Andrew marshall, a pentagon legend who served from president s nixon to obama. He just retired this past january at the ripe age of 93 years old. For his pioneering work foreman undersecretary of defense douglas [inaudible] called him the hidden hand behind American Foreign policy. Whats significant is that president nixon first tapped marshall to evaluate our military capabilities against that of our adversaries, at the time namely the soviet union. The concept is called net assessment. His former aides Andrew Krepinevich and barry watts are here to discuss the achievement. S of their mentor tonight and sign copies of their biography about him called the last warrior Andrew Marshall and the shaping of modern defense strategy. Mr. Krepinevich is president of the center for strategic and budgetary assessments and is the author of several books on military history and strategy including the very influential the army and vietnam. Hes a west point graduate and a retired army officer. And he also received his ph. D. From harvard university. Barry watts is a senior fellow at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments, hes there as well he also has a great body of scholarly work. Including future war. And prior to joining csva, he headed the office of analysis at the pentagon and he serve inside the u. S. Air force. He is graduate of the u. S. Air force academy and holds a masters in philosophy from the university of pittsburgh. And the program tonight will be moderated by Geoffrey HerreraFletcher Jones professor of political studs at Pitzer College in claremont and among the courses he teaches are the war on terror, global politicsing and security and International Politics and security and International Political economy. He holds a ph. D. From princeton university. Ladies and gentlemen, Andrew Krepinevich, barry watts and Geoffrey Herrera. [applause] so first off thanks to the Nixon Library for having us here this evening for what i hope will be a very exciting and interesting conversation. First question, gentlemen. The short version is why write this book. I guess the longer version is there is a small group of washington d. C. Foreign policy types. A long time ago i was on the far fringes of this group of, i dont know, several dozen or more who know who Andrew Marshall is and who are steeped in marshall lore. But for most americans, i think, even most americans who follow Foreign Affairs closely theyve never heard of this man. So is tell us a little bit about who he is and why you decided it was important to write what you call an intellectual biography of him. Let me begin by saying this over the years i came to appreciate this concept of net assessment as an analytic framework that mr. Marshall developed starting in the early 70s. It is in one sense an archetype of the cold war or an artifact of the cold war. But its also the case, and i think andrew would agree that we both became persuaded that it had utility and value in the postcold war environment and even today. So because the office itself and ann drink i guess i would andy i guess i would have to say to be candid can tended to be secretive and the work was not the sort of thing youd like to see on the front page of the Washington Post tomorrow morning. Even many people who worked in the pentagon have very little understanding of net assessment. So in hopes that this form of analysis would continue in the future, that others would grab ahold of it and continue to use the tool and the methodology that andy developed, we decided it was important to write this book and explain his legacy to a wider audience. Would you like to yeah. Talk about who andy was . Also add to what barry said one reason for writing the book is as barry said, theres not a lot known. But theres not a lot known about a lot of things. [laughter] but we thought that the story needed to be told because in a number of instances this individual, Andrew Marshall, had a remarkably great level of influence on how Senior Defense officials and even outside the pentagon came to think about our military competition with the soviet union. And after the cold war what kind of a world we were finding ourselves in and how we needed to think about and prepare ourselves so that we would be able to anticipate problems as opposed to reacting to them. Its always better to anticipate than to react when you live in a dangerous world. The kind of person he is, so first of all, hes going to be 94 in september. So hes a child of the depression. Grew up during the depression. Remarkable that he is a selfeducated individual. He has no bachelors degree, okay . But his scores were so high, that the university of chicago took him into their Masters Program after world war ii in their economics program. So he has a masters in economics but no bachelors degree. [laughter] he is the kind of guy who attracts the attention of brilliant people. And so when he was at the university of chicago, he was during world war ii he was ruled ineligible for the draft because of a heart condition. So he went to work in a munitions factory. Actually, a weapons plant building, i think, bombers parts for bombers. But he, hes working in this metals shop at university of chicago to earn some money to pay for his education, and in walks a guy whos working on the cyclo terror, and they haul off marshall, and they get order of magnitude improvement. Thats about all i know about sigh crowtron. [laughter] he ends up playing bridge with a guy named Kenneth Arrow in expiz wife. Arrow ends up winning the nobel prize in economics. And social its sort of this one