 Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for being here throughout the day. So we're going to close out with our fireside chat. And we can't have as much fun, Rob, as we did the other week. OK. We have some very distinguished guests and Rob Jenkins. Anne Wachowski is the Assistant Secretary of Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations US Department of State. She has had a very long career, both in and out of the government. And we are thrilled where she is and what she's doing with the GFA and many other policies and actions. Rob Jenkins is the titles are so long. The Assistant to the Administrator, USAID Bureau for Conflict, Prevention, and Stabilization. He serves as the Assistant to the Minister to Ambassador Power. You can tell it's the afternoon. It's the last session. Joe McMemmon. McMemmon. He's the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Counter-Narcotics and Global Threats, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Low Intensity Conflict. And Ambassador James, who is a senior advisor here at the Africa for the Africa program here at USIP and also had a very long and distinguished career as a Foreign Service Officer. So this is going to be a great discussion. Ambassador James and I are going to be the moderators. And so I'm going to start you all off. I have too many pages here. OK. OK. Development, Diplomacy and Defense, the 3Ds. We talk about it all the time. And I wrote an article recently. I'll just plug it in, Just Security. If you have insomnia, you can, you should read it before you go to bed. Where we talk about the plans for the GFA. And in this article, I am quoted as saying, coordination between the 3Ds has been promising. So I'm not going to go into what those are, because I'm going to let them go into it. But as I told them, I wouldn't say it if I didn't believe it. So this question goes to all the speakers. We talk about the 3Ds a lot. But what is this nexus between development, peace, and security? Why do we need it? And how do we better leverage it and integrate peace building across the 3Ds? This is how well we're getting along. Rob, a seat at the floor to me. Thank you. Well, first of all, before I answer the question, I just want to say thank you, Liz. Thank you for the opportunity to be here with all of you. So many of you have been so instrumental in bringing the Global Fragility Act into being and to continue to work with us to move it forward to make implementation a reality. So thank you. We really, really appreciate your partnership. The 3D piece is absolutely vital to the way that we're moving forward in implementing the Global Fragility Act. We are at the front end of a decade-long effort and we are moving ahead. Why is it important that, what is this nexus? Why is it important? It is important because if we are going to make progress in complex places with partners in countries where we are trying to work toward prevention, we need to be able to work with all the tools that are available to us within the US government. And in order to do that, we need to be working together. We need to be working together against a commonly agreed set of objectives with a common understanding of the baseline analysis and then forge ahead to take our policies, our programming, and related resources and apply them in the best way possible. And we are doing that. We are doing that in unprecedented ways for this purpose. And we are, we think there's a lot of promise in what we've been able to achieve so far, transmitting the tenure plans to Congress. We also know we have a long way to go and we're counting on all of you to hold us accountable and to continue to partner with us as we proceed in this unprecedented 3D effort. That was great. Now I have to come up with something to say that tries to make sense. We sometimes in our work have little victories and sometimes we have big victories. An example of a little victory was this morning when our German colleague from the foreign ministry talked about how they're integrating the 3Ds in the German government. So the term has legs. And later this month, Ann and I, with DOD colleagues, will be traveling to Stockholm for what used to be just a foreign ministry event, the Stabilization Leaders Forum. Last year, as a sign of how our government is doing things differently, Ann and team invited us along and we were the only ones there, about 16 different donors that had both state and aid, those 2Ds. We worked hard this year to convince the Swedish hosts and DOD will now be joining us this year. So we'll be the only ones there with 3Ds trying to show the other donors why 3Ds are important, why 3Ds are important. We say it so much because it's true. All of these situations, whether it's a region, a sub-region, a country, a province, it's terribly complex. It's layer upon layer. It's the lack of a social compact. It's corruption. It's extremism. It's ethnicities that don't get along. You name it. Why would we not want to use every tool in our toolbox? So at aid, our Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization, we're dedicated to trying to prevent and if we can, try to solve or mitigate violence, conflict. We're there to respond to crises and opportunities, political transitions where they arise. And we work to help our entire agency work across government in a whole of government fashion. And for that we have an office dedicated just to civil military cooperation. We have USAID people at all the relevant combatant commands. We have six people full-time at Stuttgart at AFRICOM. We have dedicated DOD folks in our building every day. Even when there weren't many people in the building every day, you can always count on DOD to show up. I just think that 3Ds is a little too small. And the next step, and I think what we're trying to, trying to show the rest of the government is how we can work together. It's not easy. It's hard. We have a team that works together every day, every day. And that's become a nucleus to which we try to bring in the rest of the interagency. I think that's the next challenge. How do we really get in treasuries there? DHS is there if it's women, peace and security, case by case. But if we can expand the 3Ds to really be what we try to be as a whole of government, I think we'll be making a great step into the future. Yeah, good afternoon. I'd like to build off of Rob's comments a little bit. I was actually involved in some of the original stability activities and operations working with State Department and AID in 2006 and 2009. And one of the key points that we built after we built the 3Ds was what we used to call the little Ds. And our Treasury partners, our DHS partners, Justice partners that were out there working alongside of AID, Defense, and State in some of the activities that we looked at globally. So the idea of expanding the 3Ds to incorporate the other Ds actually