 Welcome to Foreign Policy and Fragile States in America, a broad town hall discussion here at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. I'm Joshua Johnson. I am the host of 1A from WAMU, which is heard on NPR, where this conversation will be heard soon and we welcome those of you who are following us on C-SPAN and watching on various networks around the globe. Let me introduce the panel today before we dive in. We'll get to some of your questions in a little bit, but first joining us on the panel today is Nancy Lindborg. The president of the U.S. Institute of Peace, which is hosting us today. On top of being president here, Nancy spent most of her career working in fragile and conflicted regions. Prior to joining the institute, she served as the assistant administrator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance at USAID. Nancy, welcome. Thank you. Good to be here. Good to have you here. To Nancy's left, please, for Nancy, please. To your right from Nancy is Ilan Goldenberg, Senior Fellow and Director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. Previously, he worked in the State Department and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for John Kerry on issues like the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and ending the conflict in Syria. Ilan, welcome. And to my left is Kimberly Kagan, the founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War. She's a military historian who's taught at Yale, Georgetown and West Point. She's the author of numerous books and essays on foreign policy and is co-producer of The Surge, The Whole Story, an hour-long oral history and documentary film on the campaign in Iraq from 2007 to 2008. Welcome, Kimberly. Thank you. Let's welcome all our panelists. We'll have time to get to some of your questions in a little bit. I want to start with a few minutes of questions from our guests. A little over half the hour, and then we'll get to you. It is just after four past the hour by my clock, which gives us about 56 minutes, and I work in radio. I can do a lot with 56 minutes. Nancy Lindborg, let's start with you. What is a fragile state? So a fragile state is a state that either lacks the capacity to take care of its citizens. It's unable to provide basic security, services, and or it can also be a state that is not considered legitimate by its own citizens, often is repressive, often is part of the problem. And a state that's fragile is less able to manage the inevitable shocks that come, either a natural disaster or a conflict that can't be managed, so it spirals into violent conflict. And this is the heart of what we're seeing with a lot of the increased unrest and crisis around the world, fragile states that can't manage the shocks of disaster and conflict. You definitely are going to talk more about Syria specifically, but broadly speaking, what are some of the main ways that states become fragile? Are there certain last straws that tend to recur over and over in fragile states? Well, I would say a continuous characteristic of fragile states is governments that are not inclusive of all parts of their citizenry. So whole groups are excluded from economic, political, security opportunities because of their ethnicity, religion, race, et cetera. That's probably the number one characteristic of a fragile state. Elon Goldenberg, how did Syria become a fragile state? Would you say that it's what Nancy described, certain kinds of inclusion of certain groups within the Syrian society, or were there more factors? Yeah, well I think a lot of what Nancy talks about is what set the conditions that then, you know, but there did need to be a spark. In the case of Syria, the particular spark that then took us over the edge started really in what you might call the so-called, I guess the time was optimistically called the Arab Spring, now I think we'd call it the Arab upheaval, or basically these protests across the Middle East that led not just to a state collapse in a place like Syria, but also Yemen, Iraq, which had actually already been having, struggling since the American invasion in 2003, Libya, even Egypt to some extent. And what you saw happen there was a few things. One is you saw this collapse of state authority because institutions were so fragile, and you saw the conflict exacerbated primarily because of external actors coming in and making the situation worse. So you have one of the things that happens when you have these fragile states is you create security vacuums than everybody else that's around them is worried about losing influencers' season opportunities. So the Iranians suddenly have a close Syrian ally that's looking like they're teetering and they want to protect the situation. And so they start investing in various militias and groups on the ground and dumping weapons and money. The Saudis are trying to counter the Iranians, so they're dumping money and weapons. The Turks are worried about what's going on on the border. And so now you've taken a fragile state that was already on fire and you've dumped a bunch of gasoline on it. And that's been, I think, one of the biggest factors, at least in the case of Syria, of what's made the situation really exceptionally bad. The proxy aspect of this constantly comes up in every conversation we have about Syria. We do have some clips to play from some people who are very, very close to the conflict. And one of them has to do with the proxy aspect of that. We'll get to that in just a second. But Kimberly Kaye, let me bring you in. The Trump administration has been advocating more hard power than, say, soft power, things like aid, assistance, diplomacy. It's advocated for very sharp cuts to the State Department, 37% in the president's first version of his first budget, and cuts to USAID. Step back from Syria for just a second. How similar or different is this from what America typically does? In a fragile state, how does America usually deal with the balance between using hard power and soft power? Hard power and soft power are both necessary in many circumstances in order to help a fragile state recover itself and in order to set conditions whereby governance and civil society can return. And unfortunately, the solutions that one might hope to see in Syria can neither be exclusively military or exclusively soft power-led. Each has its role. And it is vitally important that the United States have a robust budget for its institutions like the State Department, like foreign aid, which are critical components for us to achieve our mission of helping keep the people in the world secure and free. But it is also actually incredibly important to recognize that in conditions on the ground such as those that we see in Syria, the underlying violence and oppression of human beings is not part and