after another after another and it almost reminds you of the forest gump, you know [laughter] youve got this really smart guy not this clueless guy who keeps bumping into all these fascinating people. And the other thing i guess, thats quite interesting is hes sort of on the ground floor of some pathbreaking work on how we understand Human Behavior the behavior of organizations. And there was a huge debate in the 1970s of just how formidable the soviet union was. And it was a big battle between marshall and the cia. And he had the moral courage of his convictions to pursue that debate and in the end he was proven right. So, and the other thing i would say, another reason why you havent heard his story is he was a horrible bureaucrat. Hes terrible at selfpromotion which is why we had to do the damn book instead of him. [laughter] i used to kid and say, you know, you throw words around like manhole covers, youre tighter than a clam with lockjaw, you know, these sorts of things. But behind that sort of sold stoll lid exterior masks an emotional person. And there are some stories in the book id be glad to talk about them if youre interested, just the kind of deep feeling he has about other people, about the people hes mentored, many over the years. And also about his country. And i thought that kind of was reflective of the attitude of the greatest generation which is really passing from the scene right now. So, sorry. Barry began by mentioning this concept net assessment, which is if its a biography of a human being, its a biography of Andrew Marshall. But if its the biography of a concept its the biography of net assessment. So after introducing our human star maybe we should introduce our analytic or conceptual star. So tell us a little bit about what net assessment is, but also i think maybe well, this is most interesting to me, and im asking questions, so i guess why did it emerge when it did . In the 1970s, in the Nixon Administration . What had the pentagon been doing before that time to try and assess the military capability of its preeminent adversary and the military balance between the United States and the soviet union . That was more than one question. [laughter] well, you can pick the one you want to answer. Look, if andy was here tonight and you asked him so what were sort of the origins of this notion of net assessment, he would go back to the last day of the Truman Administration when president truman established something called the special evaluation subcommittee. And its aim at that point was to try to assess for the president this was a group on the National Security council what damage a soviet Nuclear Attack would inflict on United States. And when the when that was continued by president eisenhower, became net evaluation subcommittee, and it kept on looking at the problem of the damage that the soviets could inflict with a Nuclear Attack on the United States. He continued exploring that in various ways, you know, termination, managing the damage and so on and so forth into the mid 60s when Robert Mcnamara secretary of defense at the time, decided to cancel it because he didnt think he needed any help deciding what things to buy and what things to procure from the National Security council. So it was canceled. Within a year or two people who were involved in that began to raise the possibility, there were letters written to the president , for example suggesting they needed to reconstitute a net assessment capability on the nsc or in the Defense Department. And the concern there was fundamentally given i think, by two adopts. One, by two developmentings. By the early 70s the soviets in absolute terms were starting to outspend the United States in terms of military programs in an absolute sense. And at the same time and it looked like that trend b was going to continue and it did in fact continue up until the reagan administration. So during that decade of the 70s, they outspent us by in 88 dollars Something Like 300, 400 billion. You know a huge amountment secondly the other Major Development that andy talked about at great length during the 70s was the soviets achieving basic Strategic Nuclear parity with the United States. So on the one hand, the competitor is starting to outspend you and on the other hand or, hes got a Nuclear Capability which could, in fact, devastate the United States if push came to shove and deterrence failed. So in the context of those developments, people thought it was increasingly important. I mean, if youre being outspent, then youd better make good strategic choices. And so the idea which cropped up in a special Defense Panel that Henry Kissinger ran and that andy was involved in in 1970, basically charlie hurtsfelt who was the guy who gave the go ahead for the arpa innocent and what became the interinnocent suggested to andy internet and suggested to andy and Jim Schlesinger that they needed to measure and track where we stood in various areas of military competition relative to the soviets. Now, actually nixons blue ribbon Defense Panel suggested as one of its recommendations that they establish that kind of a capability in the Defense Department. Andy didnt have anything to do with that and he was working on intelligence issues for the president and for Henry Kissinger. And so it wasnt until they reorganized the Intelligence Community at the end of 1971 that a net assessment capability was recreated, established on the nsc. Within a couple of years that was then transferred to the pentagon when Jim Schlesinger became secretary of defense. Schlesinger and marshall were very close going back to