In afghanistan, military readiness, and the importance of emerging defense technologies. This is an hour. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. It is a sincere pleasure for me to welcome our featured an honored guest today, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff general mark milley, United States army. Since becoming the 20 the chairman of the joint chiefs in 2019 general milley has worked to realize the u. S. National Defense Strategy which prioritizes competition with china and russia, and American Defense plenty. Chairman milley has worked tirelessly with civilian and uniformed leadership towards developing the u. S. Armed forces into a truly modern armed force, capable of deterring and heading off the threats of all types that we may be facing today including those emanating from nearpeer competitors that have now really pronounced once again the idea of Great Power Competition. He has kept a close and careful eye on the perennial defense issues associated with iran and north korea, violent extremism in the middle east and elsewhere. In this way general milley tenure has coincided with by any standard could be considered a unique period in American Military history. We are in these threats are multifaceted, transnational and their multidomain. And given the realities of domestic politics, questions about preserving the apolitical character of the armed forces and so on, these are all open for intense debate and conversation. Being a great infantrymen, general milley has navigated the sometimes challenging terrain. Prior to his becoming the chairman, general milley was a 39th chief of staff of the great United States army and served in many of the storied divisions of the United States army including the second infantry division, tenth mountain division. You would be a a deputy commanr of the 101st Airborne Division aerosol picking rent the tenth mountain division, climb to glory, sir, would command the third core and be the commanding general of u. S. Army forces command. With one accomplishment that is not necessarily in his bio but i will mention it today, its one is very proud about and he is the proud son of a marine. The picture behind is on the Fourth Division going over the beach at iwo jima were i think his father was a participant. General, we are really proud of you and very for proud to haveu with us today. We know a very difficult dude is coming for you in the vergne future and that is for you to remain neutral at thisnd years army navy game. I know its tough. Well keep our eye on you for those of us from annapolis have Great Expectations for your neutrality but thank you for all youve done for our country. I mean that sincerely and all youve done for our allies around the world. I would like to turn over now to a dear friend, a fellow here at brookings senior fellow Michael Ohanlon who are Foreign Policy program whoho will kick off the conversation about the defense challenges you face in we face as a nation, then he will conclude with some questions and answers. Let me say that this session a friend much on the record today. If you have questions send them to events at brookings. Edu or on twitter at future of defense. With that, sir, god bless you. Thank you for being with us today. Over to you, mike. Thank you, john. Thank you, general milley at of want to add my personal gratitude not only for you joining us today and for all youve done for the country but for all the men and women in the military families and veterans who have worked so tirelessly and sacrifice a much on behalf of the k country that you are ad are proud too represent and lea. Thank you, sir. I thought the best way to begin our conversation today was to take stock of how the military is doing in broad perspective, in its readiness and estate the of its people and its families, here there have been a lot of stresses and strains, obviously covid inc. Only the latest so i would love any update you might have on our military is handling the covid crisis but also more generally center at this moment as 2020 winds down, its been four years since you finished up at princeton as an rotc and hockey player star back in the day, say watch the u. S. Military over four decades and you have been in. S leadership as the chairman position youre in a half and before that four previous years as the army chief. I just wonder how you would take stock of the condition of u. S. Military today and then we will get into talking more about what youre doing to prepare for the future. But again thank youu for being with us, and overdue. Michael, thanks of the opportunity i do want to thank general allen for those kind words. I think his picture was on the his shoulder was a painting that i noticed and he was the assault landing on iwo jima, and that beach looks to me like it was possibly the beach my dad might have landed on with the fourth marine division. General allen, i think was his fatherinlaw, may have been the chief of staff of the fourth marine division. Their lives in less than 30 days. Im hum bled. My dad has passed away but humbled to be a son of a world war ii veteran and my mother served as a nurse in seattle. You mentioned 40 years ago at princeton, i had no idea or40 years ago it was a much much different study, if i look back a little bit. We should be proud of 1979, washington rolled into afghanistan as part of an attempt to quell what they thought was a very unfortunate war abroadand weve got the iranian a revolution, the assaults on medina and saudi arabia. That happened in nigeria which was my senior year at princeton right before graduation. We in the military were not only committed in the middle of what we thought was almost a never ending cold war with the soviet union. A decade later ulthe wall would come down between the intergerman border but 79, 80 four years ago it was a fundamentally different political world because if you look at thingslike technology , 19 71 i think or 72, 73 timeframe, early 70s is your first email ever. I think if you Flash Forward 20 years to 90, 91 timeframe, thats where you start getting your first website, and you des to 2008 get the iphone comes out. So we had an absolute explosion in Information Technology that did not really exist when i was in commission. You had all kinds of different radiosystems , different emissions and so forth and a different politicalenvironment