Be sure to watch washington journal at 7 00 a. M. Eastern. Join the discussion. A former u. S. Ambassador to afghanistan and a former undersecretary of state, talking about the ongoing contact this conflict between u. S. Role in afghanistan. It is hosted by the center for new american security. Good afternoon, i am the ceo. We are delighted that you could join us today. A rollout of the new report that we have done on afghanistan and the way forward. We were thinking about the president ial , it seems that afghanistan as it were to continue 16 years of the strategic leadership group. Also a former military officer told four times in afghanistan. Pioneered a new approach to counterinsurgency in many case studies and books as the model for how it can be effective. He went on to be a season advisor for general pates. Im fortunate to have him as my Senior Adviser on policy for afghanistan and pakistan. A natural and match a natural and national treasure. Within weeks we hope he will be a new phd for the Kings College as well. Thank you for coming. Joining us is wanted newman. Formerly Deputy Assistant but threetime ambassador. A Senior Foreign Service officer with many kudos in his record. He was ambassador to algeria, bahrain, afghanistan from 20052007. He also served in iraq as the coalition of authority. Nexus ofen at the policy, politics, and military operations and several occasions. He is a wellknown author. Other war, winning and losing afghanistan in 2009. A frequent commentator and a tremendous resource. I remember when i was undersecretary i wanted to understand. I was having a hard time understanding something about afghanistan. One of the first people we would reach out to. To start the Panel Discussion with giving chris a few minutes upfront to summarize. We will turn to ambassador newman for commentary. We will go back and forth on the discussion for a while and open it up to your questions and comments. Thank you everybody for coming. I cant thank michelle enough for giving me the opportunity to serve in afghanistan when i finished my to her as a commander. Or thed up the pentagon personal people and said i would really like to keep working on afghanistan and washington dc. Can work onu afghanistan but not in washington dc. Or you can go to washington dc but you cant go and austin again. Administration was coming in and michelle was getting on boarded as the secretary defense for policy i got directed to go down and brief michelle about afghanistan. They did. After the conversation she said what you doing now. Working in the army staff. Is that what he wants to be working . It it i got a call from her and said, you are working for me now and were going to do a strategy review. Tremendous experience and then being able to work with you in the years following has been absolutely delightful and i appreciate your leadership and support. Others fore to thank their support. Assistant and others, thank you very much. Thank you for being here today and thank you for your support during the process. We also going to have were also going to have ambassadors Jim Cunningham here but due to a lastminute emergency in his family he could not make it. I would also like to thank the researchers who provided a tremendous amount of support and challenged my ideas to make this better. In terms of the report, i am a true believer in afghanistan. I am a true believer in the people of afghanistan and the future of afghanistan. But i also know we are not going to get there from here. Andsituation has evolved developed is such that without a significant change in strategy we are going to continue to have problems in afghanistan that are just going to make the situation worse. Overall, the situation of afghanistan is unstable. What i mean is it is a stalemate in the sense that neither side to win outright as long as they continue to enjoy external support. It is unstable and the sense that the taliban continue making battlefield gains. And as long as they continue making battlefield gains, they are going to continue the military campaign. It is just that simple. In terms of the taliban, they are a sustainable insurgent. What i mean by sustainable insurgency as they have got durable support inside afghanistan, so they can andinue fielding fighters supporters and theyve got external sanctuary in pakistan and support from the golf. The Afghan Government, meanwhile, is unable to regain and retain taliban control of the contested areas. , and two situations insurgency was sustainable report support, and a government that is unable to take territory from an insurgency means that the likelihood of a clear, outright win for the government statistically is about zero. In fact, since the First World War and there have been interesting studies done on the insurgency has been successful every single time. That does not mean they overthrow the government they may overthrow the government but in negotiated outcomes, they and to do better than government. Conversely, a government that has been unable to essentially win the battle of legitimacy with insurgency control it and contested areas has been unsuccessful every time. That does not mean they were eightrown but that in negotiated outcome they have had to give more than they have gotten. That is even the case with those with external support. So, in terms of that is what i mean by an unstable stalemate. In terms of an outright likely government when, at this point it is very unlikely as is an outright taliban win. The to briefly talk about taliban and the Afghan Government, some of the antagonist. The taliban is in Insurgent Group who aims to eventually usern afghanistan and will a variety of means as an insurgency to gain control of territory, people, and contest others. They will use military attacks, shadow governments, terrorist tactics, ss nation, intimidation, propaganda, the