 So ladies and gentlemen, I let me suggest that we we get started. We're close to our 830 start time I'm Bill Taylor. I'm the acting president here of the United States Institute of Peace Just temporarily I'm very glad to welcome you here to the Institute Some of you have been here before many of you been here before but some haven't So I'm very pleased to welcome you to to the Institute and I look forward to having an opportunity to tell you a little bit about it But this is a is a great event. I think I think we've assembled here The team of people who's going to speak to you today speak with us have a conversation with us today I think is is very distinguished and capable of giving us some real insights into this of course This is risk recruitment and retention Engaging foreign publics in high threat environments and we are very pleased to be co hosting this With the US advisory commission on public diplomacy With the McCain Institute for international leadership and the Truman National Security Project Center for national policy So this is a team effort that has been able to draw this this group together The Institute of Peace and I'll tell you more about this later on Individually has had a foreign presence. We've had offices overseas. I was just talking to to Bill whom I will introduce here in a moment about our operations in Iraq since 2004 we've had a permanent presence in our operation a large operation right now in Kabul we have people in In Afghanistan as I mentioned we've had people in Pakistan, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya So we are living this risk question We are dealing every day with how to manage risk Many of us in this room work to the State Department the State Department has worked with the risk as well I was just talking to Ambassador Jeffery about how how this has been done This is I think an important topic and it's a it's a great one for us to have this conversation Bill Burns my last boss across the street here at the State Department Leaves the State Department this afternoon the State Department is giving him a farewell He had some advice for us I find In an article that he just put out in foreign policy that talks about the topic that we are here to talk about today So let me just read you what Bill Burns says and this is his advice to diplomats And he has 10 bits of advice and number nine is this except risk He says we live and work in a dangerous world demanding zero security risk means achieving zero diplomatic results We take every prudent precaution and we learn and apply the painful lessons of terrible tragedies like the loss of Ambassador Chris Stephens And three other colleagues in Benghazi two years ago But we cannot hold up behind embassy walls Every American diplomat was filled with pride when we watched Ryan Crocker excel in a succession of dangerous and important posts from Beirut to Kabul Or Robert Ford as ambassador to Syria visit areas where peaceful protesters had just been attacked by the regime in Less dramatic moments diplomats serving in hard jobs in hard places take calculated risks every day I wish that we could ensure zero risk, but we cannot That's Bill Burns advice to us as we start this conversation. I think it's great advice My role today is at this moment is to introduce Bill Hibble Chairman of the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy bill has served on the Commission for three administrations And he is also the chairman and chief executive officer of El Pomer Foundation General Purpose Foundation a national leader in innovative grant making. He is also president emeritus of the United States Olympic Committee So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Bill Hibble Thank You ambassador Taylor and let me join in welcoming everyone This is certainly a great opportunity and I was looking through the group of attendees today It's a distinguished group and I know we all want to thank you for being here You know the three organizations that are represented here are all committed to retaining and improving the global posture of the United States particularly in an area where we have high threats and Where we still want to have the ability to take on risk and Send a message and have a message, you know in 1948 the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy was formed and it really Tried to move forward and make a difference through a variety of circumstances the Cold War certainly what we're doing now But it's never been more important 30 years ago The Inman report said well, you know, we had to tighten things down We had to make sure that at that time USIA would move their facilities to more secure areas And this commission 30 years ago Spoke out through their chairman Ed Fulner against that saying our job as those who project the American image project the American ideals project the American Effort to foreign publics have to be available and you know Here we are 30 years later. We're discussing the same topic and that topic right now is on the front of a great deal Of what is being done by this government? What is being done? Of course by other governments, you know We look forward this afternoon Ambassador Ryan Crocker Was mentioned as the luncheon speaker. He really has demonstrated the ability to reach out in foreign Countries in foreign communities and make a difference for the United States, and I think we're all very proud of that I'd like to introduce the head of another organization Which is hosting today and that is going to be ambassador Volcker Kurt Volcker is the executive director of the McCain Institute for international leadership Which is part of Arizona State University? Is that in Tempe ambassador? Yeah Yes He's a senior advisor to the Atlantic Council and a senior fellow with the Center for transatlantic relations at Johns Hopkins school of advanced international studies a An ambassador to NATO. I'm very honored to welcome to the stage Ambassador Kirk Volcker and mr. Ambassador Thank You bill. Thank you bill and hello to a lot of friends. I see in the audience I want to say I was honored when I was asked as the head of the McCain Institute if we would join in Cosponsoring this effort to look at risk and recruitment and retention and engaging foreign publics It's an issue that I personally have had some interest in for some time I had a chance to drop in on some of the sessions that were being led by US IP and I was frankly very impressed it was a group of some young Diplomats and other agency representatives who were sharing experiences coming immediately out of some of the most difficult assignments We have Afghanistan elsewhere and drawing lessons learned from their experiences I don't want to drag go on a great length this morning But I wanted to offer a few observations in this general area that I think are relevant to thinking about this and I'll pick up where Bill Taylor left off with Bill Burns's commentary in foreign policy When you talk about risk the other word that is supposed to roll off your tongue is return there's a risk and a return and I think sometimes Yes, we put ourselves in a position. We're accepting risk But it's very important that we do that when it's very clear what the goals are and very clear what we think the return for that risk is It's one thing to be out there Say in a PRT or position where you're vulnerable it's another to really have a clear sense of mission and purpose and Having in place the tools and resources necessary to accomplish that mission. So that is a challenge back to the policy makers I agree with that point that we do need to accept risk But we also owe it to all of the people who work in our military and our diplomacy and our AID missions To have very clear goals and to provide all the resources necessary As someone famously said if you're going to take Vienna take Vienna And I think that is where we have to start in terms of providing the policy guidance Another point I wanted to bring up it gets to the point of engaging public's Just think for a minute this week the shooter in Canada was Upset because he wasn't getting a visa quickly enough because he had wanted to go to Syria to take part in the fight on behalf of ISIS So he had been radicalized in Canada recent convert to Islam seeking to go do that We had three teenage girls from Colorado I believe it was board a plane to go to Germany en route to Syria Fortunately, they got stopped because they had been radicalized by information. They had gotten about the the joys of being with ISIS Just bring up these two examples from this week to show that The idea of influence and ideology and information is not an old or dead idea Not something that passed with the Cold War Even though, you know, we were deeply engaged with it then it is a live real hot issue and problem and Right now we're losing that Our way of thinking about all the values that we share freedom democracy market economy rule of law is not Penetrating not sexy enough, I guess compared to some of these other messages in some quarters I wouldn't say that's general, but there's enough penetration of the extremist message or in another scenario of Russian propaganda that we get through RT that affects Russian speaking populations in Ukraine Georgia Some parts of the Baltic States perhaps We need to be very conscious that this information war really is going on today And we need to think about what we Representing the values and the policies that that we hold need to be doing to engaging that more effectively I think that after the end of the Cold War We thought the idea battle had been won and began gradually to wind down what we expected of this I think we need to start winding up again and thinking very strategically how to engage in that much more Effectively both offensively with our own message and defensively against these these narratives that are destroying some of the Some of the country's issue security values that we believe in and want to try to advance So with those couple of thoughts, I think that that is where we need to be broadly And I won't then think that the final step is to apply it locally So when you talk about engaging foreign publics in a high-thread environment, it's tougher We definitely want to be engaging globally, you know using the Internet using Broadcasting things like Voice of America Radio Free Europe and so on but then when we also are local We've got to be very active thoughtful aggressive in messaging locally in the local language on the local media With validators from the local society so that we are connecting with people so that we don't make the environment We're operating in even more risky If the environment is saturated say in eastern Ukraine by Russian propaganda or the environment in Afghanistan is saturated by Taliban messaging We're gonna be at a disadvantage For our own personnel and also in achieving our goals So we've got to make sure that locally in the local language with local validators in the local media We are we are Directly engaging and that is a critical part of the strategy It can't be only diplomacy and military and assistance We've got to make the information campaign a critical part of that strategy as well So with those brief thoughts as introduction, I want to thank you for inviting me here Thank you for inviting us to take part in the project and I wish you a fantastic conference today Thank you. Thank you all. I'm Michael Breen and the executive director at the Truman National Security Project So thank you to Ambassador Taylor, Chairman Heibold, Ambassador Volkler and the other distinguished guests here today It's an honor on behalf of the Truman Project and the Center for National Policy as well as for me personally to be part of this event I especially want to acknowledge the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy and thank the Commission members many of whom have traveled across the country To participate in this important event today Looking around the room. It's fantastic to see the Truman Project so well represented Starting with my longtime friend Catherine Brown The executive director of ACPD is doing remarkable work as well as several other Truman members Two of whom are working on an effort to elevate the service of frontline civilians in high-threat environments, which we'll learn more about today To Doug Wilson, the chairman of our Board of Advisors Doug Wilson has been at the forefront of American efforts to identify and engage next generation leaders for more than four decades And he's been a mentor to many in the United States He served for eight years as a Foreign Service Information Officer with the United States Information Agency and for six years As a senior foreign policy advisor to former US Senator Gary Hart Doug was the moving force behind the transitions and leaders project at White Oak Conferences On which he partnered with Senator Hart and former Defense Secretary William Cohen respectively These next generation leadership initiatives brought more than 500 future leaders from around the world from all walks of life For cross-cutting discussions with their American counterparts on topics including the Muslim world Russia India The Pacific Rim Europe Latin America women as leaders of change global energy and water The interrelationships between health and economic development public diplomacy and development assistance as Congressional director of the former US Information Agency Doug was on the front lines working with former Senators John Kerry and Joseph Lieberman and their teams to lead the fight against the consolidation of USIA into the State Department Well, that effort did not ultimately succeed. Doug is proud to say it did not happen on his watch He has served three different Secretaries of Defense at the Pentagon and Most recently served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for public affairs the Pentagon senior spokesman and communications strategist He's three times been presented with the distinguished public service medal the Pentagon's highest civilian honor Today he co-leads nationwide initiative focused on better community reintegration for returning veterans and their families And he's chair of the Board of Advisors at our own Truman National Security Project Together with Catherine Brown. He has been the driving force and prime mover behind today's workshop and the year-long initiative on which it's based Please join me in welcoming Doug Wilson. Thank you Many thanks to you Mike and to the organizations and institutions which have convened this gathering a TUS IP Peter Loge Linwood Ham and Sarah goes that you've done a fantastic job and in particular Bill Hibble I want to thank you and congratulate you and all of your colleagues on the US advisory commission on public diplomacy in particular for your good judgment and bringing on Catherine Brown as your executive director She and Chris Hensman are outstanding representatives of a new generation of public servants And we need to recruit and retain more people like them In June of last year an American father wrote a moving tribute to his son who had been killed overseas While serving his country He died doing what he loved most working to build bridges of understanding and mutual respect between the people of the United States And the people of the Middle East this grieving father wrote He was successful because he embodied the traits that have always endeared America to the world a commitment to democratic principles and respect for others regardless of race religion or culture He amazed and impressed people by walking the streets with the lightest of escorts sitting inside walk cafes chatting with passersby There was a risk to being accessible the father Jan Stevens Wrote about his son Chris Stevens the late US ambassador to Libya Chris knew it and he accepted it For those who serve their country in uniform on the battlefield The acceptance of risk in all its forms is a given the public understands this and gives its Unqualified admiration respect and support to these young men and women in uniform as they carry out their missions But we have given less focus and less attention To US government civilians and to the ever-broadening spectrum of risks, which they now face They too are serving their country They're doing so in an ever-increasing number of high-risk environments around the world so What constitutes acceptable risk for these civilians? US Diplomats and development workers face increasing challenges trying to build relationships with foreign publics in dangerous places The ways they have been told to deal with these challenges too often have been counterproductive and Overreliance on social media and Wrote reliance on fortress-like compounds Constraints and prevents the effective development of human relationships in too many places necessary to achieve mission goals Both military and civilians who spend their careers engaging in these environments know this They fear that the US government and the US public are becoming so risk-averse That we're creating fundamental barriers to building trust among the very swing Publix critical to giving our policies and our