can make us more successful, build out better programs, and actually enhance some of the stability operations in countries around the world. And Rob's right, we have folks working with AID, working with State, but at the same time, integrating 3Ds isn't just a Washington thing. It's a thing that has to get done at the combatant commands. It's a thing that has to get done at the embassies so that we take these plans, actually make them happen, operationalize them, and using the same approach that we advocate here in D.C. at the combatant commands, at the embassies, and working with your countries to actually make things take place and happen and use the lessons learned. From Defense, we look at how we can enhance the security situation, how we can enhance the capability of the armed forces to make them better, make them more professional, represent and understand human rights, rule of law, and things like that, that we can help enhance the activities of both our state partners and our AID partners to build stability to countries and regions around the world. Thank you. Let me start by saying good afternoon to my panelists here and to all of you. You all have had a very long day, so we'll try to keep this interesting for you and a little bit light because we don't want to lose anybody's attention for this really important wrap-up conversation. I spent 32 years in the State Department and talked about how long I was there. That was a very long time. And one of the things I learned for sure is that implementable policy starts with personnel and resources. So let's talk about resources a little bit because all of what you all are describing have to come with a lot of resources. And I also like to quote, as a State Department person, the military, because it always helps your case when you can show how the military supports what State Department is doing. In 2017, then Secretary of Defense James Mattis told Congress, if you can't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition, ultimately. And that statement's a recognition of the fact that there is a lead role, if not a truly primary role, for diplomacy and the State Department in any crisis situation. There's always gonna be a military response, but diplomacy has a really key role. Yet, if you look at our budgets, DOD's budget, Dwarf's State's budget, it has for decades, probably into the future. And if you look at U.S. AID's budget, we know that AID's budget is heavily earmarked. So the money is not available for new crises, new situations that arise. I look at my colleagues struggling every day across the African continent and they wonder where they're gonna get the resources. So the question I have for all of you is, what reforms, actions are the three D's thinking about to one streamline the process and secure funding that's flexible enough to ensure that we can focus on prevention as a priority? Something that State Department and diplomacy is all about, prevention. I'll start. That is the most often used quote that no one seems to have listened to in Washington, D.C. Another quote, Admiral Thad Allen, who was retired as the head of the Coast Guard. And then they brought him out of retirement to fix the oil spill in the Gulf. Said there's only one truly strategic document in the United States government. That's the President's budget. You can say all the nice things you want. You can come up with a national security strategy. You can come up with lovely documents, one pagers. The rubber meets the road in the budget. That is where the government says this really is what we're prioritizing. And then Congress comes up with their own priorities. And that's the world. And that's how we're all gonna have to deal with things. Realistically, at aid, I don't think we're gonna see major increases anytime soon in anything. That's just the way the world is. There's no one that works in the U.S. government that doesn't want more money and doesn't want more people. But as a colleague of mine likes to quote, we are the team we've been waiting for. Stop looking for more resources. This is what we have to work with right now. If you're gonna get more resources, it's if you show us success with what you have. So how do we work within the envelope that we have? Another quote stolen from Mattis and others in the military is I like to say, in our bureau, we wanna move at the speed of relevance. To move at the speed of relevance, that's to be agile. That's to be flexible. That requires contingency funds. Of all the things that Congress does not like to give an organization, it's contingency funds, also known as walking around money. We can't trust you to spend this wisely. So they don't give us a lot. We need more. How do we get more? We try to succeed with the money that we currently have. That includes peace and security funding available under the Global Fragility Act. That includes complex crisis funding. That includes transition initiatives funding. But given looking against, you don't even have to go outside of aid. Look at humanitarian assistance. Look at global health. Look at education. Those things all dwarf these small amounts of funding that we're trying to change the world with every day. The reason Mattis' great quote is not gonna be implemented anytime soon is the same thing that we deal with all the time is no one wants to prevent anything. Because you can't get resources for prevention. We gotta wait for the crisis. That's why the Global Fragility Act is actually very exciting. That's why, of all the places we're working in, Coastal West Africa is so exciting to me. Because we are actually trying to get proof of concept. You can see the problem coming there. If we in five or six or seven years can keep Ghana off the front page, then we can go back to Congress and say, see, you can prevent things. Give us more resources. So I think we're at an important moment right now. And as you said, we're at the beginning of a 10 year endeavor. But if we want to get the kind of resources that we need, we have to show that we can succeed. Rob, that's very well put. And that's what we're working toward every day. And I think it's important to understand that what we're doing right now is building the architecture. We've got the frameworks, we're building the architecture, and we're looking for ways to institutionalize the processes that we are embarking on now. Looking at ways to put into place processes that will allow us to continue to go forward with a framework, a set of objectives, and then alignment of resources. The resources that are specifically available to us through the Global Fragility Act, which are valuable resources because they are specifically oriented toward prevention. They gave us opportunities to do some things that we are embarking on right now in the field, in our priority countries, across the globe, whether that's in Papua New Guinea or Haiti