 On behalf of the United States Institute of Peace, we are very pleased to welcome everyone to our bipartisan congressional dialogue series, a signature USIP initiative that brings together leaders from both political parties to discuss national security issues. We are honored to have with us Congresswoman Sarah Jacobs and Congressman Peter Mayer to discuss new threats to peace and security in countries which are fragile or in conflict. This conversation comes in the middle of the Democracy Summit, which brings together more than 100 democratic countries from around the world to discuss pressures on democracies and what we can do to help each other. In his opening speech at the summit yesterday, President Biden sounded a number of alarm bells. The President talked about the shocking rise in crews around the world, the spread of authoritarianism, the erosion of trust in public institutions, and crackdowns on the press, civil society, and political opposition in many countries. The implications of these trends are clear and worrying. As democracy recedes, the potential for conflict within states, between states, and between blocks of states, cannot be ignored. Many experts are now openly wondering whether we are headed to a future global confrontation. This is why it's so important to step back to look at our strategies for preventing conflict, to look at our strategies for helping to stabilize fragile countries, including through the 2019 Global Fragility Act, and to step back and look at our strategies for promoting the American approach to peace-building. Congresswoman Jacobs and Congressman Meyer are uniquely poised to support this work. They both serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and they both engage and support bipartisan congressional caucuses that bring Republicans and Democrats together. They also bring real-world experiences that give them deep insight into the drivers of conflict and instability and what can be done to deal with these. Congresswoman Jacobs has worked in the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations. She has provided senior foreign policy advice and guidance to Secretary Clinton and has held senior positions in the United Nations. Congresswoman Jacobs founded Project Connect, which links students from around the world to the Internet. Congressman Meyer served with the Army Reserves in Iraq, where he conducted intelligence operations to protect American and Allied forces. He has worked with Team Rubicon, a veteran-based disaster response organization, and has led humanitarian operations in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and South Sudan. In Afghanistan, Congressman Meyer delivered emergency assistance to aid workers after kidnappings and targeted killings. USIP is deeply committed to conflict prevention. The Institute currently has more than 300 initiatives in 85 countries, and we are present on the ground in 16 countries for US interests at stake. Of our many programs focused on conflict prevention and fragility, we are particularly proud that we were asked to convene, host, and support the bipartisan Congressional Mandated Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States in 2018 and 2019, which recognized the conflict prevention, mitigation, and resolution of the hallmarks of US peacebuilding. Congresswoman Jacobs and Congressman Meyer, thank you for being with us today. We are honored to invite both of you for your introductory comments. We'll then have a moderated discussion, and with your permission, we'll open the floor to the audience for their comments and questions to you. We invite everyone to join us via the USIP chat box on the event page, and to join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag at bipartisan USIP. May we invite Congresswoman Jacobs for your first comments. Well, thank you so much, Lees. Thank you, Peter, for doing this panel with me. It's great to get to talk about the issues that I know you and I are both so passionate about in this forum. I'm so thrilled to be here talking today about one of my favorite subjects, how to improve our approach to preventing and stabilizing conflict abroad. As Lees mentioned, I've spent most of my career working on matters of peace and conflict, whether that was at the State Department or at the UN. And I personally think that there are a lot of opportunities to improve the way the US approaches this work, including the Global Fragility Act, but also really important reforms at the State Department and USAID. So I'm really excited to speak with you both today about how we can do that in a bipartisan way. And in the interest of getting to questions quickly, Lees, I'll turn it back over to you. Congressman, may we invite you for your first comments. Thank you, Lees. And it's likewise a pleasure to be here with you, Sarah. I know this is something that I think even during new member orientation realized we both had a shared background in the international development space. And Sarah coming from the State Department side, myself coming from the military side, and then into conflict analysis and humanitarian aid delivery in conflict zones, we've kind of seen how, well, not only how fragile things are, but also how challenging it becomes once that descent starts to occur and how preventing that path from being gone down in the first place is a far more efficient way. It's a lot easier to keep something together than it is to put it back once it's been broken. And so the more that we can be focusing on that mitigation and prevention strategies, the more we stand to benefit frankly as a country and as a folks who believe in a sense of shared humanity. And a lot of our adversaries, both geopolitical and military in the world, they benefit from chaos, they benefit from vacuums being created, they benefit from that anarchy. That is the realm of the speculator, the realm of the of the malevolent actor. But there is that personal cost, there is that that tangible human cost that anyone who has worked in humanitarian aid sees. And so now that we are in a position to hopefully be able to bring the knowledge that we have to bear on these issues and work to advance efforts at conflict mitigation and stabilization efforts, you know, I'm excited that we can do that. So I look forward to the questions and the conversation that we'll have today. I'm honored to be here. Thank you both very much for your first reflections and our first question builds on this. We were hoping that you could share more with the audience about what motivates you to work on these issues and why it's so important that you work together on them. We know that in Washington now there's a lot of discussion about the way that bipartisanship has changed. And in some cases it feels like it's receding. So we'd be very interested in your comments about why you think these are the sets of issues that require this kind of common approach. Congresswoman. Well, thank you for the question. I mean, for me that the answer on why I work on these issues is pretty simple. I try and work on the biggest problems that are affecting the most vulnerable people. And I think it's clear that conflict is that, you know, we know the cost is huge over the last 18 years. We've lost 10,000 American lives and 50,000 have been wounded in counterterrorism operations at the expense of $5.9 trillion