 I'm very pleased to be joined today by these three gentlemen who are really going to help us to dig into this issue set and we have plenty of time here this morning to both have a discussion among the panelists but also to talk to all of you with your questions as we go forward. The purpose of this panel really is to be thinking about what is the legacy of the last 13 years of war. What have we learned for good or for ill about the state of U.S. civil military relations? Many people in the audience of course will know that we have many fewer people in our population who have served in the military than have past generations coming out of war. We also have a historically low number of members of Congress or participants in the administration who have served in the military although we have had with this recent midterm a new wave of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who are joining the Congress. And so what we want to talk about here today is what are the effects on society of these shifts in our military population and is there a growing divide between society at large and the military. And then at the highest levels of power and senior leadership is there a level of trust and a positive relationship that's in keeping with our Constitution for civilians and military going forward. So to help me dig into these issues here I brought together this panel we have here today. To my immediate right is Colonel Rich Lacomont retired. He's the Dean of the Strategic Land Power School at the Army War College. He has taught at West Point. He has taught at the Naval War College and he is a principal educator for current military members on issues such as civil military relations. He also has a Ph.D. from Princeton University. To his right is Elliot Cohen who is the Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies right around the corner from us here. Dr. Cohen has also served as the counselor of the Department of State in the Bush administration and he has served prior at times inside government as well on the civilian side and notably he's also written extensively on civil military relations from his academic background. And then all the way to my right we have Mark Perry who is an author and journalist. He among the books he has written is The Most Dangerous Man in America and Partners in Command both of which relate to this subject of civil military relations and he currently is a military intelligence and foreign affairs analyst whose writing you can see in such publications is foreign policy and routinely frankly writing on issues that touch on civil military relations inside the United States. So I want to thank all three of you for coming today and let's just get started. Maybe we start mostly with Rich and get your first take on what you think has been most notable and striking from your experiences educating the population of Iraq and Afghanistan participants and veterans today. What has been most striking from your perspective about what has happened over the last thirteen years with regard to civil military relations? Well thanks. Thanks very much for letting me be here. By the way first off I wanted to say no two things I have to say. First my disclaimer as a member of the U.S. military establishment that I'm speaking here my personal capacity and my views are not the official views of the Army or the Army work on. Secondly for those of you who looked at the program and saw Brigadier General Tom Costantino as the person to be here I'm taking his place. He sends his regrets in his regard so but I'm very pleased to be here. We've had a lot of he and I amongst many others have discussed some of these topics. I'll start by I try to think hard about this idea of how to characterize the last thirteen years of civil military relations and I'll go back just a little bit further. So when I was a captain in the mid-90s early to mid-90s there was a literature out there actually started with kind of called a crisis in civil military relationship question mark a headline put on an article by Dick Cohn which suggested potential problems and so in I think of like 93 that that article came out just as I was entering graduate school and so I took that as a as a hypothesis is there a crisis as and over the years now I've had a chances out in some 20 21 years and I look at what's happened particularly with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in my senses that crisis never transpired. There are certainly tensions in civil military relations but I would submit that they're bound to be and if there aren't that's probably more problematic than you know pure harmony if you will so a lot of the tensions are the natural part of military leaders with a body of expert professional knowledge abstract knowledge applied to particular jurisdictions that they that they operate in on behalf of society so that's what a profession does and that's that operation within a jurisdiction of practice with that body of knowledge is something you constantly negotiate with those you serve that's the American public more broadly particularly civilian leaders but the executive and in the legislative branches and that's a complicated really important issues that are very difficult to deal with and my sense if I had to sort of up or down on the entire period is that actually civil military relations have been pretty healthy that we have military leaders who have behaved appropriately we may not I mean there are some blips that hit the hit the hit the press but on balance they perform their will their role well that civilians have demanded of them that they deal with these issues and try to connect the use of military means to these different policy games and that leads to tensions there are clearly differences of opinion and judgment about how best that's to be done but the best way to hash those out is through debate about those disagreements preferably I mean there's different mechanisms in private or sometimes in congressional testimony is required by some of the senior leaders but on balance I think that's been done very well so I look at it and say it's a constant education process for the military leaders especially the soldier the leaders that I deal with senior service college students transitioning from kind of the tactical realm into the strategic leadership realm to get them to understand what it means to operate in that environment and that's a continuous challenge to to engage those rising leaders so that's always there but on balance I think we've we've identified what the right topics are we've identified those things that change and we work pretty diligently that I think we've done pretty well if I look back over the last 13 years I think there were areas early on where we there were some deficiencies that have been improved and I'll leave it at that for now so I don't go on we come back to some of the details on balance pretty healthy Elliot do you share that view that it's been better than we may have expected it to be yeah I agree with pretty much everything that rich said I would add a couple points first I think actually the crisis literature I think was quite useful because it caused people to reflect on civil military relations in ways that were I believe were ultimately productive so that you know for example issues like retired general officers getting in the business of endorsing political candidates candidates for president that began to be surfaced as an issue that maybe there there's something problematic about them I think people are a little bit more restrained about that sort of thing I completely agree that a certain amount of tension is not only inevitable but probably desirable I really do think that the perspective of very senior military people and very senior political people should be different has to be different always has been different and that's again I think I tend to believe that that's that's really a healthy thing I specifically though I would I would say there are two things that have happened in the last 13 years of war you know in the 1990s the last conflict that we had had was the Gulf War the last real war and that created unrealistic expectations I think both within the United States military to some extent you know it'll pass in a broader in the broader population about what civil military relations are indeed the conduct of war could be and I think you know frankly there were enough screw-ups on both sides so that everybody's a lot more sober now about what to expect and the military is on a bit less of a pedestal and the civilians are more sober as well so I I think there's actually kind of a positive effect from the last the last 13 years of war the other thing is although Kathy I take your point about it's a smaller portion of the population that serve it's in absolute terms it's a large number of people you know we're probably talking about something like at least a million veterans who one way or another have passed through Iraq and Afghanistan those people all have families they friends I think I suspect I don't know but I believe if somebody dug into the data you'd see there's actually more elite participation in military than in the 1990s I mean I just know from