or Mozambique, Libya, five countries of coastal West Africa. In addition to that, it is absolutely vital and it is mandated by law that we align all relevant resources and activities, diplomatic development, security sector, and the related activities that Joe mentioned over here. And we're working toward that as well. So as Robert indicated, we really need to look hard at what we have that's available to us and understand how to align those resources to where we're headed. We also need to continue to work with our partners, with our like-minded partners, other donor countries, international, multilateral institutions, other kinds of international institutions so that we are making the best use of resources that are available in the places where we are working, where we are partnering. And that's something that we do do, our embassies do do all the time. We need to continue to do that with more intentionality as we implement the Global Fragility Act and the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability, and we are doing that. We want complementarity, we want coordination, and where possible, we also want collaboration. And we're working toward that. And we have already some good examples, I think, in many of the places where we are beginning to do our work, where that's coming to fruition. So there are a number of ways we need to, we need to continue to do this work. Now, additional flexibilities, yes, additional flexibilities might be useful in the future, but it's also incumbent on us to identify where we've got the flexibility already inside the U.S. government and make sure that we are using it as wisely as possible. And that's also something that we're working on as well. Thank you, Ann. Yeah, I'm from DOD. I have a big budget. I guess I have to defend it. I did have lunch with General Mattis once, very nice gentleman, runs a winery now up in, you know, the northeast or the northwest, I'm sorry. You know, we have the same pressures on us that the other agencies only, they're probably a lot bigger because of the budget. For our security cooperation activities, we've managed to get the Global Fragility Act prioritized into the plans for a lot of the regions. And that's a big effort over at the department. But when you look at the money we get for security cooperation, 60% of it is already earmarked to go to something else. So that leaves 40% that then has to compete with every other combatant command around the globe for what they consider their priorities. And those combatant commands always want more money. Everybody wants additional funding. You can look at IndoPaycom, you can look at AFRICOM, you can look at UCOM, they all want extra money. One of the great efforts that came last year was an effort called 8068, which actually Congress provided an additional 100 million dollars for AFRICOM and UCOM. It was 200 million, but they split it in 50-50. So there's a lot of activities that are gonna be taking place in Southcom and in US AFRICOM to support countries in those regions. So that's actually a very good effort. On a side note, I also run the counter-narcotics programs. So we're looking for what countries that we can use counter-narcotics funds to also help the Global Fragility Act. Case example, we're looking at building a boat ramp in Mozambique to increase the capabilities of their maritime. We're looking at building a fence in Ghana to support one of their inspection sites, and we're also looking at something in Senegal to help them out. Now we're sort of stuck by how much money we can spend, and again, the competition for resources in that program is very heavily influenced into South America. So as we work through these things, and we also look at other opportunities, how can our regional centers, the George C. Marshall Center in Europe, the centers in Hawaii, the centers here in DC, how can they help support and increase the capabilities of Global Fragility Act countries? How can we increase the professionalism, not just of the military, but the civil side of society to help improve those countries? So it's a big effort. The department, I hate to say, has a lot of priorities. Sometimes we have to fight extra hard, especially in this arena, to keep those priorities front and center in front of people, to get some money and to make things happen. Thanks. Okay. So the State Department is tasked by Congress as being the lead federal agency and coordinator of the GFA. I quoted myself earlier. I'm no general matters, but it's been promising. Oh, he's in the ring. I know, I lost my trade of thought. Okay, this has been promising. Yeah, it has been. So how is the State Department executing this role? What more can be done? Great question. Love when you cut yourself, Liz. Very helpful. Yeah, so State has the lead role for executing the strategy. It's a great honor to have that role. And every day we are working to lead with our interagency partners by our side. We can't, we don't do this without our partners. And whether we're leading or working together, I don't know, I don't know how I best describe that. But I would say that we are, we're moving ahead. And we're moving ahead in a lot of different ways. The Washington piece we talk about, all right? We talk about that. It's the policy formulation, question of resources and so forth and so on. But one thing I wanna highlight that Joe already mentioned is that in this effort, our ambassadors, our posts have a leading role to play. They are leading the way, the plans that have been developed were developed in a field-driven fashion. Our ambassadors on the ground, our embassies are a micro-representation of the interagency. Maybe not all agencies are represented at the smaller posts, but a number of agencies are represented there. And that's where the US government also comes together in a fashion that's quite effective because they know their challenges, they understand what their resources are, and they have the ability to really help advise us to work with partners closely to affect the kind of way forward that we wanna see under the plans. And so I think it's really important to understand that the diplomatic, how the diplomatic piece is being carried out in the field in a leadership role in terms of leading the US government and also in a fashion engaging with a wide variety of players. So this is not just about talking to national governments. It's about engaging at the regional level. It's about engaging at the local level. It's about engaging with civil society, with faith-based organizations, with the private sector, with multilateral organizations. We have engaged with hundreds and hundreds of stakeholders in the course of this past year as we've been developing our approach underneath the strategy. And that level of consultation is going to continue going forward. And that is something that I think I want everyone to understand because