 And with that, I'm delighted to introduce our moderator for the day as our panelists come out. We're delighted to have Martha Raditz. She's the chief global affairs correspondent for ABC News. She has extensive experience in covering the White House, U.S. national security, the Defense Department. She will introduce the panelists. Please join me in welcoming Martha. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. Thanks to the Institute of Peace. I think everybody here probably knows these panelists, so I'm going to be very brief and you have them in your program as well. We'll start with Secretary Madeleine Albright, who served under President Bill Clinton as Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001 following four years as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She's the founder and chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm and a professor of diplomacy at Georgetown University. Admiral James Stavridis, following a 35-year Navy career, James Stavridis is dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He served as commander of Southern and European commands and as NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe. Admiral Stavridis is currently the chair of the board of directors of the U.S. Naval Institute. Frederick Kemp, my fellow Ute. Frederick Kemp has served since 2007 as president and chief executive of the Atlantic Council overseeing an expansion of its scope of work. He was an award-winning journalist at the Wall Street Journal, covered the collapse of communism in Europe, and served as editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe based in Brussels. And Senator Tom Cotton. He has served as a Republican senator from Arkansas since 2015. His committee assignments include the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Armed Services Committee. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Senator Cotton left a legal career following the September 11th, 2001 attacks to serve as an Army infantry officer, including service in Afghanistan and Iraq. Welcome to you all. Our topic this morning is very simple. I have a very easy job because I have four very smart people here, and they have a lot to say. I have a feeling. So this is quite simple, and I'm going to start with you, Admiral Stavridis, and just go down the line. Tell me your three national security priorities for the next administration. I'm going to start with one that may or may not surprise you. I think cyber is extremely important, and the reason I put it at the top of my list is because I think in cyber we have the greatest mismatch between the level of threat which is quite high and our level of preparation, which frankly is quite low. In other words, we worry about North Korea, but we have options, we're kind of prepared. We worry about what Russia is doing, we're kind of prepared. We worry about violent extremism. We have programs. In cyber, we're really not there. So cyber. Number two, I'd say broadly would be the return of great power politics, and this is often categorized as Russia and China, but I'd add to it this bubbling mix that I think over time is going to include the return to the world stage of Germany and Japan, which I think will be fascinating, and above all in this century the rise of India. How we move those pieces around I think will be challenging. This gets into South China Sea and Crimea and everything else we face. So second I'd say is great power politics underlined disorder, and then the third for me would be the continuing stresses and strains from violent extremism, which we tend to identify as radical Islam, and that's certainly a significant part, but we also have racial challenges. Dylan Roof is a violent extremist. We have political challenges. Anders Brevik, who killed so many people in Norway, is a political extremist. So that strain of violent extremism kind of under the surface of the great power politics and looming out there like a tower I think is cyber. Secretary Elbrich. Well, I would certainly agree with all of those and then have my own kind of list and a little bit different organization. I do think that we are living in a completely changed world in terms of the international system and how we operate and governance questions. The discussion as to whether it's all state actors, I would argue that the presence of non-state actors has added an awful lot of challenges, especially since our national security toolbox has set up to deal with states and not with non-state actors, so the governance. The second I think is the challenge of how the great power rivalries go on, and there I really do think that we have to be concerned about what China and Russia are doing. And then also, as Secretary Kerry said, I think what is going on in Europe, so those aspects and looking at regional problems that come up and bite you that you've not really been ready for. And then the third aspect has also to do with the more process. There is no faith in institutions, and this goes a little bit not just to cyber, but to information. I stole this line from Silicon Valley, but it works so well to explain it, is that people are talking to their governments on 21st century technologies. The government hears them on 20th century technologies and are providing 19th century responses. And therefore there is no faith in institutions and trying to figure out how to deal with all of this. I have a very elegant term for this. The world is a mess. And that will let ordinary people understand what we're saying. And I think that there has to be some way that we look at the institutional structure. And I think we need to understand the following thing, and I hope we have a chance to talk about this more, is foreign policy, national security policy does not come in four year or eight year segments. It is, and no president comes in with a clean slate, and so there has to be a look at what is out there that has to be dealt with. And then the things that will bite you that you don't know are coming. Which leads us to Senator Cotton. And Senator Cotton and I have been talking, and I've found it very interesting the way you look at this, that we talk about three national security priorities. We're not talking about necessarily threats, and you view those quite differently. Sure. Well thanks, Martha, and thanks to the Institute for Peace. I can't disagree with Admiral the Secretary, but as Martha says, I was thinking through the title of this panel, three priorities, not threats. Threats are, in some degree already expressed here, the great powers, Russia and China, rogue nations like North Korea and Iran, transnational actors like Islamic terrorist groups. There's no telling what any of those are going to do over the next 10 days, what they're going to do in the first 10 days of the Trump administration. All those who have been in government know that you often have to react to contact. Where could the new administration go out and make contact? Take the initiative to set priorities that would fundamentally advantage the United States in strategic competition. And I would say there's three areas in that, and this is a good time to pursue them because a new administration is a time when people expect a new path, and it's a time when you have the most domestic political capital and working with Congress. So first would be substantial increases in our defense budget. Maybe going back to the National Defense Panel from 2014, which itself is based on Bob Gates's budget in 2012, the last time the Department of Defense budgeted before the Budget Control Act went into effect, and the sequester spending cuts took effect. Second would be a thoroughgoing review of our strategic posture, both the Bush and the Obama administrations in their first years in office undertook a nuclear posture review. The world has changed radically since then. Both Russia and China are accelerating their nuclear efforts. China is developing hypersonic glide vehicles. Russia is flagrantly violating the INF Treaty. If Russian media reports are to be believed, they're developing an underwater drone that could deliver nuclear weapons into our coastal cities. So I