so a lot has changed as you well know. As you mentioned taking stock , the military is a very powerful unit and no one should ever mistake it for anything other than that. Adversaries, friends, foes, the military is extraordinarily capable and we are powerful in all domains whether traditional domains or whether its state and cyber but whats also important to know is the gaps between us and potential adversaries, china and russia for example. They shorten or close a little bit in 20 years but the United States has been t heavily engaged in counterinsurgency warfare in the middle east and for some time the chinese for example took stock in our operations worldwide. And they decided they would modernize to do things in 79, another critical event that fateful year and we decided to come to the society of china and they were running about 10 percent for quite a while of their gdp growth so today slowed down to about sixpercent, seven percent, something in that range. So for 40 years now, 41, the chinese economy has really been on a roll. Its extraordinarily powerful ve and in its wake has come in reformed Chinese Military so the soviet military was the basin strategy back in the 70s and 80s and when i became , was commissioned today i would argue that the Chinese Military and thechallenge from a rising china , that is really whats facing us a lot of geostrategic changes, a lotof changes in the environment in terms of technology. Urbanization is rapidly approaching, almost 80 percent of the World Population by midcentury so theres a lot of changes that occurred at paces that are much more rapid than any time weve ever seen in history so theres been a lot of potential opportunities. As far as our military goes i dont want anybody tomistake, our military is capable and we are ready for whatever comes our way. Where determined to defend the constitution ofthe United States and protect the American People. If i can bear down a little bit on a couple of specific areas within that realm of water us military capability today, these are areas where sometimes those of us to our defense talks track the data and i know you do too on readiness, recruiting, retention , condition of the equipment, condition of military pay and benefits. I wondered if you had any broad observations on those sort of readiness trends. Some people have said todays force is of course very tired, its been doing so much for 20 years and other people say but divers are less than it used to be, we dont have any big deployments anymore and we put a statewide budget environments, the Trump Administration has with the congressional support of both parties manage to increase the budget andmaybe were in better shape now. I wonder if you could put some of these trends of readiness and perspective compared to the last few years, compared to where you would like them to be. Let me try to answer readiness is as you know is classified to let me answer it this way. This is an approximate comment about the army, navy, air force, marines, space force etc. About a third of the force is at the highest levels of readiness at any amoment in time and thats about right as we have a certain amount of force is in training. A certain amount of force is refitting previous employment and the third is ready to go. At a high level of readiness. Some organizations andunits are at a much higher level of readiness , others abroad. For others, and im talking about format we always say about the third and its factually correct. Some entire, some less and were doing well on recruiting. Theres someareas of concern. Some of the higher tech skills such as special are in high demand in civilsociety. Those are difficult to retain where retaining across the board on services is good. Discipline, thats one. More out. The forces tired and at work for 20 years, its true but to a certain extent most of your younger part of the force has not actually deployed and common theme that i get is trips around the world, they are would like to be deployed and its not that they deployed, they havent deployed at all and its all important work but they would actually like to have something similar and we do have forces that are in a wide variety of situations, some in congress and one of the things we started to do and i think this is important is a holistic review of our global holistic review of the disposition of the force and the forces worldwide. Theres a very strong argument to be made that we may have forces in places that they shouldnt be nand we may have forces that are needed that are not right now and we need to adjust our global difference, in some case theres troops overseas into many countries and theres a lot of implications to all of that but broadly speaking i would say that the normal conditional readiness indicator for readiness metrics is pretension and the standard classified data. I wonder if you could speak specifically before we move on to the future and you always mention china and the national Defense Strategy and innovation modernization but if you could add a word on covid and how the force is holding up at this late juncture late in 2020 almost a year of the pandemic. I know early in 2020 there were specific problems with certain naval forces, with kenny roosevelt, there had been concerned with i believe suspending training for a while back in the spring but overall it appeared to me through the spring and summer at the force is holding up pretty well in the space of covid and mercifully there werent that many fatalities in the Us Armed Forces from covid either. Could you give us a snapshot as we near the end of the calendar year about how the military isholding up in the face of this terrible pandemic. Early on we took aggressive action in the military were waiting for a subset of society , but we have discipline, we knew some people so we took some pretty stringent measures early on to protect the force and the reason why we did that, we recognize that our task as the military is to protect the American People and we cant accomplish that task, we can protect them if we are all sick so we recognized the need to protect before squarely on and we did that. We pulled out our Global Pandemic r border, we kick it a little bit and we started doing emissions on our own force. We learned a lot of lessons from pr as it was known and we started doing isolation and screening prior to any