parcel of a stable regime. And therefore, there is a degree of human security that we must attain before we actually begin trying to stabilize Syria. So just to make sure I follow where you're going, it sounds like you're saying that there's a place for both, maybe that the Trump administration's balance tends to be a little harder than in the past, but there's a role for hard power and soft power if they're in the right balance. I think there's a role for hard and soft power, but I wouldn't say that the Trump administration is actually pursuing a hard power strategy in Syria. In fact, if we look at the Trump administration's policy in Syria, we see extraordinary continuity with President Obama's policy in Syria, namely, an effort to expel ISIS from its territorial control in Raqqa and eastern Syria, a backing of the Syrian Kurdish groups that have fought with us against ISIS, an effort at international diplomacy that was actually begun under President Obama. And so, in fact, I see an extraordinary amount of continuity between President Trump and President Obama, and I think neither had a robust enough humanitarian or civil society or military approach. Nancy Lindmore, let me put that question to you. The balance between hard power and soft power today under the Trump administration compared to what we tend to see in how America deals with fragile states. How do you see it? Well, I think the most important answer to that lies actually with a lot of our military personnel, and as you hear from retired four stars, what happens after the fight is as important what happens during the fight. And we need to be sure that the balance remains such that we can continue to have the development and diplomacy tools fully available, especially take Syria's neighbor, Iraq, where we just concluded yet another campaign. The temptation will be, now we should leave. But now is when some of the really, really important hard work happens for which you need those so-called soft tools. But I would say there's nothing soft about it in terms of the importance of rebuilding not just the physical infrastructure, but the human infrastructure, as Kim said, the ways in which societies need to heal so they don't fall back into violence. Unfortunately, we just end up fighting these wars in cycles otherwise. We have a number of clips that we'd like to add to the conversation, including this one from Bahadabuk, who is a Syrian refugee from Aleppo, now living in Istanbul. Let's listen. I know that we look like we are not organized and we don't have an organized leadership. But in the end, we have a very educated majority of people who are ready to come back and help the community. But we are being pushed away by all these militias, basically any side that you can think of. We need an organized side to actually give us the help that we need. We don't need them to just support one group and throw out the others. Maybe support a group that unifies all the groups. This is what we need. That was Bahadabuk, a Syrian refugee from Aleppo, now living in Istanbul. Ilan Goldenberg, Bahad wants peace in Syria, says there is an entire class and educated majority, as he puts it, that are ready to come back. You earlier mentioned the proxy war aspect of this war. Turkey has its peace. And Russia and Iran and the US and all these competing views of what they want to see emerge from this war. Talk about the way that comes together. This large class of Syrians who say, stop all this and all these proxies, who would stop but under different terms? How does that work? So yeah, at this point where we are is the way I would describe it. And I might have advocated for something different three or four years ago. But I think at this point where we are is, Syria is essentially divided into four or five different regions that are held by different actors. You have in the Southwest and the Jordanian-Israeli border, some militia groups that the US has supported for a long time. You have the central part of the country. It's really where the majority of the population and resources are held by Assad, along with support from Russia and Iran. You have what I'd call an al-Qaeda safe haven in the Northwest and Idlib province. Then you have a Turkish area, also in the North, where the Turks basically hold territory on their border. And then you have this whole large swath that's really controlled by American-supported Kurdish groups. And not all the fighting, but a lot of the fighting at this point is happening where these different tectonic plates meet, like where there's seams, the places where these different on these borders. And so if you're trying to get to a piece at this point, I'm not for splitting Syria apart. I don't think anybody wants to redraw maps because that comes with its own set of violence and problems. But at least coming to short-term and eventually long-term political arrangements to stop the fighting at these seams, and then trying to see if you can get to some kind of a national arrangement is sort of how you would have to try to go about this at this point. But it's going to take years, and I'm not sure if we're really up for it, if anybody's up for it. But it's the best option I see right now. Before I come back to you, Kimberly Nancy, I saw you perk up. Well, that clip underscores one critical point, is that ultimately peace needs to happen through locally led action. And what we heard very powerfully there is the desire, the motivation, and the ability, as he noted for the Syrian people to do that, with the right kind of help. But they will ultimately be necessarily leading the future of their own country. That actually gets right into the next clip that we wanted to play. This is from a gentleman named Musa, who is from Damascus. He works at a cell phone store in Istanbul. And he talked about that very thing, how not everybody is looking for help from another nation. Listen. I am from Damascus. We want our country to be clean of all foreign agents and kick them out of Syria. My only request is to get our country back without the foreign powers. Why do we have all these foreign powers inside Syria? The people of Syria can solve their problems by themselves. That was Musa speaking through a translator who is from Damascus and works in a cell phone store in Istanbul. Kimberly Kagan clearly, Musa, wants the rest of the world to kind of leave Syria alone. I wonder if that's even doable. And if it is, what that would look like. Is there a path to getting all of these proxies out of Syria and let it solve its issues of fragility by the will of the Syrian people alone? The quotation from Musa in Istanbul really illustrates what had been a democratic revolution at the beginning of the conflict period has evolved into a great power and small power conflict inside of Syria. One