 Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in giving a warm U.S. Naval War College welcome to Ambassador Richard Haas. Appreciate it. What Admiral Carter didn't say is that when I spoke here then about halfway through a streaker went across the stage. I'm trusting we will not have a repeat of that searing experience tonight. It's great to be here. Admiral Carter has just been here for two months or so, he and his wife. So I really, along with you, wish them an extraordinary experience here. Navy has clearly sent you one of its best. And this institution is one of its best. Indeed, this institution to me represents something that's extraordinary in this country, but really in the institutions of the military. It's the part of America where we most invest in our people. There's nothing else like it in our society, and I think it's a real tribute to the military that it understands and appreciates what the ultimate resource is, which is the men and women in uniform. And it's schools like this one that make a tremendous difference. And indeed, I actually think the rest of society would do well to emulate it. It feels so good to see Ambassador Peters here, and one of my first colleagues, Bing West, Bing and I worked at the Pentagon back in 1979. I can't do the math that's so long ago, but it's great to see him here, and clearly none of you is a tennis fan or you wouldn't be here. The US Open finals are going on while we sit here, but it's good to see you have these priorities. One other thing. I actually learned one other person I want to single out, Professor Tim Jackson, TJ, about to step down after really a life in the Navy and a career here. And it's just someone who, again, what he's done and how he's done it really exemplifies I think what is best about this country. What I want to do is tonight talk about American grand strategy, because it's what you asked me to do. It's rather uncharacteristic for me to do what I was asked to do, but I thought I'd make an exception in this case. What I'm going to do though, in the beginning though, is to start with a few definitions. I realize that's a bit academic, but then I figured what the hell, I mean, to call something academic can't be pejorative here. If you call something academic in New York or Washington, people immediately tune you out, but I figure here I can get away with it. If I can't, we're all in trouble. So let me begin with three definitions. It's the definitions for foreign policy, the national security, and grand strategy. And I want to talk about the three briefly at the beginning, only because so often they are used interchangeably, and I've come to think over the years that that represents real intellectual confusion, and it's confusion that has consequences almost never good. Or to put it another way, these are distinctions with differences, and that if we don't understand the differences among these three terms, foreign policy, national security and grand strategy, we won't get it right about what it is we do as a country. So foreign policy is in some ways the most familiar. It's what a country does abroad, and that obviously involves the determination of objectives and the means, the tools, both the choice of tools, the weighting of the various tools, the actual use of the tools for achieving the objectives. So foreign policy by definition is something that is done over there. National security is something that is bigger than foreign policy. It's not just bigger though, it's also much more fundamental. And it's what a country does abroad, yes, but national security is also what a country does at home. And it's what it does in both of these spheres to promote its interest, and the interest can range from physical safety and security, to the resilience of the society and the economy, to reducing dependencies on forces out there that affect us but cannot be controlled. So in general, what we do as a society to promote well-being, let me say I'm going to talk mainly in the context of the United States, but definitely there's nothing about this in any way that is American. The concepts of foreign policy, national security and grand strategy apply to every country on the planet. So national security embraces what is called here homeland security. Energy policy, the capacity to produce economically, good services, what have you, to reduce dependencies, be it dependencies on energy or other minerals or inflows of capital. And the tools of national security, the elements of national security then, everything from armed services, yes, but also intelligence, diplomacy, trade policy, foreign assistance programs, but also education, schools, the quality of one's schools, infrastructure, quality of one's bridges, tunnels, ports, rail, electricity grid, immigration policy, the ability to attract and retain the most talented people in this global competition for human capital, to investment, again, whether it is an infrastructure or people or what have you. So if I could leave you with one image, it is this, is to think of national security as a coin. And one side of the coin is foreign policy. But the other side of the coin is domestic and economic and social. So foreign policy is an element of national security, but in no way is it a synonym? No way is it the totality of national security. And if nothing else tonight, I hope none of you will ever use these words interchangeably. They are differences, and I'll come back to this later. But the fact that national security does reflect things quote-unquote domestic and economic and social means that when we think about national security, we just can't think about it as looking outwards. It also requires that we think about it looking inwards, which leads me to Grant's strategy. And Grant's strategy is a third notion, related but again, but again different. And yes, it's based upon foreign policy and more fundamentally on national security. But then it is what you do given that. So you make an assessment of what constitutes your national security, but then it's what you do about it. And the reason, yes, you assess interests and commitments. You assess the threats and challenges now and over time. You then have to take into account that resources are limited. You can't do everything everywhere, every time. Indeed, public policy, of which all of this is an important element, is about choice. Or put another way, it's about priorities. One of my quick rules of thumb is if I ask someone what their priorities are and how many they've got, once they get above about three or four, I've concluded that they don't have a good working definition of the word priority. It's got to be just a few things. Again because resources, not just financial resources by the way, or military resources, but resources of every type, including attention of policy makers, of an attentive public. Resources are limited. So Grant's strategy essentially again begins with national security, but it goes on to say given opportunities, given challenges, given threats, given available resources and so forth. What is it we're going to focus on? What is it we're going to devote a significant chunk of our capacity to doing? So it's about choice and Grant's strategy is about judgment. I'm going to say something about it later, but let me take a step back now to talk about national security. I've been giving it a lot of thought. In this country, the United States, national security. I've come to think that there are three principal threats to the national security of the United States, but I bet I would surprise at least some of you if I went on to say that I don't think it's China or Russia or any other single country in the world. Or to put it another way, the 21st century is unfolding in fundamentally different ways than the 20th century and the centuries that preceded it. The principal dynamics of international relations, of world history for the last several centuries have essentially been great power competition that often spilled over into conflict. In the 20th century, for example, you had two world wars, and then for four decades you had a Cold War, and when you think about the history of the 20th century from a global point of view, it's as much those three conflicts, two of which were violent and costly and destructive on scales we've never seen, and the Cold War, which for the most part was not violent, sometimes was when it was fought through proxies, but mercifully stayed cold, as opposed to becoming hot, which