closed operating environment like a bomber or multiple people in the crew so he onimposed a series of pretty stringent restrictions on ourselves that seems to have made some contributions but i think some of the biggest contributions to us military is fairly well and we have had troops that are sick, etc. But statistically speaking, relative to the whole, the deaths and sicknesses within the military and in the force have beenrelatively small. A contributing factor is our demographic. Our demographic is not the same as Civil Society. Our demographic to no ones surprise is young people who are highly sick and may tend to fare reasonably well if infected. So we accommodation of our demographics and control measures that we put on ourselves early on, we have done fairly well and i think we are at least equal to or better than any of the military who dealt with this virus. Second part of that is our contribution to helping the American People through the er crisis. We deployed 62,000 troops in support of covid, you saw the comfort and the mercy out there, hospitals being strung up in various cities, doctors andnurses the other day. So we still have today 50, 52,000 but today 20, 22,000 and many of these are Covid Operations around the country. We have these contributions to operation work speed is significant. Its one of the institutions, a great human being g and hes going to make sure that we distribute the covid vaccines nationwide here in very short order next week. They will start the distribution so the military has made a contribution to protecting society and also we protect ourselves in the process. I think weve done reasonably well as a military. I like to know for the future you all maybe he got some of the big issues mentioning china and the current and future Global Security environment. His secretary mattis wrote the national Defense Strategy, those initiatives that occurred in the latter obama years when you became army chief like the third offset as it was called, the army has had its operations to help create future demand and you are chief. I wonder if you would want to offer broad commentary on where we stand with this greater effort in terms of preparing for a Great Power Competition, hopefully not great power war but nonetheless reinvigoration of great power deterrence and where you see us at this juncture at the end of 2020. A couple of things, first i think the nes is a very good document and that would be one of the significant contributions that general mattis has made of the many hes made over the years and that document i think is rigorous, it was well thought out at the time. Many people contributed but it really was general l mattis who did that and a solid understanding of military history and geopolitics, is it perfect . Its not perfect, theres a few things that need to be to but mostly its pretty good. Its not a bad document at all although theres things that need to be modified for the next administration, i think we will do that but right now its ready good. One of the highlights in that document is a return to Great Power Competition and you could argue the word return, maybe we were all engaged in counterinsurgency warfare against violent extremists and we didnt necessarily recognize some of the changes that have been happening in the world but nonetheless Great Power Competition is a statement of fact about the International Condition as it exists today and i would say were in a multicolor work for sure. With china and russia and the United States, all three being very powerful at least the chinese and american economies are very powerful and then the eu for example, theres brazil and so were in a multicolor world. What does that mean . Whats the effect of that . The cold war is arguably a relatively stable situation even though itsnerveracking , it was relatively stable in part because it had two polls that others traveled around but in the International System there were two essential powers and they could establish procedures and policies and communications and sops with each other and overtime that acted as a stability or a stabilizing force or the environment. When you get into an f environment that automatically becomes more complex. And more dynamic thats one condition that we are in for sure and likely to remain in for a considerable length of time. Another condition is rapid emerging technology. That has really impacted i dont know, by 1970 or so. That towards the end of the year is the introduction of Decision Missions and the United States, very few countries have precision munitions and those are almost ubiquitous, most are significant powers in the yoworld have munitions so we can hit, most country can hit targets at great distance with great precision. Now in order to do that you also have to be able to see so what has happened say in the last 40 years but lets go back even more, today we can see and over the last 50 years we can see globally better than at any time in Human History so right now ive got a gps watch on. Ive got an iphone in this room, theres Electronic Devices here and i would manage imagine the chinese have a lot of people listening in so you can pinpoint people through Electronic Devices very quickly and we have the ability to image, the ability to see andhear. We have commercially available google earth that you go back 25, 30 years that level of technology was only available to the military, now available to almost everyone so you got the ability to see and hit at range that has never existed before in Human History. Those two facts indicate we are having a fundamental change in the character of war. But thenature of war doesnt change, at least we think it doesnt change. Imposing your will and restriction and new functions of war. But the character of war doesnt. Now that has sometimes to do with technology but there are conditions that change it, theres political conditions, theres demographic sconditions but Technology Drives oftentimes through our history change in the character of war, how we fight and thedoctrine we fight, the organizations we fight. And we are undergoing a real fundamental change in the character of war. Add to that some technologies that are emerging and it becomes very fast read robotics forexample , broadly available in the commercial sector were different uses. We use it to eliminate the extent of military operations by uav