you know my own family friends there are a lot more kids who are going to elite institutions who are also going into military service there are a lot of young veterans getting out you know riches dealing with veterans well you know across the street here my students tend to be in the mid to late 20s classes are now filled with young captains and majors getting out of the service they're going to go on some of them into government some into the private sector that's going to be a very healthy thing there's a whole generation of young civilians who work with them in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and state or USAID or non-governmental organizations you know who've had a lot of experience now in dealing with the military so I'm actually kind of optimistic yeah we're going to come back to the data because if they're you're right on several of these points but let's just continue on and let Mark have a shot at this open-ended question what do you think the legacy of the last 13 years has been has it been better than than we could have hoped are there areas of concern I agree that it's we're not facing a crisis in civil military relations I agree but I think that there are three deep challenges that we face and it's no use papering over them two of those challenges predate 9-11 and the first is how and when we fight wars and more importantly weather we fight wars and that dates from the end of World War two which left the United States is the dominant military power but a nation that acted with restraints with restraint but that there were deep questions about the deployment in Korea we all know the Vietnam crisis and civil military relations which were quite deep and in this how went and whether to fight a war resurfaced not in Gulf War one but in Gulf War two and in its immediate aftermath when Colin Powell said if you break the China we own it well we left Iraq we broke the China we left Iraq and we didn't own it now we have to go back in and own the China it's a problem the second challenge that we face is who does reconstruction who does effective civil affairs in post-conflict countries and there was a quiet but important debate about this when Secretary Gates was Secretary of Defense when we ran a business transaction and transformation policy in Iraq and it wasn't the job of the Pentagon to do it it was the State Department's job to do it the problem with having the State Department doing it according to military officers is they can't do it so there's now tension between the military and the State Department between military officers in the State Department just go listen to some colonels talk about some State Department capabilities in post-conflict situations and we have to straighten that out. President Bush came up with a piece of legislation to create a civilian reserve corps and we need to do that we need to start training diplomats and foreign policy officers to go in and focus on reconstruction reconstruction in Iraq during the Anbar Awakening was run by civil affairs groups of the Marine Corps and it's not their job it's a waste of resources and the third thing the third challenge we face is that while there's not a seven days in May scenario out there for those of you I just dated myself but you know we're not the military isn't going to undermine civilian control of our force it's not ever going to happen they don't want to have that kind of political power they don't they shun it but we need to listen a lot more closely to opinions from military officers about the kinds of conflicts we're waging and we haven't been doing it Eric Shinseki was sidelined and marginalized for saying the right thing on Gulf War two which was we didn't have enough troops and William Wallace was sidelined and marginalized by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time for saying we never game this conflict when what should have happened is the president should have said bring that guy in here let's find out what's going on let's solve the problem we need to do more of that when a uniform is not a disqualifier for freedom of speech so Elliot this is an area that you've studied a lot written a lot on I'd love to get your take on this issue of what you know what is the role of the active military in terms of their voice in the system and where one starts and then you lived it from the State Department for two years and remember the deputy's committee yeah and I assure you the military is not muscled you know you'll hear plenty actually you'll hear plenty from the J3 and the J5 about what they think American foreign policy ought to be they're not particularly interested in hearing from the State Department about what military policy ought to be so it's I just I don't really don't think that's true I think you know in any administration you're going to have a cocktail of personalities but but the fact is you know the engine of our in the way decisions are made are that deputy's committee by and large everybody around the table gets some sort of get some sort of voice what's not appropriate I think I do think you give up freedom of speech actually as if you go into the government as any kind of official you give up some freedom of speech as counselor I did not have freedom of speech I wasn't going to criticize those aspects of Bush administration foreign policy with which I disagreed and there were a bunch and I was not going to say anything publicly about it nor should and I should have been fired if I did I think you give up some of that that with it the critical thing I think for civilian leadership is you to sound out the military no question about it but at the end of the day policymaking is a civilian it's a civilian function and you know good leaders sound out their advisors but civilian and military and then make a decision and I do think you know it's important I make two other points one it's important to distinguish between healthy civil military relations and sound policy we may or may not think the Iraq war was a the wrong war to fight that really doesn't have anything to do in per se with civil military relations that's a very different that's a very different matter you know it's much more when you get into the conduct I think what I think when you get into the conduct for the other points I really disagree about having spent two years in the State Department after having spent my most of my career when I was in and out of government in the Defense Department but I can tell you the State Department will not be able to do reconstruction they just can't and you know you can complain about it as long as you like but you know we don't have diplomats running cities in the United States so why on earth do you think they can run cities in a war-torn country now to the extent that we do that sort of thing it's going to be kind of the way we did in World War two with civil affairs units probably some of them filled with you know people who are city managers and their normal lives and that sort of thing there's I think there's an interesting question about how much reconstruction work we should do I seems to be one of the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan is we should be a lot more modest in our expectations of how much of that kind of work can usefully be done but you know for as long as I've been around I've heard you know military friends of mine complain about the State Department without really having a clue about its capabilities which are very limited and which are intrinsically limited because we don't train foreign service officers normally and we can't really you know to go run war-torn countries that's just not what they're going to do and military officers can complain about it and they do but they won't change anything so they got to get on with the task let me first ask if one of the staff shut there's a door that swung open over here and rich give me your sense from talking to active duty folks where where are they finding the the problems drawing line or are they finding problems drawing this line between providing advice and overstepping if you will their role what what do you think is most frustrating to them and their responsibilities well if I may I'm just gonna I'm gonna play out for you just talking about this thing about reconstruction I think we spend a lot of time I'll go back to my point because that was one of the specifics I kind of was in the background when I said there were some tensions early on when we got into Iraq and Afghanistan I think I'm part of that and this is one where I tend to place more of the of the negative judgment on the military side is that coming going after 9-11 probably coming out of some of the lessons of the Gulf War there was a sense of you know focused on conventional combat operations as really the only thing the military had to be able to do and so caught in situations in both Afghanistan and Iraq where the aftermath required a significant military presence for all the right reasons it has been there throughout most of America's wars and by the military I mean predominantly the US Army has been kind of your post-conflict stability force or the occupation force was just meeting basic humanitarian needs of the