Secretary kerry before i begin, i want to express how pleased i am that are sailors were returned into our hands this morning. [applause] a former sailor myself, as the general mentioned, i know as well as anybody how important our naval presences around the world, and certainly in the gulf region. I know i could not be, and the president could not be, prouder of our men and women in uniform. I also want to thank the iranian authorities for their cooperation and quick response. These are situations, which everybody here knows, have the ability, if not properly guided, to get out of control. Im appreciative for the quick and appropriate response of the iranian authorities. All indications suggest, or tell hat our sellers were sailors were well taken care of. It is clear that today this kind of issue was able to be efficiently resolve, and that is a testament to the Critical Role kbr diplomacy plays in country secure, safe, and strong. That is really at the core of what i am here to talk about today. As all of you know, president obama delivered his final state of the union address. Part, with, for my nearly 29 years in the United States senate, i have been attending state of the Union Messages since 1985. Ronald reagan was my first. T was my last too the president s agenda for 2016 is as clear from the speech he it is bold, and ambitious. I think that is particularly true when it comes to Foreign Policy. The reason for that is simple. And this extraordinarily complicated time, the demand for the United States leadership, for leadership everywhere, but particularly for leadership from what the president appropriately called the most powerful nation in the world, is as high as it has ever been. We understand that. We accept that responsibility willingly. That is why the United States will remain more engaged in more places around the world than any other time in history. Many of you have already contributed to our nations security and safety. Including some of you on the front lines of battle. We are very grateful for that. The goal of keeping our nation safe i know im talking to visiting officers from various parts of the world. The goal for all of you with respect to your own countries and at the core of everybodys Foreign Policy is to have a strategy that most effectively represents the interests and values of your nation. That is our goal. Certainly, a big part of achieving that is addressing the immediate crises of the day, and believe me, they arise suddenly and without anticipation. I was yesterday sitting with secretary of defense carter to my left and with the secretary of Foreign Affairs and of defense from the philippines to our right when we got a message regarding our two vessels in the gulf and the fact that they were at farsi island. So things can change in a nanosecond. As we plan for the coming year, we are focused on looking for longterm solutions not the crises of the day but on finding a way to lay the groundwork for security and stability for decades to come. Now, some people look around at the daily headlines and they suggest that the world is increasingly chaotic and doomed to disorder. Well, im about to enter my fourth year as secretary of state, and let me make it clear from all that i have experienced, from all that i have seen i strongly disagree with that judgment. Yes, there are challenges. When are there not . But as i travel the world, as i talk to foreign ministers, prime ministers, president s, people all across this planet, i dont sense an unraveling of the global fabric. On the contrary, i see a world that in critical areas is actually coming together. Now, obviously, in some respects, 2015 was a year of turbulence and tragedy. But the fact is we also saw and measured remarkable advances in every single corner of the globe. We witnessed barriers that have long divided nations begin to break down. We reached historic agreements on Climate Change, the iran Nuclear Program, trade. We made progress on issues that have seemed intractable for years, and in some cases decades. We hadnt talked to the iranians in 35 years. We are working, making progress in various sectors of economic diplomacy as well as straightforward security diplomacy. And the key word that i ask you to focus on is progress progress. Obviously, our work isnt over. Its far from over. Its never going to end for one administration to another. We witness a process of transformation. But this is a very different century we are entering from the last century, a century of two world wars and of major conflict korea, vietnam, afghanistan, and iraq. So as we look to the year ahead, we have a unique opportunity to build on what we have achieved in a number of critical areas. Now, obviously, a top priority is the conflict in syria to deal with the refugee crisis that it has spawned and the violent extremism to which it has contributed. Let me just say a word about that quickly. Much if not all no, i suppose much is the most accurate assessment of the conflict of the last century was a conflict between nationstates. It was much of it defined by what Henry Kissinger has often defined as the balance of power, the great game. But that is not what is defining the conflict that we see today. I think most of you would make the judgment that there is not the same sense of threat that nationstates are ready to put it all on the line given the stakes and the types of weapons that we have today which do act as a deterrent. But what we are seeing today are nonstate actors who have a very different sense of the stakes, who dont react the same way to the concept of deterrence, many of whom have decided, by the way, that theyd just as soon die as live, which is not the norm for most peoples judgment. So our strategy is different. Our strategy with respect to syria certainly is threefold. But what were seeing emerge is really a transformation that represents not a clash of civilizations, because theres nothing civilized about daesh. Its barbaric. Its a step backwards