of the key objectives that we, the United States and the international community at large, should have is to ensure that Syria is, over time, dissociated from the extraordinary global and regional conflict in which it finds itself, or perhaps I should say Syria has become a black hole into which regional and global powers fall. So it is absolutely essential to disconnect Syria from those conflicts. But realistically, that's not going to happen anytime soon. We have watched that revolution, which had those civilian democratic aims of replacing the Assad regime and bringing reform, changed into a violent and existential conflict. And we have to work with the fact that we have such a conflict underway inside of Syria. So what do we do? The first thing that we need to recognize is that different great powers have different objectives. And we, the United States, tend to want to find a common objective among all of the different powers. And we strike on something that we would think would be common, like fight ISIS. But we all put that at a different point in our prioritization list. It is more important to the United States than it is to Turkey. It is more important to Turkey than it is to the Assad regime. The Assad regime is not fighting ISIS. The Assad regime has every incentive, actually, to make sure that extremist groups perpetuate themselves inside of Syria so that outside powers can't come in and strengthen the opposition and make it legitimate and democratic. Therefore, I think we really have to be eyes wide open about different actors' objectives. And we also need to recognize that we can't just fight ISIS alone. We actually need to start working now on creating conditions of stability in different areas of Syria, just like Ilan said. So that over time, there is hope for stabilization, a generation, not a year. We're listening to Kimberly Kagan, the founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War. Nancy Lindborg, the president of the United States Institute of Peace, and Ilan Goldenberg, senior fellow from the Center for New American Security. This is America Abroad's panel on foreign policy and fragile states here at the US Institute of Peace. I'm Joshua Johnson from 1A on NPR. Nancy, let me come back to you. Let's play one more clip from Istanbul. This is from Barak Shukri and Abdul Rahman, both from Damascus. They're addressing something that's on the minds of a lot of Syrians right now, which is the violence that's been going on for seven years. Hundreds of thousands of lives lost, most recently in a place called Eastern Ghouta, which is located just east of Damascus. Here are Barak and Abdul. You know, nowadays, we have maskeh in Agouta. Hundreds of people die, and hundreds of children have died, and nothing has done. My name is Mohamed. We are asking people to take care of the Ghouta victims. It's being reported that aid is being delivered, but it's not true because the roads are blocked and no one can get in or out from the area. Please feel mercy and take care of them. Those were Barak Shukri and Abdul Rahman speaking through a translator, both of whom are from Damascus. Both of them spoke to us from Istanbul. Nancy, what's the moral obligation of the US to help in a fragile state? The United Nations has basically thrown its hands up and said, apparently, y'all don't care about Eastern Ghouta, because nothing we have said has made a ceasefire stick. The world seems to be content with letting these people die and preventing anything from being done, just on a humanitarian level. The US certainly has the resources to make anything happen, but what should the US be doing with a fragile state like Syria, especially in a clear humanitarian disaster like Eastern Ghouta, where all people need is a little aid? What should the US be doing? Well, what the US has been doing has been providing ever escalating packages of humanitarian assistance, including efforts to get it across the border. Unfortunately, and just tragically, what's going on in Eastern Ghouta right now is similar to what has been going on for the past seven years over and over again. The issue is less about the amount of humanitarian assistance, but rather, what are the mechanisms for stopping the source of the need? We're actually much better at responding to crises and providing assistance after a crisis has hit than we are at either preventing it, or in the case of Syria, the ability to stop it. And it speaks both to the set of bad options that are available for stopping it, but also to the weakness of the international system, the usual tools and levers that we have through the UN to really enforce what everybody agreed on at the UN Security Council, but has been flagrantly and repeatedly ignored. I wonder also, Ilan, just for the average American we say in terms of our responsibility to do more in fragile states. I mean, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, soon to be former Secretary of State, has said of Syria that he doesn't want to engage in nation building, but he thinks the US should be creating conditions for stability. The Trump administration has taken a much more isolationist policy when it comes to foreign aid. That's kind of the sentiment at the heart of America first. I wonder where you see the human conversation in a developed nation like the US when looking at a fragile state like Syria and figuring out what the populist believes is the right way to help. Well, this is, I think, a problem. One thing I think we can do as the United States is lead. I mean, the world listens to us more than anybody else because we are the most powerful country in the world still. And so that means if you're going to encourage others to rebuild, you have to be at the forefront. You have to be, you're going to ask others to throw a lot of money at the problem. You got to throw money at the problem. So this is, I think, one of the problems we've had with the current administration is this general desire to pull back on funding for all kinds of programs like this across the board. It's not just, well, we pull back and others will chip in. And we'll just get the Gulf States to do a lot more, which is often what we do in the Middle East. We just assume that they're made out of money and they have a lot of oil, so they can pay for everything. They watch what we do and they will invest based on what we invest. Because what they care about as much as they care about helping people in a place like Syria, they care a lot about wielding influence in the United States. And so they can see what our priorities are and they will try to mirror those. And that happens internationally. So when we pull back and do little, other than talk, others will do the same. More broadly, I do think there's this challenge with a question like Syria in