Confirmation hearing extraordinarily apt its a rather prescient dear of the International Security environment of the ninetys but it really comes down to that one phrase where he says was slain a large dragon talking about the soviet union well now we find ourselves in a jungle still with a broader and broader for the snakes and in many ways the dragon was easier to keep track of and i think what hes trying to say here is that weak states failing states and nonstate actors are the principal threat of the 99. 00 is a. Minute or until it is the total call and. Its also we have categorizing and its essentially putting legitimate state actors like russia or china into the same group as nonstate actors like isis and object terrorist groups isnt just al just a little bit to give this to folks contrary i mean if you are not with asio or against that. So actually i think hes making the opposite point what hes saying is there are 2 different characters that are very different from each other theyre up here or in your state adversaries russia china perhaps and then there are a completely different category which is the nonstate actors what he calls the snakes and my argument in the book is that weve spent basically 20 years of dissing on snakes on only particularly one snake International Islamic extremism and the related terrorism and i think that the world that rules he describes in 993 was an accurate description for maybe 10 years but it is out of date now and we now harness if you like mal adapted to the modern environment its interesting in the sale because i had a chance to interview mr holmes a few years back on the u. S. Russia relationship actually struck me as somebody that very. Well here and. He was speaking about russia as a School Principal to talk about is behaving student and i thinking even viewed their world as a dram that the United States. Has the long run dont you think that batman of war no longer thinks the world at me all the time its so i actually talk about this quite a lot in the book and i talk about how there was a period lets call it the uni pola you know a period after the. End of the cold war where the u. S. And nato countries and other people sort of wanted russia to become what they described as a normal country right what they meant by normal was a country that was democratic by western standards that was capitalist that was a member of the u. S. Led international rules. The best order established by the u. S. And as i point out in the book for a lot of russians experiencing Shock Therapy and privatization and harvard economists coming in response to a lot of political kristie in the west Foreign Policy thats also. Yeah i think a lot of people saw that as sort of permanent 2nd class status in a u. S. Led system and i think its pretty clear that russia in particular has been pushing back on that. Assumptions that a lot of u. S. Policymakers i wouldnt actually put will see at the top of the list there the person. Actually on albright who was the secretary of state for president clinton she made a comment in one in 98 when she said look if we have to use force its because where the United States we stand tall we see further than anybody else and sort of we know whats whats good for everybody well actually can see the number i think they have gotten my next question if the well is populated by the sneaks and the johns who is the wind down is it and i dont why not ive been signing arent you know this is a great question and actually i had to add. A note to the to the book to specify what i mean by the west so you know im a military analyst im not a partisan political person and so when i use the term the west what i mean is 2 things one are geo political entities are generally u. S. Led you know western countries naser the western alliance and the u. S. But i also include in that definition countries that fight in the same way that the us fights and its really a military definition which a couple of years before was his testimony was the basis for the u. S. Victory in the 1st gulf war and i kind of argue in the book that that victory actually. They force pretty much everybody else to adapt and evolve in response to u. S. Military dominance and the u. S. Perhaps has become a little bit stagnant because it hasnt had to face an adaptive landscape that others have had to deal with each side just a moment ago that in your book here. Specifically building our game and around the fact that after 99. 00 to wind the west was left to fly be snakes while the dragons leaned out once and watched closely from baghdad how to fly the west and now the last. Deal when the black this nation the dragons dont have the same nods of why it will neither russia or china at the lower trying have. Adapted Western Areas secured to captain them a product chatteris they dont belong on airplanes they dont use as bad. Even if they are in a 2 month these 2 very different kinds of action into the same category as a class and theyre essentially using the same method the the book talks about dragons and snakes is being very different but whats really different in the book from a lot of the research that youll see in a lot of the analysis and it was he had attention is that it actually draws on a different body of knowledge from what we normally years so most military and it. Is really a subset of business literature what ive done is to draw on which is just from the science of evolutionary theory. Looking at adaptive landscapes and the way that a dominant president in an ecosystem creates a landscape that everybody else in that ecosystem has to adapt to and i think it is interesting i dont in any way. Or suggest an equivalence between say the Russian Federation an Islamic State in any way or the opposite actually but what i am saying is that everybody whoever they are whatever the basis for existence is reacting to the in the period after 9 straight to us military dominance and one of the interesting things actually. Is that people have started to copy each other and one of the case studies are 22. 