to U.S. taxpayers. And we know that for the global economy, the impact of conflict was $14 trillion and the cost of violent conflict were over $800 billion just in 2017. And so as we're looking at all of our other priorities and all the other gains that we've made around economic development, around human rights, we know that so much of that can be turned back because of conflict and that the best thing we can do to protect those are to make sure that we are working in a preventative way, that we are doing the kinds of things we know that work and that save money. The U.N. and the Institute for Economics and Peace estimated the cost effectiveness ratio of investments cared toward prevention at $16 state for every dollar invested. And I think every American president will probably tell you that they came into office with some grand plans and some foreign conflict or intervention or event happened that changed that. And I think we've certainly seen that in the recent past. And so for me, it's really about making sure we're doing what we need to do so we don't get left in a situation where we only have bad options left. In terms of bipartisanship, I think it's the same thing. These are issues of war and peace are probably the most important issues that we in Congress are asked to decide upon. They're real people's lives that we are making decisions about. And that shouldn't be a partisan exercise. And it needs to be something that we find a way to work on together and we find a way to get back to the place where politics ends at the water's edge. Thank you. Congressman. Politics at the water's edge being a of the quote largely attributed to Senator Arthur Vandenberg, a fellow Grand Rapidean from the prior. But I strongly agree with what Sarah said. I will say the one maybe additional thing is there's no natural constituency, maybe with exceptions of communities abroad that have large populations in the U.S. But this is not an issue or at least foreign conflicts by and large. They don't fit cleanly along partisan lines, political lines. There's not really much to be gained or lost from it. I mean, it truly is a way of a place where we can exercise our fiduciary responsibility to maybe thinking in the long term and ensuring that whether it's a ensuring that we are not continuing to promote and tolerate conditions that will lead to greater challenges in the future for the United States and in the short term, you know, lead to humanitarian crises. Now, I think one area that will in this in that in dealing with humanitarian aid and dealing with conflict prevention and dealing with foreign policy or at least not foreign policy as it pertains to our direct allies. But, you know, at that more of a civil level, there's no a lot of our a lot of the things we're fighting against in terms of just engaging with an issue we're fighting against apathy. We're fighting against people who just don't really want to have to deal with something. Right. And that's where we as legislators are able to bring attention or able to bring focus are able to to try to shepherd and marshal resources. So, you know, I think there are and I'm sure Sarah would agree with this. There is nothing that warms the heart of somebody who wants to engage in a bipartisan way, especially in very partisan times than being able to find an issue and say, all right, this has been a miserable day, a miserable week. Tensions are high. You know, what can we work together on that can make us feel good about where we're at right now? And on the foreign policy side, you know, when the doors close and we're in a closed door briefing, you know, it's not posturing. I mean, it's sincere questions where folks who have wildly divergent domestic political views oftentimes wind up, you know, finding a lot of commonality, because you're not, you know, debating, you know, the relative merits or X, Y and Z. You're, you're diagnosing and understanding what can we do to prevent additional suffering and additional catastrophe. And that's not a Republican or Democratic issue. That's an American issue. Congressman, you know, there's been a lot of discussion in the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the pull down in Iraq, about whether the approaches that the U.S. has been taking to these difficult countries to fragile context to countries that are conflict, whether the approaches have been the right ones and whether they remain relevant. We know, of course, that you have served with distinction in Iraq. You've worked in humanitarian missions in the Philippines, in South Sudan, and in Afghanistan. Congressman, we would be very interested in what you think the lessons are that we should draw from U.S. engagement in fragile states over the past 10 years, over the past 20 years. I mean, number one, we have to be honest with the mistakes that we've made and we need to be looking in the mirror in a very hard and clear way because we cannot change the past, but we can make sure we don't repeat those mistakes that we learn from them that we make the necessary modifications. And clearly in Afghanistan, there was never unity of effort or there was never a strategy that aligned all of the individual tactics that were being, you know, cobbled together. So, you know, great example is the interplay between, you know, the intelligence community trying to get information and then in the process of that promoting or undercutting bad actors or undercutting efforts at the state competency building or the way in which, you know, a specific military objective may run roughshod over, you know, a development initiative. There are, you know, just absolute bonkers, bizarre stories that some of which I have lived and some of which others have relayed to me of, you know, burning down a poppy field one day and then coming back and given, you know, because that was the counter narcotics mission. And then turning around and realizing on your counterinsurgency mission, you paying that farmer to regrow his poppy field so that he didn't join the Taliban, I mean, just the self-licking ice cream cone of it all. And, you know, that enabled, yeah, staggering sheer incompetence at so many ways, but not, you know, a bunch of very, very smart and dedicated individuals but whose project in the aggregate ended up being ultimately self-defeating. So we owe it to ourselves and the Global Fragility Act that we're both, you know, supporters of and have asked for more clarity from the administration and the State Department on how they choose to proceed in a number of areas. We'll get a little bit into that. We just had a broader Afghan War Commission that went through the NDAA that I supported a standalone version of that will, you know, have a look at the entirety of this conflict. But we need to be taking a very firm and hard look at how our development intelligence, diplomatic and defense components, how that all plays together, because we cannot afford to continue to promote instability through our own incompetent actions. Congresswoman, when Congress passed the Global Fragility Act nearly two years ago, part of it was to try and address the lessons learned that Congress and Meyer has just discussed. We know that federal agencies have begun implementing the law. What we're very interested in your reflections on is what does success look like under this framework? How do we