Of freedom and democracy in American Foreign policy will feature general hr mcmasters who served in the military for 34 years and held the position of the 20 sixth assistant to the president for National Security affairs as well as being a close friend of my husband for many years. He will talk about his new book battlegrounds the fight to defend the free world, with doctor michael crow, the sixteenth president of Arizona State university. Mccain Institute Trustee and a dear friend of the family. We are honored to host mcmaster for what is an important and timely discussion on us foreign policy. You can begin. Glad to see everybody here. What i want to do first is say the book is a fantastic piece of work, got many little tags on it. I want to spend some time relative to a set of core ideas you put out in this book some that are fantastic in the sense that they are concepts we should be using in the articulation of our thinking about foreignpolicy and National Defense policy and so forth and i articulated 20 questions for you. 17 i would like quick answers to, not elongated answers and last i want to spend a bunch of time on. The first one, you articulate this, unbelievable change, look at the results of the two great wars of the twentieth century, the most peaceful europe we have ever seen, the greatest advance of democracy in the history of our species, economic progress like no one could have or have imagined, realignment of germany and japan, successful economic democracy so the question to you goes back to the wilsonian promise, protect the senate, advance democracy. In general, how do you think things are going in general in the last hundred 20 years in general . What a pleasure it is to be with you at an institute, senator mccain, i admired him and his record of service and you and your record of service and what you have done. A wonderful institution. The way you do that, if you look at this last hundred years in the context of the broad sweep of history we made tremendous progress especially after the most district of wars, world war i and world war ii, peace without great power and as you alluded to, people out of poverty. Complacency never works. I lost you for a second. Let me go to we view things, no complacency, lots of progress, tremendous struggle, it is a struggle for the soul and the core of humanity, individually free humans will advance our own lives based on the Core Principles of our democracy as a species or not. One of the words you use in battleground is an important one to me as a wrestler and the things i have been involved in. What is the core of a fight. It is more than marshall and you talk about that. What is the core of the fight. The core of the fight is we have to compete effectively, free and open societies remain secure and prosperous and extend influence effectively and we have to recognize we have to compete and reenter a competition we vacated because of over optimism in the 1990s and too much precedent and resignation in the 2000s and we are at a fundamental level in a competition between free and open societies and closed authoritarian systems. The fight and the competition is more than marshall. It is philosophical. Im not going to say cultural. That would be the wrong word. It is about Core Principles of who we are as humans and there are marshall elements to defend yourself from being overrun or wounded by others and that is the nature of the fight. For strategic competence. To integrate all the elements of National Power with element of likeminded partners so we dont want to militarize policy but to use diplomacy for Law Enforcement or information and communication. It is our ability to innovate those effort and increasingly in the late efforts across the public and private sector and approach the problems at Arizona State which is an interdisciplinary approach to these challenges. You made significant contributions to the design of National Defense policy, this notion of when did something not become a strategic threat so i will use russia which we talk a lot about and has been a strategic threat to the United States and may still be a strategic threat Going Forward but i have been all over places, my first visit in 1991 i got off the plane and said youve got to be kidding me, they dont know how to jacobin airplane. It doesnt mean they are not a military threat or not a strategic threat but their economy has been declining. They cant float a navy, they have a dictator who roams the planet to doing whatever he wants with this sort of new approach, mexicos economy is almost as large as russias economy. The question is in short form, when is the threat no longer strategic . At what point is it no longer strategic . It is strategic if you have a Massive Nuclear arsenal. They dont want to compete with us on our own terms, they want to drag everybody else down. Vladimir putin recognizes the constraint he is under economically, demographically, especially in the wake of Simon Sebag Montefiore for, the oil crisis, they poisoned his main political opponent, he is engaged in a sustained campaign of political subversion against us. What russia really wants to do is so doubts about who we are as people to polarize our society, pit us against each other and reduce confidence in democratic principles and institutions and processes. Russia isnt Strong Enough to create vulnerabilities, but Strong Enough to exploit them and that is what you see russia doing. Vladimir putins theory of victory is to be the last man standing. Against the free world. The classic position of a dictator, a singularly focused individual with no interest beyond themselves. And is given by these emotions, the sense of honor lost after the call lapse of the soviet union and his ambition to restore russia to national greatness. Hes using tools that he