it is a critical piece of the way that we are doing business under the Global Fragility Act that is absolutely crucial to its success going forward. Thank you. Okay, so, a follow-up question. There was a 3D trip to coastal West Africa last fall. Rob, Anne, you were on it. You didn't invite Joe. And Anne, you just got back from Papua New Guinea. And you were there when the plans, the GFA plans were submitted to Congress. Can you both share your experiences there, meeting with local partners and what opportunities and challenge for the 3D? I mean, try to be as practical as you can. I mean, what really, so that it comes to life for people. Is that right? Thanks, Liz. So let me start with Papua New Guinea and then maybe say a word about coastal West Africa and Joey would have invited you. Except your colleague was available. I go nowhere. Your colleague was available. So I had an opportunity to spend a little bit of time in Papua New Guinea. I was in the capital of Port Moresby and then I went up to Marobi province, which is one of the places where we are gonna begin doing our work under the strategy. I imagine a number of you in the room have had the opportunity to be there. I'd never been there before. But it was an expression, my being there, my very being there was an expression of what we're doing under the strategy, which is to engage with a whole variety of players with stakeholders, sorry, stakeholders with local elected officials, with leaders of civil society organizations, human rights leaders, regional government officials and gleaning from that and like-minded donors and multilateral organizations. The UN is very much present in Papua New Guinea and the challenges in Papua New Guinea are there are a variety of challenges in Papua New Guinea. We've decided under the strategy to really focus in on some of the community-based challenges to start around elevating women, women's rights, women's empowerment, political empowerment and around justice and the rule of law. And the opportunity to be in Papua New Guinea to hear from local elected officials who want to work with us, who share our view, to talk to local leaders of, especially the women's organizations who are so committed to supporting women, to empowering women, we're so grateful that we are there to hear and to listen and to want to work with them so going forward. It was so, so empowering and it gave me a real sense of how important the work that we're going to be doing will be. It also is an opportunity to get a sense of the scale, of the scale of the challenges and that's why the work that we're doing in Papua New Guinea is going to be focused initially at a local level in two provinces. We'll begin our work in that way and we'll hope that we can scale up once we have a better understanding where our successes are, certainly probably where our failures will be and overall our learning and then move forward. It was really, it was a wonderful opportunity to get some ground-based understanding of where things stand in Papua New Guinea. On coastal West Africa, I would say the same thing, we went as 3Ds, didn't have the opportunity to go as 3Ds to Papua New Guinea, but we went as 3Ds to coastal West Africa, to three countries, to Togo, to Benin, and to Cote d'Ivoire and we did the same thing in those places. We had an opportunity to meet with a wide range of stakeholders, government officials at the national level, at the regional level, leaders of civil society organizations, and we had an opportunity to hear how each of these different stakeholders saw the challenges that they were facing. And I think some of the most compelling conversations we had were with the leaders of local civil society organizations who were excited to be given the opportunity to do peace-building, operate local radio networks, a number of the programs that Rob can actually speak to because they are by and large USAID funded programs. And so what we got from that trip was not only an understanding of what it looks like from a local perspective, but then what each of us can do through diplomacy, through additional funding, and possibly through security sector assistance to support our colleagues, our partners in those places. And what we brought from that also was an understanding that the approach that we're taking under the strategy, this broad-based approach, this approach that includes governance, inclusive economic development, responsive governance, building social cohesion, accountable security is one that we think we can pursue with, in partnership with the governments in the region. Okay, over to you Rob. Thanks, Anne. Everything she said about the Coastal West Africa trip, I'll just say it was a lot of fun. And when you travel with an Assistant Secretary of State, you roll up with the Assistant Secretary, you get more doors open and more red carpets. When the President of Togo has us meet him at his home at 7 a.m., it shows that he wanted to fit us into his schedule. We got up. We got up. A few things that I take away from that trip. One, and I think it's an unfair, that's the nice way of putting it, there was an unfair belief here in Washington among the elite that the governments in these countries didn't understand the problem they were facing or they were in denial. Untrue. We met with, from the President, and then a lot of foreign ministers and a lot of cabinet members in all three countries, they very much know the threat of extremism that is on their northern border and they're very serious about it. The way they communicate that publicly is different in each country, but we went looking for, I went looking for political will, I found political will. I found partners who are eager to partner. In fact, they're so eager, they're like, can't you do things faster and larger and bigger because we see bad things coming. We want to work on this. That's one. Two, there is a real thirst when we talk about doing things differently. It's not deaf ears. They're like, what do you mean? When we say we want to listen more, they're like, that sounds good. There is a need for us to do things different. Later, I was able to make another trip with Clement Semter, my German colleague, and we went to Benin, Togo and Ghana to roll out a new program I mentioned earlier this morning, which is the coastal state stabilization mechanism. Jointly designed, it will be jointly implemented and managed by at least initially the United States and Germany. Very rare for the German government to put someone in country full-time to manage an assistance program, but we will have a USAID person and a German government personnel together in a crowd managing the program every day implemented through IOM. It's a regional program. In the same way that we traveled as the 3Ds to visibly show and model the way our government is going to be working together differently, we wanted Germany and the United