Barack obama. This is a 45 minutes. My name is steve crown and on behalf of the crown family its my pleasure to welcome you to the Second Annual leicester crown distinguished lecture on u. S. Foreign policy. For last your selection we hosted former defense secretary jim mattis in front of an audience of 900, a scenario which would be unthinkable today. Covid19 pandemic has transformed americas economy, society and international relations. And along with protest for Racial Justice there are questions about americas Global Leadership, image and power. These questions have elevated the importance of the work of the leicester crown center on u. S. Foreign policy and the Chicago Council which my siblings and i founded in 2018. The Center Serves as a forum for the discussion and elevation of diverse perspectives on the big global questions. They can be policymakers, military leaders, journalists and analysts on stage stop the year to discuss their insights with the public and others. The center produces original research to deepen our understanding of the proposed solutions to critical global challenges including the flagship report the annual Chicago Council survey of American Public opinion on u. S. Foreign policy. The 2020s stolberg will be released later this summer. As the council purchased its centenary in 2022, the senate will continue to enhance this important work well into its second century. During the Sentence Program is my honor to welcome our distinguished speaker by way of a brief introduction dr. Robert gates serves as the 22nd u. S. Secretary of defense under both president george w. Bush and president barack obama. He was also an officer in the United States air force who worked for the cia for being appointed director of the agency. He was a member of the National Security staff in four administrations and serve eight president s of both critical parties. His nongovernment leadership roles include president of texas a m university from 20022006 and he is currently chancellor of the college of william and mary. He is the author of four books including his latest, exercise of power american failures, successes, and a new path forward in the postcold war world. Dr. Gates will be in a conversation today with ivo daalder, who is been the president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs since 2013, served as a u. S. Permanent representative to native from 20092013 and on the National SecurityCouncil Staff under president bill clinton. Ivo is a coauthor of the empty throne, americas abdication f Global Leadership. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming former secretary of state and former director of the cia dr. Robert gates and ambassador ivo daalder. Thank you, steve, i thank you the crown family for the invaluable support of the council which allows us to deliver the critical Foreign Policy analysis to a growing national and global audience. And welcome to all of you today for joining us. It is at your first event with us, please take a moment to check out our website at the chicagocouncil. Org. We host over 100 programs and to research and, of course, whole variety of issues that may be of whartons. Todays program will be on the record, recording will also be available on our website and on social media shortly after we finish. Please share this with your family and your friends. As a reminder the council is an independent and nonpartisan platform, and the views expressed by individuals we host our their own and they do not represent the institutional positions or views of the council. Ill start a conversation with secretary gates and after about 30 30 minutes or so we will take your questions which is hence a bit by typing directly into your route. Ask a a question or vote on the you would like for me to ask secretary gates. Please also consider purchasing his latest book entitled exercise of power american failures, successes, and a new path forward in the postcold war world. If you havent had the chance to purchase it upon registering for todays event, we are sharing a link here. Secretary gates, thanks for joining us again this afternoon. Youre great to have you back to the Chicago Council. Thanks, ivo. Its a pleasure to be back and be with you. People are keep on writing books i will keep on providing them to you. Congrats really on a terrific book. Its a good and easy read. You chronicled the exercise of power over the last 30 years by four different president s. We will come to some of the themes and, now in the moment but it wanted to start at the beginning at the end of the cold war. You had a unique perspective on your deputy National Security adviser in the administration of george h. W. Bush as the cold war was winding down and as the goal for took place. And then you were director of cia, the final couple of years of that administration. If you put yourself back in that situation at the end of the administration, looking forward to the postcold war period, what would your perspective . What did you think that world would look like and what did you think at the time americas role would be or should be . Ivo, most Intelligence Officers are generally pessimistic by nature. In fact, the Washington Post at one point called me the eeyore of National Security, able to find the darkest lining in the brightest cloud. But as i stood at the Windows Office at cia when asked director in december of 1992, i was really optimistic about the future. We, the United States, dominated the world and a comprehensive way militarily, lyrically, economically, culturally. I think as i say in the book, unparalleled since probably the roman empire. We were actually making some progress on middle east peace after the demise of or after the