areas that we've taken under control and that's one of those things that you know the law of war and human decency require us to behave in ways that are mindful of the populations of the areas we take control of I think the military had written that out of its portfolio in a fairly dramatic way such that it was surprised some of that some of the comments you know I think general Wallace had another one of those where he said he looked out at Baghdad saw the looting and said somebody should take care of that something to that effect and then realize wait a second that somebody is me we are the force on the ground and so it took a while for the military to sort of acknowledge that those sorts that support to what happens after the war and some significant contributions in doing things that are not the first second or third priority for the military but are things we can do with military forces and that they were necessary in those circumstances and realizing that that was a jurisdiction of practice that the military had chose not to focus on in a way that I would submit was inappropriate now could there be was there more the civilians could do sure I can think of many ways but for the State Department at best they're going to provide advice same thing for USAID just the magnitude of those organizations you said you know that there's probably I think 25,000 total between USAID and the State Department at the time and there's over 3 million people in the US Department of Defense if you think of this in terms of inboxes of okay we have this one organization and the inboxes may look the same because you can put a title on them but what was behind those what was what they can handle the operational capacity is completely different only the military has an extraordinary operational capacity that could be brought to bear and has been brought to bear routinely throughout US history and the State Department in USAID had very limited operational capacity or all responsible for helping the United States achieve its policy aims and so figuring out what those organizations are going to do I think was something it took a little while for the military to sort of recognize that again and decide yes you're right this is part of it and by 2004 or 2005 saw that adjustment saw the Department of Defense and actually the office I worked in in the Office of Secretary of Defense was the Stability Operations Office where they promulgated a policy saying combat operations the operations should be on par and that was a recognition of kind of going back to our roots not something new but something of recapturing something so that was an important tension that I think gets at some of the points brought up with Mark and Elliot now your question I do want to pursue this issue on reconstruction and mission growth but I let me let me get first through this question of how this sense of where does the line end for advice military advice and where you know where is the sense and the force today from folks you're talking to you about the for any frustrations they feel that they understand that line very well do they have frustrations about the way their role is interpreted or is there confusion over kind of where that line is what's your sense in talking to folks it yeah that's one where I think that line is always kind of tough one I don't think they're you know if you go back to another sort of academic they act you know Sammy Huntington is in his way of sort of trying to create a clearer line between the civilian and military well objective control the military I think that was theoretically analytically maybe not a bad thing to stipulate but in reality it's just it's too blurry a line and so there's a constant you know effort to try to figure out where that line is and that's going to be with any group of military leaders any group of civilians trying to decide how best do we accomplish what the nation wants done so in that regard it's always attention and it's always kind of a learning effort for the military folks frustrations again it's probably it's hard without a specific issue what do you think for instance that the frustrations were mostly around policy decisions back to Elliot's point about whether to go to war when to go to war how to go to war or do or or do you think they were more operational and tactical in terms of concern about you know the you know 2,000 mile screwdriver kind of issues the tensions I've actually witnessed were more about the you know the operational part I think even what I described with sort of the stability operations and counterinsurgency issues were that that dissonance between what the military thought it should be doing and it argued its position to say hey this looks like it should be the State Department we went through a lot of those arguments could I point out you know the frustrations go in both directions so let me give you just one example from my own tenure is at the Department of State basically you know the Secretary had me working on Iraq and Afghanistan pretty much full time with some excursions so my first trip to Afghanistan you know what struck me is we're fighting seven different wars okay there's you know American conventional forces there are so-called white special for operations forces which are doing fighting their own war there's black special operations forces they're fighting their war there's the folks who are training the Afghan army they're conducting operations CIA's fighting its war the Afghan service is fighting its war you know you go NATO fighting a different war and you know when you asked I came back and asked military friends of my whatever happened to the unity of command thing that I kept on hearing so much about when I taught at the Naval War College with my friend Rich Lachman it was kind of outrageous that I would ask the question and I would submit that one of the biggest problems with with the Bush administration was a failure to ask those kinds of questions and you know gradually that particular issue got fixed but the civilians tend to be extraordinarily deferential even about asking questions about those sorts of things so and and I I push back a bit at the idea that the only issue is whether the military is frustrated as you well know anybody in government is frustrated that's that's what the business of government is it's frustration but but it's not the only issue I think that's an excellent point so let's let's come at that civilian side of it and and Mark you're you're talking routinely to folks today about issues relating to for instance the fight against ISIS what is your sense of the state of the the trust and the issues coming from the civilian side the White House maybe from the State Department and the civilians and DOD and the military I don't think it's a secret I hope it's not a secret that there is tension between the president of the United States and senior military officers right now and we can't dodge that there are good good reasons for it I think there was a disagreement between President Obama and chairman of the Joint Chiefs staff Mike Mullen over the correct number of troops and what to do in Afghanistan and they worked that problem out but it tended to sour I think the current environment if I if I can go back just a minute to kind of defend myself there was under the Gates Pentagon a an operation which was quite effective in the reconstruction of Iraq and it was called the task force for business and stability operations it was really good it worked it was headed up by a civilian and it went into Iraq and it the man went into Iraq and told Mr. Bremmer that the goal was not to create a free market economy necessarily but even if these Saddam businesses had been government-owned we ought to get them up and running and employ 19 to 35 year olds so they don't have to pick up weapons and he did a job he did a great job that office did a great job it did a great job in Afghanistan and then Gates ended it and it Gates ended it because he didn't have the statutory was the Pentagon did not have the statutory responsibility to do it and it was never picked up and the 19 to 35 year olds in handbar went back on in the streets and this time instead of going to Al Qaeda they went to ISIS now obviously I'm simplifying to make my point but I think it's a salient point there isn't now in our government well it's not the State Department's job well certainly not the Pentagon's job but it has to be somebody's job and somebody's got to do stability and economic operations in post-conflict countries so that we can own the China we break or we're going to have to go back and re-break the China which is what we're doing now and not very well by the way and I think to my colleagues point on more general civil military tensions we can you know their personalities here we can get past the McChrystal you know should he have talked to a Rolling Stone journalist I think that these kinds of things happen in every generation of military civilian and we and we can get through them the question is whether the civilian policy leadership in this country is correctly defining the threats we face and what kind of force we ought to apply to solve those threats if ISIS is a threat