 Good afternoon. Welcome to the New America Foundation. My name is Peter Bergen. I run the National Security Program here. This is part of a series that we've done over the past couple of years with our partners, the Center for New American Security and the American Enterprise Institute. It's the seventh in a series of programs we've done focusing on national security. We have a really all-star team to talk about the coming challenges and opportunities for the Obama Administration in the next three years. They are Ambassador Dennis Ross on your far left, who's incredibly distinguished public service career, stretches back to the Jimmy Carter Administration, and he's the author of multiple books on the Middle East. He's had senior policy roles on the Middle East in the Obama Administration. He was special advisor to the Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton. He is a counselor of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. To his immediate left is Robert Kaplan, who is about to publish, get this, his 15th book, one of the most distinguished journalists in the country. His books on every subject imaginable from the Indian Ocean to the Afghan Mujahideen to his new book on the South China Sea have been gold standards in their subject area. And finally, of course, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the CEO and President of the New America Foundation, former Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, former Dean of the Woodborough Wilson School, and her self-the author or co-editor of six books. On my left, Thomas Donnelly, who runs the Defense Studies Program at AEI, himself the author on multiple books on defense, one of the country's leading experts on defense policy, defense budgeting. And finally, and not least, Richard Fontaine, the President of CNAS, who is taking CNAS to another level, one of the most important national security think tanks in the country, and a former advisor to Senator McCain. So we're going to start with Ambassador Ross and then Robert Kaplan and then Anne-Marie Slaughter. Well, I've been given 15 minutes to talk about the challenges in the Middle East, so obviously I have very little to talk about. I thought I would do it maybe in a somewhat unconventional way. You know, I'm doing a new book right now, and it actually looks at our foreign policy in the Middle East from the Truman through the Obama administration. If I were to say that there was a message from the Saudis and a number of Arab leaders to the administration that said we have basic doubts about whether you'll stand by us, we're under great threat, the region is going the wrong way, and we feel vulnerable and we don't see what the U.S. is doing about it, people here might say, well, that's not particularly surprising. We hear that sort of thing, but if I were to say I've just quoted from a message from the Saudis to the Nixon administration in the fall of 1969, maybe you would put some of what you're hearing in a somewhat different perspective. It's not particularly new to have ups and downs in terms of questions about the United States in the region. I could actually try to, but I won't right now, from almost every administration up to the current one. There is something that separates the past from the present in terms of some of the questioning that has existed about America's sense of purpose. Are we credible from the standpoint of some of our friends in the region? And particularly the Saudis, what's different about it today is not so much that the messages have been conveyed in the past, what's different today is that it's been more exposed publicly. That's not the norm. Part of the reason for the difference is that in the past there may well have been questions about the sense of American purpose, resolve, credibility, and by the way, oftentimes that's promoted when some of the countries, particularly the Saudis, might prefer that we not be asking things of them and obviously the best defense is a good offense. Today there is something that's a little bit different and what's different today is that there is an increasing question as to whether or not our interests and their interests are actually exactly the same. Let's take the Saudis for a second as a way of trying to frame the challenges in the region and how you look at it. The Saudis look at the United States today and say on Egypt, on Syria, and Iran were not necessarily in the same place. On Egypt, the Saudis support the Egyptian military and they see it in an existential struggle with the Muslim Brotherhood and they back it completely. They look at the administration and say, maybe you're not cutting all the aid but you're curtailing the assistance. You don't seem to be supporting the military the way we do. They look at Syria and they see themselves there involved in a kind of basic struggle with the Iranians in what is a kind of proxy conflict producing an absolutely horrific conflict in Syria in terms of both its humanitarian and even its strategic consequences. And they look at Iran and they see that we've now joined with the other members of the Five Plus One and just done a deal which from their standpoint in many respects may be a precursor of a broader deal with the Iranians who they see themselves involved in with the struggle. In my remaining 11 minutes, what I'd like to do is sort of suggest a way to look at each of these issues and maintain a kind of perspective and in a sense imply or at least suggest a direction for what we can do. On Egypt, again, I'm focusing on the Saudis now only because I want to kind of frame this in a more containable way. We could be talking to the Saudis about what do we really share in terms of our interest when it comes to Egypt. What we share fundamentally is an interest in ensuring that Egypt does not become a failed state. That would be a disaster for the United States and it would certainly be a disaster for Saudi Arabia. And the question at this point is who has leverage on the Egyptian military? And I think the answer is we don't have the kind of leverage we might like to have. I saw a recent poll that was done about the image and favorability of the United States in Egypt and right now it's at the stratospheric level of 4%. So to suggest that we would have a lot of leverage on the Egyptians right now even though we have not cut off our assistance would be to exaggerate reality. But the Saudis actually do have leverage and we do have a common interest in Egypt not becoming a failed state and we're not going to be able to go to the Saudis and say we really think that Egypt should be promoting democracy and find a particularly ready response from the Saudis when it comes to that kind of a suggestion. But as I said, we have a common interest in Egypt not being a failed state. And the Saudis certainly want to be in a position where they are not Egypt's banker forever. So we could be focusing on all right, what can be done to begin to restore stability in Egypt? You want to see tourism reemerge in Egypt. You want to see foreign investment reemerge in Egypt. What are the things that could be done that move you in much more in that direction? Well, for example, if the civilian government in Egypt were empowered, if we were in a position to act on the economy, if it could do a deal with the IMF, if, as an example, the military would demonstrate they're really serious about going back to the barracks and if, for example, they would pardon those who were found guilty during the Morsi period, the non-governmental organization representatives who were found guilty because they were doing such horrific things as teaching people how to organize political parties, teaching those how to run elections. If, in fact, people, those people who were found guilty could be pardoned. There could be steps that could be taken that the Saudis have an interest in seeing because it serves their interest, but it also serves our interest in terms of moving Egypt in more of a direction. How to do that with the Saudis? I think, as an example, we should be having a very quiet, discreet dialogue at a very senior level where we go and we say, all right, let's focus on the issues where we have clearly common interests. Well, one is clearly how to manage Egypt in a more favorable direction. Two, on the interests of Syria. I said there's a basic difference in terms of how the Saudis see what's going on in Syria. And I'm, you know, the administration has declared that Assad has to go, but we also have a chemical weapons deal which makes the regime a partner in terms of dismantling chemical weapons. There is a call for Geneva II. We don't know if, in fact, there's a date that's been set. We don't know if the Saudis are going to participate. At this point, we have a date for a conference. We don't have an agenda for that conference and we don't know who the participants are. Other than that, we're in really good shape when it comes to this conference. But here again, the Saudis have just helped to organize a common front, a common more Islamic front in Syria. But the members of that front are basically, none of them are actually on our terrorism list. So there was clearly an effort on their part to take account of who we might be able to support. And we have a common interest in finding a way to end what I said is a humanitarian disaster. I mean, it's almost unthinkable. You had a population before the Civil War began in Syria, which began as a peaceful set of protests, which were not calling for a change in regime, but calling for reform. You had a population of 21 million. Right now, by the UN's count, you have 9.3 million people who are displaced. You have at least 2.5 million people, at least 2.5 million people displaced within Syria who can't get access to humanitarian assistance who are living in the most horrific conditions imaginable, where the regime continues to use starvation as a tool of policy. There ought to be a way for us to be focused, as we look to Geneva II, at least on what can be done to ease the humanitarian plight. That's also a Saudi interest. My suggestion here is even on these areas where we have differences, we can begin to find potential areas of commonality. And we have an interest in managing this because it serves our interest and it serves the Saudi interest. And obviously, I could talk about Iran. What are the Saudi concerns that they have about the deal that's just been struck? I would say this is an area where Saudi and Israeli interests are, shall we say, converging. I actually was involved in a discussion with a senior Saudi last week and I asked him before the agreement