have joint operation. And combated by a tough terrific navy vice admirable named joe meth calf hes getting pounded bit white house save the students. Save the student, and meth calf funnelly wires back the students are not in danger. What . We have Just Launched invasion and by the way, the night before invasion maggie calls up reagan and says ronny youre not going to invade are you he said no im not going to invade which he later records in his autobiography i have no other choice but students were not in jeopardy and guess who was building the air will, the british government. Become in the 1950s, britain has decided that granada it going to be the center peace for tour ism and contract was held by the Company British corporation u knew clark family owned it to the right of the con and what is being good capitalist did they do cheap labor who has cheapest labor kuhns and what did he say ill sending you my boys with one caveat we have to have arm imardz. And so knowledge and understanding was really, really efficient. My point here is that president s often find themselves too isolated and i argue for a range of solutions i begin with a brains base to approach this Strategic Thinking colin powell said that is air gangt but others said it is common sense but we dont do it. What entails brain base approach first, this is 21st century were acting if it is the 20th century. Detainment im sorry deterrent deterrent wases based on bipolarity east versus west how do you deter a situation in which we have the best army navy and air force in the world and the meme doesnt have onesome how do you deter an idea how do you deter vladimir putinen from active measure of intimidation interference using money to buy his way into all sorts of things in so the notion of using 20th century thinking in 21st industry is just mutts we still do it. We have to realize also that the world is entirely interconnected and interrelated what happens here assents there is. Can i give you one big example . Jerusalem. There are 1. 5 billion muslims by the way, one tenth of one they decide to become radical is big. Second part is that we have to focus on understanding having knowledge and understanding. We dont do a very good job. I argue in the book for a park kind of approach. For those of you who dont recall broke german codes during world war ii we immediate to get into the social media and one of the areas where the atlantic counsel has been bringing it was using social media to track a Russian Paratrooper all the way to ukraine. We can do that. And we immediate to establish the equivalent of a wikipedia for the government so you can interchange with all of this information which youre not going to get from the 16 or 17 stole pipe defense organizations so we need to be able to do that and finally, you have to focus on will and perception you dont need to send a bullet but you immediate to get peoples attention that was the basis for shocking a lot by the way was not used in operation in iraqi freedom in afghanistan it was awful in iraq it was just not done but you heed to focus in perception you want to get people to do what you want them to do and stop doing things that you dont. And military force may be necessary its never sufficient, and one of the problems we have done today is weve used the military to Foreign Place where is it does not work and quite frankly being been occasional critic of the pentagon im astounded that the pentagon functions as well today as it does. I dont know how these guys and gals put up with this stuff it is nonsensical in the extreme you dont get a budget but you have oversight so forth and i invited a number of people from pentagon to come here tonight. You know what they said we would love to i have to contact my lawyer to see whether i can. This is madness. So the brain based approach consist of these three arts. Now, what else do we immediate to do . In nfc we need to have a red team that challenges all of the policy assumses that are made. We just recognized jerusalem what was the strategy and hoping to achieve does this make sense, we dont do that in the pentagon, i think we have to separate the joint chief of staff who were double headed as joint chief and service choaf and their job is is to provide at joint chief strategic advice and guidance and military doesnt always get it correct but nonpartisan and educated and tcially experienced and they are consistent. They are there for a very long time. Coining that separation is important to bring much better advice to the president and his team. Thirdly, if congress is going to be part of the landing it better be part of the takeoff. I think what we immediate to do is have equivalent of a National Security counsel of congress interestingly the one person who has joint duties in both branches is the Vice President who by the way is president of the sthat. We put together the key member of the house and the senate to make a small nfc end 12, 14 member who is coordinate with the white house so they can be part of the takeoff as well as a the landing but one area ill stop here because i know suzanne have a lot of things to say is education. The secret weapon we have certainly in the department of the defense is education. We need a major revolution we can start by taking the National Defense universe and turning it into a National Security universe in which members of the entire government can go. National security is no longer state defense and intelligence. Commerce treasury, interior, these Homeland Security all of these can be far more had important and unless we really train and educate people along the line, were going to be way behind the power curve let me give you a final example. One of the things we dont do is to train and prepare flag in general offices when theyre flag and general officers. Ive been on the Advisory Board of the supreme ally command to europe for dozen years and have gone with four commanders. Jim jones, john, jim, and phil how much time do you think any of them had to prepare for that job . Anybody want to guess . Zero. Ive got two vice admirable sitting here in the audience who will tell you the same thing. Generals or admiral you go to a new job you dont have time to prepare for this. British take senior offices and give them two or three months so they have things that can be done in the second part of the bock if you read youll understand. If we do it we wont be engaged in lack the understanding, jolt and we lose and ill tell you theres nothing worse than losing i spent a lot of time in vietnam and believe me i bear some of those scars. Thank you very much. [applause] and so well get to you as quickly as we can. The Atlantic Council loves book events, but we love even more the ability to discuss issues in depth and try to reach conclusions. And so we always try to marry a book event with people who have expertise where they can comment on it, they can ask questions, and they can reflect. Im going to pass to susan and ed, but before i do just so you start thinking about it, i have sort of two reflections myself. One of them is 9 11. That wasnt a war we started. Or was it . And then was shock and awe in afghanistan the right response, and did we go too far. So keep this in your mind. And then the other thing is to what extent everything youre listing sort of starts going more seriously awry at the end of the cold war. Yep. We lose some of our bearings. So these are my first kind of questions. But let me turn to susan and then to ed for your comments and your reflections. Well, thank you. First of all, fred, thank you very much for the invitation to be here at the Atlantic Council and, harlan, i got an enormous amount out of your book and thought your summary just now was a very elegant way to bring everyone in this room up to speed. Its a little overwhelming to start first here since i have so many things i want to say not only about your book, but this great introduction youve just given. I think that youve done a brilliant job of describing the failure to think strategically. And so im always searching, having been in the Foreign Policy area for more than 30 years now, ive always been searching for the higher idea. Yes, we dont do strategy very well, but at one point in our history at least during a period that i have studied and im sure many others here in this room have too, thats world war ii actually, we did strategy really pretty well then. And it was a collaborative effort with our allies, but it was complicated. And one thing that strikes me thats different about world war ii and this period you describe is that in those days strong leadership was defined as being flexible. As bringing with it a capacity and a skill to compromise. After world war ii as america emerged as a great superpower, id like to think that that kind of agility existed throughout the 1950s. You would understand why i say that. [laughter] but certainly, as weve gone farther and farther away from world war ii strong leadership is increasingly defined as someone who digs his heels in and wont and is standing firm. I actually heard Winston Churchill in the never, never give in actually quoted in response to