Member of the board of advisors of cmp p which is chaired by Lieutenant General h. R. Mcmaster cmp p experts work closely with the center on economic and financial power and central Cyber Technology innovation. The goal of integrating all instruments of American Power to achieve Better Outcomes for americans and for our allies. A nonpartisan policy institute. We are a source of timely research, analysis and policy options for congress, the administration, media and the Wider National securityli community. R take no funding. This is one of the events that is hosted throughout the year. For more information we encourage you to visit our website. Fdd. O rg. We invite all of you to join the conversation. We do not have a studio audience today. We are being cautious in response to health concerns. We are live tweeting. Please feel free to put questions there. They will get to me. I will start with a brief introduction of our panel. David. A view of his book. You should go out and get yourself a copy. [laughter] he has an authoritative voice on guerrilla and warfare. Counterterrorism with extensive experience with the australian and u. S. Governments. An army officer, analyst, advisor and diplomat. Serves asom professor of practie at arizona university. A research and operations Firm Providing to political analysis, remote observation and related support through government industry and ngos. Now the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise institute. Previously at the International International institute for strategic studies and experience in government working with the departments of the feds and state as well as the White House National security council. Bradley bowman senior director of our center on military and political power. Serving as National Security advisor to members of the Senate Armed Services and foreign relationsti committee and more than 15 years active duty u. S. Military active officer. Also a blackhawk pilot and assistant professor at west point. Lets get going for those that have not read your book, explain briefly. This is a book about military adaptation by adversaries and potential adversary since the end ofd the cold war. The title comes from president clintons ciaia director. [inaudible] yes. Thank you for pointing that out. If you read his testimony, when he was going through his confirmation hearing and 93, he was asked, well, the cold war just ended, what do you think america is to face and he said we have slammed a large dragon talking about the soviet union. Now we find ourselves in a jungle filled with poisonous snakes. In many ways, the dragon was easy to keep track of. He goes on to lay out this incredibly detailed vision of weak states, failing states and nonstate actors which im calling the snakes. Right. And suggests that the adversaries will not be a big deal for the immediate future which im calling dragons. What im suggesting is that we had a period of about nearly 30 years since his testimony where our adversaries have either adapted and evolved. Im trying to trace the history of how that happened and where they are now. If you look at what has happened since then, and your book suggests this, the dragons have come back. Talking about dragons now, talking about russia. Vladimir putin, once he took over. Contributing to stability and a peaceful relation. That was not at the top of his to do list. We wanted to make russia a normal country. Cant and four years acting on both sides of the aisle republicans democrats and liberals and conservatives and as a chinese get rich they will get moderate it is not communism anymore but coits not all okay and they hae not evolved in that way prayed we were wrong and that is another dragon challenging us. Im suggesting the dragons are back but in the preceding 25, 30 years theyve learned from their snacks and offer it in a different way now. The Trump Administration is a National Security strategy and im sure you have read it and thought about it but in a way he does talk about the dragons and the snakes and doesnt use those terms but we refer to it as a dragons but with revisionist powers, china and russia. The snakes essentially are called rogue powers as well as nonstate jihadi actors. He is the nss financial saturday strategy recognizing those threats, is it essentially saying the same thing that that dave is saint . Its definitely going in the same direction, dave is going with a much less area guideways then david put it but i would love for people to take away from the conversation, both about the nss and daves book, which i dont think we have really sundered our conversation with. I dont mean that on the panel but generally as we talk about american strategy both against dragons and snakes is that these are the wages of our success, right . Great powers were driven to the edges of the complex spectrum because we are so dominant and on the hyatt rungs of the escalation letter. And so, nobody thought they could win a war against the western military and that is why they were driven to the edges of the complex spectrum. Moreover, i think the notion thathe russia and china are revisionist powers, they are reductionist powers. Russia has determined it can be successful on western terms and so as they rightly point out in the book its taken a liminal strategy wishes that because thats not a word everyone hears. Working off the margins and trying not to cross the threshold that everyone would provoke, direct confrontation with the west. That is a smart marginal strategy and it indicates thatt we are still in their minds, dominant in the middle of the conflict spectrum. Both in terms of what they are trying to achieve politically and how they judge their military opportunities we should acknowledge that we start from a notion of the success of what we did and it is just not going to be good enough and dave