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THE ASPEN INSTITUTE
ASPEN IDEAS FESTIVAL 2016
GLOBAL AFFAIRS: OUR AGE OF INSECURITY
HOMELAND INSECURITY: HOW MUCH DANGER DO WE REALLY FACE IN THE
WORLD?
Paepcke Auditorium
Aspen, Colorado
Thursday, June 30, 2016
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LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
DAVID PETRAEUS
Partner & Chairman, KKR Global Institute
Visiting Professor, CUNY
Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
WOLFGANG ISCHINGER
Chairman, Munich Security Conference
JANE HOLL LUTE
Special Coordinator,
Special Advisor to the Secretary-General, United Nations
DAVID ROTHKOPF
Director, President, and CEO
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Trustee, The Aspen Institute
* * * * *
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HOMELAND INSECURITY: HOW MUCH DANGER DO WE REALLY FACE IN THE
WORLD?
(12:00 p.m.)
MR. BARNABO: I'm Gary Barnabo from Booz Allen
Hamilton. Booz Allen has been a proud underwriter of the Aspen
Ideas Festival for 12 years, since inception. It's always good
to be here. I know many of you feel the same way, absolute all-
star panel here this afternoon.
Hopefully, you've all had a chance to wolf down a
hotdog, but you're in the right place for this discussion on
Homeland Insecurity, How Much Do We Really Have to Fear? I
think asking an essential question, how worried do we need to
be? Terrorism, cyber threats, political risk, economic
challenges, pandemics, disease, how concerned should we really
be?
David Rothkopf from the Foreign Policy Group is our
moderator. He is the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, the
president and CEO of Garten Rothkopf, a global advisory firm and
the author of a wonderful book called National Insecurity, which
really dives into the mechanics of national security policy
making in the United States. So you are in wonderful hands.
David, over to you.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Thank you very much, welcome to all of
you for what will certainly be the most disturbing panel of your
day.
(Laughter)
We have got with us, an absolutely great story panel,
including Wolfgang Ischinger, who chairs the Munich Security
Conference, which is kind of like the Aspen Ideas Festival for
security nerds from around the world, and then we have General
David Petraeus, who is one of the leading security nerds from
the United States.
MR. PETRAEUS: And proud of it.
MR. ROTHKOPF: And proud of it, exactly. We are
proud of you. And then we've got Jane Lute. Jane and I did
this routine yesterday, we are back by popular demand. Jane was
the deputy secretary at the Homeland Security. She knows a ton
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about a ton of things. She is working at the UN now, she does a
lot on cyber security and I want to kind of have one of those
panels, you know, we get this door closed here, we will just
have a private discussion among us in this room, okay.
Because there are, when we get to these issues of
homeland security and security more broadly, a bunch of things
that ought to be said that can't be said in public.
If a politician were to stand up and say terrorism is
a problem but it's not such a huge problem, they'd be done. And
yet we would all benefit from trying to put these issues into
some perspective. You know, I used to work with a guy named
John Gannon (phonetics) who was a deputy at the agency, a really
good sound guy, and from September 11, I actually stood next to
him and Tony Lake and Susan Rice on September 11, 2001 in our
office watching on the television as this happened.
And from that moment onward, one of his mantras was
"They're not 12 feet tall." The terrorists are not 12 feet
tall; try to keep it in perspective, because when it gets out of
perspective, they win, that's the objective.
The objective is to create terror and so the tally of
a terrorist success, the metric isn't how many people are
killed, it's how many people are frightened, how many laws are
changed, how many policies are changed as a result of that. And
so I want to start with that and, you know, I want to sort of go
through what we see as -- as another friend of mine was fond of
quoting Jack London -- as the wolves closest to the sled. And I
want to sort of see, which ones we think we ought to be
attending to, and which ones we think ought to be put in some
perspective.
And so Dave let me start with you. Let's take this
terrorism issue and try to put it in perspective, because you
came up in the military at a time when there were existential
threats, and where we were trying to contain and manage those
existential threats. And we seem to have gone from that era to
equating these new threats with being existential threats, and I
am wondering if that isn't potentially a mistake?
MR. PETRAEUS: Well, yes -- first of all, let me just
say thanks for the opportunities. It is great to be with you
David and with Jane and with Wolf and back at another Ideas
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Festival. You are absolutely right to say they are not 12 feet
tall or 10 feet tall or whatever it may be.
The problem is there are a lot of them, and the total
height of these on a given day can seem quite considerable. But
at the end of the day, the Islamic extremists threat to identify
that which is so significant, which is changing the landscape in
the Middle East, which has created this single biggest challenge
for our European partners in terms of domestic political
situations in many decades; a far bigger challenge than the Euro
crisis; has certainly led to or been part of violence here in
the United States. But it is not an existential threat and so
it may be the dog closest to the sled right today on (inaudible)
and that situation room, talking to those who have been in the
real situation room.