or drones. You see explosive Ordnance Disposal teams used in small think tanks but you also see experiments going on in the United States army to create robotic ships, robotic planes and its consumable, theoretically conceivable that at some point in the future you could have entire tank squads without crews or airplanes or ships without sailors. Im not saying its going to happen but its theoretically possible so robotics is coming on and its going to have military application in the nottoodistant future. Other technologies like artificial intelligence, thats an incredibly powerful technology that is coming very fast not only in Civil Society but its going to have tremendously positive applications in the military. Hypersonics is another one. So theres a lot of rapidly approaching technology thats going to have fundamental Significant Impact on the conduct of military operations as we move into the future biin combination with precision munitions and the ubiquitous nature of the ability to see so i would argue that the country that masses all those technologies and develops proper military doctrine with the Proper Organization and proper Leader Development will have a decisive advantage in the next constitution, weve seen this before in history and i have no doubt that we will see that in the future. When does it happen and mark where not really sure, depends on who you listen to. I think that its reasonable to think that sometime maybe late 30s, early 40s perhaps mid century the latest, we will start seeing significant use of those technologies in combination with advanced society and if we want to continue to be a nation, the Masters Technology in nature we do the correct application that we got and thats what you see happening today. Right now. The chinese, russians, United States and many other countries are devising systems and putting them together in different ways that will have four of military application in the future and i think were on the right track but the key here, none of us will get, he is less than your enemy is. [inaudible] one more question before i get to a budget environment and i get audience questions, we have a lot coming in i wanted to take a different angle on the Defense Innovation and modernization revolution question. How do you feel about the vulnerabilities in the Us Armed Forces today some of the technologies are already creating. We aside what would be the situation in 2030 or 2040 as you mentioned but im talking about our command and control systems or cyber systems, the Electronic Warfare environments or to tactical battlefield and what i can do to our radios, our dependence on satellite, tifiber optic cable, an issue that my colleague remarks on. You feel like weve been making progress in mitigating some of the vulnerabilities that perhaps atwe allowed to develop partly because we were fighting in the middle east against very very violent but nonetheless logically less sophisticated adversaries and in that tranny of the time to our eye off these concerns. As we make progress in addressing the achilles heel heels and the American Armed forces, what about our nationalinfrastructure that supports the armed forces . These are key ones in terms of vulnerabilities. No we are not there, there are various theories, very serious vulnerabilities out there. Most modern societies, all modern societies on electricity for example and each of these societies are very complex systems, systems within systems and they all at the end of the day depend on some form of electricity to make all theirradios work. So thats key. You have to also protect the internet if you will wasnt itself originally thought of as a military system that needed to be protected so at the beginning the internet and all that didnt have protection at the beginning. We were quite aware of Cyber Threats to the United States and to our friends and allies. Not only from criminals but from nations so those areas, all those areas are for key vulnerabilities. Space is critical. Theres an argument to be made and many have made it that there is some classified writings that say a country might try to see a first mover advantage to blind the United States. It happened in space, many people have written so if you think about a series of satellites that were key to argumentation systems, commandandcontrol systems or navigation systems, that could potentially have a devastating effect and could encourage some country to try to do something an Electronic Warfare system or an attack in space so we recognize those threats, we recognize those vulnerabilities and we are running on a very quick pace with a lot of money into showing up those kinds of systems and weve done them through hardening them and also framing what were assuming that were going to operate in a electromagnetic spectrum. Theres no way if they are at war and hopefully we never will be, i hope the probability that electromagnetic sector being degraded is almost certain so we have to get comfortable with operating without command and control systems. We have to get comfortable operating with degraded ups systems, with mimicking and jamming on radio etc. So these are all things you have to protect but also to operate in a degraded environment and were looking at all these before my last question, but i want to ask you a little bit about the overall state of the world as you see it. These several years now into the national Defense Strategy and the greater us focus on Great Power Competition and i guess ill ask a little bit of a leading question is maybe im a little unusual among some strategists and foreignpolicy thinkers in believing where in a somewhat better place than we were five years ago and iwould ask you to comment on that. For example in regardto russia. Nato has established more for forward position in the balkan states and the army chief and chairman has beat up the polls which makes a bit less than Vladimir Putin could have any designs on nato territories and in the western pacific and again, im not trying to be partisan. I think the obama and Trump Administrations both contributed to this dynamic , we maintained navigation exercises in the South China Sea and i think its increasingly clear that china g will not be able to claim that or any other waterway as their own internal lake because its a place where the world depends on open access and finally on north