has available which are limited but also very dangerous. Host particularly as they decline, the nature of a different kind of classification for strategic relationship. Next question. The u. S. Army was a small institution. The military of the United States was generally only expanded for the time of war and never found ourselves in a mentation of maintaining a war fitting or war capability for decade after decade after decade. This is the first time we have done this. What are the costs or risks of maintaining, but the way it is. It should be a permanent deterrence. What you want is to build and armed force that can convince your adversaries they could not accomplish their objectives through use of force against you, if there ever was an age of Free Security when north america could rely on the two great modes of the atlantic and Pacific Ocean technology had a limited security. We are in an increasingly interconnected and shrinking world in which challenges to our security overseas can readily reach our shores whether it is jihadist terrorists on september 11th, 2001, or a new coronavirus that reached our shores earlier this year. We have to stay engaged, broad range of defensive capabilities not just military. They cant accomplish their objectives through use of force or use of other means below the issue of eliciting the terry response. Host that segues to my next question, how do you design a company of Defense Strategy, political interference, all these things, the military is not equipped to deal with all those things, not equipped to deal with some of them at all. We look like a pack of fools because we cant get our act together, cant get command and control decisions. A lot of things are going on at all levels like the National Level. The question is a simple one. How do you design a comprehensive Defense Strategy . How do you design a competent of Defense Strategy that is more than military. Guest start with design thinking, framing complex challenges. Understanding them on their own terms and viewing them through the lens of our vital interests, why do we care, then craft overarching goals and specific objectives and the tools and competitive advantages at our disposal. That is the beginning of being able to develop a policy and a strategy. Assumptions as you are mentioning, what are the limits of competency in the system we have butts very important to acknowledge the degree to which others have agency and authorship over the future and represent the interactive nature of these competitions. We skip a lot of these steps. We tend to rush to actions we are helpful with already or try to fit everything into a military cylinder of excellence instead of recognizing real competent comes with integrating a reference. Host the design approach is exactly it and you articulate this and you talk about identifying and respecting the agency of our adversaries or competitors as well as enhancing the agency of different groups in the United States because rethinking the entire process as you suggest later to be nonlinear, and nothing that covid19 has shown us. Linear thinking, we knew covid19 was coming, we knew there would be great pandemics, we thought in linear ways and we werent ready. Guest and the models were wrong. We misunderstood big aspects of the problem. We werent as agile as we needed to be. The words i would use the we have to emphasize is the ability to coordinate and integrate efforts. We are a federal system. We are a republican. We are not going to have strong centralized control. We would be terrible if we tried to do it. We have to coordinate integrate more effectively and with the private sector as well. In short form leaving time for questions at the end. World war i and world war ii changed europe forever, the alignment was saved, the last 400 years of social and cultural progress was saved, those two wars insured destabilization of europe and it looks like people are no longer interested in the maintenance of this alliance and the maintenance of this western alliance so good or bad, i know the answer but how bad is it . It is bad. The situation and prospects not as bad as we think, the growing realization, we are all in this together. This diplomacy, nothing like the prospect to focus the mind. In the west, within europe and between europe and the United States the transatlantic relationship, the European Union but culturally and in terms of principles and values, we are in a competition. That was the first step and we have to cooperate to build a Better Future for generations to come and there is a growing realization as we are in this crisis of covid19. The recession associated with that is a crisis of confidence as well. Host one thing, very clearly, this are in gw next generation warfare. The successful implementation of those methods of comprehensive conflict, social disruption, political disruption, social media messaging, a number of those here in our country and others around the world. The question, why are we not countering it with the same approach or undermining that approach . Guest we are starting to. The Us Government along with allies, a lot of coordination going on that doesnt meet the eye. We need to become better at it. Look at the contrast with the 2016 election and lack of effectiveness, you see what our defense if measures, changes of policy that unleash cyber capabilities. What is also important is you use your competitive advantages. We conduct Law Enforcement investigations, with Internet Research agency. It is lawfair but we try to pull the curtain back better now. And expose the kremlins activities to sunlight and sunlight is the best effectiveness in this case, looking at the new generation warfare in this aspect of it and many call cyberenable Information Warfare against us which is part of the Overall