goals the benefit of the doubt and Critical to helping our civilians on the front lines Understand and minimize the risks they face It is time to have a real a serious and a political a productive discussion a Discussion involving all public and private stakeholders and institutions On how US government civilians can effectively engage with foreign publics when where and how in high-thread environments It's time to ask in an era where zero risk environments is a virtual oxymoron What constitutes acceptable levels of risk for our men and women not in uniform and where? How do we balance mission and risk and not frame these issues as zero-sum choices What tools and resources are necessary to minimize risk Without undermining or negating basic goals of engagement How can civilians benefit from the public engagement lessons learned on the fly by the US military Over the past 12 years on so many battlefields Do NGO workers engage more effectively with Publix in hostile environments than do US government workers if so How and why? Are we giving up connecting with a majority of local Publix in order to stay protected from just a few What training should there be to enable us civilians to engage more effectively in these places and what constitutes effective security there and Perhaps most important How do we recruit and retain a new generation of civilians? Willing to engage on behalf of the US government in so many dangerous and hostile places around the world To help lay the groundwork for this kind of discussion We had professionally led focus groups Conducted by compass partners and by PSB on these questions this past summer Participants came from junior and senior levels at the State Department and USAID From the Pentagon from the armed services from a wide variety of NGOs from government and private security agencies and From staff positions on national security congressional committees both Democrat and Republican from both the House and the Senate Most of the participants had considerable field experience and expertise in danger zones around the world Others were directly involved in policymaking in these areas and as you might expect there was a wide range of views and more than a few disagreements But there were a remarkable number of common threads in response to the questions and issues we raised and here are some of them Soldiers diplomats aid workers NGO workers security personnel What attracts these people and an increasing number of them first generation Americans what attracts them to this line of work They do not go into it for the money They go into it to serve their country they go into it out of patriotism to work with civil society to correct misperceptions about the United States to help the US achieve its policy goals Those who do so are self-sacrificing. They're motivated by aspiration and hope But they're also very practical and pragmatic. They want to make a difference, but they know that it takes action to make a difference and Too many of those best suited to work in high-threat environments are now leaving the civilian government sectors Some of them cite NGOs and the private sector as more in sync with their goals Many leave because they feel the US government no longer provides them with the pathways They want to meaningful or rewarding careers But more people than we had anticipated Cited US government approaches to risk as a major obstacle Many pre 9-11 diplomats didn't and don't define their careers in terms of risk, but virtually all Pre and post 9-11 now do understand and accept what risk might entail personal risk Physical disease pollution accidents kidnapping loss of personal freedom dealing with the unknown Virtually every participant in our discussions had some kind of risk Including risk to life and limb top of mind when considering their career choices For not a single one Was the concept of risk an initial deterrent to pursuing their careers So what is acceptable risk risk is acceptable many said when your situational awareness to deal with the unknown is As complete as possible Risk is acceptable when you have full information about your environment from as many trusted sources as possible in particular From local networks Networks which become accessible because of personal relationships built on human contact and trust Risk is acceptable when you have support from superiors and institutions Not just those in the field, but those in Washington risk is acceptable when you understand the risk environment and feel that all reasonable security measures have been taken and most Understand that there are no ultimate guarantees The issue is risk management not risk elimination when diplomat told us We were told that risk acceptability can change over the course of a career by locale and by time Most significantly by life changes family and children Risk to family was unacceptable to everybody So too was risk outsourced to foreign service nationals local employees and alumni of us sponsored programs One told of a night letter pinned to the front door of an Afghan local employees home Quit tomorrow, or you won't see your husband again Facing the unknown without the right skills to cope was also unacceptable Most of our participants felt that the right way to address this was not fortress embassies But the development of good networks both locally and across NGOs and government agencies To provide a complete picture and incorporate constant real-time changes But perhaps the most illuminating finding was that for many risks to their careers and For most risks of failing in their missions Whereas of much concern to them as risk to life in limb Careers end with one wrong YouTube click said one young public diplomacy officer The reputational risks in a risk averse environment agency are even greater Because there isn't always coverage from above protecting you. You'll be a sacrificial lamb immediately Risk has to be commensurate with the benefit of government said one AID worker But it also has to be worth it for me personally and for most worth it means succeeding in the mission achieving the policy goal Making the difference and all of that depends on effective personal engagement Listen to these words from one frustrated respondent who put everything in a nutshell a Lot of what we're told when we went out or when we couldn't go out was look if you get hurt You affect the entire mission if a few people get hurt in a very high-risk environment It has a big impact here in Washington all the security measures then go into overdrive Everyone gets locked down that affects your ability to go out and be effective The only way you can be effective is by engaging and by building relationships And this affects who you can attract when you talk about recruiting a new generation for public service If you lock everyone down you create the wrong incentives for recruiting the people that you want and You drive out the people that you need You can say that the best way to protect individuals from physical risk is to lock them down But then you negate the greater reason why you're there and you put the overall mission at greater risk Trying to balance these things becomes the real issue There are big contradictions between those in the field and those in Washington at state management in Congress and within the public at Large on the issues of risk and mission There is an imbalance between risk and mission admitted one Hill staffer There are expectations up here of what needs to be accomplished and there's a lack of understanding on what it takes to accomplish it Participants from on and off the Hill agreed that congressional and public blowback is rooted in a zero tolerance approach to death or Injury as risk consequences Field practitioners themselves say these consequences must be managed, but they can't be eliminated They are frustrated that the blowback makes their supervisors even more risk averse They are fearful of the political firestorms They may ignite by taking risks in pursuit of their missions And they are increasingly concerned that they and their colleagues in the words of one development office official are Overprotected and underprepared when it comes to dealing with risk Those with whom we met and talked this summer Identified other obstacles which make dealing with front right front line risk harder not easier for them Many said that relevant information is not shared as widely or strategically as it could be Because embassy components from military to intelligence to public diplomacy are so piped Others said that regional and diplomatic security personnel are overworked and under resourced a Number of those security personnel told us that their time and attention is often skewed towards protecting ever-increasing numbers of top level Visiting officials at the expense. They said a focusing on official mission goals and working closely more closely with mid-level and junior officers to help them achieve those goals Several diplomats as well as security personnel made clear that RSOs and diplomatic security professionals Want very much to do the right things But that too often they must labor under a one-size-fits-all centralized security framework from Washington Several said that the incentives for security personnel Seem to be based less on mission goals and more on no one's going to be hurt on my watch in fact Over centralized control in Washington was mentioned across the board as a primary obstacle to dealing with risk on the front lines and The primary area for review when it came to the possible new tools and potential policy changes to deal with risk more effectively Virtually all participants from NGOs security personnel and the military as well as diplomats and development personnel Called for a new management approach to risk They asked decision makers to review and reconsider current one-size-fits-all No harm no blowback security guidelines They call for security Superiors to look again at systems. We're taking any kind of risk. However Reasonable is penalized rather than rewarded and most important They want to see changes in the organizational culture of the US government Particularly at the management levels at state and in Congress to empower Leaders at the point of decision which they believe will do more to ensure organizational success Their views reinforced a recent call by a triumvirate of respected diplomats and military leaders Former DNI Admiral Denny Blair former ambassador to Afghanistan Ron Newman and former special operations commander Admiral Eric Olson They said we need a new generation of ambassadors in the field Empowered to use their experience and expertise work across silos and make decisions tailored to the specific Strategic as well as tactical needs of the environments in which they operate and they added The leader of American in-country operations in a fragile state needs high-order managerial and leadership skills for complex program Execution however the Foreign Service is now not geared towards producing such skills broadly the policy changes and Change recommendations that came out of our summer focus groups focused strongly on recruitment and on training Many called for a new focus on recruiting specifically for high-thread environments and not just for general postings And there were thinking outside the box suggestions on the best way to do that These included in and out rotations for NGO experts who might want brief government stints and shorter career service terms To better attract those with the skills and temperaments for service in danger zones First determine the profile of the individuals we want in these positions said one of our participants Then determine what is going to motivate and keep them namely the ability to do their job and feel like they're being effective To our participants across the board that means a shift in training and culture starting at entry levels and Continuing over the course of a career. It means more personal control Taking from lessons learned on the battlefield many of our military participants said it means continuous Hands-on long-term training not just a course of a week or two in Washington training in the kind of relationship building and network building and conflict environments acquiring the street smarts central to the success of those who work for NGOs and To that of the young captain's majors and colonels who too often had to learn that on the fly in wartime Many of our security participants said it means better interaction between junior officers and security personnel in the field That means two-way communication to better integrate both mission goals and the security necessary to achieve them Many of our NGO participants said it means greater strategic cooperation with local NGO representative but without de facto outsourcing policy representation to them and As participants in all the focus groups said it means understanding that social media is a tool for maintaining relationships Not a substitute for the human engagement necessary to establish them The 60 men and women who participated in our summer discussions have provided many Pragmatic and reasonable contributions to a wider discussion that now needs to take place in this country We have not yet had that full holistic discussion about how to balance mission and risk and we must do so We asked young majors colonels and captains on the battlefield to do the engagement work of our diplomats and public diplomacy practitioners because of risk But we have not yet tapped their experience or expertise to better equip the civilians who must now resume doing some of that work Those who work for NGOs have established relationships and hostile environments that our FSOs have not or cannot because of risk But we have not yet discussed how to apply or integrate those skills into public sector work a New generation of Hill staff both Republican and Democrat Understand the vital need for human engagement with a new generation of leaders emerging overseas But we have not yet fully engaged them in Conversations that are otherwise defined by parameters like gotcha politics If we can put our differences aside and unite in support of our men and women in uniform Appreciate their understanding of the need to take risks in order to achieve their fundamental goal of protecting this country and Provide them with the resources relevant to the needs and to achieving their goals Then we should and must be able to do the same for our civilians serving their country in hostile environments Chris would not want to have been remembered as a victim Jan Stevens wrote Chris knew and accepted that he was working under dangerous circumstances He did so just as many of our diplomatic and development professionals do every day Because he believed the work he was doing was vitally important He would have wanted the critical work hit He was doing the kind of work that made him literally thousands of friends and admirers Across the broader Middle East to continue Jan Stevens words were echoed by the parents of Anne Smettinghoff The young public diplomacy officer killed while delivering books in Afghanistan They wrote she joined the Foreign Service three years ago right out of college and there was no better place for her and Absolutely loved the work. She was doing as a public diplomacy officer Directly with the Afghan people and was always looking for opportunities to reach out and help make a difference in the lives of Those living in a country ravaged by war We are consoled knowing that she was doing what she loved and that she was serving her country by helping to make a positive difference in the world for the Stevens and the Smettinghoff's and for the prospect of a new generation of men and women like them many of whom Are in an audience like this today It is time to have this real discussion About how we can face understand and master change in the world and deal with the risks that come with doing so if we do not We and our national security interests will for many years remain the victims of it. Thank you And now it's time for the discussion to begin Hello everyone. My name is Lyndon Olson, and I'm the vice chairman of the the US advisory Commission on public diplomacy I'm honored to introduce the speakers from our first panel with a for the first panel Voices from the front lines Which will expand more on the risk that civilians face in high-threat environments by representatives from the diplomatic development NGO defense and security communities, and I'd like to welcome them to the stage come on down everybody It's on the panel and as I introduce you just raise your hand since you don't have a name tag in front of you necessarily Ambassador Rick Barton is the former assistant secretary for conflict and stabilization operations at the US State Department Stan Byers is the managing director of Sylvan Frontier and a former senior advisor of the office of Afghanistan in Pakistan affairs at the US agency for international development Eric Lechlem is a former senior advisor for the global defense reform for global defense reform at the office of the deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for