 Good morning, everyone. I'm Ann Marie Slaughter. I am the president and CEO of New America and Welcome to the first annual conference on the future of war So I was a law professor at the beginning of my career for the first 12 years of my career and I taught civil procedure Which is not the most exciting subject in law school But I would start my class every year by looking at my hundred-sum law students and saying Civil procedure is the etiquette of ritualized battle Think about that for a minute. That means in a society with the rule of law. We conduct warfare Through litigation we resolve conflicts through litigation and I've certainly known plenty of litigators who would make superb generals or Strategists so that's one way of thinking about the future of war when you actually achieve peace Lasting stable peace. I think lasting stable peace and self-government the future of law war is civil procedure That may not be terribly exciting to many of you, but it's one way of thinking about it second way of thinking about is the future of war is Completely corrupt Klepto states the way you resolve conflict is through money Through stealing money from citizens and spreading it around in patronage systems So that's another way of thinking about the future of war My point is that the future of war is also the future of peace. It is not just about how we fight That's the first thing probably many people certainly in this room think of when we say the future of war We immediately wonder what weapons are we going to fight it with and who's gonna do the fighting? But my point is the future of war is really the future of how we resolve conflict It's why we fight in the first place and who fights so the future of war is also the future of peace I start there because this project is a project to think big new America's hallmark is big ideas And we have found a partner in Arizona State University that thinks as bigger bigger than we do But there are lots and lots of security for there are lots of conferences like this We want to ask the big questions and we want to do it over multiple years And we want to do it bringing together technologists international lawyers Defense budget experts members of the military themselves and traditional national security thinkers as wide a group as we possibly can so with that Framework and this is as I said the first of an annual conference We're doing this together with Arizona State University Michael Crowe the president of Arizona State University Will follow me Arizona State University is the new American University, and we are new America Which is one reason we have this partnership Arizona State University is revolutionizing public education It on the premise that the purpose of education is not to be so selective that you knock people out But actually to welcome people in and educate them Now I'm a product of private universities, but I grew up in the in Charlottesville with the University of Virginia That was one of the three things Thomas Jefferson wanted to be known for when on his tombstone Because he knew how important public education is and part of what ASU is doing is breaking down disciplinary boundaries as this project will but also breaking down organizational boundaries my ASU recognizes they are a place that does research and thinking and teaching well, there are lots of other places that do research and thinking and teaching in different ways and having a coalition between a University a think tank a civic enterprise NGOs is a way to get better thinking and broader thinking Final thing I want to do this morning is to thank my extraordinary future of war team This is the one of the best parts of this job when your your team puts together something that is really Terrifically interesting and I get to sit here and listen and take notes. I won't go through all the members of the team It's a it's a big one. I'm very proud even to be part of the listserv But it is headed by Professor Dan Rothenberg of ASU and Pete Peter Bergen who is our director of Fellows directors of studies and director of the International Security Program. We met where many hats at New America The last thing I'll say about this team It's more diverse than you are going to see at many similar fora At least it's more diverse in terms of gender and we've worked very hard on that We've got a ways to go on the audience. I'm afraid but that's all right This is it we need to be more diverse not just in terms of gender But also in terms of people of color for a very important reason the victims of war are overwhelmingly women and entered and Traditionally the perpetrators of war although that is changing have been overwhelming. They're still overwhelmingly men But they've been overwhelmingly white men if we look at the world today and we look who's fighting But also who is equally important in any conversation about the future of war who is suffering from the fighting We need a far more diverse audience talking about what is the future of war and equally importantly What's the future of peace? Thank you very much Michael Crow? Thanks, Anne Marie Michael Crow air ASU. Let me just say a little bit more about ASU itself. This is a Highly differentiated public university which is set out in a course some time ago to Make certain that the last thing that we are is a replicant of the previous public universities Which have done a great job and are continuing to do great jobs But are insufficiently agile or adaptive or