 Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us here at USIP. My name is Mohit Yusuf. I'm the Associate Vice President here for Asia Programs at the Institute. I apologize, but everything I do is on South Asian time, so we're late by five minutes, and I apologize for that. It's my fault, not the speakers. Today's panel, the background, if I were just to summarize it, is this question that keeps coming back to a lot of us who study US foreign policy, but specifically in South Asia, is the question of US leverage. There are a number of things that we want actors in the region to do, be it sort of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the larger region. And always there is an underlying sense of frustration that things don't get done the way we want it done. And so the question there is, is it that we misrepresent our leverage? Is it that we look at things in ways that the region doesn't and thus we sort of don't play it as it should be? Or are there other factors here that need to be looked at and it may not be a question of leverage. But oftentimes we hear Pakistan's policy and the need to move the needle on that. Internal situation in Afghanistan and peace process. There are various policies to change the current dynamic of the region. But somehow the other question keeps coming back to do we have enough leverage to achieve what we want as the US? So that's sort of the framing of today's panel and we couldn't have had a better lineup to discuss this. I'm going to quickly introduce my speakers. We'll turn over to them for short five to seven minute remarks. We'll have a bit of a conversation and then I want to make sure we leave sufficient time for all of you to chime in with your questions and comments. So let me very quickly introduce the speakers from my left to right. Bob Hathaway is a public policy fellow and director emeritus of the Asia program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. He directed the Center's Asia program from 1999 to 2014. Before that was a professional staffer at the foreign affairs committee in the house. Has also worked as part of the history staff at the CIA before that. But my reason for inviting Bob, among others, is his latest book on the leverage paradox Pakistan and the United States, which addresses exactly this question of leverage vis-a-vis Pakistan, but also draws lessons for the larger sort of question of leverage, US leverage in the world. And I highly recommend his work for all of you. Tamanna Selikuddin is a long-time US government official, was senior advisor at the State Department, was a director for Pakistan at the National Security Council, has worked at the State Department in other portfolios as well, has been an intelligence analyst on Pakistan and works on counter-terrorism, governance, domestic reform issues in South Asia. But her most recent sort of assignment was spending time on the peace process in Afghanistan. And the question of reconciliation within Afghanistan, including the Taliban and the regional picture there. So while Bob will talk to us about leverage vis-a-vis Pakistan, Tamanna is going to talk to us about the peace process in Afghanistan and whether the US has enough leverage to get what it wants. Dr. Anish Goyal is a fellow at New America's international security program and just finished a three-year stint as a professional staff member at the US Senate Committee on Armed Services. Again, has worked in the federal government for a number of years, including being senior director for South Asia at the NSC, which made him the senior most official reporting to the United States president at the time and has various other private sector experiences as well. Finally, Jay Wise, who was still recently at the National Security Council, again as director for Pakistan. He has been part of the DOD for a long time, has been deployed to Afghanistan, but has been working South Asia from various angles in the government again for a number of years. But his real claim to fame is that he's at USIP these days. So we've got a perfect lineup for this conversation. We decided to start with Tamanna to talk about the peace process, then to Bob for Pakistan. Anish will speak to India. And then Jay will talk to us about some work he's doing right now on the issue of potential escalation in an India-Pakistan crisis to the nuclear level. And the way this is set up is the peace process in Afghanistan, Pakistan and leverage, India and leverage, and then everybody agrees no nuclear war is a good thing in South Asia. How do we get there? So with that, let me stop. Tamanna, I'll hand it over to you and then we move on. Thank you so much to all of you for coming out here, for me, for organizing in USIP, for hosting us. Today I do want to talk to you a little bit about the US leverage in terms of getting to a peace process in Afghanistan and actually reaching some sort of political settlement. And I think unlike my colleagues here, I would argue that the United States on this particular issue has a lot of leverage actually with both the government of Afghanistan and with the Afghan Taliban. And I think the real question and maybe we'll discuss it more in some of the later questions is whether we are very serious, whether we actually want a political settlement of the Afghan conflict. And if we do, can we then use our leverage to facilitate that? So just as a way of context, the current US administration inherited what is a 17 year long war in Afghanistan that has largely been stalemated and definitely since 2014 when the US combat mission ended, it's largely been a stalemate between the Afghan government and Afghan Taliban insurgents. The battlefield is complicated by a myriad of international terrorist groups, Al-Qaeda early on and then most recently Daesh or Islamic State. But these groups are largely marginal to the fight in Afghanistan both in terms of strength and numbers. If you're really looking at it, it is the Afghan Taliban who have maintained a largely cohesive rural based insurgency across Afghanistan with the help of safe havens in Pakistan but also increasingly with a real safe haven in southern Afghanistan, so an internal safe haven. The insurgency, support is not very widespread for the Taliban even though they do very well. Estimates are somewhere in the 20 to 30% range in terms of support and yet they have been very resilient and cohesive in the face of over 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan even with the death of Mullah Omar and the subsequent hiding of the death and with the killing of Mullah Mansour, the leader of the Taliban. All of these things have not necessarily fractured the Taliban nor have they really curtailed the ability of the insurgency to wage war inside the country. The Afghan government and the United States and other international allies have kept the Taliban at bay. They have not been able to hold any city centers and the Afghan government does indeed control the vast majority of population centers and the majority of the population. The Taliban on the other hand claims that it is increasing in its control of land area and that is true. While sparsely populated, they do control increasing amount of space and this I think is emblematic of a stalemate. When you are in a stalemate situation, at the end of the fighting season both sides are claiming gains. Both sides are claiming that they had a good fighting season and so when you're in the midst of a stalemate it is often hard to actually acknowledge that military victory may not be on the cards. What is interesting is that there is growing recognition of that fact both in Washington and in Kabul that this conflict may only be solved through a political settlement. President Trump acknowledged this in his August 2017 speech, his South Asia strategy speech. He noted that one of the goals of the strategy was to prevent the Taliban from winning further ground in Afghanistan and he did say after an effective military effort perhaps it will be possible to have a political settlement that includes elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan but nobody knows if or when that will ever happen. From this statement and really for anyone who follows this it's pretty clear that all sides want or claim that they want a political settlement but they really doubt the sincerity of the other side and they would prefer to increase their leverage or improve their negotiating posture through military aims and so we continue to have the conflict. What is interesting in this settlement or in this context is the word political settlement or reconciliation has now become almost accepted by all sides so nobody is saying that we're going to win militarily everybody is saying we're going to go to a political settlement and the real challenge here is getting the different sides to the table. The Taliban said it will talk to the Afghan government once the foreign forces are out the Afghan government says it will talk to the Taliban once there's a ceasefire they stop fighting and we all know both of these preconditions are just the Taliban are unlikely to be met