would have been catastrophic in the nuclear age. And what I'm simply saying is there's no country out there right now facing the United States that has both the capacity and the inclination to be a great power rival, and that to me is one of the defining but also differentiating moments of our time. It may not always be that way, and there's lots of ways that such that history, if you will, could revert to the norm. But for now and for the foreseeable future, I don't believe the United States has, if you will, a traditional great power rival on the scale of anything like we saw in the 20th century, or as we're seeing between and among the great powers in previous centuries. There's some other facets of this world that I think it's also important to take into account before we look at the three threats, a tremendous distribution of power. So rather than having a couple of countries that dominate the world, which is classic, if you will, multi-polarity, we actually have a world of widely distributed power between and among states, but also other actors. It could be financial power lodged in this or that company or bank. It could be the power to reach people through media. It could be the power of technology in handheld devices or tablets. It could be the destructive power of terrorist organizations or pirate groups or drug cartels. But this is a world of distributed power. This is not a world of highly concentrated power. And indeed, most of the tendencies out there are centrifugal. So if I were to bet, if you will, I think this is the tendency moving forward. You've got globalization as a reality, essentially the flows that are both vast and fast, enormous volume, enormous velocities, crossing borders in ways that governments often cannot control. In some cases, they can even monitor. You've also – or another way to think about it as a measure is you've got things out there that essentially in some ways integrate the world, bring it more together, provide for order, economic interdependence, which makes countries think twice before being highly disruptive, various types of regional and global organizations and arrangements. And then you've got all sorts of forces of disruption. The fact that there's an enormous gap between global challenges and global arrangements. We've got countries like North Korea or like Iran or groups like Hezbollah or al-Qaeda and its offshoot. So you've got, if you will, competing forces. And one way to get ahead of ourselves, to think about how this year will ultimately come to be known, is how these forces balance out. How the competition between forces of order and disorder ultimately pans out over the following years. And okay, so this is the backdrop. This I would argue is the backdrop to this consideration of American national security. As I said, I believe there are three threats or principal threats to it. One is the one that we have largely experienced over the last decade or 15 years. And I would call it a strategic overreach. And this has been the temptation of the United States and often a temptation it couldn't resist to try to do too much in the world. And in particular to try to remake vast aspects of the greater Middle East. If you'll allow me a generous definition of the Middle East, essentially from Marrakesh all the way through Afghanistan, where the United States has tried to remake societies particularly in obviously Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq I would argue was an example of overreach or overstretch. I've described it elsewhere as an ill-advised war of choice. It was not a war the United States needed to undertake but it chose to. Afghanistan I believe was right at the beginning after 9-11. We're about to mark the 9-11 again the anniversary of it. I believe what the United States did initially was totally warranted to basically oust the Taliban government after they would not end their relationship with al-Qaeda and turn them over to the United States and international authorities where I think the United States strayed was when it tried to remake the society and the political system of Afghanistan in ways that run up against in many ways the history and traditions of that country. And I would simply say there's been a pattern of American overreach trying to remake other societies often with the military being the principal tool for so doing. I think we've often ignored local realities of history, of culture, of religion, of society and I believe that at times we have to understand that as strong as we are and we're still first among equals or really first among unequals in the world there are still limits to what the United States can accomplish. This is to me not to feedism, this is simply realism. Now don't get me wrong, when I speak about the dangers of overreach the United States still must be capable and willing to carry out wars of necessity where our interests are vital and where no other tool other than the military would work and I even would argue we need to be prepared to undertake selective wars of choice where while the interests might be less than vital or where there might be tools available other than the military to do the job the military still makes the most sense in a kind when it's assessed on its own merits and compared to other tools. All of which brings me to what I see as the second great threat to American national security and it's not one I would have thought a couple of years ago if you'd had me here two years ago I wouldn't have mentioned it indeed when I wrote my last book Foreign Policy Begins at Home it's not one that was high on my concerns but it's emerged I was much more worried about overreach but now I'm much more worried about the opposite which is underreach. Come up with other words minimalism isolationism but what it what it reflects is a very pinched or narrow view of this country's interests and what needs to be done to defend them I believe this this world view tends to underestimate the reality and power of globalization try as it might the United States cannot become a giant gated community we'll use another metaphor the world is not Las Vegas you know what happens there isn't going to stay there one way or another things people what have you gets on the conveyor belt of of globalization and it could be terrorists as we saw again on 9-11 but as we constantly have to deal with to proliferation to disease for a global pandemic to carbon and the whole challenge of climate change or economic turmoil as we've seen with the Eurozone crisis I believe the this emergence of underreach if you will is something of an overreaction in part to Iraq and Afghanistan I also believe it sets up a false choice or between guns and butter as though in order to have enough butter you can't have enough guns and the answer is we can and need to have enough of both what this country now spends on defense is quite modest by historical standards it's quite modest compared to what we would or could spend if the threats warranted it and what ails us on the domestic side of the house and most instances is not a lack of resources but rather it's the allocation of those resources so to set up a guns versus butter debate and to basically say if only we spent less on the military so we could spend more on domestic to me misunderstands the nature of what it would take to put into place effective economic social and domestic policies we spent for example twice the average of what the other advanced economies the OECD countries spend on health care but the last I checked Americans are not twice as healthy and they don't live twice as wrong twice as long so spending more doesn't always get you more so again the gun versus butter debate I think ignores the reality it's it's almost always in public life it's how you spend is far more important than how much you spend so to set up this tension I would suggest is is wrong let me suggest two economic parallels that explain on I think what is going on why it's wrong this kind of underreach one is for those of you who do study financial markets or invest at all there's a pattern it's a pendulum pattern repent the pendulum swings too far that's why we have bubbles and that's why we go the other way and I would think that because of strategic overreach if you will the national security pendulum the United States went too far so now we're swinging back and as markets would predict we're gonna swing too far the other way there's a temptation if you will to overreact