think we need to fundamentally reconsider our nuclear and our missile defense posture. And then third, a domestic issue that has far-reaching international consequences is to accelerate the Shale Revolution in American energy production. We are blessed to have a country of great innovators, of risk-takers, of investors, of fantastic scientists, geology that permits Shale production in a way that really almost no other country in the world has that combination. That's helped us become a global energy superpower. That's something that will give us more freedom of action throughout the world. In particular, though, it will put more strategic pressure on Russia. So when you think about priorities, those three priorities, I think, if the administration would pursue them, whatever happens in the world, whatever our adversaries do, will give us greater strategic flexibility to pursue specific policies about particular countries and regions. Thank you. And Fred? For decades already, I've been stealing Secretary Albright's ideas. So let me first say I want to grab onto the world as a mess, as a fact. And then the other fact, and it won't become more orderly unless the U.S. gets more deeply engaged. There is no one else to substitute for us, and if we don't do it, then either Les Benevolent actors or chaos will fill the void. So I want you all to remember where you were on this day, because we're at a defining moment in history. You can pick your date, 1919, 1945. You can go back to 1815 or 1789, but that's where we are. We're going to pull that with one of the most fraught moments of history, which is a transition to a new president, new party with an untested president. We had that in 1961 with the youngest president of all time, John F. Kennedy, and we ended up with the Bay of Pigs disaster in April with a failed Vienna summit where the Soviets decided the president was weak with the Berlin Wall. And then a year later, you had the Cuban Missile Crisis. So that set the parameters for the rest of the Cold War, but we almost had a nuclear war. I'm not saying anything like that will happen this time. The Cold War was at stake then. I think the global system is at stake now. So my big overarching roof is can we save, readjust, re-invigorate the global system of practices, values that we've always had. And then there are three pillars, and these are my three issues, Europe and Russia. I think it was terrific that Secretary Kerry pointed to the European Union, because if the European Union comes unraveled or becomes more dysfunctional, you cannot have a strong America in the world with a weak Europe. It just doesn't happen. There are a carnstone of engagement. And a revanchist rush is pushing on that. And so both of those things, we need a reassurance for Europe, and we need Russia to know that there are certain lines that can't be crossed, redrawing borders, testing NATO allies at the very top of the list. The second is in the Middle East. Here I want to embrace a report that the Atlantic Council and its Hariri Center has done, Secretary Albright and Steve Hadley, where they outline that it's not a crisis of the Middle East, but a crisis from the Middle East, where you have extremism and migrants being exported, again undermining Europe. We can't deal with that in the short term. That's to be dealt with the long term with our allies. So redoubling and deepening our relationships with allies in the region means our traditional Sunni allies. And then working over the long term to tap what Secretary Albright and Steve Hadley rightly saw some very promising tendencies in the Middle East as well. Entrepreneurship, youth bolds that isn't just dangerous can also be a point of prosperity. And then finally, and the last point is China. If Russia is the biggest threat short term to the global system, China could be a threat over time to the global system, but it's also a stakeholder now, and it has huge amount at stake right now. We can't put ourselves into conflict with China. If we want the global system to be reinvigorated, to be readjusted and survived, we have to do it together with China. Along those lines, I really think we then have to double down our relationships with our allies in the Far East, because if we're strong with our allies, with Japan, with South Korea, with others, we will be able to have a much more positive relationship with China. So those would be my three U.S.-Europe, Middle East, China, Asia. Thanks very much. Senator Cotton, I want to go to you on this. What do you sense Donald Trump's priorities will be? We've all seen tweets. We've all seen things he said during the campaign, and since he has become President elect, but what's your sense of what his priorities might be in terms of foreign policy? He's going to make America great again. And how will he do that? Well, some of the issues that I touched on are things in which the President-elect campaigned as well. Substantial increases in military spending, a fundamental reconsideration of our nuclear and strategic posture, oil and gas production. These are things whatever the President-elect says on Twitter, whatever he says in media interviews are not good things for countries like Russia. They're not good things for Iran or some of our other adversaries in the Middle East. If you look at some of his appointees to the Cabinet, whether it's Jim Mattis or Mike Pompeo or Mike Flynn, these are not shy and retiring violets who have a constrained role of America's view in the world. I suspect that President-elect Trump, as he said on the campaign trail, and based on some of his nominations, will take a firmer line around the world with a lot of our adversaries and try to project greater strength and demand more respect for the United States. He'd be less willing to make concessions without receiving concessions in return, and I think those are all good things. I think those are a good change after eight years of the Obama Administration, which the President said famously early on that he wanted to extend an open hand rather than a clenched fist. But sometimes the clenched fist has to proceed the open hand. You know, I want to talk about the tweets for a second, and it's obviously something we've never seen before, to this number of tweets like this. It's usually a statement and very formal. But those tweets have moved markets, they've moved forward, they've moved carrier. How will that work in foreign policy? Can it move foreign leaders, Secretary Albright? I'm going to try to be polite. Let me just say that I am very concerned about the tweets and generally about the messages that are going out. And if I could say, Secretary Kerry said I'd invented the term indispensable nation, actually President Clinton did. I just said it so often it became identified with me. But there is nothing about that term that says alone. It means that the United States needs to be engaged, and I think that that is a message I think we need to get out there. Not as America first, but as America as a partner. There is nothing wrong with partnerships. I know Americans don't like the word multilateralism. It has too many syllables and ends in an ism. But the bottom line is it all it means is partnership and understanding that the world as we see it in terms of what you call the global issues that are out there, whether it's terrorism or disease or nuclear proliferation, those issues require partnerships. And so I do think there has been a system in place in the world for a very long time of how governments communicate with each other, how presidents communicate with each other, how those documents are developed. Are they a part of some kind of a decision making process that does in fact reflect what the government thinks and what the Congress thinks and what the American people think? And the tweets don't deal with that. In fact, they are... But if you want to shake things up, if you want a reset, if you really want to get someone's attention and get Taiwan's attention, you want to get China's attention, why not? Let me just say, I think it's fine. Disruption is a very interesting theory, actually, and I think that it doesn't hurt. Disruption is not a good