terms of our own population, which is what we've done. And this isn't just the Trump administration. This is also the Obama administration. We want to do something. We feel terrible about what is going on. But we don't want to get really deeply engaged because we're afraid of a repeat of the Iraq war or Vietnam and getting bogged down. And so we do just enough to make the situation worse without doing enough to make it better. I mean, if we had an option of just let Assad win and make this go as quickly as possible or very aggressively push him out, if we had chosen one of those two pathways early on, I think we would have been in a better position than doing just enough to support opposition without doing enough to really have it win, which just ends up perpetuating and makes us another one of the parties to the conflict of just dumping money and weapons and support to trying to reach shape the situation. So that's a really tough spot for any president to be in because American president wants to help and wants to do the right thing, but also knows his or her population does not want to get stuck in a major conflict. Kimberly, you wanted to jump in. I sure do. First, here in the case of Syria, we have the opportunity to make a moral-based case and an interest-based case, and they align. The case is that there are extraordinary human beings within Syria who are the victims of a brutal, violent campaign of oppression perpetrated by the Assad regime, abetted by Iran, and abetted by Russia. What we're seeing in eastern Ghouta is indeed something that we have seen elsewhere during the war of a deliberate targeting of civilians in order to achieve war aims. That's what the Russians are doing. That's what Assad is doing. That is what Iran is doing. Therefore, we are watching those regimes commit war crimes, break international laws, the law of armed conflict, and they are doing so in a way that we have populations that are displaced through the Middle East, through the globe, and we have Syria that has transformed itself into a fertile ground for recruitment, for Sunni violent extremists and Shia violent extremists from all around the world, from the United States, all the way out to East Asia. What we need to do is recognize that the reason why the recruitment of these foreign fighters is so effective is not because we have a narrative problem, but because we have a reality problem. Namely, there is no one that is actually protecting the population of Syria, and therefore, the rallying cries that extremist organizations are launching to try to get people to mobilize for justice are falling on ears that are unfortunately made receptive by the abandonment of the international community. I do want to shift gears just slightly, but Ilan, what you were talking about in terms of properly diagnosing the problem, that reflects something that one of the United States Institute of Pieces Generation Change Fellows told us earlier, Agietu Adwok Niyaba comes from South Sudan. Here is what Agietu had to say. Even the South Sudan conflict, the international community has not only failed to diagnose what the issues are, but in the process, it has also failed to come up with the right policy tools. And so if they want to engage constructively, I think it is important for them to understand what the real root causes are. Otherwise, you will have a situation of a protracted conflict. That's Agietu Adwok Niyaba, who is a USIP Generation Change Fellow from South Sudan. We're at about half time in our conversation. We do want to get to questions in just a moment. Is there anyone who thinks they might have a good question percolating that they might want to? There's one. Anybody else? One smart man with one good question, and then we're done. Two. All right. Anyone else? All right. Before we get to questions, and I threw it before, I think we'll have a mic moving around somewhere. OK. We'll get to mic moving. Before we get to questions, I do have one more question for you, Nancy. My one rule for Q&A, whenever I do an event, is to be generous with our time. You are all far smarter than me on issues of Syria and fragile states, and I would like to learn as much from you as possible. And the more generosity we can show with one another's time, the more we can learn from each other. So please, I would urge you to be concise and thoughtfully concise as you phrase your questions so that we and our audience around the world can learn as much from you as possible. Cool? Excellent. Nancy, in a report you co-authored for USIP on fragility, you wrote the following, quote, the temptation to hunker down and wait for this moment of disorder to pass is understandable, but short-sighted. We simply do not have that luxury. There is too much at stake for American interests, for the interests of our allies and partners, and for global peace and security, unquote. That's from a report that you co-authored for the US Institute of Peace. Explain what you mean by that, particularly in light of what I was discussing with Elon, that a lot of Americans have said, it's nice that we've been known as the world policemen, but what about us? And also in light of the fact that nature have whores of acumen. I assume if we don't step up, someone else will. But a lot of Americans are just tired. We've been playing world police for generations, and there are some Americans who will live in a pretty third world as it is. Can you just game this out for me? What hunkering down would actually mean practically speaking? Sure. And a couple of issues are blended together there. We don't live in the kind of world where we can just get in bed and pull the sheets over our heads and expect that that will solve the issues. Way too interconnected. Too many threats that come up from places that we're not watching. Think Ebola coming from West Africa, clearly ISIS as it emerged. So from a security interest, we can't afford to hunker down. It's also not who we are as a people. I think the American people are very engaged and care deeply about what happens, but they want the burden to be shared. The other point, though, is we are very reactive, and so we are responding to crises after they become far more complicated and so much more suffering. And we have actually been escalating our humanitarian and peacekeeping assistance over the last five years at a very great rate. Nobody has cracked the code on how to prevent conflict from becoming so violent, but we can certainly do a better job of it. The last four administrations have identified state fragility as a key security threat. And yet, we haven't invested and we haven't organized in a way to do that kind of work more effectively. And what you see is when states become very, very fragile, as Ilan said earlier, they become far more vulnerable to regional