But in the real situation room, I think you would be
seized with a lot of other issues, because you are trying to get
ahead of some of these issues. And whether it's the cyber-
crime, cyber threats that we discussed in a previous panel
today, whether it is Putin, North Korea, the potential for
nuclear proliferation, and that getting into the hands of
Islamic extremists would be potentially closer, not an
existential threat but a very, very significant threat, enabling
them to do damage in the likes that we have never even really
seen or contemplated in the past. But then all the way on up to
what I think or actually sometimes overlooked, and these are the
challenges to the so-called liberal world order that the
systems, the structures, the norms, the principles, whether
formal or informal, that have stood the world a reasonably good
stead for many decades, since they were established in the wake
of World War II are under greater challenge now I think than
they have been at any time during that period, at least
certainly since the end of the Cold War.
I think that that's very significant as well. It's
not the wolf closest to the sled, but it's one that informs the
overall context through which, we are sledding and is something
that I think we have to be very concerned about as well.
MR. ROTHKOPF: I don't want to tip the balance of
this conversation as the moderator, but I do want to ring a
little bell and say ding, ding, ding because I think that's the
big issue.
6
MR. PETRAEUS: We didn't rehearse this; we had no
preparation for this panel, whatsoever.
MR. ROTHKOPF: But I think it's true, I think -- you
know, first of all the security order that came up after the
Second World War, is past retirement age. We haven't spent much
time revitalizing it, whether it's the Atlantic Alliance or the
fact that there really isn't much of one in the Pacific, even as
issues arise there. The mechanisms of managing security,
whether it's NPT or whether it's domestic institutions are
facing problems, there's general distrust of institutions.
Europe, well, let's just stop there.
(Laughter)
Europe, the institutions of Europe seem to be at
risk, and I don't, you know, I mean I don't think it's an
exaggeration to say the Atlantic Alliance is still the
foundational alliance of global security, how much should we be
worried about that?
MR. ISCHINGER: Well, I think we need to worry about
a lot. I don't disagree with a word that was mentioned, but I
think that we face a double or actually a triple crisis. First,
there is a crisis at the level of what we call, in our language,
global governance. The Security Counsel of the United Nations,
an institution created by the United States by the way, not by
China or Russia has become actually rather dysfunctional. It's
been quite a long time since they last resolved an important
conflict.
Look at the inability to get their hands around the
Ukraine crisis or even more importantly the Syrian war et
cetera. So that's the first reflection point. How can we
strengthen or re-strengthen global institutions and the respect
for some kind of global rule of law, right.
Second, it seems to me, not in all parts of the world
but in parts of the world that matter, in the Middle East, in
Africa, in the greater Middle East, there is an important crisis
of the nation state. We have, as we speak, the clock is
ticking, and each year we seem to have more countries around the
Mediterranean in Sub-Sahara and Africa, looking at Afghanistan
as it was and as it is and as it will be.
7
We have states that are either failing or are failed
and are thus becoming almost automatically, potential home bases
for the bad guys. So we need to make sure that we have a
strategy that allows us in the West to help countries prevent
drifting into this kind of failure to control their own
territory and to have decent government that's a historic task.
So unfortunately, I don't have any good news to proclaim here.
I believe we are in this for a long time, I think the
threat represented by ISIL is not going to go away, even if we
were to eliminate it in, let's say, Syria or Libya because like
a Hydra they are coming -- they will reappear at some other
place in the region. And my last point is returning to Africa.
From a European point of view, it's important to note that the
number of people killed, the number of victims created by Boca
Haram in Africa far exceeds the number of victims created so far
by the Islamic State.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Well that's -- but I think that's an
important perspective and I do think every once in a while we
ought to let facts guide what our fears are. You know I mean
the reality is we look at the poll of the top 10 fears of
American people, it tends to be things like public speaking,
flying, things that will never kill anybody, when it really
should be sugar, which is killing more people than any of the
things that we have talked about here. I want to get to you on
this point but Dave extended two fingers but he wants to hop in
and something that Wolf just said.
MR. PETRAEUS: I think it's hugely important to
underscore what Wolf said about un-governed spaces because
particularly in the Islamic world they are going to be
exploited, it's not a question of if, it is just when they will
be exploited by extremists. The effects will not be contained
to the area in which they are. You can't admire the problem
until it goes away, US leadership is imperative in responding
and it's a generational struggle. And that has to inform all
that we do and we have to do it in a comprehensive way. You
just can't drone strike your way out of this. These are serious
lessons that I think we have to take to heart.
It doesn't mean we do it all, it doesn't mean that we
don't get as many partners and it doesn't mean that we don't get
others to be on the frontlines whenever that's possible et
8
cetera, et cetera because it is going to be a generational
struggle. But the other point that Wolf had, which is that you
could put a stake through heart of an individual organization of
an individual leader and we will do lots more of that. You
can't put a stake through the heart of the ideas that are
inspiring some of this and that's I think a challenge that's
going to be with us again for a generation.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Let me pick up on that Jane, you know,
we talk -- I don't know, maybe it's because we are Americans but
we talk a lot about personalities and brand names. So we talk
about Osama bin Laden or we talk about al-Qaeda or we talk about
ISIL. When the problem is extremism and we discover when you
decapitate one group and another one emerges, or a franchising.
You know I mean I see the threat posed by ISIL being that it
started world's first open source terrorist organization.