makes that argument nicely in the book that our adversaries have been much more adaptive than we have and we need to limber ourselves in order to remain the rule sutter of our own fortune. Brad, as a military guy there is a tendency that dave alludes to for the military to say lets do what we do well. And we would prefer that our enemies help us by challenging us in ways we are use to and to challenge us in other ways but that screws up all the plans we had on all the things we been doing with the weapons that we will design and all of that but that is of course, exactly what they want to do and our enemies are adapting and evolving to use the darwinian terms, as you do, and we are not because we like to stay [inaudible] that is right. Our adversaries are used to employing methods far beyond military powers and in our war colleges and in our advanced courses we talk a lot about that but in the end our strategies are onedimensional and part of that is because our military is so effective. If you look at the ways the russians and the chinese are operating its clear military power is not necessary but not sufficient. Ttting the state farms budget by 30 or cutting the budget of u. S. Is so short sighted. If you talk with anyone and dave has spent more armor time with more folders they want those developing the poetic experts because they understand [inaudible]ts requires aptitudes of areas of diplomacy and much more. Could i add one other thing which i think is a distinction between what dave argues for in the book and with the National Security strategy argues for witches the National Security strategy makes a narrow argument about National America first nationalism and for the kinds of challenges that dave rightly identifies in the book and that the nss rightly identifies cooperation and polling institutions and allies along with us is a much stronger front with which to confronto these challenges and that is the failing, the two failings of the nss are first they are not carrying out their strategy because they are not funding the nonmilitary elements of it and second, they have an conceptual mistake that cooperative enterprises are diminishing to American Power instead of the fact that, which i believe to be true, that playing team sports isrt what we do well and being e captain of teams is what we, is our comparison advantage relative to any of our adversaries, dragons or snakes. [inaudible conversations] off and our allies are pretrade in recent years as liabilities. On the contrary i view our allies is one of our great strategic assets. David was there when we had 100,000 plus troops in iraq, 100,000 plus troops in afghanistan andnd unless we hava 911 or something horrific we will probably not go there again because its not politically doable but we can have 1000 troops in syria, 70000 Syrian DefenseForest Service with our logistical and air support defeated the isis caliphate. They bring people need to understand the isis caliphate would still exist if it wasnt for our partners in a syria or we we would had to send the 82nd with a lot of american casualties. We cannot influence the National Defense strategy without our allies. [inaudible] i also want to dig up on this point, i happened to totally agree our allies in syria, the kurds, the arabs, working with a small footprint is a force multiplier and i dont understand why President Trump doesnt take great credit for this goldilocks solution, as you say, we are diminishing the islamic states but also, by the way, secondarily we are keeping at bay the Islamic Republic of iran which has its ambitions in russia which has its ambitions and all that is being done via small footprint of very highly skilled troops that are in combat [inaudible] however, our other allies we talked about our allies and will get diplomats appear watching angry at me but thats the way it goes, the germans are not good to bidding to the collective security the way they might be. Theyre not spending enough money and when they are its benefits for retired soldiers rather than major their tanks are capable. The turks are the second biggest military in nato and i dont see the turks coming to defend estonia with the russians attacking, i cant imagine that. The french have some capabilities but they will have capabilities and the british h psalm and that is about it. The rest of the nato members, i dont see them contributing and being allies that we can count on that they expect us to protect them without any, with very little input from us. I think [inaudible] primarily for now nato is too big and too unruly to threatening to russia and yet at the same time being too disorganized to generate a unified effect in the places that counts. Its interesting to see how the European Group within nato has, in fact, allowed to spend more in the last two, three years but President Trump has made the same comments the last three, four president s have made but so we say yeah, but its a stylistically unusual way and thats had an effect. It had an effect with russias invasion of crimea. [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] the germans are going at it with we believe this administration, believes will make germany more dependent on russia than ever. U. S. Has this freedom gas program which i think people are tying attention to which is about winning parts of europe off of russian natural gas and thats a critical weakness. Can we talk allies more broadly . When i first served as an australian embed within the force of iraq people would say you are a Great Coalition partner and i would say excuse me, were not a Coalition Partner but a treaty ally. Shere is a difference between allies by treaty who are committed to certain requirements and then people that you aggregate on the ground. One of the points i make in the book is that u. S. Dominance poses an adaptation challenge, not