and international powers getting involved and messing it up. And so we are going to see a greater disorder the more that we don't pay attention to that. And American leadership is key. Do you think we haven't been paying enough attention, Nancy, because we don't have the resources? We don't have the intelligence? We don't have the information, and we just don't care? I think it's a combination of we haven't organized ourselves effectively to really crack the code of how to do this better. But why haven't we organized ourselves? I mean, does America, as a government, as a body politic, actually care enough as a citizenry, as a nation, as a government to do that? We have the knowledge, but do we care? I think we do care enough. We care enough that we're putting a lot of funding into treating the crisis, the humanitarian crisis. But it's much harder to convince people to take action before something happens. It's the dog that didn't bark, right? But that's where we need to turn our attention in our investment. Human nature is to be preoccupied with the thing that blew up. But we need to think more about getting upstream of those problems. And it's an organization and a funding challenge. Before I let Elon make a comment, let's get the mic to this gentleman who rose his hand. We'll get to you for the first audience question, and then we'll keep working all the way around the room. Elon, go ahead. Sure. So I just want to echo exactly what Nancy said on how these localized problems then end up affecting us and give you the specific example in Syria of how this has happened. Look, the conflict in Syria has led to massive refugee flow and massive extremist flow into Europe and into the United States. But it's impacted the politics in the United States certainly. And you've had attacks in Paris, and you've had massive refugee flows into Germany. You can directly tie it to things like Brexit. You can tie it, quite frankly, to the election of right-wingers across Europe, sort of these populist movements, and, quite frankly, to the election of Donald Trump. And all these things, in my opinion, are starting to weaken now really core things for basic American security that has been the basis of how we've governed the world order since 1945 that has kept the world stable and kept us from new world wars and kept us from major conflicts. All of this, to some extent, can be tied back to what's been happening in Syria for the last six or seven years. So it's having a very direct effect on, honestly, at this point, how we are governing ourselves on a daily basis. You can draw that line very directly to Donald Trump's immigration policy into things like all kinds of things like that. Let's dive in with audience questions for any of our panelists, Kimberly, Nancy, or Ilan. When you ask your question, just tell us your name, where you're from, if you're with an organization, or if you're a student at a university, and then let's get your question. Let's go to you, and then someone over here had a question, and then we'll get to you, sir. Yes, go ahead. Thank you all very much. My name is Connor Clark. I'm currently a counterterrorism scholar at the University of Maryland. And we have seen over the decades debates on the ethical and practical and strategic implications of the appropriate scale and nature of US support for what are to oversimplify imperfect governments and non-state yet powerful proxies. Now these, of course, range from the measuring effectiveness, what those metrics should be, what are the results of the appearance or reality of imposing our standards on other countries. And of course, this is often in the context of saying, oh, well, the alternative would be worse. And I think this fits well into the earlier point about how nature abhors a vacuum. Frankly, a lot of critics of US foreign policy seem to somehow miss that the most brutal dictatorship the US has ever supported would quite arguably be Stalin during World War II. So how is this paradigm of this decision making and the public discourse and the elite debates in Washington shifted from more recent turning points, such as the end of the Cold War, 9-11, the Arab Spring, and so on? And what trends are you seeing now that might be changing how policymakers see these decisions and dilemmas? Conor, is that who do you want to direct that question to? Perhaps Elon specifically, but everyone is welcome. Thank you. Elon, go ahead. Sure. And actually, Conor, for the benefit of our listeners, I want to make sure I understand the mainstream of your question. Because I didn't go to the University of Maryland, so you are way smarter than me. I went to Miami. I spent my time on the beach. It sounds like you're asking about the way that we think through global threats, about which ones are the biggest, which ones are worth our time, which ones, like Nancy said, will deal with it when it becomes a forest fire, and how that's changed over time, like the way we think through threats in today's world. Is that what you're getting at? Exactly. OK, let's get a mic back over to you so everybody can hear you. Is that what you're talking about? Exactly. And I'm personally more curious about the elite level, but I'm very interested in the popular discourse as well. OK, thank you, Conor. Go ahead, Elon. So I think part of the problem is we have this sort of Jekyll and Hyde issue at the elite level certainly, where on the one hand we say, yes, we have to support these countries who we've always supported, even if they are dictatorships. And it's more, I mean, at the elite level and at the policymaking level, it even comes down to just history of relationships. You work with these people for years and years. You work with Egypt and Hussein Mubarak for 30 years on negotiating various Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts. And then democracy comes or protest comes. What do we do about this situation? And it's incredibly difficult. But our instinct as Americans is also to intervene positively on the side of democracy and to encourage democracy, certainly when an opportunity like that presents itself. And so that's a really hard dilemma for policymakers. I guess maybe the best thing we can do is make up our minds and have some clarity of thought. It's really, really hard to do. But oftentimes we found this a lot during the Arab Spring in particular, where it was just really hard. And your events are moving so quickly. And you're sitting there trying to make a bet of, well, if I come out against this dictator, am I going to be dealing with him for the next 10 years? And if I now burn my relationship, or is he going to be gone tomorrow? And I really should come out because I need to look good. This is a challenging sort of problem set for our leaders. And Syria is a perfect example. We came