 Our next and final panel will build on the conversations that we've had today and take a look at what should America's role in the world be with the number of challenges that we have. We have a terrific panel and I'm happy to introduce our moderator, Susan Glasser. She'll moderate the final discussion, introduce our panelists. Susan is a seasoned journalist and the chief international affairs columnist with our media partner, Politico. Please welcome Susan and our panelists. Thank you everyone. Thank you so much for sticking with us. I think we're absolutely delighted to have the final position in this extraordinary collection of people gathered on both sides and across the many divides in Washington today to talk about passing the baton and foreign policy from one administration to the next. This is a group that needs almost no introduction so I will be very brief in order to get right to a conversation that I was eager myself to hear what everyone has to say and I know you are too. So we'll start right in. Basically this is a pretty unparalleled group of people who can talk about both the foreign policy of administrations that were that might have been and that will be and so with that in mind starting from my left we have here Michelle Flournoy who of course is had many senior positions at the Defense Department was widely thought to be the leading candidate to be. The Defense Secretary had Hillary Clinton won the White House. Stephen Hadley who was the National Security Advisor under President Bush you've heard from him before were delighted and honored to be with him today. KT McFarland who is coming in as the Deputy National Security Advisor who was already telling us regaling us with fascinating stories of her previous tours in the Situation Room many decades ago. We're excited to have her join us today and Jake Sullivan who of course was a close advisor to Hillary Clinton who has sat in the White House who sat at the State Department and brings much wisdom to this conversation as well. I want to jump right in because I know we're eager to hear from all of them and you know the title of this panel is pretty high altitude as befitting such an august group of people but why not go ahead and start right at 30,000 feet not only about the role of America in the world but the role of foreign policy in the United States today we're divided country the world is divided about the election we've just had divided about what it means I think many of us couldn't really have conceived of a moment at which we would be talking about whether America's place in the world is under question in some serious way more than it has been since the end of the Cold War 25 years ago and so I really I want to start out with that in mind and go ahead and start with Michelle and your thoughts on where America is in the world today do you believe that there is going to be a different role for American leadership going forward than there has been since the end of the Cold War. Well thank you very much Susan and I just want to applaud USIP for hosting this conference yet again as part of your tradition of trying to facilitate a positive and productive transition between administrations you know I'm one who believes that the US role in the world the leadership role of the world in the world will remain indispensable I think it was interesting we heard that as a shared theme from both Susan Rice and General Flynn today when they both spoke but I think the the divisiveness of the election while it wasn't focused on foreign policy primarily there was enough said about foreign policy that I think there's a lot of confusion here at home but also out in the world among our allies and partners and potential competitors about where the US will stand will there be more continuity will there be more change what can we expect of US leadership in the future and so obviously it's going to take time for a new administration to form its team to you know deliberate and work through a series of strategies and policies but in some senses the world won't wait and so I hope that early on I would love to see the new administration articulate some principles or guideposts that people can co-hold on to that can reduce the level of uncertainty and give people a sense that look we have enduring national interests we have enduring national values we understand that there's a lot of challenges to the rules-based international order that we architected here are some things that you can count on from the new administration I think having that reassurance with partners and allies but also being setting some clear expectations so that we bolster deterrence in a period where some may be tempted to test the United States and new administration I think even before all of the strategies and policies are fairly articulated that would be very helpful to shore up that leadership role Steve American the world you've done a lot to formulate this conference and to bring us all together around that you know you were saying some fascinating things backstage around you know just where Americans are at and their conflicting views around what they think about foreign policy today on the one hand and on the other hand right we you know it's interesting that the dinners last night that conversations today one constant theme was America needs to lead in the world our friends and allies want it and it's in America's interest to do it but in this last election a lot of people said actually the American people are tired of bearing the burden of leadership in the world they want other people to do more they want to sort of set down that burden so one of the questions is we know what people in this room have said what do the American people think a do we want to lead and then b what does leadership mean in the world in which we are involved engaged and there was a poll that was recently done and I may get this wrong by the program for public consultation at the school of public policy and the University of Maryland and I've not gone into it in detail but the the summary sheet that they put out has two very interesting results that I think inform this conversation one on the issue of do Americans want America continue to lead and what does that mean let me read for you from this summary it says less than one in ten of Americans polled want the United States to withdraw from efforts to solve international problems or to play a leadership role less than one in ten and on the other hand less than one in ten want the U.S. to be the preeminent world leader so where's the rest eight in ten say that the U.S. should participate in cooperative efforts together with other nations and should play a shared leadership role now we can ask a question of what shared leadership means it's a tricky concept but I think what this basically says the United States is as was said earlier to lead doesn't mean you have to lead alone the Americans I think from this one America to lead with others and they want others to do their fair share and I think one of the ways to think about this is I think what Americans may be saying is more for more we're prepared to lead we're prepared even maybe to do more but only if others are willing to do more for the our common cause it's not an unreasonable position another thing that came up in the debate is well you know is America doing too much to pursue global interests and not enough to pursue America's more narrowly defined interests and there was an interesting finding that emerged on that most Americans looked at that distinction and saw it as a false choice seven in ten agreed with the argument that the United States should look beyond its own self-interest and do what's best for the world as a whole because in the long run this will probably help make the kind of world that is best for the United States and you know I've always thought the American people have great common sense and I think actually it is reflected in these polls so I think what we see is an America willing to support American leadership but leadership along with others with others doing more and a different concept of leadership that is not preeminence but is working with others to facilitate and to provoke common action to solve problems that all of us need to be solved so I think in terms of what does it mean to lead in this new environment we ought to take a cue for the American people I think they've kind of figured it out for us Katie everybody wants to ask you what's President Trump's view of all these so you know we're not going to make this a press conference by you but you know we'd love to get your thoughts not just on America and the world but where the new administration comes in how much of a break with our previous foreign policy are you anticipating well first of all I want to thank you for that question and tell you that I'm not going to answer it because my boss is sitting right here in front row general Flynn who gave a terrific speech earlier today is sitting right there so I'm going to just speak in general terms he's welcome to jump in too but no I think in all seriousness on a human level I think it's worth addressing the elephant in the room and that's me and that's the Trump administration I don't think anybody probably most