Good morning, everyone. Good morning to all the people watching us over cspan and other electronic means of communication. Very, very happy on behalf of Hudson Institute to welcome senator chris murphy from connecticut to join us in a series of dialogues that weve been having here at hudson over the last few years with a range of policymakers and important contributors to the American Foreign policy debate from both parties, from many different points of view. This is partly out of hudsons commitment to serious intellectual engagement over series questions. It also reflects my own view as an analyst over American Foreign policy that if you look at the history of American Foreign policy, often our policy works best when you have many voices with different points of view. Out of that sometimes contentious series of exchanges emerges ideas, compromises, directions that no single American School of thought might have come up with on its own. If you think about it, thats a little the way our constitution worked. Jefferson hated the constitution. Hamilton thought there were terrible compromises. Franklin wasnt all that pleased about it. The constitution that came out was maybe better than any of the Founding Fathers to write what was in their own head. In that spirit, i hope were going to have an interesting conversation today. What i plan to do is to begin by exploring with senator murphys series of ideas, a lot of them are related to a very interesting article he has recently published in the atlantic magazine. And i want to look at some areas where i think his thoughts and those of a lot of people around hudson might overlap. Some places where i think theres some tension between the ideas he was expressing and things you might hear around here. And then some places i just want to press him a little further and find out a bit more clearly what he really thinks. Beyond that, we will hes very graciously agreed to accept questions from the audience. Well do that in the form of asking you to write a question down. Our staff will then collate them and try to put them together. Our goal here is to make sure that the audience time is used in the most efficient way possible reflecting the questions that seem to have the widest interests among you. So with no further ado, well get started and its wonderful to be here and to be with you, senator. Thank you very much for having me. Im looking forward to it. Okay, well, as i read your article and looked at some other things you have been talking about over the years, one thing that really struck me was that you seem to share a sense of concern, both about a new authoritarianism and maybe about china and russias role in promoting this, that has begun, i think, in both parties, on both the left and the right to have more salience in american conversations. How do you see this thorn terynism as a threat to our United States security . Thank you for having me here. Looking forward to the conversation and id maybe refer back to your opening remarks in which you referenced the founding of our nation. I still believe this is an experiment. I still think the whole concept of democracy is aid means by which to run a country is unnatural in the sense that we dont really run anything else thats important to us in our lives through democratic vote, whether it be our family or our workplace. We tend to think there are other government structures that make more sense for other things that are critical to us. So i think we have to have a sense of that fragility and understand where the threats come. So far as Vladimir Putin made his model of governance more aprakttive to those around his periphery, thinking of slow, sly ways to transition democracies to something more like autocracy, i think we have to see these threats as very, very real. I think we also have to accept that the more democrats there are around the world, the safer american interests probably are, its a little bit harder for democracies to go to war with each other dragging the United States in. Harder for terrorists to organize in a democracy. So, we should be in the business of protecting ourselves from tools and models that may ultimately find refuge on american soil, but we should also just recognize that the advancement of democratic interests also tends to avoid the United States having to be embroiled in controversies and conflicts overseas. So my point in the atlantic piece is, well, you know, you are certainly going to get a democratic president who is going to be, you know, skeptical about largescale military operations overseas. I dont want my party and i dont want my partys Foreign Policy platform in 2020 to be about retreat from the global stage. I want us to be involved in a conversation and engaged in a conversation about how to see the threats, how to see how different they are than what they might have been 50 years ago but still have a strategy to confront them outsides of the confines of the United States. This structure me as one of the real points of both difference in american politics as a whole and maybe points of similarity that is a bit more bipartisan than people understand is that theres probably in the public at large, theres a certain sense maybe theres less reason for the United States to be globally engaged than in the past. But on the other hand, many people in the world of Foreign Policy looking, i think specifically at china and russia, worry there may, in fact, be more dangers to american interests and security than in the very recent past. So youre getting this debate in both parties to some degree, very strong and lively debate over whether america is safer by pulling back or by staying engaged and in some cases maybe even deepening that engagement. How do you think about this . I think we have no choice but to be deeply engaged. I mean, its its so