 Well, good morning everybody. Welcome. My name is John Hamery. I'm the president here at CSIS. We don't normally host conferences where we just talk about ourselves, you know. We at least try to pretend that we're trying to affect public policy rather than just brag about what we do. So indulge us a little bit today. I think it's going to be an interesting, interesting morning. And I want to say a specific welcome to Jim McAnne, who's been doing this really pioneering work. You know, every country, every society has the same problem. And that is how do you get new ideas introduced and made the public policy for a country? You know, every society has this problem, whether it's a great country like America or China or Germany, or whether it's a little small country, whether it's an authoritarian government, whether it's a democracy. Every society has to find a way to adapt its public policy into when new ideas come up, when new technology is introduced, when new businesses enter. The world is constantly changing. Governments are pretty static. It's hard for governments to change. So in America at least, I mean, the way that policy changes here is through political action. It's through elected officials or appointed officials who are responsible for running the government or populating the Congress. And they, you know, their job is, this is how we introduce new ideas. You know, our government hasn't been particularly clever the last couple of decades. And they deeply need institutions that give them ideas. That's what think tanks do. I would argue that what you need in this kind of an environment is a very, very rich, robust debate. I mean, the worst thing that could happen to America would be to have one think tank. Absolutely the worst thing. God, how quickly would we make mistakes? You need to have this clashing competing environment where we're exploring ideas, we're challenging each other, we're competing with each other. You know, it's just the landscape that we need to make sure that good, solid ideas are hammered repeatedly. You know, in an open way with each other so that we know that the ideas that we propose to go forward to our elected and nominated officials are good ideas. So this is why we're having this event. And it's also to, I think, give voice to this very pioneering work that Jim McCann has been doing, trying to give visibility and clarity to what goes on in this think tank environment. You know, this is a major part of America's intellectual landscape in the policy world. It's not well understood. And I think because of his work, I think Americans are starting to understand it more broadly. So I'm very glad to have all of you here. I think it's going to be a very rich discussion we're going to have. And my colleagues, I want to thank you for being with us today. Jim, let me turn to you and get this started for real and say thank you to you for coming today and for kicking this thing off. Please. Thank you very much, Dr. Hamria. It's a great pleasure to be here today. And I want to start by saying that this program is being conducted in conjunction with 70 or 80 other institutions around the world in 60 cities and 50 countries. And it is while it is happening simultaneously with the release of the global go to index, it is not about the index. It's about the important role that think tanks play in civil societies and governments around the world. I want to thank our distinguished panel of foreign policy specialists, which represents the best and the brightest in terms of institutions and scholars who are working and struggling with the very difficult policy challenges we face in an increasingly complex and problematic world. I want to say a few words about this program today in the United States. Last night it was a prelaunch in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania where this whole project got started when I was doing my doctoral dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania. Larry Summers' mom is my mentor and has been pushing and following my work. If you know Anita since I finished my dissertation in the 80s and continues to do that. And so it was appropriate that the prelaunch be in Philadelphia at the University of Pennsylvania. This morning here in Washington, we always do a launch in Washington. And then at quarter 10 you'll see me rush out of this meeting to catch a 10-20 train to New York. And this afternoon, there will be a panel at the United Nations for all of the diplomats and the think tanks and foundations in New York. Additionally, there will be a launch in Chicago and in Texas at the Baker Institute. So the objective is to connect think tanks around the world. Each one of the launches that is taking place, the events that are taking place are organic. And I've encouraged every institution to develop their own program. I participated at 7.20 this morning with a launch and program at Gateway House in Mumbai, in Poland, in Ukraine where the issues are really clear. In Ukraine it's about European integration and the role the think tanks can play. In Poland the threat in terms of Ukraine posed in terms of Poland. So PISM, which is the leading institution there, is engaging in a launch in Beijing, China, in Shanghai, all around the world. They're talking about issues and the role the think tanks play. And that's really the objective. The objective of the rankings while everyone follows them closely and wants to know where they are. And I am both famous and infamous for the rankings in terms of depending where people are. But the basic objective is really to highlight the important and critical role the think tanks play around the world. A word about the genesis of the global go-to rankings because people wonder where they came from and how they were developed. It was directly related to a series of consulting assignments that the William and Flora Yulet Foundation asked me to do when they were designing a multi-million dollar think tank initiative. They wanted to know how they would measure pre, in process and post effectiveness of the grants that they were making so that they could gauge whether their investment in think tanks around the world would have any impact. And so they asked me to review the literature and interview a range of institutions and actors who had funded, started, and evaluated think tank initiatives. I did that interview to about 125 people. And from that cold, what were the commonalities, the most frequently cited questions or answers in terms of the effectiveness of think tanks? And from that, I developed a list of criteria and made the recommendation to Yulet Foundation that they might use some or all of these criteria to integrate into the evaluative instruments they were designing pre, in process and post grants. It was surprising to me and I would point out that major significant funding for think tanks in 1989 and Eastern and Central Europe and beyond, when I asked people what did you hope to achieve at the outset? What did, in terms of effectiveness, they could not answer the question. Everything was expo facto, and it was troubling to me. And so I felt that this criteria was important not only for the larger community, but also that it would improve and help think tanks understand, when a group of experts looked at think tanks, what they thought were important. And from that came the now 20 plus criteria that we have developed that look at a range, a whole range of issues. And one of the things that people always come to me is why you should just focus on web hits or publications. And the reality is, in terms of the effectiveness of think tanks, it's really a range of elements that ultimately determines whether a think tank is important, whether it has influence and whether it has impact. And while I'm not a big fan of high impact philanthropy, which is a catchphrase in terms of the philanthropic community, I am concerned about increasing the profile capacity, performance and impact of think tanks. And the criteria, I believe, helps in that. Finally, I qualify every time I have this opportunity. It is one measure of a think tank's performance. It is not the end all and be all or the defining measure metric for looking at the performance or determining the performance of think tanks. It's one. But it is a helpful one, I hope. And if I've achieved anything clearly with the rankings, it has helped increase the profile around the world in many countries. Policymakers, philanthropists are now turning to think tanks and the obligation now for think tanks, whether it's in China or in Germany or in the United States, is to deliver. Because there is a great promise. And finally, and one of the distinguishing characteristics in terms of the report this year, is the fact that I identify a whole range of very fundamental challenges that are presenting an existential challenge to think tanks, that think tanks need to understand and in some respects redefine and reinvent themselves to meet those challenges or I believe they will go the way of dinosaurs. On that positive note, but the point is that many of the institutions I will end on a positive note that people sort of recoiled when I said that, is that many of the institutions here, many of the institutions that are on the top of the list around the world are effectively managed institutions. They're doing credible, transparent work in terms of key policy issues and they are on the cutting edge in terms of technology and how to communicate in a new world where it's mobile, infographics, et cetera, doing it in a quality and rigorous way and getting the attention of policymakers and the public and communicating in a way that they can understand. That's the important challenge. That's the important role that think tanks play and I hope you share that. And I'm sure this morning's panel will demonstrate that both eloquently and effectively. Thank you very much. Yeah, good morning everyone. I'm going to welcome our panelists. My name is Heather Conley. I'm Senior Vice President here at CSIS and I look after the Europe and Eurasia space. Thank you to Dr. Hamry, to Dr. McCann. Dr. Hamry's right. We don't often sit and talk publicly about the work of think tanks. I have had multiple conversations with our very distinguished panel on NATO, modern deterrence, looking at geopolitical trends, but this is a great opportunity. We often talk about our work when we're able to grab a cup of coffee with each other and say, how's it going? What are you up to? But we never have a chance to talk about our business. So this is sort of