One of the first things thats evident in any coalition that while states have come together usually sharing a desire to achieve a common purpose, achieving common values and common interest. Seldom will those states in that process subordinate their personal or their National Interest. So National Interests will continue to be important to the individual members of the state. Of the coalition. We have achieved i think, in a relatively short time a remarkable consensus within the coalition. Ultimately for the defeat of daesh. That really that really was a very impressive effort i think on the part last year of the president s leadership but having watched secretary kerry very closely in this and the real emergency of august and september, bringing this coalition together, so they have come to achieve an outcome with regard to daesh. But in the course of that they also continued to recognize the National Interest of their own. For many of the members of the coalition, iran is one of the principal sources of threat to their national security. You see that in the gulf and in that region. I wont speculate on the outcomes of the announcement that was made this morning with respect to whether it will fund fundamentally change iranian behavior. But that is the of, course, a very important question to all of them. Will irans behavior change as a direct result of potentially being completed assimilated into the community of nations as a result of this agreement, remains to be determined. But i will tell you that is clearly a point of interest and strong attention for our neighbors and allies in the region. It will become an important point over time. But, even though we are committed to the defeat of daesh, committed to the support of iraq and our greater iraqi ambassadors here this morning, not only are we committed to a political outcome in syria which sees in the end a transition to a government that is represented or is supported by the Syrian People that does not include bashar al assad. That does sometimes create tensions as some states view individual entities in the syrian battle space differently than other members of the coalition, and i think we have a strong common view that the political outcome is what we seek. The modalities of that outcome may differ from one partner to another. The alignments that had been formed early in the civil war in syria were strong alignments that supported various groups to seek to either liberate the Syrian People or to take action against the central regime and those alignments have been enduring. But i think we have worked very hard to manage those alignments so that it doesnt create too great attention or the dissolution of the coalition. As time has gone on, i have seen greater congruents in that view no less. If i could follow one piece, you did mention that youre just back from ankara, the role and the relationship with turkey has been complicated, its been vital, its been seen as quite tense at times. It seems youre quite optimistic right now. So, one of my questions there, you see for example the kurdish being an effective force fighting within syria, but again, this is sort of just to get to one area where there are differences potentially differences between Coalition Members on how to approach a particular ontheground partner, how do you see that kind of dynamic playing out . Well, its its actually been naturally pretty remarkable what the kurdish elements in syria have done to eliminate daesh from a large segment of the border. There is still border which is in the hands of daesh and thats problematic and its an issue for the whole coalition. But its also important for us to take into account the very real concerns of the turks in this regard. You know, were old friends with the turks. Were allies with the turks. We have been in, i think, very constructive conversations with them for some period of time, my last opportunity to visit ankara was yet a continued affirmation of commitment together to achieve goals in the region. I left ankara with a continued sense of importance of our relationship with turkey as an bilateral relationship, my sense of the importance of turkeys relationship to the coalition, but also came away, again, once again, convinced of turkeys importance to the solution to the difficulties, both the region and in syria in particular. So, in that sense, were very attentive to turkeys concerns about the issues with which they deal with regard to the kurds. So, were attentive to their relationship with the pkk. And how they view the pkk. Were attentive to their attention to what happened south of the border with the Kurdish Forces that were so successful against daesh, and in that regard, we have been very clear on the issue that we do not support the dissolution of syria, we support ultimately a syria thats territorily intact. We dont want to see broken into sectarian or ethnic flag fragments. In that regard, we dont support and i dont believe in fact the kurds support in Northern Syria a separate governmental entity. But we also have been very clear that the elements of the population that have found themselves liberated from daesh in the course of these military activities along the border in the last several months. We have been clear. The u. S. Has been very clear, we expect populations that have been liberated will return to their own system of administration. So turked amin will administer turks. Its important that as a partner that has ultimately been enabled to defeat daesh not become an Occupying Force but it has become an enabler to defeat daesh. Theyre able to return to the nature of their selfadministration that we have seen before. So were very attentive in how that has gone. Undeniably it has been successful in rolling daesh back. In the course of doing that, kobani has been stabilize. While there was a large kurdish population there, there was a large free syria that fought inside kobani as well. The ability for us to motivate free syrians to be a credible sunni, arab partner in the future. But we also have taken off the battlefield one of the principal crossing points for daesh. That denied raqqa, and forces have moved down towards raqqa. Thats created