Transcripts For CSPAN3 Defense And National Security 2018021

It alone and we have to talk with each other and figure out how the create quality jobs in the clean energy e kconomy. We have had as our part perrer inship that we are work manage the midwest and on the west coast from the u. S. Conference of mayors you can see more at cspan. Org, and we will leave this for a series of conversations this afternoon about defense and National Security oversight. The House Armed Services Ranking Member adam smith leads off and also the private sector for oversight and accountability. Live coverage here on cspan3. Hassan, we feel secure in the building but as a convener, we have a duty to prepare for the emergencies, so take a look around you and behind me are exits. I will be the official Safety Officer today. So should a fire alarm or something go off, i will direct you in the correct orientation out of the building. Today culminations a ninemonthlong effort conducteded by the cis program. Over 60 groups and functional experts and leaders of the ngo and the Civil Society communities were consulted for the project. We want to thank all of them for their insights and proarespectives. The project was made possible by generous support of the sponsor open society. And the keynote address will be presented by adam smith who is going to give us a perspective of capitol hill and he is the washington states ninth District Representative and serves as Ranking Member on the House Armed Services academy. He graduated from fordham university, and got the j. D. From the university of Washington School of law. During his last year in Law School Representative smith ran and won an election for washingtons 33rd district becoming the youngest state sen is or the at the time in the country. Representative smith is now the 11th term in congress, and are representative smith has previously chair ed ted the subcommittee on land and air forces and the subcommittee on terrorism unconventional threat s and capabilities. He has previously served on the House Foreign Affairs committee, and the House Select Committee on intelligence. After he makes the keynote remarks i will join him on the stage for the back and forth and then we will open it up to the audience and then a break from the first panel. So, without further ado, please join me in welcomes representative smith. [ applause ] thank you very much. It is a great honor be here and i ap preesh working with cics, and they have been enormous help to me, and so it is good to have someone around you to ask questions and learn. It is a little bit unsettling, a and this is the first time in a long time that i have been before a group of people that we have a budget deal. And normally that is what dominates my thoughts is that we dont know how much money we will have and the only caveat is that we will have the money for two year, and usually a debt and deficit so high that you are put in a very, very bad place. That is going to happen. I cant say when exactly, but when that happens, all aspects of government and the military will not be excluded will have to figure out how do we live with a lot less money than we thought that we were going to have, and that is one of the most important conversations that we should be having, and that the pentagon and the government level is how to make the most of the twoyear gift that we have been given, and not think that it is simply something to keep happening. It is economically impossible for it to keep happening and distinctly possible to go to other way in a massive way. So we will see how it plays out. As far as Security Cooperation goes with other countries r it is something that i have worked on for a long time and started when i was the chair of the Terrorism Committee and so i got the travel the world for three year years and see where the special Operations Command was, and not everywhere, but a lot of the places as admiral olson used to say when i met with him, and he would start out every meeting saying that to today we woke up in 87 countries or 75 or owhatever it was, and a good blueprint for where the military presence was throughout the world. Understanding where socom was. And what is the are reason for Security Systems . Well, putting that aside of the intense conflict zones that i willt get to in a second, what we are trying to accomplish, and actually socom has a great euphemism for it, preparation for the environment. I liked that, and what they meant is basically that we want to make friends in different parts of the world whether it is south africa or Southeast Asia so if things go horribly wrong we are better prepare d to deal with it, and to stop things that are going to go horribly wrong and that is part of the mission of the state department and the entire Foreign Policy to maintain stability in as many places as we can. That is the tiniest little bit complicated right now, and all of you are knowledgeable and you can look around the globe and certa certainly, you have afghanistan and somalia that are problems burk a dozen other countries as well in some state of instability combined with the presence of terrorist organizati organizations that threaten the west. So we are trying to figure out how can we work in the countrieses and the countries around them to bring a more security environment and the key to all of this is a whole of government approach. Now, what we had and we attempted to reform is the 2014 nda situations is with the result of afghanistan and other things emerging on us, we made it up as we went along. We knew that we had the to spread money around in different places to keep the peace and keep the stability, and that is what this is. You are trying to to make friends and figure out if you are working in the philippine, and what do they immediate in the philippines to cooperate with you. I harken back to a story that a are retired socom officer told me living in libya in 1980s and he said that single best ting that he had was a dentist. Everybody wanted