 My name is Lise Grande and I'm the head of the United States Institute of Peace. We're delighted to welcome you to a conversation with the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Dr. Peter Maurer. Peter is one of the most principled and famous humanitarian leaders in the world today, and it is a privilege to welcome you back to USIP. We are also honored to welcome Lieutenant General Michael Nagata, who has served with distinction for four decades in the US Army and Special Forces, who has commanded US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and who we are privileged to have as a member of USIP's Senior Military Advisory Group. Our conversation today is focused on ICRC's new and very important report called Allies, Partners and Proxies. The report looks at the changing nature of modern warfare and the implications of these changes on the human costs of conflict. The report argues that most modern conflicts are now densely networked, involving coalitions, partnerships and proxies of both state and non-state belligerents. The report makes the point that these highly complex, networked conflicts subvert, minimize and reduce the lines of accountability which are essential for upholding international humanitarian law. The report also argues that the costs of modern conflict, the loss of life, record levels of mass migration and the reversal of decades of hard-won economic progress are too high, too unacceptable and too unmanageable to ignore. ICRC's report is an urgent call for all of us to double down and use our leverage to hold our partners accountable so that we can together reduce violence against civilians. As the custodian of the Geneva Accords and one of the most revered and respected institutions in the world, ICRC is uniquely placed to make this call. We'll start today's conversation with questions for both Peter and General Nagata and then we'll open the discussion to the audience. For those who are joining online, we ask that you submit questions through the discussion via the Q&A box on the event webpage. To start us off, Peter, we would be grateful if you would tell us more about the findings of the new report and whether you think the current framework for international humanitarian law is sufficient and robust enough to deal with the changes that your report identifies. Thanks a lot, Lise, for the introduction and for the question. I'll maybe kick it off with some of the figures which illustrate our experiences over the last decade in the theaters of conflict in which we are working. I'll start with numbers of actors in the theaters of conflict in which we are. We started pulling the lists together who is occupying the territories in which we deliver humanitarian assistance and protection work. And over the last two years we have done it more systematically to find that more than 600 non-state armed groups together with more than 130 countries are basically populating the battlefields in the 40 most important areas of conflict. That's a lot of actors. Our original task from the Geneva Convention is to facilitate the implementation and the respect of international humanitarian law and to engage with belligerents, state or non-state. Whether you have to do with two parties to a conflict in a traditional border dispute warfare or whether you have suddenly five, 10, 15, 20 actors with state and non-state mixed with volatile alliances shaping from one day to another into new alliances, you ask yourself what are the chains of command you are trying to influence? What is the landscape in which you are trying to do the work you are doing? And so while I'm pretty much convinced that the basic orientation and task that we got from the international community after the Second World War is relevant, the respect for international humanitarian law, the landscape has fundamentally changed. We have to look at chains of commands, of influence, of proxies, allies, partnerships, because nobody fights wars alone today. If I look at the impact of the new environment in which we are, it's striking. A lot of people today live in control of territories outside state control and therefore the respect for the law outside of state control demands a completely different way of engagement. Our recent findings say that 50 million people, that's more than we have refugees in the world, almost double the refugee population live in territories controlled by non-state armed groups. Another 100 million, so a total of 150 million, another 100 million live in territories contested where the chain of responsibility of respecting the law in belligerent warfare is contested. And so this new situation made us reflect what do we have to do in order to engage? We have to find the chains of commands and the responsibility in order to prevent erosion of responsibility with regard to the respect of international humanitarian law and doing so we find where the hooks are. And then we looked at what makes partnered warfare today, what is this notion by through with working with partners, what does it actually mean? And we have sort of find the panoply of activities which enter into that into that equation from arms transfers to training to train and equip policies to support in doctrine, support in logistic, support in intelligence, knowledge sharing. And we tried to structure all these different activities which make out partner and allies and proxies in order to systematically see where are their relationships which we could use in a positive sense in order to influence respect for international humanitarian law. So this is by in large the essence. It's a reflection which is deeply rooted in the core of our mandate which we still believe is absolutely relevant to ensure respect for norms and principles. But it is adapted to a new context, a new situation, a new battlefield and of course opens a completely new way of engagement for the organizations because if 20 years ago our interlocutors were by and large states and maybe two or three liberation movements fighting the colonialism of states, today the land is flat, the landscape, the battlefields and we try to find hooks, entry points, engagement surfaces. General