trite to say it today, but the world doesnt stop at our borders any longer. Our economic interests clearly are now global. The ability to for information to flow across borders and for other nations to use lowcost mechanisms to try to mess with us here in the United States outside the projection of military forces more menacing than ever before. I think if we were serious about protecting america, then we have to be globally engaged. That doesnt mean your end game here is to is to defeat your adversaries or your contest aan abroad. Ultimately, i do think if we can project and portray strength to both russia and china, maybe theres a better chance theyll decide to amend their political or economic behaviors to a standard that is much more in line with american interests but we simply dont have the capacities to meet them where they are today. This is what i write about in my piece, whether its the way in which china is midwifing transformative technologies and delivering them to the world or the way that russia is using corruption and bribery and information propaganda to try to influence its neighborhood. Today we simply arent having any meaningful conversation in congress about how to create capacities in our Foreign Policy tool kit that would be able to at least countenance in what theyre doing and right now theyre operating without much pushback from the United States. In some ways it gets to something a lot of observers talk about which is that Congress Seems to have of the three branches of government, congress is the way that seems to have the hardest time shaping policy. Thats regardless of party, i think, but with the relative weakness of congress, you know, and this is by default, both the executive and the judicial branches have become much more important in the countries so that for many, i think you got a lot of people in this country now who think that a Congressional Election is important because it might affect the supreme court, right . How does congress recapture its momentum . And Foreign Policy, the Senate ForeignRelations Committee that needs to step up . Does Congress Need institutional resources . A rethink . What can be done . The first thing congress can do is get serious about, perhaps, our most sacred responsibility within the Foreign Policy realm and thats the declaration of war. Something we just dont do any longer. To some extent its understandable why we dont do it. Its not the same as it was 75 years ago. There arent armies marching against each other. There arent peace treaties that wrap up hostilitity. War is messy and your enemy is shadowy and undefined. That doesnt leave Congress Without the responsibility to still set the parameters of war making. And so i think the first thing congress can do is get back in that game. It probably means we need to think a little more creatively about how we write these authorizations. We probably have to sunset them and revisit them every few years to make sure were getting definitions right. The biggest grant is our inability to authorize war. But the point i make back to this piece is so much of what ails American Foreign policy is the lack of capabilities. We say russia acts asymmetrically because we dont have anything to meet what theyre doing to use their Energy Resources to bully neighbors or run rt 24 hours in countries around the world. So, congress could just decide to create new capacities. Now, we wouldnt manage those new capacities but if we gave them to the executive, it would be better than what we have today. We did this, for instance, in a very small way a few years ago when senator rob portman and i wrote a piece of legislation establishing a new count counterpropaganda. For the first time the state department had to think about what they would do if they really wanted to be present in fighting the information wars in and around russia. They stood up capacities to do dha. Congress could do that, right . Weve got legislation now pending to stand up a 1 billion Energy Independence fund, which could get our government in the business of spending money to help countries become Energy Independent of places like russia rather than just giving advice on how to do it. Congress could actually create that new tool kit ive been talking about for years. How much money are we talking . Right now we dont bat an eyelash when we plus up the department of defense by 50 to 70 billion a year. That amount of money represents the entirety. Have of the nondefense, nonintel Foreign Policy budget. And so ive put a plan on the table to double the size of the state department and the usaid which sounds rev usary until you realize thats what we give dod on a oneyear basis in increased funding. I would argue they are having a little bit of a hard time figuring out how to spend all the money were giving them effectively today. And i put it on the table. Ive got another document called rethinking the battlefield, which is a pretty detailed plan by which you would over the course of five years, double the size of the state department and the usaid and not do it mindlessly but to specifically create these kind of capacities that would meet these new threats. Now, i think i think this issue of the Institutional Reforms needed to adapt American Foreign policy capability in the 21st century is a really solid concept. And it is about its about adapting to these new realities and really answering what the department of defense has been good at is being adaptable. It can move into places very, very quickly. If you want it to try to give advises to farmers in afghanistan, theyll find a way to tell you its doing it. Its genuinely not doing it effectively but it will say yes. The state department is largely in the business of saying, no, it has money that is sort of criminally siloed. The camping moved from place to place. And so