security cooperation at the United States Department of Defense Gene Mainz is the current principal deputy coordinator for international information programs at the US Department of State and Nathan Puffer is the senior vice president for programs at global integrated security And is an adjunct fellow at the transit transnational threats project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Barbara Smith Who is the senior director of for governance in the law at the Asia Foundation? It'll be moderated by Matthew Rosenberg a foreign correspondent within York Times Matt. You'll take it from here Thanks I'm glad we could all sit down to talk about this I guess, you know We're talking about the risks the civilians face in hostile threat environments. I've worked in Africa and in the Middle East and for the last couple of years in Afghanistan and No, I've dealt with a number of you there a number of your colleagues and I see the challenges you guys face Is we're on the outside. We don't have your security restrictions We can move around we have our own cars and we drive and we go sit with people and People tend to open up and respond to that And I see when we've even tried to have some of your colleagues over there our bureau and cobble Which is in a very safe area next to the British Embassy. There's got to be the regional security officers They've got to come vet it, you know, is this work-related as it warrant it and The ambassador the senior people can always get over But it's the kind of people in the middle who do a lot of that public engagement who we seem to have the most trouble getting out To see things with and it's always I've always amazed by how much has changed since I first started going to Afghanistan Six seven years ago, but I could go out to dinner with your colleagues with military people They could go to restaurants. They go places and now there's very little Movement around except from the embassy to maybe an official office space and that's I imagine has got to be a tremendous challenge When you're trying to reach out and discuss with people I see all Afghans react to it They think of the U.S. Embassy is a Impenetrable fortress and they think of Americans these distant people I was trying to explain to an Afghan colleague of mine Who's coming to do a fellowship at Harvard that he will not see US military in the streets. There will be no And he was really worried about guns and I was like look you're going to Boston. Don't worry about there's not a lot of guns there And you know, I guess you know, I'm curious to hear your thoughts about What are the risks you guys have faced what you think is acceptable and How do you think you can overcome the kind of need for security? To credibly engage the public and be seen as people not just this distant powerful country that metals Which is how a lot of us how a lot of them see us Who wants to go first? You know, I had the privilege to serve as the public affairs officer in Kabul in 2012 and 2013 and you're going to hear from Ambassador Ryan Crocker at the keynote and The first thing that that he said to me when I got there is you know this embassy is not on lockdown and the security professionals are here to facilitate you doing your job and So from his leadership position he really set the standard of We needed to go in and make the case of what was mission critical and the security professionals were there to get us there and You know that put a heavy burden frankly on on us at the office director level at the agency or section head level Because we had to determine what was in fact mission critical and for public diplomacy that suddenly imposed a new rigor and strategic thinking that we don't really have to do in a less risk environment and so What really was the mission? What were we trying to accomplish there and how every single movement was leading up to the accomplishment of that mission? there weren't periphery things that had sort of a six degrees of separation from policy and So I think in terms of policy We had to be very focused on what the policy was What we needed to achieve it in which movements helped achieve it And that's very different than just a normal public diplomacy engagement where you have Regular relationships at all levels with the journalists with society as a public diplomacy officer That's in fact why we join, you know, we want to be out in public. We want to engage with people on the street That's that's what we love and what fascinates everyone but in a policy high-risk environment it was in fact all about policy and everything started from there and Everything had to be mapped out as to how this movement how this meeting was going to advance policy And that was just a very different level That we had to consider that would seem you also kind of lose that Opportunity for serendipity, right? You totally lose that. Yeah going to somewhere If there's no chance of that how do you I guess to kind of further refine the question How do you with it very okay? We have this one goal, but the goals public diplomacy is pretty fluid It's not a you know, we need to get five guys here kind of thing I don't know we had I mean the rest of the group can respond to this but for us in public diplomacy there in 2012 2013 There were two things we knew we were going to have a big transition between us to Afghan lead regardless of what of the troop numbers were that everybody was obsessed with for that year and You know, we just knew that that was going to be a big thing and all of us knew we were headed towards a presidential election And so everything we had three key questions that we asked about every public diplomacy program You know does the support transition is it Afghan led and is it sustainable and that was it and So the periphery You know, you start soon closed in Whether you wanted to or not you soon closed in on a variety of things that really Focused an effort and was not sort of the traditional public diplomacy that you might do in a less-risk environment Barbara yeah, and so I've worked both for an NGO in Afghanistan and then I I've Traveled to Afghanistan on 2d y as an official American So I just want to give one example to kind of compare and contrast the data that engagement So when I was in Kabul I'm working for an end for the Asia Foundation. We engage regularly with civil society and I'm gonna use the example of one of my colleague Afghan colleagues Aziz Rafi You may know I'm worked for afghan's whole society Forum and you know it took it for granted when I was there as an NGO that we could do what you were talking about We could go over and meet with them engage with them You know on a regular basis we could call them up and go over to the next day when I went back as an official American I would say that was a very different situation I was there as part of a senior level delegation and we really wanted the senior leadership We were with to get a chance to engage with civil society This was pre let pre 2009 election. We wanted them to hear from civil society We had to put an enormous amount of effort into Organizing and planning access for the civil society leaders took to the compound and in fact Aziz Rafi Who I mentioned wasn't able to get there because he couldn't get in he couldn't get access So one of the things we did is we tried to make sure and this is really the embassy staff that thought of doing this Is to make sure that they followed up with him followed up and are just very aware of the challenges associated with Engaging so having to make that extra effort You know you to engage even after the fact so that's an example of sort of you know as an NGO Worker you take kind of take for granted I think sometimes that your your access and it was so very different And and it comes with a whole set of challenges. Yeah, I'd actually take that one step further in that a Lot of times in I mean we were in Kabul and other places that people don't even want to come to the embassy anymore and whether it be afghan or internationals and They'll come if they have to for an official meeting or if there are you know projects on the line But if they can avoid it, they will But that what that means is it shuts down those those conversations that serendipity the relationships everything else and There's still it doesn't mean that the conversation outside the embassy stops There's a whole conversation going on in these environments that are outside of the bubble that we live in That we can no longer engage in and there's a lot of misconceptions about what US policy is what our approach is how effective It is what we are aren't doing that we no longer have a voice in and so that I mean there's a lot of kind of Unexpected consequences to this that we don't think about enough and it's a part of it's a lack of strategic thinking on our own part It's from a communications perspective And then there's a whole range of other things that I'll go into later But I just want to mention that point that sir Barton yeah I first have I'd just like to say that almost everything that Doug Brown said I would agree with it I hope he'll share his talk with all of us because there was just a ton of wealth and that We have this institutional view which I think we obviously have to straighten out But there's a there's an imperative to have a much more mature conversation in two other levels as well One is with the individuals Not every individual wants an institutionalized defined risk and the incentives that we have created career incentives Extra pay danger pay whatever are not really Appropriate to get the behaviors that we're looking for in these places So it has to be and then then we really got to have a much more mature discussion with the public's in the countries because they're the ones have the best opportunity to to deal with the Extreme violence in their own countries and then with our own public and it's we haven't had that Conversation as well. So the idea that no soldier is going to get killed on a mission Means that we might as well stay in Kentucky the idea I mean really there's no other way to do it and and they're still going to die in Kentucky by the way So but this has been a dramatically changing Marketplace when I worked at you and at the UNHCR in the 1990s. I think there was something like a hundred and eighty civilians humanitarians that had been killed in that decade Talking to AID during the transition in 2008 over 400 subcontractors of AID had died in Afghanistan We have to separate the Afghanistan's the Iraq's from the rest of the world that they're dramatically different cases and then we have to Tolerate what we can as individuals and I have a much higher tolerance than some of my colleagues That doesn't mean that I want to put my colleagues into the exact same situation that I'm willing to There's another component that's not to be a wet blanket on any of these observations at all But there is a different reality between being an official in an environment and being an NGO or a private Right, I think there's there's often often an inclination or tendency to say well this person can do that I can't do that and that's limiting me or that's somehow unfair or unjustified There's there's kind of an operational paradigm that shifts when you're associated with one entity the other particularly when the value of doing harm to American citizens American presence in a country is so much greater and the reality for for the security side of the house is that You know we're we're enabling function We don't we don't think about the world in terms of the risk. We have to engage our risk tolerance is actually quite massive and it Tracks people as a result that are there meant to engage them But that's all is we have to go out and and experience that risk for senator to find out how can enable a mission risk Isn't the mission the mission and we're meant to be facilitating is who we try to focus on But there is that separation between that official presence and what that means operationally you know tactically in some level and what it means for everybody else to some extent Which is an important distinction and advocates for why risk has to be differently approached by by officialdom in a sense Well, you know, I've noticed I Guess every once in a while I run into an official of some sort He's got a job that he needs to get out for and he basically breaks the rules or she I knew a guy at ISAF Who needed to be out in civilian clothes and he'd come over and hang out her house We go drive around and then you go back to ISAF and just like he'd been in a meeting And so there are ways to get out, but there is me brings up a very important point I can drive around in an unmarked car. I can put on a software communities. We have good security measures, you know But we're also Congress is not going to flip out if something happens to one of us. How do you guys kind of strike that balance? How do you how far can you go and do you have a sense of what is too far or how to kind of thread that needle where You're getting out doing you need to do but not exposing yourself in a way that is going to blow back here when something Something will go wrong. I mean that will happen. I think part of it You also have to look at the question Disaster the point that you just made of the blowback and we accept that as you know a given and I think part of what Rick is Saying is that and I completely agree with is that we need to have a different conversation with the public here and with our policymakers and congressional staffs and others here so that you know There isn't that same kind of expectation. There is an expectation that there'll be nobody hurt You cannot be effective in these environments and expect that no one's going to get hurt And so you've got to be able to get out and then you know, and I admit being guilty of this I've gone out around Regulations and around the RSO even though the RSO are typically very good friends But that's the only way I feel I can be effective sometimes and what I've talked to the art to the security officials about this I said you know is this kind of locked down a good security measure and they're like no because people will go around it And then we have no idea what they're doing and they're at you know greater risk, but from a Institutional perspective They've covered the risk to them because they've done what has been asked of them but we put the greater mission at risk and then actually we even put the individual individual at greater risk and You've got to find better ways to balance that and you've got to change the dynamic of if someone gets hurt It's gonna affect everything back here in Washington. I mean, how do you do that? How do you you start a public diplomacy campaign for Congress? How do you convince people in Washington that the people are going to get killed? There's nothing you can do about it, but we can try to mitigate that risk and you need to let us do our jobs because I Hear people say that a lot, but it seems to be going in the opposite direction Well, it's not a tough conversation to have because you just have to pick up the newspaper every day And there's a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for the New York Times who seems to be missing for several months There there are reports. There's not a story There's not a day that doesn't go by with a headline making front page story So the awareness is there and then the question just as there's a phenomenal awareness about Ebola right now But then there's the question of how do we go from balancing fear and and our ability to solve problems Within the State Department because that's one of the institutions. We're talking about here We we have if you had a virtuous scale I've tested this on multiple audiences at the State Department if we had a virtuous scale one end is native caution I'm from New England. That's a very good quality And the other end is American ingenuity. I'm from New England and that's a very good quality Where do we fit on this scale here at the State Department? 