of the people in this room didn't support Donald Trump maybe not at first or maybe ever and I suspect most of the people in this room didn't think he'd win but he has and the fact that you're all here even though you didn't support this candidate even though this is as you said people have questions I think it really speaks to who you are and the professionalism and the and the seriousness with which you take the professions that you have all given your lives to and so I want to applaud you and I particularly want to thank the people that I'm on the podium with because if the election had turned out differently everybody would have had a different job and I think that the fact that you're here today and not on some desert island somewhere speaks to your character so I really I want to get that out of the table elephant is identified in the room um what I would like to do because I'm not going to tell you about the Trump administration policies because that's what an new administration does it takes time to rethink things um and to come up with its policies but I will tell you the mindset and why I as an untraditional New Yorker thought Donald Trump was the guy I wanted to support early on and that's because I think we're at a unique moment in American history and to me he was the one candidate who would seize that moment and here's why it's a unique moment we have the opportunity it only happens once every 40 years every more than every generation every two generations where the United States has an opportunity to reinvent itself and recreate itself you know Mike Flynn earlier talked about American exceptionalism as our values and we stand for liberty and freedom and we are the indispensable nation we are the one indispensable nation but I think there's another part to American exceptionalism and that's that we're also the nation of reinvention I mean every one of us in this room probably didn't start out in the life that you've lived you've created yourself out of the opportunities you've had in this country and I think that's what has made America truly exceptional you know most countries rise shine and eventually decline America rises shines maybe declines a little bit but rises again in an even better and greater form and I think that's the moment we're at because there are the stars of a line to make this a unique historic moment and for the following reasons tax reform Donald Trump talked about a pro-growth economy tax reform is going to probably liberate particularly corporate tax reform two to three trillion dollars that will come back to the United States be repatriated to invest in infrastructure and new inventions secondly regulatory reform we saw in the Reagan administration where I was a foot soldier that regulatory reform really did encourage the development of small business the third thing is we have cheap energy cheap and abundant and secure energy we have been in this quest as America since the 1970s where can we find abundant and cheap and secure energy sources and then finally we have a dozen disruptive technologies how many people in this room have an iphone right everybody's got an iphone except the people have samsung and we don't let them in the room but if you've got an iphone that didn't exist 10 years ago and yet think of how it's changed your lives it's not just calling somebody it's how you how you access information it's how you shop it's all aspects of your lives have been changed by the iphone well there are a dozen iphone like technologies that have been invented in america they're going to be manufactured in america and they're going to be sold not only to america but to the world and it's stuff like wearable medical devices it's self-driving cars robotics nanotechnology bioengineering dna design medicine all of these things are just waiting to be mass produced in america so i look at this and i'm a glass half empty person i studied nuclear weapons at mit you know you're not supposed to be thinking about the good news in that field but i look at this and say we're in america where the glass is half full because with a few political decisions which is why i like donald trump because i think he's the guy to make those decisions we are going to have an economic renaissance secondly it's not just the economy's stupid but it's also american national security and it's the rebuilding of america's defenses i don't think a lot of people think and we can say later who's you know who why who blame not blame but american foreign policy in the last 15 years has not been a happy story yet if we have the opportunity now to rebuild our defenses and as general flin said peace through strength i was when ral reagan chose those words he did it very deliberately it wasn't peace through capitulation or peace through conquest and it wasn't strength economic strength military strength diplomatic strength moral strength it was all of those things together and i think we have another opportunity to do that again so when i look at the future and and what is the mindset and where does america go from here i think we have a new president who is going to seize this unique historic moment i think he's going to rebuild america's defenses and not only does it make our lives better as americans but it gives us leverage and opportunities and options that we have not had for over a generation and that's to not just rethink american foreign policy look nobody's talking about giving up the things that have been a part of the american post war period but is to maybe recalibrate them as general flin said or is to see what other opportunities exist to strengthen them and so the three bedrock principles if you want you know what is the trump foreign policy i think you could talk about the things that have been tried and true whether it was when steve hadley and i were junior nsc staffers together or when you've been in government or when you've been in government and it's things like you know it's america's values that's going to continue to be the bedrock of american foreign policy american global leadership it's going to continue it may have a different form and we may have more options and more opportunities to do it and finally is the alliance structures that have kept the peace for the long did you realize that since world war two this is the greatest and longest period of world power peace since the fall of the roman empire 75 years where we have not had global wars and a lot of those be because of our alliances so i would say all of you relax it's going to be great we're going to make america great again and welcome along for the ride thank you all right jake we've given you a tough job you have to follow that but um you know do you really feel like it's as bipartisan as all of that well i think that um obviously the tone of the campaign um uh and the way in which many of these issues were engaged over the course of the past many months has left questions about whether or not there is in fact a bipartisan consensus um and uh you know what kt just laid out obviously there's much in that that i could fully agree with um uh but i think we now have to see what actually happens at the end of the day what i think we collectively have to decide as a country is to do our best to operate according to the maximum that politics stops at the water's edge and that we try to support uh an administration in pursuing america's national security i think we've lost our way on that some over the past eight years uh that politic that foreign policy was politicized and and i think that there is blame on both sides but honestly candidly i think there's more blame in the politicization of things like Benghazi um than uh than in other places and i think that that is i hope as we go forward we can all model our best possible behavior in an effort to drive the maximum that a president's success is a country's success and that we should look at things in a sober and serious way that being said i would just like to add two things to what's been uh put forward on the panel with respect to american leadership in the world one of them is that the basic bedrock of american leadership has been a set of principles that have been alluded to of democracy of liberty and equality and pluralism of supporting friends and institutions around the world that support and channel those values whether we're talking about in europe or the asia pacific our partner israel in the middle east other countries and one of the things that i'm concerned about is that basic bedrock is under threat and challenge today in a way it has not been in a very long time i think there is an active project underway that the russian president and uh those around him are engaged in in europe in the united states and elsewhere to try to chip away at the liberal and i mean that not in the political sense but in the philosophical sense liberal institutional order that the united states is built in champion around the world and i think part of american leadership going forward is going to have to be to rise to that challenge to meet it and to prevail so that the basic elements of the order that matter so much to us in our country continue as we move forward and the second thing that i would say is the centrality of diplomacy