to our national security 25 sorties a day of fighter pilots isn't going to solve that and it used to be in this country that the civilian leadership very clearly said what the military's role was and what the doctrine of the United States was and the doctrine was basically this from Foxconn or World War one which military officers now recite don't fight unless you have to don't fight for long and don't fight alone and I would add the Weinberg doctrine go in with overwhelming force and get it done we've gotten away from that and it's causing us problems and that definition of the national interest in how we use the military needs to be reasserted or be rewritten and it's the civilian leader's job to do it and they haven't been doing it let me ask a question all of you have obviously touched on it talked about this issue of reconstruction and it is probably the most prominent element sort of new growth element unfortunately new growth we wish we hadn't had to regrow it in the past 13 years because of the decline in those skill sets following Vietnam there is obviously this tension between what is it that the military should be doing Ebola is probably the most recent example what is it that the military should be doing inside the US system and what should others do and Elliot makes the strong point that the military and as do you rich that the military is simply size-scaled operational in nature able to take you know able to leap small you know tall buildings in a single bound where other agencies aren't designed that way my question I'm just going to try to bring us back to civil military relations is what is the what is the risk that that presents if we continue to expand the mission set for the military and continue to empower it size it equip it to deal with an ever-expanding set of issues and and essentially allow atrophy on the civilian sides I'm asking that in a very leading way obviously have an opinion on that matter but I take Elliot's point that maybe there's nothing you can do about that so let me ask first rich and then Elliot in particular to comment deep how do you where do you square that circle you you know we always in crisis go to the military but we seem to never be able to transition effectively over time to build civilian capacity are we just stuck with that or is there a way out what let me make two points I'll start with kind of a domestic analogy I mean we there's at a far end you know they're looking at the priorities of missions you use the military for there's kind of the unique one of you know organized combat against a state vote there's nobody else in the US military or the government who is prepared to execute that mission the US military must be prepared to handle that mission nobody else can do that one at the far end are sort of a lot of things to just require a body of disciplined labor and I'll use a domestic example of fighting forest fires or dealing with flood we routinely invoke the military to do that there's nothing unique about the military's ability to handle floods or fires but what we have is a very large disciplined labor force that can be employed to do some of the key tasks now and I'll continue that domestic domestic allergy just a little bit when we fight forest fires with military forces we usually have firefighters advise them on how best to do that so we take the limited capacity of those who really do have the expertise to help guide the military our discipline labor to take care of some of the more simple tasks that can be trained up fairly quickly in some regards I would say the same thing should be happening abroad when we go abroad you wouldn't want the military to just run and do this I said what the military has is tremendous operational capacity which at the low end turns to get to that just disciplined labor in a place where the United States needs it at a particular moment in time and that's a key point particularly when it comes to war when you're in a violent environment essentially the military is an organization actually designed to operate in a violent environment to protect itself to provide for itself in a very austere environment and to do of right things most importantly combat but it can do other things so if not needed for some of these higher priority things when you get to the point of here other national tasks that need to be done whether you know sort of more in the USAID or State Department realm guidance from their with their expertise to use the military and its assets to assist in accomplishing those tasks is really the way we kind of operated through much more history so it's really the expertise resides with the civilians I would go back to say yes they have to have that expertise and be there to lead but the military is going to participate often times in ways that may distort what the military's capabilities are like said at the base level could be just discipline labor but the fact of the matter is the the military has engineer forces it has logistics forces it has communications assets it has a lot of assets built for high intensity combat and with a lot of redundancy that can be used is fundable for other things assuming that higher priority task isn't there so to me it's going to be a combination of civil and military activity which doesn't let the civilians off the hook or the military from their role okay so first I mean I basically agree with that but first I'm not aware of any evidence that any of the things we've asked the military to do over Ebola or tsunami relief have in any way seriously diminished readiness you know maybe there's evidence out there but I'd like to see it secondly you know Richard's point is very important about you know this the scale the capabilities the engineer all that stuff no other agency has it no other agency could possibly have it because there's no need for it outside of an emergency setting you know you're not going to have a force of 10 or 15 or 20,000 civilians who spent their whole time rehearsing for an Ebola epidemic or something like that and who get used like once every two years that's just not it's not simply not plausible so I and by the way the idea these are non-traditional tasks that's nonsense I mean West Point was an engineering school so you know you had military engineers building roads digging canals building the White House building the building the capital if you look at what we did after World War two in terms of military government these are you know Richard was right the military decided to write a lot of its real missions including by the way I would argue counterinsurgency out of its playbook after the first Gulf War and that did contribute to a crisis in civil military relations when if I really thought this was going too far then I would say you know let's hang on one further thing though I would I would make a point of and that is you know part of our thinking back on these wars you know part of the argument will be should we have gotten into Iraq that's fine we should have that argument but there should also be a very careful analysis I think and the discussion of how did we fight those wars and you know what did we do well and what did we do poorly I would say there are a whole bunch of things we did very well and there's a whole bunch of things we did really poorly I think command and control no question in my mind about it and I think the military has to hold up a mirror to itself on some of those issues you know why were units not going back to the same patch for example why were they going to different parts there sometimes the different theaters rather than say the way the Marines did continually going back to and bar but some of it should be about the amount of money that we spent on reconstruction was that all really helpful or was some of it as I now strongly suspect and I'm this respect I've changed my view counterproductive that is to say when we go into these kinds of conflict zones as we will because the civilians will make the decisions and they'll make whatever decisions they make you know we may want to rethink whether you know our contribution really can be rebuilding these societies the way we want to as soon as we get on the on the ground or rather is what we can do help provide security help train up security forces give some assistance in terms of training the locals and then get out of the way and let them do it their way and for me that is actually one of the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq very good before we go to the audience Q&A I want to get your all of your impressions starting with mark on you know what right looks like what mark what are your thoughts on going forward learning whatever lessons we have out of the past 13 years but in in the context of a history a long history of US civil military relations we have as I said a number of leaders coming out now into Congress a number of former service members excuse me coming out into Congress we do have actually as Elliot pointed out despite the 1% we have many Americans more than half of American families have someone who served in the military there is a generation here that's new and different what should they take forward as a thought on the military and