All right, ladies and gentlemen, we are ready to get started with our third and final installment of todays event on oversight and accountability and Security Sector assistance. Again, i am melissa dalton, director of the sbashl Security Program here at csis. I am delighted to welcome to this panel a selection of colleagues and fellow travelers on the road of ssa reform who either currently serve in government, or have very recently departed Government Service at various nodes of the community. Starting on my far left is mr. Adam barker who is a professional staff member on the Senate Committee on armed services. Where he provides budgetary and policy oversight of department and defense programs, including Security Cooperation. To his right is dr. Dafna rand. She previously served as Deputy Assistant secretary in the bureau of democracy and human rights and labor, also served in other positions at the department of state and the National Security council. To her right is mr. Tommy ross who is currently a senior associate with our program here at csis and was the inaugural Deputy Assistant secretary of defense for Security Cooperation and previously spent 12 years as a Congressional Staffer. And to my left is my dear friend dr. Myra kiren, shes at johns hopkins. She served a number of other important positions at the department of defense. And has recently published a Book Building militaries in fragile states, challenges for the United States. So im looking forward to having colleagues here dig into some of the vexing questions of Security Sector assistance reform as they have thought deeply about this issue from their various posts and would really like to engage all of them in a conversation along those lines. Starting with, i think, you know, some clear signals from this administration in terms of their National Security defense priorities, the return of near peer competition, while at the same time needing to be cognizant of counterterrorism priorities going forward, what does that pretend for Security Sector assistance and challenges faced by the enterprise. If anybody wants to jump in on that. Adam . I guess ill go first. I think the short answer is its tbd. I think the nss and the nds in particular have kept that long tradition of emphasizing partnerships, strengthening alliances and kind of a buythrough approach with a lot of vexing challenges. Whats less clear is how the department is going to decide to balance that allocation of resource and attention between this new shift towards great power competition, china and russia, while also making sure that those investments in the counterterrorism and irregular w warfare activities dont atrophy. The challenges youll run into is, you know, the way the nds lays out kind of a renewed emphasis in prioritization of china, russia, youre seeing a decline in resourcing towards those kind of traditional and varying presence in middle east and africa in particular. The question becomes, do they use money to buy down risk where we deemphasize u. S. Presence, particularly in the most and africa, or reemphasize, using that to Bolster Capabilities in Eastern Europe, southeast asia. Those sorts of things. Well see how those proposals to Congress Come across. Opportunities to come. Exactly. Does anybody else want to jump in . Ill jump in, sure. I think the traditional answer from what ive seen, to adams well posed question about whether the investments will come, and in places like the most where were trying to buy down risk versus Eastern Europe and asia, well apply resources to both, wont make those hard choices. I think so i think its not just a question of where we focus the resources, its a question of how we spend them in alignment with strategy. And so if were applying resources in places where we have less of a steady presence or posture to buy down risk, thats doing that in alignment with strategy is great if were applying those resources simply to, you know, try to maintain relationships with ambiguous purposes or ambiguous objectives, then thats not so good. I do think the emphasis on preparing to confront near peer competitors, and potential adversaries does present an opportunity for the interjection of more Strategic Thinking in the Security Cooperation. I think theres a tendency when youre faced with counterterrorism objectives to focus on very discreet capabilities to allow a country to go after bad guys without a lot of consideration for longterm, extraterritorial regional consequences. And when were confronting near peer competitors, theres no choice but to introduce Strategic Thinking around how specific actions can be calibrated to achieve desired regional effects and longterm effects, you know, theres no choice but to do it that way. Thats very much what the Security Cooperation enterprise needs. I would just add, thank you melissa, to my fellow panelists who ive worked the past couple years on this issue, i would add on that point there is time on the side of this community in analyzing this question of how well it works and whether its working. I would step back from this question to the primary question, what is the purpose of Security Cooperation in the first place . Its been around 17 years, since 2001, since d. O. D. Entered the zone of Security Assistance, in this kind of elevated way. Theres a lot of learning thats gone on. Really, the benefits of that learning is people are beginning to ask longitudinal questions. How much is that capacity or that investment in that capacity worked over time . How much have we bought or purchased influenced access in that country . Its Strategic Thinking and more resources would help. Bottom line here, for every new investment its critical that the first question thats asked is what is the capacity goal, what is the influence goal and what is the access goal . And delineating between those three has traditionally been a huge