out and called for Assad's removal in the summer of 2011. But then we realized, wait, it's not actually going to happen. And now we need, are we going to follow through militarily to do this or not? No, we're not going to. So where do you find yourself? It's a challenging question. I don't think there's any great answers to it. Kimberly, I'd like your perspective on this, especially from a military historical perspective. Yes. Look, stabilization, which is part of the subject of this panel discussion, is in part about establishing physical security. It's in part about helping to establish governments and legitimacy. And I think that we're at risk right now as we look at Syria of thinking that backing Assad as a dictator is to end the violence, is somehow going to be better and more stable than thinking about what we actually need to do over the long term to establish conditions for secure, stable governance to return to Syria. And that governance needs to be legitimate in the eyes of the people of Syria. It's not about us, it's about them. The reason I bring that up is that I think that we're at a moment where we're at risk of embracing dictatorship in favor of order. When the order that a dictator like Assad will create will be very illusory and temporary, and it will not actually be backed by institutions that are accepted by the Syrian people. And it will be enforced by coercion in a way that actually continues the rise of extremist insurgency against the regime. So we actually have to take the long view rather than prioritizing stability just as in and in itself. If it's only stability for a year, it's not stabilization. Let's keep going with the next question. Yes, sir. Thank you very much, Joshua. Great discussion. Edward Joseph, Johns Hopkins Seiss, and the National Council on US-Libya Relations. Joshua, I'm going to be as concise as I can, but I don't speak as fast as you. That's all right. OK. So I was just wondering if I could take the panel's view across the med from Syria to Libya. Joshua used a very important phrase. He said, mentioned moral obligation. And Nancy, you made a very strong point about the importance of planning for the aftermath of conflict. So my question for the panel about Libya is given, and it's for all of you, given the US role in removing Qaddafi and given the fact that compared to Syria, Libya is less violent. It is less displaced. You don't have half the country displaced as you do in Libya. And you have fewer actors acting as proxies. There are some, but you don't have that same kind of proxy factor that you do in Syria. Does the panel believe that there is a place, again, moral obligation as well, for greater US engagement in Libya, if not leadership? Currently, we've basically subcontracted it all to the UN. There's a plan in place. There's a lot of skepticism about whether that plan, whether you could hold elections and so forth. Very keen on interesting hearing the panel's response. So is there a role for greater US engagement if not leadership on the basis of a moral obligation? Moral or and or the fact that compared to Syria, it's not as destroyed and perhaps hopeless the country as Syria is. I'd be interested. Thank you for your question. While we get the mic over to whoever's got the next question on the side of you, Ma'am, right down here, I'm curious to take a poll. Show of hands. There's a greater role for the US in Libya, hands, yes? Yeah, all three. All right. What about in the audience? Greater role for the US in Syria, yes? Libya. I'm sorry, Libya. I beg your pardon. I did go to Miami. For Libya, hands, yes? No? OK. Not sure? Thank you for being honest. Much appreciated. Nancy, why don't you go ahead? Well, I think it goes well beyond a moral obligation. I think there's a security rationale for playing a more prominent role or being more engaged in trying to bring Libya to greater peace and stability. The meltdown in Libya has had profound impact across the Sahel, in places like Tunisia that share a very long border. Goods, illicit goods and terrorists are trans-shipped through that territory. So there are many good reasons. At the same time, it also underscores the importances of partnerships and alliances. So I do think we can and should be engaged. But I do think we can and should do so with strong partners who share our views, our values, and our vision for what the pathway might look like for Libya. I'd love to jump in and just recommend a study that I had the privilege of taking place in. One of my colleagues, Emily Estelle, at the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute actually did a very substantial study of planning for Libya. And I highly commend her work on this project. It's very thorough. It's very nuanced. And you can find it at criticalthreats.org. We are speaking to Kimberly Kagan, founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War. Ilan Goldenberg, senior fellow from the Center for a New American Security. And Nancy Lindborg, the president of the United States Institute of Peace. This is an America Broad discussion on fragile states. I'm Joshua Johnson from 1A on NPR. Let's continue with audience questions. Yes, ma'am? Hi. My name's Maria Alejandra Silva. I work at the Washington Office on Latin America, and I'm a student at GW. I feel like we haven't spent enough time talking about states that have come from the brink of failed statehood. And I just want to get your opinion on what lessons we learned from our intervention in Colombia. Nancy, why don't you take that? We actually got a question about Colombia that I think will, I'm glad you asked that. We'll follow with this question after we get yours answered. Nancy, what about that? What lessons learned in Colombia? I think we've learned some very important lessons. The first is that these resolution of these kinds of conflicts take a long time. Colombia had a 50-year civil war that was just recently drawn partly to a close with the Peace Accord of last year. And that Peace Accord was very, very inclusive. And we know that when you have more than just the guys with the guns at the table, but you actually have victims of the conflict, women, people who were displaced, that you have a better chance of forging a deal that will be more enduring. We also learned that the US state engaged in Colombia across three administrations with significant investment across development, diplomacy, and defense, which, going back to the what do we need to do differently question about the US government, that's the kind of work we need to do differently, where there is a clear goal aligned across the various functions of our government with people, the military, our diplomats, and our development people having a shared goal of where it is we're heading. And we had a greater impact. Finally, we had