and so I would argue that it is really the United States that has a significant amount of leverage over both the Taliban and the Afghan government and then thirdly to a certain extent Pakistan to actually bring about not only a peace deal but even to just get the peace process started. Let's begin with the government of Afghanistan President Trump in his South Asia strategy made clear that the United States will continue its support for the Afghan government as long as they face the Taliban on the battlefield and so this seemingly open-ended statement of support really does send a clear message to the Taliban that it can't wait out the U.S. or the Afghan government and this coupled with the recent experience in the fighting season of increased U.S. air support to the Afghan national forces has bolstered the Afghan government it has given the U.S. I would argue some increased leverage over the Taliban but the so-called conditions-based approach of the new South Asia strategy also risks increasing moral hazard in Kabul a promise of unending U.S. support may disincentivize the Afghan government to make the necessary governance improvements it may also allow a dependency on U.S. military power against the Taliban and it will also make the Afghan government immune to calls for more inclusion of Afghan minority and other ethnic and political groups I would argue to best use U.S. leverage over the Afghan government the United States needs to be more clear about what are these conditions our conditions-based approach we have to be very clear with the Afghan government what are these conditions and what are the repercussions for not reaching them in terms of the peace process I think there are two very useful areas where we should be clear about conditions one is that the Afghan government really needs to be serious about building intra-Afghan consensus so a nationwide consensus in favor of peace and that politically supports a peace process and two which is probably the bulk of the matter is actually realistic engagement with the Taliban realistic Afghan government engagement with the Taliban and the recent Kabul process I think offers us some positive steps in that matter so on the first one in terms of building intra-Afghan consensus many practitioners of peace processes would argue that 90% of your work is actually building intra-party consensus so it is, you know, if the U.S. wants to reach a political settlement we need to build support for it here at home and in the same way Kabul needs to really work on outreach to the Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, every political group within Afghanistan to build that support for a legitimate peace process part of that is also improving governance for example an Afghan citizenry that experiences a predatory government official does not see this outreach to the Taliban as very legitimate and may actually support the Taliban so fixing those governance problems and increasing consensus behind a peace process is one area that we should be focused on in working with the Afghan government and the second one which is the critical one is the real outreach to the Afghan government, to the Taliban so it is both engagement but it is also the willingness to negotiate if both sides, the Taliban and the Afghan government stand by their preconditions as they are now it is unlikely that we will ever reach the table one positive development is the second meeting of the Kabul process we were all discussing if you would talk to me a little while ago I probably would have been less optimistic but the Kabul process did, it reiterated the three end conditions of ceasing violence, respect for the Afghan constitution and breaking with international terrorism but it laid out some benchmarks which I think are significant none of these are particularly new but this is the first time that Ashraf Ghani, President Ghani laid them out all together and in a comprehensive way offered a path to the Taliban I won't go into them in detail but they include a political process, recognition as a political party transitional confidence building measures a legal framework that includes constitutional review that the Taliban would have input into a constitutional framework while recognizing the importance of the current constitution reorganization of the state security for the population including those who return Taliban who may reintegrate and return economic and social development international community support and partnership and implementation modalities so there was a lot of detail in this immediately the Taliban of course said you're missing the point, none of these matter what really matters is the presence of foreign forces and that is the crux of the matter and I think that's where the U.S. has a lot of leverage interestingly in the final peace process declaration, President Ghani outlined that there would be future discussion of foreign presence that there would be some input with the United States about what a foreign presence looks like and that even though it's an illusion and not a direct mention offers the United States a window into using leverage both with the Afghan government and with the Taliban in terms of the Taliban I think the U.S. often doesn't think it has a lot of leverage and often what we think our only leverage is is our military might and I would argue while that is useful the two places we have more leverage with the Taliban in terms of bringing them to the table are there two main reasons for continuing the fight and number one is the presence of foreign forces if we can commit as the strongest party in this triad you could say to be willing to discuss the presence of foreign forces or at least set a timeline or conditions for future withdrawal of foreign forces it would go a long way in bringing the Taliban to the table and the second is something I think people don't really recognize is the Taliban's desire for legitimacy many of their complaints sanctions being excluded from the bond conference etc are all about international legitimacy and the United States can make clear to the Taliban that they may continue to fight but the only way that they will be recognized as a legitimate part of the Afghan polity is through a peace process lastly I know I'm running up on time just in terms of Pakistan on the peace process I think Pakistan is becoming less and less of a factor on the peace process the 2015 and 2016 era where we tried to work with Pakistan and we had Murray and some other things which didn't work out the Taliban is less dependent on them for safe haven with an internal safe haven and they have a much more acrimonious relationship with Pakistan and so that I think gives us leverage in terms of actual participation or stake in the peace process is leveraged for Pakistan so if we with the Taliban and Afghanistan can come to the table Pakistan's stake in that peace process is actually leveraged over them Great, thank you Well, thanks Moid for the opportunity to speak here thanks to all of you all for coming Moid has asked me to consider whether or not the United States has leveraged sufficient to compel meaningful change in Pakistan's strategic calculus vis-a-vis India, vis-a-vis Afghanistan put another way, put more bluntly can we persuade bribe or compel Pakistan to get out of the business of providing sanctuaries and other support to terrorists who are targeting important American interests I don't think there's any doubt as to how Donald Trump would answer these questions Trump believes in American power and in the leverage that power confers throughout the 2016 presidential candidate he spoke repeatedly about American leverage over other governments as president he promised he would harness American power to force China and other U.S. trade partners to end unfair trade practices he would get Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA and pay for a wall along our southern border he would compel our allies to take up more of the common defense burden and he would force Pakistan to end its duplicitous policy of providing our enemies with respect to Pakistan we saw this Trumpian belief in the leverage conferred by American strength in his January first tweet and then in the administration's announcement a couple days later that it was suspending CSF payments and most other forms of U.S. security assistance the January 1st tweet explicitly contrasted U.S. generosity in providing $33 billion of assistance to Pakistan over the previous 15 years with Pakistan's duplicity in providing safe haven to terrorists who are killing Americans in Afghanistan the aid suspension American officials explained should not be seen as impulsive or vindictive its purpose was not to punish Islamabad but to give Pakistan incentives for better behavior moving forward if Pakistan wished the benefits of American favor then it would need to change its behavior I think that's pretty obvious that's what administration's thinking on this was it's been less than three months since the January tweet and the aid suspension thus far American officials say they've seen little meaningful change