95% of the people that I talked to guess what they say We're right up against native caution. Guess what the other five percent say We're beyond native caution So and and so then you ask people is that the balance that we need to have at the senior Retreat of 80 top people that that worked for Secretary Kerry several months ago this was the number one concern in terms of energy in the room and Definitely the number one concern of the most senior most respected career people So we have an awareness of it, but we haven't really had the conversation Either inside with the individuals. We've created a lot of institutional responses. This is so highly customized I don't know what the New York Times has said to you has asked of you, but I suspect that at least 50 of not 80 percent of your colleagues would rather not go to Kabul You know a significant even though it's even though it's a great story And so that's fine. It doesn't mean that they're cowards. It doesn't mean they can't cover crime Downtown in Manhattan or whatever they're doing. So we have to have that the other danger that I saw at the UN often as we had junkies We had disaster junkies. They get out there. They stay there. It's like, oh, yeah, this guy just went from Liberia Ta-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da and that's not good either So again, it's it's it's about maturity and almost every conversation starts with do we understand the situation? And if we don't have a common understanding of the situation Then everybody's gonna come up with a different solution or we're gonna come up with an institutionalized solution, which is too often the denominator And that seems to be the other problem that all of you face when you're when you're behind high walls the outside looks much scarier and For like, you know, the security officers who really are behind high walls that look scariest It's like their job security. They think of that and they see everything as a threat, you know And I guess internally how do you have those discussions where you decide you get people out enough to say? This isn't as scary as we think it is that we can do these things when you're in a culture that is in lockdown mode and lockdown mindset How do you kind of overcome that? You have the conversation Can you get out enough to do it? Can you do you find the lines of communication open to the senior management or people back home? I don't really know. I'm kind of curious myself because I was kind of assume you guys are all just locked down I would say people actually probably be shocked as to how much out there we were I mean for public diplomacy and USA ID we were out there and We were out there a lot. I mean, you know, I personally was out probably multiple times a day Lots of members of our teams were out multiple times a day, but these were all conversations You know, there were there were three relationships that were critical one. Obviously primary relationship with my team the second relationship with master Crocker Forget ambassador Crocker and the third most important relationship is the head of security and You know, he needed to have confidence that as a decision maker I was choosing and picking the places we need to go to advance our policy and Not send in sort of frivolous Requests and there were others frankly who would just pass whatever requests in To security and ask them to support that but not realizing that every time you support that You don't have the assets to support the movement that you need to get your job done And so my interest in my staff was not in making everybody happy You know that for people who were not happy because their inherent job did not require them to engage My job was to get our policy advanced and those people out who needed to be to do that And and that came into individual conversations with the head of security We were together probably I don't know two or three hours a day Going through movements and the justifications for each movement and the security folks You know, we're not sitting there making the call on whether something was mission critical We were making the call and mission critical and they were determining how to support it And then obviously taking the latest information to whether that movement, you know Ended up at the last second not happening because they were getting incoming information at the last minute But their job was not determining what was mission critical that was determined with the policy makers at the embassy You know, I guess the other thing just came up when earlier was It's not only just about getting out it's about getting people in what you had brought up and like look I hate going over the US Embassy. It's just going to the airport. I'd take my shoes off like a few months ago I was like, come on not another place. So How do you and for Afghans? It's just it's totally frightening. They all think they're gonna be arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay How do you how do you get people and how do you open up in a way that brings people in? You have Libraries, whatever they are people can come see stuff and talk to people and see Americans How do you do that because that seems to be one red line? It's very difficult to cross for the security folks Can I just mention so one other thing is sort of middle ground? So you know during the elections period and another thing that and international NGOs could do is is You know work with the embassy to invite embassy colleagues out And then have their Afghan colleagues or Afghan counterparts also meet and you know in in sort of a safe Space, you know, whether it's you know a contractor or an NGO that often tended to have You know some sort of security and might be more palatable to an RSO. So that's another middle middle space But I'll let other colleagues answer that question about getting people in because my personal experience is just like yours I mean, it's it was really hard to get into the embassy and very much rather people in our goal You know the last thing you wanted to do was bring somebody on to the embassy compound in Kabul. I mean a it was a construction zone That's but you know, you know, it just wasn't welcoming And so you did everything you could to avoid doing that because it really wasn't the image that you wanted to present And so we would find find these hubs where we could go do engagement in those hubs with key contacts and again Mission-critical security worked with us and those would be supportive, but you you definitely didn't want to bring people in I would we've been working in Syria for the last three years and you know, you can't really work in Syria So American diplomats are not working inside of Syria since we evacuated the embassy and Ambassador Ford left But we had to work with we had to identify an entire population of people that we did not know US government did not really have wonderful contacts with the opposition They came from places that we had not really known them and while we made it an Accelerated effort to do that. We had to get to know literally hundreds if not thousands of Syrians And so how do you do that when you don't have an embassy? You don't have a presence? I don't want to I hope we don't get too Absorbed by Afghanistan and Iraq because they are extraordinary circumstances and what you do and there's live fire is I think should be dramatically different than what you have to do to work in the other 190 plus countries of the world where we also have real threats But in the case of the Syrians well what we recognize one of our core mission initially for the United States to be credible in the place is to actually know some Syrians and Know them better I mean that should be that's I consider that the number one Powell doctrine before you send anybody into any conflict space Have some basic understanding of it And so basic understanding is actually your first mission before you can say what your mission is Because and so that's really what we come up against and that's that's a challenge We were able to do that Turkey has been welcoming enough They haven't been brilliant, but you know, it's a solid B So that you've been able to find enough Syrians that you could get to know What was going on and then you become dependent on them? But I think the neutral space is the Skype calls. I mean whatever you can use you It's it's not it's a lot like being a good beat reporter really being And and and so sitting in your computer all day is not going to get the job done And you have to enrich the relationships You have to figure out how to do it and there are lots of ways of doing it and my dad was the USIA veteran That's what he did for after he fought on Iwo Jima and he did that job because he fought on Iwo Jima that was the reason he wanted to do this job and I believe that That's that kind of mission dedication that Doug mentioned in speech and others have talked about already Is critical, you know actually the technology Technology actually isn't interesting to discuss how that works, but before we go there before we shift entirely from Afghanistan and Iraq I just want to ask Eric. What does US military do? How can it kind of help civilians get out there? I've seen them, you know spread across the country at bases, but beyond that what roles the military have kind of helping Keep some security and getting people around My sense is it depends on the country in question in Afghanistan What I observed was there was a difference between the military mission and the diplomatic development missions in terms of security for who's going out I Can talk to the experience that I had which was as a Department of Defense civilian I was working under the military chain of command and we had a very aggressive set of procedures that we had to follow on a daily basis in terms of Making sure that we had a plan of action for the day that that was being socialized Not just that day, but the rest of the week going back to the point of let's make sure that what we're trying to do in the Green Zone outside of the green zone at Afghan National Army bases is tied to the mission and the development objectives that we're working on as We help the Afghans develop their forces and their Ministry of Defense their Ministry of Interior Catherine's got a lot of notes for me here that I should be asking you about six lessons learned And first I I also just wanted to add my thanks to the rest of the folks in the panel First to the Commission for hosting this event Catherine. Thank you again for the invitation Especially to the Truman project as well calling attention to frontline civilians and the work that Becky's done with Truman Thank you very much. This is a conversation that has long overdue Lastly, I didn't quite see everybody in the audience that I thought was going to be here But dr. Ellen Klein Joe Brinker and a number of other frontline civilian veterans that have been of great assistance to me Not only in my pre-deployment, but while in Afghanistan and then in the return home I'm gonna answer that question through the lens of a Department of Defense civilian Working under a military chain of command in Afghanistan I was deployed there as a Ministry of Defense advisor, which is a program I could talk about a little bit later in the conversation But the key point being here was we were run through a two-month training program before we got into country That was built on the best practices of things that went well in the military preparation cycle for going into conflict zones And things that didn't go so well so the six key areas of skill development that I think Resonated with myself and other advisors, especially do these civilians that had another never carried again Had never been in combat Were these the first is a real keen attention to understanding conflict recognition, especially as it relates to interpersonal communication As an advisor you have to be heads up on what's happening in a conversation And I think the military has given us a lot of great lessons about how to handle those conversations in a conflict environment Related to that but somewhat different is just the training that you can get in Understanding human dynamics body language and situational reading One of the best courses that I had in my my work up cycle was a two-day course related to just reading body language and understanding When a situation is about ready to go red or how to understand how to renegotiate a conversation based on what you're reading in that Context can actually jump in there for a second and I'm curious over at state and a ID What kind of training you guys do to try and get people ready? This actually raises one of the points I wanted to make is that I mean and Doug mentioned this and it's one of the points I made one in the focus groups is that I think we we underprepare and we over-protect and The under preparing is you know we get some training when we go into this but not a lot And I think it's improved a lot over the last 10 years or so when I first went to Afghanistan I got absolutely zero training and I know a lot of other people who did as well and even the train now is often rush but We have to think about what that means we have to kind of redefine what we mean by risk One thing one way to address risk is to just think about security and protection The other thing is to bring people is you know bring the right people in that are savvy about these kinds of things and that Either I've learned it through experience or I've gotten very good training or hopefully both and when you'd When you do that that's another way to mitigate risk and often I think more effective and more sustainable Then putting people out there that aren't prepared which we often do we often take people that have no experience in these environments and put them out In literally some of the most dangerous places in the world and that's okay But you know they can't go out actually talk to anybody And so we got to change how we think about risk there are other ways to mitigate the risk and just putting people behind walls The other thing is is that risk is not static, right? It's fluid right so it's not that's exotic activity You say you know you're now you're trained against this because that happened yesterday These trends and the evolution of your situational awareness And the other big thing there is that when you do that you want to create the incentives for the people that can then make Smart judgment calls about how to shift your risk your threat environment or your threat response So that there are times when you need to be aware of little signs if you go through a village and there aren't kids out playing You change your your threat posture and you do it pretty quickly and no security officials going to be there to tell you to do that But if you don't know to think about those things and I think and what the bigger problem is when you then lock down and something That bad happens and we we respond the way we do the people that know how to do that and that want to get out and use Those skills leave the service and then you actually you're driving out the very people that are most effective and are your best Be able to bring down risk and you're self-selecting for the people that would have a less have a greater risk aversion And that aren't maybe a skilled at actually operating in these I mean it would seem that that kind of savvy It is actually more useful in places in Africa and other parts of the world Afghanistan and Iraq I've worked in both places. I was explaining this to a fellow journalist Like look here with this huge American infrastructure there Western infrastructure metals protection and trucking around parts of Congo You've got nothing there The worst thing you had driving is incredibly dangerous never mind the other You do have to have a lookout and and that would seem the kind of thing you can develop I don't people without having to get Should go to live on a compound. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's where you want to jump in Nice that I ever heard was No martyr ever improved our program Okay, so so this is a no martyr program if you ever feel at risk whatever your personal tolerance is Make sure that you change that circumstance as fast as you can. Okay, that's the that's the early warning I've been part of multiple big organizations UNH and UNHCR State Department We do at our in our particular program. My predecessors had a three week very intense The kind of personal security training evasive driving their variety of other things very good We do a lot of anthropological work basically Okay, what's what are the what are the cultural stories here? How do you fit into a place? Fine? but at the end of the day, it's a lot about your personal judgment and If you feel and so I can tell you I've taken people to places They were not comfortable and I then adjusted to what they were telling me so I'll just give you one story We were in Pakistan it was Friday there were there were a relatively small demonstration of 30 or 40,000 people two blocks away And I wanted and we were at the fortress there In in the city and I wanted to see the mosque that was right next door We went we had a very good time talked to tons of people and the fortress got lots of feedback I won't was going on in Pakistan at the moment Then said let's go next door to the mosque We happened to be going next door about the time that the little demonstration was ending and the grounds were over just Overcrowded and I felt perfectly comfortable moving with the crowd but one of my colleagues said this is really stupid and He was and he looked scared and it was like watching your friend drowning you do you just say no There's no problem with the undercurrent. We're gonna swim back in or do you ride down this down the coast in this case I thought okay. Let's get back in our car and get out of here because he is he's got a sensitivity I don't have fine. We didn't have a lot of security with us, but so it's all about that But it's all about having that kind of agility and we have that we're still gonna have the accidents We're still gonna have the tragedies I was on I was the officer in charge when we lost people in West Timor and UNHCR and then ten days later We lost somebody in Guinea and it was devastating. It was absolutely devastating I mean, how can you select people that you think will be savvy in these environments? It's impossible to know Yeah, I mean really we got when you get people they get out there You just have no idea how they're gonna react to the level of stress the situation until you see them in action and then and then you just have to make a judgment call as a manager about Who you really want going out the most and who can really handle it people that you think people that I thought would be great And then they got to it and they just completely freaked out I mean, I had one lady show up and two days later. She she came in with her return ticket And she's like I can't do it. I can't you know be you know hear the alarms all the time I can't sleep at night knowing that you know, whatever rockets gonna incinerate my hooch You know, just you just don't know how people are gonna react Until they get out that you can train them and prepare them But it it also does come down to just watching people on the ground and and as a manager of people It is really being attuned to your people on the ground because people will go through various stages during their tour Did you just have to be alert for I disagree with that to some degree? I mean, I think the way that we we do recruiting now and the way we bring people in It makes it very hard to know who's gonna react partly because we're not very strategic about the way that we identify and recruit people Yeah, and so I mean I hate to say it but like when we did the surge and this and both military and civilian And I was in Afghanistan at the time I came back and talked with friends that were part of the recruiting for the surge and they told me You know it was a pulse check exercise It was whoever was willing to go let's get him out there because we have to meet the numbers You know, I saw a guy down at a keep the details big on a on a very large fob in a very hot violent part of Afghanistan Who looked like he's about 75. He's retired lawyer from somewhere in the US. He had a pulse He did him barely and I remember seeing him walking across this construction field They were building with another colleague from the post were like He's gonna drop dead like what do we do then is that a story of this dude dies? I mean think about in the private sector if you were you also have high-pressure environments different kinds of pressures, but they do identify in profile Who the bright people are and there are ways to be better at this and to you make you know HR and You know our support to to people not just an administrative function, but a strategic function I would argue I would argue that is actually one of the most important things that we can do to both be effective and Improve our security for our people is to be smarter about how we Identify the people we're gonna put in these environments how we place them against jobs and then how do we support to them? And we're not doing that very well right now if at all Sorry Could just to build on what Stan said I think if our prism of perspective is We're gonna assess people's performance and their ability to be successful in the field and that's the first time We're doing it. We've already got the wrong perspective on this one of the things about the motor training program That I think was good, but could have been built on Was we were actually being assessed every single day as we were going through the training program? And there were people that washed out because when we were put into and it's an exercise environment but when you're put into the exercise where you're going through the simulated village and You come back and you don't handle yourself well in the post mission debrief That's a sign that you're not going to be able to do it in the field So I think adding in those sort of checks and assessment roles before people get into country as part of a revamped redesigned radically different training program is one of the things that we need to be thinking about and then follow up with How to retain those individuals that perform best in the field and keep them in the system rather than absolutely giving them incentives to Leave which we currently do I'm curious how the private sector deals with this. Well, I was just the same in this pendulum can swing right I mean to Rick's point about the junkies and there's a reason why so many NGOs Security companies and professionals are those junkies because they have this stated professional background or development It says I work in these environments, and I'm happy doing that and it's evidenced on my resume or CV And therefore it evidences that I can do this work You should hire me and it kind of it metastasizes to some extent that community which Well, it doesn't mean it just grows legs so quickly and then that introduces a whole different set of management Organizational and security challenges that can inhibit proper or functional complementary work in relation with security professionals Regardless of the an extreme kind of ensconced risk tolerance amongst a workforce particularly becomes more pervasive Still have the dictum even with a more nuanced approach towards risk of controlling their exposure Then you get the cowboys too who are a problem in the other direction And you got to deal with them as well I just want to quickly shift though over to what you brought up about Skype I mean there are a bunch of tools as Doug. It's a you know Twitter doesn't replace relationships But there are tools in which you can maintain them and try and build things. They're not great, you know But they're not terrible. How can you use them? Do you think they are effective? Do you think it's okay enough crunch, but we really shouldn't we really should be getting out there This is not a way to do business if we can avoid it. I Think you have to do everything. I mean everything you just have to be Unbelievably creative about making the most of an opportunity. We couldn't get anybody on At CSO we couldn't get anybody on to the US Embassy compound in Libya. It's been a it's been a constant problem for At least the last year because of because of the the tragedy and And and the situation on the ground We had to settle but we knew we needed to have the conversations with Libyans all over the country that we were not having so we had to settle for an arrangement where we identified a Jordanian woman We worked an agreement with US IP We had the clearance of the US ambassador For her to then go around and hold 60 meetings that nobody else seemed to be able to do over the course of six weeks and she came back and gave us a very a Very richly articulated view of the differences in each of the each of the cities in the country Now the disadvantage was when she came back brought that back She wasn't she didn't have the official voice we shopped her like crazy around Washington trying to Give people the sense that there is something of value here to learn and that you can hear But it didn't have the it didn't have the feeling she was discounted by some people I think unwisely because she wasn't a representative of the US government now We all pay for studies we We oftentimes read your paper because you have you have more access to some situations than we do But it's it's just the richest possible mix you can get and I think there are a lot of ways we can do it I mean even you can you can even use these shutdown embassy compounds to have more public events So you can get 50 grantees in now You don't want to you don't want to besmirch them all with the US they're owned by the US But these are overt programs the US is working and I think one of the ways we reduce risk for people is by making Creating a sense of normalcy around some of our activities as opposed to you're an extraordinary agent of the United States Popularizing these things and getting that message out the public media inside of these countries in many cases is surprisingly advanced And if you go back to Bosnia for example, it was broke the government wasn't supporting it a larger so you could do anything you wanted on the television networks and the radio stations of Basically almost anywhere in the Balkans and we were the international community was talking about building a new international station Why would you do that? You got all that you've got this incredible network and they're all broke Things you want to do you know I mean that does that that point about the The local media does represent a lot of Americans realize how rich a local media these places have and it can look amateur So it can look like a high school AV club, but it's people respond to it pretty well much better than they respond to any of us And you know getting in and getting those people out also seems you know How do you build bridges with them when you're showing up a lot of armored cars things like that? Can you get them to see the people they need to see can you I don't know I don't see how a lot of this works. Well if I can extract this kind of sense of access in Where we're moving, you know if if and this is applicable for any environment This is kind of a high-risk Afghan Iraq model as well as you know other countries you know if you're kind of defining this this this range this continuum and and As a result of scripture or dictate that your security partner your security enabler says This is the threshold you have to meet as far as the importance of your activity in order for that to be clearer for us to facilitate that That that kind of avoids the point that risk doesn't stop at that one level either So if you can prioritize the activity and the benefit commensurate with the risk it gets exposed to versus just this is the very Minimum you got to pass this test order for this mission to go forward and you're excluding the huge range of others Subordinate or supporting activities that aren't necessarily in that mission critical. This is what enables the policy decision. It's just it's a false economy It's not a decision that necessarily has to be made, you know and one of the things deputy secretary Burns said in his list of 10 yesterday is it doesn't always have to be us and You know one of the things that most people don't realize we have in Afghanistan We actually have 19 Lincoln learning centers in Afghanistan in all parts of the country it's just the US version of the British Council and You know those are funded through a grant run by Afghans We do the training all digitally and did a heavy investment on digital technology to connect all of them to each other You know tens of thousands of people in those every day. It doesn't always have to be You know somebody who looks like me out in one of those places on the ground There are many other ways to do things and I think being in a high-risk environment really forces you go to go back to the policy objectives and then figure out a new way and it may not be Something that I'm comfortable with or that I've done in ten other posts that I've been in But you're forced to just be a little more creative and figure out a different direction in a way to accomplish it But I think it's doable. I think on that note. We've wrapped up our time Have we? So yeah, I'm curious to hear your final thoughts that was I think something I wish we'd explored a little bit more about how do you get creative about it? How do you move beyond to sauce coming to be there? But ambassador Barton what you know from from this what have you taken away? What are your final thoughts on how we can keep engaging? Well, I think number one. Let's have a really mature conversation with every at every level The individual all the way up. I'd say number two. Let's use public diplomacy to really to really argue against violence against civilians it's it's Any country you go into 98% of the people agree with you so but but it but behaviors have been tolerated There's the narratives have been accepted the way you get things done as you use violence That's when we've run into in Nigeria recently and and it's not just a narrative. It's actually reality So you have to you have to address it. So let's use public diplomacy aggressively in that space As I would say, you know, we need to Think about risk And more creative ways ourselves think about what it means on the ground when you're in some dangerous areas But also what it means back here in Washington Think about the systematic ways in which we create incentives or disincentives within the system that actually often create more risk Because we we're not putting the right people in the right places and giving them the right ability to be effective and when that happens, we're not effective at achieving our broader national security objectives and also very importantly supporting the local staff that we're working with and Then you see things like where we're going right now with Iraq And hopefully we won't go there in Afghanistan, but there are those risks and we haven't achieved our objectives We have to think very strategically about what's the full range of tools that we have How do we be smart about this? How do we have that mature conversation? and really makes them some decisions about how we can create the tools necessary to do this and Avoid that much a greater risk that we're not effective that we're not engaging that we're not talking to people we need to and you know media is a great example of the tools that are out there and We have done media studies in both Afghanistan and Sudan and other places People are very savvy about how they consume media even in very illiterate societies And they use several different forms of media to do that and they they they Use they triangulate one against the other That's a great tool, but to really understand how best yet. We also have the versa relationships Just two two thoughts One has to do with local staff in leadership positions. I mean on the NGO side We often put we have local staff that are chiefs of party have these kinds of leadership positions and really Engaging them in this dialogue about risk I think and and about Engagement in general and then the second thing is taking care of people when they return whether it's dealing with International's and post-traumatic stress in particular those that are conflict junkies And then the the second group of course is is our colleagues in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan I'm thinking in particular about the the situation with the SIV Visa situation right now, you know making sure that those that are taking risk know that that You know there is this potential for them to be taken care of After they've you know served our country, so that would seem to go beyond just SIVs I know in Iraq we got a tremendous amount of people out. We don't have that ability in Afghanistan Yeah, and these are people who have worked for kind of the broader American project there I guess and you know, I don't know what to tell them some of them are really worried No, I have a colleague who We worked with during the Loya Jirga who was picked up by NDS and harassed and you know We worked for years to try to help him because he was under threat and Concentrate, so yes, absolutely, and he was not actually an official US from place Matt I just share kind of my big takeaway from frontline service in Afghanistan. I think As a country we value military readiness and we invest in it We would never send units from the 10th Mountain Division To a conflict without training Headquarter element planning ahead of time and pre-deployment exercises unless it was a national emergency We need to apply a similar mentality to generating frontline civilian force readiness bottom line I'd offer up three recommendations under that First is we need to continue to increase the rigor and the duration of especially DOD civilian But also US government civilian preparation for frontline service I think there are a lot of great initiatives that are happening in a micro scale that can be brought up The program that I went through the Ministry of Defense Advisor program with the Department of Defense is a great example Secondly, I think we need to ask more of the people that are in federal service There are about 800,000 civil servants in the Department of Defense 800,000 and I can guarantee you that less than 1% of those went to places like Afghanistan or Iraq over the last couple years Over the last decade, but many of them probably wanted we're gonna have to get to number three to give Understand a little time So I think we can we can think creatively about how to do That and leverage their patriotism in places like embassies and country teams around the world in the new ways The last thing I've already said it But it's a radical revamp and redesign of how we prepare our frontline civilians for this type of service I think it's probably important to recognize that you know risk is is not an input risk is a product of two things It's the threat and the kind of the capability we apply to to diminish the impact of that threat Or you know the probability continue to do it academically As far as it's hard for us to kind of move the