of this panel who is the executive director of the center at the diversity of texas at austin and he has unique button certainly dual perspective of being a person who has studied decision-making in the white house and been a part of decision-making in the white house. he was invaluable to member -- an invalid memory of making the connection and interviews that were the underlying factor and base of this entire project work so i think you for that. and i turn the macron over to you. -- the microphone over to you. [applause] >> thank you, jeff. i'm honored to moderate this panel with four dear friends and valued colleagues. there is a concern afoot that as a moderator i might let it go to my head and try to interject myself too much in the discussion. so i will sit down there while they make their presentations and will come back up here during the actual queue time. you have the detailed bios of the speakers in your program so first ist repeat those professor richard amerman. his bio says he recent retitle retired from temple university. he does not know the meaning of the word retirement, i know him well. we are close friends and collaborators and the state department historical advisory council and he continues to be active as a scholar and mentor and is an active citizen in the guild of national security scholars and historians. next to him is a professor l leffler of the university of virginia. again, another titan in the field of genetic history. i started reading his books as an undergrad and continued anymore as a graduate student and continue to benefit from his looks today. our foure only one of who does not technically have a chapter in this collection. without giving up too much in the peer review process let's he played an important role ourpproving a process interloper on the panel of shockeyns is dr. cory applico scientist and protége of the great noble prize in the economist thomas schelling frankly, cory is a long time a dear friend and former colleague from the bush administration as well. roles inany important academia and think tanks and currently runs the international institute for strategic studies in london. and is frankly a better historian than many card-carrying historians. so we are honored to be here. and finally professor andrew preston. a canadian by birth and citizenship, did much of his dedication and studies in the u.s. and is now professor and u.k. at cambridge. also different and a contributor to the book. with that we are going to turn it over to our panel. each will be reading his or her comments from and then we will have a q&a. please join me in welcoming the panel. [applause] >> it is set up like it is otherwise i am sure will would the microphone to his level and i would've had to be jumping up and down to reach at. me say how thrilled i was to join this project, to accept jeff's invitation. drama controversy and applications and i would say ongoing applications that attended the bush administration's decision to surge in iraq, for any historian of u.s. foreign relations and i will escrow the were historian, the subject is really irresistible. i will underscore the word historian. that makes it attractive to contribute at what is really a first cut at history. morning inssed this both sessions, the archival evidence is still classified. most of it. and it will remain so for a decade and probably more. if i have one thing to all of you who participated, do everything you can to get this material released. i spent a lot of time with the archives and it is becoming increasingly difficult to get any material released in any presidential administration and that is going to be a problem for the future. that, we do have access to the oral testimony of a remarkable number of pivotal contributors of all different levels, which really is virtually unprecedented for this type of project. i also had a more personal interest. i have been studying national security decision-making and policymaking for some four decades. 1970's whenk in the i began to export foreign policies of the eisenhower administration, which has come up several times largely because those processes have become legendary even though the assessments of them can often be diametrically opposed. i will come back to that but you can understand why a project aimed at drilling down into such a momentous yet, located decision held such appeal for someone like myself. you can also understand therefore easily why that appeal grew greater as i poured through the entries. emerged,us quickly really surfaced, among the contributors, regardless of their position or perspective, that the process was outstanding. i think that has been reinforced today. the adjectives ran from textbook to model to highly effective. and the worst that could be said of them was they were good. except for a few who lamented that the prospect took longer and even then there was an upside to the link that took and that has been dashed to the the length.ok -- describe the process estranged. in that sense it worked and that it enabled president bush to make a courageous decision. i think there is ample evidence that was the case. and though courageous does not ,ecessarily mean wise or right it was perhaps better than the alternative. ofnted, in a number respects, this consensus was predicable given the nature and to some extent the conception of the project. that's the famous adage history is written by the victors. churchillto winston although historians do not know if he really did say it. to make sense that applies to oral histories. the judgment of those interviewed in this case, and i think this was reinforced today and i'm not suggesting it was wrong, is that the decision to search was a good one largely the outcome was good. was the right one. this seemed to true even to those who were not on board. at least early on. and those like condoleezza rice would be an example of that. she did not come on board until the end. but she said she was very proud of how they, how the whole process unfolded. conversely, those who might be called the losers, donald rumsfeld for example, in terms of this context. cannot through the fault of the project, they were silent -- and not to the fault of the project, but they were silent. they were not interviewed. or do not agree to be interviewed. same case for george casey and many of the other military leaders. now don't get me wrong. what we learned from the oral --tories it's originally original, highly informative and fascinating. for aterrific grist student of national security decision-making and provides us a history of the search beyond