youve got to create not just additional money and authorities, youve got to create additional flexibilities outside the department of defense. My critique on syria, you know, 2,000 marines or soldiers really werent going to do the trick in a place that needed diplomats and political help to try to figure out how to create a government structure in northeast syria that the arabs, turks and kurds could all live with. You have to create the ability for dips to get to places they didnt used to get to before. Its about flexibility, new capabilities, about new funding. One thing on the state Department Capability that ive noticed, because over the years ive done a lot of visits and lectures, so i visit a lot of embassies and consulates and so on in some very interesting places. Ive noticed that where we need the diplomats most, they only stay for a year. In the sort of dangerous hot spots, american diplomats are usually stationed for just one year rather than the normal threeyear tour and because people are getting on leave and they dont all come in and come out of the same time. Theres such churn, its very hard to function. Is there a way to fix that . Can congress do something . Of course, theres a way to fix that. Its not an easy assignment to go to a place thats incredibly difficult. Nobody signs up for these jobs understanding its going to be easy. The structure of our assignments for the state department, frankly, has not changed in decades. When it was a bipolar world in which you just had an understand the basics of how you argued against soviet expansion and for american expansion, you werent dealing with all sorts of contestants vying for space, maybe shortterm deployments made more sense. But today, by the time you learn the afghanistan beat, you know, youre ten months into a oneyear turnaround time. Once again, very quietly, the department of defense has started to think about how to how to deal with that. Yes, the young soldiers go into these places and come back out in about a year. Special operators dont. Special operators are have expertise in parts of the world and they stick around, below the radar screen, but long enough so they develop contacts and an ability to understand the nuances of places. The state Department Needs to catch up. I think youre right. Every u. S. President since bill clinton, i think, has tried to build a constructive relationship with Vladimir Putin. We had resets, weve looked into his eyes and seen his soul. Weve done all kinds of things but we seem to end up with the same relationship, hostile relationship. Is that just it . Hes not going to say yes and we have to kind of take no for an answer here or is there a way to rethink u. S. russian relations . I think at some point you have to learn the lessons that are in front of you and there is a psychology to russia that does not lend itself to cooperation with the major power that helps to organize the rest of the world. And i think you have to understand that about the very foundations of russia psyche and you also have to understand Vladimir Putin has done nothing to suggest hes interested in anything other than using the United States as a political fulcrum to be able to control his own population. That being said, i dont mean to keep beating a dead horse here, but we simply put him in a position to win. When we continue to drive our spending towards aircraft carriers and drones instead of figuring out that really what would make him most nervous is to have countries around his edges who dont need his oil and his gas. And today, you know, all were left to do is bully countries into not building a russian pipeline instead of actually going with hard dollars to help them build, you know, any suite of Domestic Energy sources, whether they be nuclear or solar, wind or inner connections to other places. We spend 4 billion every year on the insurance. Thats not money badly spent but query whether putin would worry more if we spent 4 billion trying to wean countries around him off his revenuemaking product rather than on brigades deployed in nato countries that hes not likely going to invade with his with his conventional army any time soon. So, youre saying if poland had gone into fracing, it might be better off. And russian money actually went into trying to prevent that. Yeah. Fracing is not a terribly popular practice in europe these days. But that should be again, if you really think about how you would spend a new 600, 700 billion a year to make our country safer and to give those who wish us ill a little harder time, i dont think youd choose to spend zero on making other countries independent of the main Revenue Source of one of your primary adversaries. Another point where there seems to be some interesting left right consensus, on this money laundering, dark money. I was struck. We have a cleptoography here at hudson. Its the most Old Fashioned means of trying to project your influence is to just buy it and to use oldfashioned intimidation and bribery and graph to try to win people to your side. In a world in which it is very easy to sort of cloud the truth, to create a narrative in which no one believes any narratives, that provides cover for this kind of this kind of oldfashioned corruption. Yet again, we are very badly resourced to meet that threat overseas. If you go into any of these embassies today, you are going to find a handful of political officers who are charged with doing a whole ton of things. One of which is running anticorruption programming. And so why not recognize that this is a real life daily tool of all sorts of countries. Not just the russians. And create a classification of Foreign Policy officers only dedicated to corruption. Why not spend more money on funding anticorruption projects. Some of the stuff weve done in ukraine where we spent direct dollars on antic