in Pakistan's behavior but I think it's way too early to avoid the conclusion that the president's attempts at leverage have failed that the jury's still out on this question and will be for some time still I think if Trump had known anything about the history of the U.S. Pakistan relationship he would have realized the foolishness of believing that simply because Islamabad has received American financial assistance this somehow obligates Pakistan to take steps it deeply deeply believes are contrary to its own security he would have known that the United States has a long history of suspending its assistance programs to Pakistan and that in no instance have these punitive steps on the part of the Americans compelled Pakistan to alter its policies in any fundamental way he would have understood that relative both to Pakistani needs and to the loans grants and especially the investment provided by China France several of the international financial institutions the levels of American aid to Pakistan particularly in the last several years are really quite modest Pakistani's value this aid but not at any price had Trump been familiar with this relationship he would have realized that practically the worst thing you can do if you seek to persuade Pakistanis to act in a certain manner is to publicly call them liars and naves as he did in his January 1 tweet he would have understood that even when dealing with superpowers weaker countries are not without leverage of their own he would for instance have known that so long as the United States remains in Afghanistan we will be dependent to a certain degree but to an important degree on Pakistani cooperation and this dependence makes it easier for Islamabad to deflect American attempts at leverage and even makes it possible for Pakistan clear the weaker country in this pairing make it possible for Pakistan to exert leverage over the United States for instance by threatening to close the G locks and the A locks vital to supplying American troops in Afghanistan lastly he would have understood that although the United States has vastly greater strength than Pakistan much of American power will remain sheathed so long as the United States has other priorities in and with Pakistan such as American interest in maintaining sufficient stability in Pakistan so as to not the jeopardize the security of Pakistani nuclear assets in other words in dealing with Pakistan and with other countries for that matter the United States has the power to punish but not necessarily to compel this is not to argue that the January actions were wrong but only to suggest that we ought to have a clear eyed assessment of the results that these actions are likely to produce now I want to be misunderstood here it's better to be strong than weak power can produce leverage and leverage can work I think we've seen a recent example of this in the last last month's meetings of the financial action task force the threat of being singled out and publicly embarrassed for providing assistance to terrorists for being insufficiently vigilant in blocking funding to terrorists led Pakistan to adopt new measures in the weeks before this meeting that had previously refused to take here I think is an example of where leverage has worked I think the financial action task force meetings also tells us something else that's something important about leverage the decision to grey list grey list Pakistan came about only after Washington had succeeded in peeling both the Saudis and the Chinese away from their earlier opposition to taking this step which to me points at another significant conclusion about the effective use of leverage vis-a-vis Pakistan or anyone else for that matter US power is almost always magnified as part of a coalition and especially when members of that coalition are states who have traditionally been inclined to protect or support the target company, our country springs me to my final point if we want to change Pakistani thinking about the wisdom of hedging with the Taliban or about the wisdom of fomending, insurgency and Kashmir we are far more likely to achieve some monocle of success here if we are able to get Pakistan's friends and particularly the Saudis and the Chinese to participate in the efforts to change Pakistan's strategic calculus on our own notwithstanding our vast power I'm convinced we are profoundly unlikely to be able to do this no matter how much leverage we seek to exert Thank you, thanks Paul Thank you Thank you so much and thank you Moid for inviting me to speak on such a distinguished panel Moid when he asked me to speak on the panel said I want you to talk about US leverage over India and I thought about this for days and I asked other people and I thought about it some more and what I concluded is that we have no leverage over India and so I started thinking about this concept of leverage overall and I think it's a funny concept for India because the idea of leverage is trying to get another country to do something they would not already want to do or something that they don't want to do and for India that's never going to work for the United States we have never had leverage over them in our entire relationship with them whenever you count it starting if you count it as independence or if you count it after the Cold War when we really started interacting with them we've never had any real leverage over India I was part of the civil nuclear deal negotiating team about 12 years ago and even then we didn't have any leverage over India we were on the cusp of delivering India from 35 years of nuclear isolation and they were always ready to walk away if it wasn't exactly how they wanted or if the perception was wrong and so even then we didn't have leverage over India some people say that we might have leverage if we still dangle this idea that we're going to support them for permanent membership in the UN Security Council but the problem with that is the Indians view these sorts of things as writing historical wrongs that was how they viewed the civil nuclear deal that's how they view the UN Security Council debate they say this is something you people should have taken care of 60 years ago so thank you for putting it right what you got wrong back then and so even that does not provide us with any leverage the only time when we've even had a slight modicum of leverage over the Indians was when we were thinking about lifting tariffs on mango imports and that was something that the Indians really wanted and so that was the only time that we came close to it and the reason that we don't have leverage over India is because India is different it's not dependent on the U.S. in any way it thinks of itself on equal status with the United States and so it will never sort of go down the pathway allowing itself to become dependent upon something India is doing if you ask about leverage over India in my mind that's the same as asking does the U.S. have leverage over the UK and the answer is no we can ask them to do things we can try and convince them to do things we can talk to them about doing things but we have very very little leverage to force them to do something that they don't want to so for India I think what we need to talk about more is sort of traditional basic diplomacy which is the art of getting a country to do something that you want while getting them to also believe that it's what they want and that is something that we have employed many times with India over the past 20 years and for a country like India it's about the United States aligning its objectives and aligning its interest with India and so the good news is in the situation in Afghanistan right now our interests are starting to align already by and large the United States and India want the same thing for Afghanistan which is a stable safe secure country that is not a safe haven for terrorists and it is not influenced unduly by its neighbors and this is something that I think the United States and India can work together towards achieving now the problem is I think honestly is not that we're trying to get the Indians to do more you know as the president said in his speech back in August that one thing we want as part of this strategy is to get the Indians to do more I think the Indians are ready to do more and honestly they have the skills and the abilities and experience in the region to really be helpful but I think the US needs to prioritize what the Indians need to do we referenced earlier that for a long time the Indians were ready to do more and we were the ones holding them back we being the United States we were holding them back saying you know what we don't want to irritate Pakistan or this will be a bit too far so don't do this right now or maybe do this but we have to reevaluate if that's still the strategy that we want to employ or if we really do want to ask what is it that we want them to do I think everyone agrees that putting boots and troops on the ground in Afghanistan is probably a step too far but there's lots of things short of that that we can ask them to do training of the civilian government in Afghanistan