Nagata, you've lived the realities that Dr. Maro is reflecting on and through the many years of experience you've had working by with and through our allies and our partners and even proxies. Can you share with us the lessons you've learned that are relevant for the application of international law, for getting our partners and our proxies to uphold their obligations under international law? What have you seen that's worked and what have you seen that hasn't? I've seen both but thank you for asking. But before beginning, first of all, thank you for inviting me to be here. It's a particular honor to be on the same stage as Peter and this incredibly important report but more importantly, as I was driving here this morning I was trying to count up the number of places around the world where I've had the honor of interacting with people from your organization and I stopped at 12, not because that was the right number because I couldn't remember all the other places. But in all seriousness, at the beginnings of my career, my interactions with your organization were not intentional, it was just happenstance and circumstance but I learned how beneficial that contact was. So in the latter half of my career, every time I deployed to a new place around the world, I deliberately sought out your organization and my operations and activities were the better for them so thank you. But back to your question, there are so many things that come to mind but I'll try not to drone on endlessly here. The first one that gets to this question of our effectiveness, whether or not our intent to work with a partner somewhere around the world will actually succeed. The first choice is going to sound rather simplistic but I've seen us get this right and I've seen us get this wrong. Is the relationship we seek just transactional or is it meant to be durable? In which case it cannot be only transactional because rather obviously if it's just a transactional relationship, once one of the two parties stop getting what they want that's the end of the relationship. If it is a durable relationship there's a degree of resilience and strength to the relationship that even if there is occasional disappointment, the relationship will endure. The United States still aspires, still claims to be, you know, the indispensable nation or the leader of the free world pick whatever phrase you wish to use. If that is true, if we intend to continue to make that rhetoric our reality then it's hard for me to think why would ever be wise for the United States to choose just a transactional relationship. But let me get to the point here. Transactional relationships are cheap, easy and fast to create. They just don't last very long. Durable relationships, durable partnerships, whether with a nation-state or a increasingly powerful non-state actor are hard, complex and require constant nourishment, constant attention and constant resourcing. That's very inconvenient if you don't want to do those things. But that's the first one. If we choose the transactional relationship our likelihood of success goes way down. If we choose the more difficult, more complex but ultimately more durable pathway towards durable relationships then our likelihood of success in that partnership goes up exponentially. The second thing, and in a way I'm kind of repeating something Peter has already alluded to, that in the way we interact with whoever our chosen partner is at the end of the day what we do together doesn't matter as much as how we do it together. A rather obvious example is if we insist that the outcome of this relationship is going to abide by international law, is going to respect humanitarian norms, even at the cost of some operational progress then we are more likely to succeed. When we start taking shortcuts because we feel the press of circumstance or it's an emergency or what have you, in my experience whether it was months later or years later I have always seen us regret it. I've always seen a certain amount of, how did we get here? How could we possibly have gotten to this bad spot? And the answer really is because we chose to take a shortcut. We chose to skimp on this principle that how we do things together matters as much or more as what we do together. Finally, this is something I've seen most nation states struggle with including my own, but when we're seeking a relationship, particularly with a non-state actor, do we take the time and trouble to understand all of the relationships that that actor already has? Because those relationships are, it's very unlikely our prospective partner is going to jettison those relationships. They have those relationships for a reason. If we do not understand those relationships, we're going to be surprised by what happens in our new partnership and surprise particularly in military and security operations abroad are always unwelcome. Peter, the United States is changing its military posture. It's withdrawing its forces from Iraq and from Afghanistan. It's repositioning its forces in Somalia. We see France repositioning itself from Operation Barking and the Sahel changing its position. There's an argument that when great powers are engaged in a theater that they're able to exert positive influence. General Nagata has suggested this, that they're able to help those militaries do the right thing. As you see the U.S., France and other powers changing their posture, what do you think that means for the leverage that these countries can exert on their allies, their partners and their proxies? Well, I would suggest that it changes the way how you engage with the world outside and the mixture between security, military and other engagements may become a very different one. And this speaks to what Michael just has said. What we wanted basically to propose and to put forward with this new study that we have presented is a framework for a durable relationship which looks at a multiplicity of engagement and does not reduce engagements to purely military or one-dimensional interests. And if you enlarge the perspective, you enlarge the influence. If you enlarge the timeframe, you enlarge the space in which you are designed to ensure influence. And