Voting booth is the way republicans are talking about it. They are talking about the failure of the leadership and a list of examples. They are not railing on ukraine, but saying there is a narrative they are trying to build about them being a failure and they can use this as a check mark. Can i offer a slightly contrarian view . One of the surprising things about the ukraine and russia situation is the extend to which they have not headed for the exits. Putin very cleverly created a golden opportunity for them to do that. The nato meeting was happening and he creates a ceasefire. The terms of which he dictates himself. He claims she not involved in the conflict. Nevertheless he said heres a ceasefire that works this way and this way. Just as everyone is gathering. They dont do what i expected him to do is say a ceasefire. Lets back off. They went the next step. Maybe its not enough and as much as it should have been, but we have very little economic skin in the game. But they did. I think by standards of european behavior and similar crisis over the last 20 years, thats good. I agree. The other interesting thing is how it affects the debate coming from colorado and the state with gas. The export of oil and natural gas. We have all sorts of issues with can we export this and what europe decides to do with the energy equation. How much they want to stay dependent on russia now that it sees how they use it. Thats going to play in. Its an issue and senator udahls reelection and his opponent has a bill and they introduce their own independence and it was interesting to watch and try to they were not outdueling each other, but trying to outdual on energy. You see the energy and you literally see the fracking and the see the mining going on as you drive down the road. Its everywhere. To take it full circle, rachel talked about jerry mandarin. The one place where that is not an issue is the senate. It might show up. Even in the energy in colorado is in the 7, 8, 9 contested senate races down to the wire. We will see them raise the spector of National Security and or Civil Liberties in the last couple of weeks before the election. Before we throw it open to questions, we have the small matter of iran. What happens then . Up to and including the lame duck is anybodys guess. Lets say we have a deal. There will be a push by the administration most likely to reduce the sanctions we have on them over the Nuclear Program and other nepharious activities. That will be pushed into next year. You might see an immediate lame duck push. The president promised no deal. We are going sanction them. Thats what he said. What the president wants next year in the event that there is a deal gets harder. Nobody wants to be seen as the people who used up. Thats not a popular position. It is much less popular with republicans. Some of the things i am saying have passed along and shared with me, but i think the iran issue next to isis and the issue of the Defense Budget are the very top things we are dealing with with the 114th congress one way or the other. Im struck by the decided lack of optimism. Through the administration and elsewhere that a deal was going to happen. I dont know of anybody who puts the chances at better 5050. Most people put it below. The real question is what then . I think you have to move further down the sanctions because everybody said thats the alternative. You have to do it. There is this isis problem and you would like them to help on that, but its complicated. You have seen a sunni shia conflict that makes it harder. You have a really interesting 2016 president ial issue on your hands. Thats the thing. Its not going to be a couple of small topics. It will be something that they have to deal with reluctantly. They will have to pass something for isis and deal with the forum. There will be Appropriations Bills at the least where they fund all the enterprises. It seems to me that especially on the republican side, there will be a Real Old School gold water republican kind of candidate and perhaps with more libertarian roots. Where you can see National Security becoming a wedge issue. Its always a problem in the president ial elections. The history of affecting midterm elections is small. Right after 9 11, everyone was thinking about the issue. More or less you havent seen it become a dominating issue. You have seen it in president ial races. We will see it more in 20 caen as well. To bring it full circle, the debate should unfold. On the national level. In general election. Yeah. I think the American Public deserves a debate and it will be interesting between the libertarians and the republicans. You will see a similar split on the left as well. I think we will get real interesting discussion. It would be a pity if it boils down to character alone and i worry that might happen. Are you tough enough or not. That strength is not what we need. We need spider man more than the incredible hulk. A smarter and lighter and nor flexible strength than ra ra and beat your chest. I think the character tends to boil down. When it becomes political attack point. When you are articulating, it gets dangerous. For does and its not new and character will be part of this president ial election round like it has been in the last free. I graffy with steve that this spring and up to the summer recess will be a robust period of debate regarding National Security. The rendition before it comes out is im glad you said when. You will have a military commissions case which will kickoff this spring. There is an appetite for revisiting with respect to the Defense Budget. They raised the caps of the vca and they havent lifted it. If they want to make the case for a larger than some people thought would happen. Is probably this effect and we will have cocktails up there and i hope you will join us. On homeland security, they produced a briefing which is being gifted to everyone here tonight. They are on the aisles. Dont be shy. As you focused on the mideast, you take a few you talk about the pivot towards asia and my concern is it will be based in some way on