in time not by years, but by centuries. And it represents a clash not of civilizations, but of culture and modernity, a clash of people who have been left behind and who find some false notion of explanation for their acts in the hijacking of a great religion or the distortion of the most fundamental notions of how people should choose to live. So with respect to daesh, we have, first of all, intensified our campaign first, through a 65member International Coalition that we have mobilized to degrade and defeat the terrorist group known as daesh isil, some people call it, but theres nothing islamic about it and theres nothing that merits being called a state. Daesh is literally the embodiment of evil psychopaths who murder and rape; adventurists in some cases, criminals in many cases, who torture and pillage and call it the will of god. Earlier this week, we heard about one terrorist a member of daesh whose mother pleaded with him to leave the group because she thought they were going to get beaten and she didnt want her son killed. What did he do . He turned her in and then, by his own hand, publicly executed her. To quote the president , these people are killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed, period, and we will do that. Our efforts are directed both at daeshs Core Networks in syria and iraq and at strangling attempts by the terrorists to establish branches and inspire attacks elsewhere in the world, including in the United States. Now, we have known from the moment that we formed our International Coalition in the fall of 2014 and by the way, it merits remembering that this coalition has only been at this for a little over a year now. We knew that success was not going to be measured in a matter of weeks and months; it would be measured in years, as it was with alqaida. And i said at the time 2014 that it would take some time. So did the president. But in the end, mark my words, not as a matter of braggadocio but as a matter of fact daesh will be defeated. Every country in the region that surrounds iraq and syria is opposed to daesh iran, jordan, lebanon, qatar, turkey, down through the emirates, saudi arabia, and way beyond, which is why we have a coalition of 65 nations. The progress we have already made towards that end of defeating them is undeniable. Last month, iraqi forces, with coalition support, retook most of the provincial capital of ramadi, further reducing the area that was controlled by terrorists. In the past half year, the coalition and its partners have worked with iraqi forces to liberate tikrit, and 100,000 sunni have been able to return to begin to rebuild homes and find homes. Weve been able to free sinjar, remove terrorist commanders from the battlefield, including nearly a dozen leaders in the past few weeks alone. And we have worked together to cut off the terrorist supply lines, to hammer their oil facilities, to take away their resources, to deprive daesh of more than 40 percent of the territory that it once occupied in iraq. Daesh has not been able to seize a major town or city since last may. And the coalition is stepping up the pressure even further. We are intensifying airstrikes in northern syria, assisting our partners along the border between syria and turkey, and helping to squeeze daeshs remaining strongholds in mosul and raqqa, and we are opening the aperture for further cooperation with others in the region, including russia. Meanwhile, we are doing more every day to prevent foreign fighters from joining daesh and to stop those who do from returning to their home countries and engaging in terrorist activities. We are also doing more to rebut terrorist propaganda, to dry up revenue resources. We have opened a number of facilities on a global basis one in the emirates, another opening before long elsewhere that will help deal with the challenge of social media management, in an effort to be able to take away the recruitment and the lonewolf challenge. We know more than ever about daeshs sources of income, and that has allowed us to be more strategic in our efforts, with greater impact on daeshs ability to be able to sustain itself. There is no question that we have significantly degraded daeshs ability to profit from the oil that it controls, and we have made anyone who might consider doing business with them think twice. So degrading and defeating daesh is the first pillar of our strategy. The second is to work with our partners to prevent the violence from spreading. Just the other day we had a significant meeting with respect to libya, and you can anticipate additional efforts with respect to daeshs efforts to spread its tentacles into libya and elsewhere. And that is one reason why we are now providing a record amount of humanitarian assistance more than 4. 5 billion to date, which is more than any other nation in the world directly to deal with the problem of displaced people out of syria and iraq. And we are doing more to strengthen the defense capabilities of jordan, lebanon, and other friends in the region. This is really important work, and i guarantee you its going to continue. But the main reason for these efforts is the outrageous human suffering that this war has visited upon syrians and their neighbors. Many of you may have seen the socalled caesar pictures last year more than 10,000 photographs, each individual, so not repetitive but individualized showing massive torture, starvation, extraordinary government policy by the assad regime, in addition to barrel bombing of children and innocent families, schools, hospitals, not to mention the fact that there was widespread use of gas, which we thought we had outlawed as an instrument of war after world war i. This is precisely why we are expanding our focus now and our response to the worst refugee crisis that the world has seen since the second world war. This fall, president obama will host a summit on the margins of the Un General Assembly in new york. And this event will be the culmination of a rigorous