States to visibly show these three countries how we're going to be working together. And it was fun. We didn't meet with any presidents, but we met with, in each country, it was a fun road trip, by the way, you get to drive from Benin to Togo to Ghana, access at the highest levels of government, where we presented not the program that we were going to do, we proposed to them the program we want to do with them. And we said, we don't have a lot of details yet. We're looking at $20 million over the next two and a half years. Hopefully that will be bigger. We'll see. We don't know exactly what we're going to do. We don't know exactly where we're going to do it because we want to work with your government on identifying those locations and those activities. That's not usually how we work. And the equivalent of the Deputy National Security Advisor in Ghana first said, well, better late than never. We were like, okay. And then he said, we have a lot of different countries that come in here, take our time. They tell us how they're going to help us. They say they want to work with us. They don't have specifics. They don't say how much money. They don't say when it's going to start. And they definitely don't ask us for approval. They just inform us that they've decided to do something for us. And he said, this is an entirely refreshing eye-opening and very welcome approach that you guys are taking. Now the challenge on us is to continue to do that. What happens if they pick locations that we don't agree with? Well, that's partnership, isn't it? Partnership is, if it's going to be real, it's got to be respectful. But I'll return to where I started. We found the political will in these places, partners that want to partner with us. And that's the most important step. We'll see. First, I'm a little disappointed. I wasn't invited to this road trip either, but maybe next time around, sounds like it was a great road trip. That's some great food. Thank you. I want to just go back a little bit further before we even got the GFA. I started, I was working in Southern Africa when our embassy in Tanzania and Kenya were bombed. Then I was working in the State Department on the morning when those planes hit our towers in 2011, 2001 rather. And so I've been watching this issue of how we respond to these crises for a long time. And I think we're at a different place now. We respond very differently now. So the question I'd like to ask all three of you is a little bit about lessons learned in our counter-terrorism strategy, particularly in the Sahel in West Africa. We now focus on things like, root causes a lot more deeply. We look at poverty and inequality and resource conflicts. What have your agencies been doing with this new found lesson learned? And what have you found to be the biggest lessons to really deal with the conflicts that we see in West Africa, Mozambique, key countries for the GFA? How is the GFA really getting at some of these root causes, which I think is a change in approach from where we were, say, 20 years ago? From a department that has been very involved in the counter-terrorism fight since 9-11, one of the biggest things we learned was the ability to share information across agencies and develop programs and policies to look at the threats that terrorism costs, whether it's Afghanistan, Iraq, the Sahel, West Africa, and even in Somalia and bleeding over into Kenya, Mozambique, and other places. So just like we learned how to share information and build partnerships, not only with our own agencies that were very stovepipe, but also building partnerships with other countries and their agencies to actually address a very pressing problem. When you look at terrorism activities in West Africa and even over in East Africa, what are the drivers that cause that movement to sustain? Is it religion? Is it economic disadvantages? Is it an idea that one organization, tribe, otherwise will have the power and exclude others? So what is the drivers of those issues in those countries that are driving that terrorism, that violent activity, those violent extremist organizations to actually work in those countries? The idea is working with those countries, not just, as Rob just said, telling them what their problem is, but working with those countries, identifying the drivers and where we can help and where a little bit of effort can help. Whether that's a defense sector, working on the security forces, whether that's working with State Department to improve the capability of their military police, whether it's working with AID or other efforts to improve the economic situation, we have to attack those drivers and actually build some sustainment and capability of the government help them address the problems in those regions. Part of that building that out, we have to understand the capabilities of the countries. A lot of people will come in and say, I need 16 helicopters, I need tanks, I need other kinds of efforts to take care of the violent extremist organizations. If you don't have the sustainment capability, if you don't have the people trained to maintain that equipment, if you don't have the budget that can fuel that equipment, then in two or three years, you're starting all over again. So the goal is, one of the things we learned was institutional capacity building to actually allow folks that we assist to sustain, maintain and use that equipment the way it's supposed to be in the long run. And then finally, I would probably say lessons learned. You have to be a learning organization. You cannot just do the same thing over and over again, hoping to get a better result. You have to learn from your successes, your mistakes, you have to learn from partners and you have to be willing to take some chances sometime to look at a different way of doing business. In this case, we have 10-year plans. The idea is those 10-year plans aren't static. Those plans have to be reviewed, have to be assessed and have to be adjusted as we go forward in implementation of the Global Fogility Act. Okay, well, Joe, you said a lot of it very, very well. So there are a couple of points here and what you've just embedded in the question is what's in the heart of the Global Fogility Act and the purpose of the Global Fogility Act was just to tell us to address prevention, to go after prevention. And so President has said the best strategy to save lives, build lasting stability and disrupt the cycle of violence is to prevent conflicts before they happen. So this is about prevention. And I think if we've learned one thing and it is embedded in the Global Fogility Act, it is just that, that prevention gives us opportunities if we don't wait too long, if we get going, to interrupt cycles of instability, to prevent conflict, to reduce the likelihood of violence. Now I was involved in a study here at USAID that was housed here at USIP preventing extremism study a