part of it another economic metaphor that I find useful is why underreach is so dangerous for those of you do economics 101 there's no invisible hand out there in the geopolitical marketplace making things right it ain't just gonna work by itself forces of order do not dominate over forces of disorder by themselves it takes if you will the visible hand of agents who are promoting order and there's no visible hand that's more capable and more central than the United States so American withdrawal or American underreach is not going to be benign we've got to get it right be between the two the Syrian debate by the way highlights a lot of this what I'm talking about and I think there's been examples of overreach in the debate about people who want us to jump in with both feet in the in the Civil War to basically become a protagonist in the Civil War which I believe would be a ill-advised unwise as we should have learned by now I got not just the local realities count but as difficult as it can be to oust an authoritarian or dictator that often pales in comparison to the difficulty of putting something in his place that endures and is markedly better and that to me is one of the the continuing lessons of places like like Iraq like Libya and so forth so we would be buying into I believe an enormous amount there's people going the other way there's a there are those who are saying we shouldn't get involved at all we don't have a dog in that hunt either on the Civil War or on the the chemical weapons use by Syrian government forces and that to me underestimates the consequences of a world in which among other things the use of weapons of mass destruction could become fairly commonplace on top of all this I would argue that what the president has said and what he's done in his decision to go con to Congress has now added an entire new overlay of concerns of interests and a stakes on all these things so I think for the United States not to react at this point would add to the potential costs of underreach so again happy to talk about this more afterwards but I would argue a policy that we do need to respond decisively to the use of chemical weapons that we also should be arming those elements of the opposition that have agendas that we can support and that over time would sway the direction of the Civil War and that we should be doing a lot on a humanitarian as well as strategic basis in particular for Jordan or such a large number of the refugees are going the third threat to our national security is fundamentally different in kind it's neither underreach nor overreach but again coming back to the definition of national security that it's what goes on here as much as what goes on there it's the fact that we're not getting it right here at home it's the fact that our schools are increasingly not competitive the United States doesn't rank at the top yes our Stanford's and Harvard's are the best but as soon as you get below that many of our colleges aren't even more important our K through 12 schools or not lots of people line up around the world at American consulates because they want to go to an American university very few people line up around the world at American consulates because they want to go to public school in our inner cities but that is a much more common educational experience for people in in this society our infrastructure I took the train up here today we have many things we do not have high-speed rail anyone who's looked at our ports our airports and so forth knows that we simply don't have the infrastructure we need we'll see whether we can pass comprehensive immigration reform but even if we do and I think the jury is out it's still not going to be a strategic immigration system in many ways which is going to make it possible for much larger numbers of the most talented and educated to come here and to to stay here what worries me more than anything is the looming entitlement burden that the United States five ten years out when people in my generation when the baby boomers are increasingly retiring we have a trajectory of obligations that we that will simply bankrupt us and increasingly will be investing there or not investing there will be paying out there rather than investing and at some point the rest you know our debt will continue to grow and the rest of the world will get tired of financing the American debt on current terms and will force interest rates to rise not to not for the traditional reasons that interest rates rise which is to cool an overheated economy but simply to provide people with the return on capital that they will want in order to give them confidence to continue to fund our habits and that will be a very bad day for the American economy because it will slow us down dramatically and we will be on a very bad cycle we will then have to do structural reforms but under much worse conditions and what I think is at the heart of all these challenges socially and economically and domestically here is political dysfunction it's not a lack of ideas it's not that we don't know what to do about these issues though some are awfully complicated like the health care system but in most instances what is lacking is simply political ability to come up with compromises that are at least partial solution so all of this if you take what I'm saying together if we therefore have these three challenges abroad to the three challenges for national security overreach underreach and political dysfunction here at home we need a grand strategy that takes it all into account that avoids doing too much and too little abroad that basically comes up with Goldilocks and addresses our needs here in the home front it's going to be hard it's actually harder to come up with a grand strategy now simply because we don't face a single obvious dramatic existential threat in a funny sort of way this business of national security was less difficult early at times in the Cold War not that it was ever easy but simply because there was a degree of intellectual clarity and there was a degree of necessity but now in a funny sort of way we've got more choice and it's harder to come up with the answers and it's harder to build domestic political support for particular for particular grand strategies so what is it though we should do I have a proposal my proposal I call restoration for an American grand strategy the idea would be it would restore the foundations of American power but it would also restore what I would call the proper or more traditional balances and what it is the United States does in the world and here at home vis-a-vis the world or another way to say within foreign policy it would put a slightly reduced the emphasis on the greater Middle East not eliminate it not withdraw from it but reduce it think of dials or rheostats as your mental image and it would slightly increase the emphasis we played above all to the Asia Pacific and then secondly besides rebalancing between or among regions it would also play slightly grit less emphasis on the foreign policy side of the national security coin and more emphasis on the domestic side of the national security coin the reason for the first rebalancing away from the Middle East and towards Asia's Asia where the is where the 21st century is largely going to be played out it's where the world's great economies interact it's where the world's most populous and increasingly powerful countries interact it's a part of the world where the political frameworks are very thin if Europe is the part of the world with the most developed political frameworks Asia is actually quite weak you've got the most dynamism you've got growing amounts of nationalism it also happens to be a part of the world where us tools tend to be particularly useful our diplomatic tools our air presence our naval presence trade promotion so forth part of the world where we can we can actually do things Middle East by contrast I would argue is not a part of the world with the great powers are present they're not it's also not a part of the world where American tools are particularly well suited and we've learned that over the years and what when we've tried to remake societies I actually think the Middle East is in the early stages of what will be a prolonged period of a self-definition and sorting out it likely will go on not just for years but but decades I think instability and turbulence not just can but will become the new normal both within societies over questions of