the civilian side about how to make this constitutional system we have a civil military civil civilian control the military work well you notice what we're not talking about today we're not talking about whether the Air Force Navy and the Army could actually work together to fight wars in combined arms and that's because we passed the Goldwater Nichols Act and I think it's worked and that's because policymakers in Washington recognized a problem and solved it and there's no crisis in civil military relations going forward but there are challenges and we have to face them we've expressed some of those challenges here I think that while there isn't a crisis the challenges really are important and we can't look past them and the we're not going to go back to a draft military doesn't want to go back to a draft we don't need a draft we have the expertise in the military in the correct fighting force that we need and they're very effective but we have to determine as a nation but remember George Bush remember President Bush said I can tell Americans one thing we're not going to be involved in nation building well yeah we are because we can't live in a world of ungoverned spaces in Iraq and Syria and somebody's going to have to do it and we're the only economy in the world that can do it so we have to apply the expertise to do that that's the biggest challenge going forward I don't think that it's the military's job to do it and that means that we have to construct some kind of cadre of dedicated I think State Department people have shown in Anbar in Iraq real courage and dedication to going out there and doing it I'm not degrading that at all but we need more of those people not fewer and we need to draw the line between fighting wars and nation building it's not the same thing and it's two different kinds of expertise we need pay attention to that issue I think going forward right share views on what leaders coming out today ought to know for the future to run this American system well well one it is it's a system that's designed for debate and conflict and that's I mean that's way our founders had and that's one of our greatest strengths I mean we look at when I was thinking about civil military relations you mentioned before and I was thinking about some of the crises individual crisis over time there's a party thought well okay well which system in the world would I want that's better and so you know so the one of those the Churchill Pope pops the mind of you know it's the it's the worst of all possible systems except for ever all the others I think it's I think it's very healthy and I think but there's a key element to making a system that thrives on debate intention work like that and that is from both sides a sense of candor and humility from the military to be forthright about what it knows to be a professional expertise convey to civilian leaders and there's a variety of ways we talk about the forums you know whether behind closed doors with testimony but to be candid about their professional military judgment and know when they are exercising judgment based on their military expertise not kind of holding forth as an American citizen might around the water cooler based on what they read in the paper that morning so be mindful of what their true expertise is be candid about it and the part about the water cooler to that's the humility part recognize what they don't know and this is true on both sides that no human being kind of has the market cornered on all this wisdom our system is built to take advantage of collective wisdom to do that well is to have respect on both sides for what the expertise each brings to bear be candid when they see those you know where that expertise should be brought to bear but be humble about who gets to decide and what whether you could be right or wrong and this is where on both sides insistence but ultimately our system resolves in favor of the civilians the civilians get to decide and but I think it's over I spend more time with the military folks who probably have a more defined body of expertise that they feel strongly about convincing also emphasizing but ultimately when push comes to shove and there's a difference in judgment the civilians decide and be humble about the factors they're bringing to bear that you are not considering that is why our system was built the way it was in the first place by very very wise founders so right that's why I'll let you I guess I'd say a couple of things that I think the basic principles are first absolutely right there's gonna be tension it's designed for that and it's inevitable you know because of what the military is and what politicians are like I would say secondly vigorous discussion and debate inside and it's largely the job of the civilian leadership to elicit that and to probe and to question and for military people to be forthright it's a discipline when it comes to how that is then presented to the outside world with this congressional testimony is a separate issue because the military's our system it was set up for conflict in that way but but I don't think senior military officers should be holding forth about what they think American foreign policy should be and at the end of the day we have to confront the fact the civilians have the right to be wrong you know it is the you know the bedrock of this is civilian authority and you know in our military basically lives up to that I think my emphasis is a little bit different in one sense you know my view of where we are internationally as we're entering into what I believe is an extremely dangerous period where whether you look at the spread of Islamist movements in throughout the Middle East North Africa and other places you look at a very assertive China in East Asia you look at what we're seeing in Europe which is the dismemberment of a sovereign state whose borders were guaranteed this being done by violence you know since the first time since World War II there's a period of tremendous challenges this is not a good time for senior military leaders to be kind of laying down the law about which wars they think they should fight they shouldn't fight or to say in public how they think they should fight them you know what what will give any administration this administration Bush administration or any administration in the future that the right you know one of the right cards to play in the game of international poker is the sense that behind them is an extremely effective and highly disciplined military which will do whatever it's lawfully ordered to do great all right let's go to audience questions we have microphones so when it comes to you please give me give us your name and your affiliation so when we start with Charlie right here Charlie Stephenson I'm precise I have a question about the Congress the alternate source of civilian control in our system and after listening to Secretary work talk about all of the congressional knows on administration plans I have a sense Congress is in thrall to Moa and doesn't want to make any change in military benefits because that somehow dishonors the military my question is what do you think the military role is in these issues of military paying benefits readiness modernization trade-offs and so forth the military's role and yes yes okay thoughts on the military's role in terms of maybe that's rich you might be positioned for that in presenting the case to Congress well and I did mention in terms of yes we have divided principles in the United States in terms of who we answer to the executive branch and Congress force and so I've mentioned just in passing in terms of senior leaders dealing with them but particularly right now and this is we're kind of an ambiguous arrow in wartime it tends to be a little more focused on you how are we operating to accomplish policy in the midst of work we're kind of turning towards the how should the force be shaped for the future so a lot more about investments for the for the future if there's kind of a little bit of a tip in the balance between when you're fighting wars it's about the immediate needs what we do right now to succeed at these policy aims first we're thinking more about the future what's kind of the investment or insurance policy you need for for future that we're dealing with both what do what the deputy secretary I think was talking about some of the investment points looking more toward the future what do we how do we address those issues and there military personnel costs as are going up as a percentage even with the same number of folks where they are much more costly per person and the idea of there have been proposals from the Department of Defense you know about how to rein those in I think they've made those cases I won't back a substitute you know any details for what the chiefs of service and all have put out but it's a tough one when you're dealing with the constituencies you're right the different veterans communities that are out there that are very powerful and have a very strong interest in that and that's again they will have their voice but that I think right right now the point is to say all right when you look to these investments be mindful of the priority the choices