00 is the coevolution of israel and hezbollah which is just a very clean example because its a small geographical area in southern lebanon where these 2 people or 2 groups have been fighting each other for going on 40 years and you see over time they become to resemble each other in terms of their tactics not a new way morally right but in terms of the way that they are. Now. In your book here also suggest or least several mechanisms of adaptation away the evolution of anime including what you call artificial selection that is the west inadvertently building bad at class of terrorism by the way its got its war on terror and i want to seems on that were in a bird and maybe the last one deliberately uses militant terrorist groups it was a letter from afghanistan to syria its its hard to find a place that wasnt done. If our knight in shining armor wasnt trying to trying to sneak some ice dont you think that you know it would have a detrimental effect on dabbling. So yeah i think one of the points that i make is that it is a bell curve in Evolutionary Pressure if any so you assume a dominant factor in their ecosystem and then everybody else is adapting to the pressure theyre getting from their act if the pressure on them is too low or too little those that know if the pressure is too high theyll be destroyed and weve seen that with some groups but theres a sort of band in the middle in the middle of the bell curve where youre putting enough pressure on an adversary to force them to adapt and get better but not enough to destroy them and. Im actually add to any. We not only you can see russia and china as adversaries because im not sure that your specific clique now calling these groups adversarial and we know that from history that it wasnt always the case the United States and the west deliberately supported a number of those groups starting from al qaida and many of the militant groups are leaving syria so isnt really about the fight after syria so much as you know like we have an expression here in russia to sort of. Give our sneak a bit of space and its half the light and we warm up needs that was amusing in the book are not about russia and china theyre about nonstate actors are the specific example that i point to in the book their experience one is the way that israeli counterterrorism since the ninetys actually created a better cost of palestinian terrorists and my sources for that the surviving heads of shin bet which is the internal at the f. S. A. Approval in israel and they are the 1st to say that the way that they approached this problem was as they describe it point specific old tactic snow strategy and that over time they actually bred a more capable adversary i also point to the u. S. I think there the way that we operated in particular in pakistan put enough pressure on the pakistanis how ban to make them danna to crayton into a single or unified organization and take them from a bunch of guerrilla groups in a valley in pakistan to a Trans National act by 2010 right now seeing attacks in syria york city and the argument here is that. I guess we cant return afford to keep succeeding in the way that we have been against these terrorist groups because the more we do here in this is it will either be the threat becomes. Well look at polling as they like to say what Goes Around Comes Around they have to take a short break and well be back in just a few moments. So what weve got to do is identify the threats that we have its crazy you confront a shouldnt let it be an arms race is often very Dramatic Development only a silly im going to resist i dont see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk. They can come and blow our brains out at any given time we cant really do anything actually america is the only country in the world where you can kill people outside of war and legally get away with. All of the fire crawls stillbirth you all the trouble here is 3 failed the point its hollow ploy to k. K. K. Exists because america wants it to exist they are the biggest terrorist group to ever operate in this country and theyre dead to me theyre worse off than the people who destroyed the World Trade Centers are those crow white. White. White. Welcome back to all the 4 a great ending of cullen the author of the book think dragons and to snakes how the rascal learned to fight the west not take a color regardless of where we are in the world like right now i think we are all taking it and bad by whats happening on the american streets particularly in violent part. All tesing the jogging to the snakes to see i am running away to be about her theory does she think that the americans perhaps have lost sight of because she can see that im now coming home to roost. You know thats an interesting 3rd animal to to add into the mix the the other person that i think described this very well in the not in seventies was the french radical philosopher michel foukara who said look about boomerang effect right there what an empire does overseas eventually comes back to be. Applied domestically run russia sort this out of the end of the act the war in afghanistan for example the us or after vietnam and i think were seeing some of that here the point that i have made in in response to others that have asked this is to say what weve seen across the west not not just the west but particularly in the west is a collapse of confidence in elites and institutions and experts of all times and one subcategory of that is military experts and i think that the 2 things are very closely linked the u. S. Sort of lead. Rules based world order that people talk about people have started to go in in western countries to take that for granted after about the middle of the 99 and not realizing i think that it actually rested on a very hard Power Foundation of American Military effectiveness which is really a road it since that time and mystical in all due respect and i just. You hear about the world order im asking you specifically about