To have the secretary of defense in the 19 nineties there are many issues today surrounding National Defense and our military. Should they be used to quell domestic unrest like the recent protest or should they be terminating arms control treaties . And even contemplating resuming nuclear testing. Should the names of leaders be removed from bases and statues be removed from Public Places . To address these questions and many more, today we will have unique conversation between two recent secretaries of defense, doctor robert gates and general james matus. As secretary of defense secretary gates served under george w. Bush and barack obama and author of new book exercise of power. Doctor gates was an officer in the was therefore spending 27 years at in the cia and served as cia director to become the first career officer in history to move from entrylevel employee to head of the agency serving as a matter of the National Security staff in four different generations and each president of both Political Parties for his contributions he was awarded the president ial medal of freedom, the nations highest civilian award by president obama and also threetime recipient of the distinguished intelligence metal one of the cias most prestigious honors. In conversation today is general general mattis 26 secretary of defense 2017 through 2019 and is now a distinguished fellow at Stanford University hoover institution. Serving over 40 years in the marine corps starting as an infantry officer. He later served as commander of forces command and nato supreme allied commander for transportation also directing the military operations of more than 200,000 soldiers and sailors, airmen coast guard and marines and allied forces across the middle east as commander of us central command. He commanded forces in the persian gulf and the war in afghanistan and iraq war he has been outspoken recently about the president s use of military troops with domestic unrest in washington. Please join me now to welcome general mattis and doctor gates for this unique conversation. Thank you doctor duffy it is a pleasure to be here with the Commonwealth Club that is devoted to finding truth for over 100 years we will recognize that doctor gates grew into his leadership role with the background doctor gates is my former boss predecessor in office and an inspiring role model like and in one recent review as a foot soldier who rises to highest command in reading your book one that i would be reassured was required reading for cabinet officers as they come into office, i was strict and extract you are tripping large part of americas 25 year decline of status and prestige as a failure post cold war president and congress to recognize resources to effectively use personal nonmilitary instruments of power. Can you explain the fundamental failure and the significance of the title you chose for your book . First of all, thank you for this and the Commonwealth Club for inviting me. The journey of the book began with a question in my mind of how the United States had gone from a position of supreme power probably unrivaled since the roman empire in every dimension of power in 19932 way country today beset by challenges everywhere. How did that happen . How did we get here . So i began looking in all major foreignpolicy challenges we have had since 1993 looking at what we had done and not done that contributed to that decline with our role and power in the world. What i came up with was a set of non military instruments of power that played such an Important Role in our success of the cold war against the soviet union and largely was neglected after the end of the cold war at a time we continue to fund military, we basically dismantled all nonmilitary instruments of power from diplomacy to economic leverage and Strategic Communications and more. We can go into that later. As i look at the situation of these challenges from somalia and haiti, 1993, right up to our relationship with russia and china today, north korea. It occurred to me we failed in many respects to figure out how to compete with these powers outside of the military realm. The reality is the challenges that i write about for all practical purposes i consider 13 to be failures thats why the title there are failures they are a couple important successes and lessons to be learned, but we had a lot of problems during that 27 year period and i would conclude by saying that the wars in iraq and afghanistan both began with very quick military victories. The problem that i identified whether iraq and afghanistan or somalia or haiti or others , once we achieved military victory, we change the mission and decided to move to bring democracy and reform the governments of those countries and thats where we went into failure. I would like to go more deeply into what you mentioned with this symphony of power and they took a few notes from your book that give a brief overview to the types of instruments you are referring to where they may be more applicable or more likely to be used in the Military Form of power. And if not then why . So start please what do you look to to bring into the forefront . Those instruments of power are the military but also cyber. In my opinion cyberhas become the most effective weapon that a nation can have because it can accomplish military , political and economic harm to ones adversary. Its difficult to identify who perpetrated a cyberattack it takes time to figure out attribution and the more damage done the more important it is to identify exactly where those ones and zeros came from. So cyberis a huge player in a way it never has been before and can disarm weapons , redirect weapons shut down infrastructure and countries its a versatile weapon and it doesnt take the enormous expenditure