international development assistance in kind contributions of money and other types of resources in all my conversations with Indian government officials they are ready to do all these and I just want to point out that they have been doing them for many years now and so it's a matter of I think coordinating a little bit more with the Indians and not convincing them but aligning and guiding them in terms of what would be most helpful in Afghanistan moving forward one area though where our interest do not align where the United States needs to be careful is that India is never going to take over as sort of the prime country responsible for the situation in Afghanistan that they want the United States to leave they have every interest in the United States remaining a significant presence in Afghanistan both diplomatically and militarily and so if we move down the road of eventually pulling troops completely out of Afghanistan you know whenever it becomes in the interest of the United States that's something that's going to make the Indians very nervous so we need to be careful about how we align our interests with the Indians moving forward I'll also say that more broadly we need to think worldwide in terms of our priorities with India we're in this situation right now where we're asking the Indians for lots of help on all sorts of things joint patrols in the Pacific Ocean security in the South China Sea we're asking them for help on climate change and trade negotiations as well as Afghanistan and by the way can you fix your problems with Pakistan and I've been in the situation where you're preparing for a summit level meeting and there's 17 different things on the agenda that the President needs to cover with the Prime Minister of India and if everything is a priority at that level then nothing is a priority and so the United States needs to really prioritize what it really is prime importance to work with the Indians about and all this is to say that you know there's it's a strategic relationship with the Indians right meaning that we're going to work on things together in a wide variety of different fields in a wide variety of different sectors but we want to make sure that we're being careful that we don't want so many things from the Indians that that we create a situation where the Indians then have leverage over the United States and that's something that we want to manage and we want to make sure we we think about carefully as we move forward with India and we have a lot of potential with India I think you know the sky is only the limit for our relationship with India and we don't get our expectations out of whack and move forward in a manner that's going to be beneficial for everyone Thanks, thanks Anishin, thanks for sticking to the time, Jay Great, thanks Moid thanks for hosting this and if I might just thank you to USIP for allowing me the chance to take on this fellowship and study here for a little bit what I've been looking at is how technology might be used to mitigate or forestall crisis, nuclear crisis especially on the subcontinent between India and Pakistan and the first thing I'd highlight is that nuclear crisis is still very possible as everybody here I think knows the most likely scenario for a nuclear crisis is one in which there's a major terrorist attack in India that India attributes to Pakistan that takes reprisal attacks that the ensuing tit for tat oversteps one of Pakistan's perhaps poorly defined red lines and the situation tips over into a nuclear crisis that's obviously still very possible you have whether you're talking about a Lashkar Itaiba or Jaisi Mohamed that's able to launch attacks with current capability into India even a degraded group that are somewhat degraded would still be able conceivably to launch high profile attacks even terrorist groups that are less associated with Pakistan like ISIS or Al Qaeda could still be able to launch mass casualty attacks that India could then mistakenly attribute to Pakistan there are also border disputes cross border incursions ceasefire violations cross border shelling all of which lend themselves to potentially to potential escalation in addition there are over the next I would say 5 to 10 years we're likely to see things change that would that have the potential to accelerate crisis the development, the miniaturization of nuclear weapons the further development and potential deployment of tactical nuclear weapons have the potential for lowering the threshold for nuclear use or making those thresholds less clear the development of ballistic missile defense or MIRV technology have the potential to increase excuse me to increase pressure to fire first or to escalate first and then finally the U.S. position in the region is changing the U.S. has typically been able to been an honest broker that would manage crises by intervening on both sides I think we've heard Bob sketch out how the U.S. may be unable to coerce or compel Pakistan and therefore might end up estranged from Pakistan we've heard Anish talk about how the U.S. is still searching for the right way to still searching for the right way to build the strategic partnership with India that it seeks so in the next 5 to 10 years the U.S. role in terms of crisis management might be very different so the pathways for crisis are still there the forces that could compound or accelerate crisis are emerging and the U.S. capacity to manage the crisis is at least at the very least influx so in looking taking a survey of the landscape we've thought about ways to use technology perhaps to mitigate the potential for crisis or at least the potential for escalation doing so I've looked at a series of proposals from the late 1990s and early 2000s about building transparency between India and Pakistan cooperative aerial monitoring arrangements for instance that were based on the open skies treaty but based on the open skies treaty obviously those proposals some of which came out of Sandia some of which came out of the Simpsons center fell somewhat flat at that point because there was little time little political will or interest in those kinds of arrangements but they sought to create a common understanding of what was going on across the border they sought to reduce the likelihood of inadvertent escalation by creating certainty about the lack of major military incursion and they sought to offer a common venue for discussion about things like cross-border incursion or the movement of militants or ceasefire violations what I would argue is that there is another way the developments of the past 10 or 20 years have opened up another venue to think about the potential for transparency here when I was working at a small NGO in the late 90's we were trying to use imagery to find commercial imagery to find mass graves in the Balkans and at the time we had imagery that was incredibly hard to secure it took a day if not days to find and it was so the resolution was so low that you could barely tell a village from a grove of trees what's happened over the past 20 years has been an explosion in the availability the resolution the persistence of commercially available imagery the company Planet uses 190 satellites to take picture of the entire earth every 24 hours Digital Globe uses constellation of satellites to Digital Globe just began offering 30 centimeter resolution commercial imagery that's enough to be able to tell an armored personnel carrier from a tank and it's about between 10 and 20 times what used to be 10 to 20 times greater than what used to be legal from the US government years ago and then you find NGOs beginning to use these tools far more widely for instance NGO affiliated with George Clooney and yes, if you think I'm name dropping George Clooney to keep everybody awake you're probably right actually did was able to do monitoring of ceasefire violations in South Sudan using commercial imagery again able to tell the location of a toad howitzer able to tell location of different military vehicles and to such a resolution that they were able to pinpoint their movements over time in short the raw tools are there to create the functional equivalent of an open skies agreement in South Asia if you find if there is a provider willing to do that would require no ascent from either country would only require a third party whether a country or a non-state actor a commercial actor a commercial company or an NGO to acquire the imagery make it accessible to both sides and to offer both and perhaps even the analytic tools to make their way through it in ways that would create exactly the same effect as an open skies agreement without the political sacrifices that would have been necessary to get there 20 years ago now there are a lot of obstacles to a relationship there are a lot of obstacles to a regime like that and a lot of modalities that would need to be worked out and you would need to scope such an activity precisely so that it didn't create more insecurity and instability on the subcontinent than it resolved but it's now possible to take those steps I just highlight that as one potential one potential avenue