 Good afternoon. I'm Lise Grande and I'm the president and CEO of the United States Institute for Peace. We're very pleased to welcome everyone to a very special discussion today in recognition of 9-11. We're honored to have the chair of the U.S. Institute Board of Directors Steve Hadley and the vice chair, Ambassador George Moose, join us for a conversation and discussion about the implications of 9-11, the impact of the events of that day on the field of peace building. As many of us around the world reflect 20 years after 9-11 on what that event did to the work that we do in foreign policy and security policy and the work that we do inside the United States to protect ourselves from violent extremism, we wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on what 9-11 means for the work that we do in this institute. During the next 30 minutes we'll be reflecting together on a number of key questions. The first, and Steve I'd like to direct this to you first and then to Ambassador Moose, I'd like to ask you how you see the events of 9-11 changing the way that we try to promote peace around the world. Well thanks, Lees, and it's great to be on this panel with you and with George. I think 9-11 in some sense really put us in the business of addressing the problem of fragile states, and it did so in the following way. After 9-11, the Bush administration, of which I was a part, went to the Taliban, which then were in power in Afghanistan, and said, turn over bin Laden, shut down the training camps, and exclude the al-Qaeda fighters, and we'll leave you alone. And the Taliban declined, and so we went in, we overturned the regime with, by supporting Afghans as they rose up against the Taliban regime and excluded al-Qaeda and denied them the safe haven of Afghanistan from which they planned the attacks of 9-11. But then the question became, well, what do you do now? Because after the expulsion of the Soviets two decades before, the United States and the international community walked away from Afghanistan, and what followed was civil war, Taliban rule, safe haven for al-Qaeda, and 9-11, and we did not want to repeat that history. So the question was, can we take and build a government in Afghanistan, which will not only provide for the Afghan people, but ensure that Afghanistan is never again a base from which terrorists can mount operations against the region and against the United States? And that got us in the business of how do you take a fragile state and help it to establish that kind of governance that can provide for its people? And it got us into how do you develop security infrastructure? How do you get economic development going? And how do you develop inclusive governance? And as we started that process in Afghanistan, we began to then look around the world and found other fragile states that were not only the sources of poverty and migration, but were also training grounds or areas where terrorists could take root. And that really put us as a country and USIP in the business of fragile states, how do you address the underlying causes of terrorism, the underlying causes of conflict, and that gets you into the business of looking at security, economic development, and governance. So in that sense, 9-11 had a profound effect on how we saw the problem of conflict and what we needed to do in order to address it. George, how do you see the impact of 9-11 on the field of peace building? Well, thanks, Liz. And I see it very much in the same way that Steve has just described it. You know, when we go back and we look at the report of the 9-11 commission, and that report had three overarching themes. The first is obviously in light of what happened that event on 9-11, we needed to take the fight to the terrorists where they were. We couldn't sit comfortably at home and just wait for it to come to us, because it didn't. The second was that we needed to reform our own institutions, our intelligence institutions, our law enforcement, even our military, and our diplomacy, so that we would be better equipped to protect ourselves against these kinds of threats. But the third part of that paradigm was that we needed to get smarter about understanding what it was that created these grievances out of which grew extremism and violent extremism, which was aimed against us. And it's not as though we didn't know these things existed. I mean, we had any number of precursors to 9-11, including the bombings of the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. So it was there. It was with us. But it was only after 9-11 that we began to focus seriously on what was driving these violent extremist expressions that came to hit us and to haunt us on 9-11. And that is where the work of the U.S. Institute of Peace, I think, really has been focused now over the last 20 years. And that work, I think, got revitalized most recently in 2019 when the Institute was sponsored, this congressionally mandated study group on fragility and extremism, recognizing there was a direct connection between fragile states, as Steve has described them, and these places which are challenged in terms of their governance and the opportunities for extremists to exploit those weaknesses, to establish themselves and to create opportunities to launch against us. So that very much, I think, has informed, frankly, the core of USIP's work for the last 20 years. Stephen George, you both have talked about extremism and the fact that after 9-11 this became one of the key planks of peace-building work. We knew that if we were going to promote peace, if we were going to prevent conflicts and if we were going to reduce violence, we had to address this directly. As we think forward, what