emerged. I asked him the question, the Israelis are out there pretty vocally. You've been vocal on a lot of things. You haven't been saying too much on this possible deal that's emerging. And the answer I got was, why do we need to? The Israelis are doing such a good job. They're actually doing a better job than we could do. So we're quite happy to sort of let them continue to speak out against it. Well, here again, I would say there are concerns that the Israelis have raised, and at least implicitly the Saudis have. The Saudi concerns go to something in some ways that's different than the Israeli concerns. The Saudi concerns are very much driven by a fear that deals we do with Iran are basically a precursor to doing a larger deal with Iran, not just on the nuclear issue, but in a sense recognizing Iran in terms of having a regional role. And the big Saudi concern I think is something that is akin to fearing that at some point we will begin to deal with the Iranians and treat the Iranians the way we did during the Shah's time as, in a sense, our major partner in the region. I think it's fair to say that's not something that's just around the corner. I think it's fair to say I have a hard time envisioning that we're going to do any deals at this point that really come with the Saudi expense. So what really are the concerns that the Saudis and the Israelis have about the first step deal and how might they be addressed? Well, one concern that they raise is that the sanctions regime will actually fray. And the leverage that we have on Iran is actually going to erode at a time when we haven't actually negotiated a final deal and the comprehensive deal that supposedly we are now as part of the interim, as part of the first step approach is called for to be concluded within one year by within one year's time. Well, there are ways to address the concern about the sanctions regime fraying. One thing that can be done, certainly the administration from the very beginning worked very closely with the Israelis on identifying the sanctions that most mattered, on identifying all the possible ways to evade sanctions, on identifying how you could close loopholes, on working to ensure that commercial activity and those who might engage in it would understand the high reputational costs. We could again engage in that kind of work with the Israelis and obviously we could be doing that with the Saudis as well. We could do something else because I see I'm coming up on my concluding time. We could do something else. The administration has made it very clear that no deal is preferable to a bad deal. And while I understand very well the desire not to tie our hands in terms of giving away bottom lines, one thing we could do is make it very clear what do we mean by a bad deal? We've not spelled that out and at a minimum in private with the Saudis and with the Israelis and with others who might have concerns, we could let them know what we consider a bad deal to be. A bad deal would be a deal that leaves the Iranians in a position where the kind of nuclear infrastructure that they retain would be one that would permit them to break out to a nuclear weapons capability at a time of their choosing. And with such a relatively short period of time, we would have a hard time to detect it and do something about it. So it means a bad deal would be one that doesn't roll back the Iranian nuclear infrastructure in terms of centrifuges to a relatively small number from the nearly 20,000 they have now, would be one in which the Iranians would have more than a bomb's worth of enriched material, enriched uranium in the country, one in which the Iranians would have a heavy water plant, which by the way has no utility for trying to produce electricity. It is about the least cost effective efficient way you could pursue if you were interested in generating electricity. And a bad deal would be one in which you wouldn't have the transparency measures that would allow you to have high confidence that you could verify the restrictions that you were imposing. My point in these 14 minutes and 45 seconds that I've used up is to say that there's a lot of concern across the board in the region about our staying power, moves towards increasing energy independence. Does that mean we will retain a high level of interest in the region? Talk about the Asian pivot, which is a way to give you a kind of segue, that suggests that maybe we will be less interested. I would suggest in fact we have all sorts of reasons maybe in the Q&A that would explain why we don't have less interest in the region, but we can be doing more in other areas. And that all these areas where there are particular concerns, there are ways for us to address those concerns, but we have to do it quite systematically. And we should be engaging in what I would describe as more strategic discussions to identify those areas where there are concerns that some of our friends have and where we can highlight for them the very clear areas of commonalities that we continue to maintain. Thank you, Robert Kaplan. Well, thank you very much. Well, let me pick up exactly with Iran and the Asian pivot. There are many ways to read the recent interim agreement with Iran. One way might be that given the troop withdrawal from Iraq, the coming troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, this is part of a process to set our Middle East House in order to some extent, which might give us more leverage to pay attention to another area. The Asian pivot, which has been much bally hoot, I'm going to talk about Asia and Europe over my next 15 minutes. In terms of the Asian pivot, it was actually considered in a way 24 years ago when the Berlin Wall fell. When the Berlin Wall fell, there was a lot of interest and discussion at the time about emphasizing Asia. What happened was a few months later, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. We liberated Kuwait. Then the Navy and Air Force got tied down in a no-fly zone over Iraq for the next 12 years. Then 9-11, then Afghanistan, then Iraq. And now we're out of Iraq. We're getting out of Afghanistan. We're back to Asia. So it's also a natural organic evolution. And it's also an aspiration rather than a declaration because it aspires to put more emphasis on an area, but it only aspires to do so, if the Middle East allows and the Middle East does not always allow. Let me talk a bit about what's going on in Asia from an historical perspective. For the last few, in past decades, in the 60s, 70s, the 50s, many Asian states were an internal turmoil. China had the great leap forward, the great proletariat cultural revolution who was internally focused. Malaya, which became Malaysia and Vietnam, were involved in internal wars and rebellions. Japan was in a quasi-pacifistic state as an aftershock after the militarism of World War II. So nobody was focusing so much about lines in the blue water, about who controls what, because nobody could really project power outwards because they were focused internally. All right, move ahead a few decades. You have now, China's had three decades of tremendous economic growth. It's built a real world-class military naval air, ballistic missiles, cyber warfare. It's in the midst of building, if you believe in linear thinking, the greatest land-based navy in history by the 2030s, that probably won't happen because linear thinking often doesn't. But if you project ahead in that sense, Vietnam is totally consolidated bureaucratically institutionally, same with Malaysia. They've both been investing big time in navies. There's a saying in Asia now that submarines are the new bling. Everybody wants them. China has 62 of the quietest diesel-electric and nuclear submarines. They're going to surpass us over the next 10 years. And Vietnam just bought four new kilo-class, which is an enormous number for a country that size. The Philippines went from a World War II navy to a 1965 navy with the acquisition of some Coast Guard, American Coast Guard cutters. That's progress. Malaysia established new submarine bases. And of course we have South Korea and Japan, which have been not so much enlarging as modernizing their militaries. Japan now has four times as many major warships as the British Royal Navy. And even though it's an island nation that emphasizes air-sea warfare, it has more tanks than Germany in the center of Europe. South Korea, too. I can go on and on and bore you with statistics. So everyone is projecting power outwards with not so much old-fashioned oxen-cow land armies, but a real honest to goodness post-modern 21st century navies and air forces. And lo and behold, they have disagreements over who controls what in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, et cetera, et cetera. The other thing is nationalism has been somewhat passe in Europe, at least until recently. For most of the Cold War, Europe was in, you could argue, a post-national phase. Asia is very different. Nationalism is alive and well and kicking in Asia in very much in 1950s American meat and potato sense. Here you have really strong ethnic nations. There's not a NATO to unite the region. ASEAN is much weaker than even the EU is today with all its troubles. So you have nationalism, you have military power, you have consolidated internal nations, and you have capitalism successful for decade upon decade, which leads ultimately to military acquisitions because when a state is successful economically, it acquires interests all over the world through trade or at least in the region and it needs to defend those interests so it starts building a military. So where we are in Asia, China looks upon the East and South China Sea much as the Americans looked upon the Caribbean in the 19th and early 20th century. I had a number of Chinese officers tell me why do you criticize us in the South China Sea? What are we doing any different than you did in the Caribbean in the late 19th century? The Monroe Doctrine was not about kicking out the Europeans. It was about freezing the status quo because the Europeans that are already left. In fact, after the Monroe Doctrine was promulgated, the U.S. and British navies cooperated over the slave trade in the Caribbean. So it was much more nuanced than the classic comic books version of the Monroe Doctrine states. It was about not allowing the Europeans to dominate the Caribbean while cooperating with the Europeans in every other fashion possible. That's sort of what China is trying to do in its neighboring marginal waters. It's trying to become the dominant power while at the same time not destabilize its relationship with the United States