a dentist and as long as he could provide the dentists, they would tell him everything that he needed to know and they would help him which is an overstatement, but in essence, it is the way it is. And so in some of the other zone, you are operating in an insecure environment, and what complicates that is as you are trying to pass out the money, and the securitys a s assistanc not just about training people how the to defend themselves, training other countries. The programs spread across a range of things. You had d. O. D. Dollars going to the drill wells and provide health care and do a number of things burk that is all sort of under the umbrella of, well, i suppose that you would call it if you were from new jersey Walking Around money, and what you need to sort of keep the peace in a neighborhood. It got very, very confusing in terms of who was controlling what. So we attempted in 2017 to say, we will consolidate all of this money, at least at the d. O. D. Under one person at the undersecretary of policy. So that we can keep coordination of that money within the dod, but for all of this to work, it has to be about a lot more than d. O. D. , because depend pog and the country, you may need different things, and certainly, you will need security to do anything, but you also need the rule of law. So the Justice Department could potentially be very involved in figuring out how to put in place a basic system of law that people can rely on. And health care is enormously important as i mentioned, and special Operations Command runs what they call the med caps and show up in the village to say we will be here all day with a bunch of doctors to help you out so, you know, you have that. A and agriculture and i dont know anything about agriculture because i grew up in the suburbs, but it is very, very important in a lot of these parts of the world and countries in the world, so how do you bring all of that gap together and have a whole government coop ra aretive approach . I think that getting the d. O. D. Money coordinated is important, but what is going to be more important is getting some of the money out of d. O. D. And into the hands of the people who build schools and drill wells and provide health care and set up the rule of law, and to set it up so that there is a cooperative experience in the country. Dade trip through africa in 2009 i believe it was, and in which we visited a number of countries to get an idea, how are we doing . We went to more rocco, rwanda, egypt, and so it varied from country, to country how well the government worked and a lot of it depended on the am bas r do, because if the model is working corre correctly, the ambassador is in charge of the country, and that something that we went to yemen on the trip, and i talk to my trip to africa and then say i went to yemen and yemen is not in africa, and yes, but we jumped across the sea and hopped back. But in yemen, the am bbassador d a large military pres tlens and he e wanted to be in charge of it, because it is his country and he wasnt so he did not know how to operate with the rest of the people in there, because you had, you know, bifurcated command structures theoretically in charge of the whole. If this is working properly, the ambassador works with whoever the military leader is, socom is frequently a humg part of this, and then the other agencies are underneath it and they a all have an idea or plan for what they are going to provide in kenya or libya or somalia or wherever. And structured and organized spending of the money wisely. And the 2017 plan is the start of the approach, but at the end of the day, we are talking about Counter Insurgency in the good sense. Counter insurg en si is a bad name, because it is synonymous with nation building, but that is not what it needed to be. We can know that showing up in afghanistan or iraq and in a different part of the world that is completely different from america to say, all right, we are here and we will rebuild the country and show you how to run it. Not a good idea. Counter insurgency is small bits of help to describe to help the country to maintain stability. It works best through the Millennium Challenge Corporation to work with governments to say, we will give you the foreign aid, but what is the plan . What are you trying to accomplish in the education and the health care and elsewhere and that has to work from the state department through the Defense Department in my opinion. I will close with that that and take your questions, because that is one of the biggest conflicts out there. D. O. D. Has the moneyt a tend of the day when the state department and all of these other people are battling to have influence over a given country, and if the department of defense is there in any sort of force, they are the ones with the huge pot of money. And it is 55 of the discretionary budget. The other 45 is spread out over everybody else. So there is a tendency to have d. O. D. To do a lot of things that they should not be doing. One example was given to me in ken ka ya and at dinner, a great argument between a woman of the state department and two navy s. E. A. L. S traveling with me about the state department and the military running the k country, and how security is where it all started and if the military was not doing it how would you be able to do that, but the the state department woman had a good story about how, you know, this bran of tch the military of the u. S. Went up to drill wells and without talking to the state department they went up to do it, and pretty soon the people actively trying to resist the u. S. Or paranoid started to spread rumors that the wells were poisoned so nobody would use them, because you cant trust the u. S. Military and if they are here, they are here to crush you and take over your country. So, that is why you need a more cooperative effort and dip lowt mats vo a s involved and engage. So while you are talk about cutting the state department budget, we are making it more difficult to do