in that sense, I do believe that we are at a critical moment where the mixture of exerting influence in the world will be different. Very frankly, I come from a small state which has never had the ambition or the possibility to have influence in a traditional way in terms of military influence and didn't want to have this influence. But it is important to recognize that influence is not limited to military influence, but it can be much broader and it can engage in a completely different agenda. And with regard to security and military engagement, I think it can be recast and reconceptualized, made more durable, made more systematic and made more structured. And if this happens, I think we have gains for civilian populations and we have a perspective also that influence is leveraged in a positive way. You may have seen, and because you mentioned Afghanistan, Iraq and others, one of the points we highlight in our study is structured engagement of phasing out military engagement and trying to diversify to look at new types of partnership, what comes next, and I think structured engagement is very much something which speaks to the durability of creating a new form of influence. It's all about hard and soft power. I think it, Robert Nye, when he defined soft power politics and diplomacy has rightly highlighted that the U.S. has never been only hard power. It has influenced because of an intelligent soft power policy, and I think the combination of both is what probably the world looks like. I can't imagine the United States withdrawing within its borders. We can't imagine China just being agnostic about the rest of the world, neither Russia nor India or any other countries. We will have these surfaces of influence which are sometimes contradictory and they need to be structured and organized. And when weapons and conflict is involved, then better do it in a structured way and take the law and principles as help on how you do it. Peter, one of the very interesting things about your report is the back half of the report, which includes nearly 100 pages of detailed guidance on how to do exactly what you're describing. How to build up a relationship through development support, how to build up a relationship and influence through a concentration on human rights and humanitarian assistance. And if I can just say as a practitioner, as someone who reads your reports to know what to do, that back section of the report is almost like a textbook for us. And bravo to you for doing that, because I think it will be hugely useful for everyone in the field. Yeah, we are in the middle of a process of trying first to offer a framework to think about these issues. And as we move forward over the next couple of months and years, hopefully to have a collection of best practices and examples. Because at the end of the day, it's also how we think about laws and principles. Are laws and principles here to influence behavior? And if they are here to influence behavior, then we have to have sophisticated ways to influence behaviors. We don't have just to have justice accountability for violations. And so the whole logic of the report is trying to build bottom up from positive experience and say, why not think about this? It has worked. It's a positive example here of why we were able eventually to ensure better respect for international humanitarian law. It's leveraging influence for the positive building on positive examples, but also adequate to these complex environments and relationships and battlefields in which we are operating today. So you are commending sort of the middle product of what will hopefully become a larger repertory of good practices of shaping relationships in order to respect basic principles. General Negata, there has been a criticism that the United States in its relationships with its allies and its partners and its proxies has focused on training and equipping as the center of the engagement strategy. We know that you have served with distinction in Iraq and in Afghanistan and other theaters. If you had to respond to those critics, what would you say? Well, I would say the criticism is not completely unfounded. There are probably more than a dozen various train and equip and advisement operations and campaigns that I participated in over the years that I was in the military. Some still exist to this very day and have been incredibly successful and continue to be successful with everything they do now. Many have dissolved for various reasons, either loss of interest on our own part, loss of interest on our partner's part, or because it didn't work. In some ways, I'm not necessarily the best person to ask, in some ways I'm too close to these things, but you've asked me a fair question, so let me try to give you a fair answer. I think in my own view, as I've looked back on these things, I think the most important choice we and our partners had to make was not something we always consciously thought of, but as a general rule, when we succeeded, we did consciously think about these things, not just at the tactical, practical level, but also at the policy level, because what I'm about to say has policy implications. In my judgment, the best choice we made, which usually led to the best outcome, was that we were going to train, equip, and advise a partner force of some kind somewhere in the world because they were the best solution to the security problem we were trying to deal with. It could be a counter-terrorism problem, it could be almost any kind of problem. As a general rule in my experience, when we made that choice, the outcome was generally pretty positive and durable. The wrong choice, which I also saw us make, is we're doing this because we don't have the stomach to do it ourselves. We're doing this because we don't want to pay the price. We don't want to put our own people at risk. Of course, we never said it this way, but there was always a little hint, frankly, in my own personal view of we're more important than these people are, so let them go to the fighting and the bleeding and the dying. Those choices, in my experience, ended up not being durable, and they certainly did not succeed. Peter, if