Current news from northeast syria. We have great panel of experts to discuss this with you today. Ken pollack, dana stroul and were also pleased to welcome back in the eye senior fellow and director of the defense and Security Program bilal saab after a oneyear fellowship in the department of defense. We are happy to have him back and look forward to hearing his insights from his upcoming article in the 2019 fall issue of the washington quarterly entitled broken partnerships can washington get Security Cooperation right . Moderating todays panel of the six experts is eric schmitt. Eric is a writer covering terrorism and National Security for the new york times. Since 2007 he has reported on terrorism issues with assignments to pakistan, afghanistan, north africa, southeast asia, among others. He is a coauthor of counterstrike, the untold story of americas secret campaign against alqaeda. Published in 2011. Before joining the times, eric was an education reporter at the tricity herald in kennewick washington. Hes come a long way. From september 1982 until september 1983. Eric will introduce the other distinguished members of todays panel but before he begins i would like to remind you to silence your mobile devices. The broadcast for the Panel Discussion today is being covered by cspan2, fox and cnn but we do welcome you to join the conversation on twitter using the hashtag mei security. With that i will turn over to eric schmitt. Thanks so much. Thank you all for coming today. Just want to briefly introduce our panels today before you get into our discussion, kind starting on the left farlow, dana stroul preconcert azucena professional staff member on the Senate ForeignRelations Committee where she covered the middle east. On her right general joseph votel come distinguished fellow at mei. Most of you probably know him as former command of Central Command and special operations command. General votel is right, ken pollack, resident scholar at e American Enterprise institute. He served as a cia and had stints in the National Security council under president bill clinton picky covered the middle east and in particular iran and director find a left bilal saab is a senior fellow and director of the defense and Security Program here at mei and preconcert azucena advisor for Security Cooperation of the pentagons office of the secretary of defense for policy with responsibilities for centcom. What were going to do today is have discussion, starting with each of the speakers, talk for about ten minutes ago asked each question or two as it will throw it open to you all for discussion towards the end but right now think well start with ken to give us a kickoff where we stand unless they give it much, eric. Thank all of you. Its wonderful to be with my distinct with colleagues. Its nice to be back at mei but in the fabulous new building. So i guess there are a lot of different dimensions to this problem. My job is to start out by talking about i think the substantive issue the truth at the root of everything, and its an issue that is moment everyone in this room, but its when we dont like to talk about a whole lot. I do but most people dont. And that is the fundamental problem that our allies do not have the capacity to defend themselves against their primary threats. Thats where it all starts for us. Thats in driven home in recent weeks and in recent months and in recent years by any number of developments across the middle east. I think the investment of americans would love it if our arab allies were better able to defend themselves i decided we could leave the region altogether or for those who recognize at there may be reasons we would need to stay want to see any way at the very least so they could do more for themselves and we didnt have to do so much for them. There are a lot of Different Reasons why this is a problem. I could talk about them in a new book, armies of sand, something i discussed figuratively in this space a number of months ago. Im not going to go into the full description here. Thats not the point you. Simply to say, the reasons arab militaries have had such difficulty with conventional military operations over the last 70 years, why they continue such difficulty today and why theyre likely to in the near future is rooted in some very large problems that are not going to be easily or quickly fixed. They are rooted in the politics, economics, the culture, the educational practices of the arab world. None of that is going to be changed very quickly. But that doesnt mean that the arab militaries are hopeless. And i think one of the important things to think about when we think about this new concept of by, with, and through is that its both of virtue and a necessity. The truth is we might not have one to fight this way. I know when our military commanders were first confronted with the problem of daish, isis coming back into iraq and taking over so much territory in syria, it isnt necessarily the way they wouldve liked to have fought that war if they couldve had their druthers. But they didnt have a choice. That was what was available to them, and they made a virtue out of necessity and i think there are some important things to take away from it and things are valuable to think about in their own rights. Because truth of metal about arab militaries do a tremendous difficulty with modern conventional warfare, they are not hapless. There are things that can be done. There are workarounds, ways to tailor their forces, ways to approach military operations that have allowed them greater success in the past. And what the by, with, and through approach did was forced our commanders, particularly my friend Sean Macfarland, really was wrestling with this in 2015 and iraq and a thick was really the guy who kind of figured out how to do this and set the stage, created a model that were using elsewhere and he realized some things that are true or arab militaries across the board and have been for the last 70 years. When they form small elite forces, they tend to do better. When you can