you're making the choice of continuing on the same path we are in terms of benefits and pay and the personnel costs means a decrement to other investments that you might make if we're constrained by a top line of the defense budget and saying that those are inherently political choices that Congress is going to have to weigh in on we can't simplify that for Congress the military isn't going to simplify them but they're laying those choices out and I think they're doing it appropriately to say here are the trade offs you're making in terms of operational capacity modernization and personnel costs and just like the society as a whole we know that there's for this growing incremental cost of human capital and just for social services that we've committed to that may need to change if you know that seems to be one of the problems that we now have is actually the aftermath of a different civil military relations crisis and that was the way we treated veterans after Vietnam and you know there was such a there has been such a revulsion against that appropriately so that the norm is now really to just go completely nuts in terms of benefits for veterans by the way of the father of a veteran and it's ridiculous and it's going to cripple the defense budget now I think military people can sort of lay that out but it is ultimately the job of the politics political leadership both in Congress and in the executive branch to be very forthright about that because what's going to happen is the amount of money that we now put into veterans benefits some which is just ludicrous is you know really going to cripple our ability to function internationally. Hi Steve Benson CSIS we go to Rich's comment you mentioned unity of command and then later on you mentioned debate in conflict so there's this there's this tension that goes on there but I'd like to ask the three panelists in 2007 when the surge was in in its force the business task I was on the business task force over there and there was success was occurring and general Petraeus and Ryan Crocker were there could you tell me each three the three of you who you thought was in charge in theater not here but who had the final call in theater for us force for us effort during the surge in 2007 who was the person? I spent a lot of time over there in 2007 so I'll give you let me first say something about the surge the guy who was in charge was George W. Bush and his the surge decision is in is itself a very interesting study in civil military relations because he was overruling almost all of his senior military advisors getting advice in some indirect ways which nobody liked and it was the right decision and it's you know I whatever else you think about George W. Bush and I understand the people were critical of him it was a very it was a brave move and the move that you'd want a commander in chief to be willing to execute my feeling whenever I went over right was pretty clear that what you had was a kind of unequal dual leadership Dave Petraeus and Ryan Crocker with Petraeus you know because he had all the resources really playing the dominant role but I think I always felt that Petraeus was very very careful and I think Ryan Crocker would would agree in showing respect for the role of the ambassador I thought it was brilliant that their offices were about as far apart as those two walls that you know Petraeus would never see Prime Minister Maliki without Crocker with him it was it's you know at a different kind of level I thought it was a model civil military relationship now further down you know were the Munchkins all fighting each other of course the Munchkins were all fighting each other that's what people bureaucracies do but but I think you did have a kind of unity of what was an effective unity of command with kind of two heads at the top with one head being very careful and restrained but actually being in charge and that was Petraeus was interesting on during the Second Gulf War that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Myers criticized sniping among the retired types as he I think called them he was referring to General McCaffrey's appearance on CNN at the time saying we didn't have the force necessary and Shinseki was right and Myers said it was sniping and then Mullen General Admiral Mullen bigger pardon the chairman I think took real umbrage when Jack Keen argued for the surgeon called it sniping we need more of that sniping I agree that I thought that the you know Jack Keen was right to confront Admiral Mullen I understand happened and said you know we have to get this right we can't lose this your job to get this right let's get this right you should be with me on this and this kind of interplay between the retired military and the currently serving military I think is important it's informed decisions well in the past I hope it continues in the future I think it's it's going on right now we've had Tony Zinni last week talking about why General Allen was important in special emissary I you know people say oh things are okay I actually think it's it's a sign of real maturity when that kind of debate can go on among retired and currently serving military types okay right over here I'm William Brie I work at Dinecorp International now a former Foreign Service officer after the invasion of Iraq and it's clear that we didn't have a strategy in place for post-conflict security reconstruction stability the think tank community everybody came tried to figure out how we should have done it there was sort of a general conclusion that probably state should do it our friends on the hill in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and state put together a working group and they came up with this brilliant idea of SCRS civilian reconstruction and stability which didn't work and the states now tried to reform that into CSO which also didn't work as I look back on this since I was part of the task force that put this together it's clear that DOD is a preparedness organization when they're not fighting they're ready to fight state is an operational organization everybody in state is working at a job and our appropriators have never been willing to provide us with anybody on a contingency basis and as Elliot said states never gonna have the resources to actually take on that role so it's got to be a surge capability military has got it in in the civil affairs folks who are in the Garden Reserve you got any thoughts you know you said you were gonna bring this up I'll bring it up for you yeah what are your thoughts about where this should go in the future well yeah all three of you and I know Mark specifically mentioned the Civilian Reserve Corps but I'll let me start with Elliot since he lived personally through the joy well the first thing is I really you know what the State Department can do well first I would just remind everybody there's like 7500 foreign service officers so for your military types that's to under strength infantry brigades deployed to if I remember correctly 267 squad to company-sized outposts around the world you do the arithmetic one thing it means is the State Department is always running hot that you know whereas defense has a 10 to 15 percent personnel float for education and training there is no float in the State Department and there can't be but I think goes it goes deeper than that I actually came away with a lot of admiration and it got help me affection for the State Department after spending a couple of years there having had a lot of experience in defense but none in state but but I I came away thinking the culture it's not just the size and the scale the culture is not the right culture the culture let me be very clear I knew lots of and know lots of heroic brave utterly selfless and patriotic diplomats that's not the issue but in the State Department when you say plan something what you mean is give me a checklist of you know items that you want to accomplish over the next week in the military it's troops to task you know what's the mission what are the resources we're going to need one of the different stages you know it's people are used to move the stuff around the Defense Department although I knew some wonderful leaders in the State Department somebody like recently retired Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns to take just one example and there are loads of others still it is not a leadership driven organization whereas the military when you start off as a cadet in ROTC you know they're pounding into you my mission my people myself all the basics of leading under stress that's not what the State Department does and it's not part of the culture it's not going to be part of the culture all this being so I would say let's be very open about this if we're going to do these things these will be military driven functions if you're dealing with combat zones you might want to build out other parts of the National Guard or reserve I think that makes perfect sense but it's best to have those people in uniform it's best to have them able to carry firearms and know how to use them if you're dealing with a conflict zone which you know there's an allergy it's really amazing to me there's an allergy in the State Department