anything -- of the surge beyond anything we were privy to before. originally, it is a first cut. we have to keep that in mind. in many ways it wets our appetite for more of the story. appetite.ur for more analysis and word documents. more analysisr and more documents. and what scholars often called the missing dimension of international relations which is intelligence. that was mentioned there. i have a personal interest in this. i would like to know not only the correlation between the intelligence and decisions, what kind of input it was. but what i think is a fascinating question, is whether that took place in the intelligence community -- whether the reforms that took place in the intelligence committee between 2004 and 2005 had any effect in terms of how the consumers of intelligence did so. i was interested in peter's 2007nt which he said in that intelligence could not guarantee. of course intelligence can never guarantee. all it can do is inform and reduce uncertainty. one of the reforms, which is near and dear to my heart, was that the intelligence would have different types of scenarios. which was not a was easy for the intelligence -- for the consumer, but nevertheless that was pivotal and it was required. to me that as a whole other story or parallel story which i .ould loved to be explored again, i do not know how and when it might be. let me circle back to the process itself. and to reiterate that it was my study of eisenhower's foreign and national secured he policies in the 1950's, and the architecture that generated them, that was the initial spark for my interest in national security decision-making. and, you know, in many ways, and while i am reluctant to use eisenhower as a model, and i sort of did, and when will read my essay, he laughed at me for doing it, and the same thing happened at the workshop. so i'm ready to sort of get it again. [laughter] but i am not suggesting in any way that all the administration's should mimic that architecture. or what i suggest that administrations do not have to adapt their processes to the demand of the contemporary and varmint. what today we conventionally refer to as the interagency andess, is much broader much more complex than it was back in the 1950's. and for that matter, through the end of the cold war. for example, today's national security council dwarfs in size and scope and authority anything that eisenhower put together and institutionalized in the 1950's. conversely, i would argue, and this might be something that would be interesting to explore in the second volume are the third weimar the fourth i am. the power -- the second volume or the third volume or the fourth volume. and the power of the state department under eisenhower remained the core of the policy process, and the secretary of state who was the unparalleled spokesman of the foreign policy communicate. -- trinity. and -- of the foreign policy community. that power has receded even as the power of the pentagon hat is increased. -- depend on has increased. that power at receded even as the power of the pentagon increased. and there's a situation and that is also important and personalities have come up in several different contexts, in terms of the conversation, that no president since eisenhower with the possible exception of george hiv bush, i have to say mention that because jeff is here, none of has possessed any close to his reputation, stature, or therefore experience or political capital and, you know, because of his military authority, i think it was no one class. so that was sort of very important. nevertheless, i think the fundamental pillars of his process rs applico today as they were -- his process are as applicable today as they were then. i will mention a couple of them, including, which would engaging the right people at the right level at the right time, providing an environment conducive to evoking constructive debate that cuts across agencies line and to which the president is an debateess, ensuring the surfaced all options and scenarios, the success for which requires a custodial manager, national security advisor, who sort of walks a fine line between honest broker and policy entrepreneur. and finally, some sort of mechanism that ensures once a decision is made and implementation begun, monitors the progress to decide whether or not some sort of change is necessary. i am not claiming that process or architecture or models, i am a historian and not able to go scientist, and that every president must be able to devise and architecture that he buthe is comfortable with, i will argue that all of those elements should be present. in one form or another. and now i will quickly go over my criticism, which will limit how much i can be criticized for it. happy to discuss anything further during the question and answer. with, there was not a mechanism to trigger a review. or a monitor. , eisenhower had an appendage of the national security council, many of you know this, called the operation core dating board. it never worked as -- operation coordinating board. it never worked as well as it was intended that it did as sure that secretion of a policy could not continue indefinitely -- it did and sure that execution of a policy could not continue indefinitely without an appraisal of that policy. be as veryld intervals. in this case there was no mechanism to trigger that review. automatically. and even though from late 2005 -2006, many national secured officials and entities at different levels expressed profound concern with u.s. policy and direction, that there was not a review. meetings. many, many meetings. referred to in interviews as stylized. but they do not mr. lee get them to where it needed to go -- they did not necessarily get them to where they need to go. finally, elements of the nsc really forced a review. and yet it took place covertly. clandestinely. i do not know what word you want basically, in which it cut out the secretary of defense at many of the services or the uniformed military. again, that really could not have happened and then that leads to what was mentioned and what i consider one of the strangest episodes in decision-making history, which is that which surrounded the that june, inting which it was two and that the theing never really got off again for a variety of different reasons. i'm just going to quickly summarize, but my never general point is that even though. then there is the issue that comes out clearly that the nsc does conduct its own informal review. you have other ones going on. developss the nsc that a preference if that would be the word or at least puts