korea obviously a work in progress, not to mention iran but being a policy that in place and all work in progress but nonetheless we have some pretty robust internal postures that have been maybe in weeks and years and im not suggesting you want to spike the football in the end zone. I know youre emphasizing a need for continued vigilance and you feel that these policies in last few years have given us a measure of greater stability and what we had a half decade ago, over to you. Theres a couple of things i mentioned, one is we want to stay in Great Power Competition. Thats the nature of war. But thats 10,000 years of Human History , in a lot of different space, thats okay, but make sure it stays in Great Power Competition and if it doesnt shift in great power conflict or great power war. The first half of the last century, 1915 1945 we had two world wars and between 1914 1945 150 Million People were slaughtered. Talk about my dad, he was in you would you, massive amounts of destruction and were obviously feeling the effects of world war one and two and its unbelievable to think of. Big power of war and now i can think of big power war with Nuclear Weapons, its like my god, weve got to make sure that doesnt happen doso we want to make sure that the conditions stay at Great Power Competition. Thats an important thing for the military to do and how do you do that . You mentioned deterrence, thats the key thing. You want to deter your potential opponents s from even contemplating that they can have a war with the United States or they could be successful in a war with the United States so if you maintain considerable levels of military power, economic power and that you engage diplomatically and i think those three things in combination can ensure that your opponent knows that you are a powerful, capable country and its not in analysis, its not going to make sense to have a war with the United States. Thats an important fact that needs to be sustained today, yesterday and tomorrow. We need to continue to do that. The other thing we need to do is make sure and i think this is important is that your opponent knows your capability. It doesnt do any good if ceyour opponent in deterrence has no clue what your capabilities are so its important that they know that and part of that is will. Your opponent needs to know that you have the will to use the capabilities that you have. Part of that iscommunications. Part of it is communications but its important that you have lines of communication to your enemies and adversaries so if you communicate back and forth , art of the Technology Chairman is mitigating with ouradversaries. In the back channels that i do that so in order for our opponents to know clthat thats able to happen. Those are all key components to determine what another piece i think that these continuous maintenance, and its mentioned in the nds is our allies in part , the United States has a critical capability with our allies and partners and always have capability for the last hundred years or sowith our allies and partners. We have always been a believer, were unilateral if we have to be what we refer to be collective. Is that difficult . Sure. I had an opportunity in command and there were 42 flags from Different Countries area is that difficult . Yes. It would require a greater degree of consensus in a much different style of leadership. It is difficult to do that youre much more powerful when you have numbers, theres great power in alliance where all those countries together, theres great power with the United States and japan and south korea and western pacific, etc. So our allies and partners are key to deterrence as well. So not only do you have that capability to communicate, to make sure your opponent understands will but a lot of other allies and partners with you to recognize a great deal otbetween creating a stable environment and i would argue that in the last five or 10 years, we are not in a type of position by a long shot but there is room to improve and we have to keep banging away. You should never be complacent. Its a dynamic war and the enemy gets those sort of things so we got to assess the situation, continue to emphasize some of the basics. The basics of deterrence and assurance and the basics of operating in a collective security arrangement. Last question is on the budget environment and i guess it appears that in a bipartisan way that the United States congress and the last two president s and particularly the Trump Administration boosted up in Defense Budget to the point where its now almost 750 billion a year, the National Defense budget is substantially higher than the cold war average even after adjusting for inflation. Thats the good news but from the point of view of yourself and Service Chiefs and others is it now appears that budgets are going to remain flat perhaps at this Going Forward with the deficit and debt, the covid environment and even moves we saw before covid because the projections for your ago is the buildup would end and that budgets would probably at best be doubled with inflation but yet we know in 2018 when hehe released the national Defense Strategy the commission that followed, Bipartisan Commission said that we all needed three percent to five percent annual growth indefinitely to properly implement the nds that doesnt appearto be likely to happen. Could you give us some sense about your degree of concern about the budget environment and any words of advice for the Incoming Congress and new powerbrokers in washington about how to thinkabout the Defense Budget. In order to be a great power in the system, i believe you have to have a very strong and capable military. But you also have to have a strong and capableeconomy. U a very resilient country as a whole, you have to have a great Education System , all things will be on the purview of the department of defense but youve got to look at it as a whole. Military is one piece of the whole. And we do cost an enormous amount of money for the american taxpayer. As you mentioned 700 750 billion dollars and 83 to 5 percent growth rate annually, and not too long it will be 1 trillion. So in an ideal world, i agree that we would need 35 percent sustained real growth in order to continue the modernization programs and so on that we have. Thats desired. And we would want to have a sustained, predictable, adequate budget in