number of years ago which is one of the preci studies to the Global Fogility Act. And it advised exactly that, the importance of getting at the root drivers, the root causes of instability. To do that, you have to be able to look ahead to have a common understanding of what the causes, the potential causes might be of instability and to do that in wherever possible in partnerships. So our plans, for example, wherever possible are aligned to the plans of national governments, the existing plans that are already in place. Beyond that, we need to come together to develop the programming and the policies that will allow us to get out ahead, to do the necessary work in the long run. And we have to do it in a way that is comprehensive. We have to understand how do we, where can we support, where can we build capacity to address concerns about marginalized populations, about youth unemployment, about social cohesion, about the lack of presence of the state, about policing to build out comprehensive community policing, and where are those places that we can bring together in one location, the kinds of programming that will be complimentary to one another. In Mozambique, we're looking at opportunities to work, we're working very much, focused very much in the North, where there have been presence of violent extremist organizations to look at opportunities for reconstruction, for recovery, for supporting those populations that are moving back into areas from which they have been displaced, and we're doing that with our partners. And we need to continue to focus very carefully on how we can, as I say, get ahead, look comprehensively at what needs to be addressed, and to do so with a prevention lens. And the law gives us an opportunity to do that. I wanna say one other thing about this. This is a long-term endeavor, and I know that we have been asked, as we have been discussing our work, where am I gonna see the change? When am I gonna see the change? And I think one of the things that we need to be mindful of is the importance of some strategic patience. We need to look out over the long term. It doesn't mean, as Joe has advised, that we don't shift our plans. We've got to shift our plans. We've got to be adapt, and we've got to shift our activities. Over time, we have to have some short-term agility and adaptability, but we have to be doing that with the long-term in mind. You both had great answers, so we'll try to just maybe underscore some of what you said. This seems to be the afternoon to quote military generals and admirals, so I would like to say a friend, a colleague, and definitely a hero of mine is Lieutenant General Mike Negatta. When he retired as a three-star, he was the number two at NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center. And he likes to say, he spent 20 years killing terrorists. Our government has spent 20 years killing terrorists. Starkly put, we've gotten good at it, and there's a lot more terrorists now. So this isn't working. It hasn't worked. Lessons from the Sahel. 10 years hasn't worked. There are more now. What are we doing wrong? An over-securetized response to a security problem. Didn't work, we don't need to keep doing that. So what should we do? We've been focused way too much on the angry young person. Usually, but not always an angry young man. And apologies for people that have heard me use this example, but for me, it puts it really in place. I'm a young man in Southern Burkina Faso, or I could be in Mali, or I could be in Niger. Who knows, it looks the same. I don't really see the border. I don't see my government. On the third son, I have no land prospects. My parents sold that off to someone who lives in the capital. I drive my motorcycle up to a checkpoint. I don't understand the language that the guy in the uniform is speaking to me. I don't know he's asking me for my ID. And if I did, I don't have an ID. I end up getting hit in the face with a rifle. Because he thinks I'm on a motorbike, I'm not being responsive, I'm not showing an ID, I must be an extremist. He just did the number one thing that causes someone to tip over into violent extremism. Violence at the hands of security forces. Now, if he's upset at being treated that way, is he irrational? Doesn't he have a reason to be upset? So why are we focused on him being upset? We aren't focused on the government that isn't trying to bring him in and isn't trying to find his trust. Why are they making it illegal for him to ride his motorcycle now? The only way he could make money. So if he wants to keep doing that, he has to do what? Side with the bad guys and find a way to go around the checkpoint next time. Now he is an extremist. How do we fix this? Simple thing is give him an ID. We've done that a lot. Simple thing is get interpreters with those military units who speak the local language as well as the language that they speak in the capital. You've immediately cut the stress down and calm things down immediately. Try to get a health center into that village or a police station and have the police listen to people and not beat people up. All of that goes to building the social compact. Trying to establish, not re-establish, because in a lot of these places they've never seen the government. They haven't seen much of the government, at least government that's been nice to them. So you start to establish what can be social cohesion. The problem is the threat moves much faster than that. The threat comes in the middle of the night. So we have this knee-jerk reaction to have a security solution which then makes the problem worse if it's not done well. We need DOD to train those units to be more professional. We need State Department to work the diplomacy in the capital to give us runway to do the programming we need to do. We need USAID and other donor partners who can project assistance in a way that is mindful and a way that listens to people in those local places because it's gonna be different. The reasons that people are upset are gonna be different village by village, district by district. That takes time. But when we rush it, and people are saying, when am I gonna see something? Your tenure strategy isn't showing anything yet. We have to resist that urge. We have to push back and say, we need the strategic patience. Don't make us rush this because that makes things worse. We also then have to hold people tight and say, stick with this. Believe me, we can do this. Can we do it? I think we can. Will we do it? I certainly hope so. I hope these become lessons learned and not just lessons identified. Too often we say we've learned, we haven't. We just put a little booklet together and what we think we should be doing and then we work the same way we always have. Okay, so we know, it's no secret that Haiti and Libya are the hardest priority GFA countries. And there are some in this town who have some serious