thing. And I think that part of the issue is that I think it is absolutely essential. I said this, that foreign policy doesn't come in four or eight-year segments. Every administration, especially if it's of a different party, tries to do things differently. But it has created great concerns. And let me just take one example from the transfer from Clinton to Bush. I was in the middle of negotiations with the North Koreans. Bill Perry just wrote about this. The decision was made by the Bush administration not to continue those talks. I now would put North Korea into one of the more dangerous aspects of what is going on out there. So I only use it as an example of the fact that you may disagree with what President Obama did. I might disagree with what President Bush did. Actually, Steve and I took a pledge not to talk about the past. But I think that it is what it is. And it is essential that there be some understanding of what the track is, what the role of the United States is, how we behave as a responsible power in cooperation with others. And tweets doesn't do it for me. Anybody else want to jump in on that? I will. I agree with Secretary Albright that if you think of it as a diet, if your diet is exclusively shots of espresso, that's probably not a good thing. As part of a fulsome diet where you are conducting normal diplomacy, you are executing agreements, you are negotiating treaties, you are moving military forces, I think an occasional shot of espresso can jazz you and can actually energize things. Where I worry about it is I think of young officers, I'll do a military kind of context to it, which is let's say a tweet appears that says, hey, the next Iranian gunboat that crosses the bow of a U.S. Navy ship is going to get blown out of the water. Roughly. I don't think that was a tweet. I think that was actually an umbrella. But you are very close. Right. So what we need to recognize is that that particular shot of espresso has an effect all the way down to that young commanding officer where he or she is dealing with these kind of rules of engagement moments. And so you potentially kind of create this short circuit that goes from the ultimate commander in chief down to operators on the ground. I think it can be the same in diplomacy. It can work the same in economics. So I guess where I come out is an occasional shot of espresso, okay. Let's think about it, but it can't be exclusively your diet. And I think as Senator Kahn said it wouldn't be. You have probably a Madison there and others doing those other things. So let me actually embrace the tweets. As you know, I'm a little schizophrenic here, a journalist and foreign policy analyst. And as a journalist, good heavens, he's really just captured the news story every day. And it's pretty brilliant what he's doing. But let me then compliment, because I agree with Admiral Stavridis, the tweets have to be accompanied, what they have to be accompanied with by a strategy. But you can't expect the strategy to be there yet. But it's going to have to come relatively soon. There is an unpredictability that the president-elect has embraced. And on many issues, that can be useful politically. On the global stage, the U.S. has to be predictable. Its allies have to know where it stands. Its adversaries have to know where it stands. Accompanied by tweets, that's fine and could be highly effective. I don't expect the president-elect to put on a bumper sticker, you know, save the international liberal order. But if he wants to be successful, and here's the tweet I would have, which is, I want President Trump to make global America great again. And to do that, he has to lay out a strategy that really embraces this order that we created after 1945, when we had 50 percent of global GDP, now we have 18 or 20 percent. That means we have to lead more collaboratively. We have to lead in a way that inspires people around the world, so that they want to follow. And if he can do that and tweet every day how he's doing that, that would be a wonderful way, because it can reach the entire world in that fashion. And so I don't think you can expect a populist president, maybe the most populist president we've elected since Andrew Jackson, to not be populist in office. But he can be populist and sustain the global system that has benefited us all so much at the same time. Senator Cunt, do you think other countries need to know where we stand as he described it? And if so, where do you think Russia thinks they stand at this point in time? Like most countries around the world, their view of the future of U.S. policy has been somewhat frozen for six to eight months in the election and since the election as well. Again, Donald Trump has said that it would be a good thing if we had a better relationship with Russia and we cooperated more on common interests. That would be a good thing. The last three presidents at one time or another have tried to take that tactic and they've been wrong-footed every single time. I'm sure that Vladimir Putin thinks that he can wrong foot Donald Trump again and advance his project as opposed to advancing America's interests in the world. Again, when you get back to the fundamental matters, though, in terms of our defense budget, the size of our Navy, the nuclear modernization, some of the nominees that Donald Trump has chosen, I don't think there's a clear signal being sent to Moscow right now from the Trump transition team. We are going to open it up to questions very soon and wonder around. But I just want to engage a little bit on, I know the threats, the priorities going forward, but how you view Donald Trump's foreign policy agenda or his strategic thinking in terms of foreign policy and whether you really have to define that. I mean, throughout my career, everybody's defined, you know, this is the Clinton doctrine, this is the Obama doctrine, this is the Bush doctrine. Do you need that in every case or can it be a case-to-case basis? Admiral Severeadus. I think it's premature to try and scope all that out simply because the nominees that President-elect Trump had put forward were not anticipated to say the least. I think if you go back 60 days ago and you'd said we were going to pick a four-star general to head up the Department of Defense, we're going to have another four-star general at DHS, we're going to have the CEO of ExxonMobil, all of which I think are good picks, by the way. We never would have anticipated it. So I think you've got to wait and see that team come together, interact with Mike Flynn and KT McFarland, let them do the traditional NSC role, and we've got to give them some space to shape the view. Knowing very well the two military officers as well as Mike Flynn, I think I can sense the kind of outline of where things are going to go, but we need to wait. We've got to really get Rex Tillerson into the mix in a significant way as well. So let's give them some space, let's see where it goes, but I do want to agree with both the senator and with Fred that we've got to have a consistency in a view. And so we should give them time to develop it, but we should not allow ourselves to remain on that diet of Expresso. Secretary Albright, you brought this up and Mike Flynn, General Mattis, General Kelly, a lot of retired military in there. Do you think that's an issue? I mean, obviously they're leaders, they know how to get things done, but they go to the same schools. They have been in the military their whole lives. Is there a different perspective there for solving problems? Well, I do actually think that there's a different perspective, and some of it very useful, if I might say. This might surprise people, but whenever I flew on a military plane, I would sit behind the pilot, and I would see that even though they had taken off many, many times, they would go through the steps every single time. Civilians don't do that. There is something very disciplined about it. Well, it's very interesting, frankly. And so I do think that there are some things that the military can input into the system. I think also, and we talked about this, the whole issue of civilian-military relations, I find fascinating in terms of teaching