to mitigating the prospects for crisis because again over the next 10 years we're likely to see crisis dynamics the raw ingredients for a crisis are likely to stay the dynamics that provide for escalation are likely to sharpen an increase and the role of the United States will be in flux so we need to start looking for these tools tools that don't necessarily implicate the United States in a central role sooner rather than later give that back to you thank you I appreciate everybody keeping to time because I'm terrible with moderating that part of it so let me first ask if anybody has any reactions to what you've heard before we I'd like to underscore the importance of something that Anish said if you think about the context of 2005 2006 and from the American standpoint what a gift we were proposing to give the Indians we were going to bring them in into the nuclear international nuclear regime after two generations of nuclear apartheid as they sought Anish says I was there I was part of that negotiating team and believe me we didn't have any leverage that really struck me as quite extraordinary and yet it sounded right I'm not surprised but I think it's a very useful example to remember as we think about the benefits of American favor and how much leverage this should give and yet the Indians saw it very differently we were simply rectifying a historical wrong they shouldn't have to buy that we should be willing the world should be willing to simply take the step which should have taken 40-30 years ago so I'd just like to really commend him for making that point anybody else ok so let me just throw out a couple of things here we'll sort of open it up for questions and comments Bob if I may just take this thread forward and ask you and again what Anish says sounds right to me but then the question is would the Pakistanis come back and say well maybe our fault was we gave you too much and if we were to stand on this and say sorry thanks maybe we end up better so is the problem here not that we don't have enough leverage but perhaps we feel we have too much leverage because in the past it may have worked 9-11 and you know everything else well 9-11 is always or 9-12 is always the example people use of here was a skillful application of American leverage vis-a-vis Pakistan well yes and no first of all it was exceptional I don't think we learn much about the routine exercise of leverage by looking at that example but I think equally important after I don't know if Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age or not I doubt he did though anyone who knows Rich Armitage knows he was clearly emphatic but regardless of what we exactly said the Pakistanis didn't cave they're then involved a process of weeks where Pakistanis bargained they gave us some but not all of what we want and so even in this instance where it is suggested this is a perfect example of leverage it's simply one is straightforward is that more generally I think to getting to your question I think we misunderstand the nature of leverage I think leverage is most likely to be successful when we can persuade a country to work with us to work with us and I think that's frequently where we've gone wrong in our dealings not only with the Pakistanis but with a whole host of countries as we have sought to leverage them Anish, if I may quickly ask you in some ways what you say as Bob put it is extraordinary at another level because all of us work in this space I'm not surprised but the question that I would ask you is if we are headed down the same path with India as was the case with Pakistan in some ways which is we've done so much you don't give us anything in return you go to Pakistan and say we've done everything for you and here you are ungrateful souls and on India how I would put it is you've talked about Afghanistan but there are other theatres Iran is a very clear example where I don't think interest overlap or India would be willing to go as far as the US may want but even on China I mean we talk about counterweight quite frankly I don't find anybody in India who says I am willing to play your proxy here wherever it overlaps it's fine but beyond that not so is this another path where we're going to end up at a point where people are going to start talking about the favor that the US did to India and nuclear deal and this and that and here they are when it really comes to it they're not giving us what we want so is this the time to correct what we think we may get in return or do you think this is qualitatively different no I think that's a very good point and I think you're right that we do need to and I wouldn't use the term correct what we think we're going to get but we need to have realistic expectations I think for the US-India relationship one of the pitfalls the United States has fallen into again and again over the last 15 years is that expectations for the India relationship get wildly out of whack with reality and we saw it with Iran we've seen it with the awarding of the multi-world combat aircraft contract which everyone in the US government at the time thought was coming to the United States and it ended up not and we see this on various issues and the thing we need to keep in mind when working with India is that we are not going to get everything that we want from the Indians and it's going to be sort of a back and forth and that the Indians are going to do things based on their own national security interests and so we have to account for that and we have to work that into our strategies for India but the key I think is staying on an even keel and not letting expectations you know sort of get out of whack with reality Taman let me ask you two questions one why is it that I cannot find anybody in the region next to Afghanistan Pakistan, China, Russia Iran, Central Asia who believes that the US is serious about a peace process if that's the stated position why is it that everybody says sorry that's not what you're after and second on the Pakistan part because I know you worked that and that conversation keeps coming up I mean Anish mentions India is going to do what is in its national security interest perhaps Pakistan is doing what it thinks is in its own national security interest and then as the question began that what we are asking perhaps even we would not do if we were in their shoes in which case leverage is a is a moot point because if you're asking a country to basically you've got an X number of US dollars here is what we want you to do and the country says not in my interest I would argue that's rational on that part thanks for that I think the two questions are actually a bit interrelated let's start on the why people don't think we are serious about a peace process because in fact I don't think we really are and I don't mean this in any sense that what we're saying we don't believe I think it is actually a cognitive process to get to the point where you're ready for a peace process so you know maybe five or eight years ago in the words negotiating with the Taliban our peace process were said whispered in Washington so now we've come to the point where at least people even in the halls of the Pentagon are saying we need a political settlement so we've gotten to the point where we're okay talking about it but we haven't come to the point where we actually really believe it and you can see that in our resourcing in our posturing even in President Trump's speech everything is about our military presence our military victory and I think those in the region experience this in a much more palpable way than we in Washington or in the United States do that in the midst of what I would characterize as um stalemate both sides are still all sides are still committed in some ways to a military victory right we may not cognitively realize that and some of us do but our posture our resourcing our personnel is all aimed at a military victory or at the very least pushing the enemy to the point where they will cry uncle and say yes please we'll accept a deal at any you know at at any cost and similarly I think the Taliban as well they believe even with our saying that we will stay in Afghanistan as long as it takes they're like we've seen this before we kicked out the Soviets we can do the same and their hardliners similarly are mirror imaging us and are committed to a military fight so I think it takes time um continually to come to the point where you are actually believe that there is not a military victory I also think there's one compliment cating factor here it's that we talk about the Taliban you know and it exists in the in the vocabulary in the realm of international terrorism right so maybe in a different generation it was easy to say we're going to talk to the FARC we're going to talk to the IRA but now at least in terms of political costs there's a lot more political cost to say I'm talking to the Taliban and everyone's like what you're negotiating with terrorists right so it's much harder um we it's much harder to talk to anti-state insurgents when you talk about them as you know just terrorists I'm not saying that they obviously