engaged in ways that we think are important to the future This center our relationship with new America and other relationships that we have are a part of our effort to Take an oblique approach a differentiated approach to questions questions like the future of war questions like where we're going with The way that society is engaged from educational attainment perspectives and so forth And I won't walk you through all of that, but if you haven't heard much about what we're doing Completely new charter completely new design completely new approach to Education educational access research discovery engagement with the public and so forth So we're excited to be here with new America for this center. I Was thinking as I Was thinking about some comments for this event. It's kind of funny almost ironic I'll put on my professor hat for a second, you know to be talking about the future of war as a normative concept We have this thought pattern that we have that somehow war's purpose is to end war That war's purpose is to end all conflict or as Anne Marie said to move to an engagement where Conflict is carried out in other formats as opposed to physical conflict and this notion of us thinking as realistically as we possibly can about war in the future in All aspects the nature of conflict the end of conflict the post-conflict adjustment the pre-conflict Investments that might be made or other things that might be done sort of in a sense taking the algorithm for war which is very intense when conflicts are physical and Expanding that algorithm both pre-during and post-conflict so that one can have a better chance of actually working toward not ending war but Avoiding war wherever possible One thing I think that will be reflective of some of my own personal thinking is this notion of the argument I've gotten into several times with friends of mine and others about the bumper sticker end war. I Always ask which one the one that created our country The one that in a few weeks in the spring of 1775 killed or wounded a thousand soldiers of the legal authority Over the colonists living in Massachusetts at the time a thousand soldiers killed or wounded By a bunch of citizens with flintlock rifles It's almost unbelievable that war the the war that ended slavery the war that defeated fascism You know which one the wars in the future that will defeat the fascists that are rising as we speak With their views of how the world should be and so this notion of the future of war is Very important something that needs immense amounts of Broadening of our conceptualization and we need to move past this concept that we often hear From our military officers and our political leaders each time we enter into a conflict, which is that well We're not really quite sure what we ought to do in this particular sense because we've been planning for the last war Well, can we move past that so that discussion is not the discussion that someone has 40 years from now or 50 years from now When we find ourselves in another significant conflict that we were thinking or planning for something that happened in the past My mother's father a guy named mose ferris a tough stocky fighting hard drinking Irishman was a marine in the 1920s and he was in the counter insurgency activities in Nicaragua during that time that our that our country had Involved in it been involved in that was just funny later I had it we all had a book that he had given us some kind of Manual or something that he had from his years in the Marines on fighting insurgency And my brother had possession of this book decades later when Someone said well, can we get more copies of that book because of the insurgencies that we were dealing with in other parts of the World later my grandfather was long gone, but we did we did get some internal Family humor from this Grandpa spoke often about insurgencies now. He was of course a private in the Marines, but nonetheless It was just like here. We were again dealing with these same kinds of things all these years later and so How do we Prepare for war not with the notion that we will end war But how do we prepare for war with the understanding that we will be working to prevent conflict? To have conflict to resolve conflict and to repair from conflicts so as to Prevent that same kind of conflict occurring again. How do we do that? And it's this notion of integrated thinking. It's this notion of expanding the Horizon or the conceptualization of conflict conflict resolution conflict implementation and conflict avoidance all in the same equation and So from my perspective what I'm hopeful of is that we can Broaden the way that we think about these things and so today I think as you look at the agenda You'll see many perspectives Lots of people being brought together and what we hope that we can get going in all of this is this notion of thinking through what we need to do conceptually and intellectually and Practically so that at some point in the future. I thought I saw a young Officer right over there so that an officer who 20 or 30 or 40 years from now might be called upon to do something We'll not have to pull out some manual from 60 years ago or some idea of planning that's so outdated that it's of no value because we've got a new way to think about things Integrated high-speed conflict engagement conflict avoidance conflict adaptation modalities and so that's my hope for all of this With our participation and appreciate everybody being here. Thank you