and in terms of how things are carried out in your example about what happens to the people as they hear something from the top. So I am not opposed to the military people there. I think it's going to be interesting. What is the thing, though, that needs to be looked at? Is the process. I have been involved in the transition now a number of times, and obviously I was very interested in what Secretary Kerry said, how little is going on. It means that it has to go on because this is turning over the crown jewels. And I think that the process that ultimately produces a national security strategy or these documents in terms of a nuclear doctrine has to take place, and it is the NSC that makes this happen, that brings the process together since 1947. And so I'm hoping that the time immediately, or already now, and as the hearings go forward, that that process takes place because unpredictability occasionally is interesting. Constant unpredictability is dangerous. And so I think that process has to take place, and the military and the civilians have to figure out how to operate together. It will be crucial. And I think we need to support that civilian military relationship. At the Atlantic Council, we deal with a lot of military brass. And I think one of the things that's really impressed me is how the military invests in the education of its officers. If you want to have the most fascinating conversation you could ever have on military history and what the lessons are for today, then talk to General Mattis or Admiral Stavridis. These are the people I have these deep intellectual conversations with. These are some of our best thinkers and some of our best strategists. I wish other parts of the US government would invest as much into further education as the military has done. So that doesn't concern me at all. One thing that will be interesting is who the President turns to for military advice at those crucial moments when he's going to have General Mattis and General Dempsey, both Marines sitting there, one of whom it's his job, and the other one has done that up until very recently. So there may be some complicated moments of that sort, but nothing that I don't think that these people can sort through. And Senator Cotton, I have to say that just covering these wars for all these decades, the military wasn't just doing military duty. They were diplomats as well in these situations and thrown into situations where they had no idea what was going to happen in a war that was going south early on in Iraq and tried to turn that around and be skilled diplomats as well. I want to go back to this. Yeah. I mean, I certainly admire the military, but I do think that we also have to respect the people that are in the have been serving the United States as diplomats or as civil servants, people who have dedicated their life to government service and should not be viewed as traitors or people that can't do the job. And I was very proud to be Secretary of State and see how hard the diplomats really worked and the wall in the State Department that had all the people that had died in service needs. This is a very dangerous job, especially these days. And the combination of the military and civilians protecting each other and working on things together is very important. And Secretary of State mentioned that the budget for the State Department is $51 billion. The budget for the Pentagon is somewhere between six and $700 billion. And that is something function 050 and 150 needs to be looked at together. OK, thanks very much. We certainly have good words for career diplomats. Senator Kahn, I want to go back to the nuclear issue, because you brought that up as one of your three priorities. Certainly you want to modernize what's already there, but what does this look like? What is the nuclear deterrent in your mind look like going forward? It's not the 60s anymore. I mean, we were talking also about walking over those missile silos out in Wyoming and Colorado and how 60s it feels and scary. But talk a little bit about what needs to be modernized. And I want to bring you in on that too, Admiral Stavridis. And we're going to open up for questions. No, it's not the 60s anymore, in part because large nuclear arsenals are no longer restricted to the United States and then the Soviet Union nail Russia. You know, one issue I had with the New Start Treaty is it treated the United States as if Russia was our only strategic competitor in the nuclear domain, as opposed to China being a rising competitor and having the advantage of being free of all constraints. So that's something that we have to account for that China continues to expand its nuclear arsenal and that Russia is modernizing it and is changing its doctrine and rhetoric around nuclear doctrine, as well as countries like North Korea and India and Pakistan. And one day, I hope not, Iran, domestically in terms of our nuclear capabilities, what that means is, you know, reinvestment in all legs of the triad. But we need to develop a new missile system, the ground-based strategic deterrents. We need to have an Ohio-class replacement submarine and the new B-21 bomber. Congress is committed to this as part of the commitments that President Obama made to pass the New Start Treaty. This is something that's going to depend very heavily, first on Donald Trump, but especially on Jim Mattis, as Secretary of Defense. To drive those programs forward, to make sure we're getting best value on time delivery, requires very capable management. This is something that Bob Gates wrote about in his book about his time as Secretary of Defense, that it's only the Secretary of Defense who can drive a program that's fundamentally important. So like the B-21, you don't want the B-21 to end up like either the B-2 or the F-35 has. You know, those are decisions that were made 25, 35 years ago when I was in grade school. The B-21 decisions are being made now and we want to make sure those programs are effective. And what we've heard from Donald Trump in terms of the, I'll be right to you, Admiral Sturford, in terms of military budgets, adding ships, adding people, adding that, tell me just briefly, if you will, whether you think the budget, what those budgets align to in terms of threat? Well, so the reason people go back to the Gates budget is that it was the last budget done before the Budget Control Act put arbitrary caps on the Department of Defense. That was the last time the Department of Defense engaged in full-on strategic-based budgeting as opposed to budget-based strategizing. It also was a time when the world was not nearly as dangerous as it has become over the last five years. In my opinion, we have to take into account the security threats that our country faces, and that's not just the military, as Secretary Albright said, that's our diplomats, that's our intelligence officers, and so forth, but whatever the threats that our country faces, we have to find the money to counteract those threats. There's many important functions of government that we need to fund, but we have to take into account their budgetary constraints, in my opinion. We need more ships because of China? We need more ships because of China, but we need more ships because of Russia as well. We need more ships because we're a global superpower that is largely a maritime power, since we're in the new world, and most of these threats we're talking about is in the old world, and getting back to 350 ships to which Donald Trump has committed, to which our Navy has said they want to pursue is fundamental to our ability to project power into the old world, to deter Great Power War, as our global Navy has done for 75 years. I certainly agree with that, and I'm happy to see an Army captain speaking so well about the Navy. That's well done, sir. I can see why you're in the Senate. I want to quickly give a shout-out. We've talked a lot about military. We've talked a lot about diplomats. I want to draw a line under those who do development. USAID, our NGOs, the Peace Corps, many of them stand in risk every single day, and that is also part of our security and also an underfunded part of our security. Break, break, to