dollars were many that a Nuclear Enterprise or a chemical or biological would represent. Cyberis important we have been good at developing it for military purposes but i think we have not taken advantage of it in the offense of way with respect to either political or economic targets. Another instrument is economic measures that can be both carrots and sticks and the truth is as i make a point in the book we developed the sticks part pretty well. We levied sanctions and it has become complicated for a lot of countries because we have so many sanctions figuring out how to do Business International and stay within us law to be a fulltime enterprise we have that down pretty well in embargos and tariffs and sanctions and someone. Where we have fallen down and once had real capability to use it as an asset to encourage and induce other countries but we would like for them to do and follow policies whether loans and discounts or trade concessions, we are very good at sanctions the not so good to figure out how to deal with us now president clinton and president bush were both pretty good with africa when they arrange debt relief for african countries back in the 19 nineties and early 2000s. That helped a lot of african countries. But that is a rare example using those as an instrument of power. Strategic communications or the cold war propaganda, how do we get our message around the world . The chinese have developed this. Several years ago they allocated 7 billion for the chinese to build a Strategic Communications network around the world. We on the other hand in the United States we dismantled the Information Agency and put Public Diplomacy into a corner of the state department. Parts of the government do strategic munication there is no strategy. Each goes its own way and we lack the capabilities and the reach the chinese have. There are a variety of other instruments i will briefly mention things like intelligence and how we use it with other countries, science and Technology Higher education, culture, as we watch russia and china interfere in the internal affairs of other countries we had failed to use their own nationalistic feelings to help build their resistance to at the chinese and others are doing. We havent thought about it in that way but religion has played a big part in International Affairs particularly since the end of the cold war. All you have to do is look at the role of religion to motivate terrorists to see it has real power. There are a dozen or more instruments and the problem is we dont have the resources nor have we figured out a cohesive or coherent strategy on how to bring them together in a symphony to play together and each strengthens the over the other and the United States. Why havent we enlisted these other instruments . America has the power of intimidation if we are threatened in a Perfect World we need the military and cia why do we summon those instruments of inspiration . Why it is the reluctance . It is a tough question to answer. Part of it is that the congress was reluctant to fund these nonmilitary instruments going back to the end of the cold war. Congress disestablished usia and they wanted to disestablish the us agency for international development. President clinton stop that but it still diminished usaid to bring it under the state Department Rather than an independent agency. Congress has not funded the state department properly. The state department has been starved for resources except for a couple of brief periods during the george w. Bush administration there was an increase of Foreign Service officers so the reluctance that congress hates development assistance. They consider it a waste of time i we spend it at home and they dont see how that can benefit the United States. Its a big part of the reason is that reluctance of congress to fund it and in all honesty reluctance for all part for administrations to push for such funding. The irony for me as at a time when congress is more and more resistant to the use of military force of iraq and afghanistan come at the same time to make the nonmilitary instruments. Bringing up the war in iraq in the often what we call in the department of defense we go into iraq and what is happen so often is lack of imagination in the white house and state department how to access nongovernment civilian expertise to strengthen nonmilitary capabilities and to have no appreciation for the importance of the private sector or contractors as an instrument of power. It just begs the question how can we leverage the private sector . We keep the government out of some market things. How do we enlist the private sector to enhance our ability to exercise power . How do we do that . First is to recognize it has something to contribute and then you can figure out how to make it work. What frustrated all of us in the department of defense through all of iraq and afghan war experience, was the relatively few number of civilian experts. We were in nationbuilding but yet we had very few relatively speaking civilian experts in country helping to make that happen. One of the instruments that had effectiveness in iraq and afghanistan but at a time at the peak of our presence in iraq, we had 170,000 troops in the country and 300 sixties civilians in the entire country of iraq. What i propose the secretary of defense, it got no traction was one of the things we could provide help with was to help both the afghans and the iraqis in terms of improving farming techniques and how they took care of their herds. And because they are both basically world countries. s world countries so i suggested to the state department go to the landgrant universities. And then to texas a m so i knew what they were doing around the world in terms of faculties working in inhospitable