a, we're welcoming you into a coffee clatch. We're going to talk amongst ourselves a little bit this morning about the work of think tanks. Dr. McCann was absolutely right. Our distinguished panel is the best of the best in my view in this town and let me briefly introduce them with us. We have in the middle, the rows between the thorns, no, no. Julianne Smith, Senior Fellow and Director of Strategy and Statecraft at the Center for a New American Security. And immediately to my left, we have Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President of the Atlantic Council and over to the far corner, Michael O'Hanlon, Senior Fellow and Co-Director, the Center for 21st Century Security Intelligence as well as the Director of Research of the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. That's tough to fit on a business card but we know the important work that Mike does at Brookings. Well again, what I'm going to do about 50% of our conversation, we're going to talk about the business of think tanks and then I can't help, we have such a brain trust here. We're going to slide a little bit into the geopolitics and the security and defense trends that we're following as well. So after this, you'll find the PDF, the report of the go-to index for your reading pleasure but what I thought I would do is pull out a couple of the trend lines that Dr. McCann has found in his survey work about think tanks, emerging issues and just really have a conversation and get your ideas and thoughts. As a moderator, I'm going to restrain myself but I may have to pop in every once in a while to put my opinion in there. Dr. McCann writes in his report that there's four issues that are really challenging think tanks, more issues to address, more actors in the issues, more competition amongst ourselves and he says more conflict, more conflict to review. So what I thought we'd do is talk about some of those issues, the increased complexity. I'm often struck when I speak to journalists or I'm helping a foreign official understand these problems are getting more detailed, more complex and it's hard to simplify and communicate. Julie, let me begin with you. How do you break down the increasing complexity of the policy issues that we're facing today? Well, thanks and thank you for all of your work on this report. We got a glimpse last night. It was interesting flipping through and I agreed with much of it in terms of the challenges that we face but on the complexity issue, I think there is something to that and it is a challenge for all of us in think tanks. Traditionally, a lot of our work is split either functionally or regionally, you've got your Middle East program or your WMD program, counter-terrorism, whatever it is and increasingly the world isn't broken up so cleanly in a nice orderly fashion and it creates challenges for us inside think tanks. We have to find kind of cross-disciplinary ways to work together but it also creates complications in terms of having an impact on the outside. It's no longer a case where it's just important to have an impact with government officials and trying to go in and plant seeds and get people to follow some good idea you may have or pursue some concept but now you've got to have strong links to the private sector, to media. There are corporations that take a leading role. I mean if you think about, just think about innovation and how innovation from a national security perspective often resided in the public sector. You think about DARPA and things like that. Now innovation comes from multiple corners of this town in this country and so think tanks the degree that they want to have an impact and play in that space, you're really working. It is kind of the Joe Nye three-dimensional chess board of the people you're trying to have an impact on and the people you want to relate to in your research but also again there's an internal piece to that that you can't just be the Middle East guy. You have to find others that can help fill the pieces on the challenges that we're facing today and that's difficult particularly from a funding perspective which I know we'll get to. We are going to get to Mike. Thank you. I agree with everything that Julian's just said but I want to also add a different way to look at it sort of the flip side of the coin which is that you also need to keep in mind a clear purpose for whatever you're working on and hopefully a simple purpose. So complexity is a reality but let me just give an example or two and because we're all privileged here to be representing not only our own think tanks but the broader community, let me give an example from one of my favorite studies that was done by none of our think tanks and it was a smaller one, the Center for Global Development and a scholar named Steve Radelay who wrote a book about four years ago on Africa and I love it partly because I was a Peace Corps volunteer in the former Zaire when Africa was a complete mess in most quarters and Radelay points out there were a lot of things that are now starting to work at Africa and it's mostly because of Africans themselves getting their act together in many areas with their democracies, with their economies and so there was a simple theme. It was a theme about hopefulness a theme about empowerment and about good decision making in Africa and how everything else that he wanted to argue in that book my interpretation of the book at least was to reinforce that central thrust and that central message. So yes there was complexity, there's 50 some countries obviously not all of them are doing well there are a lot of problems in Africa but also there was a hopefulness that needed to be built upon and recognized and celebrated. So he had a simple message to deal with a complex world and when you can do that then you have a purpose you're not just describing a world you're trying to make a difference you have a certain key message you're trying to have someone come away with and I think that's a good example of what we are also trying to accomplish in this book. And Damon the complexity question what Julie was saying is you have to know a little bit about everything you have to have a multi-stakeholder a process to get all the pieces of the puzzle yet what the trends we're finding is there's an increased drive for specialization such specific technical knowledge on very specific issues how does the Atlantic Council deal with that that conundrum of needing to go general but needing to have that specific knowledge. Absolutely Heather I agree with much of what my colleagues have said what you've laid out the complexity and the nature of the challenges what we're facing today really does demand that you've got to be able to combine the expertise that you have whether it be on energy on our Africa and be able to bring those together you're gonna actually understand the issue that you're trying to tackle and so in many respects the conundrum that Jim has outlined in the report that you've underscored to open this up I think has made a more compelling need for the work that we have on the outside of think tanks all of us have experience inside government you're drinking from the fire hose it's very operational and you've got to deal with the immediacy and you're also dealing with bureaucracies that are stove piped and what I see now is how do you actually leverage the relationships on the outside the think tanks we're not substituting for governments that have the operational day-to-day responsibility but we actually understand the relevance of what decision makers are having to deal with and we can formulate the projects the work that we undertake that is purpose oriented it's not research and academic work for its own sake it's actually targeted at some type of purpose and be able to mesh together and as we do at the Atlantic Council we divide our work between various 10 different centers and programs that break down functionally regionally but we know if we're going to get an issue right even if we're focused specifically on an issue like Ukraine if we can't bring our energy team together our trade team together our EU expertise together with our Eurasian Russian expertise along with our military security expertise we're actually not going to be able to address that challenge, that problem and so I think it presents an opportunity for us to be one step removed from the immediate policymaking process but understand what goes into that being able to have our eyes up on what's coming down the pike with folks that understand what you're going to need to feed into that process to take good decisions and then we have a responsibility for having some of the best expertise but making sure that we don't fall back into what we often confronted in government stovepipe bureaucracies to give the right kind of analysis to me it's both a policy and a structural challenge and we fight it within our organizations, the regional versus the functional and we know government does the same thing and I think sometimes governmental responses will create a new bureau we're creating more to handle the complexity, sometimes it's just more and you need to break it down and I think in some ways we're struggling at a micro level on the same issue I think Damon you raised a point I have to say sometimes I feel like the reason life is to be an interpreter and a translator for both sides for governments and other governments to understand why the U.S. is taking decisions or what is motivating it or not motivating it and on the other side interpreting that for the private sector, for civil society and understanding these currents how do you in your daily work do you feel the same way that you serve as a translator as an interpreter of foreign policy trends U.S. domestic policy trends after the State of the Union address I feel like I've been asked to do domestic policy analysis that I am not equipped to do I can barely follow European political analysis but is that an issue that comes up in your daily work? Certainly Heather and I think part of it is look we're out there bringing some of the best and brightest into our communities who can be who do credible research, who understands to have an expertise that gets them into the conversation because they bring some real knowledge to the equation that can be dispassionate and analytical and help interpret as you say but I think one of the important things that does distinguish the work and that we try to focus on it is to what end and it's not just sufficient to be the observer and analyst out there it's what are we