Campaign of political subversion. One of the things i keep coming back to, the us remaining as the fall superpower on the planet. And the sole superpower was wrong, and and the tribunes and others and pro councils and councils all at each others throat and their minds of the entire empire. Any worries about our empire . Guest i wouldnt use the word empire but the free world overall, what you are seeing these days, much higher degree of international cooperation. When you look at the reaction of recent aggression by the Chinese Communist party and how that brought together india, australia, japan and the United States, with more partners, and the relationship with the eu and eu countries, the uk, is getting stronger as well. If we Work Together especially from an economic perspective, japan, the eu and the us cooperate together it will be tough to beat and that is the best shot at convincing our adversaries they can accomplish enough of what they want without doing it at our expense and the expense of future generations. Host i will stick around a little bit. The vision that you used, great quote. If you know your enemy and you know yourself you need not hear the result of 100 battles, if you know yourself about the enemy for every victory gained you will suffer defeat. So we do know russia and they were defeated by us. We didnt know vietnam. This was the topic of the previous book. Host do we know china . Guest we are learning more about china. We have a narcissistic view of china, how we would like china to be and we can change china. If we welcome china to the International Community they will play by the rules, change their form of government but that wasnt the case. We underestimated the degree that emotion drives the constraints of the Chinese Communist party. They are anything but monolithic or homogeneous. Between the Chinese People broadly and the Chinese Communist party which is a small percentage. Host the 15 largest cities of china, lots of activities there, but hundreds of thousands of american organizations and others working in china, working with the people, not so much with the government but working with the people and the economy. Do we know iran . Guest i dont think so. Iran has missed two big aspects of understanding the behavior of the iranian regime. The ideology of the machine and the revolution and who is in charge. Republicans and revolutionaries won out. The guardian council. And how they viewed the world. It was interesting how you brought in that angle. Host this is an element of this. Guest this is a theocratic dictatorship. Iran has been fighting a proxy war for four decades. We focus on a discrete issue or syria, the nuclear program. It was important to understand this holistic way and put together for policy and strategy, the challenge. Host your much like him. A general, a writer, a lot to bear. My son ryan was in afghanistan 6 or 7 times on nation building projects working on projects with the us agency for International Development while combat operations were still going on around the country and i remember him telling me how difficult it was to have the military and the civilians all working together in the art of nationbuilding and he told me story after story of complexity, the gps locator, wasnt in a military unit but a civilian in the field and so what about nationbuilding . We go in and eliminate the taliban threat through combat arms, become engaged in a more successful way than all the british attempts in the same groups over time but weve not build a nation. What is your thing about that part of what we do when we undertake these projects . Have to be people of that nation who build a nation and often times we go in and bring too much of ourselves. In the case of afghanistan we neglected this important task of consolidating military and sustainable outcomes and after that, we realized it and dumped too much money and resources beyond the capacity of the country and did it in a way that was not sensitive to the traditions and history and culture of afghanistan. Host all the things you mentioned are knowable. The military there to protect, defend and defeat the enemy, protect our assets, protect our interests, defend our interests and defeat the enemy. That is the purpose of the military, working with others, at the same time as you wrote about, successful by anywhere near the level of investment, they didnt produce the kind of results so is there some other way to do this . Guest the way to do it is make sure next time we dont go in under the illusion the war can be fast, cheap, efficient and leave on a high note. And an play a withdrawal, doesnt mean turning afghanistan into denmark. Trying to capture a particular person. One last quick question. Your quote of general alexander was the greatest transfer, not really, just food for thought, how do you defend that . We will set that aside, you keep it strategically important, why is it strategically important, move the American Energy economy away from that region, increasingly, others are investing in new future economies so all kinds of things in quick form, wire they strategically important . Guest the problems that originate in the middle east dont stay in the middle east. It involves jihadist terrorist organizations, sectarian civil war and what that war does, when most people a cycle of ignorance, hatred and violence and that sectarian conflict is perpetuating evidence. Host in that part of the world they want to go to college. Guest that is easy. To foment hatred, hatred of the other and use it to justify violence against innocence. That cycle has to be broken. To destabilize, that is the threat. The greatest victims of jihadist terrorists are fellow muslims. Determines to commit mass murder on our territory and elsewhere as the principal tactic, these organiz