create kind of a military subculture the way the jordanians did back in the threats of force, the way i would argue a uae is doing today, that also stands them in good stead. When they can rely on someone elses firepower and act as an adjunct to it, they could do better when they can do static operations set piece operations, they can do better. There are ways to do this that can take advantage of some of the skills that are there in arab militaries. As i said, i think by necessity having to do by, with, and through, the fact we had a Leadership Back year that did not want to simply put an american heavy division down in the middle of the desert and wipe out daesh by itself, which was something that point people were talking about at the time. I think me in a military wouldve of loved to been able to do that because it would be the easy answer. That wouldve been a way to defeat isis, destroy it really quickly and easily but it wasnt politically possible. So instead they had to adopt by, with, and through method. They had to go to the iraqis and secondarily to the syrians and say okay, we cant do it for you, you guys are quite the doityourself ear we can provide you with a great deal of assistance but the end of the day its going to be an iraqi and syrian combat troops who are going to need to take the fight. Weve got to figure out ways to train up more effective iraq and syrian forces, and provide them with a combat enablers that will make them successful put them in situations where they can be successful. Thats the heart of by, with, and through. As i said, that was a necessity for the political restrictions placed on those people trying to implement the mission. But i think it does speak to deeper truths that there are better ways to do this. That there are ways to think about how we train, how we hep train our arab allies that will allow them to do better than theyve done in the past. It starts with the recognition those armies are not like our own. Again this is something i talk about a great link in my book and when i say it will sound really obvious but the truth is we havent really respected the last 70 years, which is that the average arab 18yearold boy really isnt like the average american 18yearold boy or girl. And trying to train in arab boy the way you would train an amen boy or girl, its not going to work, right . It just isnt. They are not the same at cells. They dont come from the same society. They dont think about things the same way that we do. They have different strengths and weaknesses. And, of course, hours the russian did the same thing, the british did the same thing, the french did the same thing. We all assumed our system is simply write and its right for everyone. When you go in there and tried to train someone on a system that isnt properly advise, probably adapted for their society, it doesnt work well. We find all around the world militaries that do best are the ones who take someone elses system or build your own come with the take someone elses system, the adapted to their own society, to their own circumstances. And again by, with, and through forced us to do the same exact thing for the iraqis and to lesser extent for the syrian opposition. Now, moving forward, that does set up at least a temporary model for how we move forward until you could have deeper, societal change. Societal change whichever industry knows all of the arab leader would like to see happen although they are very nervous about actually trying to implement. But into it and get longerterm there are absolutely things that can be done. The big issues there bring us back to politics. Both here and in the arab world. It requires going to the arab leaders and saying, we are not going to give you the same training that we give to american troops because honestly, its not right for your forces. Instead, we are going to tailor Something Else that is right for your forces. Thats very hard for leaders who want the best and believe whatever the americans give their own troops has got to be the best, so i want the best so i want that. Thats also hard accu in washington because when they pay us to give them the best training, by god, were going to give them the best training, and thats how we train our own troops. So the political battles, they are a big part of getting us to the point where we can deal with these other set of issues. That money to overdo general votel come baby can straighten out the 30,000foot level for all of us. Before that when they ask about iraq. Without it uptick in violence in the last week or so and wanted to get, easy to be more specific when you talk about this model the indigo. What are the two or three takeaways that you think have been learned successfully and maybe havent been for successfully given the amount of time used military has been and are back over the last two decades . Thats a a great question, mark. In terms of the takeaways that i think weve learned or at least parts of the United States have learned, its not clear if the whole u. S. Government has learned it. Again i think there are things we hit upon during the course of by, with, and through. So recognizing the iraqi cts, a small elite force of soldiers really good within some degree of combat capability of these are guys with a certain amount of unit cohesion with advance against fire, to do some very, very basic fire and maneuver but enough so they could clear a foe that was tough not superhuman. Under circumstances where a lot of american support. That was very important, recognizing cts was critical. Recognizing we had to rebuild the iraqi command structure. During the surge we had to build more or less a a new iraq you military command. Nuri balaji had destroyed after we pulled out in 2011. Medical back and rebuild it to create a politically command control circumstances to do what we needed to do. Given the iraqis ownership of it, letting them feel like they were the ones responsible, given in the sense of pride can build up a sense of national selfesteem was also very important one and then