mobilizing this around and what are we doing it for and for us at the Atlanta Council we bake this into our mission and that it is the idea to actually continue to sustain US global leadership and engagement in the world recognizing that we've got to work intimately with our allies and global partners to tackle the most difficult challenges that we face on our agenda and I think it's that linkage of yes having the expertise, knowledge the ability to be able to be dispassionate and analytical and help people truly understand what's playing out in a way that recognizes a bipartisan ethos but doing something with that some type of use and focus and I think that's how we want to try to inform every initiative, every program we're doing so that the people that are working at staffing can be respected both sides of the aisle they're credible, they can be dispassionate analysts with media but they're going to use that ability to try to actually serve a greater purpose and a greater mission because fundamentally it's what we're grappling with right now what is the role of the United States in the world today what kind of global leadership role should we be playing and is their ability to kind of develop some center of gravity around that that's actually going to serve greater interests Purpose is a key message also, Mike and your great example Mike, how does technology change how you do your work day to day and I'm going to ask Julie this question as well true confession I am a technological dinosaur I've been kicking and screaming and dragged into blogs and tweets and I'm resisting this but I know I must do it the way you do your work I'm going to answer that in a second quickly comment on the previous question as well because I like very well phrased but I also want to give an example because I agree with the main point we are translating but we're also trying to shift the debate and let me give one very specific example it's one that's been dealt with by a number of the think tanks up here so right now President Obama would like to see all U.S. combat forces out of Afghanistan at the end of next year a lot of us who have been writing about this including people like Michelle Flournoy who is Mr. Obama's Undersecretary of Defense for Policy or my colleague Bruce Rydell who helped Mr. Obama with his initial Afghanistan policy review have publicly disagreed with this position but they've done it with a certain empathy and understanding trying to translate to an audience why Mr. Obama perhaps got to this place after 14 or 15 years you might want to end a war it was not a crazy idea to have that aspiration but why still he's sort of pushing the logic too far in wanting a complete withdrawal so it's a combination of having the understanding of the challenges policymakers face in the real world as you said but also being willing to disagree even when it's someone of your own political party or someone you worked with or for and so I think that's just been a nice set of examples on this particular debate on technology Heather I'm not unlike you and I'm actually I'm a big fan and I don't want to sound anti Twitter but I'm a big fan of Jim Clancy who just got fired this week because he tweeted a little inadvertently over at CNN and I think Twitter is a potentially useful but potentially dangerous mechanism because there's a premium placed on humor and on pithiness and sometimes we have to translate and show nuance and explain that decisions are harder than they look not simpler and more obvious than they look and something that forces you to do it within 160 characters is inherently dangerous so I've learned over the years I came out of an academic background as many of us did and we wrote books and Brookings has always been about books and I'm very happy about that and proud about that but I also recognize we need to put things into shorter terms and I've become a big fan over my career of the op-ed 800 words actually is enough space to develop a little bit of an argument 160 characters is not so I think we need to be skeptics on technology even as we embrace it and we all know we've all got great colleagues who help us with technology it's become a much higher part of the think tank mission is to get the message out in many ways all that's generally to the good but specifically there are certain potential danger zones and I think we have to be careful and I'm just in the interest of not giving a full comprehensive assessment to take a little risk of going after Twitter and just say that's a specific example of where you have to be really careful Julie what do you think and I know Damon who's a queer master I know I almost brought it up to reach your gold standard he has a gold standard but on the question of translation I mean it really is a two way street particularly with our friends abroad and I think looking back on if I take my experience in the Pentagon I think about those engagements where secretary Gates or Panetta would get maybe at best 30 minutes with an ally and you had a lot of ground to cover in 30 minutes and so you get these quick you know we'd like you to help us here we need to work together there what do you think about X maybe 5, 10 minutes on any subject and then it really that person usually the principal of country X will then spend a day or two running around town talking to different think tanks at the embassy and that's where you can unpack everything that was discussed so I heard secretary Gates say or Panetta or the president say they're getting out of Afghanistan by a certain date you know why would that happen and that's where someone like Michelle and others can sit around the table and say look this is how we got here but then they're also in receive mode in those dinners and engagements and then they will go see their former colleagues and we all do this regularly go back to see folks at Pentagon State the White House and say you know we've spent now the last couple of months listening to our allies from Asia or Europe or Latin America on this issue and you know what we're hearing is this is creating real issues and challenges for our allies they have concerns they have difficulties they need more hardware they need a different diplomatic push whatever it is we then can transmit the other direction and I think that role can not be underestimated and again having served in government and seeing those engagements first of all sometimes they don't happen at all so if it's a lower level person they just can't get on the schedule of some official they want to see if they do it short or maybe instead of ten meetings they get two meetings and so supplementing what happens on the government to government dialogue with what happens in places like CSIS is absolutely critical on the technology piece I mean I think there is kind of a strategic attention challenge for all of us it's that you know we get distracted and we it seems like this week on Twitter everybody's trending and want to talk about Ukraine you know and you feel compelled to do media outreach and have a couple tweets or maybe throw on a last minute event you didn't plan or take a trip and then two weeks later it's oh wait a minute I see now we're over here just some other subject and so it does for people on government in particular but also for those of us on the outside now it does create challenges in your ability to maintain focus to keep your you know your research agenda clear concise explain to your funders why you're going to stay the course when this is very hot over here it's enormously challenging and again particularly from a policymaking perspective it's just very very hard to keep up. I'm going to end Leigh Stainman in a second but I think Julie the media social media spurs this what Jim in the report calls short-termism which means it's driving us to focus on today what is today's events means what is it was important but I think our unique role in think tanks at least what we want to have more time to do and you never quite have it is that long term we need to start looking at these broader trends that need 3, 5, 10 longer years and do that arc stick on those long term research projects that may not be the hottest topic in the world but we know it's an emerging we've got to get our hands on it but yet I feel in a daily basis I'm being pulled into analyze the Greek elections on Sunday analyze ECB decision today or whatever it is a Paris attacks and you just get and it doesn't leave that time where I think are unique places is trying to get to the medium and the long term but you my friend are the tweeting master so you tell us why we're the dinosaurs here I'm going to take a little bit look this is a marketplace of ideas and the reality one of the great trends that we're going through right now is the rise of individual power and shaping the global agenda whether it's in a democracy like ours where you have to have public support if you're going to reverse a decision on Afghanistan or whether it's in the Middle East where protests and authoritarian regimes have led to fundamental volatility and change that is dominating our agenda whether you like it or not one of the great trends is individual empowerment that's directly connected to technology and so I see it not even I am a fan of talk technology but I see it as a compelling part of our business because if we aren't relevant to the conversations that are taking place today how are you actually going to be relevant to shaping the long term trajectory here so it's a little bit of a false choice to say I want to stay completely focused narrowly on my three-year research project the point is how do you run an initiative that is focused on the outcome of purpose maybe long term while using it throughout that course of that process to engage decision makers to play on the debates of the today that are helping to shift and move a debate in a more strategic direction over time and so I come back to Twitter and it breaks down to us thinking about our constituencies and we track this ourselves we watch who's in the room we're doing events how many times are we engaging members of Congress, foreign ministers and it's a different constituency when we think about our online audience it doesn't mean it is it means you have to sort of bifurcate and think a little bit about that but there are times when that constituency matters a lot for us when we are running something it's not just one tweet it's part of something we usually are trying to use in fact we actually have a social media team and we build a campaign around an