General joseph votel for a keynote address today. He currently serves for National Security. He joined there in january 2020 following 39 years of distinguished military service. He served in u. S. Central command. He prior to serving as the commander of central command, he commanded the u. S. Special operations command. Hes also a distinguished senior fellow at the middle east institute. Im happen foi welcome paul salem here. He is going to talk about a theme that has come up throughout the discussion this morning which were all aware of but werent sure of what to think of. I think in about 30 minutes well know exactly what to think about it. About how we should think about great power, competition in the gulf. So im delighted to introduce general joseph votel. [ applause ] thanks very much. Its great to be here, john. Thanks for the invitation to be here. Thanks for your flexibility in scheduling. I kind of smiled when i came up here. This little light i gave a speech up in new york a couple weeks ago as part of my responsibilities with Business Executives for National Security. I gave one of these typical new york clubs up there. Very dark and heavily panelled room. I was speaking from a podium and i asked my staff, please make sure theres a light there. Because i you know, it all looks good but its broke on the inside here. And i need a little bit of light on that. And so somehow that translated to my staff, hey, get a light for this guy. And i know theyve reached out to olivia here. And worked her over to make sure she did. And so ill report back to them you did well. So thank you very, very much. Welcome to all of you. Its great to be here. I know theres a number of former colleagues in the audience. I see representatives from the diplomatic core here, fellow partners. Thanks for being here. Good to see you all. And of course paul salem from middle east institute. I know theres a variety of others both from the department of state, department of defense, and other places here. Is john in the audience . I have a west point classmate that i thought was going to be here and i had words for him. But ill hold on that. Coming up on the 11th month anniversary of the retirement from the military. Been thinking about that. I had what i would say was a good transition out of the military. Im engaged with Business Executives for National Security b. E. N. S. Which has been a way to get to know the Business World and meet a lot of businessmen and women from across the country. One of my objectives when i retired was to stay engaged with young people. So im able to do that through a relationship with the combatting and the center up at the Kennedy School and with the university of Pennsylvania Center for ethics and the rule of law. I also wanted to kind of give back, so ive been able to get onto the boards of a couple of veteran oriented organizations to include one which really focuses in on helping young enlisted veterans get into our best schools around the country. So all in all, retirements been a great opportunity for me to invest my time and energy in doing things that i think matter and are important to me. And if thats not enough, i would say to my wife also are minded me that marriage is for love and not for lunch. And so i was invited after three or four months of retirement to get busy. And so i have. I think its appropriate as i speak here today on this topic that we recall that it was about 75 years ago this month when president Franklin Delano roosevelt met aboard the uss quincy in the lake of egypt. And initiated what would become eventually become a long relationship between the United States and not only saudi arabia but other countries in the region. And as the story goes, they talked about many things during this their only meeting. They talked about their common responsibilities as heads of state. They talked about their shared view that at the heart of things, they both longed to be farmers. And of course they talked about the fact that their own personal infirmities were both obstacles that they had to overcome in their lives. Franklin delano roosevelt, fdr even left one of his wheal chairs for the king which became an object of pride for the saudis. They eventually came to an agreement that centered around u. S. Support and military training for saudi arabia. Then a fledgling country surrounded by stronger nations in return for oil and other Political Support in the region. All in all, it was a mixture of personal relationships and National Interests that for better or worse has endured for over seven decades. I think its a Fair Assessment i think a Fair Assessment can be made that fdr understood that he needed to engage and compete in this area to ensure our access to the Critical Resources of the region and to support our interests. Todays topic is Great Power Competition in the gulf. And my specific job is to talk a bit about the military aspects of the Great Power Competition. And while i think people understand the general notion of Great Power Competition, it like many other conceptual military or Security Concepts or ideas think of things like the war on terror. Think of things like by, with, and through. How we train partners. Think of irregular warfare. The soft doctrinal approach to competition. Its oftentimes difficult to define and understand. I think its fair to say theyve replaced the war on terror as the scripted term of our skreejic security focus. It certainly has within the department of defense. Great power of competition is clearly becoming the driving force and identification and characterization of National Interests. Deployment of forces, budget