 My name is Karen Greenberg, and on behalf of New America and the Center on National Security at Fordham Law, I am really delighted to be here today to host this panel. We are convening to celebrate the publication of a brand new book, The Rutledge Handbook of US Counterterrorism and Irregular Warfare Operations, a compendium of 34 chapters by 47 contributors, edited by Liam Collins who's with us today, Eric Marcon and Michael Sheehan. And before I introduce today's stellar panel, a few words are in order about Michael Sheehan who was a friend and colleague of many of us here today. This book was his idea, his cherished project for many years, and he treated it like the legacy he knew it would be. It was designed to educate and inform students, scholars, practitioners and policymakers for decades to come. And it is a reflection of the mixture of talents, knowledge and where we go that Mike embodied. To remind you, Mike was ambassador at large at the State Department as the coordinator for counterterrorism. He was Assistant Secretary General of the UN directly in charge of peacekeeping operations after 911. He was commissioner for counterterrorism at the NYPD, and then beginning in 2011 he was Assistant Secretary of Defense for special operations and low intensity conflict at the Pentagon. In other words, he worked in local, national and international arenas across the military, the State Department, the UN and law enforcement. And all of this is reflected in the historical and geographical breadth of this book, a true reflection of Mike's life work which takes us from counterinsurgency operations in Latin America to the war in Iraq, from the NYPD to horse soldiers in Afghanistan, from drone warfare to information warfare. So today is to focus on a few of the essays included in the book and have a discussion about Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan. And we might, if we have time, turn to the lessons this book might hold for the war in Ukraine. So let's get started. Let's turn to our panel with us today to discuss this or for the leading scholars on al-Qaeda ISIS the war on terror and the region. First, my longtime colleague Peter Bergen, Vice President for global studies and fellows at fellow at New America, the author of numerous books about the war on terror al-Qaeda and bin Laden and most recently, the rise and fall of Osama bin Laden, which I highly recommend. Also with us today is Liam Collins, one of the editors of the book who worked tirelessly to make sure its publication came about and did a truly wonderful job, along with his colleague Eric Marcon. He retired Army Colonel with special forces, Liam was formerly director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and the founding director of the Modern War Institute. Liam is now the executive director of the Viola Foundation and a fellow with New America's International Security Program. Also with us today is Elizabeth Kendall, who joins us from the UK where she is the senior research fellow in Arabic and Islam at Pembroke College, Oxford University. Also, the chairman of a grassroots NGO in Yemen, and the former director of a UK government sponsored center aimed at developing Arabic based research expertise. Elizabeth is the author of numerous books and articles, most recently, Diplomacy Arabic with us also is Luke Hartig, a fellow with New America's International Security Program. He has served as senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council, and has served in a variety of positions across the executive branch. He is president of National Journal of Research. He is the author of numerous articles on the Just Security blog, most recently a wonderful article on the Pentagon's current drone policy. Peter, let's get started with you. You spent an awful lot of time thinking and writing about war asymmetric warfare in the wake of 911 hybrid war, and the generals and policymakers that have addressed the threat of international terrorism. Your essay in this book written with AG Sims American drone wars outside of conventional war zones, focus on one of the pieces of the counterterrorism framework drones, but within the context of expanding geographical areas and the war on terror. Peter, let me ask you a big picture question. Can you set the stage for us. I know Ukraine is friends and center today, but terrorism and insurgencies continue spiking and receding every week. Can you give us an overview of how far the lessons of these new forms of warfare have brought us and where you see today's most pronounced challenges to counter terrorism activities in five to seven minutes. So, I mean, look, if Mike Sheehan was alive today, I think he'd be tearing his hair out about the fact that the Taliban have taken over Afghanistan. I mean, Mike, you know, even before 911, Ambassador Sheehan well understood the threat posed by the Taliban. You know, he actually spoke with a foreign minister Moodawakil in the about a year before 911 essentially saying the following which is, you know, if something happens that's traceable to Afghanistan, we are going to hold you accountable. And he used a metaphor that he hoped would get through to Moodawakil which is if you have somebody staying in your basement, and they come out and they set fire to your neighbor's house, you're accountable for the behavior of the person that's in your basement. So Ambassador Sheehan I think would be very disappointed about what I think the big development is in the world of jihadism, which is the Taliban taker of Afghanistan. And, you know, that certainly wasn't predictable a few even two years ago, I mean, a year ago the Taliban control none of the 34 provincial capitals of Afghanistan and now they control all of them. And there was a certain kind of group of people who had, I think, very much of wishful thinking about the Taliban. I didn't think Ambassador Sheehan shared that wishful thinking, and anybody who's had any experience of dealing with them, didn't share that wishful thinking. But it was pretty powerful and the United States signed a peace agreement with the Taliban which essentially gave them everything with giving up nothing. They gave up nothing and I don't think it's an accident by the way that Putin moved 90,000 troops to the border of Ukraine. Exactly two months after the final US withdrawal. I'm getting inside Putin's mind is not easy. But I think that's a pretty high level of coincidence so clearly obviously he's been planning this for a long time but this seemed to signal American weakness and American withdrawal from the world and of course Putin vastly miscalculated the US and NATO response. I think one of the kind of really interesting questions about the Taliban now with Siraj Akhani being the Defense of the Ministry of Interior which is equivalent the American equivalent of running the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI. The thing is you have this very unusual thing where a kidnapping group, a crime syndicate, a terrorist group now controls the government and you know this is unprecedented in my, I think, 17 of the 33 cabinet picks in the first round of cabinet picks by the Taliban 17 of those 33 are UN designated designated by the UN in some shape or form and sanctioned. I don't there's not a government in the world maybe now the Russians are. Until that point, you know this