needle on threat over the course of time That's why we invest in initiatives in different countries in development and all those those precursors to violence and conflict But capability is something that's far more under our control and we define capability We're meant to define it in such a way as that we say it has a cost And there's an investment to it in terms of time or treasure and can we apply capabilities that are reasonable to the Outcomes we get from the risks that the results that we have to absorb or transfer do all those other Methodologies with and I think changing that sensibility of how we think about the capability and then the risk which results and then engage our Tolerance to get the return which is kind of how we open this to the question I guess is seems to me the most important kind of a new lens to apply to this larger effort as far as it Lays to public diplomacy We're like at least two minutes over so I want to thank all of you for coming and I want to thank The Truman project and US IP and the McCain Institute. This has been a lot of fun. So I'm glad we all got a chance My name is Paul Hughes Good morning, and I'm from the US Institute of Peace and I have the honor to introduce our next panel Who will discuss leadership perspectives on civilian engagement in high-threat environments and will feature both military and diplomatic views on the issue We have two recognized leaders in these fields retired Admiral James DeRides former Supreme Allied Commander for Europe and now the Dean of the Fletcher School and Former Ambassador Jim Jeffery our former ambassador to Iraq and now the Philip Solans Distinguished visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Michael Crowley the chief foreign affairs correspondent for Time magazine Who has covered both of these communities in these spaces and I would add will become Politico's senior foreign correspondent starting next Monday will moderate what should be a fascinating discussion Especially from the perspective of leadership We've heard this morning from the frontline people about the need for preparation for training, etc A key element is going to be the leadership that makes that come together In recent years the issue of civilian engagement in high-threat environments has stirred a great deal of debate both here in Washington and Overseas in our conflict zones Some of these discussions have been useful in helping to better understand the challenges and possible solutions To for civilians to work in high-threat zones while at other times Statements that have questioned motivations have threatened the mutual confidence Required between our civilian and military elements if they are to have success Solid direction and calm control from leaders such as those on the panel Prevented total breakdowns when they had their watches While we while there will not be time for a Q&A session this morning following this discussion those of you participating in this morning's breakout groups may want to ponder some issues for discussion in those groups for example How much does risk affect civilians ability to engage credibly and effectively with foreign publics? What has experience taught us about how military and civilians work together in high-threat environments? What is acceptable of risk for civilians today? And what changes need to be made for the US to actively engage foreign publics and build trust and What should be done to strike an effective balance between protection and effective engagement? Please join me in welcoming Admiral Jim Stavridis Ambassador Jim Jeffery and our moderator Michael Crowley Thank you so much. Thanks everyone for coming today And thanks to the previous speakers and panelists that we're off to a great start and Our plan for this panel is to begin with some opening comments and Admiral I think we'll give you the floor first for a few minutes and then ambassador We'll hear from you and I'll have some questions for you both Thanks. First of all, thank you to USIP and those who are engaged in the conference. It's an incredibly important and crucial question and I think the threshold question has already been identified which is Is this really necessary to put our civilians at risk our military? Obviously Goes in risky situations. It's who we are and what we do but in my mind after seven years as a combatant commander Working with probably 200 ambassadors over the course of those seven years both in southern command Latin America and the Caribbean and in NATO and particularly Afghanistan and the part of my remit that was very global There's no question that if we're going to have an effective engagement in the world We have to have our civilians go out and do it So I really want to just begin by saying how much and how deep my respect is for the civilians who put their lives At risk and it it happens across the spectrum We should probably and I think the workout groups would would breakout groups would Be good at this. What exactly do we mean by a civilian in this context? CIA operators and go through extensive paramilitary training. Are they really civilians? Department of Defense civilians many of them are Rather extensively trained State Department gets some training and you kind of progress through Department of Agriculture people AID There are varying levels of if you will civilian this as we consider Who and what level of risk we want to absorb and then at the far end of course are the NGOs our wonderful humanitarian workers our medical diplomats and then finally Civilians who are out and moving who are American citizens? Who placing themselves at risk for a variety of personal reasons some of them involving their family? Very legitimate. So there's really quite a spectrum here that I think is worth considering as we chat this morning second point would be And and Ambassador Jeffrey's very dear friend and a wonderful wonderful representative of this country I think he and I would immediately agree that there is no frontline I mean there's no set place where okay This is the risky place in a place like Afghanistan or Iraq or Libya Or Latin America and that here's the safe place and here's the risky place They're really there are places that are safer than others obviously, but there's no defined frontline in all of this so Perforce our Civilians wherever you want to make that marcation in the spectrum are going to be at risk at much more risk than was the case decades ago Third point. I think it's worth Simply pointing out that risk to our military has actually declined Significantly over the last two hundred years if you go back and look at casualty rates for the military In the Civil War. It was about 15 percent World War one World War two. It was about three percent The Vietnam War about one percent today It's one tenth to one one hundredth of a percent So the risk to military has actually gone down markedly part of that of course is Medevac capability increased technology our own military dominance But the risk for our civilians has gone up in this period and so if you looked at percentages of Civilians who have been killed or injured in these risky situations. You'd see that's gone up So I think finding the balance between those two is very important I'll quickly say three things I think we should talk about that we could do better at to prepare our civilians One is the the package of what we give them as they get ready to take on these assignments, so that's training its equipment It's practice and practicums. It is everything from night vision understanding to Understanding the culture and the engagement zone in which they're going so there's a package of things We can do to prepare and we could talk about some of those an important part in my view that often gets short shrift Is what I'll call right seat left seat in other words so often I see civilians blow into theater and the person whose job they're taking has already left Having an overlap where someone who's had the year of experience and can help that new person Learned the ropes over a period hopefully of three four weeks At cost money, it's expensive But I think that's part of the training equipping and organizing our civilians as they go in Second thing practical thing we should think about is Incentivizing our civilians if we're going to put them at high risk compared to the military We ought to I think have systems that pay them more give them career incentives You go to Afghanistan for a year. You've got a better shot at your next assignment. I see state doing this I think AID does it not so sure about the rest of the government not sure about how that happens in the NGO world But I think incentivization is another important part of this Rewarding that level of risk even as we recognize it and then thirdly I would say deepening our understanding of the culture the history in the background in each of these Risk zones where we're going to put our civilians. We do this somewhat in the military We're not very good at it on the DOD side my perception is we're not terrific at it in many of the other agencies I think that can reduce risk if you understand the situation into which you find itself So there's a quick snapshot of thoughts about the problem and maybe a few ideas We can chew on as we go along Mike great. Thank you for that ambassador. You want to give us some opening thoughts Sure. First of all, thank you Michael and Jim. Thanks for your kind comments as you know I return them in spades and thanks for all the organizations beginning with the US IP that has made today Possible. This is a very very important subject Let me start with My take on risk. It's a very subjective Gut-feeling thing that takes into account three things that we've already heard about this morning So I'll just summarize them the risk itself what they are Secondly the response which involves not just the responses that the security professional was talking about earlier But also Jim's points how we train people how we prepare people psychologically Have they been handed off correctly and the third thing and this is Kurt Volcker's word Return what's the benefit now having just said this is a gut sense of very Flexible fluid variables, which I think most of the time should best be Determined in the field particularly by ambassadors because I'm biased towards ambassadors I'll then Violate both of these prescriptions by providing a little template on risk and secondly pointing out where sometimes you don't want to listen to the chief permission first of all Risk does change as Jim said based upon the place. It's never Absent having almost been killed in a terrorist bombing in Frankfurt in 1976 and had our embassy in Germany shot up in 1991 by the same terrorist group risk is everywhere, but still you can and have to vary your behavior depending upon the degree of risk secondly I make a Basic determination between the risk to our installations and the risk to our movements when we're actually getting out and Meeting with people by and large and people can challenge this We don't do most of our outreach public diplomacy and such inside our embassies And that's just not only our tradition. That's typical Diplomatic tradition you tend to go out into the communities out into the government Sometimes you do events at embassies or at ambassadors residences, of course But by and large you have to go out you have to protect your installations for many reasons That's where the flag is that's where you have many hundreds of people often and not all of them are the Conflict junkies like me and like the others who want to get out there and shake hands and get out there And these people signed up to take general risk. They didn't sign up to have a car bomb explode in the courtyard and Lastly the risk to us Interest is huge a president lost his job because we didn't secure an embassy in 1979 a Senior official lost her chance to be secretary of state because of the fallout of another overrunning of an installation in 2012 these are big things and we have to protect them for all kinds of reasons on the other hand moving about That's different. That's a different risk profile, and it's somewhat inherent, but frankly you have fewer people involved by and large these are triple volunteers both the security professionals who are out there and the people who are doing that and They're rationally why you can take many precautions or rationally is no way you can be certain Whereas securing an installation are the alternative closing it is a somewhat easier, but not easy phenomenon two other elements to my template one is the strategic mission of The diplomatic establishment is very important. That's why in Iraq in Afghanistan We have had literally hundreds of casualties to enemy fire among the civilians and military assigned to those two missions and including many scores of deaths and the country we didn't you know presidents didn't You know lose elections people didn't get Unselected for secretary of state over that because we all knew that this was part of that mission So when the mission is very important Even when the risk is extraordinary You basically live with it. I Was went out to Yemen when I was responsible for security in those posts, and I was very worried because the security situation was Almost as bad as in Iraq or Afghanistan Yet, I was not convinced that the mission was as important and therefore we had to be careful in fact We had a major attack on the Embassy and that's where chiefs of mission while they are the best a source of information and decision Cannot be the only one because I've never ran into a chief of mission including myself who didn't think that his or her post including me in Albania was not the most important pivot and cockpit of American foreign policy where every risk is absolutely important and having had a Embassy officer stabbed now while observing an election in southern Albania. I mean You take risks in those places too the final point is perhaps the most complicated given the audience today given what we discussed and that is not the strategic mission But the specific missions that people are doing and they fall into various categories Obviously if you're going to have an embassy there are certain functions like basically being in the embassy Even if you're getting rocket attacks or your basic logistics functions and your basic Outreach to the top levels of government by the ambassador and other senior officials That's the core mission and you have to do that even under high risk One level below that is basically the supporting work with the foreign ministry work with the various other Government functions or major political parties influence Moulders and certain functions such as issuing visas and such The third level and that gets to what a lot of what we've talked about today is what I call not even expeditionary diplomacy We're talking about borderline missionary diplomacy where trying to emulate Journalists and trying to emulate NGOs we get out with a collect information in persuade populations directly out there that is a by far the most dangerous For many reasons including it is not supported by the host governments most of which look at the vienna convention and say Why are you doing that? They usually don't stop us, but they sure as hell I'm going to give us a whole lot of security protection and remember it's their Primary job. We haven't talked a lot about that, but it's the local country's primary responsibility to protect diplomats And these people are diplomats and see You can be very quickly exposed to a very dangerous situation One thing I disagree with is the argument of well if you're getting out there, and you know the local people You'll be okay Very few diplomats that I have ever seen new Their terrain as well as Chris Stevens new Benghazi So that's it's not a guarantee that something bad isn't going to happen to you So that's a consideration that we have to have Because you can stop that for a bit and then you can extend it again I've had to do it Others have had to do it too. You don't give it up, but you have to be very careful about that. So I'll stop there Great. Thanks so much for those for those thoughts. Admiral. Why don't I throw my first question at you? and and Tell us if you would what you've observed and what you've learned Regarding the way the military and government civilians work together in high-thread environments Do you have suggestions for how that relationship can be improved or what problems exist in it now? Yeah, I think as a general proposition We work together pretty well, and I'd asked Jim to comment on that obviously Again because I was a combatant commander. I spent some amount of time with many many ambassadors and saw many embassy situations and I can honestly say in the Seven years I was a combatant commander and interacted with probably 200-ish different ambassadors across 90 embassies In Latin America, Caribbean Europe and Levant and the stands I I never felt there was a situation where there was not good Coordination where the ambassador was not the lead I think I want to pick up on Jim's point that the chief of mission really is the expert in this