political legitimacy sectarian differences what have you but also regionally whether she is Sunni feuds or Persian Arab feuds but I just think this is going to be a long long long sorting out in the United States can't dictate solutions we can't and shouldn't try we can have influence yes but our influence will be will be limited and I simply think that is a fact of of life I think the other thing we should do is I see besides rebalancing between the the foreign in between one region or other is the rebalancing between the foreign and domestic and it comes back to something I said at the outset this is actually a moment because we don't face a great power rival there's a powerful strategic case that we should take advantage of what I would call something of a strategic respite and again don't get me wrong here I'm not saying the world we should or could or ignore the world but because there is no great power rival right now the United States does have both the luxury and the necessity of tending a bit more a bit more to the home front and the idea would be to rebuild the foundations of American economic power only growing at roughly half the post-World War two historic average for most of the post war two year the United States grew at around 3.3 3.4 percent we're only growing at about half that so we need to get our growth up there's lots of things we can and should do to do it if we do those things I believe it doesn't simply help us domestically and raise the standard of living of the quality of life but it gives us the resources that should discourage the emergence of a geopolitical competitor on a large scale you would have to be foolish to take the United States on geopolitically around the world if we're growing at three three and a half percent again and generating all the resources and if someone were so foolish to do so it would then give us the resources to deal to put forward a response that would be robust and then some so this is not an argument for isolationism but rather it's an argument for rebalancing or reweighting the various components of national security taking advantage of some short-term considerations and positioning this country for the long term and the two principle guideposts if you will are less less emphasis on trying to remake the insides of the Middle East more emphasis on trying to shape the the emerging geopolitics of the Asia Pacific and more emphasis on restoring the economic vitality and social cohesion of this country here here at home will we do this I don't know we've got powerful special interests in this country domestically that often compete with the national interest so you know I can't stand up here and be sanguine and say we will get it right I would just for reasons I mentioned before say that I hope we get it right because the stakes are enormous the stakes are enormous to this country given our inability to insulate ourselves from developments in the world and the stakes are enormous for the world because if the United States does not take the lead in promoting international order I don't see any other country out there that has the capacity and habits and inclination to do just that maybe some countries will emerge but the European countries lack the capacity and most of the emerging countries lack the habits and inclination they're much more preoccupied with domestic developments essentially with their rise rather than with a larger global role so it's really up to the United States to to play this role for the foreseeable future but to do it in a way that is smart that again reflects limits to its resources limits to what it can accomplish in the world and the need if you will to replenish the reservoir so this is what grand strategy is it is it's it's it's based upon again an assessment that you can't do everything everywhere every time on the other hand you don't want to go to the other extreme and you you don't want to stop doing things and it's a lot of judgment a lot of choices is extraordinarily difficult to decide what to do it's then also difficult to to get the public support for doing it because it's it doesn't fit very easily on a bumper sticker but but simply because it is hard to do doesn't mean that it doesn't need doing and that to me is a part of the challenge of leadership for our current leadership and for its successors this is essentially what's out there for now and for the foreseeable future and if we get it right if the United States essentially adopts some version of what I would describe as our restoration I would think the the legacy of that will be long and will be good and it would position this country to play the kind of role that I believe it needs to play for for years indeed decades to come it will pay for itself many times over and if it doesn't again I think the forces of disorder will grow considerably it's interesting and I'll end with this and then we'll open it up you know here it is now next year it's September 2013 so roughly in 14 months it's going to be November 2014 and here we are this week it's September 9th it's 9 9 so two days we're going to be celebrating 9 11 or marking 9 11 in 14 months we're going to be marking 11 9 what is 11 9 11 9 is the day the Berlin Wall came down and by next year it'll be 11 9 will be 25 years 1989 and it's interesting that this geopolitical era that has evolved since the Cold War is still nameless and the reason it's still nameless is that the character of the era has not asserted itself there's lots of competing tendencies there's lots of developments it's not that you know history is obviously still going on but no particular historical pattern has imposed itself or imposed its personality or character on the age still up for grabs and what's so interesting about the choices facing us and in its grand strategy is that but what the United States chooses to do and chooses not to do and how it chooses to implement whatever it is it chooses to do will go a long way towards determining the character of the of the era and most of you out there are younger me this will be the year that you spend the bulk of your lives the year you'll spend the bulk of your your your careers and it's rare to be at a moment in history where so much is uncertain where history could really play out in such a different ways but that's exactly where we are and it could be a 21st century that could be marked largely by forms of international collaboration and integration it could be quite peaceful quite prosperous lots of open to size a very benign 21st century it also could you know whether among others the major powers cooperate and collaborate on dealing with global challenges trying to manage to close the gap between the challenges and the arrangements put in place to deal with them or could be very different it could be a 21st century in which the powers are at one another possibly leading to conflicts of one sort or another and where they're unable or unwilling to compromise and find ways of dealing with regional and global challenges and it's just a fundamentally different history and trajectory and life depending upon how this plays out and my only point is more than any other single factor that I can think of it will be American United States will be what the United States chooses to do in its own definition of its grand strategy and then how it implements it it's not the only factor out there other countries are going to have to decide what they're going to do and the United States is not in a position to control history or determine history but it still has the if it's a canvas to switch metaphors as the largest single paintbrush in the biggest can of paint of anybody else out there so this debate about and where I began this debate may sound academic but it's not this debate about how we define our national security and then how we how we act on it what will be as consequential as any than any of us will either experience or given the people in this room in many cases shape and participate in thank you very much now I am told there are microphones yes that have legs on them or people carrying microphones so I think now it's open on anything I've either discussed or haven't discussed that one way or another however directly or tangentially deals with this questions of national security foreign policy grand strategy from the specific to the large from the immediate to the long-term so anything is fair game and I don't know what the rules are here do people introduce themselves