this is unprecedented so and I want to zero in on a particular case I think it's, you know, Luke Hartake did a lot has done a huge amount of work in this area. But we now have, you know, it used to be a concern, a big concern the US government was Americans being taken hostage by groups like the Taliban. There was a lot of clerics who was taken by the Taliban. Two years ago, over two years ago, an American contractor taken by the Akhani network at a time when they were a terrorist insurgent group. Now that they did a factor of government. And so we're in a very awkward position I think in in the discussions we're having the Taliban they have detained an old friend of mine Peter juvenile. Peter has been reporting on Afghanistan since 1980. He went in 75 times during the Russian occupation at great personal risk. He's married to an Afghan he speaks both languages. He's done a lot for Afghanistan is employed a lot of Afghanistan is various businesses he's been detained by the Taliban. So as an American citizen so as an American legal resident and one of those American legal citizens is also British citizen and there are another five British citizens all of them have been out. They've now been held for three months they're almost all taken in mid December. And what do we do about this is an interesting question, because you're dealing with essentially this terrorist insurgent group that now is a day factor of government. And, you know, if it was a real a real government that was recognized it might be, you know, we're more used to dealing with that. And right now we're in a very uncomfortable dilemma about how to, you know, how to negotiate with the Taliban when we don't recognize them and you and his sanctions so many of them. To the point, just to, since you mentioned drones, Karen, I want to say that Ambassador Sheehan was, you know, along with Dick Clark before 911 was instrumental in getting the drone program, sort of move forward you may recall that there was a dispute between the Pentagon and the CIA about who would pay for the drone so dispute that seems kind of absurd now, but it was bureaucratically it was hard to do, and Mike Sheehan and Dick Clark were pushing for this. And, you know, I think the drone program in a lot of ways has been very successful and don't take my word for it take a sound bin Laden's word for it if you look at the documents in the about about compound. Again and again he returns to the dangers posed by the drone program and the dangers it poses to his organization such that he was even planning to move al-Qaeda out of the Saudi minister tribal areas in Pakistan deeper into Pakistan back into Afghanistan maybe to Iran he didn't know that he was very concerned about it. And so this program which obviously you know this issues around civilian casualties which are certainly it could sound although those have gone down significantly over time and the program itself has been more or less suspended entirely by the Biden administration with the exception of a drone, a recent prone strike in Somalia that was actually African actually officially admitted to it because of because of an inquiry by David Sturman of New America. But the book so in terms of the book that Mike and Liam and Eric edited my my particular part of it was was the drone program which I think you know, owes this genesis to people like Dick Clark and Mike Sheehan. And, you know, in terms of the damage it did to al-Qaeda was highly effective, according to bin Laden himself. Liam warned me about that. Let me just follow up with one with one question, which is that when we're thinking about irregular warfare hybrid warfare. One thing that doesn't get mentioned often is kidnapping. Would you hostage taking would you include that in the I mean I've noticed a number of articles recently have actually talked about this in light of the current conflict. And is that part of it that I think people don't usually address. I mean, I think that's a very good question and I mean Lucas better positioned even to talk about it than I am but I mean, you know, one, we used to be concerned about terrorist groups taking hostages which is still a concern but now we have states using this as a tool of you know, strategic warfare against their adversaries whether it's Iranians or the Russians. And now the Taliban. And, you know, it's it actually poses interesting problems for the US government kind of apparatus which was largely focused on correctly on the ISIS terrorist hostage taking problem. And now we need to also think about how do you deal with states or using this as a tool of state craft. In many, you know, in many cases and you've got two Americans right now in Russia. Paul well and, and Trevor read I think amongst many others you know that that are there are real concern. Thank you, Elizabeth let's turn to you. Your, your piece in this book is jihad militancy and who the insurgency in Yemen. And it's just a terrific overview of the rise of the who these in Yemen. And the content in the context of the history of Yemen, I just have to say you do an awful lot and very, you know, concise amount of pages so thank you for that. I can recommend it highly enough. One of the things you touch on in your chapter is the way in which and I'm quoting counter terrorism has become a convenient justification for all sides and the ongoing battles. And I just wondered if you could just sort of expand on this a little bit both in the context of Yemen and perhaps elsewhere if you want to. Because what does that really mean if a term gets, you know, use so much that it no longer has the, you know, the accuracy and the definitional quality that it once had just can you talk about that and then I'm going to turn a little bit to communication. Right, well what I meant by that is that counter terrorism has become a, a cart blanche, get out of jail free card for all sorts of actors in the war in Yemen. Because when you're trying to score political points against your enemies you obviously have the unbelievably strong excuse that your enemies also happen to be terrorists. That's the first thing. So for example, the Houthis in their recent expansions into central Yemen have been able to position themselves to frame themselves as a counter terrorism partner by claiming that their expansionist ambitions across Yemen are actually a counter terrorism operation. So there may be some elements of truth to that in the sense that as the Houthis have expanded groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have either disappeared or fallen back or gone to other areas. But of course there's definitely a question here about how much that's been done in coordination with the Houthis rather than as a direct result of being combated by the Houthis. One aspect, another aspect is that it's very convenient to false flag operations, politically motivated operations to terrorist groups. So when you are for example fighting the southern separatists down in and around Aden, well you can claim that that isn't actually the Houthis or you, the Saudi bit of the coalition fighting them. You can claim that that is in fact Al Qaeda doing it. Now I'm not making any hard and fast judgments here I hasten to add but what I'm saying is that it's really difficult to figure out what's going on now because terrorism has become such a woolly concept and even