concerns about Haiti and Libya. A little known fact. When the GFA was originally designed, those on the hill really thought of it as a stabilization. And there's a reason why it says at least two priority countries because we, the GFA coalition, were afraid that it was all gonna go stabilization and not prevention. So, now I have to get to the question. So, how are we gonna make some measurable gains there? How are you gonna fix it? And has a plan. And I'm gonna quote general Charlie Bolden. That's a soft fall, because we're not gonna fix it. The countries in which we're working with whom we're partnering need to be in the lead. And that's the approach that we're taking in Haiti and in Libya, Haitian-led solution in Libya. Libyan elections, fair and free. Working with our Libyan partners. Working with Libyans. We, in each of these places, think that we have opportunities. And just because they're hard places to work doesn't mean that we shouldn't be there. In Haiti, we have an opportunity even as the international community, including the United States, are working to support enhanced security in Haiti, are dealing with some of the very difficult issues around corruption. We have an opportunity to look to the longer term to lay the ground to work with the Haitian population, to work with local officials, as well as with the national government level. And that's what we're doing. We've consulted with something like 300 Haitian stakeholders or more over the course of the last year and the development of plans and now recently. And we're gonna continue to do that with the Haitian diaspora, with a wide variety of organizations. And that gives us a perspective in terms of the kinds of effort that we wanna be making there. And what I would say to that is there's lots that we can do that can help lay the foundation for long-term stability in Haiti, that working toward a Haitian-led solution. So for example, in places where we're working in communities to where the Haitian, the Haitian national police are looking to strengthen security, we can do some important work in those communities around economic empowerment, around providing services to those who need them around capacity building for local community leaders. And so there are ways that we can work together based on lessons learned that give us some opportunities that are not just focused on the immediate. Same thing in Libya. We have some real opportunities. We've been consulting and engaging at a variety of levels. National Planning Council, national level officials, civil society organizations. And we've learned a great deal from those consultations and we continue to have those consultations and they are most welcomed. In Libya, what we were gonna be doing initially is to focus on the south in a historically marginalized region. It gives us some opportunities in terms of economic development, in terms of capacity building, in terms of strengthening efforts in that part of the country, in terms of giving opportunity, in terms of providing, working with our Libyan partners to provide opportunity. And so I think we need to understand that there are some specific ways that these plans, that our efforts can make a difference, working with our partners and looking to the long term. And I know there's a lot of skepticism around this in some quarters, but equally, there's a lot of support for the work that we're doing, or the work that we're gonna be doing going forward in these places and we expect to stay the course. As per Haiti and Libya, you nailed it. I don't have anything to add to that. The few reflections, I was a bit astounded when we announced the countries, or the president announced the countries, on some of the pushback on Haiti and Libya. I won't quote a general, I'll quote a veteran and a president. We do these things not because they're easy, but because they are hard. Why would we pick a bunch of easy places to try this? Of course, we're gonna pick some hard ones and we're gonna pick different ones. All of these places are unique. As I mentioned, I went to Coastal West Africa looking for political will because that's the key. You find political will in a place like Libya, in a place like Haiti where you can find it, whether that's a particular ministry, whether that's a particular mayor, whether that's a particular governor, and you try to build out from there. You do the best you can. You find positive change agents, support them. We've been in Libya for 10 years, we've been in Haiti for generations. We have a network of networks there, no matter how bad the situation is, we have organizations that are trusted that we've been working for that we can work with, and that's a place to start. Some of the critics of those two countries being priority countries refer to and envision Columbia as the example of how we should be working. Quick update, News Flash, Columbia is a bit of a unicorn. What do you need for these things to work? You need security, you need political will, you need strategic patience. We and the Colombian government have had all those things over multiple presidential administrations for both. We were able to galvanize resources in Columbia because it was a domestic issue. It wasn't an international issue. We're never, in any time soon, gonna be able to get that kind of resource allocation made for the countries that we're talking about right now. Let's just be realistic. The Colombian government put way more money into the efforts than we did. It didn't solve the problem that was supposed to be solved by Planned Columbia. But we did get the end to the longest civil war in the world. And Columbia still has issues. But if we hold that up as the example, we're gonna wait a long time before we find another place where we can do that. So meanwhile, we get to struggle on Haiti and get to struggle on Libya because it's the right thing to do. Can I add something? Liz? Thank you. I'm gonna steal a line from Rob. We're approaching our efforts with a large dose of humility. We understand the challenges. We also understand the importance of what we're doing. I will probably have to say that I have a very quick answer. Haiti and Libya both are very difficult for the department to work in. Right now, we are pretty much following the lead of our partners at State Department and USAID. And also looking at what actions may take place with the UN and how we may have to support either a peacekeeping mission or a multinational organization going in to help provide some security and stability to allow the government to address some of its problems. Haiti is a long-term issue, has been a long-term issue. Libya, same in that part of the world. But for right now, we're kind of stuck following our partners based on some of the background from Congress and other activities that we're not being involved with at the moment. So not a real great answer from the