and america's capacity its reach and resolve to build the kinds of networks and coalitions that steve was talking about so that we're not doing things alone to achieve great things and i actually think you can look across each of the past administrations and see tremendous examples of this and we need to defend that and we need america's word to mean something as we build and succeed in executing those coalitions so for example uh achieving a deal with iran that put a lid on their nuclear weapons program without firing a single shot we pulled the world together to do that getting a climate agreement that 195 nations around the world signed on to to curb carbon emissions and try and deal with this existential challenge not just to us but to everyone else we pulled the world together to do that that is not just in principle what american leadership looks like that is in practice and i do hope that as the new administration considers its options and looks at the choices that it faces that it sees the tool of diplomacy of coalition building of pulling the world together to take on the great challenges that no one country can solve on their own but no country can solve without the united states of america and that they not only look for new opportunities but they look to see the good and the opportunities that have already been seized in the progress that's already been made all right steve i want to have a quick question to you and then i want to go back to the whole group with everything uh this this issue of whether we are facing a crisis moment in the liberal small l uh international order do you do you subscribe to that as well i do i think the international order that emerged after world war two is under assault we thought after the cold war that democracy freedom was the only it had sort of swept the field uh and was accepted as a as a consensus and if you talk to the chinese and the russians in the first decade of the 20th century they would say to you look we understand we're moving towards the west we embrace western values it's going to take time we're going to have to do it in our own way well fast forward a decade later that is not what you hear from russia and china what you hear is we have russian values we have chinese values they are not western values we are going our own way and i think uh jake is absolutely right we have gone back sadly to an ideological struggle between authoritarianism which is being propounded by china russia and and and is catching on in places like turkey and the like and uh democracy and we have to decide that we're prepared to gauge in this struggle and i and i will tell you um you know i i i sort of have a mock conversation um and it's putin talking to shijin ping and it goes like this putin to she you need to understand the americans are the problem the americans are the enemy they don't accept the legitimacy of your regime or my regime and they are trying to undermine it that's what hong kong was about that's what ukraine is about and we need to stand up to those americans and we need to clamp down on their agents of influence within our societies whether it's the press whether it's angios whether it's political parties now i say that sort of kiddingly but not so kiddingly i think there is that kind of conversation going on between the chinese and the russians this does not mean that we're in a period of confrontation or conflict it does mean though that there is an ideological challenge to our values the values that were the basis of that order that emerged after world war two and the challenge really for the new administration is what kind of modified revitalized order can we construct that reflects our values and will provide a framework for dealing with the enormous set of challenges that the new administration faces so katie can i ask you then do you share steve's assessment of where the russians and the chinese are at and you know i think a lot of people here understand you're not going to sit down and make policy for the new administration before you've even been inaugurated but at the same time we have heard an enormous amount from president elect trump about russia and his desire to change our orientation uh do you imagine a different conversation between shijun ping and vladimir putin you know i think one of the biggest problems that that we as americans and it's not a partisan thing that the mistake that we make is that we constantly tell other countries how they should think you know it's in your best interest to do this or what you should do is that and you know american foreign policy has has had the luxury of being the most you know powerful economic political diplomatic country is certainly in the last several centuries and probably of all time and the fact that we then assume everybody thinks the way we do is to make a fundamental mistake and it's not so much what we think that they're but how are they thinking how do they see the world and maybe they do see the world the way you're talking but maybe we've spent way too long trying to tell them what they should think and what i'm hoping in this period um again which i think is a very transformational period not just for the united states but for the world is that we can start seeing things through their eyes i mean our old boss henry kissinger talks about then he was an expert at this he was he was a genius at seeing what did they think what were their needs how could we give them their needs but at the same time advance american foreign policy and american national security interests when i look at the world today and not how i think they should think but the reality of where things are going you know with china has been an ascendant rising power economically and in other ways but that that ascendancy particularly built on economic growth is starting to slow down russia has had vladimir putin go look at his graduate dissertation that he wrote in the late 1980s as the as the soviet empire was collapsing and he wrote a graduate thesis saying i'm going to rebuild russia can rebuild itself by using its natural resources bring them under state control and then when the prices of energy rise russia will be in a dominant position and he's followed it to the letter except what he didn't anticipate was fracking and he didn't anticipate the energy revolution so that the price of oil has gone down what does that mean for him what does that mean for russia's long-term future at the same time i look at the middle east where we have been tethered to the middle east for you know since the 1970s in the quest for cheap and abundant secured energy and yet the middle east i don't think anyone in this room thinks peace is going to break out in the middle east anytime soon so all of these things are the chess board is moving the tectonic plates are shifting and what is america's opportunity whether it's with shijing ping or whether it's vladimir putin or whoever it is in the world i think it gives us an opportunity i can't tell you what those moves are i can just tell you that the nimbleness which america can can conduct its foreign policy particularly after a period of economic growth um we'll give us options and leverage to take advantage of all of those opportunities as they present themselves thank you so much do you just quickly to clarify on this do you do you see yourself and the team that you're bringing into the nsc then as being more oriented towards a sort of Kissingerian realm politic you talked about working in the reagan revolution and reagan was always very insistent when it came to the soviets on incorporating human rights uh into his dialogue with with gorbachev do you see that as being in conflict for the trump administration those eagernesses that most graduate students um take to try to put everybody in this kind of a category and catalog i just don't think that i mean it's a different world things change the world of you know what henry kissinger was able to do is a different world that what ronald reagan was able to do i mean i look at the post war period and say during the post war period we emerged from the post war period with two adversaries who could were existential threats to the united states in the sense of nuclear weapons and that was the soviet union and china and the sino-soviet alliance so what was the kissingerian foreign policy well he was able to put a wedge between the sino-soviet alliance what did ronald reagan do he was able to take the soviet union which was the remaining large existential threat to the united states and turn that around how did he do it not by fight you know this was a war that was one without firing a shot the one thing i can tell you about donald trump is if you listen to what he says when he talks about things like deterrence he doesn't use the word deterrence look he didn't go to grad school where most of you guys went um he's a businessman but when he talks about let's build america's defenses so we don't have to use them that is the essence of deterrence that is peace through strength that is not build up your military so you go use it it spills your military up so that nobody picks a fight with you and that was ronald reagan's philosophy on the other hand there are parts of nixon and kissinger that