a timely way every year. Again, thats desired. But thats also not necessarily going to happen and i dont anticipate that it will happen. So we have to have the uniform, weve got to do a quick reality check on the likely to happen in the is nottoodistant future area and i suspect that at best, the pentagons budget will start flattening out. Theres a real prospect that they could decline significantly depending on what happens inthe environment. Again, your military is dependent on the National Economy and we have had significant pandemic, we had a counter in the Economic Situation nationally for almost going on a year now. We got significant unemployment so the most important thing that you need to do is get behind us and breathe new life into the economy. Then you can put additional money into the military so these are things that the chairman does for the pentagon does, these are more National Priorities but i suspect for us in uniform, anticipate in the coming years its likely to flatten, its likely to decrease a littlebit. That doesnt mean the world is like and for us. But that means we have to tighten up and take a harder look at priorities and we got to make sure that were absolutely optimizing the money we get and we get the most we possibly can in the most efficient and effective way for the defense of the United States and thats what we have to do. We have to take a hard look at what we do, where we do it thats why i was saying about overseas disposition for example , idtheres a considerable amount of money with the United States spending on overseas deployments, overseas bases and locations and every one of those absolutely positively necessary for defense , is aeronautics tied to a Vital National security interest, is every one of those exercises that we do critically important . Are books, real hard looks at everything that we do i think wis warranted. I have no problem in letting us do that to the extent that we can that is a nice segue into some of the audience questions which ill turn to try to into our conversations. There are a few questions about our posture in the broader middle east and the questions are diverse in their concern. Some thpeople wonder why we still have such a big us military presence in the broader middle east but others are worried that going down to 2500 forces in afghanistan by early in the new year and maybe pulling forces out of somalia for example may put us at risk. I realize these are charged questions and a lot of considerations go into them but is there any way you would help us understand the us military posture and the trials that are ongoing in the us military posture towards the middle east . Again, we have to mold the prospect here. There are a lot of usmilitary in the middle east. And you treally got to go back to the prior years and the british footprint that was in the middle east at the time and then the United States coming onstage as a world power in rlworld war i and then of course with world war ii. But at the conclusion of world war ii towards the end of it those were drawn up, so along with the diplomats of tr several other hundred countries , they decided on a world structure. And today in the media people refer to that as a rulesbased World Economic order. So theres different monikers for it. But the bottom line is rules were set up in the United States at the end of world war ii suffered grievously but nothing compared to other countries. The soviet union suffered 20 million killed in germany, japan, just horrendous destruction in some of these countries and most of them economically remain flat. The United States had an enormous amount of aggregate powers as a whole by 1945. And we wrote the rules. Other countries signed a, at least one other country didnt like it. So they wrote their own rules. That all ended in 89, 90, 91 and the wall came down and pretty much everybody subscribed to the rules that we wrote in 1945. We had to have someone d enforce the rules and that became the United States and our allies. And thats open seas for example to make sure you mentioned freedom of navigation, make sure the world was rapidly policed and all that fell to the United States as the main enforcer of the set of global rules. Now today, people are wondering why we are where we are . Thats why we are where we are, because we set up rules through various administrations that we would enforce those rules. Its a fair question to ask if those conditions still exist and we still as a nation want to do that sort of thing. If the answer is yes then that requires a certain degree of auditory output and a certain degree of military capability but if the answer is no that requires a different position thats an open ended question for the American People ntand leaders to decide. I think there is actually a bit of a debate going on in our society right now on what our role is governmentally speaking in the world but right now that is the reason why we are who we are and in the middle eastespecially , at least initially everything had to do the protection of oil because oil and the free flow of oil, that was the primary means i which the industrial world made itself. We were never dependent on mideast oil but we defended it and europe and asia, japan for example, [inaudible] thats why we were very easily but today its a fair question to say should we be a sentinel or not and thats not a question for me to answer but its one for some sort of National Debate but theres a lot of things at play also in the middle east. There are other things such as american values, human rights matters, the belief that stopping terrorism is a good thing or a bad thing and so on. Even support of israels good or bad, those are questions , policy questions again for others to ask and answer and then we execute the orders that are given to us but thats why we are there in many ways as to whywe are in the middle east to begin with. This disposition that youre talking about, somalia and other states, what are in those particular areas specifically today because of various terrorist organizations. We went to afghanistan to ensure afghanistan never again became a platform for a terrorist strike against the United States and for large measure we have been at least today successful in preventing that from happening again but we did that through trained advisors with the National Afghan Security Forces and