beginning with a coup, and now this violence, those grievances continue to rise. >> general, explain to me and to our viewers why these joint military exercises are important. >> they've been important since 1980, which is the first year we did bright star. what it does is it allows friends and al lies in the region to achieve interoperability, we can do it on the ground with field training exercises. those are extremely important trust-building factors and steps that are necessary in order to have a stable and secure region. without the exercise, we'll be fine. the real issue is how does the united states going forward continue to try to establish some degree of influence? what we say and what we think is not relevant. we parse the words pretty well. it's our actions that are extremely important. so the cancellation is i think fine, not sufficient. it's what do we do with $1.5 billion because the real cost will come down the road, jake, if we allow this thing to spin