avoid the things that Congress and Meyer has just touched on? And what would you like to see come out of this law in the next year, the next five years, the next 10 years? Well, thank you. It's a really important question. And Peter, I think you're exactly right about a lot of those issues. I think part of it is that, and I will say this as a member of Congress, we in Congress need to be a little bit realistic about what this framework actually can do and what the timelines are and recognize what it will do and recognize where more we need to work because it can't actually accomplish everything that we need to in this space. And I've been really active in encouraging the administration to move forward with selecting countries so that we can get to the process of revising those robust strategies and implementing them. And I'm pleased we're starting to see some of those important steps right now. But I think what's really important in implementation of the Global Fragility Act is that along with Peter's diagnosis, I think one of the key issues and potentially the roots of some of what he said is that we didn't have a good understanding of what was actually happening on the ground. We weren't well connected to the local community. And so we weren't seeing some of these signs or if they were being seen, they weren't getting elevated to the right level. And so as we're looking at the Global Fragility Act implementation, you know, the law does require that the administration involve civil society and consultation with their strategy. But I think that it's really important that we keep pushing that they get that right so that we can make sure that our goals make sense and are realistic. And that they are involving local organizations and having true buy in from the community. Because I think that's really one of the things that we learned. We made all these grand strategies back here in Washington. And often they were implemented in ways that just didn't make sense for the context. You know, Peter talked about the counter drug interventions. We didn't have very basic knowledge about the form of government the population actually wanted and expected or and we weren't sensitive to how some of our activities were perceived. So I think it's really important that we have these feedback loops and as we have these feedback loops that we have the capacity and flexibility to make changes in response to developments on the ground. So it's not just that we're getting the information, but we're actually changing as a result. We're not that great at that in the US government. It often takes multiple years to get a program designed and then if something happens on the ground, those changes don't necessarily get reflected or they're slow. And so I think making sure we have this clear communication between Congress and the executive branch and realistic expectations of what the interagency needs and how we can make sure we're getting context from the ground to me that will be that will be success and that will hopefully make sure that we have what we need to to avoid some of the mistakes of the past. Congresswoman, you mentioned that the Global Fugility Act is going to be piloted in several countries and that we expect to know what those countries are very shortly. Are there specific countries you would like to see on that first set of pilot countries? You know, one of the areas I've been spending a lot of time on is Mozambique and the conflict that's happening there. And I think that it is a country that's really right for the kind of approach that the Global Fugility Act would bring. I think that there's another, you know, there are a lot of places we can focus on. And I know that the interagency process is ongoing right now and I'm excited to work with the administration to make sure we get this implemented quickly and implemented well. Thank you for that. We have a question from the audience for both of you. Congressman, maybe we can start with you. The question is about our counter-terrorism operation, something that I know you are very familiar with. The question is about a recognition that we increasingly see across the government and across the military, across civil society, that although our operations have been important and have had a significant impact, they may not on their own be sufficient to address the spread of violent extremism. And from your perspective, what do you think has worked well in these kinds of operations and what do you think needs to change in our approach so that we can actually start to stop the spread of extremism? Yeah, I think this is one of those, you know, kind of reality check moments where if you, well, setting Afghanistan aside, you know, if you look at at Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and ask the question, well, there's a Helian region as well. Look at the entire continent of Africa and ask the question, now, are extremist groups more powerful today than they were, you know, in 2000? Look at the Arabian Peninsula, look at the Levant, look at the Middle East more broadly, look at the Central Asia, the Caucasus. Are extremist groups, do they have greater purchase and greater footing today than 20 years ago? And I think that answer is unquestionably yes. And so if we look at what we have done, it has clearly in the hole been ineffective. And then there are parts, some places where our counterterrorism efforts have been counterproductive, if not just ineffective. I think the mindset we still have is, you know, we, the sort of semantic slippage between thinking if we drop bombs, you know, that's doing something that is a counterterror operation and it inherently should be countering the terror. Now, excessive civilian fatalities then work as a fantastic recruitment tool of the more that we internationalize what are oftentimes local issues so that it becomes a with us or against us mentality and then a local group of not particular prominence all of a sudden gets on the radar because they kind of got the endorsement from the US military that they are a, you know, al-Qaeda level organization by virtue of us bombing them. So there's a lot of ways in which that has been counterproductive. I think it's every single area where we are trying to address those, you know, extremist factions that then slip into an insurgency, slip into, you know, terror tactics, you need to understand what is the wellspring, right? Where is that coming from? Why are there individuals in that community that are willing to engage and willing to support it? If it is addressing a local issue, if this is about a tribal dispute that goes back decades or a century over a well, then probably viewing it as a, you know, transnational jihadist potential element is not going to be particularly effective. Now, if you're talking about a more nihilistic entity like ISIS, then it is far less about local level conditions that may provide some, but that is not the overall ideology. So I think all of that, the spectrum of approach means you cannot just look at it from 40,000 feet, pick a couple of people to kill, and then say, great job done, right? I mean, if anything, that approach has been counterproductive and has only led to more growth of these organizations. It requires a hands-on approach, requires alignment of intelligence, of diplomatic abilities, of development, of potentially, you