 Good morning, everybody. I am just delighted to welcome everybody this morning to the US Institute of Peace. As you heard, my name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president here. And I am honored to be able to welcome such a distinguished group of foreign policy, national security, development experts, so many distinguished foreign dignitaries. So a special welcome to the many ambassadors who are joining us this morning. And I want to begin by thanking our sponsors and our thought partners who really helped make today possible. We had generous support, wonderful partnership, many thanks to LMI, the Boeing Corporation, Chevron, as well as Robin and Eileen Shields West, and Nancy and Harold Zirkin for their generous support, both of this event and continued support for USIP. We're very grateful for the partnership of many think tanks who have been both good counsel and really key to helping us bring together such a diverse crowd of perspectives and ideas and backgrounds, thanks to our friends at the American Enterprise Institute, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Center for American Progress, and the Heritage Foundation. I'd also like to thank our media partners, Politico and Sirius XM Radio. They are bringing this event to a broader public audience. And also, I want to note that the event is being broadcast on C-SPAN. For those of you who are following us online or on social media, we invite you to follow along by using our mobile app, USIP Passing the Baton, you can download that on your phone, or on Twitter using the hashtag Passing the Baton. This is the third time that USIP has hosted Passing the Baton since 2001, when Sandy Berger first passed the baton to Condi Rice. And the goal of this event is to generate ideas, to share views, to bring together the kind of perspectives that we need to discuss together to contribute to a seamless passing of the baton from one administration to the next. And at a time that we have so many pressing global challenges around the world, we are pleased especially to host the event this year in our own building. This building is the newest addition, one of the newest additions to our National Mall. And as part of our congressional charter, USIP is founded to represent the American people's commitment to peace. And this building is really a physical expression of peace as the soaring hope of humankind. So it's appropriate that we're having this conversation here today under our Ansary Dove in the George P. Schultz Great Hall, next to the Madeleine Albright Wing. And looking out over the National Mall, which reminds us every day of the foundational resilience of our nation. So we're pleased everybody is here today to be a part of that. The US Institute of Peace was founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent national institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, peace is practical, and it is essential for our national and our international security. So we research and apply the most effective ways to manage conflict before it can become violent and to resolve it when it does. We work in conflict affected areas around the world with local partners helping to build peace both from the top down and from the bottom up. And for us, peace is not an abstract concept. It's what happens on the ground. It's what saves lives. It enables families to be safe and dreams to be realized. And you'll hear later today from my colleague, Sarhang Hamasayid, who will talk about our peace dialogues into Crete, Iraq, which have saved lives and enabled hundreds of thousands of people to return home after the terrible conflict there. Just like we were able to do 10 years ago when the US Army asked USIP to mediate a peace accord among the rival tribes around the city of Makumidea in Iraq known as the Triangle of Death. So there, working with a team of Iraqi mediators who we trained and supported, USIP conducted a successful mediation that ultimately allowed the US Army to withdraw 80% of its troops to save $2 billion over the year and most importantly to save countless Iraqi and American lives. In Makumidea, peace was possible and today at the 10th year of that effort, peace still holds. And now I have the great pleasure to introduce a wonderful friend, colleague and wise counsel, Steve Hadley, a distinguished public servant, former national security advisor and our wonderful dedicated chair of the US Institute of Peace Board. Steve. Thank you so much, Nancy. This is an amazing group of people we have gathered here today and we are very grateful that you took the time and came. Before beginning the program, I wanted to share a few thoughts about why today is such an important day. I speak from some personal experience. I've been through a number of presidential transitions from both ends of the process, sometimes transitioning in happily and sometimes less happily transitioning out. But either way, the process could not be more important. Each administration assumes office with both the problems and the tools left by its predecessor. And a well-managed presidential transition can help the new administration get a jump on the problems and get a better appreciation of how to handle the tools for addressing those problems. And it gives the new administration a sense of what it has to build on as it fashions its own approach to the problems that face the country. The goal of a presidential transition should be for the outgoing administration to do everything it can to help the incoming administration assume the awesome responsibilities that it is about to inherit. That's what we tried to do in 2008. President Bush made it very clear to all of us that he wanted to do everything he could to ensure as smooth a transition as possible. And President Obama has been equally clear that he expects in his word a seamless passing of the Patan to the new Trump administration. And that transition can and should extend past January 20. The officials of the new administration should feel free to continue to call on their predecessors for advice and counsel. And the outgoing officials should be clear that they are willing to provide it. And we in this room should pledge together for the good of the country to focus on the substantive challenges and opportunities facing the new administration and offering it our help and support. And I would hope that the cooperation among the five Washington-based institutions that has produced this passing of the Patan event can be expanded to include others and replicated in various forms of ongoing collaboration and discussion. And I would hope we would do this on a bipartisan basis for the nation's security and foreign policy are strongest and most effective when they are underpinned by bipartisan support. And at the end of the day, it's not about the side of the aisle we sit on because we must all stand together to safeguard the national security of this great country of ours. As some of you know, the USIP hosted a number of private policy dinner conversations last night. The idea was to bring together senior government officials, members of Congress, representatives of the media, and leaders from across the business think tank and civil society communities to discuss the challenges facing our country. The conversations took place under Chatham House rules of non-attribution, but we wanted to share some highlights to set the stage for today's discussions. And for that purpose, I would like to introduce Damon Wilson, the executive vice president of the Atlantic Council, to give us a summary of the collective wisdom that emerged last night from our dinners. Damon. Thank you very much, Steve. Thank you, Nancy. I want to thank the US Institute for Peace, all of our partners that have helped make today's event possible, and as well as the rapporteurs, the moderators, that really helped collect the key takeaways from our conversations last night. As Steve said, my task is to offer some insights, some conclusions, and