your question, I agree completely with Senator Cotton's analysis, both of the overall nuclear piece and the larger DOD budget. I will draw a particular line, and I stipulate I'm a Navy Admiral, so here it comes, but the Ohio class replacement, because it is the invulnerable leg of the triad, at least invulnerable at this point, I think is of particular value. I do support the triad, not the dyad, but I can tell you from experience, those Ohio's need replacement, and that's the ultimate bank. Last thought, Bill Perry, who is gonna be here with us today has a new book out, relatively new, called My Journey at the Brink of Nuclear War, and it is a terrific book about his feeling that we are edging back toward a world in which the use of nuclear weapons is far more imaginable than it was over the previous decades. I think that's deeply worrisome and needs to be part of the conversation, and it's also, sadly, a fundamental reason that we need to continue to have that deterrent. If I could just add, this is exactly the point I'm making about a new posture review. It's not just Kim Jong-un who rattles the nuclear saber regularly. It's Russian defense ministry officials and flag officers. They talk expressly about using nuclear weapons, using tactical nuclear weapons to offset their conventional disadvantages. This is something that regularly happens in the Russian language press, often not reported in the Western press, but it's this kind of change that we have not seen for the last 25 years that is reminiscent of some of the most tense periods of the Cold War that demand us to conduct this kind of thoroughgoing review. Fred, and then we're gonna go to questions. Very short comment on Admiral Stavridis' comment on development, which also is partially lined with Secretary Albright's reconfiguring of budgets. Part of the problem is that development has become a part of geopolitical competition and is strategic, but we don't think of it as strategic. And in the 60s, interestingly enough, Kennedy did look at it that way. And we saw it that way during the Soviet period, but it's that way again. And so these are strategic expenditures in development and they have to be aligned with national strategy. And somehow over the years, this has become separated. And so I think there has to be a double down on development and it has to be seen again in geopolitical and strategic terms. Here's the good news, it's incredibly inexpensive compared to the necessity of buying the high-end military systems. These are really penny on the dollar investments. And I will tell you, I spent seven years as a combatant commander in two theaters. I deployed many, many ships, aircraft carriers, destroyers, cruisers, submarines forward. Perhaps the most impactful deployments I ordered were of hospital ships. Comfort, mercy, that's part of our security. You said that very well. Thanks very much. Let's open it to questions if you'd please introduce yourself when you stand. You have the advantage of being in the front row here, so. Good morning, Mark Mayberry, vice president, MITRE and director of the National Cyber Security FFRDC wanted to ask a question to Admiral Stravidis. You raised the issue of cyber. Also a question to the other panelists. We have lots of initiatives within the US government and the private sector to enhance cyber resilience. We have a few international activities focused on improving fuel relations, expectations, norms of behavior. Given the audience and the focus, I'd be interested in what the next administration needs to do to raise the game in this important mission area. Thanks. I'll give you four or five things. It's a list of 20. I strongly support dividing the National Security Agency from US Cyber Command. So you have two senior individuals who can focus on two very different missions, very big span of control. I think that's happening. I hope the new administration follows through on that. Secondly, we need more international cooperation and work on this. We're quite good. Many of our allies are very good. Within the bounds of propriety and confidentiality, we need to think about how we can learn more from, for example, the Israelis, from the French who are pretty good, et cetera. Thirdly, we need better interagency integration. And I would argue that includes, eventually, a cabinet-level voice to focus on cyber. It's such a fundamental backbone to our societies, our vulnerabilities are great. We have a secretary of agriculture, a secretary of interior. Where's that cabinet voice on cyber security? Could it be part of the Director of National Intelligence's role, for example? So getting that into that level and lastly, better private-public cooperation. We're never gonna secure ourselves in cyber using a military or a government approach. The real brains in that operation, as I think we all know, are out on the West Coast. We need to bring those together, better private-public cooperation. I could go on a long time on this, but there's some ideas. And Admiral Severidge, are we late to the cyber security game here? I think the way to think of it is as go back 100 years and think about aviation. We were just kind of at the beginning, we'd use planes a little bit in combat. Commercial flights were just kind of starting. We're kind of at that stage in cyber. So I don't particularly fault or blame us. We're still kind of on the beach at Kitty Hawk in a certain sense. But we've got to go faster because the cyber threat, the cyber means the internet of things is gonna jump from 15 million devices to 25 billion devices, excuse me, billion to billion. Within five years, the acceleration demands us to go faster than we did in aviation. We're at that stage, I would say. I do think we're kind of behind on it. I think the question is, what is the organizational structure for it? We've talked about this. I'm not sure that a cabinet role is the right one because it isn't all cabinet government, but it does need to be within the national security decision-making system. And especially since it is divided among a lot of different parts of the government. And it has to have an intelligence component to it. So the DNI part of it is important. The part though that I say fairly frequently these days is reorganization of the government becomes its own kind of monkey works in many way. It takes an awful lot of time, takes a lot of attention. And we need to focus on the substance of this as quickly as possible, rather than trying to decide who's in charge and who does what. It's under a cotton. How can Congress help during that period, during this transition period? Do no harm. Thank you, doctor. We passed cyber legislation last year that was a step in the right direction. I'm not sure it's all the way we need to go, but going back to my point about development of new delivery systems in the nuclear triad, that's another area where the ball is primarily in the executive branches court, that having competent, effective managers are driving change forward. I agree with what Secretary Albright said. When you think you have a problem with your organization, especially if your organization is a government and the solution is moving around boxes and lines, you're probably wrong. The solution is usually better leadership and a change culture. Now I think that we, I agree with what Admiral Stavridis said that we're still kind of the dawn of the cyber age. The people that we have working on this problem in our government are the best people in the world. America produces the best people in the world. We have peer competitors though, as we've seen, who can hold it at risk things that we hold very dear. And it's a threat that we have to take seriously. You had one final comment? Last thought is simply to put it in a military context and think back 100 years ago, we had an army, a navy and a Marine Corps. We didn't have an air force. Why? Because we didn't really fly planes around. Today we have an army, a navy and a Marine Corps and of course we have an air force. I would argue we need to put more emphasis in this area. We're gonna look back in 50 years and say, gosh, what were we thinking? Over here. Shyamala Idris with Search