i think donald trump has also advocated so i'm not going to be put into the little academic grad school box because i think it doesn't suit and it doesn't apply in a rapidly changing world so let's let's talk about the world we brought up the middle east we've talked about russia i'd like to ask everybody on the panel at this point first of all uh if you're in kts position a couple weeks from now what do you think is the first three a.m phone call uh that this new administration is going to get and and more broadly it might not be the first three a.m phone call what do you think is the number one threat that the united states new national security team will face michelle so i think about 1201 on inauguration day you may get a call that north kree has launched an icbm i think the most eager to provoke and the country that is wants to thrust itself into the spotlight and on to the american agenda and on to the world agenda is north korea so if i had to for taking bets or doing a pool i would say north korea is probably the first one to uh to create some kind of uh crisis or event that you all will have to um respond to um but as your question suggests the urgent is not always the most important and in my view um i i do think that uh the most important thing for us long term will be uh rebuild it you know sort of crafting a policy in asia i personally think that the rebalance to put more emphasis on our relationships our trade our engagement our posture in asia makes sense given that no other region of the world will have more of an impact on our prosperity and our security long term but i think if you take the trans specific partnership and a free trade a multilateral free trade framework out of that equation indefinitely as opposed to saying you know we're going to tweak it or improve it in some way you you remove the economic pillar um and you leave open the opportunity for china to be the one to write the economic rules of the road for a generation or two to come and so i would hope that um again we would spend some time within the administration and with congress thinking through how do we ensure that um the us has a leading hand in adapting the rules-based order in asia because that will be the most consequential region and it will also set a lot of precedents for our i think our leadership elsewhere steve um a lot of things one one of the things you always worry about is some as a terror tech um on americans overseas and americans here at home and that has a game changing character um second um i think um i'm i worry about the evolution of where we're going in syria i think that may be an early challenge if this effort had ceasefire that the russians and the turks and the iranians are um falls apart it seems like it is and asad and russia clearly are trying to to take more of the country i think that is both a challenge and an opportunity for the new administration you know our first crisis was completely unanticipated a chinese pilot hot dog are sort of uh collided with one of our aircraft and so we started off our relationship with chinese with the problem of how to get our people back and how to get our plane back those kinds of things happened and there's a lot of jockeying going on in the east china sea and the south china sea and you can't rule out those and finally there's a lot of political uncertainty we're going to go into three very interesting elections over the next six to nine months in europe in terms of the netherlands and in terms of france and germany and that could potentially really reshuffle the deck a little bit in terms of relationship with with europe so you know the trick i think that the new team is going to have and it's really difficult is to be in a position so that they can manage these crises some some known and some unknown manage these crises in a way on behalf of the country but at the same time build enough space so that they can do what uh lieutenant general flinn was talking about look at the context develop a strategy for the united states over the long term look at those series of institutions that we've depended on since the end of world war two and and do the rethink of those institutions to make them more effective that's going to be the challenge managing the crises not being consumed by them and still keeping your eye on the ball for those longer term more important things where there really is a historic opportunity for the new administration i think that is going to be a huge challenge did you have a top strategic threat facing us in addition to the ones i gave there's so many i do you have a hierarchy in those or uh no you know i mean i don't know hierarchy you know the problem is is you know it's the problem when people say what are your priorities so you say well my priorities are one through five and that holds up until number six suddenly appears on the front page of the washington post and then suddenly surprise surprise it's now your priority and that's also one of the problems that uh that the new new team will have kt i think you're gonna pass on uh on this one right over to jake jake they've named a lot of them i could throw out more into press us further about the potential threats this making me want to go to that desert island anyway um so look at a strategic level i think the biggest threat facing the united states is the possibility that terrorists get their hands on weapons of mass destruction and uh cause a catastrophic event in the united states and so i think our policy towards terrorism at large but also towards nuclear proliferation is incredibly important and i hope that uh that prudence prevails in respect to the notion of other countries getting their hands on nuclear materials and frankly the prudence prevails in respect to the question of whether we should engage in a new arms race i do think that those are important large strategic questions in their own right but they also relate directly to what could ultimately come home to roost here in the united states with respect to a threat i think the only other uh challenge that comes close to that level of potential absolute catastrophe and over the long term even exceeds it is the threat of climate change and i know that everyone derides answers to strategic questions by someone talking about climate change is somehow your soft and fuzzy headed and so forth and you know i um you could put it in a different bucket from um terrorists getting their hands on wmd but this is a huge piece of business and uh it is for the world i think paris was a good step forward but there's a lot of work that needs to be done on this front the only other thing that i would say is when you look across the middle east in north africa right now uh there are so many unsettled situations and so many possibilities without naming names of countries where things could break the wrong way and the net result of that in terms of its impact on europe and ultimately on the united states is quite dramatic so the new team is going to have an immediate need to look not just at syria not just at uh the challenge that iran poses to the region but in a number of countries that are dealing with significant internal challenges which couldn't turn into external challenges for the united states and our close allies and partners going forward and i think we all have to keep a close eye on that well you're always safe uh in american foreign policy predicting uh trouble in the middle east right and uh entanglement head and you know literally having just gotten off the plane from jerusalem yesterday i i do want to go back to k t because you really you do have this called the trump effect phenomenon before any policy has been made while you're still asking for time understandably to to formulate what those decisions are going to be there is an absolute core expectation uh that president trump as soon as he gets into office is going to move the embassy to jerusalem there is an absolute core you know bracing for whether it's the outbreak of a new intifada whether it's uh you know sort of upheaval in israeli politics there's already uh a foreign policy effect of the new administration regardless of whether anyone's had a chance to to sit down at their desk or not uh is there already a plan uh from the trump administration to move the embassy to jerusalem and and do you feel how do you address the fact that there's already a trump effect in global international relations because i really don't want to get into the trump administration foreign policy but let me talk about the trump effect uh to me the greatest threat to american national security in the last let's say 20 30 years has not come from abroad but come from within and that is that the assumption of american democracy is predicated on participation we're in it together somebody wins somebody loses we go home we decide we're going to support the other candidate we come back again and we support somebody different next time and the real problem with the american populate the american community is that for the last you know for decades 40 percent of the american public just checked out they may have had opinions about politics but they never went to the polls they didn't vote you'd ask people and they would say well i'm not