we can build on General Nagata's observations, have you seen in ICRC's experience around the world examples of where countries like the United States, like France, through their relationships with their partners, have used those relationships and that leverage to further international humanitarian law? Where have you seen that this has worked? Well, we definitely have a panoply of examples where opening the doors for ICRC, either in terms of access to detainees or access to trainings for belligerents or access to negotiation for delivering humanitarian services to people have been heavily supported, influenced, shaped by influential members of the international community, including the United States. It's one of those, I say that openly, one of those critical issues where sometimes we are reluctant to give very precise examples, but I can tell you very frankly, we are almost in no significant relationship internationally without also having the support of a state with influence for what we are doing. We need this influence to get access. States, non-state, armed groups, they don't give us access because we are the ICRC. They give us access because there are more important interests for them and if we have powerful advocates, access is facilitated. And so when I look at the Sahel, we are visiting detainees in most of the countries in the conflict in the Sahel. We have access. We have respect for our rules. It wouldn't have happened if the powers involved would have just been sitting back and asking us to deal with the issue. So we see when influence is exerted, we see also the difficulty that sometimes power have to exert influence because in the perspective of a power access for a humanitarian actor like ours is only one facet of the reality. There are other interests to ponder, but we see a difference. We see a huge difference and it's by far not only the United States. What I can recognize here and this is why it is so important to discuss here in Washington about these issues. We do have a three decade old tradition to work with the US militaries and their engagement and we have got to learn each other in the battlefield and to know how influence and mutual support can go in order to protect civilians. And it makes a difference. And I think what we need to do and to discuss today is can we what we have done in the past carry forward in the future, Albeit the realities are much more complex and the influence streams are much more difficult, but yes it makes a difference and it is logic. States have 196 states have given us a mandate to ensure respect for international law and we expect states to support us in this effort. And so it's not that we are asking for a favor. We are basically thinking that it is the responsibility of states to use their influence to further what we are paid to do. We now have a number of questions that are coming in from the audience. And General Negata, one of the first questions relates directly to the point that Dr. Maurer has raised. And the question is, why was the US hesitant to use the leverage that it had over the Saudi-led coalition to change the way that the war was being prosecuted in Yemen? Right. Well, the glib simple answer but not completely inaccurate is because it's complicated, but I know that's a satisfactory answer. So let me try to dissect that, at least from my point of view. Because at the heart of this question lies a number and I may not actually be capable of describing every single one, but a significant number of contradictory or somewhat contradictory impulses and interest the United States had in this part of the world. It had far more to do than just Yemen or just Saudi Arabia. It had to do with the entire Arabian Peninsula, our relationships with the Gulf States, many of whom were to one degree another supportive or antagonistic of what the Saudis were doing, and frankly our international reputation. And so I doubt it will surprise anyone watching this that you can describe the United States interest from any one of those particular vantage voices, international perceptions, what's the perspective of the non-Saudi Gulf States, what's the perspective of Israel, what's the perspective of the Yemeni government in exile, et cetera, et cetera. But when you have a meeting to discuss these and try to navigate your way to, okay, but what's the right choice for the United States to make, you have to find a way to digest all of that complexity, decide how much risk you're going to take because there's no risk-free solution here and then make a choice. And as I think everyone knows, the decision-making process at the policy level of the United States government is elaborate, some people might call it bureaucratic. And so quite often what appeared to be a decision by the United States on this particular question was not actually a reflection of a decision, it was a reflection of an inability to make a decision. Oh, that's interesting. And so we just kept doing what we were doing because even if we felt the urge, at least in some parts of a very diverse United States government, even though there were often strident voices saying we need to make a different choice, the fact that we didn't decide whether or not we would make that choice was a decision in and of itself even though we did not intend that to be the decision. That's very interesting. Peter, I think that the next question to you actually comes from something that General Nagata was talking about in one of his earlier responses when he referred uncomfortably to the proposition that sometimes states shirk their responsibilities by delegating active warfare to an ally or a partner. So the question from the audience is do you think that states are shirking their responsibilities when they do that? Well, not every time and everywhere but yes quite often as well. We have to recognize and I think one of the drivers of our new conflict reality of light footed engagement, of secret undercover engagement, of different than boots on the ground engagement is eventually to evade political responsibility which is not able to generate the consensus for a military operation abroad, neither in many European countries