a partner. We had a partner in the government of Colombia across two of their administrations. Before we get to the next question on this side of the room from this gentleman right here, Nancy, I'm going to stick with you. We have a question sent in to us by David Salas, who is the president of Somos, which is an organization in Colombia that's working to enrich local communities by increasing access to education. Following off of this young lady's question, here's what David wants to know. How can we promote greater cooperation between the United States and Colombia to generate a structural peace that considers aspects of coexistence, culture, and socioeconomic factor? That was David Salas, the president of Somos, an organization in Colombia, asking about creating a structural peace and how the US can help Colombia do so. I was particularly taken by his use of the word coexistence that promotes aspects of coexistence. What should the US or could the US be doing in that regard? Well, one of the important aspects is continuing our engagement, because what we know is a conclusion of a peace agreement often means that a lot of work still has to follow. And in Colombia, we now need to implement what was agreed upon. And that includes things like the land reform, the disarming of the armed rebels, and enabling them to reintegrate into community to coexist. And so this is a time for the US to continue to stay involved and not only think about the security threat narrowly in terms of cocoa production, but rather understanding that we'll be better served with our security if they fully reach a more inclusive peace. Let's get the next question. Yes. Hi, my name is Wes Knowles. I'm a program associate at Meridian International Center. I guess I'm wondering, so there was a discussion about borders from Milan and then a talk about legitimacy of the government themselves from Ms. Kagan or Dr. Kagan. And I'm wondering, what about the legitimacy of the borders themselves looking back at the Balfour Declaration, looking back at sort of great power actors after World War I between the United Kingdom and France? And how much of what we're seeing today at Syria or what we've seen in Iraq and so on and so forth is just a result of the fact that we made some really terrible decisions in the early 20th century. Who did you want to put that question to? I could go to the table, I guess. I mean, everyone has something to say. All right, well, how about Kimberly? Why don't you go first and then we'll get to Elon? I'll start by saying first and foremost, it's really important to recognize that our international order is based on the understanding that borders should not be revised by force, but rather by instruments of the international community. And so whatever they are, the United States and the international community actually have an interest, a very firm interest, in making sure that those borders are not moved by force. And we can go back to ISIS's early days operating on cross-border in Iraq and Syria and remember them trying to plow up the remnants of that sandy border and recognize that however important it was to them symbolically, it was nevertheless a recognized border between two states and we have an interest in preserving it. The second thing that I want to make sure that we recognize is that other than ISIS, we actually have the Syrian regime and the Syrian opposition, the Iraqi state actually trying to re-establish the map as it was, not as they would like it to be. And I have always been struck with this when I spent time on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan that we can think that states like Iraq or Afghanistan are fictional notions. But communities today, people today have a very defined notion of what their state is and it's linked to the physical borders that they've seen on their flag. I know we're slowly running out of time. Before we get to Ilan, let's get the mic to her for the next question and then we'll let Ilan jump in. Go ahead. Sure, just to say I totally agree with Kim and I think that this is, yes, if the borders were drawn differently, we hadn't had Sykes-Picot. You could look at a different Middle East, but this is the Middle East that we have. There is no, not only is it the Syrians and the Iraqis aren't trying to redraw borders, nobody, none of the outside actors are trying to redraw borders. Nobody wants to redraw borders. Part of the reason nobody wants to redraw borders is that it's a very violent process oftentimes and so as violent as everything has been, once we force the Turks and the Kurds to define exactly where that line is, they'll fight over it militarily if they have to, for example. And so the way to try to address this, and I think Nancy brought this up earlier, is any peace agreement is going to have to include essentially a very weak Syrian state, I think with a lot of different local actors playing a role in negotiating that outcome because those local actors actually control a lot of what's going on the ground, whether it's the people with the guns or the local governing councils and those actors are gonna have to be reflective of the views of the population in those areas, but that's sort of how you try to put the Humpty Dumpty back together again. It's through a federalized system, it's through decentralization while keeping the actual map of Syria basically the same. Let's see if we can't squeeze in a few more questions before our time is up. Yes, ma'am. And then we'll come to you, sir. First off, of course, thank you for putting on this great panel. My name is Elena Ferguson. I'm a research consultant from the University of Denver. And my question is we have the benefit of hindsight to see these regime trends over the last several decades. So we've seen anocratic and autocratic regimes such as Assad benefit from this Pan-Arab nationalist movement. And now we've also seen that movement come to schismatic collapse with the people under these leaders. So my question, tying into Dabouk's clip actually and Elon's following comment on the separated regions of Syria is are we seeing any indicators of a common ground's new development that ties any of these separate combative groups together to the point where we can see in a generation a fully unified movement? How about Nancy, can you take that question? A fully unified movement across different of the groups? It sounds like you're asking in these states that whose fragility has caused these fractures. Have we ever seen circumstances where the fractures have mended somehow or shared interests, common bonds help bring people back together? Is that what you're asking? So in the current situation with each group pursuing a slightly varied ideological movement internally and having that drive the differences between them when