the early 60s as both colleagues and friends. They both had worried about things like where the United States stood relative to the soviet union and whether we were tracking that so we could make more informative and useful strategic decisions. And that was really the beginning of the net assessment. Andy moved to the pentagon in a somewhat turbulent period in 1973. In fact, the move to the pentagon occurred in the middle of the yom kippur war, and for those of you familiar with the Nixon Administration, you remember 7273 were a very busy period for the white house. There was the opening to china, there was the renewal of the easter offensive in vietnam despite the efforts of kissinger and nixon to get us out of vietnam. There was the abm treaty signed in moscow as well as the strategic arms limitation treaty. And, of course, 72 we all remember was what, a president ial election year. And in june something funny happened in the Watergate Hotel which had all kinds of consequences in that period. Decisionmakers, for his job as secretary of defense, and he needs to know what the trends are, of Getting Better off or worse off. Where is the most important area to invest our funds. Those of the broad issues, if you are looking at that assessment, it is diagnostic. So if you want to use the medical analogy marshall was trying to give the secretary of defense a good diagnosis of what the real dangers were, what the diseases word that would threaten our security because if you have a good diagnosis you have a much better chance of writing a good description. Bad diagnosis, not so good. There is that aspect. It was multidisciplinary. Marshall looked at the soviet military, he wouldnt just look at how many tanks they have or how many planes, he would look at things like demographics and find the Health Care System in the soviet union was lousy. There were alcoholism problems. Life expectancy is were not good. The percentage of nonspeaking russians in the soviet military was increasing so these guys were not 10 feet tall. A lot of ways they had severe weaknesses if you get beyond the hardware and look at some of these, there was an effort to look at fault lines. Would the eastern europeans fight when the soviets went to war to tackle western europe. So there was a broad look that was diagnostic and eclectic. To question the conventional wisdom also was interesting to me, watch out for the military services when they testify on the hill they tended to say this is what the soviets are doing this is how you need to respond to them and deflect the threat. The military never goes up there to say here is away where we can pose disproportionate cost on the soviets and if we do these things we can make their life miserable and he called that a competitive strategy. That was part of a way of not just responding to soviet strength but to identify our own strengths and explore soviet weaknesses to make life rough on them. It is a broad eclectic approach challenging conventional wisdom challenged institutional and organizational prerogatives in the Defense Department. One of the reasons, a lot was classified and his predisposition was i work for the secretary of defense, he was my customer and it is not any broader than that. Brushing my microphone. A little more history in the lead up to another question or set of questions to find out. The assessment in this office emerges somewhat reactive lead to hear the two of utah. And a strategic parity on the part of the soviet union and increase their defense spending in a way that is unexpected, lots of things changing. Soviet Union Invaded afghanistan, the soviet economy begins to spiral out of control. The 1980s are a very different strategic environment than the 1970s. What role did that assessment play in evaluating dramatic slowmoving changes in the soviet economy and soviet society both up to and leading pass the end of the cold war. Look forward into the 90s. The military position, when he was in the office, i raised that because the basic output of net assessment says, comprehensive as possible work to flag a few emerging strategic problems, would still make time to make decisions about it so it has to be far enough in advance what the identify emerging problems on the popular side. Focusing on emerging opportunities when the secretary of defense wanted to make specific decisions to exploit the opportunity to work on soviet weaknesses and couldnt make those decisions. And the technical revolution which was basically the emergence of precision strike capabilities based on precision, white area at sensors like joint stars and computerized command and control became something late in the cold war in that 80s, marshall was starting to advertise to people as this is a big emerging issue. It will change the way wars are fought in the future and what are we going to do about it . To touch on diagnosis, andy is adamant that it was not his business to tell the military services how they might respond or ought to respond to the emerging precision strike revolution. He thought those choices, those decisions were fundamentally the responsibility of the military. In a lot of waste work done on the technical revolution, in early to mid 90s was trying to to raise the issues dividing the lexicon or the first debate in the pentagon. Spent overseas and was discussed in military is a around the globe. In terms of the period from the 70s to the end of the cold war there are a couple things. One is we recounted in the book when rumsfeld was on his first tour as secretary he would have meetings on saturday mornings when he would bring p