 Oh, well, Stephen Hadley, welcome to Sydney. Nice to be here. Let me start by asking you about the short-term vision. President Obama announced his policy on September 10th for a military action against ISIS. What's your assessment of how that's going at the moment? Is American strategy working? It's too soon to say. This is very early on in this operation. There is a lot of work to do to get intelligence about what ISIS is doing. This is the terrorist group in Iraq, what they are doing in Syria. We need to begin to start working more closely with elements on the ground in Iraq, the Peshmerika and the Kurdish areas, Iraqi security forces, and hopefully tribes in the Sunni areas to get them into the fight. Because in order to roll back ISIS, you're going to need people willing to fight them on the ground. U.S. air power can enable those folks, it can degrade the enemy, but in the end of the day to stop ISIS advance and to roll it back, it's going to take Iraqi ground forces and it's going to take a while for those forces to form and for those forces to be able to develop tactics and strategies that will roll back ISIS. So I would say it's early on, but the President made the right decision. We need to get engaged because for ISIS to continue to control that region means ultimately it's a threat not only to the region, but because of the nature of that terrorist organization. I think it will be a threat to the United States, Europe and Australia as well, ultimately. So switching to the long term, assuming that this strategy works and that ISIS is defeated. A lot of people have said that ISIS is only symptomatic of a much broader problem in the Middle East. So if this effort against ISIS wins succeeds, what happens next? Something bigger needs to follow, right? It does. And what we've seen since the Arab awakening in 2011 is a collapse of the military supported authoritarian regimes, first in Tunis, then in Libya. Certainly we're seeing it come apart in Syria. And of course we had the uprising against the Mubarak regime in Egypt. And the question is going to be how do you bring freedom, democracy, good governance, effective economies that provide services, that provide jobs, that will have legitimacy in the eyes of the people of the region? It's really a crisis of legitimacy, a crisis of governance. So once we are able to expel ISIS from Iraq and Syria, the question will be how can we help the people of those countries establish good governance, inclusive governance supported by all of the people, able to deliver what people want, which is stability, a right to control their own affairs and to a greater extent, and to have good jobs and economic prosperity. If we don't do that, we will not see stability in the Middle East. And the Middle East will continue to be a recruiting ground for terrorism. And that's a terrorism that we have seen can reach into Europe, reach into the United States and reach into Australia. So the response of critics would be that the United States hasn't been able to succeed in Iraq, hasn't succeeded in Afghanistan in offering this model of legitimacy that you talk about. So what is the role for the United States in offering this model? Well, you've made a good distinction. Can we do it? The United States on its own, of course not. The people in the Middle East are going to have to find their way to a more stable, more inclusive, a government that is able to deliver for its people. They're going to decide their future and nobody else. I think the United States and Europe, and I would say Australia, can have a role. Just in it, I believe it's in our interest to do what we can to help establish a more stable order in the Middle East, because otherwise it'll continue to be a training ground for terror that could threaten all of us. We've learned a lot. We made a lot of mistakes. Interestingly, Afghanistan may surprise a lot of people. They've just had an election. A unity government has emerged. Ashraf Ghani, who is now the president of Afghanistan, has a very solid reform program that has been supported by most of the elements of the political establishment in Afghanistan. I think we need to continue to support him. I think we need to continue to have economic support that the international community has pledged. I think we need to continue to provide security assistance against the Taliban. But I think Afghanistan may surprise a lot of people. With respect to Iraq, Iraq at the end of 2009, 10, 11, was actually in reasonably good shape. The Maliki government was beginning to exclude Sunnis. It was a terrible mistake. But in terms of the security situation, it was really very much in line. Al-Qaeda in Iraq had been defeated in Iraq, but what really undermined security in Iraq and brought us to the current past was what was happening next door in Syria, and the burgeoning civil war that opened the door for Al-Qaeda to rebuild in Syria in the form of ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. And they, of course, came across the border and destabilized Iraq. And it was really the failure to respond for three years to what was happening in Syria that I think ultimately destabilized Iraq. The challenge is going to be, can we get Iraq back to what we had hoped it would be in 2008-2009, which was an inclusive unity government, providing better governments to the Iraqi people, and an alternative model to the grim model of the terrorists? So my last question is also on this question of the model of legitimacy for the future of the Middle East. A lot of people invested a lot of hope in the idea that the Arab Spring would be able to offer such a model, or that a model would emerge from the Arab Spring as an alternative to Arab nationalism, to militarism, and also to Islamic extremism. But in retrospect, that hasn't happened. How do you view the Arab Spring now? It hasn't happened for a number of reasons. One is I think the United States and Europe and other countries as well failed to recognize how significant what was happening in the Arab world. That if you look back over the last, you know, 50, 60, 70 years, probably the three most historically significant events were at the end of the Second World War, the rebuilding of Japan and Germany, and the launch of the initiative in Europe that became the European Union, the end of the Cold War in 89 and 90, and the movement of Central and Eastern Europe to embrace freedom, democracy, and market economies. And then finally the Arab Spring, which was the effort by the people of that region to rise up, throw off authoritarian governments, and take more responsibility for their future. I think we didn't recognize how significant that was. I don't think we had a comprehensive approach to provide to give them help and support. So in Libya we helped overthrow Qaddafi, and then did not afterwards try and help stabilize the situation and it has fallen into chaos. Interestingly enough, the country that has done the best is little Tunisia, where this all started. And they did it not because of great Western assistance, but because on their own they began a national dialogue that began to chart a way forward for a very inclusive constitution that brought all groups to the table and gave them the prospect of participating in their society. A Muslim Brotherhood government that had been elected in a coalition configuration resigned in order to clear the path for the results of this national dialogue. I think there is an example where some people are making right decisions and one of the things we all ought to do to provide such assistance as we can and as they request so that they can succeed and provide an example of at least one country that has figured out how to make this transition from life under an authoritarian to providing a inclusive government that isn't corrupt that's providing services and jobs and a better life for their people. Stephen Hadley, thanks for your time. Thank you, nice to be with you.