the labels Al Qaeda and Islamic State have become really quite opaque, much more difficult and more blurred to define than they were five or six years ago at the start of the war. And do you have a policy solution or a legal solution or a diplomatic solution to that or is it just something you think we have to sort of just think harder about how we how we label things or is there some prescriptive you have in mind. Well yeah of course it's much easier to talk about the problems and figure out the solutions right, but I think there are a couple of things that we could be thinking about more clearly. First of all, identifying the fake news, if you like, this has become so much more difficult year by year it's become more difficult, even some of the guys I started out with cameras and one of my trips to Yemen a few years ago even some of these guys have now been co-opted by other actors in the war to start churning out something that looks like citizen journalism but really isn't. You know I've been myself in in the middle court in demonstrations which were for one thing but were then projected on local TV stations as being for something else. I don't know, these look like primary sources, but but if you weren't there you wouldn't realize that they've been mislabeled or a few extra flags had been put on in people's hands to make it look like they were, for example in support of southern separatists whereas in fact they're in support of eastern independence that kind of thing. So what we could do. I guess the first thing is a lot more human intelligence real people things on the ground in person that I know that that's complicated but nothing beats it, because you're, you know people you can trust, looking at things firsthand and who know what they're doing so that would be the second thing so really you need to be obey with the source languages. So when you're looking at it from a distance like you know this study where I'm sitting in London at the moment you know if you have to be reading the original Arabic sources really to figure out are they using the same words and their statements that they were using last year or is this now being faked by a group pretending to be al-Qaeda or the Houthis or have they evolved. And so that's then leads us on to the third thing which is a very deep cultural historical knowledge. Something that where you can be tipped off by by different clues and the style in who's speaking and how they're speaking and the kinds of references they're using as to how authentic something is. And that's not something that you can do just by being sent on a crash course to, you know, by the Foreign Office to Cairo for six months to learn some Egyptian Arabic, and then hope you're going to be able to get by somewhere in Iraq or or North Africa or Iraq you know this is this requires strong investment and and a big time commitment. I think that would be helpful. You know, I, I just wonder if just one more thing which is that we've been hearing that since 911 that you know we need a deeper understanding of, of these cultures we need a deeper understanding on the ground we've got so my question to you is not have we solved it which I get the answer, but have, have we gotten better at it, or did we never really do the homework we needed to do to be able to immerse ourselves and, and share information and understand what's going on in the way we need to how do you see the curve of this, the direction. Well, I think we're still, and you know perhaps rightly I used to sit in judgment but in terms of the outcomes we want, not rightly, but we're still very risk averse. It's difficult these will pull out, pull out all your embassy folk but even when even before we pull out our embassy folk. It's a hardship post so you're you're in there for, I don't know six months you're quickly out again in out. And also there's a massive turnover, not just in diplomatic personnel but in the military as well, where there's automatic career progression so as soon as you start peeling off the layers of a really tricky place. You're moving on to the next place. So I'm not so sure we, we might be saying the same things again and again but I'm not convinced that we're really learning the lessons. And even, and I remember being in sonar when we still had an embassy there and visiting out visiting colleagues, you know, actually getting out and figuring out what's going on. It's quite different from being in your, your guarded convoy your four by four and doing a circle between the US Embassy the UN and then back to the UK Embassy and etc how are you ever going to know, and also relying too much on regional allies because you think, well they're, they're in the region, Arabic speakers, they must know what they're doing. But perhaps they're also relying on the same old elites that they've been relying on for years. So, I just think we need to be a bit sharper. Thank you. Luke, let's turn to you, your chapter on US counterterrorism policy in Yemen from 2010 to 2020. It's an app partner to Elizabeth's. It has this wonderful conology of sort of the rise and fall of the US engagement there, particularly but not only with with drone strikes that Peter was referencing. But you have this list of five core policy imperatives that defined US intentions in Yemen, and one of them, I just want to focus on if you don't mind which is the imperative of avoiding over commitment. I'm wondering, where, how do you see this now, you know, have, have we successfully avoided over commitment, have we overly avoided over commitment, and where do you see our appetite for commitment these days and I if you feel like thinking beyond Yemen, feel free. Yeah, thanks Karen appreciate that question and you know just briefly, I think it wanted to say again what an amazing guy Mike she was and how fortunate I felt to have him as a boss mentor and I think one of the great things about working with Mike and I think it's actually really well reflected is for a guy who studied insurgency for living he kind of ran his policy operations like it was an insurgency, you know he put together these kind of small band of misfits I mean I'm a former Peace Corps volunteer I have no idea what I was doing on his team former military officers others. You know, pushing for Mike's really big and revolutionary and not the stiff boring stuff you typically get bureaucracy but entrepreneurial ideas and pushing that through and I think, I think that just comes through so well. In this handbook, I remember some of the edits might gave me during the process they were combative in the best of ways, really pushing me to think hard to create an excellent product but also just because you enjoy that process so it's really an honor to be part of this. I'm going to be remiss if I didn't mention that. But you know to your specific question Karen. Yeah, I mean I think that that that dynamic of avoiding over commitment. And when I was getting out there was was there was a time and during the Obama administration will talk about the Yemen model and the Yemen model was a really good thing right it was a small footprint, some limited drone strikes some military assistance and some civilian assistance that was essentially going to take the country into a better place and for several years it looked like that's exactly where we were going. You know, looking at it now, both