challenge for state d. O. D. Often theres disagreement later down the road. So the importance with new resources is to have that discussion up front and really acknowledge to disagree or agree on what are the different purposes. It doesnt have to be all three of those goals, but its often not one or two. Knowingly deciding what the goals are is critical. Sure, absolutely. You know, the challenge with the Late Afternoon panel is everyone can be half asleep. So ill try to be provocative to make you all up. I hope dafna is right. I dont see a ton of evidence thats up. Weve also be doing things like security communication. Now at least we in washington dont get ourselves on the same page, and were often very focused on these tangible metrics. Whats the training weve given them, whats the equipment weve give enthem and a real inclination to realize. Its okay. There are influence and access goal but they have to be acknowledged as much. But the problems come in at the very end of the investment that people came maybe they havent built capacity, but at least we have a good relationship, right . So thats often the final defense for a huge amount of investment that over time doesnt work out. So im equally cynical. I would say of the three capacity, influence and access, its usually access thats purchased the most credibly. And it opens doors from a state diplomatic perspective even as its purchased access other ways. I think the key challenge has been sort of the going in to really analyze and be honest about what were trying to do. Pulling back on this thread of the new york pier competition and a comment that representative smith made earlier in terms of forecasting out the future of the law in this environment. That when our competitors are not playing by the same rules it raises the imperative for the United States, as we still place our values as central to our foreign policy, to build some resilience around mechanisms likely in order to hold true to those principles. Could you talk about as we look ahead to this overlay of competition, what are the ways that you think we should be tightening mechanisms, likely or other potential mechanisms that might be out there that seek to implement and manifest the value based proposition of reform policy, if you agree with the premise to begin with. Im happy to take the first step. I think one thing when we were working together in the administration is that, you know, we need to be able to do a better job of being able to present investments and human rights training in not just sort of punitive and scolding measures but in ways of helping partnering militaries achieving their goals more effectively. Because in many cases the kinds of concerns that relate to the law are actually engaging personnel in activities that make it more difficult for them to achieve their objectives. And so i think one of the things we need to do internally is to be able to do a better job of iving where there are opportunities for interventions for human rights, corruption and similar concerns but are also in the shared interests of the partners that were working with. Theres still going to be cases where our partners are or our potential partners are engaged in human rights abuses or other kinds of activities that they dont want to move away from, and well have to have other strategies in those cases. But i dont think we should do every partnership and aspect related to our human rights application through that lens because thats not generally the case. I think tommy makes a good point, that oftentimes the decision times is human rights is a condition to initiate a relationship. And i think that congress is pretty clear that human rights and basic laws of Armed Conflict is going to be a nonnegotiable component of providing security systems. But i think what we have not done well so far is making human rights and those Institution Capacity building efforts in whatever effort we decide to undertake. How many times have we seen where we focused on providing a tactical capability to a partner based on a near term assess threat at the expense of a longterm, arguably more difficult line of effort of building institutions, helping to mitigate the likelihood of casualties or even just basic adherence to human rights as a planning construct. When i think about plan of operations or series of operations, hey, that should be a condition of the way you think about this planning construct. Im hoping with the addition of certain new requirements and also certain authorities that hopefully emphasize and really leverage the department of defense in particular, but its not just youve got to check the box or do the program. Theres a Mission Component of that program. The really controversial point that often will be raised in these interagency discussions is if you go overboard in conditions the human rights requirements or push the human rights too much our partners will go to china or russia. Is that the question . I heard that in your question. I think where its elevating that because it comes out every day when youre in the state department or dod and youre in those debates about interests versus values. And i think its a very counter argument to some of these questions. And i think adam is exactly right. If you organize the human rights and governance and human casualties infrastructure into how the u. S. Does business, thats one solution. It doesnt get you all the way up to the solutions, but it makes it a diplomatic application. Our officers in the field, our military offices are really carrying on these conversations. And its a little bit unfair. So if you normalize then everyones talking about civil rights and Institution Building and correction, and thats part of what we could do. And i think its a fair question about whether or not that will scare away some of our allies and theyll begin purchasing from some of our comp petitors. Our