initiative around a large event so that we are incredibly growing the community that is part of the conversation you know we've got 150 people in this room that's great but we want to use social media to be able to get the echo chamber to impact a much larger audience and some of that audience may not matter that much but sometimes it is a galvanizing force the other reality is my Twitter account is go ahead give us your number make a sense Charles no no I won't do that but I I'm working I'm online on Twitter with about 50 either foreign ministers, state secretaries all across Europe and Asia in a way that I have yes many of these relationships are personal relationships and you can pick up the phone and you can email but the frequency with which a minister is able to put out a quick statement in a rapidly moving environment where the media cycle unfortunately demands to know what's the position of the government what are you doing here but that interconnectedness among many of its decision makers through Twitter is actually quite powerful as well so I'll stop with that but using it to bring in Google Hangouts to do echo chambers what live webcast and what you're doing you do have to ask yourself is it worth it are you doing the right things is it a compelling so you don't do everything this way absolutely not we run probably 500 events in the course of the year and a sliver of those are public or sliver of those are actually webcast have social media presence but at times it matters because the world today is increasingly shaped by what individuals and public opinion it matters in our business it is a powerful tool I think it is transitioning and involving our work and it's powerful and I but I think you know to Mike's point it's also about the quality of discourse too and I think again getting back to the bipartisanship and the respectfulness that this debate must have that's where we have to sometimes slow it down a little bit maybe not being so immediate in the response and sometimes as I tell my daughter put the smart vote down let's talk you know let's let's get out of the that that dynamic let me turn to two questions that I were posed in the report are you concerned that there are new institutions that are hybrid organizations meaning they are a nonprofit think tank but they've also have a portion of them that now do advocacy so not only we promoting new ideas and trying to shape public policy in the debate but there are now organizations that are having a second side to themselves where they're actually lobbying they're advocating for a particular role does that concern you or will that influence how our industry is viewed? I'll say two quick things on that one is that it concerns me but I think transparency is often the most important response I do worry about excessive partisanship at think tanks because I think that can skew independent objective work but I think there is sometimes a role for advocacy if you believe in your idea so let me give another example from a small think tank the enough project which isn't even really per say a think tank but it's a wonderful organization by John Prendergast and others that has tried to call attention to genocide and other mass atrocities in Africa and other parts of the world and of course they've got an agenda and of course they're trying to promote it and sometimes at more established think tanks that don't have as much of a specific agenda we're proud to try to play a small role in chiming in support of something like that at an individual level so I don't want to say that advocacy is bad we all believe in public policy outcomes so we wouldn't be in this business in the first place but you have to be transparent and you have to be very careful when an organization that's billing itself as a think tank has a very strong partisan or even excessively constraining ideological predilection does it blur the lines? does it cause maybe you don't grapple with it is it something that you think about? absolutely I mean in our society there's absolutely a role for advocacy for human rights watch to have some folks registered as lobbyists to go up and promote their agenda I get it and it should be I think the important part is that there is transparency and disclosure of who you're dealing with and that's related to the fact of whether you're actually doing formal lobbying and the advocacy work but it also relates a lot to where your funding sources are coming from as well and I think that's where we have an additional responsibility to maintain we try to create the safe space for debate in Washington where yes many of our staff, our boards folks that come to our meetings have partisan views but they know when we're convening around something that this is actually where they're coming to do serious work about how do we actually forge sustainable policy for the long term and I think that's for us that's a pretty important position to play it's fundamental to who we are and to maintain that I think there has to be clarity into the role you expect that you're playing whether you're consistent with 501 3C status and how you're managing these with policies that are open that are transparent that are disclosed but it isn't to cast a shadow over the role of advocacy or even lobbying in our society it's just being very cognizant and aware of where that's coming from and what's motivated Before I turn to you, thank you both for introducing the topic I really wanted to talk about was transparency, normally we're quoted in the press but we've been a subject of reports ourselves about you know is there an inherent conflict of interest in how we do our work when we get funded by a corporation by an individual, by a foundation by a government and so I think we've been challenged to say how do we improve that transparency and I think in some ways it comes part of you get beyond the beltway quite frankly maybe this is an overgeneralization I ask a relative what do you do I work in a think tank what's that I think there's just a lack of understanding of our work but I think there's a real demand for all of us to do better in terms of transparency ensuring that conflict of interest Julie how has CNAS approached the question of transparency and then I want to touch from Mike from Brookings as well as from Atlantic Council how you all have tackled that issue Well there's kind of multiple approaches that you have to take I mean first and foremost you have to be transparent about who's funding your work and who's funding a particular project or dinner or gathering and make sure that there's you know nothing about supporting your work and reading your work about where the support is coming from but you also want to then message the people who are supporting your work to say we reserve the right to do independent research we will shape this as we see fit you do not get to come in and reverse engineer anything that we're doing it's not predetermined if we do accept support from you as an individual as a foundation as a foreign government whoever it may be a corporation we're not here to support your views we're not here to promote your views but there are instances where someone can say you know we don't believe people are focused on this issue and we want people to research this issue so in that sense they're guiding your research they're coming to you they're saying we'd like to provide support for you to do research on X because we feel a deeper more comprehensive dialogue needs to be taking place on this and say got it we will drive that dialogue you don't get to shape the outcome but so the conversation has to be kind of multi-track to the people participating in your work who's supporting us be clear about that up front the people supporting you make sure they understand their set relationship with your researchers with your high level managers with your board and how that should work and set expectations be transparent the reality is that in today's environment we are all accepting funding from multiple sources it is not a single source universe we don't all go to a single foundation we go to multiple different layers of society for support and frankly I think that's what makes our work very unique and important in many cases it is important to have projects that sometimes are funded by both the private sector and public foundations or to have something that's in part funded by the US government but also has a private sector sponsor these stakeholders bring different insights and that's the strength of our work so I know it's been difficult there seems to be you know every few years folks want to write some story about the degree to which outside players are shaping the research agenda of all of our research institutes but frankly I think we've got you know we're we've got a strong case to make I personally I've always felt 100% sure and confident about the way in which institutions like CSIS when I was here handled it and now perfectly comfortable with the way in which CNIS I've never felt that anyone can come to me and pull a lever and say gee Julie I read your draft this doesn't play too well you know we'd like you to delete this whole paragraph and that would never happen and I think folks sometimes have the impression that's what's happening behind the scenes but do they come to us and say gee no one's really looking at Latin America we'd like to plus up your work that's an influence they're influencing your research agenda that way but they're not specifically dictating look a little more on Brazil a little less on you know in that case so it's hard to talk about it again for folks who aren't in this universe it's very hard to wrap your head around the way in which we operate where the money comes from how we do our research how we select our research agenda and all the rest but it's you know again from where I sit right now I don't I don't have any reason to question kind of our ability to maintain 100 percent control over what we're doing Mike what's Brookings thinking about in this I mean Julie said it so well we could we could spend more time I could try to say it again but I just want to totally support her I'm very glad that she finished on the point that I you know I would reiterate and say fairly unapologetically I thought some of the media reporting on this issue was tendentious this year I thought it invented a problem where in fact think tanks have been working very hard to be clear for a long time about how we do have multiple sources multiple points of view all the think tanks represented here certainly