theres also this issue of kind of picking out the right missions. Not putting these guys in positions where they have to do kind of big freeflowing unscripted maneuver battles. Thats not what even the iraqis cts is capable doing but you put in in the right circumstances, set operations, limited offenses, lots of american enablers and it really could do fine. Those of the things we want to take away that again i think u. S. Military certainly recognizes that is the way forward. Thats the model for other militaries and when you did forget how we help of the militaries get to that. The thing we didnt learn, thats obvious, right . The military peace of any of these wars is about 10 of actually solving that the other 90 is political and diplomatic, economic which we once again have blindly go to once again iraq is teetering on the brink of yet another conflict as a result. Thats great. I wanted to use that to kind of give it to general votel because general, the merck in public is going to go on a crash course as weak with by, with, and through in northEastern Syria and airy r you know quite well and obviously the turkish offensive is carried out started yesterday after President Trump seemingly green lit this operation after phone call and send with president erdogan. You are quite critical in an oped you wrote yesterday in the atlantic. Tell us more about your experience, what you draw from this. Its great to be here. Great set up. Let me start big and then we will get to the area that eric just talked about. In the Current NationalDefense Strategy released back in 2010 it was articulated our principal priority was maintaining competitive events against great powers. Also, a key precept within that, however, was the importance of partnership, especially in those areas where we will have to exercise dichotomy of u. S. Monetary resources and present on the ground. Theres a very strong beliefs, i currently subscribe to this, ive always subscribe to this, the Strong Partnership can act as an indicator in fact, in these areas which is except some risk but we also retain important National Security interests. What im trying to convey here is partnership is a part of our overall approach, and we have and we have had a lot of tools in the past to deal with this. We have things like Security Force assistance. This is unified action across our government to help a country develop their own Security Apparatus to answer to the people and to the government. You can think of this as anyone of our very wellestablished Security Cooperation offices out there that work in conjunction with combatant commands to kind of address the security requirements of our partners out there. In the special operations world, particularly in the sf world, special forces can things like internal defense for and these are our specific military activities to support a a fairy come against an internal threat. Theres a variety of different examples around here. In my experience i would think we actually tried to do this in yemen in 20112013, when we were assisting the government of yemen deal with alqaeda who was actually trying to control ground that in the southern part of the country and we worked with them to address the specific threat vectors of the things i can conventional warfare. Again, a bit of a confusing term but important concept and its the opposite approach. That is where we support a Resistance Movement or an insurgency against an occupying power, adversary government, you know, theres a number of examples of this and i think perhaps one of the best ones is our support for the mujahedin in afghanistan during the soviet invasion. And i would say that our operations in afghanistan right after 2001 had this flavor, especially in the north where we had special forces teams working very closely with the Northern Alliance to accomplish military objectives. Against the seemingly taliban government that was in place. But complement this approach is this idea by, with, and through, and think what by, with, and through represents is kind of where the rubber meets the road, is how we actually estimate some of these ideas on the ground. And i think its important, and we talked a lot about this in my time at centcom to try to define what by, with, and through actually means. Each of those words kind of sounds the same but the they ry in my might mean something different. By implies these are activities conducted by him largely by our partners on the ground, whether they are state forces of whether their indigenous partners. With means with our enabling capabilities and vice that we are bringing something to them to help them, help them moving forward. And then through i think through refers to the idea of authorities, approvals, agreements, expectations that are established. One of the things we were able to do with the Syrian Democratic forces as we worked with them over a number of months and, in fact, years, was really established red lines, things that we were not going to support. We were not going to support any efforts to unite the kurdish cantons. Were not going to go to africa after the kurdish incursion. These are the types of expectations that im kind of talking about, form the background about this approach actual plays out on the ground. There are some disadvantages to this approach. Its important to recognize what that is. Parker set the pace in this period that could be an advantage but in those cases we are going to be beholden to the things, a pace at which they are doing things and they may not be moving as fast or as dry grass we want to and so they will set the pace. They may not do things the same way that we would do, and i dont mean ethically or legally. Thats an impaired upfront, operating in accordance with the rule of law and a lot of our armed conflict, thats very clear upfront and thats one of those expectations through which we are providing the support. But you know, the deeper we got into the euphrates valley over the last five or six months of the campaign, the more we saw the Syrian Democrati