just for our adversaries but for our allies so they have chosen to focus on certain capabilities that they want to keep up with the United States but they have let other capabilities supplied by the wayside in that the british have tried to cover a much wider ban of things to keep up but theyve got less resources for each individual category so part of this and this is why i say how the rest of the west fights the west we have to start thinking of a collection of western powers as a joint set of capabilities. One more point i want you to talk about here is you are not talking about our military allies but also about when we have a battlefield success in this is in the book we need to translate that into a political success after words but we have not been very successful at that. The question is whos done that . The military will try whatever their wishes is and i can never be in afghanistan a few years ago having generals and helicopters talking about the crops they should be planting and i thought what or why is an infantry officer telling me that but he say not because i want to win and thats my mission for the question is usaid and the National Endowment for democracy do we have people who know not so much nationbuilding the sense that it will create a Jeffersonian Society but it could put in the institutions of basic government so that its not a total failure corrupt and a failed state the minute we leave. Its a good challenge and having worked in both the state department and the pentagon i was shocked at how little the advantage the state Department Personnel system makes of the talents. If you think about the American Army with no offense [laughter] mostly what they are brilliant at speaking talent at the middle of the bell curve and shifting the bell curve upward. Right . They look for young women who have the skills that would make her a good soldier and recruit her and train her son about a third of her career teaching and training her and they promote her, not just on what she has done, but on her potential to docontribute in broader challens Going Forward for the state department does none of those things. You have brilliant americans diplomats, right . Bill burns for example and people you can throw into the deep end of the pool and they wont drowned that nobody ever teaches, to swim and so the institution does not ra itself to set the bonus up to be successful. I cringe every time somebody argues for whole of governmentev anything and thought United States because we are politically incapable of that we have a government designed not to do that and what we are brilliant at is swarms of independent actions that adapt to stuff. Instead of trying to make us culturally different and we are and we are successful for a reason and the reason is that the ability to great whole of Government Operations but it is the build a better mousetrap entrepreneurialism and we should have strategies as they have argued in the book of the build on that. Im will ask you a question and answer quickly because i if the president ial obama had not pulled all our troops out of iraq in 2011, if we had stayed there and building the largest ever see in the world, huge, and we had worked harder with the iraqis and i will not say to call it nationbuilding but on institutions they were voting and proud to vote but would we be in a very different place in iraq if we had a military state to broker among the factions and put more effort into trying to create institutions about government and bureaucracy . Yes. Do you agree that . I do. I was there as a humble staffer supporting my boss in 2011 when people like john mccain, Lindsey Graham were warning the obama ad in menstruation not to do with predicting what would happen for you would think after 911 people would not need a reminder that [inaudible] happened again when we left prematurely in a rack and it could happen again in afghanistan if we dont learn the lesson. I was not a fan of going to iraq in the first place and i was very much not a fan of leaving as we did in 2011 but if we had not done that that probably would not have been an isis or not in the form that we found we were not having to go back in. The Trump Administration may be about to make the identical mistake in afghanistan and syria that the Obama Administration made in iraq. I want to come back to that but i dont want to miss the opportunity to go through just before we go, dont let me forget, lets build to the options you sketch out in the book very quickly. I want to name them because i like your names and i like to say them on the air. Aiso start with explaining your option embracing the sock. And bracing the suck is the militarys language that accepting whats unpleasant will happen and try to make the most of it. We are embracing the suck strategy is to say to the extent that the u. S. Global primacy over the last 70 years oso is an an example of an historical phenomenon of an empire like any other empire we will decline but we have to deal with that and go through a soft landing while looking for a successor that can take the reins from us. I suggest in the book it will not work. By the way, you say the president obama favored such quote, managed decline in that paradoxically you right it may take trump to execute the obama ad strategy. Follow the partisan rhetoric in their strategic positioning President Trump are a lot more similar to each other that i would like to hear. I do think the problem here is like handing over to a successor to work and be, they got to be capable of doing it and, friendly enough to ask that it would not [inaudible] the chinese dont want to do it. Russians cant do it and neithea are friendly for us to trust them to do it so its not a good situation. I willl let you put in one other point, i think the president is basic ambiguity if not contradiction in Presiden