whole range of what insurgencies generally use. Likely ton, it is not go away anytime soon. They have started to make inroads. There ties with al qaeda were difficult after september 11 and for many years beyond. They have been improving recently. Have the afghanistan state affiliate that is in afghanistan. Fractiousn internally movement so they are not a monolith. They have many different factions, although theres different factions are very loyal to the taliban identity. An aspiration to maybe fragment the television and get them to defect, that continues to be unlikely. In andment the taliban get them to defect is unlikely. Everyone has a veto, sort of like the Un Security Council so as long as there are people among their inner circle that believe the military campaign not to continue, since that is the status quo that is probably what it is going to produce. There is a huge status quo bias within that organization and it will take some time and very different conditions than what they face now before they make a significant change in strategy. With respect to the Afghan Government, sadly under the Karzai Administration they plutocracy which has damaged their legitimacy and a variety of areas. That does not mean all government officials are like that. I know a lot of government officials that are just absolute patriots, but there are too many that are engaged in the clip the kleptocracy. It is a very difficult time for the government. The president and chief executive both want to reform the system. They both recognize the system needs reform but their visions for reform are very different which makes that reform process a real challenge. Even more challenging than just disagreement is the fact that there are very powerful warlords who have so much invested in the leptocracy that they actively undermine any efforts to reform form many ofd them, they are also going to threaten violence to prevent reforms so this makes this political reform a very highstakes process. Thertunately too many of army elite have been coopted acy whichkleptocra undermines their winning on the battlefield. There are active forces are wellled and fight very well. I fought alongside them and i see what happens when forces are wellled. They tend to fight very, very well and very, very rightly. A lot of the Afghan Forces are doing that. Too many, however, are poorly led or not lead well enough and there are others that may be compromised in their incentives and that is creating problems on alsoattlefield there is more u. S. Afghan strategy for the war which after 15 years i find remarkable. But we have never had a common strategy for how we come to a successful conclusion and that has resulted in the United States and afghan partners tending to move off in different directions. With respect to the region, afghan lives in a very tough neighborhood, as afghans will have a lot of predatory neighbors. Pakistan is of course a predatory neighbor exhibit a. They provide sanctuary to the evangelist tele via taliban. The relationship is not necessarily puppet but if the taliban is left to their own devices, they will continue doing what pakistan wants them to do which is to destabilize afghanistan. But if they get out of line, pakistan will crack down. If pakistanis do this out of fear, they do it because they are afraid it will become a state of india and if it is a state of india, then indians and afghans will team up to essentially dismantle pakistan. And so the closer that afghanistan gets with india, the more nervous pakistan gets and the more nervous they get the more they allow afghanistan to finance. Damaginghis sort of fouructive cycle in which pakistan to say they would prefer afghanistan to be a if state, what they they cant have one and they want to event the other, they aim for an unstable afghan because in their logic and unstable and unstable afghanistan would not be able to inflict the damage that a stable afghanistan would be able to. The United States of course has designated afghanistan a nonnato ally. Did 74. 2 states million per year to pakistan. With respect to india, they prefer that they kind of keep pakistan boxed in. They certainly dont want afghanistan to become a client state of india. Stateave many client relations with afghan and afghan elites and they also recognize there tends to be an inverse relationship between violence in afghanistan and violence in kashmir. Violence in afghanistan goes up, violence in kashmir goes down and vice versa and that is certainly not lost on india. Regional actor i will addresses around. I will address is iran. Afghanistan is their partner abroad and they tend to look at afghanistan through the lens of their conflict with saudi arabia, fearing that if a Pakistani Group proPakistani Group gets a hold of afghanistan it would be used as a lever to undermine iran. So all of these regional conflicts are part of the overall conflict. Course,United States of we have our own challenges and we can certainly be our own worst enemy at times. Since the beginning of the war we tended to superempower various elites and warlords which has been very damaging and and at times, we tended to say no when asked for help. That is part of the reason the kleptocracysee thrived. We have often frustrated afghanistan with our policy. There in october and i noticed the two countries that were way the most unpopular from the perspective of the audience. The two most unpopular countries work pakistan and the second most unpopular country was the United States. Policies some of our as clashing with the National Unity government. Damaging for them. Some afghans even actively wonder whether the United States really wants peace and afghanistan or if we are just tot of stirring the pot justify a presence and that is certainly not a healthy situation for the relationship. Art of the reason