are the top concerns now that we have in addressing violent extremism? Have we done a good enough job? Are there things that we should be doing in addition to what we're doing or things that we should be doing differently? George? Well, let me start off there because I do think just as I mentioned that the working group, the study group on violence, on violent extremism fragility, gave renewed emphasis to that element of the original line of the Northern Commission report, which I think has been underappreciated and which we have not acted on sufficiently. That is understanding better what the forces and the factors are that drive this kind of extremist ideologies and their ability to get a foothold in so many parts of the world. And so we still have catch up work to do in that regard. We are not, in my view, devoting enough attention to even tracking where this extremist ideologies and ideas are implanting themselves. For example, we know the area that I am most familiar with, of course, is Africa. And we've been tracking now for some years, the spread across the Sahel of Africa. But only recently did we wake up to the fact that in Northern Mozambique, an offshoot of an extremist group that's been based in Somalia has entrenched itself there and has caused enormous, caused enormous dislocation and violence and extremism. So we are still playing catch up here. And we still are not, in my estimation, devoting either enough attention to how we anticipate the ways in which these ideologies can exploit weaknesses and fragility or in devoting the resources that we can and should be devoting to countering those. And here again, some of the things that USIP has done over the last several years, I think are the kinds of activities and programs that can be and ought to be scaled up in order to deal with this term. Steve, what's your view on this? I agree very much with what George said. He referred to this study group, Congressional Emancipated Study Group, following on the 9-11 Commission Report. It was co-chaired by the co-chairs of the 9-11 Commission Report, Lee Hamilton and Tom Cain. They basically said the ball that got dropped after the 9-11 Commission Report was this notion of prevention. And I would point out, we've all been tuning into a lot of zooms and podcasts and all the rest on the lessons of 9-11. I was struck by Lieutenant General Michael Nagata, who happens to be on the Military Advisory Group of USIP, a retired general. And he made the point that we've learned the same lesson abroad that we're going to learn at home. That is to say, you can't kill your way to stability and peace. You can't simply kill terrorists and think you've addressed the problem of extremism. And he went further and said, as we focus on extremism at home in terms of white supremacists and groups on the left, he made the similar point that you can't indict and incarcerate people and think you're going to create enduring civil peace. You need this effort towards prevention, which really has many parts. But I think the three that are under appreciated and under addressed are the grievances, as George mentioned, we've got to, whether it's abroad or at home, you need to find a way to address these grievances that fuel and are used and manipulated by extremists in Paris. Secondly, the governance challenge and the challenge of corruption. We have not figured out how to help countries address those issues and establish inclusive, enduring governance that is not corrupt, that delivers for its people and commands legitimacy. One of the things that 2019 study group found in terms of prevention, and we've learned this over and over again, the number one problem in fragile states is governance. In governance that is not legitimate, that is corrupt, and that takes advantage of the people rather than serving the needs of the people. And we haven't solved that problem. And the third one is the messaging and the propaganda and the use by extremists of media to inspire and encourage terrorism. And we've been working at this for 20 years and I still think we're not much closer to the solution than we have been before. So there's a huge amount of work. And I guess the last thing I would say these is these require more attention. They are largely non-military skills that are required, and they require greater investment. We've invested in our military over the last three decades. We have the best military in the world. We have not invested in these tools that we need to address governance and messaging and grievances that are going to be key if we can discourage and prevent extremism and finally deal with this problem of terrorism. Yeah, after 9-11, the United States engaged militarily in Afghanistan and then engaged militarily in Iraq. The military engagements were, of course, backed by our diplomatic efforts, our efforts on the humanitarian front, the human rights front, and on the development front. Now that the United States is withdrawing militarily from Iraq and very recently from Afghanistan, we'd be very interested, gentlemen, in your views on what can be done to protect the gains that have been made. There were things that were done in Afghanistan and Iraq that were hugely important and even if we're withdrawing militarily, what can we do to preserve those gains? Steve? Well, your right leads to point out and it's difficult to remember in the sort of onslaught of commentary you're in the middle of and 20th anniversary of 9-11 about mistakes in the war and terror, mistakes in Iraq, mistakes in Afghanistan. We're rich in self-criticism and that's a good thing. I think we're a little bit lacking in the appreciation of what was accomplished and I just if I could say