know, state building or at least institutional competency building, finding what elements are strong in that area. And frankly, that's going to lead to some uncomfortable bedfellows and allies because the folks who cozy up to us when we invade a place are usually not the purest of hard ideologues. They're oftentimes grifters and corrupt individuals, but, you know, we wind up in that one camp or the other rather than stepping back and saying, what are we here to do? Are we here to promote stability or are we here to achieve a broader objective? And the more humble we are, the more narrow we are, the more accurate we are, and the more realistic and pragmatic we are, the better a chance of actually achieving what we've set out to do. Congressman, do you feel that the global fragility act will allow you to do the type of telescoping allow us, the U.S., to do the type of telescoping that you've just described? So I hope so. And I think it's our best opportunity to address that legislatively right now. Sarah had mentioned interagency several times. I shudder when I hear interagency only because then I hear, I serve on, in addition to foreign affairs, which we both serve on. I also serve on Homeland Security and the amount of times just the interagency becomes an email forwarding and then setting up a meeting four weeks later to get told that it actually belongs back in the originator. But that's a different argument about legislative prerogatives and our oversight function. So I think in terms of not only providing a legislative impremature and a sign that this is something that's important, but also allowing those test cases and again not trying to bite off the whole apple, but looking at places where we should align in a way that is a bit, that hopefully can secede or go past one administration. I think that's oftentimes the issue is if our foreign policy, when it gets dovetailed under domestic policy and viewed as something that isn't necessarily on the longer horizon that it needs to be, can be challenging. So there are elements within our diplomatic and development sphere that do engage on a longer horizon. There are ones within our legislative sphere that do engage on a longer horizon being able to dovetail both of those with a degree of specificity, I think offers tremendous promise. Congressman, what is your view about the types of operations that we've had that have focused on counterinsurgency objectives and what would be your expectations about how they need to change? Yeah, well, I agree with everything Peter said, which you'll probably get tired of us saying on this forum, I imagine. But for me, I think that we've actually made quite a lot of mistakes and made a lot of mistakes that are pretty harmful to how we are going about things. As Peter said, I would argue we're much worse off in terms of violent extremism now than we were 10 or 20 years ago. And so having really looking deeply at what we're doing and how we're doing it, I think is incredibly important. When I was at the State Department in the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, we were working on looking at how we could change the way we prevent and counter violent extremism. I won't work very closely with the USIP on this, setting up the Resolve Research Network, which I think has done great work in trying to get that local perspective up in with academia. And I know my team still uses it for a lot of information. But what we did as part of that is we looked at all the different empirical studies on what factors drive violent extremism, what leads an individual to join, but also as Peter mentioned is important, what leads a community to be more susceptible. It's not just about an individual joining. It's the whole community. And what we found is that actually a lot of the conventional wisdom around this issue is frankly wrong. This is not an issue of poverty. This is not an issue of hatred of the West, not an issue of madrasa education. Actually, what we found is that the most empirical evidence links violent extremism and factors like state violence, state repression, absence of civil liberties. And so when you look at our approach, when you look at what we do to address violent extremism and terrorism abroad, you either see us doing a lot of things that directly feed into the very factors that are the most correlated. And then we are running programs to counter it that are on the things that are important for their own right, poverty, alleviation, but aren't necessarily what are going to get you to reducing violent extremism. So if we're really serious about addressing these issues, I think we need to have a really honest conversation with ourselves and our partners about the implications of abuse and impunity and how we work with partner countries around the world. I am still in meetings where people are like, oh, we know they're not the best partners, but they're really helping us on this counter terrorism operation. And I'm like, we are we are still making these same decisions that in the interest of short term gains, actually putting ourselves further behind the eight ball in the long term in terms of this issue. And the last thing I'll say is that, as Peter mentioned, especially in Africa, I find that we take these groups that really are local. And because they decide to try and get the aura of this these broader international groups, they either use the name or get some money or espouse some ideology. Most of the time, it's not really what the group is about. And then we label them violent extremist groups, we label them terrorist groups, we change the whole way we engage with them. But we actually know how to how to work on these kinds of conflicts, we do it in other places all the time. And we know that that means it's really a political solution. It's really about making sure the government is bringing often these usually farther away provinces in getting the resources they need that people are feeling heard that they're part of the political process. That's how we work on these kinds of conflicts. But as soon as we put the label terrorist or violent extremist on, all of a sudden we decide we can't negotiate with terrorists, there's only a security response. And we can't do the exact things that we know work to end these kinds of conflicts. Congressman, it was very striking when you were saying, we know what we think is driving these programs. We've designed these initiatives, these, you know, this extremism, we've designed programs to try and address those, but we've got the analysis wrong. It's very striking to hear you say that. And if you allow, you mentioned the resolve network, which I know is something that you've been very familiar with and promoting. Can you say a few more words about how that works and why you have confidence in that? Yeah. Well, when we were setting it up at the State Department in partnership with USIP, I think we really had a sense that there were all these local researchers on the ground who had a much better understanding of what was going on. And yet all of the research was being done by people from the West flying in with our Western approach on how to look at these things. And so how could we marry those two perspectives? And more importantly, how can we make sure that in the work we're doing to try and help places, we're actually getting the