So anybody can be a member, you don't have to be in a
hierarchy, all you have to do is you know declare allegiance and
it's a force multiplier for them and it makes them seem much
bigger than they are. Are we focused on the right bad guys or
the right bad actors, or are we too guided by what dominates the
headlines?
MS. HOLL LUTE: I think we are way, way too dominated
by a national security mindset. And I think we need to
understand the difference between looking at these issues with a
national security mindset as opposed to a homeland security
mindset because they are entirely different. National security
is strategic, it's centralized, it's top driven. Homeland
security is transactional, it's decentralized, it's bottom
driven, driven by the states and the localities of this country.
You know in national security you know the watchword is unity of
command, in homeland security it's unity of effort.
You know information is shared in the national
security setting on the basis of need to know, in homeland
security it's duty to share.
You know so there is an entirely different
relationship between fear and the public and the leadership as
against the national security or homeland security. In national
security, the country has to be attacked before the nation will
go to war. In homeland security, if you are a society, you are
a community and you are fearful for your lives or your
children's safety the mayor and the police chief are fired.
9
So there is a very different orientation on these
problems and we talk, you know, sort of in the -- I have
enormous respect and I have been colleagues and friends with all
of you. I mean, and learned from all of you for generations --
decades.
(Laughter)
MR. ROTHKOPF: Wow, she is trying to lift us up and
she casts us down.
MS. HOLL LUTE: You know I wasn't going there, I
wasn't going there. I am way older than I look. But I think
it's really important, you know, because when you are dealing
with these problems, this is all interesting how we think about
it and it's important that we need a theory of the case. Let's
take terrorism; what's been our theory of the case for 12 or 15
years following 9/11. Our theory of the case is the bad guys
are out there trying to come here that's what we think. How are
we going to deal with that? We are going to find them and fix
them in a military sense, abroad. We have three tools. We have
an intelligence tool, considerable; a military, best in the
world; and we have our partnerships, our security partnerships
with NATO and with other countries bilaterally. That's great.
What if they are here? What if they are already
here? What terrorist strike can succeed in this country unless
there is already a basis of support? How good is our
intelligence capability going to serve us, military deployed
domestically, the Brits, NATO not really.
So we need to think about the questions that you are
raising, which are the real questions from the perspective of
homeland security this country can protect itself. We can
protect ourselves. And as we said for a very long time, we need
to be prepared not scared. And the homeland security agenda of
looking at borders and immigration and of cyber security and of
national resilience are all tools that we need to put on the
table.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Yeah, I think you know -- by the way
embedded in Jane's comment there is something else to take away.
You know we sometimes look at bad actors or external threats and
we say this is where the risk comes from. But very often the
risks are magnified or exists more greatly closer to home,
10
whether its absence of leadership, institutional weakness,
growing divisions within society that organically fuel some of
these things. And so, you know, we can go and eliminate five
terrorists and not address the core problem that put us at risk.
You agree with that?
MR. PETRAEUS: Yeah, I mean, this is why again, you
have to have a comprehensive approach. This is more than just
again killing or capturing bad guys with either precision
strikes or Delta force raids or whatever. You have got to get
at the root issues. Now, you have got to do it in a way that is
informed by the knowledge that this is going to be generational
in terms of longevity, and therefore, you've got to be as cost
effective, you've have got to be as inclusive with your allies.
By the way among our most important partners in these
endeavors are Islamic countries. This is much more of an
existential threat to Muslim countries than it is certainly to
our countries, as big as the biggest challenge caused by the
tsunami of refuges from Syria is certainly for our European
partners. But -- and so therefore disparaging them or their
religion is not a particularly helpful way about going about
getting partners.
And by the way in most of the successful cases that
we've had or areas where we have made periods of sustained
progress, we have inevitably had very important Muslim partners
and institutions of Muslim countries working together with us.
MR. ROTHKOPF: So disparaging them is one thing that
we see some candidates do. Another thing we have seen a
prominent US candidate recently do is disparage our allies. And
he started -- by the way the President of United States you know
said that some of our allies in the Middle East were free
riders. Probably not so great for the alliance that you are
talking about there. And then Donald Trump starts talking about
how the Europeans are free riders. These are global problems.
They can't be solved by any individual nation acting
alone. Do you feel that a Europe that's weak institutionally,
stressed by flows of immigration, unsure of its own future, and
still reluctant to have any kind of foreign policy that's a real
foreign policy that they can follow through on is up to the
challenge of being a partner? How do you feel about the Donald
Trump criticisms?
11
MR. ISCHINGER: I don't like it. And no I --
MR. ROTHKOPF: There is not a big approach from
constituency, right?
MR. ISCHINGER: As you know, if I were still, you
know, a senior official in the German government I wouldn't say
what am I now saying because now I speak as an individual and
it's only my own responsibility. I think for the leadership
role of the United States, which we will need even more urgently
because of these issues in the future than we needed in the
recent past. It would be an unmitigated disaster, if you ask
me, if Mr. Trump were elected because I think that would create
at least for a while, a rise in uncertainty about the role of
the United States.