it is not the combatant commander and What the combatant commander can bring is the intel muscle marry that up Under the ambassador with the CIA intel piece, but the judgment call I think really has to be the ambassadors I Would often call an ambassador and say, you know, I really want to do this particular military mission Is it safe sometimes we had a status of forces agreement sometimes we did not We can put troops in countries without status of forces agreement at the agreement of the two departments Had excellent cooperation open dialogue. No mystery here. It's really about talking a mutual respect I think over the last ten years We've gotten a lot better at that then 1.2 million years ago when Jim and I were starting in this business In those days I'd pull in on a ship and you could just feel the acrimony between the embassy and the visiting warship Now that's really that's changed. I think we've improved a great deal. So bottom line I think that piece of it the cooperation is pretty good I Have a question for you, but I kind of as a prelude to it. I want to share an interesting Quote from an article that Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns who's leaving the State Department after a 33 year diplomatic career Had in an article he posted on foreign policy The website of foreign policy magazine yesterday in which he he outlined 10 Sort of rules and principles He's drawn from his experience and one of them had to do with this very subject we're discussing today risk and his quote was We live and work in a dangerous world Demanding zero security risk means achieving zero diplomatic results So he's he's boiled that down in pretty stark terms and so my question for you ambassador Jeffrey Is it possible? You know you you had a very interesting phrase that there's a kind of a gut feeling When it comes to assessing risk, but is it possible to define? Acceptable risk for civilians today and how would you do that? Again, it depends on how important the mission is it depends on the overall strategic mission in a given country it depends upon the Specifics and the lady who was talking about public diplomacy and Kabul did a very good idea Get a very good job. I thought of the articulating the idea that you have to be sure that every movement every activity is in support of an understandable American interest and then Don't do stupid things. I've had two accountability review boards done by the State Department on me for people who died under under my authority and Have had many other incidents that I've either observed have been involved in and essentially when you look at when things go terribly wrong They go terribly wrong for one or two reasons one is bad luck and Classic example being a rocket landing In the middle of a compound without wanting when people are as they must do moving around and then circumstances under which It wasn't bad luck, but bad judgment an individual went out without security thinking that he knew his locals and everything would be okay, and He wound up with six bullets in his head. So Basically, you can't and there's no way from Washington that you can in advance give Guidance or other Strictions that will determine what's good judgment and what isn't and what's stupid So essentially people on the scene just as in the military have to make On-call decisions of what feels good or bad, and then you judge by them if they go wrong Can I add a thought agreeing completely bad judgment bad luck? the third thing is bad performance and that can be a Failure on the part of the u.s. Military frankly Every morning that I woke up as a combatant commander I would sort of mentally cycle through the countries and think where's the risk? To our ambassadors to our diplomats our interagency people. That's our job and when something happens like happened to Chris Stevens That's there's bad performance involved in that and there's bad equipment, which I'd call kind of part of bad Performance and Intel I think those three I'd put in in the category So I think it's important and and the ambassador mentioned Accountability and review boards and we need to find out where because that's an area I think where you can take practical steps to make our people safer So you are now a dean of the Fletcher school I am at Tufts quite a different job You have already I've seen you try to enlist at least two people in a master's programs there So you're doing your job? I'm signing him up right and left if anyone wants to talk about a master's degree at the Fletcher school See me at coffee He's serious to very aggressive. I've got his card So what kind of advice do you give to students there who are? who are considering a civilian career in the u.s. government but are thinking about risk and and Concerned about it trying to figure out how how much to weigh it as a factor in their decisions What do you tell them first? I say that a life of service to your country or even? Five years of service to your country as a foreign service officer as an FBI agent as a Worker at USA ID at the Department of Treasury Is a wonderful wonderful thing for everybody to spend some portion of your life in service? Secondly, I try to assess the person a little bit Mike and just think about personality and background and their sense of themselves and what they want to do and then I'll try and give them advice that says You know you're someone who might really fit. Well at the CIA You know you you meet people that would be just terrific some of them I can think of as operators some I can think of as analysts Other people I meet who I think boy, they would be just terrific diplomats. It becomes someone like Ambassador Jeffries and 20 years tall good-looking, you know all those kinds of things a lot of hair Now you look like a potential donor to me It took 45 years not 20 So the second point Mike is After the general comment of yes service and we love to see our our Fletcher graduates go into service I try to make the point there's lots of different ways you can serve in the US government And I'm always happy to talk through those with our students in terms of risk I'm clear-eyed about that with them that it's not a risk-free career and that However the flip side of risk in that sense is adventure it's exciting and I think Jim used the expression the adrenaline junkies or the Crisis managers that there's something to that. There's something about Getting out and living your life in in ways that are very very exciting. That's the flip side of risk So I'll try and talk about all those things with our students And what do you hear from them coming up from the bottom and do you do you is it a mix? Do you get the adrenaline junkies who say I'm willing to take risk and they maybe wish that the You know, they're looking for an opportunity to take risk or or do you hear concern? It's a really dangerous world. It feels more dangerous all the time and I'm not so sure about this I got to say I don't hear much concern The for starters our population at Fletcher average age about 27 28 People have five years life experience most of them somewhere in the international world Two largest groups of people coming to Fletcher Peace Corps volunteers and Department of Defense These are people that are already have been in risky situations they get it and Frankly, they are looked up to by the other students and they're at Fletcher anyway There's a real culture of we want to be out there in the world And I think they would for the most part resonate to what the ambassador said To accomplish diplomacy or aid and development or agriculture. You've you've got to get out there and take risk Jim question for you, and I'll preface it by saying that the I think the last Embassy compound I was on was in Baghdad. I was with Secretary Kerry and his trip to build the ISIS coalition last month and Understandably, it's about as secure an environment as you can be in Woe betide the colleague of mine who took some souvenir photos of the building as we were Surrounded and found himself deleting everything he'd taken Now obviously Baghdad is an extreme case perhaps what you would say a unique case But can you talk about how we protect our personnel? I know you've touched on it But elaborate without undermining our goals our diplomatic goals How do you strike the balance? Well, sometimes you don't and clearly the folks who took away those photographs weren't because As we all discovered after a rocket hit my residence You can Google Earth that embassy compound and you can then go down to about what one square meter Resolution and figure out exactly where everything is and and that's of course is the problem Can we pause on that for a minute because I mean it has that been a transformative problem in the last few years is your sense that That Google Earth really is being exploited by people to To assist attacks in a way that has made things much more dangerous than they were 15 20 years ago They do do it and you just you know you you deal with it Yeah, and Can I just add one thought it's not just Google Earth. It's Twitter. It's social networks. It's Facebook. It's what people are revealing It's what I assume that was the concern of my colleagues photos that he would tweet them and put them on absolutely So it's the availability of information broadly not just sure but sorry back to the original question of this balance Well, first of all every day you worry about two things you worry about security people doing exactly What you're calling and counted and I would say they were rear days when At least one such incident didn't come up to my level and God knows the many levels below that What we were trying to deal with every day secondly, you worry about the Conflict junkies who and these are the most lovable, you know commendable people I had one not in Baghdad, but when I was running OSCE missions out of Washington in 1993 and this lady was in Tajikistan on one of the missions and The ambassador called me and said why is your person in Afghanistan? So we'd finally tracked it down and she said well I knew this wall art and he really you know We had a good rapport and he invited me in and and so you get a lot of this but in a way You try not to be too harsh and disciplining such people because you want these people to have this kind of attitude and it is really a It's a it's a back-and-forth, but again the first rule was Don't let anything happen in your compound. I had that happen to me in 2004 and I was absolutely convinced I wouldn't have that happen again We lost four people right outside of in the green zone right outside of the embassy In an explosion in what we thought was a relatively safe Shopping area so But you also have to get people in how do you do that? Essentially you rely on very good people to micro manage things like bringing officials in but the main Issue that you have to deal with is moving about and there you have to have good intelligence You have to have good equipment for example. We had drones following our Movements and You have to rely to some degree on the locals and that's a very questionable and very complicated subject and You have to call the shots as the situation changes. We talked a bit earlier about lockdowns. I Didn't like lockdowns. I did them very rarely. There's a lot of Washington pressure for what lockdowns and that gets to The perception of judgment and risk in these situations that I think it's worth just mentioning in summary terms and that is It's human nature that when X happens and it's bad or potentially bad Nobody wants to see a repetition of X. I know that's one of the things we learned as junior officers in the military if Snuffy keeps making the same mistake You get a problem even if it's not a big mistake because it's a patent nobody likes a patent of screw-up. So therefore the idea of Locking everybody down is twofold first of all at least for a few days You won't make that same mistake and people will forget about the mistake that was made a week ago And then when you go out and do it again They've moved on the second thing is you're supposed to use the lockdown time to figure out, okay What went wrong? What did we miss what's going on out there and then I react to that It's not a CYA thing it when you use properly, but as I said, it should only be used really it can actually make you do better Admiral One of you would unpack a little bit more an idea or two that you introduced in your opening remarks Because I wanted to ask What you think needs to change what we need to be doing differently Sure No one thing that stuck with me was you mentioned better training Yeah, and I thought it'd be interesting if you elaborate on that But you know you can go beyond that point but sure talk talk about What what we need to be doing? As a practical matter beyond ways of thinking but actually Okay, should we do Training is incredibly important and we don't do enough of it in my view as we send our folks forward And it's important not as a CYA thing as the ambassador said it's important First for and foremost for its practical effect Making an individual safer and then secondly, it's important psychologically for the for the force that they go forward And then thirdly it helps greatly when the civilians are interacting with the military who are there to protect them So I think that training my view needs to be more extensive. I don't know what state is doing right now I'd guess it's probably 10 days. Maybe something like that. I'd triple that I think you should do at least a month of Serious work that puts you in scary situations so you can assess yourself and understand What it really feels like to the degree that's possible. So role-playing Familiarization with equipment medical training quick response medical training Understanding what the military is doing around you and how to work with your Indigenous security force Understanding that the tricks of that trade which are very different not everybody's going to get that package of seal team six Protecting them as we know So I think a great deal more and again, this is expensive for the Department of State. It's expensive for a ID I wonder what kind of training the other agencies have if any there might be some basic things that the I think the military DoD has money and capability to provide a lot of this So this wouldn't have to come out of the state budget other than the time for the FSO or the civilian to work there So I'd say all the things I just mentioned a more extensive training period is is just crucial and Really fundamental here's some good news So many of our folks in these agencies now have been through this I mean the baseline of experience is much much higher than it was a pre 9-11 for example And and I think we all recall right after 9-11 a lot of people in the civilian world were very concerned I gosh I didn't sign up for this kind of thing way my sense is that attitude has gone When I look at FSOs and AI D and the people in the US government. They're going forward they get it. They know what's common. They're brave We need to do a better job preparing them in the training piece and then what goes along with that are all the equipment things that I mentioned and The ambassador mentioned drones. It's protective gear transportation putting them in the right kind of vehicles Intel that really focuses on protection and also from the military side truly effective QRG quick reaction Forces that can can get there Immediately and in a hurry when it's an extremist. So there's a few thoughts to think about the second thing I mentioned is Reward the incentivization for this I think is also important. That's not going to save lives But that's going to reward those who are willing to go and it'll I think Bring more talented people if they know that you know if I go and I do a year in this dangerous location I get a mark in my jacket. That's going to help me move to the next level I'm going to get additional pay to do this I know my family will be taken care of if something happens to me I think those are also part of the package That that ought to be examined and it ought to be done across the US government so that the the people from state and CIA are in the Same sort of category with AID and AG and DOJ and so on and you can zone the risk The way we do in the military there are zones where you get very strong financial benefits and Reenlistment and recruiting benefits in the most dangerous places and then there's kind of a middle zone of places Think Afghanistan Iraq then the Balkans and counter piracy and then you know kind of edgy But not totally safe and then you know sitting at Fort Dix You know, I think a system like that would also be salutary for our civilian folks. Yeah, I'll pause there Thanks. Well, maybe that last point leads me a little bit to something. I want to ask you about Jim Which is we've talked a lot here about very high threat environments first time I met you I think it was 2010 in Ankara and your ambassador to Turkey Yeah, and that's a country that's basically safe, but not it's not the UK. It's not it's not Luxembourg It just talk for a minute about how you think about Interacting in a country like