reading the words that I wrote a couple years ago and, and looking at what's happened in the war in the year sense. It's hard to look at it as anything but like a pretty complex and utter failure. I think the, I think the over commitment point gets at, you know, we never did bring in the kind of civilian assistance that we wanted to both because we didn't want to over commit also because we were very risk verse after Benghazi that included civilian experts that also included military experts again something that Mike she and was always pushing for he always wanted to get more military trainers and more, more assistance to to the local forces. And he meant that we never have that right posture in there to actually be able to do the things we want to do. So there's one like right to me I even have the right right tools in place. And there's a second question of do we even have the right judgment to make it to get to the outcomes we want to achieve and I think a lot of this gets that at Elizabeth's point about just how poorly we misunderstood the many political climate. And how poorly we understood how some of the reforms that we were pushing whether that was, you know, removing loyalists to former president solid to all the moves in from security services. The dynamics of the Houthis that failure of imagination to imagine that the Houthis and the solid might actually come together around a shared objective. And that kind of blew up in our face and, and one of the dynamics in these specific events that I talked about in my chapter was so critical that was, was our efforts to push the IMF's fiscal reforms in Yemen, ultimately mean that are the most important one being the revocation of the of the fuel subsidies. And that was sort of the final match that lit the fire right and that was the pretext that the Houthis use was outrage and there was legitimate outrage about sudden rising fuel prices in Yemen. Even if it was a good ultimate fiscal policy thing was that there was a lot of concerns about that. And he seized on that to seize power and I think we missed so many details like that. That ultimately led to, to the overthrow of the Hadi governments and, and the rise of the Houthis. We did some stuff well, right. Peter talked about the direct action program the direct action program definitely removed a lot of top Al Qaeda leaders definitely made an impact on the threat both within Yemen as well as abroad. And where we failed there and I think we already see us failing on direct action consistently over the last, you know, 20 years is just an utter lack of transparency around it. And a real unwillingness to engage effectively around allegations of civilian casualties. So, you know, no matter how effective our drone strike campaign was in Yemen, you look at things like you know the strike that was reported to have taken place in December of 2013 where claimed to have hit a wedding party and, and the US just never addressed that there's never been a public statement made on that on that particular reported operation and things like that ultimately really kill your credibility and any chance you have to say that we're fighting the good fight. I think that that credibility sort of goes up and smoke. So, I'll pause there and answer a little bit of your question and a little bit, a little bit more. No, that was great. I have one follow up question which is expand, expand a little bit on what you mean by civilian assistance what would that look like what what what is that. Yeah, I mean several points we talked about doing things like doing a pretty robust police and rule of law training program where the State Department would have funded a substantial amount of civilian trainers both contract trainers as well as kind of career State and US AD or Department of Justice type employees to come in and really help the many's build build that up. There were other other aid programs were looking at civilian aid counter violent extremism type programs, things that ultimately we just couldn't do because we had a very strict cap on the number of people that we could have in Yemen. That was driven by in some cases the ability to secure the facilities that they were staying in. In other cases just a real risk aversion after Benghazi, where we were doing you know weekly secure video teleconferences where we were viewing threats from around the world. So we never we never got that aid in there we never had a robust civilian assistance program we put some money into Yemen we didn't have the kinds of personnel and expertise that we need to really build capacity within within the many government for things like governance and rule of law. However, I worry that sometimes in one of the critiques I've gotten it talking some friends about about this chapter is that you know I sort of attempted at times to treat this like a technical if only we could have gotten more civilian assistance in place we would have done better. But I think there's again back to my point about the many political dynamics there's a real savvy and understanding of the many political dynamics that we just totally missed. I mean we, or we got it in half measures. It's everything that Elizabeth was saying just a couple minutes ago that we didn't get right and, and I think when we're looking forward when we're looking at places where we're going to have to probably engage and negotiate with some, you know, some less than ideal partners or in cases where we're going to have to negotiate with some real out now adversaries thinking of like all Shabaab and Somalia where there's been this there's been increasing calls for negotiations with them. We got to we got to up our game a lot and that means really developing the types of expertise we need to be able to engage in that and then in developing some really smart and creative approaches to to those negotiations. Thank you. Liam, you've been writing and thinking about counter terrorism encounter insurgency for many decades now, both on the ground and from afar, you have two chapters in this book, one on special operations forces, special operations command with Charles Cleveland and one on dismantling al-Qaeda in Iraq. Peter and Elizabeth and Luke have kind of given us a rather negative assessment of what's gone on and what continues to go on in region. Would you disagree with that and I'm just curious on your, how you weigh the effectiveness of what the United States has tried to do militarily with his intelligence forces and diplomatically and where you think we are now given all of these years. Yeah, so first I want to follow up on something Elizabeth and Luke both said they talked about being risk and risk averse which I agree but I take a little more nuanced approach to it I think we're short term risk averse which actually means we're long term risk seeking without knowing it right we aren't assuming that risk in the short term, putting people at these embassies or whatever it is getting them out where they can actually gather this information. And in the long term that right so we're long term risk seeking and don't realize it. Yeah, so where we're at I mean so you know I'll talk about, you know, hit Afghanistan a little bit because I think it's relevant we've been talking about that and kind of have some similarities to Syria and Yemen or compare and contrast those but one of the