What about his comments about NATO? And what about
his comments about dealing with all sorts of other allies? And
do we really believe that he could, if he wanted to, strike a
deal that would not be the advantageous to the West with Mr.
Putin, who was been in office now for 15 years or so; who is
probably at least as smart, in terms of handling national
security issues; as Mr. Trump, so I am not happy about.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Is at least?
MR. ISCHINGER: At least, at least.
(Laughter)
But the other -- but let me come back to the, sort
of, to the more serious part of the question about Europe. Jane
made the point and I appreciate that from the US point of view.
The focus has been primarily on how do we prevent bad guys from
coming here and then of course you have to think about what if
bad guys are here. We know in Europe that they are there, we
know they are in France, we have just seen it happen. We know
they are all over the place. It's probably a little miracle
that in my own country, in Germany, no big terrorist attack has
happened, knock on wood. It will be statistically unlikely that
we will be spared forever, so we know they are there.
We know that it's much easier for them to come into
our countries because it's -- for all practical purposes, not
possible to completely control these many, many different
borders et cetera. It's a little easier for the United States
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with only two neighbors and the open sea on both sides. In
Europe this is more complicated. So our challenge is to make
sure that this "Weak European Union" becomes stronger, where it
matters. And one area where it matters is a more coordinated
intelligence and homeland security effort.
Quite frankly, I published a piece; a little while
ago, which created quite a bit of excitement; I said in the
United States of American -- I mean, correct me if I am wrong --
for the first 150 or almost 200 years they didn't have a federal
police. And then for some reasons, they created the FBI, which
is sort of a countrywide executive police institution. Has the
point not arrived where in the European Union in order to hunt a
terrorist from Sicily to Norway and back we need some kind of
capacity to act that does not respect national borders, a
transnational kind of police like "a European FBI."
Well, you can imagine the reaction, some people said,
"Great idea that's what we ought to do." Especially those who
are in charge of homeland security, they think this is good.
Others who are more concerned about privacy
protection and about the rights of the individuals say the last
thing we want is that a Spanish policeman, you know, shoots
people in Denmark et cetera. So there are concerns, there are
fears but I think that's what we need to do in Europe.
And my last point would be this, there is admittedly
a kind of a malaise in the European Union about the functioning
of the EU, whether we call it a weak EU or an EU that is
increasingly been disliked, look at Brexit et cetera. Part of
the reason is that many of the projects which the European Union
has correctly tried to advance have been seen by our broader
public as elitist projects. And when you ask -- when you look
at the polls, when you check what would people like to see the
EU do for them, the one answer EU, where -- even in Britain --
you get a positive response, is security.
People want to have the EU act as a security actor,
not necessarily only in -- I mean our military forces in the
context of NATO in Afghanistan in Mali, in other places. They
also one the EU to provide more homeland security. So if you
look at the expectations of the people there is actually a good
basis on which to act and create a slightly stronger and more
resilient homeland security structure in the EU. Is that going
to happen in the next weeks or months? I am afraid not as
13
quickly as I would like to see it happen because we will be --
our leaders will be busy discussing Brexit, Brexit, Brexit and
Ukraine and Syria. They are overwhelmed at the moment with all
these other major crises.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Go on Jane.
MS. HOLL LUTE: I think there is a dimension of
security again which you see vividly from the homeland
perspective. I mean one of the things about the national
security institutions of this country that -- you know by and
large at the level of generalization, there is almost no
interaction with the American public.
Our intelligence community doesn't have a lot of
interaction, it's not designed to with the American public. You
know, the State department looks outward et cetera. You know
the military, we have long lamented the fact that it's was not
drawn broadly from the American public.
Homeland Security, we interact with 5 to 7 million
people a day. So you get very vivid feel for what people mean
when they say security, you are absolutely right Wolfgang I
believe it. People want to feel free from fear of attack.
That's what they need fundamentally, at home and abroad. But
they also want guarantees against the unbridled use of power
that's the less articulated version of security.
You know, I mean, I think whatever the next president
faces, whomever she or he is they are going to have to lead the
global recovery from the next six months because we are in for a
very rough ride as we have this public conversation about all of
these issues, all the while facing what people believe is a
deteriorating sense of security, whether it's financial security
or actual security.
So what are the tools that we have in place to
reassure people because people are angry everywhere. I mean and
this is an anxiety based anger. You know this is not a purpose
driven anger, when you have purpose-driven anger people kill
each other.
This is an anxiety based anger, we don't trust
businesses, we don't trust the banks, we don't trust the media,
we don't trust markets, in many cases we don't trust governments
or institutions. And I think the anxiety stems from the fact
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that we may not know how to architect trusted institutions at
scale in the public space. We are trying to -- and we are
seeing that in evidence again and again and again.
You mentioned earlier the UN is a weak organization,
compared to what? I mean we -- our institutions, you know,
their weight bearing effectiveness for social problems of
enormous complexity has been called under question now across
the board. So as we address proximate threats, what am I afraid
of, what am I going to take action on because I am afraid? And
what responsibility should we assign to individuals, should we
assign to communities, should we assign to police forces?