have done this with complete conviction and have been very conscious of the need to do it for a long time and so I thought some of the reporting was better than others I probably don't want to rehash article by article but the original big splash in early September by the New York Times I will say that I thought was tendentious and I thought it was creating the appearance of a problem where in fact none really existed it to the scope that was identified now yes one could be more transparent we were actually pretty darn transparent before that article something tanks maybe not as much but basically everyone knows that the think tanks represented here and most of the ones that I work are very adamant about being transparent and reflecting multiple points of view and having an open debate so if you want to challenge us on a specific report go ahead but to create this image of a conspiracy or sort of the inside Washington that operates in this conspiratorial way I thought was false I'll give one very concrete example if you don't mind from my own past in 2007 Ken Pollock Tony Cordesman and I went to Iraq during the surge Tony's here of course Ken and I are at Brookings and we came back and we wrote two different things Ken and I wrote one article Tony wrote another we actually didn't even have the exact same consensus view amongst the three of us but we all said things that were big league unpopular with certain constituencies and and I'm confident it's true here it was certainly true for Ken and me we got no flak from anybody Strobe was very proud of what we wrote and he said you went to Iraq you researched this you wrote what you thought was correct that's what I want you to do that's what Brookings is all about meanwhile that was a that was a pro-surge article meanwhile my colleague Susan Rice at Brookings at the time and not to mention a few others were rather skeptical and I think history since then and before then offers plenty of ammunition for both sides of the debate but the point being that we had an open forum that September 2007 in which six of us from Brookings in this particular case we did it all in the family but we had a sort of a debate about how do we think Iraq's going and where is it headed and that's fairly typical of the institutions represented here. I just wanted to add to that in two ways I mean first of all if you think about it I actually welcome this discussion of this debate as Jim has informed all of us there are about 6,000 institutions around the world that call themselves think tanks and so I think an expectation of certain transparency and ethical standards being raised across the bar is actually quite healthy conversation because it does matter and I think it matters for our industry that there be credibility behind the work that we do and so I welcome this I think it's an intimate part to getting our business model right but if you go back to what our business model is we're in the marketplace of ideas and ideas come from individuals they come from great people with great talent you are kidding yourself if you think you can hire someone who frankfurt your doni and best or john herp if you hire folks who have been working on these issues in their career and you think they're going to come to a place where you're going to tell them what they have to write or say you're not going to stay there our business is premised on the best minds the best intellects and the best expertise and to attract the best talent everybody has to do if you're going to be at the top of your game we have clarity of intellectual independence we have it formally written out as a policy we have it embedded in all of our donor agreements that there is intellectual independence for those on our staff and our scholars that work here and the reality is that many of the folks leading key programs have fairly open public policy records on these issues and it's not as if all of a sudden you can expect to buy their view that's just not how it works and if it was you'd actually see your best talent going somewhere else and I think that's quite quite healthy so transparency across the board the focus on having the best talent means you've got to protect your people and let them put forward ideas and what Mike points out we actually often celebrate this fact that we will have disagreements within our staff on certain issues the point is can we be a platform for debate on something that's really challenging even if you've got dramatically different views about how you deal with Putin today which we do on our staff how do you actually foster what is a really difficult discussion and debate in our society and our politics to help map a way forward I agree with all of you I think that transparency is always a good thing and all of our institutions we've had stated policies our reputation and your integrity as an analyst is based upon that people view you as an impartial independent actor on it and I think that's critical I'm a member of CSS has created an ethics council and I think what I've learned through this process and as we're strengthening or making more transparent what we already had available to us it's a series of daily decisions and in some ways this is infusing professional training particularly for our young professionals it's a daily decision about what to tweet about how you acknowledge other people's work that you're you know it's all of that it's a series of daily conversations and training but I couldn't agree with you more while I think it's always an opportunity we always want to improve ourselves and it's very hard to read things in the New York Times about our work and I agree with you it would have been better to have a balanced conversation because we have very strong conflict of interest language it's exactly as Julie says this is what we do it's hard to have that question to read that being question but I think we come out stronger from it for me it's been an opportunity to explain to people how we do our work and I think we could always use those opportunities to do that but let me turn to another particular issue fundraising and in some ways that was in part the discussion about the transparency we have to work very hard every day in our work to fundraise how big of a challenge is that how much does that consume your day to day work and how do you think it's been shifting over the last several years Damian I'll start with you so I came out of the US government to come work at a think tank and had not raised a penny in my life I didn't know this world at all was quite concerned about it and I thought this was quite concerned I have to figure out how to do program work and fundraising what I've realized is it's actually false to make that distinction if you love what you're doing if you love what you're working on and that's actually pretty easy to do and you're happy with the daily content of your work and frankly I think we're pretty spoiled to have the luxury to be able to work on some of the most difficult issues on the national security form policy agenda with a degree of independence around this and I have found this sort of the integration of doing great work and sharing their stories about great work is what you're doing when it comes to fundraising and it's not a way to think about it as an added burden or an issue we're in a marketplace of ideas and if your ideas are not relevant then there's a challenge if you're not actually being able to make progress on a set of ideas whether it is getting folks to listen to it on Capitol Hill and Administration or internationally or to attract funding behind what you're doing you have to ask yourself are we working, are we doing the right thing so I think folks have exaggerated the distinction sometimes too much and I think it is quite important to integrate the passion behind what people are doing why are they working there in the first place and then let them share that and I think that's the essence of what you need to do to be a successful fundraiser as be a successful executor on the work that you're doing Julie, I won't be as rosy I think, you know Damon's right if you believe in your mission and you're putting out good work and you're living it and widening your network promoting your work I mean in some ways it's like build it and they will come but I will say having worked at think tanks before I went into government in 2009 and now just stepping out I have seen a little bit of a shift in the challenges I think there are more and more sponsors, funders donors that are asking for an active role again not in controlling the research but we want to be present we want to be a partner we want to help shape the dialogue we want to be in the room which is all important and justified and completely valid but it creates another you go out and start a project donor X has agreed to give you a certain amount of money and then you're really hand in hand you're managing that relationship very closely throughout the duration of the project I want to ensure that you can show impact impact is the hottest thing proved to me that you're having impact which frankly is sometimes hard to do in think tank land you can't necessarily point to a policy coming out of assistant secretary's office of the state department and say my think tank was the only one that played in the space and we get full credit for this new policy that they're launching when in reality probably ten other think tanks were in that space as well to help push the agenda forward so there's the care and feeding and working with your supporters and donors and ensuring that they're satisfied that they're engaged they're part of the process that they understand the direction that you're taking there's the going out and finding new creative sources of funding when there's so many of us out there working on so many complex issues and they're showing the impact and by that you feel compelled to do the media work to go testify on the hill it's a three-ring circus and I think all of us when we do encounter someone you know I'm from Michigan and you're back home and what is it that you do you know you can say well I have to go out and ensure that my research and my projects are well supported I have to then promote that work I have to actually do the work I have to be sure I'm tweeting to keep up with Damon Wilton I have to testify in congress I want to make sure I'm traveling abroad and getting foreign insights and personal hobby horses that aren't funded and so I want to stay smart on turkey even if I'm not doing a project on turkey