political i'm not going to go vote i don't vote it's not for me and and that i think was the greatest threat to the country because again a democracy is predicated on participation and in 1776 that the constitution the declaration of independence in the constitution that was written assumed that we would take not just the opportunities of democracy and the privileges but the responsibility for self governance and when i look at the american political landscape the thing that i think of is the trump effect is a lot of that 40 percent they're back in the game now you may not like some of the things that they believe in or you might love some of the things that they believe in but the fact that they're in the game is something that strengthens democracy because you never want to get to the point where the people don't participate they don't feel it's them they feel disconnected from the country because that we have been given the gift of the responsibility for democracy falls on our shoulders and some of the population of this country have decided that it wasn't for them they're back in the game and i think that if you got that going for you if the united states has that the american public it feels like they're back and they're participating there you've got a piece of the action they've got skin in the game but i don't think there's any problem that's too big for us to solve because look at american history i mean this is tough right i get it the civil war was tougher valley forage was a lot tougher the depression was worse and when the american people are together there we are not only the indispensable nation but we are unstoppable because we do we're innovative we're creative we're entrepreneur we all of those things and yet we're never any of those things if 40 percent of the population checks out they're back in the game and as far as i'm concerned that's the trump effect and that's the single most important thing that i take away from this election so there's been a lot of scathing indictments of the foreign policy blob these days i know all many of the people in this room don't want to necessarily think of themselves as members of the blob but you know katie alludes to some of that critique uh steve and michelle i'm wondering if you can you know sort of address whether you think some of the foreign policy failures of recent decades are because uh there wasn't skin in the game uh of too much of the population how much are the people in this room and in both parties to blame for where america's at in the world well you know i i guess i'm part of the foreign policy establishment and i have the distinction of having been rejected and denounced both by the obama administration and the incoming trump administration uh you know the way i think about it is um a little different than katie but but somewhat similar and i'm you know as carl rove used to tell me when i would sort of talk about political advice he would say hadley you don't do political advice stick with foreign policy that's what the president pays you for but but i think this election you know we've never had election quite like this we've had political insurgencies we've had populist movements we've never had one in our history that actually won the presidency and this is different and they won it because the because i think there got to be a divergence between what the elite was saying and what the american people believe and that's happened before and when that happens the american people rise up in their anger and they whack the elites and someone said the the mantra of this election ought to be have you heard us yet and there is an element of that so uh look this is an we are think as fred kemp said earlier early on we're kind of an inflection point in our history i think there that is a real opportunity for the new administration i think the american people want us to do a rethink and ask some fundamental questions that haven't been asked for a while uh i think that's all to the good and i think what you've seen today is you know the new administration understands that that is their role and they have brought in at the cabinet level people who are from outside the system of the last uh a couple decades and are going to do that relook but they are also working out and reaching out and we heard this from lieutenant general flinn today for the expertise of people in this room to help them do that relic relook and i would hope that the community that's reflected here will understand that that is really what the administration has been elected to do and is willing to help and support it and that means you know look when they when they make mistakes there are a lot of people in this room who are prepared to tell them how they've made the mistake but also when they get things right we also have an obligation to stand forward and say yep they got this right and we ought to support them so i think that's the way uh things are headed and and i hope that this event over last night and today is a first step in that direction i agree that this was a change election um you go back to 2008 that was also a change election one of the things that i remember and really appreciated now in retrospect that president obama said to us all when we first walked into the transition office was um well the first thing he said was no ego no drama this is not about you so get over it the second thing he said was don't assume everybody that came before us is a bunch of idiots you know the temptation in a change election is to throw the baby out with a bath water we're going to start with a clean sheet sheet and de novo sort of start from scratch and and you do want to honor that impulse for change but i think what he was telling us is there's there's some goodness and some learnings and some best practices in what may have come before you and so look carefully at you know the presidential directives that steve hadley left behind and that other administration's left behind but you know sort of try to call the best out of what you're inheriting and also honor the message for change and i i that was sort of hard for some of us to hear at the time um because we were riding the wave of you know this is you know a change in a new era and a new chapter for a historic chapter for america but in retrospect i really appreciate the the value of that sentiment and i i would hope that this administration would also take that to heart i know i want to get questions to the audience you've been very patiently i'm sure collecting their thoughts uh while while you're getting your questions ready i want to throw one more to the panel president obama will give uh his big last speech tonight uh looking at his record uh susan rice of course shared some of her thoughts with us earlier today about that legacy i'd like to ask everybody yet what is both the most uh underrated accomplishment of president obama when it comes to foreign policy and also what is the most overrated uh accomplishment that he's had or been given credit for that might not look so strong uh when when history goes back on it uh jake i'm sure you've done a lot of thinking about that what uh what's well and underrated i don't know who the bozos were who negotiated the iran deal but you know uh well let me start with what i think what does he get enough credit for it's always hard to answer these questions so well you know we give him credit for that i look i think in terms of um what president obama did to put the united states in the strong position it finds itself in today uh was basically take a set of steps building on the crisis management of the bush administration at the end of the bush administration to turn around an economy that was in crisis not just in the united states but around the world and different decisions by different people in the same place could have led us into a great depression and so the fact that the president had to wear with all uh in the face of some pretty turbulent political waters to uh advance a set of economic policies that included rescuing the auto industry and put us on the path that we're on today is quite extraordinary in 2012 mit romney ran against brock obama um for the presidency he said i'm going to work hard to get us to six percent unemployment we're at 4.7 percent unemployment in 2016 coming down from shedding 800 000 jobs a month at the beginning so uh you know to katie's point about having to not just look at foreign policy as something that happens out there but what are the kind of basic foundational attributes of american power at home the core economic power of the united states especially when you look at it in comparison with the rest of the world right now developed and developing is quite remarkable and he deserves a great deal of credit for that now i think part of this election was about the distribution of the gains that came as a result of that recovery and about a lot of changes in our economy that have uh frankly he didn't have the capacity to attend to as much as he might have both because of challenges on the hill but also because he was busy actually doing crisis management and the long-term trends that now need to be dealt with that i think is the next big project whether you're talking about automation or