the Iraqi Government. We believe now after 20 years, two decades we have achieved a modicum of success. I would argue that over the last 5 to 7 years as a minimum we have been in a condition of strategic stalemates where the government was never going to militarily concede and the telegram was never going to militarily concede the regime so we are in a condition of strategic stalemates and we are worried that that war could come to an end, that was somewhat in alignment with us nationalsecurity interests and also in the interests of people in the region through a negotiated settlement. Many people think were going to negotiate with someone like the taliban but that is in fact the most common way that uncertainty makes way, those negotiations are ongoing right this minute as we speak and are at a very critical stage in fact. And we have made some national decisions, to reduce our military footprint and afghanistan down to 2500 soldiers by 15 january. We are in the process of executing that decision right now but what comes after that, that will be up to the new administration. That we will find that out on 20 january and beyond. Right now our plan are plan where executing is to try to get 1200 troops by 15 january and that is also in support of the agreements signed with the taliban in february. Sothats happening as we speak. In iraq , the Iraqi Government once the us military to continue the Space Program with the iraqi military. We think thats an important thing to do. We think that helps the interdicting and preventing aggression by iran in the region. We also think that is important to continue to sustain the success of the isis caliphate so that it doesnt regenerate and come back. Also the president has also made the decision to reduce our force posture in iraq. To 2500, also by 15th of january and decisions after that willcome from the next administration. In somalia, somalia is an ongoing debate right this minute. Not so much as to what their footprint is, itswhat the footprint will look like. The valley is a threat and we know is an organized capable terrorist organization with an extension to al qaeda just like isis was. We have some rich and they could affect some attendance, conduct operations against not only us interests but also against the homeland so it would require attention. Were taking a hard look and repositioning the force the better any loss to conduct counterterrorist opposition operations. What we have a small footprint, low cost in terms of number of personnel and in terms of money. But its not so highrisk as you saw on the news, we bought a very brave the aiea, certainly steel in somalia so many factors but that we think were approaching it rationally and responsibly to adjust the footprints of what is necessary in order to continue the operations against the terrorists throughout their operating against the United States. One quick followup on the broader middle east and afghanistan, theres question about korea, id like to turn to next and we only have about five minutes before we wrapping but in regard to afghanistan, to the extent you can explain an unclassified setting like this , what 2500 us troops footprint will look like, i think a lot of this would be ofcurious. That essentially one major operating base and then smaller capabilities with training and interspersed with the afghan forces, is that how will a couple of bases, maybe one near kabul and then maybe one in these. We settled on what that footprint would look like. We have looked at that and were in afghanistan, general made recommendations to get back to you and hes approved the plan to go forward. I would prefer this point not to discuss exactly what base is coming up. As a general comment youre looking at larger basis with several satellite cases that provide the capability to continue our transmission and continue our counterterrorism mission. In regard to korea, there are a couple of questions that are focused on the need for vigilance and in our defense part of the world, going back in time 70 years to the origin of that conflict. Theres obviously been a lot of history transpired in just the last years under the obama and trump demonstration in regards to korea, how do you feel about the overall situation today or are you worried about a north Korean Nuclear or longrange missile testing. Do you feel are different posture the South Koreans is pretty any comments in particular regarding korea with the innumber of questions on it. I think the alliance between the United States and the republic of korea is very strong and its very resilient, a defense treaty and we have 28,500 troops in south korea, with significant capabilities and direct military is very significant, one of the better militaries in the world so i have im very confident in the military capability picture and provocations by north korea. It is also true that north korea has advanced their Nuclear Weapon missile capabilities. Mand in fact the deterrence capabilities have not only income edition with japan and also the United States and its very significant so north korea is a high priority challenges, internal to oursociety. Do i expect north korea to view provocations at some point in the future . Its very possible. They got a long history of doing things like that. But i think we have adequate vigilance. We are monitoring the situation as we always do in north korea and we have adequate military capabilities that might come our way. Very last question general and again, thank you so much for the time youre spending with us today and all of you g men and women in uniform around the world. To defend us and their families, their questions about weapons of mass destruction and let me put that in a specific form in regard to the concerns in particular, one we learned anything about biological weapons with the potential of future kinds of biological weapons are watching this pandemic and to naturally occur . But nonetheless may foreshadow thing that could be done deliberately by future nonstate actors or governments create more biological weapons and secondly in regards toNuclear Weapons , youve already touched on this in your discussion but i wonder if in particular the concern about limited nuclear war that we heard russia at times in recent years that secretary mattis felt the need to in some ways respond to the Nuclear Posture review in 2018 but if the idea