at this time. And the United States has to steer between two parameters which the Obama administration is trying to do. On the one hand, not let China dominate the South and East China Seas because China's geographic centrality, its demographic and economic heft plus its emerging military power would make China too dominant in the region, more dangerous in the region than the U.S. has been over the past few decades. But at the same time, it cannot let China dominate. We cannot get into a war or a real fracas with China because of Vietnamese and Filipino nationalisms. We have too many equities with China. Trade, currency, global warming, the environment, this, that and the other to allow any of this to be threatened by local nationalism. So we have a narrow gorge that we have to ride through. But I think ultimately, and this is looking long-term, we have to accommodate Chinese military power to an extent. We're not going to have the Pacific Basin as just an American lake, an American naval lake the way it was in the decades following World War II. It's going to be more of a nuanced, multi-polar order, but the U.S. still has to be at least the first among equals. Now let me, now I'll pivot to Europe. All right, let me, I think Europe is underrated, very much underrated. We see it totally as a fiscal, boring debt story. It's much larger than that. If you were a Pole or Romanian in the mid-1990s, the world looked great to you. You would escape history because you had a path to the EU which was robust and strong. NATO, you were in NATO or joining NATO and NATO was strong as heck. And Russia was conveniently weak and chaotic under Boris Yeltsin's incompetent rule, essentially. Now you fast forward to now if you're a Polish or Romanian defense minister or intelligence chief, the world looks a lot bleaker. The EU has had now four or five years of sustained, deep economic crisis which has weakened its geopolitical bandwidth in Central and Eastern Europe. NATO is just coming off a decade-long involvement in Afghanistan which many could argue had lost and did not perform well in and has an identity crisis. And meanwhile, Russia is no longer weak and chaotic but led by someone who, whether you like him or not, is a serious geopolitical thinker who's expanding the boundaries of Russia in terms of influence. Vladimir Putin knows he cannot recreate the Warsaw Pact. That's not his goal. The Warsaw Pact collapsed because it was too expensive to maintain in the first place. What he seeks now is more of a traditional, soft sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe that's sustainable over the long term where, so the Russians are buying up infrastructure. They're buying up banks. They're building oil and gas pipelines, as we know. They've got direct pipeline routes to Germany and the low country so they don't need Poland for that. Meanwhile, Poland is dependent on Russia for natural gas through another pipeline. Poland, Bulgaria, the Baltic states, they all depend on Russian natural gas for 90% of their energy needs. Romania is an exception because it has its own energy. It gets only 30%. But Romania is an exception. So we're not seeing the recreation of the Warsaw Pact. We're seeing a more nuanced, subtle Europe of differing shades where the EU is just less dominant even though these countries are members of the EU. If you were to ask me who's the most interesting leader in the world now? All right, you could say President Rouhani of Iran. You could name some others. Let me give you an obscure one to follow. It's Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary. Viktor Orban is an interesting man, very capable, sharp guy. He's moving Hungary demonstrably in the direction of neo-authoritarianism with more and more restrictions on the media, more and more restrictions on the economy. But then you have to ask, why is he doing this if he's so smart? He's closer to Brussels geographically than he is to Moscow. He's in the heart of central Europe. Hungary had a fairly happy transition into democracy and to capitalism in the 1990s. Maybe Viktor Orban knows something that other people don't, that the Kremlin is more and more influential and Brussels is less and less influential and he has to protect his equities. He's planning for the future. Viktor Orban is like the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. So an EU crisis that goes on for five years with 40% unemployment rates in certain countries is one thing. Such a crisis that goes on for eight or 10 years is quite another thing because attrition of the same adds up to big change. And you have a real disaffected youth population in Western Europe. You have less influence of the West and Central and Eastern Europe. You have an authoritarian Russia. You have Europe that doesn't end at the Mediterranean but at the Sahara, so it's affected by the instability in Libya, in Tunisia, et cetera. Europe is not just an economic story. It's geopolitically interesting and it requires greater and greater attention by the Obama administration. With the last two minutes I have left, let me talk about the Caucasus for a minute because the Caucasus are interesting. In the 1990s, Armenia was pro-Russian but it was not a Russian satellite. Georgia was pro-Western and Azerbaijan because of its own emerging energy sources, you know, energy balance in the 1990s was able to play off various blocks, so to speak. Armenia is now a hardcore Russian satellite with thousands of Russian troops on the ground. It just became a member of the Customs Union like Belarus and Kazakhstan with Russia. Georgia has partly mishandled things so that it's more and more under the veto pact. It's been Finlandized by Russia in the sense that maybe some East European countries threaten now to be Finlandized by Russia over the long run. And Azerbaijan, even despite its massive energy bonanza, its ability in previous years to play the Israelis off against the Iranians and the Turks and this and that has to pay closer and closer attention to what Vladimir Putin wants. So there's a lot going on in the world, in other words, that is not specifically focused on the changing balance of power in the Middle East but is affected by the changing balance of power in the Middle East. Thank you. Thank you. Marie. So, Rob, for a second, I thought we're actually going to agree. We're actually going to agree. You're going to tell, you're going to say, Europe is far more important than we realize, something that I've been saying for 30 years. But, of course, and I was getting all excited and then, of course, you said it's far more interesting because the EU is actually falling apart and it's the non-EU parts of Europe that are more interesting. We're going to differ there. I'll just, well, we can bring that out in the discussion period, but I will just note that I'm guessing you, as many others were saying five years ago when the Euro crisis started or four years ago that the EU would not survive till today and actually it is coming through it. And I still think has its problems but is still more important as the EU as the largest economy in the world. But I'm not going to talk about that just now. I'm going to, you left me the rest of the world, which would be Africa and Latin America. But what I'm going to do is instead try to talk about the whole world but from a different perspective, which will, I think, cover some of those areas but also look at some of the areas you all have talked about. And I should just start by saying I'm delighted not only to be here, I said to Peter as the first foreign policy panel I've done in a while but also particularly to be here with our partners, the Center for New America and Security and AEI. This is exactly the kind of role New America loves to play to bring lots of different communities together. So in 2009 I wrote an article that was called America's Edge, Power in the Network Century. And I argued, this was January of 2009 so just after President Obama had been elected that actually for all the focus on the decline of the United States we were still using an outdated geopolitical frame that looked at the world in terms of big states and smaller states but above all of separate states and then in fact in a deeply interconnected network world what was most important to be a global power was how connected you were to all other entities, nodes, countries, companies, groups around the worlds. And it pointed out that from that perspective in a networked world the United States was the most connected power in influential ways and if it built on that it had a much brighter future than anybody was projecting. And I wanna now analyze the first four years of what the Obama administration has tried to do from that frame and then look at five challenges from that frame and if you think about the problem as being in a deeply globalized interconnected world how do you enhance your position as not the central node because there cannot be one central node but as one of the most important central nodes and I'm asking you think about, either think about you're on a plane, many of you will probably soon be on a plane, I hope on a plane not delayed in airports but think about pulling out that airport magazine and looking at the hubs with all the airline routes coming away from the hubs or just think about a map of the internet and those huge central nodes that are so powerful. So if you look at it from that point of view economically what the Obama administration is trying to do is to make us once again the central trading and manufacturing platform of the world which sounds like a almost delusional idea if you think about every piece thing we pick up that still says Made in China and now increasingly Made in Vietnam or Made in Bangladesh. However, as you look at the future of manufacturing whether it's 3D manufacturing or simply much, much more automated manufacturing the United States as you've read you're starting to see reshoring, you're starting to see very big companies coming back and what the administration is looking at is the United States energy self sufficient low cost of gas much lower than certainly in Europe and elsewhere with an educated population that is completely central and particularly via the two trade backs they're trying to conclude the TTP across the Pacific and the TTIP through across the Atlantic. So if you think about that they're thinking about a huge free trade zone. I mean obviously we're all members of the WTO but the new trade agreements into Asia and to Europe with the United States and I would say more broadly the Americas in the center with lower cost high value