so trying to lay that out for someone it's like wow I thought you kind of had your feet up on the desk and you were holding a cup of coffee and thinking deep thoughts it's a little bit more complicated than that and so again not that everything's changed in the last couple of years but again having worked this before and now coming back to this environment it is I feel myself running a little faster and it's not impossible you're right if you're passionate about it I think that shines through and the supporters do come your way and appreciate your approach to a lot of hard challenging national security questions but it's tough I will be honest about that Julia just explained my life I mean what can you add to what was just been said brilliantly articulated by both of them and they're both right and I'm sure I'm speaking for all four of us as hard as it is we're all very grateful that we live in a country where there are corporations wealthy individuals, foundations that believe in the public policy process and feel some kind of a civic responsibility to try to help this space whether they like yours or yours or yours or my think tank, Harvard or Princeton or the University of Maryland whatever the broader academic slash think tank culture in this country is a real national treasure and we're all fortunate to have people who support us as we do that and I know I'm speaking for everyone when I say that let me talk a little bit about impact and then I want to bring our audience into this discussion I want to ask each of you and I have a different answer to this I'm sure what does success look like to you and please give an example what is the most successful thing you've done in the think tank space where you can sort of measure that impact maybe sometimes things take years but what does success look like the first one out let the others think I've got a collaborative example so before I went in to the Pentagon in 09 I worked in 08 with a group of think tanks on kind of an Atlantic Council among many looking at kind of a future agenda for the NATO alliance and this is when I was here at CSIS and a bunch of us decided that we were in essence going to all be marching towards the next NATO summit and we knew the alliance was about to draft a new strategic concept and we knew all of us would be competing for the same funding sources across Europe and across the United States and so instead of just all bringing out our sharpest elbows and going for it we did something somewhat unusual is from the get go at this day one we said hey let's scrap that let's not all put in 10 different proposals let's write something together let's convene we'll go out and get some funding collectively and we'll write a report and it'll be a blueprint for the next NATO summit and the Obama administration coming in and we'll articulate some of our ideas on what this new strategic concept can tackle I then went into the Pentagon with Jim Townsend who was at the Atlantic Council and who had drafted the report with me and the two of us had that under our arm and literally used that as our playbook with our colleagues over at state Phil Gordon and others who had also participated in this exercise and we had the playbook we had vetted it with allies it wasn't exactly, didn't unfold exactly as we all envisioned because of course you're always a little more provocative a little riskier on the outside but by and large I have to say that's one situation where it worked perfectly in terms of taking the people that were likely to head in and letting them the plays and letting them use that as their guide and we did each and every day and we used to joke about it we're like get the report out what did they say about niche capability specialization, out of area operations partnerships and we'd occasionally how'd that play out and we did look back over the years we're like oh we never got to that recommendation I wonder if we can still do something on that and it was great because for me having been at CSIS before I went in I didn't always feel like I could point to such a concrete example sometimes you do feel like you're walking in you hand them here's our memo and it's just right through the shredder thank you for your interest in national security you don't necessarily get the receptivity you always want people nod nicely and say alright I gotta run but in this case that was a perfect example of impact and it was so collaborative it felt good that we had all tried to row in the same direction let's try an example who's next, Damon? sure so I think this this is a really big issue for me because I think it's important that again our work matter why are we doing this to what end we expressly are not just academic universities and research so we actually go through a pretty formal strategic planning process of the Atlanta Council and each of our programs and centers works through particular on big ideas but what are you trying to do what's the impact you're going for then what's the talent that's going to do it what initiative are you driving that's going to get there what process engages decision makers what are the deliverables that come out of it how do you actually roll this out in a way that permeates a policy world a decision making process and can you step back and ask yourself did it even matter can you assess that and so we actually go through this up front doesn't always play out that way but for our staff to know one we hold them accountable for thinking that way and planning that way and if we look back over the course of the time we then go through a both qualitative and quantitative process I love data, I love numbers but I realize in this world we've got to be more nuanced than that so look what our Adrian Arch Latin America Center did this past year they put out a series of reports but one of its flagship reports was a pretty straightforward report that brought together pretty prominent pollsters from both Democratic and Republican side to run a nationwide poll with disproportionate sampling size in Florida and New Jersey on American attitudes towards Cuba and it was a report that the team put out actually recognizing there were divergences of view on the staff about what the policy application should be what you should do with Cuba but put out a report that actually kind of made the case pretty clearly that it's not the third rail of American politics that you might think look at what where the gravity of American public opinion stands on normalization of relations with Cuba and in fact Parsis in Florida, Parsis in New Jersey where you have disproportionately influential Cuban American communities and it was a lightning rod report that generated more media than anything else we put out last year our team was very clear and understood we did a lot of private briefing before we went to the senator's offices that were going to be supportive and our team went to the senator's offices that were going to be a little upset about it and insured preview we did the same with the administration and then our team actually traveled Miami, Chicago, New York to talk to key communities about this and the reality was many on the team were not necessarily making the case for an opening for Cuba and I think it would be extraordinarily presumptuous for the Atlanta council to claim you paved the path for President Obama's decision on Cuba but it did play a big role in people's thinking and understanding of how that issue cut an international issue cuts back at home and I think the team had a voice that mattered on that set of issues the way we look at this is we do think qualitatively and we have our teams come back and we actually capture particular anecdotes and some of them you can share and some of them it's actually pretty inappropriate to share or some of them it would be presumptuous to claim credit even if your team played a role with something because a lot of what you want to do is private based on relationships of confidence but we combine what we look at qualitative assessments of our programs with a range of quantitative indicators and we track everything related to our events our publications, our online audiences we have, we track how the members of congress that our teams are briefing these metrics of impact if you will, media mentions even the financial numbers behind it to give us in the aggregate a holistic picture of whether a particular initiative or program is making a difference I like that they're putting an impactful part of the strategic planning process I'll choose an example that allows me to also give a couple of shout outs to a couple of other think tanks including a smaller one and thinking up on something John Henry said before the need for the back and forth of the U.S.-China relationship and to say a couple of words, obviously a very big relationship with a lot of input on the military side of this relationship a small think tank called the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has done path-breaking work Andy Krepenevich and others there and they've helped create this notion of air-sea battle which basically said in a nutshell and forgive me Andy and others for oversimplifying while the United States is bogged down in a rocket Afghanistan let's not forget the IS has had a lot to say about that CNAS as well, the Atlantic Council as well Mike Green being one of my favorites of all in this whole thing but in the process of this basically CSBA and Krepenevich said we got to be careful not to overdo the military focus on the Middle East to the point where we don't think hard about the Asia-Pacific this played into the whole rebalance or pivot concept as well but it was a military analysis that Krepenevich and Company did and it basically helped the Navy and the Air Force in particular focus on the need to integrate some of their communications and intelligence and missile defense systems and a few other things it had some very specific programmatic benefits to my mind that was all to the good it also had some rough edges it also risked being interpreted by China in particular as being directed at them this is nothing against the original concept but it required some debate and some refinement and some consideration about other dimensions of it and that's where I had the pleasure along with some of the think tanks represented here as well of trying to weigh in on this debate in a book that I did with Jim Steinberg the Dean of the Maxwell School at Syracuse which is affiliated with CSIS so this academic think tank Nexus is also important to keep in