the decline of manufacturing jobs and like so i'll leave it at that i don't think there's anything he did that was underrated so katie in the spirit of this new bipartisanship breaking out as you want to take a gander at this question the same question yeah um of the president obama's uh accomplishments what what has he done that was perhaps underrated or something that uh like the bush administration offered some lessons for the obama administration there's one of the things that struck me um because i'd not supported president obama when he was when he first ran or when he second second time he ran but one of my colleagues at fox news which is where i used to work until that a month ago um one of my colleagues is wan williams african-american man who's a very respected journalist and somebody that i i think very highly of as a human being and he said the night that barack obama was elected he said you don't understand what this means you don't understand what this means to me and i thought okay i don't really get this and he said i'm an african-american and there have been times a lot of times when i haven't felt that i've been treated equally or considered equally and he said so when barack obama won the presidency that it was it was a a change that he felt in a fundamental way and i kept thinking back to when geraldine furrow was the first woman to be on a national ticket and when she was vice president um the democrat party to mondale i didn't support her either but i sure felt great about the fact that a woman was breaking through that glass ceiling so whatever else you say about you did like his foreign policy you didn't you did like obamacare you didn't i think that that just the fact that a man like that of a that people a generation before would never have thought an african-american man could win i don't think that's the only thing that i want to remember barack obama for but i think it has shown it showed to me the same kind of pride in my nation that i felt when geraldine furrow had the had the not got the nomination and then it was the same pride i felt when sandra day o'connor was nominated to be the first woman on the supreme court a woman i did get to know and and consider a friend but it was that same notion that stuff that you didn't think was going to happen a generation before has happened and when i look around today at the kind of people who are assuming national leadership roles it again to rise above the partisanship and all the rest it makes me really proud that i'm a member of this country where people can rise on their own qualities and and there is just no limit to what they can do if they're willing to work hard get a little bit lucky and follow their dreams so i'd like to leave it there steve i'll speak a little personally um and it's it's along the same line as k t i appreciate what michelle said about president obama saying you know just because the bush administration didn't didn't mean it was did it didn't mean it was wrong and you had to build on what was done it didn't feel that way uh particularly for those of us from the bush administration that didn't leave town but stayed in washington and sometimes the administration seemed to me to go out of its way to say well you know the bush people screwed this up and we're gonna get it right um and the only thing for a while i thought the obama administration gave us credit for was the transition which of course was our leaving office and the impression was the only thing we did right was how we left off and i will tell you there are going to be moments when you're gonna feel the same way that that is the attitude of the new administration towards you you just will because you're going to be hyper sensitive to it because of all the time and effort you put in it you can't out but it's only to be human and if i would have a request for the new administration i would it would i would say remember as michelle said you're not writing on a blank sheet of paper and there's a lot there that you can work with and secondly when you talk about it talk about the future and where you're going and and don't you know don't use what the the past administration did as an excuse i would say don't even talk about that you've got so much you want to do and can do looking forward i would say look forward and build on what you've got terms of president obama you know the american people aren't going to remember this policy that deal they're even going to forget the iran nuclear deal at some point i think what they're going to remember is a man of great dignity it's what k t was saying a man of great dignity that brought that dignity to the office that that broke through another barrier as this in in america's story as it becomes what it should be and what it holds itself to become i think they're gonna remember how he handled himself in office how he handled himself with his wife and with his family and the way he balanced these awesome responsibilities with his responsibilities in his family this is a very commendable thing and i think in the end of the day that's one of the things that they're going to remember president obama for and they should because he enriched the country simply by how he conducted the office shall um i was going to suggest two things that i think are um under appreciated and they go to the the challenge that that jake noted which is the the threat of nuclear terrorism after 9 11 this was sort of front and center as the thing we feared most and rightly so in the last eight years very quietly this administration had a series of you know nuclear security summits but it really worked with the global community to police up a whole lot of weapons usable material that was dotted around in the atoms you know atoms for peace reactors and the soviet equivalent but but what the material that terrorists if had they been smart could have actually acquired and manufactured some kind of improvised nuclear device that danger and it's not gone but it is dramatically reduced because it's a lot of quiet us led coalition efforts to police up that material and ship it back either to russia or or the united states and i would pair with that um i don't think anybody has written the story yet of the the time and attention that the president put on preventing another 9 11 i mean the follow each and every threat stream that had any credibility and any chance of producing a catastrophic attack was run to ground and and disrupted or foiled or dealt with and the sort of persistent attention and focus at the presidential level to make sure that kind of attack didn't happen again i think was is something that hasn't been talked a lot about publicly but was a very real animating principle for the administration all right everyone's been super patient so i'm gonna ask you to keep it brief given that we're almost out of time give us your name and make it really a question if you can right here sir thank you mohammed gannon with the syrian american council so we surmise today about potential threats and things that could go wrong my question is about an issue that's already gone incredibly wrong syria what advice would miss mcfarland give president trump on how to contain this or address or approach syria thank you i'm sorry i didn't quite get the question i i think he's just asking what what what your counsel to the president's going to be on syria what would you advise on syria oh boy this is a really tough one um well first of all i think i i wouldn't want to say in a public forum what kind of advice i would give to president elect trump but syria and what it represents in a greater sense of failed state is going to be one of the greatest challenges you know throughout history you worry about countries that get too rich and too powerful and then come to take a piece out of you in this case failed states present one of the greatest challenges and as you've said failed states which potentially or if you said jake um people who get their hands on weapons of mass destruction fissile materials and so the advice i would give is not specifically about that but about the understanding that failed states weak states which historically have never been a threat to great nations we are in a new era where failed states the weakest states among the world the world community or even subnational groups now can present the greatest threat to world peace and to their neighborhood thank you thank you very much and thank you all for your very insightful comments today i'm to mike atillam and with new america and my question is for kt i have to give the president elect a lot of credit in that he is not someone who shies away from a fight and over the course of the campaign he made that abundantly clear the one country that he's been very consistent in refusing to criticize is russia notwithstanding a pretty significant body of evidence indicating that russia has tried to pick a fight with us on a number of different fronts as we've been sitting here and i don't want to politicize this but the story just broke that the fbi has gained access to compromising material that the russians apparently have about the president elect two questions flow from this can you tell me one thing that the administration is concerned about as