they commit terrorist we're not saying that's not true but you still need to negotiate with the people you're fighting with the second question I think is really interesting if the whole region thinks that we are not serious about um a political process right so then they think we are committed to a military um military battle and in Pakistan's view we will lose that battle right I think it's very clear to them that okay no matter what we if we continue what we are doing it's likely that either you will lose or that we can bog you down here in an endless war and so if Pakistan has two choices and what Anish said is very illuminating here India wants us to stay there to protect India's interests and Pakistan thinks that same thing that we are going to stay there to protect India's interests so Pakistan would like us either a if we're serious about a political process a political process in which the Taliban serve as part of a government that is friendly to Islamabad and not friendly to New Delhi or if we're going to fight then the Taliban keeps us bogged down so that we Afghanistan doesn't become a place that is you know an imbeccable to Pakistan's interests good finally let me ask Jay and then take your questions Jay I have a fairly fundamental question to ask you which may throw your entire research off and I won't let you do that but which is your entire premise is built on transparency that once you have more information you'll be able to see what's going on there'll be less denials and you can then prevent a crisis I could make the polar opposite argument which is made by many in sort of the nuclear realm which is that ambiguity is great and that's what India and Pakistan actually have held on to since 1998 which is that they don't fully reveal their nuclear postures and doctrines and you know I've just finished as you know a book on US role in India Pakistan crisis one of my conclusions is that the one important tool that the US had to help de-escalate crises was information manipulation it decided when to share what with whom if you do what you're saying you do that tool is gone because everybody can see what really happened it went a negative those are both good questions and I should say that at the outset that what I'm not proposing is full transparency through the entire subcontinent completely untrammeled I'm talking about something that is a little bit more limited and constrained first I'd say that any arrangement would have to be really very tightly focused on the border and the LOC it would not be able to you wouldn't want to do anything that would change the way or challenge or disrupt the India-China dispute over Doklam for instance you would want to make sure that this was very very focused and you would also want to make sure that the concept was purely as a check on escalation it wouldn't be intended to give each state full information about the military movements nuclear deployments and so forth of the other and doctrines of the other so it would fully accept that there are places and times when ambiguity is still important and relevant to your point about the U.S. role in managing crises and I for anybody who thought that Steve Cole's book was going to be the most important book on South Asia this year I point you to Moe's book instead but I would just highlight my suspicion is that the time that the U.S. could maintain such a monopoly of control over information that it could successfully manipulate what it showed to one country and not to another I think skepticism in those capitals about what the United States is doing will change and I think also you're likely to see as the explosion in information that I've described happens you're likely to see more one-off uses of that information particularly in times of a crisis so what you want is actually credible people and tools to be able to show to be able to reliably show change over time so that decision makers aren't taken in by one person tweeting a very inflammatory picture suddenly because I think those kinds of things are actually perhaps more likely to drive crises and intensify crises and so the kind of relationship that I'm talking about or the kind of arrangement or regime that I'm talking about is something that would actually be a firebreak to those to those kinds of instances so let's open this up and then we can come back and have a conversation as we have gaps in the questions Max right here and just wait for the mic because we have this on webcast so people won't be able to hear unless you thank you I just wanted to raise a question listening to the four presentations I sort of come away with the feeling that the concept of leverage is not a particularly useful one it doesn't work in the case probably doesn't work in the case of Pakistan probably doesn't work in the case of India perhaps doesn't work in the case of American support for the peace process in Afghanistan because they have to work it out themselves I wonder whether how you respond to that assertion that maybe even though this is what the whole panel has been about the thought that I've been I've often thought that in foreign policy the rest of the world plays soccer and America plays American football and sometimes we have a big disconnect in just the way we play the game the rest of the world plays it much more subtly than we do we and we think leverage works when sort of the arguments that you've made is it doesn't work very well I would disagree with the conclusion you drew about the thrust of presentations at least my own presentation I would argue just to the contrary leverage does work and moreover it's more from the standpoint of advancing U.S. interest it's more important than ever it's more important than ever because there are more costs than ever before to the employment of crude reforms of American power military there's a greater multiplicity of actors in the international stage including non-governmental actors but I think we don't have and we this is not just Trump I think this is every American president at least since the end of the Second World War and probably before we don't really have a very good understanding about how to exercise leverage it's not simply about dispensing or withdrawing American favor I think it's much more and I briefly alluded to this about building relationships about creating a sense of shared purpose about creating a sense of obligation so that the other party feels it's interest to go along with you I think that's the way I define leverage to me leverage is persuading another party to take steps that it might otherwise not want to take or feel to take and I think Phil it's in their interest to take and I think you can do this in less subtle ways the last thing I'll say is I am less convinced than maybe you are that the Americans are different in this respect I think all great powers let's say at least since the 17th century although probably before then too believed that great power afforded them great leverage and every one of them was disappointed I mean the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe between 1945 and the collapse of the Soviet Union they were continually disappointed by the actions of governments we call their clients the Indians have been continually frustrated by their neighbors the Chinese are today they are frustrated with North Korea so I'm not convinced that we are really incapable of turning our strength or our power into leverage I think all great powers have the same problem I would build on what Bob said that I do think in Afghanistan it's interesting unlike Pakistan and India I think we have immense leverage over Afghanistan and to some extent the Taliban I mean just given our mere military presence and the amount of money and political support we give them I think what is hard for us to understand is that given the power dynamic that we are so much stronger in relationship to a non-state actor like the Taliban or a weak nascent government like the Afghan government we feel that like there's such a big power difference that it should be a blunt instrument that leverage should be clear that you do what we say and unfortunately the reality is and the reality of a more complex subtle world is that blunt force leverage doesn't work and that really we should think of it more as game theory given that we are the strongest power in that we have the ability to absorb more risk and so by doing that in a peace process we can bring two parties that have no ability to absorb risk and meet in the middle because we can bring them together and we have immense leverage there but I think it's very different than the India-Pakistan examples in Afghanistan so I'll just add real quick that in terms of Pakistan there are different types of leverage and the leverage that the United States has tried since 2001 just doesn't work because it's been this blunt force sort of leverage that Tom and I talked about we've never at least that I'm aware really tried to understand what the Pakistanis want and what their two objectives are and what their true objectives are in the region and without understanding that we're