these happening continue to happen is we operate and bureaucratic silos. The state tends to do its own thing. The intelligence agencies seem to do their own thing. Nobody is in charge of the full range of efforts on the ground and so you get gaps between the silos that people can exploit and you get action points in the silos were efforts in one silo can damage efforts in another silo and we have seen that repeat itself over the past years. This is thatin afghans are gaining ground. United states has not been able to hold it back. You have predatory is in the and the reconciliation efforts that we worked in from 20112013 not only failed but were very damaging in the eyes of many afghans. The United States policies have been way too sluggish and bureaucratic. Do with all of that . We looked at three options. Keepn a was withdraw funding afghanistan and try to manage the risks of International Terrorist groups coming back. Option b was an openended commitment. Keep troops there. Essentially as Jim Cunningham put it, put it on autopilot. Includes managing the white house and washington, d. C. Option three was focused engagement, is there a way to do Something Different commitment. Ded it is what we call focused engagement, it is quite simply realistic strategy. They stung the fact that a negotiated outcome is probably the most realistic way to gain a favorable and durable result in this war. So we have to figure out how to make the conflict right for negotiation in which the acting government has the advantage. And then you need to be building the foundations of the Peace Process. And not just a deal where people get around a table and try to hammer a deal out in three days but a process that will probably take 1015 years or longer to unfold. Afghanistan has been in a war andnearly 40 years now there are a lot of tensions and issues wrapped up in whatever Peace Process might unfold so strategic patience is going to be absolutely essential or this. Objectivesout three for how we expect the conditions negotiated outcome in which the Afghanistan Government has the advantage and we expect sacrifices and services of both Afghan Soldiers as well as americans. So we have to objectives. First, stabilize. To stabilize our presence and say we are going to be there at this level or an enhanced level as long as they want is. So get rid of the withdrawal timelines. We will stay there as long as the Afghan Government once is to be there. At the same time went to develop policy. Fghanistan get everybody on the same sheet of music. Then i think we have to get more to promote afghan sovereignty we have beenng trying for a long time to essentially finesse everybodys find that sweet spot where the interest of all afghanistan as as well as all the regions, pakistan, india, whatever can all agree. Weve come to the conclusion that that sweet spot probably does not exist. Is way around that afghanistan essentially declares themselves to be a neutral power backed by the unit got it the United States. Then you have to have a process that adjudicates and manages that. Toyou cant find a way ,anage the socalled great game if you will, in a productive way this isss probably a alternative, to remove the great game altogether. Then, build the foundations for a Peace Process which may take to15 years on or longer unfold and will probably require a thirdparty facilitator to begin to construct this process and build these foundation levels. In it will have to happen at a national and regional level. To stop,ly, we need the United States needs to stop operating by bureaucratic silo and actually but somebody in charge of the full range of United States efforts in afghanistan and we will talk more about that in the q a session as well. The report also determines or lays out what we expect might be reactions to the strategy by in the United States bureaucracy. And then we also layout and identify some risks and ways to manage them. Through aeve that strategy like this, that you can actually bring the war to a favorable and durable conclusion that respects the service and sacrifices of afghans and americans alike and can set the stage for that kind of very Bright Future that i think afghanistan and the Afghan People aspire to and want to achieve. Michele ok. Thank you. Ambassador neumann, you have more aboutved afghanistan then most of us in this room. This is a new report. New recommendations and a new strategy. What were the main takeaways, the things you thought were most salient in this work . Amb. Neumann thanks michele. As the report went forward i felt more like it was convincing kibbutzing. And thewar, surrender, your accuracy wanted you to choose usually there are three things if you keep in mind news clips. Jures there are three things that are really important. First of all it deals with the question of winning. That has been a major problem because i think we tend as americans to be focused on winning in a conventional war sent you have a surrender ceremony and after that everybody goes home. Its urgency does not provide that kind of end. But if that is your definition of winning, then you choose between an impossible vision for success or essentially policy impotence because you can never have a strategy for successfully engaging. That is a pretty unsatisfactory place to be. Withen this report deals winning in the United States and talks about it in terms of the invention of strikes against the United States, then what that justo require, that is not playing with semantics. It is not redefining hangmen as expert. Ion one can argue whether or not the definition is right. I think it is important to recognize for us all a need for that in second eight credible definition. Crediblecond, it a definition. Also, why it is important to us. Why we went there to begin with. Hy they have remained with us there are reasons for that. We