a word in terms of our military men and women in uniform who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who've been part of this war on terror, they should hold their heads up high. They accomplished what we needed them to do, which was to ensure that there would not be another terrorist attack, mass casualty terrorist attack on the United States. People forget that after 9-11 and I was there and I got the intelligence reports and what the CIA told us was this was going to be the first of a series of mass casualty attacks, some of which would involve weapons of mass destruction and people forget that within a month of 9-11 envelopes with white powder that turned out to be anthrax showed up in the U.S. Capitol and at headquarters of major media outlets and killed some of our people protecting the Capitol on Capitol Hill and we had no idea what was the source of that attack and it thought it might be actually an al-Qaeda attack. It turned out it was not so but people forget that what was anticipated was this was the first of a wave of mass casualty attacks and if you had told us that for 20 years there would not be another mass casualty attack in the United States we would say you were smoking the drapes as they say but because of the efforts of our men and women in uniform our intelligence officials our diplomats because of the things we did that George talked about to take the fight abroad and to improve our institutions at home that did not happen and our men and women and uniform who and our diplomats and our intelligence officials who served in this fight for the last 20 years have a lot to be proud of. We also have a lot to be proud of in terms of the opportunity we gave to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to try to build a more inclusive society that respects human rights, women rights, gives opportunities for their youth and a lot of that sadly is now at risk in Afghanistan. I think what that means for us as the USIP is we have to remind the federal government that as the Biden administration focuses increasingly on the problems of China and great power competition we continue to have interests in the Middle East and I think we the USIP need to continue to be focused there. We I think need to maintain our commitment to Afghanistan to those people who stood with us in Afghanistan to try to build a brighter future for their country and we have to recognize that we don't confront China just off the coast of China in Asia but China is a global power and we need to deal with it globally and as USIP knows China is a key actor in many of the conflicts that are a problem in fragile states and beyond so we we I think need to be committed to Afghanistan we need to stay engaged we have to recognize though that the context is changed and we're going to have to figure out new ways of engagement we're going to have to get to take a steer in part from where our US government where our allies are because we will be more effective if we can be in support of and consistent with US policies than if we go it alone. What that actually looks like I think we don't know and can't know at this time and one of the challenges for our wonderful staff at USIP will to be figure out how do we get the job done how do we continue this work and support of the people of Afghanistan even in this change context I think that's the challenge we have before us. George. No I don't know that I have much to add to what Steve has already said except to reiterate and reaffirm the commitment we have to engaging over the course of the last 20 years we have created enormous networks of civil society organizations religious groups women youth etc all across Afghanistan and those groups have been key to bringing the benefits of good governance to communities in Afghanistan we we have a commitment to them to continue to support that work in whatever ways we can and as Steve points out this is early days we don't know what that environment is going to allow us enable us to do but I'm encouraged by a couple of things I'm encouraged by the fact that some of our partners have already committed to remaining there search for common ground for example where I served on the board and which is one of our key partners in peacebuilding has already announced it intends to try to maintain its staff there we know of course leaves a lot of the folks of the UN has committed to staying there and we also know that our own government has leverage that it can use to try to help preserve the spaces that have been created for civil society and for organizations that we have been partnered with and so I know that you are already even even as we are still talking about getting the remaining staff out of Afghanistan we are already thinking about what does that future look like in what ways can we continue to be present or to be at least have a presence in terms of our influence in ways to continue to support these efforts on the part of the the partners that we've supported over these many years and I certainly I know that our board is going to be fully supportive of those efforts and to recognize that we have a moral shared moral responsibility to stay in Iraq and to stay in Afghanistan and to continue to promote peacebuilding as one of core American values and activities in both of these countries gentlemen I'd like to say one thing before we leave this topic I think it it needs to be said that the effort that you have led within USIP with the full support support of the staff and folks that have been working this issue 24 7 to get our staff and their dependents who were staffing our office in Kabul out of Afghanistan into safe locations has been a unbelievable effort