manufacturing. This is as a manufacturing platform and I will say to come back to Europe lots and lots of European businesses now are wishing first of all that they were exploiting their own natural gas and that there's obviously a big environmental debate but what they're seeing is the United States becoming more and more competitive because of the lower price but also because of our technological advantages in various places. So that's the first thing I would say is that the administration has put a lot of energy into two very big trade agreements and also looking at thinking of us as a manufacturing platform and as energy self sufficient. From the political point of view thinking of us as the most central power how we've been focusing on a vision of the United States as a central power in a world of regional organizations. So this is again something people don't pay a lot of attention to how much the United we have invested in existing regional organizations and building new ones and here coming to Asia although we still are having a hard time getting to the Asian summits this last time because of the government shutdown. But this administration has poured a lot into the East Asian summit when President Obama came in Henry Kissinger said you know the one part of the world that is really not institutionalized at all from a strategic point of view is Asia and for the reason that APEC you had Hong Kong and Taiwan but that obviously could not be a security organization. Now there is the East Asia summit. It can address security issues. It does address issues in the South and East China seas radically imperfectly for sure but at least there's a forum there and we are a part of it. Building the African Union which we've worked with much more effectively and in the Middle East. I mean the Arab League is and the Gulf Cooperation Council are again very imperfect but I think Ambassador Ross would agree that they have played more of a role in certainly the Libya crisis and in Syria even if without direct impact yet there's an entity that we can engage. So the idea that what we're thinking about is a world of strong regional organizations that we are directly connected to and in the Americas the OAS is still a weak organization from that point of view but again we built the summit of the Americas and we're thinking very hard about an energy community of the Americas. So looking then from a military point of view and here of course to be a more central node part of what we had to do was to bring our troops home from Afghanistan and from Iraq but again if you think about bringing large deployments of troops home then investing much more in the war of the 21st century and again as a central node in drones, in cyber, in special forces that we can send out from anywhere in the world and on the sort of more institutional side NATO as the central node of a global security network which is again this architecture that was developed at the 50th anniversary meeting of NATO. From a social side and this is very important in a networked world the United States is deeply deeply deeply connected to every other country in the world through immigration and technology and the immigration we've always had what is new is ask any Washington taxi driver when they called home or skyped home most recently it'll be within a week when were they physically home it's often within a year to 18 months so you know our immigrants today are living links back to their home countries. Immigration reform is absolutely essential there to maintain and to build on a world in which your immigrants really are connections to their countries back home. And finally and perhaps most importantly and I'm gonna come back to this on the challenges technological centrality right that we invented the internet and we have been absolutely the most important central node in internet governance in internet innovation and again from the Obama administration for the cause of internet freedom for to have a global open internet to have a right to connect in that world of a global open internet we are very well advantaged as we move more and more online. So from a more conceptual global power point of view for the United States as the most connected nation in the world you can look at things that the administration has tried to do on the economic side political military social and technology. So let me now come in my seven minutes to the challenges. So obviously economically the biggest challenges I see are getting those two trade deals done there and that's enormous that would be it would be very important with respect to Europe in terms of really strengthening the EU but above all strengthening us and the EU together of course we are still over 50% of global GDP and even as China rises that's still a very big number but really then integrating in services and something that never gets talked about integrating in terms of standards the EU eats our lunch around the world in terms of global standards for obvious reasons it's a very large entity and that hurts American business enormously right if you're using the EU standard on plugs rather than the American standard that's a big problem for our business so integrating here and getting common standards is enormous and in Asia this is going to be if they can accomplish TTP and then leave open the possibility of China joining that will ultimately be more like a regional WTO where we are very strongly connected to all the countries in the region and the Americas because of course Mexico and various Latin American countries are also a part of this trans specific trade agreement so that is an enormous challenge that we have to be able to bring home the second is addressing the problems created by the NSA spying by the by prism we are this is a huge economic threat that has not been talked about or focused on particularly in this town nearly enough as an economic threat if we cannot address the political fallout from the NSA starting with Germany Brazil but many other countries we are going to suffer diplomatically but much more importantly our country our companies are going to be seriously disadvantaged so just think for a minute the Germans are talking very specifically about creating basically a German intranet so that all email that goes through Germany does not get sent or all data does not get broken up into little packets and sent all around the world which is the way it happens now but that basically only travels through Germany so that we would not be able to have access to a lot of that information Brazil is talking about doing the same thing if you imagine I'm going to come back to this the division of the internet along geographic lines I recommend Bob Kaplan's book on the return of geography that's a disaster for all of our companies that assume global data flows obviously China is excluded but most other countries are still very part of a global internet and for Google for Facebook for all of our internet companies and that includes GE any company that's doing big data storage which is a growing number that's an enormous challenge politically the biggest issues that I see at the moment and I'd be interested in Ambassador Ross's point here is how we lead through civilian power through putting diplomacy first which is exactly what we're doing on Iran right now and again working with regional organizations working diplomatically how do we do that without the credible threat of military force to I'm a big believer in diplomacy first I'm a believer in in in the shift back from sort of putting the military first to putting our diplomats first but I don't believe that diplomacy works very well without the credible possibility of some military action I think that's what you saw in Syria with respect to the chemical weapons the minute it looked like we were really serious about using force things change quite dramatically it's interesting this was sort of what Israel is is gearing up to do to say to the Iranians look if you're not going to make a deal we are willing to take action because they're afraid the United States no longer is I think as a general rule the president has not found the right balance between leading through diplomacy but still making it credible that we would use our military under where our most important interests are at stake another area where we have a huge challenge is we're no longer seen as leading on global issues if we're thinking about the centrality of the United States in a global globalized connected world then where are we on climate change on nuclear proliferation more broadly although I think we do get a deal with Iran we will see a return of the president's global zero agenda because I think that is something he strongly believes in but right now that is certainly an abeyance and finally on humanitarian issues this is an administration that came to power saying we were going to lead on development issues we were going to lead on human issues I can't emphasize enough what ambassador Ross said about Syria I think it's going to be the Rwanda of our time I think we're finally able to go in and see what has happened because remember we've got a tiny number of reporters in that country and most of the country has been closed off to reporters and the people who have been there say it is the worst conflict they have ever seen and you are talking about war reporters who have seen Bosnia who have seen no shortage of of horror so the United States is not being perceived none of us are of actually doing anything that makes a difference for Syrians on the ground I've got one minute so from the military point of view I will say I think that the biggest challenge is for this administration to think about rules governing the next generation of warfare we're investing in drones and cyber and special forces but it so is everybody else there as New America has a database on drones there are 80 countries that have drones already I don't think we want a world in which other countries can imagine taking out their enemies the way we have done with our own without some kind of global rules similarly obviously on cyber we are thinking about that but the use of social forces as well with the social challenge getting immigration done is critical it's not just critical as a matter of domestic politics it is critical to building on what is historically been one of our greatest strengths as a country the having immigrants from all over the world and then as I said remaining connected to them back home and finally let me end on this this in again this huge technological challenge where because I think a partly our hubris and partly