effort to strengthen the humanitarian system for delivery of help, to be able to secure new funding and increase opportunities for resettlement and humanitarian admission around the world a comprehensive effort for millions of syrian refugees, but also for those from any country who qualify for refugee status. In that vein, i am pleased to announce that we have plans to expand the u. S. Refugee Admissions Program in order to help vulnerable families and individuals from el salvador, guatemala, and honduras, and offer them a safe and legal alternative to the dangerous journey that many are tempted to begin, making them at that instant easy prey for human smugglers who have no interest but their own profits i might add, making them also prey for one of the great scourges of the world today, which is human washington journal continues. Washington journal continues. In modernem working slavery. This is in the best traditions of our country and of many countries around the world. That is why measures to help refugees build selfreliance through education and opportunities for local employment are so important, so that the men, women, and children who come to our nations are better equipped to contribute to the communities that welcome them. After this speech, i will be heading to silver spring, maryland, where i will meet with a group of dedicated americans who work in one of our Resettlement Centers helping refugees integrate into their new communities in the United States. And lately, this critical work has been conducted against a backdrop of some pretty nasty politics, with people making statements on the refugee issue that seem designed to scare our citizens but have no basis in the facts. Let me be very, very clear we can both maintain the highest Security Standards and live up to our best traditions as americans by welcoming those in need of help to our great country. That is who we are. That is what we do. That is how we wrote our history. Thats how we became who we are. And we dare not turn our backs on future people, generations seeking the same set of opportunities. We have the ability to protect ourselves even as we remain a country that welcomes migration. And that is why while i am in silver spring, i will also meet with a group of refugees newly arrived, some wellestablished, in order to hear about their experiences and to emphasize how welcome they are in our nation. Now, the refugee crisis is not just a syrian problem, nor a middle eastern problem, or a european or an african problem. It is a Global Challenge of historic proportions and dimensions, and it tests our values, our selfconfidence, and our very humanity. We have to do all that we can to respond effectively, and the most Effective Response of all, my friends, involves the pursuit of peace. I said to my staff at the state department engaged in the syria conflict at the end of last year im tired of going out and bragging that were the biggest donor to refugee needs. Write a check, help the refugees that can go on endlessly. We keep writing checks, we can set up a new camp. The question is can we make peace and end this Endless Supply of refugees . In the past four and a half years, one syrian in 20 has been killed or wounded. One in five is a refugee. One in two has been displaced. And the reality is there will be no end to this crisis, no end to the pressures on lebanon, on jordan, on turkey no end to the flow of people to greece and bulgaria and through there to europe and germany no end to this crisis unless there is an end to the conflict itself. One person stands in the way of that, and that is bashar alassad. That is why the third pillar of our strategy is to deescalate the conflict in syria, and that can only happen through a political transition. Every leader ive met with says to me theres no military solution, you got to have a political solution. I mean, you can i suppose you can sit there and make the argument theres a military solution and you could wind up like the roman historian tacitus who wrote of carthage, they made a desert and called it peace, sure. But if you want to hold the country together, if you want to restore the secular, united syria that once was, if you want to bring people together in a way that allows sunni and shia and druze and ismaili and christians all to live together, then you need a political transition and you need a political settlement. Last november in vienna, the United States and other members of the International Syria support Group Finally agreed upon a series of specific steps to stop the bleeding in syria, to advance the political transition, to isolate the terrorists, and to help the Syrian People begin to rebuild their country. Now, i cant stand here before you today and tell you this is going to work. I know how it could, but its going to require the cooperation of countries in conflict. It was monumental that we were able to bring saudi arabia and iran to the table together in order to join in this, and it is important that both have said they will not allow their current differences to stand in the way of working towards a settlement. In december, we and the other members of the United NationsSecurity Council passed a resolution endorsing the work of the vienna support group, the International Syria support group, bringing the full weight of the Global Community behind this process. So for the first time, every one of the Major International players has come around a table together with a specific timetable for negotiations between the responsible opposition and syrias government. And because of the hard work of all of those parties, those talks are now slated to begin later this month, on january 25th. It will be difficult. It will require goodfaith effort by russia, iran, by all the players to push for the implementation of the geneva communique, which calls for a transition unity government. But it is not to be missed by anybody here that even iran put forward an important contribution to the dialogue in a pe