resources to the people who are in those places and not just continuing to have the approach where the money all stays with us and then we go and do something somewhere else, right? Like, I think we can all agree that we need to get our development and our approach away from that. And so the resolve research network is really designed to help better utilize these local researchers as we try and answer these questions. And I think it's been really helpful. Liz, you probably know better than I, all of the many great things they've done since I stopped working on it at the State Department. But I think it is really helpful to try and figure out all the different ways that we can start building in this local perspective, both through local consultation when we're actually doing the programming, but also making sure that we're actually utilizing local researchers in the empirical evidence and analysis base that we're using to design these programs. Well said. We have a question for both of you. It's about the importance of stabilization and conflict prevention in light of the strategic rivalries and great power competition that we're experiencing, both with Russia and, of course, very much with China. A number of observers have said that conflicts, even in countries that are very far from our shores, could become flashpoints between us and Russia or us and China. And the question is, what should we be doing now to mitigate the potential for dragging the great powers into a localized conflict? And how do we protect our national security interests better within the rivalries that we now see? Congresswoman, can we start with you and then over to the congressman? Sure. Well, you'll probably be unsurprised to know from my previous answer that I think the most important thing we can do is not fall back into that approach we had in the Cold War where we tried to just counter everything the other side did and that we just take on commitments because China happens to be there. I don't think it's smart in terms of prioritizing our national security, but I also think that it leads to this very issue that we were just talking about, which is that we then side with a partner because they're the anti-China, anti-Russia partner. But it doesn't mean they're actually upholding our values around democracy or human rights, that they're not committing these security sector abuses. And I would argue that a good number of what we're seeing of conflict right now is because of some of those unsavory choices we made in the Cold War in the interest, again, of this short-term security that in the long term has actually had really negative impacts on our national security. And so being really mindful that we don't need to just one-for-one counter them wherever they are, that we understand what our real national strategic interests are and where we don't have national strategic interests and that we understand that the broader goal of an international rules-based system is actually what is going to keep our national security safe. And so eroding that rules-based system in the interest of winning a point here or there on the board is actually going to set us back. Congressman? I think that's a very a very kind of trenching point that Sarah made on, you know, we can't lose sight of what it is that actually supports us here, right? I mean, it is that rules-based order that gives us an edge and that provides a degree of cover and protection for our allies in the world and undermining that in the interest of a short-term or kind of more localized or sorry, more kind of isolated conflict can spin out and we've seen that occur. I would say that there are areas where it's a kind of great power offensive competition and in areas where it's a bit more of a great power defensive competition. I think Ukraine and the way in which Russia has tried to destabilize Ukraine is a wonderful example, you know, where we are, well, combined with a different case, but obviously Chinese threats to Taiwan and their one China policy with increasing belligerence and the intervention into Taiwan's air defense identification zone. So though I put those two in a slightly different area, then say great power competition in Africa at large, that has largely been driven by a Chinese investment under their Belt and Road Initiative and significant diplomatic treaties. Now, what we have seen is that the less savory a country, or at least government, the more willing to commit human rights abuses, the more willing to pit elements of the population against each other to engage in actions that are beyond the pale in our conception, the more likely that those dictators turn to an autocratic great power or autocratic regional power for some top cover. And I think that can oftentimes be incredibly challenging. We've seen that in South America with Venezuela, we've seen that in Central America with Nicaragua. I think it's no surprise that Nicaragua just earlier this week stopped identifying, stop recognizing Taiwan. Now that I'm sure came with some wonderful strings attached from their, you know, new and strengthened Chinese partners. So we have to be mindful of the, of A, that the fact that a government in any particular country, that is a snapshot in time and we should be applying appropriate pressure. But we also shouldn't be so naive as to think that it may be bad today, but it could be worse tomorrow. And I think Iraq is a fantastic example of this. Now, any area in which we're involving ourselves, we also need to make sure that a, if a win is an American win, then a defeat is an American defeat. And that then attracts countries that may not otherwise really care or have much of a reason to involve themselves in a certain space, except to see the U.S. humbled and taken down a peg. Russia undermining us in Afghanistan and some of the work that they did with the Taliban and the Afghani network is a wonderful case in point, which frankly was the same reason why we went into Afghanistan, you know, 40 years ago, it was to be able to undermine, to be able to, to kneecap, to hobble our adversary in another area. So the more that we can be promoting a rules-based order, but also engaging in ways that are not simply diplomatic, not simply defense, not simply development, but tying, using those tools to create enduring economic value and enduring economic relationships, that will be able to then build bridges to civilian society and hopefully support and maintain a degree of prosperity that will not only echo into, you know, the government relations, if well done and institutionally built, but then also promote ties that will be far more enduring than maybe a security alliance of convenience. Congressman, there's a consensus in Washington that it's probably time for the U.S. to put more emphasis on diplomacy. We've had a question from the audience, knowing your background, working previously in diplomacy. The question is, what do you think that we need to do in order to strengthen our country's diplomatic capabilities? Sorry, is that to me or Peter? That was for you. Oh, great. Yes. Well, I think this is one of the most important issues because it's true that the State Department does not have the capacity and resources. It needs to really play a leading role in pursuing our national security interests. And I think we see it time and again. I can tell you, I see it