for Common Ground. You've each talked about areas of potential investment and the senators talked about pre sequestration levels of defense budget. Admiral and Mr. Kemp have talked about investments in high bank for the buck development. This is all coming at a time of incredible economic stress, huge debt and I'm curious to hear, and particularly as Congress controls the purse strings from the Senator, where will this money come from? Where would you see the priorities for reducing or restructuring budgets in order to invest in some of the things that are being talked about today? Oh, I'll defer to the Ways and Means Committee on that. Now, hopefully we'll have more economic growth in the coming years and hopefully that can generate some of the tax revenue that we need. You can always find some savings in the Department of Defense. There was a report last month that suggests I think there's $125 billion in savings. I don't accept that number. I think it was highly theoretical about the kinds of practices you could apply from private corporations that you simply can't apply in the government because of things like civil service roles and government contracting roles, but Bob Gates found $400 billion early in the Obama administration. He wasn't allowed to reinvest that in the military as he was initially promised, but that's just one example of the kind of savings that you can find. One of the things I mentioned early about a top priority, additional or accelerated oil and gas production. Well, a happy fact is that the good Lord put oil and gas in a lot of places where the federal government owns land around the outer continental shelf. So from leases, royalties and bonuses, you generate some revenue through that as well in addition to the geopolitical effects it has. So there's ways that we can find the revenue that we need to meet the threats that we face around the world. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, but I think both parties, at least the Democrats with whom I work regularly on the armed services and the intelligence committee recognize that. Okay, next question. Right here. John Herbst, Atlantic Council, to go from the heights to something specific. If Mr. Putin continues his aggression in Ukraine, should the new administration renew sanctions in March? And if it doesn't, and I'm looking at you, particularly Senator Cotton, should Congress pass legislation mandating sanctions? I expect Vladimir Putin is still going to continue his aggression because I define him having troops in annex Korea as aggression. I don't see him leaving Crimea anytime soon. I don't see him leaving the Donbass anytime soon. So I would support the extension of sanctions. I would support a whole suite of efforts to apply more pressure to Russia, to greet Russia with firmer boundaries. And so they know that costs will be imposed when they cross over those boundaries. The report that the Director of National Intelligence released last week about Russian or Russian affiliates hacking the DNC and John Podesta said that this is a clear pattern that has continued in cyberspace, but there has been a significant escalation in the scope and the scale and the reach. And you have to wonder why Vladimir Putin thought he could get away with that kind of escalation. That's just one example, the one specific example of the crimes and transgressions that Russia has committed against the United States and our interests under Vladimir Putin for 15 years. I think the key thing we can do is apply more pressure and try to gain the strategic upper hand, not in any particular place, like Ukraine or Syria or the Baltics, not in any particular domain, like cyber or nuclear, but across the board. Can I just add a point on that? Admiral Steverita, say it, go ahead. Yeah, agreeing with the Senator, if I could phrase it slightly differently, perhaps. It would be first Russian proverb, which is probe with a bayonet when you encounter mush, keep going, when you hit steel, withdraw. There's not been a lot of steel in that relationship, and so I think there needs to be more confrontations. We should confront where we must in cyber, Syria, and Ukraine, for example. We should also try and find zones of cooperation, and I think there are potential ones out there. Counterterrorism, counterpiracy, counter-narcotics, potentially in Afghanistan where our interests align, perhaps in the Arctic. Over time, maybe arms control. There's some trade space, so I would say absolutely agree, confront where we must, but cooperate where we can. And the fallacy, Ambassador Herbs, is this idea that we're gonna create a grand strategic bargain with Russia. That's not gonna happen, I don't think. We're gonna have a transactional relationship that is gonna have to include some steel, but also find some zones of cooperation. Secretary Albright, I wanna hear what you have to say about Russia and where you think we're going. Well, I do think that we need to be tough as has been expressed, but I think also that we need to persuade our allies. Those sanctions have to be renewed by our allies also, which requires diplomacy and work that's gonna have to be done of not just America first saying how we are gonna do things. I am concerned about some of the ways that the discussions about Russia have taken place during the campaign, making it seem as if they are kind of a benign operation when they are not. And we do need to look at what the hacking has been about, what the role of information has been, Russia today, a number of different aspects of the information aspect of this, but I think we need to be tough. And while at the same time looking for areas where we can cooperate, but there has to be diplomatic activity with the Europeans to make sure that they also renew the sanctions. Okay, question over here. John Alterman, CSIS. Senator Cotton, you talked about the need to increase military spending. Before you came, Secretary Kerry talked about putting a couple trillion dollars into Iraq and Afghanistan. I think most Americans would wonder whether it's a question of investment. As we think about the threats that the United States faces around the world, as you say, there are superpower threats. There are threats like Iran and North Korea. There are non-state actor threats, like Secretary Albright was talking about. There are any number of things we could use military instruments to address. As you look around the world, what do you think we need to use military instruments to do more of? And what do you think we are currently using military instruments to do that we should be doing less of? Well, my preference would be to use military force as little as possible. No one who's seen combat would like to send our sons and daughters off to combat again. The two trillion dollars that has been spent in Iraq and Afghanistan was spent on wartime operations. That's not an increase in our fundamental capabilities. I would like to see an increase in our base budget, not so we can employ it and win with it, but so we deter those kind of conflicts from happening in the first place. And too often, you see our military impressed into things that are not core military operation. We were talking earlier about the role that our young privates and corporals played on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan that were diplomatic or development or legal or political. And they did those things with great skill, but that's not the training that they get at basic training. When I was in Afghanistan, I was on an interagency joint team. We didn't just have Air Force and Army. We had state, we had USDA, we had AID. I'd like to see more of that. I'd like to see us apply all those other levers of national power to all the problems we face. So we're not using our military for tasks that they perform, however admirably, but still is not in their core skill set and distracts away from the tasks for which they've been trained that we have to use them. I totally agree, interagency piece powerful. I want to pick up the secretary's theme of the allies and just kind of make the case that NATO, despite the fact that we need to get our European allies to step up and spend the 2% of their goal, it's still enormous allied capability there. Japan, Australia, we have resources in our alliance system that we can tap if we can execute alignment of purpose. Not always a given, but I think that's another place you can draw resources and potentially lessen the burden on U.S. troops. Martha, if I could just add there, when I speak about not having to employ our military like that, I mean in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, I think it's a great benefit for our security to have them in places like South Korea and Japan and Europe on permanent status. We have these alliances like NATO or like the U.S.