department, but we're glad to have good partners that we can work with to move forward. So Joe, I think we've been pretty nice to you, quoting all these generals except in your huge budget. So this question is just for you. The US and military appears to be changing its approach from just doing what it used to do in the old days, a lot of security assistance and training of military forces is something that I guess you all call more human security. Can you tell us what that really entails? How does it show up programmatically? What are you all trying to do differently with this kind of a shifting focus towards human security? Yes, on the focus, I would not say as much as shifting as enhancing. We've had teams training with partner nations for many years. We've always had a requirement, whether we provide training or whether we provide equipping, that we have to go through the lehi vetting of all the security forces and people we train with. And I know Anne's very familiar from her previous job in the department working the lehi process to vet the forces we train with to ensure that no one has committed human rights violations, that the organization, as a whole, hasn't committed human rights violations. So, and if they have, the organization either does not get the training or we have to identify the individuals that may have been involved in a human rights violation and actually pull them off of the training. So that's one thing that's been going on for quite a while now. The other thing is part of our security cooperation effort, every package that we do to a partner country has to have an institutional capacity building effort. In other words, some way that we build the institution, as I mentioned earlier, not just give them a piece of equipment or not just provide the training, it has to be built on how we improve the institution and whether that's the Ministry of Defense, whether it supports a Ministry of Interior, whether it supports a Department of Defense joint staff-like activity providing training. Columbia is a great example. We have what's called the MOTA program and I cannot remember the acronym and Ann probably remembers it better than I do, but we actually place either DOD civilians or military officers with partner nations to help them build the capacity of their organizations. And a part of that is also is enforcing the human rights, how we treat people, how we treat civilians. Civilian control of the military in a lot of these countries. I probably have to say the last one is a plug for the regional centers such as the Marshall Center. Every part of that component does some type of capacity building and it also does a great effort on reinforcing that civilian control of the military which is very important in many parts of the world that we work in. Okay, so we've come to our time limit, but I want to ask you really quickly, the three of you, a lightning rod, lightning rod, sorry, lightning round. Lightning round answer. We started off this morning and I was pretty honest saying we're struggling. Why should we have hope? What? What's the alternative? Our job isn't to give up. Once I had another quote from a general I wasn't planning on. I had the great opportunity to brief then general Lloyd Austin on the humanitarian situation in Syria at the regional ambassadors conference that brings together all the SENTCOM chiefs of ambassadors every year. I briefed him on that. Syria was not looking good. His response was, you make me want to go into a dark closet and suck my thumb. A year later, I was cheeky enough to remind him of that and say it's worse now. We don't give up. There's always reasons for hope. Every one of these countries has people that want to make a difference. And we're the US government. If we give up, everyone gives up. So we need a lead. We need a lead with our hearts, with our heads, with our dollars. And this is about a new way of doing business. And a lot of people think it's not gonna work. We wouldn't be in this business if we weren't optimists. It's my answer, I'm sticking to it. It's a good answer. And, Joe. You wanna go in the room? Oh, you like it. Okay, you wanna close? All right. I don't have any general quotes, but I do have an admiral quote. It's damn the torpedo's full speed ahead. So, you know, Rob's right, you can't give up. There is a beacon of light everywhere you go, you just have to find it. And sometimes you have to find it and you have to take that dimmer switch and turn it up a little bit brighter. And whether that is from education, whether that's from training, whether that's to improve a police force or a military institution to counter corruption, whether it's to help bring in international development to improve the life of somebody, you have to find those bright spots and you have to turn them on and you have to make them better. And then the cascading effects should lead to success. But as Admiral says, damn those torpedoes, full speed ahead. I gotta bring my quotes with me the next time I come. You two, you two. What they said. Look, we have learned a lot of hard lessons over the last two decades plus. Those lessons are embedded in the law that we're talking about here, they're embedded in our experience. We have an opportunity to take those lessons to apply them, to work with our partners, to make lives better, to make communities more peaceful, to make countries more prosperous, to work with countries to make them more prosperous and give them and give people opportunities, opportunities to succeed, opportunities to have successful lives, communities to be welcoming and inclusive. We have lots and lots of opportunity here through the Global Fugility Act and the US Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability. And I think it's incumbent upon us to continue to work toward success. We've off to a great start in the 3D context with all of you and we're optimists. Thank you. So I wanna thank you all and if you've been tweeting these quotes and doing hashtag peace con, the people over at the Pentagon are like, what is going on over at that peace building conference? So I wanna thank you all. It's been a great conversation and thank you for providing some hope. There's a lot of work to get done and I wanna thank the 3Ds especially for, and especially these people right here who have been pushing the Global Fugility Act and doing the really hard bureaucratic work. I say if it was easy, somebody would have done it, we would have done it before. This is really, really hard and you have a bureaucracy that's fighting back. So we're grateful that this team is here. This is the end of day one. I was about to say day three. It's over. Now it's the end of day one. We have two more days. They are at Trinity University. Do not come here tomorrow. We won't be here. Thank you so much and have a wonderful evening and we'll see you well bright and early tomorrow.