Security is typically something communities assigned to their
governments to handle. We want safe streets, governments should
run the police. We want to save country, government -- you run
the military, et cetera. And here again the difference between
national security and homeland security is stark. I mean
Washington is not the national command authority as it is the
national security, it's the federal partner. So the FBI, an
investigative agency at the federal level has really defined and
limited responsibilities compared to, you know, the state --
850,000 state and local law enforcement in this country. So we
need to look at both parts of the picture.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Okay, I'm going to open it up
questions in five minutes. But I don't want to fall into the
trap that I was trying to avoid at the very beginning, which is,
it's easy to talk about terrorism, it's especially easy because
of what you just said, people don't want to be afraid of an
attack. But leadership, it seems to me, is sometimes about
saying this is what we should be focused on, this is where the
real risk lies, let's be able to move pass this.
And there are some countries where there have been
multiple terrorist attacks where they are able to manage them
and digest it and handle it a little bit better and it causes
less terror as a consequence. Apart from that, Dave as you look
at it, a new President is coming in, what are the risks that
ought to be prioritized, if you were advising this next
President, as she came in. See what I did there?
(Laughter)
And she said, you know, where should we be focused,
where should we allocate our resources? You listed some things,
you said cyber, you said the rise of the emerging powers, we
15
talked about Africa as a place, you know there is a whole of
host of things. And we know that in terms of terror attacks a
tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of Americans die as a result of terror
attacks than as of -- the use of guns in the United States in
sort of the normal course of action, 50 or 60 or 100 a year
versus 30,000 year.
MR. PETRAEUS: 33,000.
MR. ROTHKOPF: So it's grotesquely out of proportion,
and one should be much, of course, a source of concern. Where
would you focus?
MR. PETRAEUS: Well, I think the biggest challenge is
to avoid focusing too much on the dog closest to the sled and
you do get sucked into that. You know, I have been again in
these different organizations, privileged to lead very large
ones, and it's almost inevitable that you get wrapped into that
day's dog closest to the sled -- that day's significant threat -
- that day's topic de jure in the morning shows, in the
afternoon shows and what will be on the Sunday shows.
And so that's the risk actually. And the antidote is
to make sure that you don't end up, you know, nose to glass on
that particular issue or stuck to that issue and unable to
address all of them. Because I think what the Commander-in-
Chief really has to be is like that guy in the circus, who gets
a bunch of plates spinning and then goes back and gives them the
right spin to keep them all up there. And you know, you keep
adding to it to the extent that you can, with your bureaucracy
you do that.
Certainly there are limits. You know, Jean, knows
very well, I mean there is only one situation, you can only have
so many meetings during the day. I mean, we used to calculate
how many crises, every now and then waiting for another NSC
meeting or a principles committee meeting, just joking, how many
crisis can the country handle at a time?
MR. ROTHKOPF: But the people from inside felt that
they were too many meetings --
MR. PETRAEUS: But -- and that's why, it is three to
five, that are really pressing at a given time. And the
challenge I think for the Commander-in-Chief is actually to look
at other than just that three to five. By the way the deputies
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of the these different organizations; which Jane was, of course,
and Michael Morell, my deputy at the agency; they spend almost
all day at the White House. I mean Michael would disappear
after the morning meeting and sometimes you wouldn't see him
again until that night because they just have deputies after
deputies after deputies, that is the one that meets at high
frequency.
And again the challenge has to be focused on
additional topics is again the long range issue here, that's why
I went from the very close fight, if you will, the tactical to
the very strategic global issue that I think is the big
challenge, which is the challenges to the so-called liberal
world order and all of these different organizations, norms,
principles and so forth that have stood us in reasonably good
stead.
And figuring out how do you deal with a China that
benefited more from this system than any other country during
recent decades because they achieved something no other country
ever has, which is really two decades of almost unbroken double-
digit growth in their GDP, it is unprecedented.
But they're are among the biggest challengers of this
system whether it's building islands where there weren't any in
the South China Sea, floating what will be the World -- the
court on the law of the sea, aerospace identification zones that
interfere with other countries, just one after the other. And
dissatisfied with the IMF so you create the Asian Infrastructure
and Investment Bank, again we can go on and on and on.
MR. ROTHKOPF: But I think it's a perfect —-
MR. PETRAEUS: These are issues that you've got to
focus on even as you are knocking down the close fight targets.
I mean you can't let them come over the walls they say, you know
they're right outside the wire, you have also got to be engaging
in the deep fight -- that is the challenge.
MR. ROTHKOPF: I have written two books on how the US
national security process works, and I've been in the government
and talked to a lot of people in every single administration. I
have spoken to every single national security advisor, the first
thing that they say is, "We do foresight really badly." And
this is --
17
MR. PETRAEUS: And this is what you're going to have
to do. And if you have to have a special cell that does nothing
about -- think about these long range, you know the beauty of
commanding what is the main effort of your country at a
particular time in the military is you can get the most talented
people. I had -- I knew every Rhodes scholar in the US military
was, and they were either working for me right then or had just
finished working for me or were going to work for me.
