Night at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan twos book tv. Staff marky chief of millie talks about Global Security challenges and military readiness. On the remarks president s comments on transgender people serving in the military. This is hour. Good afternoon. And welcome to the National Press club, the place where news happens. Im myron belkind, the 2014 National PressClub President and a former correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in england, india, and japan and i now teach journalism and the importance of accuracy at George Washington school of media and public affairs. Before we get started, i want to remind our inhouse audience to please silence your phones if you havent before i introduced the head table, i want to recognize two very special tables on my right and your left in the audience which are comprised of members of the National Press clubs American Legion post 20, which was founded on november 11, 1919, one year after the signing of the armistice that ended the First World War and for many years was associated with general of the armys john j persene who was an associate member of the National Press club and who served as the tenth army chief of staff. Rmys john j persene who was an associate member of the National Press club and who served as the tenth army chief of staff. Legionnaires led by post 20 commander and jim noon, please stand and be acknowledged. [applause] mr. Belkind now, id like to introduce our head table. Please stand when i call your name. And to the audience, please hold your applause until all the head table members are introduced. On your right, kevin wensing, retired u. S. Army captain and a member of the mpc head liners team that plans these events. Brendan mccarry, managing editor of military. Com. Lisa matthews, Vice President at haguers sharp and cochair of the mpc Headliners Team. Ellen mitchell, defense reporter for the hill. Scott mscione, defense reporter for federal news radio. Yasman tajda, reporter for National Defense magazine. Josh rogen columnist for the public section of the washington post. Skipping over our speaker for a moment, eric meltser, a senior news production specialist for the Associated Press and the npc Headliners Team member who coordinated todays lunch. Thank you, eric. Jim michaels, military reporter for usa today and former marine infantry officer. Amanda matsias, National Security reporter for cbs radio who comes from a military family. David majundar, defense editor for the national interest, and alfredo dias, retired army master sergeant, a veteran of vietnam, iraq, and panama and the Vice Commander of American Legion post 20. [applause] mr. Belkind id like to acknowledge press club members responsible for organizing todays event, betsy fishermartin, John Donnelly and laurie russo and Staff Members laura coker and lindsay underwood. With just over 1 million active duty and reservist soldiers, the army is the oldest and largest of Americas Armed services. Its fiscal 2018 budget request is about 166 billion, including proposed war spending. In the context of a roughly 639 billion total pentagon budget request. The army faces a host of challenges today and President Trump added a new challenge yesterday with his tweets barring transgender people serving in the military. In case you are not aware, we have some breaking news update on that story, which is the news that a little while ago, as we were preparing for this lunch marine general joseph dunford, the chairman of the chief of staffs and who spoke at the National Press club a few weeks ago, sent a note, wrote a message to the chiefs of the services and senior enlisted leaders that the military will continue to, treat all of our personnel with respect. And the two key paragraphs i will read out, quote, i know there are questions about yesterdays announcement on the transgender policy by the president. There will be no modifications to the current policy until the president s direction has been received by the secretary of defense and the secretary has issued implementation guidance. In the meantime, we will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect as importantly given the current fight and the challenges we face we will all remain focused on accomplishing our assigned missions. General joseph dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. The armys ranks enlarged after 9 11 and they shrank after the iraq and afghanistan drawdowns, and now they have begun to inch back up. The army wants to be sure, though, that if the units are larger, that they are also properly trained and equipped. The army and other services have said their readiness, their preparedness to fight is not up to standard. To improve the situation, the army wants more money, but everyone agrees it needs to be well spent. The army has had trouble, in particular, executing large weapons acquisitions and billions were spent on the crusader, comanche and future combat systems programs, for example, with much less to show for than had originally been planned. The army is battle hardened today, but it has mostly waged one particular type of war, counterinsurgency. While tomorrows fights might be markedly different in character, to stay ahead of the curve, the army is focused on keeping pace with rapid technological change. General mark milley is keenly aware of all of these challenges and is in the midst of addressing them. General milley became the 39th army chief of staff in august 2015. Before that, he led Army Forces Command at fort bragg in north carolina. He has had multiple staff and command positions in eight divisions and in Army Special Forces units throughout the last 35 years. He has deployed to multiple theaters of conflict. He graduated and received his commission through the rotc program from princeton university. He holds masters degree from Columbia University in International Relations and the u. S. Naval war college and National Security and strategic studies. He is the recipient of numerous military awards, including the bronze star. They are too numerous to mention. Just look at his chest to see the wide range. [laughter] general milley is a native of winchester, massachusetts. He and his wife have been married for more than 30 years and have two children. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in a major big welcome from the National Press club to army chief of staff general mark milley. [applause] gen. Milley thank you. I love coming to the National Press club and getting Headline News as i sit right there coming out of my chairman. Thats great. I really appreciate you doing that. So thanks for the opportunity to be here, and i dont know how many of you know it, but myron was also a veteran himself, served in vietnam as a young man, pfc bell kind, he was on general westmorelands staff in the early years of vietnam, 64, 65, 66 time frame. So thank you also for your service. Thank you. [ applause ] i always tell my students, general, its not the length of a story or the length of a speech, its the content and speaking objectively you gave us a hell of a lot of content and we appreciate it. Via American People often get their view of us through the media. Not exclusively but it is one of the mechanisms and i have an obligation as the chief of staff of the army to do that and i will be happy to do that. I want to talk about for topix today. I have about 20 minutes or so. Hen we will open it up to q a i want be able to talk indepth than 20 minutes but i will throw them out there and if you have follow along questions, you can ask. I want to give you what mans view of the security challenges that we are being challenged with around the globe today. You a littleo tell bit about the army and the current state of readiness and what we prepare for. Then i want to talk about the future and last, i want to throw out a couple myths about military operations that i think are worth while discussing. I want to reiterate up front the transgender news that came out the other day. I want to reiterate what general dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said. I know what is out there. The military is the military. Walking in here, i have yet to receive implementation operation or directives. Learn to obey the chain of command. My chain of command as the secretary of the army and secretary of defense, right . President. We will work through the implementation guidance when we get it and work from there. Secretary mattis has not received directives shut. I know there is a lot of churn out there of what was said. Receiveact when we directives. Through the proper chain of command channels. And then we will evaluate what we have and move on from there. Surprise to no anyone that the entire chain of command will, always has, will today and will tomorrow it and always should treat every single marinessoldier, airmen, respect. E proper i will be happy to field whatever questions on peoples minds later on but that is about all i am going to say about it because that is kind of where i am at. Let me take her of some other things. I want to talk about the global strategic environment very quickly. Right now we defined some of the challenges globally. Plus one. Nemonic for there is a lot of way to describe security challenges. You can talk about them globally and there are other types of challenges. Change,omy, climate other things. Department of defense at this time, broadly speaking we are defining them by a set of nationstates, for which we are talking about and then a broader challenge which are non state acting terrorists. It is based on the security challenges that we designed the force. I say all of this with a caveat secretary of defense mattis is leading us all through a very detailed, strategic, global strategic review. Expect we complete that sometie fall. That may or may not change how we view the strategic challenges. At this point in time, i look at them through the lens of four nationstate and one group of nonstate actors. The nationstates are china, russia, north korea and iran and the nonstate actors are violent extremist organizations, al qaeda, the taliban, isis, alnusra front as a whole variety of like type groups that seek to do damage to u. S. National interest. The most capable of them is russia. I look at strategic threats in terms of capability and will. That is a pretty conventional look, that is a standard look for people in the military. Capability and will. With russia it is clear that the russians military capability is significant and it is the only country on earth that represents a existential threat to the United States because they have the inherent capability of Nuclear Weapons they can strike and destroy the United States of america. By that definition they have extraordinary capabilities. Other countries have Nuclear Capability but only russia has the capability to destroy the United States. Their conventional capability has been modernized significantly in the last 510 years. Then you get into will, and that is a much more subjective, capability can do the math and added up but when you get into will or intent, that gets quite subjective. There you are dealing with