against all odds and with a success that I think is greater than almost any organization that I'm aware of there are a lot of organizations that still have a lot of people in Afghanistan and at this point still have no way to get them out and that does not include us and I just want to pay tribute to you and to all those members of the USIP staff who participated in that overwhelmingly successful effort and not just to get our people our staff folks and their dependents out but we got over a hundred American citizens out we facilitated over a thousand other people getting out of this country who were in harm's way with this new regime and it was an overwhelming effort and I think the importance of it is that we USIP have kept faith with those staff members who put their faith in us and who staffed our office in Kabul and I think that's enormously important and I think the USIP staff who participated after they get a couple days of good nights to take enormous satisfaction in what they accomplished you know I was eight years as deputy national security advisor national security advisor I saw a lot of emergency operations I didn't see anything that was as effective as this so kudos to you and kudos to the staff gentlemen thank you kudos for keeping faith with our folks one of the things I think all of us in USIP are grateful for that recognition and recognize that it was our responsibility to keep faith with our partners to keep faith with our staff and with their families one of the things that was so striking about the the period of the evacuation is the collaboration across all aisles and all parts of the US government and administration and our partners you know there were times every single day when we were talking to every single branch of the US administration to countless representatives from congress and from senators and countless partners and it didn't matter what side of the aisle we were on it was truly a non-partisan joint effort to do what needed to be done to do the right thing that's the way we should be doing things and I'd like to take us into something that we've you've both alluded to at earlier times in today's conversation and that is about in the last 20 years the exponential growth of technology and how that has added to drivers of conflict Steve you spoke about this and George you touched on it and what I would be interested in is not only how social media contributes and new technologies to the drivers of conflict but your thoughts on how those new technologies can be harnessed for what we want to do which is to reduce violence prevent conflict and resolve wars when they do occur Steve your thoughts on that so uh I was in the administration at the dawn of this this technological revolution and I must say I was very bullish about it I thought that it was going to empower individuals to advance the cause of freedom human rights rule of law and their own their own empowerment and and be a very democratizing force as we learned in in our efforts to advance freedom and democracy in the world the empires tend to strike back and strike back hard and what I did not anticipate was how authoritarian regimes would skillfully use these tools in order to increase social control and you see this in China today especially in in in in in big ways I remember I brought in a group of when I was national security advisor some uh high tech folks all young none of them in cotton ties into the roof of the room of the west wing and I said to them I gave them in advance a dvd of the propaganda that that terrorist groups were using in order to recruit and train and all the rest and I said if this if you were sat where I sat and this was what you were seeing what would you do to counter it and we got some good ideas and they became an advisory board in state department but the truth is we have not solved this problem and you know in a summary fashion the bad guys have been ahead of us in exploiting this technology I think the authoritarian regimes have been ahead of us in exploiting the technology and we're behind and uh it's going to have to require people who are younger and more more technology proficient than me to figure that out but it is a number one task and we're not we're not doing it we're not doing it George well again I don't know that much I can add but you know we have seen throughout history how technological advancements can be used to serve either good or ill um and this is another instance and and we've also seen that also often it's the bad guys who are most skillful in exploiting those new technologies and and how it applies so in this case we have the bad guys on both extremes those who would wish to reinforce authoritarian governance if you can call it governance at one end of that spectrum and at the other end of that spectrum we have these um non-governmental armed actors who are also seeking to exploit and successfully seeking to exploit those technologies and the platforms that social media platforms that are built on them to advance their causes whatever they may be um and and we have also we've known as fever said that there is in these technologies the potential to empower people to make societies more equal and more democratic to add transparency for example I know how we at usip and other organizations have used these technologies in order to make elections more transparent and in so doing make the results of those elections more credible and to reduce violence in the course of elections because so often that violence arises from misinformation or disinformation we've seen how that is possible we have seen in societies how that technology can be used to create greater transparency into government government