this sense what everybody spies so we do too and if we can do it we will do it and we are going to collect data first and then target particular individuals later the rest of the world sees this very differently many Americans see this very differently but it is real this is not the same you know we protest but of course we spy to the the Europeans are very very upset and I understand it there's a sense of wait a minute you know you don't bug your friends cell phones this is a it plays into a vision of the United States that is a very negative one and it has real repercussions if countries decide again to follow China China does essentially control its own internet if you imagine other countries following suit then the whole world the democratizing power of the internet and the tremendous economic innovation and growth that comes from an entirely new technology could truly be pulled back the pulling back of globalization would happen first by the Balkanization of the internet in ways that would make us make the United States much poorer but also make the world once very dangerous from that point of view as well so I think I'm one minute over but that is plenty to chew on everybody was gave us so much to think about and was very disciplined about the time so thank you very much and just a reminder this has been carried live by c-span we're going to bring in Richard and Tom to ask our panelists some additional questions and then throw it open to the audience so rich Tom let me turn to back to Bob Kaplan for a minute and then to the others as well and but I'm interested in sort of the connections between what the administration is trying to do with his profile in the Middle East and what is trying to do with his profile in Asia there's one sort of logic that says if you save time attention resources in the Middle East because of your engagement there you dial back Iraq you dial back Afghanistan you dial back in other ways you have more available for Asia there's another logic that says that the quality of your security commitments and your diplomatic engagement in the Middle East will bleed over into the way you're perceived in Asia and so there's a connection there so be interested in your thoughts on that first of all obviously if you get involved in a long ground war somewhere that's going to deplete your attention elsewhere and Asia did not like the Iraq and Afghan wars Taiwan especially didn't like it the Vietnamese didn't like it because it meant less attention on dealing on the US dealing with China it meant less attention of the top policymakers in terms of you know in terms of military deployments it's true that if you set good examples in one region it affects another region you know it affects your world because nations can only judge you on your past actions and if your past actions are not impressive they're going to have less respect for you but I think there's something else that we're missing we're all too much prisoners of Cold War area studies of these hard and fast divisions between the Middle East South Asia Southeast Asia East Asia and what's happening is that there's a collapse there's a fluid I call it a fluid organic continuum exemplified by by Myanmar for instance with you know new pipeline routes and highways that are connecting South Asia with East Asia you see China more and more involved in Afghanistan and Iran in terms of mineral exploitation buying more and more hydrocarbons you see more and more hydrocarbon flows from the Persian Gulf to East Asia across the Indian Ocean interstate so you're having there are the connections between regions is becoming is increasing little by little but because it's a gradual development it doesn't make a news story so to speak so the Indian Ocean is the maritime organizing principle of this but you can't in for instance you cannot deal with the Middle East unless you understand Russia and Vladimir Putin and you cannot deal with energy in Asia unless you understand the Persian Gulf the fact that China and India are going to need more and more of their hydrocarbon resources from the Persian Gulf while the US may need less and less in the future so there's less and less of a distinction but in the extreme cases of getting involved in you know in an interminable land war somewhere or a setting a bad example somewhere that leads people and elsewhere to question your power you know the assumptions of your questions are correct I want to quickly follow up that there is a perception that there isn't another actor like the United States that if you have an area of great instability that if the United States doesn't act it's not clear who will act so if it looks like we are retrenching if it looks like we establish red lines but don't act on them then that does send a message elsewhere and the very point you made about the increasing dependency upon energy from from the Gulf area and the understanding that historically we've been the ones who's made sure that the sea lines of communication have remained open that raises questions who's going to do it if the United States doesn't do it where does that leave them and so I think there there is a desire ironically for us to be smart about how we use our power and there's a concern that when we're not we become less capable of using it but there's also a concern that if we begin to retrench and if we in fact it appears as if our own increasing degree of energy independence makes us less concerned about this part of the world somehow it's going to affect everybody else's security so it's not a source of great reassurance to those in Asia if they see that there is a kind of American retrenchment one other point I just wanted to throw out there it's true that that I think Putin of late has been playing effectively on the chessboard but I would also note if the price of oil is high that's really good for Putin and Russia particularly given their economic situation if the price of oil is low that's particularly bad for Putin and Russia particularly because you don't have an effective rule of law there because companies can't know what they can repatriate and because the capacity to innovate in Russia isn't what it ought to be and at a time when we have increased by about three million barrels a day what we're adding to the global energy pool because of what we're doing with our own developments in terms of shale one of the reasons the price of oil has has been relatively stable at a time when there's been a lot of disruption within the Middle East and because of what our policy has been towards the Iranian you've had Iranian oil not on the market has been because we continue to increase now if some of the disruptions in the Middle East put Iran to the side in terms of Libya's loss of oil on the market in terms of Iraq's not increasing the way it was anticipated in terms of other disruptions like Nigeria if some of those disruptions were to disappear and are continuing to increase the amount of energy from here you know Russia is not going to be in such a great position given what the likely price of energy could be so I'm not sure that he is so well positioned as he might like to portray to the rest of the world he's playing a good game now but ten years ahead it looks differently on he's got like the next half decade look good for him is the way I would project it after that it gets more complicated well okay just every party has to have a pooper every every conference it's Cassandra so I'll be the neocon knuckle dragger look if you had to compare at least from my perspective one of the measures of comparing the United States and the world today to five years ago is that there's much less us military power and pretty obvious projection for the future is that will there will be less capacity less capability less modernization we are not substituting in an adequate way more modern systems for obsolescent systems so even things like the Asia pivot essentially evaporate when you look at the actual numbers of platforms involved there may be a larger slice of the US Navy in the Pacific but the overall size of the Navy will be so much smaller that there will actually be fewer ships on station so you know in doing our tour of the horizon we haven't exactly looked at ourselves and our capacity to achieve the goals to remain something of a guarantor or a balancer whether it's in the Middle East which is as chaotic or more chaotic even that it has been and if the Pacific pivot is to mean anything it should begin first and foremost with establishing a more or less sort of ad hoc set of security arrangements than currently exist and if Bob's right we have to start worrying about Europe again I mean after hoping that we had solved that in a somewhat lasting fashion but essentially we don't have the capacity and as we change the character of our economy at home and what our government spends money on our ability to mobilize our economy to translate it into military power will take longer there'll be less capacity at the margin and so on and so forth so I wish you guys would look at the question of American capacity particularly military capacity and ask what or answer the question what you think that it'll mean for the regions that you talked about the most what will the Middle East look like without much American power there if the pivot doesn't materialize it's not like we have a lot of ships in the Indian Ocean in the first place and so forth so I guess first question is just and Bob you'll correct me but I think we've still got 11 aircraft carriers and the Chinese have one and I don't know when the projection is not even one not even piece of job okay so but but but the trajectory is in I understand but 11 aircraft carriers takes a long time but I guess my question back to Tom is what do you imagine war would look like could I mean I mean whatever the capacities allow I wouldn't I may be any student of military history it you know wouldn't be so full it's just to rule out a particular kind of war just we have always thought that technology was going to change the character of war it never does you know where we expect think of the the early Rumsfeld years that the transformation the military transformation where we're going to be able to bomb people from a distance and get them to behave in the ways that we want that and they you know came into office specifically saying we will not escort you know Balkans school children ended up in the pretty large nation building or post-conflict reconstruction mission you know what was the end game in Syria the idea that we could have launched a couple of cruise missiles and achieve the satisfactory