things that emerges from the book, and looking at examination of us irregular warfare operations is somewhat ironically or counter intuitively we find that more more likely to have success when people don't care about it. Right, or when we self limit our investment to it. When we invest too much in it we almost doom ourselves to failure right plan Columbia right was a fraction of what the US investment was in Afghanistan Iraq and, at least in right in terms of uncertainty not necessarily a counter drug but widely viewed as a fairly successful at about a 10 billion dollar initial cost versus one or two trillion in Afghanistan and Iraq. And the same thing right, there was a force cap unintentional force capable only 55 for operations in El Salvador, and that's widely viewed as a successful counter uncertainty campaign. And they were forced to deploy as trainers and advisors they couldn't engage in frontline combat. The military didn't even care about the operation right, and if the military cared about it then they would have screwed it up right so who was left running it primarily seven special forces group. And so they could kind of call their own placements forward and switch them out right if the military got involved right, it would make a combat patch for it would be a named operation. If somebody would think they need it for promotion and they would start cycling folks in that were completely unqualified for the mission, just to get them the experience down there so they can, they can do that. And so I think that's kind of the case that you see throughout it kind of related to that is another thing that emerges is right. We've all heard this but yet we continue to do it right don't mirror image when we build a US, you know, don't mirror image their political or military institution in the US is image right, understand their culture. You know their history to create by political and military institutions that fit what they are in Afghanistan right we focused on building a national army which never made any sense right. The most success we had were kind of the village stability operations Afghan local police but we started that too late and didn't engage in that process long enough. In kind of if you look historically what does the US do fairly well right when another country has decided to put their political will to it and their budget into building a military will really good at building a military forum. The country doesn't have the will or budget to it really good at building kind of a niche force that we can isolate from the corrupt non functional problematic military and we did that in Afghanistan and we did that Iraq with smaller, you know smaller forces. But we're not good at building a military to scale when there's no national commitment, and no one's good at doing that. And yet that was what we really did in Afghanistan and Iraq and so it should be no surprise that right the Iraqi military folded against right the Islamic State really not. We're not talking the Russian word coming across the border and the Afghan military against the Taliban in Afghanistan right these are not sophisticated well armed enemy, and yet they folded right by contrast right Columbia El Salvador, or widely successful. And so I kind of you know we all heard the saying that all politics is local I have a corollary to that and that's all security is local in Afghanistan and Iraq I think we kind of forgot that. And then kind of a third a third kind of theme along that lines right kind of mentioned this is anytime if we're doing a regular work we're supporting these kind of operations. We often do better if we retreat if we prevent our forces from engaging in combat. Right because what happens if they engage in combat right we can't help ourselves right then we want to leave the operations we aren't so worried about building the local force. Again the village stability operation if you only have a six or a 12 person special forces detachment, you have to rely on the locals for security, as opposed to just running around and hitting targets on your own. In the same right now Salvador was the same case. And again in Iraq, we didn't, we had the same problem right special forces attachments wanted to go and do direct action when that wasn't there wasn't their goal for that. And then, you know, following up on Luke said I think Luke was talking about over commitment and I think. I think I mean it's technically I think the right term but I think really what we mean is not an over investment right, we have to be committed right we have to be committed to Yemen. Otherwise, why are we even there. So commitment isn't the problem. Well it is a problem we aren't always committed but we should be committed but we can't over invest and that's I think that we should think of it that way. Let me just follow up with this you know one of the things you're really talking about is reacting to things that are going on in country right, but then there's also the counter terrorism mission of preventive counter terrorism. And what I was going through a bunch of Mike's old stuff and getting ready for this and he had given this interview to harpers, I don't know like 14 years ago. The biggest challenge now is to prevent al Qaeda from exporting its local terrorist capacity capability from Pakistan and Iraq to other parts of the world. And so we've seen, you know, terrorist groups, sometimes identifying with al Qaeda me tells Liz with this point, what does it even mean al Qaeda anymore as a, but as a brand and just sometimes with ISIS. How do you assess this in terms of our successes in countering the development of terrorism globally, and, and what more could we do in this respect or is it something we should focus elsewhere instead. I mean, it's obviously it's a challenge to try to prevent the spread or those things right the democratization of the means of violence right information is available. And so I think it's really preventing the attacks that can really hamper us. We've been pretty successful about doing that but it's definitely hard, hard to prevent and and when you, you know, even 15 years ago we were arguing right that everything was al Qaeda right because there's advantages to be called al Qaeda right you get the brand is ISIS after that right brand affiliation because you're you're not really anybody if you're the global Salafist for preaching in combat, the media is not going to cover you because they, no one cares to breed about GSPC but you put al Qaeda in front of the name. Then it's, it's relevant and then same thing from a from a policy perspective, right we have certain tools as long as we can tie him to al Qaeda or something. So everybody's incentivized actually to lump them in as al Qaeda or Islamic State, whether it's you know media to report on them, or gives us policy tools. And so it actually makes it harder to kind of understand the difference differences within the broad al Qaeda the broader Islamic State or whatever the next generation is. Elizabeth you want to add anything to that. I will just add one thing you probably saw me nodding away because I was agreeing so much with what Liam was saying, but just one thing that he reminded me of that Liam reminded me of was on some interviews in some interviews I was doing on the ground in in Yemen. In the middle of the pandemic. I remember some