partners have become really good at doing whats called reverse leverage. So we get very scared by that reverse language for sure. So thats certainly true that some of our recipient countries have learned that trick. But i think the evidence, theres still not sufficient evidence that time and time again or something really tactical in that front is turning units away. If youre giving assistance thats a very different system than purchasing. And i think often in the debate about whether or beneficiaries and allies will turn to other clients in this debate. What i find interesting here is we now have a couple of case studies where the u. S. Military hasnt necessarily operated in ways that might be in line with the leahy law. And i wonder to the extent those cases have been used as case studies to show to our partners, hey, these are direct examples why you should also not follow them. And no one works with the u. S. Military because its the fastest. It never will be. Thats just not how our system is designed. The iranians will always beat us, the russians will beat us, and chinese will always beat us. I dont think at the end of the day itll be, hey, we pushed your people to do it right or not that will actually be the final decision. I think one of the meta themes coming out of this are the tradeoffs and thinking about oversight in the way you can be defensive and adaptive but also to remain competitive arguably in this case. So based on your practical experience, your policy experience, what is that that right balance between striking good oversight accountability mechanisms in the sweet spot that also allows for innovation and adaptation . And if you have specific examples to draw upon. I think we should talk about first on this one, if you look at the reforms i think what congress intended to get across is theyre comfortable in providing increased flexibility, a much broader set of authorities, multiyear money and those sorts of things with the understanding thered be greater transparency, greater accountability. Whether its through the first ever consolidated annual budget request for Security Cooperation, to kind of give the congress an idea how their department decides allocating resources against big problems. Beyond that i think the folks assessing i think there hasnt been a sufficient focus to date on, a, developing quality assessments on a front end, deciding where capability gaps exist, and then through the life of that Program Monitoring the implementation, evaluating the effectiveness. Did we actually achieve the objectives we laid out . And i think on the front edges developing clear concise objectives, i think thats something my colleagues up here have touched on already is im not so sure weve done that to date. There are other things in there. Quarterly requirements for obligation expenditures. So i think if the department can utilize these tools, they can give them in a way that makes sense and they can articulate why theyre doing what theyre doing with clear requirements. They have the assumptions of why theyre doing and whats actually achievable, i think thats something i think we could use a little more work on. What are our assumptions on what we can achieve in a realistic time line . And our track record isnt the best in saying were going to create a brand new and capable Security Force in a country that has a shared security interest with the United States, and trying to find ways we can align that in a much more realistic way i think would be good. But we all know theres processes in place. It actually takes a long time from proposal to delivering capability. Im not sure i know the right answer to make that more agile, but thats why there are a lot of smart folks at the department to look for ways. And i think it provided broad guidance but not a lot of specific direction in very tactical and minute details. If we had to recreate these organization and responsibilities, can we overtake it organically in 17 years, what would it look like . And how do we shorten flash to bang from requirements to deliverability. Congress would be great, but helping the executive branch would be a first step, but getting on the same page internally. Why are we working with this military, who is doing it on the ground, and under what circumstanc circumstances is the United States willing to become a cocombatant. If we send someone who as we saw in the case of lebanon a couple of decades ago, someone who ends up trying to convince the head of the military to conduct a coupe or someone else who offers the head of millary tasecret slush fund, we actually shouldnt be surprised when these things dont work. A lot of it comes down to people and a lot of it comes down to the mission. And how do we make sure we dont dilute ourselves when that shift is happening . Theres this great line in president reagans diary from the night hes authorized the uss new jersey to start firing on the militaries and militia, and he says this still falls under the heading of selfdefense. Clearly in retrospect thats not accurate. I think fast forward to syria and you could see a similar comment being made of the circumstances. I want to relate back to adam, he is spot on. General fletcher made be the happiest person in the room on the last panel when he talked about how the reforms in the mda have forced them to think on a longer time horizon, to think about multiple years. The reason thats important is if youre on a oneyear planning cycle as the dod has been in this base since the inception, you dont have the ability to build in institutional considerations. Considerations about sustainability, even really how, you know, your oneyear plan aligns with a longterm strategy. And thats been very much to the detrument. I think that lack of connection to a bigger picture, understanding what youre trying to achieve and what the necessary inputs, not just with one