immediate pressure on the capital of daesh and thats an important outcome for this. Were beginning to see the capacity ultimately for us to regionally synchronize military activities that can create a more comprehensive strategy across daesh. As an entity. It is a unified comprehensive, synchronized strategy, or sin synchronization, and that is beginning to take shape. Thats why im optimistic. Can i squeeze in one more . One more. Thank you. You mentioned commitment to the territory integrity of syria. Politics in iraq is always a major question, and you know, in this report we come out saying that it is important not to give up on the iraqi state, that we need to see as you said about syria and iraq, able to maintain its integrity. That required getting the sunnis in. And you talked about there are some sunni fighters that are actually being recruited and actually joining the fight to retake ramadi. But there is a sense and there are people in this town that would say, you know, we have seen this show before, what is your thought on this concept of functional federalism and the real willingness for the hard political decisions to be made to sustain this. This is one of the reasons of the greatest skepticism when you step out of iraq and people just sort of look at the situation. Well, i can understand skepticism. I think we need to give this a chance. The Prime Minister has been in office since the 7th or 8th of september. He came into office, at the moment that iraq that daesh was determined to destroy iraq. Most of the iraqi territory was already under its boot. Thousands of iraqi troops and thousands of iraqi civilians had already been either displaced or slaughtered. So he came under a very, very difficult moment, and i think in stark contrast to previous systems of government in iraq, he sees the future of iraq as one that divests authority from the center in order to empower reliable government in the province. He talked about this, its functioning federalism. Hes been clear. But of course he has a skeptical power base that operates from a long history of concerns about what the other components within the Iraqi Society really intend to do over time. That skepticism is something that we have to recognize, its a skepticism that, by committing ourselves to the political process of iraq, in supporting the Prime Ministers effort at functioning federalism, in being quick in the process of stabilization, in the context of liberated populations, it creates the operationalization the real physical operationalization of functioning federalism. That ultimately achieves his publicly announced objectives. First id say, look, lets think about what has happened politically in iraq since the overthrow of the king, and we have not seen democracy in action there, democracy as we would like to see it and democracy as we know it, we have not seen it yet, as Prime Minister, operating under some of the most difficult, political, Economic Economic very importantly and military challenges, as he seeks to make progress in a Pressure Cooker of political pressure in an economic environment that leaves iraq devoid of resources that it could apply otherwise. And under pressure to defeat daesh. To reunify the country and unite iraq. We have to recognize that hes making progess. Thats why the coalition when we get together, whether its at 62 or at small group level, the coalition has yet to walk away from a meeting without affirming the coalitions commitment to the Prime Minister and territorial integrity and the unification and the unity ultimately of iraq. Thank you so much, john allen. Thank you for your tireless dedication. To this on behalf of the nation, id like toeveryone to thank john allen. Thank you very much. [ applause ] [ applause ] good morning. Im brian katulis, im the senior fellow here at center for american progress. Thank all of you for coming. We want to thank general allen for sharing his wisdom and his thoughts on the status of the campaign. What we want to do here is have a bit of discussion, reflecting on what general allen said. Then also talk about a report that the center released this morning that assesses the status of the campaign, my role today is to simply moderate the discussion. Ill introduce the panel here. We;ll have a couple of remarks from the senior fellow hardin lang and then dr. Steven walt, from harvard, and finally sarah margon, former colleague of ours here at the center for american progress. Our goal here in having this discussion is be as wide ranging as possible. About halfway through, ill draw you guys in, anyone who has questions into the dialogue and discussion. So, first, without further ado, hardin, the floor is yours, where are we, more than a year into this campaign, what does the report says, what are the highlights . What do you think about what general allen said . Thanks, brian. Before i get started i want to commend folks, some of the work that the other panelists have put out, doctor walt has written an interesting piece. The staying power of isil. And what the implications are or are not for our national security. Sarah margon, human rights abuse inside of iraq in real time and its not just from a human rights perspective but its quite important from a political perspective. Theyre doing a whole lot to sort further rend the sectarian fabric of the country apart. Stepping back to our report, i guess there were a couple of things we were trying to say, the first one, probably was, look, lets take a deep breath, focus on recalibration, and see if we can work a little bit to get the politics right. Its been a rough couple of months for the antiisil coalition, no doubt about it. General allen is quite upbeat and optimistic about it. The events, the fall of ramadi, really did jolt the policy establishment. Theres good reason to concern. But the first point we would like to make, there have been a lot of reactions to those events. And a number of critics have said, the fall of ramadi calls into question the strategy of relying on local partners to do this fighting. The u. S. Has to look at deploying significant number of combat troops back into iraq. To stiffen the spine of iraqi and take this fight