nor in the United States. And because it's difficult to have and to continue to have military operations on the ground and to be also responsible for these military operations, the partner allies and proxy relationships are also here to duck responsibility. And I think shrinking or diffusing responsibility to unknown and unknown multiplicity of actors is one of the big problems that we are dealing with. And that's the reason why we propose the opposite, having structured relationships and systematic relationships and long term engagement and transparency and first and foremost consideration for the protection of civilian. And why do we say the protection of civilians? Because today's warfare is not only complex, it's more deadly than ever and it has produced impact on civilian populations which become a burden, not only for the context in which this happens, but for the whole international community. What do we do with 80, 90 million of refugees and internally displaced person with rocket science, rocket numbers of people dependent on humanitarian assistance. The price is too high to let it go. And it's very interesting, Michael, what you said before, because I fully agree that the non-decision is very often at the origin of many of the problems that we are encountering. And my effort and my top line argument in all conversations I have on state responsibility is basically to say factor in the cost of non-decision. Because the cost of non-decision is today exorbitant for the international community, for the people affected, for the regions, for the countries. And if you see seeming chaos in today's world and difficult international relationship is also because we had accumulation of non-decisions which let conflicts evolve as they have evolved over the last 10 years. And this has now accumulated in absurd numbers of suffering of people. And so we need to reverse the trend. And reversing the trend is really starting with structured, considered engagement in order to respect basic rules and principles in order to minimize the impact of what warfare as it goes on. There's a question to both of you which relates to, if I understand well, the recognition that the nature of warfare is changing. That civilians are at very great risk because many belligerents consider civilians to be a legitimate target to be part of the actual strategy of their entire campaign. If that's the case, is the framework for mitigating violence and protecting civilians, the Geneva Accords and the protocols, developed and acted and ratified in a very different time in history. Is that framework sufficient, robust enough, adequate? Is it good enough for what we see as the reality today? Well, I'll start. I'm not an expert enough in the language of the various conventions and treaties that govern this to know how much of an improvement needs to be made in the language. I'm sure there are some, given the fact we're hurtling through a digital age that did not exist when most of these treaties were originally signed. I'm sure there have to be some improvements that ought to be made. But acknowledging that I don't really know how much of a problem that is, I am much more anxiety-ridden about how at least the character of armed conflict has changed so dramatically just in my own career. Just in, you know, I was 38 years of active duty, just in that relatively short span of time, less than four decades, armed conflict for me at the end of my career was so different than what I originally was recruited and trained for. It's almost bewildering how different it is. And I do not believe we've made the appropriate adjustments or the adequate adjustments to reduce the likelihood that we end up having unintended negative outcomes and negative consequences because the change has been so rapid. I'll give you, I guess, one permutation of this. The ability to distinguish between a combatant and a noncombatant has gotten more difficult every year of the last 20 years. It has not even stayed at the same level of difficulty. The level of difficulty in distinguishing who is a combatant and who is not has gotten worse every single year, and frankly I see no end in sight to this. Particularly, again, as we are hurtling through this digital age, I'll mention just one thing. What's the likelihood of so-called deep fake video and photographic material? What's the likelihood that combatants around the world are going to look at that as a potentially useful tool and sell themselves? In this case, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to use this powerful capability to my advantage. The likelihood is zero. People are going to use it. That will make our ability to distinguish the warfighter from the non-warfighter even harder. I'm not suggesting this is an impossible problem, but what I will suggest is I don't see enough effort in the United States or in the international community to match the trajectory this challenge is presenting to us. From my side, I would maybe start with the following. When I look at the four Geneva Conventions, the additional protocols, as you rightly said, crafted to respond to different types of conflict, but I would still believe that these conventions in the way they were crafted and what the authors of the Geneva Conventions put together are partly time-tested over centuries and cultures. They represent a normative framework which today is still valid, appropriate, adequate, whatever you name it. I believe the big advantage of these conventions is that they are not just conventional law. It's customary law drafted into conventional law after the Second World War. And this makes a large part of the general rules and principles of the Geneva Conventions so relevant for future conflicts as well. Having said that, I fully agree that given the transformation that we have seen, insufficient time and energy, political and technical has gone into developing what these principles mean in present-day context. And whether the response will be at the level of doctrine, of manuals of interpretation or of new norms is something which we have to look at without prejudice. That's basically where we are. I would be surprised if after such