iraq war, first gulf war, and we obviously had a Good Relationship with russia at that point. President reagan and president bush had both work with gorbachev and we had reached out to Boris Yeltsin who became the president of russia, and then essentially the leader of the former soviet union, if you will. So i really thought the future was quite bright and we had a great team in the first bush administration. Jim baker was secretary of state. Dick cheney was secretary of defense. Brent scowcroft was National Security adviser. We all worked together smoothly, so seem to me that the prospect was very bright. And yet when you read your book, doesnt look like the last 30 years, everything penned out in exactly the way that you were hoping in some ways. The big question is what went wrong . That really was the germ of an idea that really led to my writing the book, was you were who were at end of 1992 and fastforward 30 years and we have set at every turn be set at every turn by internal and external we received as withdrawing from Global Leadership role, in some respect we are. We are fighting three simultaneous crises here inside the United States, our racial crisis, and economic crisis, a Public Health crisis and they are all linked together in one way or another and we are paralyzed. The congress cant do anything of any consequence because of the partisan divide. So i wanted to go back and look at how did we get to this place, particularly in terms of the rest of the world, and what were the things that went wrong and were there some successes we could point to . So i used the book to review 15 different Foreign Policy challenges that we experienced during the last 30 years. The obvious ones russia, china, iran, north korea, iraq, afghanistan but also did we do the right thing in that getting into syria . Did we do the wrong thing in the way we went about iraq and afghanistan, somalia, haiti and so on . The book is really, tries to address the question you ask. How did we go from the pinnacle at the end of 1992 to where we are today . Before i get to the answer which would also lays out your view of what we need to go, as you mentioned 15 major National Security issues, crises. Pick one or two we did it right, you got it right, we did the right thing and work out in the right way. The two biggest successes that i write about in the book, purse is columbia where on a bipartisan basis under three successive president s we were able to help colombia poll itself back from the brink of becoming a narco state, a state controlled by criminal syndicates. It began under president clinton and one of the lessons was we had a very strong local partner in president uribe who was determined to strengthen the institutions of colombia. He was anticorruption. He was dedicated to the recorded principles and ideals, and he wanted the colombians to do it themselves. And then on the other side of the coin, the Congress Actually limited the size of the presence the use would have been colombia. Initially it was 400 people come use people in uniform. Finally grew to 800 800 but ths it. And then the same thing on civilians. And so it forced an arrangement in which we were in support of the colombians forcing them to do the work themselves in terms of going after the leftwing insurgency, the farc. We provided the training. We provide equipment. We provide intelligence, but they with the ones they carried the fight. The other aspect of it was this is one of those rare instances in which the state department was in charge, and there were many agencies that were involved. The Justice Department over tenn or 12 years train Something Like 40,000 colombian judges. So there was a lot of help in creating strong institutions and so on. But the main point was we had a strong local partner and we were in support of that partner, rather than doing the job ourselves. The other success was president bushs initiative to do with hiv aids in africa. And again it had broad bipartisan support for considerable funding, tens of billions of dollars over an extended period of time that literally saved millions and millions of lives in africa. And one of the things that make this work was that a number of different agencies in washington had a role in it, that the president designated a Single Person to be in charge in the state department who had authority over the budget and over the programs. So there was a coherence and an integration of all of the government efforts in this arena that was very, very rare, and the entire project ended up being really enormously successful. So those were two important successes i think during the period, and quite honestly, out of the 15 examples that eyesight, those are about the only to successes. Ayes and ask about the other 13. Take one or two where you think we really got it wrong and the lesson, then we will get to the lessons we learn from both of those about where we should go from the future. Lets go back to those 30 years, where do we really get it wrong . I think one of the main lessons of the book, and it draws on our experience in somalia, haiti, iraq and afghanistan, is that in every case our initial military engagement was successful, and the original military mission was accomplished quickly. The taliban and alqaeda were ousted from afghanistan literally in about five weeks. Saddam was overthrown in seminary small period of time. Our original humanitarian effort in somalia was very successful by our troops, but the one characteristic all four had in common that led to problems was that we undertook we undertook nationbuilding. We tried to change the culture and the politics of each of those countries, each with its own long history, some like katie with a long history