And we'd have these cells called the Commanders
Initiatives Group that would be thinking about these longer
range issues. And again that's the kind of development that I
think you have to got pursue so that you just don't get riveted
to dealing with that day's issues.
MR. ROTHKOPF: A number of you would like to speak, I
know a lot of people here would too. So what I would like to do
is -- are there people with microphones in here?
So what I would like to do is, if you got a question,
raise your hand, identify yourself -- stand up, identify
yourself and ask your question in the form of question, keep it
brief.
And then we will try to get some answers, because
we've got only 20 minutes. So let's go to this gentleman here.
MR. MALLARD: Frank Mallard (phonetic) for David
Petraeus. In the course of your talk, you mentioned the
cooperation you were getting out of the Islamic countries.
Could you elaborate on that? As far as I can see the
cooperation is coming from countries like Saudi Arabia, which on
one hand are helping you, on the other hand they are the
greatest financial supportive of Wahhabism in which they are
exporting and is creating most of the problems that exists
within the Islamic world.
MR. PETRAEUS: Sure. And let me just start with
Saudi Arabia. First of all I think they are doing less of you
talked about. There is on question of what they have done in
the past. Indeed, the mosque in (inaudible) was one that was
built with their money. I watched to a degree the
transformation of Bosnia in the wake of their civil war serving
there for a year. And in other countries as well.
18
But I can tell you that when I was commander vis
Central Command -- actually Iraq Central Command, Afghanistan
and the CIA, if we took anything to them about people that were
financing extremists groups or anything like that, they would
deal with it and they did it quite expeditiously because this is
an existential threat from them much more than it is for us.
Keep in mind that the current crown prince when he was then the
deputy minister of interior and our single best partner for the
fight against al Qaeda, when it came to the Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia and really in the GCC writ large, Mohammed bin Nayef was
nearly blown -- he was blown up, he just wasn't killed by a bomb
that was designed and put inside the brother of the most
talented and single most dangerous man in the world Ibrahim al-
Asiri, who is this explosive expert in Yemen that we have been
seeking for quite a long time.
Beyond that you've got countries like the United Arab
Emirates, which are helping enormously in a host of different
ways, again a very comprehensive approach. The other members of
the GCC by and large doing the same thing, we have got
partnerships across North Africa with various countries.
So again, if you -- by the way you can't deal in a
country, you can't take action in a country, without that
country either approving or at least in some cases providing
tacit assent to what it is that you might do. The best of all
is the active engagement. And you do see that as well right now
in this partnership against the Islamic State that does include
Muslim countries flying along side and certainly dropping bombs
on some of the Islamic State targets. Although that -- some of
that effort was diverted of course for the fight against the
Iranian-supported Houthis in Yemen, which is another whole
challenge for that region and really for the world.
MR. ROTHKOPF: And I think you would acknowledge --
and this -- any of you wish to speak about it -- that cutting
the heads off of terrorists groups or killing terrorists doesn't
address the extraneous problem, the only way to address it is to
come up with a counter narrative to the extremist's narrative
that is a positive narrative. And that's not going to be one
the United States can offer, those countries must critically
play the role. Right?
MR. PETRAEUS: No. If you're going to counter the
voices of extremism in cyber space and particularly now, and
let's remember that the distinguishing feature, the single
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differentiator of the Islamic State besides the fact that you
have a leader actually who is willing to establish a caliphate
is the expertise that they demonstrate in cyber space. And that
is really a significant threat. It's been there in the past,
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula had this Inspire magazine that
was very important. And you may recall it was led by an
American Yemeni who ultimately was killed along with the editor
of Inspire.
But at the end of the day, you've got to have
credible voices, so these are voices in that language, in that
dialect understanding the religion in a very scholarly way. And
that is invaluable. And it's not something that is in great
supply in the United States.
MR. ROTHKOPF: If only we took our foreign policy
magazines and web sites as seriously as they took.
(Laughter)
MR. PETRAEUS: Your subscription would jump.
MR. ROTHKOPF: It would double to 20.
MS. HOLL LUTE: I think it's -- I mean the one actor
Dave did not mention is not Iran. I mean this region is not
going to stabilize or succeed unless Iran successfully
normalizes and back into the international community. Whatever
you think about Iran, it is a strategic player in the region and
more broadly.
In addition, it has borne a very large burden with
respective displaced populations and refugees. I mean there is
-- it is a very complicated relationship that the United States
has with Iran right now at this moment, you know, the US and
Europe have not always agreed on the approach to Iran. But I
think it's safe to say, in this particular region the
historically great player, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt I mean these
countries must succeed for this region to succeed.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Next question. Yes, ma'am.
MS. BARON: My name is Adrian Baron (phonetic) I am
from California from LA. As a child we learned about speak
softly but carry a big stick. And after dismissing a lot of the
20
propaganda in the media I want to know, do we have a big stick
or is it really outdated equipment in case of an emergency?