of the locals telling me that there are groups along the coast in a place called Shabwa who were claiming to be al Qaeda. Not because they wanted Western media attention although, but because they could claim a higher price on the ground for becoming guns for hire for other militias actors in the war. And they said that they were al Qaeda they they'd get more money than if they were just some regular gang so you can see how the waters are muddied and so many different ways. Let's turn to some of the questions. Here's one. Does the panel find disarmament demobilization and reintegration promotion programs for ex combatants to be effective. And one of the things that I find that is, you know, if you carve out some space for de radicalization of ex combatants. Is this something that works and if so, how does that work. Anybody want to take that on Luke. I mean, look, there's a pretty, pretty rich body of research that I cannot speak about it in any great depth around DDR programs and what works and what doesn't work and we have, you know, tons of experience on this from a whole range of different conflicts, some of which are more or less accessible to a terrorist environment, maybe Elizabeth or anybody else in the more academic background can speak to some of that is essential right and, and I think things like DDR things like counter and violent extremism have been the really under invested tools throughout the world and and will worries me a lot about that is, what are we going to do in a place like Yemen where eventually the fighting will stop with these are we presume at some point the Civil War will end. And you will have a lot of people who, you know, a lot of disgruntled young young men who decided to fight the who these who may be drawn to terrorist groups. And that, I think there's a lot of case to be made that the decrease in all kind of activity in Yemen has is a track responsive sort of fighters being converted to the anti healthy cause instead. If you look at a place like Somalia, you're going to have similar types of challenges. If we ever get to a point of some level of reconciliation, or the such with with all Shabbat and there's some programs that they've stood up and in in this trip that have had kind of limited and limited success but, but at least some early ideas of how I do that. You know, we need to, we need a lot more to figure out how those programs can work effectively in these contexts and then to appropriately fund them. And then to develop some metrics for what actually works or not I think one of the things that's really frustrating when I worked in the Obama administration are preventing violent extremism efforts is, we just had so little metrics so few metrics on which, which of those metrics actually worked in which of them would actually achieve the goal of sort of undermining the jihadist cause but that's a perhaps unsatisfactory answer. Not unsatisfactory at all. Peter I want to ask you something that sort of flips that a little bit which is that Luke referred to you know of course the war in Yemen will end. One of the other things that's happening is this persistent, you know, conflict on the ground throughout the region, not just Yemen, which you've been writing about detailing and observing, and now kind of wondering as the shift of the globe turns to other things whether it's global issues whether it's Russia and Ukraine, whether it's China you know to big power rivalries. How do you see this affecting either our attention for Yemen Afghanistan Syria, or the reality on the ground, in other words, do you have hope for some kind of stability in the region and, and do you think that the, the attention of the rest of the world is it's being drawn out is going to have an impact there. If you're an Afghan. Yes, you think you know the, you're very worried about the fact that the world's attention is just completely consumed with Ukraine and it's not like Afghanistan's issues have gone away. I would say the biggest change since 911 is sectarianism, which of course the United States had a major role in provoking. You know, absent our invasion of Iraq, and then the subsequent civil war, which was sectarian nature, the sectarianism we're seeing in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq. I think that you know we, we were part of the original sin there. And I think that's the biggest change I mean if you look at the modern. The alarm was not looking to create some sort of sectarian war across the region. ISIS certainly is and if you look at the attacks in Pakistan. Just in the last two weeks where they killed several dozen worshippers at a sheer mosque in Peshawar. And if you look at the increasing attacks on sheer and has arrows in Afghanistan so this thing is sort of spreading it's always existed of course and. I think that's the big shift that we're seeing but I do picking up on something that Liam said and also Elizabeth and, and I'm Luke we mean that if we were to go back and do this all over again. The war on terror. I would say you know there was a debate in the Pentagon during the Obama administration about what to do in Afghanistan and there was a part of the debate was go light and go long. But the people proposing that didn't win the debate one of them was Joe Biden, and he's made I think a big mistake by just pulling the plug entirely. But going light and go long would have had several, I think very effective for all the reasons that Elizabeth and Liam and Luke or sort of alluded to. It would also be very politically sustainable in United States because it wouldn't have cost a huge amount of money. It would be politically sustainable in the countries that basically wanted us to be there like Afghanistan and Iraq and we still have 2500 soldiers in Iraq that we've relabeled non combatant ish soldiers and that really is just to sort of satisfy the sheer political parties and it seems to be good enough for the moment. In Afghanistan is all sorts of that we could have if we'd left one marine outside the US Embassy and said that marine is going to be there indefinitely that's what the the Afghans could tell us whether we have 3500 troops or 8400 as we had at the end of Obama or whatever. What they wanted to hear is that we were planning to be there, you know, for the long term, and saying that would cost us absolutely nothing would have been in our interests their interests. When we said we were leaving everybody else left and the contractors left. And that was very important because there was 6000 American contractors keeping the Afghan Air Force, you know, up in the air. So anyway, I think if there was a big lesson, at least I take away from this discussion is that going like and going long would have been politically sustainable. And, you know, obviously wouldn't be the, there's no perfect solution it would have been the least bad solution that's been proposed. So I think we should get to Ukraine, which I know we want to do. I want to just raise something that's along the lines of what Elizabeth introduced, which is these new kind of weapons that are being referred to as, you know, weapons of warfare that are hybrid weapons, and cryptocurrency, and social media and I just want to focus on the social media for a moment, and just ask you all. And I know Elizabeth has spoken on this but I'm curious of all of you thinking, you