to try to summarize briefly the several hours of conversations that took place among 80 plus foreign policy leaders. Mr. Hadley, Steve, set the tone. Let's see, is that a little bit better? A little bit better. So Mr. Hadley set the tone. He set the tone for last night's conversations very much as he did now by underscoring the importance of how... Thank you. Underscoring the importance of one team helping to prepare the next for success. I had a chance to work for Steve during one of those transitions and see how he set that inside government. And it very much informed the conversations last night. As one of the participants put it, at the end to sum up the conclusions, count me in and helping to support the next team. The premise of many of the conversations while we were there to help share experiences, insights, and to help the team succeed, there was an acknowledgement, almost a premise to the conversation that the biggest challenge that folks are often likely to face are the ones that we're not prepared for, whether at 9-11, the Arab Spring. Among the first conclusions that I think really permeated the conversations last night was that U.S. success abroad is anchored in who we are at home and our strength at home, beginning with a growing economy that creates options for us internationally and a sense of a greater integration on security, economics, trade, and energy. The second part of that is our democracy and can our politics help solve problems, deliver results, and do their values, our democratic values, stand strong in differentiating us from some of our adversaries. And on the military front, are we able to come together to support the investments, bending sequestration, sustaining investment, and nuclear modernization? There was a back to basics theme in some sense on what makes the U.S. attractive at home and what makes us influential and effective abroad. The second main conclusion, I think from many of the conversations last night was the centrality of the U.S. role and the world and almost a call across to a word, to a tee, of more leadership, not less on the issues that are on our agenda today. Sure, a recognition of the complexity that we face, questions about the tools, whether we have the tools and imagination to deal some of these challenges, but that we agreed that it was in the U.S. interest to do so and acknowledge that we need to use the full range of tools, influence, power to advance U.S. interests. Our friends and allies want it. And in fact, in the absence of the U.S. acting on key issues, the situation often gets worse. And this therefore means we have to make a more intentional case with our own electorate. The third key conclusion, I would argue, take away from the conversations last night was that long-term strategies matter. There's an observation that some of our adversaries are very effective at having long-term strategies that span from one leader to the next. And an acknowledgement that a long-term strategy and a democracy like the United States, as Steve said in opening, requires bipartisan support is more effective and hence engaging our publics, the Congress, politicians in this effort, is important to ensuring a sustainable, consistent approach. The fourth set of issues last night were the common analysis of challenges that are high on the American foreign policy agenda. Beginning in the broadest sense with the fraying or the breakdown of the U.S.-led rules-based international order. Discussion from fragile states to hostile challengers to the rise of technology and how that impacts our effectiveness. A sense that the global system itself is in play. And therefore, there may just be an opportunity, if not a responsibility, to reshape that system in our interests consistent with our values. Related to that, there was quite a bit of conversation about a battle of ideas, a battle of ideals, if you will. Sure, information wars, but more than that. Is the world increasingly safe for free market democracies or for authoritarians? And how do we shape those outcomes? There is a sense as well in terms of our challenges of the return of the nation state, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, a China that can be a challenger, but also a partner, increasingly a stakeholder in this order. A Russia that's also seen as a challenger, but where there are strategic areas of cooperation and how do you have dialogue that doesn't mean a blank check. An Iran where there is much focus more so on the future rather than the past on strict enforcement of a nuclear deal and checking nefarious interests. And a sensitive out of all the nation state challenges we face that North Korea may be the most likely to test. And of course, the non-state challenge, particularly from terrorism, ISIS, but it's broader than that with a sense of high impact, low cost challenges to American interests. As part of that conversation, there was an interesting exchange on black swans or blind spots, if you will, from space to genetics, genome editing, to global pandemics or the GPS system being attacked. And there was a special conversation about what it takes for us to rise to address those challenges and a conversation, therefore, about our alliances and our allies. A broad recognition of the unique asset the United States has with our alliances about how this is overwhelmingly in American interests that it helps us deal with these challenges and that the US is a catalytic power and galving as other nations to solve the challenges. But also a healthy recognition that we have to reconsider some of those assumptions and ensure that our alliances and the structures are adapted for today, are fit for purpose, if you will, and that we've set sufficiently high expectations whether it's on reform or defense investment or global engagement of our allies. To conclude, I think last night's dinner conversations really underscored a tone across folks that were both supporters of President-elect Trump as well as opponents in the political process. That first, there are some principles that are longstanding and therefore there will be some continuity. There also will be change, of course, but there's something to build on. Second, I think the part that reinforced all of the conversations was our strategies, our policies, our foreign policy is most effective when it does enjoy bipartisan support. Third, a real sense that there will be a need after the noise of our election and the divisiveness of our campaigns that there be some clarifying messages sent to the world, to our allies, so that our friends can count on us and our adversaries don't underestimate us. And finally, I'd close with a sense of optimism that pervaded some of the conversation. A complete recognition of the complexities that face the United States, the challenges of the task, but also a sense that the United States, perhaps more so than any other nation, is best prepared to help navigate this complexity to navigate these challenges, not simply to defend the past and defend the status quo, but to play a leading role in helping to shape that future and adapt the system for interest consistent with our values. Thank you. Turn it back. Thank you, Damon, and you can get a sense from that really excellent summation and thank you for doing that overnight with such articulateness of the breadth of the set of challenges. It's hard to just narrow it down and we do have the imperative to grapple with this so that we can play the role that the world expects us to play. Throughout the day, this event has been designed to ensure that there's truly interactive engagement. We have an extraordinary collection of opinions, of experiences, and views here in the room. So we have, coming up next, the first of our speakers, we will be delighted to welcome in a few moments Secretary of State John Kerry. And for the next few moments, I'd like to ask everybody to turn to your part, your neighbors, and have a conversation about what you just heard. How to...