considerations, capability development, and International Relations that support all of this. But Great Power Competition is more about in my view is more about prevailing than it is about directly confronting. Correspondingly, it is militarily more indirect than direct. An argument is often made in my profession on whether Great Power Competition is actually warfare or not. My personal belief is i believe it does belong on the taxonomy of activities leading to open conflict. Competition is often about diverging interests and objectives. Exhibit a in my experience is syria. In this country, this is an area where four Different Countries russia, iran, turkey, the United States and others came together for a common purpose to defeat isis. As that was accomplished began to divert in terms of all of our interests and objectives. And turn much more into a competitive environment over that than over our original purpose for being there. Ultimately Great Power Competition is about a balance of power and the relationships that support maintaining influence. In todays environment, Great Power Competition is also about domination of emerging technologies and domains. And the rules that guide ethical, moral, and Legal Employment activities of these emerging areas. And contrary to what we may be see in our policy and our public communications, Great Power Competition does not mean that alliances and partnerships are not important. They are more important in my humble opinion in successfully prevailing in o geostrategic setting dominated by power competitors. Winning in this environment also has different connotations. It is certainly about beating our adversaries or our enemies. We always try to do that. More importantly in todays strategic context, its a much more subtle approach. Winning applies several things, i believe. It applies maintaining a competitive advantage. Outperforming our competitors. In business parliaments being seen as a greater value. Higher quality, more desired. And more reliability by our partners. Winning is about protecting our interests. Those that are essential and those that are important. Winning requires that we maintain our access and relationships. And a level of influence and balance of power that is more favorable to us than to our competitors and adversaries. And examples are preferential access to passage through the suez canal. Despite over a long period of time, we remain the only country that has head of the line privileges there. That is a distinct advantage of something that persisted even during the most difficult days of our relationship with the egyptians. Finally, winning means decisions based for our leaders through strategic advantage. Relationships, options, planning, available capabilities, and the capacity to go along with all of that. My main takeaway for each of you today is that we must compete militarily in this region to support our overall National Security objective of maintaining competitive advantage against power competitors. It does not necessarily mean that we do this at the same lels or operations or locations that we have for the last several decades. But it does mean a level of policy and planning, presence, relationships, capabilities, activities, and reliance that demonstrates our ability to maintain that balance of power that is more favorable to our objectives than others. Any discussion of the gulf and the surrounding region has to start with a discussion of our interests. I think there are five that are currently present and will be well into the future. First, we have to ensure that the region cannot be used as a platform for terrorists or terrorist organizations to attack our homeland, citizens, or those of our friend or allies. Secondly, ensuring we have to ensure that instability in this region does not impact our interests in other regions. One only has to look at the impact of refugees flowing from a place like syria and the impact it has on europe and immigration policies and ultimately on our country. Third, we have an interesting to prevent proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Access to the critical lines of communication and resource of the region. For us and for our al lice and partners. And finally, we want to maintain an overall favorable i think the more important aspect is a discussion of where they fall on the scale of criticality. From important to existential. I would argue that addressing terrorism, instability, and perhaps access are probably important but may not rise to the matter of being existential to our survival as a nation. I would also say if left unchecked could be existential to our security or those of our close partners. I think that the efficacy of an Iranian NuclearWeapons Program would manifest itself as an existential threat to the country of israel. And would largely be seen the same in our country. My point here is this. There must be a robust discussion of interest in this region and their criticality as part of our National Security process. And we have to community this better to not only the region and to our great power competitors, but also to the citizens of our country. And secondly, we have to recognize that the that interest in areas other than Eastern Europe and the indo pacific are parts of our strategy. This is an area where Great Power Competition has and will continue to take place whether we want it to or not. Some would argue that an equally critical contribution to winning the cold war played out in the mountains of afghanistan with our support against the soviets. Just as it did on the Central Plains of europe with our large and long Standing Military alliance. Today