mind and the book came out of Jim's experience as Deputy Secretary of State to a large extent and the dangers that he saw in the relationship and the need for the United States and China as they maintained resolve in commitment of core interest that they felt very strongly about and Jim and I felt the United States should feel very strongly about our allies western Pacific security to still look for ways to take an edge off the rivalry which we see as quite dangerous and I know we're not alone in feeling that way and that debate continues and there are plenty of other participants in that debate and it's going to consume all of us for the rest of our lives let's face it it's going to be an epic event and we're going to need a lot of voices in this but a number of think tanks played a role CNAS has done great work CSIS, Atlantic Council but that's an example and also I should say very briefly in concluding my Brookings colleagues who are China and East Asia specialists Ken Lieberthal, Jeff Bader, Richard Bush David Dahler, several others have really helped the whole debate and helped me in this process so that's where you get a benefit a think tank that has a lot of regional depth like all of ours do as well my only one example if I may it's actually to do with our Arctic work and to get to one comment that Julie made earlier I don't think many Washington based think tanks would even have one thought about the Arctic but a funder at the time the Norwegian Research Council said this is really important and a changing area we think that there's some interest here and I was part of when Julie started this work before I came in a collaborative work with a Russian think tank and a Norwegian think tank and a German think tank so it was an international collaborative effort our second report looked at the future security architecture of the Arctic and we came up with a recommendation to create an Arctic Coast Guard form as part of sort of meeting a need, a gap in the governance structure a few months ago a Coast Guard colleague called me and said I want to send you a picture of the experts meeting of the Arctic Coast Guard form we're going to be launching that in March of this year, thank you and that was the first time I could actually put a dot to I wrote this report that I wasn't sure too many people wrote came up with the recommendation and it actually took several years it perked and it came to fruition but only because wonderful colleagues government and experts pulled some of their thinking together so that was my that was the most successful day I've had I think here just to watch something that came of an idea and watch it go through the process and turn out well speaking of impact let's get down to business here now we've finished talking about ourselves let's talk about the state of the world a little bit I think one of the most impactful moments for think tanks in Washington in particular is carrying up for a presidential election where the marketplace of ideas springs forth as we prepare a new American administration to do with the challenges what are and Julie the center for New Mexico has put out for a great new bipartisan group that's pulled together to sort of look at some of those key issues what are y'all thinking now we're transitioning to the season of presidential elections how will think tanks play into preparing the next administration for the challenges they face Mike, do you want to say anything? Here I'll give a shout out to a colleague at Brookings who I just love to hear the praises of Alice Rivlin Alice Rivlin who I think will turn 84 next month has not slowed down you don't want to be on the wrong side of the debate with her and she and a number of my colleagues at Brookings and we try to play a contributing role in our defense center are thinking hard about the deficit and the country's economic future as they always do and also we have people like Bruce Katz running our metropolitan studies program but with Alice and Bell Saw Hill and a few others Ron Haskins this is a group of people that has strong traditions in both parties and government service but also fundamentally independent thinkers picking up on Damon's point they're willing to tell both parties what they don't want to hear which to me is as important as anything else because everyone here knows that sometimes think tanks do produce people who go into administrations the work of the think tanks in terms of their recommendations or their overall gist and thrust but it's also important to have people who are ornery and academic and independent and contrarian enough that they enjoy telling people what they don't want to hear Michael is at you and to the extent that I can model myself after Alice she does it with a sweet smile but boy does she tell people what they need to hear and there are a lot of people who don't think tank worlds like that but we're going to need I'm a supporter of President Obama but the State of the Union address obviously was what Paul Songus might have called a little more from the panda bear about what you want to hear except for that top 1% and the Republicans are just as bad they're going to say well we can cut taxes and grow the economy and shrink the deficit and preserve the programs you really need and both parties want to maintain this and they both genuinely believe in their message to a large extent and also clearly unlikely to be fully correct in both cases and we're going to need all of us to be willing to as John F. Kennedy might have said ask what we can do for our country not just ask which part of our taxes are going to be cut or benefits increased so I think on the deficit the economic picture that's a place where historically Brookings has done a lot and I know other think tanks too and where I anticipate the need for some tough medicine next year and a half so a lot of the work that goes on at think tanks is done within somewhat of a bubble I mean it's the think tank community here in town trying to have impact on policy makers and working with yes other players around the country and around the world but it can be insular and so what we want to do at CNIS is launching a project really to have a broader conversation with the American public about America's role in the world I think we do find ourselves in an era where we have quite schizophrenic public attitudes about US leadership in some cases we've got retrenchment instincts we also have kind of this desire and urge to lead we're not sure how we define that we don't necessarily want another 10 year plus engagement but we don't want that to define US leadership but we don't necessarily want to sit everything out and so we're starting a dialogue with folks you would suspect we would start a dialogue with some of the heavy hitters, Republicans and Democrats to build first a bipartisan consensus on how you would shape US leadership for the next president moving forward and to think beyond the calls on the left and the right for us to sit on our hands and focus on all the challenges at home but then what we want to do is take that conversation abroad we want to take it to multiple cities across the United States and have a wider conversation with Americans that are feeling war weary that are worried about the domestic challenges that we face that are worried about the very real resource constraints that continue our ability to set priorities kind of what US leadership in the world should look like moving forward with a much wider conversation and so we'll be putting out op-eds and tweets and all the rest but taking the conversation outside the Beltway but starting with a group of people who genuinely believe that we need a fresh look at how we're going to define US leadership in this very complex environment we now find ourselves in. Damon what do you have cooking? Well let me just quickly add something on I think the role that we're all playing here certainly our international partners and allies, they watch the American political debate and they get quite concerned because of the nature of the partisan back and forth and it's sharp, it's vicious it's the nature of democratic politics I think one of the extraordinarily constructive things that all of our institutions are involved on is that serious people working on serious issues building up strong relationships over the years across party lines so even when you see the nastiest things happening on the domestic political front between the parties there is a pretty rich dialogue amongst people who are thinking seriously about the chat whether it's the budget or national security issues we know each other we create safe spaces where we work together even when there's political bickering particularly as we go into a presidential campaign the ability to be able to cultivate and sustain those links are quite critical because some will go in, some will stay out some will come out but there is ability at the end of the day we have a particularly unique role to play in the world and I think that's the core of what all of us are working on right now and the absence of some degree of a political center of gravity about what role the United States should do the world doesn't understand this we're an unreliable partner an unreliable superpower in the world is messy and I think what we're all working towards is yes you'll have differences you'll go right and left you'll have differences of views here but how do you actually over time create a sustainable relatively consistent set of guideposts on America's role in the world American-formed policy that allows us to be a predictable strong partner with our allies and partners on dealing with key issues and there's a sense that we've really gone from overreach to underreach and we're confusing the world today and it's these colleagues up here and many others who will align on campaigns, who will work on campaigns who will do the talking points as we go through debates and battles and all of that but still fundamentally everyone knows have a vested interest in the U.S. foreign policy success and I think that's often underappreciated because we like to focus on the political parts and battles and deny sometimes the reality of the connections and relationships that really underpin what hopefully is a bit of a more sustainable American approach on some key issues knowing that there will continue to be differences. We're a democracy, it's healthy but there's certain guideposts that we may be grappling for right now and I think if any of these efforts can help shape those as we move into a