that where you you have some security concerns. It's it's a rough neighborhood But it's not, you know, what we think of is essentially a combat zone or super high risk environment What are some lessons you drew from there now for starters it became a combat zone at our consulate in Istanbul in summer of 2008 when six people were killed in an terrorist attack So the first thing you have going for you is not going for you the first thing you have that you have to deal with is the perception of threat in a place like that is pretty It was pretty high. We had our Consulate shot up in Adana a few months after I got there. So yeah as long as you have in there, of course, there was the Terrorist bomber attack in Ankara right after I left in 2012 so worse than I had remembered. Thank you for That's a problem. You push a button in a lot of these places and all of the awful and quasi awful things that can happen to you come out Security is normally not on people's minds in a post like that Even despite these incidents the way it is In a place like Baghdad. It is nothing like People having to routinely Duck and cover as rockets are landing around them to keep up a sort of perception that a There is a terrorist or a security or a military threat and B You can die if or get hurt if you don't take the right precautions You didn't have that kind of environment in a place like Ankara So therefore you had to do an awful lot more top-down Drills Discussions emphasis and watch like a hawk anything that was going on that was seemingly Exposing your people to risk again You didn't worry at all about people moving because everybody was moving they were commuting to inform work And there was very little we could do about that at times when we got real intelligence at one point This was in an earlier tour in Turkey. We moved Everybody in a high-rise building out of that building in 24 hours because of the threat information We moved people repeatedly from their houses because we had intelligence information but normally it's something that the Security people the intelligence people in the top management look at and the rest of the post just kind of skates along And that's the problem. So It's different than Now I'm trying to think of where was I ever in a really peaceful post may be muted, but Apart from that every place has been a little bit difficult. I do. I just wanted to add we focused the conversation So much on Afghanistan Iraq. We branched out to Ankara Let's just do the numbers on violence around the world for a second. So violent deaths per hundred thousand in the Population Europe is the safest place in the world. It's one Violent death per hundred thousand per year in the population United States Five times more violent here in the United States five violent deaths per hundred thousand per year Mexico El Salvador Guatemala about between 25 and 50 violent deaths per hundred thousand per year The most dangerous city in the world Caracas, Venezuela 150 violent deaths per hundred thousand per year Kabul seven in between The United States and Central America now There's targeting issues. There's you know, this includes all street crime and silver But to the ambassador's point, he's never been in a safe environment there really are a lot of dangerous places that we haven't talked about and and We put people at risk and their families at risk in places because of crime because of instability And it's not just the terrorist problem. So I just wanted to add that to the the conversation Well, let me throw the next question to you and I just want to make sure we spend a couple more minutes Or focus for a couple minutes on local populations because I think we've we've centered this conversation Primarily around our people But I guess but and Jimmy if you want to follow up and share your perceptions also if you could both talk about your sense of how local populations react to To the to how we operate the United States operates and what the kinds of messages certain levels of purity And extreme low risk tolerance are sending to those Local populations are key local leaders and actors We need to interface with and how does that Affects and maybe complicate our efforts to connect with them and have productive relationships Obviously, it's it's very different in different countries Reacting culturally, but I'd encourage the Americans in the audience. I'm sure the vast majority of you are Americans picture if you will in your capital city Tens of thousands of heavily armed troops marching around wearing sunglasses Combat gear driving their vehicles all around the capital How do you like it so far? Probably not real. Well, that's kind of how we come across here. I'm speaking the military Our civilian counterparts are vastly better because they're not tricked out looking like GI Joe and they're Engaged they're taking more risk, and I think that's understood and appreciated so we're we're we're not very good at projecting ourselves as a Beneficent military force we try very hard. We the military try very hard to soften the edge of that wherever we can but The accoutrements of defense are such that we tend to send a pretty hard message when we go Which is where our diplomats come in and try and soften that message and are so much better at Interacting and working together diplomats and development before you jump in Jim I just want to ask you. Do you think we've gotten a little smarter about that? I do like we were very I do might say very clumsy in the first few years after 9-11 and maybe have I'm more sophisticated Is that I think that is fair The countervailing thought is also unfortunately that in the middle between the military and our civilian workforce are often contractors We just saw four blackwater employees convicted of murder that's another problem set that has yet to I think be significantly addressed because the contractors Operate as sort of free-form electrons out there in a certain way so We are better. We still have work to do and all the dimensions that I just mentioned. Yeah Jim do you want to take a crack that question? It's a very very good question and There's a lot of ways to answer it wash story and we tried what we called low-pro Moves we would have a very low profile dirty old BMWs and not a whole lot of security and basically, you know Not diplomatic plates, but you know plates. I don't know we made them up or something like carry on homeland Exactly, and so anyway, we sent one team out like that One day and the next thing I know I've got the mayor of Baghdad calling me and saying We've got these spies and I'm gonna personally shoot them and so that ended my low-pro program And the the problem is is two-fold the last 10 percent of security Necessity Gives 90% of the visibility. Yeah, that's for example We made people even in armored vehicles or I made people where they're PPE and where they're helmets that meant when they got out to see Their local counterpart on top of coming up showing up in this convoy They were pulling off their helmets and these heavy armad vests but that's also necessary because I know of an incident my son was involved in in Kabul where a woman died because she wasn't wearing her protective equipment inside a vehicle and the round penetrated the vehicle and it probably wouldn't have penetrated her armor and part of the problem is Hey in the parts of the world I work And I worked in people don't use seatbelts the only people who wear seatbelts are us we have a different idea of a Kind of we're sort of more anti inshallah than the people we're dealing with that's our nature and therefore we do Come across as I mean even you know most of the people that I visited of course You know they had their own extensive security as well But as I said they had cool BMW 7 series vehicles to drive around in and their security guys Looked cool too and didn't have a lot of bulky armor and we would show up and we would look ostentatious and a little bit ugly American the Problem is as I said You know I tried the alternative low-pro and look what happened Right, I'm lucky they didn't get killed and I just wanted to follow up You mentioned the the woman who had met with the warlord talk about the meeting after she came back And now that was that was an interesting one because I didn't got a call from the ambassador In that country and I've had several of these conversations over time in Washington with ambassador said You can't do that. I said well, she's not under your security authority and I mean, maybe we'll tell her not to do that again, but I mean I won't mention her name But some of you must know where she's a famous conflict junkie in the Department of State And I said, you know, yeah, we need people like this and also in Bosnia When we went in after 96 We were suddenly responsible for putting in many many hundreds of civilians for all of these UN OSCE and other activities USA ID teams and such and we couldn't follow the embassy rule I mean embassy was a half dozen, you know We call substantive people basically guys and girls who go out and talk to folks and about 40 security people Because it was the usual three-vehicle convoy and everything else Well, that would have meant tens of thousands of security people and we just had to say we can't do that You know the and that's the other Criteria when you put people in an international organization You can't demand different security for them and the way we got around that was saying you will draw our attention to the fact that they're Americans because they're wearing helmets and they have these SUVs so let them look like everybody else and That's how they'll get their protection so you can play it that way as well there are various ways you can try to get people to do their job and not draw attention to themselves in various ways, but As I said every single case is different. Yeah So I think I'll kind of bring us to a concluding topic and I'll offer the question to both of you And if you have any kind of summary thoughts, please take this opportunity One of you it may have been you Jim mentioned the You know one of the political consequences of the tragedy in Benghazi and we're not going to get into the politics of it today, but but I think For many Americans and people in the media Benghazi is a story about Politics and recriminations and people getting jobs and not getting jobs But I I would like to hear from both of you what you think are in this context What are the lessons of Benghazi? What should we take away leaving the political piece out of it? What should we take away in terms of risk and protection and Interfacing with a local population in a high threat area and Admiral maybe I'll let you go first on sure And I I don't think I'll surprise anybody. I think real-time intelligence Which is always the answer to everything, but the the more we're capable of Getting ahead of the Intel feed number two is distant reaction forces so in each area now the combatant commanders are continually Ensuring that they have everything in the inventory available to get as quickly as possible Number three is on the ground forces. So that's cooperation between the diplomatic security services US special forces if it's ratcheted up and we need additional force on the ground and local security forces and fourth its Judgment and and I think that's probably a good one to loop back to the very beginning of the conversation I completely agree with the ambassador at the end of the day The ambassador and his or her gut sense of what's going on fusing this intelligence knowing what the quick reaction capability is Factoring in the local situation and then above all as the ambassador said several times Judging is it worth it? Is it worth it for me to go to that place with this level of protection at this moment in this scenario? So there's four things none of which will surprise anybody, but I'll close by saying every day Tens of thousands of our civilians and our diplomats are at risk and 99.99 percent of the time they come through Will never be a hundred percent We're gonna lose people and that's part of the equation here And I want to conclude my remarks by just saying I spent 37 years in the military And I'm very proud to have served at alongside the civilians who took the risk every single day with us Thanks ambassador those comments and Benghazi lead to something that we need to also emphasize When we take risks particularly with our installations, we're not only risking our own people We're risking the Mewes military that has to come and rescue us as we saw tragically in 1980 with desert one The best thing to do is to not put the military in a situation like that when they have literally a mission impossible to try to get us out on Benghazi a the mission That our folks were doing in Benghazi was worth it to use my strategic mission In my mind that is that was a critical Place in a critical country at that time and we had people specifically Chris Stevens who can actually make a difference out there So I would check the box for The strategic mission was right in terms of was it too highly risky Here we come very quickly to judgment to say an American installation in Benghazi Couldn't fend its couldn't fend off an attack is wrong because there were two installations there and the second one did it Got a few reinforcements because of the the quick action by the embassy Entriple flying in a plane with some reinforcements But still they had some 12 or 14 security people at the beginning Not only were able to defend themselves They were able to actually send a rescue force to get people out of the first one. So the question is why were there only? Three people assigned for security at that embassy compound now if you look at the records You'll say no there were five security people there That's because Chris Stevens brought two of his own people down with them But it was only serendipity on that day that those people attack when you had the two additional people They didn't attack because they know Chris Stevens was there they attacked because they attacked on that day And this is insane nobody who's done security in the Department of State can possibly figure out why? We were down to three security Offices at a place like that. So this is just terrible judgment again The mission was worth doing and the mission could be done as we saw at the other installation You just have to have a few more people there and You know better intelligence would have been nice but again the other people didn't have better intelligence But they managed to secure the compound Okay, well, I think we're just about out of time. So I want to thank you both for a really interesting panel and I hope People learn something here. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Yes, I key. Thank you Well, thank you very much admiral and Ambassador and Mike and after that I think that I just might go to the Fletcher school. That was a very good sales job My name is Scott Bates I'm president of the Center for National Policy and a senior advisor with the Truman National Security Project It's an honor for us to be hosting this event today with the US Institute of Peace the McCain Institute And the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy And I think I'd just like to take this moment to recognize all the members of the Commission who've flown across the country to be with us Here today and who planned this event. So please give them all a round of applause a Brief story this topic is very important to me because when I worked for the National Democratic Institute in Bosnia I met my wife over there. She was a US diplomat. We had our first date in a Bosnian minefield So we were out there in the field working on something mission critical We had enough security and we were interacting with the Bosnian folks and it was a wonderful thing So now we are going to go to breakout sessions and there are three of them The first breakout session is on a risk culture and it will be right here in the Carlucci auditorium With the best congressman that Virginia's fifth ever had Tom Piavello He is now special representative of the quadrennial Diplomacy and development review at the US Department of State and Caroline Wattams Who is senior advisor to the QDDR process? So it'll be right here The second breakout is on risk management and it will be in room B421 with Ambassador George Moose vice chairman of the board of directors of the US Institute of Peace and Arshad Mohammed the State Department Correspondent for Reuters the third breakout will be on risk preparation and will be in the Kathwari room It will feature Rebecca Zimmerman a doctoral candidate at SICE and an associate policy analyst at Rand And Angelique Young the senior coordinator of the resolution to act program at the Institute for Inclusive Security This session will be moderated by Rusty Barber senior advisor for international operations at US IP So now we're going to go to the official break and when you go in your breakout rooms, it'll be a very brief Opening statement a conversation you will be part of and then come to a couple conclusions because we need your insight Thank you very much