this comprehensive approach. This comprehensive approach is vastly preferable than dropping 150,000 u. S. Troops into a country and trying to the pacify it. If we can do it for a small amount of cooperation from other countries and agencies, we definitely get more bang for the buck, but ultimately, we are more successful in what we are attempt ing t attempting the do, but that fight is going to play. General mattis said it best trying the defend the state department. He said if you are going to cut the state department, you need to give me five more division, because we will need them, and regretly, when he said that, that is what happened. The pentagon is getting a lot more money, and the state department is not. And a lot of the places in government are not either, so basically, as you are talking about the Security Cooperation, dont forget the whole of government approach. Yes, we need to train the troops in the trouble spots of the world to keep the peace and the security, but security is about a lot more than the military. So, i will look forward to the questions and i thank csis for hosting this event. Thank you very much, representative smith. I know that your back is bothering you so if you have to stand and walk, that is totally fine. It is fine. And it is actually not my back, but it is Something Different. Okay. Apolo apologies for that, and so, lets get to where you ended up which is this government and whole comprehensive approach, and challenging to say the least right now as you said the state department is going through at best described as a restructuring, but, heavy pruning or the siege force approach on them. What do you think sort of is the next stage or the era ara of th congressional viewpoint of where we go with the comprehensive approach. Do you know that if we are going to get to the point where the d. O. D. Is well resourced and takes on a lot of these missions is because the money is will there, and what then becomes the next stage of where we can go to the make sure that we have the kind of security that looks more like the whole of government that you hope for. Well, i, you know, i am not known for the optimism. I think ta that is up fair by the way. I am not being pessimistic, but it is what it is, okay. I simply try to assess the situation where it is at, but i will start with something positive which is that i am working with congressman ted yoho and senator coons and inhofe to put more power in the hands of usaid, and improves that particular leg of the stool if you believe in the defense development, diplomacy approach to Foreign Policy. It is promising, because it is ironic that this is something that was central to my approach prior to 2008 and i worked with s susan rice and gayle payne at the time to reform the way we do foreign aid. Because foreign aid is spread out over 40 agencies and in little boxes and pots of money that you cant, and it is very, very difficult to implement. Raj shah, and not the one in the white house, but the usaid guy for a while is as brilliant a h human being that i have ever encountered and he did a beautiful job at us a aid and so was gail. We never did the reform because the state department would not let go of it, and they wanted to control it, and i always thought that it was a mistake, and we should have a separate department of Development Like they do in great britain, but it is a turf thing, and the state department wanted it so under the Obama Administration in eightt years we did nothing congressionally, and raj did what he could within the conf e confines of the law, but now we have the possibility of reforming that, and that would be a p big step towards getting us at a better place of a whole government approach if the usaid had more power and authority. It seems that will there is a debate in washington over the true structural reform is possible, and whether one should think big to make some of the bigger structural changes or one sort of is absent a major crisis, and one is forced back if you will back into what you will have, and do you fall on the spectrum, because it sounds like on that example there is a view for a chance of a fundamental structural change that can hem us on the Security Assistance. There is a chance. And, you know, it is always worth working on as ledge sgisl that is what we do, legislate. So i would never say that we should walk away from it, and the challenges to getting there are daunting. Because of the can current structure and because of the money problem that i alluded to in the opening remark, is it going to bite us . Everybody is short of money, and we are living way crazy beyond our means and so then you tend to get locked into the patterns, and you dont have the freedom to innovate as you should. But there is a possibility to get to a better whole of government approach. Speaking of spending, we hear in washington how difficult it is, and many of us experience it to try to explain anything like Security Cooperation or the preventative defense or whatever the comprehensive approach or whatever the term is, and so to the people who are thinking of where they want the tax dollars going, and the value to try to explain the value of that when folks are looking at, you know, whether they want the taxes raised or they want the benefits decreased or whatever the issue may be. They dont want either one of those things by the way. What is the compelling case if any that you have found works if you will in terms of the talking about your travels, your experiences, and in this sector, and the value that it can provide to americans. Is there a way to sell this successfull successfully . There is. There is a sizable problem that i will get to after i explain how t to do it. I have been giving the speech for a long time, and constituents are straight forward on what is happening with this house if we are spending money, and across the world, how is this helping . So there are four ways that it h helps. Three practical and one that is a more, i dont know i