it relates to russia what is one concrete thing that you are worried about when it comes to russia and second what assurances can you provide to americans when it comes to our broader strategic relationship with this very important country i don't know about the story that you're talking about that's broken and so i don't think it's um appropriate for me to have any comment about something about which i know nothing now i know in washington people prefer to talk about something about which they know nothing but i'm going to refrain from and going to not take that temptation i think what don trump has said on a number of occasions is what you've said jake although not in relation to to sub-national groups as much as he has about the soviet union the soviet union now russia and it's the it's nuclear weapons i mean i've heard him say on a number of occasions nuclear weapons change everything so that i would assume is going to carry them on and when you talk about existential threats to the united states the existential threat to not only the united states but to the world is nuclear weapons in the hands of people who want to use them um throughout the nuclear age deterrence has kept the peace we are now in a new era where deterrence may not keep the peace and i i think that um again i i'm going to refrain from jumping right in and giving an opinion about which i don't know the um the subject but thanks uh just a quick follow up jakey you probably would be surprised as anybody to hear your views and donald trump's on russia be compared to be the same i i get the point on nuclear weapons but i do want to give you the chance to respond on this issue of russia and whether it's really the exception to some of the more bipartisan comments that have been made today uh you know it does seem that since the election this has been the subject of perhaps the greatest questions around the trump foreign policy and how it would differ from that of hillary clinton's had she won uh you know is is that your view that we're headed towards a major rift in russia policy and also just to clarify for everybody is it your view that the russian intervention in the election proved decisive in any way did it actually affect the outcome now that us intelligence agencies have assessed that in fact it occurred with the goal of electing donald trump let me say something you never want to trust a reporter and i say that as somebody from the media we talked earlier about um susan about not wanting to talk get into donald trump's foreign policy what i will say however is you know i'm not going to say what donald trump thinks about the um the election and what involvement the russians had i think i would just say what what mr clapper said which is that there is no evidence that whatever the russians did had any effect on the outcome of the election and for any political leader who is looking at what you've said is a change election that what you've said is a very the american people saying hey you heard us yet that for anybody who wants to sort of blame the loss of hillary clinton or the democrats or the the governorships or the senators or the house of representatives of the democrat party you're making a mistake if you think that it's because of some other thing if this is the american people talking and i just think it's a mistake that the democrats are making if they continue to try to look for a scapegoat sometimes it's better to just look and see what their positions are that may have led to the dissatisfaction of the country because it's not just one election if you look at the last several elections it's been governorships that have been lost it's been state legislatures that have been lost it's been senators that have been lost and it's been congress congressional seats that have been lost and so i really am not going to jump into the middle of that so jake i'd love to get your response and whether you agree with that well i um i i thought we were approaching this panel from a perspective of you know trying to tackle the issues in a bipartisan way i i'm not gonna let's in there is overcome well i mean i think those comments leave a lot to the previous comments leave a lot to weigh in on but but look let me let me say just just a couple of things on the question of whether this actually had an impact on the outcome of the election the only thing i would point out is that the the margin of difference in wisconsin pennsylvania michigan combined was 80 000 votes so many different things could have had an impact in chasing 80 000 votes could one of those things have been a broad based effort detailed in kind of horrifying specifics by this even the unclassified version of this report by the russians to have an impact on the election be one of those things i think it would be unreasonable to suggest no there's no way but i'm not gonna be the one who you know ultimately is the arbiter of that i don't think jim clapper has tried to arbitrate that either on the um on the broader question of where we go forward on russia policy and and to the question that was just posed it has been troubling to me that on the issue of the article five guarantee to our nato allies the president-elect on the campaign trail raised questions about whether he would honor it it has been troubling to me that the president-elect has raised the possibility of lifting the sanctions on russia vis-a-vis crimea and there are other examples of this as well but of course we have to see what actually happens if those things happen if the article five guarantee atrophies and america's word can't be counted on in europe or if we give up on the pressure that we are placing on russia for its flagrant violation of international law then i think we all have great cause for concern but this all the rubber meets the road when you actually see the policies being pursued by the new administration i don't have a good answer to be honest with you for why he has adopted some of the positions he's adopted they don't make sense in his broader approach from my perspective and they don't make sense in the perspective of america's national security interest but that's not for me to answer why it is he's chosen to adopt these positions can i say one thing i think um so probably get me in trouble with some of my closest friends but i think at some point when passions have cooled a bit and we get some distance on this election we need to look back at it and and a lot of a lot of us need to do some soul searching about the roles we we played i think the media has a lot to think about and i think us in the national security cone need to as well it's a terribly important thing in this country that our intelligence officials our military officials our national security officials um our in uh and our foreign services officers all are in a position as has been the tradition to be basically non-political in the sense that they are ready willing and able to serve whomever the american people elect as president whether republican democrat or other i think that is terribly important so that a president comes in and can have confidence that those institutions really have the best interests of the country at heart and are willing to serve the new president as he or she pursues those interests and i think we've gone through a situation where so many people signed so many letters telling the american people their views about who should be elected president and i understand that and i respect it and it was these were very difficult decisions for people to make those people in sign and those who did not and and i think they were all well motivated but i think that the risk is that it had the fact of of encouraging a politicization of those institutions and undermine the confidence that the american people and the incoming president could have that they were going to be non-political professional groups serving the president and i'm going to take some flak for this but i i'm uncomfortable about how it came out and i think when again temper school and we get some distance i think we need to do some lessons learned on this election if we really believe that bipartisanship and working together on common problems of common americans is at the core of how we have a successful foreign policy you know unfortunately i'm getting the hook which is terrible because i know there's a million more questions in the audience and that we could go on for a long time this has been a great conversation i do want to give everybody a chance to sort of sum up it's been a long and terrific and thought-provoking both conference all day today as well as this discussion today uh so i do want to give everyone here a chance to sort of go back and look at both did we miss anything really important uh you know that's going to be the subject of those briefings uh for kt and general flinn and the team when they get into office and any final thoughts you want to leave us with michelle i won't try to summarize that discussion um but i would say you know i think um and i'll i'll commend steve hadley here and it's really just uh unsolicited advice for for kt and general flinn i think you know one of the great national security advisors and and deputy national security advisors um that we all look