know, what are the ability do you think to really counter the social media. Look at a social media war, and how it affects what we know how we react. Is this something that you have confidence we're going to get on top of or is it something you think is going to linger. Because I noticed that that a Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine today was reported as, you know, pronouncing that social media was a modern weapon of war, with his intention to use it that way. Is that what we want, because we want it to, on both sides or is this a way of calming this down I mean how do you see the social media component, and Elizabeth we should probably start with you so you could pick up from your comments from before and then we'll go around. So that is a very difficult question. But yes, there's no question that social media is immensely influential. And since we've managed to knock so many of the platforms off. I'm offline. So I'm thinking, was it November 20 November 2018 I think a lot at Europol and Interpol did quite a lot with Telegram, because I follow, I follow Al Qaeda and, well and some of the Islamic State groups in real time. All day every day and sometimes in the middle of the night as well so I'm constantly looking at looking at what they're putting out, and it has become much more difficult to find them. And we're now in much smaller spaces where you have to really be looking for them in order to be able to find them so what I've always thought we've done very badly is the counter messaging. It's going to be too bad at knocking them knocking them off line closing their platforms down. And I think that when someone's had their platform closed down for the 15th 20th time, no longer feels like the badge of honor it did the first or second time it starts to feel quite painful and annoying, and probably quite demoralizing. Why on earth, we don't seem able to counter message effectively. And for that one is, we're doing ourselves instead of collecting authentic voices and perhaps helping to magnify them. I don't think it works when you're putting out messages as, as a government or as a contractor that's very obviously linked to the government. And also, undermining. I mean, I think there are a lot of lessons one can learn from how Al Qaeda tried to undermine Islamic State, the kinds of derogatory terms they used the kinds of exposés they did a lot of humor, which was very undermining. I think we could be watching the groups themselves to also learn a little bit on how to undermine well. The one final point I'd make is that on the ground I noticed. Sorry, this is in Yemen again, but I noticed that so many more people are using social media obviously than there were at the beginning of the war seven years ago, but also that they're not necessarily professionally on things like Twitter, and Telegram, but news travels by like wildfire and WhatsApp groups, and they're much more trusted. Now I don't know if that's just my microcosmic experience but but my senses, you know, my sense is that that's quite widespread. That's that's a much more popular platform. Luke, I'd like to bring you in here because in your writing about various policies and you're writing about, in particular, the promise of diplomacy. You know, to what extent is the exchanges that are going on, you know, non officially messing things up in terms of how we address things how do you see, or do you really think that's a separate thing social media or is it really something that interferes and that we could counter in several ways, both hard and soft ways. Yeah, I mean I think it was really highlighted a lot of the key challenges and how we think about social media and, you know, one of the, one of the things I had the fortune to work on government was establishing what's now that global engagement center, which we had stood up and kind of reinvented it for iteration of it. And one of the insights that we achieved and this is a really awesome process we brought in these experts on messaging and technology and spread of information from Silicon Valley from, from Madison Avenue kind of across this kind of cross society type effort that I think we all sort of aspire to one of the things we really found was that you can't, you can't put out us messaging right us messaging is just inherently not cool it's not going to resonate. It doesn't matter, you know how slick you make it look, you have to identify and you have to amplify credible voices that oppose those who you want to counter. And sometimes those might be voices that you do not fully embrace that those might be some anti American voices in fact they're anti American but they're not propellants right. And so it's this tricky dance of identifying that range of voices out there, where they need assistance with, you know, improving their production quality or amplifying their efforts, being able to lean into that and to be able to help them with that. And giving yourself some of the, the political runway which I think is really important in this space to be able to work with groups that, you know on their face might be the sort of thing that a, you know a marker Ruby or a Ted Cruz but season is being the the not the kind of group want to work with again it's not about this having a full close partnership with this group or with this particular voice. It's about identifying credible voices that can ultimately undermine those of your adversary. And, and I think we put that that a really great system in place that you know it's always challenging because this is hits you really deep into the kind of the risk aversion of the bureaucracy and the unwillingness to really engage in this kind of provocative you know you don't you don't typically we're going to meet a company now right we don't we don't operate by committee we don't have a long interagency coordination process you have to be nimble you have to be agile on it sometimes fear governments not up to that task. I don't think though and I think this we saw this certainly beginning of the ISIS challenge and when ISIS first kind of really well online and they got a ton of attention for that. And what we're also seeing it now is a broad outpouring of desire from across society to be helpful, right. And like I said, we built this really great effort that involved Madison Avenue involves Silicon Valley and Hollywood, and, and it just sort of language and the Trump administration because so many of the centers were so opposed to President Trump, but I think there's a real desire to help and I think there's a real opportunity for the administration, both on counterterrorism but it's even now on on Ukraine and Russia issues to build a really effective partnership with those outside of government who can help with these tricky messaging solutions. Interesting, Liam that kind of he teed it up for you to talk about Ukraine. You were in Ukraine from 2016 to 2018 working with General Abizade. Can you bring this conversation around to what's happening in Ukraine and the sort of questions it pushes puts before the American security establishment and the world. How do you see this I mean particularly in terms of what you said before your distinction between, you know, an appetite for long term risk or short term risk and how you how you see this and the current conflict. Yeah, first, to answer your last questions about