when they speak and stand up certainly sir I am Andrew Mitchell I'm from the State Department I'm here with the Warfare senior class I'd like to thank you first for coming and speaking to us it's a great honor to hear you speak respectfully I would submit that I think you're overly optimistic about the situation in the Middle East when you say that violence and disarray will become the new normal I think we've actually passed that point and it has become the new normal in light of that you spoke and reflected the views that the administration has has said in pivoting away from the Middle East for focusing on the Far East and my question to you would be as we make that transition what happens to our historic allies I would say Saudi Arabia Israel Jordan and Egypt and in that context I would note that beyond the much rhetoric that's been made about our military assistance to Saudi Arabia our slowness our hesitancy to forward our to our non-military assistance since the fall of Austin Mubarak has actually left us with almost no seat at the table in discussions as well as going on with that country now how can we make this pivot which I agree is it is a good idea without abandoning those who supported us it's hard for me to answer that because I'm still taking it back by the fact that I was accused of being too optimistic on the Middle East I've been accused of so much in my life but but that that's the first and my kids even call me Debbie Downer so it's a so I'm a bit taken aback so let me give you a couple of actions as I said I do think we're in the to use a baseball pardon me for sports analogies but if this were a baseball game we're maybe in the second then I actually think what began the event several years ago which were misnamed in Arab Spring are just beginning to play out and the reason they were misnamed is spring last three months this is anything but a seasonal phenomena and spring is positive it's not clear to me this has a positive and much less trajectory so I I basically have banned the phrase or less unless you say so-called Arab Spring because I really it's really the upheavals that's what these are these are these are historic people where the old order in the Middle East which was largely an authoritarian order has largely either disappeared or has come under real pressure but a new order hasn't taken its place or you had one temporarily take its place in Egypt which and now there's been a counterrevolution if you will there there's no water in places like Syria there's diminishing water in places like Iraq and certainly in Libya Bahrain is trying to figure out if it what where it goes and it hasn't come up yet with a formula even the Saudis I would argue are potentially vulnerable that because of demographic increases because of the politicization of a lot of the world because of the corruption that's associated with the regime I think there's there's potential for instability there one thing that's happened I think you're getting to this is that in the short run a lot of these countries are going up in their own way and I talked before about the distribution of power one of the things we're seeing is independent foreign policies much more so the UAE or Saudi Arabia are pursuing their goals say in Egypt and are funding rather unconditionally the the current military slash transitional government in Egypt whereas other governments like gutter we're going the other way supporting the Iqwan the Muslim brothers there's a sense that as America does a little bit less others are filling something of a geopolitical vacuum I think that's a that is a one of the realities of the modern Middle East we're seeing breakdowns of states militia is Asian in many cases what you see in Syria for example is a you see a war that's yes between fact factions if you will or large groups in Syrian society but there's overlays of outsiders that are influencing it and in turn the war is influencing them so that it's it's going in in both directions I think for the United States there has to be a strategic determination about a couple of things one is if I'm right we don't want to get in the middle of civil wars directly and that's where for example it's one of the reasons I favor arming elements of an opposition we can live with rather than Americans getting directly involved and I wish we had done it sooner and fairly large-scale but I don't think it's it's too late I think the United States at times has to make a decision about whether it's going to focus on what country what governments are and what governments do and by that I mean to what extent is the focus of American foreign policy on the character and nature of societies and to what extent is American foreign policy focusing more on the external and foreign policy behaviors of governments and to what extent should we demand certain standards be met and if so how high should those standards be and how quickly should they be met in terms of democratization or to what extent should the United States basically be more patient and be more modest about the trajectories that asked these societies to take as you probably can tell I lean towards the sense decided being more modest and more patient but I also think that the at the end of the day let me just say that if your pessimism and my pessimism are essentially right that the new normal in the Middle East will be turbulence and it's it's quite possible that it will go through the instabilities we've seen in some countries is two things the countries that have already experienced instability are not necessarily going to sort themselves out quickly and countries that haven't experienced instability are not going to be immune one of my I've got two pieces of wisdom about the Middle East one is that the enemy of your enemy can still be your enemy and and the other is that things sometimes things have to get worse before they get even worse and so it's it's not quite obvious to me again we're poised on the threshold of a regular and then what the United States and has to do it is be prepared to carry out a very inconsistent policy and by that I mean we're gonna have to look at each situation and figure out what are the interests what is the influence what are the stakes what is it we could accomplish at what cost so the idea that we're gonna have a consistent one-size-fits fits all policy towards the Middle East is to me wildly unrealistic we're gonna have to be much more careful about what it is we say about expressing preferences we can't forever be saying different leaders must go without that without having first thought out what would it take for them to go and what are we prepared to do not only to see them go but to put something better in their place and by the way what are the odds that something better could be put in this place I just think the United States is going to have to be much more careful and in terms of both its assessments and then and what what its actions are but this is what's going on in the Middle East is really the stuff it's the big stuff of history and I actually think again it's there was this post-colonial order that had largely existed for half a century or more in some cases for a century if you think about even the colonial year the the map of the Middle East the Sykes-Picot agreement it's quite possible before the before this is all worked out that not only will you have massive changes within countries and more than one change as we've already seen in Egypt but you can have changes between and among countries that borders may current borders may not exist exactly the same way and so forth so we actually need a much more strategic long-term approach to to this part of the world that I think is going to be turbulent and difficult to influence for for a long long time sir so I am left to go to Farad from Bangladesh Navy and my question is about you're talking about the focusing from Middle East to the Asia so if you see at Middle East now the Egypt's area and if Iran so the situation is not good now due to the resource constraint if you divert from the Middle East to the Asia so you are actually opening two fronts so if the situation become volatile at the time in these two regions and I think it's going to be very difficult for you with the resource constant well in Asia which again to me is a part of the world which I think is highly important because you've got the enormous economies major powers we have several allies a formal allies there but I really do think