coalition, building partners. Two of those partners make our Congress Look like a budget and guys are going to play golf and have a couple of beers afterwards. At least my observation, things are getting more dicy all the time. I was just in japan about a year ago. Almost begging some of the folks i was talking to to make nice with south korea and saying you are bother our allies and boy you right. There is not a lot of love between the two countries and the rational realist way of thinking about things is not cutting a lot of water there. We didnt touch on asia and its the biggest part of the world for most people and quite volatile right now. I would be surprised if i get through my time without a war in asia. We need to get the allies working and i dont see it happening without a lot of massaging. Thank you for introducing that. Lets talk about asia with this Term Initiative that is underground. It seems to be incomplete. I used to be an english teacher at the High School Level before i went to law school and my favorite line is look at what people do and not what they say. If you said there was a pivot to the Obama Administration, you would say when did that happen . You have the chinese navy expanding. You have chinese making extraordinary territorial claims in terms of the eez. Their ability. Their economy is slowing down, but i think the Obama Administration may not have been a pivot, but it has been repositioning the pieces on the chess board. We need to do that. Whats on the front page of the paper is isis, russia and i think this gentlemens question is further support for the argument that we will probably see a big debate about the Defense Budget this spring and whether you need to lift the vca or whether you need to refund and recapitalize from this decade of war. Obamas National Adviser susan rice is giving a speech i believe on Southeast Asia in particular. The government tends to react right then and dont play longterm. This is a ways of we need to be prepared. Other than china doing a lot of tack hacking, that doesnt seem to be making a lot of news right now. It doesnt mean there is not ground work being made. That was saying we need to reestablish a jungle combat training. We used to have a dedicated base in panama. We dont have it anymore. The thinking is we will be at war with an asian nation. Lets be prepared. What happened to the pivot. It was an attempt to have an Obama Doctrine and a new way of thinking to chinas influence throughout the third world. What happened . I think the term was probably unfortunate. Everybody involved in the policy will agree on that. It implied that we are not going to do this because we are not going to do that. There is some of this happening, but it means slowly shifting resources to a part of the world that becomes more important while others become less important. To some extent, the pivot is still happening. One of the premises though is as a nation. People can shift their thinking and arguing. What happened there is what we have been talking about. There is a man coming up behind you. Thank you. In last wednesdays new york times, they talked about an existential struggle going on within the state and that explained the events we have seen. He said that was an attempt to define their future. I welcome the comments on that and your thoughts on the general column itself. I spent more time than is healthy reading the literature. Its fascinating and sophisticated. Im not sure debate is the right word. There is a conversation within the people who are part of the movement. Why they are different from al qaeda in particular. There is a notion that they have embraced as a group. Al qaeda was skbrong they thought you would wear down the opponents of islam and have the safety blown past that. You do the right thing and you stop the people who disagree with you. I think as the Islamic State movement grows, there bound to have different thoughts on tactical terms. Are we going too fast or too far . Have we stuck our heads out of the fox hole. We will get whacked. I cant imagine there is not a debate to go back to the start. Was that a good move on their part . Its hard to know. There is an interesting window if you look at what they say themselves. This is not a new phenomenon. He traces not only the birth of the predecessors, but the two general schools of islamists. Those who adhere to a formerly violent jihad. Isis is the most recent and radical version of that. The other says no. We forswear that. You go this route and you get more mosques. You set up currency. Exchange program. You send students into various universities. We do it through other lawful means. And the two are at each others throats. Friedmans piece is whats going on within a fraction of this side of the debate. You can broughten this bigger. When the movement got going, what were they doing to the mideast and why were they not catching up and why were they behind the west and how do they deal with that humiliation and lack of agency that he was feeling and that he came up with all sorts of reasons. It was a quite healthy move in my view towards taking agency and saying okay, you have your violent folks over here and al qae qaeda. They tried to regain the ball and move forward. They failed. We are going to do this through peaceful and democratic means. One of the pities that that movement didnt succeed and we and others perhaps didnt do quite enough, but it was an internal issue in terms of how much they could succeed on their own. One of the real pities is now we are back in a world of hard core islam and less hard core islam rather than another way forward for how you deal with that sense of humiliation. I think i saw another. I have a question that came in from twitter and its a great one. Thats on the panel. It was the Veterans Issues that play into the midterms. Thats another they tried to play up on the republican side. The competence question. Veterans are popular for obvious reasons. They should be. You havent seen a whole lot of pressure from the republican side on that other than another example of how this administration