-Japan Treaty, not because we're a charitable organization, we're a nation state and we have interests. And while it is in those nation's interests, of course to be an ally of us, we have them primarily because it is in our interest to have those relationships and to have those troops forward deployed, which by the way is often less expensive than having them based here in the United States. Now there's some questions about whether they're deploying the right places like for instance in Europe, whether we should move them further to the East and the Poland and the Baltics, more so than we have now. But having those four deployed troops in a steady state is a big benefit to our national security and it saves money. I just wanna go back to the beginning very briefly and you talk about priorities versus threat. Immediately when Donald Trump takes office on the 20th and none of us can really predict but there's lots of signs out there, what do you think the first crisis or threat might be? Is it North Korea? Is it the Secretary of Alberta when you start? Well, I always think- There's a threat, not a priority. I don't wanna jinx anything, so. But I think that they're- I said you can never predict so. Well you can't predict, but I do think that I hope that when he is president and he gives his inaugural speech that it's very clear about where America stands and then that in fact there is a comprehensive foreign policy speech. I do think that the threats are going to come from non-state actors in a variety of ways that are harder to deal with in terms of some, I mean as we watch what the terrorism level has been and what is happening in Turkey for instance, I am nervous about North Korea because we're dealing with a nutcase on the other side and so he really is somebody that might take advantage of that particular moment. Fred? Notice I said we can't predict but that I ask him to predict, but you know. What we do. The reason these transition times are so fraught is it's a period of time when your adversaries test and your allies hedge and so if we're not clear on the question for example of Ukraine, you might find Vladimir Putin testing. If we're not clear on the question of sanctions, you might find the Germans and others hedging and so American leadership and predictability is absolutely crucial at this point of time and so as much as I would like to have the administration take time to develop a national strategy document, on the other hand they have to start developing national strategy ideas really with the inaugural and then flesh them out before. So I think the greatest dangers come if we don't have a strategy because if we don't have a strategy you don't know what the priority is and then you get into North Korea where certainly non-proliferation is key but it's also an opportunity if you can work together with China to sort this out. What an incredible opportunity that could be in the first year where you work together with the Chinese to take on this global menace. North Korea, I think that was a tweet by the way that it's not gonna happen, they're not gonna get a nuclear weapon to reach the US. Are we talking preemptive strike here? Well think about the threats in the earliest stages of this presidency. I think a simple fact is most of our adversaries are scared of Donald Trump to put it very bluntly and adversaries like China and Russia I think are unlikely to test us in the early days of the administration. China has shown itself susceptible to deterrence in the East China Sea. I think Vladimir Putin is more likely to play possum or rope-a-dope do things like refuse to retaliate for what Barack Obama did two weeks ago or declare a ceasefire in Syria as he did last month which is I would say really just a refit North Korea because of Kim Jong-un's history of erratic behavior and the difficulty in deterring him and Islamic terrorists because of their fanatical beliefs and the difficulty in deterring them, I would say are the two most likely challenges that a new president Trump would face in the very early days of his administration. I always like to quote Secretary Defense Bob Gates for whom I worked for many, many years. He used to say about predictions like this, our record is perfect. We've never gotten it right. And so- That's what I'm saying, everything you say won't happen. I'll fearlessly say, I see something maritime happening and it could be Iranians going after one of our destroyers in the Arabian Gulf. I could see China pushing in a maritime sense, a kind of a soft tug in the South China Sea, possibly in the East China Sea. I agree with the Senator on Russia will take a wait and see attitude. So I think a maritime touch and I think undoubtedly cyber. You're gonna see intrusion in cyber and it's gonna come from all directions. North Korea, Iran, Russia, China because they wanna know where those limits are. Senator Cotton's saying he thinks some are scared of Donald Trump. Let me ask you this then. We heard Secretary Kerry earlier say the red line thing, that didn't matter. There wasn't really a red line. They paid consequences. Is that in a sense, okay, whatever you think about that red line, whether in fact they were allowed to cross or not, that isn't in the adversary's mind anymore. They will have Donald Trump who's made some pretty powerful threats, if you will. I agree they are frightened of President-elect Trump because he's unpredictable, but they will seek to remediate that by defining where those lines are and whether this administration will shift those lines as a matter of tactics or not, I don't know. We'll know more when that national security team comes together. I would think this will be a fundamental conversation they'll have. Fred. The one thing one has to think about early on because I think there is a danger of an ISIS or ISIS-related attack on our homeland and indeed I think they would like to do that early in a Trump administration. And then the question is, what's the Trump reaction to that? Because as with Al Qaeda at 9-11, ISIS is weakened right now. ISIS has lost territory. ISIS has, and a point when it's lost territory, it is becoming more dangerous outside of its territory and in the West and potentially in the US. So it's not just that it's a danger, it's the one really has to game out how one responds so that you don't actually play into their hands by over responding and then acting as a recruiting tool. Okay, question over here. My name is Shelly Pitterman. I work with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. In the context of this broad discussion, the United Nations has not been mentioned yet. So I would like to invite the panel to speak to the role of the United Nations in addressing issues of American national security and building partnerships, supporting development, and of course dealing with mass movements of refugees and others. Thank you. Well, let me say, I was saying Ambassador Albright this time, yeah. I am a believer in the UN, but it needs some fixing. There is a new Secretary General who actually is an expert on refugees as well as on governance. But the question is how the United States is gonna support the UN. It does not work without the United States. And I think that we cannot have influence on the UN if we do not pay up, it's a club, the dues, as well as the peacekeeping operation. And all I can tell you is when I was there, we were working on reforming the UN and at the time we had not paid up. And the British, Malcolm Rifkin, in the General Assembly session