that Asia more than any of the part of the world will largely determine the the contours of this of the coming geopolitical year I don't see us opening a front I see American involvement now making it much less likely that a front opens up I think the United States being more involved in the Asia Pacific working with its allies particularly with the Japan's and South Korea's but also keeping open all sorts of communication with China having a presence there clarity about what America is prepared to do what it's prepared to tolerate promotion of regional frameworks economic and political military this is the way to keep Asia largely stable Asia has been remarkably stable for the most part for three plus decades it's enjoyed phenomenal economic success but now the economic success is slowing and I don't see it coming back to the levels it had and you're seeing nationalism rising you're seeing greater assertiveness so you're losing the lubricant if you will of great economic success and political military issues are beginning to come to the fore but there aren't the institutions or the relationships to manage them Asia just take another 30 seconds has never gone through the reconciliations that have characterized Europe you have for example in Europe Franco German reconciliation is the at the core of post World War two order in Europe and then you had the coal and steel community which became the economic community which is now the EU there's nothing like that parallel in Asia you haven't had Chinese Japanese or Japanese Korean or Russian Japanese reconciliation then the differences go back 60 70 80 or more years in some cases you don't have the the arrangements of place you have several economic arrangements there's virtually no diplomatic political military arrangements that exist in Asia it's quite brittle and quite thin so my argument is since the consequences of conflict would be enormous for the United States in the world the United States needs to get more involved not to open up a front but to prevent the front from opening up in the Middle East the front it's not a front the Middle East instability has gone is out there in great ways and the real question is what can the United States do to dampen down the instability what can it do to see the instability doesn't spread what can it do to insulate itself from some of the instability there's not solutions you know I find a really useful distinction in English between the words of problem and conditions problems have solutions conditions that most you have is the ability to manage them I would suggest the Middle East is a condition to be managed it's not a problem to be solved and the best the United States can do for the coming years figure out ways of helping to manage it and again it's through using influence where we can and may mean doing this with arming or this with economic aid or this with diplomacy the fact that we're having this energy transformation going on gives us a little bit of freedom we can't be aloof but it gives us a little bit of time and space a little bit of cushion I guess is the word I would use but we have to have a much more discreet or discriminating policy towards the Middle East to try to deal with the instability that's already there hopefully it doesn't course I think the biggest strategic question for the United States in the Middle East will ultimately not be Syria won't be Egypt it will be around and whether the United what these United States prepared to tolerate or not I think that we haven't talked about it tonight but I think that will be the biggest question and for me it's it's the near-term policy question that could have the greatest implications for American grand strategy and national security for the next couple of years but essentially I would say the strategic goals are to be to try to keep things from getting out of hand in the Middle East and prevent things from unraveling in the Asia Pacific is the way I would put forward the strategic approach sir sir commander bow from naval expeditionary combat command student at strategy and warfare naval expeditionary combat command and many of our sister services we've stood up civil-affair teams and turning young officers into you know combat diplomats maybe overuse of the word but is there something in your four decades that you've seen that we're doing different in the diplomatic corps in these theaters where the State Department's not coming with the same emphasis okay this is where I'm gonna possibly alienate Ambassador Peters and others who watch this I have a couple I actually have some strong views about this not necessarily right not necessarily informed they're just wrong one the State Department ought to focus mostly on diplomacy I think they ought to focus mostly on what I would call it what I called earlier foreign policy promoting American interests out there reporting back doing diplomacy consulting with countries and so forth trying to shape their behaviors that to me is what diplomats do and that ought to be what foreign service officers in the State Department largely does also promote investment what I do not think turning either American soldiers or American diplomats into nation builders is a good idea in both cases it's a distraction for what their missions are and what their training largely is I think the military order largely fight wars and do special missions where force is required can also do training and all that and advising but that's but not to be doing nation building what you call a combat diplomats that ought not to be the norm for the military nor what we to have kind of Peace Corps diplomats be the norm for the State Department very different skill sets what I've argued historically is that if we are thinking about large-scale nation building if whatever reason we want to do it that we ought to have a reserve force through this that's modeled very much on the military reserve and we ought to have a civilian reserve could be retired military could be retired police retired engineers or done that to be retired it could be people with these skill sets and with language sets we'd have it all on a database and we'd say gee we need 20,000 people who go into country X to speak language Y and we're really good at the following skill sets we'd have it and we'd say okay and people would sign up for this and they would spend weekends and however it is like the reserves and this would be what we would do when we thought we had circumstances that require but we would have people who were trained for this who had the real-world experience careers and we would deploy them so I actually think we need something on a large scale like that rather than ask either our diplomats or our soldiers to take on these missions which are at least one or two steps removed from it is I think what they're trained to do what their best that and what we need them to do so I would just go in a very different direction I don't want to ignore the side of the room there's a gentleman in the back so I'm Commander John Craig from the United Kingdom and I'm the Royal Naval Exchange Officer in the Joint Financial Operations faculty here. I've question about grand strategy the name implies long-term vision with some form of desired end state what we're talking about tonight sounds like short-term reaction and you highlighted your concerns about political dysfunction and the fact that parties can't agree so do you think it's even possible to have grand strategy in a Western democracy with an election cycle? It's actually the subject I struggled with as hard as any other in writing my last book there's a pattern out there certainly from mature democracies and they're struggling and there's a famous social scientist sociologist in the United States in the 20th century man Carlson and basically wrote about the tendency of when the state introduces certain types of reforms and if one says in this country to use in America's example say goes back to the 30s 40s 50s a lot of these things that were associated with the Roosevelt years to get us out of the Depression and to provide a safety net for the American people what Olson predicted and Alas has come true is that powerful special interests would glom on to these reforms and become advocates not for their perpetuation and extension and that's what's happened so a perfect example and now I'm going to alienate anyone over 50 in the room but so be it is the AARP the American Association for retired people 