always going to fail at trying to exert leverage because we just don't know what they want so it strikes me that what everybody here has been talking about is the difference between the use of leverage to compel a country to do something that it would normally where it would normally do the opposite on one hand the use of leverage to subtly influence a country to do something that maybe a few degrees different than what it would normally do and those are two very different tax but I think the use of leverage is along a spectrum like that and to Tamanah's point and to Bob's point frequently great powers think that they can use leverage to compel fundamental changes in countries orientations and that simply is or if not usually fail let's collect a couple of questions if I may let's start from here and I promise to come on this side as well here and then we'll go back thank you, Aryan Ajad, I'm a fellow with the Atlantic Council I have a question for Bob and one for Tamanah could we do mine starting with one and I'll come back if we have time because I want to give people as much they're very brief I would just like Bob to say more bring on board China and Saudi Arabia on the issue of leverage the gentleman right there my name is Andrew Hall I'm from Kimonix International my question is for Tamanah how important do you think the presence of USAID or continued funding is to the narrative for peace talks and bringing in leverage especially in the backdrop of Trump to cut a budget or foreign assistance packages by 30% not necessarily for Afghanistan but how important is USAID to Afghanistan can anybody have a question for Anish or Jay specifically no, in that case let's just go here right up front I'll come I'm Wathuk from the acting basic actually I'm building on the question of Mr. Anish on USAID has asked her of they have things about the nature of their relationship with Pakistan I've been in Islamabad in 2007 and they were talking about whatever you have to examine the relationship with the United States or United States has to choose between India and Pakistan Pakistan they're going to choose India so I guess what are they doing now we need to know what are they seeking for to get their interest Bob do you want to take the first one I'm sure simply make a two sentence rejoiner to something that Anish said about we've never tried to understand Pakistan's perspective Pakistan's needs I disagree with that Donald Trump understands it but I think consistently in recent decades the people who focus on the region clearly understand the Pakistani perspective we simply don't agree with that we're not going to base American policy on it because we define American interest as fundamentally different from the way Pakistan defines its interest Bob in the interest of making this a conversation can you tell me what Pakistan ultimately wants in terms of Indian presence in Afghanistan because you keep talking about it what is it specifically that they want as little as possible I think what does that mean in terms of policy I think they want to feel that India does not represent any sort of threat on Pakistan's western border that means virtually no military presence minimum number of Indian quote spiness you remember a few years ago the Pakistanis were talking about 18 Indian consulates throughout the country well it turns out just what three or four they want the Indian economic influence to be sufficiently small so that India doesn't have any real political influence in the country I would just say to reinforce my take on this talking to both sides all the time is even the most fundamental questions neither understands the answer to when you sort of unpack this you know in my view quite frankly the number one concern Pakistan has is long term military training of the Afghan army way above everything else when you unpack this what I have found is the most fundamental of questions that one would think in 17 years we would have figured out both sides kind of say I never get an answer to this so I would just say there is something more to it than knowing anyways go for it to your question very briefly how do we bring China and Saudi into this coalition to work on Pakistan changing its strategic calculations the Chinese have taken large steps and not just in the last couple years 19 years ago at the height of the Cargill crisis the Chinese were already telling the Pakistanis to back off and in that case of Cargill to withdraw from the Cargill Heights I think we've seen a number of instances in the last several years where the Pakistanis have counted on the Chinese support and it hasn't become forthcoming because I think increasingly Chinese view that they their interests don't necessarily align with Pakistan's interest in so far as Pakistan has seen its interest as encouraging jihadist groups Saudis I know less about so I'm not quite confident in talking about how to bring them along except that it seems to me that for issues that are important to us and I think getting Pakistan out of the business of sponsoring jihadi groups is clearly important interest we are more likely to succeed if we can not only make that an important item in our agenda with the Saudis but also for the British to have that as an important item in their agenda with the Saudis and the Germans and the French and other international actors whom the Saudis want to cultivate because I think going back to what I said something earlier I think we're most likely to succeed if it doesn't simply come across as this is an American agenda item we risk international isolation if we don't begin to work with other major players in an area like this do you mind if I just add one to point to Bob's question I mean I don't think we are necessarily going to be able to change Pakistan's strategic calculus but one area why the peace process is actually important it is one area that has some convergence with Pakistan's strategic calculus and if Pakistan and the region including Saudi Arabia and China do feel that we are serious about it they are willing to put their leverage on both the Taliban and other groups to make a peace process come about and that's largely because a settlement that includes the Taliban to some extent in Islamabad's view does blunt Indian influence so it makes the peace process a small portion of convergence in terms of USAID I think USAID is obviously very important in Afghanistan one way that it is important in terms of specifically the peace process I think is building legitimacy for the peace process and building support for the Afghan government in that it does that intra-party consensus building one big problem with it is though is that the USAID that I know can function very well in government controlled areas areas that are pretty stable that already support the government that are already see the government as legitimate or and we don't want to talk about this but you know some of that aid money can flow into Taliban controlled areas which are stable which are already schools etc. can function in certain Taliban controlled areas the real places where we need USAID are the contested areas and those are the places where we can't send USAID because of security reasons and because we can't monitor the activities so I think that's a real challenge for USAID anything on the side let me get one here here and then I'll come back thank you I have two questions it's very interesting all the the presentations and how you elaborate on the leverage approach my question is very straightforward two questions first the fact that I'm from Portugal the fact that United States is now sending two messages one is going out of multilateral organizations at least is decreasing is interest and the message of American first all these impacts in the leverage approach at least in South Asia what is your view on that thank you good question lady in the back what do you think are the long-term implications of legitimizing the Taliban we have one here and then one there and then we'll come back to the panel oh hi this is for Timania I thought I was going to agree with you now I think I have Walter Jones the Republican from North Carolina said that no armies there were one in Afghanistan and you think there should be a declaration of war in Congress well that's not going to happen but the point being I think there's a negative leverage that is NATO and the United States are an enemy a good enemy that the Taliban can look at and say look the foreign forces is occupying here that will damage you know for every person bad guy you kill you're going to kill a good person so to me you know I think I think we need to get out of there I think it's a negative so if each actor if each actor India Pakistan the Taliban etc does favor a political process to end the conflict but none of them trust the others commitment to a political process then how could each actor display its or I guess end the possibility of ending or its desire to end the conflict through a military victory and display its own commitment to a political process let me start from this side and ask if you want to say something I'll