and insecure situations. Ask them to help and partner with us and augment what we are trying to do in these countries. Many faculty members were already in those countries. How can we help and provide funding. Also we had the advantage the head of the National Association of landgrant universities of mcpherson who is the president of Michigan State university but also the head of usaid under president reagan here is a guy who knew what we needed to do to galvanize these universities to be a powerful partner. Nothing ever happened. Similarly we confuse the private sector to figure out how we counter the Growth Initiative this trillion Dollar Program of infrastructure building airports and highways and sports arenas and so on in most places around the world. A lot of these are White Elephant projects. The chinese make these countries sign contracts. They dont pay much attention to do things honestly or in ways that benefit the people of the countries that are receiving. We cannot compete with that. The chinese through state owned enterprises can find the cash to fund these projects we cannot do that. The economy doesnt how that we are not structured that way. We have a private sector that invest all over the world and how can the United States partner with private companies from the United States and invest in these developing countries and brain jobs and environmental concerns, sustainability, in a way that doesnt saddle these countries with projects the end up to be useless or huge amounts of debt. We dont do much in the way to try to incentivize companies and that is a resource we could make better use of. Finally we have these enormous number of churches and charities that do projects around the world whether health or getting rid of diseases like the Gates Foundation and others. Often they dont want much to do with the government, but is there a way we can augment their activities to work in partnership with them . How can we Work Together . And frankly there isnt much done to move down the road. These are three examples where i think we havent been very imaginative to leverage our great strength to translate into efforts of what i would call is shaping the International Environment to serve our national interest. We dont need to be altruistic it is the responsibility of the president and the government to advance American Interest in protect them around the world. That means you have to shape the International Environment and these are the tools to use to shape the International Environment. We have tried on many occasions to shape the environment and as you point out varies successfully. And multiple countries to gain peace and stability and one was with columbia. That worked. Why did that one work when it did a number of other failures . Columbia was a success. It was a success under multiple president s. By the late 19 nineties, columbia was on the verge of becoming a narco state the leftist insurgency, the farc was on the verge of taking control of the country and the government. That what made our author on effort to control and defeat the farc was first of all we had very Strong Partner in columbia. The president of columbia was very strong and honest and was determined to defeat the farc. So we started with a president who was them one dash dedicated to democratic principles and rule of law and determined to be the fight at considerable risk to himself. He survived a number of assassination attempts. Second, there were already basic institutions in columbia. They were week but were established and we could help strengthen and then inside columbia that includes police and military but also the judicial system. Over the course over the partnership, the Justice Department trained 40000 judges in columbia. The third reason for success i actually give credit to congress to limit the number of americans who could be in columbia at any given time to help the colombian government so they limit us to 400 military people and contractors that eventually rose that was that the colombians had to fight the fight themselves and our role had to be to support and train and help them to carry the fight to the farc. We couldnt take over the enterprise of the limits that congress put on a so we are there in support of the colombian government and that was a reason for success we could help them but we would not run the show for them. Another factor was this plan had bipartisan support in congress and was funded over a period of ten years or more by three successive president s we had time to make things work with the bipartisan support so for the cost of 10 billion of the ten or 12 year period we hope the colombians put on the farc and originally counter narcotics and cultural and political change to brain democratic principles honest government and someone. Without realizing and thousands of years of history we are still facing problems at the beginning of the United States with the race issues in the United States today so we still have the imperfect democracy. So thinking at the point of the bayonet to other countries is one reason first of all we have been involved in these longlasting wars. But its also one of my favorite quotes from Winston Churchill late 1944 he was approached about overthrowing the dictatorship that was very supportive of what the allies were trying to accomplish to be the germans and the nazis. They wanted him to install the democratic government and churchills response was and then of the point of a tommy gun. You cannot force a country with a rudimentary democracy today. That the cost has been extraordinarily high. A lot of the iraqis that he dominated government. So there is a long and tough road ahead for iraq but this is to bring social cultural change basically using the United States military.