37 whatever it is million people you know and every and most people I know over 50 are members of it why could you get discounts on your automobile insurance and whatever but most people aren't aware that they are one of those powerful lobbies in America and a percentage of the very small money they get from you but since it's multiplied times 37 million it adds up real fast goes to lobbying and essentially making it impossible for us to even have a serious conversation much less do anything about Medicare reform which is the single biggest looming entitlement obligation facing this country and there's no way on God's green earth that we can fund so this is an example where mature democracies have real problems you see it on gun control you see it on lots of issues now you can there's only two ways I know of competing with them one is you have countervailing special interests so for example the mayor I live in New York City so Mike Bloomberg is essentially funding individuals and groups to take on the NRA on these supporting candidates or opposing candidates based upon their position on gun control you may like it I disagree that's not the point the point is he's basically said the only way to weaken the role of the NRA it's never gonna happen top down it can only happen bottom up I want to try to set up a countervailing special interest there's some efforts to start that on the Social Security and Medicare issues but enormous if gap shall we say between the startup efforts and the groups like the AARP the only other way to then out of choice to take them on would be through a leadership where a president would say I'm gonna make this one of the center pieces if you will coming back to what I said of my approach to grant strategy and I would say that unless the United States get its entitlement obligations under control we are sitting ourselves up for a major debt crisis and we are gonna leave ourselves vulnerable to the either the vagaries of the market or vagaries of central bankers and nobody wants to do that if you doubt me just ask people in Greece and it's not immediate but it's probably 10 or 12 years off but you can't change entitlement obligations on a dime it's a little bit perfect experience it's like turning around an aircraft carrier if someone's 58 or 60 or 62 you can't suddenly say we're gonna raise the retirement age a couple of years we're gonna change Medicare what you're gonna receive dramatically but if someone's 45 you can because people have enough time to internalize it and plan their lives it's not imminent you don't get the pushback so the fact that we're not dealing with these issues now means that in 10 or 15 years when all of the chicks come home to roost we're gonna have a real problem and it's gonna be too late to do anything with them except on fairly draconian terms and it's gonna be a very painful process for the American economy and American side those are the only two things I can think of to deal with these issues and I think from mature democracies it's tough it's the reason that Europe's going through a lot of what it's going through particularly in southern Europe it's out there for the United States it's also true by the way of emerging countries who have their own sets of problems I think governance domestic governance is tough and the fact that governments in many cases have lost their monopoly or domination of media and information because of the diffusion of technologies has made it even tougher so it's it's gonna be rough sailing to use another nautical metaphor I'll try I'll try to avoid them but I but I think your point's legitimate and it's one of the real question marks it's you know the reason I wrote the book I just wrote was for the first time in my adult life I'm not feeling sanguine that we're gonna get it right and when I said the biggest threat faced the United States is really our domestic politics and our ability it's for the first time I'm not sure we're gonna get it we're gonna be able to make the adjustments we should make and I'm not saying we won't but I'm just you know Churchill had to bring your Brit Churchill had the famous quote you know Americans can be counted on to do the right thing but only after they've tried everything else well we're still we're clearly still in the trying everything else phase the question is when will we get that when will we run through that phase and will it be soon enough and that's what I don't know I don't know how the timelines work out but you asked I think one of the big questions out there sure my name is he twittal and I'm an adjunct professor of strategy in war here at the cool war college I'd like to go back to Syria and the immediate present debate is about to come to a head and obviously will be far reaching consequences as to how it plays out I'd like you to tell us what you think about the Russian proposal today to put the Syrian chemical weapons under international control is that helpful or is that mischief-making well it's one of the two Admiral Carter and I were talking about this in 1980 in 1990 and 91 we are he and I were in very different places he was on out in the cent com area of operations on carriers and so forth I was the the Middle East guy at the National Security Council at the White House I was in charge of that part of the world working for Brent Scowcroft and President Bush 41 one of the things we did and we had prepared then was we thought it was quite possible that at some point as we if you recall in the fall of 19 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in early August of 90 in the fall in November of 1990 the UN passed the resolution saying that unless he's out completely and unconditionally if he's out of Kuwait by January 15 countries may use all necessary means to achieve that goal we thought somewhere in late December early January as it got really close we thought that Saddam Hussein was going to start doing things like the Russian seem to have done today with Syria we thought that he was going to start saying well I'll get out of a little bit of Kuwait and I'll do a little bit of this and I'll do a little bit of that and one of the things we had prepared and it was done at the interagency level was that if Saddam put out any sort of a proposal that gained any traction whatsoever we weren't going to accept it we weren't going to reject it but rather we were going to test it and what we did was said okay we put together a paper that basically said here's where you need to be by certain time things so in 48 hours you have to have achieved this and 72 hours you have to achieve this basically we gave him a set of tests his own paper to test his bona fides whether it was just the tactic or whether it was sincere and if so if he had started doing things and he met these tests then we would have held our fire on the other hand if he if it looked like it was just a tactic to interfere with decision-making and implementation we were gonna say not good enough here we go that's what I think our reaction ought to be now that we ought to basically say to ourselves look what would be our conditions and off the top of my head it would be such things that he gives up he agrees to give up all of his chemical weapons before that he has to give a full accounting of all his chemical weapons he has to agree to intrusive inspections he would agree to sign the chemical weapons convention we agree to some kind of a rate of destruction or international transfer we'd probably have some kind of custody of the weapons in the meantime so we would have a set what I what I would recommend that the White House be doing I hope they've done it is they would basically come up with their test of bona fides and so you you continue to march towards whatever military options you're gonna do as if none of this is going to happen so you continue to press things with the Congress and all that I don't I didn't favor the decision to go to Congress but we are where we are so you continue to move towards getting congressional support for the use or congressional authorization rather for the use of force as if none of this is going to work at the same time you say look we're prepared to accept this as an alternative outcome but here's our here's our criteria and if you're willing and able to meet them then great there's an alternative I actually think even more that it actually helps the president in one way because one could argue that the threat of the use of force potentially is