just just real quickly on the question about leaving multilateral institutions and the slogan of America first and the impact it has on leverage I think if you look at it in a broad sense sort of in a global sense and it does have a huge impact on not only on leverage but all of our relations sort of worldwide in terms of our ability to work with other countries and our ability to speak in a multilateral form but I think if you sort of look specifically at Afghanistan it has less of an impact because I mean NATO plays a role in Afghanistan but it's a very supportive role to what the United States is doing so I think for most these countries the United States is it already and so the fact whether it's United States or NATO I don't think they differentiate and the America first sort of slogan is as far as I understand it is really about manufacturing and trade and that's not something that's a real concern right now for the Afghan peace process Should I answer the other question? I'll start with your question in the back about legitimizing the Taliban I mean I agree with you that we don't want the Taliban as it exists now as it is fighting nobody is saying that we should legitimize them or claim that they are legitimate in their claims to be a government or anything like that I think we're very clearly on the side of the Afghan government I think there are many safeguards in 2009 the U.S then outlined what the R3N conditions were these have gone on to be adopted by the U.N. by multilateral forum and reiterated by President Ghani even last month which are that any Taliban who seek to reconcile would have to cease violence would have to accept the Afghan constitutional framework including its protections for minorities and women and would have to break with international terrorism and so what we're talking about here is entering a political settlement process you know estimates of Taliban insurgents are somewhere plus 70 to 80 thousand I mean I don't think we realize the scale of that worldwide people say ISIS is like 13 thousand right I mean the Taliban is a huge factor in Afghan society and so you will not be able to kill your way out of this just the reality of the fact right and so if we want to bring Afghanistan out of decades and decades of war and not just the 17 years that we're here we have to find a way for those who are fighting who are not fighting forever who are actually have some grievance be it local or national grievance is there a way a mechanism that can guarantee that the Taliban do not support international terrorism that can close ungoverned spaces and also bring back many of them into the polity and I think from an American perspective it's easy for us to think about as black and white Afghan government good Taliban bad I think it's a very simplistic understanding the average Afghans experience of both the Taliban and Afghan government are often not good right being a woman in Afghanistan whether you're in a government controlled area or a Taliban controlled area is not necessarily a positive experience but ending the war does require political dialogue and that process there will be people who don't reconcile who we cannot reconcile with and that's okay but I think not trying dooms Afghanistan to endless war so the negative sorry the negative leverage I actually agree with you to a certain extent so you know President Trump in his speech even says his inclination was just get out of there right it was true the presence the Taliban and even the Hikani network I would say don't have homeland aspirations right they fight us in Afghanistan so maybe our mere presence causes not just them but a host of other militant groups to continue to fight us there and increases instability in the region really but I think it is the counterterrorism that there is really a national security imperative to not leave ungoverned spaces not leave a vacuum from which groups and dias so I think his advisors such as general Mattis said there was a responsible way to end the war is not just to pick up and leave right picking up and leaving would leave a vacuum that is not in our interest and we may have to come back at a later date but but your sentiment is well taken that is our presence there for so long beneficial or not so the last one sorry he would I wasn't clear on your course so what can each party do to show that it is committed to a political settlement I think there's a lot they can do first of all what you're hearing publicly even though these are recycled points a lot of them still have a lot of preconditions so the Afghan government says you must cease violence before we can talk to you the Taliban says all foreign forces can leave before we talk to you I mean the US has different things that we've put in I think first of all statements can be bellicose because there's a fight going on so it's really about the secret conversations the quiet conversations need to be open and they need to be done with also Pakistan, China, other partners second of all I think resourcing and personnel our policy Dr. Barney Rubin did a great article I think Wildback, Personnel is Policy and if you look at how we resource the military effort versus how we resource the peace effort I mean there's no comparison right so if you're serious about something you put your money where your mouth is well just this last question what can Pakistan do I mean the obvious answer is they could curtail their support to the Hekhanis to the Afghan Taliban including the provision of sanctuaries but I think we have not we as Washington have not sufficiently recognize the extent to which many of those now opposed to American and NATO forces in Afghanistan reside in Afghanistan it's if it ever was and I think at one time clearly it was important it's far less important the question of cross border you fight and you go back across the border and recoup that's not nearly as central militarily today as it used to be so I think we need to be modest in expecting that a change of Pakistani policy is going to have an impact on ending the war more modest than maybe we are well for once we're going to end on time if we didn't start on time so I think I won't sort of try and summarize what you've heard but just to say that at USIP all of you we fill your inboxes with invites for events but we've tried hard not to only focus on the news cycle but to also talk about some deeper issues like this one and quite frankly leverage is an issue that many of us struggle with you know in some ways the way I look at it is US is able to get countries to do something when they see it in their interest but when they see it in their interest there's no point having leverage because they're going to do it anyways and when you want to change behavior we draw a blank more often than not for South Asia I will say Bob I was struck by one comment you made which is that leverage for you is that you need to make the other feel that it's in their interest to do something I wonder whether there is a missing piece here which is actually to try and make it in their interest to do something feel something is less likely to happen when you're talking with states and there I think there are tough decisions to be made and on South Asia at least not that this is about my view but quite frankly I've argued for long that the elephant in the room is the India Pakistan conflict and we've tried every single thing on us to change everybody but touch that and perhaps then we undersell the whole idea of US leverage because we approach it in ways that are nearly impossible so I don't know but I think there are larger questions to answer the final thing I'll say is and all of you perhaps know this better than me but in our experience in a lot of cases that we've dealt with this policy makers around the world and many are sitting here so I don't want to be too confident about this but policy makers around the world find it very hard to put themselves in the opposite numbers shoes and see whether they would do what we're asking them to do and often times I would argue we won't do what we ask countries to do and perhaps that's again a point where leverage may not so anyways this debate is to be continued we don't we didn't expect to get an answer here but we've raised more questions which is exactly what we wanted to do thank you so much for joining us and please join me in thanking the panel thank you are you telling me you have not met Bob Hethel? I have I've heard him speak wow where have you been? I've met, I've seen him all vice versa that's Louise nice way to say ah thank you very much excellent to see you and we appreciate your concluding point hi welcome thank you hi nice to be here I was going to ask you what you think something I've been meaning to do for you what you think Rick Olson's piece I think Ambassador Olson is quite correct I mean I worked with him I think there are visions yes I have seen it that's the way you see them we are we don't have any answers I like it and I've written that somewhere but the next question would be you know there's three tracks the first track is bringing up asher of thought