MR. PETRAEUS: We have the biggest stick in the world
by a factor of -- I don't know what --
(Laughter)
Look, let me again, you know, people are entitled to
opinions but not their own facts. And the facts are that even
with the cuts, and sequestration is the most horrible way to
ever cut a budget. We have done some really dumb stuff, you
know, it's not uncommon to hear people say on certain days that
among the top five threats to our national security is
Washington DC itself. But at the end of the day you know we are
spending 600 billion on our military alone that is four times,
yes China has increased dramatically, it's still four times what
they have.
One of the reasons that the US has to lead is because
when it comes to the assets that are crucially important for the
kinds of endeavors we're enabling; in Iraq, and to a degree in
Syria, and some other countries, Afghanistan still; the
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance armada
architecture that we have, which is just not all that manned and
unmanned platforms. It's the pipes, it's the communications,
it's the 150 people that it takes to keep one of these in the
air and analyze what's coming out of it, listen to it, arm it,
fuel it, fly it, payload it, fuse the intelligence with
everything else, on and on and do it 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week. Then the precision strike, then the industrial strength
ability to fuse intelligence that is so critical to what it is
we're doing.
Yes, we're still improving what we are doing as we
rebuild what we took out of Iraq. and that's one reason that it
would have been great if we could have kept some forces there.
I am not convinced by any means that would have enabled us to
have the influence to keep Prime Minister al-Maliki from heading
down the ruinous path he did with highly sectarian actions that
undid all that we sacrificed so much to achieve during the surge
and the subsequent three-and-half years.
But we would have platforms, situational awareness,
pipes all the rest of this stuff that would have been enabled to
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us to get on the front foot against the Islamic State much more
rapidly.
And that matters because the sooner you can show that
the Islamic state is a looser is the sooner it's no longer as
effective in cyberspace.
But make no mistake about it, our capabilities are
more than all of the potential allies and partners around the
world by several factors. And that's why again our leadership
is absolutely indispensable. It doesn't mean we do it all, it
doesn't mean we shouldn't have every ally and partner, we can.
Churchill was right, you know, the only thing worse than
fighting with allies is fighting without them, and all that
stuff.
But work with me here, I know it's lunchtime. But we
have got an incredible capability and we've got to use it
judiciously, cost effectively let others fight in the frontlines
whenever possible et cetera, et cetera. But make no mistake
about the capability that we have.
And I would it's the same in virtually every area of
governance, even extending into the diplomatic and development
and other areas even though we have never funded them to the
tune that they probably should have been.
MS. HOLL LUTE: This is -- we can echo absolutely
everything Dave is saying and not because I went to basic
training in 1976.
MR. PETRAEUS: Because we're professors together at
West Point.
MS. HOLL LUTE: West Point.
(Laughter)
MS. HOLL LUTE: I mean the United States can get
anywhere in the world from Missouri. I mean, you know, we are
really that much better than everybody else.
MR. PETRAEUS: Without landing.
MS. HOLL LUTE: Without landing.
22
MR. PETRAEUS: And come back without landing too.
MS. HOLL LUTE: Without landing.
MR. PETRAEUS: After doing something.
MS. HOLL LUTE: So the question that has been at the
heart of so many minds is what will the US do with this power.
But as -- in Homeland Security what we discovered is every other
country has borders, every other country is wrestling with
immigration, every other country has a federal, state, local or
federal center, periphery you know province problem. And they
come to the US again and again and again. We could not open all
of the bilateral Homeland Security dialogs that countries around
the world wanted.
Because they knew we were wrestling honestly with
these operational problems in highly complex circumstances,
where values compete, you know when borders on the one hand you
want keep out people and things that might be dangerous, but we
also want to expedite legitimate trade and travel, we want to
keep out people who might be dangerous, but we want to welcome
those who would enrich our culture and our economy. And we were
wrestling with these. And despite what again -- whatever
popular mythology may be out there, we are still a pretty
special place.
(Applause)
MR. ROTHKOPF: Europe has a special relationship with
borders. And I would like to just pick up on what Jean said
because you had Schengen agreement, everything opened up within,
and now you've got refuges, rising nationalism in a variety of
different places and questions about whether this idea of
openness can exist in an era with these kinds of threats? Where
do you think that's going?
MR. ISCHINGER: Well two points, first, there are
good reasons for us in Europe to be self critical about the
kinds of institutions and the kinds of things that we've created
such as, you know, for example the euro, we didn't sufficiently
create a hard enough sanctions to make sure that every single
member of this euro system would actually not violate the rules.
And more importantly, to the point here, when we
created what we call the Schengen system in other words no
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controls along the internal borders, but only controls around
the outside borders of this rather large area comprising a
majority now of European countries from the Mediterranean to the
Arctic if you wish.
The idea is a great idea and it has brought enormous
economic benefit and it, of course, it means that even you as
Americans can go from Denmark through Germany to Italy without
ever encountering, without ever needing to show your passport.
The problem is the same privilege can be enjoyed by our friend
the terrorists. So the question is, have we sufficiently --
have we done enough to make the outside border control as
effective as we should have made it.
And the answer of course is no. When we created it,
we did not reflect sufficiently about a situation where one of
the countries responsible; let's say, Greece, or Italy, or a
country with an outside border in the region of crisis, what if
that one country is either unable or willing or both to do
everything that's needed to control that border? Do we have a
Plan B that can then be set in motion in order to make sure that
the system works? The answer is, we did have the Plan B and we
are now slowly grinding out a plan that would actually create a
force, a European, a new European institution that would have
efficient personnel to execute these border controls.