when I'm traveling in countries around the world that our foreign policy is still being led by the Pentagon because they're the ones with the resources, they're the ones with the capacity. And frankly, they're the ones that our leaders often listen to. And so that really skews our foreign policy and it skews the way we think about and engage with countries around the world and it skews, importantly, the way countries in the world engage with us because they start to believe that the security cooperation, the security assistance, what they're doing on counterterrorism for us or some other issue is the thing we care the most about because that's what they're seeing the most about and hearing the most about. And so I think we have a long way to go on this front. Congress just passed a state authorization bill for the first time in nearly two decades. And even then, we passed it in the same vote as the National Defense Authorization Act and the dollar figure comparison does not look favorably. And more importantly, it's not even really enough for what we actually need to fund, rebuild and fully invest in our diplomatic corps. So I think we need to rebuild our diplomatic corps, but we also need to empower them, modernize them and brace forward looking. It's not just about staffing but impact. And so we need to reform and change practices to create the kinds of diplomats that are reflective of US leadership. I think we also need to refigure a little bit right now. In part because of this capacity constraint, everything is mostly reactive. We react to things that happen around the world. We react to crises as they come up. And so we need to figure out a way to be more proactive and to do preventative work and to be able to have better information from the ground so our diplomats can adequately inform policymakers. So one of the things I'm working on right now is trying to figure out how we can get our diplomats to leave the embassy compounds more to regularly and meaningfully engage with civil society. We know there's a lot of security concerns. We know Congress has played a role in enhancing the security concerns. And so how do we make sure that we're pushing back and starting to actually let diplomats do their jobs? I also think it's a key lesson from all the CIGAR reports that the civilian agencies were too understaffed, too under resource to really play a leading role. And so we get the military doing all sorts of things that the military really shouldn't be doing. So that's why I'm working on this bill. It's the Diplomatic Support and Security Act with Congressman Adam Kinziger. And I think it's really about making sure we're focusing on risk management rather than risk avoidance because we need our diplomats, again, to be out there and doing their jobs. And so I think this is one step. We're also working to make sure that USAID has what they need to be able to work with local partners more. A lot of these institutions were set up at the end of World War II at the height of the Cold War. We live in a very different world right now. We have information quicker than we used to. We can do things quicker. We have more data available. And so how can we make sure that we are rebuilding the state of our own USAID in a way that reflects what the world really looks like now and the kinds of tools and practices that we know that we're going to need? Congressman, this is in many ways a companion question that's come from the audience to the one that Congressman Jacobs has just answered. But this one focuses on the Department of Defense. And the question is, what renewed focus and investments does the Department of Defense need to make so they can do a better job in stabilization and in conflict? And there's a very specific corollary here where the colleague says, or should DOD just simply choose the easier kinetic option over the harder, slower civil society-based approach, which the Congressman has spoken about with such interest and passion. Congressman? I would say one thing that definitely needs to change is the way in which the Department of Defense is oriented towards frankly, de minimis regional or country expertise. We had a little bit of an effort with this, with the Afghan hands program that was quite minimal in its actual reach. But that goal of not having the war as it is often described in Afghanistan of being a not a 20-year war, but a one-year war fought 20 times. So building a bit more of that knowledge and that relationship. I think one of the strongest things the Department of Defense has that has been a wonderful means of promoting stability and building strong relationships has been the ways in which we have bilateral training missions and exercises and other opportunities for members of our military and members of our allied or other international militaries to come together to learn from each other, but to also build personal ties to enhance understanding and to have the type of relationship that can be used to diffuse the conflict or can be used to get, you know, just like, you know, frankly similar to how our diplomats do it, but in a less structured and less formal engagement where everything is in, you know, long readouts of cables and very stilted organized meetings, but you're getting a bit more ground truth. So I think more of a regionalization within various combatant commands or at the very least, I mean, they, you know, how we have our attache program, having that degree regional focus could be highly impactful. But I also, you know, Sarah was mentioning getting our diplomats out more. This was my paramount frustration in Afghanistan. I still have no idea why we had so many people there because they didn't leave. They could have just zoomed in from foggy bottom and been as impactful. I did not meet a single State Department employee with the exception of an RSO at Kandahar airfield once. I did not meet a single State Department employee the entire 18 months I was in Afghanistan. And to me, when we spent close to a billion dollars on an embassy complex, staff with hundreds of people is just a tremendous waste of money. I get it. It was a great place to go punch the ticket, say you went there, you know, been there, done that, got the t-shirt and now it's on my, you know, personnel file and hopefully will be considered positively for a promotion down the line. But that way in which the institutional incentives, if they don't align with the personnel incentives, if they don't align with the institutional incentives, and if we aren't focused on building understanding, you know, but rather giving the perception of it, we'll always find ourselves back in the similar position. But I will also say that to the second part of the question, you know, the DOD's role here should be quite limited. You know, there are benefits to some of our foreign military, you know, training operations, the foreign internal defense, the FID components that are Green Berets were really created to do, you know, civil affairs, you know, can do some humanitarian missions. I think there are a lot of ways in which that can be used. But it should be, again, augmenting diplomatic or development goals rather than, other than kinetic way of trying to achieve a military objective. Because I think that oftentimes undercuts that mission because it's rounded again towards a military opportunity rather than