counter and violent extremism online and social media recruitment chapters 29 and 30 in the book so available online so go ahead and for the listeners they can go they can get a longer explanation of that. Yes, turning towards Ukraine I mean first of all right we talked about again short term risk aversion. I seriously doubt we have any advisors there, an advisor observers right I mean we used to put observers in wars all the time right on both sides when we can obviously we're not going to get them on Russia side to really understand how was war emerging right we didn't do it in in 2020 and in the in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. We should have done this right. And that's how we get a sense of where warfare is going by being there as opposed to observing it after the fact. So that's something where we could take more of a risk to really understand what's going on on the ground better from, you know, from what direction, it's going to go. In terms of the war and how it's playing out yeah I mean I think we're all a little bit shocked on on Russia's kind of initial strategy, especially after executing up, you know the seizure of Crimea to perfection, obviously a massive underperformance by them so it's hard but going back with you know time and in a little bit of building the force I mean Ukraine we were over there they were committed to building a competent military in in their president it was President Poroshenko at the time and their minister defense and chief of defense. At the time, they were not worried about the fight in the done boss right the low level conflict that was going on in the east, they were definitely afraid of a Russian invasion which is what happened and they were incentivized to reform their military to defend as well as possible against that. And that was with their concern every day and so that's really what they were trying to build and what they're in what our advice to them was for. I remember advisory efforts from different nations but again sometimes at that time different people within different nations were trying to too much mirror image right our model but just figuring out what what is Ukrainian model for the military need to be like. No pause there. I'm curious your thoughts here as somebody who's watched so many US engagements abroad go go awry. So many global counter terrorism counter, you know, violence initiatives go forward. What does Ukraine look like to you do you see this as something that's going to evolve into a long war or do you see this something is more of yet another region that will be in disarray for X amount of years, in which we try to nip nip and tuck at I know you don't have a crystal ball but is this look like what we've been encountering in the past just happens to be nation state actors or does this really seem like a difference of magnitude of character, etc. I think that's a good point that we just discussed it's amazing how incompetent Russians have been who have been long trumpeted as masters of hybrid warfare and yet. Zelensky is doing daily press conferences and social media appearances and they haven't shut down anything it seems so what what what do the Ukrainians learn from the Crimea experience where the Russians did deploy effective cyber warfare seems that they have. They've only observed half a millennia ago that wars begin when when you will but they do not end when you please and so you know we don't know you're you're you're you better also said it's hard to make predictions, especially about the future. And so we just don't know but I mean the most likely outcome is what we're seeing now which is a quagmire that goes on for a year, and it's a slow bleeding ulcer on the Russian Russian body politic. There's all sorts of uncertain consequences. So, I mean, to me that's, you know, and then of course there is the possibility of peace, which will satisfy no one but you know that peace arrives when there's a mutually hurting stalemate, which maybe now. The possibility of Ukrainians win, unlikely and perhaps but they could push back. And then there's the possibility that Putin is removed. I mean these are all so but possibility number one is the most likely. But there are various futures that could happen. One question that for you with sort of follows on what Peter said which is that President Biden and Tony Blinken have ratcheted up the diplomatic effort. Even prior to this in terms of restoring much of what had been weakened in recent years. And I think that's one of the challenges of diplomacy having an impact resolving impact in Ukraine given what you know about the strengths of today's State Department I know that's kind of a predictive question but but how robust are we right now and and how confident are they they might be able to do that. I apologize. I love to re quote the the yoga bear quote that a few bird just use. I mean, look, I think this administration as as prioritized diplomacy as prioritize, maintain the liberal world order. There's no, no doubt that their, their playbook for how they're dealing with this and their approach to it so far has been kind of right out of that idea of lead with diplomacy lead with alliances build international consensus before you do it which is sort of all the sort of are striking how Afghanistan went so poorly right is sort of like they didn't seem to fully embrace that that playbook and in the, in the execution of the, of the drawdown, which was a policy I supported but the the actual implementation was very powerful so so clearly there's a a clearly there's a, the intention is the right place. The focus is in the right place. But can they actually do it. You know I think a lot of that depends on do we have the right ambassadors in place and other diplomats to be able to actually execute on this plan. We actually have the still the credibility with some of our allies that has been strained over the last couple of years both in the Trump administration with the undermining things and and in many cases over disputes over how we waste a war on terror so you know anyways I think that we're going to be in a position where great power, the conflict looking at Russia, China, etc, is going to be more important going forward counter terrorism is going to get squeezed, and it's going to be all the more important that we have robust diplomatic support for and approaches, and frankly that we're willing to accept some risk and we're willing to rely on some of the really great defensive capabilities are outlined in the, in the, the textbook to keep us safe. Thank you for that. I think it's, I think we've gone a long way to understanding how, you know when they write the history books. It's what happened before, and this is something that you point out in your essays, you know. It's the war that infects or infuses how we act in the present. And so, in the long term how the war on terror affects how all of us confront this new instability and this new war front. It's important and I just thank you so much for reminding us of what it is we're bringing to the table both in terms of our regrets, and our hopes for, you know what we, what we fixed and what we whoever we are I think we know how to do. We're out of time. Let me just say that I know Mike would have loved this. I know he'd be so proud of this book. So thank you all and we'll see you next time.