So, yeah, I mean we are slowly learning. But if I
may, let we add a second point. As important as the military
capabilities are, and as important as it is that we in Europe
also try to lift our defense expenditures up to a goal that we
have all agreed to some time ago. Mainly, there was this famous
2 percent, as important as all of that is, I think, the threat
of terrorism and fundamentalist extremism in Europe isn't going
to go away only by showing and demonstrating and executing
military strength. We need -- I echo what you said -- we need a
comprehensive plan. Part of this comprehensive plan has got to
be from a European point of view that we do not regard as we
have done for more than a generation now.
Our policies vis-à-vis the countries in Northern
African, Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East as recipients of
charity, you know, classic foreign aid recipients, we make sure
that people don't die from hunger or disease et cetera.
We've got to -- even if it's painful, we have got to
understand that would we need to create with these countries is
24
a security strategy, in which they can be partners and the
strategy that will try to make sure that over the medium and
longer-term we will prevent new failing states, and we will have
resources to make sure that states that are about to fail can be
rescued from becoming platforms for ISIL or Boko Haram et
cetera, that's of course a huge task, I think we can do it.
We need strong leadership support from the United
States for that. And hopefully -- that would be my last point -
- and hopefully the distraction created by, you know, aggressive
behavior by Mr. Putin in Eastern Europe can at some point be
eliminated so that we can focus on these homeland security and
terrorism issues and so that we don't have to spend too much of
our resource on hedging against what is perceived in Europe
today as a renewed threat or at least potential threat from the
East.
MR. ROTHKOPF: I think that's an extremely good
point. I'm afraid we don't have much time left. I think we
will have a chance for one more question. But I want to put one
button on that point. I had a conversation with the National
Security Advisor of Jordan not too long ago and Jordan is an
absolutely vital country in all of this. And I said, "What's
the most important thing for you to maintain stability in Jordan
and fight these things?" And he said, "That's easy," he said,
"7 million jobs," he said we have to create jobs for people.
MR. ISCHINGER: Absolutely.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Now the problem is that when you say 7
million jobs you think of it as development, and when you think
of its development for better for worse that ends up going to
the children's table in the policy discussion, it's not taken
seriously. And we have a bunch of impediments to solving these
problems an other is our terminology. You know I call it
semantic risk, right, if you call certain things soft power, you
denigrate them, you make people think they are less important.
But it is through soft power, it's through cultural outreach and
diplomacy and education and interchange that you actually change
belief systems.
And if you don't change belief systems you can't
fight these issues as well. So I would encourage all of you as
you leave this room, never to use the term soft power again.
Because what people believe, what they're willing to fight for,
25
who they're willing to support is actually the basis of all real
power.
Take one more question, somewhere in the back because
we have been up close to the front. All right, is there
somebody in the back there that you see? Okay, but very, very
brief question, and we will try out to have a very quick answer.
SPEAKER: Thanks, I will try to make it as brief as
possible. When you look at China and you look at Russia,
obviously we've pivoted to the Asian pivot -- and this is more
for General Petraeus, I think, but you're free to answer
obviously -- is China's more bullying for just sort of respect
versus Russia has more longer term desires to sort of regain its
overall dominance from a balance of power perspective?
MR. ROTHKOPF: Thirty seconds.
MR. PETRAEUS: Look they both pose challenges. In
the case of China they're both partners as well as competitors.
Russia, clearly, there is a desire to reestablish as much as is
possible the former Soviet Union or at least the Russian empire
and destroy the world stage, doing so with a significant decline
in revenue because of the collapse of energy markets.
China, the increasing assertiveness is very
concerning. And again, as I mentioned earlier, when you put the
two of these together these are the primary assaults on this
liberal world order that has stood the globe in reasonably good
stead over the last number of decades.
MR. ISCHINGER: Very, very brief.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Ten seconds.
MR. ISCHINGER: Just to underline the point, I mean
China is today and will be even more in the future, the biggest
or at least one of the biggest economic powers right? Russia is
not a significant power in that respect. The gross national
product of Russia is smaller than that of Italy, slightly larger
than that of Spain. In other words, when we think about the
threat coming out of Russia they can't possibly sustain a longer
conflict against, you know, a major adversary.
It's -- in economic terms, not a major power anymore.
And the interesting thing is that how Vladimir Putin has managed
26
to play in the major leagues even though that's not exactly
where he belongs.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Thank you.
MS. HOLL LUTE: When I was at Homeland Security
people used to ask me, what keeps you up late at night? You
know wakes you up, is it China, is it Russia? Like no, you know
if it's not unpatched vulnerabilities, the thing I worry about
most coming back to David's opening question, what I'm most
afraid of? The most afraid of the fact that we will lose faith
in each other.
MR. ROTHKOPF: Bravo.
MS. HOLL LUTE: And we can't afford that and that's
something each of us can do something about.
(Applause)
* * * * *