the waters in the middle east see a constant presence of Chinese Naval vessels. Top not recognize the geostrategic implications and opportunities of this region to the overall idea of competitive advantage against Great Power Competitions, great power competitors is a mistake in my view. Its also important to look at current and emerging threats and influences affecting our approaches to the region. Most of these will be familiar to you. But there may be a little different twist here. I would briefly highlight six areas for you. The topic of the day is Great Power Competition. So we have to start there. Russia while not economically strong still poses a significant military threat to the United States. They now possess longterm access to the mediterranean through intervention in syria and continue to look for opportunity to supplant our influence and play a role as a deal maker and peace broker in the region. When we step back from partner, we should expect russia to step into that void. China is the more significant challenge. Their longterm centrally driven plan to dominate emerging technology, expand markets, and create military parity and possible superiority poses a direct challenge to the United States than must dominate our strategy. Across the region, across this region, they are increasing military presence, influence and activity. Principally as an extension of their road niche tuff. You only have to look at the economic corridor, the linkages in the port and the routes to the port in djibouti to see an example of this. A second threat of course is iran. I view iran as an injured animal protecting itself but capable of lashing out. Given the recent lost of Qassem Soleimani and the tragic events with the shootdown of the airliner, we should expect them to look inward and consolidating their power. This may limit the regional in the near term. This is an opportunity to keep the pressure on the regime still reeling from losing its most prominent military commander and their own incompetence in shooting down a ukrainian airliner. Not the same quds force under the leadership of Qassem Soleimani. The new leader qaani will not immediately and may never carry the same gravitas and throw weight as his predecessor. I think it can also be argued that the quds force itself as an institution may exercise more introspection on their part as well. And this may be an opportunity for us. We should expect that iranian proxies, however, will not likely deescalate and may for the most part test their independence from iran. We can especially expect to see this in lebanon, yemen, and iraq. The maritime environment will be an area where iran will continue capabilities. Coastal defense systems, fast boats, mines, and other softlike capabilities. And it appears by all accounts that iran is moving forward to restore components of the Nuclear Weapons program that may have been delayed under the jcpoa. We should expect missile capability will continue its longterm trend of qualitative and quantitative improvement in iran. Finally, i think its important to note that the arab gulf states have come to understand that conflict between the United States, they stand to lose the most and are not eager in my view to see this escalate beyond the stanls it has recently. And would likely prefer to an overall trend of deescalation. A third threat is terrorism. Back to the future is a phrase that comes to mind here. Jihad is going local. Using local fighters impacting local populations and creating local successes. Isis will continue to exploit scenes in and out of the region. Al qaeda will continue to will attempt to use the instability of the region to reconstitute its external plot ing capability. The underlying tensions of the region, corruption, poor governance, disenfranchisement. Toxic sectarian narratives among others are ever present. Iraq remains in a difficult position. While theres not a push for u. S. Departure, the protests continue under a new Prime Minister and a weak government. Some have surmised that it may be difficult for the kurds and sunnis to block u. S. Departure. In this political sphere, iran will likely remain patient as we have at least temporarily replaced them as a personal point of contention on the iraqi street. Syria is also at a difficult juncture. And there should be significant concern about whether the regime will have an ie sis resurgence. Seemed to have subsided and perhaps stabilized to some degree, the outlook in other areas is not good. Idlib is a significant disaster. In the last six months, somewhere between 400,000 and 800,000 persons were displaced. More than 1200 have been killed and a relatively small percentage of the deescalation area. Progress is extraordinarily slow and bloody. And there is an open conflict between turkey and syria in this. With russia playing the supposed referee. Al qaeda linked hds continues to gain power and influence and appears to be growing into a syrian version of the taliban. And al qaeda grows more dangerous by the day. Attacks against Regime Forces in southern syria have returned to 2011 levels. And in this vacuum, hezbollah is increasing their recruiting and isis will likely take advantage of the situation to grow their capabilities, membership, and influence. This poses serious concerns about spillover into jordan and along israeli border. And we are all aware of the situation in lebanon is not good either and will likely continue to get worse before it gets better. In this turmoil, we expect that hezbollah will consolidate their position. And while currently unaffected, the Lebanese Armed forces stands to lose as instability continues.