with us. In every instance those efforts largely were a failure. We have spent many years in places like iraq and afghanistan, and one of the points that i make in the book is that i believe we were in a position to have left afghanistan in january of 2002. We had an internationally recognized government there. All of the different parties have come together and agreed on somebody to be in interim leader from the pashtuns to the Northern Alliance and so on. The government had international recognition. A a number of countries were prepared to contribute money for afghan reconstruction and construction, and the wood ina moment for us to leave. But in every case it was the original mission was a success, but only when we expanded our objectives and became too ambitious in terms of what were going to try and do in each of these countries did we end up getting into trouble. So a a common factor in sucs and failure seems to be that if youre going to involve yourself in a nationbuilding exercise, or helping a nation to solve the social and economic and political problems that may lead to the conflict, if you dont have a partner that leads that on the ground, you are not going to be able to succeed. You cant do it for someone else . Yeah, you cannot impose democracy on another country. One of my favorite quotes is from churchill who at the end of 1944 was urged to overthrow a dictatorship in athens greece was actually a very strong ally of the allies and impose a democratic government. Churchills response was democracy is not a harlot to be picked up in the street at the point of a tommy gun. The point is you cant impose democracy at the point of the can. So if youre going to be involved in nationbuilding, what we didnt understand and this is the lesson i hope my book teaches, is it really is a longterm undertaking and it is a predominantly civilian undertaking. What we can do is encourage them, given help as it did colombia in institution building, in training judges and getting closer to the rule of law, a variety of civilian agencies involved such as Development Assistance with u. S. Agency for International Development and so one here so if we are going to be involved in nationbuilding, and in some places i think we can be helpful and very low cost, it has to be a civilian dominated effort, and we have to understand that its a very long time line. The truth is we had troops in south korea. Weve had them there now for 70 years. South korea did not become a functioning democracy and tell well into the 1980s. It was a long process, and we had tens of thousands of troops in the country for that entire time. So this is not something that can be done with a short timeline or, as i say, at the point of a gun. Remind our audience is going to ask question to secretary gates you can do so by typing ccga into your browser and asked the question i will get to in a minute. The overarching lesson i think that this set of issues points to the room is at the core of your book is that the over militarization of our Foreign Policy, that the military is not only just a very large instrument that the United States has but has displaced other nonmilitary instruments often in our engagement abroad. Part of it is a very strong military. The other part of it is a growing and a weakening state department, economic instruments and other instruments of power that we had. Why did that happen . Shouldnt after the cold war with the peace dividend, the military actually have gone down and the nonmilitary means of our power been emphasized more than it turned out they were . A lot of people dont realize is one of the significant contributing factors to success in the cold war were the nonmilitary instruments of power. The cold war took place against the backdrop of the biggest arms buildup, arms race in history of the world, but because the soviet union and the United States could not fight without both countries being destroyed, that competition take place using other means. For example, our decades long effort to deny the soviets technology that would assist their military programs, but also in the modernization of the economy. Strategic communications, the United States information agency. You know, its a date was in the Kennedy Administration under people like edward r. Murrow and in the Reagan Administration under people like charlie wick had reached to every corner of the world. In the 1990s i think because of the hubris that came with success in the cold war and our stand alone atop the world, if you will, i think that congress and president essentially thought that these instruments could be dismantled. It was the congress in 1998 that eliminated the United States information agency. The congress at the same time wanted to eliminate u. S. Agency for International Development, and president clinton refused to do that but didnt touch the agency the state department or it at less independence and lower profile. All of these instruments were either dismantled or starved of resources, even as the military, it had some budget cuts during the 1990s after the end of the cold war but it remained enormously strong. It was a man bites dog story and at the end of my first u. S. Secretary in the fall of 2007 i gave a speech in which i called for more resources for the state department. Nobody had ever heard of the secretary of defense calling for more resources for the state department, but as secretary of state condi rice would like to remind me, i had more military people desperate more people know to advance advanced than n the foreign service. So with respect to over militarization, it kind of recalls the old principle that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. And so i think we began to