new administration that's not only good for the United States it's actually a pretty good thing for the world. Fantastic, I think we have time to take a few questions if we haven't talked ourselves through all the key issues so if we have oh great I have one question there and a colleague there and then we'll take right up here and then panelists will just have you we'll bundle them and have you respond to them thank you please identify yourself. Ken Meyer, Gord Roldox, it seems like I heard a contradiction in what was said today in that I think everyone agreed that the think tanks do have their agenda they're trying to promote a certain policy and at the same time they want to be impartial and have debate within the organizations so my question is whether the think tanks role is to promote a diversity of opinion and there are two ways they might do that one is through the people they hire the people they invite to participate in panels and in this regard I go to a lot of think tanks and I think they've utterly failed in this regard the panel today is a perfect example we have representatives from four of the most well-funded influential think tanks and nobody from the small struggling iconoclastic think tanks like the Institute for Policy Studies or the Center for Economic Policy Research the other way to spread diversity you might argue would be just to have think tanks that covered the spectrum of opinion but once again it cost money to run think tanks so as with everything else in this society from K Street industrial industry lobbyist to people in the government even the universities think tanks tend to I doubt if many people in this audience have ever heard of the Institute for Policy Studies or the Center for Economic Policy Research and you've virtually all heard of the four organizations we have represented here so in a sense the think tanks are just reinforcing the corporate domination of our society in the media in government itself in the think tanks is it the role of think tanks in either of these regards to higher people who have a diversity of opinion or just make sure that institutions that do have a different opinion can have some influence in the society or not. Thank you so much. If you just want to hand that microphone to the colleague right in front, thank you. Hi Bob Hine, I'm the Navy Fellow at Brookings I'd love to introduce conversations regarding the spectrum between Twitter op-eds, books you talked about having to keep up with the news cycle and the difficulty in explaining to people what you do and I'm curious as to whether you consider yourselves journalists pundits or academics. Thank you. Wow. Sir, yes please, thank you. Thank you, well thank you very much. I'm Andre Silpezo and I am the partner and director for Vietnam, Southeast Asia and Washington DC for the Interstate Traveller Company in Detroit, Michigan. Now, my question first of all, congratulations on a wonderful hard hitting realistic multivariate analysis of how think tanks work. It's really great. I have a specific question if I could on the work I guess it was that you were involved in sir on the in Iraq in 2007 and the question is this, obviously you went through so many things and but I'm just curious if in that early in 2007 something that is clear now was a came to light and that is that by deposing a brutal but essentially a secular Sunni dictator we and bringing in a more sectarian Shia government if that there was any indication that this would create fertile soil for the rise of Sunni extremism of the Islamic State for example. Thank you, well a broad range of questions Mike, I'll start and we'll work down the line if anyone would respond to any of those questions. Hopefully on Ken though because I'm sure others will probably pick that up too but I want to say a couple of things. First it was important to me to cite the important work of other smaller think tanks knowing full well that we are four think tanks that represent a big community and can't perhaps please you with that but it's important to me because I learn as much from the small think tanks as I do from the big ones and whether they're iconoclastic or not as long as they're smart and creative and serious I take your point and I'll emphasize I'll agree with you at least on that part of what we're describing yet. Secondly at Brookings we don't take institutional positions on anything even that the earth is round so if anyone wants to support John Prendergast and the effort to stop genocide in country X, Y or Z they're doing it as a Brookings senior fellow but under their own name and that's our effort to make sure that we don't have an agenda even though there are some causes that are obviously like that one presumably fairly non-controversial. On the specifics of Iraq one that is I know we're not going to rehash the Iraq debate here in detail I guess to link your question to what we're talking about today what I would say is that one important test of think tanks would be did we help highlight the key debates and issues at various junctures along the way and on the Iraq question I could go through and score us or evaluate us both me and my own work individually and the broader community and I think it's fair to say that the United States probably went into the war with a little too much consensus at the time including even in the think tank world and including perhaps even with me what I tried to do with Ken Pollack and Phil Gordon and others was to underscore that if we went in it was going to be hard but I didn't oppose it and I think I was vindicated in saying it was going to be hard perhaps I was wrong in not opposing it but the question is did the think tank community writ large had the vigorous debate at each step along the way and my answer would be probably not quite vigorous enough in 2002 there were some specific people and specific elements of the debate that were highlighted well I think since then and also before then and certainly today the think tank community is highlighting a lot of the key issues and I still think we have a chance to salvage something in Iraq so let me finish on that hopeful Julie just quickly I would say first of all for the record CNIS has fewer than 35 employees so having worked at this great institution with what seven, eight floors and hundreds of people working here CNIS is a different beast and so I would put us in a slightly different weight class but hopefully doing high quality work just as all my colleagues are up here I think we are on the question of bipartisanship I mean look the answer is yes and no there are plenty of shops around town that will hire folks strictly on their political stripes and they're open about that and they're fine and there's a place for that and there are loads of other institutions that don't care what your political stripes are or they deliberately try to have a good mix at CNIS we have folks that disagree each and every day on everything from China to Ukraine to the Middle East and we have those fights every Tuesday morning at staff meetings it unfolds weekly and we pride ourselves on that and so it just depends on how the leadership at any given institution issue and whether or not they find value in that or if they are opting to be partisan and again there are plenty of shops around town that prefer to operate that way and I think there's a home for both I was going to start where Julia is I'm flattered to be putting this in your CSIS bookings because we are like CNIS we're of a different scale we've grown quite rapidly but we actually when we began our reform process at the Atlanta council we had 12 staff members this is a marketplace of ideas and so I think there's quite a bit of scope because for smaller institutions because what matters is the idea and the ability to push that forward so we'll often find ourselves partnering with others and not often American but often other international partners who don't have a foothold or a voice here and frankly are a lot smaller than their American counterparts to be able to bring to light some of those opinions in the context of our debate as well and like Mike said institutionally we don't take positions we don't take specific positions but we protect and encourage we want our scholars our researchers, our program directors in their own name go out there and get involved and take opinions so part of this has to do with again the mission and the transparency of that you know what you're going to get when you're working with an institution of Cato that is specifically designed around trying to promote certain libertarian approaches and views or CAP versus a heritage A&I the transparency and that approach of sort of the ideological underpinnings is quite important to know how you're dealing with for example the Atlantic Council our posture is how do you actually push forward U.S. leadership and engagement people that fundamentally aren't really internationally oriented are probably not going to be working at the Atlantic Council and that's kind of built into who we are but it still opens up the scope for diversity of views because there's a healthy and huge debate over how you actually play play this role effectively and you asked sort of how do we see ourselves in some respects it could be a combination of all or none I mean fundamentally strategists and on many of our staff they're once in future policymakers but people that think about strategy and actually how to affect change related to that so it's not sufficient if they're just a journalist we actually don't want someone who is just doing the the punditry or is just academic you've got to leverage some of those skills to be able to be a strategist in this town to have impact and I think that's how we think a little bit about it well I have to say it's an extraordinary privilege to work in a think tank our days are filled with busyness as Julie outlined but our enthusiasm for what we do and the privilege of being in the country that values this is great but perhaps the greatest privilege is being able to work with colleagues both within CSIS but my colleagues and other that provides such richness such wonderful thoughts and that's the secret we all work together even though we get a little crazy when someone has a really good idea and they get that foreign minister and we don't get that foreign minister it's all very friendly and I this has just been a fantastic conversation I'm glad we had coffee together this morning so that our coffee clatched please join me in thanking our panelists for a great discussion