outcome strikes me is unlikely I throw in just another sort of wildcard which is the Indians announced a week ago but they're going to build their third aircraft carrier so they will be doing much better than the Chinese and the extent to which you know their ambitions or lack thereof has any impact on any of the things we've just discussed and well but they're they're still it building the missiles to try to destroy our characters our carriers they they are developing means of projecting their own power around the region but the first order of business for them is to trump our investments in our power projection can I interject here first of all it's it's not so much surface power it's undersea undersea power where the Chinese are really surging ahead the Indians regardless of what their position is diplomatically they effectively held balance against China the way the Japanese do there's something we're missing here in this discussion we're talking about our vulnerabilities not other vulnerabilities look at China if you were to ask me what's the single biggest question in the world today I would say it's the direction of the Chinese economy I think the Chinese economy is in much dire straits than it's then it's written about they're on a credit bubble they have ghost cities the economic expansion is slowing down their statistics lie week the next 10 or breathe the air there may come a point I'm just supposing where their economic slowdown causes social and political unrest that current crimps the advance of their military budgets themselves that's why I said earlier don't be don't believe in linear thinking it's interesting to note but I don't see you know but to say that the Chinese are going to have the greatest land-based Navy you know in the midnight 20 30s is a stretch by many criteria because things will happen you know you know to intervene so it's not just our vulnerabilities it's China's on the threat in Europe is not going to be a new Cold War I have a piece online now saying the EU is not collapsing what's happening is the EU is differentiating between within the Eurozone and outside within the Schengen Treaty went outside the Schengen Treaty away you know the further away you get from Germany in the low countries the worst the economies tend to be so the threat in Europe is not going to be the Cold War threat it's a much more specific nuanced threat such as maybe protecting Poland and the Baltic states and things like that yeah I would I mean I do think it's true that nobody else can project power the way we can number one number two nobody else has the kind of mostly because of our the experience of the last 12 years where we fought these wars we have an amazing capacity to integrate intelligence with battlefield management fuse our capabilities because of our experience in a way that nobody else has now unfortunately it's contributed to the very point that you were raising that we aren't prepared to continue to spend the kind of money on the military that we have we will have to think about what that means for our place in the world it's not the first time we've had a period of retrenchment we've done it before we have a way we have a self-image about our own role in the world that tends to reemerge when we've had periods where we fear or feel that we're not respected in the world the way we have been so some of that may come back it's hard to imagine it right now because there's such a sense of weariness and weariness would be involved with conflicts particularly in the Middle East that look inherently messy that never quite produced an outcome that those who argue for our involvement suggest that it will that leads to us being increasingly cautious about what we want to do in the rest of the world the question I think becomes let's not focus too much on the current snapshot because I don't think that things are going to remain static for us as well and I and I do think like you I I think that the Chinese have enormous strengths but they also have enormous vulnerabilities you know one of the jobs I once had was in the office of net assessment in the Pentagon and one of the things you focus on a net assessment is you know how do you compete and where are the vulnerabilities of those that you're competing with there are is and really suggesting a lot of different measures of power now as well but I guess with you I'm not prepared to write off the role of military power because sooner or later it does have a place and and where you asked me the question or at least you made a reference to this does diplomacy work without the credible use of coercion to back it up and the answer is it's pretty hard to find examples of success without that so if it becomes clear that we're not capable of projecting power because we become too hollow it's going to have a diplomatic consequence but I guess my larger worry is a point I was trying to get up before there's nobody else out there who fills that vacuum and unfortunately vacuums do get filled and usually not by particularly useful forces you know it's interesting we're an hour and five minutes in and we haven't mentioned the word al-Qaeda which would have been you know a subject of great interest several years ago and I guess that's a form of victory that we have a group of very serious people who simply don't mention it it is although I was gonna had I had 18 minutes as opposed to 15 minutes I wouldn't have mentioned it writ large but I would have mentioned it in Syria yeah because I think it's an illusion for those who think that Syria is only a humanitarian catastrophe which it is and what Anne-Marie was saying it's I think the picture is much worse than anybody knows this recent story about 11,000 children being fatalities in this war and the stories of torture being used against babies in front of their parents is so I mean it's it's so unspeakable and it's not even it's not even out there and yet what I was about to say the bigger strategic worry we should have about Syria is that the number of al-Qaeda that and jihadis who are going to Syria because Assad is a magnet for every jihadi worldwide and the idea that somehow they won't embed themselves and at some point that won't become a problem for us I think is an illusion what can be done about it either Ambassador Ross or Anne-Marie right now I mean other than recognizing it's a problem and I mean you talked about a Rwanda of our time and you've been very vocal about doing something about it what can be done now what is a reasonable thing for the Obama administration to do you say Geneva too there's no no agenda it's not clear who's coming and is it sort of a waste of time go ahead I'll follow you up so just just to start on your al-Qaeda point I think we have to continue thinking that anywhere there's a major power vacuum it is basically a we should be thinking of it as a place where al-Qaeda al-Qaeda affiliates can set back up and you know that it's a it's a it is a network and it's a network where suddenly you can have a much more active note so today that Syria it was Afghanistan it was Sudan but that that we can never at this point not pay attention to ungoverned spaces that have sufficient infrastructure for for terrorist networks to set up and I just meant again in terms of the kinds of forces we need I think we're going to need the kinds of forces that can fight those networks more than huge land-based conflicts so now that I've temporized for a minute rather than answering the question I actually think our best hope in Syria for humanitarian reasons as well as strategic ones and it's a disaster on both fronts is something like Geneva where we can broker a political settlement that includes safe zones and UN forces to actually police them I only think that can happen if the United States and other countries make clear that if we can't get that agreement we are willing to use force in some ways whether it's using force simply to cripple the regime I understand the dangers I mean I totally understand the dangers of doing that but my point is we have gotten nowhere unless we have been willing to say to Assad who thinks he's going to win and there's good reason for him to think he's back absolutely on the upswing you have to remember that from the beginning in Syria it was it was not a sectarian thing it was not even turn overturned the regime it was people whose children had been tortured who wanted the same kinds of rights that people across the Middle East were marching for they did that for six months they took bullets they people were you know snipers the works before they even set up a their their own forces but Assad wanted it to be a sectarian conflict from the very beginning he understood that very clearly he he absolutely did everything he could to fan the flames calling them terrorists well now it is a sectarian conflict and they are terrorists so from my point of view you'll not get anything unless you make it clear to him that he that the other side may not win but he's not going to win either right that we are willing at least to take the measures that will stop him from doing what he's doing and then you get to a political some kind of political settlement that can be enforced I do not think Todd shaking his head I do not know you know if if there were good answers we'd have done something but but I cannot I think the alternative to that is watching this thing go for possibly years and possibly looking at this you know the changing borders around Kurdistan around Syria and Turkey in Iraq and much worse just two quick points at the moment Al Qaeda seems to be you're the expert but I'll just throw in my two cents that Al Qaeda seems to be preoccupied with killing Shiites or Shia trending and is less focused on on on larger existential American threats but that could change on the dime in the years to come the other thing is I can cannot imagine any kind of agreement in Geneva that does not involve putting large-scale troops on the ground to police it in some way I just don't see how you get to put you know to orchestrating a peaceful settlement in a in a country that's war-torn divided among dozens of groups with 20 million people and very spread out I agree I just don't I don't think they're gonna nest that's why I said UN troops not US troops I mean we might provide air cover etc but where I agree with that yeah I I don't see how you produce a political settlement unless you change the balance of power on the ground and the balance of power right now is shifting in the wrong direction mostly because of of Iranian Hezbollah Khataf Hezbollah backing of Assad where they're the kind of the shock