to having diplomats carry weapons I don't know why but but there is but that's not what you wanted a conflict zone you do want somebody who's willing to pack heat because they may need it so put all that stuff into the garden reserves if that's what you want to do and and let the State Department play that critical role of political advice because that's what they're good at reading foreign cultures advising on that sort of interpreting that but but don't put tasks that in the nature of things they will never be able to do it's my job as a panelist to give you solutions I don't have a clue what to do about this but I know that Secretary Gates and Condoleezza Rice talked about this a lot about the role of military and the State Department in post-conflict areas and how to straighten it out and what it meant to be a title 8 versus a title 22 and where the law was and who was going to handle it and Rumsfeld never talked to Condoleezza Rice let's be blunt about this because he well he was waging war in Iraq he was also waging war against her so they never talked about it thank God we had Bob Gates coming and talk about it but I think it needs to be straightened out maybe it is the job of the guard in the reserve fine then change the law but get you know maybe we ought to start with Gates and Condoleezza Rice and have this discussion what are we going to do about this and I don't know what to do about it I think it's a good good advice because the guard in the reserve did it at Anbar they did a terrific job with the help of the State Department fine but that's not what the law says the law says something really quite different and it's going to it's going to be a problem and people on Capitol Hill are very uneasy about it what are we going to do about it let's face it and come up with a solution Rich you were in the trenches on this issue which is a couple of things first off going so I was in the Pentagon and our main counterpart office was the SCRS the State Department coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization as we were working on trying to figure out what the right sort of policy division was but they also were trying to build some operational capacity I work with them a lot both in Washington then when I was in Afghanistan but that's something the SCRS folks trying to operate and in terms of getting the expertise and working with that sort of the embassy level to sort of work country plans and the things that the State Department is responsible for and USAID with regard to programs there was an important benefit that I think that SCRS and I hope that CSO and I know they're still there and I haven't been as in close touch with them a late are continuing to work on how we get the right policies and authorities to connect the sorts of things that the the State Department USAID do well and which are needed in a peculiar way in conflict zones that the military has to be more mindful of them participate in doing that so that idea that we need to stay we learn that we were detached in ways we shouldn't have been I think early in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I think we've done well to improve how we're linked with them at the policy level and then when it comes to the operation level I think that's where there's still a difference in expectation particularly by the military folks that they will come in and simply substitute for the military as opposed to provide better expert more expertise and policy guidance in the realms that they are good at the cultural knowledge the use of the authorities that only the State Department has and we're doing a better job of that so that I'll add another part that on the military side we're looking how you know there's ways to look at that too civil affairs historically World War two there were civil affairs units and the military government civil affairs kind of went into the areas we liberated and worked with the local authorities were friends and could so there was kind of an assumption there was a structure there they could sort of help be liaison between the U.S. military and locals that we were working with that and that's really the dominant world civil affairs had played in most of the post World War two era after or after the occupation of Germany Japan well we kind of lost that part so civil affairs showed up in Iraq and Afghanistan oftentimes they were ready to liais with something but there was nobody there unlike Kosovo or Bosnia we had displaced the local government structure and we were at least that we have we've been at the UN resolutions as we were the occupying power and we were responsible for governance but we didn't have that military government capacity we had had that we developed during World War two well we're looking to sort of reestablish some of that at the Special Operations Center for the Army and again that's I could give you details of that I just have aware that they're working on that's where I would say again it's sort of we identified a major disconnect in terms of both the civilian and appropriate civilian and military folks working together I think both sides are working at what would be a tragedy to me is this is one of those areas where if we struggle through trying to find a good way forward over the last 13 years and if in the budget cuts these sort of new developments are the first to go I think that would be a significant tragedy in other words we learn this mission set and the appropriate and better ways to do this at some cost but lives treasure and in terms of mission success that we shouldn't have to face again in other words the military the army in particular not doing counterinsurgency that should never leave the portfolio that can't leave the portfolio the same thing should be true with the insights gained from SCRS and civil affairs and what we saw about military governance so I think that's another one we need to get to lock in as best we can okay let's just take a few more questions let's go right here thank you very much for this very engaging panel and I served in Iraq and I wanted to ask you a question sometimes is is the nature of of policy as who is going to take a lead in that certain circumstances sometimes confuse the people on the ground I mean sometimes when I remember we I'm a medical officer and I was stationed with the Office of Security Cooperation and medical issues are medical issues you get them with the Minister of Defense Minister of Interior Minister of Health and they used to come to me because and sometimes very hard to help my counterpart in Iraq because I don't have the authority to engage so sometimes maybe the directive when we get people on the ground to do this sometimes is confusing I'm curious to see is what what what you gentlemen think about about when you assign a mission to someone is the nature of the mission sometimes create the confusion that that take place on the ground let's group one more question with this one way back here yes good morning my name is Paul Tennant I'm a exchange officer British exchange officer in the Pentagon I've been here for a couple of years now just like to run a couple of observations past you and ask if you agree and if you do whether there are any feasible solutions the first one I would say from the outset is very much common to the UK equivalent which is that there is an issue in my opinion with the routine physical access between those who work in the State Department and those who work in the DoD and I don't understand why we can't all just have a pass which gets us into both and allows us to talk to each other from a much younger age and then throughout our careers the second observation is is that it seems to me to be very difficult to persuade lawmakers to make decisions based on the best federal interests if they're dealing with federal institutions wherever possible divorced from the state interests which often drive their votes and I wonder if there's any solution that you can see to encouraging people to vote for what's best for the federal institution okay so I think the first is the question is really related back to this issue of unity of command direction and actually authorities which is something because we've talked about reconstruction we sort of danced around but there are very you know distinct authorities going on here both in terms of the military system and chain of command but also related to the title 22 versus title 10 as Mark pointed out so that's the first time sorry yeah sorry the that's the first issues the second is I guess I would say sort of the maybe the tribal nature back to the issue of the tribal nature of the different cultures inside the the national security system that makes civil military relations as frustrating I guess one would say on both sides as they are are there ways to take on those cultural issues and if you wish to take on this question of how to make members of Congress vote for the national interest versus state interests I welcome you to do that with the acknowledgement that senator Warner is in the front row and can judge your answer accordingly so go ahead mark I'm not going to take on your question because I don't know really what you're talking about this is