delivered a line that they had waited more than 200 years to say representation without taxation. And so I think in order to have the kind of influence we need, we cannot, if I may say to Congress, not have resolutions where we say we're not gonna take part in the United Nations or in fact have the President-Elect talk about the fact that it's just a club where people talk a lot. People at the UN work hard and the people that are sent to the UN as ambassadors are there because they are capable of making decisions. But the UN needs a real reform and the Security Council itself is like the Rubik's Cube. So for instance, when we were there, we were suggesting that Germany and Japan become permanent members of the UN, leading of the Security Council, leading the Italians to come to me to say that's not fair, we lost the war too, which is not a great campaign slogan. Or at any given time, out of 15 members, five were Europeans and I would go to a European ambassador and say, I need your help on ex-vote and the ambassador would say, I'm so sorry, I can't help you. The EU does not yet have a common position. And then two days later, I'd go back to the same person and say, can you help me now? And the ambassadors say no because the EU does have a common position. So it's that kind of an issue that needs to be dealt with, which is reform, but it requires American support. And if we give up on the UN, we have lost one great tool of governance. Senator Cotton, do you believe everything she said and agree with that? Every single word. I can say the UN is in the doghouse in Congress right now, as they are in Arkansas and I suspect most other states around the country and they're blade running in their support for Congress. And the kind of reform that has to occur that needs to be far reaching. It is an outrage that the United Nations Security Council passed that anti-Israel resolution last month. It's an outrage that we continue to allow China and Russia to block resolutions that are giving them cover for what they do in Syria while we're letting resolutions pass about Israel. So there's gonna be a fundamental discussion about the United Nations role in the world and the US's role in the United Nations. Okay, another question? Back here. I'm Margie Ensign, the president of the American University of Nigeria located in northeast Nigeria. Can you tell us what some of the priorities are, national security priorities for this fast growing continent? We have a very vibrant Africa Center, the Atlantic Council and the head of that center, Peter Pham, Dr. Peter Pham, is concerned that we are not paying attention to some very negative evolutions in Africans, particularly focused on Congo right now. You could also, for Europe, have a migrant wave from Africa to Europe that dwarfs what's happened with Syria, and you can imagine the political consequences of that. So I think, a couple of years ago, we were talking about how, I don't know if it's six of the fastest 10 growing economies in the world were in Africa, which was true, but now you've had a turn in a negative direction in a few places in Africa, and for all the priorities we've listed, you just can't turn away from that because that could turn out to be a black swan in different ways that saps your attention. I want to finish here, and thank you for all the wonderful questions with just a final question. We have a few minutes left, and that's when you go forward and you think about national security, when you think about foreign policy, what is the moral responsibility that we have as a nation? How do you define that when you look back on the war in Syria and barrel bombing of civilians? Where do you use that? What does it mean? How do you go forward with that? You've certainly dealt with it. You've dealt with it, Admiral Stavridis. Let me start with you, Secretary Albright. Well, I do believe that we need to have a moral foreign policy. I believe that this is an exceptional country. It doesn't mean, however, that exceptions are made for us, which has to do with torture or a number of things that are illegal, but I do think that the U.S. can and needs to be a moral leader. I also do think that what has changed in this world now is as a result of information that we know what is going on everywhere and what our responsibilities are when people are being ethnically cleansed or genocidally killed for no reason, except who they are, not anything they have done. But it is a hard responsibility. And one of the problems is that it is harder and harder to explain to the American people. And one of the things that I talk about with regard to this is what I call the Karzai effect. The bottom line is because there are a lot of Americans and our allies that died in Afghanistan. And not only did President Karzai not say thank you, he blamed us for a lot of the problems. And so I think it is going to be part of all of our jobs, those of us that are interested in national security policy, to spend more time explaining what America's role in the world is. I am a believer in America's moral authority and the importance of our leadership with others. Well, I'm currently the dean of a graduate school of international relations, and we spend a great deal of time discussing idealism versus realism in American foreign policy, and we have whipped around like a weather vane over the last 100 years in that regard. And as usual, you know, life is not on and off switch. You don't just do realism and real politic, nor do you constantly turn your military into the peace corps with guns and send them forth into the world and do only soft power. You don't just do hard or soft power. It's kind of a rheostat, and you have to dial it in. And there are times when you need hard power. We're not going to negotiate with the Islamic State. But there are other times when that long game takes you back a bit, and you find that balance between hard and soft power, and you find that balance between idealism, which matters deeply and is core. But you have to overlay it with realism. Can we really do everything? Can we carry every burden? Do we want to be the world's policeman? No. And I'll close with the importance of allies and alliance systems. We're very lucky to have like-minded nations in Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, our pool of allies and growing pool of friends. I think in the end can help us ease that burden and allow us to put the rheostat in the right place. And Senator Cotton, I'm going to end with you here. You've been on the front lines. You know how hard it is. You've looked the enemy in the eye. You also know, certainly from your constituents, that this country is tired of war. So how do you balance that? Well, I would say that the moral imperative of United States foreign policy is the safety, prosperity, and liberty of the American people. And as an elected official, in particular, I wish my fellow man well. I serve my fellow citizen. That is the end of our foreign policy. Now the question is, what means do you use to achieve those ends? And as Admiral Steverita said, there are a lot of means. Most of our means are not military power, or at least the application of military power. A lot of the just the cultural attractiveness of our country. People want to come here and study. They want to do business in America. They want to be in alliance structures with America. They don't want to do that with Russia. That's an advantage that we should cultivate. Our alliance structures, I said, we don't do that because they're humanitarian organizations. We do that because it's in our interest. And if you look at challenges that we face in countries like Syria or Libya with the refugee crisis, the reason we have that refugee crisis in part is because rather than run the show, we've let the show run us for the last eight years. It's almost always better in foreign policy to engage at the outset and try to stop problems before they worsen and become a threat to the safety and prosperity and liberty of our people. OK. I want to thank all of you. It was a great discussion. And thank you all for your service and various assets. Thanks very much. Well, let's get together.