troops for for the Syrian forces and the Syrians use all of their firepower advantages from a distance so if you don't change the balance of power Assad does think he's winning right now he is not capable of putting all of Syria back together and at some point I think we will have to define an objective in Syria yes we want a political outcome yes a political outcome is the best is the best result but it's impossible to produce it unless the balance of power is changed on the ground you have to on the one hand ensure that it becomes clear that Assad can't win you have to ensure that those who right now align with Assad understand that he is not going to be the future and that there can be some kind of assurances for them if they split from him if you cannot do that we are simply looking at a war that will continue to grind on at some point al Qaeda will embed itself right now it's in places but it's focused on the conflict but at some point it will embed itself in parts of Syria and then we'll face in Syria what we face in Yemen today and it's a matter of time before it gets to that point but you're looking at a war that will grind on you know today you have 600,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan so it has a huge effect on Jordan you have a million in Lebanon it is it is raising the level of violence in Iraq back to what it was in 2008 sharpening the divide there making it harder and harder to come up with any kind of political understandings within Iraq so I mean this is you know this is a cancer that is not going to be contained within Syria so I just unless the objective becomes a kind of containment objective which which itself requires building up localized leaderships within Syria is you you basically make a decision to ensure that the the reality of localized rule produces fragmentation in Syria but then you invest in localized leaderships and have them become buffers and even that requires safe areas so that refugees feel that they don't have they don't have to leave as a Husqa fall up I'm wondering I was particularly struck in the reporting on the the timeline aspect of the Iran negotiations now going back a couple of years did seem to me to sort of put a different colored set of lenses on in fact particularly our Syria strategy but arguably our regional strategy more broadly if a nuclear deal with Iran becomes the prime directive but you know but how does that affect our approach to Syria doesn't it sort of further constrain our ability or our negotiating position in Syria if we if I mean these things are inevitably linked if not directly so you know we can't afford to take off the Iranians too much just as we're trying to lure them to their nuclear destruction I don't know I mean it depends on how you approach negotiations one way of I'm a big believer in negotiations you don't achieve anything if you don't have leverage if it looks like we are prepared to to concede what Iran might seek in Syria as well I wonder those who think well in the Arab world you know the I like to say that conspiracy is like oxygen and everybody breathes it so the there's this big fear that will do will do a new we'll do a deal on the nuclear issue and in turn will give the Iranians what they want in the rest of the region and one way to answer that fear is by making it clear no we have a very clear set of objective in Syria and elsewhere and we're going to do certain things with our friends we're going to shore you up because we're committed to that we're trying to we're putting first things first Iran becoming a threshold nuclear state is not an acceptable outcome if there's a diplomatic way to achieve that we ought to try to achieve that the Iranians should understand that you know they can have civil nuclear power and we're prepared to accept that but the way we approach that negotiation is not going to be linked to everything else I think if we were to link it to everything else our ability even to achieve what we want on the nuclear issue with the Iranian diplomatically would disappear I just add in the last two days with all the various conversations about the Iranian deal I have also heard Iranian experts saying that Syria is getting out of control even for Iran that that this is this is obviously Syria you know I mean Iran supports Hezbollah Hezbollah is supporting Assad but but that the sort of specter of this continuing and this continuing in ways that then really starts destabilizing other countries is not not a prospect that Iran can contemplate with equanimity partly the Saudis are on the other side I mean you really you really start looking at nightmare scenarios so you know the one thing we do know is that Iran wants to be recognized as a major power in the Middle East and in the world for that matter that it thinks it is I would agree with no linkage but I would well imagine the if you can get a deal and it's a real deal and that means we then can engage Iran the prospect for Iran of actually being able to be part of negotiations on Syria and on other key and on Afghanistan is something that seems to me we that is leveraged that that's something Iran very much wants and that is at least thinkable if you can imagine getting a deal without a deal you know it's not say as long as they're prepared to play by a set of rules they want if they want set of rules that give them a kind of hegemony in the region then obviously that's not an acceptable set of rules it's one thing to have a respected place in the region look there they're a large country there they have a set of interests and this is it's possible to accept that they can have civil nuclear power that can't be converted into a nuclear weapon it's also possible for them to have interests that are respected by others in the region provided they were prepared to respect other people's interest in the region I would just add that a balance of power means precisely that just because you open up a civil dialogue with a big power that you've been estranged with for a third of a century does not mean that you automatically neglect your other allies because once you do that you lose all the leverage as somebody wrote right after dealing with the Chinese and Beijing in 72 Henry Kissinger flew to Moscow you know that was where he flew even though his deal in Beijing was essentially against the Russians to reassure the Russians I would imagine that if in the coming months Secretary Kerry were to make a trip to Tehran it's imaginable now if that were to happen he would fly directly from there to Riyadh or to Tel Aviv on his private official plane actually I would suggest he needs to go to those other places first all right if he goes to Tehran first and then what they read and what has been done is going to be I'll put it this way surprise and diplomacy works if it's such a transformational surprise that everybody sees the benefit surprise and diplomacy doesn't work if it's anything less than that because your friends will read the substance of what you're presenting to them through the lens of their suspicion they will already have all their defensive worries built very high and what they hear is interpreted through that lens and therefore they may not hear what you're saying they're going to hear only their fears throw it open to Q&A from the audience if you have a question can you raise your hand please identify yourself questions encourage not statements wait for the microphone so C-SPAN can get your question Emily we'll start with this gentleman here on I thank you I'm Qing Yi Chen with Phoenix TV just a breaking news B B 55 bombers just flew over the dispute island in East China Sea and similarly is because of China just announced the air defense identification zone so could you tell us how do you think about the the motivation of the US action and also what's the rationality of behind China's announcement and could this lead to a escalation of the tension among the three biggest economies in the world thank you disappear the bombers are from where from which country yes first of all given that China is a military is growing and growing at a faster rate than other countries in the region it would make sense for China to wait and delay and not start crises in incidents because the longer it goes on the more the balance of power shifts in China's favor that's not happening so the question is why isn't it happening why did China declare an air defense zone over this region I would say because as the as the Chinese because Xi Jinping has emphasized kind of a neo Maoism more nationalism more central control the Chinese economy is struggling your the tensions are more fraught than they were before it's it's it's noteworthy how much nationalism has been dialed up in Japan as well in the past few years the if this is correct I'm just taking your word for it that the US flew planes over the region if this is correct it's you know it's a show of force in defense of Japan meaning that the Pentagon the White House thought it serious enough the Chinese declaration of an air an air security zone that it merited a US response in defense of Japan let me note that if in fact this happened this shows how insecure the area is because if you actually have to go to the trouble to send your bombers over an area without having without normally you should just signal this without having to actually do it but if you actually have to do it it shows you you know it shows you how much more severe the security situation is in Asia a region where we've taken stability for granted for too long we thought for too many for decades that Asia is a business story you know it's for Fortune Forbes magazine it's a business story but it's but it's but it's slowly gradually become much more than that I just had two two points one I mean yes the to me this is the the most dangerous possible crisis we can imagine it's like when the Japanese captured the Chinese fishing captain that night I literally thought you know we could be looking at Sarajevo 21st century style where you know one quick trigger somebody you know if it had the Japanese fired or the Chinese fired and the Japanese responded then the United States has to come to Japan's defense I would say two things one it is also possible we're doing this really aimed at Japan as much as China I mean partly yes we're saying to China do not think you can do this with respect to Japan and we will not be there but we're also saying to Japan do not respond we're here and that's very important in other words we do not want Japan to respond in a way that that could escalate so I would I would see that message as well but the other point and