behavior and government action you're talking about how do you get at this challenge of corruption while one of the ways you get at the challenge of corruption is to shed more light on what it is that governments are doing and in what ways they are or are not benefiting their citizens from all that so all that potential is there unfortunately you know the bad guys are not hampered by parliamentary procedures or bureaucratic processes or legal niceties or ethical niceties as they pursue these and so we're going to have to learn how to be much more agile and much smarter about how we deploy this and let me go back to where I started we're also going to need to invest more in these technologies and the ways in which they can be used if we are to be successful in countering the ways in which the bad guys are using them now gentlemen we're nearly at the end of our discussion and we have just one final question we'd like your reflections on you know as we look forward we've come 20 years from 9-11 if we look at the next 20 years what are going to be the main peace building challenges on the horizon George if we can start with you oh gosh I don't have a really great crystal ball but I have to say I mean for as far as I can see the challenges of the next 20 years are already with us we can already see them if you look at the latest report of the national intelligence council on global trends 2040 it lays out things that are already evident to us now there may be those you know black swans and unknown things out there that that will come come to haunt us but at the moment if you if we look ahead we already see how returning to the theme of fragility how these trends are already impacting um already weak and stressed to governance systems the continent that I know the best of course is Africa and you look at the challenges that these weak governance structures institutions are facing and now they're being hit with yet a new wave that consists of well let's start with a global pandemic that is greatly weakening their capacities and challenging their ability to respond to the needs of their sources we know that they're facing the the enormous challenge of climate change and how climate change is fueling controversies and conflicts and tensions within their society and how those tensions are in turn being exploited by extremist groups who see opportunities here to advance their own agendas and then we add to that going to Steve's point this challenge of a global environment in which we see increasing contention not only between big powers but also between middle powers that are coming into this space and creating yet other new challenges for weak and stressed governments so we already know what that looks like and which only therefore enhances and increases the importance of how we try to not wait for those things to happen but to try to find ways to to get ahead of them to try to find ways to make societies and communities and governments and regions more resilient to the challenges and the threats that we know that they are already facing Steve one last word I grew it everything George said I think he said it beautifully I would just add one problem that we've been struggling with for the last 20 years and we will struggle with for the next 20 years which is corruption and governance and the one thing I would leave you with we don't have the right tools we don't have the right strategy but I think it is also fair to say we can't do those things for the people in fragile states they're going to have to build these institutions for themselves and it means one of the things we need to be focused on is who are the available partners and if you think about the experience in Afghanistan Iraq and Columbia David Ignatius had an article talked about how we didn't really have a partner in Afghanistan committed to the kind of good governance and anti-corruption that we needed we may have that and now in Iraq in the form of the regime of Mustafa al-Qadimi we certainly had that in terms of alvaro oride in Colombia and the Colombian people who really took the lead in the fight against terrorists and building more democratic inclusive institutions so I think one of the things we have to recognize in our work is we can't do it for people we can help people do it for themselves but we have to have a local partner committed to good governance and anti-corruption or we're not going to succeed so I would like to thank you for joining us for a very personal and important reflection on how the events of 9-11 impacted the work that we do in the U.S. Institute of Peace and in the field of peace building more generally Steve Hadley is the chair of our board thank you Ambassador Moose as the vice chair thank you I'd like to in conclusion recognize that the U.S. Institute of Peace has an exceptional staff of more than 400 people we benefit from an exceptional board co-led by Steve and by Ambassador Moose we have an international advisory council made up of distinguished people from the diplomatic academic and private sector who guide us and support us in the work we do we have an exceptional senior military advisory group made up of generals admirals other leading members of our armed forces which advise us we benefit from all of that in conclusion we would like to take this moment to honor the exceptional staff who have worked for the United States Institute of Peace in Afghanistan we have 49 staff members for years they have been committed to progressing peace and reconciliation in their country we honor them and everything they have done to contribute to that great cause thank you for joining us today for this special conversation we look forward to the next one