supporting efforts that will hopefully mitigate and prevent the need for that to occur down the line. Congresswoman, we all know that we're in the middle of a democracy summit that's taking place this week. And we have a question that's come from our audience about how important we think it is to work jointly with like-minded partners and allies as well with multilateral efforts to build stability and prevent conflict around the world. Knowing that you've had senior positions in the U.S. government and senior positions in the U.N., the question is over to you. Well, you know, frankly, I think it's crucial because the fact of the matter is the United States is never going to put in everything we need to do to be able to adequately prevent these conflicts. And so much of what we do and what we need to do is around creating incentive structures where people in those countries are making decisions that are more focused on good governance than on whatever other thing they could be making decisions on. And so to do that, you have to have partners pulling in the same direction. You know, I think it's important that we align our goals and strategies and work on peace and stability and not have competing and overlapping efforts in a given country, in part because it means not none of our efforts will be as successful. In these multilateral efforts, I think it's really key to coordinate with partners who champion accountability and justice in conflict settings and reject cycles of impunity. More countries who understand and commit to these issues, the better off civilians in conflict will be. I think this goes right back to the whole point of the Democracy Summit. The whole key to our national security movement is this international rules based order. And so not only do we need to work with our partner democracies to make sure we're protecting from the backsliding in our own democracies and that we are supporting democracy around the world, but also that we are doing the really hard accountability and justice and, you know, anti impunity work against ourselves as well, because the more we ourselves abandon the rules of the international order, the less that they'll be able to protect us in the future. We have two final questions. One of them is about age and youth and energy, and the other one is about bipartisanship. So the one about age and youth and energy is as follows. The colleague says you both represent brilliantly the younger generation that now makes up increasingly the House of Representatives. And our colleagues would like to hear your perspective on the role that you think youth and women should be playing around the world in conflict prevention and resolution and what the US can do to harness their voices and their energy to bolster international security. Congressman. Yeah, I was just having this conversation about it specifically in Afghanistan, where one of the bright silver linings of the recent moment, and this is it's a perilous moment. And let me be very clear. There was a famine that's coming. If we do not effectively address it, tens, if not hundreds of thousands, potentially millions could die over this wintertime period. So it is very bleak. And I'm seeing zero action from the Biden administration to engage in a substantive way and have discussed it. But setting aside, there was a very good silver lining with the way in which civil society organizations and particularly younger women have been stepping up and showing that they're not afraid. And frankly, the Taliban don't really know what to do with it. There's been a lot of positive movement, a very conservative society that I would not have expected to occur. But you get some folks with cell phones and they're saying, no, we do have expectations. We do have demands. And we're not going to go quietly. And in the Taliban, which weirdly both wants to have a degree of fear, but also doesn't want to ruffle feathers that much, are in a bind. And you're seeing that there. You're seeing similar initiatives with younger generations that don't necessarily hew to the same traditional ethnic armed grouped dichotomies in places like Myanmar, where the three fingers salute from the Hunger Games has become the identifying mark of the opposition to the Tatmadao. So it's been a very... I think you're seeing those green shoots in a feeling of a time to cast off an older generation or just insist upon not being relegated to the back areas because we have ways that we can get a message out, regardless of what the traditional power structure may be in an area. Congresswoman. Well, first of all, I appreciate that whoever asked the question thinks that young people and women are really making up the most of this Congress. Millennials are 7% of the current Congresswoman I think are about 28. So we got a ways to go. Let's not get carried away. But I'm glad that in people's imagination, we are the ones running the show. Look, I think that this is incredibly important. The fact of the matter is most wars are fought by young people. Young people are the ones out in the battlefields. Young people are the ones who are missing school, who are not getting food right. Like these things are very intrinsically tied to youth. And I hear a lot of people talk about the youth bulge in Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance. And I think that whether that big cohort of young people is a positive or a negative in these countries will entirely depend on how well their governments are able to actually include them in decision-making and bring them into the process and make them feel like it's a country that they want to be part of and want to help build versus something that they feel like they need to change and move in a different direction. And so I think this is actually really one of the most critical things that we need to be thinking about as we look at what peace and stability looks like moving forward, especially in places where we have these huge young populations. I think we also, when we look at peacebuilding, I think in many people's imagination that the way a conflict ends is still like two old men in a conference room negotiating. But we actually know that the more people you get involved in that negotiation process, the more likely it is for that deal to stick. And that's very true for young people who both will be the ones who actually probably implement the deal because these things take a long time and you need the buying of the next generation. But two who have a different perspective and who, again, often we're the ones actually doing the fighting. Sometimes that means they're more bought in, sometimes less, but whose perspective needs to be involved. And so we can't just have this top-down government-to-government approach because it excludes so many people who are going to be necessary for these peace processes to actually work. I mean, I think we're seeing it right now in Cyprus. We have a very top-down model there. It excludes civil society. It excludes young people. And what you find is that their idea of what peace could look like, what a political settlement could look like, it's very different than those who are in charge. And so we need to make sure that we're designing settlements that are viable in the long term. We're also seeing this in Sudan, I would argue. And a big piece of that is including all of