to in history are the people who who understood that their job was to ensure the president had the benefit of all views and the best information to make those tough decisions and i think you know you were in the tradition of the scowcroft she had the honest broker making sure that even when you didn't like a point of view that dissent was reached and i think you know you there are some very strong people um that have been appointed uh and uh and and and i think making and there's a broad range of views institutionally as you noted and i think you know going forward as you put a process together you know i think there's such strength in ensuring that those points of view are brought to the table and heard in inside government and out and you have a lot of people in this community and in think tanks whether we have ours behind our names or d's behind our names that want to see this country be successful and that want to help and want to offer perspective and input so i would just encourage you to avail yourselves of that and make sure that those you know those views the full range of views are available to um to our leadership i think one of the themes that came out of the dinners last night and again today is this notion and about rebuilding or i shouldn't say rebuilding i would say building on what we have and strengthening the domestic platform that is the platform on which we engage the world strengthening our economy getting our politics to work restoring our military terribly important we do know that that's what the american people want us to do at home and it also gives us a platform to being influential overseas other thematic i think was important that it's not just the military instrument and i hope we won't strengthen our military at the expense of the non-military instruments of power which was a thematic today this is our diplomats this is our development officials terribly important this is uh and the various NGO partners that help us we heard today some other things that need to be strengthened if we are going to be able to deal with the problems we face this problem of resiliency of our institutions and infrastructure uh all the way down to the local level the strengthening of international institutions that can properly lead be good partners for us and we also talked about this issue of fragile states which you mentioned that now used to be strong states that threaten us now it's fragile states that threaten us and this thematic of a marshal plan that is basically to try to invest in these fragile states and help them put themselves in a position so that they offer a hope to their people to achieve their aspirations in life so they are not susceptible to a call to achieve their aspirations in death this is a huge agenda but if we really are going to have the full tool set the new president should have we need to be thinking about all those elements kt thanks so much for joining us again and do you want to there's so much to pull together but where do you want to leave us with in 1970 i went to the white house for the first time i was a college freshman and i my pair i've had some a poor family from the midwest my parents hadn't gone to college my grandparents had so i had to pay my way through college and i got a part time job working in the white house situation room i was the night shift secretary um on henry kissinger staff and when i had that job if you had told me that i was going to live to see a michelle florano in the positions you've had or a madeline albright or a hillary clinton or a condi rice i probably would have just said really you know my era women you could get a college degree and that was terrific you could probably be an executive assistant and maybe you could be a you know a super secretary you might even be a research assistant but i never would have thought that 45 years later i by the way am probably the oldest person in this room but 45 years later that it would not only be day regardless you know absolutely nobody bats an eyelash at the thought that a woman can do any of those things so i look at this as i've stepped on the shoulders of some great women some of them are older than i am but some of them are and and the idea that america is passing the baton is not that we're arising out of nothing and we the history began when we walked into the white house it's the fact that we're standing on the shoulders of the people who came before the women who came before certainly but everybody who came before and so the way that this administration this new administration is going to take traditional american values take traditional american global leadership roles take the traditional alliances that have have served us so well for 75 years i do see that this is a building upon something and it is a passing of the baton and that is one of the great reasons to celebrate this institution the bipartisan fractious nature of our politics but i think it's a great testimony to the experiment that it's america and that continues to be the shining city on the hill jake will give you the last word well i think honestly i think kt deserves the last word because she's heading into assume a position of awesome responsibility and we wish you the best of luck and i think what you just said in laying that down i can't improve upon and so i will uh i will leave it with those comments well i just want to thank this panel because i think if uh if graciousness were the test of our foreign policy we'd be doing very well indeed what a terrific and insightful group and i'm very appreciative as well to the u.s institute of peace for hosting all of us today as well as to all of you for sharing your time with us thanks again to everyone for this and i know we'll have some final thank you susan um and thank you to our panelists thank you kt thank you jake thank you michelle steve you you started uh doing a bit of a summation do you have further thoughts on how to wrap up what has been an extraordinarily full complex day i i have a course of 20 minute address but i think actually people want to leave so let me uh let me say thank you to our sponsors partners speakers and guests i think thank you to our five sponsoring organizations i think this is an example of the kind of collaboration we need uh the new administration has lots of challenges i would like to think that the process we started today will continue that in the weeks months and years ahead usip and its partners will continue putting together conversations and dialogues like this to try to come up with ideas and provide to support to this new administration as it tries to make positive uh progress for the country and i have to say i'm a glass half full person i am optimistic about the future i think no matter uh how difficult the challenges we face how long the road i've got confident in the american people in our democracy and that our national leaders will step up and rise to the occasion and i would just ask that all of us do what we can to help and with that thank you very much for being here and back to nancy thank you steve um and thank you for all that you do for usip and for bringing the kind of wisdom and bipartisan spirit not just to this institution but to this town we all benefit greatly um just to echo your thanks to a e i to the atlantic council to the carnegie uh endowment for international peace for the center for american progress and to heritage foundation uh to our media partners um sirius xm and politico and to our sponsors lmi chevron bowing robin and eileen shields west and nancy and herald zirkin we really appreciate that and i also you know this this has been an extraordinary group effort but i i really want to call out the usip team who's been working on this for many many months and uh start with uh the fearless leader of this effort sali booker i don't know where sali is but please raise your hand yeah who really uh really took a lot of ideas and made it into reality assisted by diane zelny i'm going to go through a couple of names so lisa frazier and the extraordinary uh management services team that did all the security and the setup and made all of this happen ellie quinland lis callahan demetra page bane nick and louise all of our rapa tours and uh everybody who's put heart and soul into this for many months especially thanks to all of you who have been a part of this day and for especially those who have stuck it out to the end of a long packed day um this has been hopefully the kind of conversation that has enabled us to bridge the contentious election that we all just live through bring together ideas insights um and more important than anything the the commitment and the conviction that we do need to pull together as a nation given the complexity of the challenges that we've heard about um that await all of us thank you and i invite you to join us in our peace concourse downstairs we have people standing by to show you how to get there for those who are thirsty or need an immediate snack uh and want to celebrate and also we've invited uh the young teams from all of our partners to join us so in part i really urge you to join us as we have a passing of baton to the next generation of foreign policy national security and development experts thank you all