on the table the notion of having a doubled down strategy which ultimately cap becomes the surge. it is not generated by one of the agencies. so it is difficult, again, that would be, that is in violation of the sort of the eisenhower model, in which it would have input up, it would had to have been mentioned unless no one thought about it at all. early in the process. nsc and thet of the staff, and particularly the credit of steve hadley and so many of those who are here, attesting to the other eisenhower principal, that the organization, no matter how good it is, really is only as good as the individuals who are part of it, so in this case, it really was the individuals, that sort of, negate everything i said, because it compensated for what i consider really flaws in the structure, relying on sort of extra governmental inputs, officials outside the formal chain of command, concealing some of the deliberations from others, or whatever, the nsc did ultimately arrive at a recommendation that enabled president bush to make this courageous decision, a decision that the nsc wanted it to make and clearly president bush wanted to make, at least for the second half of 2006. it surely was a courageous decision. although i will leave it to history as to whether or not it was the wisest decision or the right one. the question is whether the system works. maybe it did, if the fact that the barometer is that the policy ended up where they wanted to be . but i do not think that is the right question. so i mean, i would like to ask those who are involved in it if they were writing a textbook on decision-making process, is whether this is the path wait they would recommend to get from point a to point b. and i think not. and i hope not. thank you very much. [applause] >> so first of all i want to begin by thanking the organizers. i think it was really inspiring this morning and earlier this afternoon, inspiring as a scholar and even more importantly, inspiring simile as an american citizen, to listen reassessmenttful of the decision-making that went into this surge. i think it is incredibly impressive for us as americans to think that we have had such people, whether we agree with their decisions or disagree with their decisions, making policy and the highest echelons of the white house, the state department, and the pentagon and elsewhere. us asooves all of americans to think how different things are today, and how consequential it is that we do not have serious, thoughtful minded people engaged in the process comparable to the ones we have heard today. i also want to preface my remarks by saying that i do not have a stake on this volume. i was not interviewed for it. i have not written an essay for it. i was an outside referee. i also hope that peter fever will take my comments thoughtfully as an objective signar, because i did not the letter as an academic and 2002, opposing the war. and i'd like to think that have come to whatever views i have had, which are pretty complex and textured, about the decision to go to war and about the aftermath. and just because i'm an academic, i do not necessarily have vested opinions, politically inspired. probation!n >> ok 10 minutes from now i probably will not get your approbation. but at least i'm on probation now. i was asked make some overall comments about the book and the surge. i think it is a wonderful book. the interviews are really illuminating. edited.me is seamlessly the interviews are brought together in a very effective way. excellentde an chronological overview of the decision to surge troops in iraq. essaysadmired the because they offer such different perspectives. there is an essay by three of the key policymakers, steve hadley and megan o'sullivan and peter. one essay by them. and then six or seven other essays by very renowned scholars, three of whom appear on this stage. about allgnificant the essays, is that they make you think really deeply about strategy, and president bush's overall decision-making. what i want to do in the 10 minutes or so that i have is to talk about these three patters. process. strategy. an overall decision-making. process, terms of richard, whom you have just heard, is very critical of the process. so are some of the former policymakers, like philip alico. nonetheless, in my judgment, steve hadley and peter fever and megan offer a compelling defense of the process in their essay. they make two really important points. that the process get the president most of all the option he wanted. secondly, the big point they make is that even more importantly, the process enabled the president to forge a consensus among top officials, which was no mean a compliment. of course -- no mean accomplishment. as you have heard, richard was not convinced. what he does in the volume in a very systematic way, is to compare bush's national security council to ike's national secret counsel process. richard claims -- ike's national security council process. richard claims president bush was not sufficiently involved from the inception of the process, that the process was belated. that it was stove piped or siloed until nearly the end. and that the outcome was predetermined. think, isteresting, i that steve hadley and peter fever and megan o'sullivan do not really directly rebut those criticisms. and they do not say that there process is a model, that it is a text book model. they clearly do not make the claim that they were trying to emulate eisenhower's process, the process that president eisenhower employed so effectively. that is not what was on their minds. the make the larger point, throughout their interviews and throughout the volume, that we , that the morning process worked. that is what counted, the process worked. that word is used over and over again. i would say this assertion that the process worked invites examination of strategy. not simply process, but strategy. what does it really mean to say that it worked? volume, bob jervis, one of the most renowned scholars of international relations in decision-making in the whole world, bob dervish notes that there is much dispute among experts about whether the surge made a lasting difference or whether it was even decisive in the short run. in part, doug lute underscored that today and said there were many other ingredients that made the surge work rather than simply the deployment of american troops. saysrrent developments, bob jarvis, like the sunni awakening, they have to contribute more to the outcome, more to way making the surge work than the deployment of additional troops itself. is far tooervis skeptical of the short-t