one of the things that has led the Russians and potentially the Syrians to be attracted to this idea I would say if that's the case we might want to stop talking about how modest the use of force is going to be but it's a funny approach to coercive diplomacy let me just say but the but I would basically I pursue both tracks and you know I think in life you have to be willing to take yes for an answer so you frame the questions though and the test so if if they were met you could live with it and that but you don't allow yourself if you will to be distracted or you don't allow it just to be used as a tactic so it ought to be very it ought to be demanding but not unreasonable that would be my that modest or immodest recommendation sir one more last one sir commended Alexander firstly I think that this era after the Cold War could be termed Pax Americanist overreach secondly you talked mostly about America grand strategy in all the areas what happened to her from this discussion is what is the responsibility of the international community removing over to you got missed the last couple of words I wouldn't quite call it a Pax Americana for in part because it's not quite a Pax and it's clearly an era of American primacy no doubt and America is first and has been and is first among unequals and the gap is quite large but it's not an era of Pax Americana because we're not able to impose peace we couldn't do it on Iraq or Afghanistan despite what more than two million American soldiers cycled through Afghanistan and Iraq at one time you know we spent trillion a trillion and a half dollars we couldn't do it we can't we haven't been able to prevent you know you can't prevent the rise of nations you can't prevent the expressions of nationalism there's a the United States doesn't have control we're not a hegemon again we're the most influential country in the world but given globalization given the diffusion of power given our own political constraints and so forth it's not hegemony it's something less it's significant but less and we're kind of living in that gray area my own sense is again I think we've made it messier than an auto have been because at times we've tried to do too much and again my current concern is we might be entering a period where we're doing too little and I worry about again the erosion of our power here at home so what I'd love to do is extend this period of American primacy that's that's essentially my goal international community okay so I said before I banned the phrase Arab Spring I also don't use the phrase international community the reason is there ain't one it's good you're all sitting down but there is a one now that might be a goal indeed in a previous book I talked about the idea about one of the goals ought to be to knit together more of an international community and I still believe that's the case to deal with proliferation terrorism climate change disease protectionism you know all the threats to global order in whatever sphere but there isn't much of an international community today because the there isn't the consensus on what ought to be the rules and the arrangements that would shape international relations look at the G20 last couple days ago G20 got turned into the G11 because only 11 countries could agree on what could be said about chemical weapons in Syria so there's been zero progress at the global level on climate change world trade talks are more about there's two trade negotiations that are significant going on ones across the Atlantic ones selectively in the Pacific the the UN the Security Council rather than being an expression of international community is more an example of my point the yeah there's rear there's rare occasions where the five permanent members with vetoes agree we talked to for a second ago about Saddam Hussein and the invasion equate that was one of them but that was probably one of the very few areas where there is a degree of international community which is the concept of sovereign immunity and the countries what not to cross borders and invade other countries but there's there's virtually there's very little agreement on anything else so so I take two lessons for that when it's very rare we're going to get complete international backing or participation in efforts to uphold our visions of water and we're often not going to get it through the UN so what that what does that mean is you you end up going for international support where you can and you end up forum shopping sometimes you look for other for besides the UN for example in the Balkans we went to NATO where you go to coalitions of the willing and you get countries to pitch in where they're willing and able to now again the long-term diplomatic goal or to be to if you will translate the concept of international community from an objective to more of a reality and that to me is that's a pretty good task for diplomats I would actually say that's one element of what I think we ought to be doing in the world is consulting a lot with countries to try to get them to think that way why it's in their own self-interest to do certain things and so I think that's that's more but in the meantime we've got to accept the fact that international community isn't the reality and that we have to find if you will multilateralism where we can and that means a much more I once wrote I once gave a speech in my last job at the State Department and I talked about multilateralism a la carte and I think that's the approach you basically it's not a prefix dinner it's not one size fits all you you you do kind of designer multilateralism and in every instance you say where can I you know what principles or what goals can I build a meaningful amount of international support how can I get there do I create a new institution do I use an existing one how ambitious am I in the degree of all what I'm asking people to sign up to and that to me that's the stuff of foreign policy and I just think that's where we are for this era of history but a long-term goal ought to be to move the world in that direction and I would hope that in the course of this century through consultations the United States and China and India and Russia Japan Europe Mexico Brazil you know the major basically the G20 the G8 or the G20 countries make progress towards that and that would go a long way towards having this be a more orderly century and that'll be actually I'll actually leave you one last idea then I'll stop because it's 8 o'clock and we didn't even if we don't start on time we end on time important yes you gotta set precedents here the which is if this is gap right now between global challenges threats what have you on global arrangements there's an enormous gap in virtually every domain of international life because there isn't the policy consensus or there aren't the institutions are both that order to narrow that gap seems to me a really intelligent goal for American foreign policy to try to over the next 5 10 15 20 whatever years 30 years to see where we can't persuade others to sign up to rules or to use the word of the day norms arrangements what have you in these various domains or facets of international existence and to work with us to promote them to discourage people from violating them that to me is a pretty good definition of what we're trying to do and this year so I'd be great to come back or sometime to say you know we're actually we're making progress towards building an international community and there is some now I'm not saying there's none I'm sorry I don't want to be you know flipping about that there are elements of it now but what we want to do is broaden deep in it and that to me is this good definition of what our goals ought to be in foreign policy is anything else. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, Ambassador Haas on behalf of everyone here our US military students or international students our faculty the members of the US Naval War College Foundation and their guests I want to say how much we really appreciate you coming out here to spend time with us this evening as you know the mission here at the Naval War College is to educate leaders that's a great banner but really it's all about understanding how decisions are shaped advised and made for us in uniform and for those who make policy and tonight you gave us through your transparent your intellectual thought so much to think about and we're very appreciative of that so please everyone let's give a round thank you