the nasty quarter in the United States beach seems to be falling apart and these days a lot of people like quoting abravanel a girl who famously said of the danger that the east of america cannot come from abroad it must bring amongst us thats what he sad and this is not just a rhetorical question its a question of how you to your priorities where you put your money as a security professional do you mean that actually is of Funding Priorities spending trillions overseas instead of Holland Program do you think back choice of priorities has made all where america. Actually do make this point in the book i say that we need to be ferguson much more heavily on resilience and home and get out of the business of. You know what the president trying to sort of endless wars overseas because thats what president obama wanted to do as well as what president bush wanted to do after his 1st term and also point to nato as another major plan nato has been focusing a lot on domestic resiliency that is you know guaranteeing its ability to continue functioning under conditions of chaos for about the last 4 or 5 years and of course we should be honest here and say that one of the main drivers for that is russian aggression in the baltics. Crimea if they dont forget about that and pretty much everywhere else around the world now speaking about again the last 6 station in the United States we hear a lot because hes about to funding or diverting resources from the police the people who are day have to be in town tram urgencies on the street but if you look again on america and be on on you know the the soldiers idling in poland on you know thousands and thousands of american soldiers overseas you know that team at a very huge price tag to the american taxpayers to be precise it was 700000000000. 00 just last year alone. Do you make america safer you do have the entire u. S. Defense budget theyre not really your services and actually it is in fact more expensive to bring those troops back to the u. S. Than it is to have them overseas in many cases which has been part of the debate in the us about about the u. S. Has forces in about 80 countries overseas in terms of bases much of the u. S. International posture relates to the end of the cold war and it is a live debate and has been for quite a while in the United States about whether. Those bases do make america safer or in fact on the other hand whether they draw america into conflicts that it might be bene to stay our friend and that is a you know its a political debate thats probably as old in the u. S. As this period were talking about it really started immediately after the end of the cold war last year the United States a state sponsor 114000000000. 00 on Law Enforcement graphic Law Enforcement saves more than 6 times last than what it sounds overseas and we are now hearing at many many calls and even support from some like just later use at sea diver in that money and put that to the developer and all the disadvantaged neighborhoods again as a security professional deep think thats a good idea because i can think of dealings of ways that dragging this nation media beast get exploited that situation the absence of police or you know they handled were all security functions to sound militarized brigades. Yeah i dont think disease chance in the u. S. Of the hannah no military functions to prison functions to the military theres a number of long internationals not not not military militant brigades im sure youre hearing about are as inside the admiral barrett may sensually you know force police out that they are now people you know with 8040 sevenths walking the streets and claiming Police Functions doesnt your azad one of russias greatest exports i think the point i would make more broadly there is when you take us into if you own just the people you know im talking about the age of 47 as a as probably the most widely used. In the world but just a point just to go back to a couple of points you were complaining that the entire u. S. Defense budget with the. U. S. Policing budget and of course the u. S. Defense budget is not the same as what the u. S. Spends a misses that includes all kinds of things including health care for members of the u. S. Military and their families the cost of bases domestically a lot of things its not just the overall and the legal coming in with me me me god damn im sick why didnt. The countries combined and im not its clear that a superpower related i did states have to have ample Security Budget my question was about the choice of priorities because well so russia and china countries are not taking their security lightly but that bad balancing of damascus and antiaids is a slightly different that they handle it but the basic right yes so the correct comparison i think would be to train their operational budget for wars overseas and the domestic budget in the u. S. Which actually was about 1. 00 to 1. 00 at the height of the war on terror it wasnt significantly larger overseas and domestically but the other question is whether its a reasonable comparison right because well the u. S. Law enforcement budget does is to aggregate state and local and federal funding there actually 800000 Different Police forces in the u. S. The question about whether you should. Divert funding from Public Safety to other forms i think is a very valid conversation and i think were going to see that playing out but i suspect that its going to be more at the local like at the city level. And at the state level than at the federal level to the point in seattle its worth mentioning were talking about a 6 block radius of downtown. Which has been in existence for what 48 hours but really going to yourself and speaking about the hundreds of hours since thousands of businesses look at. Nearly many many millions of dollars in damages dozens of People Killed many more injured we dont have a precise. 20 you know pretty worrying statistics i mean you can accuse me or you know trying to amplify the fear back you know i have n