Bob I think I'd differ with you a little on Xi Jinping in the part of what we haven't talked about domestic politics enough but Xi Jinping just announced an enormous set of reforms the economic reforms if he can carry them out are being looked at as as fundamental as some of Deng Xiaoping's original reforms and he's really talking about liberalizing parts of the Chinese economy that are going that need to be liberalized he's talking about going after corruption that's going to cause all sorts of domestic trouble so it is also the nationalism is partly a way of buying off the PLA he's he's can do both things they actually go exactly but he has to he has to create space for himself to be able to do this economically and that means he's got a military constituency and a young you know nationalist constituency and he's trying to juggle those things so he this may not be something he wants to dial up but that he has to yeah another question this lady over here hello Lori Watkins member of Truman Project I haven't really heard anyone mentioned the country of Turkey except for Miss Slaughter briefly mentioning it and how they're a major actor obviously in the region especially with Syria and recently I traveled to the area the especially the key least province and it'll break your heart to see some of the refugee children that have traveled there but there's Turkey is taking care of one million people right now refugees so one question I guess I have is who do you think is a fastest question and no one really knows who the opposition to Assad would be if we were to help help arm them help them get more developed lead whatever it may be and what do you think of Turkey's position playing in that region and reset something earlier that was right early on in this in what happened in Syria this started off peacefully and not only to start off peacefully the opposition was dominated by those who were non-sectarian and who wanted an inclusive Syria what's happened over time is that you've had radicalism is come to dominate the opposition from the standpoint of fighting capability in no small part because they had the money and they had the arms the issue is whether it's too late to try to support the free Syrian army in a way that would make it possible to shift the balance of power now one of things that's happened is that there's a kind of collaboration between the free Syrian army and some other radicalism is just because this is a way I mean there's both some fighting among them and there's also some collaboration and that's made it difficult to have confidence that if you provided arms you could really count on having a high level of confidence that you know where the arms would end up it seems to me if you really wanted to do something to change the balance of power you would have to decide that you were going to support the free Syrian army you'd have to do something that we in effect always wanted the opposition we wanted the opposition to have one address well you need those who are providing support to the opposition to have one address you need it to all be coordinated you need to have a quarterback you need to have everything channeled you need to have training worked out in one way or everything done in a complementary fashion that has not been the case and the question is whether it's too late for that I would I'm not sure it's too late I still think it needs to be part of what might be an integrated strategy towards trying to affect the balance of power as to Turkey has a huge stake in this I think this is an issue of some dissonance within Turkey itself you ask a broader question you start off by asking a broader question by the role of Turkey you then you sort of morph that into focusing only on Syria you know Turkey had a foreign policy that was described by a slogan which was called zero problems with neighbors today it has only problems with neighbors so I think that Turkey itself needs to be rethinking a little bit of what it's approach towards the region is going to be the fact is you may have noticed that Egypt has dramatically downgraded its relations with Turkey recently the what's happened to the Muslim Brotherhood by the way not only in Egypt if you look at what's happening in the Muslim Brotherhood across the region right now the Muslim Brotherhood was very strong in opposition in power it's been completely ineffective everywhere it's been and it's it's not a rising force right now it's a declining force right now well for Turkey the AKP the Muslim Brotherhood is basically these are our sister parties so Turkey has to think hard about what its posture in the region is going to be at a time what it thought was going to be the rise of political Islam would actually be in a sense of vehicle for Turkey playing a larger role in the region as a whole it has to rethink that posture Turkey by definition can play a significant role in the region it's not playing the role I think that it envisioned for itself and I think it has to rethink that posture right now there's another point which is Turkey try to to manipulate the crisis in Syria in Iraq it thought it could be a neo-automan regional player middle-level power what happened partly is that it became embroiled with its own Kurdish problem because the southeast quadrant of Turkey is heavily Kurdish so when it tried to affect events in Syria or in Iraq its own Kurdish problem got in the way and that has really been and Turkey is basically rammed up against its own contradictions in Syria and in Iraq it's now the latest iteration is it's you know they built this pipeline from Kurdistan through Turkey but whether they turn on the taps or not is very questionable because that would hurt Turkey's relations with Baghdad and so it's Turkey is ethnically too embroiled in the region itself you know to project power without a lot of complications with its neighbors one sentence that's right but one thing we've paid very little attention to is that Erdogan just met with Barzani the head of Kurdistan in Iraq which is actually quite extraordinary to have a side-by-side meeting this gets him support among Kurds across the country many of whom are in Istanbul and in fact one Turkish expert I just talked to said this will help Erdogan in the election he's actually done more with respect to the Kurds in Iraq than I think it's sort of a historic event it is and it is he has been trying to use the Kurdish issue within Turkey as part of his effort as he looks to a change in the constitution which would empower the presidency so if he were to swap positions and become president then he would be able to be president with powers as opposed to more ceremonial so it is the point is that you were talking about the relationship in China between what is in a sense the internal posture and the external posture we tend to always think about what the relationship between our domestic informed policy is if you look at Turkey today this is a centerpiece of what's going on right now and it turns out this is we're not so unique in this respect one more question this gentleman here thank you thanks Mr. Bergen and thanks to the panelists I'm sort of reminded of Citizen Kane where Charles Foster-Kanes asked about business conditions how did you find business conditions overseas and he says with great difficulty how would you define the relationship between the president and his peers you have the Wall Street Journal below the fold piece in July by penetrations by India into U.S. companies Angela Merkel probably memories of the Stasi and the whole NSA affair and we know how the president and Mr. Putin get along so that's one question and do you doc you had Dr. Rice here in September she's I think wrapping up a chip to Afghanistan now both she and Ambassador Power forge their reputations and the crucible of Rwanda how are they doing to coin Ed Koch's phrase and to Ambassador Ross how's the how's Secretary Kerry doing thanks okay that was not one question so we're gonna have to have very short answers for those go ahead well okay that's an excellent answer I just I mean I think both Ambassador Rice and Ambassador Power are in extraordinarily difficult situation from the point of view of having both been very active in Libya and obviously outside of office but in in office both supporting the intervention in Libya and and certainly I think wanting a to be able to act in Syria but part of what's happened in Syria for all of this is you know at every turn it looks absolutely awful action looks just terrible and fraught with uncertainty and how are we going to do this and how are we going to get out of this and we're better off not acting until a year later when or six months later when it looks like if we'd only acted six months ago maybe we could have done something and the so the question now is I think if we don't act now in a year in two years we are going to be looking at the Middle Eastern equivalent of the Thirty Years War and I think we're going to be wishing where once again you had sectarian and borders sectarian conflict and borders at issue and then we have to act now but I can understand that if I were sitting in the situation room in the White House and the President said to me okay would please lay out what it is we're going to do and how we're going to do it I'm not sure I'd have a great answer so I think that's where they are. I would just say Secretary Kerry has showed himself to be a risk taker you know he rolls his reputation on success on on on negotiations where the probability of a good outcome is probably below 50% and he's doing it not in one negotiation but in several not just with Iran but with the Palestinian Israeli one and so this in a sense gives him more power than maybe he's given credit for he's not looking to his next job so to speak. He's very much he's been underestimated I would say you know the key to diplomacy to be effective in it if you're a secretary of state is a to be prepared to take calculated risks be to have a very high level of energy and determination and I would even say tenacity and thirdly to also know the to how to exercise patience the idea of calculated risks in patients may seem like it's it's not a con those are consistent attributes but in fact there's a key to effective diplomacy and I think he has the potential as difficult as these challenges are he's showing a readiness to stick with it and that is I think it's a necessary condition for success it's not sufficient for success. Thank you to our brilliant panelists Ambassador Ross Robert Captain Anne-Marie Slaughter and thank you for coming today and thank you to the audience for watching this.