the different perspectives in that negotiating table. We're nearly at the end of our discussion this morning. And we have a final question that takes us back to where we started when we were reflecting together on bipartisanship. The question comes from our audience and it is as follows. The nation honors Senator Bob Dole today with the State Funeral. We are reminded of his contributions from the perspective of the greatest generation. With you both raising issues from the perspective of the millennial generation, how would you like to see opportunities for members of Congress to develop relationships? Are there certain areas for bipartisan cooperation or at least less partisan issues that can provide space to legislate together? Congressman? You know, so Senator Dole, when he was a young soldier grievously wounded in Italy, was brought back to recuperate it, then Percy Jackson Army Hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan, which I represent today. But he also met there, Danny Inouye, who later became a senator from Hawaii, and Phil Hart, who later became a senator from Michigan. So all three of them met while they were recuperating from their wounds in the war. Now, I'm glad that we do not have such a catastrophic conflict where our generation is bonding, you know, in laws and bandages. But, you know, I think we do need to seek out those areas and frankly foreign policy and what the future direction and standing of the U.S. will be in the world is a fantastic area because it, you know, hopefully is an area where politics stops at the water's edge. But more importantly really gets to the question of what do we want the United States to be, you know, in this century? You know, we have gotten past the postwar moment. We've gotten past the post Cold War moment. We frankly have enough perspective on 9-11 to view it as obviously a significant, you know, day that changed the course of the past two decades, a traumatic tragedy that frankly defined many of our young lives, but also saying now two decades on how do we engage with the world to not only make sure something like that never happens again, but also recognizing that our engagement of the world is more than that. So I think that definitional component, that definitional opportunity is there and I think it's ours to seize. But in the meantime, there's a lot of folks of the differing generations that, you know, nobody gives up power willingly. I'll put it that way. Go Lingers, Moven. Yes. Well, like I think we've talked about a lot of areas where there's obviously room for bipartisan work just here today with Peter and I agreeing on getting our diplomats out of compounds, getting our counterterrorism and counter violent extremism work to be focused on more than just the military making the interagency work. Peter, I've got so many horror stories for you on the interagency. But, you know, and I think that most of us would agree on the key lessons from our engagements in Afghanistan, even if we disagree on what the policy outcome should have been, the Global Fragility Act is bipartisan. So I think there are a lot of ways that we can work together. I think for me, the way I actually think about it is that when we're talking about conflict around the world, when we're talking about peace building stability, what we're really telling other countries is that they need to find a way to talk to people they disagree with and resolve those differences, not through violence. And so we cannot then say that we can't work together to find agreements. This is the very thing that we have basically designed our foreign policy around. And so it's in our national security interest to find a way to work together on domestic issues on foreign policy and to show that we can. But we also know that we have tools. We have these techniques we use in other countries on how to bring people together and get them to talk that we could be using here. We're not immune from the very things that we are trying to diagnose and work on in other countries. And so I think there's a lot to learn both ways on how we can do a better job of building those ties across the aisle and across different parts of our very vast and diverse country. And I think that that's actually a space where I hope USIP and other groups who do a lot of this peace building work in other countries turn their sights to because I think we will be most effective in our foreign policy if we approach it with humility and with the understanding that we are going through the same challenges other countries are going through. So how do we figure out how to deal with them together versus us trying to portray some kind of you know that we're set aside from it and then we're just telling other countries how to do things. We're at the end of a wonderful hour together. We would like to invite both the congressman congresswoman for final comments and reflections. May we start with you Mr. Congressman? I just wanted to say this has been a wonderful opportunity. Thank you to USIP for hosting and to my colleague Ms. Jacobs. I hope you have a wonderful weekend before we're back on Tuesday. But I think it's important that we that those who have this experience and can both speak from a generational standpoint but also an experiential one to offer that because you need to have those voices represented if you're going to be able to take action based upon those lived experiences. So thank you so much for this opportunity. Congressman? Well thank you. Thank you Mr. Meyer. This has been really wonderful. I love when we get to talk about our nerdy issues and agree. And I thank you Leeds for this conversation. It was really great. You know I'll just close by saying that you know I think we're at a really pivotal moment for our foreign policy and our national security. And we have an opportunity right now to rethink a lot of the fundamentals to reimagine what American leadership in the world can look like and to understand what the world is right now and what it needs and not necessarily be beholden to some of the old legacy systems and approaches that we've had. And I think that if we do that, if we're able to actually seize on this moment, the future is going to be very bright and we'll be able to do a lot of great things and we'll be a force for good in the world. But we have to be able to seize on it. And I think a big piece of that is making sure that we do shift and refocus and change the way we do our foreign policy that we are focused on prevention, that we're investing in things like the Global Fragility Act and leverage research on how to redirect our approaches and fund local communities and enable our diplomats and civilian agencies to lead these efforts. And so I think conversations like this are incredibly important to get us on that path and all of the work that you do at USIP is very important to help us get on that path. So I'm very grateful to you and very honored that you asked us to have this conversation. Thanks everyone for joining us. I hope that we all together thank Congresswoman Jacobs, Congressman Meyer, for being with us today, for showing us how bipartisanship works. Please know that all of us salute the leadership that you provide for this country. I wish everyone a very happy holiday season. Thank you for being with us. We look forward to our next dialogue. Thank you. Thank you.