a higher order of estimates and judgments. All we know for certain behavior is that russia has acted aggressively externally to its boundaries in places like crimea, georgia, he and elsewhere. We also know they try to undermine things like elections in European Countries and other countries. We know there is a variety of cyber activity that goes on and a variety of nonmilitary direct g pressures that go on. You ask yourself, why are they behaving like that . You will get all kinds of debate on all kinds of arguments and then you can try to figure out how to hand off. I would argue, this is me, now, i would argue that russia is a purely rational actor. They operate off the traditional costbenefit model as they see it. Russian aggression or further aggression can be deterred through the proper use of tools and russia does undermine the United States interests in europe and elsewhere but there are also areas of common interest. Russia is a state, because it is a great power, the russian state and the United States need to move carefully with extensive forethought. That will assure our allies and partners and its her further aggression. China is a different situation. China is a rising power and in chinas case were looking at a country since the reforms of 1979 and of the last 3940 years, china has advanced significantly in terms of economic development. They were clicking off at 10 gdp growth per year, they slow down in the last couple of years. They are probably one of the most significant if not the most significant economic ship and shift in economic global power since the rise of the western industrial revolution. But the chinese Economic Growth over the last 40 years is really, really, really significant. Mean . Oes that historically, when economic power shifts so significantly, military power also follows. We are seeing a significant increase in the capability, capacity, and strength of Chinese Military capability. Then you get back to will and intent. The chinese have been fairly transparent. They have a thing called the china dream. Their intent is to restore their historical 5000year role. They want to be the most significant power in asia and they went to be at least a global coequal with the United States by the mid century. They have written books about that and have plans about that. They would like to do it easily if they can and if they cannot, they are building their military. China is not the enemy and neither is russia. For people like me in uniform, of the has a specific nation and that is a group of people are nationstates who we are currently engaged with the Armed Conflict in. Used loosely. Competition is one thing even if it is adversarial. Things below are the level of conflict that happened that are not necessarily savory. But there is a big difference thosen flick and activities below open conflict. So competition without conflict is probably a desirable goal, especially within those two given the size and capacity and capability of this country. That is where we are at. China is a very rational actor, perhaps one of the best rational actors and i believe through proper engagement and deterrence and assurance measures that we can work our way into the future without significant Armed Conflict. But these are Unanswered Questions and we will not know until we get there. That is my estimation of his but that is my estimate at this point. When you get to iran, their Nuclear Weapon has been put on pause. Hopefully for good, but we are watching that very closely. Even if it is, we can say with certainty that iran consciously tries to undermine u. S. Interest in the middle east. Supportat means they terrorism and terrorist groups. We are in a posture relative to iran to support our friends and allies in the region and be very wary of iran. In the country that is in the news a lot, north korea. It is a very significant threat. I dont love to go into tremendous amount of detail on it. Much of it is classified but it is clear that north korea has advanced significantly, quicker than many had expected, their intercontinental lipstick therery intercontinental ballistic ability that could hit the United States. North korea is a significant threat. The United States policy for many decades now have been the objective that north korea will not thats Nuclear Weapons and they will not possess Nuclear Weapons and they will not possess Nuclear Weapons that will strike the United States. We are fully and support of the secretary of state and department of state in the efforts to bring this to a resolution. Time is running out a bit. North korea is extremely dangerous and gets more dangerous as the weeks go by. We will see on that one. The last one is the violent extremists or terrorists organizations. You have a situation in afghanistan, iraq, area, west africa, libya, each had different factors and analysis. You cannot group all of these things at once. Weever, i would suggest that are in a veryvery long struggle against violent extremist terrorist organizations that have a very radically different you of the world than we do and to killsciously want americans, undermine american interest, and also kill american friends and partners in the elsewhere. And so we in the military are committed to help and that effort. Our basic approaches to work with our friends and partners in the region and increase their capability to reduce terrorist threats so local Intelligence Forces can manage those at a local level. You see what is playing out against isis, which i think has twodate. Successful i think we will destroy the organizational ent