is bad at leading. Its a hard issue i would say. North carolina has come up a little bit in the race. But first of all if you look at the votes, the democrats voted a lot of money for veterans and so on and the republicans have not backed the votes. You have a va scandal and it points in a lot of directions. They said someone is not good. Thats a scandal and its a hard thing to argue. I doubt it will make a huge vent. You have veterans running. Im not sure it will be an issue. Im not sure it will be out of the va scandal. The power of being a veteran. Thank you to the person on twitter who sent that in. I used to cover business so i would say the market has priced that in. I think we have time for one more question. I will take these two questions. There is another area that is west africa and whether ebola will be such a detablizing influence and concerns out of the collapse of states. Im curious what people thought about the National Securities coming from that. The vote on the issue of health care and biodefense defenses and an adcriticized and backfired. Thats one issue. It goes back to the point about the budget. There is not going to be a strong push for the policy, but there will be a need for money. Especially in the u. S. Destabilizes the regimes. Where is the money going to come from . I think it will be part of that conversation, but im not sure they will take it over. Some might say obama is sending more to fight ebola than to iraq. Thats silly. For the simple fact that if this disease is not addressed by civil society, and it spreads, it has a factor for destabilizing not only part of africa, but the world. Military numbers ki8ed tens of millions and that hopefully wont happen today. They are well within taking the on this. I think last winter, this was going to be treated as a medical need. They dont trust the government for good reasons. Getting serious about how we hope the governments are important because this is what it gets you. People dont let their sick be taken and they metastasize. The difference between isil and ebola is less than you might otherwise think. The final question to the gentlemen there. John donnelly. I would like to go back to iran real quick and if the negotiations fail and you talked about the sanctions, i would think this is wearing out. What are the oughts that israel or the United States launches an attack. Thats a heavy question. Thanks. There is a constant agitations for war and more on the republican side, but not entirely. This is pretty big. His knowledge up front. Maybe he can mitigate and what he has been doing all along is the fear of war by talking about how difficult it will be. They are punishing worse than what it has done. We can go pretty hard and think you will see more agitations. We have been talking about the program for decades and how worried we are and how we might need to attack. Whether it goes to the next level is hart to imagine for me. I raised one of the stories that the finalists had been chosen for president obama. You are well into the second term when the president came with two wars, where he is steadfastly a posed to and dedicating to ending. Its probably clear to him that its not going to be totally out of afghanistan and iraq when he leaves office, but he doesnt want to have a third war. He doesnt want the number to go up. I think tim is right. If anyone can do to avoid new conflict while trying to do whatever they can to declare victory in one conflict. If that means pulling conflict and saying we are done, hold your breath if nothing else happens. They box themselves in because they vowed and promised that iran will not get a Nuclear Weapon. To get themselves more room to negotiate, they have been very harsh in their description of we will not let i i ran have a Nuclear Weapon which implies the threat of force. We also promised to close guantanamo. Government doesnt also keep promises. You are right. Punishing sanctions. I think that first of all, you are right. There is no appetite through this administration. The question of how much pressure is exerted from outside forces from congress and israel and others depends on how the negotiations conclude unsuccessfully. There ways that could happen. They could end with a bang or whim peror we got close. If not for the crazy ayatollah who is the supreme leader, we should have gotten there. We will wait to see if he dies off sometime soon. The amount of pressure to do something militarily will depend on what that looks like. There a lot of understanding and the pentagon calls it the mow the lawn strategy. You mow the lawn and the grass grows again. You recognize that a Bombing Campaign and the boots on the ground solution for iran is unthinkab unthinkable. A Bombing Campaign only gets you so far. Why start that six years into his administration. I agree with everybody and would add that we would do everything to encourage them not to do that. They are a sovereign state. I agree with everybody and i dont think its any. You are involved with what sanctions are. They go up and over to the side and keep going this way. We will keep there is no appetite with the war against iran. With the politics when it comes to israel is a different matter all together. On that peaceful note i would like to congratulate security on their first anniversary. I would like to invite you to join us for cocktails in a few minutes. Thank you for coming tonight. My name is david ellis and i would like to join you in thanking my guests. Thank you. One of the campaigns we are following is the pennsylvania governors race. Incumbent governor corbett is facing a tough challenge from tom wolf. They faced one another in hershey, pa monday. Heres a short portion of that debate. So the governor barn stormed calling pensions of crisis. Do you believe that pensions are a crisis and they havent done able to come to terms on a pension plan. Do you think its a crisis or is it not. If you do why and if not, why not . It will be a crisis and we need to make sure we do what the governor did which was fund our pension system. We have not done tha