an intense period of warfare and destruction that we have seen, at a certain moment the international community is not able to come together and say, well, what did we learn from here? What can we do better? We have always done that to have those moments of review and looking forward. We try hard at the present moment, given the obvious blockages in the international community to advance the normative systems of international humanitarian law, because every process which has been started at some time in the last 10 years is blocked. There is no process which has successfully advanced, whether it is at the level of weapons, the conduct of hostilities, the protection of civilians, power differences and power interests at the present moment are still too freshly controversial, given the conflictuality that we would easily agree to a fixed normative framework. And on the other hand, and I think the study again wants to help craft consensus through recognition what problems are through best practices and out-of-bred practices, you can create eventually normative guidances and directions. So I'm pretty optimistic that there is a certain agreement that this is not good enough for the problems that we have created. And we find more armed forces in the world and more politicians in the world who recognize that it is like that. And even if compromise is difficult, whether it is in terms of the significance of norms and principles with regard to new technologies, new weaponry, whether it is with regard to new forms of protection of the population, all these issues as you rightly say, Michael, have been so fast that they may not be ripe for normative legislation and negotiation. But I think it is important to keep the ambition high and to have a vision that this is necessary to do. Gentlemen, we're at the end of our discussion, but we have a final very interesting question. Let's come from the audience. I think it relates, Peter, to a point that you raised earlier when you mentioned, almost en passant, that 196 countries have embraced the Geneva Accords. In fact, the foundation of being a member of the international community is to embrace the Geneva Accords. You're the standard. So as a final question to you both, what do you see as the greatest threat right now to the continue adherence to and embracing of international humanitarian law? General? I think the greatest threat to the question that is being posed here as well as the greatest threat, in my opinion, to the very survival of these forms of government that have all signed these accords is what I consider to be the global erosion of confidence between populations everywhere and their own governments. Perhaps there are a few countries where that is not true. I don't know who they are. Every place I have been for at least the last 20 years, probably longer, including frankly in my own country. I am seeing a steady, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but a steady erosion of this confidence between the governed and those who purport to care for and govern them. And as long as that trajectory remains true, not only is the question you have posed, or whoever posed the question, not only is that question likely to result in a very unwelcome answer, but many other similar kinds of questions are going to result in a very unwelcome answer. Because so long as that erosion of confidence continues, the likelihood that these populations will faithfully adhere to the agreements and the pronouncements of these governments, either as individual governments or in accords such as the Geneva Accords, goes down correspondingly. I would add to Michael, while I fully agree with what he said, that in our experience at the present moment in the midst of so many conflicts, it's not only the confidence between governments and populations, it's also the trust amongst belligerence which is eroding. And at the end of the day, the respect for a norm is at the end of the day as good as trust amongst the opposing parties is. This is law designed for war, not law designed for peace. It's law designed for war, which means you need to have a level of trust that the adversary as bad as much as you fight him will also respect the law. We find it increasingly difficult to establish these small and shaky bridges between belligerence which establish trust in the respect of the law as an instrument because the others respect it as well. And establishing these bridges between belligerence in order to have better respect because you create a minimum standard of understanding is what is at stake at the present moment and where we have seen the biggest breakdowns of order is basically when belligerence don't trust that the other side and that the other side will respect. And this reciprocity on the re-establishing this reciprocity as of critical importance, we are confronted very often in the middle of these discussions with the following conversations and I end with that. One side of belligerence tell us, well, we really appreciate the Geneva Conventions, we respect it, but we will only respect it if the other side respects it. And the conversation is exactly the same on the other side. And I think that's at the present moment the thin ice on which we are walking and in some parts the ice has broken in and that's cold water as we know. Gentlemen, on behalf of the United States Institute of Peace and in fact all of us who have been part of this discussion today, thank you. You know in peace building there are three components, what you do to try and prevent a war, what you do to try and mitigate violence against civilians during the war and what you try and do to resolve it. One of the most difficult of those three questions is precisely the ones that you have provided your wisdom and your insight on today. How do we mitigate violence in the middle of a war? It's the crucial question and we thank you for spending time with us and sharing your thoughts. We hope that everyone joins the United States Institute of Peace for our further conversations on how we can do what is necessary to protect civilians, what we can do to prevent wars and how we can help to resolve them. Thank you. Thank you.