to isil. And one of our big takeaways, the time we have spent in iraq, going back and forth, the u. S. Has the most efficient and fearfighting machine on the planet. But tens and thousands of u. S. Troops arent not going to fix what are fundamental problems and political crisis in iraq that led to the creation of isil. There are people on the other side who basically say, as we heard general allen said, look it, iraq is at a stage where it could in all likelihood its going to disintegrate. Its going to break up into states, sunni, shia and kurdish. We need to readjust the u. S. Policy against that. And what were saying, none of us are yet convinced, were at a point where it makes sense to short the iraqi state. Iraq Holding Together as a balk work and having to work to fix the politics of iraq, really does provide the best opportunity for some sort of policy and stabilize the region. I mean, so, where does that leave us, rather than rather than getting into discussions of tactics the additional troops, where they might go and belong, we wanted to focus on the wider politics of iraq, syria and the region. The first step we think at the regional level is to work a bit more on the unity in effort. General allen and his team have been doing a great deal of work to stabilize there, but there are still outstanding issues we need to address. Only three are hitting targets in both iraq and syria. You have arab members of the coalition who have struck operations and most of our european allies are focused on iraq. There needs to be more to break this stove pipe and break the territory as a single theater. Efforts to support local partners on the ground and from the air, need to be coordinated at a regional level. So say, the Iraqi Security operation that we saw launched yesterday in anbar needs to be coordinated better with assistance going in to, say, the syrian kurds who have been doing a great deal of fighting in the north. If we can break the politics, though, by the shortterm imperatives of defeating isis discuss to regional stabilities. One of the most interesting things here, if, in the short term we cannot let this crisis go to waste. Its possible that the coalition could provide the architecture for a Regional Security and par does or framework. Its not too soon to begin exploring this with our partners. Getting into iraq, the general said things about his dedication to functioning federalism. And for us this really is the heart of the matter. Something has to be done thats going to open the door to the sunni arab population to make them feel as though they have a real stake in the future of the country. So far, there have been some important pieces of legislation, the concept of a national guard, but most of the stuff right now is still stuck in the political process and on its own its not going to be enough to convince sunni arabs to come back in the political fold. So, we need to be supporting the Prime Minister to build out and make tangible this concept of functioning federalism. In the way sunni arabs feel that to come back in the fold. Affect the way we conduct the campaign. The u. S. Made a decision to withhold air support until the Iraqi Security forces were leading the fight. Its that kind of moment and that kind of posture and policy that we need to constantly reinforce to make sure that the Central Government is driving the show and those populations that are in areas combat is under way theyre representing them. Syria remains the hardest part of the puzzle, and theres no doubt about this. The coalition itself is divided. General allen made some comments about this, i think hes walking a very delicate tight rope in trying to hold this together. The u. S. Strategy has hinged on this program to train and equip 15,000 antiisis fighters. If were still at a number of 60 a year in theres clearly a need for review. General allen focused on what well need to do to get that process going. I dont think its going to be sufficient. One thing were arguing in the report, once we can get this program online, its going to be necessary for the u. S. Government to not only defend those forces when they go back into syria against isil, but they also need to be able to defend against them the regime in damascus which is committed to destroying them. This is a step that were not willing to make on our partners there. Finally, i think if we are willing to step in a more direct way and assert a willingness to defend these partners, it may open up a window of opportunity to reengage a diploma diplomatic process. I dont think its going to happen any time soon. At the moment, the diplomacy is largely stall. When there are moments were willing to engage with the credible threat or use of force, we see that the diplomacy process starts to reignite. We dont see an end to the civil war any time soon. But creating a framework that could to deescalation over time. Support of its political strategy rather than focusing on deploying tens of thousands of additional troops. To the make this easier its probably important to appoint one person, one commander, one envoy whos really going to be in charge of this effort. We have different commanders concerned about the effort inside of iraq. And being able to coordinate both the diplomatic and the military assistance aspects of this in a coordinated fashion is to be essential to success. The president has warned that it is going to take years for this battle to be won and but without proper recalibration of what were trying to do, i suspect that the fighting against isis is going to prove more longer and drawn out than it needs to be. Thank you, brian. Thanks, hardin. Steve, i want to turn to you, first, hardin said, the strategy is fundamentally okay, we just need to recalibrate it. We heard general john allen earlier, your assessment whether you agree or disagree and how you see the snapshot right now. First of all, i think the strategy you heard here sounded very familiar to me. We have a coalition thats going to wage this particular conflict, its going to do it by military training of local troops, its going to do it with some elements of air power and some elaborate, political engineering in societies t