of a limited nuclear war as sort of that idea thats being put back in of all thats a particular concern to you as well. Some countries for example might take a little too cavalier assuming theyre doing a limited strike or two andstill keep things under wraps. So final set of questions on weapons of mass destruction. These are complex questions. On the first one,its clear. The devastation that the covid19 virus has done not just to the United States but t the world. And its imperative when you look back at the january february timeframe and the economic devastation and obviously the loss of human life. So good that virus or any other type of virus or other biological type system be deployed for nefarious purposes and do that by intent. Absolutely yes it could. On these other concerns, yes it is a concern. Is it a concern that a nationstate would do that . Certainly nationstates have the ability to develop these weapons and could deploy them that would be very drastic move on the part of any nationstate which would be a complete and utter act of war which wouldhave a devastating response from the United States. Of more concern would be a terrorist organization. Someone who may or may not be operating under a National Rule set, thats of great concern and its actually not all that difficult to imagine biological weapons being developed and then deployed by organizations that would in fact have no compunction whatsoever about pldeploying those sorts of weapons and causing destruction like theyve done. We know some organizations dont have that yet but theres a possibility so its something we need to be on guard against and in terms of interdicting and destroying like that but we need to take the Lessons Learned from this current pandemic and roll those into a capability to defend ourselves, so in the future we have stockpiles of ppe and organizations that are capable of Rapid Deployment and we are having protocols and procedures that we can quickly and rapidly imposed upon ourselves in order to limit the effects of any sortof biological weapon. Its ongoing and there are rigorous Lessons Learned for the program. With respect to Nuclear Weapons, i have very different time intellectually getting my head wrapped around the limited clear war, Nuclear Weapons are so devastating, they are even these socalled small yield Nuclear Weapons, and hiroshima and nagasaki, if im not mistaken doing this from memory, i think that they were destroying any 80 to 90,000 people in the class. Unbelievable. So if you took Something Like one kiloton, a small Nuclear Weapon, that would still be devastating. That would take out Lower Manhattan so im not sure what limited meansmeans in these terms. I think anytime anyone , any one should decide across the nuclear threshold, thats an extra nearly dangerous moment a in time. In International Politics and national security. For any related to even contemplate. Some have actually developed doctrines. To do that and i think thats a very dangerous path to follow. The other part of that is again, back to the terrorist organizations or some organization that if they were to get their hands on these Nuclear Weapons, then n thats a problem. And its still a problem in the world and something we need to pay close attention to. As Nuclear Proliferation occurs and is occurring now in many other countries have Nuclear Weapons, we haveto pay close attention to the proliferation of nuclear war because the more nationstates happen , just by common sense your probability of an accident happening is the probability of death, your probability of use , those and those compilations of deterrence become that much more complex. Dsso Nuclear Weapons are something that needs to have lots of peoples very mature very serious attention on the development, use, control and all those other procedures. And in certain ways over the last five, 10, 15 years a lot of our study and rigor and discipline with respect to Nuclear Weapons as abdicated. Because e the cold war went away. The fear of nuclear war between great powers, the United States and soviet union went away. I think that level of atacademic discipline, we need to recapture some of that was the war keeps getting more complex, not less complex and more accurate in Nuclear Proliferation. I have a difficult time thinking of limited capability but i do think there are various controls that need to we seriously resurrect and put back into the study of the entire nuclear environment. Is your chairman, you covered a lot and were so grateful at brookings and i know around the country for what youve done today and continue to do and we wish the very best of the holidays and new years to everyone in the armedforces and their families again, thank you very much for being here with us today. I appreciate the opportunity to you and all those listening area. Over and out everyoneand best wishes for december and beyond. Happy holidays, mike. Progress returns today facing a friday deadline to extend federal funding and ignore the government shutdown. Also on the agenda a 740 billion Defense Authorization bill and a bipartisan agreement in both chambers with a threat from the president. Continue on another relief package but so far there is no specific bill on the schedule. Viruses back today, whatsthe house live on cspan, the senate live one. [inaudible]. Today, California Governor Gavin Newsom will hold a News Conference on his states response tothe coronavirus and. As part of parts of california activator stakeholders. Watch live coverage 12 30 on cspan2. The Cdc Advisory Committee Organization Practices a Virtual Meeting to discuss recommendations would get the covid19 vaccine first. The two groups likely to receiveposes our healthcare workers and longterm care facilityresidents. This is a portion of the meeting. Today we will revisit the allocation of the covid19 vaccine to answer the following policy questions. Should healthcare personnel and longterm care facility residents be offered vaccination to phase 1 a. After we have reviewed the evidence, then clinical considerations and safety monitoring presented by my colleagues we return to this question. Recalled that during the aca Community Meeting last week reviewed evidence to inform allocation decisions. For the finance, the workgroup examined covid19 Disease Burden as well as the
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