not well but I'll answer this one if I may very quickly and then allow my colleagues to come in in and bar during the surge general Casey gave pre little pre-surge general Casey gave general Conway of the Marine Corps a mandate to solve the problem in and bar which included getting 18 to 35 year olds to work and Conway went down to the third civil affairs group to Colonel John Coleman and said get it done and and so Coleman met with what Roosevelt are called terrorists and when he met with them the next day they became insurgents and I was okay because then they were insurgents because we met with them they used to be terrorists and he and he met with them in a man and they and they started building out the very earliest days the surge and in talking to the these guys Coleman and Walker and these guys who did this out in the end bar they I said who who did your answer to who gave you permission to do this what was your mandate and he said I was told to do it I did it till somebody told me you can't do that nobody said don't do that so I did now that seems to me to be pretty much the way the US military appropriately runs itself they get a mandate they have an order they follow it they do it until somebody says wait a second which case he did he said Conway you're running a goat rope out there and Conway came back and said you told me to solve this problem here with the parameters and that's what I'm doing and it's being solved sir and he said okay you're right and so you know this is yeah I understand you know this kind of lines of communication all this but that's the nature of conflict and we were in a conflict in Iraq and we worked our way through it and the surge worked so just the to the issue of access badges I remember the first time I went to work in the Pentagon I was in the office of the Secretary of Defense I could not get into the joint staff spaces so we had a we had an issue within the Pentagon I don't know if they've sorted they haven't sorted that out what no they restrict access right so you know so that that gives you a sense of how problematic things are look I think what actually tends to happen is in the way that mark was just describing on the ground people tend to sort stuff out and so a lot of the you know the pushing and pulling tends to happen there tends to be a lot of it here that you know be a lesser amount and back to add and then you know out in the field people kind of work things out and it's very largely personality driven speaking of personality driven one thing I would say is it is the nature of these kinds of conflicts that they are you know so extraordinarily complex it requires a different skill set that most generals have what one of the mistakes that I think a lot of our political leaders make and even some of our military leaders make is to think well you know generals are interchangeable generals are not interchangeable there are some who you want you know to fight the big one in Europe with the Russians and there are others who you want to be you know some kind of pro-consul in Afghanistan and there and there are different kinds of human beings with different abilities and that's one of the challenges I think for civilian leadership is figuring out which one you've got and the final thing I'll say is I'm an I that that that is a great story and it's true story about the search one thing I'd remind us all as we talk about these wars I once had the opportunity to sit actually I had several opportunities to sit down with and Barry shakes the embarras have a different view of what the awakening was they actually think they did it not that we did it that's an important point as we you know think through these wars we are not the only actors you know we sometimes talk about these things as if it's all a question of you know do we do the right thing do we do the wrong thing how do we do it and we sort of assume that there's some bad guys out there who are just kind of an implacable force which one way or another you're going to take apart and everybody else you know is acted upon rather than acting and that's just not true they're acting as well very good very good point I agree oh thanks and I'll just you might go back to where I started in terms of you know the nature of military relations I was reminded looking back through some of my notes about you know what had happened early in the Cold War and if you look at the tension there what Taylor going public with his views against President Eisenhower against the views of the new look which was that more that massive retaliation and pushing for flexible response and some of the tensions going on as we were thinking about what was what was supposed to happen in the future and then some of the things we saw in Vietnam I was reminded you know people go back to so where's the good model well you know Marshall with Roosevelt seems to be a pretty good one and there's a lot of interesting details to that but there's a key point that I would highlight about that era when you're fighting a war of unlimited aims the military's natural tendency and the government and the government of the people's desire to support them and providing whatever is necessary to win at that moment tends to line up with the military preferences so there's not that much civil military tension when you're sort of total war for unlimited aims we haven't been in that circumstance for the sense of World War two what we've seen over the last 13 years are wars for limited policy aim generally limited aim some we've displaced some governments but certainly partial means and so a lot of times this tension between how much force to use and how to use it through the natural tendencies that the military leaders are going to have it towards escalation is very close with it's you know once you get going you want to win and push as hard as you can greats against the civilians thing or the civilian preference to restrain the use of force to keep it in line with the policy aims that we're pursuing and the resources we have available in that context I looked at the last 13 years and you know we did pretty well compared to other times Vietnam and the post Korean war the Korean war itself and then post Korean war how we adjusted to the nuclear era and new services and we've got more services and we now have an Air Force we now have a Department of Defense we have more players by the way access wise I was also reminded that we fixed the access thing previously the war Navy State Building was where the War Department the State Department and the Navy Department that is now the old executive office building that is the seat of the National Security Council everybody else kind of had to move out because they got too big and so we've sort of separated so there was a time but it was an easier time and we didn't have quite the same challenges or the establishment so we're not going to solve that exit problem I don't think easily what we've done is recognize these are complex issues we've grown the number of organizations involved and these are all valuable voices I would not argue in favor of unification as other nations have done in fact that different service voices the State Department voice the USAID voice are all valuable voices to add to the debate and so in that regard the proliferation of organizations and some of the inefficiencies that come with that are nonetheless sort of the signs of health or are part of what makes our system work well and in that regard I would say that we haven't seen a lot of harmony but harmony would be bad but it's been healthy in terms of I think generating talk about the right issues debate about the right issues and resolution pretty well and then don't get me wrong there's policy issues we could have done better and there's things we need to take forward this is not that you know there we certainly haven't solved all the problems out there but civil military relations wise I think it's been fairly healthy and we've got a lot of positive things that we can learn from how things have happened over the last 13 years and my greater concern is that we'll put those lessons aside when we go back to our corners organizationally to deal with bureaucratic battles that are less important than maybe some of the national policy and we've had to work with down range over the last few years well I want to thank all the panelists this morning I just quickly jotted my takeaways we don't have a crisis in civil military relations there's tension that's healthy and unavoidable and intended by the system that we have a lot of work to do on whole of government efforts still to understand the various roles and responsibilities that different agencies including the military bring and in particular on this issue set of reconstruction which we have not solved and I very much fear as Rich has indicated he fears that we're going to lose those lessons and perhaps most importantly is Elliott's reminder that working in government is very frustrating so for all of those of you who are away from government today hopefully you are a little less frustrated for the event and please join me in thanking this panel and we're gonna have a break the next session starts up here at 11 a.m.