even some of their regional goals happen to be identical, are we seeing a development of a new common ground's ideology that could eventually become a unified movement that unites all of them or at least a majority to come to a peaceful resolution? Gotcha, maybe Kimberly do you want to jump in? I'd love to tell you yes, but I think the answer is no. I think that what you're asking is, is there a sort of pan-era nationalism or other kind of sweeping movement or sweeping set of ideas or even like the little granule of an idea that could be a sweeping idea that gets all of these groups together. And I have to say I don't see it. And therefore, I think that we actually need to take each group on its own terms, which makes the requirements for negotiating, for delivering aid, for supporting governments, for delivering humanitarian assistance really, really, really tailored. But you know what, we're the United States of America and if we apply thought to how we need to tailor our assistance to different groups, we can do that. I wonder maybe if Nancy, if we go back to someone what you said at the very beginning in terms of what causes states to become fragile, that lack of inclusiveness where people fall apart, this kind of seems to weave back into your original point where say a nation like the United States could be at 30,000 feet enough to either figure out a way to articulate that to everybody and makes them go, oh yeah, we're all kind of after the same thing or deal with them individually and not force them to walk side by side but still think, kind of play the chess game in a smarter way, understanding what the divisions are and not force them to come up with that themselves. Well I think there's an interesting example next door to Syria in Iraq, which has just gone through its third military campaign in the last 13, 14 years. And I was just there a few weeks ago and in fact, what you find is that for the first time probably is Iraqis are feeling a sense that they, this time, were able to win the battle, that they, with the Iraqi-led fight, won over ISIS. And so there is after a lot of fragmentation and you've got the Kurds, the Sunnis, the Shias and a lot of different minority groups, there is a sense that they'll move forward within the state confines and they're demanding a more accountable, more inclusive government. So that's a shared ideology and in particular, it's true for those who are under the age of 35. And what you have in these conflict countries are disproportionately young populations. And what we're seeing is increasingly it is the young members of these countries who are demanding less corruption, more accountability, more services, better governance. If you want to call that an ideology, that's what I see emerging in Iraq and I see that as a potential to emerge down the road in Syria. Let's see if we can squeeze in one more question. Yes, sir. I'm sorry, go ahead. Hi, my name is Sean O'Reilly. I'm from George Mason University as a graduate student. So to take this from like a 30,000 feet level down to where the rubber meets the road, what are some of the unique programs that USIP has been doing on the ground and what are some ways kind of tying it back into the last question? How can we incorporate more young people to make a positive contribution because as younger generations are gonna be the inheritance of these problems that we're facing today? I wonder if by way of wrapping up, we could ask all three of you to answer that. First of all, Nancy, what is USIP doing? And then what do we see as ways to engage, any innovative programs you see, particularly ways to engage younger people who are gonna inherit these problems from their parents to help them do so successfully? Nancy? Sure, well, first of all, we have a program that engages youth leaders in conflict countries around the world called Generation Change, which is fundamentally equipping them with some of the key tools and skills and knowledge base that allows them to mediate and facilitate conflict in their own communities and states. We believe very strongly here at USIP that peace can be, how to build peace can be learned and it is essentially very practical with skills that are often lost, especially in countries that are going through sometimes generations of conflict and you lose all the ways that basic disagreements can be managed before they erupt into violence. Kimberly? ISW has a program of called the Hirtagmore Studies program whereby we train young scholars here in Washington, DC so that they understand what war is and how the instrument works, how it needs to be subordinated to a political objective and how to ensure that there is strong civilian control over the military. I know that's very small compared to what USIP does, but we're only 15 people, so we're pretty proud of it. Thanks. You're pretty well, 15 people. You're welcome. Sure, and I don't have any specific programs, although CNES, we also have a next generation future leaders program which tries to educate sort of policy makers on how to be more effective as they move forward and people who are going to assume those own. In fact, it's a central sort of part of what we do as an institution. We like to say we're mostly about futures, not formers, but I'll just finish by saying from a US perspective, when you spent less time talking about this, I do think we also, it is a lot about the various tools that Nancy talked about and Kim talked about and we've all talked about in doing things on the ground, but there also does have to be a long-term political willingness in this country to actually support dealing with these problems and that includes military. And if there's one thing that we've learned, I think from Iraq experience in particular, it's that 150,000 troops doesn't work because there's just not political support for something like that here, long-term in my opinion, it's not worth the cost and the effort and the American public isn't gonna support it, but zero seems to also put us in some really bad places as we saw with ISIS and so maybe we need to be thinking about long-term, a few thousand troops in Syria, a few thousand troops in Iraq for the next 20 years to help create conditions that support all these other things is also a big part of the solution for this. You can't be just about the US military but we're not gonna be able to do it without the US military. I think we need to remember that too. Elon Goldenberg, seeing your fellow from the center for a new American security, Kimberly Kagan, the founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War and Nancy Lindborg, the president of the United States Institute of Peace. Nancy, Elon, Kimberly, thanks for talking to us. Thank you. Much appreciated. Thanks everybody for coming. Appreciate it. Thanks Joshua.